A/N: Betaed by the wonderful The Apocryphal One.
"Ben," she says and that's all it takes. The walls in his mind crumble to dust and he is left defenceless.
They are standing on a bridge in the new base of the First Order and it would have struck him as ironic, had he not accepted long ago that he was going to die by her hands. She is his salvation and his damnation. He is a slave, chains binding him to the darkness and to the choices he made as a child. He can't turn back even if he wanted to. But she is looking at him as if there is another way and the demons in his mind are begging for release and forgiveness.
"Don't call me that." He doesn't want her to say his name. He killed the last person who did. He had killed the person who once listened to that name. He had destroyed the light and hope it meant. He had walked into the open arms of the darkness willingly, letting it fill the aching hole in his soul with sweet dreams and false promises of greatness. He now knows it was a lie. She knows it, too. But he already gave in to temptation once, he doesn't want to again. He doesn't want to give in to her. He would have nothing left if he did.
"Ben Solo."
They have clashed many times during the years after Starkiller Base. She has gotten much stronger. She has embraced her powers and she has become a Jedi. She is the hero of the Light side, their new hope. She is like the sun, beautiful and radiant. She is shining too brightly for him and every time he has fought her, he could feel himself weakening. Sometimes he beat her, sometimes she beat him. Whenever he failed, his grandfather remained silent and Snoke tortured him until he couldn't stand anymore.
But she has never said his real name. He knows how she sees him: as Kylo Ren, the monster who killed his own father. And she is right. That's what he is. He had hoped to stop caring once he committed the greatest sin of them all. He had hoped he would see where his path was leading. He had hoped he would be able to silence the demons in his head. None of that happened. Killing Han Solo didn't achieve anything. He failed again and he hates himself so much, it is suffocating.
He doesn't want to be called Ben Solo. He doesn't deserve to be called Ben Solo. And he doesn't understand why she thinks he does.
"Ben Solo is dead." He wants her to turn around and go away. Her face remains impassive but her eyes are full of determination and her lightsaber is the mirror of her soul: steady and stable unlike his own. She isn't going to give up. "You won't find what you're looking for, Rey. I killed him just like I killed Han Solo."
She shakes her head. "You may have killed Han," she says, her voice shaking a little. "But you didn't kill Ben. He is still alive. He is still there, buried deep inside you," she points at his heart. "He is the reason you still know what hope is. I am here today because of him."
He lets out a low, humourless chuckle. "You are foolish. Did Luke Skywalker tell you this? It sounds like him." He tilts his head to the side. "You should've accepted my offer back then. I would've been a better teacher for you than he ever could be."
"You're wrong. You're wrong about so many things," she sighs. "I don't want to kill you."
"Why not? That's been your aim all these years. I'm beyond redemption," he smiles. "You said it yourself, remember?"
It was the first time they had seen each other after Han Solo's death. She spat the words at him with a fury that rivalled his own. He is tempted to pry into her memories through their bond and see their second battle for himself, but the last time he tried, the stars in her mind blinded him and he blacked out for several hours. Their connection causes him pain but he doesn't want her to be aware of that.
"I know you saved me." A shadow of sadness dances on her face and he freezes. She can't know about that... "You are the one who left me on Jakku."
He wants to deny it, but he can't say a word. Her eyes are like an ocean and he feels as if he is drowning. She opens the gates of her mind to him, letting down her walls, bringing him in. He wants to shout out, to stop her, but it is too late. He is suddenly embraced by her light and it hurts, it hurts as much as anything Snoke ever did to him. He feels like it is tearing him apart, raging around him like a hurricane and he wants nothing more than to return to his own head and crawl into the darkest corners.
"Don't be afraid." She covers his hand with hers and he looks at her. She is smiling at him with silent tears streaming down her face. "I feel it, too."
He wants to ask her why she is crying, but then the memory starts playing.
It is raining. Rey is a brave little five-year-old girl and she is going to become a Jedi when she grows up, but there is one thing that scares her and that is thunder. But she is strong and she promised Ben that she would get rid of her fears. It's somehow easier to say that, though, when the sun is shining… And where is Ben anyway? He always comes to her at nights like this. He would sit with her until she fell asleep and tell her stories about his hero, Anakin Skywalker, the golden child, the galaxy's saviour. She always feels sorry for Anakin in the beginning. Growing up in the desert couldn't have been easy…
Rey gets out of bed. She can't sleep and Ben isn't here, so she would look for him. Maybe he's still at training? But it's already late and she doesn't think Master Luke would hold him for so long.
She steps out into the hallway. It's quiet and empty like the life has been sucked out of the building. She doesn't like it. Where is everyone? A shiver runs down her spine and she hugs herself. She will hurry, find Ben and everything will be alright.
The sound of her footsteps echoes between the giant walls and Rey feels tiny. She stops in front of a window and looks outside. The storm is attacking the planet like it wants to devour it alive. The moon is hidden by an army of clouds as if they want to protect it. She can't see anything from the rain, so she uses the Force like Master Luke and Ben have taught her to. She reaches out with it and almost faints from the evil and despair that hit her at once. Something very bad has happened. There are people out there who mean harm to everyone she knows.
Rey starts running, her heart beating erratically like a caged bird wanting to escape. At any other time the big iron door at the end of the hallway would be hard for her to open, but she's fuelled by adrenaline. She is outside the next second. Compared to the deadly silence behind her, it's loud in the rain as if there is a battle being fought up in the sky. She's soaking wet in a minute but she doesn't care. The presence in the distance pulses with rage and she's terrified, but she runs towards it. She knows it's unwise but she has to know what's happening. She has to find Ben. He would make things alright again…
She spots moving shapes and her mind is shouting at her to turn back and hide, but she wills her legs to carry on. She keeps her eyes on the black forms, so she doesn't notice that there is something on the ground. She trips and falls to her knees. She wants to get up immediately but she makes the mistake of looking back.
It's a body. It's missing an arm and Rey realizes horrified that she's kneeling in a pool of blood beside it. There's a gaping hole in the chest and there's mud on the neck. She's afraid to see who it is but she lifts her eyes to the face and she lets out a piercing scream.
She knows him. It's Herub. He is a Jedi student. He is always nice to her and he would occasionally talk to Ben when she's walking around with him in the evening.
His eyes are open and he has a shocked expression like he can't believe what happened.
She just saw him yesterday. And now he is dead.
Rey forgets how to breathe. Her mind is utterly empty. She understands that she shouldn't be here but she is incapable of getting up. She's frozen and she can't stop staring at Herub's face.
Suddenly, she gets the ghastly feeling that someone is behind her but before she has a chance to act, red fills her vision. She turns around, every sense of her being alert to the danger. It comes from a red lightsaber embedded into the chest of a man who has a weapon in the air, ready to strike down at her. He falls to the side and Rey sets eyes on a group of people dressed in black.
They all have their lightsabers drawn but she focuses on the person in front of them. He has a mask on and is apparently their leader. His saber has two smaller blades on the sides and it glows in the colour of blood, angry and unstable. Red means Sith.
He's looking at her and Rey wonders if she's going to die here.
"What are you doing?" One of the people in the back asks, but the question is not aimed at her.
"She's mine," says the man in the mask and Rey feels like the air has been cut off from her lungs. Even if it is distorted, she would know that voice anywhere… "Go ahead. I'll come after you."
"Ren…"
"I said go!" he shouts and she feels like she got punched in the chest. No, no, no, it can't be…
The men leave and she's left alone with the creature in the mask. She looks around and notices even more corpses. She's somehow certain that they were all Jedi students. Boys and girls she trained together with. And they were slaughtered by these men.
She wants to say something, ask something, but she doesn't understand anything.
He walks towards her and she scrambles to her feet, stepping back fast. He stops. He lifts up his free arm and with a press of a button he takes off his mask.
Rey wishes he hadn't done that.
Because now she has to believe what she didn't want to.
He was her hero. He was her best friend. He was kind and a genius and he always made her laugh. He was often sad and he had a bad temper but he never lashed out at her. He gave her piggy rides, tickled her until she couldn't breathe and let her play with his hair. He told her stories about the Force. Master Luke said she was the only one who still could make him smile. He called her his little Rey of sunshine.
He was Ben Solo. Her Ben.
She doesn't know who he is now. Ben Solo couldn't have done this.
"Rey…" His voice sounds broken and his face is pale but it doesn't really register with her.
"Why?" She feels like she's trapped in a dream and no matter how hard she tries, she can't wake up. "Why did you kill them?" He would be there for her in these moments but now he's the nightmare she wants to escape from.
"W-will you kill me, too?" He's the one who's teaching her how to conquer her fears. But how could she conquer them when he's the one she's afraid of?
He doesn't answer her questions.
"You shouldn't have been here," is all he says before dropping his mask and extending his arm towards her.
Rey can't move. It's like she has lost control over her own body. The sense of betrayal is strong and she can't hold back the tears anymore. She trusted him to never use his powers on her like this.
He comes to her and squats down, so he can look her in the eye. His gaze is full of anguish and torment and it breaks something in her. He slowly touches her face as if she's made of porcelain and even if she can't imagine why he has done this, she understands one thing: he's not going to kill her. No. But he's going to leave her. She has the feeling that he will burn every bridge behind him, and for a moment she wants to beg him to stop and turn back.
She never gets the chance to.
The last thing she hears before she loses consciousness is him whispering into her ear.
"Forgive me…"
Then there's blackness and she knows no more.
The next time she wakes she is in a desert and there is a ship nearby preparing to take off. She couldn't explain why, but she has the feeling that she has to get to it. Someone important to her is on it. It must be her family.
Before she can take a step, though, someone grabs her tiny arm. She tries to fight but the hold is too strong. She looks to the ship and her heart sinks to her stomach. It has taken off without her. But why would her family leave her behind…?
She doesn't know when she started crying. But she knows that she doesn't want to be alone here.
"Come back…!"
The memory ends. He is back in his own head. He closes his eyes, but the image of Rey as a child, abandoned and desperate, has burned into his mind. He hears the echo of her scream in his ear and feels her confusion and dread in his heart.
He has killed and he has tortured people. He has destroyed lives and planets. He has committed sins that can never be forgiven. Murdering Skywalker's students was his invitation into the kingdom of darkness and he has accepted it. But then Rey was there when she shouldn't have been. Her fear of storms should have hindered her. She wasn't supposed to see him with the Knights of Ren because his orders forbade him to let anyone live who did. Yet he couldn't do it. He couldn't kill her. So he wiped her memories and left her on Jakku, a place where no one would search for her. He didn't look back down on her when he took off with his ship. He didn't turn back.
He knows he will never get absolution. He has hurt too many people. And he doesn't care. He gave up trying to forgive himself when he held her unconscious body in his arms and with the corpses around them as the only witnesses, he decided to protect her by ruining her life.
She has crossed the bridge. She is standing right in front of him now and he realizes that it's not his own forgiveness he needs but hers. And that is the one thing he can never take from her.
"How…?" He was certain she would never recover her memories.
Her smile is sad. "Luke is a better teacher than you give him credit for." She looks down on her lightsaber. When she meets his eyes again, her face is hardened and through their bond he feels her light slowly turn from white to grey.
"You killed our fellow Jedi students. You betrayed your uncle and Master. You turned on your family and everything they stand for. You abandoned me on Jakku. You joined the Dark side. You let it consume you. You murdered your own father and broke your mother's heart. You injured Finn. You erased my memory. You made me forget my past, who I was."
She steps closer to him, their noses almost touching.
"I remember now. I'll never forget who you are, who you've become. But I also remember now who you used to be. And I'm here to remind you."
He expects a blow or a hit. Instead she slowly slides her arms around him, enwrapping him in a tight hug. Hear head fits perfectly under his chin and he's sure she has heard his heart missing a beat. Her hair tickles his nose and she is warm like the brightest sunshine in the summer on Naboo.
He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to process this. All thoughts have left his mind and he can only concentrate on how small she is. She seems so fragile and delicate… but he knows she would be fully capable of driving her lightsaber through his chest. He finds that he doesn't care. If this is what death feels like, so pure and angelic, then he is ready to go to hell.
He wants to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close, but he is afraid. Not of breaking her - nobody could do that, least of all, him - but of what it will do to him.
'You can do it.' Her voice is quiet in his mind, driving the shadows back into the corners. His demons are silent and he feels peaceful for the first time since the voice started whispering to him about greatness and power when he was a little boy.
He puts his arms around her with a gentleness he didn't think he possessed. He tried to kill her countless times, every fibre of his being longing for her disappearance, for the temptation to cease. After leaving her and the Light, he had buried the memories of her laughter along with his mother's scent and his father's last touch under his anger and rage.
He doesn't want to hurt her now. He doesn't want her to stay but he also doesn't want her to go away. He is conflicted and perplexed without his anger guiding him.
She feels so good. She fits so well against him. She smells like the ocean and he wonders whether the first Jedi Temple on Ahch-To has been rebuilt. He found his uncle's stories about it fascinating when he was Rey's age at the time of the massacre.
His knees suddenly give out and he sinks to the floor with her. He doesn't let go of her and buries his nose in her hair, breathing her in, breathing life in.
He has taken so much from her. He had stolen her youth, her innocence, her future and her dreams. He had forsaken her to a childhood full of pain and loneliness. He tortured her and he injured her friends. He killed the person she saw as a father figure. He fought the Resistance and he had set out to destroy the cause she believes in.
He is not worthy of her forgiveness.
"No, you are not." She lifts her head to look at him and cups his face in her hands. Her touch burns but it's a good hurt. Their bond is humming between them, painless and tender, and he marvels at her beauty for the first time. "But you could be."
She plants a feather like kiss on his scar, the one she gave him. Her lips are warm and gentle – it's meant as a reassurance. He closes his eyes and he suddenly sees the two of them as children from a time when the line between Light and Dark was less blurry.
Rey's laughter is his favourite melody; he wishes he could listen to it for all eternity. She brings the sun down from the sky, glowing like the brightest stars and he is thankful that she is part of his life. When she smiles, he forgets about his family's legacy, the expectations he has to fulfil and the voice that's haunting him with images of glory and power.
"I surrender!" He puts up his hands. "You can get the last cookie! Just stop tickling me!"
"Told you I would win," she says, grinning and stands up to grab said cookie from his bag. He's still lying on the ground but he props himself up on one elbow to look at her. "Next time I'll beat you," he says.
"You dream big, Ben," she winks.
"Just wait… I'll become the most powerful Jedi ever and I'll get all the cookies I want."
"Until I become the most powerful Jedi, of course," she sticks her tongue out.
"Who is dreaming big now?" he laughs.
He opens his eyes. Her gaze is full of hope and second chances.
"You have become the most powerful Jedi, after all." He smiles and there is a single tear running down her face. "I have," she whispers.
Maybe she is right.
Maybe Ben Solo is still alive.
A/N: Rey saying Kylo's real name and kissing his scar are my weaknesses. I had these two scenes in my head and I just had to write them. I hope you liked the result! Reviews are appreciated and treasured.