The throne room burned.

Ash clogged her throat, the heaviness in the air intertwining with an eerie silence in the main chamber that housed her and Ben. Their connection whipped between them with a ferocity, the power of it pressing against her skin at every angle. Sweat clung to her with an uncomfortable griminess, but when she reached out and ran a line of ash down Ben's cheek, he felt exactly the same. Even when she inhaled, it was warm and tangy, like she could breathe in their force connection, and somehow it was different with the growing lack of clean oxygen.

She felt resistant when her finger swiped his cheek, a repelling force between them trying to drive them apart as their warring sides fought against itself and both of them simultaneously. Despite this, Ben remained kneeled in front of her, and while he did jerk his head away from the motion, he made no move to stand.

It left her with some sort of sickening satisfaction.

"Do you yield?" Flames crackled and whipped around them, drowning the room in an insufferable heat. Even then the emotion that dripped between them was so much colder than it had ever been before, tugging her with the memory of when he had attempted to pry the map to Luke Skywalker out of her head. Absent of emotion, of understanding. The only thing between them then had been Kylo Ren's absence of humanity, and Rey's stubborn pride.

Hilarious, considering the roles they stood in now.

One large shadow cast over the room above her, not her shadow, but someone else's; dark and echoing a voice in the back of her head. A creeping sensation crawled up her spine, her hair standing up at the nape of her neck, but she didn't look. Everything else had been deferred, a mere blur in the background but Ben's features a clear focus.

It was the only thing in focus.

And she took it in.

The very tip of Leia's saber inched startlingly close to his chest, the crackling pressure of it building with her own budding frustration. Their thread in the force remained ever insistent on closing that distance, and becoming one. In that moment however, they felt so much farther apart, that warring sensation willing it, demanding it.

"No," Ben answered, and he sounded so sure. It was enough to earn a scoff from her, his obstinacy despite these being his final moments.

Had she not traveled down this path, had she chosen quite literally anything else, her heart may have twisted in her chest, dropped into her stomach with an aching nausea looking into those dark eyes now, the last bit of humanity she would ever see in Ben Solo, that last shred of faith.

May have.

Part of her almost wanted him to obey, but his abstinence was endearing in a sense that it could have been labeled as downright charming.

Your destiny is almost fulfilled. One final objective. Kill Ben Solo and take your place on the throne.

It wasn't a voice that she recognized, different tones mixing and blurring together into several that echoed around her all at once. Before, she would put her hands over her ears to block them out, but the saber stilled at her companion, and he was looking up at her with startling certainty.

Not backing down.

Not giving in.

Rey smiled, a sickly sweet smile that only bled ill intent. Her tone was much harsher, oozing her victory, but not with the casual playfulness that she had before. The real Rey who would crack jokes when she won rounds of sparring with her friends, that time that she had won their training session and the playful banter that they had exhibited in the Falcon's cockpit the day before.

Shame that none of that mattered now.

Before, she would have held onto that memory tightly and refused to let go. This mirage of her, this possibility she didn't recall. She also didn't care.

"So you choose to die, then?"

"Don't do this." Ben pleaded.

And he reasoned. "Don't go this way!"

But she didn't see it.

The saber hummed with anticipation as it inched closer to his chest, and despite his incessant begging that she not run him through, he still didn't move.

"Rey, stop!"

Kill him. The voice purred.

"I would never follow someone so weak." Rey hissed through clenched teeth. "Pathetic."

"You want to kill me?" Ben spit with empty defiance. "Then do it! Put an end to this!"

She scoffed, lowering her weapon only to kneel in front of him and cup his sharp jawline in her hand. Untapped power thrummed underneath her fingertips, prickling against her hand like sharp needles. "Any last words, monster?"

"Yes." Brows knitting together, a sudden resolve took to his features, turning that same determination on her. It was as if he recognized her doubt, his eyes daring contradiction but his lips speaking something else entirely. "Listen to my confession-"

But she couldn't. Not the reasonable part of her, not the part of her that knew it wasn't real. And only because when those last words were spoken, that was it. Rey-the Rey that tapped into the back of her mirage's mind, unable to will her body to obey her, couldn't stop the movements that felt so fluid but not hers all the same. She didn't show restraint, nor any care at the fact that she was about to take such a precious life from his hands. One that meant everything.

STOP! She demanded, the booming sound of her thoughts echoing across her mind, the image before her dropping away into nothing. Now, thrown from it all, she slammed against ground that held nothing below her. No floor, no one around but her and the voice echoing across this place that reminded her so much of the empty vastness of the In-Between, except without Leia's guidance and instead replaced with something much more sinister.

Rey winced, bracing her hands underneath of her, propping herself up onto her hands and knees. Her head swiveled around, but she could see nothing. There was someone else here drifting through the force and growing closer with every rapid leap of her heart.

"I have found you." It said underneath a malicious grin-or so she pictured. "You are something truly special, and he beat you. He is the one that is holding your true potential from you!"

The Jedi shoved herself back onto her knees, taking in trembling gasps as her palms planted tightly over her ears, and then with great desperation, her hands grasped underneath of her, but all they caught was water seeping through her fingers. It was cold, giving a red flush to her hands, but it was something to grasp-something to use and attempt to ground her.

It wasn't just her reaching for something to hold onto. A hand was extending to her on the other side, submerged in the darkness and obscuring their face. She knew it too well, had touched it more than enough times. Long, deft fingers that held so much practice and experience in them, that had bested her with the Force in more ways than she could imagine.

Except, he'd always held back.

"Ben!" Rey screeched, reaching through the invisible barrier between them, being met with resistance but she pushed through. The barrier grabbed at her hand and pushed against it, pushing her back. Her fingers just barely brushed against his own, the tips touching, but he reached past her, his hand wrapping around her wrist in a vice grip, and hers latched on with the same desperation.

At least until he tried to pull her under.

"Ben!" She coughed. It yanked harder despite her fighting it, turning her head to avoid taking in mouthfuls of water. "Be with me… Please…"


Rey's eyes snapped open with a gasping breath, gulping down several lungful's of air and blinking furiously for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The depths of her panic had roused her from sleep and clutched at her chest tightly, urging her to scramble for her lightsaber, making one lousy attempt to turn over in her bunk where it rested on the small container beside her cot, only to be met with resistance.

Tears pricked the corner of her eyes, and the ball of her palm rubbed furiously against them.

It was still night, and she was home.

Safe.

Ben was lying next to her-one hand holding onto her wrist strangely enough, fast asleep as though he had been there all night. Once they had come inside from the campfire, sleep had overtaken her quickly. She'd drifted in and out as she felt him settled onto the cot which had squealed and groaned above her, the flimsy structure unfamiliar with his stature that was much larger than what it could provide stability for.

She entertained that being the reason that he had moved. The bottom cot held them well enough, though his sinking form pulled her against him, but such was the effect that he had on her any regular day. Of course she didn't necessarily mind, however foreign the concept of sharing such space with another person was. He did however teeter on the edge, close to falling off but looking content with his position nonetheless.

Well, there was the time that she had drifted off leaning against Finn, their backs pressed to the walls of the Falcon, having been overtaken by their exhaustion.

That had been strictly platonic, and it did not stir within her the same rush of emotions that laying here with Ben did now.

And like a moth drawn to a flame, Rey curled herself against him, his hand that had been holding her wrist released to accommodate her. She tucked it underneath her head, the other slipping around his waist. Fate had been testing her surely. They fit together so easily, and she could hear the whispers of his thoughts, how he longed for his bed on the First Order.

Though it was much larger, more plush, she felt him remember how even on the loneliest of nights, it proved to be still too much to endure.

Ben preferred this, and that much made her release a quiet sigh of contentment.

As she laid there, calming down from her initial rush of adrenaline buried into Ben's side, the darkness wrapped around them in much the same way she embraced him now, how he had even embraced the darkest parts of him. There had been a time that she imagined that she had been the one holding him together much like this.

Every broken part of him that threatened to shatter and cut her had been carefully construed and put in the most fragile of places, pieces constantly threatened to fall, threatened to shatter and cut her, and she'd endured every sting against her skin, every scar that it'd left.

It was easy because she knew it was right.

Now, he was the one doing it for her. He endured it.

All the dark parts.

For the first time on Exogol, she felt peace.

Rey felt as if she was home.

And in the rarest of instances, Ben looked relaxed, one arm propped underneath his own head, the other that had released her wrist wrapped around the shallow dip in her waist instead. Despite her hesitance earlier, the way her nerves had been strung so tightly after the events that had led to them leaving Crait, taking up this space at his side felt so easy. Natural, even.

Her fingers came to touch his relaxed expression ever so gently. With purpose, and making herself close to him out of something more than pure want. Things looked so much more simple when put into this controlled perspective, looking at the bare outline of his face through the dark and seeing someone not worrying about the future and the choices he was now freely given.

No longer would anyone hover over him, willing him to do their bidding.

He had decided this on his own.

The pads of her fingers continued and drifted down the line of his jaw, slack with released tension, drifting over his slightly parted lips. Her hand dropped, her own lips coming to graze the curve of his neck where she tucked her chin. Dark strands of his hair brushed against her nose with each shallow breath that he took, but she couldn't allow herself to move.

How long had she turned in her bunk before he had decided to join her? How long had he not spoken, had stayed awake and merely listened to her relentless tossing and turning before moving down to her bunk?

Had he known that it would help, or was it merely a preference? He had been insistent on not sharing the same space when with the resistance, having chosen to sleep on the floor the first night in her room, but now that they were alone, was it a different story?

Did it matter his reasonings if the fact that he was just here?

The moment in the washroom came back to her full force, not so much what she had seen-even if it was forever embedded into her mind's eye-rather what she had heard, what she had sensed through the Force. His fear had been unmistakable, an insistent tugging through their threat that had sent her into the washroom in a blind panic, expecting the worst.

Perhaps he was more accustomed to his own darkness than she was, but she knew with a definite sureness that he was caught between his two realities, spread thin amongst several different worlds. The son of a senator, and also a smuggler; heir to the Jedi legacy and the previous First Order commander. Of course he had splintered, and continued to struggle with so many different sides of himself that fought over who had control of whichever moment at any given time.

Had that played a part? Was he plagued with similar nightmares?

She'd spent so long tiptoeing with her feelings around Ben Solo. Enough nights had been spent awake, staring into the ceiling or an open sky replaying every moment that passed between them-deciphering what every moment meant, why it sent her heart soaring. She'd spent enough time trying to remember every word and its meaning, every vision down to even the barest touch. Every moment behind the eyes of Kylo Ren when she saw the ghost of Ben Solo slip through and beg for her help.

On that night when they had touched hands through their force connection, her opinion of him had changed for good. She had seen something other than a monster that had murdered his father, and instead saw a boy on whom the fate of the galaxy presided, the boy who wanted nothing to do with the legacies that were hoisted upon him. The real Ben Solo, sad but powerful, starved for companionship, and love, lurking underneath a mask and a fake persona that had become one fleeting nightmare.

Rey had kept every moment when he exhibited humanity in her mind's eye, seared that expression into it. The eyes of a man who feared intimacy, but wanted it; the man who said please and held out a hand still maintained his distance.

Underneath of her sorrow for him, she had found comfort and acceptance at his side-the part of him when he let his mask drop. His rough fingertips underneath her own, they had both looked into each other's minds, gazing into each other's memories. That same emptiness that she'd felt on Jakku, his force presence emanating a dark power so strong and willing her to shy away from it. When she'd pressed through, she saw who Ben could and would be without it, and she only longed for what she had found inside of him.

Her deep hatred for him seemed like such a far off memory now-who he used to be-and she struggled with the realization of the many more reasons she had to be compassionate, to understand what he had been going through. Their first connection when he had tried to get her to bring him Luke, she'd shot at him in fear and unbridled rage, the way he had looked at her in pain when she'd spat the word monster with venom.

Except, he'd heard it before very much in the same way. Had agreed with a strong conviction. Yet, he continued to be the clarity and peace that she needed despite everything.

And more than anything, she had carefully navigated the connection that she was sure that she wanted-albeit would and could not admit-when she'd barged into the washroom and he'd sat naked before her, his muscular, bare form disarming her and shutting down any sense of cohesive thought.

If his bare torso had been enough before, this would keep her silent around him for a long time, she thought. Her ears burned with shame, suddenly feeling foolish for reaching out to him, but it was certainly preferable if he had been in any kind of danger.

And it had been preferable in other ways, too.

No, no no.

Those were a few things on her mind-amongst other things.

Nothing that she could or should think about now.

Be with me, Rey. Please?

Those words were still so very complicated.

So she reached up and pressed a gentle kiss underneath his jawline, the darkness enveloping her while her eyes fluttered closed and pierced only by Ben's sleeping form molded around her.

"Goodnight, Ben."

Rey buried her face against the curve of his neck, listening to the white noise of recycled air being filtered throughout the ship. But she also listened to the calm that washed seamlessly over her companion. It was reassuring, comforting until she also drifted to sleep, her thoughts and mind for once at a pause and leaving her with no energy to even dream.