A/N: *everyone looking at the chapter title and sweating*

you guys aren't reading it on AO3 so you don't know but - Yes, despite the title, there are 2 more chapters.

Sooo this is when you find out I've been Rian Johnson-ing.

Don't forget to make sure you remember what happened on Chapters 10 and 11. Let's go!

And Thank you Sarah (bergersteen on twitter) and Nicki (notnicorette on twitter) for helping me with this wild ride.

For everyone that wants to say hi to me on Twitter I'm Reyllos (truly can't believe I didn't share this until now)

"Ben!"

Her screams echoed for ages after his father's ship sped away.

Artoo beeped hysterically.

"Oh, dear," Threepio said upon spotting the dark figure entering the Falcon.

What the droids were doing here and not with his mother, Ben wasn't sure. But knowing her, Threepio was getting on her nerves for some reason or another.

Why they hadn't helped the Resistance members fight against him minutes before, he didn't want to think about. The idea that even his old family droids waited on him to come back was too haunting to contemplate at that moment.

Either way, Ben didn't acknowledge them. He strode towards the cockpit, taking off his cape and his gloves and letting them fall to the ground on his way.

Chewie roared to him, to which he replied:

"I'm piloting." He sat down in the pilot's seat, lit up the control panel by muscle memory - Ben Solo's muscles - before his movements stopped. As his gaze fixed on the old, dusty buttons of the Falcon, his vision blurred.

"You know who my father was." He whispered the explanation before the Wookiee could object, his throat tightening at the memories.

Chewie let out a feeble groan and slumped in the co-pilot chair.

Ben closed his eyes; there was no time for sentimental apologies. But even in a more peaceful time, he doubted that there would be enough time left in the Galaxy for all the apologies needed.

Or the regret.

But there was still one parent he could save. Anything else could wait. Besides, the end was coming. He would feel what he had to feel then.

He would get what he well deserved then.

Ben decided to distract himself from his spiraling thoughts, focusing instead on battle plans and the goal ahead. He checked their coordinates to at least know what system they were in.

A smirk graced his lips when he saw the numbers.

"Ah- excuse me, Sir- Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, are we under First Order domain?" Threepio's voice rang beside him, his exasperation filling his soul with nostalgia.

The younger Solo set his jaw, staring ahead of him and out the viewport. "No."

Ben then looked up and his eye caught the golden dice hanging from the ceiling. Ever since he saw their projection on Crait, he had an inkling they would be reunited soon.

He raised his arm, his hand grazing the golden metal before it diverted from its path, finding an old hair tie hanging next to the dice. He stared at the faded fabric, loosened from time and use.

Before he trained with Luke, and on the rare times Ben wasn't haunted by the voices in his head and terrors of his heart, one of the few interests Ben and Han shared was their love for flying. There, in that cockpit, was where Ben Solo learned to pilot. It was where he spent hours and hours yelling and being yelled at – frustrated and in love with this ship.

As he grew up, so did his hair. And while he didn't agree with Han that he had to just cut it already – he did agree that it had the nasty habit of falling over his eyes. During his late childhood and early teenage years, Ben's instability and crumbling relationship with his parents only allowed rare good moments with the Falcon and Han. But even then, he'd keep that hair band on the freighter to help tame his locks when he had flying lessons or helped his father.

It was no surprise his father had kept it, even when the chances of Ben Solo, turned Kylo Ren, stepping into the Millenium Falcon again were less than zero. Han Solo had gone to the depths of enemy territory to find Ben, betting his life against all odds that his son would come back. Ben understood that now, had understood it even before he was willing to admit it.

So, when he stared at that old piece of his childhood, worthless to anyone but him and his father, he accepted that everything Snoke had told him was a lie.

Han Solo didn't see him as a monster. Ben's skeptic of a father had stopped believing in many things in his life, but not in his son. Han gave his life for one last bet.

And even in death the old man had won.

Ben Solo swallowed hard and grabbed his old hair tie. His hands moved on their own accord and pulled his hair back in a half ponytail. He couldn't give his father what he so desperately asked on Starkiller; he couldn't come back to him and undo what he did. But he could give him one last thing. He could make sure the love of Han's life didn't meet his same tragic destiny.

Ben took a deep breath and flew them off the Finalizer.

"Excuse me, Master Ben," Threepio said, and Kylo nearly lost his grip on the controls at the sound of the old nickname. "-but where are we going then?"

As Jakku appeared in his line of sight, so did the Oblivion. It was focusing all its firepower on a specific Resistance cruiser, hovering so close to it that the First Order ship was almost swallowing it whole.

Ben didn't take his eyes away from that view. "We are going to take that Star Destroyer down."

By the time they left the Finalizer, everything was in motion.

Rey piloted their U-wing as they watched the freighter soaring alone towards the Oblivion. Her eyes widened, and her heart leaped into her throat.

The Oblivion kept all its firepower focused on Leia's cruiser, still unaware of the small ship coming their way. The Falcon remained untouched as it approached its opponent with a heat and a will to match its pilot. And, for a moment, one that wouldn't last, all they could do was just behold the sight.

A dwarf against a giant.

Ben held the controls tight and gritted his teeth, trying to focus on the Oblivion's hull as it got closer and closer.

If there was one thing Armitage had incompetently ignored, it was Ben Solo's upbringing. Hux dreaded his Force wielding abilities and feared his training in battle. But what he didn't consider, what he never understood, was that Ben was his parents' son.

He had grown up hearing stories about the rebels, their excruciating adventures, their insufferable heroism, and their pretentious plans. Ben knew how they thought, how they planned. He knew that at their most successful battles, they didn't need numbers, they needed one lucky shot and one weak spot in their opponent.

So, once Kylo Ren realized General Hux was turning the Oblivion into his personal battleship, he did what any rebel would have done: he stole the construction plans.

The real ones, not whatever garbage Armitage sent his way and passed off as the original blueprint.

Ben glanced at the Wookiee co-piloting beside him. "I need you to be the gunner." He paused, waiting for Chewie's protest.

But Chewie simply stood up and headed towards the gunner position. Before he was out of earshot, Ben continued:

"And I'm going to need you to shoot when I ask."

At that Chewie halted, turned around and roared at him. Ben just stared at him, unwavering. He was aware that his request and the trust it demanded from Chewie was absurd, but he needed it anyway.

His surrogate uncle then showed his teeth and released a weak growl before continuing down his path.

Ben then glared back at the Oblivion, its left side paralleling the General's cruiser. X-wings had exited the Resistance ship, trying to attack the Star Destroyer in vain. The First Order ship had an impressive shield, and it carried nearly infinite TIE fighters that were flocking around and eliminating their worn-down adversaries one by one.

The Resurgent-class Star Destroyer also had so many turbolasers that, at that short distance, it would be able to vaporize the Resistance cruiser in minutes. And it only hadn't because Hux needed to occupy it and reach Leia first.

Ben's hand gripped the controls, and he took a deep breath. He accelerated.

It didn't take long until the TIE fighters attacking picked up movement from their left. Some of them charged on the Falcon's direction while more exited the Oblivion to pursue them.

Good.

Ben turned their ship upwards abruptly and took off at a nauseating speed. Artoo and Chewie yelled profanities as Threepio complained more politely from the corner he fell into.

The Falcon shook as the first of many shots hit them, but Ben paid no mind to them. He focused on the Oblivion's hull as they flew close to it, almost as if they were climbing the ship.

The freighter jolted, a few alarms started ringing, and Chewie roared if he could just shoot one of the blasted TIE fighters.

"Not yet!" Ben yelled back.

As they reached the top of the Star Destroyer, Ben eyed the command tower and raced towards it. Focusing on his target and ignoring the explosions that rocked the Falcon, Ben created a silence for himself.

That was when he sensed Rey.

Unmistakable, a will relentless as durasteel, a blazing fire with that temper, and that light of hers. He took a deep breath, wishing it was just a sensation coming from their connection, but knowing her better all the same. Especially when, as he sensed, she had a one-track mind on… something. Whatever it was this time, he knew he couldn't stop her. He had known it ever since he met her. He just silently, and selfishly, hoped she would come out of this ordeal unscathed.

Chewie's growling broke him out of his reverie.

"Not yet." He grumbled as they were nearing the command bridge.

Ben brought the Falcon up slowly and the TIE fighters followed. At their predictability, the corner of his mouth lifted in another smirk. He checked how intact their shield still was as he zig-zagged the Falcon when the defense turrets near the bridge opened fire.

As the dome of the shield generator on the right neared, he focused on it and sped up in its direction. Ben closed his eyes and took a deep breath while feeling the Force. They'd need a millimetric precision not even Han Solo or his son would nail on their own.

The former Supreme Leader sensed each TIE pilot, each ship behind them, the defense turrets firing, and the dome ahead of them. When their freighter was a few feet away from crashing, he opened his eyes at once and swiveled the Falcon up, making an arc over the shield generator before diving downwards next.

As Threepio asked Artoo if it was possible for non-organics to throw up, Ben saw that most TIEs were still able to follow him and keep firing. But one of them was slow, too slow, and it collided in high speed against the Oblivion, too big to be stopped by the shield, crashing against the bridge shield generator.

Alarms rang out on the Oblivion and Ben hummed in approval. He turned around to look in the general direction of the gunner position.

"Now!" he shouted to his uncle.

Chewie fired back at the TIE fighters near them with all his might. The battleship beneath them turned chaotic, beginning its well-established protocols for the second command bridge to take control while the first one was unprotected. They would focus all their attention on the top of the ship, intent on reinforcing the defenses of that area to protect their vulnerable high-rank officers. And they would be too distracted to look elsewhere for a few minutes.

Swiftly, Ben swiveled their ship down. He descended the Star Destroyer with difficulty, noticing the Falcon's engines weren't working as well as before. But he just needed the freighter to last a few more minutes or it would all have been in vain.

As they reached the ship's underbelly, Ben focused on the spot where he knew the reactor would be. The shield was still intact in that area, and in any other ship of the First Order fleet, the reactor, wisely, wouldn't be much of an issue as it had been in the past.

The former Supreme Leader was aware of these facts, because when he looked at the Oblivion construction plans, he confirmed that it was as impenetrable as any other Resurgent-Class Star Destroyer.

But Hux was greedy, and he had to add one more detail that would be his downfall.

He didn't want only the turbolasers to be powered by kyber crystals, for Kylo's Finalizer already had that. The General wanted more. He wanted to be better. He wanted to prove not even Force wielders were a match to his calculating military skills. He wanted the Oblivion to be powered by a reactor whose energy was amplified by the biggest kyber crystal Ben had ever seen.

Hux was a conceited fool and it would cost him his life. Even if it took Kylo's with him.

Ben placed the Falcon directly under the reactor, trusting that the engines would hold and Chewbacca would handle the sea of TIE fighters around them for the few minutes he would need to concentrate.

He closed his eyes and focused on the crystal above him, which wasn't a hard task considering its size. The kyber was numb and unfocused, as most of the ones used and beaten by the First Order were, but it was alive. Ben fluttered his conscience against it before he started pulling it to him.

Summoning an object of that magnitude was preposterous, and he knew that. Luke would tell him that size matters not, that it was all about his own connection with the Force rather than physical or mental strength. But, Ben Solo had always been impatient. And as it turned out, his impatience made him practical.

A grunt escaped his lips as he tugged the kyber and a shake reverberated through the Falcon. There was a flare of heat to his right which he hoped wasn't that big of a fire. He focused on his task again, remembering his goal.

While the memory of Rey trying to take Luke's lightsaber from him was rather painful, it became a piece of information that he'd file for later. He would file it right alongside his memory of the day he bled his own crystal. As Ben tugged and tugged the crystal, he was reminded of the explosion he and the last Jedi created. Anakin's crystal hadn't even cracked and it unleashed a blinding energy just by being upset.

As his muscles strained and his stomach clenched with the effort, Ben was reminded of the energy his own crystal released when it cracked. How it burned his right hand and scorched all his clothes.

Ben Solo had always been impatient. So, when he read the Oblivion's construction plans, becoming aware of this weak spot that no one would have noticed, that no one would have understood, he didn't need to read further. He wouldn't even need to train to summon anything if a time came when he had to attack the Star Destroyer. With a crystal that immense he would just need to crack it enough to create a blast; he could unbalance it enough that it would become a bomb inside the ship.

It was as he remembered this that there was a snap. And, like the first time he watched a kyber break, everything went white.

"What…is he doing?" Finn asked slowly, eyes trained on the Falcon as it continued to charge full speed towards a ship, a hundred times its size, as if it would just go through it. And…great, also getting itself in shooting range of TIE-fighters that now opened fire.

"We need to do something." Rey clenched her jaw and charged their ship towards the battle.

They had the element of surprise to their advantage since the TIE fighters were rather distracted, either shooting at X-wings coming from the Resistance cruiser or the Falcon. Too distracted to realize this small U-wing coming in their direction.

As they approached them, Rey felt Ben, his energy all wild and focused at the same time. He couldn't care less if those TIEs brought his ship down, he had one goal, and one goal only.

Well, she had one goal too.

"Finn, Rose-" she called, but they were already moving before she could find the words.

"On it!" Finn yelled over his shoulder before he and Rose ran to the gunner positions and began shooting.

It took the First Order pilots about five seconds to realize there was another ship they should worry about. As a considerable number of them headed towards Rey and her friends, she turned their ship and flew away from Ben's location, hoping to command their attention.

When the floor beneath their feet shook and explosions sparked in the corner of Rey's vision, she got confirmation that her plan had worked.

Now she just had to make sure Ben wouldn't get himself killed.

They flew right and left, pivoted, going up and down as Rose and Finn shot at as many First Order ships as possible. Rey regularly checked where the Falcon was and if they needed extra coverage. By the time the freighter flew to the top of the Star Destroyer and was surrounded by a sea of TIE fighters, she confirmed exasperatedly that Ben indeed had a death wish.

She turned their U-wing around and sped towards the scene, getting a better view of the Falcon as it swirled so precisely the freighter just missed hitting the hull of the much bigger ship and forced a TIE fighter or two to crash against it instead.

"Woohoo! Your boy knows how to fly!" Poe yelled.

A string tugged on Rey's heart, both from pride and from Poe addressing Ben as hers.

Rey of Jakku had few things she owned, and even fewer that weren't left behind on her nothingness of a planet: a satchel, half a deck of Sabacc cards, a few items of clothing, and a lightsaber. To think Ben Solo belonged to that list made something primal in her flutter.

An excited glint flickered in Poe's eyes as he pushed on the controls beside her, challenged to use his flying skills as well after watching Ben.

A smile tugged on the scavenger's lips despite the war raging around them.

"I don't get it," Finn yelled from his position as he kept shooting, "There's a second command bridge. After the Executor's crash, everyone in the First Order knows there's a second command bridge. His plan won't work." A pause, then a mutter, "Why doesn't he know that? I knew that…how didn't he know that?"

Rey wrinkled her forehead but continued approaching the explosion site. The Falcon was surrounded by enemy ships, smoke decorated a few spots of the old freighter, and it seemed to be flying off balance.

As soon as they were in shooting range, Finn and Rose opened fire against the TIE fighters surrounding the Falcon. But Han Solo's old ship soon disappeared when it headed towards the bottom of the Star Destroyer. Before more TIEs could follow Ben, Finn and Rose shot at them incessantly and Rey provoked them into yet another high-speed chase to divert their attention.

"Rey, what is he doing?" Poe asked as his eyes darted back and forth at all the First Order ships around them.

They had no idea what Ben's plan was and if it was close to an end, if it even had an end. The Star Destroyer Oblivion still attacked Leia's ship impressively, and they wouldn't be able to fight off all those TIEs alone in their U-wing for long.

But the reply never left Rey's lips, as a bright white ray of light shimmered somewhere in the space beneath their ship.

And then the Oblivion, pride of the First Order, was ablaze.

Finn and Rose shot the last ships that were still after them, while the others TIEs retreated immediately. And Rey and Poe couldn't do anything but stare at the fire.

In between staggering explosions and the collapsing of the black ship, the Resistance's cruiser that sheltered Leia stood whole. Rey sensed her through the Force, alive, well, and agitated. Her presence flickered at the Jedi, as if the General stared right back at the girl from where she stood.

A beat passed until Rey's eyes scanned the perimeter, her stomach sinking.

"Where's the Falcon?" she asked.

Poe looked around, unable to give her an answer. Rose and Finn walked back to the cockpit, laughing, cheering, and celebrating their victory. But their happy bubble was a startling contrast to the dread filling her bones.

"Rey?"

She looked out their viewport frantically, only locating a few X-wings approaching them to open a comm link, and nothing else. But Ben wasn't dead. He couldn't be. She would have felt it. Her heart took leap after leap against her chest until she saw it.

A flaming, swirling dot falling towards Jakku's atmosphere.

Despite the nearing Resistance ships, Rey sent their U-wing into a nosedive.

"Rey!" Finn called her again, holding on to whatever he had in sight.

Words were stuck in her vocal chords, unable to get out and explain the debilitating fear inside her. Hoping against hope, she wished that the terror she felt was hers only, and completely unrelated to their Bond.

When Ben regained consciousness, the world was burning and spinning between pitch black and Jakku sand.

The Force felt raw after the stunt he pulled, and his veins were electric. During that whirling daze, his exertion seemed to stick splinters in every corner of his body, and if that wasn't enough, smoke filled his lungs as more and more fires started in the ship carrying him.

As his three companions yelled things his mind couldn't comprehend anymore, Ben realized that was it. That was when he finally got what he deserved: falling face first in the middle of the Jakku desert before his entire body was crushed and destroyed by his father's ship.

He deserved nothing less.

If Hux or the Resistance weren't the ones to carry out that sentence, his father would. Jakku would.

His hands were loose around the controls since he fainted, and when he came back to consciousness and stared at them, he didn't try to control the freighter anymore. He accepted his fate. The Force pierced every cell of his body, reminding him he had performed his role. And all that was left to do now was accept the end.

Chewie somehow returned to the cockpit. Growling, he pulled the controls from Ben's hands as the yellow ground got closer. Ben blinked twice, situating himself while his uncle crushed him against his seat as he managed to pilot their ship from a semi-standing position between Ben and the panel. He kept them in the air for as much time as the Falcon's damaged engines could bear it.

A few seconds later, they crashed.

When Ben came back to it for a second time, he noticed he was upside down, stuck between a groaning Wookiee and the Falcon's pilot chair. His head hurt so intensely that he could barely see, but his eyes didn't make out any fire near them which was…good. He untangled himself from Chewie and managed to crawl out of the Falcon, even with his vision blurring.

He stumbled out of the ship completely dizzy, a track of blood running down his right temple as he stared around at a sea of sand.

That was fitting; he had nowhere to go. He had planned little beyond leaving the First Order, bringing down Hux, and saving his mother and Rey, since he was quite sure he would die at some point during that plan. And now there he was, stuck in Jakku. Of all places.

His ears were ringing and his knees gave way as he collapsed to the ground with a thud. He took a deep breath that made his ribs ache. The Force was roaring in his blood, content and restless at the same time.

At last, Ben Solo was able to do this one thing right in his short and tormented life. He turned away from darkness and now Leia was alive. He sensed her, brilliant and steady as he once did before everything went so bleak in his world.

And Rey too was alive, but not only that. Because as much as he wished to protect her – and he always would, given the choice - she could have handled Hux on her own. But more than alive, Rey was free, free to be and have all she wished and deserved in life.

So, he didn't understand, he couldn't understand what else the Force wanted from him. Why, after everything he had risked today, why was he still alive? Because he sure didn't deserve it. He sure couldn't fix more. He couldn't mend everything he had broken.

But he didn't get an answer, just his long comatose consciousness rubbing salt in all his endless wounds. Now he had no goal to occupy his mind and distract him from it. With no excuses left, the Force took advantage of the little window in his soul that he had opened to the light, and slammed against it until the window was as wide as a gate.

Ben looked back at his father's ship and held back a sob that surprised himself. He no longer had a mission to distract himself from the fact that he would never see his father again, and it was only his fault. When he then looked ahead of him, at just a blur of colors and movement until his vision focused, he choked on a laugh.

That explained things, why he was still alive.

Tuanul stared back at Kylo Ren as the Light raged in his chest. And he didn't know if he had hit his head too hard, exhausted himself too much in this war, but he could've sworn he was seeing people in it.

Despite having its population decimated by the First Order only two years before, villagers were walking, talking in it. People that were either living in a cemetery of his own making, or ghosts haunting him for his choices.

Whatever they were, their image made something spark in his spirit. A pull.

We're not done yet.

The wind picked up around him, carrying a thousand whispers. The pull got stronger, drawing him in. Ben stared at the sand beneath his knees as if the solution had been there all along. As if he finally understood a language that was ancient and lost until now.

A preposterous idea flickered in his mind, but it was clear as the day surrounding him. The Force was calling him, like it did all those years, but the difference now was that he was listening. And Ben, for once, decided to heed the forgotten side of him that just believed.

He knew what he had to do.

The ambient sounds disappeared. There was nothing left but him, the wind and that ground.

It's just us now.

That feeling tugged so strongly at his decaying heart that he couldn't do anything but comply. As he placed his hands on the ground and closed his eyes, the Force surrounded him and roared so loud he couldn't do anything but answer.

Rey gasped.

Her hands left the controls as all her nerves caught on fire and she held her chest.

"Whoa!" Poe yelled, taking control of the U-wing from where he sat before they spiraled out of control in the atmosphere.

Rose rested her hand on Rey's shoulder, calling her, asking what was wrong. But Rey only gasped for air, digging her nails deep against her chest.

Rey and Ben sometimes sensed what the other was feeling through the Bond, but this was something else. She closed her eyes and tried to call to him, but there was no answer, only a light dimming as if there was a drain sucking all his life force out.

"Something's wrong," she croaked.

"I really, really hate when you say that," Poe yelped from where he hunched over the main panel as he tried to pilot in her place.

"Uh…guys, wasn't our middle point the Jakku system?" Finn interrupted.

"Yes," Rose answered distractedly, watching Poe wrestle to control the ship from the co-pilot seat as Rey gasped for air.

"And are we sure that the planet over there is Jakku," Finn continued.

"Yeah." Rose furrowed her eyebrows, confused as to why her boyfriend was focusing on planets when chaos happened in front of them. She looked at the coordinates from over Poe's hip, since he was nearly splayed over the control panel.

"We are," she confirmed.

"Ok, so someone tell me this: since when does Jakku have any green on it?" Finn asked and jabbed his finger at the viewport to point at a striking bright green area on the planet near them.

All of them stopped what they were doing and feeling to look at what Finn was showing them.

Rey had lived nineteen years on that planet. All of its mountains, villages, and sandbanks were embedded in her mind, and if there was one thing she was certain of, more than her own name and the details of every part she has ever scavenged, was that there was no green on Jakku.

Before anyone uttered a single word, she stood up at once and ran to the first container she could throw up in, which in this case was a tool kit.

Rose's eyes widened, and she followed the girl as Poe finally sat in the pilot's chair to control their ship. Finn didn't know what to focus on: his friend losing all the contents of her stomach while Rose patted her shoulder, or the planet he despised the most coming closer and closer.

"Poe." Rey called with her rasping throat. When he glanced back at her, she continued, "We need to go there."

He took a deep breath and shook his head, "I thought you'd say that."

"Poe-"

"Look, Rey, it's over, okay? We did our part, we helped him, Leia is safe, Hugs' ship is up in flames, we set fire to half their fleet, we almost got killed by a supernova today. I know you want to go after him, but we have to go back to our base. You two can catch up on your Force thing while I'll take a nice bath-"

"We need to go there." Rey begged, gasping for air as her eyes watered, "Please, Poe, I think…I think Ben's dying."

The pilot then squeezed his eyes shut in a grimace, but sighed. He turned to the controls and set his jaw.

"Fine," he said before speeding up and plummeting them towards Jakku's only flora.

"I can't believe we're going back to Jakku," Finn muttered.

Once they got close enough to land, Rey uncurled herself away from the toolbox and the corner she had set herself in. She and Rose walked slowly until they stood at the back of Poe's chair.

"There." Rey pointed at four dots and one flaming ship at the edge of an open vegetation.

"Wow." Rose's jaw dropped, reflecting the feelings of Finn and Poe as grass, bushes and full trees grew before their eyes.

Rey didn't share their excitement. She gripped the top of the pilot's chair as her energy drained and all her limbs went numb.

"Is that-" Finn pointed at the black figure kneeling in the sand once they landed on the ground.

Rey didn't stick around to answer. She exited the ship as fast as her weak legs allowed. As she stumbled outside, her friends following, they were met with a baffled Chewie, R2D2, and C3PO. But they skipped their usual pleasantries in the face of the mind-boggling sight ahead of them.

"What is he doing?" Finn asked, not taking his eyes off Kylo Ren as a new world seemed to grow from under his palms.

R2 beeped agitatedly in binary code at the same time C3PO replied, "I'm afraid I can't give you that information, Sir. Since we arrived at the planet, Master Ben hasn't left that spot."

Rey looked ahead, at an entire forest of life growing beyond the village before them. All activity in it ceased, and its inhabitants looked around in awe. Rey understood better than anyone that wonder of seeing green for the first time. Of seeing the one thing they never thought they'd see on Jakku.

Of living years of being without having, searching without getting, and sleeping without resting. No desire, no fear, no anger, no passion, just the bold and primal goal to exist in that desert of a planet. Having sand and hunger as the only things she ever knew, as the only things everyone around her ever knew. She understood the wonder of seeing growth sparking on a barren land.

Of seeing life, where once there was only death.

She released a shaky breath. This wasn't possible. She had studied everything there was to study about the Jedi, about the Force. She had dedicated years to understand it. There was nothing in the books even close to what she was seeing.

But she already knew the answer; she had always read it between the lines impossibly woven between her and the Supreme Leader of the First Order.

The Force didn't fit on paper.

But it didn't come without a cost either. Luke had given his life when he projected himself on Crait. Ben himself had told her on their first connection about the deadly consequences of overusing her abilities.

She looked down at his crumpled form again, feeling his life force fading, pulling their Bond along with it. That cord which once joined them irrevocably, that she swore was a nuisance, but was ingrained in her being, as much a part of her as her own hands, her legs, her heart, as natural and obvious as blinking, as breathing, as existing...

It was being yanked on from the place where it resided in her to where Ben was.

"No," she gasped.

From somewhere behind her, Chewie growled something about not being able to take Ben away from that spot as Finn yelled back at him that he didn't understand what he said. But those were the last words she would remember from that day.

Because Rey blocked out everything but that black figure in the sand as she realized with an immense sense of terror and absolute certainty that, despite her earlier efforts, Ben Solo was going to die.

Her hands flew to her chest at the exact moment the Bond was ripped away from her, leaving only destruction in its wake. Leaving nothing but desolation and pain. But her eyes never left Ben. She fought back tears and nausea, and set her jaw, refusing to accept this.

Rey knew of the guilt Ben hid inside. The girl didn't need their Bond to predict the mess he would be once he accepted it. She understood why he was atoning and surrendering to the Force like this, and at Tuanul of all places. But the consequence of it it didn't seem fair, didn't seem right.

He had saved Leia, not caring about the risks, not caring about power or even his own life. He had saved Rey all those years before and again on that same day. He had turned away from the First Order and done the impossible, destroyed one of the biggest enemy ships all on his own, probably bringing the war to an end. Ben had given everything to this war, to the Force. And so had she. They had come this far and this was what he got, what she got?

It couldn't be, it couldn't be.

She had to believe there was more to life than tragic endings.

Maybe it was her own egoism, her refusal to return to the loneliness that once claimed her, or her bleeding heart wailing desperately after half of it was just unceremoniously torn off. Whatever it was, she thought of one word, and one word only.

No, just no.

She didn't care what was supposed to happen. All she knew was that she wouldn't let it.

Her legs started to move by their own account and then she was wobbling towards the man hunched in the sand, ignoring all the noise and questions coming from the others. Every one of her bones was made of paper, every movement required the effort of moving an entire mountain as aching and hollowness infiltrated her body. But she didn't stop, she kept walking until the tip of her toes grazed against Ben.

Once Rey reached her destination, she succumbed to the all-consuming weakness in her limbs. Her knees buckled, and she was so close to Ben that she fell over his back.

Ben didn't react, he was too out of it to move. Rey closed her eyes and buried her face in his tunic, drawing a sharp breath as she connected with the hurricane surrounding them. After everything she had sacrificed, she wouldn't sacrifice this, she wouldn't sacrifice him. It was only fair that after everything she had given, she received this one thing in return.

But the Last Jedi knew the Force. She knew it was sometimes the energy in between every living thing and sometimes an unstoppable power with its own plan. More than anything, she knew that one could try to bend it to their will, but they would never win, because the Force wasn't there to indulge anyone.

But she didn't care about what she knew. When she placed her hand on the ground and felt her energy bleed from under her palm, Rey cared about hoping against hope that the Force would grant her this one last wish.

Then everything went dark.