When Ben comes to, he's lying in the dirt and his entire body feels like it's on fire. He coughs, tries to roll over, and he feels the pain chase its way from his ribs right down to his feet. He's bloodied, broken, and there's a wound so deep inside him that he can't quite feel his way out of it.

But Rey, she's alive.

He opens his eyes.

"Rey?" Her name comes out on a croak, the prayer of a hopeless man. She's not there. No one is. But he's no longer in the Sith temple. He glances around himself and sees it in the distance, rising from the mists of the planet. How did I get here?

He rolls to his stomach and has to breathe deeply through his nose, has to fight to not vomit. How sad would that be? The former Kylo Ren, retching outside a Sith temple like a mewling baby. Pathetic.

He shivers.

And it's that moment that he realizes he's naked. "Kriff," he mutters as he manages to pull himself to his knees. He wraps his arms around his upper body, which looks more mottled bruises than pale skin at this point. There's a wound in his side and he's sure there's an irony there, that this particular wound takes the place of where Chewie's bowcaster once shot through him. That, he knows, had been healed.

Healed by Rey.

He had felt his body knit back together, old wounds fading, like he was somehow born anew. The Phoenix, as it were, risen from the ashes of his own destruction.

There are whispers in his mind, of another place, somewhere he went to. After they'd…oh kriff, she'd kissed him. She'd pressed her lips, soft and gentle, to his, tangled her hands in his (his!) hair. And then it all faded.

Ben…

"Who's there?" he says as he pulls his way to his feet, clutching at his side. He's sure he cuts an intimidating figure, half bent over and covered in bruises. He wants to laugh but even the thought of it causes spasms of pain to shoot through him. The lightsabers are gone. His blaster? He doesn't see it, glancing around the area he's found himself in. It's either with Rey, wherever she is, or still down below.

He tries to cast out with the Force but…there's a block.

What?

He can't feel her. And he's cold in ways that are far worse than just being naked on a Sith planet in the middle of nowhere. Rey's ship is gone. Of course it is. He'd disappeared to whatever Force forsaken place he'd gone to. And she'd left.

Why would she stay?

She can't feel him either.

He's dead.

Or was, he thinks.

It's all still so muddled and he tries to delve into the memories, but he can't find them, can't pull them out. They slip away with every attempt to pull at them, only glimpsed out of the corner of his eye and then flitting away if he tries to focus on them.

Ben…

His hand goes to his waist at the sound of the voice again, and he curses. "This is ridiculous. I have no weapons." No response. "I don't even have any kriffing clothes!" The latter is shouted into the wind and lightning of the place and he hears it echo back at him.

It should be funny.

It's not funny.

He thinks the voice says his name again, but he can't be sure. It's faint.

"Rey?" he says, and just her name pierces him through his heart. He's given up everything for her, given her his very life. And he'd do it again, just to see her smile, to hear his name on her lips, to feel her in his arms. It's everything he's ever wanted, everything he dreamed of and knew he could never have.

He'd had it.

For a moment.

And it had been so very, very lovely.

He never thought he'd live through it and truth be told, he's still not completely sure he is alive. He feels every bit of the cuts and bruises and broken bones on his body. No one to heal him now. But perhaps this is his own personal hell, feeling abandoned and exposed, cold and injured, and with this wound so deep inside him that he feels it gnawing at his guts.

Leave…

"Can I?" He turns to stare at the TIE. Where would he go? Where Rey is, he thinks. But he doesn't know where she is. And it's not like he could just waltz into the Resistance base, naked and beaten to within an inch of his life and expect anything but a blaster bolt to the gut.

Wouldn't that just be the proper ending for Kylo Ren? Gunned down by a bunch of Rey's Resistance buddies, unarmed and naked.

You can…you must…

He feels the air around him shiver then.

No, he feels the ground shiver and watches as a crack forms in the citadel. A memory surfaces as everything starts to break down around him. He'd barely made it up the edge of the cliff that the Emperor had tossed him down.

This world is dying…

"Who are you?" he asks, as he stumbles a few steps toward the TIE.

That's not important. This world is dying and you must leave. He hesitates. Now!

He feels a shiver trace down his spine, wraps his arms around himself, and pulls himself, one limping step after another, to the TIE. The climb up into the thing is not going to be an easy one. And kriff, why did they make these things so impossibly tall. When he'd found it before, when he'd manage to crawl into it, it had been from up above.

But now…

The Force…

He tries to reach for it, tries to pull it to himself, wrap it around his body and allow him to have the buoyancy needed to get to the top of the damned ship. It's there, he realizes. Sluggish and defiant. The lighter side of the Force has never come easily to him, and he's often discarded it in favor of the dark side's seductive tendency to quickly pull him along.

But now he can't access that.

He's on the planet that's the darkest, the most evil, the secret world of the Sith, and the light still burns him, as if Rey's light had somehow become his own.

You sacrificed yourself…

"And yet I'm still here."

He finally musters up the energy to wrest what little of the Force he can, enough to pull himself up and over the TIE. He opens the hatch and drops in heavily. He's going to leave here. He's going to go…somewhere.

Somewhere he can find clothes, he hopes.

"Kriff…"

The planet shudders beneath him. Another crack opens in the Sith temple. Lightning streaks past and strikes in a shower of sparks and fire. Without even having any idea what he's doing, where he's going, his hands are on the controls and he's in the air.

He fades in and out of consciousness as the TIE streaks away from the planet. He has no idea how much time has passed, how far away he is from it, when he feels it…not an explosion, not exactly. It's as if the planet simply ceases to exist. He closes his eyes, for just a moment, and then lets his hand fly over the controls of the ship. He has no idea what he's inputting. He just knows it's right. He'll let the Force guide him to where he needs to be.

"What do you mean it's gone?" Poe is asking.

Rose stands at the controls, hands flying over them sure and strong. She pauses, inputs something else, and they all stare at the star chart for the region they'd so recently fought their final battle in.

"It's gone," Rose repeats. "It was there one minute. And now…" She shrugs.

"Isn't that where you said Rey was headed?" Poe asks.

"Yes," she answers, still staring at the controls. She had told them, had given them Rey's words, about death and resurrection and the tragic end to Ben Solo's life. They're still reeling from it, she supposes.

"Then…" Poe starts to say, runs a hand through his hair.

Finn reaches out and puts a hand on the other man's forearm. "No," he says. "She's not dead. I'd feel it. I did before…" He pauses there, shakes his head. "Or I thought I did…"

"You did," Rose says. "She died. And he brought her back." It seems that no matter how many times she tells them this, Finn refuses to believe it, refuses to believe Ben Solo could be anything other than the monstrous Kylo Ren.

"He's behind this," Finn says, his words dark.

"Kylo Ren?" Poe asks.

Finn nods. "I just know it. He's been behind everything."

Rose shakes her head at that. She'd seen Rey, seen the way she spoke of him and the way her whole face softened. She wouldn't pretend to understand it. They'd all seen the destruction wreaked by the First Order; they'd all faced down Kylo Ren in their own way. But Rey had been close to him in a way no one else could understand. And the two had defeated the Emperor together.

She hadn't asked for details as to what exactly happened there.

But she could see enough.

Poe's watching her when she looks up at them and there's a tightness about his face. "Come on, Finn," he says. "I think this one may not actually be his fault."

"He's dead," Rose points out.

Finn looks like he's about to say something else, when Poe speaks again. "Just trust her. You always did before."

Rose watches as he takes a deep breath. "Alright," Finn says, his voice tight. "I trust her. It's just him I don't trust."

Finn pushes away from them then and quits the room, leaving Poe and Rose to stare at each other. She's really not sure why Finn is so untrusting of someone Rey has told her is dead. But still, a shiver traces down her spine. They all know Finn is Force sensitive to some degree. He sensed Rey's death.

And she wonders, not for the first time, if perhaps there's something Finn understands that the rest of them don't. Something specific to Kylo Ren, or Ben Solo, as Rey insists they call him. Something that indicates his death is not quite so permanent as any of them think.

He contemplates going to another planet, finding clothes. But then how does one explain that he's not really Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, and yes he really is sitting in this ancient TIE fighter naked as they day he was born.

No, that one can't happen.

So he lets his fingers input the directions to some planet in the Unknown Regions. He has no idea where he's going, and he shivers. The TIE is not exactly a comfortable place to be for someone not wearing clothes. And he's searched the thing, hoping it might yield something. Even a cloak, an old shirt or pair of pants. Anything.

Wrapping his arms around his body, he falls back into the seat, head resting against it, and lets the ship go on autopilot.

In his dreams, he reaches out for the Force, but finds it empty, a blank fog. He tries to push through, hears voices whispering to him, but he can't quite make out the words.

Rey…

But there's no response from her.

Their bond is quiet.

She thinks he's dead. And perhaps he would be better off if he were. She would be better off, certainly. But he wonders if her death and his…whatever it was…has led to the bond being severed once and for all. They were a dyad, or so says the Oracle, so says Palpatine. They're one soul in two bodies, but now he feels every bit of his own body, the bruises, and pains and the horrors of all he's been put through.

But he can't feel her.

And every time he reaches, he feels a hitch somewhere in his heart that makes him almost double over in pain. He knows she's not dead. He made sure of that, and her X-Wing being gone when he returned to his TIE tells him all he needs to know. She's gone. Back to her friends, he hopes, back to where she's safe and loved and no longer tied to a monster like him.

It's easier that way.

And yet…he still feels her light filling in the holes in the tattered remains of his soul, wants to bask in that warmth.

Rey…

He drifts, in and out of dreams, in and out of nightmares, for only the Force knows how long. When he wakes, his ship is approaching a planet. He glances down at the controls, pulls up a map, and takes a deep breath. How did it…

It's no matter.

He's flying down into the atmosphere before he can think of anything else to do, coming in for a landing at a small flat place on one of the only islands. When he pulls himself up and out of the ship, just barely making it before falling to the ground in a heap, he realizes he's exactly where he's supposed to be.

He lays there, beneath the TIE, taking a few deep breaths, feeling every rock digging into his naked backside.

He knows this place.

He doesn't know how, but he knows it.

He pulls himself back up to his knees, then to his feet. It's a craggy place, damp and cool. He shivers, noting that it's dusk. Either sunset or sunrise, he's not sure. He hobbles away from the TIE, looking up a series of steps. They lead up the side of a craggy hill, leading to…huts.

Yes.

He knows this place.

Ahch-to.

This is where Rey was when it all began, when they first found each other in the Force. He remembers her shooting him, hurling insults, and finally reaching across the galaxy to each other. It was the start of something, the start of whatever it is that has brought him here, that has, in a way, brought him home.

He begins his climb.

It's not easy, holding his side, limping on one useful leg. But he does it, taking one hobbling step after another. He comes to the first landing, leans against the hut he finds there. It's not the right hut. He knows this much, and when he peers inside there's nothing there save the remnants of some ancient fire, crumbling to dust in the dark interior.

He continues.

It's slow going.

Painful.

It's what he deserves, he thinks, penance for all he's done wrong in this world. He can feel the Force there, winding its way around him. For a moment, he feels light, buoyant, and then he takes another excruciating step. And another.

When he gets to the next landing, he knows he's in the right place. He sees a small group of huts, one in tatters. That's where they were, where she was when they reached out to each other for the first time.

He stares at it for a moment longer, his mind looking inward. He still can't feel her, but here he feels somehow closer to her, as if all he has to do is stand in the middle of all that rubble and breathe and he will somehow bring her into existence.

Is this to be where he spends the remainder of his days?

"No, I don't think so," comes the voice behind him.

He whirls on his good leg, the bad one twisting as he does so. He winces, and then his eyes fall on her.

"Mother," he says, just one moment before he realizes two things: She's glowing blue and so after her death, she must have become one with the Force; and he is standing in front of his mother as naked as they he was born. He can feel his entire face go red and frantically tries to cover himself with his hands.

Thank the Force he has large hands.

His mother makes that scoffing noise that used to really grate on his nerves, but for some reason feels almost endearing at that moment. Well, it would, if he weren't stark kriffing naked in front of her.

"It's not like I haven't seen it before," she says.

"Mother…I was a toddler the last time…"

She waves one blue-tinged hand. "You're not that different from your father in some ways."

And he chokes, coughs, and oh kriff he had forgotten just how irreverent his mother could be. Only her Force ghost would come to him here and talk about such things.

"Mother," he says again, and she laughs, waving her hand in the air.

"You're not going to spend the remainder of your days here," she says, and now she sounds serious. "Call this a stopping point on your journey, a bit of a rest before you begin the rest of your life." She takes a few steps toward him and he wonders, for a moment, if she can touch him. He still doesn't know the laws of Force ghosts, what they can do, what they can't do. He had always hoped his grandfather would find him. And now, it's his mother who does. "Son," she says, and he's surprised to hear her voice break.

"I…" he starts to say. Not that he knows what he's trying to say. The words won't come. Still.

"I'm sorry," Leia says and there's real sorrow to her voice.

"What?"

"I failed you," she responds with, an echo of her brother's voice from not that long ago. Ben feels the warm prick of tears at the corners of his eyes, feels his mouth turn down, that choking sensation he's so familiar with.

"I failed," he says. "I failed you. And…and Dad…and…"

"Rey?" his mother asks. He just nods, the truth laid bare. "No," she says and his eyes flit up to hers.

"No?"

"You saved her son."

"Then why can't I feel her?" he explodes with. The familiar rage traces down his limbs, but fizzles quickly. He doesn't feel stronger for it, his knees buckling, and he hits the ground hard. His mother comes to stand over him, and he's surprised that when her hand touches his shoulder, he can feel it.

He looks up at her, naked and so very vulnerable, and feels her lean down to wrap her arms around his shoulders. . He feels himself knit back together, feels himself become somehow whole again, as if somehow his mother has imbued him with everything she is, healed every ache and pain. It's a warmth that brings back those feelings of safety, of love and caring that he hasn't felt in so very long.

Only when he was in Rey's arms, her lips fused to his, her hand in his hair. It's the safest he's felt since he was a very small boy.

"You will," his mother says as she backs away from him. She looks up to the sky and smiles. "And it won't be long."

"Mom?" he says.

She nods. "Luke probably left some clothes in his hut." She turns and waves her hand toward one a bit further up the hill.

Great, more steps. "I don't think…"

"That they'll fit? There's probably a robe," his mother cuts him off with. It's eerie, how she seems to be finishing his thoughts. He supposes that's part of being a Force ghost and tries to shrug it off. The last thing he needs is for her delving too far in and seeing any of his thoughts about Rey. "I see those too," she says, and smirks. "Alright, I don't really. I just saw the way the tips of your ears turned bright red and figured out where your thoughts had gone to."

Ben takes a deep breath. "You said I'd grow into them," he points out.

She shrugs. "I can't be right about everything." He can see her starting to fade, and he wants to rush after her, wants to find out more, hear more, know more.

"Mom…" he starts to say.

"I love you, Ben," she says. "More than you can know."

And then she's gone. He never has the chance to say the words back to her, not that he could have managed it. He couldn't get them out when he was confronted with the memory of his father, confronted with what he had done to him. He couldn't now. Maybe he won't ever be able to.

You'd like to…with Rey.

With a sigh, he steels himself for the next short climb to his uncle's hut. He's not sure he's ready to face those memories really, to see what his uncle left behind when he'd passed into the Force. No doubt he's the first one to make their way there since it happened a year ago. He has no idea what he'll find, but he knows he needs to do it.

He needs to face this last bit of his legacy.

Before she leaves Exegol, Leia hands her a scrap of clothing. He left this behind, she tells her with only the sorrow a mother can show. Rey clutches it to her chest, presses her face into it. It mostly smells of the dust of Exegol, that sort of tang of darkness that hangs over the whole place, but there's a little bit of Ben there.

She breathes in deep.

Leia smiles at her. See that he gets that. When you see him again…And then she's done, disappearing with that serene smile still on her face.

She knows.

And she approves.

Rey races back to her X-Wing, and climbs in. She folds the shirt reverently on her lap, and takes another deep breath, her hands coming up to touch the controls of the ship. They're practically not under her power. She has her hands on them, and she's inputting something in. Coordinates of some sort. She doesn't know where they're coming from, but it's not from her. Her hands fly over the controls as the X-Wing takes off from Exegol. She flies over the land, over the sea, keeping fairly low to the ground. Lightning strikes all around her, but doesn't touch her ship as she flies, easily dodging it.

And then she's lifting off.

It's time to leave that place of horror. She takes one last look at it as she flies into the atmosphere. And then she's zipping away from it, across the galaxy to parts unknown.

It takes her a moment of staring at the coordinates that she's entered on the screen to realize where she's headed.

Ahch-to.

The Force, apparently, has decided she has unfinished business there.

She closes her eyes, leans back, lets the Force guide her back to a place that was as much a home as any she's experienced. As she drifts off into a contented sleep, there's only one thought that keeps going around and around in her mind.

Ben Solo is alive…

She wakes when she's approaching the planet and just seeing it sends a shiver up her spine. This is where so much of it started. Where she retreated to after her first face-off with Kylo Ren, where she started her journey in the Force and discovered that she'd somehow found herself bonded to him.

It had been a horrible thing at first. Unwanted and discouraging, that her journey should begin with a bond to a monster.

And then she'd seen the soul behind the monster, found Ben instead of Kylo, and the warmth of their connection. She doesn't know when she started to really see Ben, or when she'd started to feel that warmth deep inside her, that want and that need for their connection. She can't imagine life without it now, can't imagine who she'd be without him. She doesn't want to know.

She circles around the planet and comes in for a landing where once the Falcon sat. The TIE fighter is there already, and she thrills to see it.

He's alive…

She still can't quite feel him but here…here on this planet where the Force is so strong, she almost can.

She lands the X-Wing next to the TIE and is out of her ship almost as soon as she touches down. As she moves away from the two ships, she turns back and just stops. The world spins and for a moment, she's back on Exegol, back where her world was ripped apart, seeing the TIE that he had taken to find her and that would never leave the planet, a lone sentinel, the only testament to Ben Solo's turn to the light.

And then everything solidifies, the world comes back, the chill and persistent dampness of the island world of Ahch-to, the cries of the Porgs, the roars of the Thala-sirens as they lounge near the sea. The caretakers are just as unhappy to see her as she is to see them. They're watching her, chattering away in their guttural language.

"Sorry," she murmurs and she's not sure if that's for the things she did while she was last on the planet or if it's for her return to the place. "I need to be here."

They stare at her, and then turn away.

They know she's right.

She takes a deep breath and sets to walking up the stairs, retracing those steps she took so long ago, when she was a mere girl, and not the woman she's become. When she was unsure and scared of the power she suddenly found herself with. She'd been out of control, terrified, and so afraid she'd fall the way Kylo Ren did. Because if the son of Resistance fighters, the nephew of one of the greatest Jedi of his time, can fall, why couldn't a lonely scavenger?

She pauses.

Casts out with the Force.

The further she goes up the steps, the more she can feel him. He's there, and she slows her breathing, syncing it to his. The bond has not fully opened, but it's the first time she has a sense that it's still there, that it's just waiting, biding its time. "Ben," she whispers, and she feels something echo through the Force, like ripples from a rock dropped into the sea.

Rey?

"Yes!" she says. She knows where he is. She can feel him.

She flies up the steps, sometimes taking two at a time, and races across the hill at the top of the island. At the crest of the hill, overlooking the cliffs of Ahch-to, she stumbles to a stop.

She closes her eyes for a moment, the world suddenly blazing with colors. Ben Solo is there, standing just at the top of the hill, watching her. The wind is wild up so high, whipping his hair out around his face. His lips are parted, his eyes wide.

He's there.

Really there.

And Rey has absolutely no idea what comes next.