"The Fleet. There's still time to save the fleet." Rey rushed over to the oculus, concern and joy surging through the Force all around her.
Ben stared at Supreme Leader Snoke's broken body, lying in pieces on and around the throne, his mind spinning so fast he could barely grasp a thought. "It's time to let old things die." He said as gently as he could inspite of the adrenaline and power zinging through his nervous system. The past no longer mattered to him. Only the future. Their future together.
The Force around Ray wobbled chaotically and Ben's heart lurched painfully in his chest. He could feel her joy die a swift and painful death as it turned to shock. "Snoke," he looked at her then and turned to walk her way as he continued to speak. "Skywalker, the Sith, The Jedi, the rebels... Let it all die." He crossed about half the distance between them and came to a halt. As calmly as he could manage with his chaotic emotions fighting to take control of him, he said, "Rey, I want you to join me."
He extended his hand toward her, "We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy."
The Force around Rey began to pulse like a fast-beating heart. He'd always been able to feel her emotions but never anywhere near this intensely. He couldn't tell if it was just her or if it was a combination of both of them feeling so strongly that was causing the powerful echo of agonizing disappointment to grow between them with each reverberation.
"Don't do this, Ben." She said in a soft voice that was drowning in sadness, "Don't go this way."
His guts clenched as pulses of pain, anxiety, doubt, disappointment and anger fluttered through him. How could she even consider not joining him after what they'd promised each other? After everything they'd gone through to get to this point? After risking both their lives by showing up here? His heart twinged painfully and he began to wonder if she'd truly meant it when she'd sworn that he wasn't alone, if all of this had been just a ruse to save her outlaw friends. He couldn't bear the thought of it.
"No! No, you're still holding on!" his desperation saturated the rapidly rising volume of his voice. "Let go!"
A surge of fear mixed with pain washed over him through the force surrounding her. He grasped at his runaway thoughts and emotions with every bit of his strength and wrestled them back under control as he blurted out the only thing he could think of that might help. "Do you want to know the truth about your parents?" He'd been flooded by memories he hadn't even known he'd forgotten when their hands had touched a few hours ago. He had spent most of the time afterward, up until she'd popped out of hyperspace in the Millenium Falcon, examining those memories.
"Or have you always known?" Ben had learned from that flood of memories, among other things, that he'd physically been there when his uncle Luke had bought her from her parents for a handfull of coins.
He felt a twinge in the Force around her and knew the truth instantly. "You've just hidden it away."
He could feel her emotions more strongly with every step as he approached her slowly, trying not to scare her. Her pain, confusion, and fear pulsed over him stronger and stronger with each step as he closed more of the distance between them. "Say it." He knew she knew the truth and could sense that she needed to admit it to herself. "Say it." He coaxed.
Tears poured down her face and pain swirled through the Force squeezing them both in it's harsh grip. "They were nobody." She said in a fragile, tear-clogged, voice.
He could feel how much it hurt her to admit that and her pain only increased his disdain for the couple who had never deserved her. "They were filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money." He said dismissively. They were nothing to her, nothing but a ghost of a fantasy. A fantasy that needed to die.
She'd never mattered to those old sots, she'd never mattered to anyone like she did to him. He had to make her see that it didn't matter who her parents had been. What she had grown up as. All that mattered was who she was now. Who she was to him. "They're dead, in a pauper's grave in the Jakku desert."
He was bewildered by her pain as it washed over him. How could she hurt for those people? He wondered. Couldn't she see that they didn't matter?
"You have no place in this story, you come from nothing, you're nothing." He shook his head, still in shock about those facts though none of them mattered to him in the slightest. "But not to me."
She hadn't come here because of any naive dream of fulfilling some stupid legacy or because she believed the galaxy owed her some sort of mystic destiny. The choice to come here and fight for him had been a choice she'd made from her heart. A choice made through the strength and courage of her feelings and convictions. It was a choice she'd made for herself and that's all that mattered to him.
Her watery eyes locked with his and he felt her bitter disappointment fade away as it was replaced with an utterly confusing and devistatingly intense jumble of longing, fear, loneliness, pain, hope, need, anger and doubt that pulsed brightly through the Force surrounding her as their souls tugged toward each other fiercely. "Join me." He implored, offering her not just his hand but also his heart and soul for a second time.
She hessitated. Ben could feel how much she wanted to reach for him as well as how much she didn't trust him.
He inched forward, his whole being begging her to believe in him enough to reach out a tiny bit and accept his outstretched hand. Her doubt, pain, and fear were a suffocating haze that swirled all around and through him as he pleaded with the Force to let her take one more chance on him. "Please." He begged, his voice breaking over that word like the violent echoing waves of doubt and fear that were crashing against his battered heart.
Rey glanced down at his hand then looked up into his eyes. Her hand raised slowly from her side and crept toward his. Her pain, fear and doubt disappeared as courage and resolve flooded through her.
His heart leapt into his throat trapping his breath behind it as her fingers inched toward his. Hope as bright as a supernova sprang to life inside his soul. A scant few inches was all that separated them from a future where neither would ever spend another moment feeling alone, discarded, unwanted, or unloved.
Her jaw clamped down and her fingers straightened forcefully as she jerked the long-forgotten lightsaber out of his slack-fingered grip. On pure instinct he grabbed for it, and the silvery hilt halted between them even as his brain registered the fact that she intended to use it against him. He pulled as hard as he could manage in spite of his pain and shock, desperate to keep the lightsaber away from her.
The Force between them was a boiling cauldron of conflicting emotions. His desperation warred with her resolve and his fear with her determination as they both poured everything they had into the effort to win the weapon upon their lives were depending.
Ben knew that this tug of war could end in only one of two ways: either she would win and kill him, because he absolutely refused to cross blades with her, or he'd win and get one last chance to flat out promise her anything and beg her to stay.
The Force heaved between them, shoving them apart as the kyber at the heart of Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber cracked deep within it's core. Rey roared and redoubled her efforts, forcing him to do the same.
At the very limit of his capabilities the realization that with her unwaivering determination to kill him, she was absolutely and emphatically rejecting his feelings for her as well her own for him. He knew then, without a doubt, that there was nothing he could say to change her mind... like everyone else he'd ever loved, she had turned away from him.
Ben's heart shattered into a million pieces, his soul screamed in agony as a brief flash of blindingly bright light exploded between them and everything went black.
Both Ben and Rey jerked awake in the darkness, the same scream trapped in both of their throats.
They looked at each other, their eyes as huge as dinner plates. The room lights grew to a dim gloom that allowed them to see clearly but didn't hurt their eyes. It had been nearly seven years since that event, and almost six since either had dreamt of it.
"Did you just…?" Ben paused to drag in a bracing breath as his lungs slowly began to relax.
"Did you...?" Rey was panting, shaking, devistated.
Ben rubbed a hand over his painfully racing heart. "I was inside your head."
"I was in yours!" She gasped. "I'm so sorry! I had no idea!"
"I know." He groaned, pulling her into his shaking arms. "When I was inside you just now, I could feel how little you were picking up from me. I was so stupid! I didn't have a clue that you couldn't feel me the way I could feel you. I'm so sorry! I should have just came out and told you that I worshipped and adored you and would have given you anything if you'd have just agreed to stay and be with me!"
Rey climbed to her knees, took his face into her hands and said earnestly, "I should have trusted you! I should have known," she kissed him lightly on the lips, "that it doesn't matter what I call you, you're still the other half of me. I should have had faith in you."
"You would have if I could have found the words and the courage to let you know how I felt!" He rasped as they held each other, both sobbing and peppering each other's faces with kisses.
"Why is it that everytime I walk in on you two you're doing something that I really don't want to see?" The couple jumped apart to gape at Luke Skywalker as he rolled his eyes at them. Rey jerked the sheet up to her neck, covering her low-cut nightgown with a blush rising on her face as the dead Jedi's pulsing blue glow lit up the whole room.
