She tries for a laugh but it sounds awkward even to her ears. 'Lightsabers don't have crossguards. Not proper lightsabers anyway. Excuse me.' She hurries to the fresher and seals herself into the only place he won't be able to sneak up on her.

Then she cries. She doesn't recognise herself and she is beginning to be afraid of the person she is becoming. The loss of control she has just exhibited in the middle of a training duel, when, as the master, she should have been modelling correct behaviour and demonstrating how to be a Jedi to her student is the same lapse of judgement she made when choking Poe. She isn't sure where these emotions are coming from, but they are frightening – the anger she feels, the fury that springs from nowhere and does such damage – these do not feel like they belong to Rey Skywalker. Perhaps she is Rey Palpatine after all.

She wipes her face and straightens her hair in the mirror. She has been through so much, maybe the effort of holding herself together is starting to show. She died, she loved and she lost all in one day and yet she is still expected to be the adult in this situation, when all she feels like doing at the moment is crawling back to Ahch-To and asking Luke to tell her where she went wrong. She cannot possibly be expected to help Ben when she is apparently so much in need of help herself.

She exits the fresher and he looks up immediately, although one of the textbooks is open in front of him again; she feels his eyes on her as she marches to the tent and retrieves Anakin's lightsaber from her pack.

'Here,' she says, handing it to him. 'You're right, I've been treating you like a child. This is yours.'

He is supposed to be her other half, the matching part of the dyad, and although she has never understood what that means she decides it is time she learnt, and that starts with treating him more like an equal than a patient.

'Thank you, Master Skywalker,' he says, his dark eyes the size of small moons.

'Don't call me that,' she snaps, because the name sounds so wrong on his lips and the more time passes the more she thinks she never deserved to take that name in the first place.

'No, Master Skywalker,' he repeats, solemnly, taking the lightsaber from her as if it is a religious artefact.

'I think we should find the nearest town,' she suggests, wanting suddenly to get out of this camp and somewhere she can forget who she is supposed to be for a while. 'You need clothes and I need…company.'

There is a flash of something across his face, a look of hurt which is quickly buried and he bows his head to hide it. 'I'm ready to go now, if you like.' Standing, he clips the lightsaber to his belt where it belongs.

'The closest settlement is a two-hour ride away.' She heads for the speeder, suddenly all business. 'I've programmed the co-ordinates already. According to the navcomp it's a small logging town, with a trade area and a leisure complex so it'll have everything we need. The population is primarily Caphex, with a Reesarian presence so we shouldn't have any problems as long as we keep our heads down and don't cause any trouble.' With a significant look, she throws her lightsaber in her backpack and waits for him to do the same. 'Aside from the supplies, the most important thing we need is information. We escaped from the Resistance and I need to know if they've put a bounty on us, or if they'll just try to recapture us on their own. I imagine that'll depend on how well the clean-up operation with the First Order is going. If they're busy, they may well leave us alone, or they may be out hunting us right now – if that's the case we need to think about getting off-world as soon as possible.'

She slings a leg over the speeder and he settles in behind her easily enough, taking a loose grip on her waist without complaint. 'What do you mean – clean-up operation?'

She spends the rest of the journey filling him in on recent events, since, from the questions he asks, he appears to have no knowledge of the battle of Exegol, or even that of Crait, and the revelation that Starkiller Base has been destroyed also comes as a surprise. She relates these events dispassionately, focusing on armaments and troop movements, ships and commanders, as if she is reciting from a textbook and she does not mention her own role in proceedings, or that of his family. She tells him nothing with any personal connection and she is careful to refer to 'Supreme Leader Kylo Ren' at all times. She does not mention her own lineage and nor does she relate how either of them died. By the end of the journey she is starting to wonder how much longer it will be before he remembers these things on his own and how much longer she will have to carry the burden of all of this without someone to talk to about it. She knows of no one else apart from him who has come back from the dead, and she badly wants to share her experience, to see if together they can work out what has gone wrong.

The little town in the middle of the jungle is built entirely out of wood. Rey moors the speeder to a post at the back of a crowded landing strip and sets the restraining bolts so that no one can misappropriate it while they are away. She raises her hood, just in case her face has been broadcast on HoloNet and Ben looks concerned for a while before his face relaxes, and then ripples slightly right in front of her eyes. She can sense him using the Force, but she isn't sure what part of the textbooks he is channelling now.

'Alter image,' he confides, with a trace of smugness. 'I should appear to you as a small, pre-pubescent female Caphex.'

She squints, but she cannot see any trace of this projection, which will affect the minds of everyone who sees him. His skin should be pale grey, and he should be sporting huge triangular sideburns around a flattened nose and large black eyes, but it is likely that this trick, if it is working at all, is not working on her. 'You look like a well fed, large nosed, slightly awkward Chandrilan male to me, with the biggest hands I've ever seen.'

'Chandrila,' he repeats. 'Location – Core Worlds. Atmosphere – breathable. Points of interest – Junari Point, Lake Andrasha, Sarini Island, Silver Sea. What makes you think I'm from Chandrila?'

'Just leave it,' she says, leading the way along a street surfaced with wood chippings and up the rough-hewn steps to the threshold of the first shop. It is only when she passes the doorway that she realises there is going to be a problem.

'Greetings to you,' the shopkeeper spreads his arms in welcome. He glances at Rey, his sideburns twitching as a friendly smile stretches his mouth and then he turns to Ben and his eyes glaze over slightly. 'And to your friend,' he adds, in a slightly less friendly manner.

'I don't think it's working,' Ben mutters from the corner of his mouth.

The shop is dark inside, lit by the murk of old fashioned tallow candles, with a couple of flickering glowpanels to supplement the meagre light. The darkness can't hide the scant amount of stock hanging on rails around the walls, or conceal the fraying edges of the shopkeeper's robes or the chipped paint on the counter. Rey feels so guilty she is tempted to leave, but Ben is already stepping forward.

'I'm in search of clothing,' he says in his usual baritone and the shopkeeper blinks rapidly, presumably attempting to reconcile this with the piping voice of a pre-pubescent female Caphex. 'Do you have anything that might be suitable?'

'Of course, of course,' the merchant moves towards the right-hand side of the counter and from underneath withdraws the kind of short, demure frock, complete with shoulder ruffles and integral flouncy hood which any self-respecting pre-pubescent female Caphex would be proud to own.

'That's – er – lovely,' flounders Ben.

Rey waves a hand. 'Maybe you have something else out back.'

'Maybe I have something else out back,' repeats the shopkeeper and then disappears into his storeroom.

'Idiot,' hisses Rey. 'Think of a better disguise.'

'How about this?' he hisses back, and there is that rippling effect around his face again. 'I should look like an older, male Reesarian, just taller than six feet, with long hair and a chest as broad as a tree trunk.'

She shoots him a look. 'Average looking Corellian male, needs a haircut.'

'Corellia,' he repeats. 'Location – Core Worlds. Atmosphere – breathable. Points of interest – Gilded Descent Casino, Navigation Institute, Santhe Shipyards. Why am I from Corellia now?'

'Sssshhhh – he's coming back.'

The shopkeeper returns bearing what appear to be pink culottes, with matching stockings. 'What happened to your friend?' he asks, glancing up at the red skinned, dreadlocked alien with the piercing blue eyes.

'She had to leave,' Rey apologises. 'Can you find some clothes for him instead? Trousers, shirt and jacket, any colour but black.'

This time the shopkeeper whips out a tape measure and Ben's Force powers are put to the test as he is measured and then whisked away to a changing room to try on a new outfit. Rey counts through the credit chips in her backpack while he is gone, shaking her head. He returns looking satisfied and dumps a handful of smaller garments onto the counter while the shopkeeper rings up the total and put everything into a bag.

Rey waves a hand. 'Thank you for your payment, have a nice day.'

'Thank you for your payment, have a nice day,' repeats the man at the till.

Ben tries to butt in, 'But we haven't…'

Rey stands on his foot and he holds his tongue until they are outside the shop. 'That isn't the Jedi way,' he says reprovingly. 'That was stealing. We should go back in there and pay.'

'We don't have any credits. I can't use my account because if I do the Resistance will know where we are straightaway and all I have left is some small change that we're going to need to buy food.'

'But it's not right. He's poor.'

'So are we,' Rey snaps. 'Perhaps you should have thought of that before getting yourself captured, Prince of Alderaan.'

'Alderaan,' he repeats. 'Location: nowhere. It hasn't existed in what – more than thirty years? Chandrila and Corellia I can understand – I'm humanoid, Basic speaking, Core Worlds accent, but Alderaan? Why would you imagine I come from there?'

'And,' Rey continues, ignoring him. 'What gives you the right to lecture me about the Jedi way? Last time I looked you weren't a Jedi, you've spent half an hour looking at a book and I donated you a second-hand lightsaber. That doesn't make you a Jedi.'

The anger is back, rising within her no matter how hard she tries to force it down. She knows that it isn't him she is angry with, but herself, and that only seems to make the rage worse.

'Given that the choices seem to be Jedi or Sith, which would you rather I be?' he responds mildly. 'I thought you said I was heading for the dark side so I've been trying to take the other path but if you'd prefer me as a Sith I can do that instead.'

'Fine,' she says, pouring out all the credit chips she possesses and dropping them into his hands. 'There's a market. You do better.'

He doesn't reply but trots happily up the stairs of another of the long, low Caphex buildings, this one open to the elements and full of individual stalls, on which meat and produce are displayed on planks. It is noisy inside as the traders singsong their wares and Rey hangs around the outside, picking desultorily at unripe fruit, batting flies away from hanging birds. She catches the odd glimpse of Ben as he moves through the throng and every time she sees him he is smiling. Jealousy sparks in her chest that he is now sharing the gift he had only given her with random alien strangers in a market and she begins to follow him, meaning to shout at him, or pull him away, or something, but as soon as she gets close she realises how wrong that reaction would be.

He is conversing with these people not in Basic, but in their native language, in which he appears to be fluent, asking them questions and showing an interest in the answers. She backs off, conscious that she is overreacting and feeling ashamed of herself once again. At length he returns, laden with far more bags than she would have expected for the credits he had and he holds out his hand to show her the change, the smile still lingering in his eyes.

At the end of her acrimonious breakup with Finn, Rose Tico was fond of saying – when someone shows you who they are, believe them. As Rey watches Ben turn out of the market and into the nearest drinking establishment she realises he is showing her who he is. Intelligent, observant and good with people. How many awful things must have happened to him, she wonders, to turn the Ben Solo in front of her into the monster that was Kylo Ren? Her heart squeezes tight in her chest for him, although he is holding the door patiently, without a care in the world. How hard will it be for him to have to remember all that trauma? Does he even want to – is that why his memories are so slow to return? And if he doesn't remember, how much longer can she carry the secret on her own?

She follows him into another dimly lit interior, this one with small clusters of chairs and tables around a central, circular construction, on which a series of bottles, jars and cannisters are laid out. A fellow Reesarian behind the bar gives Ben a companionable nod as he chooses a table and pulls out her chair.

'What will you have?'

'Firewater. A large one.' Rey is clearly not going to live the rest of her life tee-total, because when he returns from the bar bearing a glass of the potent brew and another of water, she downs the alcohol in one.

Ben signals for another.

'Aren't you drinking?' The question is almost an accusation.

He shakes his head. 'I prefer not to be out of control.'

She snorts with the irony of that and then downs the second glass when his friend at the bar brings it over.

'I don't know you very well,' Ben starts quietly. 'But even I can tell that there's something the matter. Are you going to explain what it is?'

She nods at the barman for a refill, the burn down her throat fading too rapidly. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

He runs a hand through his hair. 'You seem… angry. Over the slightest of things and with no rational reason. I thought you were going to knock my head off this afternoon. You said you wouldn't sleep with me if I paid you, and yet you want 'company' so we're in a bar where I'm presumably supposed to make myself scarce while you find a clean looking Reesarian. That doesn't strike me as rational behaviour. And you rescued me, a complete stranger, from your friends out of the goodness of your heart for no very rational reason that I can see either. So yes, I do think there's something the matter. And I think I know what it is. I think it's grief. I think you lost someone close to you and you don't know how to deal with it.'

The barman delivers a bottle, and Ben whispers something to him before he leaves. Within a couple of seconds, the bar is filled with background music from one of the HoloNet channels, which effectively covers their conversation from the risk that anyone may overhear.

He leans forward and fixes her with eyes she has gazed into many times, the ones that always seem to be so full of pain. It is no different now, although the sadness he feels is for her. 'I don't know about grief,' he says. 'I mean, I may do, I may have lost my entire family and I just don't remember it but I do know that you can't just bottle up your feelings and expect them to go away. Hurt like that doesn't just disappear, it turns inwards, it'll eat you up if you let it.' He pushes the bottle towards her. 'So let it out. Tell me about him. Tell me about Ben.'

She nearly laughs, turns it into an awkward cough instead, because he is expecting her to admit that she mourns for him, when he is sitting right across the table and he hasn't gone anywhere. But this is not her Ben. As she stares into his eyes she realises that. This man is intelligent, observant, good with people and he is also kind, but he is not the tortured soul she loved. He is not the Ben she wanted to save. That man is gone.

'What does 'little starfighter' mean to you?' she blurts out, Lando's code name finally crossing her lips.

He frowns. 'Nothing. Should it?'

A fat boil of anguish rises within her and when it pops, the sorrow she has carried with her from Exegol comes oozing out, dripping from her mouth in words that leave a foul taste. 'Ben is dead. He died for me. I did something awful to him, but he came back to save me anyway. I was lost, and he found me, but he died doing it. He died because he loved me. I couldn't stop it happening, he was dead before I realised what was going on and I can't bring him back. I want to, but I don't know how.'

She finds her hands are over her face and there are tears pouring between her fingers. 'We had so little time, it wasn't fair. And now he's gone and there's something wrong with me. I've changed. I keep getting angry, and hurting people and I'm so alone.'

There are arms around her and now she is crying into a chest, a chest which is warm and alive and strong enough to support her and she wants to rest on it forever.

'You're not alone,' he says, and makes the whole thing worse.

She cries harder, sobbing in a way she can't remember doing before and while it is painful it is also cathartic, because she is lancing a boil which has been throbbing inside her for days.

'And there's nothing wrong with you either.' His chest rumbles beneath her ear. 'You've been through so much, give yourself time to heal.' A hand is stroking her back. 'I'm not going anywhere.'

'Kylo Ren,' calls a voice from across the room and Rey snaps upright in Ben's arms, because she knows that voice, and she knows it means they have been found.

Pushing tears from blurred eyes she seeks the speaker, pulling out of Ben's damp embrace with her hand dropping to her lightsaber. But there is no one there, and she realises that the voice is coming from HoloNet, which has been playing in the background all this time and has now been interrupted by the face of General Poe Dameron, projecting an emergency message to interrupt all channels.

'Ex-Supreme Leader of the First Order has escaped,' continues the recording. 'The Resistance has learned that the tyrant Kylo Ren, galactic war criminal and ally of Emperor Palpatine fled the battle of Exegol before Resistance forces could bring him to justice and is now at large. He is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Anyone knowing his location is advised not to engage him, but to contact the Resistance as soon as possible. There is a reward for information on his whereabouts.'

The picture shifts from Poe's face to a close up shot of Ben's, which appears to be an excerpt from a speech he had given at some point during his tenure as leader. A number appears below the holo, presumably contact details for anyone who wants to report a sighting. Then the emergency message switches off and the bland instrumental music continues as if nothing has happened.

'That's more than a passing resemblance,' says Ben, in a voice full of shock. 'I look just like him, although he has a scar and I don't. I can see why the Resistance were suspicious.'

But Rey isn't paying him much attention because she has noticed that the barman has stopped sanding down the counter and is staring across the room with a look of fixed intensity. She glances swiftly at Ben, and although he looks the same to her, she suspects that surprise has caused him to drop the image he has been projecting. Grabbing her bag, she strides to the bar and waves a hand.

'He's not the person they're looking for,' she says with authority. 'We were never here.'

'You were never here,' he agrees, and she drags Ben from the tavern as quickly as she can manage.