Title: For Darkness, Stars
Chapter 10: Nova
Fandom: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with references to all canon universes and non-canon supports as necessary
Author: Kira Solo
Summary: "…Between us the bond deepened, growing into something that could not be undone." (Bastila Shan) A story that explores the depths of the bond between Rey and Ben Solo in an emerging future where one's destiny might be shaped by the pull towards a higher purpose — a Force whose will is greater than the desires of those that are drawn together because of it. REYLO.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rey/Ben Solo
Warnings: Language, violence, scenes of a sexual nature, angst
Author's Notes: Following the release of this chapter, I'm slowing down my posting schedule to one chapter a week for foreseeable future. I've got a finite amount of this written so I've gotta slow it down a bit. See you... I dunno? Next Saturday, maybe?
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For Darkness, Stars
Chapter X: Nova
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I long to feel my heart burned open wide, til nothing else remains
Except the fires from which I came
Like parted souls, divided for an age, awe and wonder I'd embrace
And the world anew again
But now, this picture from me fades
From still's cold hand there's no reprieve, light the fire in me
- "Nova", VNV Nation
...
The surprise on Ben's face as he choked a gurgle made her stomach clench. There was no pleasure in it. She didn't relish it. She wasn't trying to hurt him, she told herself — it was defensive. There was an ounce of poetic justice in it, that she'd siphoned this bit of skill from him through their force bond: She'd seen him use this move — she'd experienced it herself. She batted him backward into the air like he'd done to her on Starkiller Base.
A smack from the center of her palm, backed by a whoosh of power that swept through her, leaving her breathless, and Ben Solo flew.
He rose high into the trees, but rather than smacking into a trunk, Rey reached after him, guiding his body with a nudge of the force so that he skimmed the trees but no branch clipped him. She didn't want to fight him, but if he forced her to defend herself, she would — for herself, for her friends, for the entire Resistance if it came to it.
Still, she second-guessed her own intensity and hoped he'd land on something soft. His expression… the farther away he sailed, his eyes didn't lose the veil of hurt surprise that made them shine.
It wasn't too forceful of a shove — at least, she hadn't thought so, or perhaps she just underestimated her own control. She winced, watching Ben recede into a dot in the distance. The darkness swallowed him, and then the underbrush as he descended in an arc, his arms splayed, legs akimbo. When he struck the earth a few hundred yards south, it came with a splash and a squelching sound.
She breathed a short sigh of relief, leaving his saber behind as she followed after him at a quick clip that, when he didn't rise, turned into a jog, that became a run. Rey sprinted over logs and trees and brambles; felled branches that snagged at her ankles, moss-covered stones and boulders covered in slippery slime and run-off from the swamp. Green and stinking, still brown water with mist clinging to the enormous roots that rose from the water.
His name caught in her throat, along with her heart.
Where was he?
His snarl of anger burbled. A splash followed, and Rey, cresting a ridge made by two collapsed tree trunks set above a rocky outcropping, exhaled her relief sharply, setting her jaw as she slowed, knowing that she hadn't hurt him too badly. She paused to look over her shoulder: Blaster fire between the trees — a mile away, at least — as the fighters dropped into the forest for cover. The sheer size of the destroyers ensured that the battle waged outside the moon's atmosphere stayed far enough away, but it was obvious that some of it had spilled onto the moon itself. She couldn't see the Falcon from where she stood, but if she paused long enough to reach out with her feelings, she knew at least that Finn was safe, and that Leia had returned with reinforcements given the number of ships in the air.
Knowing that they might've tried to escape through hyperspace instead of facing the First Order meant that this was a show of strength: the General would want to demonstrate that their numbers were growing, that the Resistance was strong despite all that they had lost.
They were not defeated.
A tree branch snapped, and a black, lurching thing rose from the muck of a swamp. Rey climbed to the last ledge of the felled tree trunk, looking down at a sodden, spitting Ben Solo.
"It's a good thing you weren't wearing your cloak," she said. "You might've drowned."
He turned blazing eyes up to her.
"Where did you learn how to do that."
It was hard to take him seriously like this. It took everything in her not to laugh. Something stopped her: a pinch of shame — a tightness around the eyes she felt when she looked at him. This wasn't how it was supposed to be between them. It wasn't supposed to feel so strained, so fraught. There was a tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with running hard through the forest. It accompanied the uncomfortable inability to look away from him when he stared at her like that.
Rey swallowed the little lump in her throat before she lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, feigning nonchalance. Her stomach gave a twist to match the knot in her chest. "You."
His jaw ticked, teeth grinding together as he wiped some of the filth from his face. It sloughed from him in streams, leaving muddy smears down his face. "Another 'benefit' of this bond between us," he sneered.
Ben wiped his mouth before he spoke again, glowering up at her. "Let's see what else you've stolen from me."
The strike caught her off guard, clipping her in the chest. The world spun as Rey slammed backward, Ben hitting her with the full brunt of his rage. The echo of the sentiment followed, hitting her in a wash that left her seeing spots.
Shame. Pain. Hurt. Denial. Regret. Rey gasped: the full force of his feelings rushing over her.
She blinked, staring up at the sky as the world overhead spun, the stars streaking by. Rey coughed, her lungs aching from the punch to her chest. The back of her head throbbed — Ben hadn't been so careful. He wasn't concerned for her well-being, not now that he had something to prove to himself — she sensed it easily: he felt he hadn't earned his title. He'd claimed it by chance, but for a moment, the Supreme Leader had had another agenda, and now he wanted to avenge himself for the trouble. For feeling like she'd fooled him.
That was the lie he was telling himself; what he'd convinced himself to believe when she rejected his offer to stand beside him and reshaped the galaxy to his liking.
Didn't he understand? Did he understand nothing of what she stood for? That if he forced her hand, she'd fight him until the ends of time if it meant breaking down a little more of his mental armor; if it meant chipping away at this facade. This wasn't what she wanted —
"You didn't want to do it alone."
Something crossed his features — the ghost of some realization; that she'd struck a nerve and it stung. Rey saw it in the way his eyes darkened. Ben's lips moved, biting down on a harsh reply. He swallowed, and she watched as he struggled with wanting to confess to it — to scream it at her. Ben held it back, his anger a growing cloud around him. If Rey reached out, she thought she could almost touch it.
Rey swallowed. "Your pride is hurt," she informed him, gleaning a better understanding of his reasoning through their bond: a snarled tangle of bitterness and hurt, anger, and rejection. He didn't get it. "You don't understand at all, do you?" she asked. "You think this is about you and I — such a small piece of the puzzle." She shook her head. She wanted to laugh, it was so absurd: he'd kill her because when she walked away, it made him feel small. Unimportant.
Rey rolled to her side as Ben climbed from the bog, a dripping mess, breathing hard from the effort. She pulled herself to her side, hoisting herself onto her elbow.
It hurt. The physical pain of her injuries was magnified by something else: that dark tangle of emotions that pushed Ben forward another step. Their hurts swirled together, making her bones heavy. He had half of it wrong: she didn't want to rule the galaxy at his side, but she never said that she didn't want to stand there. Rey's eyes burned.
She shook her head, pulling herself up further. "I feel every ounce of your pain, Ben Solo. Don't you dare think for a second that I can't see you for who and what you are."
Ben's shoulders heaved, but he continued to stare at her as if he'd sooner smother her light than help her up. Rey struggled to her side, lifting herself up with a wince. Her head throbbed in two places, and her hip stung. Her entire body felt like it had been shaken and tossed around.
"A monster," he whispered, the faintest hint of a smile twisting his mouth.
He struck out a hand, reaching for his saber, his eyes on her as he advanced. Rey flung an arm up, slapping him to the side and blocking him. This time, he was ready — this time when Ben sailed into the underbrush, he snagged her around the ankle with an invisible hand and dragged her after him.
Rey yelled when she hit the ground, rocks and branches and water swallowing her as Ben's force grip on her dredged her body through the swamp. Rey struggled not to choke on the water that poured over her head, submerging her. She thrashed, her limbs snapping down as he pinned her below, yanking her towards him so that he loomed overhead — a shadow, his arm extended, a vice-like grip imagined around her throat as he pushed her into the silt of the swamp and held her down.
Her lungs burned, her throat aching with the sting of stirred sediment. Rey could feel the vicelike grip around her legs, razing her over the bottom of the swamp; striking each stone, bone, and branch that had sunk into the silt. Bits broke away, and still, others sliced at her. Her side clipped something fiercely jagged, and unable to help herself, Rey opened her mouth to scream at the flare of heat and pain in her ribs.
Water in her mouth. Water in her throat. Water in her nostrils. Water in her lungs. She'd grown up on a planet that never saw rain, and yet, Rey would drown in three feet of the filthiest water in all the systems.
The pain in her lungs was impossible, and desperate for air the longer she stayed below, the more her body fought. The movement in her throat was involuntary — a contraction of the muscles that begged for air. So much mud swirled over her head that Rey couldn't even see his figure standing above her — she could only feel him; his impossible strength, the steady burn of his power, and the impossible quiet of her underwater tomb. In that blackness, as the spots dancing before her eyes began to grow dark, she felt a stirring in the world around her — a steadfast roar that released in her limbs, turning her arms and legs light. She stopped fighting, and all around her, the burble of something more between the roots and beneath the stones called to her through her fear.
A flash of memory forced her eyes open wide, and Rey thought of the cave on Acht-to: alone in the darkness. Alone with herself. Over and over and over again — echoing in that hollow despair that she felt so acutely — forever alone, always wanting for the family she never knew. It called to her like it called to him. It echoed in him like it echoed in her: their shared solitude. The yawning abyss between them. Theirs — for all the worlds, that was something they both knew and shared.
His fault. Her fault. Neither. The void between them existed regardless, because neither was willing to cross that divide. Rey understood. Either would need only to take a step forward — or both. They might both fall, or — she considered distantly, apart from herself and no longer afraid — perhaps they would both fly.
She felt the force's pull as surely as she felt her soul begin to drift, and she called it to her from the place that understood that deep well of shadow.
Her hand lifted of its own volition, rising from the swamp, dripping water to gesture not at Ben — but beyond him to the sky.
The stars overhead lit with fire — blue and crackling, as sharp as ozone, electrifying the moon and lighting even the darkness behind Rey's eyes. The hold on her released, and she rose as if reborn to the night. The forest was alive around them, lit by a crackle of lightning so bright that it made even the fear in Ben's eyes pale by comparison.
Rey did not relish it, but she understood what she needed to do. Ben turned to her, trying to understand this manifestation.
This was not a power that belonged to him. It did not owe itself to the light, and yet, that definition and boundary that separated light from dark hardly mattered when she lingered on death's doorstep.
Rey shook her head, trying to clear it of the fog that settled on her. He'd tried to kill her, and the force had responded — retaliated. Her lungs seared, burning as she coughed, dragging in another lungful with a wheeze, spewing water. Rey crawled to her knees, her eyes streaming.
Ben said nothing, staring down at her before staggering away a step, and then another. "That's impossible," he managed. She shook her head. Her fingers trembled as she lifted them from the bog.
Had she done that? Had she somehow manifested force lightning to save herself? Her fingers looked normal. They didn't feel any different. She didn't feel any darker for it. Rey shook her head, turning wide eyes towards him as if to apologize. "I didn't mean to —" she managed.
Ben, his eyes wild, shook his head, splashing away from her but not turning his back.
"You were going to drown me," she said, trying to explain. Anger bubbled. He'd tried to kill her. Ben swallowed. Whatever he said next was lost in the storm.
A crack, followed by a thundering boom shook the ground, sending ripples around them. Rey, panting, swam in Ben's confusion, envy, fear — all of it hit her like a wave. She gripped her head.
"Stop," she whispered. Too much. There was too much passing between them — his thoughts and hers, his feelings tainting her own. His powers — hers. Light and dark and something in between —
Another crackle of blue-white lit the trees, and she could see beneath the gloom that Stormtroopers advanced through the underbrush towards them. There were TIEs on the ground in the distance. An Interceptor. It figured: the First Order wouldn't leave their Supreme Leader unaccompanied. She looked behind her through to a clearing, desperation mounting quickly. The fight approached — nearly upon them. She and Ben stood at the center point of an encroaching battle.
That this wasn't normal was evident: she felt him screaming down their bond — He was afraid of her — no. Afraid for her. He was furious at himself. He was furious at her.
"I knew it. I sensed it." Triumph. Triumph and fear for what it meant for him — for them. For the fact that she'd denied him. He shook his head. There was no time.
"You wanted to kill me." Her voice faltered beneath the thunder.
Rey turned her face up to him to find his eyes wide and shining, Ben shaking his head as if the mere gesture negated the obvious. "That's not a light side ability."
Had she hurt him? She didn't know.
His surprise thrummed through her veins, matching the rhythm of her own mounting panic at what that might mean.
The forest lit with lightning again, and the boom of thunder shook them from overhead.
"Why did you kill Snoke instead of me, if this is how we're going to end up: constantly fighting each other," she whispered. She couldn't be sure if he heard her, but something in Ben stilled. "Why didn't you just let me die." She swallowed hard, her vision blurring. She shook it off.
"Because when you said that you saw I would not bow to him anymore, I thought that's what you wanted," he said, strangled.
Rey shook her head, staring. She couldn't stop the quiver in her lip. He'd nearly drowned her. She couldn't resolve what she felt from him, and what he was so intent on doing. He might've dispatched her on the spot.
Ben took a step towards her, raising his voice.
"Because you were not his to kill," he said sharply. "Because he tied our two souls together; because that can't be undone so easily."
Ben approached her, dropping to his knees, intent that she should look at him. Rey shook her head.
He ripped off a glove, holding a hand towards her, his fingers shaking. Her own were held in fists on her knees to keep from shaking. His fingers were so long and so pale, glistening and flecked with dirt. It occurred to her that they'd never physically touched before — it had only been through their bond. Rey pulled in a breath, and Ben's feelings flooded her so quickly and so hard that it hurt to breathe.
"'The darkness rises, and the light to meet it.' We are two halves of a whole — two binary stars, circling each other — our forms meeting each other at the midpoint and swirling together. Can't you feel it?" he asked. "Or has it never felt right when you pressed your fingers to mine? Say you don't feel it too — how everything around us hangs suspended and so fucking precarious, but when you're here like this, next to me, everything is right — every damnable star aligns like the universe is conspiring to carry you and I."
"Balance," she whispered, swallowing hard against the tears that threatened at the corners of her eyes. And it hurt so much because they were still fighting it; fighting each other.
"Yes," he breathed, and the sound shook against her lips.
A nearby tree snapped, the scent of smoldering wood filling the forest as the trunk exploded into scorched splinters. Shouts in the distance as the storm overhead swirled the clouds black and grey, roiling with it. The groan of splintering wood followed a loud snap that echoed amongst the trees. Ben turned, too slowly, as the tree spilled towards her, it's trunk cleaved by the lightning. It burned as it fell.
Rey watched him raise his hand, struggling to catch it in time before it would strike them. Its descent was slow at first, but gathering momentum. It would crush them both before she could even get to her feet.
Its branches were on top of them — the trunk enormous, swallowing the whole world.
"No!" she breathed, and for the first time, Rey lay her hands on Ben Solo — shoving him out of the way as the tree slammed into the swamp.