Happy Friday everyone! :D

Ben woke to find himself sprawled on a narrow ledge, one leg dangling over the brink into empty space. His body ached in a dozen different places, the pain growing more intense with each second that passed. It seemed to pulse with his heartbeat; racing down his leg from his hip and wrapping his chest until every breath was a battle all on its own. And yet, none of it compared with the agonizing silence of his mind.

"Rey."

He whispered her name, desperate to hear her voice. Desperate for even the faintest spark of her presence to assure him that he was not completely alone. The pain surged and Ben ground his teeth against it, fingers raking against stone as his hands curled into fists.

"Grandfather…" It was instinct that drew the word from his aching lungs. "Help me."

His voice died in his throat, and he was left lying there, staring upwards. He could see through the crack in the rock above him and beyond, past the throne room's dim light, to the dark sky over the citadel. There was lightning like a brilliant web flung across it to illuminate the roiling clouds. In the bright glow, he began to see moving shapes. Ships plummeting to earth. Small fighters falling like shooting stars, glowing with heat, flames licking at their engines. The larger battleships cracked and splintered, the pieces raining down onto Exegol's surface.

The grief rose in him, deep and terrible. Cy would be on one of the ships above him. Taryn, Jai, Decha, Corann. The trooper commanders Tal, and Sim. Rey's friend Lita, and Admiral Mitaka. All would fall. All would die at Sidious' hand. And Ben could do nothing about it.

"Grandfather," he cried out, his voice breaking. "Please, help me!"

There was no answer. He closed his eyes, shutting out the flickering light above him. Shutting out the sight of falling ships. The sight of dying friends. As he had always done before, he retreated into darkness.

Ben.

The voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper in the back of his mind. But it was familiar.

Ben.

Again, it called him, as if from a distance. As if from a shore somewhere far away. The sea of the dark side swept cold against his skin, but this time he didn't have Rey's light to guide him. To orient him. He was lost alone in the shadows, as he had been before her brightness came blazing into his life.

Rise, Ben. This is not the end.

"I can't," the words were an exhale as the black waters surged around him, pulling at him to drag him down into the depths.

Seek the light. It hasn't abandoned you.

"I can't."

It surrounds you. Don't shut your eyes to it.

And with those words, as if the voice had brought it into being, Ben seemed to see a light. It shone out through the darkness of his mind, beckoning him. Drawing him as relentlessly as the tides that washed around him.

"Help me," he whispered. "Help me, grandfather."

You haven't forgotten the power of the light side. Trust it again. It wasn't the light side that failed you.

The light drew closer, and the sea around him began to shift and toss restlessly, as if agitated. He struggled against it, fighting to pull himself just a little bit closer to the warmth of the yellow glow.

Let it flow through you, Ben.

The light was directly above him now, shining as brightly as a midday sun. The waves roared around him, a deep rumble that shook him to his bones. But he saw, for the first time, how close he was to the shore.

Let if lift you.

Ben's feet found solid ground. He staggered from the waves onto sand that was warm beneath his feet. Stumbling, he fell forward onto his knees and curled his fingers into the fine particles, bending forward until his forehead rested against the ground. Shaking. Gasping for breath between his sobs. A hand found his shoulder, and Ben looked up to find his grandfather smiling down at him.

Rise, Ben. The Force will be with you. Always.

...

Ben's eyes fluttered open to find himself still lying on the rock ledge, still in pain. Still helpless. And yet it was all different. He blinked slowly, his mind still half in the vision. His soul still gasping on that bright shore.

"Grandfather?"

Rise, Ben.

A sudden surge of energy ran through Ben, and he gathered himself, new determination lending him strength. He would not die in this hole in the earth. He would not lie silent as Sidious took everything that he held dear. He had done enough cowering before his old master. This time he was going to stand and fight. Even if it meant his life.

Pain shot through every limb as he rolled onto his side, bracing himself with his palm flat to the stone. He held himself there for a moment, gasping in breath as the stabbing in his chest faded a little. Gritting his teeth, he drew his uninjured leg beneath him and rocked back, shifting his weight until he could raise himself upright on it. The smallest of movements brought a thousand new pains to his awareness, but Ben simply clenched his teeth harder and ignored them as best he could.

Ben reached up and wrapped his hands around a jutting stone, lifting his injured leg and bracing his knee against another. Bone grated on bone as he dragged himself up the side of the fissure, and the stab of pain narrowed his vision to a pinpoint. Ben gasped, his hands and feet tingling with the threat of looming unconsciousness, and he clutched his handhold even tighter. After a moment, his sight cleared, and he pulled himself a little higher.

"Be with me."

The words came as from somewhere far beyond himself and he breathed them out against the stone like a prayer. And the light side answered. It wrapped him in warmth, giving him the strength he needed for every new reach. Every new pain. Cold sweat ran down his face, and his body shook with effort, but hand over hand, foothold after precarious foothold, Ben made his way toward the surface. His fingers closed around the edge of the fissure, and he gathered the little strength he had left to pull himself from the earth. And that was when he saw her.

Rey.

She was moving. Pushing herself slowly onto her hands and knees, her face contorted with pain. Ben watched as her arms trembled and she nearly fell again, and his eyes darted toward the throne. Sidious didn't seem to notice her. His gaze was directed skyward, where his lightning spread across the sky.

When Ben looked back to Rey, she was upright. Feet spread, arms at her sides, she stood alone against the darkness. Blood ran down her fingers to drip onto the floor, but she held them flared wide in the way she always did when she called on the Force. A moment later, Ben heard the clatter of metal on stone, and Rey's saber flew from the shadows. It ignited with a harsh buzz, and a single shaft of yellow white light blazed into life.

Only then did Sidious turn back to face her.

Ben thought he saw surprise flicker across the tyrant's face, but it disappeared before he could be certain, twisting into anger and hatred. The column of lightning that blossomed from his hands disappeared, and he sat for a moment in silence, staring down at Rey from his throne. Rey staggered, nearly collapsing as one of her legs bent beneath her, but she caught herself and remained on her feet to stand tall and defiant under Sidious' gaze.

Panic twisted Ben's gut as Sidious rose slowly from his seat, and he clawed frantically at the rock in a desperate attempt to pull himself forward.

"Lay down your weapon, girl," Sidious said. "You cannot prevail."

Rey did not answer. She simply raised her saber before her, her knuckles going white as she tightened her grip around the hilt. Ben didn't need to see her eyes to know that they were fixed on the little bundle of blankets that lay silently on the stone steps of the dais.

"So be it," Sidious snarled. "Let your death be the final word in the story of rebellion."

As he spoke, Ben saw him lift his hands, the fingers stretched toward Rey. Violent bolts of lightning burst from the tyrant's fingertips, writhing through the air.

"No!" He shouted, the cry tearing at his raw throat.

But his voice was lost in the low rumble of thunder. He began to stumble forward, the pain in his leg coming in waves that made his vision blur and sent nausea curling through his stomach. But he kept going.

Be with me.

He fell, catching most of his weight on his shoulder, and the jolt sent a stab of pain into his ribs. He was up again in the next moment, reaching for the light side. Praying it would give him the strength to go just a little farther.

"Be with me."

The familiar words whispered around him once more, but spoken aloud in Rey's trembling voice instead of within his own mind. She repeated them again and again, strung together in a desperate prayer as she brought her saber up to meet Sidious' attack. There was a blue green flash as lightning crackled around her, wrapping her blade to be dispelled by the crystals cradled in the hilt of her weapon. Bolt after bolt followed the first, and Rey managed to stand beneath them all. But she was faltering. Losing ground. Sidious saw it and began to laugh.

"You are nothing!" he cried, "A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me!"

Ben increased his pace, pushing aside the agony of each step. His mind was focused elsewhere, drawn by the familiar pull of a Kyber crystal. A weapon. He needed a weapon. Ben flung out his hand, stretching for the Force. It came as he called it, and the saber cracked against his palm in the moment before he reached Rey's side.

Ben didn't hesitate.

In one motion, he ignited the weapon and stepped up beside Rey, swinging his saber in a wide arc to meet hers so that the two crossed before them. A shield to shelter behind. Only then did he realize that the blade he held was not his own.

The green glow of Luke's saber mingled with the yellow light of Rey's weapon to overwhelm the eerie flicker of lightning. Rey saw what had happened in the same moment he did, and her eyes snapped to find his. He nodded, the corner of his mouth rising by a fraction into something that was almost a smile. She noticed it, and a moment later, he felt her fingers sliding over his arm. He reached out to her and clasped her hand in his, taking a better hold on his saber with the other.

The moment their fingers entwined, Ben felt something straining at the back of his mind. Like a memory just out of his reach, it hovered there: a sensation both foreign and familiar. And then something inside of him shifted. There was a roaring in his ears like a great wind, and for one heartbeat he seemed to see the world through another set of eyes. Fear and grief that weren't his own constricted his chest, and his mind grew loud with the confused tangle of his own thoughts, and those of another.

Rey gasped at his side, a sound not of pain, but of utter relief. He felt it too; the sudden knitting of his soul with hers. Two becoming one once again. But the connection seemed to run so much deeper than before. The light side flowed through them and around them, like the very air they breathed. They were bound. Bound in body and spirit with bright cords that could not be severed.

Ben looked past their joined sabers to Sidious' startled expression and took a harder grip on his weapon. He didn't see so much as feel the flexion of Rey's fingers around the hilt of her own. The Force rippled out from them in response, and thin tendrils of Sidious' lightning began to twist away into the empty air as though bent by the magnetic fields of their sabers. Ben took a step forward, almost without realizing what he was doing. Beside him, Rey did the same, and Ben felt the Force surge around them again as the light rose against the darkness.

The writhing cords of lightning that stretched toward them from Sidious' fingertips turned back upon themselves, racing back over the distance they had traveled. For the briefest of moments, Ben saw Sidious' face fully illuminated, hideous and deformed. And terrified.

Then the lightning struck, coiling around him in arcs of white fire that singed flesh and opened wounds in the tyrant's newly restored body. Sidious' voice rose in a scream of agony and he staggered backwards, limbs jerking spasmodically. He collapsed against his throne, his features wasting before Ben's eyes, skin crumbling like dust from the pale bone of his skull.

The Force swept forward again, out from them towards Sidious, and there was a deafening roar of thunder almost directly overhead. The dais split into several pieces, and the many rayed throne disintegrated as a shaft of lightning blazed down from the sky. The world shook, and Ben was thrown backwards across the stone.

He rolled for several meters before he came to a stop in a shallow groove cut into the floor of the cavern. Around him, the world was falling to pieces, and he could hear the cries of thousands of voices raised in sudden panic. Lightning flashed so brightly that it dazzled his eyes, and it revealed huge chunks of stone as they fell from the ceiling into the rows of cloaked acolytes. Statues tumbled into ruin, and new fissures gaped wide all about him. But he couldn't seem to make himself understand any of it.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

The lightning died, and the thunder grumbled into silence. Ben's ears rang in the dust-clogged quiet, and he eased himself up on his elbows to look about him, coughing as he breathed in the thick air. The landscape around him had changed, so that he could recognize little. But then he turned and saw the dais. The stairs were no longer level, as though the earth had bucked and twisted beneath them, and fear like a shaft of ice pierced Ben.

Col…

It was in that moment, that he heard the cry.

He dragged himself upright, hissing as pain shot through his body, and his eyes snapped to where he last remembered seeing his son. Miraculously, the child still lay there wrapped in the dirty blanket, whimpering feebly, coated with dust, and shaking with cold, but otherwise unscathed. As Ben stared at him, he caught movement in the corner of his eye and turned his head to see Rey trying to get up from where she'd fallen, legs shaking beneath her. She staggered a step before they gave way, and she fell to her hands and knees, beginning to crawl toward Col instead, her fingers reaching desperately toward him.

Ben pushed himself unsteadily to his knees and began to inch his way over the rock toward them. Hot blood trickled down his temple and from a split in his lip, but he felt nothing. Adrenaline still coursed through his veins, dulling the pain that he knew would become excruciating in the hours ahead. But he didn't want to think that far into the future. Here, in this moment, his family was safe. He was safe.

He couldn't seem to grasp that one simple fact.

Col's cries grew louder as Rey reached him. She scooped him up and cradled him close against her chest, tucking his limp little body inside her tunic to warm him, making soft shushing noises. Ben saw tears shining on her cheeks and felt them burning in his own eyes, and he heard her thoughts whispering in his mind.

Free. We're free.

Despite the pain, and the memory of terrible fear, Ben felt his spirit rise. He glanced up to see patches of the sky between the clouds of dust, and the remnants of a great battle being fought. But instead of ships emblazoned with the strange symbol of the Sith Eternal, he saw the rayed sun of the First Order. He even spotted the Finalizer drifting far above him, swarms of the smaller TIEs darting here and there all around it as they hunted down the last of their enemies.

Grabbing hold of an enormous chunk of rock that had fallen from the cavern ceiling, Ben pulled himself up, balancing on his good leg as he stared at the scene playing out high above his head. He had no idea how it had happened, but somehow the First Order had come through. The Sith Eternal fleet was all but destroyed. As he gazed upwards, he realized that at long last, he could see an end to the battle. An end to the war. A new hope.

He'd forgotten what that felt like.

And yet something still felt wrong. He had just dropped his eyes back to focus on Rey and Col when he saw it. A slight disturbance among the floating particles of dust. A movement in the air that somehow didn't fit with the shifting breezes that rustled through the cavern. He peered closer, squinting.

Something was curling over the ground like smoke, and yet not like smoke, wavering and distorted like the heat haze rising from the sands of Jakku as the sun rose. It pulled at a memory: something he had seen but couldn't place. He watched as the strange haze drifted aimlessly through the shadows of the cavern.

Almost aimlessly.

It struck him all in one moment. It wasn't floating through the air without direction. It was heading straight for Rey. And he suddenly remembered where he had seen something like it before. In a memory of Snoke's throne room. He had seen it with his own eyes that first time, and he had not recognized it for what it was. Hadn't recognized the revelation of the terrible knowledge his Master had obtained.

The twisting vapor was the same as it had been then. Sidious. Sidious trying to return after his own body was relegated to dust once more. And there was only one that would be a suitable vessel.

"No," he whispered, eyes fixed on it as it reached toward Rey's back.

But she wasn't the goal. She had never been the goal, only a means to an end. There was no time. He had no strength left to do anything more than stagger forward, injured leg dragging behind him. He increased his pace, step hitching with every stride, as the cloud began to coalesce, curling in the air around Rey as though it were seeking an opening. His legs gave out under him and he collapsed to the stone, pushing himself up again as his knees struck and stumbling onward.

The spirit of Sidious was stretching toward Col now, one long tendril almost touching the child. Rey didn't seem to notice, hushing Col's frantic cries. In one swift movement, Ben hit his knees before her, wrapping her tightly with his arms so that her body was pressed tight to his, Col shielded between them.

In that moment, a cold unlike any he'd ever known crashed into his awareness. Darkness fell like a curtain in front of his eyes. He knew what was happening, but he didn't try to fight it. He couldn't.

He felt himself falling, and his limbs seemed heavy and useless. Rey was shouting something, shaking him. With every ounce of strength left to him, he reached out and ran his fingers over her face, feeling its familiar contours for the last time before it dropped to Col's tiny head.

"I haven't failed," he whispered.

And he found, for the first time in years, that he wasn't afraid.

And then the darkness swallowed him.