Finn snaps to attention, the silver chrome of the Finalizer's interrogation room jarring his vision.
Ren stands before him, cloaked in black and masked.
"What do you want?" Finn groans.
Distorted through the mask, Kylo Ren's voice nonetheless sounds softer than Finn remembers it. "Are you strong enough to walk?"
"Why?"
"Answer me!"
"Yeah, I guess so. Why, making me walk to my own execution?" Finn asks, trying to muster some bravado. He knows the First Order has no use for him. "Will it be with a blaster or a lightsaber?"
Kylo Ren snaps his restraints off, binding Finn's wrists. Finn glares at him, relishing in his hatred.
I'm not going to run, Rey, Finn thinks, though he knows she can't hear him. I'll be brave. He remembers her hug and draws strength from that. She holds him upright—Rey, and Poe Dameron, and Leia Organa… with them, he felt like he had a family.
The First Order might be about to kill him, but they weren't executing one of their own.
Kylo Ren escorts him into the jaws of his intimidating black shuttle with its sharp wings. Finn tries not to falter.
Several stormtroopers wait on board. Kylo Ren turns to them. "You will leave this shuttle."
"We will leave this shuttle," they repeat, and wander off.
"What?" Finn's so confused. Did Kylo Ren want to take down Leia himself? Is he using Finn's mind to do that? Finn strains against his restraints.
Kylo punches several switches, and the shuttle lifts and soars out into space. Even masked, he glances over his shoulder as if expecting followers.
"Um," Finn says, swallowing. "Is it just us?"
Kylo turns to him, hesitates, and takes off his mask, letting it clunk on the metal floor. Finn gapes at the sight of a purple scar twisted across his face.
"This is a rescue," Kylo tells him, and—is that pink in his cheeks?
"The hell?" Finn squeaks out.
"Rey misses you."
"Oh, hell no!" Finn shouts. "You're not—you're not—she's trading herself for me, isn't she?" Sweet, stupid—she's far more important than—
"There is no trade, Finn."
The use of his name jars him.
"I'm taking you to Rey and the pilot. Poe. They'll get you back to the base."
Finn stares, watching the color drain out of Kylo's face. Disappointment? "Oh, I get it now. Psychological torture, right?"
"I assure you I am more than capable of that, but no, that's not what this is."
"Then what is this?" Finn yells.
"A rescue!"
"But why?" Finn's voice echoes in the cavernous ship.
"Rey and I share something called a Force bond." Kylo turns back to the control panels, setting his lips as he studies them. "She wants you back." He almost smiles. "It seems a lot of people miss you."
"So you're… leaving the First Order." Is this what Poe felt, when Finn helped him? Shock? Disbelief? Afraid to hope? But Poe hadn't even known Finn, hadn't known what the First Order made him do. Finn's seen what Kylo Ren has done… to Poe, to the villagers on Jakku, to Rey, to Han Solo.
Kylo grips the side panels. "Yes."
"I mean, I know I left the First Order too. I just didn't stab my father through the chest to prove it."
Kylo waves his hand, and Finn's handcuffs fall off. Finn lifts his wrists, hope worming its way in in spite of all of it, all the impossibility, all that he knows about Kylo Ren. Life rushes through him like water.
"Here." Kylo takes his lightsaber and holds it out to Finn, who freezes.
"No, thank you," Finn declines, remembering the scene with Han.
Kylo glances at the ground and drops the weapon. It clangs against the floor. "If you hold it, you might feel better."
"Knowing that I can kill you?" Finn calls as Kylo walks away. He kneels and grabs the hilt of the weapon he remembers searing his shoulder, Kylo's face twisted with malice and hate and shining with sweat.
"Did your injuries heal completely?" Kylo asks.
Finn doesn't answer. He can't. It's too strange.
"Leia!" Maz's voice booms from across her restored cantina. She rushes up to Leia, embracing her and then beckons for the Wookiee to bend down so she can place a kiss on Chewie's cheek. She turns to acknowledge Luke. "Took you long enough."
Abashed, Luke lowers his face.
"Come along now," Maz yells over her shoulder. "All of you! I don't have all day."
"Where's she taking us?" Luke mumbles to his sister.
"The basement." Leia replies with the obvious. Chewie ducks as C-3PO and R2 follow.
"Here," Maz says, pointing to an empty metal tin. "This is where I kept it."
"The lightsaber," Luke says. Watching the small orange creature, Luke still can't fathom how she came upon his old lightsaber.
"Yes. It called to her. Rey."
"She told me."
"You are certain she's not your child?" Maz asks bluntly.
Luke flinches as Leia's jaw drops. "No! I—that's not—I know. For a fact. She's not. It's not possible."
"Hm." Maz takes off her goggles, peering at him. "Then there's only one other explanation for why it called to her."
"What's that?" Leia asks, exasperated.
And somehow, Luke knows it's true. "Obi-Wan."
Maz nods.
C-3PO tuts. "Rey is Obi-Wan's daughter? That doesn't even make—"
"Grandchild," Maz corrects. "Presumably."
"But the Jedi code—" Luke starts, but he stops before Maz even motions for him to. Because he, of all Jedi, knows how even the best Jedi can wander.
"Don't think too ill of him," Maz says gently. "Arbitrary rules are sometimes more wrong to keep than to break. Especially when those rules keep you from love."
Arbitrary rules… and assumptions. If once you down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.
For all Yoda's wisdom, he wasn't perfect. Luke knew then it wasn't so, simply because he had to cling to that belief, had to believe in the hero father he'd always imagined he had, at nights on Tatooine when he couldn't sleep. "Why did they give her up?"
"Given the timing, I suspect it had to do with the Jedi academy massacre," Leia says.
Maz nods. "That would make sense."
Which was my fault. That meant Rey… Rey's suffering, the intense loneliness she wore like armor, is his fault too. Luke clears his throat. "Maz… where has she gone?"
"To rescue her friend, as she told you."
"But how would she know?" Luke persists. "A Force vision?"
"Perhaps." Maz studies Luke. "Search your feelings, Luke Skywalker. Search for what you know to be true."
Luke gulps, because his mind is racing back to all he learned at the Jedi temple, all he learned in hopes that he could become a better Jedi, could redeem himself, only to find that the longer he hid, the harder it was to ever consider emerging.
"Wasn't there a prophecy concerning your father?" Maz asks, her voice creaky and ancient, lined with wisdom like Yoda's.
"He brought balance to the Force," Luke recites.
"Temporarily," Leia mutters.
"He would never have been able to do that without you, Luke. Nor without Obi-Wan."
Please don't start speaking in riddles. "I don't follow."
Maz crosses her arms. "Perhaps, in each generation, there is supposed to be someone to do that. Because as much as we'd all like the battle against evil to cease, we are all at an age now where we see that it will always take a new form."
"But Rey isn't related to Anakin," Leia points out.
Maz sighs. "No, she's not. But does it have to be one person? Luke, you and Leia worked together."
"I have no descendants," Luke cuts in. "Leia has one and Ben's… not interested in balancing the Force."
Shadows writhe as the lamp flickers. "Leia, dear, you say Rey warned you about an impending assassination attempt?"
She nods.
"And then she just up and left, saying she was going to rescue Finn because he was still alive."
"Yes," Luke snaps. We've said that.
Maz replaces her goggles and shakes her head at Chewie. The Wookiee looks bewildered. "Have you considered the possibility that Rey is Force bonded to someone?"
"She did ask about Force bonds," Luke says, slowly, because he feels like he's just waking up to something that he does not like at all.
"Who?" C-3PO asks tentatively.
"There's only one living descendant of Anakin Skywalker who's not in this room," Maz answers.
"You can't possibly—" C-3PO starts, before R2 insults him. "Stop it, R2!"
"Is he pulling her to the Dark Side?" Luke demands.
"Luke!" Leia shouts, her face pallid and her eyes sparking.
"That, I cannot say." Maz shakes her head. "But if he was, why would you both be alive?"
"Maz Kanata," C-3PO interjects. "If there was hope for—well, for Darth Vader, can't we hope that Ben will heed the call of the Light as well?"
Leia turns to the golden droid with an expression of such gratitude that C-3PO looks to his feet as if embarrassed.
"We need to find them," Luke says, an energy he hasn't felt in years zapping through his bloodstream.
"That you do," Maz agrees. "Though I'm afraid I can't help you there. I've got to visit an old friend, convince him to come out and help you. I must say, Leia Organa, you're the only one who's kept fighting even in the face of exhaustion." She takes Leia's hand.
"You don't have to do it alone anymore," Luke tells his sister, and she throws her arms around him.
They land on the small, dusty moon bathed in silver light. Kylo sees the Millennium Falcon, and his heart quivers. Snoke's probably realized what he's done by now, realized that Kylo's a failure.
"Finn!" shrieks Rey, and she races across towards him, Poe fast on her heels. All three of them fall into a messy embrace. Kylo wraps his arms around himself.
It's the first time he's seen her with his eyes since the Starkiller base, since she burned his face.
"Ben." Rey breaks away from her friends, reaching for him. He's stiff, but he lets her hug him.
"Thank you," she whispers, looking at Kylo like she's never seen him before, like she's really seeing Ben, but that can't be because whoever Ben was, he's dead now.
That's what Snoke wants you to believe. My son is alive.
Her eyes, hazel planets in a galaxy of freckles, take him in with a shine and a smile, and with a jolt, Kylo finds himself with so many things he wants to say, and none that he can actually say, so he lets her feel inside his mind. He's grateful to her.
"Have you thought more about coming with us?" Rey inquires.
Poe turns to his orange and white droid—the droid, Kylo realizes—and mumbles something that sounds like a threat. But the droid peers at Kylo with curiosity and not a trace of dislike.
"I—" Before he can answer, a small buzz hums behind him. Kylo whirls around, scanning the gray horizon, the sky that looks as if it's made of metal and smoke.
"What is it?" Rey asks.
"We were followed," Kylo says, heart sinking. Shit. He yanks his belt off—the belt with his tracking device. You idiot! He can't even betray the freaking First Order right.
A green cannon shot flies out, slamming into the retracted wing of his ship.
"Get to the Falcon!" Rey shouts, reaching out and grabbing Ben's hand, but he can see another shot coming. He yanks his hand free, protecting the Falcon from sustaining a hit and twisting the shot so that it fires back at the TIE fighters.
A barrage of shots fire. Kylo slings his arm out, calling for his lightsaber.
"Hey!" Finn protests as it slides out of his hand and soars into Kylo's. But it's the only way. He swings it, blocking shot after shot from hitting Finn, and Poe, who both freeze.
"Are you insane?" Rey screams at them both. "Get on board! Finn, you're the gunner! Poe—"
Kylo's boot lands on the ramp when another onslaught of cannon shots spew at them. With one arm, he protects the ship; with the other, he slashes the lightsaber, but there are too many and as green fills his vision and he starts to trip, a tiny, tinny thought echoes in his head:
I'm about to die.
"No!" A flash of blue, and Rey's lightsaber flies out, inches from severing his nose but saving him from the blaster. "Get up!"
He scrambles to his feet to hear another cannon shot behind him. Rey slings her lightsaber out, but it flies out of her grasp.
The shot slams through Rey's torso, and Kylo feels the pain explode in his own mind too, watches as Rey crumples.
"Rey!"
He grabs her, he grabs her lightsaber, and he drags her on board, screaming her name the whole time.