She's been in this position before, when Darth Vader raided her ship.
But even then, Leia wasn't this frightened.
The moment she saw her son trip, fall and so many stormtroopers swoop in for the kill, she threw herself in front of three of them, dropping her blaster. "Take me!"
Ben screamed from behind her, but Leia wouldn't look because she would not risk these stormtroopers heading for her son. Her baby. "I'm surrendering!"
"It can't hurt!" snarled one of them, and he grabbed her.
"She's not the ones we're after!" shouted the other.
"We'll never catch them!" the other yelled back. "Look, he's already gone!"
Leia gasped in relief, even as they dragged her on board one of their infernal ships, bound for—for where?
Snoke. Wherever Snoke is, that's where she's headed.
"He'll kill her!" Ben cries as Luke peers at the stump that used to be his wrist. The Millennium Falcon flies, but Rey doesn't even know where. She wants to vomit.
"Lie down," Luke instructs.
"But—"
Just do it, Ben! Please, I can't lose you too!
He acquiesces, but the emotional storm within him thunders, and Rey feels it. She buries her face in her fists and cries.
"I don't think he will," says a voice.
Rey's head snaps up, and a young man, mostly translucent, smiles at her, at Luke, at Ben.
"Father!" Luke bursts out.
Ben struggles up on his elbows, gaping.
"Whoa," mutters Finn, gripping Poe's arm.
"You look much better without the helmet," Lando remarks.
Anakin Skywalker rolls his eyes. "I can't stay long, but Luke, you've got to remember."
"Remember what?" Luke bellows. "Father—please. I can't do this anymore. Tell me plainly, just once, please! For your son. For your daughter. For your grandson."
Anakin's lips waver. "The Emperor always said that your compassion for me would be your undoing. That in the end, you would seek me out. Darth Sidious may have learned a few things from his master." Anakin peers into his son's eyes. "You won't fail her."
And he's gone, and Ben gawps at the space his grandfather just occupied. Rey feels faint.
"He's trying to get us to come to him," Rey gasps. "You and me." She looks at Ben.
"Shit," Poe says.
"You're going, aren't you," Finn says quietly.
Rey glances at her husband and nods. We are, aren't we?
Yes.
"First we need to go to D'Qar," Luke says, his eyes starting to water as he stares at Rey, at his nephew, as if he wants to memorize their every feature. "You need a cybernetic hand, Ben."
"And I have an idea," Ben adds, and two faces fill Rey's mind.
"It's the only way," she agrees.
Ben keeps trying to flex his left hand only to remember he doesn't have it anymore. Rey runs her fingers through his hair, kissing his forehead, but he can sense her fear.
Ben shudders as he remembers his vision in the Cave of Evil. He can't let it happen. He won't. He has to save his mother. He can't lose her, too.
Rey sniffs, and Ben realizes she's crying. He drags himself to an upright position, and she crawls onto the bunk next to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sobbing into him.
We've lost Maz.
We've lost Maz, and your mother, and we're going to die. We're trying to do the impossible—kill this being that no one's been able to kill, not even the Emperor. I'm not—I can't do it, Ben. I'm no one.
He pushes her away with his good hand, cradling her face in his, trying to be strong for her even as his internal world collapses, and all the courage he's ever had shudders and falls. He's not a fool: he knows that if he and Rey go to Snoke without a plan, Snoke will slaughter Mother and pit Rey and him against each other. They have to play this carefully.
I was a fool, though. I've been the fool of fools.
So many wasted years… all the nights he lay awake, convincing himself Mother didn't matter, that she was just Leia, an enemy, the leader of his enemies. And still she loves him enough to forgive him everything, even the murder of his father.
Would his life have been different, if he told her about his dream friend who walked his childhood nightmares? If he told her about the senator and what he did to Ben?
This is all my fault.
It's Snoke's fault, Rey insists.
It's also mine. I set this in motion. Now, Ben thinks he understands the roiling sentiment that must have consumed his grandfather as he watched the Emperor, his master, torture his son to death.
No!
As he did for so many years, so many nights when insomnia danced in his mind, so many days when Snoke looked at him as if he was worthless, Ben draws his strength from the memory of his grandfather. But now the memory is complete, and it's supplemented by the woman looking into his eyes, the woman who loves him.
She might die in this, and that, too, will be his fault. I'll do whatever I can to prevent that. No one else should die for him.
Rey draws his head down and kisses him, pressing her body against his. You're not alone. We're married, remember? She's my mother now, too.
When the stormtroopers throw Leia to the ground, her knees crack against the stone, but she refuses to stay kneeling. No, she will face this supreme monster and look into the eyes of the creature who tortured her son, who seduced him to the Dark Side, and she will not be afraid.
"Princess Leia Organa Skywalker Solo," Snoke purrs, and his voice taps its way down Leia's spine, one vertebrae at a time. His face is the face of a corpse, the face of one who should have died centuries earlier.
"Snoke."
"Just as brave as your father."
"You're a monster," Leia informs him, revulsion shimmying through every nerve in her body. "A sick, disgusting—"
"How am I any more a monster than your father? Than your son?"
"Don't," Leia snaps. "Bring Ben into this."
"Worry not," Snoke says, smile hideous and decaying. "Your son will come into this."
Leia's heart leaps. "No. You're done hurting him—"
"He hurts himself, Princess. Or didn't you notice his odd bruises and cuts as a child?"
You failed as a mother. Leia shakes off the subtext. I did the best I could.
"I was there for him when you weren't. I could offer him what you never could."
"Han and I offered him love," Leia retorts. "Which is something you cannot possibly comprehend, you disgusting—"
Snoke waves his hand, and Leia finds herself unable to speak. "Your son, I expect, will be joining us shortly."
No. Never.
"His compassion for you," Snoke muses, leering. "Will be his undoing."
"Hux, we need your help."
Hux's heart leaps. "Did you hear that, Phasma? The great and powerful Kylo Ren is asking for help." He snickers, no longer caring that it's apparent to everyone that his cool, calm demeanor was all an act, and it's been washed away along with all his dreams.
"Please."
Hux blinks. "What do you need my help for, Ren? Can't the Force—"
"No," Ben breathes. "No, the Force can't get me to Snoke."
"What in the hell makes you think we can?" Phasma blurts out.
"Please, Phasma," the stormtrooper—FN-2187—puts in. "We know you can try."
Pale rage rises with bile in Hux's throat. "Are you actually asking us to risk our lives to help you?"
"Essentially, yes," the scavenger girl says, crossing her arms. Hux's eyes catch something—a dangling sleeve—on Kylo Ren's outfit.
"What happened to your hand, Ren?" Hux inquires.
Ren shakes his head. "A stormtrooper cut it off when they took my mother."
Hux snorts. "So Snoke finally has her."
Ren flinches.
"Don't you think that when I suggest using the Starkiller to destroy the Resistance base, it was in my mind that she was there?" Hux sneers, leering closer. "I wanted to use the weapon to destroy the Resistance, but I also knew that if I could destroy her, you might—Snoke might—"
"Be grateful to you for erasing all the Light," Ben finishes.
Hux smirks. "Exactly."
"You're despicable," Rey hisses.
"Me? I'm not the one who stabbed a lightsaber through my father," Hux says, watching as Ren bites his lip so hard blood dribbles down his chin.
Didn't you, though?
Hux remembers the gray pallor overtaking Brendol Hux's face when he saw the manner in which his son hung the cadet he killed. The memories it triggered—surely Hux knew, even as a teen. He wanted his father to be proud, and he also wanted to sicken his father, to wound him the way Hux was wounded whenever he remembered the insults his father hurled at his mother, insults that clobbered her to her death.
Brendol Hux could barely look at his son after that.
"Look," FN-2187 says. "His mother loves him, so all your taunts are irrelevant."
She can't. And yet Hux clearly recalls the infernal woman, the cheeky woman who had the nerve to call herself a general, diving to save her son from the flailing bridge, and something breaks inside him, shattering and bleeding.
"Snoke plans to use her to draw Ben and Rey to him. The only way we can prevent that—the only way we can take down Snoke—is if you help us. That's the only way."
"If Snoke already has her, there's no point. He'll draw strength from her," Phasma says.
"No." Hux sighs impatiently. "He'll have to bend her to the Dark Side, first." He can't believe this bunk is spewing from his rational lips. "And I doubt he'll waste his energy on her."
"So we do still have a chance," Phasma says. "We can win, Hux."
"What's in it for you?" Ren demands. "We're prepared to meet—"
"Oh please," Hux snaps. "Haven't you figured it out already? The reason I want to kill Snoke is because I want to lead the First Order."
Ren's face surges with red as Rey scoffs.
"You son of a bitch," snarls the stormtrooper.
"Why are you even surprised, Ren?" Hux continues. "Even if I help you now, we'll always be enemies. You've hated me from the moment you met me, just as I've hated you."
Phasma groans.
Ren swallows his own blood. "I don't hate you now."
"Bullshit."
"I don't. I can't. You're my only hope."
Hux steps back, raising his eyebrows. "Are you begging me?"
"I will if I need to."
"What would you even have us do?" Phasma breaks in. "Say we escaped?"
"We're actually going to stage an escape," Rey says. "Some of us."
"Neither of us even know where Snoke is right now," Hux snaps.
"I'd be going with you," Ren says, glancing at the girl. "Snoke will find me, I assure you."
"And promptly murder us both for working with you."
"No, he won't. Because you're going to lie as best you can and claim I'm treating you terribly."
"We won't have to lie," Hux says.
"I'm going to offer you to Snoke as a bargaining chip."
"The Supreme Leader does not bargain."
"Exactly. He'll take me aboard." Ren looks into Hux's eyes, and Hux sees green in Ren's, green he never saw before. "And you'll be able to send our coordinates to Rey and let her and a team of Resistance leaders on board."
"And what about what I want?" Hux says. "To be Supreme Leader? If you destroy the First Order—"
"We just want to get my mother," Ren cuts in. "And kill Snoke. There are four of us Force users, and we're going to try our best." He and Rey exchange a look, and Hux knows they're leaving something out, but he's exhausted from pressing.
"What makes you so certain we won't just abandon you?" Hux taunts. "Why would we contact this pathetic slut—"
"That's my wife you're talking about," Ren growls, his only fist tightening.
"Oh, for pity's sake, you got married?" Phasma exclaims.
Hux can't fathom loving someone enough to commit one's whole life to them, and he can't think on it anymore. "But what if we don't? What if we leave your mother to die and you to rot in the Dark Side with Snoke?"
"Because you know you'll never get what you want then," Rey says, her voice surprisingly strong as she stands beside her husband. "And even though you're not sure whether you can trust him—trust us—there's more hope in what we're offering you."
Hux swallows. "When are you breaking us out?"
"This will begin to make things right," Poe promises before jogging off with Lando to plot Hux and Phasma's escape.
"Your hand is all set," Dr. Kalonia proclaims, turning off the machine. Ben flexes his fingers.
Rey looks at Ben, and there's one thing on her mind, one thing she wants from him before they go, possible—probably—to their deaths.
He smirks and swoops her up in his arms, carrying her to their room, where they kiss and kiss, his lips trailing down her neck as she tugs at his shirt. She's careful not to jostle his hand, but otherwise, she's less careful and less restrained than she's ever been.
When Rey rolls off him she leans her head against his shoulder, tracing the wound from Chewie's bowcaster with her fingers. "Ben?"
"Mm?" He shifts to meet her eyes.
"If we live… what do you want to do?"
He frowns. "About what?"
"Like… we're married. Do we want children? What will we do about the First Order if Hux is leading it? What kind of life will we have?"
Ben reaches down and traces her side, the scar she got saving him from the cannon blast when they rescued Finn. "I'd like kids. I'd be scared, though."
"Me, too." She swallows as memories of Jakku assault her.
"You don't have to do that."
"What?"
"Push them away." Ben swallows. "You could let me see."
"I've told you before about Jakku."
"Not all of it. You don't have to, if you don't want to. But Rey, I can tell you're still afraid."
Rey presses her forehead against his chest, listening to his heart beat, and she lets her memories pour forth. Many he's already seen, or seen snippets of—No! Come back!, Unkar Plutt, her dreams of an ocean and an island, where she's home.
Others he hasn't fully seen. She shows him her first day scavenging, at age six, with a female Teedo creature who teaches her how to rappel down ships but leaves her alone at night, at the mercy of Unkar Plutt, who treats her as a servant. She shows him herself leaving Unkar Plutt weeks in, finding her own home in the downed AT-AT, drafting a doll that lived a far more exciting life than her, a doll that belonged somewhere. She shows him the Teedo woman's death when her rappelling line snaps when Rey is eight, how other scavengers grew jealous of her skills and beat her up, so she learned to fight to keep them and lecherous men away. Through it all, she bares more of the desperate, all consuming loneliness, the certainty that she's been abandoned because she's worthless. She shows him that even though she knows now who she is, why she was left, how that's not true, she still believes it somehow, still fears it.
I love you, Rey. He kisses her on the lips, on the head, on the chest. Please believe it. Believe me.
Rey strokes his hair. If the Force bonded us, brought us together, we must have a chance, she thinks wildly.
We do.
However faint they both know their chances are, when they're together, it feels so tangible Rey can't help but absorb the hope.
"May the Force be with you, Ben."