Chapter 8

Feeling the energetic field around her as she concentrated with her eyes closed, it was the first time she felt the immensity of the Force run through her body. It felt as if everything else around her was gone and she was alone with the Force, running through her, around her. She managed to hold onto the strength of it for but a moment longer, though, before it broke away and her eyes shot open. Ben's smirk was the first that she saw. She followed his gaze as it flickered away to the remnants of their grandfather's last mask, her eyes staying there as he spoke. "I believe that you and I can make great things happen together, if you want to go for it and overcome weakness. Phasma was just an example of someone who didn't truly believe in it, and that lead to her weakness, her death deserved."

Rey pulled her gaze away from the mask that their grandfather had worn for most of his life. "There is so much I don't know," she whispered, looking down upon her hands and letting her eyes trace the reddish marks of where Ben's bounds had been. He had been sceptic of her request to show her everything and had only untied her after a few silent moments, leaving her wrists bound in case she might want to try something and wasn't sincere, until they set foot in the room they were now, where he seemed to feel more powerful, less likely to be overturned in case she was fooling him. "All the things I learned about Luke Skywalker and the fight against Darth Vader, I learned through retold stories. I will never know what really happened, only the watered-down versions of it all through other people's mouths."

As Kylo Ren opened his mouth, they both heard a loud bang coming from further down the hallway, its exact location or cause unknown but the mere strength of the impact alarming enough. His eyes shot to Rey, fleetingly to the ties that he had bound her wrists with, then back at her as he tried to decide whether or not she could be trusted or if he should tie her up again. Snatching his mask from the table and sliding it over his face, he made for the door, having decided. "Follow me," he commanded with a look over his shoulder, Rey running after him as he forced the door to open with a simple hand movement and strode, nearly ran, off down the hallway in the direction of where he thought he had heard the noise.

Rey worked hard to try and keep up with him, becoming breathless as they followed the group of Stormtroopers marching quickly towards the door at the end of the hallway, beside the one where she had been kept locked up. She heard a rumbling sound come from beside her, filled with rage and anger. She guessed she would soon know where the anger came from. She saw the opened door as they reached the hallway, saw the emptiness of the room a second after her brother as she moved to look past him.

"Damn it." Turning around with his long dark cape flying, he screamed at the group of Stormtroopers that had gathered and stood watching at the empty room with their weapons drawn but otherwise unmoving, not knowing what to do and just staring stupidly. "What happened? How did she get away?" he demanded to know, not waiting for an answer as he began to stride towards what Rey later knew to be the control room of the base.

When they turned the corner, their eyes fell immediately on the shivering mass on the floor, barely holding himself upright against the wall and holding one of his hands over his chest. They quickened their movements until they were a foot away from General Hux, where Ben knelt down. Rey didn't. From where she stood beside her brother, she saw the blood streaming down between the pale man's fingers and already knew he would probably not make it.

"They… had a plan," General Hux spoke in the weak, groggy voice of a man on his death bed, gathering his last few gulps of air to say what needed to be said, as he died to protect his beliefs. "They tricked us… The Supreme Leader is dead. They will let the Senate know the facts. They released the General."

Throwing a quick glance upon his sister and getting to his feet, Kylo Ren set off to continue his way to the control room, leaving Hux to die on his own.

Ripping her gaze away from the fatally wounded man's paling face and the death that swam in and clouded his eyes, Rey continued to run after him, nearly having to jog now to be able to keep up. As she stayed in his shadow, the pieces fell together and she realized that Leia had been cooped up in the room beside hers the entire time that she had been locked up as well. Finn and Poe must have made it and succeeded, as must Luke have. Phasma had been killed by her own fellows because she had proven to be too weak for their wishes, and Hux had been fatally injured by one of the Resistance present in the First Order base. Supreme Leader Snoke was dead. The only one left in the way of the Resistance was Ben. If he failed, too, the First Order would be unbound.

Rey felt her blood rush through her system, her heart beat pounding hard and consistently in her temple as all of the realizations hit her, about the complexity of the situation and the opposition and about their plans and how they had used Ben and what kind of person Ben truly must be. The cogs worked in her head and she was so involved in it that she nearly bumped into Kylo Ren's back as he came to a sudden halt.

"You won't get away with this. You will never get the First Order down," a deep and angry voice sounded before the whoosh of a lightsaber unscathed filled the air and Rey nearly had to squint against the red glow of it in the relatively dark control room, and she saw flashes of her mother and of Luke, immediately wondered where Finn and Poe were with her heart racing.

An insanely strong headache hit her then, and she grasped for her forehead and slammed her eyes shut as the Force pulled back and forth inside and around her, oblivious to what was happening around her, caught in her own world as light and dark, belief and knowledge, hope and trust, battled with each other. Darkness overcame her and it felt that she was swirling in space without any way of survival. Seconds ticked by and sounds penetrated her mind and a unfamiliar scream pierced through as she fought against the pain and the war inside her, the sounds outside her head first becoming louder than softer and louder again as she battled against her own mind, finally forcing her eyes open to the sight of Luke heaving and shaking in a corner, clutching his side. Blurry eyes travelled further to the dark figure with the red glowing lightsaber standing feet away from their shared mother, and she realized she was slumped on the floor by the entrance, Ben having left her there without hesitation.

Crawling to her hands and knees, she felt her stomach heave and bile rise in her throat, which she fought against as well. Her entire body was shaky and sweaty as the words spoken between the General and Kylo Ren reached her ears, and she felt a sort of déjà vu, especially upon watching them blurrily. She remembered her father.

"You won't be able to stop us either, and your attempt to do so will end with your life, just like my father's and like that old fool's," Ben spoke in a bitter tone with a nod to the man on the floor. Years of retreat and of hiding from the Force as well as old age had made him slower and weaker than ever. He grasped the side of his black mask and pushed it up and off of him, letting it fall wherever it wanted to land. She should look him in the eyes as he showed her who he truly was.

Leia felt only sadness, no anger or fear, as she looked at her son, hidden behind and underneath a black attire meant to make his affiliation clear, just like his grandfather, her father. It was a déjà vu for her as well. "Do you know why your grandfather became the way he was?" Leia questioned. "I have never condoned what he did and always will despise him for the decisions he made, but at least he had a reason, while you are just letting yourself be carried away by half-truths and little stories."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Ben yelled, but the look in his eyes and the slight crack, nearly inaudible, in his voice made it clear that she had hit a nerve.

"No, you don't know what you're talking about!" Leia countered, nostrils flaring as she felt her anger well up again, and all of a sudden, temporarily ignoring Luke and Rey and focusing just on them, she felt stronger than him again, stronger than whatever they had done to her child, and she continued. "You try so hard not to feel, just the way he did... but you can't not. My father died because of love and any emotion associated with it, like fear. Fear of losing what you love. Fear of never having it."

Rey felt the throbbing headache in her temple slowly dissipate to a duller pain as she took in the words her mother spoke - the full story she had always wanted to hear, especially since she discovered she was the granddaughter of the Darth Vader so many had feared. Her eyes fell on the way Ben's lightsaber shook in his hands, and fear gripped her that it might lead him to do something impulsive.

"Darth Vader was a very impulsive man, and mostly very stubborn. A Jedi is not supposed to love, but he loved so much. He refused to give up on being a Jedi, reeled in by a childlike curiosity to discover all of the Force. He refused to give up on love. He couldn't not love my mother, couldn't not be with her. Love clouded his judgment as a Jedi, and the Force clouded his judgment as a man, a husband and a father." Leia paused, tears filling her eyes as she remembered her own father wanting to kill her. She had been happy where she had grown up, hadn't needed Darth Vader, but once she discovered he was her father, a pain had settled in her heart - a pain that had only deepened after bearing children herself and finding it even more ludicrous that you could ever not want the best for your children. "Maybe love makes us all weak in a way. For him, it made him incredibly afraid of losing to the point of driving him to insanity in the pull between the light and dark. He would do anything to keep your grandmother by his side. Yet the dark doesn't love. When she died, he gave up on believing in it and let himself be swallowed by the darkness entirely. I think you can't hate without having loved first, and I believe you are the best example. I know there is still love inside you, no matter how hard you try to deny that part of you..."

"I do not love!" Kylo Ren screamed, his face contorting in anger as he lifted his hand and made to stab his mother with anger, much the same way as he had killed his father.

Rey saw what was going to happen seconds before the lightsaber would have hit her, and reaching out with her hand, she pulled at the Force inside and around her and used it to slam her brother back against the opposite wall, the lightsaber weakening in his hand before falling to the floor, inches from his yearning hand as another wave of the Force flowed from Rey as she stood to her feet, only focused on her brother and not her mother's shocked eyes.

"You will not kill our other parent, too. You've done enough," she spat, looking over her shoulder as she heard thundering footsteps just before Finn and Poe appeared in the doorway, making for her, opening their mouths just as Ben took advantage of the half second she lost full control over the Force and grasped his lightsaber, using it to slash at her calve.

Crumbling from the intense pain it sent shooting up and down her leg, she lowered herself to the floor again, grasping the wounded area, watching through bleary eyes as Finn and Poe launched themselves at her brother, and she was scared for them, as they had no means of actual defense like he had, but also in too much pain to be able to help them. She was barely aware of the General lowering herself to her knees beside her and grasping her calve as well.

It was like watching a movie in slow motion, as then Ben, then Finn and Poe got the upper hand, the latter barely escaping a few well-directed stabs with the red glowing saber. She knew they wouldn't stay lucky that way, and she heaved air as she tried to pull the Force to her but couldn't, swallowed bile of effort. She kept watching the scene before her, trying to use it as a ways to force herself more, force herself better, like a ball rolling down the staircase, first slow, then faster and faster and more dangerously. Just as Finn and Poe jumped back further than ever to avoid fatal damage, the scene before her seemed to freeze and a cold wind whipped around her.

Looking around her to try and find the source, she saw Luke standing behind them, half-crumpled, one hand on his still-injured side, but the intensity in his blue eyes speaking volumes of how powerful he really was. "Stop trying to be someone you're not, Ben," he spoke in a somewhat breathless tone, still stronger than anyone in the room would have expected from him. "You're not him, and you don't have to be him either. You don't belong here, away from who you truly are."

It was then that the light won from the dark inside Kylo Ren, seeing the evidence before him of how strong you could be with the Force without being part of a people-killing opposition, of how love alone and lack of the force wouldn't necessarily give you a life where you had to miss something. He saw a hint of a possibility to be strong without having to force yourself not to feel in his sister. His little sister had mastered the combination better than he ever would, he realized, and he slumped to the floor in front of Leia and Rey, tears falling from his brown eyes. What had he done?

The lightsaber lay long forgotten as Leia grasped her son's hand and he grasped it back, to ensure he knew there was still a way back, and that is exactly what he needed.