The brutal slash of the red lightsaber igniting was the only answer.

There was a sudden rush for blasters, which appeared from the pockets of nearly everyone in the room. Hux attempting to juggle at least three from his own personal armoury. Rey knew Ben was good in battle, but it was unlikely he was going to be able to stop every single one of them simultaneously.

She gestured, and the conference table soared upwards, knocking down the First Order insignia as it flew through the air and crashed into the desk which, because it was that sort of desk, promptly exploded as the hidden weapons within it detonated in a shower of splinters.

She stepped out of the way, leaving him a clear line to the door. 'Then you can either choose to kill me, or leave. I won't fight you.'

He had no such qualms, holding the blade at her throat, but she knew he wouldn't do it. He loved her too much, and too deeply, that love a clarion call to the light that had constantly ripped him apart. She knew he loved her, it was laid bare and bleeding in those dark eyes as he stood there, poised for a stroke he would never deliver.

She said, in words that only he would hear, 'I love you.'

He froze. 'No,' His voice was an acid hiss. 'No, no you don't. I accepted you for who you were from the beginning. I asked you to join me. I made you my equal. I defended you. I've spent the last few months turning my life upside down just to get you what you want.' He switched off the sword, and the room fell into a thick silence. 'But you've tried to change me since the day we met and now here we are. If I won't become exactly what you want, I have to leave? If I won't change everything I am and become your pet like everyone else in this room, you'll ask them to fire on me? You know I won't kill you. You're counting on it. I love you, and you've taken that, the one good thing I had left and used it against me. That's the dark side, Rey. That's what it does.' His eyes were shot full of pain, and he looked at her as if he'd never seen her before in his life. 'Not every monster wears a mask.'

Then he was gone, walking away, walking past her, walking out of her life. She had set him free at last, but the cost of it was too much to bear. Menan Ocram's hand fastened on her shoulder, and she braced herself against a chair.

Tension trickled out of the room in an assortment of sighs, and sagging shoulders, holstered blasters and muttered comments.

Then a voice crackled into life from a speaker in the ceiling. 'General Hux. You asked to be informed of the Supreme Leader's movements. He has taken the command shuttle, heading unknown. Shall I contact him for you?'

Rey glanced over. 'Let him go.'

Hux responded, 'No further action.'

However, a couple of seconds later the disembodied voice was back again. 'General, the shuttle has turned and is approaching The Reaper. At some speed.'

'I'm on my way.'

The rest of the council was also on its way, Rey dragging behind as she broadened her awareness of the Force outside the ship. There was the anger she'd expected, the volcanic rage exploding through space towards her, powered by ion engines and a lifetime of disappointment. He thought she was another in a long line of people who had betrayed him, tried to change him. He didn't understand she was trying to give him space in order to change himself.

She'd never bothered with the command deck of The Reaper before, and now she was there, the whole thing felt alien and uncomfortable, full of incomprehensible noises and urgently flashing lights. She was conscious of the crew staring at her from their entrenched positions, faces glowing in the artificial darkness, and she wished for someone to stand at her side so she wouldn't feel so alone.

'He's on a collision course,' one of the uniformed officers noted, as if it was irrelevant. 'Direct impact with the bridge estimated in ninety seconds.'

'What's he doing?' Hux asked her with a raised eyebrow.

She wrapped her arms around herself. 'He doesn't have anything left. He alienated himself from his family, and I pushed him out of the First Order. He has nowhere else to go.'

'Permission to fire on the shuttle, sir?' The officer spoke as if this was all simply a military exercise, and Rey felt her temper flare.

'I don't expect fear from your army, General Hux,' she bit out. 'But I do expect their loyalty. The man on that ship is your Supreme Leader.'

'Don't shoot.' Hux gave the order, but he sounded unconvinced.

'Thirty seconds to impact.'

Rey found herself counting down in her head. Ben would pull up. He would realise that she was doing this because she loved him, because he'd asked her to let the past die but hadn't been able to let it go himself. Any second now, he'd pull up.

'He wants me to fire on him,' she murmured. 'He wants me to prove I'm a monster.'

There was no place for Kylo Ren in her First Order, or anywhere. He was part of the past. Ben Solo was going to have to let that part of him go and work out who he was meant to be.

'Twenty seconds to impact.'

'How many Azaxi women and children did he kill in the settlements yesterday?' she asked suddenly, hoping that the numbers might take away the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and replace it with self-righteousness.

Hux gave her a quizzical stare. 'None. He came back not long after you did. The settlements were not destroyed. That was never the plan.'

'Ten seconds to impact.'

He wasn't going to pull up. She was going to have to save him from himself. Darkness rises and light to meet it, she thought. I can do anything he can do. But she'd never been any good at lifting.

She reached out for the shuttle, trying to visualise it as more than a lump of extremely heavy, extremely fast metal, hurtling towards impact. The man inside it was nothing, not anymore, except to her, and she concentrated on that. It wasn't a ship she was trying to lift, just a single ordinary, precious human being, and that tipped the balance. Her power flung the ship up and away and she couldn't tell how far or how fast it might travel, or where it might end up when it finally stopped. All she knew was that the presence she'd carried around in her mind for months had gone, and she was truly alone.

A couple of the bridge crew swivelled in their chairs to stare at her, but Captain Ocram's hand beneath her elbow tugged her away.

'I need to show you a possible venue for our meeting with the fifty-seven delegates if you don't mind, Supreme Leader. I think it's large enough, but you may want to think about the layout.'

He continued to chatter inane nonsense at her until they were off the bridge and had navigated a couple of corridors, studiously ignoring the steady stream of tears and tugging her onto a circular expanse of polished floor, in the middle of which sat a single, very large chair.

She was caught out by that. 'But – this is a throne room?'

'Of course it is. The Reaper has been the flagship of the fleet since you came on board, but you've never shown any inclination to use it, and now I think this room will become useful. It has enough space to accommodate representatives from every potential ally, and if you control the meeting from there,' he nodded at the throne. 'They'll all be able to see and hear you.'

'You want me to sit on the throne?' she asked, amazed that he'd even suggest such a thing.

'Not necessarily sit on it. Stand by it, if you want to. Stand on it. But find a way to make all the people who are coming listen to you, or this alliance will be over before it's begun, and everything you've just done.' Here his hand fastened on her arm. 'Will be for nothing.'

She worried about it all night, and that worry helped camouflage the fact that both her bed and her heart were cold and empty. There was no one to talk to about any of it, how to assert her authority without going too far, how to build consensus without appearing weak. She'd never done any of it before. Power had always been Ben's world, not hers.

She stood in front of the wardrobe doors for a very long time the next morning before she could muster the will to put it on. That dress had been hanging in in the closet since she'd arrived, the high necked, long sleeved, full skirted, hooded Supreme Leader's robes, too much like something he would wear for her to choose. She needed to be taken seriously though, and she needed respect, if she was going to achieve everything she wanted.

Rey surveyed herself in the mirror afterwards, booted and belted with the lightsaber at her waist and her hair covered by the cowl. She was sure that wherever he was, Ben would have approved.

She strode through the throng of milling delegates and seated herself on the throne as if she'd been born to it. 'I am Rey, Supreme Leader of the First Order,' she declared.