Rey stared at him blankly with her mouth hanging open as the truth of his words washed over her.
Ben could feel her incredulity mingled with mindnumbing shock. He felt the emptiness wash through her mind as all thoughts fled from it. He saw the dizzying spin of the room, edged in red, as her eyes rolled back in her head and caught her against him as she fainted for the first time in her life. Helpless to do anything else, he just cradled her limp body against him and laid his cheek on the top of her head. He ran his fingers through her hair and just held her. After several minutes he felt her confusion followed almost immediately by embarrassment as she woke up. She straightened up and looked at him. "I fainted."
"It's a lot to process." He excused her faint easily. "I wanted to do the same when I realized it."
"When was that?" She slanted him a still red-faced glance. "Exactly?"
"Exactly?" He echoed. "About twenty minutes before I woke you up this morning."
"And when exactly did you regain all of these memories?" She pressed.
His discomfort rippled through her. He obviously didn't want to answer the question but with resignation he replied, "The first time we touched."
"That's what you saw when we touched hands?" She was aghast.
"You saw the future when we touched," He said. "I saw the past. I saw everything about you that I had wiped away. Before I even had time to process it all, there you were. I had no idea what I was going to do when I saw you in that pod… I've never been so horrified to see someone in my entire life." He grimaced. "That had to be the most foolhardy, absolutely insane, bravest thing anyone has ever done." He hugged her tightly. "You have no idea how terrified I was when I realized that you were coming."
"You only showed me bits and pieces of your memories from the Supremacy, so of course I have no idea." She grumbled.
"It wasn't exactly my finest hour." He frowned.
"I disagree." She snuggled into his arms a little deeper. "You took a giant leap toward becoming my Ben Solo that day... even if it took me a year to realize that."
He sighed. "Rey," His voice was steady but his emotions were in such a flux that she couldn't be sure what he was feeling. "I love that you want to see me in a good light, that you think of me as Heroic Ben Solo... Nothing makes me happier than making you happy… but this Ben Solo - Kylo Ren dichotomy you have in your head just doesn't exist. They're both me. I am the same person no matter what you call me."
She pulled away to frown at him. "No, you're not."
"Yes, I am." He said gently. "I am the monster you hate and the man you love. I always have been, and I always will be."
Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest and she jumped to her feet taking several steps away from him before turning to glare at him. "That's not true! Look at what you're doing!" She said vehemently. "Kylo Ren never would have turned his fleet over to a rebel! He never would have called for ceasefire or a galactic federation! He wanted to dominate the galaxy, not free it. You're not Kylo Ren! You're Ben Solo, the man I love!" She swore.
"I did what I had to do to get what I wanted." He stood up and stalked toward her. "I have always been willing to do absolutely anything to get what I want." He grabbed her by her upper arms and ducked his head to bore into her eyes with a flinty stare. "I helped destroy entire planets because I wanted the galaxy to fear me." The glint in his eyes terrified her. "I lived to feel the terror I caused in lesser beings. They meant absolutely nothing to me. Everyone outside of this room still means nothing to me. If I could set the galaxy on fire just to watch it burn, I would. I absolutely do not care about any of it." He released his grip on her.
"I care about you. I love you. I want you. I'll do what I have to do to have you. If that means giving up the galaxy, fine, you can have it. If it means not choking the life out of some fool that annoys me, fine, I'll behave. Whatever it takes to make you happy, I'm willing to do it." He took several steps backwards. "But I need for you to love me. Not some romanticized idea of me." He thumped himself on the chest. "Me."
"I hate everything that I'm making you feel right now, but you can't love me if you don't even know who I am." He stopped and took a calming breath. "I need for you to know me and love me." He pleaded. "All of me. The good and the bad. Ben Solo and Kylo Ren."
"This is what you were apologizing for earlier." She said with sudden clarity. "Not for holding back those memories. You knew that you were going to try to convince me that you aren't who I see when I look at you."
His grimace was all the confirmation she needed.
"You're wrong. I know exactly who you are." She advanced on him. "You're the little boy who used to let me climb into bed with him when I was frightened, and the man who now holds me tightly every night." She stopped inches from his chest and peered up at him. "You're the boy who promised not to hurt me, who promised to never let Snoke get me, and the man who kept those promises." She reached up and cupped his scarred cheek. "You're the boy who willingly chose to suffer years of abuse to protect me from an evil, twisted, bastard, and the man who still suffers from that choice."
He gaped at her, dumbfounded.
"I felt it in your memories. You knew it was me he wanted. You saw that he was blinded by your bloodline and you chose to use that to protect me. How long did it take you to figure out that it was my dream that you first saw him in?"
"About ten minutes." He said softly. "When your next dream started playing in my head while I was still wide awake. I don't smell things in my dreams. You do."
"You gave up all knowledge of me because you knew that if he ever discovered what you'd done, he'd kill you and come after me." She could feel how right that guess was from his reaction, so she pressed on. "You let him twist you and torture you until he created Kylo Ren inside of you, but you are not Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren was the price you paid to protect me, he was the shield you used to hide me. He was never real, only an illusion. When we touched hands and you remembered everything, which did you want more, to kill Snoke or to protect me from him?"
"I wanted to protect you." He admitted then couldn't resist scolding her. "You didn't make that easy on me by showing up in the one place in all of existence where he was guaranteed to get his hands on you."
She ignored his scolding tone and carried on making her point, "As Kylo Ren you learned to embrace evil, to live for it, to love it… and you expect me to blame you for that? For being who you had to be to survive? For giving up everything, including your humanity to protect me?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "I refuse to blame the man you are for being the man you had to be while you had to be him."
"I still feel like I am him." He protested.
"Of course you do!" She said in exasperation. "You don't just stop being effected by abuse because it stopped. You don't just wake up the next morning cured of all your pain, insecurity, fear, and defensiveness because the person who caused that is dead. You don't learn to live a normal life in a year after you've spent half your life as the plaything of a sick, demented, evil bastard. It takes time," She reached up on tiptoe and kissed his chin. "Decades maybe, but you're not alone. I'm with you. I'll always be with you."
