Rey became conscious. She couldn't describe it as waking, it was nothing that sudden, but one minute her awareness of herself was dim and distant and then it slowly sharpened and focused until she remembered she had a body somewhere, even though it didn't seem to be doing as it was told. Everything was dark, but although she couldn't open her eyes the red glow of light through blood told her she was no longer dreaming. She was cold, particularly her arms and legs, and her back ached from the hard surface on which she lay. The odd footstep in the background and the rustle of clothing indicated she wasn't alone.
There was something covering her face, and the longer she lay there the greater a need to breathe she felt, but that automatic switch between body and mind seemed to have finally been severed, and although her brain called for air, her lungs failed to respond. She panicked, tried to move, couldn't so much as shift her little finger. Then there was a hissing and her chest heaved, all on its own, oxygen flooded her mouth and nose and she became aware of the pulse thudding in her ears, and shortly afterwards, of the pressure of something resting on her chest – the machinery sustaining it.
She was in a medical bay somewhere, the smell pervading the air matched the scent she'd detected on Ben once, after he'd collapsed, and she was being kept alive artificially. The last thing she remembered was a flash of disappointment, and then she'd been shot. Ben had been trying to grip her hand, but she hadn't wanted him that close after the revelation he'd tried to kill her and kept the extent of her powers secret. It was the secrecy that bothered her more, she'd always expected him to make an attempt on her life, but he hadn't seen fit to talk to her about the abilities she seemed to possess, presumably hoping that if he kept silent, she might not realise the extent of her powers. Or maybe he assumed that she already knew.
Either way, that moment of doubt had caused her to let go of Ben's hand and now she was helpless, alive, but unable to move and clearly a long way from whatever was happening to him.
A man's hand touched her leg, just above her knee at first and then sliding upwards on a slow glide to rest possessively on her inner thigh. The thought that it might be Hux made her skin crawl, but there was nothing she could do to either protest or shake him off.
She was about to attempt something from the Jedi books when a voice she didn't know said, 'To demonstrate, she can be touched gently.'
Another hand inserted itself between her legs and her thighs were separated with rough force. The fingers crept closer, uncomfortably close to the place that Ben had made his own. 'You can use her without fear of retaliation.'
'Remove your hands.' Hux's tone was icy. 'I've already seen as much of her as I ever want to.'
'Supreme Leader?' Whoever the other man was, he worked for Hux and Rey's legs were replaced, side by side.
'I have surveillance everywhere, including in the traitor's quarters. This woman has spent large parts of the last few days naked so if her clothes could stay on for once, I'd appreciate it.'
'Supreme Leader.'
Rey felt the distinctive brush of a sheet cover her legs.
'Is she conscious?'
There was a slight pause, some beeping. 'Minimally. Not enough to use her powers.'
Hux's voice came again, from closer this time. 'I'm not a cruel man, Rey. I know you will find that difficult to believe at the moment, but I assure you it's true. I reward the loyalty of my staff, I don't kill them if they disobey me. I try to lead through respect, not command with fear. I make consistent decisions and I reserve my wrath for our enemies. I am the leader that the First Order needs.
Ben Solo was never supposed to take charge, Snoke simply kept him around because his powers were useful, and because he enjoyed inflicting pain on such a willing recipient. Snoke knew his secret. Terrifying as he tried to make himself appear, Kylo Ren was never going to be a Sith, but he took all the punishment Snoke could dish out because he thought he deserved it. There was no higher goal, he wasn't being trained to rule, the 'training' served no useful purpose other than to let that traitor feel better about himself. He wanted to be punished. He wanted to be beaten. He wanted to hurt. He still does. I am simply granting that wish.'
He took a breath. 'But I have nothing personal against you. When you first came on board, I thought that we had much in common – we both wanted the Supreme Leader dead, and we both wanted new authority for the First Order. I thought you would be the one to kill him for me, and I was prepared to support your escape afterwards, as long as you left the Order as mine to rule. But the longer you remained on board the more I came to understand the nature of the bond between you, and I learned that the physical element is the least of its strength. You no longer wish to strike him down. You are no longer part of the Resistance, you stand with him, and you have left me no choice.
I am not a cruel man Rey, and because of that, I am going to kill you, but I don't intend it personally. I won't cause you unnecessary pain. Ben Solo must die, and his sufferings over the last few days, although enjoyable to watch, have now become depressing, even for me, and I need to bring this episode in the Order's history to an end.
As I watch him die, I will think of you. Thank you for making his death possible. Goodbye.'
There was a rustle and his voice came from further away. 'It will take me ten minutes or so to get to him but when you receive my signal, switch off her life support.'
Rey's state of consciousness went from minimal to fully awake as the words were spoken, but because her heart rate and respiration were automatically controlled, her body gave no sign. Death was coming, and it was the helpless, humiliating death she feared. She reached out with her powers immediately, searching for something in the room to fling at Hux or the doctor, but although she could feel metal structures around her, the weight of the bond which kept her flat on the bed also kept the Force within herself. She tried again, this time seeking another brain she might be able to control, but her body was a prison and it kept her mind locked inside, unable to touch or move anything in the physical world.
The hiss of a door signalled Hux's departure and Rey panicked silently, knowing her time was running out. Hux had suggested she had been apart from Ben for several days at least, which must mean that the bond had reached its full extent, she'd have to touch him if she wanted to live, to breathe on her own, but she couldn't move, couldn't get out, and by the sound of it he was in no fit state to come to her.
Her chest moved as the respirator gave her another shot of oxygen, and, knowing that there might not be too many more, she made her decision. There was no hope of rescue, but she wasn't willing to leave him like this, not with so much unsaid. The price extracted would be terrible, but she was about to pay it anyway, so it didn't matter. Reaching back into her memory she found the passage in the Jedi texts which had been waiting patiently for an opportunity, the same lesson Luke had used to appear on Crait.
She couldn't leave her bed, but that didn't mean she couldn't go to Ben and even if the effort killed her what did it matter? She was going to die anyway. She sank inside herself, concentrated hard, found the state of calm she needed, free from bodily distractions and then she wondered where to begin. She knew from the recording of Crait that she'd be visible, if insubstantial, so she couldn't just wander the corridors without Hux's surveillance picking her up and she didn't know where Ben was being held. Since the General wasn't travelling far, he must still be on board, so the prison wing seemed like a reasonable place to start.
She imagined the cell she'd woken up in once, the one with the hole in the ceiling and wished herself there. The transition was instantaneous. One minute it was dark, the next she was in a white walled room standing on her feet, wearing her favourite outfit, lightsaber by her side. The room was empty and since she wasn't really here and didn't need doors, she simply walked through the wall into the next room along. That too was abandoned, although it held a dirty interrogation chair, covered in dark splatters, with globules of something meaty scattered all over the floor. Her hallucinatory heart pounded, she didn't have long and there must be hundreds of cells on this level, she didn't have time to search every one.
She felt it then, a waver in the Force, somewhere over to the right, faint and feeble but it felt familiar and along with the sensation came a whisper, half word, half thought with only the faintest trace of breath behind it.
'Seventy-two. Thirteen. Thirty.'
She followed the words like a trail of breadcrumbs, slipping across the corridor behind the backs of patrolling guards, ghosting through doors.
'Seventy-two. Fourteen.'
She surprised another prisoner, stepping into and out of his room quickly while he blinked his eyes, held out a hand, but worse was the captive who simply stared at her without reaction, too brutalised to care.
'Seventy-two. Fourteen. Thirty.'
Then Ben was in front of her, in a small cell so bright it made her imaginary eyes hurt, lying on the floor as if he were already dead. He wasn't bound or fettered in any way, it clearly wasn't necessary. His body shuddered at regular intervals, but the convulsions were tiny, the exhausted tremor of muscles pushed beyond endurance. His fingernails had bitten arcs of flesh from his palms. His face was caked in dried spittle, his hair crusted into hard ropes with the residue and his jaw was clamped shut, teeth bared in a rictus smile. His eyes were fixed and unseeing.
'Seventy-Two. Fifteen.'
She wasn't sure if the words were coming from his stricken throat, or whether the Force was simply amplifying his thoughts, and she hesitated for a second to see if he knew she was there.
'Seventy-two. Fifteen. Thirty.'
He was counting. She realised with a start that he was counting, focusing on that in an attempt to maintain control. And what he was counting was time. Seventy-two hours, fifteen minutes, thirty seconds or, as Hux had put it – a few days.
Ben was counting the time since he'd seen her last.
Something inside her broke, a thin, protective shell that had been eroded away over the last few weeks until now there was nothing left. She knelt beside him, put her hand on his cheek and hoped that he'd feel it in whatever hell he walked.
'I can't breathe without you,' she said. It wasn't quite what was in her heart, but she knew he wouldn't accept those three words no matter what condition he was in.
His eyes rolled, but slowly, so slowly she could feel his struggle under her palm. Where the bond had trapped her in her body, left her unable to act, it caged him with pain, destroyed his ability to concentrate, to speak.
She willed him to focus, poured all her effort into making the touch of her hand substantial enough to revive even a fraction of the connection between them. His voice was a harsh whisper when it finally left this throat. 'It hurts.' He sucked in a rasp of air. 'When you're not here.'
The understatement filled her eyes and she touched him with her other hand, wanting to hold him in her arms one last time. 'I'm sorry.' The words spilled out of her mouth, watered by tears. 'I'm sorry that it had to end like this. I'm sorry that we didn't have more time. I'm sorry that you've been hurt again, when you've already been through so much. It isn't fair. None of this is fair.'
'Died,' he cut in. 'Luke died. Doing this.' His fingers made a weak curling action and she realised that he understood exactly how she'd come to be there, and what the consequences were.
She clutched his hand. 'It doesn't matter. I'm dead already. Hux is on his way here and as soon as he arrives he's going to switch off the life support that's keeping me alive and when I die, you'll die too. But I couldn't let you go without seeing you again. I wanted to tell you that I wasn't pretending, it was all real to me. Everything. Every moment we were together. It felt like it was real because it was.'
His throat worked. 'Go,' he said.
She got as far as, 'What?' before her hand groped at her chest and she faded away.
He struggled to hold on to the scrap of calm her presence had brought him, but he was falling into shadow again, his vision dimming, lost in the dark. She was dying somewhere not far away, she was taking her last breath and the light in her eyes was going out, but he was still falling, and he couldn't stop.
He had always been part of the darkness, it had owned him most of his life and now it offered protection, comfort, the end of pain. But even as he let go he felt it again, the call to the light. This time it was a little voice from somewhere deep down inside and it said, 'Get up.'
He listened for it, and it came again, steady and determined. 'Get up.'
He did nothing, cowering in the shadows away from the torture of the waking world.
'Get up,' it said, and this time it sounded like her, a little bit of Rey still lingering in his memory. 'I don't think he was training you to succeed him,' she said. 'I think he was training you to get up.'
He wanted to reject the idea outright, but he could tell the voice was waiting for an answer. Could it be right, he wondered, sunk so far inside himself he couldn't feel anything anymore. Could it be that all his training had been for nothing?
He hadn't succeeded as a Jedi, and he hadn't succeeded as a Sith either, he'd tried both and failed. All those years of training, all that struggle and effort, the pain and the punishment, the small, hard-won victories, the constant disappointment, the striving to do better, and where had it left him, here at the end of his life? Helpless and on his back in a prison cell, unable to save himself or the woman he loved.
It was easier to admit that now it no longer mattered, easier to look back and acknowledge that the feelings he'd had from the beginning had never really gone away despite her refusal to join him. He'd told her he wouldn't ask twice, but he saw now that he'd ask a thousand times if there was any chance he'd get a different answer.
And somewhere nearby she was dying alone.
Anger saved him, anger always saved him, and it came boiling out of his guts, raw and primal, reenergising exhausted muscles, stiffening bone and sinew, sparking nerves into new life. Rage, hot and quick, burning through him stronger than the pain. Fury at all the years he'd wasted striving for impossible goals he would never achieve, the years spent being knocked down which had taught him only one thing – how to get up.
Focus. Concentration. Breathing through it.
He opened his eyes, let the anger surge, strong emotion, under control and before the pain of the bond could sink him again he ripped open the cuts on the palm of his right hand, working his fist swiftly until a pool of blood gathered on the floor. His left hand raised, and he called the lightning, flowing out through his fingers strong and sure and as he blasted the red smear he spoke the words of the Balc incantation which would break the bond for good.