As Rey got to her feet, she saw Ben still looking around at the deep cavern around them. Hundreds of smooth, glassy spots dully reflected the light around them; she still wasn't quite sure where the light came from. She'd extinguished her lightsaber and returned it to her hip, but this light was much more diffuse than that. It was almost like the walls themselves let off a soft glow, and the mirrored surfaces just echoed it back. Beyond Ben, should could see images in the other mirrors, people moving silently. She did not recognize any of the scenes or people she saw, but she didn't truly care what the other scenes could be. Ben was here, somehow, right before her, real and alive.
"I shouldn't be here," he said, his words echoing in the stone chamber.
"Why not?" she demanded, and he looked at her as if he'd forgotten for a moment that she was there even as he was still holding her hand. His brows drew together as he looked at her. She couldn't quite place the mix of emotions that fought in his eyes: sadness, worry, fear, but more than that.
"I don't deserve it," he said, his voice barely a whisper now.
It was true that he'd done some terrible things. He had aligned himself with Snoke and therefore Palpatine while dark madness coiled through the galaxy. His fall had led to the deaths of his entire family. He'd killed people – but so had she. If he didn't deserve to live, then neither did she, but he'd thought she was worth any price.
She was standing so close to him that she could feel the warmth of his body and smell the scent of his skin. An incredible tenderness welled up inside her and she wanted to lean her head on his shoulder and be so close to him that his mind was hers. The thought was distracting, here as the world crumbled away around them.
Then she reached into her pocket and drew out the kyber. She held it between her fingertips so that what little light there was filled it and she thrust it toward him. Finally, he looked up at her, first at her face and then at the blue crystal, strangely heavy for its size, that she was holding out to him.
"My mother's," he said. It was not a question. She lifted it just the smallest bit higher toward him.
His fingers wrapped around the crystal, sliding over hers. The spark of desire crackled back over her from his fingers and dissipated into her body. The kyber disappeared into his hand and then into his clothes. He seemed heartened by the gift and the lines of worry finally smoothed.
"We need to go," he said to her, all at once. "You broke through and now the temple won't stand."
She didn't wait for him to explain that. It made sense, a strange, immediate kind of sense. She'd manipulated the twisting ribbon and some foundational part of the temple had been disturbed. As if in response to Ben's words, a loud crack like thunder echoed up from below them. "Gotta go," he said again, and he began to move quickly toward the upward sloping section of the floor.
He'd been here before, she realized. He didn't just figure it out based on what he'd just experienced; he actually knew where he was going as he pulled her hand along with him. She tightened her grasp and ran to keep up. He was more than a head taller than she with legs to match, and he moved with grace for someone as big as he was. Rey had to work to keep pace as they ran uphill. A shower of gravel fell from somewhere above them and Ben tugged her to the side and out of its path. She'd outrun plenty of enemies but a collapsing building of stone was a new one.
A second thunderclap echoed up from the depths. The sound bounced off the stone walls, a disorienting experience. Glassy patches on the walls glinted as they passed. A falling rock crashed into one up ahead of them; it didn't shatter like a real mirror would but cracked all the same. Belated fear gripped her throat. She'd been so focused on figuring out how to bend the ribbon that she hadn't fully realized what she was doing. Each of these was a like a portal into a separate moment and place along the ribbon.
Ben wrenched her against the wall as more rocks fell, clattering down from the ceiling. Her eyes darted upward but she couldn't see where in the heights above it had come from. She stared at the image in the glass directly across from them. It should have been a reflection of the two of them, but instead it was … herself. Alone, and young, and small. Two people bent over her, silently mouthing words to her. Her parents.
"Don't trust it," Ben said. He'd noticed what she was looking at. His voice was hushed but urgent and she blinked, uncomprehending. "This place," he was saying. "It has a will of its own. It shows you what you want to see but ..." He paused and dragged her a few feet further up the corridor. "Actions have consequences, Rey."
She could interrupt that impassioned conversation her parents had had with her younger self, but there was no way to control what happened after. She'd dragged Ben away from imminent death and now the temple was collapsing around them. Rey turned her eyes to meet his briefly, just for an instant, and she saw the intensity there. He was desperate for her to understand what he was trying to tell her: she couldn't go back. She'd done enough damage for him, and he didn't entirely approve of her methods. She looked back at the mirror that had held that precious image, but from this angle, it was just black.
And then he was pulling her again, back upwards away from the glow and into the black corridor. Ben swore, which was the first time she'd heard him do that, as the darkness became thick around them. He slowed and then stopped, afraid he might lead her over a cliff. She released his hand and drew out her saber. As she ignited it, she could see his face again, and what she saw there was surprise. He was impressed. The amber light was dim in the dark cavern, but it illumined the ground at their feet well enough to keep them from falling to their doom, so that seemed good enough. Ben's hand encircled hers on the hilt, and he turned it around, studying the craftsmanship with as much interest as if they were not about to crushed to death.
"Gotta go," she whispered to him, breaking the spell, and she grabbed his hand with her free one and began to pull him behind her. The man who'd been Kylo Ren accepted her leadership easily and merely tightened his fingers around hers as they ran.
Suddenly, she skidded to a halt. She spread out her arm in front of him as if she could hold him back just that easily. Fortunately Ben stopped too, but she pushed him backwards just a little for good measure. She titled the blade downward to reveal a fissure in the stone floor. It hadn't been there before, and with every moment it grew wider.
Only blackness gaped back at them. Rey didn't need to see it to feel it. Cold air rushed up from the huge crack in the stone, along with a smell of damp air and decomposition. Ben looked at the spreading crack and then up at her. He had spent more time facing down that blackness, and he stepped over the widening fissure, if not confidently then without fear. Then he stretched his arms back to her and took hold of her elbows. She did not drop the saber but leaned it away from him, wary, as he supported her. The fissure continued to open even as she went over it, and only the pull of Ben's hands on her drew her the rest of the way as her back foot slid off the edge.
He released a breath he must have been holding and then pushed her ahead of him slightly, urging her on. Rey grabbed his hand again and dragged him with her. They were getting out of here together or not at all.
The light of the entryway appeared ahead of them. They kept running as the stones falling from above grew larger and the thunder below them grew louder. Rey extinguished the lightsaber but kept it in the hand not clinging to Ben's, unwilling to take the risk of losing it by trying to hitch it back to her hip. She could feel sweat beading on the back of her neck and the pounding of each step into the hard stone. Her breath was coming in gasps, not because of the running but because of the fear. She could not lose him, not a second time. The sound of the temple falling in on itself was immense, deafening, and she almost didn't realize it when they emerged back into the sunlight, dust swirling around them.
Rey and Ben turned back to look at it. With a final, unfathomable shudder, the temple rocked and shook, and then collapsed, finally, in on itself. Ben pulled her into him and covered her head with his hand, protectively, while the pyramid fell. It was uneven, with one side crumbling first; the whole thing lurched toward the crumbled side, the part still standing seeming to rise for a moment before it too vanished into the tumble of stone and dust. It took an impressive amount of time for the whole thing to fall in, yet it was likely just a minute or two. When at last they could see the remains, there was nothing left but a huge, blacked scorch mark in the jungle.
Ben released her from his hold, from where she'd been pressed against him, and laid his hand along her cheek, peering eagerly at her as if to reassure himself that she was all right. She blinked up at him and at the sunlight, and the swirling remnant of the temple.