Finn lies awake in bed, waiting until he hears the door close.
"They're off," Poe reports. "May the Force be with them." He heaves himself down next to Finn. "I am not looking forward to explaining all of this to Ackbar, Statura, and Ematt."
Finn snorts. "This plan had better work."
"It better," Poe agrees.
"It's funny, how far Ben's come. I never thought he'd be risking his life for anyone."
Poe rolls over to smirk at him. "Apparently, bravery plays a role in all former First Order minions."
"Hux and Phasma?" Well, aren't they being brave?
"And you." Poe looks into Finn's eyes, and Finn sees only sincerity. "Finn, when you rescued me—when I heard what you were going to do on the Starkiller—when you came back hurt—I wished I had half that bravery."
"What?" Finn snorts. "You do know that I tried to leave, don't you? I tried to run at… Maz's cantina."
"She still gave you the lightsaber, didn't she? She saw the same thing in you that I see in you." Poe grimaces and places his palm against Finn's face. "Finn, you weren't lying when you rescued me, when I asked you why you were helping me. Don't you remember what you said?"
"That it was the right thing to do?" Finn snickers. "I was full of shit."
"No, you weren't. You needed a pilot, I'll give you that, but you helped me also because it was the right thing to do. I don't know if the Force has been helping you all along, or if it's just a part of your personality, independent of all that—but Finn, you're probably the most moral person I know. I look up to you."
Finn tries to roll his eyes to disguise the tears welling up in them. "Stop that. I look up to you."
"Why, because I'm the best pilot you've ever seen?" Poe teases.
Finn shoves him.
Poe pulls him closer and kisses him.
I'm with you, Rey reassures as the stormtroopers manhandle him. I'm with you.
"Let me guess," Hux snips. "That sot Mitaka is calling the shots."
"The Supreme Leader will want to see you all," declares the stormtrooper, looking to Phasma. "Welcome back, Captain."
A boot slams into Ben's face, cracking his nose.
"No less than a traitor deserves," observes Hux.
What if he doesn't keep his promise?
But Hux's voice is cool, collected, the same Hux Ben's always known, until he found Hux and Phasma plotting to take down Snoke, and this gives Ben hope that Hux is acting.
"Drag him along," Hux orders Phasma, as if she's nothing more than an ordinary stormtrooper. "And if you let him use any funny Force trick to get free, I'll see that you answer for it."
"Get up."
Leia rolls her eyes as two stormtroopers march into the room, grasping her arms and hauling her to her feet.
"The Supreme Leader has demanded your presence, prisoner."
"And just what does your so-called leader want with me?" Leia can't tell if it's a good thing that Snoke is finally sending for her again, or a sign that her time is almost up.
They thrust her into a darkened room, where Snoke rises from a throne. "Good."
"What do you want now?" Leia snaps.
"Only to make you watch. Hold her tightly," Snoke commands as a certain redheaded man strides into the room. "General!"
Hux. Leia's stomach dissolves. No, no, no!
"You weak—" Snoke rages. "I was counting on you, and yet once again you manage to get a superweapon blown up and get yourself captured!"
"My apologies, Supreme Leader. I did try—"
"Silence!" Snoke roars. "I've tolerated your weakness for so long, boy, but I will not tolerate it anymore!" His hand shoots out, long and skeletal, closing into a fist. Hux gasps and sputters, fingers clawing at his throat, but there's nothing there. "You have one last chance to prove to me that you aren't as useless as your father."
"I will not let you down, Supreme Leader!" Hux cries.
"Bring Kylo Ren to me." Snoke turns to Leia with a toothless, evil smile.
Leia wants to scream, wants to kill this creature, destroy him, because no, Snoke can't have her son. Ben—why?
He loves you.
She recalls the moment she freed Han from the carbonite and kissed him. Han was amazed she'd come for him, and now her son's come for her, and she wants to smack him and embrace him at the same time.
Hux returns, throwing down a beaten creature before the Supreme Leader, and Leia tries to cry out his name, but Snoke won't let her. She glares at him.
Ben struggles to his knees, his face streaked with blood. He spots her and tries to lunge for her; Snoke knocks him back to the ground.
"Kylo Ren," Snoke says. "You've forgotten all I have done for you. What I've showed you. The power of the Dark Side."
"You did nothing for me except torture me and isolate me," Ben spits.
Snoke sends Ben's head smacking against the floor, and Hux laughs. Leia loathes him.
"I showed you," Snoke snarls, stepping closer. "The power of the Dark Side. But you're too weak to take advantage of it." He raises his hand, and Ben stiffens, bites his lip, struggles, and then screams as Snoke tears through his mind, rips through his memories.
"It seems," Snoke says as Ben still screams. "You need a reminder about the power of the Dark Side. And your little—what's this?—your wife. Your wife has experimented with the Dark Side herself, has she?" He retracts his mind probe, leaving Ben gasping and vomiting. His hold on Leia snaps, and she rushes over, dropping to her knees and combing her son's hair back from his face.
"What a touching family reunion," Snoke taunts. "Minus your father, of course. You stabbed him through the chest as he begged you to come home, didn't you? And it still wasn't enough."
"Don't listen to him," Leia urges her son, watching as Ben's face tightens in agony.
"You can try to turn to the Light, but that deed—that action—it's left its mark on your soul for good, Kylo Ren. You know it. You can try all you want, but you'll never wash it away. You'll never redeem that sin. That Darkness will be with you, tearing you apart until you die."
"You're a liar!" Leia shouts.
"Am I?" Snoke cackles, the sound reverberating through the room, stabbing her ears. Leia notices Hux cowering behind them. "He knows it's true, doesn't he? Don't you, Kylo Ren?"
Ben can't respond. His eyes bulge as he struggles to breathe. Leia clasps his shoulders. "Please, Ben, listen to me. I love you."
"How can she?" Snoke sneers. "Did she ever love you, even when you were a boy?"
"Always," Leia insists. "Imperfectly, but always."
"Really?" Snoke says. "Because who did you trust more when you were eight years old, Kylo Ren? Your mother was too preoccupied with the Senate. Your father cared only about his own gain. Who was there for you? Where was the Light then?" He's raging now, his voice falling over them with torrents of horror-inducing fury. "You still can't even trust her, can you? Not with that." Snoke goes from infuriated to calm in nanoseconds, and it dizzies Leia.
What is he talking about?
"You know she'll restore the same weak version of the Republic as before!" Snoke urges.
"As opposed to the oppression of the First Order?" Leia snaps.
"You see?" Snoke cocks his head, and Ben shakes his.
"I know what you are," he manages. "You're afraid, too, Snoke. Afraid of dying—"
Snoke freezes Ben again, and Leia, his face darkening and blackness seeping into his eyes. "You are nothing. I could have made you all-powerful, and you're throwing it all away. Have your forgotten the Light side? How it made you promise not to hurt anyone anymore? The Dark Side could have helped you then. The Light Side didn't help you that day, and it won't help you when I kill your mother, when I turn your wife to the Dark Side and if you still won't turn, when your wife kills you. And I know she's listening. I want her to hear every word.."
He releases them again, and Ben sucks in air. "I won't. She won't. We have minds of our own, Snoke, and—"
"Oh, do you?" Snoke leans closer, until his face is inches from Ben's, from Leia's, and his stench fills her nose. "I'll let you know just how little your choices actually matter: I've been playing you since a child, using every moment to turn you to the Dark Side, and the only choices you've ever made on your own were either for the Dark Side, or will be futile, because I will take subject everything to my will, and that includes you." Snoke retreats, grinning, and Leia can't—she can't—
"Put them in the same cell," Snoke orders Hux. "And think about it, Kylo Ren: either you do as I wish, or don't, but know I'll get what I want anyways. You know what I can do. Choose to live. Choose wisely."
He wants Ben to kill me, Leia realizes.
She can barely think as they're pushed back into her cell with its gray mortar walls. Ben immediately crumples to his knees again.
"Ben," Leia tries.
Her son slams his fist in to the wall, and dust flies everywhere. Leia coughs and staggers forward to grab him, stop him from hurting himself.
He looks into her eyes, as if he can't believe she's actually stopping him.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Ben insists. "No matter what Snoke—"
"I know you aren't." Leia pulls him close. "Can you forgive me?"
Ben remembers being eight and curling up that night, his parents wondering why he didn't want dinner, why he just huddled under his blankets.
"Is anything wrong?" Mother asks
Ben shakes his head.
"Then come eat dinner," Father orders.
He doesn't want to get up, though. He's worried they'll notice something, that they'll be able to tell, and he'll get in trouble for not fighting back, for following that man in the first place. I just wanted to be a hero, he thinks, a tear running down his face. "I'm not hungry."
Father sighs. "Kid, you've got to stop this. We don't always get to do what we like. Your mother and I would like you to eat dinner with us, you don't want to, one of us is going to be unhappy, or two of us. It took a lot to get you on this trip, remember? It would make us very happy if you—"
Ben pulls the blankets over his head, and Father groans. "Ben, come on." He tries to wrestle the blankets off, tries to tickle him like he used to, but Ben panics and screams, using the Force to push his father away from him, to the floor.
"I thought we'd talked about this," Father says, deadly serious as he points his finger at Ben, who sinks back below the blankets as Father goes to talk to Mother.
Chewie sits and waits with him. Chewie doesn't pull the blankets off his head.
Ben breaks. All these years later. He tells Mother about that day, about what that senator did to him, about the way Snoke walked through his dreams as a friend, about how Snoke manipulated him into manipulating Luke.
Mother cries, but she does the one thing eight-year-old Ben wanted but was too scared to ask for: she holds him.
He's wrong, you know, Rey says in his mind.
What?
Snoke. He's wrong. Our choices matter. Yours mattered. Even when you chose the Dark. And they matter now that you're choosing the Light.
"You need to send them the coordinates," Hux hisses to Phasma. She's covered with that armor again, masked.
She looks at him. "Why not you?"
Hux shakes his head. "You need to do it." He's still reeling from what Snoke said that day, how he manipulated and sculpted Kylo Ren from birth. Much as Hux sculpts his stormtroopers, although allowing the weak links to die surely isn't tantamount to the lengths Snoke went to.
Is it?
Your choices don't matter.
I will subject everything to my will…
Is that what you want to do?
My choices are going to matter, Snoke, Hux thinks furiously. I'm going to be a much better ruler than you.
You'll kill someone, someday, his father's voice whispers.
Hux grew up knowing what he'd have to do to that other cadet. He grew up with his fate written, too: kill, or die. And now he's writing others' fates, and for the first time, his stomach pinches when he thinks about it.
Phasma reappears minutes later. "Coordinates sent, sir."
Hux doesn't reply. He looks straight out at the sky towering over the planet, at the stars set against deep blue, and wonders the question he's never allowed himself to ask before. He didn't send the coordinates because he didn't want to contact the rebels again. Because he didn't want to ask this question.
But it burns inside him anyways.
What if?
Thanks for reading, all! There are two chapters left.