"Didn't you ever fix ships with your father?" Rey grunts as she tries to wrench a melted part off of the compressor.
"I mostly used the Force and annoyed him. He thought I was showing off."
Rey rests back on her heels.
"Maybe I was, a little bit."
Rey swipes sweat off her brow, continuing to study Ben. You wanted his approval anyways, didn't you? "If you're not able to help me," she says, nodding to the gruel they'd been given. "Make dinner."
"Okay." He gets up.
"When did you find out who my grandfather was?" Rey calls, curiosity getting the best of her as she works.
He leaves without answering her.
Fine. Rey scowls.
He returns with two steaming bowls of mush. Rey gives up on the compressor for the moment.
He leans against the wall. "Is this what you ate on Jakku?"
Rey wrinkles her nose. "No. Believe it or not, the food on Jakku was more appetizing." She doesn't care, though. It's food, and her stomach rumbles for it.
"I knew you were Obi-Wan's granddaughter when a lieutenant told me that the droid and the stormtrooper had escaped with a girl from Jakku."
The food stalls in Rey's mouth. "What? How?"
He swallows, looking into his own bowl. "Somehow, I knew. I didn't know for sure until later, when the lightsaber answered to you, and Snoke told me."
"That's not what I'm asking. How did—how did you know—you knew I was on Jakku!"
Ben pushes his hair back. "How much do you remember?"
"Remember what?" She shakes her head. "Nothing. I remember nothing, Ben, aside from someone flying away in a ship and leaving me with Unkar Plutt!"
"Has Luke told you anything?" he ventures.
"That you killed all the padawans at the academy. And that I was the only survivor."
"But you don't remember it."
"No."
He looks at his hands. "I'm glad." He takes a deep breath. "Snoke told me that the Jedi—if a new Jedi order was allowed to grow, it would ruin everything. It would ensure chaos, undo the little bits of order brewing in the galaxy. He told me it was time to make my choice. And that, if I was willing to join, the Knights of Ren would have me."
"So you didn't plan it."
"I didn't try to stop it, either."
True.
Ben presses his hand against his side and winces. "I didn't know. Until they were there. I thought there was always one more minute—one more chance—to tell. I didn't know what I was going to choose. I wanted to make Snoke happy, and when the Knights arrived, they patted me on the back—they talked to me like I was already a brother. The padawans never did that. They treated me like a pariah, whispered about my family. And so I—I helped. Luke was gone that night."
"And me?" Rey whispers. She can't remember what happened, but another memory—the vision she had in Maz Kanata's palace—fills her mind. Rain. Lightsabers crackling. The dead, lying all around her.
Ben meets her gaze. She sees anguish in his eyes, darkness, fear, but also shame. She doesn't need to push inside his mind. He's giving all of it to her, showing her.
"You were on the ground, in the mud—there was thunder, and everyone was—gone. And you had been playing dead. You whimpered, and I realized you were alive—and I knew you, Rey, because you were so kind, even then. Feisty, but kind. Another knight noticed you, too, so I killed him." Ben's voice is barely a whisper, but it echoes in Rey's mind. "I heard later that Luke found you and sent you somewhere in the Western Reaches. I should have known when I found Lor San Tekka that night… he must have been watching you."
"Who?" Rey asks.
"An old friend of my mother's."
He killed him, too, Rey realizes. "So if I hadn't played dead," she says, voice shaking. "You would have killed me, too."
"I didn't kill the padawans. Not one. I didn't start killing people I knew until—later. But I didn't stop it."
She's not letting him off the hook. "So, you killed them."
"I killed them," he whispers. Eyes swimming, he looks to Rey again. "Do you hate me?"
She wants to laugh at his question. But she can't, because even though so much of her screams that she should hate him, she knows it's the darkness. And the regret—she hears it, and the fear. Regret excuses nothing, but it might be a ladder to the Light. "I wish I did," she admits.
He frowns. "I don't understand."
"I don't hate you."
"No, that part I get—it's just, why? Why not? I killed my father in front of you. I kidnapped you. I tell you now I could have let you been murdered as a child, an innocent child, and still you don't hate me?"
Now, she proves his mind and she feels his loneliness, the loneliness and fear of a child and a man, his anxiety, his terror and reverent worship of the Dark Side, and his draw to the Light because he wants so desperately to hope, to heal. And he lets her in.
There's something else, an image. Orange, and small.
"My doll," she says suddenly, breaking away from him. "You had my doll!"
"I made it for you."
Rey swallows. "I always thought it was from my mother."
He shakes his head. "When you arrived at Luke's academy, you cried because you missed a doll you had back home. And you idolized Luke, but he was gone a lot, and he had us older padawans training you. So, I made you Luke as a doll."
Rey stares at him, perceiving no deception, and she laughs.
"Four more days," Rey says to Ben as they haul their findings towards Prana's goons. They've been scavenging for weeks. "I'm sure it'll be fixed by then."
"I hope so, because if the First Order finds us first…" The past few weeks, he's felt more like Ben. He doesn't want to be swayed into becoming Kylo Ren again. But what if he can't resist it?
You're so weak.
But she's not, and she's helping him because, inexplicably, she cares.
The man who with the silver skin picks apart what they've brought. Concealed inside Rey's robes are several more parts that they need to repair the ship.
"You don't need to search me," Rey tells him sweetly.
"We don't need to search her," the man announces. "Here is—"
A face Ben's never seen but prayed to often appears, off towards the edge of the swamp. Dressed in Jedi robes, a young Darth Vader stares at his grandson.
"Grandfather?" Ben steps towards the apparition.
"Who's he talking to?" snarls the metal man.
Anakin Skywalker slips back among the trees. Ben runs towards it.
"Come back here!"
"Ben!"
"Get him!"
"Ben!"
He trips over a tree root, chin slamming into the ground. He spits out blood and cranes his neck. "Grandfather?"
The man he's always wanted to see, the man he's spent so many years trying to emulate, rises before him. Does he want me to turn back to the Dark Side? Trepidation bites at his fingers.
"Ben Solo," whispers his grandfather. He looks young, and whole. With this face, there's no need for a mask.
Ben tries to think of what to say. His mind feels strangely blank, as if his thoughts have been tied up.
"These are your first steps," the man says. Not Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker.
Horror grips Ben, squeezing him tighter than that serpent. Sentiment ruined what Darth Vader spent his whole life fighting for, Snoke had told him.
But now, looking into his grandfather's actual face, Ben knows it saved him. His stomach twists and his muscles coil as shame threatens to split him apart.
Anakin reaches out, hand hovering over his cheekbone. Just like Father.
"Where have you been?" Ben manages to eke out.
"I've always been here," Anakin replies, and, as the Light engulfs him and Anakin vanishes, Ben understands.
Hands grab him, hauling him up. A fist lands in his stomach. Fingers tear at his hair and boots kick at his knees as Ben is dragged out of the swamp, past Rey, who wears a look of absolute horror.
"Into the sarlacc pit for you," rasps the silver man.
No. A cold, slimy sensation slips over him. Not when I'm so close. Not after Grandfather finally woke him up and he feels alive and like there's a new hope.
"Please don't!" Rey cries.
"A sarlacc pit? Truly?" King Prana's voice, disdainful and cruel, fills the air. A low hiss sounds, and Ben sees another serpent, just as green and thick as the one in the forest, lick its lips.
"He tried to run away," insists the silver man.
"They are the best scavengers we've had in years. Do you know how much profit they're bringing me?"
"I can't do it without him," Rey confirms.
"I might be able to buy more rathtars, after Han Solo failed me!" hisses King Prana. The serpent rises.
Father. Ben's heart constricts.
"But he tried to escape!"
"No!" Ben protests. "I saw—I saw something—"
King Prana cackles. "He might be crazy, but he does good work." He waves a hand, and the serpent slips back to the floor. "Thirty lashes."
"Luke."
Finn screams as the shadow of an old man appears on the edge of a cliff. Poe jumps too, grabbing Finn's shoulders. BB-8 ducks behind Chewie, who snorts at the ghost.
"Obi-Wan!" Luke rises, relief evident. "Have you—where is she?"
"In the hands of King Prana. No doubt planning an escape." A smile crosses Kenobi's face.
"That's three days away," Poe breathes.
"Prana? That maniac who wanted the rathtars?" Finn gasps.
"The what who wanted the what?"
"When we met up with Han Solo. I've told you the story."
"Oh. Right."
"One and the same," confirms Obi-Wan. "And if you want to get her, I suggest you head out now. The First Order is about four days from reaching her."
"Anakin?" Luke inquires.
"He checks in with me as rarely as he did when we were alive."
"Oh hell no," Finn says. "Did you hear that, Poe? You've gotta be kidding me? Darth Vader is a ghost?"
"Anakin Skywalker is a ghost," Luke corrects him.
Poe's really not too sure of the difference. As Obi-Wan vanishes before his eyes, he turns to Chewie. "We taking the Falcon?"
Chewie roars and nods.
"One of you needs to radio Leia," Luke calls.
"I nominate Poe!" Finn says.
Poe glares at him.
Finn shrugs. "She likes you the most."
On board the Millennium Falcon, Finn hears Poe griping to Chewie as he readies the radio. Luke paces the ship, hand running along the bunk, the hologame table, the padded bench. His eyes look more haunted than the planet they're leaving below.
"Lots of memories here?" Finn asks. "From the Rebellion?"
Luke smiles and takes a seat, gesturing for Finn to do the same. "You might say that."
"The first time I was on this ship, the motivator went, and Rey had to fix it." He'd been free from his stormtrooper duties less than a day. He thought Poe was dead. And he met Han Solo that day.
"It's an old ship, but a faithful one," Luke remarks.
"You miss Han?" Finn inquires. "I'm sorry—I just—he helped Rey, and me. He believed we could rescue Rey from the Starkiller when everyone else had given up on her."
Luke peers at him. "Do you love her?"
"Rey? Of course. But…" Finn's mind turns. "Not like—not like in the way Han loved your sister."
"Really?" Luke leans forward, resting his chin on his knee.
Something prickles in his stomach. Finn shakes his head.
"Before he found out Leia and I were twins, Han thought Leia might be in love with me," Luke says, voice mysterious as if he's trying to send Finn a message. Whatever it is, Finn's not getting it.
"But she told him."
"After the Battle of Endor." Luke smiles. "She and Han used to go back each year, bringing Ben with them—it was only a few months after Endor when she announced she was pregnant. Right here in this room, she told me. Chewie slapped Han on the back so hard I thought he'd paralyzed him."
Why did Luke have to bring his sordid nephew up? "Pregnant with a monster," Finn spits.
"Ben wasn't like he is now. Not when he was born. Or for most of his childhood, really. He was sweet, sensitive even. Insecure, though, especially as he got older. He loved his father."
"Well, clearly that changed." Finn's voice is hard, unyielding. He can't think of Kylo Ren as Ben.
Your son is dead.
Finn agrees.
"Maybe. But all of us—we're all capable of doing insanely cruel things to people we love."
Finn can't help himself. "Even Darth Vader wasn't capable of killing you. Or letting the Emperor kill you. Kylo Ren… he crossed that line. He killed him. I saw it all. He pounced on Han's mercy."
"Yoda told me once that if I started down the Dark Side, forever would it dominate my destiny." Luke flicks the hologame table on and stares at the hollow figurines. "It didn't dominate my father's, though. It doesn't have to dominate Ben's."
Finn fights the rage flickering within him, burning him. "Don't you think it'd be a little hard to come back from slaughtering his own father?"
Luke pauses. "It might be harder. No, I know it'll be harder. But with each action, he makes a choice. Someday, maybe, he'll see the right one."
"If Rey is with King Prana… what happened to Kylo Ren?" Finn asks. "Couldn't he be dead?"
"The Force would have told me." Luke smiles. Finn cannot relate. "And as long as he's alive, there's hope."