Rey kneels at the ruins of the temple, tears streaming down her face. She doesn't even care that legendary Jedi master Luke Skywalker is watching her sobbing openly, mourning people she had never met and a life that was never hers.
She thought of Hennix and his humor, Voe and her ambition, and Tai and his kindness. She had seen them only a few months ago, and yet, they had been dead for three years.
At last, she puts the thought into words.
"So… I was swapping with the Ben from three years ago?"
She heard Luke's footsteps as he approached and kneeled next to her.
"Yes," he replied softly. "I severed your connection, thinking that you were perhaps another dark influence. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had let it persist. Maybe it all would have been different."
"Do you have anything of his?" She asks abruptly, unsure what prompted her.
Luke hesitates a moment, before reaching into his robe and withdrawing a white ribbon.
"He used to wear this on his wrist, every single day. I asked him where he got it once, and he couldn't seem to recall. Still, he never took it off. I found it in the rubble afterward."
Rey was hardly listening, her gaze focused on the familiar fabric as a memory consumed her.
"Rey… Rey…"
Somebody's calling her name. It's a boy's voice.
"Rey, Rey!"
His voice is earnest, pleading, as if he's about to cry. A voice trembling with loneliness, like the glimmer of distant stars.
Rey wakes up.
…That's right. She's sleeping in the freighter again. She knows that Luke is nearby, most likely also asleep, on his own ship.
She sits up, the rustle of her clothes loud enough to startle her in the silence. Outside the window, the world is just beginning to shake off the darkness.
Rey looks at the white ribbon she has tied to her wrist. The faint echoes of Ben's voice linger in her ears, and she is compelled to get up.
Her feet carry her from the freighter and toward the ruins of the temple. She walks a familiar path, albeit in a new body, that takes her to Ben's hut - or what's left of it, at least.
She sits cross-legged in the center of the rubble, clutching tight to the little scrap of fabric, the only thing that remains of her connection to Ben. Suddenly, she recalls her lesson with Luke, the day he had severed their connection.
Holding the ribbon in front of her, Rey closes her eyes.
What do you see? Luke's voice echoes in her mind.
Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence
And between it all?
Balance. An energy, and a… connection.
That was new.
Rey's brow furrowed as she concentrated on the new sensation. The white ribbon began to warm in her hands, and her heart began to pound.
"Please, take me back," she murmurs. "Just one more time."
For a little while, she sits perfectly still. She feels a little warm, and her head feels slightly vague and dizzy… but that's all. It didn't work.
She puts one knee up, then stands. Abruptly, her feet tangle. Her vision spins.
I'm falling, she thinks.
…That's strange.
She's fallen over backwards, but no matter how much time passes, her back doesn't hit the ground. Her field of view rotates, until she is staring up at the night sky.
The glimmer of distant stars.
Her head hits the floor.
Falling forever. Or maybe rising.
In the midst of this indistinct floating sensation, a light shines in the night sky. Without warning, it splits in half.
Rey hears a baby crying.
"Your name is Ben."
There is a brutal sensation, as if part of her has been ripped out.
Even though they were two who lived as one in the beginning, even though they were still connected, they too were severed as they fell into life.
"Tell that to the little bandit."
"I think you mean the little angel."
A young couple converses. They are cooing over a baby.
The baby grows into a young boy. The young couple grows older too, and with their age develops tension. The woman has a prestigious job. The man is prone to nights out on the town. The son is alone.
Feelings of abandonment haunt him. Then come the voices.
These are…
…Ben's memories?
As if she is being swept along helplessly by a storm-swollen torrent, she experiences Ben's life.
The boy leaves home on the wings of his parents' worst fears. His uncle is better, if only slightly. He learns and he trains. He makes friends. But he is different.
His friends don't hear voices.
He goes on adventures with his uncle, seeking out relics of the Jedi order. They encounter a group called the Knights of Ren and they fight. The leader invites the boy to join them one day, and he knows that these people are the same kind of dark and twisted as the whispers in his mind.
He knows that these people are like him. Still, he spits on the ground as the knights limp away from their confrontation.
Then come the days she already knows, the swapped days.
Ben comes back to himself alone in his own hut, Luke having left after expelling Rey from his nephew's body. He raises a hand to his cheek, and finds tears there.
Later, he tells his friends that he's taking a ship to Jakku.
The boy goes to bed. Then he wakes.
His uncle stands above him with a weapon. The boy parries, and brings the hut down on top of them, crawling out of the rubble alone.
He thinks that he has killed him. He is angry and he is mourning. His eyes glow, he lets out a scream, and lightning strikes the Jedi temple, setting it ablaze. He runs towards the flames.
Something explodes, and he is thrown backwards. He is surrounded by bodies. His classmates.
This isn't what he wanted.
He is pursued by Hennix, Tai and Voe when he leaves the planet. He kills Hennix by accident, deflecting his own lightsaber back at him while levitating Voe to keep her from falling off the cliff they are battling on.
He doesn't want his friends to get hurt. But his intentions don't matter.
He seeks out the Knights of Ren, and his other friends follow with the intent to stop him. Tai is killed by their leader, and the leader is killed by Ben.
He is the master of the Knights of Ren. He kills Voe, and this time, the death is intentional.
Stop, Rey wanted to beg him. Stop, please.
So much death. So much destruction.
Stop this.
No matter how much she begs, he cannot hear her.
She is the wind that stirs his hair. She is the reflection in the water as he contemplates the horizon. She is everything and nothing all at once.
She is on the other side of the galaxy, growing up on a desolate planet all alone, far from the events she is witnessing.
Ben, she screams at the top of her lungs. Ben!
She is falling.