Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars.
Prologue
34 ABY
Star Dreadnought Mega-class Supremacy
Crait System, Outer Rim
Something had happened, something he could not entirely put together. He had been seeing the scavenger through the Force. No, she was not the scavenger. She was more than that and yet nothing more.
Rey.
He knew she was coming. He could feel it.
The moment their fingertips touched, he saw a flurry of visions. Many, but unified. Merely shadows, but visible. And all of them were her by his side.
He had only begun to think of grasping her entire hand, when she suddenly turned to something outside of his vision. The last thing he saw was a look of both fright and rage on her face. The bond had stopped at that moment. Rey had disappeared, his bedsheets as flat and untouched as though she had not been sitting on them mere seconds before. His hand was outstretched in midair.
This bond had been longer than all the others before it. It was the first time she did not shout at him. He had expected her aggression, but was greeted instead by a tear-streaked face. Her wet clothes stuck to her skin. Her hair was damp and fell to her shoulders; he had never seen her with her hair down before. She wrapped a woven blanket around herself. To him, it looked rough and uncomfortable.
He did not break the silence, but felt as though his heart did in his stead. He wondered if she could hear how loudly it beat in his chest. She glanced at him and he saw the tears dotting her lashes. He swallowed hard.
Something had happened, something terrible. He could feel the pain and sorrow radiating from her. He could feel it as though it were his own.
And then, without prompting, she began to recount what had just happened to her.
He figured out without much effort that she had followed Skywalker to the first Jedi temple. He remembered a trip to Coruscant with Han Solo to secure funds for his racing venture, how they had taken that filthy ship to the old galactic capital from their home on Chandrila, how he had marvelled at the charred spires of the former Imperial Palace from the Falcon's grimy windows. He was six, and Han Solo had insisted on bringing him along while he reviewed him on the Falcon's more advanced customizations. Ben already knew the basics, his father had made sure of that. He had wanted his son to become a skilled pilot, but Ben was always more preoccupied with the history of interstellar flight than how to fly. He could not remember how he convinced his father to drop him off at the Library of the Republic while he went off to broker deals with other foolish beings like him looking to make a profit. Yet he did, and he had spent that day reading books and holobooks from the Old Republic to the Galactic Empire. It was the first time he had touched that much paper in his life. There was nothing in the galaxy that smelled quite like it. His mother's place on the New Republic Senate (or at least the holographic ID Han Solo had swiped for him) easily offered him clearance to view whatever documents he wished, and he made sure that most of it was on paper.
He had pored over the ancient texts about the Jedi Order, now practically non-existent thanks to him. Scholars were arguing relentlessly about the location of the first Jedi temple: some said it was on Coruscant, under the mountain upon which they had built the Jedi Academy itself; some said it was on the moon Jedha, its Holy City decimated in a mining incident but its kyber crystal caves still intact; others said it was on an uncharted aquatic planet called Ahch-to in the Unknown Regions, so remote that no one in recorded history could claim that they had ever set foot there. Still, there were claims that on Ahch-to there were manifestations of both the Light and the Dark, that it was a place of True Balance.
Rey told him of the temple ruins at the peak of the island and the cave underneath. The cave whose temptation she told him Skywalker had warned her to resist. The Light above and the Dark below. It was exactly as she described. But he did not know what lay there in the Dark.
She told him about the hole in the ground, the never-ending mirror, the shadows behind the frosted glass. But mostly, she told him about her disappointment at seeing only her own reflection.
He did not say a single word as she spoke. Her voice, though soft, echoed in the hollow walls of his room. Though he could not hear a fire crackling from her end, he could see her swollen eyes and sad face bathed in the warmth of its light. She stood out against the cold metal of his chambers, looking even more like she did not belong there.
"I'd never felt so alone," she said.
She was not.
"You're not alone."
She had him.
Were they friends? He would not have known, having never truly had one. Were they allies? That was an even greater stretch. They were bonded, but what did that even mean? The only thing clear to him was that she had him. In some inexplicable way that only the two of them could ever know.
Another tear streamed down her cheek.
"Neither are you," she replied. "It isn't too late."
With bated breath, she held out her hand. He did not break their gaze, but felt his mouth quiver. He took off his glove.
The moment their skin met, he felt that it was possible to forget how to breathe. Through a hazy film of tears that would not fall, he gazed deep into her eyes, but saw far more than just her dark pupils and his own reflection in them.
He saw them.
No longer alone.
Together.
He saw her past, his past, their future. There was not much to be done about the past but to burn it, to raze it to the ground until not a trace was left. But their future lay before them. Their future together. And he wanted to reach out for it now.
What he had seen in her eyes occupied his thoughts for hours afterwards. He had not spoken to her since then. But she was coming. He could feel her, her pull stronger and stronger with every jump in hyperspace to get to where he was.
He never told her he was on the Supremacy. But she knew.
His thoughts were hers. Her emotions were his. Their past, though separated by time and distance, was one and the same. Their future would be too. All this they shared, in a bond that no other could see or even remotely comprehend.
As Ben Solo stood to change his overcoat, he resolved that she would be by his side from now on. Neither of them would be alone anymore.
Note: Jedha wasn't actually destroyed in a mining incident.
