Title: For Darkness, Stars
Chapter 25: Ghost
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
For Darkness, Stars
Chapter 25: Ghost
...
I walk out to meet my fate
In the receding of the day
In hope the tide will grant me stay
From the ghost that never wanes
- "Ghost", VNV Nation
...
Hers and not: residual echoes of what the saber was and to whom it belonged stirred around Rey as she moved with it, carving the morning air around her: it felt a little as if she were chasing ghosts in the pre-dawn; their whispers filled her ears, though their memories strayed just beyond her — too quick to catch.
It felt as if she were waiting for something bigger than herself, and it was only just out of reach.
Touching it alone after having repaired the saber produced no further visions. She'd expected something more, but the blade had not been as forthcoming as the first time she'd found it stashed away amongst Maz's treasures. Ben's disappointment was enough to keep her awake into the long hours of the early morning. Finally, having given up on sleep entirely, she'd taken it with her and ventured outside where it was easier to separate her thoughts and feelings from his restless dreams.
She spun the quarterstaff over her knuckles, twin blue blades cutting the darkness with a humming vibration that she felt all the way to bone. It was not apart from her — but an extension of her limb as she spun around, the Force a sigh of air that moved with her, buoying her up so that it felt as if her feet hardly touched the ground, weightless.
It felt so far removed from the person she once thought she was: so small and alone, isolated in the wasteland of the Jakku dessert. This world was full of things unseen; full of potential that beckoned.
Eyes half-closed, a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, she stopped, sliding her foot in a crescent and thrusting the blade into the mist. She reached forward with her feelings, finding her mark before raising her hand. Breathing even. Controlled. Smooth as she pivoted, bending leaf and branch in the gentlest and most persuasive of gestures.
The small smile she wore grew.
The sensation of connection filled her lungs. It slipped beneath her skin. It moved with her and through her; turning her steps light, as if she could float.
The twin blades danced around her in a wheel of that bled from blue to white, cutting arcs before and behind, leaving laughter ringing through the trees. It felt whole.
The canopy dripped fat droplets of dewy water, and it became a game to catch them before they might strike the earth — hissing and evaporating on either given end of the lightsaber. The speed at which she caught them was impossible — the control otherworldly that she could stop the strike before cleaving through a tree.
Rey stopped, breathing hard, feeling the weapon as a part of her now; it's legacy a song that touched the heart. It was familiar to her. It whispered secrets she couldn't quite hear.
She opened her eyes, catching glimmers of sunshine falling between the trees, dappling the shade with mottles of gold. The forest floor was thick and rich, decaying matter giving new life in green shoots that sprang upwards and tried to capture the suns' light. There was balance here, if she left herself open to it: it felt… as it should be, which troubled her less than the other things that she could feel on the periphery.
Ben's momentary confusion while waking was a ripple that turned her body in his direction. His disorientation was tinged with concern, and as she lowered her lashes, she breathed him in — pulled his essence through her, and exhaled his relief as she sensed him reach back, his awareness brushing hers.
"Good morning, Ben," she said aloud to the empty forest.
His tension banked and unspooled. Another question formed, but it was looser — too unfocused for her to decipher as quickly. He was — less worried now, but curious, still. She tried to concentrate, holding it, but it slipped away. She sighed, blinking her eyes open to peer in the direction of Maz's castle where the impressions of a too-short couch and a kink between his shoulders left her contemplating the way he slept as she's snuck out of their room:
Shirtless. Dreaming.
Interesting, Rey thought. Was this the result of yesterday's prolonged contact reinforcing their bond, or was she so lust-addled that she'd dropped her guard entirely following that kiss? She blew out a breath. It had been quite something.
It wasn't her imagination, either: the bond was growing stronger. Echoes of his presence occupied her mind, a shade slipping amongst her thoughts. Rey felt his attention — he sought after her. A flash of Ben, sentinel and looking out over the forest canopy, but too far from view for the naked eye. A small smile tugged at her mouth, and she turned away, blushing at the other more secretive thoughts that crowded between them: sensorial things that she could almost feel grazing her skin like his fingers had.
She pulled her lower lip into her mouth, smiling and swinging the quarterstaff, trying to work through those residual impressions of lips and tongues and teeth and hands, protective arms holding her close, his skin siphoning off the worst of it — replacing her fear with warmth; warmth turning into desire.
There was something more than shadow to him; beneath the rage and frustration, she sensed something more lingering there; something pure and shining that he'd tried to snuff out. Light lived in him, still; just as, she sensed, darkness dwelled in her.
Would both halves grow to overtake them, she wondered?
To her left, something moved amongst the trees. Rey turned, her senses sharpening to a blot of shade between the trees. The leaves of the ferns swayed as if brushed like someone had stood amongst them only before. She stood still, the sudden kick of her startled heart knocking against her ribcage. Rey swallowed, unsticking her tongue from the roof of her mouth, and drew herself up, positioning the staff before her so that the blade's ambient light illuminated the gloom.
"Hello?" she called. Her voice didn't waver, but neither did her heart stop pounding in her ears. Someone was out there. Watching her.
Beneath her foot, a branch snapped as she took a step. Wincing against the sound, Rey eased forward, determined to remain unafraid and strong. Anyone could be out here. The forest and its wild growth was the prime place for smugglers and derelicts, and there was no question that Maz kept all manner of acquaintance. With Ben conspicuously absent from First Order headquarters, she had no doubt the fleet would be trawling the universe, searching for their absent Supreme Leader. Anyone might be out there, lurking in the bush, waiting to ambush her.
Uncertain what she was seeing at first, Rey hesitated: something lingered amidst the mist-strung forest, just around the trunk of a large tree. It lit the area around it with a faint, ethereal glow unlike anything she'd seen before. The problem was, Rey realized, she had sensed this presence before in the Takodana brush, and elsewhere too — she'd born it with her for so long, she almost didn't realize how close the feeling was to her: like a shadow, ever-present, and so close that you might lose it beneath your boot heels.
She sucked in a breath, and followed.
Not more than a few paces ahead, the light dimmed, the forest falling to blues and greys — a concealed inlet where the daylight couldn't reach because the trees grew so close they became a cathedral ceiling. The grotto had possessed the same stillness and calm; an anticipatory potential that made her grip the quarterstaff a little harder, her jaw setting as her gaze darted around the clearing.
The Force was at work here, and stronger than she'd ever felt it, but it wasn't the place; that was only part of it — and part of her, she realized. The same preternatural calm that filled the clearing seeped into her bones, pushing her to the balls of her feet as if ready to spring. Something was here. Something watched her. She felt its attention as surely as the small hairs on the back of her neck stood up with attention. The urge to run was becoming overwhelming, but still, she held her ground.
This place was special, but she hadn't felt it before — perhaps the repaired saber somehow allowed itself a conduit: amplifying her senses to allow her better… Force reception. Rey frowned, feeling ridiculous.
"Hello?" she said again, this time, a little more sharply.
Nothing moved between the trees.
The saber's light revealed nothing of note on the trees or stones nearby. She expected something far grander: more than vines and ferns and corded roots that snagged at her ankles; something like the tree on Acht-to, the reach of which might've grazed the stars for how high it stretched, and how deep the roots. This place felt similar: it felt like raw power — an exposed electrical wire.
She flipped the quarterstaff, its hum filling the silence as she turned on the spot. In the gloom, it's blue-white glow was almost blinding.
"Who's there?" she demanded. Her voice didn't quaver, for which she was grateful, but she was breathing hard without exerting herself. A cold sweat trickled down her spine.
Nothing there. No one here but her. She swallowed, frowning, and tried to calm her hammering heart.
"Ridiculous," she muttered, shaking herself. She stood to full height when a further search of the trees around her revealed nothing unusual. If Ben were here, she suspected her little paranoid display might actually extract a laugh from him. She exhaled, her shoulders sagging, and puffed a breath as she closed her eyes briefly, trying to center herself, and shut off the saber entirely.
Impenetrable silence descended around her, but the dim glow of light remained in the clearing.
Her brain worked to process what her eyes were seeing, but self-preservation pushed her legs into motion before she really registered the sight before her. It was another moment entirely before she realized she'd stopped breathing and her vision was spotting over with the first urge to panic and then pass out.
Her heels hit the rock behind her before that happened, and she spilled backward, arse over elbow and smacking into the soft earthen floor before even that.
The staff flew from her grasp, striking the ground a few feet before her and rolling into the toe of a man who wasn't a man: men were solid and didn't glow from the inside out. Men had mass and form and solidity; you couldn't see the trees through their torso.
Rey mouthed the word, but she knew there was no one near enough to help even if she managed more than a croak.
He towered over six feet in height at least — cutting an imposing form that was made even more striking by his broad shoulders and dark robes. A scar marred the left side of his face, slicing his right eyebrow but only grazing the eye. They were a clear, sharp blue beneath heavy brows, and they regarded her with an admiring understanding that rippled with power.
He lowered to a crouch, tipping his head as if to admire her work, and nodded with appreciation at the dual-ended saber she'd fashioned from the body of her old quarterstaff.
There was something about the manner of his dress; the robes were of an archaic style. 20 years old at least. No one wore a tabard anymore — she'd only seen that style of dress in pictures. No one wore a tabard anymore — because it was the attire of a Jedi knight.
"That's innovative," he murmured. "I'd love to see how you adapted the original construction with a split kyber crystal, but unfortunately —" He waved. One of his hands were concealed by a glove, but Rey suspected he wasn't indicating the cybernetic arm the leather covered. "In my present condition, manipulating physical objects can sometimes be rather challenging."
She reached out with whatever strength she had — whipping past the boundaries of her body quicker and with more vehemence than she'd managed before. The impact of her telekinetic thrust smashed through the dead man's torso without as much as making a ripple and hit the tree behind him, ripping it up from the roots with a groan.
Rey snatched back her hand, kicking her heels into the earth to gain momentum to escape him. He didn't move, surveying her with raised eyebrows and a faint smile.
"You're not real," she whispered, her legs twitching with the desire to snatch the lightsaber and bolt. "Ghosts aren't real."
He raised an eyebrow, lips curving in an altogether too familiar, unsettling way.
"Oh stars," Rey whispered as the similarity struck home:
The dark eyes, the shape of his mouth, the breadth of his shoulders, his stature, his height — even the way he carried himself. Ben. All of him — not exactly alike, because there were pieces of Ben that were decidedly inherited from Han Solo, but she could see the bloodline as clear as his smile when he grinned. She saw Leia in his eyes, and in the way he smiled at her — with the experience of hardship, and with a boyish shyness that the man he'd grown into had not entirely lost.
The man she'd seen in the grotto's pool. The man from the lightsaber's memories.
"I know you," she whispered.
He ducked his head, hair falling into his eyes, abashed. When he looked at her through his fringe, understanding glimmered in the darkness — and with a little sadness.
"I regret to say that… my reputation precedes me."
Rey sat upright, looking him over. She swallowed, her mouth dry, and tried to reason with the possibility of what she had been brought here to witness. She crawled to her knees, inching forwards so that she knelt before him — the pair of them almost eye to eye; she in wonder, and he with the patience of eternity.
Rey shook her head, her eyes trained on his. Her lip quivered. This was not the Dark Lord she had expected. Where was his breathing apparatus? The imposing black armor? The legends said he'd been mostly parts, in the end — hardly human.
"Master Skywalker?" she breathed.
He watched the play of emotions on her face. "You've nothing to fear from me, Rey. The blade you possess belonged to me, and my son after me. He sends his regards."
It hit her like a punch in the chest. "But Luke's —"
"Moved on," he supplied when she faltered.
Rey shook her head. This was impossible. She raked her hands into her hair, peering at him from between her fingers. When he didn't vanish in a cloud, she pinched herself for good measure.
Anakin. Anakin Skywalker. She dared not say his name, but this was the clearest representation of everything Maz had told them:
"Maz said you were two people —" she said. "You're… as you were when you began your Jedi training?" she ventured.
"Wiser, I hope," he said drily.
She swallowed, shaking her head.
"How is this possible?" she asked, reaching out as if making to graze his face.
He held a hand up as if asking for patience. "The Force and its mysteries, but I regret there isn't much time to relay the cost of this effort." He hesitated, "Rey."
She shook her head. "I don't understand — why have you come here, now? Why to me? Why not —" Ben, she wanted to ask. Why not his grandson?
He held his hand over the blade. "I have always been with you, for as long as my lightsaber has been in your possession. I have seen everything. I have fought alongside you." He searched her gaze. "I will be with you for as long as you have need of me, your guide. Do you understand?"
She shook her head, terrified by the implications. "No," Rey said.
"Ben is… closed off to me," he said, looking into the trees and beyond them, she suspected.
"And I'm not."
Anakin shook his head. "It's the nature of darkness to see only so far as you cast your light." He smirked to himself, folding his hands into his robe sleeves. When he looked up to her again, those shadows that deepened his gaze held her rooted.
Ben hadn't changed, then. There was light enough in her that Anakin could speak with her because of the saber in her possession, but there were no ties now between them. The thought left an ache in her chest.
"I don't understand," she whispered. She thought that through their bond there had been at least some progress, some shift in his desires —
"Search your feelings, Rey. When no Jedi remain, the Force must be your teacher. You must heed it well; go where it guides you, but first, you must learn to listen for it."
She frowned, touching the staff, drawing it closer to her as if it held the answers. It didn't. That which threatened her the most was the thing she feared. If she yielded to it, she would fall. If she didn't, Ben would never return to the light. Deeper still was the very true possibility that her feelings for Ben would be the very catalyst that prompted to lose herself entirely. Maz had said that she needed to yield to the will of the Force, and the current had swept her straight into Ben's arms when she did. Through him, she could almost feel it reaching out to touch her — that shadow of worry and doubt that said a nobody would remain… nothing, and all would be lost: the war, her friends, herself, and Ben Solo —
"But I feel the Dark Side calling me." She looked up into those eyes that had seen both sides of the Force, and had not survived either.
"The Dark Side beckons because there is knowledge there that a Jedi needs; the skill is in remaining touched but unconsumed by it. Balance is a tightrope that not everyone can walk, but I see you want to try."
"You won't caution me against it."
He lifted his gaze, assessing. "If I did, would you listen to me, or your heart?"
She ducked her head, her face reddening.
"Your feelings for him are the reason we are speaking now, Rey," he said to her. "You care for him, and you would see him restored in the light."
"I would," she said firmly.
"Why."
It was a simple question, but it struck her in a way that stung.
"Because it's right."
Anakin shook his head. "There is neither right nor wrong when confronted by the will of the Force. It does not wane; it only shifts to compensate for great losses and great gains, rising power and enormous defeats. It strives for only one thing."
"Balance."
"Balance in the Force," he agreed.
"And I must yield to its will."
"Wise words for someone so young."
They weren't hers, but she still didn't understand how to do it without losing herself and everything she believed in the process.
"Why," he said again. "What is your true motive in nurturing that kernel of light in him?" he pressed. "For the war? To turn the tide? For political advantage?"
"No!" she choked, but that wasn't wholly true. She'd said as much to Luke on Acht-to, hadn't she? It hadn't been to save Ben — his soul, his spirit. It hadn't been to return him to his mother who missed him. It hadn't been to spare his heartbroken father before it was too late. She'd failed to see the man, and only the mask and all that Kylo Ren represented.
And Anakin knew it: he knew her heart, and that small machination became so much worse than what she'd ever intended. Rey sank back down onto her heels, not realizing she'd risen.
She covered her mouth, tears threatening.
"Something more, perhaps," he offered, coolly. Did he find her wanting? Unworthy of the task? Misguided in her intentions?
She felt like it.
There was more to it, though: that wasn't all Ben was to her — a means to an end. Not… anymore. She wasn't quite sure when it had happened, but their bond was a building block onto which she heaped her hope.
There was no manipulation when she'd escaped Acht-to and sought him out on the Supremecy. She'd gone after him because she believed in that the tiny speck that burned inside him, and how that wonderful, small light deserved to be protected; Ben Solo deserved another chance. He deserved happiness, or at the very least, the opportunity to experience it where there had only been loneliness before. She... cared for him, and she wanted - she wanted to see him whole.
She might not have been able the one to accomplish such a feat, but she would be damned If she quit before even trying. And if Ben Solo found himself incapable of beating back the darkness that held him in its grasp, so help her, she would carve open an escape hatch so he at least had the option.
"What am I to do, Master Skywalker?" she asked.
He offered a mournful smile, looking for all the world as if he'd lived for more years than he'd been given. Rising, he gestured that she should follow, bringing the quarterstaff with her. "Face the trial every Jedi before you have taken: it is a confrontation you may not win, but it is the only way to vanquish your fear of it: walk out to meet your fate. Sometimes one must descend before they can rise."
"But I don't understand —" she tried to argue.
"The Force has given you direction, hasn't it? In what way is a dream not unlike a map?"
He drifted, his robes trailing as his light left the cathedral of trees. In the gloom, his body dimmed to a speck, and then only his voice remained along with the feeling that his presence lingered, still.
"Journey to Mustafar. Pass the test," Anakin said simply. "Save my grandson."
Rey waited for the sensation of his presence to fade, lingering in the dispersing mist as the day grew warm, her clothes growing damp the longer she sat there, thinking:
Save Ben Solo: that part was clear. He did not, however, tell her to 'save herself' too.
And that, perhaps, was a lesson that separated Jedi from Padawans — sometimes, Rey thought, it was the silent instruction that was the most important, if not the most difficult to master.