A/N: /* I wanted to write a scene where Leia asks Rey about what she did during TLJ, and this was the result */
"How are you holding up?" Leia asked, entering the small room.
Rey looked up and gave a tight smile. "I'm all right."
"We've been scrambling around at such a breakneck pace that we haven't had the chance to really talk about your time with Luke. Do you mind?" Leia asked.
Rey felt conflicting emotions swirling inside her. Did she want to talk about everything that had happened since she set off for Ahch-To? Not really. But Leia deserved to know.
So Rey smiled and gestured to a chair. Leia sat and Rey began her story.
"Luke wasn't pleased to see me. He said he'd come to the island to… die. He'd lost faith in the Jedi order, and he refused to teach me, refused to come back. I followed him around for days, trying to change his mind. Something I did must have gotten through, at least a bit, because he finally agreed to teach me. He said he would give me three lessons and they would show me why the Jedi needed to end."
"What did he teach you?"
"He taught me how to feel the Force, how to reach out and sense everything around me. The light, the darkness, the balance between the two. He told me that the light, the Force, doesn't just belong to the Jedi. It's so much larger than that.
"The other lesson was about the failures and hypocrisy of the Jedi. I left before the third lesson. I could tell he wasn't going to change his mind and help, so I decided that the only thing I could do was come back by myself," Rey said. She knew she was leaving parts out. Huge, important parts that Leia deserved to know, but how could she find the right words to explain?
Leia looked a bit disappointed, but she shook her head and forced a smile. "But he did come back, in the end. He saved us all."
She looked so tired. She had lost so much, Rey realized. Han, Luke, so many Resistance fighters, her home planet,… her son. Could Rey really deny her the small spark of hope she had to offer just because recounting the story made her feel uncomfortable?
"Leia, I…there's more that I have to tell you, but I'm not sure how. It's confusing and it doesn't show Luke in the best light," she said hesitantly. Leia gently took her hand.
"Please tell me," she said. Rey took a deep breath.
"It has to do with your son," she started. Leia's eyes took on a glazed, far away expression. "I don't know how to explain it. There's this… connection between us. I woke up, the morning of my first lesson with Luke, and he was there. In my hut. We could see each other and speak even though we were light-years apart."
Leia's grip on Rey's hand tightened. Rey could see a million questions in her eyes, but she stayed silent and let Rey continue.
"It terrified me, at first. After… what he's done. But, Leia, I think there's still hope for him. He's still so confused and so conflicted. The night I left the island, I went to this cave. Luke said it was a place strong with the Dark side of the Force. I felt it drawing me in, the whole time I was on the island. It promised that it could show me the truth about who my parents were and why they abandoned me.
"In the cave, there was a wall of smooth, polished rock, like a mirror, but fractured. I could see a million different reflections of myself. It drew me in, inside the rock somehow. I followed the line of reflections until I finally reached the end, believing all the while that it would show me the answers I came for. But all I saw was my own face, back where I had started.
"It was horrible. I had hoped to find so many answers on the island, with Luke, but I found nothing. When I reached my hut again, Ben was there. I told him about the cave, and he just listened. I told him how alone I felt, and he comforted me, Leia. And I… reached out to him. I stretched out my hand and he took it. He was a galaxy away, but I actually touched his hand.
"The moment we touched, I saw a vision of his future. Just an outline, really, but I believed in it. I saw him turning. I saw him making the right choice."
At this point, tears were running freely down Leia's cheeks.
"Then Luke burst in and the connection with Ben broke off. Ben had told me about what happened the night he… the night the Jedi temple was destroyed. He said that Luke came into his room while he was asleep. He woke up to Luke standing over him with an activated lightsaber. Leia, Ben thought Luke was going to kill him."
"Luke wouldn't," Leia whispered.
"I fought with Luke and demanded that he tell me the truth. I needed to know if he had created Kylo Ren. Luke told me that he did visit Ben's room at night. He looked into Ben's mind and saw profound darkness and a future where Ben caused awful suffering. For a moment, he saw that he could stop that future, and considered doing it. Luke never would have gone through with it, but Ben woke up and Luke ended up triggering the future that he wanted to avoid."
Leia clutched Rey's hand as if her life depended on it. "My boy," she said. "My poor boy. I never knew; Luke never told me. I shouldn't have sent him away."
"I felt confident that if I went to him, after the bond we had formed and the future that I had seen, he would turn and come back with me. I left the planet and had Chewie drop me off at the Supremacy in the Falcon's escape pod."
Leia chuckled incredulously, even through her tears. "Just to be clear, you went to the heart of the First Order, to their most powerful super star destroyer all by yourself in an escape pod?"
"Yes. I was petrified, of course, but what else could I do? I had to do something to help the Resistance, and Luke wasn't going to come with me. And I believed in Ben. When I arrived, the stormtroopers put binders on me and Ben escorted me to Snoke. In the lift to the throne room, I told him about my vision, and he said that he'd had a vision too, but in his vision, I joined him.
"We arrived in Snoke's throne room. He took my lightsaber and dug into my mind, stealing Luke's location from me. I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong. He said that he had formed the connection between Ben and me, that he had manipulated us both. He ordered Ben to kill me, to complete his training.
"For a moment, I thought he was going to do it. I thought that it had all been a lie, a trap. But Ben used the Force to ignite my lightsaber, on the armrest of Snoke's throne, killing him. Ben saved my life. He chose me.
"He pulled the lightsaber to me and we fought together against Snoke's guards. I was terrified, but finally there were only two left. I defeated the one I was fighting and saw that Ben had been disarmed and was being held in a chokehold by the other guard. I threw him my saber, and then it was just the two of us.
"I asked him to stop the First Order from firing on the Resistance fleet. He wouldn't. He said that we needed to let the past die, then asked me to join him, promising that we could rule the galaxy together and create a new order. I couldn't just abandon the Resistance, so I used the Force to try to get my lightsaber back. Ben and I struggled over it, and in the end, we split it in half. At the same moment, the Resistance cruiser crashed through the Supremacy and Ben lost consciousness. I took an escape shuttle and rendezvoused with Chewie, and you know what happened next."
Leia looked stunned.
"Then, right as I was helping the last of the survivors onto the Falcon, it happened again—the Force connected us. I saw Ben, kneeling on the ground. He looked… broken. I was disappointed in him, and angry, so I shut the door and shut off the connection, but I haven't lost hope for him. Han tried to save him, I tried to save him, but I think he's going to have to save himself. I feel so strongly that the Force isn't done with him."
"I don't think the Force is done with either of you," said Leia. "I don't pretend to be a student of the Force, but I've never heard of a connection like the one you and Ben share. I wonder, did Snoke really create it? If so, why did it persist past his death?"
"I think… there was always something there. After he captured me on Takodana, he interrogated me, reading my mind. It was terrifying and uncomfortable, but there was something…familiar about him, even then. It was as if touching his mind opened new doors in my own mind, doors that held memories and skills that weren't my own, but became my own.
"He and I are so different in so many ways. I've been clinging desperately onto the past, hoping against hope that my parents will come back for me, while he's been burning his own past down. He's turned his hurt into anger, while I've tried to turn mine into hope and compassion. Yet, deep down, at our very cores, we are exactly the same, and we both saw that, that night when we touched across a galaxy. We're just two people gifted with power we don't understand, unsure of where we fit into the bigger story. We're two people who have been alone and hurt, searching for belonging, for… love. I think we're two halves of one whole – broken, but in a way that fits together. I don't think Snoke could have created that. Maybe he saw what was already there and meddled with it, but I can't believe that he created it."
"Rey, the way you talk about Ben," Leia said, voice thick with emotion, "You've given me so much hope. If you reconnect with him, if you feel like it will help, would you please tell him that I love him? Even after everything he's done, I want him back. I want him to come home. Could we talk again, later? I have a lot to think about."
"Of course," said Rey.
"Thank you, Rey. Thank you for telling me. Thank you for risking your life to try to save my son."
"Will you promise not to tell anyone else about this?" Rey asked. "I don't think anyone else would understand."
"Your secrets are safe with me," Leia promised. She wrapped Rey into a hug, then left her with her swirling thoughts.
