Rey takes a long, slow breath to allow herself time to think. There are two options. She can tell him that he is a galactic war criminal, captured by his enemies and about to face trial and execution, or she can tell him that he is a clone created by a power mad tyrant who planned to occupy his body and use it to rule the galaxy. Neither option is particularly appealing. Instead, she decides to stall, to see how much of his memory he has lost.
'What's the last thing you remember?' she asks.
He runs a hand through his hair. She doesn't recall Ben ever doing this, but for quite a lot of the time she'd known him he'd been wearing a mask, so this new habit may not be significant.
'I woke up on the floor. Then people started shooting at me. Why?' There is a hint of challenge in his tone, despite the restricted circumstances in which he finds himself.
'I think you surprised them, coming out of the smoke like that.' She doesn't mean to do it, but she runs her gaze down his chest as a flash of that image, all long limbs and curly hair burns in her mind's eye.
He flushes dully and looks away and she is ashamed for a moment. 'Who are you?' he asks bluntly and there is more than a hint of challenge now.
'I'm Rey.'
'Rey what?'
'Rey Skywalker.' This is a stupid thing to say, she realises. In fact, appropriating the Skywalker name when the last of them is not, in fact, dead, now seems more like an act of theft than the tribute she had intended it to be.
'Skywalker,' he muses. 'Like Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Knight.'
'Yes,' she breathes. 'Do you know him?' If there is anything that will jog his memory, it is surely this. She has seen the recordings of Crait and she knows that his last interaction with his uncle did not go well.
'I know of him,' he replies, with an indifferent shrug. 'Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, led a mission to destroy the first Death Star at the battle of Yavin, fought in the battle of Endor, opened the first Jedi training temple in the New Republic era, then disappeared. I assume you're his daughter.'
She waits for more, and she waits for so long that the silence grows uncomfortable.
'Did I get it wrong?' he asks, frowning.
'No, you're quite right. But – how do you know about Luke?'
'Does it matter?' he queries and he leans forward a fraction. 'Who am I, Rey Skywalker?'
His voice is taut, without the smug arrogance that characterised their interactions when he was Kylo Ren and she feels the frustration beneath it. 'That's what I'm here to find out,' she answers. 'You were found on a planet called Exegol. What do you remember of it?'
'Exegol,' he repeats. 'Location – Unknown Regions. Atmosphere – breathable. Points of interest – Hask desert, Hon Zduul plateau, Sadow escarpment, Sith Citadel.'
He sounds like an encyclopaedia. There doesn't seem to be any emotional attachment to his recitation of these facts. His expression does not shift, he does not display any flicker of awareness that this was the place that he fought and died.
'It is also,' he continues. 'Very cold.' That hint of challenge is back and the look he gives her makes her blush and glance away. 'I'm grateful for the clothes.'
She sits back. 'Do you remember what you were doing on Exegol?'
'I don't remember anything,' he replies, thrusting his hand through his hair in what she thinks must be a nervous tic. 'About myself, anyway. I remember that the people shooting at me were armed with Glie-44 blaster pistols manufactured by Eirriss Ryloth Defense Tech which is a model favoured by the Resistance. I also remember that this ship is a YC-123B transport hauler out of the Corellian Engineering Corporation, 27 metres long, equipped with CEC-3900hh ion engines, at least one of which has been damaged and requires heavy maintenance. By the state of the internal quarters I'd say this ship has seen better days and is probably nearing the end of its useful lifespan but that fact that it is still being used suggests that there are no credits to pay for maintenance or anything else, which again, points towards the Resistance. Luke Skywalker was also a well known Resistance sympathiser, which means that I'm being held prisoner by the Resistance, of which you are part. The fact that your friends tried to kill me without warning and that I was captured on a planet with a Sith Citadel, added to the fact that I appear to be able to repel blaster bolts with my mind leads me to believe that you think I'm your enemy, and you think I'm probably quite a powerful enemy at that.'
He leans forward to stab the table with his finger and the challenge in his tone has escalated into outright hostility. 'So I'll ask you again – who am I, Rey Skywalker?'
He is actually quite bright, Rey realises, and also quite observant. She has never considered what attributes he must have possessed to have made it to Supreme Leader but it appears that stupidity was not one of them. He is going to puzzle this out fairly quickly unless she does something to distract him. Given what she knows of his temper, if he doesn't regain his memory it is possible, likely even, that he will soon lose patience with her and attempt to fight his way out of captivity, in which case Poe will attempt to kill him. If he does remember who he is Poe will also attempt to kill him, although he will go through the farce of a trial first. Rey is starting to see that there is no way out of this that doesn't involve her doing something that the Resistance will have cause to regret.
She waggles her fingers and the canteen of water from which he drank earlier floats into the air.
He stares at it with an expression of wonder on his face. 'How are you doing that?'
'I'm a Jedi,' she answers. 'I'm controlling it with the Force.'
'I've heard of the Force,' he murmurs, without taking his eyes off the bottle.
She smiles as the enormity of the gift she has been given reveals itself. Here is a Ben Solo who has lost his memory in death, but seemingly retained everything else he had in life, his powers, his knowledge of the world around him, his intrinsic character. But he does not remember Kylo Ren, or any of the awful decisions that led him to become that persona in the first place – here is a Ben Solo who, until or unless his memories return, now has the opportunity to start again, to make different decisions. Here is a Ben Solo reborn.
'I don't know who you are,' she says, and she expects he will be able to sense the truth of her words. 'We've only just met, but I feel like we have a connection. You can use the Force, the same way I can, but there are two sides to it – powerful light, powerful dark - and it's up to you to choose a side. The people who shot at you – they weren't sure which side of the Force you're on.'
He considers this for a while. 'Is that why I'm being kept here? So that the Resistance can work out which side I'm on?'
'Exactly,' she smiles and gently lowers the bottle back onto the table.
'Will you teach me to do that?' he asks, with such hunger in his voice that she feels her smile broaden.
'Gladly. But not here. We need to find a safer place.' She suspects that his memories will return more quickly once he reconnects with his powers, and with her through the bond, but that is not something she wants to initiate here, when she knows that Poe is listening from the cockpit.
As if on cue, General Dameron's voice cuts through the speakers in the ceiling. 'Ask him if he remembers the name, Rey. The one Lando told you.'
She shakes her head. 'He won't, not yet. There's no point in asking.'
'There's no point in asking because he isn't who you think he is,' Poe's voice is hard. 'We should finish this now and tell everyone what we've done. Don't drag it out.'
Ben is glancing between her face and the ceiling and his brow is furrowed as he struggles to understand the riddles in which Poe speaks. 'Is that your commanding officer?' he asks.
'No one tells me what to do,' Rey replies, and this statement feels like a revelation. She has spent months falling into line, training to be a Jedi and getting blamed for it as if it were a selfish act. Now that she thinks about it, she feels as if her whole life has been a succession of other people deciding what she should do – from the parents who had left her, to her surrogate family with the Resistance, to her grandfather and the horror he had wanted to inflict. Now she is standing up for herself. 'We're leaving,' she says, to both the man in the room and the man in the ceiling.
She strides for the door, jamming it open with her mind as Poe attempts to seal it shut and once outside, she grabs her pack from the guardpost where she'd left it. 'Stay behind me and do exactly as I say,' she orders.
'Are you sure this is a good idea?' Ben seems surprisingly reluctant to follow her.
'Would you rather stay here and have people start shooting at you?'
'I suspect people will start shooting at me if I go with you,' he grumbles. 'How am I supposed to defend myself?'
'Just do what you did last time. Stand still and put your hands over your eyes.' She flicks him a smile.
'That isn't funny.' It doesn't sound like he has much of a sense of humour, but she suspects that has nothing to do with his memory loss.
She heads for the galley, tips out all the rations she can find into a spare pack and hands it to him. Then she makes for the main cargo compartment and appropriates the largest tent she can find, along with sleeping, cooking and medical equipment and anything else she thinks she might need for a protracted stay in a forest. She gives all the equipment to him to carry and he shoulders it without complaint. She is aware that Poe will have tripped the self destruct function and has probably left the ship already; there are likely to be only a few minutes more on the countdown, so she is annoyed when Ben hangs back at the top of the exit ramp.
'Why are you helping me escape?' he asks. 'You said the Resistance are holding me while they work out what side I'm on – if I escape won't that mean I've chosen the wrong side?'
She gives him another grin, but his face is serious. 'I don't care what they think. I already know what side you're on. Mine.'
'That remains to be seen,' he answers and her smile falls away. From his perspective, they have only just met and his words remind her that despite the fact he once died for her, she doesn't know Ben Solo very well at all.
She races down the ramp, hearing the heavy clang of his footsteps behind her and the minute the toe of her boot meets the damp mulch of the forest floor she realises she has made a mistake. General Dameron has had too much time to marshal his forces and there are a number of Resistance fighters stationed between the trees, all armed with blaster rifles. The aftermath of the party has probably prevented many more from joining, but there are enough to cause a problem, especially since Poe has placed them in a semi circle and Rey and Ben are threatened with muzzles on all sides.
'Rey,' yells Poe. 'Think about what you're doing. Don't throw your life away for him.'
Rey fumbles for Luke's lightsaber in her pack, depresses the switch and brings it up into a defensive posture. She can hear the muttering in the air, feel the restlessness of Poe's troops as they face a person they know is not an enemy. And then someone realises who is at Rey's side.
'That's Kylo Ren,' shouts a voice, and the shooting starts before Poe even has time to order it.
A beige blur in her vision is Ben ducking behind her as she whirls the saber, deflecting bolts into the ground. The air fills with the whine of plasma discharge, the shriek of high energy particle beams scorching the air as the forest turns white around her with the glow of so many weapons. She has to keep still and present as much of a shield as possible so that Ben will be safe behind it. His instinctive use of the Force on Exegol protected him before, but she does not dare trust to it again, and she will not allow him to die while she can find any means to prevent it.
A heavy hand lands on her shoulder, distracting her. 'Have you got another one of those?' he yells in her ear, pointing at the lightsaber. 'I want to help.'
Something in the air behind her shifts and she can feel that the engines on the transport are powering up as the self destruct programme reaches its final stage.
'When I say run, you run for the speeders,' shrugging him off, she nods over to the left.
'Yes, but Rey –'
'Ready?' There is so much energy building behind her it makes her teeth itch.
'But Rey –'
The energy reaches a crescendo, the dramatic wail of the engines now obvious to everyone in the landing area and the frequency of the blaster bolts begins to lessen as the Resistance fighters see the danger they are in and begin to back away. There is a moment of complete silence, and the forest holds its breath.
'Run!' she shouts, and sprints as fast as she can in the direction of two speeders tethered to their moorings across the other side of the clearing. After only a few paces she realises that she has utterly outpaced him, since she is running with the enhanced speed of the Force and Ben is struggling some way behind her with a heavy pack and an injured leg that she has completely forgotten.
The transport explodes and she sees it happen in slow motion, the moment of time elongated as blue flame blooms in the engine cavities, then spreads upwards and outwards, rippling through the hull and turning red as it passes. All the oxygen is sucked into the nascent explosion and Rey has a second in which to reach out her hand and yank Ben forward, out of the way, depositing him with an awkward tumble on top of the second speeder, while she vaults onto the first. There is a tremendous concussion as the ship begins to rip itself apart.
She fires up the repulsor engines, motions a hand to twitch the mooring cables out of the way and boots up the throttle, jetting off into the forest.
'But Rey –' Ben calls from behind her. 'I don't know how to fly.'
She looks back over her shoulder and he is just sitting there, a leg on either side of the craft, poking at a button with an expression which is half panic, half disgust. She has a sudden, fleeting desire for the Supreme Leader who once chased her in his TIE fighter over the Pasaana desert at low altitude and high speed to see what he has now become, and then she bites her lip and turns back. Behind the helpless pilot, Resistance soldiers who have been knocked flat by the power of the shuttle's destruction are crawling back to their feet, guns raising and even as she reaches Ben's speeder and stretches down for his hand, the blasters are beginning to fire.
Luckily, he has retained something of his previous athletic ability and he clambers onto the seat behind her nimbly enough and then his arms wrap around her waist and there is an explosion inside her nearly as powerful as that of the transport. She hurtles through the trees, dodging streamers of blaster fire as well as she is able and all the time she feels Ben's body against her back, warm and alive as his heart thuds in his chest and his breath is hot on her neck. He is alive, and they are free, free of the dirt of Exegol and the trauma of past sins, free of the Resistance, the First Order, the Jedi and the Sith, free of death and together as they were meant to be.
He leans forward and for a second she thinks he has remembered who he was, and he is going to tell her that he feels the same, but instead he shouts a question into her ear that she doesn't want to hear. 'Am I Kylo Ren?' he asks.
The world goes dim for a second and Rey's hands seem to be losing their grip as they fall from the controls and she finds herself relaxing, flopping bonelessly backwards against his chest as he gives a squawk of alarm and pushes forward, taking over the steering and, through a process of trial and error, locates the landing sequence. There is an odd roaring in her head and something seems to be wrong with her side, as it feels wet to the touch. She raises her hand to her face, finding that her fingers have been painted red for some unknown reason.
She says, 'Ben?'
'Am I Ben?' he asks immediately but she doesn't answer, because the trees around her have begun a slow and stately dance and the edges of her vision are going black and the very last thing she feels is his arms coming up to catch her as she falls.