She needs to end this, she thinks, as she watches him standing at the head of the First Order. He's tall, imposing. His face is bare, and he's learned, sometime in the past year, how to school the riot of emotions into a passive neutrality. Supreme Leader of the First Order.

He still doesn't make the speeches, still stands nearby as the black specter of the Force, darkness wrapped tight around him, like glove to the throat.

Only the eye twitch gives anything away. But it's small, miniscule. Rey feels it more than sees it.

"We will hunt every last Force user down!" Hux is shouting. Eye twitch. "And we will end them all!" Eye twitch. "No one will go against the First Order!"

Rey wants to turn the holovid off. Watching him standing there, so tall and broad, she feels her stomach twist in knots. He'll come to her after this, mouth full of pleas and forgive me and I'm not strong enough. But she knows he believes in it. Or wants to believe in it. She's never quite sure what he believes anymore.

If you had just taken my hand, he tells her over and over again.

But no, she couldn't. Not when he wanted to burn it all to the ground, not whatever it was that wrapped itself around him, flowed thick and dark through his veins, was taking hold. He would have killed them all.

"Did you know?" she asks when he comes to her that night.

He already looks contrite, his eyes downcast, and still that twitch at the corner of his eye. "No," he says and he sounds miserable.

"But you're going to let them."

"What choice do I have?" His eyes are dark there in the dim light of her quarters. He always comes to her these days. She's open to him, let's the bond flow freely in the quiet dark of night. But she never goes to him. She wants no part of the Supreme Leader, no part of the First Order.

Here she is Queen and he her servant.

"There's always a choice," she says as she turns away from him.

She can feel him step up behind her, one of his hands ghosting over her shoulders, her neck, coming to rest in her hair. He plucks at the buns there. "I like your hair down better," he murmurs as he leans forward to place a soft, almost chaste kiss, at the base of her neck.

She says nothing for a moment as he wraps his arms around her, just lets him pull her back to him, enjoying the feel of his strong body behind her. One of his hands wraps around her waist and she feels almost completely engulfed by him. "We can't keep doing this," she murmurs.

"We can't," he agrees, pressing open mouth kisses to her neck, the shell of her ear.

"Ben," she says, the word sharp. He doesn't let her go, but relaxes his hold a bit, takes his lips off the back of her neck.

"You still can't call me by my name," he whispers.

"I call you by your name." She won't turn to look at him. She can sense the gathering darkness. "Not by the construct that Snoke…"

"Don't ever mention him," he hisses.

She turns then but it's too late. He disappears. She can feel the bond shudder and go silent. She wonders, sometimes, why she still lets him come to her, still lets him wrap himself around her. As if he's contrite. As if he cares and is distraught about what the organization he is the head of puts her and everyone else she cares for through.

He never asks after his mother.

She never offers to tell him.

She's not sure he deserves to know.

There are rumors of several deaths of Force sensitives in the Unknown regions. There's truth there. She can feel them as they're snuffed out one by one.

"Did you kill them yourself?" she asks one night when he appears. He's on his knees at her bedside before she can even blink.

"No," he says and his voice is hoarse. "No, I swear. Their deaths…" He takes a ragged breath.

"You feel them too," she whispers.

"Like knives," he says, hitting his chest a couple times for emphasis. He looks up at her then and she's struck by just how haggard he looks. His hair hangs limply on either side of his angular face and there are dark circles beneath his eyes. She knows, if she looks in the mirror, she'll see the same circles beneath hers.

"Then why?" Why do you let them? Why don't you come home? Why don't you love me enough…

He doesn't respond. And really, what response is there? He has none. He never has any. And yet she keeps trying to pull him away from the Dark side, but it's dug in so deeply that she can't extricate him from it. Sometimes she fears that it's running so deep in his veins that if she pulls him away from it, she'll kill him.

And she knows she should.

She should. It would end this. The bond, everything. Yet she can't. Try as she might, as logical as it might be, she can't.

"They'll find me eventually," she whispers as he lays his head in her lap. She strokes his hair like she might a stray dog's fur. "My death will be on your head."

"No," he murmurs into her lap and she can feel his breath ghost across her. "No," he repeats.

"They're hunting down children, Ben." The words are harsh and ragged. "Why would you think they'd let me live?"

He says nothing to that.

She leans down closer to him, her lips very near one of his ears. "You'll be the last to fall," she whispers. He stiffens, lets out a snarl. And then her hand is stroking nothing but air. "You know I'm right." She says the words to no one, but somehow she's sure he hears them.

The biggest blow comes some two months after Hux's proclamation. Two of their own, sent out on a mission, don't return. Rose confides in her, late one night, that one had spoken of feeling the deaths that the First Order had been meting out.

The Force.

She's sure he might have been Force sensitive. He disappears in the Outer Regions, sent out to track down evidence of First Order activity on a planet long since declared neutral. Without their return, they have no more information.

"There's nothing there," Ben says to her when he appears a few days later.

She looks up from her study of the Jedi texts and shakes her head. "Nothing…"

"On Ventooine."

"It was a rumor."

"Yes."

She feels a shiver go down her spine. "It was a rumor planted by you?"

"Not me, no." He sounds almost desperate.

She doesn't say anything but instead looks back down at the book she's holding on her lap. The text swims in her vision and she can't make anything out through unshed tears. "Go," she finally manages to choke out.

"Rey." His voice is a broken thing. He is a broken thing. But he won't stop. He won't leave them, come home, be what he should have been. The darkness clings ever closer.

She finally meets his eyes, struck by the abject misery there. But she hardens slightly. She has to. "I don't know if there's anything left of your heart, Ben Solo."

"Don't call me that!" he shouts, one fist raised. "That's not my name!"

"That's exactly the problem," she whispers. He's gone a moment later and the tears finally begin to fall.

She can't keep doing this.

She has to let him go, let him find his own path home or his own path to destruction. There's no middle ground. Not for Ben. Not for her. Certainly not for the two of them together.

She's always been able to fix things. But this seems to not be fixable. He's broken, certainly, but he's not like the parts from a derelict spaceship. She can't take a little of one thing and a lot of something else and make it all somehow equal an unbroken whole.

She can't keep doing this.

She keeps the bond closed for far longer than she would have thought possible. The strain takes a toll on her. She's frayed about the edges, unraveling little by little. She wants to open it, pull him close. She can feel him there, just on the edges of her consciousness.

He almost gets through the time an entire village of people known for being Force sensitive are massacred. She can feel…something…remorse, self-hatred, pleading. She comes close to caving.

She can't keep doing this.

It's like a mantra.

He'll come, put his great head in her lap like the lion laying down for the lamb, and she'll stroke his sweaty brow and whisper words of understanding.

But she can't.

She can't understand.

And she's not a lamb.

She's a lioness, his equal in every way. She could slaughter him as well as he could slaughter her, their fight for dominance in a world they both inhabit one that will go on forever.

Until something changes.

And it won't be her. She wants him, here with her, on her side. But he keeps interfering. She won't say his name out loud. She saw him die, cut in two by the very same lightsaber she wields to defend herself, the same one that Ben sent back to her before turning to take out over half the guards.

It's that moment that keeps her thinking there's still something.

Some good in him. But she can't let him do this to her, can't let him creep in. He has to come to her, has to come with her. Not the other way around.

Rey, she hears his name whisper in her mind.

She slams the bond shut and wraps her arms tight around herself.

She can't keep doing this.

She feels her death like she feels the others. But it's sharper, harder. She's standing in the mess hall talking in hushed words to Finn and Poe when it hits her.

She lets out a gasp.

"No," she whispers and her voice breaks on the end. They try to stop her as she rushes off. Finn looks worried. Poe looks confused.

Neither of them know.

They can't feel it.

But she can, hard and painful, like someone cracked one of her ribs and pushed it into her lungs. By the time she gets back to her quarters, she's breathing hard, sucking in great gasps of breaths that don't actually do anything.

The oxygen has been sucked out of her lungs.

The room goes a little dark.

They got Leia.

She'd gone off to drum up more support, ever the politician. Everyone told her not to, not with Hux's proclamation, not with the First Order hunting down every Force sensitive in the galaxy. They tried to keep her safe, hide her on the base somewhere that they could never get to.

But that wasn't Leia.

Once a princess, now a general, she refused to take anything lying down. She refused to hide. And so off she'd gone with only Chewbacca for company. It's a secret mission, Leia had told them all, waving off any of their attempts to join them.

And now she's gone.

Hunted down like an animal by the likes of Hux and his henchman.

Or by Kylo Ren.

She's not sure she wants to know the answer to that. But she needs to know.

He's there almost as soon as she drops the constriction on the bond. On his knees, his back bowed, head lowered. "You knew," she hisses at him before he even seems aware that they've connected.

"Yes." The word is a broken thing, brittle glass heated to the breaking point.

"How could you?" It's like his father all over again. You're a monster. He wasn't then, she realizes.

He is now. The darkness flows through him, pouring into every crack, filling up those holes in his foundation with its bitterness. It doesn't make him stronger though. That's his mistake. It makes him weak. Exhausted and weak with pain and anger and hate and rage.

"I didn't…" he tries to say and chokes on the words. "I never…" He can't get them out.

"You're still a monster," she murmurs as he crawls to her on bended knees. He looks like a dog who's been kicked, lips pressed together, hair matted and unkempt, one trembling hand raising toward her.

"I know."

"I don't know how I ever thought you were anything else, Kylo Ren." He flinches at the name. "You killed your father. And you ordered the death of your…"

"No!" The word is harsh and falls heavily into their silent room. "No, never that. I…" He takes a deep breath and looks up at her. "I killed my father," he whispers. "Yes. I know. But my mother…I tried to hide her."

She the walls she's been building crumble around her slightly. You can't keep doing this Rey. Stop. Stop now before it goes further.

"We're all that's left," she says and throws the walls up with everything she is.

Kylo fades out a moment later, but not before she's seen the way his stricken gaze meets hers.

She's all that's left. Luke is gone, his sister now gone to join him in the Force. They're at peace, at least, Leia finally where she wanted to be. Back with her beloved twin. Back with her husband. She knows they must be together, despite Han's lack of Force powers. No one is ever really gone. Wise words from a man whose wisdom had led him to nothing more than isolation and pain.

And so there's her.

And Kylo Ren.

The Resistance tries to hide her with all their might. They talk about Force masking cloaks when she leaves the base. But she'll have none of it. She'll face them with her head held high.

She'll face him with her face turned to the light and her hand still reaching out toward him.

It's been months since Leia died, months since she last saw him…Kylo Ren, Ben Solo. She's had many months of reflections and reading and trying to understand her place in all this.

And his.

No one is ever really gone.

She can feel him, just hanging on by a thread, as Hux pushes things further. Kylo Ren is the Supreme Leader, but she can sense Hux's influence behind every action the First Order takes.

Ben has taken a backseat.

He allows it to happen. He must because it does and they can't possibly be defying him.

He doesn't try to come to her, but sometimes she feels, late at night as she's curled into her bed, arms wrapped tight around her pillow, that he's right on the edge of her conscious.

It's the middle of the night when she comes to and finds him there, curled into a tight ball on the other side of her bed. "Kylo?" she whispers and reaches out a hand to touch him,

He whimpers.

She draws her hand back.

"Ben?"

He opens his eyes then, sees her there, and tries to back off the bed before realizing he's trapped against the wall of her quarters.

"Rey." His voice is a rusty thing, weak with disuse.

"No," she says, but she reaches out anyway, stroking the sweaty hair from his brow. There are lines there, across his forehead, over the bridge of his nose. She traces them with her finger. "I'm next, aren't I?"

His eyes close and she's not surprised to see the moisture gathering just at the crease of one of his eyes. She touches it there and he flinches back. "Yes."

She nods. "Will you be the one to come for me? At the end?"

He takes a deep breath and gathers her close. She lets him, pressing her cheek to his and his arms wrap around her. He's trembling, tremors wracking his body as he gulps in a few noisy breaths. "I can't," he finally gets out, the words more air than sound.

She pulls back to look at him, her eyes following the lines of his forehead, his prominent nose, to those plush lips that she's always wondered about. "You must."

"How can I?" His voice is harsh, guttural. "How can I be the one…"

"It's always been you."

"We'll destroy each other." His voice cracks.

"Then that's the way it has to be."

"Rey," he whispers into the nape of her neck and she lets him, memorizing every line of his body as it's pressed to hers, making sure she can remember the feel of those damp locks between her fingers, the length and breadth of his hands, the strength in his shoulders and arms.

"Promise me," she whispers against his temple.

"For you, anything." A shudder goes through him.

And then he's gone and her arms close over emptiness.

She won't have to do it anymore. Soon.

He finds her surrounded by the entire Resistance. He finds her just as he promised, that'd they'd face each other at the end. Not through the bond, but face each other down on the dusty plains of some Mid-Rim planet she's never heard of.

The First Order stands behind him, Hux at his side.

Rey steps forward and offers a smirk that shows a confidence she doesn't actually feel deep inside her. It disarms Hux at least. She can see the man's eyes follow her every move with an undisguised sneer on his pasty face.

Ben is watching her too and seems, if not surprised, then at least pleased at the saber staff that she twirls at her side before drawing near them. "Hugs," she says, barely sparing the man a glance.

"I have to commend you, scavenger," Hux says almost conversationally, scuffing his hand on his chest like he's wiping something distasteful off his fingers. "You've outlasted everyone."

She doesn't bother looking at him.

Her eyes are focused on Ben.

And he looks green. His skin is sallow, the circles darker than ever. She wonders if he's slept at all since she begged him to meet her on this final field, since his mother was killed, since Hux first gave the order.

She feels the slap before she even realizes that Hux has moved. "You will look at me!" His voice a screeching sound and she flinches as the sound rakes her ears. His attempt at being commanding falls far short.

Rey doesn't look away from Ben.

Hux mutters something incoherent and she can see his hand come up out of the corner of her eye. It makes no contact, however. Instead Ben's hand comes up and Hux falls back. No, he doesn't fall back. He stumbles, pushed by Ben's power, a reminder that he is ultimately inconsequential. He might have defeated a whole slew of Force sensitives with no training. But coming up against Ben or Rey is a different story. Here he is not quite as powerful as he might like. In some ways, that might be even more dangerous than if he did have Force powers.

"I won't have any of that." Ben's voice is dark, annoyance threaded through the deep tone.

"I'm yours," Rey murmurs. Her hand is on her saber staff and Ben doesn't stop her from igniting it. "I've always been yours," she says and his eyes widen. She lets the same darkness weave around her for a moment. But she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and lets it go. The light settles into all those crevices and she throws her hand out, letting it flow from her.

From her.

To him.

"Always." She's never heard his voice so warm and it sends shivers up her spine.

She knows what's coming next.

She can feel it as she opens herself to the bond. She can't keep doing this, but she doesn't have to. Ben's lightsaber is in his hand before she can even blink and with that same sharp move she's come to enjoy watching, a stamping of the foot, wide-legged stance, he ignites it.

And she spins.

Back to back.

"Seems here we are again," he mutters as she reaches back and finds his hand.

"What took you so long?" She offers him a tired smile as she looks over her shoulder at him. She knows what's taken him so long and she's still not sure if they're there, not totally.

But in the here and now, they're back to back, lightsabers drawn. When Rey attacks, so too does Ben. And then the whole of the First Order and the Resistance are clashing. Blaster bolts fly around them as they fend off the attacks of Stormtroopers.

Ben's hand is tight around hers. They won't get separated. Not this time. He feels real and solid at her back as they take on the world together, hands linked. The bond is open and it's alive. She's never felt it like this, never felt it sing, even as she cuts down another Stormtrooper, deflects another blaster bolt that's coming her way.

They work almost as one, linked together as they fight their way through.

And then they're at Hux. Hux who is trying to escape, Hux who tries to run as they come to stand side by side. Red lightsaber and blue saberstaff held out and toward him.

He says nothing for a moment, just stares at them. As if this is everything he both never imagined and knew would come to fruition. And then his face crumbles and Rey almost feels sorry for him. "Don't kill me."

Ben scoffs and pulls his lightsaber up, readying the final strike.

Hux cringes.

And Rey steps forward, puts her hand on his arm. Ben glances at her and she watches the darkness drain a little bit out of him. Not completely, but a little.

"Why should we grant you mercy?" Rey asks and her voice is surprisingly harsh.

Hux stammers, an attempt at a reply that never quite materializes.

"Did you grant mercy to General Organa when you had your assassins take her out?" She steps forward, around him, circling him like a predator circles prey. "Did you grant mercy to those of our people you hunted down to the ends of the galaxy?" She twirls her saberstaff and grazes his arm as it moves. He flinches but doesn't step away. He has nowhere to go anywhere. If he takes a step away from Rey, he'll get closer to Kylo Ren. And she knows he doesn't want to do that.

"Rey," Ben says and she glances at him. There's a darkness rising up inside her and this time he reaches out to grasp the hand not twirling the saberstaff. She lets him take it, twining her fingers with his.

"Did you grant mercy to the children you killed?" Here her voice turns sad and she looks back to Ben. "I know," she whispers to him. "I'm here."

"The light," he murmurs back.

"Yes."

Hux looks back and forth between them and his face twists in a small sneer.

"You would show no mercy to me. None to Ben. You don't know what mercy is. Kill or be killed." She says the last with a nonchalant shrug. "That's the First Order's motto, isn't it?"

"We don't…'

"Not officially, of course," she goes on with. "What will you do now. Hugs? With your armies so close to defeat?"

"He'll regroup," Ben answers. "Fall back, regroup, and start again."

"And that," Rey says, "is why we can't let you live. Don't you see?" She steps closer to him. "We have no choice."

She almost feels sorry for him when Ben runs him through with his saber. The look of surprise on his face as he falls makes her wince.

"He really didn't expect that," Ben mutters.

"I suppose he thought I'm a Jedi."

"You aren't?" And at this Ben actually sounds confused.

"There are no Jedi," she says and there is no bitterness to the words. "The Jedi died with Luke, just as he wanted. I am only me. There is too much anger…"

"Too much pain," he adds.

She watches him for a moment. "Yes, too much pain, for me to be a Jedi. I'm somewhere in the middle."

"Grey," he murmurs.

"Grey?"

"There were rumors of Force users who existed in some sort of grey area between the Jedi and the Sith."

"Grey. I like that."

"And what of all this?" he waves a hand.

"What of you, you mean?" She glances about and is surprised to see the fighting broken down, come to an end. Every last person, Resistance and Stormtrooper alike, are watching them.

"Yes," he says and the word is more a cry, more a plea, than anything else. "What of me?"

She doesn't say anything for a moment. What of him? He was there, while Hux hunted them down, had them slain.

"I couldn't have stopped them," he whispers then, leaning close to her. "Not even if I wanted to." He grasps her hand again and this time brings it up to his chest, pressing her palm to his heart. She lets him, feeling the great thing as it beats in time with her own.

"No," she finally admits. "Who could?"

"You," he answers, almost too quickly, and there's a small, unexpected quirk to his lips.

She shakes her head. 'I'm nobody, remember."

"I was wrong. So wrong." He puts his hand over hers where it's still resting on his chest. "You're not nobody. Not to me. Not to anyone else. You're their savior." He throws his arms wide and she can't help but smile as she takes it all in.

"And what of you?"

He steps closer. "You're my savior. You always have been."

She reaches up then, puts her hands on both sides of his face. "You'll come home with me?"

One eye twitches and then they both close. He sighs. "Yes," he finally says. "Yes I'll come home."

She knows it won't be much of a home for him. Surrounded by the Resistance, his father and mother both dead at the hands of the First Order, at his own hands. She still doesn't know what role he played, exactly. How many died at his hands, if any. It's something they'll have to discuss, something they'll have to work out as they come to terms with whatever this is.

But they will.

She takes his hand in hers and as one they turn to the two warring factions. "The war is over!" Ben shouts. "You are free!"

Rey smiles up at him and for the first time, he smiles back. There's a lot to figure out, she knows this, a lot of pain and anger and hurt. That's not going to go away, maybe ever. But it's a start.