A/N: For the RFFA Valentine's Day "More Than Love" Event.

For paynesgrey. I hope you enjoy 3

I did a mix of the given prompts and tags.

How Does One Come Home

Tonight the stars burned holes in his skin. Ben sat on his bunk, soaking up the distant light passing through his viewport. Lifting his hand, he focused on each shadow that stretched down to caress the mattress. Light and dark, burning and cold, everything and nothing. He wanted to soak up the energy and reflect it back. Rid himself of the shadows he'd cast.

That was his purpose here in the Ambassador's shuttle. He needed to put a stop to the ripples his past actions had caused. Ensure that the Renewed Republic survived its infancy. He owed it that much. He owed his mother that much.

His fingers curled into a fist, and he let it bounce harmlessly against the mattress next to him. Ben could see Leia's face against his eyelids. He peeled his eyes open, fighting the exhaustion to stare again out the viewport. The memory burned more than the starlight. He'd take the torment of the light over recalling the last day he'd seen his mother.

It was easier to bear the Force's reminder of his past darkness. That was a known constant, understood and long since determined. He'd come to terms with how far gone he once was. Ben's eyelids fluttered. Explosions bloomed with each blink. These lights and flames didn't bear the comforting salve of true warmth or goodness. He'd taken so much from the universe.

Groaning, Ben forced himself to sit up. The bunk above him, though empty, still posed a threat to his head if he didn't hunch forward. He was alone in these quarters, no matter the crew he travelled with. Always alone.

There had been one person to trust and reach out to him even before he'd committed to the Republic. Even without closing his eyes, Ben could picture her. Auburn hair in a halo around her face. Passion and fury sparking in her eyes. Compassion ebbing like a salve. Rey.

He blinked, head swivelling to follow the ghost of movement that blurred in the corner of the room. Nothing was there. The Force hissed in the depths of Ben's mind like pressure released from too-tight pistons. Automatic. Maintenance. It had been months since he'd felt their bond truly open. All he sensed in this moment was a rush of worry and then - nothing.

Ben cast his eyes to the stars again, daring their light to burn him away, to take away the silence that had stretched between himself and the woman who'd shown him the way to atonement.

He turned to the console, his attention captured by a slowly flashing indicator. Had it been on this whole time? No, it caused the wall to tint green and fade to black with each cycle. Ben would have noticed. His purpose renewed, Ben lurched to his feet to approach the console. Pulling up the notice, he immediately turned to the closet. There wasn't time to get properly dressed again. He would make do with a clean shirt and a grey robe.

When he tugged the collar down over his nose, Ben grimaced. The indicator had changed. Yellow flared rapidly, urgently. He started out from his quarters with the robe half on. If they really did need him on the bridge so soon-

His footsteps faltered as the first concussive blast rocked the ship's frame. Again and again the durasteel walkway trembled. The shuttle was under attack. It was easy to slip into the snarl, into the heavy-footed steps that took him to the bridge. Too easy. Always too easy. Ben reigned in his sharp tongue only moments before he approached the ship's captain.

"What's going on? Who's attacking?" he barked. There was too much going on for the size of the crew. They needed all the help they could get.

A low whine joined the cacophony of alarms and alerts as metal refused to yield. Someone was trying to cut into the hull. A raiding party.

Someone shouted to answer Ben. "We don't know! They came out of nowhere!" they called quickly before diverting once again to damage control. Autoturrets needed to be authorized and initiated. Their task hadn't called for a caravan; without summoning reinforcements they were their own defenders.

Ben gripped the closest thing to him - an array of screens all demanding input to rectify damages and warnings - as the ship rocked and an inferno raced across the viewport. Ben could only stare as the fire billowed and danced before snuffing out in an instant. Then the sound of cutting came again. With the blast shielding damaged from the bomb, the hull plating screamed in defeat before opening with a shuddering crack.

As if by destiny, their attackers had selected the plating over him to hack at. Staring above him, Ben waited for the vacuum of space to tear away their precious air in the remaining moments they had left. White-hot bands of roughly sliced durasteel peeled away to reveal a brightly lit channel. This wasn't a move to kill; they were boarding. There was still hope.

Two cylinders dropped through the opening, thunking to the ground and hissing, sputtering, releasing smoke in guttering gasps. It should have kick-started Ben to his senses. He grabbed for his holster, fingers swiping at empty air. He hadn't taken his weapons belt with him.

Half the crew hadn't noticed the smoke yet, their focus on a thousand other crises. Ben coughed and yelled roughly for weapons as he backed away from the opening. A dark form dropped through, just as heavy as the smoke grenades. They brandished a baton in one hand and a third grenade in the other.

Ben resisted the urge to track the arc of the grenade as it was thrown. Instead he settled onto his haunches and brought his fists up. He could handle this one humanoid.

Raw emotion flooded into his thoughts, though it wasn't his own. The sheer force of the anger, the frustration, the untempered self-loathing coalescing kept Ben from reacting as the figure in front of him surged forward. He was only viscerally aware of the baton rising and falling. Pain and darkness overtook him, leaving him with only a final thought. What had happened to Rey?

He was only half aware that they were moving. The explosion had damaged something in his ears.

She was carrying him. One arm around his torso, the other gripping his forearm like their lives depended on it. Maybe they did. Ringing on and on, all Kylo Ren could hear was klaxon and exasperated huffing from Rey. It all had the sense of tin around it, not quite real.

Forming coherent words wasn't within Kylo's capacity just yet. He continued to stagger along, buffeted mostly by Rey's never ending march. His own feet stumbled along as he struggled to keep up. He wanted to say something, anything, but he could only focus on one thought at a time. Right now, that thought was why. Why was she dragging him with her?

He didn't want to leave, didn't want to abandon everything that he'd worked for just to accompany her to his mother's militia. He had been painfully clear. That was why they'd ripped a lightsaber in two from the force of their will. Still though, he didn't voice his protest. Not until Rey slammed on an emergency pod access panel and dropped him unceremoniously on the floor of the unit.

"I won't leave," he growled. His hand came up to grip the edge of the pod where it coupled to the Supremacy. If it sealed behind him that would be final.

Rey barely spared him a glance and Kylo wondered if he hadn't actually spoken. She remained intent on overriding the system, and Kylo watched her punch in a specific comm frequency. "It's me. Yes, I'm alive," she said into the headset as soon as she had crammed it on.

Kylo forced himself onto his feet. His gloved fingers gripped the seat she occupied tightly to hide the effort it took. Without her arm under him, his strength was failing. Darkness flitted at the edges of his vision. Still he charged on. "Get off that comm. We're not going anywhere. I have to give orders to my people," Kylo grunted. His hand dropped from the ceiling of the tight pod to clutch his torso. The pain would pass. It had to. He just needed to rest.

She snarled something. It was cutting and crushing all in one, Kylo imagined. He couldn't make out the exact words until he asked her to repeat herself. Tin coated her words, distant in his ears. "Ben, you're injured. You're not thinking straight. Help me to help you."

The compassion licked at his bruised ego. He shouldn't need her help. He should have been strong enough to seize that saber, to prove to her that their place was at the head of the galaxy. It was what he'd been reaching for.

Rey's face wavered in Kylo's eyes. The darkness surged again, gaining more ground. He was… he…

Kylo Ren collapsed on the floor of the escape pod. In the last dregs of consciousness, he watched the door seal a hair's breadth away from his outstretched fingers.

Ben Solo awoke in near darkness. He was on his stomach. The tender flesh there protested the moment that he attempted to move. His assailant's baton had left a nasty reminder there. Ben pushed himself up with his forearms, searching for any of the crew he'd been travelling with. The darkness made determining anything difficult. As scattered gaps of memory returned to him he recalled the brief window in which his bond to Rey had reopened, overwhelming his immediate concerns.

Something was wrong. He'd known for so long that of course something was wrong - she hadn't been seen since Taryn XI. But it was one thing to know nothing than it was to feel her soul ripping itself in half. Ben squeezed his eyes shut and murmured her name as he reached for her. Forcing their bond open was impossible, but if she'd opened it up before…

Metal slammed on metal. Ben's eyes flared open, his feeble attempt to reach out into the Force disrupted. He realized now that the floor beneath him wasn't the same white panels that lined the shuttle he had been travelling on. And they were moving. The ship trembled beneath Ben's fingertips, unsteady. No, this was no clean, fresh-off-the-line shuttle.

In fact the more that Ben twisted to look around in the dim light the more he was convinced this was in fact a very old ship. The slamming metallic sound boomed again, and Ben realized it was coming from outside the room he was in. Close by a door was opening and sealing in heaving motions rather than smoothly gliding shut. And judging by the volume, the person walking through was getting close.

Ben gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet. He'd been caught off guard before. This time, he wouldn't be. He leaned into his Force connection, using it to guide his open stance and raised fists. A figure blocked some of the light eeking out through the door in front of him. Ben held his breath.

When they opened the door, he'd get some answers. Why they wanted to stop the Ambassador's ship. Who they worked for. What Ben would have to do to track them down to eliminate this new threat.

He exhaled sharply. That wasn't his position anymore. He wasn't supposed to be a weapon for the Renewed Republic. If they used him like that - if he let them use him like that - then he wouldn't have progressed at all. Nor could the Republic. The cycle needed to end.

The shadow in front of him remained. Ben narrowed his eyes. Yes, those were definitely feet blocking the light. Answers. He could still get answers without diving headfirst into his past demons.

They didn't open the door. A heavy switch was pulled, blanketing the cell in harsh white light. Ben looked through a thrown up hand, waiting for the attack now. He heard metal scraping as a slot opened in front of him. A tray slid into place bearing a plate of deep space rations and not much else.

Ben leaned forward to study the figure through the slot, but between the sudden light ruining his vision and the slot snapping shut, he couldn't discern much beyond a general shape. Humanoid. Fat lot of help that was.

He waited to hear them walk away and the doors heave themselves open in the hall. Then he allowed himself to re-examine the space around him. Black walls and black floors made up the cell. The light came from a pattern of cut-outs in the ceiling, a repeated oblong motif that Ben should have recognized sooner.

It had to be one of the galaxy's ironies. Ben Solo, grandson of Anakin Skywalker, held captive in an Imperial prison cell.

The First Order consolidated its power quicker than Kylo would have anticipated. He suffered through their escape pod being picked up by his father's old partner. Chewbacca nearly took Kylo's head off even with Rey insisting in that painfully earnest way of hers that she was "helping" him.

But there was more to worry about than one disappointment of a godson cuffed to the cargo bay. Kylo rode out the dogfight that Rey dragged them into between bouts of lucidity and additional blackouts. HIs body was fighting his need to remain awake, to seek out an escape from this path that Rey was trying to push him on.

Kylo woke again when they were on the buffeting tides of hyperspace, hours later. Rey sat across from him. She was focused entirely on the shards of metal and kyber crystal in her lap, and Kylo had the opportunity to simply watch her.

She chewed on her lip when concentrating, gnawing on the same spot over and over. Shadows had settled under her eyes. Had she rested since Snoke's torture? Kylo couldn't shake the thought. He traced her figure looking for any new injuries. It seemed the wretched Falcon was just as painfully lucky even without Han's touch. Other than the few knicks and marks from the Pratorean Guard, she was unharmed.

He had to say something. He couldn't keep staring at her like this, caring for her wellbeing. She'd not only turned him down but dragged him away from the position he'd craved.

"Am I to be a prisoner now? Is that how you're going to redeem me?" he asked. It was intended to prod her. She barely reacted, shifting to drag some new, tiny tool out to further dismantle the saber handle in her palm. Kylo's eyes flicked from her hands to her eyes and back. "Well?" he demanded.

Rey leaned forward, her grip tightening as she pried at a piece that had become welded to the handle. With a grunt she dislodged it, sending the fried bit of wiring across the short distance between them. Kylo flinched as it sailed past his head. Rey finally looked up at him for a moment before returning to the saber.

"I'm not ignorant. You don't want the same thing that I do," she muttered. Her prying turned into hacking as she fought with another melted piece of plastic and metal. "But I do still have some hope for you. Not as a prisoner. You'll just grow to resent having been taken from the Order."

Kylo snorted. "Because I don't already resent that. You're still not looking at the future, what we could have accomplished in the Supreme Leader's death," he insisted.

Rey dropped the hilt to the floor with a thunk. The tool joined it and she wiped her hands on the sides of her tunic to get rid of the char that coated her fingers. "You're still not letting go," Rey parroted his words back at him. "When are you going to admit that you're still just as focused on being a better Darth Vader? That isn't all you can be, Ben."

He recoiled, his head hitting the metal bar that he was cuffed to. "That's not- I'm not clinging to the past," he spat.

Her shoulders dropped. "Maybe not," Rey sighed. "I can't pretend that I really understand what you're thinking. I thought I did. And I was wrong. But I am certain of one thing. You don't actually want to be the monster."

Their eyes met, his burning with denial and hers… Rey simply was tired. Her eyes were empty, just barely filled with life. Kylo said nothing, waiting for her to start some new argument. She looked back down at the broken saber in her lap. Shards of blue so dark it was nearly black were scattered in unknown constellations.

"I didn't think it made sense to keep you around the Resistance. We're leaving them, finding some neutral planet to set you down on. And then we're leaving," Rey explained.

"Why?" Kylo asked.

Rey's lip twisted in a wry smile. "Like I said, you don't want to remain the monster you are. Maybe you'll never seek redemption - and I know now that I can't force you to confront that possibility - but atonement… that's still possible," she explained. Her fingers curled around two fragments of crystal, pinning them together in vain hope that they might mend once again. As soon as she released tension, they fell apart again.

"If you never come back, I understand. If you find the next shuttle to First Order space… well I doubt that you'll be welcomed back with open arms," she commented bitterly. "But it's the best that I can do for General Organa's son. You can let the guilt and your actions ruin your future. Or you can do something to move past them."

Kylo wanted to shout, to insist that she was just delaying his rise once again. That she could have instead brought them back to the Supremacy for them to take their rightful place as new pillars of the galaxy. The argument was bittersweet, tasting like fetid fruit in his mouth.

"Thank you," he muttered instead.

It was when Ben was least expecting to get a result from his captor that he finally saw them. His rations had long since been finished - after waiting for a time to judge if he wanted to risk being hungry over being poisoned - and the shuttle had been flying for several more hours since. He couldn't even begin to guess where their destination would be and the waiting had been driving him insane.

Then, with only the sound of the hall doors slamming open and shut as a warning, Ben's captor visited him in person. As they hauled the cell door open, Ben nearly fell from the bunk with surprise.

"Rey?" he whispered. This had to be a dream, a delusion. Wrapped in a ragged black tunic with a heavy weapons belt across her hip, Rey stared at him from the doorway.

She shook her head. "Don't, Ben," she growled. "Just… just stay there. Don't make this more complicated-"

"More complicated?" Ben interjected. "Rey, what happened to you? Where did you go?" He threw himself from the bunk to rush to the door. His feet jarred to a stop when she raised a blaster to his chest. It wasn't the first time she'd threatened him but it was the first that she'd tried since she'd dragged him bodily from the Order.

It made his blood run cold. Once again with greater earnesty than before he wondered just what the kriff had happened to her.

"I told you not to ask," she said. Her eyes pressed closed for a moment and she bit her lip. When she opened them again, her resolve looked uncertain. Ben took a chance and slid one foot closer.

"Please, Ben," Rey hissed. Her wrist twitched so the bolt she let off went over his shoulder before returning the blaster to his chest.

His heart hammered in his ribcage. He didn't dare move again, not while she was like this. Still, he couldn't leave it alone. Rey was here, in front of him. Alive. "Just talk to me," Ben plead. "I've been so worried for you."

He saw her free hand curl into a fist. "How? How could you? After what happened, I thought… you should hate me," she spat. For the first time in a long while, Ben could start to feel her in the Force. Not in a rush of impossible to contain emotions but Rey's self, her presence.

She was reaching out unconsciously to him. Hurting. Needing him. He swallowed and nodded. "It's okay, Rey," he whispered. His words tore at the wall that had stretched between them, and now that it was breaking down he was starting to get thoughts, feelings, deeply buried agonies that Rey had run away from. The more he felt, the more he pushed with his own connection. It was a loop that coaxed more and more from her.

She exhaled sharply and like a faucet, the sensation was gone. Ben was left once again with a void in the place of Rey in the Force. She'd kept him from seeing one thing, the moment she'd buried deepest inside of herself. "Ben," Rey warned.

"Taryn XI wasn't your fault," he whispered. "I tried to tell you that."

The blaster wavered in the air. Rey's chest rose and fell in hurried breaths. "It doesn't matter," she snapped. "It doesn't have to be my fault. I still killed her."

Ben shook his head even as the memories clawed their way to the surface. Again their Force connection flexed, one feeding the other with pain and guilt as they recalled the explosions that wracked the planet's surface. Orange and yellow had consumed the factory that the burgeoning senate delegation had only just touched down at. It was an obvious target. Everyone knew it.

"You were the pilot. That doesn't make it your fault that they left the ship," Ben snapped.

Rey turned to face the wall, her blaster falling to her waist. "I read the books. All of them. I should have been better than an assassin with ten remote detonators. I should have sensed the danger. I knew there was danger," she snarled.

This was his opening. Ben closed the gap between them, tugging the blaster from her fingertips. "There is always danger," he insisted. "That doesn't make you complacent in their deaths."

Her eyes, wide as platters and shiny with the threat of tears, turned to his. "You're not a monster," Ben whispered. "Trust me, I know."

Rey laughed bitterly. She used the heel of her palm to swipe at her eyes. "You think it's that easy, don't you? That you can just say that and I'll believe you. You don't understand."

"I was in orbit. I heard everything-" Ben started to insist.

"She trusted me. You trusted me. And I got your mother killed. The pinnacle of the Republic. It was my comm channel they tied to the detonation. I sent the signal that killed them," Rey cried. "And then I ran away. I thought they'd blame me. I deserved to be blamed." Her shoulders were stiff. She was expecting him to lash out, to rage and shout at her like she had after he'd killed Han.

Ben dropped the blaster to the ground and swept Rey into his arms. She trembled but she didn't push him away. "Rey, Rey, Rey," Ben murmured over and over. When she finally eased into his embrace, he said with a chuckle, "You're making my mistakes."

She pressed her face into his chest, her fingers curling into his robe. All the tension and fear she'd kept tangled up inside was unravelling. Ben knew the feeling. He'd been spared the indignity of being watched as he destroyed his tiny camp on the planet Rey had left him on. Rey hiccupped through frustrated sobs.

"They want you dead, too. The Remnant," she muttered. "I…" Her voice died out. Ben nodded and rested his cheek on the top of her head.

"That's why you took me." Regret tainted the Force.

Ben cupped her chin when she once again regained herself. "I don't blame you. I understand why you ran, why you thought you couldn't come back," he said. He studied her eyes, tried to be that force of compassion for her that she'd been for him.

"You can let the guilt and your actions ruin your future. Or you can do something to move past them."

Ben woke the next morning planetside in a Republic building, alone. The Force still masked Rey or Rey masked herself from the Force; either way, Ben could only hope that his words - Rey's own words - would bring her back to him one day. He listened carefully to the security feeds for the next weeks, listening for news of any Remnant activity.

There was no word of anything involving a dark-haired Remnant agent. Ben felt some relief when he received news that the Ambassador's crew had sustained only limited injuries on their journey with him. They even were able to ship his saber back to him. He thumbed over the silver casing, worrying over the owner of its matched pair.

Eventually, Ben had to conclude that either Rey had gone underground or hadn't been able to trump her guilt and worries of the Republic resenting her alleged cowardice. Ben had gone through the archives of reports from Taryn XI. The frequency of the explosive trigger had never been discerned. Rey's disappearance had been noted only that she may have died as well.

Ben caught glimpses of a shadow in the corner of his eye, of a cascade of brown hair on the pillow next to him in the early light of the morning. When he blinked, it would be gone. Not yet, the Force seemed to whisper.

Within the year's end, Ben caught glimpse of Rey's face in a crowd. He started, first thinking that he'd imagined it and second blaming it once again on their bond. Still he stopped in his tracks to watch her, expecting all sound to drop away as they finally, finally could connect in earnest again.

Nothing happened. The people on the road grumbled and shifted around him as he frowned at Rey across the way. She beckoned with a twitch of her head and it was then that Ben realized that others were also moving around her. His heart leapt to his throat. He shoved past the people in their way. It was just too unbelievable to consider-

She threw herself into his arms, right there in the middle of the road. "Sorry for taking so long," Rey murmured, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

"You took long as you needed."