The Call to the Light

Chapter 43

By TheOneAndOnlySlayer

Edited December 2017

Sssss

The minute their carrier ship sets inside the Boshtar's hanger, Ben casts one last, pained look at an unconscious (slightly Force-healed) Chewie before marching away toward the ramp. He doesn't take notice of the new garrison of strangers, all who seem to center near Finn, who commands them with a sense of protectiveness.

It is…a small relief to feel so many sensations inside of Ben. He is sure he is part-drunk, part rampant with his thoughts and two very different types of energies pulling him to and fro. The reality is baffling: within a few hours of time he has executed two wildly opposite powers, powers he never, ever expected in his ambitions to perform: healing, something his allegiance as a former Darksider cites as out of normal behavior, and – and Force Lightning.

Force Lightning.

He shivers more pointedly from the cold of space. Force Lightning is a certain…decorative form of punishment to Snoke. Ben knows this, and it has been terrifying for him…to have experienced it.

He knows hatred like the beat of his heart. His discipline is unmatched in almost all the Darksiders he has fought with, save Snoke himself. To have summoned it on complete impulse…to have electrocuted someone until they burned to a crisp…

…To have attacked Chewie while barely conscious…

Maker. Ben has never felt more like a time bomb than right kriffing now. He needs that private conference room, to think! And to focus. He is sure he will rip something – or someone – in two.

Finn is kind enough to stay his burning curiosity, but the precious pilot makes his way forward to Ben's retreat. "What the kriff was that, Solo?"

"Do not deter me," Ben all but growls. "There is something I must do."

"You said Rey would be on that ship. What happened? Why'd you fuck up?"

"Guys," Finn interrupts. "Private, I think."

"Just what I was thinking." Ben turns with a quick snap of his singed cloak and glares at Poe to shut up. He refuses to speak another word. His mind, though – he cannot escape the thoughts there.

He's been tricked. He has been made a fool, a pathetic child exposed to the storm of his insecurities.

Rey was never there. It was all a trick, an easy farce to fall into, and Ben, stupid Ben Solo, playing the good little Jedi, abandoned all logic and patience for the sake of his own fears and insecurities.

At once he feels his back burn with the presence of these two simpletons judging him. They don't know! It isn't fair - He held her, touched her cheek, smelled her hair –

And was obliterated by a manipulation of the Force, a visual manifestation. Of course he knew that complex technique: to create a vision and appear as another person.

Wild theories careen through his head: so who was the host? Venasto and Rutja could not have possibly conjured such an intricate trick. Certainly not Khaili, the impulsive little twat. Though, all three would have graciously allowed their master Snoke to possess them, in order to perform such a remarkably convincing feat to fool Kylo Ren himself.

It was a trap. Ben Solo couldn't see, couldn't reason past the vision of his former comrades swooping in on Rey: too impulsive as usual, too aggressive in his frustrations to think straight.

They reach his chosen place of meditation. Ben Force-shoves the door open, making Poe and Finn flinch.

"You told us Rey was going to be on that ship!" Poe demands.

"And I believed it!" Ben sneers back. "There were three Knights of Ren. I engaged them. Did your men not see them?!" His eyes widen at the realization. If they're still on board - ?!

Finn shakes his head, understanding. "I didn't see anybody when we found you. Except, you know, the…" crispy carcass, Finn thinks in what he thinks is the privacy of his own head. He realizes it's not as private when Ben flinches in his direction.

"That Rodian ship's on a tractor beam," Poe adds. "It's on orders for destruction. No one's escaped. The only people we've captured are ten mercenaries on retainer for the First Order."

"Are you sure?" For a wild moment, Ben is reminded of the "others" Rey had blabbered about, other Force-Sensitives.

"Yeah, of course I'm sure!"

"There was…" Finn begins, before Ben can counter in Poe's simple-mindedness in the Force. He licks his lips when Poe switches his focus to him. "There was a…burned corpse next to you. Couldn't make it out."

There is a definitive heavy silence in the room. Ben has to hold back the wave of Dark Energy he knows lingers underneath his fingers, scratching to be released. It had felt so good, so right: fighting back without having to hold anything back. Making Snoke's face melt with Force Lightning (was this what toppling down statues of deities felt like?), all fury and righteousness – no bloodthirst except to avenge the woman he –

"What did you do?" Poe's tone is less accusing, replaced by something between awe and apprehension.

His back straightens, satisfied temporarily at this. "I was tricked." He allows this one confession among these men, Rey's brothers. Though he cannot look them in the eye. "I-I lost control."

"Snoke," Finn concludes, frowning.

Ben needs to do something with his hands. "It was a trap. I've kept him at bay for so long. He's always…when I was…still his," he struggled to form the right words. It pained him to think this way. "He could call to me from light-years away; peer into my mind. Ever since Skywalker and…"

Finn already knows everything. "You were shutting him out. Your mind shields, on Sher'hatha."

To Ben, it sounds close to pity. Surrounded by all who would misunderstand him, he will take it. "He waited until I was weak enough. Distracted."

His deep, sooty eyes rove over the transparisteel. The next move seems so clear. If he is brave enough. He must. He's killed whatever Ren Knight acted as a host, but the connection of the attack would have struck the Force-enabler. He retaliated at Snoke through his mental attack, he knows it. And he wants so badly to go in for the kill. His blood sings at the opportunity.

"Get out. Both of you."

The two men balk at his unkind order. Ben could curse – he was gracious enough to give them the free will to leave.

"He tried to confront me, frighten me. I attacked him." His voice is so intense he is sure he's frothing at the mouth. "Now is the best chance to get into his head."

The shadows of doubt that cast their faces leave no mistaken impression: they're afraid.

Something deeper than mere nervousness crosses Finn's face. Between the two of these men, Finn had actually listened to the more obscure lessons in the Force Rey and Luke wanted to share with him. "That's…not a good idea," he finally says. "She's not gonna like this."

"She can punish me all she wants." It's meant to be reassurance. Truthfully, Ben would happily throw himself at her feet and beg forgiveness for what he's about to do. "I know him better than either of you – than any man on this ship. Leave me for the next day."

Poe's all too satisfied to leave him, scowling. He has to pull at Finn's jacket, while the younger man sighs in heavy concern.

As the door hisses closed, Ben sinks to the ground, drawing the wells of his power, is fury, his potent beast of a soul snarling in the depths.

He cannot shy away; the Dark Side that has still been left in him keens in freedom.

There are gates and locks strewn all through Ben's consciousness. Most have shuddered at the pressure – the spectre of his former self in that damp castle – later, swinging his sword at worthless skin-traders, staring down at their corpses in satiety. Now he fingers at these barriers, unleashing just a few.

His mouth arches open in a gasp. Dark, potent energy that hasn't been tapped surges around him. Rey.

This is not Snoke beckoning to him, this massive Dark power: He feels himself.

He looks at his hands. With one, he had burned someone alive with lightning. With the other he had healed, with compassion in his heart.

A strange creature he makes, but he knows now. He can walk both paths.

He cannot find Xolon – he has tried, only to be blocked by some barrier, some sort of Force-suppresser. Breathless and on edge before he has even begun, Ben prepares himself: I am in control. I am in control.

He searches. Far across the galaxy, deep in some cavernous stronghold, he is sure his master waits.

Master, he calls out tauntingly. The Dark makes him haughty, and he must watch his footing as he treads through this invisible battlefield.

Rey's face, peeled in pain and then that vile sneer, sting his vision.

But there is something else calling to him nearby. Ben looks up – as if there is a sun in that room in space. And he senses it – ahhh, there: the Light.

It has always hovered nearby, an errant sunspot he has to blink away. It often blinded him. Now he opens up to it. Breathes it in.

And he exhales.

ssssss

Beyond, something wretched and spindly moans at the unexpected burn. The Light scalds him. He recoils, searching every which way for the presence that has crept up to him.

Sssssss

Alone in the conference room, Ben nearly laughs at the other creature's pain.

My wise, all-powerful lord of all things!

The shock from the other presence ebbs into irritation. Then:

Ahh, he ponders. Liked my little message, did you, boy?

Ben's back bows like an animal, on edge.

You have taken, Ben calls out, always taken from me. The need to see this other, this parasite of a soul-guardian (once his protector, his friend…and isn't that the saddest thing) – the need to see his greatest betrayer suffer at his hand presents an incendiary and careless possibility as a tinder-match in a dry forest. My youth. My freedom. And now – you have made the mistake – of taking the most precious gift the universe has graced me.

I was once, the thin, hollow voice argues. I raised you from your miserable little legacy.

I was six! Ben crows. This warped version of a lament – once, Ben was stupid enough to fall for it, to believe this was real compassion. What he had turned from his parents for.

My boy. You've strayed so far.

The change in tactics is so sudden that Ben reels. This – this was once how Ben knew his choice had been right. This rare but genuine care. The lilt of parental affection, like a whine that reflected pride.

"Where is she!?" his demand comes out through spittle. He charges upward, a steep cliff that seems easy enough to conquer if you just go at it fast and hard – he can handle it -

You'll never find her, Snoke says, so simply that Ben's tortured posture begins to buckle. And even if you do…you won't recognize her. And she won't recognize you.

What does he mean. What has he done…

He shouldn't jump at this bait. If you've touched her –

Haven't I already? Stupid boy, you'll never get her back.

I know who has her, Ben decides, prematurely, to let on. You've let Xolon take her. I'll kill and carve you both -

The Light simmers and bleats for attention. Ridden with fury, Ben ignores it. Aching, he is desperate to go in for the kill. He's weak; Snoke is as backed into a corner as Ben is, right now. He can feel it. He knows this creature almost as well as Snoke is sure that he knows him.

But then – something warm creeps from an obscure corner. And then all too suddenly, Ben's aggression buckles just enough. Swathed in something warm, and kind – or at least, the overdesigned sensation of what kindness should feel – Ben's consciousness takes an unexpected, and costly, turn.

It's like water, always. It's undetected at first, silent as it creeps higher, until you cannot escape it.

You were never strong enough to resist, Snoke's critical tone echoes.

Ben feels himself go under this new spell before he can try to stop it.

Sssssssss

The sunlight is everywhere – molten amber pouring through every crevice yet soft as summer, drenching the soft stone, the glassy water surface and pristine gardens. Ben knows this place simply by how dizzy the light makes his eyes feel. He is on Naboo, in the secluded lake country where the nobility and gentry retreat.

The pathway leading to the ivy-laced veranda is familiar. He's been here before as a child, a part of Leia's muted attempt at discovering who her real mother was, another stubborn and elegant monarch.

Despite how much Ben despised being uprooted from place to place with no real idea of home, he has missed this place. It was quiet, and just when his connection to the Force had given way to Snoke's futile whispers, this was more than just a safe space. It was a paradise. The only thing daring to remain a shadow is Ben himself, dressed in his usual shades of black and gray.

Except...he isn't wearing black at all. It's an odd mixture of casual and well-made tunic and pants, and a dark brown Jedi robe. He hasn't worn anything resembling the Jedi's traditional garments since…since the temple.

"Hey, kid."

The voice behind him – that word –

He blinks. Ben's breathing is pocketed with shards of glass, his lungs burning in protest.

This isn't real this isn't real this isn't real –

"Ben, kiddo, come here," Han Solo (His father, his FATHER) says to him. His father's face is still worn and silvered as the day Ben had damned his soul over again and ran him through with his own lightsaber.

Ben can't move, can't for the life of him understand why he has to relive this, his dad's gravelly voice, the man whose nose he shares on his own face.

It's too late. The man has come over, his steps soft against the carpet.

For an obscene, terrifying moment, Ben is afraid this dream-Han will come over and embrace him. And that the syrupy light will transform into blood-red and a cold durasteel bridge.

But he doesn't. All he does is – it still makes Ben freeze under the touch – pat his hand on Ben's shoulder and lead him out to the veranda.

"You haven't noticed it?" Han's bushy eyebrows shoot up to his gray hairline. "I'd have thought that you'd sense something was going on."

There's no way Ben can reply. His lungs have squirmed so much that they've tangled halfway up his throat. When they step outside, Han actually puts both hands on his shoulders and frames him to face something. "Look."

Ben blinks stupidly. As if this dream couldn't be any stranger.

At the other side of the balcony are his mother, looking less like an army brat and more like a proper, retired woman of leisure. Luke is behind her, coaching her as her arms are held out, pointed to the lake. She's levitating something.

On the other side of them is Rey. Rey is…

Ohh, my darling.

Without knowing it, Ben's tension leaves him. She's happy and at home, in a way that she should have been all her life. She's wearing more of the Jedi trappings, including the beige tunic and pants in a similar fashion to the gauze-like wrap crossed over her torso, the day he first met her. Fought her.

In the glorious daylight, she's smiling, which makes Ben smile. Rather stupidly, too.

"All these years, Rey finally had your mother try it out. Ain't she somethin'?"

Ben looks back at his mother. It's true – Leia hardly ever used the Force. Any connection to her birth father is a curse.

The vision has changed, far too quickly. The people fade away like the brilliant afternoon: Rey, Uncle Luke, his mom…

And his father. The smell of him, the same engine grease staining his fingers and clothes. His carefree smile. His lively, gleaming eyes.

"Dad – "

Gone, like tendrils before Ben can try to hold him back. To try and say…anything.

The sunset is brilliant, casting a golden-orange glow over every surface, so thick in its color it's almost a shadow. He's forgotten how intense the smell of the flowers is. When the perfume assaults him, it reminds him of more than just the way he thought he was allergic to them. He thinks immediately of –

"Rey," he breathes out. Because he is robbed of the ability to do so. It's as if the brilliant sunset and the view of the hills and the water try their best to compete with her, the absolute vision of her.

She's wearing the most exquisite thing he could ever imagine her in. Not that she looks any less lovely any other day, but – the dress hugs the curves of her hips and cascades down her legs. He's never seen her in anything other than pants. And her back…ohh, her back. The curve of her spine casts her skin in dual shades, a canvas of dark and light.

Her hair is half-up, half-down, flowing around her shoulders. He longs to touch it. As his feet unconsciously bring him closer, he spots her Padawan braid tucked behind her ear. It's a detail he couldn't have conjured up on his own.

She gives him the exact same low-dosage scowl he's associated with her for a year. "Don't look so shocked, alright? Your mum let me try it on."

Realization makes his throat bob. "You…" Of course, if Ben's mind conjures unrecognized things, it would be this. He knows how close she is to his mother, to his entire family.

The suggestion makes his heart ache. He misses the sight of her, marvels at just how beautiful she's always been, underneath her wildness and stubborn-set jaw.

He becomes worried, instantly, that just as the vision of his father (and the warm, unbroken feelings that surrounded him) disappeared, he will be taken away from her, too, and be shrouded in the darkness in which she is not there with him.

"You're beautiful," he says. Because she always has been. He may never – he may never say it to her again.

She balks. Her mouth parts just a bit.

Her silence prods him to speak. "Though I don't think there's a place to hide a lightsaber."

She rolls her eyes at the poor joke. "Master Luke and your mother told me this is…where your grandparents…you know."

"Where they met?" he supplies.

"No. That was Tatooine." Ben watches as Rey looks away from him. "Where they - you know. Kissed."

She's so shy. So different in discussing a kiss than the Other Rey. This Dream Rey – he wonders how many years in this dream she's been part of the Jedi life. How…chaste she could be.

"I can't imagine anywhere better." He supposes he should look away at the lake, the birds, the view. But he doesn't have to. He imagines how his grandparents, two very powerful people, stood together like this, on the brink of something terribly unknown.

"Ben."

The way this Dream Rey even says his own name is different. Different, as in, not having tried to get used to a name besides the one he foolishly gave himself. From Kylo to Ben.

"Why did you invite me here?" she asks.

Ben doubts he will disturb anything if he gets the wrong information. It's his dream, not an alternate reality.

He drinks her in more intensely than before. She's so sweet-looking. She's not completely different, though. Something – the way her eyes are so sharp, the way her frame may be slim, graceful, but still guarded – suggests Jakku still forged her into the same wary person.

For once he feels more collected. He leans forward, just by an angle, not realizing he's blocking the sun from her. "Why are you wearing that dress?"

And that is what changes her. Fear of getting caught makes her blanch just enough in the colorful sky. Her pupils dilate, and there's a puff of breath that brushes his collarbone.

He wants so badly to kiss her. Will she let him?

He can do it; he's done this with her twice already. He thinks before his lips meet hers that it won't feel real, but he's so, so wrong. The moisture behind her lips is slick and warm. She's the one who holds back, an unexpected turn, since she seems to be the one who shelters herself within her Jedi training. This is so different. It's obviously not real because, not only does he doubt Rey would ever wear something even as simple but too shiny and expensive-looking as this backless dress, but his heart isn't threatening to explode out of his chest. His face isn't wild with heat and sweat like the last time he stood so close to her. He doesn't feel like he could choke on the air, fearing kissing her would make him pass out.

When he does lean in, it's a comfortable kiss, one that wouldn't feel like the first one between them. Like they've done it many times before and this is just…meant to be.

sssssssss

It's too late by the time Ben knows his error, and wrenches himself away. His body is then tossed into some furnace – his sins are thrown at him, again, and he is left, screaming and thrashing, until he backs himself against the wall, where he has to bash his head to get these visions out!

The sun, oh Maker, the sunlight – he still feels it over his skin. The fresh air and the water…Rey's puff of breath on his chin – it all felt so real -

"Get out! GET OUT! GET OUT!"

sssssssss

Hours – it must be a day – later,Snoke has done his damage, disappearing into the ether like a cloud. Laughing.

How could he have been so stupid. So wanton. That vision…it was as only Ben could have imagined it. And he just sank into it, like a careless slip on the floor. And had stayed in that spot like a drooling lunatic, unwilling to wake up.

There had been no point in moving from where he had screamed his helplessness raw. He would be wasting his time to engage Snoke again. Bastard….monster, Ben thinks quietly, pitifully, all efforts of ire exhausted.

Instead he casts an empty stare at the faraway stars. There had been a sense of escape, on the Falcon, among the vagrants they had collected. Away from his mother and Finn – symbols of his mistakes. Most of all, he was with her – only her. Rey, the incredible creature, had forgiven him – or accepted him. Or maybe forgiveness was never between them in the first place. It didn't matter because he had her by his side. And his soul had seen sunlight again.

Hadn't he worked so tirelessly, on the sea-coast refuge planet, to wrap himself in mental shield protections? Knowing that a powerful Darksider could make someone brain-dead, light-years away, just through thought? His discipline, once his greatest tool, has floundered.

Tears mean to soothe his burning face. He has failed, so miserably. He had thought he was lonely before – once he had mocked Rey for it, but deep inside it was equally true for him: alone among the Jedi, his own family, and the ranks of the Darksiders. This one spare drop of belonging – knowing what it felt like to have her beating heart against his, to even feel her Light under his hand – there is no peace, no refuge, no forgiveness in this empty room looking out into the black.

The door hisses open. Ben does not turn. He imagines he could disappear into the air.

"Chewie's gonna be all right." Finn casts a cautious eye around the room Ben has holed himself in for furniture, tech gear, any heavy objects that could be hurtled at his head. "…Didn't know you could heal."

Yes. The effort from doing so, letting the Light in, makes him flex his fingers. The other thing (he pinches his mouth shut to keep from cursing like a madman) was unlike anything he had experienced. It was a new, fiercer form of punishment throughout his body. His body sang from it, the Force Lightning channeling all his helplessness into that beast of a nightmare, with Rey's face and Snoke's cruel voice.

And then, not even an hour, he Force-heals his uncle. Where is his soul now? What manner of Force-wielder is he?

His body stings from the Force-healing, the pure strength leeching from him as he searched in the Force through Chewbacca's worn, tired frame. Weaving together patched scars and weary bones left Ben numb, more so than the emptiness he ought to feel.

Finn leaves. Finally – finally – Ben's face crumples, casting glassy eyes out to the black, endless and impossible.

Did I lose you? After you've worked so hard to find me? After I let you in?

This love he feels, he had been sure was caustic: the love for a son that would disintegrate an Empire; the love for a wife that would reduce a man to a beggar, crawling back time and again for forgiveness. He had scorned at its effect on the weak, swearing he would never let it tamper with him.

And now. Ohh, and now! - when all he can think about is her. How he wishes he could tear out his heart and seek the answers to this agony.

Search for me! He rasps, clawing the ground beneath him. Search for me like you always have – always intersecting my path!

He draws up her pretty face, her brilliant eyes. He fears he has forgotten the spare details that made her her, even though he had seen the acute manifestation of his once-enemy, his fate-sharer.

"WHERE ARE YOU!"

Ssssss

Another day has passed. In that time since the failed siege of the Rodian ship, Ben Solo has lapsed into some deep meditative state. Finn checked up on him a half day after and found him cross-legged, eerily similar to how he often found Rey in her Jedi meditations. There had been an energy in the room, bitter as ozone. He is now slumped against the wall, cheeks sallow and spotted with hair stubble.

Poe Dameron regards his own unannounced visit with the desire to throttle this man. Twenty-five of his own men are dead, including Kelys. Just now, the spy had succumbed to her blaster wounds. Thick with sorrow over losing her, someone who believed they were actually so close to the end of this war, Poe doesn't know where else to go, how else to channel his loss.

There are these little ultrasonic transmitters that, when pressed, release almost invisible sounds that go straight to the nerves of most biped races. It's a type of silent alarm clock for undercover bases or black ops to avoid making actual, detectable sound. While they've been proven very effective, they're a total bitch to wake up to – the pinging in your ears can last for hours.

Poe Dameron mercilessly uses one now on Ben Solo, slumped against the wall."Wake up, Lord of Darkness!"

Most men jolt into action as if they have been shocked by a live wire. Though Poe should have realized; apparently Ben Solo is a live wire, according to Finn's firm speculation.

Barely blinking awake, Ben is so weak that his arms shake as he gathers himself into a sitting position.

"So? Have you learned anything?" Poe demands.

Ben hopes he does not look like he has wept. "When was the last time you were here?"

Poe rolls his eyes, straightening. "You look like absolute shit." He goes to the door, where a guard detail has been posted. "Get me one of those breakfast plates, will you? And some water."

Ben would have blushed in embarrassment. He hates being caught in such a humble state, especially by someone who's so kriff-damned haughty.

"Nothing?" Poe's hands on his hips, looking down at Ben like he is a disappointment.

Ben's expression darkens. "She's alive." Only because he refuses to accept any alternative.

"Did Snoke tell you that?"

Those ugly promises threaten to turn Ben's lungs to fragile glass. He said he wouldn't recognize Rey. He knows what this means. When he was still Snoke's apprentice…why, it had been his idea in the first place, hadn't it – turning Rey into one of their ranks. She had been a gift dangling in front of Kylo Ren to present to his master, a symbol of his command of the Force. A fitting punishment, for both her and him.

A tired shake racks through him. He's not exactly in a sharing mood, so he simply nods.

"You can't sense her," Poe disagrees, almost arguing with himself. "You said you've always been able to…find her, or whatever."

Ben cringes. Force, he wishes he could take that back. What personal information.

Be nice. It's as if she's here, damn her – forcing him – no, eliciting him into good behavior like a chain around his neck is at her hand. Will it always be like this?

A thousand fires burn in his tongue as he tries not to lash out. "As I said," he explains. There is no emotion… "Rey's…powerful. She's stronger than me. Smarter. She must…"

Weakness and despair cause him to run his hands through is hair, then hold his forehead up, elbows at his knees. It's a tick he's done since childhood. Han Solo had done the same thing during their…talks.

"She must know what she's doing."

Poe stares at a spot on the floor, seconds away from digging at it with his shoe. "Look. What are you planning on doing if she…if you can't find her?"

When Ben raises his head, pale and sweating, he looks at Poe as if he's mad.

Poe fixes him with a stare, pleading for sensibility. "We're fighting a war here."

For a moment Ben thinks he misheard such a treasonous, utterly careless suggestion. Dameron is a grain of sand amidst the wisdom of the Force, the actions and ongoing current of the galaxy. His concentration on one facet of it, victory, makes Ben almost laugh.

"And I suspect you want to tie me to a chair, drugged to my eyeballs with Force-inhibiter serum and spilling all kinds of First Order secrets? Forget your friend who's won dozens of victories for you – now that she's spent, as long as I'm locked in a box, I'm useful?" he challenges Poe.

Poe steps back, shaking his head. "No, no, I'm not going into that argument now."

"Why not? It's all that makes sense to you."

"I should be out there at the next battle, not here, babysitting you - !"

"How can you not care that she's gone, you talk like she's already – "

"She's not – you don't get to talk about her like she's yours – "

"You self-obsessed…!" Ben huffs darkly. "You don't even know her!"

"You're the one who's obsessed with her!" Poe points out. "Seriously, you really think sticking at her hip, this ally routine, is going to save you?"

"I don't need saving!" Ben shouts on instinct.

"Then WHY IS IT EVERYONE WANTS TO?!"

The pilot's never howled this loudly. He's literally screamed. Ben cocks his head, regarding the man who has tried to put everything within logic into boxes: good and bad, innocent and guilty: just like him, once. Poe's aura is radiating from the injustice

tearing at the seams, a loth-cat roaring from a cage wanting to rip Ben in two.

But there's something else that becomes horribly, delightfully obvious. This moral douchebag is jealous: jealous of his unadulterated connection with Rey, jealous of semi-civility with Finn…jealous of how his mother has secretly stowed her love for, and faith in, her lost, murderous son. Jealous of how she must have proclaimed Ben's change of allegiance, and certainly how she must have bullied her council members into accepting it as truth.

For what might be the first time – more so than when he was strapped down, screaming against Ben's own mind probe a year ago, Ben believes he sees Poe, understanding his pain. That is one thing the Dark Side will always get right, that you never really know someone until they are in pain.

The cynical brat within Ben makes him cast his gaze upward and laugh. Poor Poe Dameron. He could rejoice at the Resistance poster boy's quivering fury. But that would further complicate things. Ben is exhausted to the bone. He's sure that he will collapse into sleep again – better to stay alert and prevent being manhandled into a medbay and sedated with Force-inhibitor drugs of some kind. Force knows the Resistance must have a supply in their back pocket somehow.

And as much as he….loathes to admit this (his fingers and the skin of his eyes remember the dance of pain and images he drew from Dameron's mind)…he needs Dameron. He's reminded just in time; the pilot defended him days ago, in front of all those people, Resistance and First Order alike. He's taken aback now that it still really happened.

Great.

Never had getting this one-sided man to understand himself been so important. He tries anyway. Perhaps because the way Poe teeters the brink of his own knowledge, his own set of truths held aloft, about to shatter, makes Ben sympathize.

"General Organa - your precious leader, my mother – you love her. You worship her in the way I should as her own son. Whatever she has been to you….Snoke, my master, had been for me." And it's true. The reminder of Snoke's voice crooning in sympathy, once so genuine and understanding, feel like scar tissue with phantom pulls from hooks. He thought he was once cared for, and made strong, by him. He believed every word…

"All I've known…all I've fed on since childhood, has been wrong. Everything I've thought made me stronger has been rendered worthless."

It seems to be an effort for Poe to recover his confidence. "That doesn't excuse all those Jedi people you killed. All those civilians you ordered executed."

Ben opens his mouth, then bites it back. The Jakku village… Instead, he retorts. "And you blasted the core on Starkiller. You've killed eight hundred thousand more people than I have."

"Those people are on the wrong side," Poe closes in vehemently. "They've allowed planets to burn."

"Oh, and the Jedi are saints educated from the heavens, are they? Innocent and free of blood on their hands, like you or me?"

This is part of an argument he's made with Rey months ago, when they were still enemies. Revisiting it is a friendly, familiar routine. As if he and the man he once tortured will ever be friends.

As he expected, Poe's puffed-out chest deflates. He can talk all about preparing for the next battle plan, but he's as tired as Ben is.

Seeing this early sign of defeat makes Ben's own chest swell with feeling. "I will find her. I know it."

The determined promise sounds so childish that he almost looks away when Poe dismissively runs his hand in his hair. They have nothing better to day to each other right now. Until:

"General Organa told me about your training for Rey to kill Snoke. Why can't you do it?"

Ben goes absolutely still. He had never, ever imposed the idea that joining forces with Rey, teaching her the secrets of the Dark Side, was all so that he would avoid the true responsibility of spilling Snoke's entrails. The man known as Kylo Ren was – is (he's always a part of Ben, he fears) – cruel, reckless, vicious, unfair, but not a coward. He's never refused a single task, never opted for another to complete it for him.

He's killed his own father. There is no mission, no damnation that he can possibly shy from.

All this time, he had imagined looming in victory with the killing blow. Him, glaring prayers of true, final deliverance as his one-time, phantom guardian faded into nothing. In shades of his daydreams, Rey was there, too, slashing and parrying madly, more spirit than human.

But he doesn't think he's ever taught Rey to kill Snoke on her own. Though their path had wavered, he never anticipated that Rey's ultimate test would be to face the creature that had twisted and unmade him. Still sober at how Snoke left Rey into an empty shell, all those weeks ago –

And now, Force only knows what fate has befallen her. What his ignorance has cost her.

Thirty-one years old and he can't even protect the woman he truly loves; the one person who unforgivably means more to him than an entire lifetime of legacies. If there is one way out of this miserable, pathetic little existence he calls his life, it must be this.

Give me strength, my darling, my star; I have no more left.

Taking a clean breath, hoping that cold, filtered oxygen can strengthen him once more, he turns to Poe. Clarity rings in his reply. "I think killing him myself was my plan all along."