He knows the air here in Chandrila. It is fresh and clean. Master Skywalker sinks to his knees before him as they come to the main square. Humanoids and aliens walk hand in hand, arm in arm, happiness shared.
Master's smile is not one of happiness. His eyes do not match it. His beard has grown a little on the long journey here. His desolation hasn't abated, only deepened. When Master Skywalker hugs him, Ben finds some kind of relief. Master is going on a journey; he can feel it in the Force, along with something else, something he's faintly felt since before he can remember. If he tries to remember the source of it, all that meets him is an empty space. Master draws back from him.
For a moment, Ben considers telling him of that odd shimmer he feels in the Force, which sometimes, in the dark, tries to pull him closer.
He spots his father approaching through the crowd in the main square. His father. Yelling out, Ben eagerly pushes past legs and bodies, already too tall for his age, his ill-fitting robes shifting as he runs. Ben wraps his arms around his father's legs and hugs him tight.
"Hey kid," says his father. Ben lifts his head. He narrows his eyes. In his excitement, he didn't notice it before. His father has a weight in his eyes, which he didn't have before. His father hugs him again. "I'm a general now," he says, with a strange calm, like he isn't used to the address.
Ben turns his head, looking through the crowd. The bodies shift and push and slip between one another. Master Skywalker is gone.
Ben steps away from his father, slipping his hand up to feel his father's rough-skinned palm.
Master Skywalker's journey has begun, but he has his father now.
The sensation pulls at him then, quite suddenly, clutching around his heart. Ben squeezes his father's hand.
His father frowns.
"Something wrong?" he asks him.
"Nothing," Ben says quietly, breathing. The sensation has faded.
With his father's old blaster to her cheek and the logo of the Resistance on his back, he stared into the eyes of a Knight of Ren. Of the leader of the Knights of Ren. Ben stared into her brown eyes and knew immediately. (How? How could you not tell me, he'd demanded, 21 years old with fury roaring, rising, rearing forward until all words were gone, glass was smashed, and blood streamed from his knuckles.)
Ben lounges across the cramped space of the medbay and stares up at the ship's ceiling. The Force always gives him memories when he doesn't expect them. This is why he doesn't sleep. Clenching his fingers to his palm to cease the trembling, the chattering in his head, he swings himself up to standing. He walks towards the cockpit. Finn stands behind Han.
"Wait—" he spits out in disbelief. Ben slides past him, sitting in the co-pilot seat. "We're making our landing approach at lightspeed?"
The stars flood Finn's features, like thunder. Ben hides a smile.
"You said it yourself kid: those shields have a fractional refresh rate. Keeps anything travelling slower than lightspeed from travelling through." Han nods to Ben. "Get ready."
Flicking switches, obeying the general, Ben holds on tight.
The endless blue becomes white and grey, mountains of solid rock spattered with grey. Ben throws himself back against the seat. Every thud, every judder, every near miss. He flinches.
"Han—"
An indignant roar, a rattling, comes from the ship's bowels, from the engines themselves. Han grapples with the controls.
"I am pulling up!" Han yells, though who he's yelling at is unclear. The whole of the Falcon tilts back, flying low over a jagged cliff face, scattering snow from trees as they crash through the forest, branches and trunks snapping—
"Han!" Ben shouts as the whole body of the ship rattles.
"I get any higher, they'll see us!" Han snaps, his grip tightening on the controls. The Falcon bursts through the trees to the crisp white sky and—snow. The whole ship spins across the icy snow, Han's grip useless against gravity—
Ben is thrown forward, then immediately backwards, as the ship judders to a clunking halt. Han sinks back in the pilot chair.
It's Finn who speaks first.
"C'mon," he's already out of the cockpit, halfway down the corridor, "we don't have much time."
Ben sighs, running his hands through his hair.
"What this ship's been through," he murmurs.
Han grunts in response.
"Okay, so, how are we doing this?" Ben zips up his jacket to his chin as Han speaks. Han looks at Finn. "You worked on this thing kid."
"The flooding tunnels are over that ridge. We'll get in that way."
Han nods, urgently. Ben's struck with how fragile Han looks, huddled in a winter coat and wretchedly thin scarf. His legs are spindly, feet already covered in snow. Shaking his head, Ben focuses on Finn.
"What was your job while you were based here?" Han asks, scanning the horizon behind the kid.
"Sanitation."
Ben freezes, his brows disappearing up towards his hairline, at this announcement. Han grabs Finn by the shoulder, shoving him against the wall of the beacon they're huddled behind to hide from the wind.
"Sanitation?!" he hisses, more incredulous old man than smuggler or general at this moment. "Then how do you know how to disable the shields?"
"I don't," Finn confesses. Ben looks properly at Finn then. He really isn't a Stormtrooper, this kid. Stormtroopers follow plans and other people's goals. This kid is making it up on the fly. He's ready to run.
"I'm just here to get Rey."
With the girl in tow.
(To be honest, Ben doesn't really see the problem with that kind of plan, and he can almost feel the kick Maz would give to his shins at that.)
"People are counting on us," Han says, frustrated and despairing within the same anger. "The galaxy is counting on us!"
"General – Mr Solo – we'll figure it out." Finn's eyes light up, while the snow and the wind batters around them. "We'll use the Force!"
Ben can't help it. He shakes his head.
"That's not how the Force works!" Han replies, incredulous.
Finn looks guilty, but rolls his shoulders, and starts off towards the tunnels.
"Force it's freezing," Ben mutters. Han side-eyes him.
"Oh really? You're cold?" Han makes off after the kid. Above them, there's a white streak of sunlight, thundering through the thick cloud. The weapon's charging and Ben remembers, among all the bickering, what they're fighting for.
Captain Phasma is the key, it turns out, to Finn's plan.
"She'll do what we ask, believe me," Finn says to both Han and Ben's unconvinced faces. "She isn't like the others – she's – she's out for herself."
She's patrolling the corridors, while the tannoy above mentions a search for a prisoner. Ben can't help but crack a smile as he leaps out, grabbing the captain around the shoulders and dragging her into a side closet.
"Don't you dare! Don't you—" Ben wrenches the chrome bucket off her head. Blonde hair flops over two chips of ice-blue eyes, and she sneers as Finn comes into her view.
"Remember me?"
Ben holds Phasma tight against the wall, restraining her.
Phasma lets out a slow, dangerous breath. "FN-2187."
Han brings his blaster to her chin as her fingers trace over the trigger of her rifle. Ben extracts it from her hands.
"Not anymore," Finn retorts. "The name's Finn and I'm in charge now Phasma, I'm in charge—"
It's an excitable puppy finally standing up to the bully of its elder.
"Bring it down, kid, bring it down," Han murmurs. Finn mellows, clearing his throat.
"Yeah." His attention shifts back to Phasma, his expression darkening. Ben realises, with a jolt, just how much this means to the kid. He knows only vague things about the current trooper programme. They take kids from their families and empty their brains of thought so they're mindless and brainwashed and think nothing of massacring an entire village.
He's a smuggler, he's done bad things. He's turned a blind eye. Some might say that makes him as bad as the First Order.
Ben tilts Phasma's rifle at the back of her head.
With hard eyes, Finn leans in towards Phasma.
"Follow me."
Phasma is tight-lipped, silent, as they march her towards the block which contains the computers for the shields. She's silent still as Ben slams her into a chair and puts her in front of the glassy, glossy graphics, so far removed from the clunky equipment of the Resistance.
He sees her upper lip curl with a snarl as he sits beside her, resting the heel of his boot on her chair, and aims her rifle at her head.
"I should've known it would be you, FN-2187. You were always scum."
Finn flinches but aims his rifle at the other side of her head anyway. "Do you want me to put a blaster bolt through your head? Lower the shields."
"You're making a big mistake."
A smile tilts at the edge of Finn's mouth.
"I don't think so."
"I'm not talking to you, Finn," she says slowly, as she taps in a code. She turns her head, looking straight at Ben. "I've looked through the archive files. I find it's always good to know your enemies just as well as you know your allies."
"Got no friends? No wonder," Ben replies, but he shifts. Her gaze is steady, unthreatened by the two weapons aimed at her. As if she knows she will survive this.
"I have as many friends as you, Ben Solo."
"I'm hard to get along with."
Bacca growls in agreement.
"You might think my enemies are the enemies of the First Order – the Resistance. I couldn't care less about your pathetic band of rebels."
Ben smirks, ignoring the prickling sensation at the back of his neck. "Out for yourself. I kind of admire that."
"Ben," Han speaks up for the first time, stepping forward. "Don't engage. She's trying to save her skin."
"Of course I am. This is a war, and anyone who fights for a cause dies for the cause, sooner or later. Foolish error." Phasma spins in her chair, causing Ben to drop his leg; he winces but he keeps her rifle steadily aimed at her forehead. "My enemies are the ones currently on this ship. Don't you want to know what I found?"
Ben keeps his attention firmly on the captain. "I'm sure it'll thrill me."
"Don't worry if any of the corridors seem familiar here, Ben Solo. You've been here before."
Ben swallows thickly. His grip trembles on the blaster. "Doubt it."
"I have no reason to lie."
"You've got every reason."
A press of his finger and the blaster bolt cuts quickly through her left shoulder. Phasma roars, falling forwards, clutching her shoulder. She wrenches her head up, dragging up her knee in an attempt to stand.
"You're all scum," she spits, and she stumbles up, slamming a button on the console. On the screen above, the blue diagram of shields, crisscrossing over the base, slide back. In Basic, information scrolls over the screen. Every single shield, lowered.
Phasma grabs a fallen trooper's rifle, staggering towards the doors. She rips the chrome armour from her arms, her chest, leaving it scattered behind her. Tapping in another code, she cracks a grin as she presses her hand to the blaster wound.
"I'd get a move on if I were you. My troopers will storm this block and kill you all."
The doors open behind her, and she runs down the corridor.
"No!" Finn starts forward, trying to chase after her. "No!"
"Kid, kid, kid!" Han grabs him, pulling him back. "Remember Rey – hey! Remember – you're here to get Rey."
Finn calms, his breathing heavy. "You promise, Solo?"
Han nods. "We won't leave here without her."
The questions linger on Ben's tongue (Is it true? Was it true? You lied before) but as Han looks to him, guilt in his sigh, the questions dissolve and fade away. Standing, Ben abandons the rifle, and grasps his blaster, following Finn and Han out into the corridor.
"Okay," Finn whispers, as Han crouches behind several crates, a short distance in front of them. Ben checks his blaster, ignoring the questions still rolling around in his head, as Finn drops to a crouch beside him.
"The cells are through that blast door. We'll use the charges to get through. I'll go in and draw fire, but I'm going to need cover."
Just as Ben nods, he feels a shiver in the Force. He assumes it's Finn.
"You're sure about this, right?"
"Hell no. I'll go in and try and find Rey. The troopers will be on our tail – we have to be ready for that…"
Ben feels the shiver in the Force again, stronger. It's not just a flicker, like any ordinary signature. It's the signature of another Force user, a Force user in hiding. Ben lifts his eyes to over Finn's shoulder.
Sure enough, there's the scavenger. Through the viewport, he can see Rey climbing the hangar walls, easily jumping from one foothold to another.
"Hey!" Finn's urgent, offended whisper catches Ben's attention. "I'm trying to come up with a plan."
Ben points. "Look behind you before you do."
Finn narrows his eyes, turning towards the viewport. Ben can see the relief in how Finn's shoulders slope and how he presses his palm to the glass.
"C'mon," Han says, seeing Rey too. "Less amazement, more rescuing."
When they round the corner, barely two minutes later, she rounds the corner with her blaster raised and gasps, jumping back.
"You all right?" Han asks, calming her. She nods.
"Yeah, I'm—" She swallows. "I'm fine."
"What happened to you? Did she hurt you?"
Rey frowns; there's something else on her mind. Ben moves closer, sensing it. Maker, the Force spills out of her. Right now, there's a confusion and a stubbornness—an unwillingness to talk about what she's witnessed or perhaps even what she's done.
Ben feels the sensation in his blood, knowing it far too well.
"Finn, what are you doing here? What are any of you—"
"We came back for you."
"It was his idea," Ben says, causing Finn to turn around, glancing at him over his shoulder. Rey's eyes fix on Ben, soon returning to Finn. She looks overwhelmed simply by the idea of people wanting her.
She throws her arms around Finn, hugging him tightly. They whisper to one another, a brief conversation muffled by clothing and how tightly these two fast friends hold one another. Ben hears parts of it.
"—you get away?"
"Can't explain it – you wouldn't believe it—" Rey breathes, and she squeezes him once more, before she pulls away, smiling. Her smile hesitates, then widens as she approaches Ben.
"Thank you too."
He stiffens, shuffling his weight from foot to foot. "For what?"
Rey envelops him in a hug, though he's more of a wall where hugs are concerned than Finn is. "For coming back."
Awkwardly, he puts his arms around her shoulders. She's tall for a female human, but she's still so small and that makes him feel even more freakish. But she hugs him tighter, pressing her cheek to his chest, and he allows himself to be lost in the embrace for a moment.
"Destroy base now, hug later," Han pipes up, and Ben blinks, remembering where he is. As if scalded, he jumps back from Rey and nods.
"Good idea."
The girl is gone, and now, the Resistance is here. Along with their general.
She feels it in her heart, more than she does in the Force.
He had always joked he was attached to her somehow. That they could travel through lightspeed to either side of the universe, and still the string between them, the connection between them, would never break.
It doesn't matter many times we fight, she'd say in reply, I always hate watching you leave.
Sarhu Ren walked quickly into the space of the main hangar. A squad of troopers marched behind her. She scanned the vast, empty space.
"Search every area," she commands. "Find them."
The troopers split apart, quick to obedience.
Behind her mask, Sarhu's breathing trembles. She hears, a distant echo (a memory) of a rattling mechanical breath, like a shadow.
The girl hadn't got it quite right when she'd invaded Sarhu's mind. The shadow wasn't the problem. Its existence was what gave her the pain but separated her from the grief of Alderaan and the grief her parents, now scattered into the stars, with the planet of her childhood nothing but a cluster of asteroids.
The footbridge echoes underneath her footsteps, hundreds of miles above the white heat of the engines. To look up at the ceiling of the hangar is to almost look up into space itself.
"LEIA!"
The universe stops on a pinpoint.
It seems to her they're the only ones that are alive in it as she turns to face him.
"Han Solo," she says, measured but Leia still peeks through, his name softened in her voice by history. She finds it difficult to care about that as he steps onto the footbridge. "I've waited a long time to see you again."
"What's it been? Thirty years?"
His humour bleeds with pain.
High above, just to her right, a set of blast door opens. Through the light from the sun, drained of nearly all its energy, soon to be trained on D'Qar, home of the Resistance, home to Han Solo, Sarhu sees two young figures. One is the ex-Stormtrooper, FN-2187. The other is the girl. Rey.
To her left, a tall figure, dark-haired, aims a blaster rifle at her.
Hello Ben, she thinks, knowing he cannot hear her. Cannot feel her.
Han walks forward. His pace is slow like he's approaching a wild wolf.
"Take off that mask. You don't need it."
It takes all her effort to incline her head as if she has no plans to obey him.
"What do you think you'll see?"
His crooked smile appears, bringing back too many memories. She squashes them underneath the heel of her boot, centring herself on what she did to Mikata. That rare loss of temper. Snoke had chuckled when she'd confessed to the deed.
"The face of my wife."
Her hands tremble as she lifts them towards the mask, towards the hood that covers her hair. Tightly, she clenches her fists.
Han merely waits.
She draws back the hood. She pulls down the mask, which is a scrap of silk and it rests around her neck.
Though she feels old, she knows that she does not look it.
He has aged slowly, a wrinkle coming with each year, a grey hair gradually becoming the thick tuft of grey hair atop his head now.
Her hair is thick and youthful, with only a tinge of grey at her temples. Only a few lines surround her eyes.
She fully embraced the Force, and as her punishment, the Force gave her more time.
The planet was dust and grey. The sky grew dark, overshadowed by the arriving ship. It gleamed black, a remnant and a reminder of the Empire. The New Republic's shining light, the one who had brought peace to the galaxy alongside her smuggler and her brother, wiped the blood from her mouth, her head and body heavy from blows. She held her makeshift brace as she stood, limping slowly towards the opening ramp of the ship.
Wrapped in gold, the voice that had whispered inside her from when she was 19 years old.
"Well done, Senator Organa. You are as strong in the Force as your father feared you were."
Leia sank into the dust of the planet, falling onto her hands and knees. She clenched her fingers, grasping at gravel and dirt.
"Tell me," he said. "What mercy am I being asked to impart?"
She choked on another cough, this time filled with blood. "
"Ah, yes," Snoke hummed. "Mercy. Easily given – but for a price."
She pressed her head against the mud. A broken sob released from her chest. "They beat my son! My husband! They almost killed them – because I – I suggested peace."
"I know. However much you try, they always wish war. Don't they?"
His fingers threaded through her hair.
"I…" She hiccupped, tears streaming down her face. "They took Ben…"
As revenge, they took Ben away from her. She had looked away, for just a moment, her and Ben among the thrill of it all; the heat, the weather, the markets, the sellers, the food, the smells and the sounds. Ben loved Coruscant. He giggled as Force users happily displayed their skills for credits and he gazed in awe at the cultures; what they made, how they behaved, how they spoke. She had let Han go with Chewie for a smuggling job, making him promise he wouldn't get in too deep.
"If Calrissian calls, you'll know what state I'm in," Han joked, kissing her and Ben goodbye.
Confident with the crowds of Coruscant around her, Leia negotiated the price of two Mandalorian oranges with a vendor.
One moment, she was playfully haggling credits. The other, Ben's hand slipped from hers.
"MAMA!" he screamed. She dropped the food, letting it scatter, squashed underneath the feet of other buyers. Glimpses of Ben through the clothing of humans and aliens, him being dragged away by a hulking horned figure, whose leader she had given mercy.
"BEN! BEN!" Hysterics filled her mouth as she stumbled over someone's skirt, and Republican guards rushed forwards towards the ship's ramp, where the alien slung the squalling, crying Ben over his shoulder. The guards opened fire as the ramp closed and the ship flew up into the air.
"No – no – no! Ben!"
They were gone from the atmosphere. Gone from Coruscant.
Leia fell to her knees. A crowd gathered, amazed at the sight of Senator Organa weeping and panicked, on her knees, sobbing out her only son's name. Republican guards grabbed her, hauling her to her feet.
A party went with her to the alien planet. Wind and dust whipped up around them. None of them knew the terrain. They were wiped out in an instant, the ship destroyed.
Alone, beaten, Leia sobbed and prayed to the Force.
She received silence.
"Please," she begged. "Please…"
Luke promised. If she prayed to the Force, the Force would give her an answer.
Leia… I can get him. I can bring your son home.
"Not you," she whispered, clinging to her blaster, huddled behind a small rock, while the aliens chattered and bragged about their victory. Ben sniffled and sobbed, and they bid him be quiet with blows to his head. "Never you."
The voice chuckled, seeing her thoughts. You would take them alone?
She breathed hard. Once, twice. Jumping to her feet, she ran through the scattered bodies of her guard, firing on the aliens.
She marked one of them before another smashed their arm into her face, knocking her on her back. One stamped on her leg, crushing the bone. They grunted and huffed as they set to beating her, while Ben sobbed.
To her shame, she surrendered.
They left her then, to slip into unconsciousness.
When she awoke, she was broken and bleeding, and Ben was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be found. When she reached out with the Force, she felt only his pain, weakening her further.
So, when the voice came again (when Snoke came to her again), she finally said yes.
Snoke chuckled again, a laugh without mirth, as he pulled himself away from her.
"I know," he said, with false sympathy. "The pain of losing a child is too much to bear. But you can save him. Before, you saved him, Leia. Save him again."
She was silent, for a long moment, to his words. His persuasion.
"You know my condition, don't you? You are smart enough."
"I gave him mercy," she said slowly. She lifted her eyes to meet his. In the silence, she bared her teeth. "Now you must give me something in return."
Snoke sighed, triumphant.
"Go," he ordered, with a wave of his hand, "find her child. Give mercy to those who stand in your way."
His troopers wore the colours and armour of Death.
Leia watched them until they were a dot on the horizon.
Tears wetted Leia's eyes and fell down her cheeks.
When the sky was turned to inky blue, they returned. They had blood on their armour, and one cradled Ben in their arms. Blood streaked his chin and nose, and his eyes were pink from crying. The trooper held him out to Leia.
He outstretched his hands, begging for her.
"Mama," he choked out. "I'm sorry Mama…"
"Oh Ben," she wept, hugging him close. "Oh Maker, oh God—"
She cradled him, almost doubling over with relief as she held him. Snoke turned his back.
"Bring them," he ordered, flinging the command over his shoulder as he walked up the ramp, into his ship.
Leia struggled to her feet. She held Ben tight as she limped slowly into the dark recesses of the ship and a new destiny. The Force beat within her, the rupture growing bigger with every step she took.
But, as Ben calmed in her arms, Leia watched Snoke carefully. He drank some exotic wine, and drummed his fingers against his knee, pleased with himself.
Leia looked back at Ben, stroking his cheek with her thumb.
"The man scares me," he whispered eventually, when the ship was off-planet, thundering through hyperspace. "He wants something."
"He does," she said softly, stroking his thick dark hair. "But he won't get it, little starlight. He won't get what he wants – not at all."
"You got old," Han says into an ever-growing silence. Leia knows she should step back as he comes closer, but she can't bring herself to do it. She thinks too much, of that day. When she stroked Ben's cheek and promised him Snoke wouldn't get what he wanted. Her, tightly pressed underneath his thumb.
(For a while, he hadn't. For a while, she fed the growing Resistance, feeding them with intel, writing notes to Senators who she knew favoured the coming war. For a while, bit by bit, she weakened the structure of the First Order. Until a Jedi padawan, tired of Luke Skywalker's training, turned spy for the First Order and divulged the location of Luke's academy. Snoke's Deathtroopers marched on children and teenagers, killing without thought. From Snoke's ship, Leia watched the massacre. She scanned the horizon for Ben, but she saw nothing but the dead. A new part of her heart, her spirit, broke for every life taken, while Snoke took the six most promising students and christened them his knights. With a twisted smile, he made her their master.)
"It's too late, Han," she says. She can't help but smile at the domestic exasperation in her tone. Exasperation, when as her husband looks at her, old and tired from fighting, she feels increasingly torn. Like she's possessed by two bodies.
Sarhu, the broken warrior.
Leia, the fighter.
Han gently shakes his head.
"No, it isn't. You can still come home, Leia. We miss you." Han swallows. He speaks in a whisper, taking another minute step forward. "I miss you."
"Will you help me?"
Han's eyes are earnest. "Yes. Anything."
She breathes hard. Slowly, evenly. She brings forth her saber. Sleek and black, forged in the heart of her father's palace. Not too soon after the massacre. Not too soon after she had been named Master of the Knights of Ren and gifted the name Sarhu.
She keeps her eyes entirely on Han's face as her thumb traces over the button. Just a breath and the saber will activate.
"Thank you," she whispers.
It's a punch to the gut. She gasps, stuttering. Han catches her, looking around wildly. Ben is above them, his blaster aimed at her gut. Leia clutches her side, falling to her knees, doubled over as the pain wracks her body.
"Han, run!" Ben's voice echoes.
"Leia—" Han gasps, cupping her cheek, his fingers ghosting through her hair, tracing over the wound. "Leia…"
Fire unfurls with the sonorous sound of several explosions going off at once. The hangar's walls engulf in the flame. Leia cracks a smile. No doubt the result of multiple charges, placed on every other column.
Her husband is predictable.
"Dad, for Maker's sake, run!"
"Not without her!" Han yells back at his own son.
"Your wife… is gone, Han," she breathes, catching his attention. His eyes widen. He shakes his head, firmer this time.
"No, that's not true. It's not—"
She keeps her eyes steady, reaching up. She caresses his cheek.
"Ben just saved you."
It's as if she has destroyed his universe with a single click of her fingers. He slowly stands, and turns away, running down the footbridge. Leia looks up, clutching her saber tightly to her chest as she stands. Pain shoots through her body again.
Ben gives her one final look before he glances at the fire, spreading rapidly over the oscillator, and he runs.
Above, FN-2187 and Rey clutch one another, unsure of what to do.
Leia rolls her shoulders, igniting her saber. She advances.
Leia Organa or Sarhu Ren, she has a mission. She will complete it.
The scream of the TIEs echoes in the dark sky, followed by the heavy guns of the base and the whine of the X-wings.
"We need to split up," Ben says, as Rey and Finn arrive at the base of the oscillator. He feels the heat of the fire on his back. "Han, you get back to Chewie and the Falcon that way, over the snow. Take this," he adds, shoving his father's coat at him. "Keep close to any shelter you find."
"I've done this before, kid," Han says heavily, throwing the coat on. He breaks into a run.
"Rey, Finn – with me." Ben throws his bag over his head, onto his shoulder, arming his blaster. "We'll cut through the forest."
He could barely see what was happening between Ren and his father. All he had known was that one of them needed protecting. The general, the one who led the Resistance.
At his first chance, he shot her. It's a shot of adrenaline and despair to remember how at the last moment, he'd aimed for her side, rather than her head.
Maz's crowing runs through his head as he clambers up the side of the hill, towards the thick line of trees. Rey is just behind him, Finn too. He flings his hand out, and Rey grasps it tight.
"Finn, come on," she urges, panting.
You are right back in the mess!
Finn breaks through to the front.
"Falcon's this way," he tells Rey, pointing. Ben's kind of grateful he told her because, in this half-daze that he's in, all he knows is: get away, get safe.
It's in his genes. The smuggler blood.
"Oh no."
Ben shakes off the daze at the hum of a lightsaber.
Sarhu Ren is a dishevelled mess. Her hair whips around her, snow landing on her clothes and her skin is pale, the exhaustion in her eyes plain to see. The blood from her wound spatters in the snow, blood on white.
Her focus falls directly on Ben.
His footsteps crunch in the snow. Distantly, the TIEs whine. Fire and smoke are the scents.
"… Mom." He sees for a second, her bottom lip moving, her eyes changing. Mellowing. He kids himself, for a second, that he might calm her. Distract her long enough for everyone to get away.
If he could, she wouldn't have chosen the Dark. If he could, he wouldn't have been pushed from his father to Luke, then back to his father, then to Lando, when being a general and a father proved too much for Han Solo. Lando wouldn't have dropped him off on Takodana as a favour to his old friend, and Ben wouldn't have been raised by Maz Kanata. He would've been raised by the woman stood before him.
Would she be a general, like Han? Or a princess, like so many years ago?
"Give me the girl."
That breaks the silence between them, and the spell he slipped into, of past lives and possible alternate universes.
Ben shakes his head.
"I can't do that."
She roars, a great release of everything, and the sting of a saber's blade across his face blows him back. The last he hears before everything goes black is Rey calling his name.
Rey has killed Stormtroopers. She's fought on Jakku, with clumsy blows of her staff.
She's never been more terrified as she has facing Sarhu Ren.
Sarhu slides away from Rey's attempted blows, made in panic, like water, her body a blur of Dark energy as she spins on the ball of her toe, raising her blade to strike a blow upon Rey's head. With a yowl, a yelp, Rey blocks the blow. Behind her, the surface crumbles into a cliff. The heat of the planet's molten core is on her back as Sarhu Ren pushes her back, again and again, until she is at its edge, struggling underneath the pressure of Sarhu's anger.
The two blades locked together shine blue and red on both their faces.
She can't win. Not against this. Not against the Force itself.
Maz's words fill her head again.
Now, it calls to you… Feel it… It moves through and surrounds every living thing.
"The Force," she whispers. Sarhu frowns in the face of it.
Rey grits her teeth.
The Force.
It will guide her.
She trusts it as she slides out from underneath Sarhu, leaving Sarhu to turn, with bared teeth.
Sarhu returns with a flurry of blows, but Rey blocks them all with ease.
She leads the charge now, rather than running from it, circling Sarhu to jab the saber at her in another flurry of blows, clumsy but now with true power behind them.
She slices low at Sarhu's ankles. She smells cauterised flesh as Sarhu falls on one knee, her cloak ripped and burning, her ankle grazed by the saber, which is enough to make her fall.
Rey hisses in the cold air of Starkiller, stalking her prey.
Sarhu leaps forward, but Rey is ready. She blocks the swinging blow, gripping Sarhu's wrist, and forces her blade into the snow. Sarhu struggles, spitting, panting, but the blade breaks, the saber flung off into the distance. Rey swings out, and it cuts across her enemy's face.
Sarhu collapses to the snowy ground.
A voice enters Rey's head, far away from the kindly, fatherly voice that guided her on Takodana.
She is weak… Begging for death… Be kind. Bestow your mercy upon Sarhu Ren.
Rey breathes, taking in the scent of burning. For a moment, there is burning hatred within her. Anger, terrible white-hot anger that she feels unable to control.
It would be easy enough. To stand over Sarhu Ren and impale the blade into her chest.
A rumble fills her ears, and the ground splits, separating Rey from Sarhu. The thoughts fade, and she is left only with fear.
Fear of what she has done. What she thought to do.
Fear for Finn.
"Finn," she gasps, finding his unconscious body. Overwhelmed, adrenaline flooding from her body, she collapses finally, weeping against his chest.
Light fills her vision, the white light of the Falcon, and it is Chewie who roars at her in greeting, Han who waves at her from the pilot's seat, as Chewie hurries down the opening ramp. Far away, the planet ruptures. Chewie gathers Finn in his arms. Rey follows.
It is when Finn is lying in the medbay, safe from the base's destruction, that dread fills her heart.
She knows what it is. She feels fear for Ben too, as she realises. She left him, on that side of the forest, with that monster.
Worst of all: she left him.
Without thought, with hesitation, she left.
Ben blinks awake to a collapsing planet and his mother's body beside him.
He crawls, ignoring the pain that flows through him from the blow to his face, rapidly towards her. An ugly slice of a blade marks her face. He shakes her, checks her pulse. Strong, thriving.
He gets his survival streak from his mother and the tendency for trouble from his father. Maz told him that.
He hears from above a whir of engines. High above, some way off in the distance, there's a First Order shuttle arriving. Come to take her away.
In her belt, he notices a tracker, gently beeping her location to a personal code no doubt.
The questions he ignored in the heat of battle, in the heat of needing to do something good after doing so much bad, come flooding back with one look at her face.
There's something missing from his past.
Like hell will his father tell him any of it.
The only clue, the only lead? Is her. The woman once known as Leia Organa, known as his mother.
"You're going to hate me for this," he mutters, ripping off the tracker. Scooping her up, he runs through the trees towards a familiar sound of engines. Through the canyon, the Falcon flies, Han in the pilot seat and Rey in the co-pilot seat, Rey's eyes searching.
"Hey! Hey!" Ben calls. Rey's eyes widen as they fall on him. Han seems frozen for a second. Then he brings the Falcon in to land.
Her face is scarred by the very blade Rey wielded. The scavenger admits this with a shy blush coming to her cheeks. She shuffles towards Finn, sitting on the floor beside him.
They're already far away from the crumbling base, their mission completed.
Han couldn't care less about what Rey did to survive. They've all done things to survive. To stay sane in the face of another war. He gave up his only son, focused on trying to be a general. Ben smashed equipment to bits and bled in an attempt to cope with the realisation his mother had fallen, and his father had lied. Finn ran, and probably still is (Han doesn't blame him), from his life as a Stormtrooper. A cog in the machine of the First Order.
Chewie has been… Chewie.
Leia… she gave up everything.
Ben stands away from his mother, leaning against the cockpit entryway with a cup of caf in hand. He's got a scar to match his mother's, half-repaired by their limited bacta. Most of it has gone on Finn. Behind Ben, the Falcon plunges through the hyperspace lane, back to D'Qar. (The First Order knows their location. Soon, there'll be an evacuation to organise. He should contact Ackbar about that.) Chewie checks over Finn.
It's Han who approaches the sleeping wildcat in the bay, the one scarred by a young desert orphan. It's simple really. He stands. Picks up a blanket. Puts it over her shoulders.
She opens her eyes.
"You know… The First Order will find me."
Every word sounds half-hearted and false coming from her lips. Han watches her, nodding slowly.
There's a crunch of glass and wires. It comes from Ben. Not breaking eye contact with the floor, he crushes a tracker under his boot.
"Sorry about that."
Ben disappears into the cockpit.
Leia clutches the wound at her side, frowning a little at the bandaging. Han is used to patching those kinds of wounds.
"You're still full of surprises flyboy," she murmurs, sleep taking her.
Sitting behind a curtain, looking through at the medical unit, Ben watches the ysalamir skitter around its small cage. He's on the edge of the bubble they create, and he kind of wants to stay here all day. Not using the Force for a while seems like a good idea. Maybe things will seem sort of, well, normal again. Like he can kid himself he's still just back in this for a couple of days.
The Toydarian doctor flits in the corner of the med bay. All precautions have been taken. The ysalamir are kept in a cage by the patient's bedside, and it is only people who can't be affected by the Force allowed in close range of the First Order's chief enforcer.
Sarhu Ren. Leia Organa. He doesn't know her name just yet. She sleeps, kept in a coma in a glass dome, statistics and readings consistently taken and splayed across the glass in Basic.
There will be the talk of what to do with her later. Some might just suggest immediately sentencing her. Some might suggest a trial. Ben's still unsure of where he'll lay his cards when that discussion comes to pass.
Maybe he'll do what he does best and run away.
(Looking at his mother in that tank again, for the countless time, he knows he won't.)
Idly, Ben traces the shape of his half-healed scar.
Dr Kalonia told him because of the lack of bacta, he's most likely going to end up with a thin scar across his brow and cheek. Thankfully, she didn't make a "one for the ladies" joke. Mostly because she knows Ben. The idea of a smuggler is a lot more appealing than the reality of one.
"Ben! Oh—" Rey puts her hands on her knees at the feel of the ysalamir. Ben gets up, rubbing the high of her back. Her hair is in its messy three buns, and she's still in her clothes from Jakku, dusty and yellow from the sand with snow clinging to the bands around her arms.
"I know. Bit weird at first."
He guides Rey to a chair, dropping into a crouch before her.
"How are you doing there, scavenger?"
She smiles slightly at that address. "Finn's going to be okay. Dr Kalonia told me. And – and we found the rest of the map." She rubs her temples, still getting used to the sensation of the ysalamir.
"The map," Ben repeats the phrase flatly, though a million emotions running through him. The map. His uncle. His hand goes to his neck, his fingertips feeling the scar at his neck.
Rey nods.
"Yeah. Han's sending me to find him, along with Chewie and Artoo. Artoo had the rest of the map inside his data."
Ben laughs. It's a full break of a laugh, that causes the Toydarian to try and hush him, but when Rey joins in, he gives up with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head.
"We can't laugh," Rey says through her giggles. "We can't."
"I know – I know. But that's… that's very my family." He glances down, finding that Rey's fingers have softly interlinked with his, quite unconsciously for the two of them. He swallows thickly, standing.
"I was… I was going to ask you to come with me."
Under the effect of the ysalamir, it feels like being in a bubble. Everything's both muted and heightened at the same time because it feels like all his senses are gone. They come back as Rey looks at him, worrying her bottom lip.
Ben glances towards the bed and the glass dome where his mother lies. She already looks older, and more fragile, marked by her father's saber and dressed in a soft robe of white.
"It's okay," Rey says. "I shouldn't have asked."
She gets up, going to leave. Ben finds himself reaching out, as he had in the forest. Her fingers fit into his so easily that he gulps, stuttering a little on a phrase he knows too well.
"May the Force be with you."
Rey smiles.
Later on, he's at the front of the crowd, watching as Rey, in Resistance clothing of grey with clean skin and a bright smile, boards the Falcon. Chewie is with her and lifts the Falcon into the air.
"Old friend," Cee says to Artoo, "it is good to have you back."
Maybe soon, Ben thinks, we can have everyone back.
On this shell of a base, which was once a forest planet with a winter climate, they healed him. Quickly, efficiently. Like it never happened. They repaired her too. Just like it never happened.
Surrounded by light and white, Ben plays with the Force, lifting toys into the air to his delight. He seeks Leia, for a smile, for pride or approval. Overwhelmed by just how much she loves this boy, she picks him up, grasps him tight and cuddles him.
"Mama," he whines, "lemme alone."
He snuggles into her anyway. Leia sits back, stroking his hair.
"I wish I could show you Alderaan," she murmurs. "It was so beautiful, Ben. The fire in the library roared and crackled. Mother and I, we spent so many nights there, with Father, talking and joking and… being a family. Did I tell you of when Tarkin came for dinner there?"
Ben yawned. Outside, beyond the viewport, a distant star, far off in the galaxy, was in the process of dying. It roared and churned. "Who's Tarkin?"
"A very powerful, very bad man," Leia murmured into his ear. "He suspected Bail Organa and Breha Organa, my mother and father, of rebelling against the Empire."
"He was right though."
She kissed Ben's temple. Tears hovered in her eyes. "I was there too. He questioned my father, but my mother play-acted. She accused my father of affairs, numerous ones until I broke down. I cried, as loudly, as messily as I could. It was the one thing I could do, to get rid of Tarkin that night. And it worked. It didn't allay his suspicions, but it brought my parents time. It brought the Rebellion time."
"I'll be a rebel," Ben muttered sleepily. "When I grow up."
Leia rubbed his back, soothing him. When she spoke again, she kept her voice soft in his ear. "I hope you do."
Standing, still carrying Ben, she watched the far-off dying star.
Ben lifted his head from her shoulder. His tiny fists clenched at her robe. It was black and threaded with gold.
"You'll be there, though."
Leia pressed her lips together, into a thin line. Wordlessly, she put Ben down, sitting cross-legged before him.
"Ben, look at me." Maker, his eyes were wide and dark. And so ancient already. As if the Force had waited a thousand years just to make this child. She remembered what she'd thought of him, when she'd felt him kick and reached towards with the Force, with the thought of comforting him. She knew he would be a fighter.
His defiance would shake the stars.
(She really, really hoped it would, one day.)
"You understand the Force, don't you?"
"It's a power you have. And Unca Luke."
"It's not just a power, little one. It's a companion. It sees you through every stage of your life, and you can speak to it. It can speak to you in return, but only if you let it in."
Ben's ancient eyes pierced her, for a horrendous beat, where all she heard was the roar of the stars. His brows arranged themselves into a frown. "When will I see you again?"
Had he felt it? Was that what had caused him to ask? Feeling her grief, knowing this would be the last time she saw him again?
Behind the door, she heard muffled conversation.
They were coming.
She thought she had more time.
Force, why couldn't she have more time?
"Come here." She opened her arms. Ben threw himself at her, looping his arms around her neck.
"I don't want you to go," he whispered. She clutched him tight, feeling his tears coming.
"If your father does what it is right..." Ben burst out a sob. Leia rubbed his back, rocking him gently. "Hush. Hush my darling. We will not see each other for a long time. You see, I have agreed to something. Something that's to do with the Force."
"Why?" Ben cried into her chest, his tears staining her robe.
"To save you," she said, cupping his cheeks. With her thumb, she wiped away his tears. "I'm doing this for all of you. Snoke wants me to give myself up, to become his apprentice in the Dark side. Like hell, my little starlight. The First Order will be crippled, from within its own walls. I will be the one to do it. Please… please tell me you understand."
As tears brimmed in her eyes, his faded with a sniffle and a gentle nod of his head.
"I think I do, Mama."
Closing her eyes, Leia felt her tears drip down her cheeks as she waved her hand, stitching a wall over her son's memories.
It was selfish, to tell him of her plan. Dangerous. But she had to. If she hadn't made that promise, made that vow, it would be too easy to forget.
It is always too easy to forget a vow you make to yourself.
Make it to someone else, announce it to the world, and it becomes a duty.
In her arms, Ben fell asleep, snuggled against her neck. When he woke up, he would remember nothing of this day. He would not remember being broken, her blood, her words, nor her confession.
The doors opened.
Leia looked up. Two Deathtroopers entered the room. One snatched Ben from her arms and took him from her sight.
Snoke glittered in his golden robes. His features twisted with another gruesome smile. She felt the tendrils of his Force powers invade her mind painlessly. With a stony glare, she slammed a wall up against them.
Snoke's smile vanished.
"The old Empire ran itself into the ground. You, Leia Organa – my apprentice – oversaw its destruction. You made it into nothing but ashes. It is time to begin your training, and for you to see a way towards the First Order."
Another presence lighted the Dark in the room. A flickering flame, raw and young. Leia's heart tightened and ached as it thrummed.
Ben.
She felt a youthful snatch of hope.
Mama?
Closing her eyes, she imagined a wall. Brick by brick, a wall in front of the image of her son, carried in the arms of a faceless Deathtrooper. He was still asleep, his subconscious calling out for her.
The nebula slowly expanded along the horizon of the galaxy.
Perhaps she would. Perhaps she would fulfil her duty to her son. Hopefully, one day, the New Republic would shine as it was meant to.
She looked out into the stars.
"Godspeed, Rebels."