"Say something." Rey's plea was one spoken through grit teeth, falling into a mode of searching. Searching for anything. Any explanation that could explain what she had seen, or more importantly tell her what she hadn't seen that could have led to what she had.

It didn't make sense to her right then, but then again nothing did right now either.

"I'm okay."

She didn't believe him.

"Emergency protocol initiating-" The droid posted outside of Ben's door hummed. The R2 unit swiveled the upper half of its body, starting a series of noises that brought her back from reprimanding Ben, stealing a glance sideways and silently hoping Ben wouldn't disappear when she looked back.

"No, no! No emergency protocols!" She hissed at it, stepping over the trembling boy and clicking a sequence of buttons into the droid's keypad.

It beeped and whirred sporadically, spinning on its spherical axis in confusion of the conflicting orders. "Initiating-" It started again.

Rey turned the saber around, jamming the hilt of Luke's saber into it. "I said stop!" As though willed by some invisible force, the droid flew sideways with consecutive panicked whistles, colliding with the far wall and splintering into a shower of spare parts and wires. She gaped, eyes wide, her hands coming up to run through her hair.

"Ben-" He was centering himself in her view, filling her panicked stare. He seemed fine, and she grappled for him, her hands bracing his forearms and reveling in his solid form grounding her.

Until he retreated, and every stretch of distance between them felt agonizingly long. But she knew why, only because their surroundings felt grimly real and the jedi was turning her attention to the boy. He would tell, through his panic induced stare, as he braced himself on the floor and prepared to run away, she held out her hand holding him there, preventing any form of escape.

And although it felt wrong. So very wrong, she narrowed her gaze on him, her gaze more focused, more demanding. "You're not going to tell them." Two fingers waved through the air in front of his vision, and in a true show of her abilities, he obeyed.

"I'm not going to tell them."

"You're going to leave."

"I'm going to leave."

As his steps retreated, her eyes followed him until he was out of her view. "Stop," She said firmly when she heard Ben's own boots scrape the ground, moving back farther than she'd be able to reach.

But it wasn't what she found herself protesting. "Someone was trying to kill you, Ben." Rey practically dared him to press her on it, try to martyr himself for something that was beyond his control. "Were you going to kill him?"

"I don't know." And that honest truth hit her hard.

"You don't know?" She practically whispered, her back to him. Even through the force, she couldn't feel him, couldn't scrutinize his expression or take a peek into his thoughts to gouge his own reaction to all of this.

"I thought about it."

Rey moved away from the fallen resistance member and towards where the remains of the droid were splayed across the hall, desperate to focus on something else. She did not even remember hearing the droid meet its untimely fate, but the footsteps resounding down the corridor stopped her in her tracks.

A spark of anxiety welled inside her chest, only to be greeted by Finn, disheveled and recently roused from sleep, flanked by a pair of resistance soldiers, all wielding blasters at the ready.

"The R2 unit alerted me! What's going on?" Finn walked briskly and with purpose, features creased in concern and a hidden panic so as to not let it show that he was frightened. Of what he thought had happened, that Ben Solo had escaped, that he had likely turned on her. He didn't have to say it, but she could hear it as loudly as if she had thought it herself.

Before Ben could interject, Rey pulled herself to her full height and sheathed Luke's lightsaber, "There was an attempt on Ben's life. I had to protect him—us." Her voice held strong, and steady. "No harm came to the assassin, and he's already been dealt with. No further investigation is needed."

Finn looked as if he didn't believe her.

"I'm-I'm sure everything is stored in the R2's memory. We have nothing to hide, I swear it." She urged. The resistance soldiers made no move at Finn's flank, waiting for his order, but Rey could feel their anxieties deeply rooted within their wide stares, looking distrustful of them both.

Finn on the other hand just looked tired, beyond his years, nodding rather solemnly as he issued the order for them to search the scraps for the memory bank while he only faced her, and strangely enough his stare hit much harder than any disappointment from him ever could.

And that brief amount of time felt agonizingly long, the shuffling of metal parts on the ground and the silence that drifted between them while she shifted her feet and tried to avoid her friend's look lest she give something away.

Never mind actually looking back at Ben.

"I found the memory bank." One resistance member announced, and before she could blink, they were sealed off back into Ben's cell as the resistance's footsteps retreated down the hallway the way they had come.

Slivers of the early dawn light filled the hallway outside of the cell, and despite it being a brand new day, Rey felt very much in the past, still tired as if she hadn't slept, still feeling like the day previous when she'd been forced to stand by while they locked him away. Left him vulnerable.

Whoever stepped foot inside of Ben Solo's confines were trapped with him. Not the other way around.

Nobody was at fault that they had to learn it the hard way.

Rey turned to look over her shoulder, just far enough to witness Ben sitting on the cot, no longer looking at her, his mind miles away where she could no longer reach.

They spent so long just aware, having not been given any moment of reprieve until now. A second to breathe, to think. She didn't have time to analyze who they were or what their connection meant. The force brought them together, it concluded with the fall of Palpatine, and yet why could she still feel him as strongly as she always had?

Now that they had that moment, Rey wasn't sure if she wanted it anymore.

She'd stared down the face of death, had found faith and allowed the Force to guide her down her paths that kept her alive-albeit barely-but she still couldn't wrap her head around what it meant to have sweaty palms and a heart that wrenched so tightly at the sight of Ben Solo.

There was no longer the distraction at simply trying to stay alive, and they were two people trying to find a new existence, what it meant, and what they were meant to be-together.

Settling herself down on the cot next to him, she allowed herself to breathe, let her own defenses slip, allowing the connection they shared to open her mind to him. It was easier not to fight it, which had to mean something. "I'm sorry that everything has been…" Rey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "A mess." It was best not to sugarcoat that.

"I don't know what our next move is. I don't know what Poe has planned for the resistance or whether either of us even fit into it." She admitted, every dark cloud of disarray muddling her thoughts. "Now that the First Order is vanquished, I'm trying to avoid having to think back on it." It was as close as she allowed herself to come face to face with her lineage, who she shared her blood with. If she thought any harder about it, the darkness took root, and she forced herself to wall it away. Rey shut her mind down.

Ben proved to be an easy distraction, the one thing she could focus on to avoid confronting everything else. A project, as much as she hated to admit it. As much as he didn't deserve that. As much as he'd willingly enslaved himself to the resistance… A petty fool's thought to think such tragedy was worth it. To Ben it was. And that was something she would never understand.

"I don't know either," Ben spoke honestly, tentatively. "I can't vouch for Poe's intentions, or the resistance's next steps. I just know that if you don't want to think about it, it's easier to focus on someone else rather than something else. I can't imagine the truth of your lineage is difficult to hear, but you're not like Palpatine. You never will be." And even as his eyes strayed away from her, to his hands, as if he had committed some terrible crime, Rey believed every word. "There's no connection to you or the First Order. You're free."

When she looked at Ben and thought of the things that Kylo Ren had stolen from both of them, it all paled in comparison to what Palpatine had done to their lives. To know that Ben stood with her in the final battle meant more than words could touch. So she touched him instead, urged him to feel her gratitude, took his hand closest to her, but lacking the reserve she used to have, pulling it into her lap instead.

"But you're free as well." She reminded him, voice low and gentle, leaning over so that her words were a mere whisper in his ear. "Because where we're from shouldn't define who we are, but rather they should be an opportunity to give us a choice to be who we decide." Rey would tell him again and again if it would help him remember. She knew that he was unsure, that hesitation, that apprehension. To be birthed again and learning how to navigate without Snoke and Palpatine puppeteering him along, absent of a mind steering him in the opposite direction of where he wanted to be-at one point he wanted to be.

Sitting in that brief shared silence, it felt more comforting to Rey than any other moment during the day's passing. She adjusted her hold on his hand, turning it over so she could interlace their fingers together. Where her fingers sat, she could feel the faint thrumming of the pulse in his wrist, how quickly it was, but reminding her that he was human.

"I know that you had a nightmare last night." She could feel it, even from her room, the anxiety emanating from him, the absolute terror of whatever plagued his mind even at rest. Ben stiffening next to her only confirmed her assumption had been right. "Do they happen often?" It was only a rare occurrence that the visions also assaulted her in their slumber. Their force bond was much more powerful, allowing their minds to intermingle without worry over borders or restraints unless the other insisted on it. Dreaming was a dangerous realm for those who were force sensitive anyway, let alone what they could accidentally expose to each other, their deepest thoughts brought to light.

And while he didn't need access to her deep unbridled thoughts-not yet anyway-Rey didn't keep any hope that she could effectively block him out when it came to that.

"I don't know who I want to be yet." Ben admitted, squeezing her hand as if to assure her that he was here. That he was here and real. It all still seemed so much like a dream, despite the dark reality that still hung ever present over their heads. Rey tried to block that out for now. "Right now I'm just trying to get through, helping you when you eventually come out to the resistance after everything Palpatine has done."

Dark pools of brown remained fixated on where their hands were tangled together, the heat radiating from his to hers so easily. Her light was touching him, and his was touching her back. Warm and bright and everything she wanted to feel and more. Except the walls built up around him were still standing strong, but it wasn't fully effective. There was still a small crack she thought she could peek through. His gentle grip on her hand wavered for just a moment, and he almost pulled away. Almost.

"Different things each time. It's never the same. Some are memories, some are just made up of everything I'm scared of." He admitted, straightening from his hunched posture, towering over her a few inches but she was sure that was subconscious, a mere defense mechanism. "My uncle, my parents, Snoke and Palpatine. Memories of when I left the Jedi Order, memories of my training with the First Order. But I had a dream about flying with my father once. The dream of a child just wanting to be a pilot before I stumbled down the wrong path." That last statement came out much quieter, his thumb running over the back of her hand. "I can still hear Snoke in my head sometimes even though he's dead. Mocking me, calling me weak. Telling me I failed."

He made to pull back from her, the notion not desired but she could feel the sudden wavering of his thoughts and how his grip on her hand relaxed with hesitation. Only reluctantly did she let him pull back. The air around them shifted and grew heavy again, his gravity so heavy, threatening to pull her in. Rey knew the illusion of Snoke's mockery, had witnessed it firsthand. That very essence of the dark side that held a tight grip on him and squeezed him tight.

It festered and manipulated those who fell victim by listening too closely to their weaknesses, to their desires, and unfortunately at the time Ben had so many so young. If she could, she'd pry the very inside of his mind, find the ghosts, and purge them out. Throw herself into that void if it meant she could somehow help. "They're dead, you know." She said a bit too forcefully, as if trying to muster up enough courage to convince them both. "I'm sorry, I know it isn't my place but-"

"You have just as much of a right as I do," Ben assured her.

It felt nice to even know that she had someone on her side. Of course she had Finn, Rose, Poe, and the entire rest of the resistance, but they didn't know her the way that Ben knew her. He looked directly into her darkness, and he didn't shy away. Once again reaching her hand across his lap, she ran the pad of her thumb over the rough ridges of his knuckles. The bacta tank had done wonders healing the lacerations, and stealing a glance to inspect the place where she had scarred him what seemed like a lifetime ago, the ghost of the moment barely remained.

The memory would always be there, but at least the physicality of it was no longer a stark reminder of what she had once done.

She moved to pull her legs onto the cot beside him. It creaked beneath them with the shifting of her weight. Even sitting beside him, he took up a majority of the space, and felt to tower over her. That had at once been unnerving, but now she just felt comfortable.

"You know, if they happen… If you have any dreams like that, I mean, I'll be right here. You can find me." Even if he wouldn't wake her, she would remain attentive so that he didn't have to.

The barest ghost of a smile played at his lips, stretching his legs out from the open cot rather than pressing them so tightly to his chest as he had been. He nudged her with his shoulders, laying back on the cot, draping his arm across his stomach.

"I know." He went on to reassure her. "You always are."

But the reminder of what had transpired was still a heavy burden on his mind she knew, the heavy feeling in the air never wavering, growing more strongly as time continued to pass, as they waited for Finn to return with his findings.

"I'm sorry." Ben continued suddenly, forcing themselves out before she could stop any form of apology. It hadn't been his fault, and looking at him, that one arm across his stomach and the other braced across his forehead, she knew he meant it. "The resistance isn't going to take kindly to this if they haven't been roused from their bunks over the situation already." And yet he wasn't worried about him, she realized. "You don't want to lose your standing to the resistance, Rey. Not because of me."

"Ben, stop."

"Why didn't you let me take the fall?" His voice was strained, deep in that way it was when he was upset. "How could you be so foolish?"

"Foolish?" Rey scoffed, blinking.

The resistance did not consider his safety a priority, and why would they? He was their enemy at the end of the day. How naive had she been to not realize that this would happen? She felt the shift in him before he moved, once again sitting up, standing, fingers raking brutally through his hair as he burned a pace back and forth across the cell.

She steeled herself, but she did not feel the slow caution that leveled his head the last couple days. It was compromised. He was upset, and it grated at the very forefront of her mind, only because she knew she couldn't blame him. "There is nothing foolish about wanting to protect you."

Too easily did the moment come, and she shook her head, rising to a standing position herself, her fists curling defensively at her side, her throat aching with more protests she could not get out. Every excuse she wanted to offer died, every apology of her own. "The resistance has to answer for this. Someone tried to kill you, and they cannot easily excuse that."

"Yeah, they did." Ben agreed. "They needed to make it clear they won. The war, the defeat against the First Order, the Knights of Ren. All of it." The similarities between Kylo Ren and Ben Solo were striking in that moment that his pacing stopped. A mask that they were both so easily to put on, an expression so cold and yet noticeably the tone never matched it. The difference at least was that Ben Solo did not match the murderous intent that Kylo Ren did.

At least she didn't think so.

"Had you done that-killed to protect yourself, they would have killed you for it. There would have been no reasoning. They would not even consider anything that you would tell them. They would just see it as a battle between us or you."

"You won the war too, Rey. I wanted you to embrace that, if I had been able to bring you back. I thought about how I wanted you to wake up and go on. I wanted there to be an after. For you. I was ready to die with the weight of what I'd done." Ben ran a hand down his face, his fingers twitching before curling into a fist, as if just itching to find something to break in a tantrum, but aside from the cot, and a small table, there was nothing. "I warned you of what would happen if I came back, but you didn't listen." Ben snapped, dark pools of brown almost black, dimmed by the flickering lights above. "I knew they would call you a fool and they were right. You're risking your position with the resistance for a First Order fugitive!"

The floor seemingly opened up beneath her feet, and the panic sank into her very being, making her straighten to battle his biting words. Every instinct in her bristled to run, and run far. But she was done, despite her reassurance, and her worries and her fears, never would she run again. Not from Ben, not from Kylo Ren, no matter which one he decided to be in a moment. "I'm risking everything to help you. I don't care what the resistance thinks of me for that." Outside of the door, she could hear R2-D2 whirring his head curiously, likely gouging the atmosphere's temperament for any threat. Rage-waves of it-rose and spilled off of Ben, crashing over her like the tides upon the remnants of the Death Star so long ago now. But there was also confusion, and fear. "Whoever you are, I'm choosing to help you."

"Kriff, Rey." Ben scoffed, incredulous. "You're not Leia, or Han or Luke. You're not in charge of saving my soul. I'm not your project, nor your pet." He spat. "You should've let me face my own punishment with the resistance, but you're so insistent that I am not Kylo Ren. And you're wrong!" His breathing was becoming labored, every word coming out in a rage induced fury as he put desperately needed space in between them, beginning to pace again, the shaking in his muscles betraying any sense of calm.

"You're not my protector, nor my sitter to make sure I'm behaving as well as I should." With one flourishing hand wave he finally finished. "There was a moment that I wanted to. I wanted so badly, and I didn't. I probably would have if I hadn't remembered your constant nagging!"

Rey tried not to let the words hurt, knowing where his sudden frustration came from, but she couldn't keep herself from frowning, couldn't stop her own glare digging into his very being. The pure fact that he was trapped in a box, and anyone and everyone-those who he knew and also didn't-had access to him. Ben was without a weapon, was to be without any form of protection aside from a droid, it was enough. She didn't fault him for that, but it hurt nonetheless.

Thankfully, as if on cue Finn opened the doorway and stepped foot inside. "We managed to replay the moments leading up to… it's unfortunate demise…" He paused as Rey was already shoving past him, out into the hallway past the many judgemental eyes that had already begun gathering there.

"Let's discuss it. Away from here." Rey delivered a pointed look over her shoulder, and with a soft huff of frustration, she left him alone.