Alone in his recovery room, Ren mused on what Phasma had told him. He didn't love Rey, but she interested him. In her mind he saw a glimpse of the loneliness, of the desperate hope that someone would come back for her…of having power that he could shape with his guidance. He had been kind to her, and she rejected him. She rejected him. She chose that traitorous storm trooper over him.
He combed his oily black hair with his fingers, fighting down the acid that bubbled from his stomach to his throat. He closed his eyes and remembered when he had first saved her from those traitors and thieves, when she slept peacefully. There was hope, then, that she would open her eyes and, though she might have been scared at first, accept him. But they had turned her against him before—
Phasma may have been right. How long had he laid in this bed, broken by Rey's rejection? How could he allow her to have so much power over him? Snoke had called for him to finish his training once he had recovered, but he wouldn't be able to concentrate when all his thoughts were consumed by Rey. He needed to be free of her.
That night, he dreamed of the ocean and the island he saw in her mind, but there was more detail: long stone staircases and steep slopes choked with crabgrass. His bare feet felt cold as he walked higher and higher up the hill until he reached its peak. Two figures sat side by side, drenched in an orange sunset that masked their faces. He did not need to see their faces to know who they were.
He awoke early with a burning sensation in his stomach. Wordlessly he changed into his black garb and mask and stormed out of the sick bay. He only needed three things: a ship, funds, and the map that led him to Skywalker. All three of these things were within in his reach: his personal shuttle was equipped with a copy of the map that still lacked the final piece, he could take out a good chunk of credits from the war chest without raising too much suspicion, and once he disabled the tracking units on a couple of droids, he would be able to fly the shuttle by himself. He just had to do this quickly before—
A voice that felt like being force fed sand cut his thoughts.
"Kylo Ren," General Hux called out as he strode up to him. "I see you've finally recovered. Welcome back."
Ren balled his fists but kept walking. "Not for long. I received Snoke's message and will be going to him now."
"For training, if I recall," Hux sneered as he huffed to keep up with Ren. "I'm surprised you hadn't finished. I thought that was a requirement for all knights of Ren to complete their training first."
Hux waited for a reaction that Ren didn't have time to give, and his look of smugness morphed into suspicion.
"Snoke really has you shaken, hasn't he?" Hux added.
"We'll both pay for our failures. My ship needs to be ready now," Ren said, his teeth sore from grinding them.
Hux sniffed at him but responded, "How many men shall I order to accompany you?"
"Just a few droids to run the ship. Snoke wants me to come alone."
Hux couldn't hide the disappointment on his face, but he agreed to the order. They parted down different hallways, and in a moment Ren arrived at the hanger bay. His black shuttle was flooded with orange-clad technicians furiously checking every square inch of the ship. Ren grabbed one of the technician droids and demanded that he disable all tracking devices on the other droids and the ship. Once the job was done, he locked the technician droid in the shuttle until he could decide what to do with it. As the ship's engine warmed up, he pulled out the absolute limit he personally could pull out at once from the virtual war chest: three million credits. Hopefully it would last him until he could find Rey.
"I need destination coordinates, sir," chirped one of the pilot droids, a lanky red machine with crane-like fingers.
Ren pulled up the hologram of the incomplete map, and pointed to the planet just to the left of the gaping hole. "Set the coordinates there. What is the estimated travel time?"
"Three to four weeks, sir."
Plenty of time for Snoke to realize that Ren did not go straight to him, but at least he would have a head start. Once he killed Rey, however, Snoke would understand. If Luke was really there, he would kill him too. Snoke would forgive him if it meant that Ren succeeded where his grandfather, unfortunately, failed.
"Take off now, sir?" asked the oblivious droid.
"Yes. We must make haste."
And within moments, the shuttle departed and shot off into deep space.
Within two days, the ship's radios buzzed with Hux's demands as to where he was going and what he was doing with the money he withdrew. He switched off the radios and tripled checked to make sure that the ship was completely undetectable.
"Are we fugitives?" a squat blue technician droid asked before Ren struck it down with his light saber. He slashed at the hunk of metal until it was a pile of melted chips and wires. He turned to the pilot droids, his stringy black hair clinging to his temples, but they said nothing.
He sheathed his light saber and stumbled back to his bed. His impulsive rage draining away and leaving him exhausted. The back of his head ached as if he had been slammed against a wall.
Ren, Snoke's voice whispered in his dreams like smoke.
Ren kept his eyes shut, both in the dream and in reality, though he felt his master's nails picking at his eyelids.
Tell me where you are going.
"If I do, you will follow me. I need to do this alone."
One of the nails punctured through the lids, and his eye bled. He squeezed his lids tighter, nail still trapped.
I did not allow this.
Ren woke up and his hand slapped over his cold, wet eye. But the wetness was only tears, and he could still see. The ache was gone, however. Had Snoke broken their Force bond? No, he wanted to know what Ren was planning and where he was going. He rose from his bed and ordered that the ship travel as fast as it could handle. Meanwhile, Ren locked himself in his bedroom and meditated, building up walls and false leads in his mind around his plans.
Snoke had ways of getting what he wanted. For three days, Ren woke up with a high-pitched ringing in his ears that pulsated randomly when he tried to meditate. When the ringing stopped, for several days whatever he ate tasted like a salt block. In between all this, he woke up in the middle of the night from gripping muscle spasms in his neck, back, and stomach.
Then it all stopped.
Silence and solitude greeted him after two weeks of restlessness. He walked the grated halls cautiously, waiting for Snoke's next torment. At night, he stared at the ceiling, waiting for the spasms that never came. Snoke had to be waiting for him to feel safe enough to lower his guard. So he paced and meditated in his room, ordering his droids to refuel and get supplies when they landed from one planet to the next.
Finally, they arrived at their first destination. Ren stared at the empty piece in the map, so small compared to the rest of the galaxy, but large enough that it could take him years scouring the area for Rey and Luke.
"Where to next, sir?" the pilot asked him.
"We're going to be exploring this space here. Just anywhere."
"As you wish, sir."
And so the ship plunged ahead into unknown territory, the planets ahead barely the size of stars. Ren skulked away to his room, only to find the ghostly outline of his father in the hallway. Han Solo still looked as gruff and haggard right before he died, but there was no burning hole in his chest from where Ren had impaled him.
"Supreme Leader," Ren said, restraining the spike of fear in his throat, "I will not break so easily."
"Supreme Leader? I've been called a lot of things, but nothing as nice as that," Han Solo answered with a smirk, his voice like an echo.
"Then who are you?"
"Your father, who else? Don't worry, I'm still dead. But the Force, son, the Force is something much more than I ever thought it could be. Much more forgiving too."
"No. No, you're a figment of my insanity. You never embraced the Force."
"I thought so too, but—"
Ren turned and stormed away before Han Solo could finish. By the time he had walked around the ship and returned to his original starting point, the ghost was gone. Just another hallucination by Snoke. He knew that their Force bond was strong, but he had completely underestimated its reach.
He thought of the bond he had formed, and ultimately destroyed, with Luke. He closed his eyes and tried to find maybe one of the shattered remnants of their bond, but came up with nothing. On a whim he decided to reach out for Rey, sifting through the contract and release of the Force, seeing a tendril of her own energy but never being able to catch it. But it was this fleeting wisp of energy that made him more determined to capture it. He meditated on it for several days, ordering the ship to move in what felt like was the direction her energy came from.
He dreamed of the island among the ocean again, Rey and Luke posed like bronze statues in the morning twilight. It occurred to him, though, that this wasn't an ordinary dream. He seized Rey's hand and brought her to life. She gaped at him and tried to pull her hand back, but he held her still.
"We're connected," he said, surprised at the discovery.
"No, we're not. Get out of my head!"
He grabbed her by the hair and forced her to look at him. No more gentleness. No more consideration. He would take what he needed. Her face turned red as she tried to twist away from him, but he rooted through her mind until he found what he needed and extracted it.
An invisible blow to the face woke him. His mind still holding the location firmly in its grip, he stumbled out of bed and to the pilot's chair.
"Set the course to Ahch-To," he wheezed as he punched in the coordinates, still reeling from the vision, "Go as fast as this ship can move."
"Yes, sir. It will take two minutes to properly set for hyper-drive. Please secure yourself."
Ren strapped himself to the captain's chair and gripped its arms. His father looked back at him through the reflection in the window.
"You can still choose the right path, Ren," Han Solo whispered as his image faded away with the stream of stars that passed the ship as it lurched into hyper drive.
The ship hurtled itself for several long minutes and came to a halt just above the atmosphere of the turquoise planet. The ship descended gracefully through the atmosphere and skated over the seemingly endless sea. A few pinpricks in the distance quickly grew into rocky, barren islands and islets as he explored the lonely planet. After the fifth barren island, his impatience outweighed his strategy to take Rey by surprise. He blew that chance when he invaded her dream. She knew he was coming for her.
He flexed his feeling within the Force like a fisherman throwing out his widest net. Yes, he could feel that she was on this planet. He forced his feeling out a little farther, a little farther still—and felt her push back. Immediately he pointed out the direction where her feeling was most concentrated, and demanded that the ship follow it.
"We need to go faster."
The pilot hesitated for a moment and said, "Sir, this is the fastest we can go without—"
"Full speed, pilot."
The pilot's silver fingers jumped and pressed the buttons needed to increase speed. Rey's energy grew thicker the closer they drew. He demanded higher speeds, they were almost there, he could see the island now where he could just about taste her energy flowing from it.
"There! Land there!" he shouted.
The ship dipped to land, but a horrific mechanical squeal pierced his raging enthusiasm.
"Prepare for impact," said the pilot as the ship flipped, throwing Ren against the metal ceiling.
He regretted not wearing his helmet.
Luke Skywalker witnessed the black ship spin in the air and crash into the ocean. It floated on the surface like a dead goose before sinking beneath the bubbling water. Luke held out his hand, closed his eyes, and focused. The ship resurfaced and glided over the waves, gently landing on the sand next to Luke. The elderly Jedi forced open the hatch and avoided the sea water before stepping on board. He stepped over the fallen droids that littered the hallway and into the cockpit, where his unconscious nephew laid in a mess of broken glass and machinery.
He knelt by Ben and could feel the young man's life energy still stubbornly burning. He brushed off the glass shards that had ripped through Ben's black attire, and wiped his wet black hair out of his face. With the Force Luke lifted him up, and brought him out of the ship.
Rey had joined him on the beach, her staff tight in her fist. "Is he dead?"
He waited for her to come to the conclusion herself.
"Master Luke, he can't stay here," she begged. "If the First Order tracks him here, they will destroy us."
"The ship will have to be destroyed, then. I will be taking Ben to the temple, and then you can help me with the ship."
As he walked passed her, she turned and cried out, "But he—"
"Killed Han, you needn't remind me," Luke said, still walking. "He killed my students as well. I will be back soon."
As Luke climbed the craggly first steps towards the Temple, he heard Rey growl and stamp out of frustration. It barely mattered to Luke. What did matter, however, was what purpose Ben had coming here in the first place, and why he came alone.
What to do afterwards? Well, that depended on Ben.