Kylo Ren and Rey arrive at the Resistance base like silent ghosts. They are ghosts, because to everybody else they are invisible, lost, dead. And intend to stay that way.
Rey approaches the base with ever-so-slow steps, skillfully stepping over branches and twigs as if they were hardly there. She is in a trance, and it's no wonder- she hasn't been back for months, maybe even years— of course she feels disoriented. It's like returning to the scene of the murder when she is the killer.
(She is the killer)
The two of them approach the base, Rey and Ren, hand in hand, trailing the sounds of busy, happy people working their chores, chatting and enjoying life, like one should. But it's so hard, so very hard sometimes. Rey wonders if it isn't impossible.
She draws her eyes over the various scenery around her: green bushes, hazel trees, clear, blue, sky if she tilts her head upwards. She can't seem to stop looking.
It's like a stabbing to the heart, to realize that some part of her, hidden away so very carefully, misses this. It aches in her chest, that cold, hard fact that she will never laugh again.
She is never going to laugh again, because there isn't anything left to laugh for.
"— Rey."
The scavenger is pulled out of her memories (had she been drowning in them?), by a gentle nudge on the shoulder.
She turns to the owner of the hand, Kylo, and all she needs is one look at his scar, the screaming reminder of her sin, to be back to the present. She hates it.
Ren's hand lingers on her shoulder, and she feels it— he is shaking too. Just like her.
"What next?" Kylo asks the scavenger. He looks into her eyes as if hoping to find some form of plan, or direction in them. Rey closes her eyes, answering Kylo's unspoken question by telling him there is nothing to see, nothing left to say. She bows her head and does not look anymore. There is no plan, no direction. They are just here, and now they don't know what to do.
Rey is the first to take a step, even though she is too lost to know where to. She takes a step, and so Kylo follows beside her. One foot in front of the other, they take the path forwards. Neither of them are sure where exactly they are headed, but they are heading, and that's all that matters.
But then they arrive at the base, and things aren't so easy anymore.
They draw closer to the base, and a sensation passes over the two of them. It hits Kylo first, and the hardest. Abruptly, he stops in his tracks, pulling Rey with him, and falls into that familiar pit of paralyzing, overwhelming fear.
Kylo had forgotten— no, he had chosen not to think about it— about his mother. But now that he has, he realizes: She knows he is here. She has to. She isn't the strongest jedi in the world for nothing. Of course she would've felt him the moment he landed on the planet, all that dark energy twisting around inside him just waiting to be noticed.
"Rey," he hisses urgently, pulling the woman to the side. "… Leia! She knows, doesn't she? She knows." She knows we're here and she's going to—
The scavenger is obviously worried, but not terrified, not like Kylo. "Yes," she nods back, sharply. "And it's going to be fine."
"How do you know that? She'll alert the members, they'll find us—"
Rey's gaze turns stony, and her fists close in resolution. "Then we'll fight them. We can take them on, all of them." We're not going to die here.
"I know, but— but—" He can't seem to grasp his thoughts, so he falls silent and apart.
Rey looks at him, and feels his erratic heartbeat thundering inside her head. She reads him like a book, understands everything, and speaks.
"You're afraid of facing her," she whispers.
Kylo stiffens at this, and his pulse quickens more than ever thought possible. Is he? Scared? His insides are writhing in conflict and he feels so cold because why else would he be shivering?
"No. Not scared," he says with a voice crack that reminds him sickeningly much of that boy called Ben, who had once lived.
"… Guilty," he finishes.
Rey pulls her lips into a stiff but reassuring smile, and even if it is fully and completely fake, Kylo lets it warm him.
"She's not going to find us," Rey whispers. "… She wouldn't"
Kylo knows Rey is right, but it doesn't make him feel better. He nods anyways, and they keep on walking, following the voices from the base, but never going too close, because the sun might just blind them and burn their wings, as they plunge to their deaths.
Rey and Kylo hike onwards until they find a small cliff overlooking the base, where they stay. They sit down to rest their legs, and don't get up again. The voices beneath are too enthralling to leave, almost like music.
They are both scared, their hearts beating in panicked rhythms together, but at last they understand: They need this. Everybody needs an ending, even those of the most fallen, unfixable sort, even if the ending they crave is incomplete and forgettable.
They are saying goodbye to everything binding them to the past. To let the past die, to kill it. That's why they're here. What they're sacrificing everything for.
Rey breathes in the fresh, humid air, and rests her head against Kylo's shoulder where they sit. He wraps an arm around her, and there they stay.
Home, at last.
