Chapter Nine

21 ABY

Ben could not shake Little One's words from his mind, and his distraction showed even in the presence of Luke. Her words humbled him… he was her beacon of hope. He who brought the light and cast out the darkness. Before he'd left, tucking her in and urging her to sleep, she'd whispered his name so quietly but urgently, calling him back. She asked him if he would visit her in her dreams again. Again. As if Ben had done it before.

"I like when you visit me in my thoughts. When you do, there's no room for Him."

Him. Snoke. Finally, he had a name. Ben was speechless when she'd said it in the saddest of voices. Saying it made it real. And Ben did not care to know why Snoke had never told him His name. It made no difference; He was present all the same.

Little One was frightened, and Ben was reminded of how he felt at the same age, before he'd gotten used to the comings and goings of His narration. He remembered a time when the voice chilled him to the bone. Brought him to tears. Made the shady corners of a room seem like abysses shrouding sinister things that never showed their faces. But He, the voice, persisted, until there was nothing left to fear but its absence. When it wasn't there, Ben truly felt the loneliness.

He wondered if Snoke had revealed himself yet to Little One, or if He chose to remain a mere voice and name. Anger welled inside of him: Snoke had her call him Master.

Brushing aside the conflicting thoughts, Ben mustered his courage and closed his eyes. In an empty wing of the temple, one that faced the hills he liked to climb, Ben knelt and searched for his center.

I know you are here, and I know who you are. His thoughts were much bolder than his words would have been, calling out to the effigy that served as his shadow for as long as he could remember. It followed his every move, heard his every word and dissected his every thought. Ben had never confronted it before. He'd only ever listened and answered. But seeing the fear in Little One had given him resolve.

I know you can hear me and that you are not just in my head. You are real, and you want something from me. With me… but you will leave the girl alone. Take me, whatever it is you want, but you will not have her.

As confident and brave as he sounded, Ben was met with nothing but a slow, empty laughter echoing in his mind.

"It is quite early to be selecting a Padawan for yourself, isn't it?"

Luke's voice startled Ben in the darkness just outside of the temple. Regaining composure, Ben inwardly cursed himself. In his distraction – or rather, his focus – he had not sensed his uncle's presence.

"I don't understand," Ben said slowly, rising to his feet and re-erecting the barriers in his mind as best as he could. Luke would find a way in regardless, but Ben could at least try to withstand his uncle's prying.

"You believe that you can teach her more than what comes with her lessons." It wasn't a question. Studying his soon-to-be apprentice, Luke frowned. He had found Ben's walls, pushed against them ever so slightly before respectfully falling back. "And on your own?"

When Luke stepped back inside the temple, Ben obediently followed, sheepishly pushing his hair back against his head. "She is like me, Master."

"In what way?"

"In the way that she is more… advanced than the others."

"Watch your pride, Ben."

Ben nodded with exasperation. "I just think that the pace you have set in her training is holding her back –"

"Like it held you back?" Luke stopped in his tracks and faced his nephew, and Ben knew instantly that he'd lost the fight in barricading Luke out of his head.

"We don't…" Ben worked his thoughts in his mind, testing their weight and licking his lips in concentration. "We don't have to do everything as they did before. The old Jedi… they failed for a reason. Why should we follow in their footsteps?"

Luke was quiet, his eyes sweeping from his nephew to the line of busts before them. Ben realized then where Luke had led him: they faced the memorial of The Lost Twenty. Ben had never given them much thought outside of their discussion during early youngling lectures. The original busts were kept in the Jedi Archive of the temple on Coruscant before the temple fell. When Luke had asked for sculptors to recreate the busts, Ben guessed it was a sentimental thing.

"There was an unofficial twenty-first member," Luke started. "Added in memory after the busts were already lost. Do you remember why these busts were made? Why we teach the younglings their importance?"

Ben could not, for the life of him. The busts were recreated after he'd become a youngling, and all he could remember was that the Jedi depicted were failures.

"Not failures," Luke corrected. "But those who had left the Jedi Order. They serve to remind us that the Jedi are imperfect beings from an imperfect organization. We fail. Despite the great deeds we, and they, had accomplished… we still fail. Yet, we also succeed. You would do well to remember that. To find that balance."

Failure is for the weak. Ben was no longer unsure if the thoughts were his own. They were His, taunting him now with His derisive, compulsory wisdom. The longer Luke's silence lingered, waiting for Ben to respond, the more Ben believed that they were his thoughts, also. The more they made sense…

Present Day

She was lifted from the sea, the cold of its endless waters and the torrential rain replaced by a heat that radiated like fire against her skin. The freedom her limbs felt in the water, flowing and fluid and suspended in nothingness, gave way to a nearly crushing grasp, pressing her body tightly against some immovable surface… but she was moving. She was swaying, carried in vice-like arms and they were leaving the water behind them. Leaving behind the solace and the quiet and the darkness that had washed everything away…

No… there was quiet here, too. Finally, there was quiet, and better yet, Rey could breathe. Even as her body descended to the ground, painfully slowly. Even as the heat lifted away. Even as she sputtered up water with each wet cough. She felt the pain and the deafening roar in her mind finally, mercifully fade. When she willed her eyes to open, Rey caught a glimpse of a tortured, pale face just as it turned away, and heard Luke's voice call through the downpour.

"There is still good in you, Ben. Let that be proof, what you have just done."

Someone was roaring… the dark figure that stood over her like a beast guarding its cub. His arm moved in one fluid motion, as if the gesture itself ignited the lightsaber in his hand. "You… You will not call me by that name."

Rey forced herself to her knees, the world spinning around her. Lightheaded, she clawed at her temples, closing her eyes to find her center. Instead of the blackness, the world behind closed eyes shifted to a landscape on fire. A temple in the distance crumbled, red and orange flames licking at its façade. Bodies littered the ground, wounds and severed limbs bloodless from the cauterizing blade of a lightsaber. Her arm felt uncomfortably heavy until she flexed her fingers, the crackling red lightsaber disengaging. Lifting it in her leather-gloved hand, Rey gasped and let it fall unceremoniously to the ground. She crumpled to her knees and watched her tears wet the burnt, dry earth beneath her.

But her movements were not her own. She was merely a pawn in a play already enacted; reiterating history… and the narrator was coming for her.

"I will not kill you, Ben," Luke's voice pulled Rey back to the clearing – back to Ahch-To. She squinted through the rain, finding him, his face illuminated blue by the lightsaber engaged in his hand.

And there was Kylo Ren, his parallel, leaving his stance over her and circling the older man. The point of his lightsaber dragged along the ground, leaving a smoldering trail in its wake. He spoke, his voice all gravel and hatred. "Then you will not survive this." In one impossibly large step, Kylo closed the gap between them, the chaotic red beam of his saber clashing with Luke's. They condensed into a fury of flashes, Luke at the center of an orbiting Kylo Ren.

The world slipped away when Rey blinked, and she could see nothing but the oscillator chamber on Starkiller base. She was looking into Han's eyes as he called the name Ben. A memory spurred on by Luke's use of the name… Rey's chest ripped apart and again, her emotions were not her own. There was yearning there, above the pain. Yearning to hear the name again… but in her head were whispers, castigating the want. Your son is gone.

The barrage of Kylo's memories were coming quickly and insistently, as though she was experiencing them simultaneously while they flitted through the real Kylo's mind.

Forcing her eyes open again, Rey cried out just as Luke nearly missed deflecting a great, arcing swing of Kylo's saber. Luke responded on Kylo's downswing, thrusting the hilt of his saber between Kylo's shoulder blades. His stumble was almost undetectable as he used the momentum to spin behind his uncle and return the favor, the spitting crossguard of his hilt digging into Luke's shoulder.

"No!" Rey cried out, but immediately she was silenced by Luke's cautioning look. She forced herself to focus, to remember Luke's instructions. He'd told her what to do as soon as she'd agreed to be his bait: when he comes for you, you will need to gain the upperhand. You will need to take control of your connection: subdue him. If you can't, I won't have the chance to try and save him. If you don't succeed… do what you must. I will as well. It is kill, or be killed.

And somehow, despite everything… Rey knew she did not want that to happen.

Desperately, she tried once more to close her eyes and brace herself from what she would see. This time, it would be her who would take control. She felt for Kylo's mind. So far, she'd done nothing but permeate his memories, stepping into his shoes and seeing what he saw. He was incapable of keeping her from them, and in the fury he radiated at arms with his uncle, Rey was unsure if he was even trying to. And yet, he would not accept her invitation. He refused to meet her where she reached, where she mentally held out her hand for him to take. He would not meet her in the middle.

Finish it, and you will be free of this pain.

Again in the oscillator room, and Han was gone. Though she did not look up, she knew she would see them far above where she stood: Chewbacca, Finn, and her other, original self. She could hear her own cries, could hear Chewbacca moaning in anguish.

Look what you made me do.

She could sense Chewbacca before he even lifted the arm that held the blaster. In this form, her senses were so much more finely tuned, as if everything around her was in slow motion. Every single thing that emitted a life force called to her like a droning audience and it was maddening. Yet no matter how hard she tried to raise her arm, to use that innate sensitivity to stop Chewbacca in his tracks and protect herself from what she knew was coming… she couldn't. Or rather, he wouldn't.

I destroyed him.

Rage engulfed her as soon as the blaster beam struck; rage that morphed into penitent pain. She felt as though she welcomed it, wanted it, deserved it...

"I can help you, Ben," Luke's voice could not call her back to the clearing, because this time, she was hearing it from ears that were not her own. She could feel the hesitation in Kylo's predatory movements; could feel the want for salvation… but she wasn't alone in Kylo's head. There was a sickeningly dark presence that abated the light.

Though his mind was a tortured milieu of wavering uncertainty, Kylo's body was a deadly and menacing thing. His tall frame towered over his gradually subduing uncle. Bits and pieces of singed, black fabric fell away from his body to reveal pale, luminescent skin; telltale signs of where Luke's blade had gained the upper hand just to hold back... But his nephew would not do the same. He was unrelenting. He was like a flickering sound lost in the din of the rain, struggling to be heard and failing beneath the crushing force of the downpour. And each time Luke would show compassion through their crossed blades, it would spur Kylo on. He was wearing the elder down, bit by bit, beating at his side to refresh the pain and maintain focus.

Beating at his side...

Realization flooded Rey and she let go of the string that anchored her there. Ahch-To reemerged around her and she leapt to her feet. "Stop this!" she screamed, and for good measure, she reached once more with her mind. You must stop this!

Luke was on his knees. His lightsaber had skittered away. An expectant expression calmed his face. And Kylo was approaching, the red of his saber the only light and his large gait purposeful. Suddenly… impossibly… he stopped. The air filled with nothing but the sound of the rain, his breath, and the unhinged light. After what seemed like an eternity, his lightsaber disengaged and darkness seeped into the clearing.

Leaning in closely to the man on the low ground, Kylo mimicked Luke's earlier admission. "Let this be proof," he growled. And then, he was gone.