Chapter Two: Cut
It wasn't the Supreme Leader she noticed first. When her eyes adjusted to the low lighting of his personal quarters, they absorbed unmitigated destruction. Ancient books and writing utensils had been swiped from the sleek desk, while its accompanying durasteel chair had lost three legs. Along the wall, the reflective panels bore a ragged pattern of burns and scorch marks. One panel had been shattered, exposing the joints of the wall beneath; its glass surface lay scattered across the floor.
Only the bed remained untouched by the storm which had swept through the suite-a storm which had begun and ended with the man sitting on the mattress.
A long and arduous month had worn away since Snoke's assassination, Luke's death, and the Resistance's escape from Crait. For a month, no words had passed between them. Having discovered the door within her mind that linked their consciousness, she'd kept it closed to his repeated knocking. Some days she'd twisted the lock, her fingers clasped around the handle, ready to peer through the crack; on others, she'd thrown the bolt and slumped against it for added security.
Even with the barrier between them, she always knew he waited on the other side. She sensed that even if she were to bar him permanently from entering, he would remain posted just outside of her immediate reach.
Thankfully, Rey hadn't resorted to such drastic measures. Circumstances had changed: General Organa was dead. While the whole of the Resistance had gathered to mourn the loss, the survivors of the Raddus wore their devastation most openly.
They were not alone in their grief.
At the time of Leia's passing, Rey had felt a blast of searing pain tear through her mind like a wildfire. Ferocious waves of heat had blistered her side of their bond, stealing through the cracks in the frame and singeing her already damaged psyche.
Days had elapsed, and the flames of his anguish had been extinguished, doused by an even more suffocating emotion. Rey decided the time had come to drop the chain and open the door. She couldn't ignore him or his personal turmoil any longer; she didn't have the capacity for such cruelty.
Stepping out, she had found the bridge stronger than ever before, fortified instead of neglected. She had passed through the space and connected to his mind with ease; he'd had no desire to keep her out.
"Ben?" she asked, uncertainty coating the single syllable. She hesitated at the edge of the room, waiting to gauge his reaction to her intrusion.
Perched on the lip of the mattress wearing only a pair of tight black pants that cut off mid-thigh, he appeared leaner than when she had last seen him, yet the muscles in his arms and chest were more defined. At another time, on another world, seeing him half-dressed had unsettled her. This exposure read differently: everything about his countenance reeked of defeat.
"The funeral. . ." he rasped, choking on the word and pausing to collect himself. He didn't raise his head as he asked, "Is it over?"
"No," she replied, hedging closer. "The remembrance ceremony will last through the night. I slipped away when I could."
"Why?" A hint of hostility underscored his question. "Why did you come here, Rey? To marvel at my misery?"
She bristled, chest puffing out to rattle off a defense. Instead, she took a deep breath before telling him the truth: "I came to say I'm sorry for your loss."
His hands clenched and unclenched against his knees. With his body bent forward, she couldn't see his face, only the tension that traveled from his hands to his shoulders and down his spine like his body was attempting to shirk her condolences.
"You came to exploit my weakness." The accusation came out as a growl. "To turn me."
Rey's cautious shuffling ceased. His rejection of her honest concern stung like a hard slap.
"I wanted to remind you that you aren't alone. That's all," she stressed, feet planted firmly in place while her body leaned forward for emphasis. "Clearly, I've made a mistake."
For a man who believed in letting things go, he couldn't seem to follow his own advice. His unrelenting grip on the past had yielded deadly results, yet he still clung to hopeless ideals. If he couldn't see that progress came through accepting past events and recognizing their triumphs and failures as important lessons, he would be doomed to repeat the mistakes of his dead master.
He was right, though. In a way. At no time had she stopped hoping he would come to see reason and join the light again. She'd only given up on being the one to convince him. That decision rested wholly upon his shoulders now-no one else's.
Disappointment bored into her chest as she began to pull back, to retreat and close the passageway once again. Reopening it had done nothing except pick apart a half-healed scab.
"We're the same now. You and I."
The quiet remark detained her.
"Albeit, I'm an orphan of my own making."
In a handful of determined strides she crossed the room to stand in front of him, intent on making one thing clear: "You had nothing to do with General Organa's death."
At this proximity, she could see the sneer pulling back his upper lip though his eyes remained downcast. It was as if he were talking to himself instead of addressing her.
"Didn't I?"
An overwhelming urge to allay his self-hatred excavated the details she knew from spending time at the general's bedside hours before she had passed on to the next realm. "She died due to complications from prolonged space exposure. Not by your hand."
"You're forgetting that I initiated that attack."
"Under Snoke's orders. You were under his control," she fired back. "You aren't at fault."
His head swayed from side-to-side, jaw tightening. "Truly, your naiveté is unbecoming."
Unable to tamp down her anger any longer, she gave voice to her frustrations: "Why are you consumed with the need to blame yourself for something you didn't do?"
He stood up, surging toward her yet stopping short. Rey's heart lodged in her throat, adrenaline kicking in, but she stood her ground as he loomed over her. He couldn't hurt her here, not within the bond. They both knew that.
"Do you honestly believe the death of her husband wasn't a blow to her soul?" His words ran together, spit out like rapid blaster fire. "That the loss of the Hosnian System didn't cut her to the core? Or that her heart didn't fracture even more when she felt Luke's lifeforce fade?"
Each offense landed like a lash. Rey faltered under the magnitude of his crimes and the torment he carried because of them.
Tears welled in his eyes and ran down his face. His voice became measured, scathing, and resolute. "I killed my mother just as surely as if I'd struck her down with a saber."
Heat radiated off of him; however, it was the coldness she could feel through their bond that scared her most. She couldn't leave him without imparting Leia's final thoughts: "Whatever you may think, your mother loved you. More than anything." Rey peered up into his face with all the determination she had, challenging him. "She died still believing in you, her son. She trusted that you would see the light."
"Then she died a fool," he claimed, pivoting away. "It's too late."
Her frustration released on a snarl. Stomping her foot to regain his attention, she indicated the upended room. "If you didn't love her, if you didn't care-why do all this? Why mourn for her now?"
His hands flew up, anchored themselves deep within his hair, and pulled back the dark locks until it looked painful. Claws of anger and despair embedded in his chest and tore a bellow from his lungs, at once volatile and sorrowful.
"She was my mother!"
Raw agony consumed him before her eyes. He lurched away from her, hands alighting on the barren desk and flipping it to its side. The action failed to satisfy the chaos reigning within him.
Much to her astoundment, Rey watched as the debris littering the floor began to rise and spin, gravitating toward him as though his body were a magnet for the damage. In just a few moments, glass shards, splintered wood, and broken metal whizzed around him, creating a terrible whirlwind that battered the figure standing in the center of it all, though he barely registered the bits of destruction colliding against him-even when they drew blood.
Rey scrambled to interfere with the dark energy fueling his outburst and to quell the Force generated winds that whipped her ceremonial garments around her small frame. Each time she reached into his mind, her efforts were pushed aside.
"Ben!" she cried, trying in vain to break through to him.
Hands still pulling at his hair, he vented the source of his anguish. "These feelings. . .they're ripping me apart."
"Don't fight them!" she called. "Accept them. Your emotions are your strength, not your weakness. Acknowledge how you feel!"
His roar echoed off of the walls of his room. "I loved her!"
In that moment, time stopped and gravity weighed heavy. Bits of wreckage dropped from the air around him, clanking against the ground at his feet.
Ben fell too, exhausted, although he managed to direct himself toward the bed where he slumped awkwardly. "I loved them," he repeated on a sob.
Rey approached him slowly, not wanting to startle him. Her boots crunched against the debris at their feet. A foot away, she came to a stop, unsure of what to do next. She'd never comforted anyone; on Jakku, people died in the unmarked paths around Niima and often went unattended, hardly noticed except by the shameless pickers who stole any remaining valuables the body carried. No one mourned for a fallen scavenger, and no one gave thought to seek out surviving kin. How could Rey show she sympathized with him over the loss of his mother?
It was Ben who reached for her, his hands grasping the soft burgundy fabric at her hips, fingertips digging in just above the bone and drawing her closer, closer. He shifted his position until he sat upright, posting Rey between the space of his open legs.
Still crying, he leaned his head against her torso, breath ragged and hot just above her navel. Her hands naturally moved to his head, smoothing his hair, then her arms stretched around his broad shoulders, hugging him to her body. If this is what he needed, she could give it to him.
A thought circled through her mind, suggesting one more thing she could share with him to ease his pain: a part of herself he didn't yet know.
"I was eleven when I first considered I'd truly been abandoned," she began in a soft, detached voice, as if remembering someone else's life. "I was angry. Angry and reckless."
Ben tilted his head minutely, closing his mouth to muffle his cries so he could listen to what she had to say.
Rey continued. "I flew to an old Destroyer and lashed out with everything I had. When my hands were bloodied, I used my feet. When my feet grew sore, I picked up my staff."
Even all these years later, Rey's impulsive actions left her with residual shame. She stroked his hair and noticed how his breathing had evened out. Then she went on, "I'd worked myself into a proper fit when I punctured a pressurized temperature gauge."
Against her stomach, Ben inhaled sharply. She imagined he could picture what happened next.
"The explosion didn't do much damage," she eased his thoughts, "but the fumes that followed were enough to kill me."
His fingers flexed at her hips. The small movement drew her out of the unpleasant memory.
"I let my anger and despair control me," Rey concluded, "and it almost cost me my life."
Ever so gently, she tugged on the ends of his hair, wanting him to make eye contact with her before she made her final point. He didn't resist, gazing up at her with swollen eyes and a reddened nose. Rey's thumbs swept the remaining dampness from beneath both eyes simultaneously.
"You have a choice, Ben: come to terms with how you feel, or let the remorse and guilt for your past transgressions eat away at you."
His jawline tensed, his dark eyes searching hers for something. "Hux is right: my emotions make me unstable, conflicted."
"It's a good thing," she assured him. "Where there's conflict, there's hope."
She thought she saw something very much like hope flicker behind his eyes until they broke away from her own, sketching down her cheeks to rest on her lips. The weight of his stare alone parted them, ready to offer more words of encouragement, equally prepared to impart her feelings without vocalizing them.
When she swallowed, he tracked the movement, dragging down her neck and finding the points of her collarbone. The last time he had inspected her this carefully, this closely, she'd been strapped to an interrogation table.
Rey inhaled deeply, trying to calm her racing heartbeat. The rise and fall of her chest did not go unnoticed by the man before her; neither did the object dangling at the end of the delicate golden chain that lay between her breasts.
His eyes widened as a long-buried memory resurfaced to remind him where he had seen the gold and aquamarine ring before.
Rey had forgotten she'd carried the token here for a specific purpose. Immediately, her hands moved to lift the chain over her head and bestow the heirloom to its rightful owner, but his middle finger pushed into the center of the ring, crooked around the base, and pulled it closer to his face. The elaborate ring couldn't fit over the first joint of his finger.
His bottom lip trembled. "She gave this to you?"
"For you," Rey explained, trying once again to lift the necklace over her head.
This time, he let the ring slip from his fingertip, though he didn't let it go far. Pressing the ring between his palm and her chest, he held it there for a long moment as he tried to compose himself. Tears shimmered across his vision again; he worked his jaw, his mouth chewing through silent words and sentiments as he fought to stave off the flood of unwelcome emotion.
"Keep it."
"She wanted you to have it," Rey protested softly, placing her left hand on top of his.
He swallowed with some difficulty. The lump in his throat strangled his words: "It will disappear when you do."
The reminder and the despair it created struck something deep within her. Not knowing what to say or what she could do to ease his turmoil, Rey's hand slid along his arm until it came to cup his cheek. Her eyes darted everywhere, unable to focus on the emotion which poured out of his expression in tandem with the sensations that rolled through her mind.
As her gaze scanned across his bare chest, she noticed a line of oozing blood. One of the pieces of debris had cut him during the maelstrom which had overtaken him a short time ago.
A thought clicked into place. "Then I'll leave something else behind."
She considered the wound: superficial at most, no longer than the length of her palm and relatively shallow-something she could deal with. Ever since he'd shown her how to use the Force to heal in her hut on Ahch-To, she'd been practicing on her own bumps and bruises.
Keeping her hand less than an inch from his skin, Rey set about repairing the small slash. She focused her mind on the job, biting down on her lip as she visualized the tissue coming back together.
The more she sought the Force, the more her sight honed in and illuminated all the small connections that had to be rebonded to mend the cut. In a few short breaths, the process became more complicated than anything she had attempted before. Unwilling to give up, she placed the fingertips of her free hand against her temple and concentrated harder.
"Rey. . ." A hoarse warning coated his voice.
Perhaps he'd noticed the slight tremor in her hand or the sweat beading at the edge of her hairline. None of that mattered. Even if her efforts to comfort him on a deeper level amounted to nothing, she could rid him of some small, tangible hurt.
Her hard work ended in success after another long minute. To her pleasure, only a faint line marked his chest when she finished, hardly noticeable in the dim light of the room.
The undertaking-even one so simple in theory-completely zapped her of her strength.
Unbalanced and weak-limbed, Rey swayed forward as if she were going to faint. Strong hands braced her, gripping her biceps to steady her. Moving one arm around her body, Ben helped her descend safely. He lowered her onto his lap, swinging her legs to one side. Shifting slightly, he cradled her against him and directed her head to his shoulder with a light touch.
Nestled against him, Rey took a few moments to recover in silence. Her breathing was shallow, as strained as if she'd just lugged a full sack of scrap metal to the polishing yard. Each inhalation carried a clean scent tainted with the tang of salt from Ben's skin, soothing her as much as the warmth of his body and the easy rhythm of his own breathing. Every sensation surged through their bond, so acute it felt like she had truly crossed a bridge to be with him instead of phoning in from light-years away.
Unexpected and tender, she felt his lips skim against her forehead. All of the composure she had been summoning together vanished. This was a side of Ben Solo she had not yet witnessed, though she had suspected for some time that a gentle heart dwelt deep within its bruised exterior.
"I'm impressed," he whispered.
Rey felt heat rise up the back of her neck, uncomfortable with accepting praise. It was an alien gift to her ears, even after Leia, Finn, and the others had showered her with plaudits following their escape from Crait.
"This is embarrassing," she commented, nudging his shoulder with her nose and trying to hide. "Why am I this tired? I've healed more than a cut or two since you last saw me. This doesn't usually happen."
His hand traveled up and down her arm as he pondered her question. "Healing others requires a vast amount of effort," he offered. "You're also on a distant planet, healing remotely."
Rey raised a hand and ran her index finger along the new scar she had given him. Would more of their encounters end with such crude tallies of their time together?
"You should be proud," Ben concluded.
She smiled because she agreed with him. "I'm getting stronger."
His fingers moved from her arm to rest under her jaw, tilting her head in an undemanding way. Their eyes connected and held as he uttered: "You're more powerful than you realize."
There wasn't much distance to close when she kissed him, but he obligingly dipped his head to meet her halfway. The initial shock of it made them both gasp, the spark between them more intense than when they had touched in the hut on Ahch-To. Messy and unsure at first, they adjusted to more accomodating angles and let their passion direct their movements. They were quick to give in to the deep-seeded hunger they each carried-a need to be whole, to tie together the cords of strength and vulnerability, to belong to something other than themselves.
Ben pulled back abruptly, frowning as a thought worried his brow. "That's why you should join me."
"We've had this conversation before," she reminded him harshly while trying to catch her breath. The sudden change in tone rang discordant with the racing of her pulse. "My answer remains the same."
His frown deepened, and his voice became more urgent. "My mother and the rest of the admirals are gone. The Resistance will crumble."
"What are you saying?" Rey wanted to push away from him, though doubted she had the ability to stand on her own yet.
"There will be an attack."
Her heart stalled. "Is that a threat?"
Rey struggled to get out of his arms, causing his grip to tighten around her. She shook, angry enough to bite, to howl like a wounded animal before it attacked. How could he say these things after what they'd just shared?
"A caution," he clarified. "Don't be a fool. You knew this is what would happen."
"You're still a monster," she whispered.
Breathless from the stab of his betrayal, Rey finally wrenched herself away and collapsed to the floor. Much to her chagrin, she couldn't push herself to a standing position to put distance between them; she would have to settle for breaking their connection.
As she fled back to her imagined doorway and loosened her grip on the bond that held them together, she heard his final words: "They want you dead, Rey."
