Rey's eyes peeled open with the sudden intrusion of light, grimacing as she adjusted to the dual moons bright in the sky and threatening her with the arrival of morning. Her body felt heavy when she pushed herself up on her cot, the reversing injection that was basically bottled adrenaline meant to wipe the syrupy feeling from her body only made her feel sluggish and suddenly angry for what little she could recall.

A new day, and with it, also bringing on too many problems that still needed solved.

She'd failed the interrogation, that much had been blatantly obvious, but she also knew that her and Ben had made a promise-while "promise" hadn't been a word used, it was as much of a promise as it could be. They were leaving. After that, the rest would be figured out in due time. Somewhere with life, one that offered a new start with plenty of oceans and greenery that stretched farther than the eye could see; clear skies that would eventually promise rain, and a reminder that she had left the scorching deserts of Jakku far behind her. For something new.

Wherever that may be.

But she had to wake up first.

With a soft intake of breath, Rey fell back over, curled up on her cot and tugged her body close to herself, small and compact that was more of a habit than something that was comfortable. It was safe, and even when she found safety and comfort in Ben, her sleeping mind still reverted back to what she knew, what was familiar. Her scavenger heart would not so easily be swayed.

With recent events however, it was tumbling dangerously close.

"Are you awake?"

Rey's eyes turned upward as Poe stepped foot inside of the room, but she was already moving to greet him, and with a dismissive hand gesture, he motioned for her to sit. She did, balls of her hands rubbing against her eyes. "Stars, save me from your intrusions." She hissed through her teeth.

"I wanted to talk to you without anyone else around." He began.

"So that it will not hurt your pride to be seen with me, you mean?" She breathed, her hands falling into her lap, blinking furiously to adjust to the light that Poe half obscured standing in the doorway.

Above her, his face fell as he ground his teeth together. Rey however was absorbed in it all, forgetting briefly their attitudes towards one another, his cold and wanting nothing more than to do right by the resistance, hers spitting venom at his betrayal. At least her shot this time was more verbal and not a crackling energy, but that didn't mean looking up at the man she had considered a close friend-so lost in the weight overbearing on his shoulders-was painless.

"Do you remember how you answered the major's question?"

"I can't say I remember very much from your interrogation, but I am still feeling the effects of it." She shot back bitterly.

"I just need you to understand why." Poe attempted to reason, closing the curtain to her room and drowning them in a pale light. He stood in the very center, shifting his weight, hands fumbling before choosing to settle in front of him.

"I understand your why, but placing blame because you have no other choice is what is not fair. I just want you to trust me, and my judgment to know that Ben will not revert back to Kylo Ren's legacy."

"I don't care about what's fair, I care about doing what is needed to keep the few recruits we have alive. I have let Ben this far because I do trust you, and I want to believe what you're telling me, but I can't wait and hope the risk is worth it." He put emphasis on Ben's name, as if batting around calling him what they all considered him, an alias left behind on the Death Star, but he refrained, albeit with careful restraint. "Everyone is scared, and they have every right to be."

"So that is it then. We are not even going to offer him a chance? We are going to hole him up as a prisoner until he rots?"

"We are going to have a trial. A democratic vote." Poe decided. "The resistance can decide as a whole whether or not to keep him, but if they decide against it, Rey, he will have to go."

"What?!" Rey was standing now, voice echoing across the cave and resonating her outrage to whoever happened to be in earshot. "You have not even given him a chance to prove himself to anyone! He has been locked up like some war criminal! There is no justice in that! You know what their decision will be!"

"Then that is the decision that will be made." He confirmed, eyes darting to the ground between them, then looked back at her, expression torn in half somewhere between lost and helpless-as equally conflicted as she had been between her loyalty to the resistance and Ben-except his stood in between risking their friendship, or the potential safety to the resistance.

The choice didn't seem that difficult if looked at from that perspective.

"We gave him a few days just to let everyone calm down. He threatened us, attacked a resistance member-whether by his fault or not-" Poe went on before she could interrupt, silencing her parted lips with a raised hand, the other braced against his hip now. "You said he's Ben Solo, well then he needs a place that he can find that, but I think with the memories he has of the resistance, it shouldn't be here."

Working a tick in his jaw, he backed off, exhaled an exaggerated sigh and nodded, only once. "He led excursions across the galaxy, killed millions, decimated planets and you don't want to see that because it's Ben." Poe scoffed, his perturbed demeanor switching to something more hostile, but defeated. "Trial is in fifteen. Just be there."

And then he was gone, and Rey was left sitting on the cot with a heavy heart, but the results of the trial wouldn't matter, if just to remind her that the resistance would never be on his side, that they would never accept him as he was or who he would turn out to be.

They would just have to go somewhere that he could.


Rey believed that the equation for humor was often tragedy and time. Enough cold nights on Jakku, enough overbearingly hot days, more than enough notches in the wall, enough trying to scavenge for trade to get her through the week, and enough waiting for parents who would never show despite her hoping.

It had left her rather positive she thought.

But it was a lesson that she recalled when a storm raged through and swept something with it or left something behind-hope, doubt, fear, sorrow, loneliness, all one jumbled catastrophic mess that often mixed together and and reminded her that while grief never quite went away, it proved easier and easier to make room for. The mentality that with enough of it, and enough time, there would eventually be reason to smile.

To laugh.

She didn't see that in Ben now.

And he'd been through more than his fair share of tragedy, enough time, and yet absent of any humor to help get him through.

A corner of the cave had been parted and sealed off for the trial. The entire resistance had abandoned their posts and gathered in their small secluded space to witness what was about to happen. She saw faces she recognized, those she'd fought alongside in the war, and slowly they were becoming more obscure.

People she'd thought of as friends, had claimed as family, now stood on the opposite side of what-rather who-she currently strived to protect. The air around them was thick with their oppressive emotions; apprehension, eagerness, anticipation. Like a predator circling crippled prey, waiting for them to fall so that they could sink their teeth into the kill.

They'd been waiting for Ben to slip, and now they stood by to pass a judgment on someone they did not understand. Not like her. It was enough to make her frown, to look down at the floor and avoid the eyes she knew were on Ben instead, but his eyes would be on her. Bewildered, confused, and in all truth she couldn't harness the bravery to look.

She'd felt him before she saw him, standing just far enough that she couldn't reach but close enough that she could see his flat expression just outside of her peripherals. He'd been brought in first, waiting.

Poe walked in with the council flanking him on either side. "There is no easy way to do this," he started, visibly agitated. "And this was not an easy decision to make, but honestly I just want it out of my hands."

He'd been her friend once, too.

"We've called an emergency trial due to a number of events since bringing the former Supreme Leader and our current captive guest, Kylo Ren and Ben Solo. First-" Poe started, speaking to the crowd of the resistance directly, noticeably avoiding her hardened gaze that now fixed desperately on him, begging not to do this. "First being the assault on one of our own-"

"The one who tried to kill Ben in the confines of his room? The child who shot at him first." Rey spat.

"-Second being the results of Rey's conditioning in which our Major feels could jeopardize future operations for the resistance-"

Rey seethed, frustration bubbling just at the bottom of her throat.

"And third, a general consensus observed that the resistance's morale is at risk with Kylo-with Ben's presence here."

His words twisted against her insides like a knife, cutting and digging itself deeper with every passing second; stealing her breath, breaking tears through that otherwise would be locked behind whatever contempt she was feeling. All she had to remind herself that with this, whatever Poe was suggesting didn't matter. Not in the end.

"So, it is with regret that the resistance as a whole has agreed to exile the accused with the forgiveness of his war crimes and with the belief that it is our best course of action moving forward," Poe turned his gaze on Ben, acknowledging the man in which he had decided his fate for as murmurs rose up around the resistance, equal parts agreeable as whispering with some sick satisfaction at wherever he may end up.

Alone.

Dead.

"Arrangements will be made to escort Ben off planet to wherever he chooses, and as a further token of peace within the resistance, we will not force him to undergo any conditioning in case of any compromising Intel. We will be moving the base's location, so all current information here is subject to forfeit." Poe rattled on, but all Rey could do was breathe to keep the blood from rushing to her ears, to keep her mind on the right path, stop herself from lashing out against his decision.

"Dismissed." His voice boomed and echoed off the cave walls.

She searched for Ben disappearing through the weaving bodies of people that she knew-or thought she knew-as they went about lives that hadn't shattered in the blink of a few moments.

Poe's sudden presence at her side forced her from where she'd retreated to contain the pressure of her emotions. The crowd around them was already dispersing, leaving her and Poe, and suddenly no other person in the room mattered.

"We are giving him until tonight. You'll have time to speak with him before then," Poe murmured, aware of her fragile state.

She didn't feel fragile. Rey only felt anger, and spite. "I want to speak with him now," she pressed, feeling for the natural tether that connected her to him. A dyad in the Force. She couldn't hold back her panic as it clawed desperately to reach him.

But there was nothing.

"I'll make the arrangements." Poe assured her. "But I just need you to trust me and know that this is the right course of action to take. Don't make this any worse than what it is." He urged, taking one step back, but she persisted, hands curled into fists at her side, a physical tremor in her hands.

"Trust?!" Rey practically spat. "You want me to trust you after what you have conditioned into their heads? That Ben is a threat after everything he has been subjected to the last few days?" A hitch in her throat, emotions welling inside and threatening to spill out, lips pressed together in one angry thin line.

"The resistance would not stand for it. You know this, and I've told you."

"It was your responsibility to make them understand. At least for now. For me." Rey bristled. "Does my friendship mean nothing to you?"

"It does." Poe answered, quiet. "But so does my standing in the resistance. Finn would agree if he were here."

"Finn would have also stood up for Ben, or he would at least offer something other than what you had set in your mind before the trial even started!"

"I don't expect you to understand."

"I don't, but I do understand what kind of leader you are turning out to be." And Rey ejected herself before she could lash out, backing away, her hands braced into fists. "And it is not one that I can say I am proud to be a part of. Do not follow me."

In her fit of rage, she retreated back to Ben's quarters, reminding herself repeatedly that the results didn't matter, that they were leaving the resistance behind to go wherever-for now-that they would find somewhere Ben could belong, start a new life however he wanted it. She would give him a chance that nobody else seemed as eager to do, because she believed in him, what he could be, what he was.

And they would find it together.

There are still plans for you. Both of you. Don't give up on him, Rey.

Rey still had that promise to fulfill, and getting him out of this place was only the start. What still had yet to come? Was it a fate, or mere destiny?

She would help him, come what may.

It was C-3PO that she interrupted her heated trek, noticing his glossy metal form clanking toward her with a purpose. What that had been, she couldn't tell at first glance. Unfortunately, he was always quick to talk. She couldn't take a wide berth to go around him, she realized, and was forced to a halt.

"Rey, it is so good to see you back!" The metallic grinding of shuffled steps across the cave floor echoed in her ears, enough to grind her teeth as she winced.

"And you as well, 3PO, but I really need to be-"

"Of course! You may rest assured knowing Ben will be fit for comfort following his journey out. I am sure that wherever he ends up, it will surely be better for him, I believe!"

"Do you agree with the choice they made 3PO?"

"It is difficult to say." 3PO answered, and with a soft hum of thought, he threw his arms up. "I do not see the same person standing in the resistance now, but that does not mean that everyone can forget that we fought a war. I am sure that Poe's reasoning is surely to benefit the resistance in the future."

"Maybe," She murmured, chewing at her lower lip.

"But I cannot condone his exile either, especially not given the chance to prove his innocence. Chewbacca has expressed that same opinion, despite everything, and if he can, I have confidence that eventually everyone else can follow his example."

"I'm hoping that to be the case. Goodnight, 3PO." She bid the golden droid a farewell with a quick wave and fixated on returning to the Tantive. Silhouettes flickered in shadows across the cave, people laughing, celebrating, dancing. Part of her yearned to join them, to fit. Another part scorned that she even entertained it, but the most reasonable part of her acknowledged why and with that, she pressed on.

Ben's anticipation crackled like electricity when she neared the outside of his cell, his emotions hitting her like a storm, raging but with a calm that suggested he had known his fate before it had been decided, and had come to accept that for the second time in his life, home refused to accept him. He was nothing, a liability, a monster. A pest that needed to be exterminated.

There was no light in Kylo Ren.

No forgiveness worthy for Ben Solo.