"Fight us, you ugly bastard!" Lando shouts as he aims a blaster at the creature Ben worshipped as the Supreme Leader, as his Supreme Leader, for years.

Not anymore. Snoke writhes on the ground, kicking off a rock as large as his head and sending it flying at Lando, who tries in vain to dodge it. It strikes Lando in the shoulder, sending him flying against the side of the Millennium Falcon.

Chewie howls and Snoke barely escapes a bowcaster blow. Someone else screams—Poe—as Snoke lifts the pilot in the air, throwing him into the side of a cliff. They're in a sort of valley on Ahch-To, a patch of rolling grass set between a plateau on which the Millennium Falcon rests, a cliff towering opposite the plateau, and a rolling hill scattered with boulders.

"Poe!" Finn shrieks, racing to the fallen pilot. "Come on, Poe, wake up!"

"Ah," Snoke chortles, the sound so brutal it's all Ben can do not to double over. "The stormtrooper. FN-2187."

"Don't call him that!" shouts Rey, and Ben's heart sinks. Mother grabs Rey, positioning herself in front of her.

Snoke smirks at her as Ben sees Luke wriggling his way out from debris, on the top of a steep slope above them, Grandfather crouched over his son. Obi-Wan straightens and looks at Rey with shock. A little green creature—Yoda—looks at Snoke with a pity Ben cannot relate to.

"Rey Kenobi. Come with me now, and I won't touch your friends."

Ben's heart drops further, and Snoke smirks. He knows perfectly well that's the line Ben used on Rey back on Stewjon. And everyone knows it's a lie, but only Rey and Ben know why Snoke says it.

"She's not going anywhere," Finn snarls, crouched over Poe's unconscious form and looking at Snoke with utter revulsion.

"Go join your friend," Snoke says dismissively, tossing another stone, as large as Finn's torso, at him. Ben's hand flies up to stop it, but Finn beats him to it.

"Hiding behind your Force-sensitive friends, I see?" Snoke taunts.

"No," Finn breathes. "No. I have the Force."

The closest thing Ben's ever seen to shock crosses Snoke's face. "That's impossible."

"Apparently not," jeers Mother.

"No—I would have known!" Snoke screeches. He knocks Chewie to the ground, and fury lashes through Ben.

"How?" Ben demands. "Hux—"

"I hand-picked that one!" Snoke shouts before stepping back, breathing deeply. "Say goodbye to your father, FN-2187 Skywalker." He aims at Luke again.

"No!" Both Rey and Ben stop him from levitating Luke, who's struggling to stand on a clearly broken leg. The salty air slaps Ben's face, wet and sharp and stinging as his brain tries to process what Snoke just said.

"What did you say?" Finn demands.

"Your mother was his whore," Snoke sneers, jerking his head towards Luke. "Just like she's—" He nods to Rey. "His whore." He nods to Ben.

Together, Ben and Finn both aim at Snoke, who successfully deflects one of them—Ben doesn't know whom—and topples over as the other's blow hits him.

And then Ben looks to Finn in shock as Snoke's words sink in. Finn is my cousin? FN-2187? The stormtrooper? The man he'd screamed, so feral, at: "Traitor!"

"That's impossible!" Finn shouts.

"Search your feelings," mocks Snoke, smiling deviously at Luke and ignoring Finn. "You know it to be true. And now you're going to see your only child wiped out, Luke Skywalker, just like I killed his mother—"

"Hell no!" Rey screams, and she and Ben protect Finn. Not missing a beat, Snoke whips about and sends Luke crashing over the side of the slope, crumpling as his shoulder hits the ground with snap—only a few feet from Snoke.

"Or, you'll be saying goodbye to the father you never knew," Snoke says, aiming at Luke again.

"No!" Finn charges at Snoke, and Snoke's lightsaber slices through Finn's shoulder as Finn thrusts his hands in front of him, sending Snoke flying back. Both of them writhe on the ground, but Snoke is the first to rise.

"You know what to do," Grandfather whispers in Ben's ear.

"So," Snoke says to Finn. "You do have the Force."

"Is it really that surprising?" Ben shouts. "That's your greatest weakness, Snoke: you're constantly underestimating the Light. You don't respect the Light—you don't want to acknowledge it."

It's working. Snoke turns away from Finn towards Ben, who steps away from Rey, away from his mother. Grandfather steps with him. Obi-Wan moves in, closer to Rey, as Yoda hovers over Luke's still form.

"I want to use the Light!" Snoke bellows, wind whipping around his robes.

"Exactly!" Leia intervenes. "You can't use the Light. You work with it."

"You," Snoke says in disgust. "You pathetic, weak—hasn't a life lived devoted to your—your Rebellion, your Resistance—shown you the power of the Dark Side? Because it's claimed everything you've ever loved, Leia Organa. And to think, you, too, could have been a talented user of the Force—"

Mother shoots out her hand, and her brother's lightsaber soars into it.

"I do not," Mother informs Snoke. "Consider my life a waste. Force trained or not."

"Your son always wanted to kill Han Solo. Otherwise he never would have—"

"You monster. I know what you did. I knew what you wanted with him, even before he was born!" And she rushes at him.

"No," whispers Grandfather.

Snoke lunges at her, but Ben throws himself at his old master, thrusting with his lightsaber and grazing Snoke's neck. Snoke howls, tossing Leia's lightsaber far from her, and snatching Ben's from him. Both Ben and Leia tumble to the ground, right at Snoke's feet.

We never had a chance. Ben spreads his arms, covering his mother as best he can. Rey—I love you.

Snoke towers over him. Behind Snoke, Ben sees Finn stirring. He can't see Rey—Snoke won't let him—

"Nice try, Rey Kenobi," Snoke sneers, holding one hand up as he stretches the other towards Ben. "If you want to go first, I have no objections." His fingers tighten, and Ben feels his windpipe constrict, and he can't breathe, he's being strangled, life itself is being squeezed away, and Rey can see—and if he dies, what will become of Rey, of their baby, of—

Snoke's eyes bulge. He gags, and his hand waves. Ben sucks in air before Snoke resumes his chokehold, and then—

Snoke's gasping, clawing at his neck, and Ben can gulp in air, sea air and wind. His lightsaber flies out of Snoke's hands, behind the monster, and Ben sees Rey, Obi-Wan standing to her side as she chokes Snoke. Her eyes, wild and desperate, meet Ben's.

Help me. We can freeze him, Ben—he's strong, but if we do this together—

Ben shoves at Snoke too, getting to his knees. He feels the Force more powerfully than he's ever felt it, and he's not focused in the least on his rage, or his pain—he's focused on Rey, and his mother, on her own knees and helping him and Rey, and his uncle lying unconscious and his friends and his father's friends, and the roar of a Wookiee waking up and the ghosts of generations past staring at them in awe, and his cousin staggering to his knees just behind Snoke, Ben's lightsaber fired up in Finn's hands.

And in Snoke's eyes, for the first time, Ben sees something mixed among the blackness: defeat.

Finn hesitates. "Do we have to do it like this?"

Ben glances at his grandfather, who looks to Obi-Wan, who looks to Yoda. Luke cranes his neck and groans. He's okay.

"Evil he is," Yoda confirms. "But Dark you are not."

"Can we get him aboard frozen?" Rey asks. "Can we even contain him?"

A blaster shot fires through the air, slicing through Snoke's upper left torso. The shock cuts through Ben and Rey and Mother, and their hold breaks.

Hux stands in front of a cleft of rock where he's clearly been hiding, blaster held high, firing and firing. But Luke's discarded lightsaber is already flying into Snoke's hands before any of them realize what's happening, and then it's hurtling towards the air at Hux.

And with a twang, Chewie blasts the Supreme Leader with his bowcaster, and Snoke falls face-first into the grass, dead.

"Hux!" gasps Rey, rushing up the hill towards the general, Ben ahead of her.

The lightsaber lies on the ground to Hux, but Ben can see it's cut clear through Hux's sternum, down through his gut. Still, the general, face paler than Ben's ever seen it, hair soaked in sweat and mussed instead of perfectly combed, glugs in air as if each breath might cure him.

"Oh!" Mother drops to her knees, reaching out for Hux's face. Hux flinches away, gawping at her as if he doesn't understand what she's doing.

"Thank you," Rey breathes, unable to kneel down, but with tears streaming down her face.

Ben doesn't know what to say. Thank you? I'm sorry? He says nothing at all, but he looks at Hux without disdain, with the same forgiveness his father showed him, and Hux looks at him, still with disdain, but with something else too, something soft and something reminiscent of what could have been, but wasn't.

And then Hux's eyes focus on Anakin Skywalker, on Obi-Wan Kenobi, and on Yoda, all of who hover nearby. "Oh," he gasps. "I'm…" His lips tremble, and his eyes fade.

"Why couldn't Snoke see you?" Rey asks her grandfather, aboard the Millennium Falcon. She watches Finn holding Poe's hand as the pilot grumbles about whatever salve Ben's applying to his head. Chewie faithfully pilots the ship, with the help of a temporary co-pilot in a terrified C-3PO. Leia and Luke fuss over Lando, although Luke keeps glancing back over his shoulder at Finn—not an easy task for Luke, with his clavicle broken. The tortured look on Luke's face, Rey suspects, doesn't stem from a physical injury.

Obi-Wan sighs as BB-8 rubs up against Rey's legs. She can barely see him over her stomach. "The Dark Side only sees what it wishes to see, Rey. Snoke, over millennia, dulled himself to any semblance of Light. He was further gone than perhaps anyone I've ever heard of."

"Hux saw you. In the end. He didn't before?"

"When he made peace with the Light," Obi-Wan agrees. "He may not have been Force-sensitive, but like each person, Force-sensitive or not, he was allied with the Light or the Dark."

"Why did it take you so long to find me?" Rey finally asks, rubbing her stomach as the baby kicks. Her stomach tightens and Rey winces. She's been experiencing contractions on and off for the past month, and has already had three since the island.

Obi-Wan looks into her eyes. "I tried."

She nods. That's enough. "What was my mother like?"

"I only met her twice. The Jedi Order—Jedi were discouraged from personal attachments. I provided for your mother's mother. I met her during the Clone Wars. I met your mother only twice. She had the same hair as you, the freckles." Obi-Wan sighs. "It's only of my greatest regrets, not getting to know her. You and Ben won't have that problem."

Rey watches Ben care for Poe and smiles. Ben turns around and smiles back at her.

"Forgive me," Obi-Wan says. "I let rules dictate everything. That's partially how I lost Anakin. That's how I lost your grandmother, and your mother, and you."

"You found me now," Rey says.

Obi-Wan sighs.

"After they die," Rey says. "The ones who aren't Force sensitive—Han, Hux—where do they go?"

Obi-Wan smiles. "I can't tell you. But they're at peace, is all I will say."

"Does Han know about Ben?"

Obi-Wan leans close to her. "How could he be at peace if he didn't?"

Rey nods, looking away. "Thank you. For coming."

It's over. I'm safe. Snoke is dead. The First Order, wounded.

She steps away from Obi-Wan, who fades. Wandering down the hallway, she remembers Han opening the grate where she and Finn had been prepared to gas him and Chewie to death, thinking them to be the First Order.

Finn turned out to be his nephew. And Rey, she would be his daughter-in-law. She's carrying his grandchild.

Another tightening in her abdomen. Rey leans against the wall, breathing deep.

I'm glad you came, Grandfather, she thinks. And Rey understands: the belonging you seek is not behind you, but ahead of you.

"Rey." Ben appears, and Rey pulls him close, kissing him as deeply as she can, as deeply as she's dreamed about in the month they've been separated.

"I love you."

"I know," he says mischievously. "I love you, too."

And she hears him, too: I never stopped trying to find you.

I know.

I'm sorry it took so long.

You came back for me. That's all that matters. Rey reaches out, stroking his hair behind his ears.

"Will you marry me?" he blurts out.

"What?"

"I—I mean, since we're going to be parents, I was just—" he stammers.

"Of course I will," Rey answers quickly, blushing, though she's not sure why. His face is similarly flushed. It doesn't matter to me, she thinks to him. What you've done. What they think of you. What comes next. I love you, and I want to help you.

"I'm so sorry," Ben whispers. "About all of it. What Snoke put you through. Kidnapping you. Trying to read your mind that time—sending you into that tree—"

"I knew all of that when we made this baby," Rey points out. "Not what Snoke put me through, but that's not exactly your fault."

He nods.

"I forgive you."

He smiles, and she cringes as her abdomen feels as if someone's twisting it, crushing it from the inside.

"Rey?" Ben asks. "What's wrong?"

"Practice contractions," Rey offers. "Phasma told me to expect them."

"You're gasping."

"It hurts."

"How many have you had?"

"They seem to be coming more regularly the past hour," she admits, as the realization sinks in.

"You're in labor," Ben states.

"I'm in labor," she agrees.