With copious prodding from Poe, Leia agreed to give him updates each time Luke made his check-in. She made sure to express her exasperation – "Let's not forget who gives the orders here, Dameron" – but… he knew that she understood. The fact of the matter was that he was just so nervous. Not because he even anticipated anything going wrong, but it was hard not to at least worry that something was going to happen when Leia and Luke were being so cautious.

He stood by what he said to Rey: especially given their concern, it felt almost inevitable that Rey and Luke would encounter trouble.

Maybe Poe didn't have any control over the situation once Rey and Luke left the hangar on Ossus, but at least he could stay as up to date on their safety – or lack thereof – as possible.

He was sharing a drink with Finn back in his friend's room that first night after Luke and Rey left; when his commlink crackled to life, he was mid-swig.

"They're still safe and sound."

Poe grabbed the commlink from his pocket and rushed to respond. "Thanks, General."

Neither of them said anything more.

Finn didn't speak, not right away, but Poe could feel the words bubbling up to the surface, and he waited patiently. "You're really going to keep doing this every six hours until she comes back?"

"Do you have a better suggestion?"

"Accept the fact that, short of going with Rey, there was nothing you could have done to keep her safe?" Finn paused, tilting his head thoughtfully. "Not that you could have done much of anything for her on Osssus, if Leia could have spared you at all."

She couldn't have, which Finn and Poe both knew very well. Poe had barely kissed Rey goodbye before he was in Leia's office, being briefed on everything that he had missed during his suspension. There he learned that, in a matter of weeks, Snoke was planning to finally come out of the shadows, at least in a manner of speaking. The Supreme Leader had quietly established a hold on enough of the Core and Inner Rim worlds that he felt secure enough to assert a true military rule across the galaxy.

But since receiving this information from the spy, Leia had been busy. She'd mobilized forces in each system, on each planet where Snoke planned to attack. Now that Rey and Luke were gone, the plan was for the Resistance members on Ilith to begin scattering to provide support, contributing to stocks of weapons, med supplies, and fighters. While Leia was busy coordinating across the galaxy to ensure these transfers went smoothly, she wanted Poe to supervise within the base—oversee the loading of supplies, keep a careful timetable of departures and estimated arrivals at various planets to ensure that they didn't raise suspicion when fighters began cropping up across the galaxy. Once nearly everyone was gone – and only then – he would take Finn, Rose, and Leia to Kuat, where they would meet up with the rest of Black Squadron. It was from there that Snoke reportedly planned to oversee the attack; if the attack was successful, he hoped to establish a full-fledged First Order base on the planet.

"We don't have the numbers to really take them on," Poe had pointed out to Leia, once she had explained this all.

"You're right," she'd agreed. She sounded exhausted—had been exhausted for weeks. "We're relying pretty heavily on surprise, here. The First Order doesn't believe that our numbers have grown since D'Qar, and they certainly don't believe that we've had access to so many weapons or supplies. They're not going to be expecting a fight, not anything like what we can give them."

Even so, Poe knew that they both understood something that Leia seemed reluctant to articulate: it quite possibly wouldn't be enough.

He also knew why she didn't say it; they didn't really have a choice. If they didn't take advantage of the spy's intel, chances were high that the First Order's grip on the galaxy would become too firm for anything short of a miracle to make a dent in their power.

So yeah, Leia needed him. Regardless of his temporary demotion, the fact of the matter was that, since the Battle of Crait, he'd solidified his place as her second-in-command. She wasn't going to let him go with Rey on her hunt for one crystal.

"I know there's nothing I can do, Finn." Poe muttered. He took another swig of hull stripper. "But at least this way, I can breathe a little easier every six hours."

"For approximately two minutes."

Poe scoffed and shoved Finn's shoulder; his friend gamely tilted over before pulling back up to his full height. "But those two minutes are great."

Finn nodded slowly, and it seemed almost possible that he was going to leave it there. But then he had to go and say it, flat-out. "How many times have you imagined things going wrong?"

"Let's not talk about it."

Many. Too many.

After gradually losing focus to such an extent that he could think of nothing save for the silent commlink in his pocket, Poe left the hangar and practically ran to Leia's office. Luke's last check-in was scheduled for over an hour ago. Whatever window existed for leeway, for falling asleep or getting distracted or lost, Poe knew that it had closed.

Poe knocked on the door, and moments later added, "It's me, General."

"Come in, Poe."

She was standing in a corner of the office, staring out of one of the few windows on the base at the snowy wasteland that was the surface of Ilith. Her features were lined with worry, as though Poe wasn't anxious enough as it was.

"I was hoping that maybe you'd just… forgotten to tell me about the check-in," he told her.

Leia knew that it was a lie, though she was courteous enough to pretend otherwise by simply shaking her head. "No, I haven't heard anything."

Neither of them knew quite what to say. Regardless of their caution, it seemed… unacceptable, unthinkable that they might now need to plan for the worst.

"Does- does that mean we're evacuating?" he asked at last.

"I'm not sure," she confessed.

He bit his lip and looked down at his mentor, noting the fear that radiated from her. Fear of action – of deciding that Rey and Luke were lost so quickly – and fear of inaction – of the possibility that their ability to keep the Resistance alive was rapidly disappearing purely because Poe and Leia were too attached to the people who were possibly putting them in danger. But they were also the only two who could make this decision knowing the full context of their predicament; they still had not revealed Rey's curse to any of the other commanders.

Suddenly, Poe (selfishly) wished that someone else knew. Anyone else. Anyone who could make this decision more objectively.

But he knew what Rey would tell him in this moment. The Resistance could not survive an error in judgement, not when they were… so close to taking on the First Order. "I think it does," he told Leia. His voice was barely above a whisper, and it was not on purpose. He just… struggled to get the words out.

They stared at each other for several beats. Finally, she nodded.

Over on her desk, a speaker crackled to life. "You there, sis?"

Leia and Poe were both huddling over the desk in an instant. Leia's voice came out harsh as she answered. "Jedi really know how to keep someone in suspense."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry. I overslept."

"So you're fine?" Poe rushed to ask, pressing the button to trigger the mic. He saw Leia raising her eyebrows at him but felt no shame at all as he pushed on. "Rey's fine?"

A laugh on the other end of the line. "More than fine, Poe. I heard from Rey a few minutes ago. We should be leaving within an hour. I'd have waited to check in until then, but I was worried that I gave you both a bit of a scare as it was."

"Remind me to punch you once you get back," Leia told him in response.

Poe, however, was eager for more explicit confirmation. "You're coming back? It really all worked out alright?"

"You bet it—" Luke faltered. "What the hell?"

What the hell? Poe's eyebrows drew together as he frowned. He found that he couldn't look at Leia, couldn't look at anything but the desk. "What is it, Luke?" Leia pressed him to go on.

"Forget everything I said. Leave. Clear out of that base."

The speaker went dead.

Everything moved in… something of a vacant blur, after that.

Despite the continued secrecy around Rey's curse, Leia had made it known that Luke and Rey's secret mission might put the Resistance in danger, and that a hasty evacuation might be necessary. As a result, she squeezed Poe's hand tight and told him, "I'm sorry," and then she leapt into action, putting the call out across the base, and everyone jumped into action in a flash.

He envied her ability to compartmentalize, even though he knew that it had hurt Rey in those first months with the Resistance. Perhaps she had allowed herself to lean into it too much… but it was moments like this that reminded Poe why. Because when he became a commander in the Resistance, he had believed, with absolute certainty, that his own feelings would never have any bearing on his decisions. No call would hurt him more than any other.

As it was, though…

Poe found himself in the pilot seat of the Millennium Falcon, pulling out of atmo on Ilith for what was likely the last time, and he suddenly realized that he was terrified of what was going to happen now that the evacuation was finished. Now that he had a few moments to stand still. They were operating under the assumption that Rey was as good as dead; even if she successfully evaded whatever threat seemed to have overtaken her and Luke, she would have no idea where to find the Resistance. How was he supposed to pick himself up again to fight in a revolution?

To his left and slightly behind, Leia sat, and Poe was taken aback when he realized she'd reached out and clasped his hand in her own.

"If something happened to her, you would probably know."

Something. He knew what that meant. "Do you really think so?" He paused, taking in the empty space around them as Chewie booted up the hyperdrive. No star destroyers, no dreadnoughts had arrived. "Maybe… maybe they're not with the First Order. If no one's come yet…"

Leia didn't answer, and at first Poe thought she was just being kind and allowing him his speculative daydream.

But her grip on his hand tightened and he turned sharply in his seat, eyes widening at the sight of her—almost doubled over, her free hand hovering over her mouth. Poe realized belatedly that she had let out a gasp.

He lost all sense of formality when he frowned and said, "Leia?"

For a long, long moment, she said nothing. Her eyes were still on the floor beneath her as she said, "No. They're with the First Order."

"How can you know that?"

Raising her gaze to meet Poe's, Leia's lips trembled. He was taken aback by the sadness in her eyes. "Because my brother is dead." To think that there was a time when he wouldn't have believed it possible for her to know that without seeing or hearing of it herself.

And oh, Poe saw her—the way that she immediately tried to steel herself. There was an echo in the back of his mind: Just another loss. But none of them had been just another loss, and this one certainly was not. And it wasn't that she thought otherwise; he simply felt the same conflict in her that he was struggling with. If she allowed herself to hurt over Luke right now, would she be able to stop?

Poe swallowed and rose to his feet, pulling Leia up along with him. "C'mon, General. No need for us to be up here right now; we've got a long trip in hyperspace ahead."

It said something about the state that she was in, that Leia allowed Poe to pull her through the Falcon with no explanation and no interference, save to stop and give Chewie a good, long hug.

While he led her to the captain's quarters – so that hopefully she could allow her composure to slip enough to mourn her brother – Poe found himself searching the Force for any sense of Rey. Was Leia right? Would he know if Rey died, with the same clarity that Leia felt it with Luke?

He felt nothing. Not her presence, not her life, but not a lack of life, either. It was as though she was still somewhere, just barely out of reach.

Kylo stood over Rey, and as she watched, his expression shifted from disappointment to irritation. "That's not how it works. You can't just decide not to take the path that was meant for you. This moment was set into motion thousands of years ago, Rey, and you're trying to dismiss it because you don't want it?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but she found herself at something of a loss. Not because she agreed with him—and oh, she was fully equipped to tell him as much. But she was struck by the extent of his insistence that she couldn't possibly refuse what he believed to be her destiny. She was struck by the fact that he was so emphatically insisting that her path lay on the dark side, even though she had listened to his explanation and then rejected the idea flat-out.

Rey's brow furrowed. Quietly, she asked, "Why do you want me to join you so badly?"

"It's not about what I want," he replied, exasperation saturating his tone. "You and I were meant for this. Everything that we've been through has been to shape us into the Sith'ari."

"You told me that the purpose of my curse was to break free of the limitation of having no choice. If I'm not choosing the darkness, that's not freedom. That's a Sith from millennia ago deciding for me. It's Snoke. It's you. But it's certainly not me."

Ben threw his head back and groaned in frustration. "Stop being so fragging pedantic. You were destined to choose this!"

"Or so Snoke told you. Perhaps he believed in this prophecy, and perhaps he cursed me in an attempt to bring it about, but Ben…" Rey faltered as she said his name. She could not stop turning over something that Snoke had said: that Ben unintentionally opened their Force bond after killing Han because he believed that Rey would understand what he was struggling with. And it was with this in mind that she offered, "What if Snoke just saw a scared little boy and believed that he could mold you into what he believed the Sith'ari should be? What if that's what he meant to do to me? I'm sorry, but I don't believe that that's enough to make it truth."

Silence hung heavy between them.

He let out a huff and turned on his heel, moving closer to the empty throne. He held his gaze on the throne—pointedly away from Rey. Quietly – so quietly – he finally replied, "You don't know what you're talking about, Rey."

Well. Something told her that wasn't true. His tone, perhaps. The inklings she still held onto from her Force vision on Ossus.

And so she asked again: "Why do you want me to join you so badly?"

Ben said nothing. She gave him time, in case he meant to gather himself, but finally she decided that he likely was not going to give her an answer. She rose to her feet slowly, stepping around Luke and Snoke's bodies so that she could draw closer to Ben. But she left a fair amount of distance between them when she finally stopped. "I don't believe that you want to be the Sith'ari any more than I do. And you don't have to be."

He still didn't answer. The only sound, the only movement in the room was the soft creak of Ben's leather glove as he flexed his fingers at his side.

Feeling tentative and more than a little self-conscious, Rey took his silence as an opportunity to continue. "After Luke brought me to Ahch-To, I missed you, Ben. I missed you so much, and Leia, and Han. But I envied you, too. I was so scared of myself and scared of the idea that I might never have a life beyond that tiny island, and you know Luke. For my entire childhood, he never really figured out how to comfort me about something that… he thought might be true, at least to an extent. Maybe I had reason to be scared of myself. And there was a good chance that it wouldn't ever be safe enough for me to leave Ahch-To. He was scared of lying, so he didn't say anything. And that hurt, especially when I remembered Han and Leia as being… so refreshingly honest, in their own ways."

In response to that last bit, a soft grunt from Ben revealed that he was still listening. Skeptical – understandably – but listening.

A ghost of a smile pulled at Rey's lips, but she frowned again as she looked down at the ground. "I remembered that you'd moved on to Luke's temple, but that didn't matter. All I could think about was the fact that you could still see Han and Leia. You saw Luke for more than a smattering of days each month. He actually trained you, when I felt like I had to beg and plead for each lesson. You had everything that I wanted.

"Please remember that I was young. I understand better now that your childhood can't have been any easier than mine. They made all of the wrong choices about my curse, but they kept so much from you about your grandfather. Leia thought they were protecting you, just like she thought they were protecting me, even if they were actually…" She swallowed nervously, thinking of his words from earlier. "Even if they were just making you more curious about your family's legacy."

Still, Ben said nothing. Rey wanted to believe that this meant that he was earnestly listening, because he finally wasn't arguing with her. Admittedly, she was reluctant to open herself up to the Force to try to gauge where he was at more clearly; not when he still didn't even seem able to look at her. But this… this was good. She felt in her heart that it was good.

"Luke and Han didn't know how to be fathers." Rey remembered all too well, how quickly Han slipped from goofy playmate to smuggler who needed to be off-planet for an indeterminate amount of time. Save for the occasional political function where he put on a smile for Leia's sake, those were his only two modes. It was fun and exciting for Rey when she was small, but even before Luke took her away, she'd begun to notice how Ben had tired of it. "And Leia…"

"I think you mean 'Senator Organa,'" Ben muttered.

Rey grimaced. "Yes, I do." She bit her lip, not sure whether she should say any more about that.

No. They both knew that Leia's commitment to the New Republic – and then to the Resistance – was all-consuming. She knew that they both understood that pain, and she knew that Ben knew it, too.

"I didn't understand those things when I was a child. All I knew was that they were your family, but they weren't mine. And I never felt that before Luke took me away, but then it was all I could think about. I didn't understand why they were willing to do that, not when they'd always treated me like family. You'd always treated me like family." Rey swallowed nervously. "It left me feeling unwanted. Broken."

"What is your point, Rey?" Ben spun around and looked at her at last, and gods, he looked like a wreck. He wasn't crying – there wasn't even a single tear in his eyes – but there was so much distress, so much loss all over his expression, even as he tried to sound angry.

"Just…" She hesitated. "Just that you were right. I do understand. I understand that it doesn't matter how well-intentioned Luke and your parents were, because they hurt us anyway. I understand how difficult Jedi teachings were because of that, how difficult it was to be told that attachments were potentially a path to the dark side and to feel ashamed for wanting more from them anyway. And I understand how easy it would have been to just… listen, when I realized I had a Sith whispering in my ear that everything those people had taught me was just as wrong as I felt certain it was. I understand how comforting it must have been to be told that it all happened for a reason. I understand."

Ben would not (could not?) look Rey in the eye, but again, he did not argue with her. He stood stiffly, and he did not cry, and he did not argue.

Gently, she told him, "That doesn't mean that you don't still have a choice. Your grandfather chose the light, in the end. There's nothing to stop you from choosing the light now. You can help us to take down the First Order, and you can atone for your mistakes, and together we can help a new generation of Force users to understand their abilities and rewrite the mistakes of both the Jedi and the Sith."

He inhaled and looked up abruptly. No, he still could not look her in the eye, but he frowned with his gaze somewhere in the vicinity of her chin. "You're telling me that you want to devote your attention to the ones who will come after us, even after what you just did? Maybe you're still keeping your feelings closed off to me, but I know that you must have felt that power coursing through you when you killed Snoke. When we battled the Imperial Guard. Why in hell wouldn't you want to hone that? Why would you waste that power on children when you could channel it into your destiny?"

Oh, Rey certainly noticed that; Ben was still talking about their destiny as an almost-inevitability. She didn't like it, but she also could hear the way that his conviction was wavering. And so she took his question seriously.

Did she feel a power in her anger when she attacked Snoke and the Imperial Guard? Yes. Absolutely. She had never had to use a lightsaber against anyone before, let alone against so many foes at once. The feel of Kylo's lightsaber, too, had been all new, but she had fallen into battle easily. She had felt capable and certain and it had been invigorating to experience that immediately after overcoming the curse that had ruled her entire life.

But she also found herself remembering another moment. Sparring in that clearing on Ajan Kloss, opening herself up to Poe completely for the first time and feeling the Force coursing through her, through him, around them both.

It didn't matter, how much brute strength she'd felt when wielding her anger against those guards. She found that her battle with Kylo paled in comparison to the way she felt in the Force in that moment with Poe, and in countless moments since. Most recently back on Ossus, when she'd meditated with her crystal clutched in her hands.

"I don't know if I believe that was power. At least not a power that I want. That was the least connected to the Force that I've felt in a very long time. The Force is meant to uplift us, to guide and strengthen us without overpowering us. If that's not what the darkness has to offer me, I don't want it."

"How can you say that so easily?"

Rey could feel her hands trembling just slightly as she thought again of the shift of Luke's expression – from pride to shock – as Snoke murdered him. A senseless murder. And oh, was she angry. "Just because I feel certain doesn't mean that it's easy."

"You say that," Ben began. His voice shook, and when he began to move again – to circle her again – Rey couldn't ignore the sense that he was doing it in the hopes that it would distract her from his distress. "But after everything the Jedi did, if you're so quick to feel certain that you are choosing the right side, I can't really believe that you've thought it through. After everything that Luke did to both of us, if you decided to forgive him…"

And Rey suspected that, with this comment, Ben had stumbled into what was actually upsetting him by complete accident.

"Luke spent several months trying to repair our relationship," Rey told him. She felt exasperation simmering beneath the surface of her tone, and she tried to rein it in, but gods was she displeased that Ben had suggested that her choice to forgive Luke was also easy; as though it wasn't one of the most difficult things she'd ever done. "He owned his mistakes to me and he asked me all the time what I needed from him, and when I told him that he wasn't giving me the support I needed, he listened and he changed. I'm sorry that he didn't give that to you, but he wanted to, Ben. He wanted to so badly. I felt it, how badly he wanted it."

Ben nodded slowly, his gaze quite vacant. "So because Luke said he was sorry, you're siding with him."

"You are the only one talking about sides, Ben. Wasn't that at the root of most of the Jedi's problems? I've done plenty of studying myself in search of answers about my curse, enough to know that the Jedi and the Sith were constantly getting into trouble over their insistence that the Force was about a light side and a dark side. That was exactly the mindset that Luke fell into when he allowed himself to think for even a moment that your heart was turned forever, and it was one of his greatest regrets."

Rey wrapped her arms around herself and, quite tentatively, told him, "I couldn't care less about sides, not right now. I can see that you don't want to be the Sith'ari, not without me. I can see that your place in the Force isn't what you want it to be, and I want to help you change that."

She loosened her grip on her own torso slowly, trying to gauge Ben's response once again. Yet again, she took the long stretch of silence as a sign of… non-disagreement.

This was good. He wasn't arguing.

Her mind raced as she began to imagine what it would mean, if he accepted her offer. Leia would have her son back. The First Order would lose one of their greatest weapons. He could make amends with everyone he'd hurt, perhaps give closure to Poe that would render his nightmares non-existent. And she knew, knew, that there was so much she and Ben could learn from each other.

Unfurling her arms, Rey clasped her hands together and brought them before her mouth, taking him in. She knew that she looked as though she was pleading with him. Frankly, she was. Gods, she wanted this.

Ben opened his mouth—

From the far end of the room, behind Ben, the door to the rest of the ship hissed open.

While she watched, Ben's expression shifted from hesitation to resolve. He inhaled slowly and turned to face the interlopers.

A crew of stormtroopers flanked two people, one a tall, menacing figure decked in gleaming armor, the other a dour-looking man clad all in black. (No doubt to distinguish himself from the gray uniforms that Rey had observed on most of the other soldiers on both ships.)

"Get her," Kylo said at once, his eyes on the troopers. Several of them raced forward to surround Rey.

The dour man frowned at Kylo for an instant before looking around at the carnage. "'Get her'?" he echoed. "You two seem to be the last ones standing. You seriously expect us to believe that this girl caused all of this damage without your help?"

Rey inhaled sharply, stewing over the implication. The reaction came at the wrong time; the troopers had just reached her and didn't take kindly to her abrupt rise in anger. On either side of her, a trooper grabbed her arms, holding her stiffly while another trooper affixed cuffs back to her wrists.

"She did have help, but not from me." Kylo nodded toward his feet, and Rey's heart stuttered when she realized that Luke's robes were now all that was left. This, too, was something that he'd told her could happen to Jedi once they died, but something about the physical loss of him made her hurt even more. "She and Skywalker managed to break free. They killed Snoke and the Imperial Guard. I'd just managed to disarm the girl and kill Skywalker before you arrived."

It was a shoddy excuse, and, based on the way the man looked at Kylo, Rey knew that he could see as much. Even the large presence in the armor seemed skeptical, just from the way their helmet tilted slightly.

The armored stranger was the one who pushed. "And you… watched? Just let it happen?"

Kylo hesitated. "I underestimated them, and they overpowered me and knocked me out. I woke up to this carnage. I suppose they were too sentimental to kill me, but I won't let it happen again." He glanced down at Luke. "Not least of which because Skywalker is finally dead."

Again, Rey couldn't tell, for a moment, whether his excuses were enough.

But then she watched as Kylo stood to his full height. He cleared his throat. "Why is everyone just standing here? You," he said, turning and pointing to the stormtroopers. Rey got the briefest glimpse of his expression, and oh, was she unnerved by the resolve there. Where did it come from, when he had just been wavering? When he'd been so close to admitting that he wanted something more than the First Order could offer him? "Take the girl back to my ship so that I can interrogate her. We still haven't gotten any information on the Resistance, and I intend to change that. And you," he pointed to the two strangers. "Tell me whatever it was that was so important that you interrupted the Supreme Leader."

"We've been trying to reach the Supreme Leader for twenty minutes," the one in armor said. "When we were unable to do so, we concluded that something was wrong."

"And clearly we were right," the dour man added. "Because the Supreme Leader is dead."

Kylo strode forward with purpose, and everyone but Rey jumped when he reached out a hand and grabbed the man by his neck, lifting him up off the ground. "Snoke is dead. The Supreme Leader is very much alive."