[So a few comments before you embark on the journey I am trying to call to life. I am not a native english speaker, so I will happily take comments to improve my writing. Also, I am working with an alternative ending where Kylo has followed Rey just after the supreme leader's murder. Hux is now in control of the entire First Order fleet and will grow accordingly. For the length, this is like an intro so it is short but the chapters will lengthen with time. I want to write a long haul story so if the reviews are encouraging, I will do so!
Have fun, tell me what you like, and the next chapter is already on its way!]
Rey was standing just outside what looked like a second opening of the mine. As she was moving the rubles around, making way for her friends and allies to pass through the breach in the mountain as they flee from the unceasing fires of Hux's armies, she tried not to think too far ahead. The strenuous process was taking even more time and energy as needed because of all the thoughts bouncing around in her head. How would they react? Would they understand?
She thought to herself: "Don't think about it. Think about the 45 boulders you are trying to move around like they are freaking apples."
She closed her eyes, focusing on the task at hand. Slowly, she saw their faces. Then, their bodies. Their entire bodies, safe and sound. Too few bodies; but bodies nonetheless. She had left them legions. They were now a handful of shivering figures climbing out of a gaping hole. But they looked thrilled to see her. Finn took her in his arms. She felt safe and warm. She felt home.
Leila's hand touched her shoulder, a proud grin on her wrinkled visage, tapping a couple times before continuing her ascension of the cliff, getting to the haven that had become the Millenium Falcon. And then she stopped.
What was just seconds ago a warm and fuzzy feeling Rey's stomach, fueled by the happy and light atmosphere of reunion that was floating into the crisp air of the mineral planet was now morphing into a lead ball. The air buzzed with a weird tension, and then buzzed some more with the angry sound of blasters loading.
The scavenger knew way too well what they just saw.
As she wiggled free out of Finn's arms, she rapidly mounted the cliff to the top, where he was standing. She cried some words on a loop; all of them meaning to convey a ceasefire. Her distraught gaze flipped back to her friends, exposing her back to their target.
She could feel every fiber of his being. He was calm and stoic. From his soul emanated the feeling of someone who is ready to die, if things really come down to this. It calmed her just as much as it panicked her. The eyes of the ones she called friends were all too intense on her face. They were determined. Seeing just on the other side of her shivering body the cause and very own rotting roots of all their problems. Leia, standing tall and steady on what seemed to be the most unstable stack of pebbles, rose a hand just an inch over her waist as if she was ready to let the blasters turn everything into dust at the flick of her wrist. But her hand was trembling. Nothing was played.
"Rey. What exactly are you doing in front of him?" Leia said, her voice cracking with age but certainly not with uncertainty.
"He's okay. He's with us now. He killed Snoke. He came with me. He left the order." She was cackling like it was her life on the scales… knowing the connection that was thriving between them, even after the departure of Snoke, maybe it was her life she was defending as well as his.
Finn was eating his cheeks from the inside out, growling and mumbling to express his furry. She was way too aware of how he was probably feeling in the moment. She felt life a traitress to the rebellion. But she was if the story unfolded as she saw when she had touched him, a savior to the cause. He shifted from behind her, his tall and steady silhouette advancing with so much ease that you could see that he was using the exact minimum of energy required to accomplish his actions. She had never felt him so calm, as he was usually a mountain of bubbling wrath. Yet he was.
"What do you have to say for your defense, Kylo Ren." announced Leia. The sound of this name was filled with disgust and ridicule. As she was talking to a little kid playing around and hurting everyone in the nursery. Maybe that is how she saw him. As a big, strong and dangerous baby. Because he was hers.
"I would like to be called Ben." His profound raspy voice resonated in the air. General Organa flickered onto her solid base. '' And I have nothing to say except that I am here from now on. She has my saber. She can feel my every thoughts and will. If I cut the connection with her, that's when you can ask me how you are supposed to trust me''
Her gaze flew slowly from his to Rey's: '' Is what he's saying veridic? '' The young Jedi shook her head rapidly, her lips forming a straight line, her eyes locked into the abyss of her superior's pitch-black irises.
"How do we know she is not under his spell. That he it's not just another sucker punch?'' The humming of approval passed around in the limited crowd.
Rey could feel Leia's force asking if she could communicate with hers. She let her in, momentarily because Ben's presence was so overwhelming that she feared she would lose herself if any more energy inhabited her.
"Because I tell you that she is telling the truth.'' They all stopped for a moment. '' But I will not risk the little we have left. Put some restraints on him.'' Hurt passed through her eyes. '' And on her as well."
Some people Rey barely knew approached her with shackles and passed them around her wrist to the point it bit her flesh. The sting grew as they moved her around to what she has come to know as her ship. Finn passed by her side, disgust and incomprehension in his gaze, BB-8 following him and another man closely but whining at her approach.
Rey whispered: '"It's all gonna be okay BB-8. It's just all temporary." Well, she hoped so.
They had been put in a room that could have been called a broom closet if a cleaning tool had even seen the deck of the Falcon. They were facing each other, eyes locked since the moment the door closed, as if in a trance. Ben broke the spell to rub his wrists as good as he could. The mere fact that he could break them in a flash but was still respecting the bounds was an example of the trust they now could have in him.
Rey began to approach her hand from his. Slowly, steadily, as their first physical encounter, she slid her hands closer to his. Their knees were squished against each other and her foot was going to sleep from the weight of his buttock on her ankle. They were close, so the distance was not as demanding to cross as when they were galaxies apart.
In a simple motion, she rubbed his wrists. She was not seeing a lot into it, just a gesture to ease this containment a bit. But the contact of her finger with his skin lit the air on fire. As it once did. As it would always do, she secretly hoped.
Felling his gaze on her head, she took back her hands. A shiver of disgust filled her. It was still Kylo Ren we were talking about. Maybe was he switching to the light side, changing his name and his allegiance, he was still the monster she knew. She piled the thoughts she just had in the back of her head, fixing her vision on the door right next to them and clenching her jaws. He was useful, that was all. She was a courier bringing an estimated weapon to a cause she was believing in. End of story.
He raised imperceptibly an eyebrow in return: "What was that?"
"It was just to help. Nothing to be read in it."
"I am not talking about the gesture. But the thoughts."
"You know all too well that it was nothing. It's this weird link that your master put in there." She banged her head against the metal surface for emphasis "It's scrambling my landmarks. Don't take pride in it. It's gonna go away when I don't have to be your white flag anymore."
"For someone who was once so eager to see me desert everything I ever believed in to jump on the bandwagon of your hopes and dreams, you now seem really hostile."
The silence following this sentence drew longer.
"You know way too well that you are doing the right thing. That we could not continue to fight you after all that the first order has taken from us. That fascism and oppression have got to end. That we are a part of the solution to do this. You and me. It does not mean that we have to do it holding hands."
Ben pinched his lips, nodding his head in agreement. "I see what you mean and I can assure I am of the same opinion." His eyes cleared for a brief moment: "Anyway, you would only slow me down." His face was still adamant and his tone equal, but something in his whole attitude told Rey that he was as close as he could get to joking. A smile flashed, faded, on the corner of her lips.
Moments passed again as the tension in their muscles grew fiercely. They were awkwardly moving every two minutes, trying to figure out a way to be comfortable. After a couple of twist and turns, Rey's back was facing Ben's stomach and his legs were spread out. Slowly, as she was asking permission, she laid back on his chest. They were comfortable, at last. For how long? Nobody knows. But for a bit, it would not hurt anyone…
Rey woke up, her head rested on Ben's shoulder. Her head jerked in surprise and the felt painful impact at the top of her skull as it impacted her cellmate's nose. He muttered in pain, half awake, and she felt a warm and viscous liquid fill her hairs. Blood.
"I'm sorry, I didn't want to…"
But the door opened as she was apologizing. A dark hand reached out in the dim light of the closet and extirpated her from the close quarters with the Sith Lord.
"Leia wants to talk to him. She wants you close by to play the human lie detector." Finn winced when he saw the back of her head: "Are you okay, your head is covered in blood? Did he…?"
His questioning stopped when he saw Ben's nose, hemorrhaging blood as he was drawn from their makeshift cell. A smile grew large on the trooper's face: "That's what I am talking about! Great job Rey! What did he say to deserve this?"
He laughed a little, the goons surrounding Ben did the same, escorting the bizarre duo to the general's quarters – how little they may be on this ship. As they were walking, the two last Jedi's stares magnetized to each other for an instant, knowing too damn well that this encounter would decide both their faith.
Because without each other, any cause would be damned.