Chapter 7: One Thousand Shining Stars

.

After rather a lot of kissing and holding, too new and pure to spoil with words, it was Rey who detached herself, put on her boots, and stood up. "I told Luke I was going to make breakfast." There was a little upward turn at the corner of her mouth that wouldn't go away. "I want to try something Finn showed me."

Ben went with her to the cooking lodge. There, at the entrance, she put her hands on his shoulders and turned them both so that he stood in the shadow of the doorway and she in the morning sun. "Wait here. I need to get some things." She hesitated, then gave him a parting kiss, leaving him blinking after her as she strode away.

The air was thick and dewy, as it was every morning on Ahch-To. Ben filled his lungs with it, bolstering himself on the salt-scented cold. He ignored Classen's stare and the predictable statement of "I see you two made up."

Rey came back hauling one of the well buckets stuffed to the brim with packets of food. Chewbacca came behind her carrying more. Ben suffered a jolt of panic when Chewie met his eyes, but the Wookiee said nothing, only waited for Rey to slip inside and drop off her burden before returning to free him of his. She patted his hairy arm, promised to send him a plate, and then put herself close at Ben's side in what felt like a show of defense. When Chewbacca's back was to them and growing smaller up the way to the Falcon, Rey nudged Ben with her shoulder and went inside. "Come on. I'm making pancakes."

Ben obeyed, feeling useless on a number of levels, watching as she arranged her ingredients and started mixing them directly into the bucket. Apparently there wasn't a bowl big enough for the task. "Finn showed you how to make pancakes?"

"Uhuh." She was stirring in pale blue milk from a jug.

"Where did Finn learn this?" He was fairly certain it had not been included in the Stormtrooper's basic training.

"Rose's sister taught him. And he made, um... a pie with cheese and berries. It was really good."

"Can I help?"

"You can get the plates out."

Luke's dinnerware was stored in a low rectangular chest and comprised of an eccentric mix of hand-carved wooden dishes and ugly gray trays. The latter reminded Ben of the ones he had been served meals on in his cell. Surplus from a military barracks, he guessed, or something equivalent. The utensils and cups were equally mismatched.

He set out enough to feed everyone and handed an extra plate to Rey when she asked. This she took to the oven, along with her bucket and a frying pan and spatula brought from the Falcon. Luke's oven, rather ingeniously, had a removable top, making space for use of the open fire. Ben still would have preferred something that ran on a power source other than wood, but it was a creative adaptation for lack of more advanced technology.

He watched Rey fuss over the arrangement of everything in her small workspace, plainly still in the experimental phase of the project. "Is there anything else I can do?"

"Sit back and be patient," she recommended. "I'm not going to burn myself, if that's what you're worried about."

"I didn't say that."

"Good, because I'm not the one who cuts their hands pulling weeds."

"It wasn't a weed," he grumbled, wondering if teasing was the price he paid for kissing. "It was the tree trimmers."

"What?" She shot him a hard look over her shoulder. "No, it was the weeds. We weren't using trimmers."

Ben pressed his lips together. She had meant the first time, with her, and not the incident which had occurred in her absence, meaning she didn't know about that. Or she hadn't, at least, until he babbled like an idiot.

She was still staring at him. "Are you okay?"

He opted to keep his mouth shut and nod, hoping she would think he had spoken in confusion. It seemed a fair excuse. He was mentally unstable and traumatized, after all, and it had been a busy morning.

Rey hunched over the oven, poking at her in-progress pancake more than was probably necessary. "... Sometimes," she said in a distracted sort of tone, "the insulation would be stripped off a wreck before all the valuable bits were taken out. By a novice, or someone in a hurry." An image of heat waves over desert sand came to Ben's mind. It was a memory, but not his own. "You'd get cooked if you spent too long in those ships."

"Did you try?"

"Sometimes, if I was desperate." There was a false lightness to those words which made the underlying weight of them all the more evident. He knew it had been hard for her on Jakku. He had seen scattered images of it, gleaned from every time their minds touched. It was as prominent a part of her life as Snoke had been of his own. One day, maybe, she would tell him the whole of it.

For now, he let silence set in, save for the sounds of her cooking. He closed his eyes and tried, not for the first time, to determine if the morning thus far had been a dream. It was tempting to think of it that way. In a dream, he was not responsible for his own actions.

"Don't fall asleep." Perhaps he had, because Rey suddenly had a stack of finished pancakes on her spare plate and was scraping two of them onto his, then waving her spatula at the array of food supplies. "There's butter and fruit preserves, if you want. I don't know what kind of fruit, but it's good." She piled another two pancakes onto a second plate and offered them to the guard. "Here, try some."

Classen took the plate without a word and stood with his back against the wall, eating the pancakes plain. Rey didn't seem to take offense at this, busy dishing out servings on the remaining three plates. One of these she made significantly larger than the others. Ben assumed it was for Chewbacca, but given her way about food, he wouldn't be surprised if she took it for herself.

Luke made his entrance while Ben was delicately coating his pancakes in preserves. Rey sent him away again with the extra large portion for Chewie, and then sat down next to Ben with her own. "Is it that good?" The question was directed at Classen, who had annihilated most of his serving already.

"Not bad," he said around a swallow. "Not fluffy enough."

Rey appeared to consider this critique as she doctored her own serving, taking opposite of the route Classen had and piling on every topping available. Ben was still dawdling over his second bite, savoring it. The preserves clung to his tongue, unexpectedly tangy. It had been a long time since he indulged in sweets.

"Well?" When she turned her head to look at him, she was so close he had to lean back to read her face.

He chewed awhile before he spoke. "... I think Finn should teach you more recipes." Rey beamed at this, and as very close as she was, he couldn't resist placing a kiss on her brow.

She wrinkled her nose in the way he loved, still grinning. "Your lips are sticky. That was disgusting."

"I am a monster," he drawled. "Aren't monsters supposed to be disgusting?"

"Stop it." She kissed him soundly. Then, startling him, she flicked out her tongue to lick the corner of his mouth. Presumably it was to capture some trace of food, scavenger that she was, but Ben was equal parts alarmed and entranced by the gesture. There was little to do for it but kiss her again.

"I take it back," Classen muttered. "This is way too fluffy."

.

"Leia sent a gift for you." Rey had told him this over breakfast and Ben had ignored her. She brought it up again while he was helping her clean the dishes. "I can go and get it if you don't want to bother Chewie."

"If you want." Ben did not want, but Rey was plainly curious, or at least she thought it important that he receive the gift as soon as possible. He would let her have it her way. There was nothing he wanted to deny her that day.

He wasn't long waiting. When she met him in the relative privacy of his hut, she was carrying a sturdy rectangular lockbox. This she set down in the middle of the dirt floor and moved out of the way, reciting the lock code for him. She had to say it a second time, then, because he hadn't been ready.

When the box opened under his hand, he was met with a jumbled gallery of his childhood. There was a model ship he had kept on a shelf in his bedroom. There was his favorite holo novel, a fanciful tale of pirates and an ancient Jedi treasure. Beside it, a transparent orb made to fit in a child's palm. He picked this out reverently and rolled it in his hand. It was smaller than he remembered.

"What's that?"

Instead of answering aloud, Ben grasped both ends of the marble and twisted it along a seam that defined the middle. Gloriously, the thing bloomed to life, flooding the domed room with a wash of projected stars.

Rey's face lit with an open-mouthed grin. "What's it a map of?"

"It's not." He balanced the toy between his fingers and traced a delicate line over its surface. The starry projection blurred and a purplish nebula painted itself through the air behind him.

Rey gasped.

Ben drew another line and a second streak of color inserted itself above their heads, this one gradiating from yellow to green. Next, he tapped five points with the barest tip of his finger and five new bright stars appeared.

Rey was in breathless delight. "What's it for?"

"It's a toy."

"Can I try?"

He passed it into her eager hands and she swiped two quick lines across it, whipping her head around to follow the corresponding nebulae as they flared to life. At his instruction, she twisted it again to enlarge the projection, filling the hut with a single cloud of rose-colored light. With taps of her fingers, she built constellations, smiling like a child-god. Ben saw her excitement and thought of a time when, as a boy, he would fly his model ship through a custom starscape, daydreaming adventures of smuggling and hidden treasure.

Damp-eyed suddenly, he went back to sifting through the box's contents while Rey entertained herself. There was a holo album he recognized and was afraid to look into. There was a scrappy piece of cloth, a red scarf that had been part of his smuggler costume, useless now and too sentimental even by his standards. His mother should have kept it. He considered returning it to her.

Underneath that, there was a piece of folded flimsi. Nervous, he pinched the top fold and lifted it enough to glimpse inside. There, not entirely to his surprise, was his mother's careful, rarely used handwriting.

Ben took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then picked up the letter and smoothed it between his hands. Eventually, he worked up the nerve to read it.

Son,

Before you were born, when I carried you inside me, I knew already
the person you would be. I knew that you would be bold and willful,
witty and keen-minded. I knew there would burn a fire in your blood,
a passion, and that you would fight for it with everything you are.

When you were young, I smiled to see my vision manifest. Even in
hard times, even when I knew you were unhappy, I could see that
fire in you and I knew that it would carry you through.

Then Snoke cast his net, and I watched your fire dim and die.

I am so sorry, my son, that I did not do more. I knew what Snoke
wanted, but I underestimated the threat. There is no other excuse.

I failed you.

I wish that we could both go back to a time before a all that. I wish
that we could do it over again. I wish I had a chance to do it right,
but such wishing leads to nothing except wasted time. My only joy in
life is knowing that you made it out. Your fire relit from the embers
and you fought your way to the other side, in spite of all that was lost
on the way. I am proud of you. I want you to know that. You came
back to me, and I am so, so proud. I hope one day that you will be able
to look me in the eyes again and know that I love you.

Until that time comes, be well. And listen to Rey. She's a wise girl.

- Leia Organa Solo

Ben let his hands fall into his lap, the letter with them. There were lines of wetness on his face. He couldn't be bothered to wipe them away.

"What does it say?" Rey's voice was too gentle, too wary of harming him further. He shook his head. And then, as if that simple motion had broken his defenses, he doubled over and wept.

She was there in an instant, wrapping herself over the slope of his back, shielding him, holding his broken pieces together. She stayed like that a long time, simply holding him, until the sobs he tried to stifle turned to quiet, ragged gasps, and then to nothing. When he was finished, she held on a little longer, then sat up and let him go.

"Better?"

The question was jarring, too simple for the circumstances, but it stirred him enough to uncurl and to check what damage he had done to his mother's letter. It was crinkled, but whole, and he put it away with stiff hands before he could do any worse to it.

Rey was sitting beside him still, waiting. Eventually she asked him, "should I go?"

"No."

More timidly, "can you look at me?"

He did. She brought both hands to his face to brush away the tear tracks, and then she didn't stop. Her thumbs traced the lines of his cheekbones, slowly, again and again. Her calloused fingertips explored the curve of his jaw, earlobe to chin. He could only watch her and let her do as she liked until, at one point, she faltered, tensing minutely, and lifted her hand away from his cheek. "Sorry. I didn't... is this okay?"

"What?"

"Your scar. I won't touch it if..."

He caught her hand and pressed his face to it, pressed his ruined cheek into her palm. "You put it there. It's yours."

"I'm sorry."

"You were defending yourself." He remembered the look of her standing in the snow, in the dark of a dying sun, lit blue by his grandfather's lightsaber. He remembered how, before that moment, he had been merely intrigued by her. From that moment on, he was enchanted.

"I wanted to kill you," she said.

"You didn't."

She ran her fingers along the thickest part of the scar, from cheek to jaw and back, mapping the ridged and misshapen skin. "Does it hurt?"

"No." It was numb in places. There had been some nerve damage that bacta couldn't fix. He didn't tell her that.

When she had satisfied her curiosity over the grotesque relic of their battle, she kissed his forehead, rested her lips on the stray end of the scar there, and then pulled back to meet his gaze. "Are you better now?"

He closed his eyes on a rueful smile. "I might be."

"Okay. Good enough." She sat quiet a moment. Then, perhaps not knowing what else to do, she put her arms around his neck for one more quick hug. "... I like your star toy."

"You can have it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." He had no intention of using it himself, except for her amusement.

"How about we share it? I'm sleeping in your hut anyway."

"If you want."

She leaned back in to plant a kiss on his lips. "Thanks, Ben. You're sweet."

The gesture was sweet, but her words left a bitter taste in his mouth. "No, I'm not."

She gave him a wide-eyed, frank look. "It's what your mother says about you, when you were little."

"That was before, and she's my mother."

"And this is after. You're sweet."

"If you say so."

Rey dropped the subject. She gave up on conversation altogether, fitting herself across his lap like an overgrown Loth-cat, leaning into his chest and letting him hold her and twine his fingers through her hair. He realized after a while that she might have been trying to prove her claim, but he could hardly mind. She was warm and soft in his arms. He could feel her heartbeat and the slight heave of her chest when she sighed, and all around them the air was still rose-clouded and lit with artificial stars.

When she left him, it was with a kiss and a word about checking on Luke. Ben motivated himself to stand a few minutes after, to put away his childhood belongings and to wander out into the hazy sunlight.

With his thoughts on meditating in the brisk air, he ended up on one of the well-used paving stones outside the cooking lodge. On a nicer day, it would have been warm from soaking in the daylight, but Ahch-To's wind and cold earth had already stripped away what the sun could give. Ben was already weary of his island prison's weather.

It was not, however, enough to drive him back inside. He sat in the cold and let his mind sort through the day's events. He was almost getting used to this process of revelation and reorder. At the same time, he wondered how much of it he could take. Every day since Snoke's death brought new truths with it, or crushed long-held beliefs. It felt as if the whole of his life was being rewritten, or that he was reading it from a new perspective. His waking had been a slow one, beginning with his father's death and ending with Snoke's, and yet the shock of it kept returning, or perhaps it had never ceased. He was still waking up—still processing his reality. He felt at once disconnected and too close, and he feared that if one more false truth came undone, it might undo him with it. He needed time. He needed a chance to breathe it in, to convince his heart and soul of what his waking mind knew—that it was over, really and truly. That Kylo Ren was dead. That he had ended that life when he ended Snoke's, and that whatever followed was something new… or that it could be, if he let it.

If time and space were what it took to make himself believe this, then maybe his mother had known what she was doing when she arranged his exile.

Rey came back to him less than an hour later. She had a sense of nervous restraint about her. He got the impression that she had been trying to give him time alone, and that she had wanted to come back sooner.

Regardless of her wants, she was straight to business. "Luke thinks we should train together. Fighting, I mean. He wants to know if you're ready."

"I..." Ben composed himself, managing a hint of a smile to lighten his answer. "I don't think I can be ready, but I did say I would teach you."

She grinned and waited for him to stand. This time, it was he who caught and held her hand.

.

Luke was sitting on the edge of the sand ring with a pair of wooden swords beside him. Ben indulged in a flash of annoyance at his uncle for presuming that he would agree. As if Luke had not expected it at all, he turned his head at their entrance and said, "ah. She convinced you?"

Ben kept his face bland. "Rey needs it."

Luke matched his expression, perhaps unintentionally. "That's what she said about you."

Rey tugged on his arm. "Come on, we both do." When he resisted her, she shrugged and went out to the center of the ring on her own to stretch. Ben watched her a while, forgetting himself until Luke cleared his throat and it occurred to him that he ought to join her.

When Rey decided that they were sufficiently warmed up, she retrieved the practice blades and tossed one to Ben. There was no verbal warning, but her intent was clear in that sixth sense they shared, and Ben easily snatched the weapon out of the air and spun it into his favored low-slung position. Rey raised hers high at her right shoulder, breathed into the stance, and came at him.

She started lightly. Flirting. Testing him. Measuring him. They had fought side by side against Snoke, but they had never faced off against each other without intent to do harm. There was a discordance to it, despite the change being a positive one. He wondered if she felt it too.

He let her have the offensive, focused on fending her off, making a feint here and there but not pressing the attack. Rey seemed to enjoy herself, and he would have been content to leave it at that, but she kept pushing him harder, moving faster, matching her speed against his strength. She would swoop in for a well-aimed strike, cross blades briefly, and then skip out of range. She would give him an opening, luring him in a step or two before he remembered himself and stopped, readying for her next attack.

When this cycle had repeated too many times, he surrendered and gave her what she wanted. Rey bared her teeth, grinning when he stepped in to meet her, locking blades with an overhead swing. She slid out of it and snaked her sword around for a slice at his side. He knocked it away untouched and came at her again, exchanged a few quick blows and then pinned her in another lock. Rey was stronger than she looked, but Ben's height and muscle were things she would never match. He watched her strain underneath him, felt her testing him, looking for a way out without exposing herself. He bore down on her, dolling out his strength carefully and almost, possibly, arguably beginning to have fun. Then Rey made a too-desperate dive out of the way and he overextended, couldn't pull the strike enough to miss her completely. His wooden blade grazed her shoulder and she came away looking sobered and sore.

Ben dropped his stance and very nearly dropped his weapon. "I'm sorry." It was hard to say those words because it was too easy. He had to stop himself from saying them over and over again, every time.

Rey had kept her guard up, ready for more, but let it fall when Ben stayed where he was. "I'm fine. Are you okay?"

"Yes." He was confused by the question. She had been the one hit, not him.

She brought her sword back up and widened her stance, ignoring the reddening bruise on her shoulder. "Can we go again?"

He should have refused her.

Rey was more cautious this time, taking on the defensive and leaving him to make the first move. Warily, he stepped in and engaged. Each blow she caught, and each flowed into the next, forcing her back a step at a time until he had her at the edge of the ring. His vision was narrowing, going dark around the edges, and he should have stopped, but he didn't, seduced by the rhythm of blow after blow. The cold wind brought snow to mind, and the colors of the world around him seemed duller and darker, somehow. He looked at Rey and he couldn't be sure if he was seeing patient concentration on her face, or fear.

There was a pressure at the back of his skull, vice-like, spurring him, driving him. There was a sick tension in his muscles that demanded more, harder, faster. There was a part of him that ached to crush something, that hungered for destruction. There was a need he hadn't felt in weeks that seemed like years, or a memory of a need, as strong as if he were feeling it anew. There was an image in his head of what he could do, of sweeping the sturdy practice blade hard at the side of his target's head, hitting the tender spot above the ear. Of bringing her down, of bringing his weapon down on her, again and again, with bone-breaking precision. He wouldn't. Of course he wouldn't, but he could. He was capable of it. It would even be easy.

He could see Rey, not as she stood now, facing him, but as she would look when he was done with her—when Snoke was done with her—bloody and lifeless on the ground.

He slammed his mind back against the image and crushed it, ground it against the inner wall of his skull and ground out all sense of the world with it, smothered his traitorous mind in darkness.

.

"Ben."

He sucked in a gasp and opened his eyes, blinking, frantic, to find his field of vision filled with Rey, living and mostly undamaged. She was above him somehow, framed by the glaring white sky.

"Are you okay?"

His head hurt and his mouth wouldn't work. He tried to answer her with his eyes. He didn't dare open his mind.

Rey put a hand on his face, swept his hair back from his brow. "You collapsed."

He nodded vaguely. He was figuring that part out.

"Do you know what happened?"

His breathing was heavy. He couldn't remember how much he had exerted himself at the end. Belatedly, he registered her question and sat up, too fast. Rey had to rear back or risk a collision of foreheads. He didn't know yet how to explain what had happened, but he knew one word that would make her understand. "Snoke."

That earned an appropriate flash of fear before she fought it down, setting her stubborn jaw and applying herself to the problem. "What about him? A memory? What?"

Ben squeezed his eyes shut and nodded again, hunching his shoulders. It must have been a memory. It had to have been. Snoke was destroyed, body and soul. He had been sure of that.

Rey scooted closer, putting herself hip to hip and wrapping her arms around him. She moved slow, offering him a chance to retreat. When he didn't, she pulled his head to her shoulder and pressed her cheek to his sweat-damp hair. She held him as tightly as if she meant to contain whatever horror was inside him, and he was willing, for the moment, to let her try.