A/N: I hope you are all safe, in every sense of the word. 2020 needs to get it together. - Please excsue the huge chunks of expository monologue floating around in this chapter. If I were a better writer, my characters would shut up more.
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Rey strides through the halls of base ship, leaving a wake of flickering lights behind her. The Force tampers with electrical fields as she passes through them, its power the lightening in the storm of her emotions. She does her best to seal the chaos, focusing on her destination and the book still clutched in her hand.
Their own existence is unrivaled both in power and in sorrow.
There are only two people on the ship who might explain that passage to her. One has gone missing from his rooms. The other, Rey has never gone to this late but she has nowhere else to turn. When she reaches Leia's door, she presses her thumb to the lock. It clicks open and she crosses the foyer, angling straight for the General's personal quarters. Then, finally, something stops her.
The door to Leia's office is ajar. Spilling through it is a thin slice of lamplight and the sound of raised voices. One of them is Ben's.
Rey's mind briefly blanks, giving way to a single, overriding thought. Still here. Still with me.
She's reaches for the door, then freezes once she starts to register the words.
"- telling you. I've read them again and again, both Jedi and Sith texts. I keep looking for a different answer but they all point to the same thing. There is no other solution."
"Ben, please. Give it a little more time. Maybe we can-"
"She doesn't have any more time!" Ben's voice is a snarl. "You weren't with her at the auction. You didn't see what it was like."
"She still survived," Leia counters. "She was strong enough to pull through."
"Only with help. If Finn had been rejected by the water, if he hadn't been connected to the Force, I… we would have lost her. Again."
"So let Finn keep helping her. If he can be a solution - "
"He's a bandaid on a mortal wound. Even if he fully embraces the Light, he'll never be strong enough to temper her. Until the dyad is repaired, she'll never be truly safe." Ben starts moving. His footfalls come toward the door and, unwittingly, toward Rey.
"Ben, wait. Please -"
"I'm sorry, mother. My decision is made. I just came here to tell you so you'd understand."
"This isn't what Rey would want. You know she wouldn't-"
The door swings open, throwing light onto Rey's face.
Ben halts, filling the doorframe. Backlit, his features are dim. But she can see his surprise in the way he goes perfectly still.
"Well?" Rey stands in his path, looking straight into the shadows of his eyes. "What exactly wouldn't I want?"
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Leia leaves them in her office, saying the two of them should talk. As she rolls past, the General sends Rey a glance that coils low in her stomach. She's never seen Leia plead.
Then the door closes and they are alone.
"How much did you hear?" Ben's voice is so much milder than it had been with Leia. Rey wonders how often he does that, shelters Rey from his darkness and lets it slip out to others instead. Just how much has he been keeping from her? She realizes with strange detachment that they are standing on the verge of something they won't be able to go back from. She also realizes that at some point between his bedroom and Leia's door, she's already decided she'd rather go through with this than keep waiting. Keep hoping that one day he'll answer her questions before they chew her up from the inside.
"I heard enough," she answers.
"How did you know where I'd be?"
"Actually, I was looking for Leia."
"Oh. I see."
"I went to your room. You weren't there."
Ben frowns. "But the power didn't-"
"I don't come over because I'm scared of the dark, Ben. You know I don't."
Ben's jaw flexes. His silence only strengthens Rey's resolve. If she has to drag him out into honestly, so be it.
"I come because I want to be with you."
Emotion ripples his expression. He tries to control it, looking away from her. Still, he says very quietly, "I know."
Rey extends the book toward him, her fingers still sandwiched in the passages she'd read at his desk. Those words lurk in the dark, papery crevices, as if they might bite her. "How long were you going to hide this from me?"
"I wasn't hiding it. You knew what I was doing."
"You told me you hadn't found anything."
"I told you I'd only found things I didn't want to hear."
"Things like this?" Rey lets the book fall open to the passage. Ben looks at the text as if he wants it burned.
"Of course," he exhales bitterly. "Of all the places you could've happened to look, of course you'd start there."
"What does it mean? I know it's important if you came to Leia."
Ben says nothing. Rey can practically feel his walls going up.
"I've already seen it, Ben. You can't undo that. I might not understand it yet but give me time and I will. So either you can just tell me now or I can go figure it out on my own and be even angrier with you for not helping me. If that's even physically possible. Being angrier with you."
"Rey, it would be easier if you just let me-"
"I don't want easier," Rey snaps. "I want answers. I can take it, alright? I promise I can take whatever it is you're hiding. But what I can't take anymore of is… this!" She gestures to the space between them, a few steps and a mountain of secrets.
A violet needle of Force lightening skitters between them, leaping from Rey's fingers and dying before it can pierce Ben's. They both go rigid. Fear spikes Rey's anger, like gasoline on red coals. She expects Ben to step back from her. Instead he comes closer.
"Did you do that on purpose? Are you -"
"Of course not," Rey draws away from him. "I'm unbalanced, remember? I will be until we fix the dyad. Only we can't because you won't tell me how." Her voice is rising, face flushing, but she's past the point of trying to collect herself. "Or maybe because you just don't want to."
Ben looks sharply at her, a flash of real anger in his eyes. He stops reaching for her hands and goes still where he is. "I'm trying to protect you, Rey. The least you can do is try to understand that about me."
"Well, I don't want your protection. I want you to tell me what's going on."
Ben's face goes stony. He turns and, to her brief shock, he starts for the door. "No. You don't deserve this."
Rey goes right after him, keeping some distance in case the Force tries to flay him again. "Running away again? Just like you ran from me in Exegol? Let me believe you were dead?"
She sees the tension winding up his back as he walks away from her. His hands clench into fists, even as he reaches for the door.
"Is it the pain this book talks about?" Rey demands. "This great pain of being a dyad? Is that what you're afraid of? Why you keep pulling away from me in the Force? Why you don't want to be with me?"
She says those words aloud, 'You don't want to be with me', and Ben completely loses it.
He whirls, suddenly in her face. The hand that had started opening the door throws it shut again, slamming so hard that Rey feels it in her chest.
"Don't want to be with you? Rey. My whole life, you were the only one I-" Ben bites his words off, catching himself. With visible effort, he dampens his fury down into seething. "You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what it was like to find you in Exegol. To claw my way out of that pit, to make it back to you only to find you crumpled and cold and…" he stops, drawing a shaky breath. "You want the truth? Fine. The truth is I want to be with you. I've wanted it since the moment I saw you, since before I even knew you, more than I've ever fucking wanted anything! And that is the dyad's pain, Rey. Because you and I don't get to have the only thing we want."
At some point, Rey has stopped thinking. Stopped breathing. She can only stand there as Ben shouts things that make her feel full and empty all at once. She opens her mouth to ask what he's talking about, but the words won't even come.
Ben sees the shock on her face. He deflates as suddenly as he'd blown up. He runs a hand through his black hair and leans back against the door. His walls are all crumbled now. Behind them, he is just as much a mess as she is.
"And the truth is, I already knew what those texts would tell me. I just didn't want to admit it to myself. But I saw it in Exegol when I saved your life. The Force showed it to me. And if that's what it takes to save you, so be it. I'll pay any price."
"What price?" Rey's voice is hollow and hoarse from shouting. "What did the Force show you?"
"That you and I can't be together. No dyad can. The two that are one must fall on opposite sides of the Force. Only then does it achieve balance. If you go to the Light, I must go the Dark. And the other way around. No matter how hard we fight it, that will always be our fate. That's the suffering of the dyad."
"But… that doesn't make any… no. Just, no." Rey shakes her head. "We're a dyad. Two that are one. It only makes sense for us to be together."
"I thought so too in the beginning. But when I saved your life in Exegol, the Force showed itself to me. Our powers are too great, there's no one else that could match us. If we come together, in Light or Dark, the Force becomes unbalanced. It will start working against us."
"You're wrong," Rey says, because he must be.
"I wish I was," Ben says. "Think about it Rey. Leia and Han were my parents. Luke Skywalker was my uncle and Master. I was born into the Light. And you were born a Palpatine, daughter of the Dark. But when your parents left you on Jakku, they changed your course. You were five. And I was fifteen. It was on my fifteenth birthday that Leia started talking to Luke about sending me away. She could feel the darkness starting inside me. Within a year, I was hearing Snoke's voice inside my head. We were trading sides, balancing each other out before we even knew what we were doing."
"That's… just a coincidence," Rey shakes her head. "It doesn't mean-"
"When Snoke died and I became Supreme Leader, Luke perished and you became the Last Jedi. Then when you started feeling a pull toward the Darkness and seeing visions of yourself as the Empress, the Force sent me visions of Han to guide me back to the Light. And when we both stood against Palpatine? When I finally decided to defy everything and stand alongside you? The Force refused to allow it. It took you from me. Wiped you out of existence. Don't you see, Rey? Our whole lives we've danced between the Light and Dark, but we can never be on same side at once. Powerful Darkness must be met by powerful Light. And vice versa. That's you and me. That's the purpose of a dyad."
"And that's why… you broke it off?" Rey says, dazed.
Ben shakes his head. "At the time, I was only trying to save you. But once I saw what the Force held for us, yes. I left. I knew that if we stayed together, sooner or later the dyad might be reforged. And then the whole game would start again. A war between Light and Dark, with us as the centerpiece. You didn't deserve that burden."
You didn't deserve it, Ben's words echo in her head, their true meaning now clear to her. He hadn't been condemning her. He hadn't been telling her that she wasn't deserving. He'd meant that she deserved better. He'd been trying to sheild her from a painful truth, to carry it for her without her ever knowing.
Oh, Ben. You stupid, beautiful, man.
"You should have told me," Rey said. "You shouldn't have just let me believe you were dead."
"If you'd known I was alive, you'd have searched for me. Just as I once searched for you. And if you'd found me, you'd have tried to save me. Turn me back to the Light. And your trying would have destroyed us both. If you'd succeeded in turning me, you yourself would have fallen to the Dark."
Rey shakes her head. "But you already turned. You chose the Light on your own. You came to Exegol to defeat Palpatine. The Force failed to keep you on the Dark Side-"
"I came to Exegol for you, Rey. Nothing else. I don't care about the legends anymore. Not destroying them, not becoming them. The conflict between Jedi and Sith turned me into a blight once. And now it's trying to do the same to you. First you were a Palpatine, and breaking that cycle killed you. Now you're a Skywalker. Don't you see? It turns us into legends only to break us on the rocks of the ideals we became. In the end, nothing's even left of the people we were before. I thought if I broke the dyad, I could save you from that fate. I didn't realize I was condemning you to a different kind of death. To save you from that, the dyad must be reforged."
"Maybe," Rey says, shaking her head to try and clear her thoughts. "If I can find a way to control it, we could both be in the Light. If I could-"
"I thought Force sharing might be enough to help you control it. But it wasn't." Ben gestures to her hand, where just moments ago lightening had darted from her fingertips. "Finn was my last hope. But he took some of the Force from you today, and you're already like this. Only the dyad can save you. I see that now."
"But we don't know how to repair the bond."
"We do," Ben says. "You were right about one thing. My fear… my hope that I might find another way to make this all work. That's been what's keeping us apart. My desire wasn't equal to yours." Ben reaches out, cupping Rey's face. His hand engulfs her neck and jawline. His thumb brushes along her lower lashes. Wet, she realizes. At some point, she's started crying. "I put you in danger, Rey. I'm sorry. But now that I know there's no other way, I can do this for you."
Rey feels a whisper along the edges of their bond. A brush of contact, gentle as his hand on her cheek. She jerks, taking his wrist in her hands and pulling it from her face. "What are you doing?"
"Finding you in the Force," Ben says. "Reforging the dyad."
"So you can leave again." Rey grips his wrist.
"So I can save you."
"But you will leave me," Rey says. "If you're right about the dyad, once it's repaired we won't be able to be together. That's what you came here to tell Leia, isn't it? That you were going to reforge our bond, even if it meant relinquishing yourself to the Dark Side."
Ben's silence confirms her question.
Rey firmly guides his hand back down to his side. "Then I don't want to be reforged."
Ben frowns, straightening from the door. "This is the only way to save you."
"I don't care. I'll find another way. The dyad needs two equal desires to reforged, right? Well, you might have changed your mind about it, but now so have I. And as long as I don't want to, you don't get to decide all on your own."
"Rey," Ben says sharply. "This isn't a joke. I'm not going to just let you die. It's better for it to be this way than for you to -"
Ben doesn't get to finish that sentence. Because Rey pushes him back against the door. She takes his face in her hands, going up onto her toes. She barely registers the shock on his face before she covers his mouth with hers.
The kiss only lasts a few moments. Ben's lips are warm and soft. He smells like seared metal dipped inside the sea. Apart from than that, their second kiss is nothing like their first. Rey pushes Ben hard up against the door. She feels the line of his body along her chest, a press of teeth behind the softness of his mouth. Ben inhales sharply, his hands finding her waist as if against his will, torn behind pulling her close and holding her back. When Rey breaks away from him, she is glaring, telling him that she damn well means it.
"I said, I don't care," she breathes, her mouth a little swollen. "I'm not letting you go again. Not for any price."
A/N: I touched you once, I touched you twice. I won't let go at any price. Check out my twitter for previews of upcoming chapters, starting next Monday (6/8th). Nanirain1