When the bridge opened, she felt it like a ton of bricks. Every fiber of her being was now actively linked to its mirror in his body. It was intense, like sharing the same essence, the same energy for a moment. She was well aware that she was strapped in a seat, with her two traveling companions heading back to the provisory base. Although she could perceive – the leather against her shoulders, the faint sound of talking, the rumble of takeoff, the belt's nylon biting into her neck – she could also vividly sense another perspective. She saw the atrium in which he was panting with anger and resentment, force-choking a weakening Daris against the wall and standing against Leia. The few remaining crewmembers present were either petrified with fear or slowly attempting something purely stupid to try and resolve the situation.
From his side of things, everything seemed to freeze after he experienced a foreign sensation of calm slither onto him. He saw Rey appear, attached to what seemed like a Millenium Falcon passenger seat, in the center of the action, just between him and his mother. Faintly, he could hear Organa give orders to get him back to his quarters. He felt the tight grasp of those who were playing the role of guards lift him from the ground, his body accepting the man-handling with close to no resistance. His gaze was solidly planted in the abyss of Rey's eyes. He could feel her very core, calm, equal to herself, strong. Her monolith appearance made his fit appear weak and inappropriate. For a second, Ben felt how powerful she really was. Yes, everyone was blabbering about her inexplicable comfort with the use of the Force, but she had that depth… that baffling immensity of a soul. It was almost humbling to share it.
He could hear her thought as they were his. Notions of unity, of interconnection and balance. How much he needed her, as surprising as it could sound. More than to find a way to accomplish himself, but to live. To impersonate what was their true destiny. The meaning of what they had both saw when they had first touched each other.
Ben saw her collapse into the dark side, building the mighty Sith she was promised to be. Rey saw him rise to the Light, conquering the galaxy as its legitimate liberator, opposing to the dark side with all the skill and brute force she knew he had. But none of these portraits were plausible. The reality had never been black or white, and for that was always in conflict. They could see before their eyes all the consequences of the never-ending clash between day and night: death, suffering, loss, and destruction. Having this in mind made defining who was good or bad a confusing endeavor.
They were back into something that looked like a research room. Desks covered in obsolete forms, relics of another time. As they were, in a way.
The guards found pointless to put the chains back on. The door was not even locked, as far as he could understand it. He was just isolated, waiting, again, for things to unfold. But she was there, ghostly presence from far away, now standing before him.
"What happened, exactly? I don't understand, really." She asked, impartial.
He felt ashamed, once more, but kept it to himself. "Yeah, wanting to keep things to ourselves in this…" she swirled her hand around "…will be kind of difficult."
"I got… irritated. By the stillness of the process. By my infuriating position in it. I am sure that you can understand how anticlimactic my situation can seem. I am sure I am talking to an insider when I say that waiting endlessly for nobody knows what is draining."
He was referring to her time on the desert planet. She nodded, her head falling on her ribcage. "I never trashed everything in my sight on Jakku, may I say."
An angel passed.
"I thought that only Snoke could… do this. Seems like this is a permanent thing." She inquired.
"I am not surprised. The Force can be quite stubborn, I am sure you can see that for yourself now."
"Not as inflexible as I thought."
She passed in his mind, brushing his consciousness. He shivered. He got to his feet and walked towards her with the decisive strut he was known for.
"Get out of there." The tall man's face was now inches from hers. She could see the details of the mark she had left on his face, the jagged edge of the scar, running from his jawline to his forehead in a macabre dance of pulsating flesh and dead tissue.
"Why?" He saw her lips form a determined pout, planting her intense eyes on his.
"Because you are not entitled to my mind! The fact that we are inexplicably linked doesn't mean we have to probe the extent of each other's brains."
"So, you think that we should discard this? Whatever this is?"
Even from that far away, he could feel her warm and soft breath on his face. It burnt his skin, particularly his scar… and his lips. He backed off, throwing his hands in the air all around him.
"Yeah! What, you think that after all the decay we have put both of our camps that we are so remarkably important to the universe? That we are central to the solution? The only thing you've uncovered is that we are part of the problem. That everything that is happening is because of the mere fact that our kind exist." All the pens in the room started to levitate, followed closely by ruffling papers, floating through the air around them. "That our connection to the world has toyed with our destiny from the very beginning."
She cut him harshly: "The problem has been our persistence to try and find the best way to conduct ourselves. Bad or good, Dark or Light, Lust or Abstinence, damn we even argued over red or blue!" in her sentence, "we" resonated as centuries of generation of Jedi and Sith. From the corner of his eye, he could see a silver shadow tremble and disappear amongst the paper storm. They both flipped to see it but it was gone.
"And so, we can change a millennium of bickering by morphing ourselves into introspectors? By sitting on a rock and find balance from within? You really are a number, scavenger, I can give you that." His voice was like a bouncing fall, solemn and profound, but clearly turbulent. "And you clearly want to be part of this, be the center of the change. Arrogant fool." The silhouettes were multiplying around them, flickering for a longer period of time, but still vague and blurry. "For them, we are as important as an X-Fighter or a blaster. We are tools, weapons, mascots really. That is all that serving a cause can bring us, being used, Rey."
Hearing her name from him shook her. You don't ever realize how personal your name can be until when it is used by someone you never thought would say it.
"How could we live when the war is raging. How could we turn our back to all of this? We have to have hope that we can free them, that we can be the key or at least a part of it. Or else, we are completely useless and I can't bear to be useless. I've been worthless all my life!" She was screaming, now fairly certain that the occupants of the Falcon were now hearing her. For his part, the words kept flowing from his throat as a steady stream of rumbling thunder.
"I've been the hope of literally the whole world since I was born. Being forgotten tastes like a dream to me right now. Seems we genuinely are incompatible."
They both got silent. Not because they were finished; it was clear to both of them that they could have continued arguing for hours, feeling bursts of their respective energy pound their very soul continuously as they exchanged ideas, experiencing intense heat explore each of their conscience in an intricate ballet. But they had to stop. Because the sheets of paper had stalled in mid-air, fixed in a strange rain of opalescent ivory.
The silver silhouettes were now steady. Thousands of faces, looking right through them in a dignified silence, immobile and exhaling strength. Force ghosts. All of them.
Rey and Ben turned around a couple of time, then stopped, stunned, shoulders brushing against one another when their gaze fell on a known face: Luke Skywalker. A smile lifted his cheeks for a brief moment as he embraced them both with warmth. He was at peace.
All of their voices grew into one, echoing around the vast chamber. It was like a strong buzzing of ideas, like if their words were painting a picture, a perception, a sentiment. It was a pure, untouched hope. The two young warriors felt their lungs emptied with a drastic exhale. A deep faith was settling in each of their cells.
All the shadows combined into one, the air shivering around this embodiment of energy. In a swift motion, the shape passed through them, then disappeared.
They were on the floor, breathless, covered in sweat and tears. Their hands were joined on the cold tiles of the floor, their joints whitened from the force with which they were holding on to each other.
"And you still think that we mean nothing…?" asked Rey, in a whisper, fastening her pupils to his.
The bridge that was connecting them broke abruptly as the door to the study room opened.
The resistance's General had felt a colossal wave in the force. It was coming from where she had put him. It alarmed her. Not wanting to put anyone in danger, she subtly got out of what she was doing and followed the perturbation. She was imagining the worst; he had lost control, was preparing a slaughter. He was doing exactly what she feared from the first moment she was him on the mineral planet.
But when she got there, he was on the ground, panting. He was the most vulnerable he had ever been since his childhood. He was looking at the ceiling, just there, his defenses down. She could have sworn he was lying next to someone else, but the shape was gone in a blink. She got closer and made a decision.
"You can work, right?"
Ben blinked a couple times, still unsure of what he just had experienced. He got on his elbows and saw his mother.
"What do you mean?"
"Keeping you there is almost as secure as having you anywhere. You can be useful, as you want too so much. We have hundreds of containers and files to go through. You'd be as good as any to help."
A little flame of anger sparked in his chest, but he tried to extinguish it. He thought about Rey, about what she was believing in… about what just happened. He nodded once, silently. She answered with the same motion and walked away.
"You can begin here. I am sure there is plenty to be found in all those files on the floor"
As he was rising and regaining contact with reality, his mind traveled to a moving point amongst the stars. He squeezed his hands into the emptiness of the room.
Rey's chest got filled with warmth as she squeezed back.
They would be able to exist through this burden that was put on them.
[So I am taking a little break for the new year's celebration! Hope to see you soon! Thanks for the support!]