If Ben had a choice, he would spend the rest of his life sitting beside Rey, watching the sunset that never ends. But now he is standing to leave.

Rey looks up at him, still clutching her bleeding hand. It's not bad, but the bleeding just won't seem to stop. The indents her nails made are still clear as rain on her flesh.

"I'll get you bandages," Ben blurts out before he can stop himself.

Confusion on her side. "Why?"

"You're bleeding." Shouldn't that be obvious?

"Oh," Rey gasps, examining her hand as if she hadn't noticed the wound until now. Maybe she hadn't. "… So I am."

Her voice is so unconcerned it chills Kylo to the very bone. He should be used to this, but he isn't.

Rey looks up, and smiles dryly up at Kylo. He shivers.

"My body is crying."

Such a beautiful, poetic way of describing wounds, but Kylo doesn't give a single fuck and grabs her hand. "… How do I make the tears stop?" he asks, desperate. Desperate, and he doesn't know why.

Her smile dies.

"You don't."

Ben touches his scar; his own, personal tragedy. It still bleeds on, just like Rey's hand.

He understands.


Rey tucks her hand in her lap, because she just can't seem to keep her gaze away from the thick blood spilling out of her fingertips, away.

Once, she had held the power to heal herself. Now, she doesn't know what she can do.

Break things, she supposes. Break people.

She looks up at Kylo Ren, the one person in all the world who she would heal, if she could.

Kylo is still holding her hand, and doesn't seem to want to move, even if both of them know what he has to do.

Rey sighs and stands up, taking his hand in her bleeding one, pulling off his glove and casting it into the wind.

She's not sure why, but she places a hand on his neck, and a kiss on his lips. Before he gets the chance to kiss back, Rey pulls way again and stares him in the eyes.

"Go," she breathes. "Go to Leia."

He hesitates, but Rey's eyes are just too earnest to resist. He forces himself to give a short nod, but his head feels too heavy from heavy thoughts to ever lift again, so it remains bowed. Rey smiles, because she's known him for long enough to tell that he needs this closure. No matter what shape it takes.

Kylo's hand, previously held by Rey, slowly slides out of her grasp and closes into a fist. His hand is dyed red from Rey's blood; they match.

Without another word, he turns and disappears down the leaf-strewn path.

Ben, who had left himself incomplete for so many— too many— years, finally takes a step. He walks like a man rising from a deep slumber, stale and aching.

Here he is, seeking out a presence he had spent all his life running from.

He descends the earthen staircase, towards the base, and into territory he never imagined returning to. And yet here he is.

He isn't home, but he is back.


One would say that Kylo Ren walks the path forwards, but really, he is getting pulled towards the base by invisible chains and there is nothing he can do about it.

Helpless.

After twenty minutes of hiking, he steps past a tree and immediately wishes he hadn't. A figure stands silhouetted by the leaves and he recognizes her immediately. How could he forget?

How could he ever forget his own mother?

(He tried, he really did)

And he simply can't believe that he came back here. He freed himself of it all, his past, and now it's back. Haunting him, right in his face.

Kylo stops behind the brush. He knows she can sense him, but he doesn't step into the opening, because, in hiding, he can still be a stranger.

I don't want to be your son again. Not yet.

(Not ever)

Kylo can't see her face, but he knows that Leia is smiling. He knows her well, and that can never be erased.

"You're here," Leia speaks, loudly so he can hear her from so far away.

Kylo forces his eyes downwards, just like all those times he looked down in shame as a tiny, insignificant child, dwarfed by the monstrosity of all the world's expectations.

The famous Leia Organa and Han Solo, saviors of the galaxy!And their son— just imagine what greatness he will be capable of! Will he save the world, too?

Kylo Ren wishes he could close his thoughts as easily as his eyes.

He takes a step forward. And another. He can't seem to stop.

Finding Leia isn't hard. All he has to do is follow that overbearing shadow of expectations that looms over him, always.

He steps out of the shadows and into the clearing, and he supposes that this is the end. And the start of a new era.

The sun shines red through the leaves, and as the wind blows through the branches; a cluster of red light circles dance across Kylo's troubled features as he hides in plain sight. Leia sees him, but he doesn't see her; his gaze is still adamantly fixated on the ground.

Will he turn to stone if he looks her in the eyes? Will he choose to stay, even if that means sacrificing everything he ever valued and becoming nothing but a fake, again?

"Ben…" Leia whispers, imploring him to speak.

Sorry, Ben isn't available at the moment. This is Kylo Ren, can I take your order?

"I knew you would come back," she continues.

You don't know anything. Ben is dead. DEAD!

"… Why are you here?" she asks.

"Because—"

He cuts himself off. Without thinking, he had swallowed down the guilt in his throat and spoken; but not in his ruthless "Kylo Ren" voice, but as Ben Solo.

He hadn't spoken like that in years.

Don't say another word. Don't speak.

"… You're dying," he whispers. He's letting himself down more with ever second, but he can't help himself, not today. His mother-not-mother is dying, and he doesn't know what to feel anymore.

A small part of him almost wishes that Leia would deny him, and say that it was all just one big mistake, and that it was going to be okay. He doesn't want to feel like this anymore, like he is slowly, agonizingly, impaling his mother with a saber and watching her die.

Leia takes a step closer, and even though Kylo wants to run away he doesn't. But then her hands reach out to embrace him, and with dagger-sharp reflexes Kylo has recoiled into the shadows like a scared wolf.

Because he knows: If he lets Leia in, he will never escape.

The old, beautiful, (dying) commander— she just stands there, staring silently at her son who is dead.

And soon she will be, too.

Kylo cannot see her because he refuses to, but he feels it perfectly, when Leia raises her head and lets it down again, in a solemn nod. He knows exactly what she means. What her answer is, to his one thousand questions.

She is dying.

And no, there isn't a thing he can do about it.

… Except one.

Absentmindedly, he touches his lightsaber at his belt.


They stand under the trees, son and mother, but that's not at all what they are.

The only sound between them is the faint falling of dewdrops to the earth, because talking is so very hard, when silence is so easy.

Kylo Ren ventures to break the quiet, because goddammit, someone has to.

"… I've grown stronger. Much stronger than you ever could've made me." No matter how far his voice strays from weakness, it still sounds like a child's (like Ben's), trying desperately to stammer an excuse, when what he had done is inexcusable.

"… You can't hurt me anymore," he whispers, and why the fuck did he have to sound so scared.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Leia says.

"You already have."


It is the people you love the deepest that hurt you the most. Leia's face, unseen by all in the forest, falls into sorrow. But she hides it well, and Kylo realizes nothing.

She has to be strong. She speaks.

"You can still change, Ben."

"… Can I?" he meant to sound cynical and cold, but standing in the damp, darkening air, head bowed like an abandoned puppy and hair dripping from the rain, Kylo Ren looks and sounds nothing short of pathetic.

"Yes," Leia answers. She sounds so earnest, desperate…

… She really loves him, doesn't she?

Kylo shakes his head.

"You don't understand," he whispers with a grim smile. "… I don't want to."

"Don't do this to yourself."

He can't take it. He can't take it anymore.

"You can do anything," Leia continues. Is that supposed to make him feel better?

Don't you understand? I. Don't. Want. To. Change.

"What are you so scared of, Ben…?" Leia implores, her voice tender when it should be hard.

Pain. Trapped in a box. Losing who I am because there's just so many strangers climbing inside.

He chokes, "… You."

He is so, so scared of becoming anything like her. To hurt others, the way Leia and Han hurt him. Because whether he liked it or not, everything his parents did, every last mistake, would affect him and shape him and make him who he is.

And that's why, wasn't it? That's why he killed his name (and father, how could he forget?), and took on a new persona. He became Kylo Ren, simply because he didn't want to be Ben anymore.

They had a thousand worlds to offer him, and he wanted none of it.

He just wanted to be himself, without having to shoulder all his parents' mistakes and expectations on his shoulders.

… Why was that so impossible?

"Like parent, like child."

Why was that phrase so hard to run away from?

Why did it have to be so true sometimes?

Before Kylo gets the chance to rebuild himself and somehow, impossibly calm down, his hands have shot up and gripped his head, pulling madly at his hair, anything to just make that swirling, distorting, screaming storm of thoughts—

"Stop, Ben!"

A familiar, stern voice shakes him to the core and he comes falling out of his head and to the ground at his mother's feet.

He raises his head, and without realizing what he had just fucking done, he looks into his mother's eyes. Their gazes lock, and so does the prison door that's held him trapped for so long. There's no escape.

No—

He's shaking now, hand flying to his lightsaber because he is so sure that he's about to be attacked.

The memories flooding in are just too much.

Why did he agree to come here?

Didn't he KNOW what would happen?

He holds his weapon with a hand shaking earthquakes, and collapses to the ground, his mind filling with old hidden-away memories resurfacing and pulling him under.

He's drowning and there's not a single hand to hold.

He doesn't even remember Rey anymore.

He opens his eyes and sees the past, and it pulls him into its cold embrace.

There is no air.

He drowns.


He is but a teenager, but already he is thinking of how sweet it would be to just disappear.

He wishes he could fly far, far away, but the stars are dead and the wishing well dry, and all he is left with is bitter disappointment.

His parents left him and flew away, so why can't he do the same? All he wants is to run, run far away, but instead he just smiles like nothing is wrong when his mother returns home from a business trip, sometimes even bringing— god forbid— his father.

Leia moves to embrace him, and all he can do is nod his head and play along.

Hide how betrayed you feel. Don't let the loneliness show, it's not important.

You're not important.

Not to them.


They'd have the same fight, over and over again.

Repeat.

It was an endless cycle, and each time it became slightly more perfect, slightly more broken and less mendable.

And he was helpless to stop it. All he could do was wait for the day when it became impossible to simply ignore each other and pretend like nothing happened.

When "talking it out" and hugs no longer helped, that's the day when it all goes to hell and there's no coming back.

He would be crowned the king of hell.

He would become Kylo Ren.

It was the only way out and he knew it, and he would— will— make the whole rest of the world see it. See that sometimes, sacrificing what makes you who you are is so, so much worse than running away. To compromise himself and become weak, just because it's easier— that's not an escape.

That's what truly makes monsters of us.


He stands, no longer as a teenager trapped, but as Kylo Ren. He has a death grip on his saber as he stumbles towards a figure draped in whites and browns, but it's all a blur.

I can't see.

Is she smiling? Is she scared?

He stops, and holds out his weapon. Finger hovering over the trigger. And it's pointed at her.

He can't move.

Not when his fading mother looks at him with those warm eyes of her's, not when she puts a hand on his cheek and smiles.

He wants to run away but he CAN'T MOVE.

She moves to embrace him, because she knows it is the end. But Kylo tenses at this, because he doesn't belong in this warmth, it just feels so wrong. Love feels wrong.

It is all so wrong and he just wants to run away and hide and never have to feel again but—

He can't.

Before he can think his gloved hand has wrapped around his mother's dying frame and stays. The hand holding his weapon still hovers in place. He can't seem to move it, and he realizes… he doesn't want to.

"This is it," Leia whispers, exactly in that tone she used when he had been a child and she told him she loved him and it was going to be okay.

But it's not going to be okay.

Kylo clutches her tighter, soaked in the rain (when had it started raining?) and cries, shivering, broken.

Lost.

"We're attacking," he whispers to her. She deserves to know what's going to happen, even if it's cruel, even if it's telling her that everything she fought so hard for was for nothing.

She bows her head.

"We're ending the war," he continues.

"I know."

He can't see her face (he hasn't dared to look at it), but he knows she's trying to hold herself together. He knows she looks beautiful, because if she had still been his mother, she would've been the most wonderful parent in the universe. But he threw her away.

Because back then, she hadn't been— Wonderful, that is. And he hadn't been strong enough to realize that he still could've turned out okay, if he'd only let himself.

But he hadn't, and now he is Kylo Ren.

Leia weaves her arms closer around her tall boy's back. Kylo can feel her bones, just barely insulated by muscle.

She's wasting away.

But not for much longer.

Leia grasps her son's shoulders and looks at him. It's for the last time, but Kylo wishes there hadn't been a time to begin with at all.

"Ben." She says his name— or what used to be his name— in the softest, warmest voice imaginable. He winces.

"I'll wait for you," she whispers.

"… Where?" Kylo asks, so he'll never have to come back again.

"You'll find me."

No, he shakes his head, but can't bring himself to say a word.

Sadness crosses Leia's expression, but she pulls herself together and tries to reassure Ben— or maybe herself.

"It's going to be okay."

"… No."

"You're going to be okay, Ben."

… NO.

His scar is burning, everything is burning.

"Nothing is going to be okay," he hisses through gritted teeth with a face enough to make anybody cry. But inside, he's begging the whole world to make a liar out of him.

"You're not going to be okay, you're dying, and Rey wants to die, and I..."

He chokes on his words.

"… I can't take it anymore."

… I CAN'T.

His teeth bite into his lip and he tastes blood in his mouth.

Leia smiles up at him, and Kylo tries, he has never tried so hard for anything in his life, but he can't do it. He can't smile.

He sobs.

His lightsaber is shaking and so is he, and he knows what he has to do but he isn't strong enough.

Not yet.

He tries to say something, anything, but nothing comes out. He can't even say "I'm sorry."

Slowly, very slowly, Leia's hands leave his shoulders and everything grows cold again. And this time, he really does say it.

"… I'm sorry." I'm so sorry. I threw everything away to find my place, and now that I've found it I'm throwing it away again and—

"I know."

He's shaking, he can't stop shaking. But Leia is smiling, no, she's laughing, because she's like that. She stands before him, her strength failing and her legs almost too weak to hold; and still she keeps on loving the world, the universe, and… Ben.

But he's breaking her world.

Kylo looks into his mother's eyes (they look just like his), and he simply can't understand; how does she look so calm? Why isn't she scared, like him?

She always was the brave one.

"I'll see you again, Ben. I promise." Her voice cracks, just a little.

… No.

I never want to see you again.

He can't move, he can't speak, his words come out as as stumble and he feels like screaming.

His sobs are wrecking his body and something inside him is slowly tearing apart as a monster emerges from inside. But Leia can't see this, all she sees is Ben, the perfect, nonexistent, Ben.

He grips his lightsaber so hard he almost breaks his hand.

Leia looks up at the landscape, and Kylo tries to do the same but his neck seems to be made of cement because he simply can't move.

Leia sees the sky, and beams; it is truly a beautiful storm. The sky is bleeding for them. The shadows are darker than black. There is thunder; a symphony of rumbling that's crawling, coveting, grabbing for that final explosion everybody's waiting for.

Kylo holds his lightsaber steady, but his other hand, the one holding his mother's shoulder, is shaking and can't stop. But he doesn't feel it anymore, he doesn't feel anything.

He is alone with his thoughts, and his thoughts scream that he is ready.

He is ready.

Ready.

Leia must know this too, because her eyelids slowly drape over her gaze and close. She whispers to him, so very softly, and Kylo shouldn't be able to hear her, but somehow he can. He latches onto that one sound, and hangs on for dear life.

"… Ben."

"… Don't… Don't call me—"

"I love you, Ben."

The storm is raging closer and the rain almost drowns them both.

"… Mom. I'm—"

"I love you," she smiles, "… And I am never, ever going to stop."

The storm collapses in its final crescendo, shattering Kylo into a million glass pieces. Leia opens her mouth to say something and hurt him even more, but she never says another word. Her words are gone. GONE.

He presses the trigger.

"… Ben."

The light, as it stabs through his mother, is beautiful. It cuts right through her abdomen and everything— her blood, that look of betrayal on her face— is illuminated and clear as day under the lightning

And then it all goes dark.

He screams.

Leia's eyes widen but he can't see her, he can't see anything.

She's fading, so quickly now.

Shaking.

Dying.

And he can't feel a thing.

Her ashen eyes; he watches as they slowly grow dimmer. Tears spill out of them and there is so much blood he could drown in it.

Leia's breathing comes out ragged and her words are almost swallowed by her pain.

She traces a hand over his scar, leaving a trail of red.

The whole ground is covered in blood now, and yet she stands. And he will stand beside her, all the way to the end.

"… Ben," she rasps. She's not smiling. "… Ben."

Ben.

BEN.

He's crying, he can't stop crying.

He holds her like she's the whole world, and with every moment more blood trickles out of her wounds and her pulse slows, just a little bit, and as he looks at her and tries to memorize every crevice of her face, he realizes that he just impaled the world and now it's too late.

"Mom," he sobs, "… Mom!"

Leia opens her arms, and in that moment Kylo is a child again, her child, falling into her embrace and letting out a dry, shuddering, sob.

She pats his back and whispers that he's going to be fine. It reminds him of what she used to do when he was a child coming home with tears and a bruised knee. Leia used to promise him hot chocolate and a warm blanket, and somehow that made him feel better.

Something as insignificant as that.


It's a warm summer's day, everything is colored gold and beautiful. There is a house made of white stone, and through the doorway comes Ben, running.

Leia looks down at her son and smiles reassuringly, and he lets her smile warm him.

"What happened, Ben?" she asks, softly.

He looks up and sniffles.

"I think I…"

He's a child, searching for words is hard.

"… I think I just died."

She laughs, as if it were a joke. "Honey, you're not dead."

"But I—"

She holds a finger to his lips to quiet him, and pulls him into an embrace so loving only a mother could do it.

"Don't be silly," she laughs, lifting up her son with a smile and spinning him around."You're right here, Ben. Right here with me."

She wipes away his tears with a smile, and slowly, her eyes slide closed.

"… And I'm never going to let you go."


A single drop of blood falls to the ground, and Leia's arms slip away from Ben as she closes her eyes for the last time.

She lets out a soft, shuddering breath, and then— nothing.

Ben tries to bury himself in her embrace, but there is nothing left.

She dies.