Title: To Welcome You Home

Author: Omnicat

Canon Notes/Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: J.J. Abrams & co's Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens and Rian Johnson & co's Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi are a must; George Lucas & co's Star Wars: Episode I through VI, Ron Howard & co's Solo: A Star Wars Story and Gareth Edwards & co's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story are strongly recommended; J.J. Abrams & co's Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker and all Extended Universe materials compliant with it are ignored. This fic is spiritually compliant with Charles Soule & Will Sniley's The Rise of Kylo Ren, though I started writing and planning too early to make it factually compliant. I use freely from any Extended Universe materials I'm familiar with, but I'm doing my best to ensure everything makes sense if you've only seen the movies. (The EU is a monster. Help.) The timeline I've set Ben's backstory to is of my own making, however, and at this point I honestly don't have the heart to adjust it to the canon one. There needs to be some limit to all this angst.

Content Notes/Warnings: Heavy angst with slow-burn recovery. Canon-typical violence, fallout from canonical character deaths, rather more explicitly creepy and abusive than movie canon Snoke, self-hatred/blame/harm/destructive behavior, suicidal thoughts, misc other heavy psychological stuff/trauma/(ex-)villainy, and a POV character who is very much a source and subject of hatred and conflict. Modern Earth profanity, because I can't take 'kriff' seriously. (It sounds like a brand of dog food! Or krill's cranky cousin! Seriously, I can't do it.)

There is no sexual element to Snoke and Kylo/Ben's relationship at any point in this fic, present or past tense, explicitly or implicitly. That being said, my primary goal with Snoke was for him and his relationship to Ben to make your skin crawl. I didn't skimp on the predatory, faux-fatherly, 'benevolent deity'-esque kinds of affection and intimacy, and Snoke enters Ben's life when he's very young. On top of all the physical, mental, emotional, and magical abuse that's there intentionally, if (child) sexual abuse is something you avoid in stories, please be advised that this might trip some wires despite the lack of a formal rape warning.

Characters & Relationships: Ben & Leia, Rey(lo), Poe, Finn (x), Rose, Force Ghost Luke, in absentia: Snoke and Han, and various bit parts and cameos both canonical and original

Summary: He had turned his back on the First Order and thrown himself at his mother's feet. He had set his hands toward rebuilding and redeeming. But his heart was slower to follow. How do you banish the darkness when every beam of light shone into it only shows more clearly how thoroughly it has ruined you?

or: angsty, Ben-centric, slow-burn redemption-equals-recovery and recovery-equals-redemption fic, featuring equal parts mommy feels, Reylo, all the different ways his dead father figures and mentors haunt him, and a lot of friction between the ideals of reconciliation and rehabilitation, and the reality of the great, fresh, bloody wounds struck between them all

Author's Note: All comments, from long to short and from a single emoji to an essay, make my day! If you have any questions about the fic, feel free to ask, and if you spot any SPAG problems, I would be grateful if you pointed them out. (Please be as specific as possible so I know where and what to look for!)

Enjoy!

II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II

I – The End

His mother was alive. In the end, it was that simple.

He'd thought he had seen her die. He had watched as the command bridge of her ship was engulfed in flames, had felt her presence in the Force fade into nothingness, had received Snoke's damning praise for finally being an orphan, holding still for it with bent knee and raised chin like something frigid and slimy and toxic was being poured down his throat. He had tried to be glad, or triumphant, something, anything, but only felt whatever warmth remained in the universe, in himself, leach away. The process started with his murder of his father now completed, everything inside and out cold and dead and hollow.

Everything but that secret pinprick of connection the Force had given him to Rey. Rey, hurtling herself toward him through the dark like a comet, burning hot and bright as she entered his atmosphere as if to single-handedly keep the life and light in him from dying completely. Rey, who slashed him open all over again and abandoned him as quickly as she'd come, like everything that happened between them had been nothing but the last, dying pulse of a star. A flare of light with no other purpose than ripping the already fraying fabric of his reality apart, exposing the void underneath. A brightly burning after-image of nothing.

No mother, no father. No master, no equal. No Jedi or Sith or Empire or Rebellion. No passion, nor peace. (No phantom fingers combing through his hair, dragging along his scalp, sinking like the finest claws into the whorls of his brain and trailing off down his spine until his entire body was lit up with treacherous alarm.) Just empty silence inside, and all around him the gaping maw, the bottomless pit, the black hole that was the First Order.

But then – the report. The footage. Shaky blue-light movement and sound warbled with static. But his mother. Alive. And she hadn't been angry before he stopped sensing her, had reached for him just as he had reached for her – but then the shot had come from behind him and he was too shocked to stop it and she was gone, he'd thought in his weakness he had killed her too, but he hadn't. He hadn't.

All around the table had been high-ranked predators in neatly-pressed uniforms, waiting for him to tell them how to correct the oversight of Leia Organa's survival, when something had just snapped. And suddenly everything was simple. For the first time in sixteen years, he only knew, not what he thought he could or felt he must, but what he wanted to do.

His answer was no. No matter the question. No.

So he turned on his heel and ran. He hurled himself back into his mother's arms like he had wanted but felt too hurt and rejected and inadequate and monstrous to do since he was fourteen years old and she pushed him down the ramp of her ship towards an uncle he barely knew and didn't want to know, not if it meant formally separating from his parents, losing even the feeble hope he'd always clung to that this time, this time they wouldn't be gone so long.

To hell with the outcome, he threw himself at her feet and wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face to the belly in which she'd carried him, hiding his tears from everyone but her, and –

"Ben. Ben? Oh, Ben."

And he was home. That was all that mattered. The Dark Side, destiny, duty, it all paled next to this, had never compared, not the way he had tried to convince himself for so long.

He'd made it home.

I-oOo-I

Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined failing Snoke so utterly could be so freeing. Everything was suddenly so easy. He thought he may have finally figured out the Jedi way; freedom though detachment, the peace of letting go of everything but this one perfect, glorious snapshot of the present.

The trick, as it turned out, was knowing how happy you were before it was all taken away from you.

The data cube stayed behind in the curl of his mother's fingers when he dropped his hands to his knees, palms-up and open. He looked up at her and she looked down at him, his own tears mirrored in her eyes, and it was enough. Whether it was a neck shot or stun cuffs or a dose of hypercompliance juice or something else coming for him with thundering footsteps from what felt like a galaxy away, it didn't matter. That terrible, hungering void at the center of him that sucked in all the light and no extreme of devotion had ever been able to fill, was finally sated. Now that he had this, he was strong enough to do anything, had the power to withstand whatever the universe might throw at him.

Because Mom was alive and he'd made it home before the end. He'd done something right for once, and someone he loved was proud of him and loved him back for it. Letting the Resistance interrogate and execute him would take no effort at all, now.

Voices shouted somewhere inconsequential and far away.

He pulled his lips into his best recollection of a smile; tried to tell her without words how sorry he was, and how much he loved her, and that whatever happened next, it was okay.

Her hand came up to cover her mouth, eyes closing tightly for a bracing moment. The shouting got louder. One of the voices had recognized him, many others his shuttle; none of it mattered. She searched his face and her presence in the Force flooded his, fumbling through unknown motions, groping and plucking, starved for knowledge of him. She couldn't articulate what she was looking for, so he simply gave her everything.

Someone grabbed her arm.

She freed herself so aggressively it would have been startling had they not been pressed mind-to-mind, bleeding into one another, her perceptions and decisions as obvious to him as his thoughts and memories were to her.

"My b-boy," she whispered, breath stuttering in her lungs, and he could feel a mountain moving in her heart as she did. "My son." Something horrible and suffocating crumbled to dust, and it was as if she (he, they) could breathe for the first time in ten years. "My baby."

As shock rippled through the air and the Force both, she cupped his face between warm, weathered hands and engulfed his heart in hers. The universe tilted on its axis. Something long-absent slotted into place where it always ought to have been. His tears were mirrored in her eyes, the eyes he'd inherited from her, and in their souls was a matching, single-minded, all-consuming –

Oh, he thought, stunned. Oh, wow.

It wasn't the end. Not if his mother had anything to say about it.