"You don't know what you're talking about. There's no way Finn would ever turn."
An hour later, Rey, Ben and Leia sit in the general's tea room. Leia stares into the fireplace, its light skating around her features. It makes her look tired. Old. Ben leans against the mantle, the neat lace of butterfly bandages seaming his temple. Rey paces the hearth, fuming.
"We have to consider the possibility," Leia sighs. "I didn't see the signs. But I won't dismiss them now that they've been brought to my attention."
"There haven't been any signs!" Rey insists. "I know Finn better than anyone."
"And I know the Dark Side."
Rey's gaze snaps to Ben, glaring openly. Ben stares back, refusing to back down.
"Look, Finn had already rejected the First Order and the dark side before he met any of us. He risked everything to get away from them. There's no way he would turn!"
"When Finn was a Storm Trooper, he didn't have anything to risk but his own life. Now he has something more important. Friends. Family. You. Things he loves but feels powerless to protect. He wants the strength to save what he's afraid to lose. And that's one of the dark side's sweetest promises. The Skywalkers know it all too well."
"Fear is the path to the dark side," Leia says softly to herself.
"What?" Rey snaps, more sharply than she'd intended.
"Something I read once in the Jedi texts," Leia speaks up. "One of Master Yoda's teachings. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. It's a path to the dark side."
"I don't believe this," Rey scoffs, turning from them both. She starts for the door. "I'm not going to listen to nonsense. Just because you have a personal problem with him, doesn't mean-"
Ben catches her wrist. Rey tries to yank free.
"Rey, this isn't a personal problem. You think I wanted to tell you this? You think I didn't know how much it would hurt you?"
Rey stops pulling, staring at the floor instead of Ben's eyes.
"I've been watching him for days. If I were still connected to the Force, I'd be able to feel the darkness growing in him. You could too. If you'd been looking for it."
Rey swallows, her throat almost too tight for words. "He's my friend, Ben. The first friend I ever had."
"I know. I'm not saying it's too late. Just that we need to be conscious of the danger. Finn needs to be mentored. Guided. He probably doesn't even realize the line he's walking. I didn't. Not until it was too late."
Rey hesitates, conflicted. To help Finn would be like an insult, admitting even the possibility of his darkness. To ignore it, if it was truly there, would be to condemn him. Ben's words are not so different from what Rey herself had said to Luke when she'd learned of Ben's childhood. Only now she is the furious and unyielding one, forcing the world into a rubric of Good and Evil. And Ben is asking her to see something she doesn't want to acknowledge. She sags a little into his grip.
"What are you saying we should do?" she asks softly.
"Talk to his friends," Ben says. "Dameron and the mechanic. Tell them to keep an eye on him. And you'll need to convince Finn to accept me as a teacher."
"He'll never-"
"We can teach him together if that's easier. But I have to be there. When he's around you, he's too desperate to prove himself. And to protect you. Those feelings make him vulnerable to darkness."
"And you really think seeing us together is going to be good for him?" Rey challenges, pushing into unspoken territory. Finn's jealousy over something that Rey and Ben hadn't even acknowledged to one another.
Ben hesitates. "I think it's better than the alternative."
"If Rey's right," Leia says, "then we have nothing to lose by having you both mentor him in the Force. If Ben is, then the risks are too high to be ignored. We err on the side of caution until we decide otherwise."
Rey doesn't respond for a long moment, holding Ben's gaze. Then finally, she relents. "Alright. I'll try. But I don't know if he'll listen to me."
"He will," Ben says, fingers slipping from Rey's wrist. "He has to."
Leia sighs, still troubled. "I'd been having Finn and Poe join some of our council meetings. But perhaps that was a mistake. I'll relieve Finn of his New Republic duties until-"
"No," Ben says sharply. "Don't try to fix this by isolating him. It won't work."
Leia frowns. "The Republic is in a delicate time, Ben. If I can't trust Finn to be in a position of power, then-"
"You'll tell yourself you're trying to protect him, but you won't be. He'll know you're pushing him away. Keeping things from him. Maybe because you're trying to help, but also because you don't really trust him. He'll feel that. He'll resent you for it."
Leia stares at her son. A painful, heavy silence stretches between them. "Ben. I never meant to-"
"Don't," Ben says, cutting Leia off. "Just… don't send him away telling yourself you're trying to protect him."
"Alright," Leia nods. "I won't."
#
That night Rey doesn't sleep. She goes through all the motions, laying in her cot with the sheets pulled to her chest, closing her eyes and forcing herself to be still. But stillness only carves a pit inside her, and it fills with fragmented memories of the past few weeks. Finn going off the rails when he first discovered Ben in the storage locker. How he'd lashed out at Leia when she'd tried to stop him, no longer discriminating between enemies and allies who tried to get in his way. The disgust in his voice when he called Ben a monster. The hatred and superiority when he declared he wouldn't let Ben hurt anyone.
Instinctively, Rey reaches out, her palm flattening on the wall that separates her room from Ben's. She wonders if he is sleeping alongside her, only separated by a sheet of metal.
When the clock reads 3:45a.m., Rey gives up. She kicks the sheets away, moving in the dark so as not to stir D-O, who sits beside her bed in sleep mode. She dresses, a pair of utility pants and a standard issue tank, and pulls her boots on at the door. With physical relief, she steps out of her room.
Rey tells herself she is going for a walk. And she does just that, at first. She walks the entire loop of the dormitory hall, trying to wear herself down. After she completes the loop three times, she finds herself standing outside Ben's door.
She's more than a little surprised at herself. She'd expected to still be angry with him. And she is, in part. But she'd rather be angry right next to him than on the other side of some stupid wall.
And so, before she can think too hard about what she's doing, she knocks.
There is no response.
He won't answer, Rey tells herself. He's asleep. Like you should be.
Still, she doesn't move from the doorstep. Just in case.
If he doesn't answer, I'll just leave. I'll go back to my room and I won't mention this to anyone.
Then the door opens and Ben is there, solid and warm and real. Alive. Rey knows it's irrational that she still thinks that way sometimes. Maybe it's the sleeplessness, but part of her is relieved just to see him standing there. If she could feel him in the Force, maybe it would be easier for her to believe he won't just vanish again.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
'Can I come in?' She wrestles with the question but can't seem to push it off the tip of her tonue. He's going to think you're crazy, she tells herself. He's going to ask if you have any idea what time it is.
But instead Ben just steps aside, without asking her a single thing.
#
Ben hadn't been in bed. Rey can tell because it's perfectly made in the glow of his single desk lamp. The desk, on the other hand, is a mess. Books sit in stacks and lopsided piles. Paper scraps turned into homemade bookmarks jut from pages at odd angles. Entire sections are folded with dog eared corners. One small cover lays open with notes scribbled on its pages, a pen clipped to its top corner. Rey recognizes Ben's handwriting from the note he'd slid under her door all those weeks ago. The one she still hasn't gotten around to throwing out.
"Couldn't sleep?" Rey asks, as if she hadn't been the one to knock on his door at four in the morning.
"I rarely do," he says.
Rey nods, taking in the room. It's practically empty. No personal belongings. No photographs or souvenirs. Just the books. She nods at them. "More dyad research?"
"Yes."
"Anything useful?"
"Nothing useful, no." Ben steps over and closes the book left open. "Just more things I don't want to hear."
Rey nods again, aware that she has hit a dead end in the conversation.
"Do you want to sit?" Ben asks, taking the chair for himself and gesturing her toward the bed.
Rey sits on the side of Ben's bed. The sheets are crisp and cool to the touch, confirming her suspicion that Ben hadn't been in them when she knocked. Ben turns his chair around to face her. The room is narrow enough that she could straighten her knees and slide her ankles between his.
"I think I owe you an apology," Rey says, words leaving mouth before she herself is aware of them. "I reacted badly today. I guess I don't have much left by way of emotional reserves. I know you're trying to help. It's just-" To her horror, a wet heat pricks her eyes. Rey looks down into her lap, forcing the sting back down. She will not cry in front of Ben Solo. She sighs. "Just a mess."
"I was sorry I had to tell you. Everything I touch in your life falls apart."
Rey shakes her head. "It's not you. Just a running theme of mine at the moment."
She hears Ben shift in his chair but she doesn't look up, not even when his weight settles next to her on the bed. His hand covers hers.
"I feel so stupid," she admits. "If I'd been paying more attention-"
"Don't," Ben interrupts, squeezing her hand. "You're on the side of the Light. You couldn't have noticed sooner."
"Do you think he's in real danger?"
"I think we can still help him," Ben says. "If he wants it. You can bring him to the light. And I can steer him from the dark."
Rey draws a deep breath and nods. "Alright. Okay."
The words ease some of the tension wound around her spine. She thinks briefly, insanely, of collapsing backward into Ben's bed. It hadn't seemed reasonable, natural even in the hospital. But now…
"Have you slept at all?" Ben asks.
"No. I guess I should go back to my room and try. Not like I've got anything better to do for the next few hours."
Rey stands, but Ben doesn't. And he keeps ahold of her hand. She goes briefly into a blurry memory of the hospital, her pulling him down to lay beside her. She does her best to keep a neutral face. "Unless you had something in mind?"
Faintly, Ben smiles.
#
"Remember, she has more power than anything you're used to. Don't shift too early and strip the gear. And don't-"
"Ben. Please. Don't insult me." Rey pulls in the clutch and gently revs the throttle of the yet unnamed racing ship. It purrs like thunder cooing. Rey lets the subtle gravity of the ice moon tow them around in its orbit, until she finds a path that's clear of the main planet or any of its other moons.
"I'll try to go a little easy on you," she smirks toward Ben. Then she guns it.
Acceleration slams them back into their seats, pushing breath out of them. Rey thrills as she builds revs and seamlessly shifts upwards, bolstering the engine, expecting to find a limit and just getting more and more. At the pull of her fingers, the smoothest, sleekest power feeds into the thrusters, turning their surroundings a blur of space and starlight.
They skate the ring of an asteroid belt, then curve around a star that burns warm and golden overhead. They dip into a cloud of interstellar dust, a nebula with insides like a great pillared temple. They weave through columns of violet, amber, and blue.
The ship is like a living thing, feather sensitive to Rey's touch, as if it is listening to her thoughts and emotions instead of her fingers and feet. She rolls the throttle, and the ship roars, hitting that perfect sweet spot of power and speed. And Rey feels weightless. Untouchable. Free.
It is, she thinks, the purest flight she has ever known.
Finally, after four more arcing climbs and barrel rolls, she brings the ship to a stop in the outer atmosphere of a little gaseous planet, gleaming opalescent against the black velvet of space. Creamy clouds wisp around the ship's glass, shot through with the palest shimmers of pink, blue, and lavender.
"That was amazing!" Rey squeals. Then she realizes she'd been so busy enjoying herself, she hadn't even tried to go easy on her passenger. "Oh," she turns, expecting to find Ben pale and shaky in the passenger seat, like most of her first-timers. An apology is half out of her mouth when she sees the look on his face, and it stops her dead.
Ben Solo is alight. The joy on his face is almost boyish. He breathes out a curse and then says, "Yes. It was."
Huh, Rey thinks, her own grin softening as she takes his in. He really is Han's son.
"What?" Ben asks, raising an eyebrow at her prolonged gaze. The smile lingers soft around his eyes and mouth. "What are you doing?"
"Memorizing."
"What?"
"It's the first time I've seen you smile like that."
Ben shakes his head and laughs. "Well, it might be the last time. You fly like a madwoman."
Rey shoves his shoulder. "Don't act like you don't love it."
Ben meets her eyes then, pinning her in place. "Alright. I won't."
Rey's breath hitches. It doesn't come back until Ben breaks his gaze, sitting back in his seat. He makes a show of tightening his seatbelt and then sweeps his hand toward the vast expanse of space. "Well?" he challenges, "Was that it? Show me what else you've got."
A/N: Hold onto your heart, cause I'm coming to break it.