He finds Rey in the conservatory, where she's watering her orchid, quietly talking to it. "I promise, we'll find your family. I won't let you be alone," she says softly.
It hits him then, what this must trigger for Rey, caring for an orchid separated from its creche. They need each other and he thinks, perhaps, this could be good for her. Help her voice the pain that's always just under the surface of her joyful exuberance.
"Rey," he says gently.
She looks up and the smile that fills her face makes his breath hitch. How can she always be so incomprehensibly lovely? It's as if someone had searched through him for the very definition of beauty and created her from whole cloth. For him.
But it's not just the sculpted form of her face, or the perfection of her body. It's so much more than that. He imagines he can see her very soul, and it's magnificent. Who knows, maybe he can. Maybe he sees Rey in a way no one else can.
He likes that, the idea that there's an aspect of Rey that's only his.
"How is your flower?" he asks.
"It's still sad, but I think we're really bonding. I swear it moved when I came into the room, and I could feel gratitude when I misted it." She frowns slightly. "I don't know if I like thinking of it as an 'it'."
"Then don't. They're looking lovely today."
"Hmm, yes." She smiles at him again and he still can't believe he's managed to not only find, but to keep such a creature. "Well, they're still worried, and more of the creche has lost their Force. We need to try and find a way to go to Kamino."
"Let's talk to my parents at dinner."
"Where's Poe?" Rey asks.
"Oh, he stayed behind at the shipyard—we went while you were sleeping. He wanted to get to know the ship and the droid before heading out tomorrow."
"Speaking of his mission," Ben segues. "Dad, any luck enticing the Kamino on another shipment of orchids?"
"Not sure yet. I put the word out I had more at a good price, we'll see if they bite."
His father had spent the rest of the afternoon cooking, and Ben had nearly groaned in pleasure when he'd had his first taste of the roasted nerf with honey and grapings. His dad had very obviously poured his love for his family, for Ben, into this meal.
Rey puts down her fork, the first time she's stopped eating since the meal began. "Couldn't we … I don't know, sneak in?" Her face is tight with concern.
Han purses his lips. "I dunno about that. We're already going to have to do some fast talkin' to get inside as it is."
"Between the two of us, Ben and I should be able to Jedi mind trick just about anyone. Palpatine," She stops and swallows obviously. "He said … he said that the power of our dyad was the power of life itself. That has to mean something," she pleads.
Frowning, Han looks deeply into Ben's eyes. "I'd just feel better if we handle it my way."
Leia reaches for her husband and takes his hand. It's a tender gesture that makes Ben understand just how shaken his father still is from the events of the afternoon.
"But we could be too late!" Rey cries and Han's frown deepens.
Ben turns to Rey, "Sweetheart, I know you're worried about the orchids, but they are … well they are just plants."
Her eyes flare and she spits, "And I suppose I'm just an orphan?!"
Ben pulls back, shocked by her vitriol. "You know that's not what I meant," he says slowly.
"They're suffering!"
"I know, but we have to focus on the end goal," Ben reasons.
Her face screws up in conflict and anguish, then she throws down her napkin and runs from the dining room.
"I, uh—" Ben stutters.
"Go," Leia presses.
He leaps from his chair and follows closely on Rey's heels.
She runs straight for the conservatory and he finds her cradling her orchid in her laps, sitting cross legged on the floor. Her eyes are vacant and dry, which surprises him. He'd expected to find her weeping.
"Rey?" His voice is cautious but full of longing.
"Yeah," she responds with a dull tone.
"What … what happened back there?"
She just shakes her head and Ben makes a frustrated face. She never lets him in, not really. His heart sinks into his belly and he's filled a heavy sorrow. What if she never does?
"Please … talk to me," he pleads as he takes his place next to her on the hard surface.
"What is there to say? You'll never understand." There's a depth of bitterness to her tone that throws him.
"I'd like to try," he coaxes.
"You already know I was an orphan, that I grew up with no one, a slave to Unkar Plutt. There's not really anything else to tell."
"And you were waiting for your family."
"My dead family," she scoffs. Then her face crumples into a sickened expression. "Well except my insane grandfather who never wanted me anyway. Who took them away from me."
"Saving the rest of the creche won't change that," he offers.
"I know … I just … I just wish someone had tried. For me."
"If I'd known, I would have stolen the Falcon and come for you. I was 15 …" That gives him pause. He'd had a serious episode that year. It had been the first time he'd given into the voice and used the dark side.
Now her eyes do grow damp and she smiles slightly. "I know you would have."
"And Rey … I do know what it's like to be isolated and alone. I know what it is to feel like you're caving in from the inside because you have nothing and no one."
"But you had your parents," she argues, seeming affronted on their behalf.
Ben can only snort. "No, I really didn't. We … we weren't like we are now. I was raised by droids. You were raised by the sands. They're both empty."
Her cheeks stain pink. "I hadn't thought of it like that …"
"I'm not trying to compare it, I know we both had our own paths. I just … I wish you'd talk to me. Really talk to me." He leans towards her, but doesn't touch her. Not yet.
"I want to," she admits in a small voice. "But I don't have the words. I don't know how to explain what it was like. It's never enough and somehow also makes it sound so …" She trails off and mumbles, "It was just my life."
"Could you show me?" he asks.
"Show you?"
"Share a memory."
"Let you in my head?" she asks with real fear, which only highlights how much she still doesn't trust him with her whole self.
"I don't … I don't mean like … like before," he says lamely, referencing how he'd broken through her defenses and took her secrets.
"You mean through our bond," she says, understanding dawning on her face.
He nods, hoping she'll let him in, finally let him in.
"I could … I could do that." Her face shifts to wariness. "But don't go snooping."
"I would never do that." They both realize the lie in his statement and his cheeks heat with shame. "Again," he amends.
But instead of remonstration, she sets aside her orchid and takes his hand before saying, "I know. I know, Ben."
"I'm so sorry—"
"Shhh," she soothes, placing her fingertips against his lips. "You've apologized enough. I know you won't do it again."
He takes the hand against his mouth and curls her fingers, kissing them. Then he looks into her eyes, pushing his sincerity through their connection. "Do you? Really? Do you know how much I regret ever having done that to you?"
She nods, her eyes wide and full of emotion. "I do. Do you know how much I regret not telling you everything from the beginning?"
They haven't talked much about this, and he's surprised by how her eyes are pleading with him. "I didn't, but … thank you."
"I know I pushed you too far—"
"No," he cuts her off. "Never excuse me for that. Never," he proclaims with a hard tone.
Again, she nods, and then she releases his hands. "Sit across from me," she requests.
He scooches around and mirrors her position on the floor while she holds up her palms, gesturing for him to place his against them. As soon as their skin touches, he's flooded with her. It's never been quite this intense outside of their bed and he gasps at the rush.
She winds around every cell, somehow permeating his very being. It's like when she finds her release and cascades through him, but it's purer somehow, without the physical distraction. Then everything shifts and his understanding of pain and loneliness changes forever.
It's like he's being scoured by the very sands of Jakku. He didn't know he could feel so hollow. The hunger … no, the starvation cores him out and he feels his eyes fill with tears.
The bleakness of dragging herself through the dead tombs of a long-dead empire, desperate for something, anything to fill her belly. The grotesque skeletons and empty armor, filling her life with death. The death that stalks her.
Then the night comes, and it all grows that much more terrifying. No one is coming. There's no hope. No relief. Relentless, constant agony as she shares with him the memories of her endless nights.
Methodically scratching the days into a wall, trying to find it inside to keep believing.
His jaw clenches when he feels her fly back, felled by the blow of Unkar Plutt when she's but a slip of a thing. She's so powerless, nowhere to run, no warmth to be found. Though, it's the cruel laughter, the taunting words that rip into his sense of everything right and decent in the galaxy.
You're no one.
You're nothing.
No one will ever want you.
But then he feels it, that defiant glow at her center. A defiance he never had.
My family is coming!
They love me!
I am someone!
I'm Rey!
She's right. There are no words to describe the feelings she'd shared with him. And that that had been her life, every day, the sheer hopelessness is breathtaking. Yet, she'd held onto that breathing, living fire inside her. She never let it go out. For 15 years.
Her strength … it defies comprehension. She glows with that core that can't be extinguished, and he's in awe. Somehow, she was even stronger than he'd ever imagined, and he's filled with shame at his own inadequacy.
Rey never would have bent to Snoke.
Slowly, deftly, gently she pulls out of his mind and he's left bereft from the loss of her. Even with the pain she'd endured, shared with him, he never wants her to leave his center.
Back in the conservatory, with Rey, he blinks rapidly, trying to find a way to tell her that he understands. But all he can discern is the simple truth of everything.
"I love you."
As he holds her sleeping form, his mind tumbles over the bleakness she'd revealed and he wonders if his future self had ever known half-so-much about her. It makes him a bit smug. She might still miss this other version of himself, might grieve for him, but Rey is so much more his than she'd ever been that stranger's.
As far as he can tell, they'd never really had a conversation, not a real one. They'd never delved into what's between them, caught forever in that place of feeling the pull, never knowing if their all-consuming feelings were returned.
He can imagine what it must have done to his older self. While he'd like to believe he'd grown more able to control his emotions by the time he'd met Rey in the future, somehow, he knows that, without Rey, that's simply impossible.
What must it have been like to throw himself into the dark, mercilessly stab the light through? Turn his back on everything he'd known, everyone he'd thought had already abandoned him? Before Rey, it's all too easy to see how tempting that would be. How he'd already been struggling when she'd swept away his anguish.
Because he does know solitude. Not her relentless suffering, but the feeling of being alone, so bitterly alone. He was surrounded by people, but he'd been lost, untethered. Casting about wildly for his other half.
He's certain they were so isolated because they knew, they must have known, deep down, that they were not whole. Half a soul, such an unnatural state.
She'd tried to fill it with fantasies of long-murdered parents. He'd filled it with the dark side.
He lets out a long sigh and strokes her sleeping form, needing her comfort. He almost wakes her up, just so he can see her eyes, taste her lips, but he knows she needs her sleep after their ordeal today. They both do.
Huffing a frustrated sound, he settles in next to her, pulling her closer. He needs to sleep.
But his thoughts are haunted by the path he'll never take until sleep finally pulls him under.
"I'm sorry for getting so upset yesterday," Rey says at breakfast the next morning.
"Huh?" Poe grunts while plowing through a huge pile of wintu eggs.
"Neither of you need to worry about it," Leia says in a tone that ends the conversation. Rey looks down, clearly still feeling badly for her outburst and Poe just shrugs, going back to eating.
"Well, I did hear back from a contact last night. I think we're going to be heading to Kamino in the next few days," Han offers, picking up a new subject.
"Really?" Rey's head snaps up, looking heart-achingly hopeful. Ben finds he, too, is eager to find out just what is going on there.
But Leia frowns. "I've been thinking, and I'm not sure it's such a good idea for the two of you to go with Han. His father takes in a deep breath and looks towards the ceiling, obviously relieved. "I know you're strong, incredibly so, together, but that you're so vulnerable to Snoke concerns me."
Ben's lips make a hard line. "Mom, no. We're going." Snoke has done too much to him, and Palpatine, well for what he's done to Rey alone, Ben needs to remove his spine.
Leia, however, sits straighter and uses her senator voice when she says, "I think I know what I'm talking about."
"With all the considerable respect that is due, I'm the one who had Snoke in my head my whole life and where I go, Rey goes," he responds with just as much confidence. He feels Rey's hand in his under the table.
Leia stands, all regal officiousness, and looks at Ben for a long time. "May I speak with you? Alone?"
Feeling like the little boy who left this very apartment nine years ago, Ben nods stiffly and follows his mother.
As he'd walked to her office, trailing behind her rigid back, he'd been getting ready for a fight. Yes, he'd prefer Rey stay behind, but she deserves her justice, too. He won't take that from her. Besides, he believes in her strength even more than he believes in his own abilities.
But as soon as Leia closes her office door behind him, he finds her eyes pleading and her hands extended in entreaty.
"Ben … Son … Please, let me protect you, finally protect you. The way I should have."
Oh. Oh! Is that why she doesn't want them to go? It's not that she doubts them, it's that she wants him safe.
"Mom, this is something I have to do. And Rey needs it, too. From since I had memory, that man has been lurking in my head, twisting everything, keeping me from talking to you."
"I know … but you're my only child. I've already failed you, so completely. Please, at least let me do this." Her eyes shine with guilt and pain.
"We're averting a war … people will get hurt, maybe even die. But you don't … you don't understand what he took from me."
"Then tell me," she pleads.
"Just … just imagine how different our lives would be if I had been free of his taint. I wouldn't have hidden everything from you. I might have told you how much you were hurting me by being away so much."
"You shouldn't have had to. I just … I thought I'd be able to make it up to you, but then you were with Luke." Her hands flail helplessly.
Grinding his teeth, he points out, "You sent me to Luke."
"I didn't know what else to do!"
Ben takes a deep breath and reins in his hurt. "We don't need to rehash this. Just … I could have stayed with you if it weren't for Snoke."
Leia blinks. "I hadn't … I hadn't thought of that."
"I know. That's why I have to do this. He took my happiness from me. My sense of safety. Hell, my sense of self! I have to Mom. I have to."
After a long moment where they hold each other's eyes with stubbornness, she fiercely declares, "Well, then I'm coming with you." He starts to speak, but she cuts him off with, "He tormented my baby boy, and I won't let you face this without your whole family around you."
Now it's his turn to feel uneasy. His mother isn't as young as she used to be and he's not sure when she last held a blaster. His dad, well, he knows he can still handle himself.
"Mom—"
"You go, I go. That's the deal," Leia says firmly.
Ben knows better than to argue with his mother when she has that look on her face and he just sighs. "Yeah, okay."
As they walk back towards the dining room, he hears voices coming from the family room. His stomach sinks as he recognizes one frustratingly familiar timbre.
When they turn the corner, Ben's worst fears are confirmed.
Luke Skywalker.
His uncle.
A/N: Thank you, ArtemisBare, who is battling food poisoning while caring for twins and STILL read this for me!
Thank you, Readers! We're beginning our crawl up Plot Mountain, so in theory we're entering the final act. I know, famous last words. Thank you all for being so supportive and just tremendous!
