Chapter 1: In Ruins He Left

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The cell was too bright. The shadows cast here were faint and half-hearted. A dark room would have suited him better. This one was too exposed, too open despite the cramped confines. A smooth, gray, rectangular box, featureless and stagnant but for the door on one end and the flat plane of padded metal that served as a bed on the other. The most complex structure in the room was the toilet in the corner, and even that was minimal. There was nowhere to hide here. Not from anything.

Not from himself.

The brightness was nerve-wracking. The silence was worse.

It was not the physical silence that bothered him. That, in its way, was a relief. His was an isolated cell—the only one on the floor. The special treatment came as no surprise. He neither welcomed it nor resented it. His cell was quiet, but not oppressively so. If he sat still, closed his eyes and measured his breathing, stretched his senses far enough, he could pick out the myriad sounds of the city. Loudest were the humming of engines, the high keen of speeders and the lionine roar of starships. Sometimes there was the drone of a voice projected to a crowd, too distant to make out the words. Nearer, the clatters and pacings of his wardens were almost ceaseless. In the realm of the physical, he was far from alone.

It was his mind that was too empty. There, it felt as if he'd been cut off from something integral, something he had never planned to live without. It felt like losing a limb. Worse than that. Limbs could be replaced.

Snoke was gone.

Ben had never been alone in his thoughts before, and it was stifling.

It was, he imagined, like floating in open space, nothing but a thin environment suit to protect him and no tether, no ship to reel him in. All of his life he had oriented himself by that patient pressure behind his thoughts. There had always been a steady, reassuring voice to fall back on, to seek answers from. It had soothed his doubts, pushed him when he faltered. He couldn't remember a time without it, until he had turned on it and struck it down himself.

In its absence, his mind was ripping itself apart.

It had crept up on him slowly after Snoke's death. There had been too much activity in the aftermath to feel the stillness inside. When he became wholly aware of it, there was no turning back, no forgetting or ignoring it. Not a moment passed when he wasn't scrabbling at the back of his own mind, looking for something to hold onto that wasn't there.

It was driving him surely, steadily mad.

And then Rey came back.

Logically, he told himself, she had been there all along. Only days had passed since the Supreme Leader's fall. He'd gone from the battle to a bacta tank and then straight to his cell. His mother and uncle and all else involved would still be trying to sort out the pieces and make something functional from what was left. He could feel their presence in the Force if he tried, distant and unsatisfying—a pale shadow compared to what he'd known, like the ineffective shadows in his cell. An ember where there should have been a flame.

He'd been locked up for two days, perhaps three, when Rey made her first visit.

She looked well. She was flourishing in victory and in her training. He'd noticed earlier how she had put on weight, no longer the starveling creature he had met in the woods. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair glossy, her clothes unwrinkled and respectable, and he had enough awareness of his own state to know that he was her opposite on all counts. He saw the same acknowledgment in her eyes when she looked at him.

Rey was guarded with her emotions, wary, but no more so than usual. She had never been afraid to show her outrage or her surprise in a heated moment, nor to enthuse in a gesture of kindness or a victory, but neither did she let such indulgences rule her. Even genuine emotion could be used as a tool, and Rey knew that. Ben knew that about her.

It was one of the things that made her beautiful.

When Rey was let into his cell, her face was closed, but that only lasted until the door shut behind her. When she took in the sight of him hunched against the wall, a ragged splotch in the pristine grayness of the room, she allowed shock to flood her eyes, then pity, and then something that resembled disappointment.

"The guard said you weren't eating."

Ben saw no point in confirming that. The untouched tray of food by the door did the work for him. His wardens had been replacing it at every meal, and Ben had been dutifully ignoring it.

"If you're trying to kill yourself, there are less painful ways."

She would know, he supposed, but the pain of hunger had yet to match the blinding numbness in his head.

Rey poked around the room, noting the unused cot, the clean set of clothes folded atop it. Her eyes flickered back to him, sidelong. "Everyone's worried about you."

He doubted that.

"Well," she corrected herself as if he'd spoken, "mostly people think you're plotting against us. It's just Luke and General Leia, really... They're trying to get you pardoned."

He wanted to be pleased by that, but the sentiment fell flat. Of course they hadn't given up on him. He could have held a saber to their throats and they would still be spouting words of forgiveness.

"They want me to thank you." This she said more quietly. Reluctantly, perhaps. "We wouldn't have beaten Snoke without you."

Ben coiled in on himself, cringing at the mention of it. Though she had spoken softly, the echo of it slammed around the inner walls of his skull like a bell's toll. Why had he killed Snoke? He knew the answer, rationally. He would have done it again if he had to, but if he'd had the fortune of foresight, he would have struck himself down as soon as his master was dealt with. It would have been easier that way.

Rey waited, shifting her weight from foot to foot, but Ben had no intention of speaking. When time made that clear, she went to pick up the tray of food. "If you're not going to eat this, can I have it?"

Ben didn't answer. He watched her, she looked back at him, and then she sat down against the opposite wall and took his silence as permission.

The meal was nothing special—a roll of bread and some sort of mash that looked like casserole—but Rey's eyes lit up before she'd even tasted it. He expected her to wolf it down quickly, as an underfed animal would, but he was wrong. She drew out every bite, savoring the prison meal as if it were a royal feast. Ben caught himself begrudging her the simple pleasure. It wasn't the food he envied her for, but the ability to enjoy it.

Rey washed the food down with the tin cup of water that had been sent with it. Then, curiously, she pushed the cup across the floor and left it sitting by his feet. Ben watched her stand. She took the tray with her. "I'll come back tomorrow. You should try the bread next time." And with that oddly casual farewell, she left him.

When the door was closed and locked, Ben peered over his knees at the cup she had left on the floor. It was still half full.

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The next time she came, he was barely aware of it. He had been caught in that space between sleep and waking. The sound of the door was like a dream. Her footsteps seemed too distant to come from the tiny confines of his cell. It was only her presence in the Force that convinced him otherwise.

He would have cursed her for the intrusion if he had the will to speak. As his mind realigned itself with reality, he became torturously aware of his pinched gut and cramping muscles. He hadn't moved since the last time she'd been there, except to drink the water she had left. His neck and shoulders had joined his stomach in the game of intermittently screaming at him and going numb, and to add the requisite insult to the injury, one of his feet had gone to sleep.

As before, Rey's attention fell on the untouched meal. She picked up the bread without asking this time, tore it apart and put half back on the tray. Then, tray in one hand and bread in the other, she reclaimed her spot on the far wall and chewed for a while.

"Leia thinks I should try to read your mind," she said eventually, "the way you did to me." She let that sink in while she tasted the other item on the tray—today, a brownish stew. "They're all arguing over what to do with you. Nobody knows if we can trust you."

He thought about asking if she trusted him. She wanted to, that much was clear. He thought about asking why she bothered at all. It seemed a waste of effort.

Rey ate a carefully divided half of the meal and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "I'm not gonna force myself into your head."

He found he was surprised by that, and then found himself amused by the thought. He knew what Rey was capable of. Having the moral high ground didn't mean a person was above cruelty. Rey could have chosen to invade his mind for the sake of saving him and no one would have questioned her, nor would he have blamed her for it. Even so ungentle an effort was more than he deserved.

But Rey had her own codes, and while she could be vicious, she was not unneededly so.

"You can let me in if you want," she concluded. "It's up to you."

The offer startled him, though the only outward sign he gave was a blink. He had perceived her previous words as a dismissal. It was hard to imagine that Rey would want to touch his mind again—not without an incentive as heavy as the fate of the galaxy to drive her. He remembered too clearly her tear-stricken face on Starkiller Base. The image bloomed behind his eyes in damning detail and his breath caught in his throat. He didn't know whether it was out of horror at his own actions or out of shame.

He wouldn't have given himself another chance had he been in Rey's shoes, but here she was doing just that.

He did not answer her with words. He let her wonder and wait while he grounded himself, or tried his best to. It was tenuous. He didn't know how long he could hold it, but he was half way into the act before he knew what he was doing, so he plowed on. The thread of thought he threw her way was clumsy and not as gentle as he had meant it to be, but Rey didn't flinch away. She latched onto it willingly and fed it with her own strength. When he faltered, she pulled the thread tight. Once she had her grip on him, he didn't think he would be able to break the link if he tried.

And once she had him, why would he want to?

Rey was a flame in the dark. When he looked at her, he was blind to all else. With her in his mind and he in hers, he felt, for the first time since Snoke's fall, unbroken.

She followed the thread into his thoughts, prodding at each that came to the surface. Their eyes met, but he was seeing more than her face. Though he did not push or pry, it was a two-way road, and her passing thoughts flitted by as clearly as if she wore them on her skin. She was divided. That much he'd guessed already. She wanted to believe that his change of heart was genuine, but she had been lied to before.

More than that, and to his chagrin, she was worried about him. It hurt her to see him this way, half-starved and hopeless. Ben understood basic human sympathy, but she seemed to have an overabundance of it. No matter what had passed between them in his... moments of weakness before and after Snoke's fall, he didn't think he had earned her compassion. Aiding her in the final stand couldn't possibly have made up for the things he had taken from her.

It was not his intention to probe—far from it—but his tired and wandering mind pressed questions against her consciousness before he could stop himself. Why care? Why now? Why him?

Her defense was reflex. The door slammed shut between their minds and he was left reeling.

"This isn't about me."

It was, but he didn't argue. He couldn't. Instead, he caught his breath, head bowed, eyes closed, and then, apologetically, he reached out again.

She accepted the apology. She caught him up and reforged the link, leaving him all but sighing at the relief of it. To have someone else share his thoughts—to have direction, if only for a moment...

He laid himself bare as Rey's awareness washed over him, coming on like a wave, scouring, seeping into the cracks. He submitted to it with hardly a thought. Snoke had done this often and far less gently. Submitting was easy.

"You're lonely." He felt her flinch after the words were said, acknowledging the echo of the first time they had done this. He saw the trace of memory before she clamped down on it—saw it from her perspective this time, and felt his gut twist. He wondered if she would retreat again. He braced for it, but she steeled herself and forged on.

"You've... never been alone in your mind before. Snoke was always there. You..." She stopped. He watched her brow furrow and her lips draw back, a wild animal baring its teeth. The picture of her mind seemed to ripple, disturbed. "It's like flying in a storm."

Ben felt himself tense. She was dragging it to the surface. She didn't mean to, but she was. Each crack and chasm in his psyche, each broken piece, glass shards scattered without a purpose. His breath came shuddering and hers matched it. This was too much. This wasn't supposed to happen with her here. The hole in him ached. The loose, jagged pieces whirled inside his mind, cutting, and his efforts to catch them and stop them were useless. He might as well have been catching mist. Rey pulled out too late as Ben pressed his hands to his temples and curled in on himself.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean..." She reached again, tried to help, but she didn't know what she was doing. He slapped her away with a thought before she could lose herself in the wreck of his mind. She'd been right to compare it to a storm, but he wasn't flying. He had no control here. The engines were dead and he was a slave to the winds.

He was only dimly aware of Rey leaving, and only because it sent another jolt of aloneness through him. He couldn't blame her for going without a farewell. He wouldn't blame her if she never came back. He was probably as terrifying now as he had been when he called himself Kylo Ren.

What he did not expect was for Rey to reappear moments later with a presence he knew better than even her.

Luke must have been waiting in the hall, and Ben too focused on Rey to notice. His uncle stepped into the cell and straight into the storm of Ben's mind. There was no asking permission. Ben tried only feebly, only automatically to fight him. Luke overpowered him as one would swat a fly, and then slammed a wall down between Ben's center of self and the hurricane that assaulted it. The storm raged on, but he was apart from it now. He could catch his breath and regain his mental footing, as long as Luke took pity on him.

"You used to be better at shielding," his old master said gruffly. "We'll work on it."

Ben stared up at him, comprehending but not believing. He didn't speak, and Luke didn't confirm the implication, but nor did he appear contemptuous. It was... something. It was a start, but Ben didn't have the nerve to entertain further hopes. It was far, far too wild a fancy to begin wondering what he would do with himself if they could somehow put it all behind them. He was not an optimist. It was easier to expect execution for his crimes, or lifelong imprisonment. The former would be preferable. His mother deserved better than to live with the burden he had become. His uncle deserved to move on, to focus on a new apprentice...

And Rey...

Rey shone as bright as a star, but she was walking the edge of a chasm. She danced along it, and sometimes she stumbled. He'd seen that in her too. Rey deserved a life in the light. Rey deserved an even path. What could Ben possibly be to her but an ungainly weight, fouling her steps?

Luke was still looking at him intensely. Ben wondered if he'd been projecting his thoughts. His uncle said nothing of it, however, and only gave Rey a vague pat on the shoulder as he left the cell.

Alone with each other again, Rey watched Ben warily a while before she moved to her spot across from him. She dropped into a squat, not quite willing, perhaps, to commit to sitting back down. Ben shut his eyes and wondered how long she meant to stay.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you."

He didn't answer.

"Maybe what I saw will help." There was something of desperation in her voice, subtle, but straining. "Snoke was using you. He manipulated you. That's what Leia keeps telling everyone. Nobody believes her because she's your mother. She's right, though. I saw it."

Ben wanted to ask her if she thought they would believe in Jedi mind tricks any more than they believed the biased plea of a mother. Speaking aloud still seemed an insurmountable task, though, and the question went unspoken.

Rey lingered, but she didn't eat anymore of his food, and she didn't chatter. Perhaps his own silence was finally deterring her. She stood eventually and went to the door, only to pause and look back down at the meal tray. "If you pass out from hunger, they'll probably throw you back in the bacta tank and wire you up with a feeding tube."

Ben didn't let her see his frown, but she had a point. He waited until she was gone, and then he took a deep, slow breath and reached for the torn piece of bread.

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The third time Rey came, he didn't rouse. After Luke's terse visit, he had spent more time asleep than awake, catching up while he had the chance. The shield his uncle had erected was still in place, but it eroded steadily. It would be gone by the next day, or faster if he prodded at it, and he lacked the strength to shore it up. He had another day of rest, at best, before the storm returned.

When he woke in the radiance of Rey's presence, he couldn't have guessed how long she had been there. She was sitting on his unused bed, engrossed in a datapad. Her eyes flicked up when he stirred, but didn't linger. She chose to read a while longer instead, presumably waiting to find a good stopping point before she gave him her full attention. Heavy minutes passed before she set the pad aside. "... The guard said you ate a little. Did you like the bread? I'll leave it all for you today, if you want."

Ben regarded her for the span of a few heartbeats, then dragged today's meal nearer and shoved it in her direction. He could feel her scrutinizing him, but apathy and shame kept his gaze to the floor.

Rey stooped and retrieved the roll, tearing it in half as she had done the day before. Ben bullied himself into playing along, pulling the tray back and taking what was left for him. He cast his eyes on the opposite wall and forced his jaw to work, though the bread tasted like ash.

"Leia said you loved bread when you were little. She said it was all she could get you to eat."

So his mother was sharing embarrassing stories about him. As small as it was compared to everything else, he managed to find that annoying.

"The guards won't let me bring you any outside food. I thought maybe there'd be something you'd want to eat more. Your mother said she'd cook all your favorites if we get you out of here."

"She can't cook."

Rey froze. Ben risked a sidelong glance to see her mouth hanging open. It was almost satisfying. "A droid cooked for us." He winced at the roughness in his throat, sandpapery from disuse.

"... Oh."

"Why are you doing this?" His tone sounded accusatory to his own ears, more than he had meant it to be.

"Doing what? Making you eat?"

"Helping me."

"You helped me." She made it sound simple.

Ben didn't have enough fight left in him to counter that. He would have argued that he had hurt her, and she would have pointed out the marks she had left on him. She hardly needed to. Even now, the scar on his face tingled numbly. "You should have killed me."

"Yeah, I hear doing things like that can lead to the Dark Side."

Her blithe tone might have made him smile on a better day. "Did your master tell you that?" It was becoming harder, not easier to speak. He picked up the cup of water and drank.

"No. You did."

Oh. He didn't remember saying it, but she was probably right.

"The council's still arguing about what to do with you." She told him this around a mouthful of bread. "Most of them didn't take my word because I'm not fully trained. Or because they don't believe in the Force." She sounded bitter. "I levitated a chair."

"Did that convince them?"

The skin around her nose pulled tight, forming a network of tiny wrinkles. It was fascinating to watch. "Didn't seem like it."

"The fortitude to sit on councils tends not to breed flexibility." His voice cracked on the last word and he coughed. The water wasn't helping much.

"Your mother sits on the council."

"Yes."

Rey wisely did not argue with that. "She wants to see you, you know."

"Then why isn't she here?"

Rey chewed the last of her bread, thinking before she replied. "She's trying to give you space. She thinks you hate her."

The words stung, but he had earned them. "Is that what she confided in you?"

"She talks about you a lot."

Despite the evidence she had already provided of that, he found it hard to picture. He thought his mother would have wanted to forget him. She should have given up on him when he left—she and Han both. Then he would never—

He wouldn't have had to...

Ben tried to banish the thought. "I don't hate her."

"Good. I'll tell her you said so."

She was waiting for a response, but he had worn out his patience for conversation. He pulled his knees up, crossed his arms over them, and buried his face in the shelter he'd made of himself. Maybe she would take the hint.

Rey waited. After a while, he heard the tap of fingers on her datapad. She stayed a long time, unmoving, reading, or pretending to read. When she did eventually leave, she took her light with her.

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She did not come back the next day, though he'd left most of his bread for her. Two bites were all he had been able to handle before his stomach recoiled. Luke's shield had degraded to nothing and Ben was once again left vulnerable in the tatters of his mind.

He counted the meals. The first came and went. The second came, and when it was taken, marking the end of the day, he asked about Rey.

"She and Master Skywalker left on an assignment." The guard was a woman, burly, dark of skin and light of hair. She was the same guard who brought and retrieved all of his meals.

"How long?" The intensity of his own voice alarmed him. He wasn't that desperate, was he? He couldn't afford to be, if he was fated to be killed or locked away for life. He told himself it was the disruption of routine that upset him. He had nothing else here to look forward to, after all.

"I wasn't told." She took the tray. She didn't wait for a response.

It was just as well. Ben didn't know what he would have said. Rey hadn't told him she was going. Why would she? She didn't owe him the courtesy. She liked to talk, but she wasn't the sort to spill information without need. Certainly not in his presence, at any rate. Perhaps she hadn't known at all. The task that took her away might have been assigned only after her visit. He nearly called the guard back to ask, but despite all his fretting, he couldn't quite muster the motivation.

Gingerly—stars, his muscles ached—he moved to lie down on the floor. He had spent a night or two like this, when he didn't pass out sitting up. The three paces to the cot seemed too much trouble. He hadn't even needed to get up and use what passed for a 'fresher in the cell. He hadn't eaten enough, and his body was using all the water he would give it.

A rarely voiced rational part of his mind mused on how childish he was acting. Childishly, he dismissed it. In retaliation, that part of his mind went to speculate on how his mother would scold him if she saw him like this. Former Senator Leia Organa-Solo, while perfectly capable of drama herself, was not known for having patience with it in others. The thought didn't make him smile, but it conjured the memory of smiling.

Where had it gone wrong?

With Snoke, obviously. He couldn't remember the first time he had heard Snoke's voice. He'd been too young. Snoke had been his comfort when his parents fought, his companion when the rest of the world filled with shouting and tears. Snoke had been there in the good times too, reminding him how fragile, how temporary it was. How easily those smiles turned to annoyance, and then to anger. When the next time his world fell apart—and there always was a next time—Snoke would be there for him. Snoke would protect him. Snoke would guide him when his mother was too busy and his father wasn't there. Ben couldn't rely on either of them, but at least he had Snoke.

It was only later, after Ben was sent away to stay with his uncle, that Snoke began asking for things in return.

In his cell, Ben quailed at the memory.

He had been used, cruelly, and the worst of it was that he had known. He had seen what Snoke was doing to him, but he had thought that he didn't have a choice. He had thought, in his youthful overconfidence, that he could take what he needed from Snoke and be able to defend himself when the Supreme Leader tired of him. It wasn't as if he could go to Luke for help, or to his mother. They would be killed if they interfered. Snoke had assured him of that.

Kylo Ren had embraced the Dark Side because it was his only option, the only strength he had. Fighting it would have been futile and costly. That was what Snoke had taught him. If he accepted the Darkness, if he made himself its master rather that its enemy, then—and only then—could he master his own life.

By the time he came to realize that the Dark Side could never be mastered, he was in too deep to turn back.

And still, in spite of all that, it had been Ben who chose his own path. He couldn't place all the blame on Snoke. A stronger man would have refused the Darkness regardless of consequence. Luke would have sacrificed himself and everyone he loved for the sake of the galaxy. Leia likely would have done the same. Ben had been weak, and now he suffered for it, as others had suffered by his hands. The Force exacted harsher punishment than any mortal court would.

The shrieking whirl of his mind raged on an indeterminate while, spiced with remorse, until slowly, imperceptively, it dissipated into the familiar void. Somewhere between one state and the other—he couldn't place the moment—conscious thought and memory turned to dreams.