CHAPTER FOUR
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It's Rey who delivers the news: his execution date has been set for a month from tomorrow. Kylo sits on the edge of his cot, hands clasped together, feeling oddly calm. Perhaps he should be scared, but the prospect of death appeals to him more than it frightens.
Rey kneels before him, cups his face between her hands. "Did you hear me?" she asks. "They're going to kill you, Ben."
He leans into her touch, reveling in the contact. "Did I hurt you?" he asks.
For some reason, the possibility is more painful to consider than his own execution. This scavenger who was once his enemy, the girl he unapologetically chased across the galaxy, captured, and interrogated. Now the thought of harming her sickens him.
Rey looks down, studying the floor. "No. You didn't hurt me."
Relief floods through him, the purest thing he's felt in years. Still, he can tell that she's nervous, hiding something.
"Then why did you cry?" he asks.
"I just lost my nerve is all," she says.
Rey is too steady a woman for nothing to panic her so thoroughly, but Kylo lets her keep her secrets. She doesn't owe him anything, not even the truth.
"That's not important anyway," Rey says. "Not right now."
Kylo stands, and it feels good to be on his feet while she's on her knees. Sends a thrill of heat through him, makes him think about fucking her again, this time more slowly and carefully so that she'd enjoy it.
Rey doesn't move at first. Then she leans toward him and presses her forehead to his thigh.
"Please," she whispers. "Please be different. Don't leave me."
She bites at his hipbone, teeth sharp through the grey of his prison-issued pants.
"Sweetheart…" Kylo grabs her hair, loose and soft, and tangles his fingers in it.
Whatever pride or resentment Rey has been hanging onto, it seems she left it at the door.
"You have to fight," she says, pressing a kiss to his bare belly. "I'll—I'll do anything, if you'll just fight, Ben."
Something cold crawls down his body, and an image flashes right in front of him: Rey, young and terrifyingly thin, crying on the desert ground with a man on top of her; she's so afraid, ashamed, trapped; desperate to do whatever she has to to survive—
Rey cries out, a high, wailing sound he's never heard from her before. She stumbles to her feet and backs away from him, dry sobs robbing her breath, feeling all the things she felt before, caught under the man who raped her. Like it had happened yesterday instead of years ago.
"Rey!"
Kylo reaches for her but doesn't touch, hopeless, helpless. "I didn't mean to—I swear, it was an accident. I wouldn't have looked on purpose."
She turns and runs from him, giving Kylo no choice but to let her go.
He doesn't sleep that night, not with Rey awake in her bed, too furious and ashamed to rest. Then he hears her, hushed but clear, a whisper through the Force saying, Get out of my head.
"I can't," Kylo says.
He knows she hears him because he feels the responding ripple of her anger across their bond. Then stop pitying me. I can feel it, and it's insulting from a creature like you.
Kylo rolls onto his back and covers his eyes, embarrassment warming him. He should ignore her—she's just hurt and scared—but Rey is thinking of what a pathetic thing he is. How stupid he must be to protect a man who abandoned him, how weak to waffle between the light and the dark without mastering either—
You weren't calling me a creature when you spread your legs for me, Kylo thinks, before he can hold it in.
Then: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sweetheart, please—
When Kylo reaches out to her, he only finds so much raw fury that he can't force his thoughts through it. He wants to apologize at her feet, beg forgiveness, but Rey isn't here. She isn't here, and now she won't be coming back.
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Whatever was unfolding between him and Rey, it's been shut away now, and Kylo is almost thankful. It makes letting go easier.
So when his mother comes the next morning, Kylo speaks first.
"Don't ask," he says. "It'll only hurt you to hear my answer, and I'm tired of hurting you."
She laughs, a hoarse huff that carries her old frustrations with him. "Stubborn as always. You were the most difficult child."
Kylo strides away from her, laughing too, harsh and ugly. "I know," he says. "You never wanted a kid like me."
"No. You don't get to do that," his mother says, a sharp-edged order that breaks at the end. "I love you more than you'll ever know, unless you live long enough to become a parent yourself."
It stings, but softly. What he's lost doesn't matter anymore.
"That won't be happening," Kylo says. "I intend to come quietly."
"I know you won't live for yourself, but what about me?" she says. Beneath her hurt he hears anger, the indomitable ferocity that defines his mother. "Haven't you stolen enough from me?"
That's all it takes to pull Kylo back to Starkiller. The clang of his helmet hitting the bridge. Holding out his lightsaber, a peace offering that would soon turn to ash. Then the darkness of a dying star, shrinking into oblivion—
"Why?" Kylo asks. "Why would you even want me to live, after—all I've done?"
His mother walks over to him, and it's too much, he can't let her touch him, let her dirty herself by laying hands on his skin. But then she cups his cheek, same as his father did in his last moments, and says, "Because you're my son."
Kylo rips himself away from her, shaking. "Get out."
He can feel the hope in her crumbling when she says, "Ben—"
"Get out!" he screams. "Just leave!"
She straightens, drawing herself up with all the dignity of the princess she is. "I didn't raise you to be the sort of man who would give up," she says. "So make me proud, Ben Solo."
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It isn't stubbornness that keeps him quiet. Not hopelessness either, although that feeling has grown intimately familiar over the years. No, the key to his silence is simple exhaustion. He's been nothing but a tool since he was a child, first to his uncle, then to Snoke, and although he found some peace in submitting to it, now he's too tired to continue being used. All he wants is to rest.
He spends his days mostly sleeping. No more escape attempts, no more taunting his guards. It's boring, but he counts down the days. Waiting.
A week before his execution he gets a new visitor: Finn.
Kylo lies facing the wall. He doesn't turn around. "What are you doing here?"
Finn grabs him by the ankle and manhandles him halfway off the bed, giving Kylo no choice but to sit up.
"Rey told me what happened—all of it—and she's too scared to see you herself, but she doesn't want you to die," Finn says. "So I came for her."
"And what exactly are you going to say that my mother and Rey haven't already said?" Kylo asks.
Finn crosses his arms over his chest. "That you're selfish. Cowardly and selfish."
Kylo has to smile. "Well, that's a different strategy. I'll give you that."
Finn sits beside him on the bed. He's still wearing the jacket he'd had on when Kylo sliced up his back, and he wants to shy away in shame. He'd nearly killed this man, and now here he was, arguing to keep him alive.
"You know we were all terrified of you, right? The stormtroopers, I mean. I'd heard of you a long time before I saw you, and when I did, on Jakku… well, the rumors fell a little short, to be honest."
Kylo can't figure out what angle Finn is going for here, unless it's to make him feel like shit. If so, it's working.
"My point is that you have something most people don't have, the same thing Rey's got: the Force. Now, I've been told that I don't know how the Force works," Finn says, smiling with his voice as much as his mouth, "but I'm guessing that if it picked you then it's got plans for you. Better plans than being used—which I understand a lot better than any destiny mumbo jumbo."
Kylo doesn't want to like Finn, but it's hard not to. He's kind for being here, maybe even kinder than Rey, and what he has to say—it's tempting to believe. That perhaps the Force has put him on a difficult path for a reason, and just because he chose the dark side, it doesn't mean he's beyond change.
"What does this have to do with me being a selfish coward?" Kylo asks dryly.
Finn claps him on the shoulder a bit harder than necessary. "Plain and simple: there are a lot of good people who are gonna die if you don't cooperate. Who are already dying because you won't open your damn mouth."
When Kylo doesn't answer, Finn asks, "Don't you think you've done enough damage?"
After he leaves, Kylo lies on his back and stares up at the clinically white ceiling, thinking about the Force and Rey, his mother and blood—the blood in his veins and the blood on his hands.
He used to believe that he was meant for something. Now Kylo doesn't know what that is, but maybe it's greater than rotting in this cell, waiting on death.
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The Supreme Leader never comes for him; no one comes for him. Because he's too weak to be worth the effort. Because Snoke must be certain that Kylo will hold his tongue, an obedient dog to the end.
The next time someone brings him a meal, Kylo says, "Go get the general. I'm ready to talk."
He spends the next three days sitting in an interrogation room—wrists locked behind his back, shackles on his feet—with his mother and other high-ranking officers of the Resistance. Kylo gives up everything he knows. Security codes, the locations of military bases and factories, plans for weapons both massive and small. Every scrap of information he has on his elusive master, on Hux and all other relevant officers.
When it's done, his mother cups his cheek and says, "Thank you, Ben."
He leans into it—selfish, like Finn said, because he doesn't deserve forgiveness, and his mom seems so eager to extend it. And still, he's hungry for more.
Kylo pulls away, looking down at this woman who gave him life and love, neither of which he's appreciated.
"Can I see Rey?" he asks.
Lieutenant General Tsann gives him a cold look. He was happy enough to take Kylo's information, but he doesn't seem as eager to give him any more than his life.
"No," Tsann says. "You'll remain in your cell until we decide the terms of your… release."
His mother shoots Tsann a sharp look, the kind that cowed Kylo when he was still a boy named Ben Solo.
"Don't worry, it won't be long," she says. "I made deals across the board to safely secure your freedom. It's just… the conditions of that freedom need a little negotiation."
Kylo would laugh if he wasn't so weary, tired right down to his bones and blood.
"It's all right, Mom. I haven't been free in a long time. Anything's better than nothing."
It's true, Kylo realizes. He needs this. He needs to have room to live, to find out who he is without Snoke over his shoulder. Maybe even who he could be for Rey, if she still wants him.
That night, he feels her reach out. The wall she'd learned to build finally coming down, dismantled under the force of her will, letting her emotions flow freely from her heart to his. She's relieved, so relieved, that he finally gave up his master. That he's going to live.
"I'm sorry," Kylo says. "For everything. I shouldn't have—"
Stop. I know.
"I miss you."
Kylo closes his eyes, still ashamed to give, to need, but too desperate to hold back. His heart beats a wild rhythm as he waits for her to answer.
Then: I miss you too, Ben.
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