CHAPTER 5: I KNOW YOU

A/N: Okay, I only just realized that my formatting was completely messed up on this chapter! I would Like to thank Rufeal for all your feedback! I noticed how badly I was head hopping when I wrote this chapter and have been working my hardest to fix that. It's honestly a bad habit I have, but I'm working to break it because it bugs me, but I'm glad you enjoy it! Also this was edited, again, grammatically today 11/22/18.

Ben felt Rey before he saw her. He felt her breath quicken and the pounding of her heart as if it were his own. He felt her relief as she stretched herself over the force and a rare moment of serene calm when he heard her shift towards him. Then a sudden realization and absolute panic washed over her about something she said, multiple things she said.

Of course, he had felt her fear before they disconnected, her sadness, and her desperation as all of it mixed together and turned outward. That was when he felt his mind be set on fire, a fire so hot and intense it almost hurt to look at. A volatile mixture of every negative emotion she had felt that day directed at a singular point and projected out in the form of arrogance. The source was Rey and then it was snuffed out, and he felt her go unconscious. He could have felt more, possibly even helped her face whatever, or whoever he thought, had caused this if it weren't for those damned dampeners. Familiar blue eyes, my uncle's eyes he thought, haunted Ben's mind.

When her brown eyes finally met his the shell of fire and false bravado broke, leaving her cracked and shattered mess of a mind to flood his. Her head sank into his black-clad shoulder.

"They're gone, everyone is gone," she whispered, "Leia's gone." Her voice rose and then broke with a strangled noise as she buried herself further into him, into the storm of his presence that was always constant, her words echoed slightly as she sobbed. She buried her mind as far as humanly possible into his, leaving a Rey shaped chasm in her wake, and It was filled with the flood of his consciousness masking her trail as if out of habit. How many times has this happened? He thought, how many times in the dead of the night sitting alone in the penetrating darkness had she retreated into him? Ben had lost count. Even more so how many times had he retreated into her?

He had found out shortly after Crait from Hux of all people that his mother was alive. I didn't kill her, I didn't kill her, repeated over and over in his mind. When he heard that it, it was as if a dark shadow had lifted from his heart, one of many something whispered, and in the dark alone in his room for the first time in years he sobbed. She had appeared and gathered him into her arms, and into her very being.

"You were gone." She didn't need to elaborate. He had felt it the dread, the emptiness, the lack of light in the force the moment she left, and then he could breathe once again when she found him. The dampener was blocking him from fully feeling her in himself. Kriff I hate this stupid thing, he thought.

"It's okay, I felt it too." He said his voice was low and gentle as if not to startle her, almost a whisper. "What did he do?" Ben's head tilted downwards, searching her eyes. Brown almost black curls shifted towards her. His vision blurred. Inwardly he was hardly sitting up straight. Rey doesn't need to know. He thought.

"He saw you," she said. "He wanted to know what it was, so I told him." Kylo Ren, no Ben, stiffened. You can't tell the difference, can you? The force whispered or was it, Rey, maybe it was the taunting voice of his old master? All of them seemed to run together.

"Who was he? That man that interrupted us." He felt her stiffen and that familiar buzz of panic in the back of her mind, or was it his? He couldn't tell at this point. He took off the glove on his free hand and set it on hers sending shockwaves up his arm and through hers startling her. The force rang with the contact.

She sucked in a sharp breath before speaking. "He claims he's Anakin Skywalker." He saw red and stiffened, tightening his grip on her hand, and using what little he could feel of her warmth to center himself. The force rang with truth. It was that moment a man with red hair and a force presence full of warmth chose to walk through the door. Neither Ben or Rey acknowledged him, seeming to be in their own world.

"No, Anakin Skywalker is dead." Why can't the past stay dead? Rey flinched at the thought. A stone sank in Ben's stomach as he watched her. The silence echoing as she sniffled. He forced himself to relax. His hand reverting to a gentle, almost feather-light touch. The man watched curiously.

Because we're in it, she thought to him. His heart stopped. Fuck. It all made sense now with the outdated technology, the old style of armor, even the phrasing used by his medic.

"That's not how you talk about one of the men who rescued you now is it?" The red-haired man said, concern obvious in his voice. Two pairs of brown eyes met grey-blue ones. His white armor glittered under the light, his mouth was slightly turned downward, eyebrows were furrowed, and his arms were crossed. "I do apologize about the dampeners, they were a necessary precaution. I had to make sure you both wouldn't blow up the ship." Rey's eyes widened in recognition as she listened to his voice, and Ben was struck with the familiarity of this man's presence. His posture changed, from gentle touches to a rigid one she had seen him use once in the throne room in front of Snoke. One that was coiled and cautious like a wounded animal. It was like being held by a statue. Like a mirror, she copied his response.

Ben had felt this presence before in brief flashes of warmth in the force. He had felt it after he had vivid, hallucinatory, nightmares when he was a child, and when he first started hearing Snoke's voice in his head as he slowly widened the natural fissures in Ben's mind. He had felt it as he wept after destroying Luke's Jedi temple and it whispered of forgiveness, and as the years passed it grew more and more infrequent, but here it was now in full force right in front of him. He opened his mouth to speak. Rey stroked her thumb across his palm.

"I know you," Rey said for the both of them, her voice almost a whisper. A series of images and sounds flashed through her and Ben's minds until it settled of a faint whisper and the image of the bowels of Maz Kanata's castle. Rey, these are your first steps, the voice was older when she heard it. That phrase reverberated through her, or is it me? Maybe it was both? Ben thought. His brown eyes bored into blue ones. The man watched them intently, and his furrowed brow raised. His arms were crossed.

When Obi-Wan had first really felt this Ben's force signature he had to do a double take to make sure what he felt was real. It felt like a physical wound in the force that had simmered and festered for years, decades possibly and it feels just like Anakin's after his mother's death, Obi-Wan thought as his gut sank.

He moved towards the pair his frown deepened, and his hand stroked his beard, an action that struck both Ben as Rey as very familiar. "I would be surprised if you didn't, but I'm assuming you don't mean from the holonet." His voice rang out around the sides of the room, it's strange how there's no outside sound. It's as if we're in some sort of void or vacuum. The man thought. This is vastly different than we first thought. He glanced a look at Ben, then to Rey, and then to some unfixed point behind both of them. Ben was like staring at a statue, but his signature in the force was like a churning ocean, even though he appeared outwardly calm. I never introduced myself. Good going Kenobi. He scolded himself. "I only just realized that I know your names but you don't know mine. I'm Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and you two have gotten yourselves into a bit of a situation, haven't you?" He said a wry smile on his face.

Ben Solo's mind came to a screeching halt startling Rey out of her own dazed confusion. So, this is who I was named after, rang over their bond, he sounded almost curious to Rey. His thoughts then came back with a vengeance one after another analyzing every movement and twitch Obi-Wan made. He seemed to relax a minute fraction before clamping his vice-like hand further into hers. His mind was on fire while simultaneously suffocating, and a sudden wash of calm came over him. He glanced at Rey and she gave him a small smile. She touched his scorched mind again, guiding his attention to Obi-Wan.

"Now, Ms. Rey and Mr. Solo was it? I suggest you cooperate as much as you can." His Coruscanti accent echoed against the silence.