She feels it coming with a sick sense of familiarity. It lunges out of the darkness at the back of her mind, fully formed and baring its claws, and its voice is a red coated roar. Anger. Born of grief and loss and loneliness and the unfairness of her life it shapes her, it defines her, and it is in control. She knows what she must do.

There is no way out of this. Her gaze shifts from Ben to Finn to Poe, the three most significant men in her life, and she knows that not all of them will be walking out of this situation alive. Although she has run from Ben, although he is not what he was, he is all she has and she will defend him to the death. Poe will try to kill him, she reads it in his stance, the way his fingers twitch in the direction of his blaster. Finn will try to protect her as he has always done, to save her from herself and he will get in her way. She will have to decide whether or not to hurt him in order to set Ben free – she will have to choose between them. Poe's dark eyes flicker from her to Finn and she knows that he understands this too.

Ben steps forward, still holding out his hand. As one, the rebel soldiers take aim, but he ignores them. 'Don't do it,' he says, speaking as if there is no one else in the room.

She ignites the blade, shakes her head. 'You know I must.' The anger has hardened into certainty – the course of action she must take is the only one the Resistance have left her. She cannot lose Ben, and if they have backed her into a corner, they must expect her to fight her way out. Everything that happens now is their fault.

He gives her a level stare. 'Don't do this for me. I'm not worth it. If you hurt the ones you love, there will be no difference between you and Kylo Ren.'

She is conscious of Poe's eyes narrowing as he attempts to comprehend Ben's warning. Ben is wrong though; he thinks she still has an option. But all the decisions Rey has made since she woke up on Exegol have led her here. There is nothing else she can do. She raises the saber in preparation for attack – so far, she has managed not to kill anyone except a couple of Sith troopers who don't count, but this skirmish will not be without casualties. 'I have no choice,' she says. 'They will put you on trial. You'll be sentenced to death.'

He steps forward, and Rey can sense fingers tensing on triggers. Ben can defend himself properly now, but he hasn't reached for his weapon and she has a nasty feeling that he isn't going to – it isn't the Jedi way. He will leave this to her. He says, 'I know.' He moves past her at pace, his blade clattering to the ground, his hands held out in front of him as he approaches General Dameron. 'I surrender.'

Poe simply blinks at him, as if he expected anything else but this, and Finn sags noticeably as he relaxes. Poe recovers quickly, nods, and the Republic fighters close over Ben like a wave, searching him for weapons, slapping restraints on his wrists, surrounding him in a sea of blaster muzzles. He does nothing but stare in Rey's direction, a mute plea in his eyes. He doesn't want her to react. Once again, he has decided on a course of action, like when he contacted the First Order, or when he died to bring her back, and he hasn't consulted with her in advance. He is so determined to sacrifice himself on her behalf he hasn't stopped to ask if this is what she wants, he simply goes ahead and puts himself in danger and doesn't think about the consequences.

Ben hesitates for a moment, meets her wounded stare and she wishes the bond were still operational with every fibre of her being. He says, 'This isn't what you think.'

Rey's head is buzzing. There is such a welter of emotion inside her she struggles to contain it; she can feel her hands shaking, her breath growing short, her face overheating. She feels like she is full of static, like someone is talking inside her on the end of a bad commlink and however hard she listens, she can't make out what they are trying to say. She has never been so angry in her life, and there is so much rage inside her it has to have an outlet. She wants to lash out at Ben for putting her in this position, and she also wants to protect him; she doesn't want to hurt her friends, but she also wants to rip them apart for getting in her way. Everyone in the room watches her as carefully as if she is a bomb with a lit fuse, about to detonate and Rey struggles to control herself. It never used to be this difficult. She could manage conflict before she died but now the struggle inside her needs release and instead of running to the attack, she turns and hurls her lit saber at the far wall instead.

Poe takes the opportunity to move, shepherding his new captive towards whatever ship he arrived in and Ben simply seats the helmet purposefully on his head, turns and allows his gaolers to lead him away without a backwards look. She is shocked by how quickly it happens. One minute they are together, and she is busy agonising about how much or how little he is like his previous self, and the next they have been separated and she has lost him completely. He hadn't made a fuss, or attempted to fight, he let himself be taken, as if he expected it, or thought he deserved it, or – she realises suddenly – as if he had a plan.

She clings to his last words – this isn't what you think – because she has nothing else to cling to. He must have anticipated that the Resistance would track him here, or be waiting for him on Exegol and had gone with them as part of some scheme she can't fathom, in the same way he planned his escape to the First Order as Kylo Ren. She isn't sure what he hopes to gain, and she isn't sure she rates his tactical ability particularly highly, but the roar of departing engines tells her she has no choice.

Finn taps her on the shoulder, for long enough that she realises that it isn't meant as a tap, but as a pat. 'It's alright,' he says, in a tone which is probably supposed to be reassuring. 'It's all over now. You're safe.'

She turns to face him and holds out her hand for her saber, hefting it in her palm the moment it obeys her summons. 'Of course I'm safe. I'm always safe.'

Finn's expression takes on a cast which is probably meant to be sympathetic. 'You don't need to pretend to be strong with me. I know you, Rey. And –' here his voice drops to a whisper – 'I can sense you.'

'I can sense you too. Like an annoying itch at the back of my mind.'

'Then why didn't you run when you sensed me waiting on Exegol? I was trying to hide myself but I don't really know how to do it yet.'

That is an excellent question, and one to which Rey doesn't have an immediate answer. She has been distracted since the shuttle first headed in the direction of this planet, and it is possible that this lack of attention has helped to conceal Finn's presence, but that doesn't explain why Ben had also missed another Force user down on the surface. She wonders if he did miss it, or if he had sensed Finn and simply decided that the risk of capture was worth it to find out more about his origins.

'How did you know we'd come here?' she asks.

She falls into step beside Finn as he begins to follow the remaining Republic troops heading towards their landing area. 'We didn't, at first. There are reception squads waiting at locations that might be important to you – Jakku, Ahch-To, Takodana – but we were only certain you were coming here when you sent the stolen intelligence transmission through and given the location you sent it from, Poe figured you might be on your way back to Exegol.'

'I knew coming back was a mistake,' she shakes her head. 'What's going to happen next?'

Finn shrugs. 'A trial. Poe's been preparing for it since you left Ajan Kloss. Kylo Ren will be put on trial for war crimes and when he's found guilty he'll be dealt with.'

'How? I'm not getting involved.'

Finn tries the awkward pat again and she sidesteps him before it can go on too long. 'No one expects you to. You've been through enough, with being taken prisoner and the mind control and everything.'

'Mind control? You think all this is mind control?'

Finn rolls a shoulder. 'Yeah, I struggled with the idea at first, but the way Poe explains it makes sense. You haven't been yourself since you got back from killing the Emperor, you must know that. Poe says you tried to choke him to death and you broke Ren out of a Resistance prison and took him straight back to the First Order. The Rey I know would never have done any of those things. You're not yourself – someone is making you behave like this and the only Force user I know powerful enough is Kylo Ren.'

Rey has been shaking her head for some time. 'That's not what happened. I didn't mean to choke Poe, it was a mistake, and I escaped on Ajan Kloss because it was the right thing to do – Poe was going to kill him, did he mention that? And there is something else you don't know about me, something that explains everything that's happened recently. I'm not who you think I am.'

'You mean because you're a Palpatine?' Finn trots out her lineage as if it doesn't matter. 'That doesn't explain anything. You've been a Palpatine as long as I've known you and you've never tried to choke your friends before. I don't buy it – genetics doesn't make you who you are, only choice does that. Wasn't that why you took Skywalker as your family name? Weren't you trying to show that your bloodline doesn't define you? Why are you so keen to go back on that now?'

She doesn't really have an answer, because she quite liked this exculpation for her recent decision making – if the anger inside her is not coming from her ancestry, then that means she is responsible for it, and that is a far more frightening prospect. 'And you think mind control is a better explanation?'

Finn stops walking for a second and gives her a long, hard look. 'It's the only explanation I have, at the moment. Unless you can think of a better one?'

There is something lurking at the back of her mind, an idea which has been germinating for a little while now but is not quite ready to flower. She can't put it into words. 'He hasn't been controlling my mind,' she mutters.

Finn carries on, and together they board a non-descript shuttle she doesn't even notice and blast off along a vector she doesn't care about, to a destination she can't name. 'It doesn't really matter whether you think so or not,' her friend says, once the journey is underway. 'We have evidence that you weren't responsible for most of it anyway. Poe captured the crew of that ship you were on, the cargo freighter, and found loads of contraband weapons in the hold, along with a lot of logs. Turns out the captain was an ex-Imperial officer and he'd been hauling supplies for the First Order for years, from before they destroyed Hosnian Prime, and he wasn't planning on stopping any time soon. He wouldn't talk but one of the cargo handlers spilled everything – he said it was Ren's idea to re-join the First Order, not yours, and you tried to stop him. Is that true?'

Rey shrugs stiffly and stares at the floor.

'And the First Order held you captive once you arrived, didn't they?'

'How do you know that?' Rey sincerely hopes that Finn doesn't know what the terms of her captivity involved. It isn't that she is ashamed of having slept with Ben exactly, but she is well aware of how her time on the Obdurate will look to prying eyes.

'It was obvious from the daily broadcasts by Ren, and from eyewitness reports of the raid on Coruscant that you weren't involved.'

'What broadcasts?' she asks weakly. 'What raid?'

'We intercepted the First Order's news channel and Ren was giving motivational speeches from the day you arrived. There was a whole load of stuff about how he had been captured by the Resistance but had fought his way free, about how incompetent we were, about how the attack on Exegol had been a lucky strike, it was all very boring. But he didn't mention you once, and we knew that if you'd really turned to the dark side you'd have been next to him – they'd have been showing you off as a defector, but you weren't there so we knew you weren't supporting him.'

'I was locked in my room,' she admits. 'I only got out once before we left. Tell me about the raid. The Order doesn't have that many ships left, I'm surprised they thought they could take Coruscant.'

'It wasn't much of a raid,' Finn says, in a smug tone. 'Really badly planned. There were no casualties on our side whatsoever, we were really lucky. So the First Order turn up with nearly forty Destroyers, the whole fleet, as far as we can tell, and they start powering up their weapons so we ready the planetary defences and send out the fighters to engage and then they have some sort of malfunction with their shields. The shields go up, and then a couple of seconds later they go down again, and it keeps happening – not a single one of the Star Destroyers can maintain their shield integrity and as soon as they realise that they turn around and run away again. They go so fast that quite a lot of TIEs are left behind and we capture the pilots and interrogate them. No one mentions you being involved. All briefings and inspections were done by Ren or his generals, according to the pilots and none of them knew your name at all, Poe asked.'

Rey shakes her head. 'When we arrived the First Order generals were monitoring everything he did, but I remember him saying after a while that the generals had started to trust him and by the end they seemed to be obeying his orders. He must have demonstrated his loyalty somehow.'

'Did you know anything about the raid on Coruscant, Rey?' Finn asks carefully.

'Nothing at all,' she says and Finn's shoulders sag in response.

'I know you're telling the truth,' he replies. 'I can sense it, but even if I couldn't I'd still know.' He pulls a commlink out of a storage locker and opens a channel without letting her see the recipient of his call. 'Yeah, I asked her and she didn't know. Yeah, I'm sure. Yes, I used the Force,' he reports. 'She's in the clear. I said she would be.' He cuts the call and returns the device with an apologetic shrug. 'Poe asked me to check. Now everything can go back to normal.' He pats her on the knee.

Rey has had quite enough of the patting, closes her eyes and strives for calm. It isn't easy. She is angry, because she is always angry, but it isn't acute at the moment. She feels more conflicted than anything. It is obvious that Ben has been playing a more dangerous game than she suspected. He has constructed for her an effective cover story, one that has bought her safe passage back into the heart of the Resistance, should she want it, but he has lied to her to do it, and has guaranteed his own guilt in whatever trial is coming. She suspects that this is because he knew that, if captured, he would be found guilty for crimes committed before he came back from the dead, so a few more wouldn't matter, and he also needed the trust of the First Order's generals to gather the intelligence she had sent over to the Resistance only a few short hours ago. The sudden and catastrophic shield malfunction has his fingerprints all over it, and she is sure it is not simply luck that no lives were lost as part of this failure of a raid.

But the extent of his will to save her at the cost of his own survival sets her teeth on edge. She can feel Finn's smile even with her eyes closed and she can sense how desperately he wants to put all of this behind them, and welcome her back with open arms. But Rey no longer wants the comfort of a hug. Ben has backed himself into a corner and she isn't sure how he is planning on getting out. She doesn't know what his exit strategy is, or even if he has one, and so she must be ready to extricate him from this mess herself. He has saved her, once again, and now she must save him back.

Finn launches into a lengthy monologue on recent developments in his relationship with Jannah, and their search for their respective birth families and Rey provides appropriate sounding comments whenever he pauses. After a while, she starts yawning and then apologises for her rudeness effusively enough that Finn is too polite to continue and Rey gets to close her eyes and pretend to sleep. The journey back is so long that pretend sleep has transitioned into actual sleep by the time they land, and Rey staggers, bleary eyed, through disembarkation, and a lengthy journey by airspeeder until Finn unlocks the door of her new quarters and she stumbles in.

The light within the tiny room is so bright she has to squint to see, and it cuts through her grogginess like a plasma blade through flesh. She has been allocated accommodation directly opposite a giant holo-projector, which, instead of the advertising it usually carries, is now broadcasting news into the sky. Specifically, it is now broadcasting Ben. An image of his face towers above the throng of high rise skyscrapers which cluster thickly around Rey's own building, a face which appears composed and calm, although Rey knows how much effort will be going into keeping it that way. Ben stares out impassively from whatever cell is now holding him, oblivious to the fact that his likeness is plastered thousands of feet into the air.

Around the bottom of the image run words in a variety of languages – Coming soon: the trial of Kylo Ren.