A/N: Y'all… I'm not even sure what to say about this chapter. It's been planned for a while but in the execution… it became something more. I can't even come up with a proper description other than to say I have a lot of feelings about this one. I hope I did it justice.
"Into this wild abyss,
The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave."
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
CHAPTER 10
"Concentrate."
The tendril of a vine snaps against her nose, giving her the tiniest sting.
"Ow!" Rey picks up a rock with the Force and hurtles it straight at his head. "You concentrate!"
Ben ducks at the last moment, narrowly missing what would have been an unfortunate decapitation. "That's not helpful."
She laughs anyway.
"I'm trying to teach you—"
"Because I. Need. A. Teacher," her voice does a sing-song of mockery. Ben gives her a look that could cut like a saber.
"Desperately." He holds himself in full Emperor mode, generations of haughty-ass highborn breeding showing through. It makes her a little flustered. "Now," he says. "Try again."
"Okay, fine."
They stand thirty feet apart on a nearby plateau. Rey can see the top of the rainforest canopy, and a series of distant waterfalls that connect to theirs. She can feel Ben try to push inside her mind. She closes her eyes.
She focuses all her energy on keeping him out. He tries to speak through the Force, but she is determined not to listen. She works on creating a wall around her, a shield. She will let no one inside. At first the barrier is thin and wavering, and she can feel it strain under his attack, but she calms herself and focuses on building the wall around her piece by piece until it stands a thousand feet high. It is quiet now; in here, there is nothing. The solitude is bliss.
She focuses on her wall and channels her power and begins to push out, across the space between them, until she runs up against the barrier of his mind. What happens next is a battle of wills, much like there had been in the interrogation chamber on Starkiller Base, but now she is more controlled. Now, at least, she has some idea of what she is doing.
She wraps the serenity of silence around her and gives a sharp push outward. The wall around her obliterates, and she can feel Ben's wall shatter too. He makes a muffled sound.
When she opens her eyes, he is wiping blood from his nose.
"Oh Gods," she stammers, "I'm—"
"It's fine," he says, as he gets his own breathing under control. "Plagueis was right about one thing. You are loud."
"I'm sorry—"
"Don't be. You're doing well. Just try dialing down the intensity."
She tries. She tries pulling back, but the same thing happens.
"I can't," she says. "I'm no good at this."
"Stop saying that." He walks towards her, and the Force vibrates between them, residual energy giving off what feel like sparks. He comes to a stop behind her.
"Clear your mind," he tells her. "Breathe." He leans forward, and she knows this because of the heat coming off him. His voice is quiet and very close. "When you reach out, the Force is going to rush in. It's going to feel like too much and your first instinct is going to be to push back. Don't. Let it flow through you." Large hands come to rest on her shoulders. "Don't be afraid. It's not going to hurt you. Okay?"
She nods. Her heartbeat is accelerating for reasons that have nothing to do with the Force.
"Try again."
She does. She clears her mind and opens up. Just as he says, the wave of energy comes crashing in.
Ben gives her shoulders a gentle squeeze. "Don't fight it."
She works hard to stay calm.
"That's it." His breath is warm and soft against her ear. He whispers now. "Let it in."
She does. The tidal wave diminishes to a gentle breeze; it flows all around her.
"That's it. You've got it. It's not going to hurt you." Her eyes are still closed as he turns her around to face him. "Now try bringing me in too."
She senses his energy, a column of Darkness standing just outside her shield. Her instinct is to tense and push out, but she quells it. Instead she focuses on taking her shield and wrapping it around him too.
Rey gasps. Soon the Dark is inside her.
"I won't hurt you," Ben says. "You know I won't."
She knows; she relaxes. Soon the Darkness becomes a sweet salve. It becomes almost peaceful. She leans into it and sighs. She falls further. She imagines his skin, her lips on his mouth, falling and falling—
Rey breaks the contact. "Sorry."
Ben looks shaken as well.
"Too loud?" she asks.
His expression is impossible to read. "Not at all." His gaze drifts down, and Rey realizes her hands are pressed flat to his chest. "It was perfect."
The air shifts between them. Something charged and dangerous lurks underneath. Rey steps away.
He insists she continue the exercises. One success is not enough. She must control the Force and her thoughts and the effects on those around her; she must have the ability to absorb and deflect the influence of any who try to control her. She must call on her gifts with the instinct of breathing and with the practiced ease of a musician. This is her instrument. She must learn how to play.
Sometimes, she fumbles. Sometimes, she pushes too hard. He has the throbbing of a headache and the copper tang of blood in his throat, but he tells her to go on. Sometimes she lets him overwhelm her. Sometimes he feels her heart beat too fast and her breathing slow as he places hands on her. She is distracted by his presence. Not the Force or his thoughts but his physical body. She has too much passion for a Jedi. But that was always the Jedis' greatest fault.
"Enough," he says.
"Finally." She reaches out and calls a piece of muja fruit to her hand, snatched through the air from a small pack he has left on the ground.
"Hungry already?"
"I'm exhausted," she says, the juice of the fruit glistening on her mouth. She eats like an agitated wampa.
"Recover fast. We still have sparring practice."
She pulls a face like he is playing some cruel trick. "How? With what—?"
"You mean a lightsaber?" Kylo activates his own and twists it in one hand. "Call it to you."
"I'm not taking yours again."
"Not mine. Don't you feel it?"
She tosses the pit of the fruit aside. She closes her eyes. He watches, and he feels the same state of wonder as when his grandfather's saber went soaring past his head.
"I feel it," she says.
"Then call it to you."
Another object shoots out the small pack. It lands in her outstretched hand, but Rey still has her eyes closed.
"Luke," she says. "I can feel him."
Kylo is glad she cannot see how he watches her. "Since your other saber is broken," he says.
She opens her eyes and lights the saber between two hands. A long green beam appears and the glow of a thousand suns as she smiles.
"Thank you," she says.
"Now show me your form."
She charges. No finesse. A manic cry, and so much joy. Her arc is low, and he can see her target. He parries with the edge of a cross guard.
"Try harder."
She grins. She is spinning. Her movements recall the rotations of her staff, but she is the quickest study. She raises both arms and blocks his downward swing.
"Don't go easy on me," she snarls.
He pushes with the brute strength of his body. Her feet slide in mud; the edges of her dress grow dirty.
"Harder," she says.
He is grinning too. She pushes back with her weight combined with the weight of the Force. Kylo staggers. They are dancing. He can feel her intuition through the bond between them; he knows where she wants to go next. But she knows the same of all his movements. Sabers clash and sparks fly. Red and green. Life and blood. She gets cocky and jabs at his flank until he suddenly steps sideways. She loses her balance, and he grabs her wrist, flipping her onto her back.
She lands and is winded. He stands, looking down at her. "I'm sorry," he says. She swings for his thigh. He blocks her and burns a hole in her skirt.
Her teeth are bared and feral. "Not sorry anymore?
He aims the point of his red saber at her pale, fluttering throat. He can see her chest heaving. He is not sorry at all.
She kicks him. Right in the shin. He steps back, and she flips her body up to charge him once more. A portion of her leg is visible through his crudely added slit. The same leg that she kicked him with.
They fight and fight and dance and scream. They throw as many taunts as swings. Birds take flight and the sky rushes high above them, as if trying to flee their chaotic routine. He is alive like the world spinning around them. He is—
"Ah!"
His blade catches her shoulder. He can see the mark of a burn. He is losing concentration. He should never have let himself—
"Why have you stopped now?" She holds her saber with the point to his heart. "It's just a scratch."
"I didn't mean to—"
"You promised not to hold back with me!"
She stomps over to the pack and finds the canteen of water, drinks greedily and angrily and pours some onto the gift of his burn.
"It needs Bacta," he says.
She won't let him see it. She storms off to the other side of the plateau and collapses in a heap. "Forget it. I'm exhausted."
He crosses the distance and lies down beside her. "Me too."
She hands him the water and he drinks, eyes focused on the fluid sky. He can feel through the Force that she tilts her head towards him.
"Why do you always hold back?" she says.
"When?"
"With me."
He looks at her. "Rey—"
"Be honest."
I am, he thinks. I have never lied to you. "In all the times we have fought," he tells her, "I have never wanted you hurt."
"I'm going to get hurt. I get hurt a lot. You don't have to protect me."
"Yes, I do."
"Gods." She folds her arms and looks away. "I hate that you're so gentle with me. I don't get what I do wrong that makes me so special."
"You think you do something wrong?"
"Sometimes…" She has more to say, and he wants her to say it. "Sometimes I feel like you see me as less."
Not that, he thinks. It is so far from that.
"I know I've not had your training." She looks at him when she talks. He could look at her talking at him for hours. "I've not had any education. I don't know lots of things."
"And yet, you are brilliant."
"No, I'm not."
"You are."
"Then why?" She turns away when the hard part comes. "I've seen you in battle. I see the pleasure you take. When you don't hold back, you are cruel."
"Yes, I am. Is that what you want of me?"
"I don't understand." She looks at him again. (Keep looking, he thinks.) "How you can be both those things. The person you are with me, who won't even let me get a scratch. And the one—" (do you want to say 'monster'? Why don't you say it?) "—who relished almost slicing my friend in half."
Ah, he thinks. "Perhaps we are the same."
"Why? Why do you hurt some people? How can you do it when you won't hurt me?"
"I let the stormtrooper go," he says.
"Finn nearly died!"
"I don't mean on Starkiller. It was before he defected. When we raided the village in Jakku." For once, she is quiet; evidently, she doesn't know this story. "FN-2187. Finn," he adds before she can correct him. "I felt his doubts after I gave my orders. And I ignored them. It was my fault he turned."
"You can't control people. They make choices. You make your own. Finn chose—"
"I chose to let a soldier in my army be disloyal. Because I had no loyalty either. I had the same conflict as he."
"So why did you hurt him?" she says. They look at each other.
"Because I was also a traitor."
"You're a sadist."
"No." He turns to the sky again. "I took no pleasure. It was anger I felt. At myself. And I am petty. Destructive too. Just like you said: to people who mean nothing to me, I can be immeasurably cruel."
"No," Rey says.
"You contradict yourself now." He removes a glove. He holds his hand in silhouette against the light. "This hand did those things. You cannot ignore it. It can be cruel and it can be gentle." He offers it to her. "Would you still take it?"
"I already did."
"Whose hand did you take? Did you think it was Ben Solo?"
"You are Ben."
"You have learned a name." He waits. His palm lies empty. "Do you want to understand who I really am?"
His memory is a palace full of doors. Endless and beautiful. Some are covered in red and gold with heavy locks she cannot open. Some rattle as if monsters are trying to get out. Others are part shattered and ajar. She doesn't know if they are the ones he wants her to see. She wants to break down them all.
One has the smear of a blood-caked hand. Someone wanting escape. Or someone trying to keep the door shut. She does not look there. She ignores the gilded and chained up doors. The black one where Snoke whispers. The one with a glass window where she can see a small boy gaze up at a tall man wearing a mask.
She does not understand this place. There is no laughter. No warmth. No happiness to cling to. Why do you only remember the worst parts? She keeps her favorite moments like treasures. But you have no time, no room, no interest. Cruel and harsh.
There is light up ahead. There is a corridor of glass and mirrors and light so pure and white that it blinds her. She hears a voice. She knows it. She picks the first door she feels and finds a girl in a cloak with her face turned up to the rain.
Murderous snake.
He holds this one so clear. He holds this one so precious. Her recounting her fall into the pool and the cave of mirrors. He remembers her lips. Her eyes. The dampness of her skin. Her loneliness. How she wanted to touch him.
Rey does not wait to see what he saw when their fingertips brushed.
The light and glass corridor becomes more fractured. A girl in a snowy forest. A girl in an interrogation chair. A girl standing amongst the trees, shaking and afraid. The need. The want. How he would be the one to keep her.
She sees that he carries her through a battlefield onto the ramp of his ship and up to his living quarters. She lies on his bunk until they arrive on Starkiller. And he carries her into the base as well.
Glass shatters. She must leave this place. She has seen too much.
Another door breaks down. And another. Ben lying in his bed as Luke stands above him cast in demonic green. I will destroy you, Ben thinks. I will make this right. I will avenge them.
The Jedi school. She sees the Knights of Ren. They are all boys and Malaak is growling and Ben holds the still form of Alec in his arms. Luke looks on. There is so much tension; a held breath before an exhale of violence.
No, she thinks. She runs. The doors get smaller. She is descending. The walls become rough stone. Primitive wooden doors. And one in particular. It calls to her. Yellow like a sun and covered in the handprints of a child, small palms laid out like butterflies. There is comfort here, she thinks. She reaches out and goes inside.
Soft, blue-skinned hands. Gentle. The kindest hands in the world.
My Babá.
A female voice. Her face a deeper blue than her hands, her thin lips purple. Her eyes are translucent pink. She is kind. So much kindness. It overwhelms; it could make you cry. There is love here, and there is peace. His earliest memory is of these hands holding him. Hohs-nah, his mother says. Named for the place that she comes from. Now she's come to live with us.
Hosna looks at him and Ben smiles.
Years pass. His father comes and goes. His mother loves him and feels torn between staying near him and helping others. She speaks in the special language that only they share. We must always help them, she says. We must do all we can. We must give of ourselves to make things better. Do you understand?
(Momma loves you most of all.)
Hosna's hands grip him tightly as he watches his mother leave. Peace, Babá. Peace, she whispers to Ben, and in his soul, he agrees.
He gets older; his body grows. He does not feel like a child anymore. A fine strong boy of ten, Hosna says. She is with him more than anyone. She is slower now. Older. In her pink eyes there are flashes of pain.
What is it? he asks.
It is nothing, Babá. It is a headache.
It is not.
Doctors come. His mother brings them from across the galaxy. An endless procession. Hosna lies in her bed. Her legs do not work anymore. One of her arms grows dark and swollen and has to be cut off. Her soft blue face grows drawn with age, thin with suffering. They give her medicines that do not work. There are tubes in her nose, in her mouth. The grown-ups all say words but none of them help. His mother cries in secret, for Hosna is her friend too. Ben cannot find tears.
We will make you better, he tells her. Hosna's hands are little more than bone wrapped in gossamer now.
Babá, you must let go.
He will not.
He sets up a mat in her bedroom. He sleeps beside her golden-striped Skeer-cat. His mother brings birds from her travels, cages of coo-doves that sing the sweetest songs. Her room is a garden. The windows are kept open and Ben watches the butterflies float in. Red, green, orange; he counts them. Hosna's breaths grow shallow.
I will not leave you, he tells her.
Nor I you, Babá.
Soon, she is too weak to sit up. Too weak to eat or drink.
No more, Babá, she says, and pushes the spoon away. I can take no more. Her pink eyes are smeared with red. She is not aware of her tears.
Ben holds her fragile hand. He feels what she feels. He sees inside her mind. Pain, so much pain; wave upon endless wave of it. She will never be free, he thinks.
Help me, Babá. You know you can. Help me.
Hosna speaks without words. A burgundy tear drips down her face. I love you, Babá. Grow strong and good. Let me go now. I know you can.
How? he thinks, but there is something inside him. It has always been there.
He knows what he must do.
He kisses each cheek. He wipes away her tears. Thank you, my Babá. She does not speak the words, but he can hear them all the same.
I wanted to save you—
You know that cannot be. Help me, Ben. For the first time in their long years together, she uses his given name.
Please.
He breathes deeply. He concentrates harder than he ever has before. He pushes all thought to the side and uses his feelings. His mother never taught him this but, somehow, he just knows.
He places his hands on her face. Sleep now. Sleep.
It is midday, but the room grows dark. The light of the sun is temporarily blocked out and there is black inside of him, deeper than anything he could have imagined. It is pouring out now, covering everything, though it leaves no trace. He makes sure to cover Hosna most of all.
I love you, he thinks. I do not want to let you go.
She breathes once more, but after, she does not breathe again. His eyes are tightly closed. He is focused on taking away the pain, on taking it all away.
He does. The cloud lifts, and the room returns to brightness. She is at peace.
Ben can sense his mother now.
She climbs the stairs. She is young for her years, with a dark braid that hangs down her back. She has just returned from a long trip and Ben can feel her emotions: eagerness, exhaustion, anxiety over her friend.
He can feel her call his name.
"Ben?"
At the top of the stars there is a door and behind the door there is light. His mother pushes it open.
He stands there, and he sees himself through his mother's eyes. Ten years old. Already too tall and too thin. He looks at her and she thinks him gentle. And around him, all around him—
He feels his mother draw a sharp breath.
A dozen butterflies lie dead on the floor. She counts their colors: red, green, orange. The Skeer-cat lies on Ben's pallet. It is not breathing. The birds in the cages she had brought, the ones that sing their sweet songs, they have fallen from their perches and lie motionless. And Hosna. Hosna—
The old woman is a carcass shriveled down to bone. Her skin is no longer blue, it has been drained of all color; it is as white as the sheet she lies on. Her mouth is open in a silent scream. Her once pink eyes are congealed red and there are darker crimson smudges on her cheeks. She does not move. She does not breathe.
There is no life in the room save that of her son.
His mother is still as his Hosna. A thousand things are crashing around her and they are all too terrible to name. My father, she thinks. My father. It cannot be.
"Mother?" Ben senses her confusion, but he does not understand the source. He is pleased. Why is she not pleased for him?
She steps around the butterflies and takes his hand.
"Come with me, Ben. This must be our secret. No one must ever know."
But he does. He feels it for the first time in his life.
His mother is afraid.
Kylo knows when the memory is over. The tension leaves his hand and she exhales like it is her first breath of life. She breathes hard and she does not look at him. Her hand rests in his but she does not hold it back.
She breathes, and he turns his head to the side. He studies her profile (he has its perfect likeness stored in a wing of his mind). She breathes and he watches. He sees a single tear fall. It forms a lonely path along the side of her face. It trickles down slowly like the last source of water in a drought. He reaches out. He catches it.
Do you understand now? he thinks.
Rey blinks at the sky. The sky is blurring. The light is blurred. She cannot see anything clearly.
She can only feel. There is the damp earth at her back. The warm, muggy breeze from the jungle. The sound of the birds and her breathing. Her clothes shifting against her skin. She thinks she wants to rip them off.
She can only feel. The weight of her hand held in another's. Her hand brushing the grass. A hand touching her face.
She can only feel. Everything inside her is hurting. She can only feel his pain. She can only feel him.
She turns her head. She watches as he takes her tear and drinks it from the tip of his thumb.
He looks at her.
Do you understand now?
Yes.
She leans towards him. She can only feel. His breath on her face. His breath merging with her own. A single breath held taut between them.
Rey closes her eyes and waits for Death's kiss.