A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews and follows/favs :D Almost there now...aaah! Enjoy~
CHAPTER 31
They had allowed him his cloak for the occasion. It felt like a shroud that clung to his shoulders—death following him as a persistent shadow. Ben wanted to shrug it off. To tear it to pieces and escape its tightening grip. And yet, like his approaching doom, the exquisite fabric fluttered close behind him, its hem whispering promises of suffering and redemption against his heels.
Now it had come to it, he didn't know if he was afraid to die. If a last spasm of hope would be revived in him when the exact moment was there. If that possibility of hope scared him, or if he welcomed it. If he should surrender. Or fight—
He sucked in a sharp hiss of pain. The clenching of his fists had caused the electrocuffs to retaliate. The charge of electricity bit the skin on his wrists—white-hot pinpricks that pierced it to the bone underneath.
He didn't let it slow his pace. He strode on, back straight and shoulders squared, his chin lifted away from the buzzing ring of smooth shackles resting heavily on his collar bones. The device continued to sap his strength like a parasite.
The parade around him was as magnificent as it could possibly be; speeder bikes and assault tanks gleamed and even the patrol droids shone brilliantly. And then there was unit after unit of troopers and officers who stood at attention on the square in front of the palace: the pieces making up the spaces of a checkerboard. The mass of black and white was only punctuated by crimson banners carrying the First Order insignia. The dark sun setting like a frayed pupil in its hexagon cage, glared at him from all sides, turning its followers into a many-eyed monster.
Hux was waiting for him, a king with his knights at the very center of the board, his hands clasped behind his back and his cruel gaze the focal point for Ben's nearing end. He could not look away from his victor's icy hued eyes when in his heart he wished for nothing more than to stare back into Rey's hazel brown ones.
It was too late for comfort. Too late for solace. Too late for telling her just how much—
The four troopers surrounding him, extending from his center like the needles of a compass, yanked the chains linked to his bonds and brought him to a rough standstill. The high-pitched, ringing chink-chink-chink of metal barely had time to reverberate in his skull when the shock collar and cuffs responded in kind. Their combined surge of torturing energy drowned out the remaining din of his chains which only served to tether him more fixedly to his present agony.
"That would be far enough, Emperor," Hux sneered, his voice swelling in the oppressive silence of an entire army that was at his bidding.
Not all of it... Not all of them... Ben corrected the illusion to its growing reality, chest heaving with the effort of containing the aftermath of the most recent waves of pain.
His frame was still trembling with them when the General signaled the executioner to approach with a haughty flick of his chin. One stormtrooper stepped from among the rows, the only one whose armor was stained with black shoulder plates. There was a similarly dark shaft that flowed from one visor like ink leaking from an empty eye socket.
Fragile as his connection to the Force had become, Ben could sense the envy and relief that followed the trooper in its wake; a trooper who had simply drawn the assignment as randomly as being dealt bad cards in a game of Sabacc.
Another chorus of chinks as his guards pulled on his chains and he slammed to one knee—a false gesture of reverence for the General that was going to orchestrate the final act of his death without having to utter a word.
Hux raised a hand, the folds of his over-coat shifting so that Ben could glimpse his saber clipped to the belt like a trophy. He could feel its familiar enraged, lonely snarl—its phantom weight in his palm.
The two knights flanking the General like ominous sentinels stood stock-still, but their signatures clashed around them like a ferocious, greedy current.
Ben tore his gaze away from the face he hated—from the muscle flexing in Hux's pale cheek and the cold blue hardening to an even sharper contrast with his flaming hair. He fixed his eyes on the gloved hand instead, rigid in the air and poised to cleave it only seconds before the laser ax would.
"Dax."
It was a whisper that fought to be heard through his executioner's helmet in the infinitesimal space between Hux's hand falling and his last heartbeat.
"It's Dax."
But that short space was enough. It took him no longer than that to understand. To know who the trooper was and what she was trying to say.
If he had been meaning to fight, it was impossible now...
"Ben," he simply told her in return, his voice strained but the tightness in his chest easing with that one word. The lingering foreignness of it on his own tongue was dispelled in finally reclaiming the birth name Snoke had forbidden. It resonated with the core of him. Still. After all these years. After everything that had happened.
At last it was his name again because she had tasted it on her lips first.
The laser ax arched upwards, his eyes no longer following its inevitable course. The phantom image of Rey was all he could see.
He wanted to tell her.
Tell her he didn't want to die like Kylo Ren.
That he wouldn't.
That he had died as Ben Solo.
(…)
"You'll go in barefooted if you keep that up."
It took another round of stalking the width of the cockpit like a frenzied animal before Finn's comment penetrated her storm of thoughts. Rey winced, her jaw clenching when it brought to mind the similar remark she had made no more than one or two standard days ago.
To Ben...
"Sorry. Something I said?" Finn asked, lowering his voice. He eyed her frozen figure with inexpertly concealed worry.
"No. Well. Not really. Just wanting to get there," she explained rather incoherently, coming over to stand next to him. She turned her back deliberately against the moving ribbons of hyperspace—they made her feel as if they were going slower than a Sinking Fields mud slug.
The hurried whispers of Rose and Connix discussing tactics drifted over from the corridor, while Leia sat silent and unmoving in the copilot's chair, her light subdued and brittle.
She was afraid too...
"Rey?" Finn tilted his head, brows furrowed.
Startled back to the present moment, Rey tried to block terrible image after terrible image from being projected against the inside of her skull.
"Not looking forward to that part, then." She nudged her chin evasively at the stormtrooper helmet he was passing absently from one hand to the other.
Finn let out a wry sigh, mouth struggling to form a self-conscious smile. "Can't say I am. You?"
Rey let her gaze wander to the knight's mask lying abandoned in the pilot's chair, a feeling of foreboding mingling with an almost resentful determination. "No. Me neither. But we better wear them. It's our way in. Our only way in."
Finn nodded gravely, though when he leaned in his eyes contradicted his serious tone. "Better hope yours doesn't itch as much."
"Not sure Sith prioritize comfort over ominous," Rey countered.
"Not sure those two are mutually exclusive," Finn pointed out wisely.
Rey felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth, and for that brief moment it felt like their friendship wasn't entirely gone. Maybe never had been. Some of it was still there—a single, bright point of light momentarily piercing the gathering darkness.
"Finn. Whatever happens next, I—"
"Don't."
Rey frowned, taken aback by the terseness of that one word. "Why not?"
"There's no need," Finn told her sternly. He cleared his throat softly, rubbing a hand over his face before he repeated her own sentence, "Whatever happens next, will happen. And we'll just have to see where we stand afterwards. Allies. Enemies. Stars, maybe a bit of both."
He gave her a sincere smile, placing a supportive hand on her shoulder as he made to move away. "And if we do make it out of there alive, I guess that just means you owe me. And not just for my state-of-the-art freighter. I'm talking saving-the-galaxy-level favor here."
Rey couldn't stop the amused huff, making it harder to pretend reluctance as she conceded, "Agreed."
She watched Finn as he joined Leia. She barely stirred at his approach; didn't even seem to hear a word of what he said to her—
Rey's breath caught in her throat at the familiar pull of the Force and the tell-tale silence now sounds got sucked out of her proximity. In their stead, she felt a presence behind her that prickled the skin on her neck.
"Ben?" Rey whispered to herself, relief and fear warring for dominance as she spun around.
But it wasn't Ben. She reached out a hand to steady herself now the little girl skipped past her—her proximity removing all of gravity's hold on Rey even as she increased it.
She was filled with longing as much as with anger—anger at a vision that should give her courage but made her even more scared instead. Rey curled her fingers against the interior of the shuttle in a helpless gesture for more support as she watched the girl chasing after someone in a game she might never play. Her heart swelled and beat louder as if in protest; in having to witness that smile, his smile, playing across the girl's face.
Planting her feet more firmly on the cockpit's even floor, Rey tried to anchor herself in the reassuring hum of the engines that traveled through it and reverberated in her soles. She took a deep breath. And another.
It didn't work. The sudden vision of her, their daughter, remained. Watching her, and she could not look away, Rey felt herself sinking away and suspended at the same time—it was like drowning in the sand of the Jakku desert and floating on the oceans of Ahch-To.
The girl danced around her, unaffected by her mother's turmoil. She laughed without a sound, moving light-footed away from Rey again—her eyes lighting up almost exactly like Ben's.
Rey stepped forward, almost stretching a hand to catch hold of the girl—and with her the one person she could see in her every expression.
And then he was there too.
The child stopped before Ben's kneeling form, placing both hands on her bent knees and leaning forward as if she was going to rub her tiny nose against his. Diverted by her own mischief, the little girl whirled away again. Her apparition diffusing like smoke until she was completely gone and Rey's eyes found Ben's in the void she left behind.
They widened, his pools of brown shimmering with both sadness and bliss. Rey wanted to scream—her signature a restless current—as the lines in his tired face softened. He looked too much like a wish—a last wish—he'd been straining to hold onto had been granted.
Another heartbeat later and he, like their daughter, faded too.
Rey's panicked shudder coincided with the shuttle's as it came out of hyperspace. She reeled, nearly losing her balance. They were gone. It felt like she fell through the shuttle's skeleton and endlessly through the vacuum of space that was beyond it.
"You're up," Finn simply told her in a tone of forced calm. Trembling, Rey rushed back to her seat, a light already flashing on the console.
Praying the vision hadn't been a goodbye—it wasn't, she wouldn't let it be one—she unceremoniously pulled Keeva's mask over her face. It closed with a sharp hiss that seemed to travel straight through her skull from one ear to the next. The pressure of steel against her skin already felt infuriating. Ignoring the instinctive urge to take the kriffing thing off again, Rey switched on the comm channel with a gloved finger.
Whatever random communications officer had hailed them was already jabbering away, the shadow of the Dominance gliding into their viewport before the ship itself appeared, looming above them like a predator.
"Command shuttle Upsilon Five, do you copy? Your arrival is unscheduled. Please state your business-"
"Keeva Ren of the Command shuttle Upsilon Five receiving Star Destroyer the Dominance. Requesting immediate clearance to land." Rey felt a chill run down her spine, not at the lie but at the sound of her distorted voice: it was tinny and mechanical; cruel.
"General Hux has forbidden all planetary traffic entering the atmosphere—"
"The General will want to meet with me and my...esteemed guest."
Silence, then a tentative, "You have a prisoner?"
"I have."
"Then protocol demands—"
"I doubt protocol will lessen your punishment if you delay my arrival any more than you've already done," Rey growled, not deviating from their course and increasing the shuttle's speed instead of slowing down as it zoomed even closer to the massive Star Destroyer.
Another silence, this time Rey could almost hear the growing annoyance of the communications officer in the intermittent, subtle undercurrent of static.
"Who is this prisoner?" he eventually demanded.
Rey exchanged a quick look with the woman next to her, her profile somehow sharper but more abstract through the visor of the Knight's mask.
"Well? Who is it—"
At Leia's solemn nod, Rey cut across the man's agitated tone, making her own impatience clear as she spoke, "General Leia Organa, former Senator of the New Republic, Leader of the Resistance and now a wanted war criminal."
The prolonged silence was one of shock. Rey thought she could hear the man on the other side of the line gulp, maybe even sputter in disbelief.
"See for yourself," Rey added brusquely when no immediate answer seemed on its way. She waited a split-second so Finn could hold Leia at gunpoint, then flicked a switch to start the video feed.
Definitely some sputtering this time. The sounds of other, more authoritative voices and fingers rapidly flying across a keyboard preceded the man's stammering, "A-Acknowledged. Please proceed."
"Finally," Rey bit back, hoping she had sounded irritated, not relieved, and abruptly closed the channel.
Exhaling carefully, she dipped their shuttle under the large spaceship's triangle-shaped belly. The Ties streaming out of its entrails instantly veered off now their orders had changed at the last minute.
"Get ready for planetfall," Rey instructed the others in clipped tones, not wanting any of them to voice their luck—saying it out loud might somehow jinx what they still needed of it.
She eased the shuttle down towards the blue-brown sphere, skewering its atmosphere and racing through the eye of a vortex of thin, swirling clouds.
Soon the palace came into view, its white spires growing larger and larger in the viewport until they filled nearly all of it. Her own spike of both repulsion and recognition was mirrored almost perfectly with Leia's at the sight of it. She could discern the square lying spread out below her—the statues of Chandrilan mythical figures and New Republic heroes hemmed in on all sides by rows upon rows of soldiers and military vehicles.
Clearly, the First Order had started the execution without them...
Cursing under her breath, Rey maneuvered the thrusters into position, her hands holding onto the controls so tight all blood had left them some time ago. They were here. They were close, so close to saving him. She tempered the engines just enough to guarantee a landing that wouldn't involve a crater and smoldering wreckage, as well as to give the unit of officers directly underneath them time to scramble out of the way—some of their caps tumbled around the transport like dead leaves.
Rey had already pushed herself out of her seat and was one step away from the corridor leading to the ramp when she stopped in her tracks. Maybe it was Leia's solid presence that made her turn around and say it. Maybe it was the faint trace of the twin brother the General carried with her. Maybe it was because they could all use the strength the phrase always seemed to summon.
"May the Force be with us."
It didn't even matter that the mask she wore grated the words. Connix's posture stiffened, not in apprehension but resolve as one hand straightened the crease in her sleeve. Rose, too, looked ready, her eyes blazing under her officer's cap before she swiveled around and took her assigned place behind the controls. Holding Leia by the arm, his blaster hovering near her temple, Finn nodded, his stormtrooper helmet wobbling once with the staccato dip. Leia herself stood upright, her chin lifted regally and her light hidden away but radiant nonetheless.
The cuffs around their prisoner's wrists buzzed to life as the ramp lowered at Connix's curt command. The slit of sky expanded until it encompassed the gates of the palace and the crowded square stretching out before them.
There!
Rey forgot to move as she searched for and found the flicker of energy that was Ben—his tall frame diminished as he knelt on one knee, his back towards their group. He was far away, his presence in the Force too somehow, but still close enough for her to pick up on the strands of his hair starting to shift on his shoulder as he made to look around.
And then the trooper facing him moved and a raw sliver of hellish blue flashed as the laser ax plummeted towards him…
(…)
Their beautiful daughter blossomed into being out of thin air. He thought it cruel, almost unlike the Force, that in his last moments it would burden him with a vision of a future that would die with him. The girl came dashing towards him, unfettered by time or gravity, her radiant smile only growing wider as she stopped mere inches away and rubbed her intangible nose against his. Apparition or not, she was so close he could count the sun-freckles that were scattered on it in a similar pattern as her mother's.
Ben gasped for breath at the staggering similarity between the girl and Rey. The first seemed to snicker with either her own daring or his awe at her preciousness and she spun away again—a taller figure appearing amidst her dissolving form.
Rey...
The glare drawing color from her face flickered the moment his eyes found hers; stars that had been stretched by hyperspace travel hitching back into place.
She was gone before his frantic heartbeat had a chance to slow, both her black-clad figure and the child that had connected them one last time, brutally whisked away. If he hadn't been down on one knee already, he would have sunk to it now with the loss of them.
The low but increasing hum of engines gave Hux pause, his hand inches away from slashing the air as if he wielded the laser ax himself. Frowning, he stared at a point over Ben's shoulder. Whatever transport was approaching, it revved then cut power with clear impatience. Ben half turned his head to glance over his shoulder, curiosity winning out at the unmistakable thud of a ramp hitting the square.
"What is the meaning of this—" Hux began to utter in affronted tones when there was a high-pitched zing, a flash of blue and a crunch of metal that coincided with a swift sigh of air brushing the side of Ben's face.
"Stop!" the General bellowed, giving Dax an angry kick that caused her to stumble backwards. He raised a warning finger and hissed, "You wait for my command, trooper."
Ben felt blood pump through his body, felt the instant urge to come to her defense, but his gaze dropped to his hands instead and it was hard to wrench it away again. The cuffs were deftly severed to a sliver of metal that was now all that bound his wrists together.
Dax...
She had missed his neck and torso on purpose. Whether or not it had been her intention all along, including rigging the draw to be in her current position, she had taken advantage of the distraction inadvertently provided by the arrival of the transport.
Blind to the sabotage Hux turned to one of the officers grouped behind him, practically pushing past Marrek who slowly cocked his head, fingers moving towards his mace.
"Find out what's going on. And sent whoever gave permission for that shuttle to land to reconditioning—"
Hux broke off abruptly, the sound of nearing footsteps, brisk but out of step with each other, visibly locking him into place. The blue of his eyes seemed to undulate—almost drowning his dark pupils in them—and his mouth gradually formed a savage grin.
Yara sent her fellow knight a subtle shake of the head and Marrek relaxed the grip on his weapon, but he did not let his fingers stray far from its newly fashioned hilt.
"Sir?" the officer probed cautiously, comm link clenched in a trembling fist.
Hux arched an impatient brow at the prolonged and tentative silence. "Speak man, for stars' sake—"
"General. It was Captain Peavey himself who ordered no action to be taken and to allow the shuttle passage due to its significant cargo."
Sparing the woman who had spoken up an appraising glance, Hux nodded, a satisfied glint gathering in his eyes. "Thank you, Lieutenant Stynnix. Let Captain Peavey know our guest of honor has arrived and is most welcome indeed."
"Yes, sir," Stynnix replied brusquely, taking a respectful step backwards and already working away with a slender stylus on a rather bulky status data-pad.
"See, Sergeant Mitaka? That wasn't too hard, now was it?" Hux remarked slyly to the officer who had failed to report with the same speed and efficiency as his counterpart. Mitaka blanched at the simultaneous rebuke and demotion, sweat pearling his temples.
Ignoring the man's obvious discomfort and downright fear, Hux took a few arrogant steps closer to Ben, in nothing showing how unsettled he had been at the unexpected addition. In fact, there was not so much as a trace of annoyance at the delay left in his expression—all of it replaced by unbridled triumph.
"Where are your manners, my Emperor?" Hux goaded, gesturing for the four troopers that held the chains to his shock-collar to move. "Surely, you would wish to greet the newcomer yourself?"
Ben nearly choked with the surge of excruciating pain as the chains around him rattled and yanked him to one side. He shot out a hand to make up for the imbalance, smacking a flat palm against stone; it felt like the last vestiges of his Force connection were exorcized through his contorting digits.
Breathing heavily, he tilted his head sideways to the approaching figures. Although his hair obscured most of his vision, through the strands he could distinguish a blond, pale officer barely keeping up with a knight who shouldn't be here. The silver veins on her mask glistened serenely in the wavering sunlight that the clouds were beginning to devour.
Keeva?
There was something off about the way she carried herself, her hidden chin struggling with the unfamiliar weight covering her face. It seemed to take an effort to keep it lifted high enough to pass for confidence. Her frame too was somehow swallowed up to a greater extent by the many layers of her black robes than he could recall had been the case before. But more than that, it was the trickle of a familiar energy that prickled the skin at the back of his neck: a tingling so strong it overrode the shock-collar's steady buzzing.
Impossible—
The thought dispersed before it had fully formed when the figures behind the officer and the knight came into view. A single stormtrooper shepherded a solitary prisoner, blaster hovering threateningly near a face he had tried to forget and remembered all the more clearly because of it.
No...
He swallowed hard, the collar sending another wave of crippling energy through his body at the lightest touch of his skin against its steel.
It could not be...
Sad but proud he stared back into his own eyes; eyes that seemed to see only him as he could see only her.
Leia...
His breath hitched, almost in a frenzied panic.
His mother...
Even if it hadn't been for yet another torturing current of energy roiling from the collar around his neck, the raw shock that ran through his entire being would have had him shudder just the same.
Flashes of those dreams that had plagued him came rushing back, the echoes of the voices in them swelling like a deafening chorus in his skull as the woman who bore him into this world drew closer and closer.
Will I ever see you...see you...Will I ever see you again...? What does your heart...heart...What does your heart tell you...?
His grandfather had been torn from his only parent. Ben, in turn, had been abandoned and had left both of them.
Had killed his father trying to bring him back to the light…
He might not be attuned to the Force anymore, feel its every fluctuation, but Ben could see the impact of that one truth in the tired line of her shoulders. In the way she strode and yet faltered, how confusion and despair were etched into her face, and in the barely dimmed hurt in her lingering gaze.
Ben choked in utter disbelief, his hair fluttering in the puff of air rent from his lungs.
Mother and son reunited.
But for what?
To be murdered together...?
"Keeva Ren, is it?" Hux inquired without looking at the knight. Instead, he greedily eyed the prisoner she had brought even though she did not return the favor and look at him.
Keeva simply nodded, coming to a standstill inches away from Ben. In his peripheral vision he could see her fighting against the apparent urge to ball her hands into fists. They trembled ever so slightly with the effort, then pretended to relax—one resting close to her slender saber.
"So, this was your secret mission," the General stated. It was more an answer than a question, his tone implying ridicule rather than being impressed.
Again a curt nod.
What? Ben thought to himself, unable to make sense of any of it. No. That wasn't right. Searching for— He gnashed his teeth at the pang of guilt and old anger traveling through him at the mere word. Searching for his mother was not Keeva and Darius' mission...
"Well... Well..." Hux muttered as if amused.
The Knight facing him started to amble in his direction with the conflicted posture of someone battling disgust and eagerness. There was more to her movement. It reminded Ben of someone else and he was struck again by the hint of a familiar energy.
But it couldn't be her...
"I take it you are not disappointed," Keeva said coolly, her voice sounding harsh and uncaring through her mask.
"Far from it," Hux answered, not paying attention to Keeva continuing to approach him—nor noticing Yara and Marrek exchanging wary looks a mere step behind him.
"I should have known the desert rat wasn't the only one trying to find Organa. The Empress," Hux explained with relish at perceiving Keeva's tilted mask, her boots stuck on the square as if suddenly magnetized.
"You have done well. In fact," Hux said, taking a step forward, his eyes flicking to the side to indicate the malevolent presences of Keeva's fellow Knights, "I might consider entrusting you with the task of finding the scavenger girl who dared usurp my throne." His voice morphed into a confidential and venomous whisper. "Bring her to me and your place in the First Order is ensured even when that of others of your...kind are not granted that same privilege."
Keeva, at first, didn't reply, her unseen eyes directed at the General's and her body unmoving. Then she flexed her fingers and, with what appeared to be a great effort dipped her head with a bitter and hollow: "How can I refuse."
"Excellent. I am glad we understand one another even after so short an acquaintance. Now." Hux angled his body back to face his latest prize, hands clasped behind his back and his chin jutting out derisively. "General Leia Organa... The rebel rouser herself. How fitting I could arrange a family reunion on your son's birth planet."
"Pleasure's all mine," Leia commented stoically, but even with his dwindling Force connection Ben could sense the tremor in her light as she spoke.
Two of his four guards wrested her from the stormtrooper's hold and roughly pushed her to her knees beside him.
Hux leered down at them both, Keeva circling to stand behind him as his hand rose into the air once more. "Regardless of whose pleasure it is, I win either way—"
"Actually... Not quite yet...General."
Ben startled at the conviction tinging Leia's voice, even more so at finding her bound hands reaching for the collar around his neck. He made to move away, not wanting her to suffer the same paralyzing pain. But when her fingers closed around the device, the ripple of violent energy he expected to hit both of them didn't come.
"Mom..." he breathed out with difficulty, tears burning in his eyes as the words he couldn't say threatened to spill over his lips anyway, "I'm so—"
"I know, son. I know..." Leia overrode him, the warm brown of her eyes shimmering too and the faint trail of her signature that he could sense drastically shifting. Grief, joy, anger, hope, exhaustion and despair—it was all there like shadows interweaving with sunlight, neither dominating but reaching a perfect balance instead.
"You have trapped yourself in this long enough."
Her words triggered a powerful but utterly calm surge—their profound meaning like a catalyst when the collar burst apart as easily as fine-spun glass.
His connection with the Force rushed back, an overwhelming wave of sound, colors, scents and the touch of individual signatures rolling over and through him, nearly robbing him of his breath with their intensity—even the stars seemed to momentarily blind his senses now their reassuring presence returned to him.
Ben staggered to his feet as Hux shouted madly, "Kill them! Quick! Kill them! DX-4762, are you deaf?! I order you to execute them-"
"No. She won't."
Hux's head swiveled to the stormtrooper stepping up and halting next to Ben and Leia, spit flying as he cried out seethingly, "What?!"
"Numbers make for bad soldiers. You should've learned that lesson already, Hux." The stormtrooper reached up and pulled off his helmet, raising his blaster in the same moment.
"FN-2187..." Hux hissed in pure loathing, his face wan and sickly now it drained of what little color it possessed.
Dax started, the laser ax scraping the square as she stumbled a step or two back, her surprise at the appearance of the defector who had inspired her as stupefying as Ben's.
"Finn?!" she exclaimed, astounded and barely able to believe it. He nodded at her, eyes glinting with determination as he deliberately released his helmet—it hit the ground with a resounding thunk.
It could have been the signal for her and those who were with her. It was. Dax fumbled with her own helmet, almost nervously, but there was no trace of it in her caramel-colored face, her fierce eyes alight and her cropped, auburn hair clinging to her scalp.
As one, dozens and dozens of stormtroopers mimicked the gesture, a myriad of faces appearing among their dazed and confused mirror images. They looked tense, scared even, but resolved, their blasters collectively aimed at their General.
Ben straightened, the cuffs hanging loosely around his wrist shattering at the merest perusal of the Force he directed at them. Their electric, fatal whine still rang in his ears as he flung out an arm, fingers sprawled as he wrenched the Force.
His saber slapped against his palm and ignited in a rejoicing, crackling snarl; the erratic red column greedily biting through the blaster-bolts Hux fired at him and cutting through his mother's bonds.
And then Keeva's saber flowered from its hilt like an elegant red flame, inches behind Hux and the knight reached up with one hand.
But it wasn't her face it illuminated as she took off her mask…
