There is silence. No one shuffles, no one mutters, no one so much as blinks. Rey knows that the silence is hers to break, but she doesn't think she can. It appears to be an easy decision. All she has to do is confirm that he is a clone and he can walk away, an innocent man. Or she can make the other choice. The balance of the evidence he has presented is against her, but she knows that Poe has a vested interest in Ben being found guilty, and if she says that he is not a clone, then he will probably be found guilty and executed. So it is easy, on the surface, she really has no choice, all she has to do is raise her head and open her mouth and say….
'You are Project Thirty Four.'
The people in the seats around her react, they murmur and elbow each other, tap things into their commlinks, exchange significant glances. Only one person doesn't move.
'And is that enough for you?' Ben asks.
This is the real dilemma. This is the real question, and it is one she has been struggling with since the day they met. Kylo Ren was never enough for her, she wanted Ben Solo, and when she was given him she let him slip through her fingers. Now his clone is standing in front of her, someone who represents all that Ben himself could have been, if his history hadn't got in the way. He is everything she wanted – he has Ben's face, his skills, his abilities – the only thing lacking is his past. Let the past die, she thinks. Kill it, if you have to. Here is the living embodiment of that idea. Here is a Ben untainted by the shadow of the past, his memories are all dead and he can finally become what he was meant to be.
With the close of this trial, he is also a free man. She can take his hand and walk out of this court into a new life and they can start making memories together. She remembers what he said to her just before they landed on Exegol, the argument she thought wasn't quite finished – If you stay with me we will be hunted. We will never be safe. We will never find a place to settle without fear. We will never have a home. This trial is his solution to the problem. This is his exit strategy. He is innocent, and the whole of the galaxy now knows it, they can live anywhere they choose in peace.
But he is not Ben. She has just acknowledged that out loud, to herself as much as anyone else. Ben is dead and he isn't coming back. She has a choice between nothing, and the man in front of her, between the memory of a lost love, and a clever, brave, honest man, who loves her.
She can no longer meet his stare, and she looks at the floor instead.
She has to let the past die, she has to move on if she wants any chance of happiness. She has to settle for this man, and stop thinking of it as settling.
She takes a breath. Finds the strength to look up. And shakes her head before she quite realises what she is doing.
It is an answer born of instinct, from some half formed whisper deep down inside her that tells her this is wrong. He is not Ben. He may look like Ben, but it wasn't Ben's face she fell in love with. It wasn't his skills or abilities, it was the mistakes he had made and the chance he had to rectify them, it was the darkness of his past and the glimmer of light in his future that was attractive. When it comes right down to it, good, clean, pure, innocent Ben Solo wasn't the man she loved, wasn't even the man she knew. It is an ugly truth, but she loved him because he was Kylo Ren as well. His past defined him, in the same way that her past has defined her, and it is impossible to let that die and move on. His past makes him who he is.
The hurt on Ben's face is quick and sharp, but he clamps his lips in a tight line, strengthens his jaw and turns his attention elsewhere. Rey finds herself sitting, staring at the fingers in her lap which are twisting around each other in a constant spiral and she can't wait for all this to be over.
'That concludes my evidence,' Ben says firmly, and it may be only Rey who hears the tremble as he speaks, it is so faint. 'Do you find me guilty, or not guilty?'
The audience appears reluctant to express a view for a minute. The hollow echo of feet on wood rumbles around the hall, so many people are turning to see what their neighbours think, shifting in place, or simply expressing their discomfort with a stamp. As far as Rey is concerned, there can be only one verdict, but she is surprised at how long it is taking for the judges to come to it. The noise in the room grows, and Rey is jostled from both sides as her fellow citizens lean across her to talk to each other in a language she doesn't understand. She sneaks a glance upwards, and sees that the panel is conversing in a way that makes her think they don't agree. Poe shakes his head, but the third judge gesticulates as the second points a jabbing finger at the accused.
Rey is surprised when the first shout goes up across the hall. 'Guilty,' is the cry, the voice guttural and more of a howl than a word.
Someone else hears it though and takes up the call. 'Guilty!'
The word reverberates through the packed benches, spreading like a virus, caught by more and more people and passed on. 'Guilty, guilty, guilty.'
Rey's eyes jump to Ben. He is standing with shock written into every line of his being. The calm with which he has treated this appearance, the focus which has sustained him through the duration of the session seems to be deserting him. He sways in place, his fingers clutching at the helmet he still carries while the noise rises to deafening proportions. Whatever he had planned, this isn't it. Rey understands his predicament without needing to have it explained – being innocent was his exit strategy, he has no other plan. If he is found guilty then he has no means of escape, he hasn't thought that far in advance. It looks like she will have to use her way out after all. This is one thing she doesn't have to consider – she may have just rejected him, but she will not let the mob have him either.
A booming voice cuts through the surging chaos, and like everyone else, Rey looks up to find the third judge has commandeered the microphone and is reaching out to flick the gavel out of Poe's hand. 'Court adjourned,' she commands. 'By the authority vested in me as Chief Justice of the New Republic I declare this court is adjourned until such time as the evidence can be considered in full. Guards – clear the room.'
But the momentum in the audience is still building and this order doesn't seem to slow it down. There is such anger against the First Order here, such grief for what has been lost as a result of their actions, such hatred for anyone who once stood on the opposite side that it seems to be capable of overwhelming the normal rules of behaviour. People around Rey are getting to their feet. Some of them are shouting, at the judges, at the guards now beginning to fight their way down to the base of the hall to support their two colleagues, but most people are yelling at Ben. He tries not to react, to show weakness, but there are angry citizens all around him, pushing and heaving and it looks like he is having a hard time staying on his feet.
'Guards!' The voice of the Chief Justice has a strident ring, but Rey also hears a trace of fear in it.
The Republic troopers react, a horde of them running into the chamber from outside, and they are carrying weapons, blasters of the kind which are not allowed inside the hall. Then one of them makes a mistake. Rey doesn't see which one it is. All she hears is a sudden volley of rapid plasma fire and glancing up she sees it directed into the ceiling; it is probably meant as a warning, but it has a different effect. Fear ripples around the hall. The galaxy is only a week or so out from under First Order control and memories are still fresh – Coruscant has not yet relaxed into calm, its citizens still anticipate attack and as one, they appear to realise that they are crammed into a public place and someone is firing at them.
The hall moves, as a collective panic seems to overtake every member of the audience at once, despite the increasingly frantic yells of the judges for calm. People are on their feet, pushing their way past their neighbours to get to the exit in the most expeditious way possible and Rey finds herself pressed into the hard barrier of wood as everyone else on her row tries to get out. But in front of her, on the floor of the chamber where so many more people are gathered, the reaction is worse. The crowd swarms for the door and slightly raised above it, standing on a circular platform which has no defences and was never meant to be surrounded in the way that it currently is, stands Ben.
He is looking directly at her, and in his face she reads something that she didn't expect. There is no panic in his expression, nothing to indicate alarm, in fact if she had to guess she'd say he was happy. There is a faint smile on his lips. Then a surge of people overwhelms him and he goes down.
Rey isn't worried at first. He has no weapons but he has the Force, he can defend himself with that alone, and for the first few seconds she expects him to come up again fighting. When he doesn't she starts scanning the crowd now rushing the exits for anyone wearing a black tunic who is keeping their head down. He may well attempt to use this diversion as a way to escape.
It seems that Poe has the same thought, because he is on his feet barely a minute later, causing the floating bench to rock alarmingly. 'Seal the doors,' he commands, hefting the microphone back. 'No one leaves the court. This is not an attack. Everybody sit down.' This last sentence is delivered at such volume that it can't be missed and it causes a brief pause in the mass flight for the door. 'Anyone with a blaster, get outside and everybody else stay in your seats. Kylo Ren is trying to escape.'
This gets their attention. The clogged staircase stops moving as everyone looks at everyone else, searching for a familiar face that everyone knows. But there is no call of discovery and Rey smiles to herself. She knows what he has done. He doesn't actually need to leave the room immediately in order to escape. He can simply borrow a face, prey on the weak minded and slip out of the door when the audience is finally allowed to depart. His tricks won't work on her though, and she scans the hall surreptitiously, trying not to give away what she is doing – she must not react when she spots him, she must pretend not to see. She is so busy looking that she doesn't hear what is going on in the pit.
A space is opening at the bottom of the court, a hole has emerged in the eye of the swirl of people, a spot that everyone is trying to avoid and there is an increasingly loud murmur coming from the base of the room. Rey only starts paying attention when someone says, 'Medic.'
The word is thrown around the seating, getting passed up towards the sealed doors. Someone has been injured, which is not surprising given the crush, but a feeling of the kind Rey never ignores tells her that she needs to get down there right now, and see who it is. This is easier said than done, because the press is worse towards the seating where she is, as people avoid the podium in the centre and push back towards the sides. She is not gentle with the Force. She does not hesitate to push the obstructions out of her way, although they grumble and yell and fall over each other as she picks them up and hurls them aside. Even before she reaches the centre her heart tells her what she will find.
He is lying on the floor, a crumpled black form, his hair spread in an untidy circle beneath his head, one leg extended, and the other curled beneath him, both arms spread in a cruciform pattern. The hilt of a knife sticks out of his chest. Already a pool of deep, rich blood has spread from the wound, and it is this that the people are trying to avoid. No one wants to have his death on their shoe. It takes Rey an instant to comprehend the scene. One of these people has taken the opportunity to enact their own justice, using the cover of the pandemonium in court; she has no clue which of them it was, since every one of them looks guilty and she has no time to read minds. The way that Ben is lying tells her he has not bothered to defend himself. There are no defensive wounds on his hands and the knife has penetrated all the way into his chest. But he is not yet dead.
His face is pale and as she slides across the floor to crouch at his side she places a hand on his unmoving ribs, checking with more than the senses of her body. The life force inside him is not fully spent. A shred of him clings on somewhere, but his heart has been stopped by the blade and he is bleeding out too rapidly for any medic to counter. She takes a breath, and hurls herself into the healing trance she has used before.
She doesn't think too hard about it, she doesn't calculate how much of her energy she is transferring, there isn't time for that. Unless she does this now, he will be dead, and it will take an act of noble self sacrifice on her part to bring him back, should she wish to pursue him into the grave. She throws herself into him with all the power she can muster, she draws on reserves that she didn't know existed, she brings the power of the Force to bear and it flows through her hand and into him until she isn't sure where she ends and he begins. It feels different than the other times, more turbulent, uncontrolled, perhaps because she is rushing, she isn't quite sure when to stop or how much of her life to give so she gives it all, all her heart, all her emotion, everything she has ever felt or experienced, all of it pouring out of her and into him.
It continues for so long she stops counting the time, but she feels the limits of her power approaching and he still hasn't moved. The knife clatters to the floor as the rip in his chest knits itself back together and she takes this as a positive sign, but his chest doesn't rise and he doesn't open his eyes. She is going to exhaust herself before he wakes. She doesn't have enough energy to give, and she needs to stop soon or there won't be anything left to keep the flicker of her own life alight. There is another decision point approaching, and when it comes she doesn't hesitate. She waits until the last possible instant, and then she yanks her hand away.
She will not give herself for him. Maybe if the events of the last hour had never happened her decision would have been different, maybe if she had still been determined to hold on to the illusion that he was truly Ben she would have spent her life without a thought, but that is not the case. He is a clone, and she will give him as much as she can, but she will not give him everything. There is a core of her self that she keeps back, the central part that makes her who she is that she doesn't share.
She hopes that what she has given will be enough.