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"The Father?" Ren asked, looking over at Rey. "Of the ghosts?"
"Yes, you met my son." The Father answered, looking at Ren. "And you met my daughter." He said, turning his attention to Rey.
"Your son told me that if we destroy the crystal with the dagger of Mortis we can leave this place." Ren said.
"But your daughter said that doing so would harm the Force." Rey added quickly, shooting Ren a pointed look.
The Father sighed. "My children have a crude understanding of the Force. But they are not, technically, wrong."
"What do you mean?" Rey asked, desperate for answers.
"There was once a crystal like the one my son told you about." The Father said. "But with my death it shattered. My children would not have known of this."
"So the crystal is gone?" Ren asked sharply.
"Not exactly." The Father said, slowly. "You see the crystal was just a physical manifestation of the Force itself. When it shattered, it did not disappear. It merely changed form."
"Then where is it now?" Ren asked, and the Father shook his head.
"The Force is all around us." He said. "Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there."
"So when your son told us to destroy the crystal...he was really telling us to destroy the Force?" Rey asked, having a very difficult time wrapping her head around all of this. It seemed the more they learned about Mortis, the less it made sense.
"Not destroy the Force." The Father said. "Pervert it. The Force cannot truly be destroyed."
"What does that mean?" Rey asked, and to her surprise Ren responded.
"It means we have to bend the Force to our will." Ren said, glancing between Rey and the Father. "We have to force it to let us out of here. In other words...we have to use the Dark Side."
"Exactly." The Father said to Rey's horror.
"No." Rey said immediately. "There must be another way out."
"There is...right?" She asked, looking up at the Father.
"There is another way." The Father agreed, and Rey felt an invisible weight lift off her chest. "You can fulfill the purpose for which you were brought here. If you do, the Force will let you go."
"Why were we brought here?" Rey asked. "You said you knew."
"It is because you are a dyad." The Father said, and Rey frowned in confusion. "Two that are one. You share a connection."
A connection. Rey felt her stomach plummet and she looked over at Ren, her eyes locking with his. Fear coursed through her veins but a very different emotion filled her chest. Was this why it had felt like she'd known him her entire life? Was this why they understood each other so effortlessly?
"But you are an incredibly dysfunctional, unbalanced dyad." The Father continued, and Rey felt a shiver run down her spine. She broke eye contact with Ren to look back up at the Father. "You are so unbalanced, in fact, that you are tearing at the very fabric of the galaxy."
Rey's eyebrows knit together and she glanced over at Ren once more. Were they really powerful enough to cause such destruction? They were just two people...Was this because he was Supreme Leader? Because they were at war?
"How is this possible?" Rey asked, shaking her head. "I don't understand what we're doing that could cause so much damage."
"A dyad connection is an incredibly powerful thing." The Father said. "One like yours has been unseen for generations."
"You're not answering my question." Rey protested. "How are we tearing the fabric of the galaxy? What are we doing?"
"Find balance within your dyad." The Father said. "Find balance and the Force will let you leave Mortis. You'll be free."
Rey looked over at Ren, the cold tendrils of dread creeping around her heart. She had once tried to turn him to the Light and it had ended in heartbreak. She didn't know if she had the strength to hope they could find balance between them. Whatever that even meant.
"How do we-" Rey turned to ask the Father how to find balance and realized he was no longer there. Rey felt the words die in her mouth and looked over at Ren.
"Rey." He breathed, taking a step towards her. "Do you understand what this means?"
Rey was fairly certain his understanding of the situation would not be the same as hers. "It means we have to find balance."
"It means we're not alone." Ren said. "We're meant to be together. Rey, we're bonded to each other-"
"And we're destroying the galaxy!" Rey interjected. "You heard him. We need to find a way to fix this."
"I knew it." Ren said, ignoring her concerns entirely. "Snoke didn't create our connection, he just used it. But now we can escape from here and the bond will be ours to control."
Rey shook her head, a mess of conflicting emotions making it hard to think. "Ben..."
"I know you feel it too." He said, the desperation in his voice breaking her heart. "You have to."
Rey ran her hands over her face and realized they were shaking. She needed to get a grip and think. But how could she think with Kylo Ren standing in front of her, looking at her like that?
"This is why we were meant to rule together. We are-"
"BEN!" Rey cried, her scream sending a flock of birds flying out of a nearby tree. Ren shut his mouth and looked at her, his eyes pleading.
"Ben." Rey repeated, quieter this time. "I feel it too. Of course I do. I always have."
"Then why do you fight it?" Ren asked, his voice laced with hurt.
"You heard him." Rey said bitterly. "We're an unbalanced dyad."
"Don't you think that maybe we're unbalanced precisely because you're fighting this?" Ren asked and Rey shook her head.
"No, I think-"
"Give in, Rey." Ren said, taking a step towards her. "Stop lying to yourself about what you want."
"Oh that is so rich coming from you." Rey snapped.
Anger flashed behind Ren's eyes but he took another step towards her, his face set with determination. "We're a dyad whether you like it or not. You can't get rid of me; you're bonded to me."
"I'm not trying to get rid of you." Rey said.
"You wish you weren't connected to me." Ren said, the pain in his voice breaking Rey's heart.
"I..." Rey struggled to find the right words.
"You're afraid." Ren continued. "You're afraid of who you are and what you want. That's why you're fighting this. That's why you're pushing me away."
Rey quickly suppressed the fear that he was right. He was confused - that was what he really was. And he was trying to drag her into his delusions.
"Ben, I'm fighting this because of who you are." Rey snapped, and Ren flinched. "Who you choose to be. You are the most powerful person in the galaxy and you use your power to do what? Invade planets, impose martial law, slaughter villages, destroy entire planets!? You justify this by saying you're bringing order to the galaxy but you know that's a lie. You know this is wrong but you do it anyway."
"Fine." Ren snapped, clenching his jaw. "I'll admit I'm a monster. I never claimed to be anything else."
Rey stared at him in frustration. "You're not though." She said. "That's the thing. You're not a monster. There is still so much good in you."
"There's not." Ren said flatly.
"There is though." Rey insisted, taking a step towards him until he was close enough to touch. He looked down at her, fear in his eyes. "The things you've done haunt you. Even after everything Snoke put you through...you still feel compassion. You still feel guilt."
"Compassion is weakness." Ren said quietly, and Rey felt her heart constrict painfully.
"Compassion hurts." Rey said. "To feel compassion for another person is to feel their pain. Bearing pain takes strength."
"Exactly, it drains you." Ren said.
"It could...if taken too far." Rey admitted. "But compassion connects you to other people. Through compassion we can support each other - make each other stronger."
"If you really believe that, then why are you trying to break our connection?" Ren asked, and Rey sighed, closing her eyes for a moment.
When she reopened them, Ren was still looking down at her, his dark eyes full of a deep sadness that Rey wished she could will away. "Because you don't support me." She said quietly. "You hurt me. You try to pull me away from my friends and you tell me I'm nothing. You use my emotions against me to try to try to provoke me into using the Dark Side. You're doing to me what Snoke did to you."
Ren tensed, and Rey sensed his guilt through the Force. "I'm trying to make you see the truth." He said. "Sometimes the truth hurts."
"You're trying to make me stay with you because you're lonely." Rey said, and Ren's mouth twitched. "You think if I turn to the Dark Side I'll join you. But has it ever occurred to you that if you were to succeed at turning me to the Dark Side that I might come to hate you as much as you hated Snoke?"
A flash of fear passed behind Ren's eyes. "Or we would finally see eye-to-eye."
"Ben." Rey said, shaking her head. "The part of you that wants me to rule with you...the part of you that wants our connection to grow...that's the Light in you. The Dark Side doesn't understand partnership, only domination."
Ren turned away, his expression conflicted. "There's nothing wrong with having Light in you." Rey said.
"Yes, there is." Ren ground out, turning back to face her with a sudden fury in his eyes.
"I have Darkness, you have Light...it's okay." Rey said. "We're human. We're not going to be all one or the other. No one is."
"But it hurts." Ren said, and Rey felt her heart break.
She reached out and took his hand in hers, squeezing it tightly. "I know." She said. With the Light came compassion, and with compassion came guilt. With guilt came pain, and with pain came the Dark Side. This was the cycle that kept him trapped. The cycle of hating what he had become and falling further into the Darkness because he hated himself.
"The conflict tears me apart." Ren said, his voice wavering. "I can't kill the Light. I've tried so hard. I even..."
Rey nodded, a lump forming in her throat. "I know."
Ren swallowed thickly, the unspoken memory of his father's murder hanging in the air between them.
"Snoke was right. There's a weakness in me that can't be overcome." He said, and Rey shook her head vehemently.
"It isn't weakness, Ben." She said. "It's the best part of you. It's the part of you Snoke couldn't control. It's the reason you killed him and not me in the throne room that day."
"You're the other half of my dyad." Ren said. "I was never going to hurt you."
"You didn't know that then." Rey said.
"I felt it." Ren said. "I just didn't have a name for it."
Rey felt her heart flutter and she subconsciously took a step towards him before stopping herself. She looked down, suddenly self-conscious, and let go of his hand. She needed to get a grip and think.
"Why don't we go home. We already got more answers than we'd hoped for...we can find the castle another day." Rey said.
"Home?" Ren asked, and Rey frowned until she realized what she had said.
"I mean the ship." She said quickly. "Slip of the tongue."
"Right." Ren said, and Rey turned to leave before he could see the color rising in her cheeks. She really did need time to think.
Ren sat down with a bowl of soup they had managed to throw together somehow and Rey took the seat opposite him, handing him a spoon.
"Well this will be interesting." She said, glancing down at the soup. "I've never made a soup before. Rations were all we had on Jakku."
"I've never cooked in my life." Ren said. "We always had droids to do this kind of thing."
"Well...how bad can it be?" Rey asked, blowing on the soup to cool it off before taking a bite. A frown slowly creased across her forehead as she chewed. A bad sign.
"Is it terrible?" Ren asked and Rey shrugged.
"It's edible." She said.
Ren looked down at his own soup apprehensively. Rey's standards for food were pretty low. If even she didn't think it tasted any good...
"Try it." Rey said.
Cautiously, Ren picked up a spoonful and swallowed it, his nose wrinkling as he did. It was bland but also somehow bitter.
"This is disgusting." Ren said, pushing away the bowl.
"It's not that bad." Rey chided. "Eat it. There's nothing else."
Ren sighed, feeling his empty stomach growl, and took another bite. They ate in silence for a while, shooting each other glances every now and then, as if waiting for the other to speak. They had been quiet, speaking only of mundane things, since they'd returned from their walk. Only now, they had run out of safe conversation topics. And in the silence of the room, it was much harder to ignore the elephant in the room.
Ren watched Rey eat, conflicting emotions filling his chest. She cared about him. It was evident. They were a dyad - it was almost as if she had no choice but to feel attached to him. But she didn't want to care about him. She didn't want to be part of this dyad and the knowledge of this hurt more than Ren had thought it could.
Shouldn't he be happy? She couldn't escape him. They were bonded to each other. And even more than this, Rey cared about him. Wasn't this all he had wanted?
Rey finished her soup and then pushed away the bowl, breaking Ren out of his dark thoughts.
"Well I'm going to go for a walk." Rey said, standing up.
"I'll come with you." Ren said quickly, the look of disappointment on Rey's face not escaping his eye. She didn't want him to come. She had been trying to get away from him, he realized with a sinking heart.
But instead of saying anything, Rey simply nodded, turning to go. Ren followed her out of the ship, wrapping his arms across his chest as they stepped out into the cold air outside. An icy wind whipped through the leaves of the trees which, to Ren's surprise, had turned yellow, orange, and red. Leaves fell all around the forest, scattering the ground with bright colors. It was as if fall had come.
"The seasons change with the time of day." Ren said as they stared at the changed landscape around them. "It's getting more extreme the longer we're here."
Rey made no reply, walking over to one of the fruit trees she had grown. The fruit was all dead and the branches were barren. Rey touched it and the leaves began to regrow; their green a stark contrast to the orange and browns of the rest of the world. When she removed her hand, however, the leaves turned yellow and fell off, the branches becoming barren again.
Ren looked away, walking in the direction of the cliff. He kicked some of the dead leaves with his feet, getting tired of the silence. They needed to talk about it. All of it. Their dyad connection. How they were going to get out of here. Everything. They couldn't avoid it forever.
There was only one way out, Ren thought ruefully. He would have to exert his will over the Force. Balance was an out-of-reach pipe dream they would never achieve. He wasn't even sure it was something worth trying to achieve. Balance was a virtue of the Light Side. The Dark Side resisted balance - it existed as it saw fit. But Rey would never accept this. She would fight tooth and nail to stop him from using the Dark Side to get them out of here. And in the end, he would have to fight her again. He wasn't ready for that yet.
Ren kicked the leaves once more, frustration building, and then froze. He knelt down, brushing aside the rest of the leaves with his hands. There, snaking its way through the ground, was another crack. Ren followed its line, brushing off leaves as he went. It continued all the way up to the face of the mountain, stopping at its base. Ren felt a shiver run down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold wind. He stared at the crack, the words of the Father coming back to him.
The crystal was just a physical manifestation of the Force itself. When it shattered, it did not disappear. It merely changed form.
Ren felt his heart skip a beat and he reached up a hand to touch the mountainside. He felt the rock shudder beneath his touch, an earsplitting crack resounding as the rock split in two under his hand.
"Ben!?" Rey cried, running over to him.
Ren stared at the crack, understanding flooding his mind. It was as if Mortis was fracturing like a kyber crystal, cracking under the pressure of the Dark Side.
"What did you do!?" Rey cried as she took in the new crack running up the mountainside.
Ren turned to look at her, shaking his head. "I know what the crystal has become." He said, looking up at the mountain. "We're standing on it."