Rey
Rey isn't exactly surprised by what happens when Ben takes her hands and they begin to focus on pushing out of the plane that they've found themselves trapped in, but she is filled with a feeling of awe that is unlike anything she's ever experienced. Back on Exegol, when Ben arrived and she felt his presence, there was a sync that occurred, but it was erratic, muddied by distance and the external circumstances they were both dealing with.
The sensation of synchronicity that she feels now as they sit on the ground on Ach-To is total. There is a dual nature to the feeling, as she is separate from him. She is reminded of a binary star system where two stars are close enough together that they maintain a center of mass between them. She and Ben are separate but locked together.
"What is this?" She asks breathlessly. "It is way stronger than on Exegol. Do you think it is just because we are touching?"
He doesn't answer for a moment, but when he does his voice is quiet. "It is possible that physical touch has something to do with it. It may have something to do with this place. I'm not quite sure…" He trails off, and Rey feels him pulling her into him, not physically, but mentally. It is the exact opposite feeling of when he used to push into her thoughts and memories, something that always felt like a violation. This feeling is not unpleasant in the least. Rey wants to allow herself to fall completely in, and she starts to let go of herself bit by bit, until it feels like she is unraveling. There is no sense of danger. It feels like coming home.
All at once she opens her eyes, and she is no longer on Ach-To. She is on a planet that she does not recognize, standing next to Ben as he looks at the burning wreckage of what was once a dwelling of some kind. Burning debris is scattered everywhere as if something exploded. Ben regards it calmly and looks down at her, a sad smile on his mouth.
"Before we went any further, I wanted to show you this."
"Ben, you don't have to—" She begins, but he cuts her off.
"No. I have a lot to answer for. We may never get out of here so I may never be put on trial or judged. But I'm less concerned with the judgment of others than I am with yours."
She starts to speak but he shakes his head and raises a hand. The gesture is gentle and beseeching.
"Just let me, Rey. Please."
It is the please that does it. Rey thinks of another time when he pleaded with her, and at that time she knew in her heart she must refuse him. But she doesn't have any reason to say no now. She simply nods at him.
He smiles a little then, just a small crooked line on his mouth and he nods, looking back up at the wreckage.
"This is when I knew," he says softly, breathing a sigh. "As I stood here and watched the temple burn, I knew that I could never go back to being Ben Solo. I didn't know yet who I would be or how I would become him, but this was the moment when things felt inextricably altered."
Rey is silent, not wanting to break the spell. Despite the bond and everything she knows about him based on her own invasions into his mind, she's never seen him be voluntarily vulnerable. She is struck again by how much he looks like his father.
"There are things I could show you, scenes from my childhood that might make some things clearer about my relationship with my parents. To be honest it would be rather tedious. We were a family and we were complicated. I had friends at the Jedi training temple, and I knew from talking to them that most families are complicated. What made my family worse was the problem of power…who had it, who didn't, and who had too much of it.
"My father," Ben begins, but his voice cracks and he stops to clear his throat. Rey looks at him and she can see his eyes are shining. "He tried really hard when I was young, and I remember being with him a lot. Their marriage was complicated, and mom was very busy with the Senate, so he took me away with him and Chewie on the Falcon for days at a time. The two of them are who I remember the most from my early childhood.
"But it was Mom who came through for me when I started to exhibit signs of being Force sensitive. I was very young, and sometimes the things I could do scared me, but she was so calm, so gentle. She tried to instill in me the idea that I was the one making decisions, that mistakes might happen, but that nothing terrible would happen because I was good, and therefore I'd make good choices.
"Which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing, a good thing even, to tell a child. The trouble was that I started to have these doubts."
Ben stops talking. Rey is quiet at first, unsure of whether to prod him on. She walks to stand in front of him and takes his hands. He looks down at her, his eyes no longer shining. They are dry, and the look in them is ancient, full of aching regret.
"I know now that the doubts were put there. I don't know how Palpatine accessed my mind, or why he found it to be so fertile. I only know that at first, I began to doubt my goodness, and then I began to doubt my parents. And then at some point when I was just past my fifteenth year, a voice started speaking to me. It should have frightened me, but it didn't. By that time, I was so isolated from my parents that it was a relief that someone was talking to me at all. And the voice told me things I wanted to hear, that it didn't matter if I was good, that all that mattered was that I had the power, the same power as my grandfather's, and I was meant to be his heir."
He takes a shaking breath and looks down at their clasped hands and gives hers a little squeeze.
"You know the rest. Mom and dad became frightened of me. Mom wanted to send me to Luke and dad was against it. Their already troubled marriage fractured…mostly because of me. So, I ended up with Luke and the voice in my head grew louder, and I came to know its name. Snoke became my confidant, my advisor. Ultimately, he became my handler." He heaves a long sigh. "And then I ended up standing here, looking at this fire and believing that all my choices were made."
His face has gone dark, and it is Rey's turn to give his hands a squeeze, prompting him to look at her. His eyes are lit by the fire, and she has a strange disconnected thought, about how she isn't entirely sure what color his eyes are. They always appeared so dark to her in the past. Now they look brown, with flecks of gold and green. Strange, she thinks, how many times she's looked at him and never noticed this about him. But then, she muses, we are often blind to what is happening right before us. She wonders how he was so blind to his own power, not Force-derived power, but the power that every being possesses, that which enables them to just walk away. But then she is pulled up short. She was no different. She could have walked away on Jakku, but she didn't. She allowed herself to be held in place by a hope that was never to be fulfilled.
"We got stuck," she says randomly, shrugging her shoulders.
His brow furrows, but he doesn't say anything.
"I'm going to take you somewhere. Will you let me take you?"
"Sure," he answers, giving her a small nod.
Rey focuses on Ben's eyes. She is still holding his hands. In her mind, she leans back as if to pull him toward her, but her body doesn't move. She feels something snag heavily inside of her, as if she has caught onto something that is moving past her and when this happens, Ben's eyes slide shut. She leans further back, pulling on the heavy weight of his consciousness, until she feels a balance start to tip so that he is slipping toward her. He doesn't resist the pull at all, and she is conscious of his relief as he is drawn into her mind.
Ben
Ben is aware of heat. When he opens his eyes, he is staring out across a desert, it is late dusk, the sun all but gone from the horizon, but the heat trapped in the sand radiates up from the ground. Rey is to his left, and to his right is a collapsed AT-AT.
"Jakku?" He asks, turning his attention to Rey.
She nods and looks off toward the fading sunset, its rays lighting her face like fire.
"For a long time after I left, I wondered why I didn't just walk away," she muses in a quiet voice. "I was in pain, quite honestly. Starving. Alone. I was strong, and it was what kept me alive, but it wasn't living. When I listened to your story I wondered, why did you stay trapped in an identity that caused you such misery? Why didn't you just walk away? But then I realized. We were both stuck. Walking away wasn't really an option. We needed to break away, and we needed help to do it."
He catches the thought and asks, "Who helped you break free?" He watches her smile widely and it lights up her face in a way the sunset never could.
"There were a lot of people, but Finn was the first. Finn just showed up one day like he fell from the sky and he changed everything. It all happened very fast and it didn't seem like I was making any choices, just reacting, but that isn't really what happened. I made one choice after another, one step after another. After Finn, it was Han and Chewie, and then Leia. Master Luke as well. But Finn was the one who helped me break out." Her smile changes, becoming smaller and more thoughtful and she looks down, as if savoring a memory.
Hearing her describe Finn as her liberator with such obvious affection, causes Ben to feel uneasy. He is aware that trying to hide this from her is pointless due to the bond, so he does the only thing he can think of to do.
"Did you fall for him?" He asks apprehensively, hoping that she can't hear it in his voice.
If she can she has the grace not to say anything. Instead she appears to be thinking about his question, her smile fading as she shifts her eyes to stare far off at another point on the horizon. When she finally speaks, her tone is contemplative, as if she is thinking these things through for the first time.
"I wasn't sure at first. There was no precedent in my life. I had met men who came to trade of course, but never a young man who was close to my age. And Finn was so exciting, so dashing. But when we first escaped Jakku, I was so busy being in the adventure and jumping from one moment to the next that I never really gave Finn my full attention in that way."
She pauses and seems to measure her next words very carefully.
"I'd never given anyone my attention in that way, until I saw you in that interrogation room." Her breath picks up, and suddenly he can feel her remember her rage. "I hated you. I really did. I was brand new to the rebellion, not even really a part of it yet to be honest, but I already knew which side I was on. And you, in that mask…I despised you and everything you stood for." As she says the words, her hazel eyes light on him, and he can see she is shaken slightly by the memory. Her brow furrows and her lips part. He wants very much to reach out to her, but he resists, as he can still feel the memory of her hatred coming off her in waves like flames.
She blinks a few times and her countenance changes. Her brow smooths and she looks at him, locking eyes with him in a way similar to how she did in the interrogation room. She whispers the next few words.
"But then you took off that mask…and I was just dumbfounded. It was the strangest thing. I still hated you…but there was something else. I'd never felt it before. It made me even more angry, if I'm being honest," she states, her mouth holding the barest trace of a smile.
"The bond?" He asks, preparing himself to be disappointed, for her to say that is all there is between them.
"No," she answers, her face now as open as an empty bowl. He feels her want to protect herself, but in the end she surrenders. "In the instant our eyes met, I felt something for you. It would be easy to say that it was the bond, but it was both more and less than that. Something more human, more vulnerable."
She is quiet for a time.
"So, you asked me did I fall for Finn. My answer is that any person would be lucky to fall for Finn. But he isn't meant for me, nor I him. In that moment on Starkiller Base, despite everything, including that I was very much your prisoner at the time, I chose you as my equal. It was instant and impossible and ineffable. I found the whole thing rather unspeakable to be honest.
"It became clearer on Ach-To after I came to understand you a little better. But during the months after Crait, it was…" She stops, gritting her teeth a bit. "Terrible. I was so angry and disappointed. I felt like I'd failed everybody! The rebellion, your parents, myself, and, oddly, you as well!"
Rey breaks off and Ben can see that she is shaking a little, but he is reluctant to reach out to her. She didn't interrupt him when he was telling his story. He will show her the same respect.
Finally, she continues. "The anger I felt toward you was its own kind of dyad, its own other side of the coin. And of course, you know I was having my own visions and doubts about myself. I had visions of us on a throne together! A Sith throne! It went against everything I am, and yet seeing us together was so confusing because I knew that I felt something for you, no matter how impossible it was.
"When we fought, I would have killed you, you know that. And when I did kill you," she pauses and she is breathless, taking deep gulps of air as she tries to calm herself. Tears fill her eyes as she looks at him. One falls to her cheek, and he reaches up to wipe it away with his thumb.
"The timing with the death of your mother…I know it seems suspect, that I only saved you because of her. But that was not it. I finally killed you, and I yet I knew I could not live without you."
She is shaking hard now, and he can no longer hold back, can no longer keep from taking her into his arms to comfort her. Because this has been such a long, strange road and he doesn't quite understand it himself. He holds her and makes quiet shushing sounds, stroking her chestnut hair and rubbing the small of her back.
"You were the one who broke me free, Rey. And I felt it too in the interrogation room. It makes me sick to think about it now. I was so used to being in control. I still don't know what made me take off the mask. I fear we might be in a much different place right now if I hadn't showed you my face. But for some reason I wanted you to see me."
They pull apart slightly and he leans down to rest his forehead on hers.
"We have to find a way out of this place," he says quietly. "We have to live."
He pulls back but keeps her close, allowing himself to look at her face, trailing his gaze from her downturned eyes to the soft contour of her lips, wondering what it would feel like kiss her. But then he notices the little furrow between her eyes he stops this train of thought. He can feel Rey's anxiety for the future, for her friends, for the republic. He knows Rey's living reality will likely have very different concerns from his own. For now, he keeps this knowledge to himself insomuch as is possible with the bond.
Rey appears surprised when she looks up to find him looking down at her. She starts a little and pulls back from the embrace. He senses that she is overwhelmed, and he lets her go. She catches his hand in hers before they completely separate.
"I want to take you someplace else. Is that okay?" Rey asks.
"Where do you want to go?"
"Someplace we both loved," she replies. "Though it might be a little hard for you."
Ben hesitates, but then acquiesces. There are no easy places for him to go in the galaxy anymore. "Might as well get used to it now."
Rey looks at him as if she's trying to figure out what he means, but then nods a little.
"We'll figure it out Ben," she states.
Ben feels Rey give him a little mental tug and when they open their eyes again, they are on the Falcon, sitting in the cockpit across from one another, Rey in the pilot's seat, Ben in the copilot's chair. Ben looks around the space, a look of wonder and reverence on his face.
"Is it still?" He trails off, running his hand over the controls in front of him.
"Yeah, as far as I know," she says grinning widely. "She's a survivor."
Finn
I've been pouring over the texts that Maz brought, trying my best to make sense of them, but most of them are like reading a crazy person's journal entries. I fear that the fact that I am not a true Jedi will prohibit me from being able to use them to figure out a way out of this mess.
Suddenly I hear Rey sigh on the ground, and she shifts while reaching for Kylo's arm, pulling herself closer to him. His head inexplicably turns in her direction. And then of all things they turn toward one another, each positioning their bodies so that they are facing one another. They do not seem to regain consciousness during this change, but they both move with intention. Their arms wrap around one another and they each give another pull on one another's bodies, further closing the distance between them.
They want to be closer.
Rey's readings on the medpack analyzer skyrocket. She is alive in a way that she has not been since I found her on Exegol, and yet my heart drops to a new low. Something I did not think was possible. I feel guilty, because of course I should want her to be better. But not like this. I shake my head. This is a nightmare.
I walk away from them and head to the cockpit. Not for the first time I wish Poe were here. He wouldn't know what to do, but he'd hate this as much as I do, and that would make it better somehow.
As soon as I enter the cockpit, I notice something is off. I sense something. It is a very faint energy signature, but I would know it anywhere.
"Rey!" I cry out.
And then the strangest thing happens.
From far away I feel her say incredulously, "Finn?"
Closer in the Galaxy
She is warned not to go, the hooded woman, but in the end, she decides that the benefits outweigh the risks.
"Sister, you don't know whether or not this even is what you think it is. It is something that hasn't been seen for generations. It has fallen into legend."
"I am aware," the hooded woman states drily. "But the signs are there. And I feel it. Don't you feel it?"
"It doesn't matter what I feel. We are safe here. No one knows we still exist. We can stick to the original plan, build our legions until we are strong enough again to bring a reckoning for what was done to us."
"We need the physical forms of the dyad. If we had them, we could magick ourselves into them, take the power, raise the dead. We could be a clan again. That alone will bring a reckoning."
In truth she need not argue. She outranks all and can do as she pleases. In the end it is as simple as boarding a ship and entering the coordinates for a signal that calls to the core of her being. She is coming to claim that which is rightfully hers.