Author Note: This is my very first fic. Of all time, in any fandom. I love this community and am so inspired by the work that other authors are doing around this couple. I'm stupid in love with these two and, like, working through some stuff about it. :) Angst ahead! You've been warned.
It felt as though night had fallen, though there was no "time" to tell in hyperspace. Rey gazed out the cockpit of the Falcon, absently wondering whether anyone searching the skies of the planets they passed had caught the bright streak of their progress as it struck like lightning across the stars. The others, barely two dozen in number, had dispersed from the ship's hold only moments ago. A heated discussion of what to do next had turned in circles until everyone present realized that there simply were no good options. It didn't help, Leia admitted, that none of them had eaten or slept (she wasn't counting her force-coma) in the two days since the chase had started. She dismissed them to the task of finding food and sleeping supplies in the dusty storage compartments of the ancient freighter that, until a week ago, had been slowly gathering sand in the Jakku desert. As they hunted for things to eat, blankets and bed rolls, Rey had noted the vacant expressions of these strangers, the weight of their fatigue and dread. They had been hunted, slowly and cruelly, picked off, run to ground. They had escaped by the skin of their teeth thanks to two force-wielding strangers, one of whom they had never met. And will never meet, Rey mused absently, feeling again the hollow spot in her chest where the sensation of Luke's departure had flared like a setting sun only hours before.
He was gone. The legend, her begrudging teacher. Her last, best hope to understand her place in all this. The warmth of peace and purpose she had felt in the moment of his passing had chilled within her. With the pretense of searching the cockpit for useful supplies, she had melted into the shadows of the room and then, gratefully, a chair. (Han's chair, she'd winced internally.) Two fathers gone within a week. That sensation was there, too – twin aches of loss for such different men. Men who had seen her, recognized her quick mind, her skill and resourcefulness. But also the instability of her power and the dangerous, searching openness of her heart. Reaching out to the Force – and to him.
Him. She shut her eyes against the last glimpse of him as it rose in her memory, but shutting them only clarified the vision. Kylo Ren knelt before her, backlit by the staggering brilliance of the salty plain, with one hand upturned as though holding something she couldn't see – or beckoning to her once more. His face was inscrutable, but she could guess at the swirl of emotions that lurked beneath it. The humiliation of defeat. The pain of abandonment. And something else. Admiration, longing. She opened her eyes, and they were wet with tears. Another stunning shift of the past however-many-hours. The murderous snake turned… what? Friend? Ally? Savior? And then enemy again. Her heavy limbs, though exhausted, trembled with shock at the thought of all that had passed between them. It might take a lifetime to understand the complexity of the bond they had shared. Forged by Snoke, but once inhabited, unimaginably volatile and… tender. Suddenly overwhelmed, she folded forward in the chair, pressing stiff hands to her face. She rested there until a soft rustle at her side snapped her to attention. As she turned, a warm and weathered hand came down on her shoulder.
"Rey," Leia breathed gently, "you need to sleep."
Rey raised her eyes to the General's face. The older woman looked down kindly, sliding her hand across Rey's shoulder and into her lap as she took a seat in the cockpit's second chair. Pausing, she looked slowly around her. With a sigh, she raised her hands again, running them gently across the console. Rey swallowed hard; the sight of this woman, the thought of the loss she had suffered, were too much. The tears that had retreated rose again, and she shook her head against them, against what she knew must now be said. "I'm sorry, Leia," she said simply. "I failed."
Leia's head turned slowly, but her gaze was quick and Rey saw unexpected mirth in her tired expression. "You didn't," she countered. "As my brother enjoyed reminding me, no-one is ever really gone. And although my son has not returned, something tells me that the burden of what he achieved today will wear on him more than he knows."
Rey drew her brows together questioningly. "But… Snoke is dead. Han is dead. Luke is dead. There's no-one left to contain him, to confront him, to persuade him to another path."
"They are dead," Leia acknowledged, glancing down at her hands and then into Rey's eyes. Her eyes were penetrating, but warm. "But you are not. Chewie tells me that you have spoken to him. That you were with him on Snoke's ship. What do you feel in him?"
Rey averted her eyes, frozen suddenly. "I have spoken to him," she began slowly, haltingly. It came out in fragments. "When I was on Ahch-To, with Luke… He appeared to me, several times. We didn't know how it was happening, but we started to talk. I was so angry. I called him a monster. I needed to know why – why he had killed Han, why he wanted to find his uncle. He told me… he told me that Luke had betrayed him, tried to kill him." Leia shifted slightly in her seat. "What he told me was true; Luke confirmed it. Luke's shame, his sense of failure with his nephew, failure of you, failure of the Jedi and the Force – that's what drove him into exile. And I understand it. I understand him." The tears rose again, and she let them fall. "Leia, I understand them both. At first I couldn't see Kylo Ren as your son. But I felt… Everything he's done, it's because he's in pain, Leia. Ben Solo is in pain. He feels abandoned, betrayed by his family and his masters. He doesn't want to be alone. Snoke claims that he bridged our minds, but what I felt through the bond… it's something stronger. He offered to teach me. He offered me his hand."
Leia's face was still, but her eyes flashed. "His hand?"
"To rule with him," Rey muttered. The relief she felt in unburdening herself, the grace and gravity with which her confession was received, had stilled the trembling in her arms. She felt empty. Almost. The last words had to be said.
"I took it, Leia. I felt his suffering and it felt like… like my own. My solitude and pain on Jakku. Rootless and hopeless. I reached out to him and took his hand. In a vision, I saw him turn. I believed, I surrendered myself to him, and he killed Snoke for me. To save me. He wants… an equal. A new world. Beyond Light or Dark, beyond the Resistance and the First Order. Inside, he's a hostage to the pain of his past. Your son needs – he wants to let the past die. To that end he is killing his enemies. But what he wants is not something that those deaths - or I - can give him. I can't save him. I failed."
They regarded one another carefully. Rey's heart bloomed with sorrow. She felt ashamed of what had passed between her and Kylo Ren, but also utterly unwilling to condemn herself for recognizing what his suffering had wrought in him. She did not want to hold Leia responsible for Luke, or Han, or any part of her son's path. Snoke's influence notwithstanding, he had made those choices on his own. But she knew that Ben Solo's pain shone through her, needed to be seen and acknowledged. Leia was present to the force of it, felt the misery that poured out of Rey's body and into the space between them. She had not been ignorant to it, knew that her son had needed her, but the Resistance had needed her more. With battles to be fought and won, lives at stake, she had not been able to walk away. But now, the Resistance decimated, abandoned by their allies in the Outer Rim… she felt into that silence and found no hope. No hope for the Resistance, no war left to win except in the twinned heartaches before her, Ben's and Rey's. She sat back slightly, and shifted her gaze out the window. There was nothing to see, but she fixed her eyes on the distance and sighed heavily. "I owe my son an apology," she said.
An hour later, Rey's feet carried her out of the cockpit. She was so tired that, in the morning, she would not remember leaving. She would not remember finding Finn leaning sleepily against the bunk in which Rose lay unconscious. She would not remember sitting down next to him. She would not remember the warmth and comfort of his solid form beside her, or the gentle press of his hand, offering permission for her tears to fall. She would not remember him rolling her gently onto her side, her head in his lap, or his warm hand stroking her hair. She slept as though dead, feeling as though she deserved to be.