Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.
It was a late night on the Falcon. She saw soldiers all around her sleeping on the ground. Some were in the caves a little bit farther away.
The Resistance had landed on a small planet far away from the First Order, hoping that the Order wouldn't find them for a time while they settled down.
She was coming back from using the bathroom—carefully stepping over people—when she heard whispering from cockpit, the place where Rey slept. Rey and Leia had their own rooms because, well, Leia was a Princess and a General and had flown on the Falcon forty years earlier so she stayed in the room she stayed in when she was on the Falcon.
Rey, on the other hand, had gone through so much, being pulled into something she really didn't feel comfortable with at first, so, when people were deciding where they would sleep, they all decided that the only "good" Jedi would take one of the rooms.
The cockpit wasn't a room persay, but she felt more comfortable in it than Finn, Poe or anyone else would.
"No, I'm not going to talk to you right now!" Leia heard Rey say in the darkness. She stopped and looked towards the pit. "You told everyone to give all the power they had to kill Luke. Your uncle, Ben!"
Leia walked towards the pit, and stopped at the door before knocking, unable to keep her curiosity at bay any longer after hearing Luke and Ben's names in the same sentence.
"Rey, can I come in?" Leia asked, but didn't wait for an answer as she opened the cockpit doors and noticed the girl in her usual attire standing and heaving breaths as if she had been fighting with an imaginary Ben for much longer than Leia had heard.
"General," Rey stated.
"Can't sleep?"
"Someon—something is on my mind." Rey caught herself before she said anything.
Leia sat in one of the chairs. She hadn't been on the ship in decades, but it felt like centuries. She smiled sadly, remembering the past forty years, the good and the bad.
"What's going on?" Rey didn't budge. "Rey, I can't run resistance if one of my best fighters doesn't tell me what's going on."
Rey sighed, unsure of how to tell General Organa the fact that herself and Ben had a Forcebond.
"This is gonna sound silly," Rey warned.
"Rey, I watched Han do a lot of stupid stuff over the course of our relationship, and a lot of it was silly things, so I can handle whatever you wanna throw at me," Leia said.
"When I was on Ach-To I woke up this morning and felt a presence. I looked up and there stood Ben. So, naturally, I went outside the hut and shot my blaster where I thought he was."
Leia looked shocked.
"But he was—"
"I know, just, let me finish," Rey said. Leia nodded. "So, apparently, we have a Forcebond where every so often we can see each other. We talked on the island about light and dark, Luke, how each of us feels lonely. Luke wouldn't really train me and Ben was still under Snoke's power."
"So…just now you saw him?"
"He wanted to apologize. For everything. But I just can't after everything that happened.
"There was this one night on the island and even though we could see each other, it was like he was there in a way," Rey answered and continued on. It felt a little intimate telling Leia about how their hands touched, but she knew she needed to tell her what happened. "We…we touched and suddenly I could see the future. He was standing with me, he had come over to the Light."
"You guys touched?"
Rey nodded.
This was a foreign idea to Leia. Not only that her son had touched a girl (because Ben had never really ever seemed interested in anyone before or after he went to train with Luke), but the idea of a Forcebond.
"Snoke said he linked our minds because he knew Ben was still torn between Light and Dark," Rey said.
"But you did see him with us?" Leia asked, desperate to have her son back.
"I did. The thing is, he saw us standing at the end together, too, in the Dark."
"So which is it?"
"I don't know," Rey answered. "I felt Darkness pulling me towards it on the island, and I know there's still good in Ben."
"You know, everyone's not always Light and not everyone's always Dark. There's a grey area. People are both. Good people do bad things and bad people do good things. My father was a good man until he turned into Darth Vader. In the end, however, he came back to Light just before he died. So, maybe this bond is trying to tell you something," Leia stated.
"Which is?"
"Well, people can't change people. You and Ben see each other all the time now, without anybody even knowing unless they're awake and right by you. You went to him and told him what you saw, to change him, did you not?" Rey nodded. "Snoke may have been linking your minds, but the Force has always been something that is unpredictable. It may have linked your minds itself and Snoke may have heightened that bond. One thing I do know is that the Force wants you to communicate. You and he may feel the need to pull the other to their side, which isn't going to happen after all that Ben's been through, but the Force knows what it's doing. It may even be an asset."
"He saw my parents, too, when we touched."
"Oh?"
"He saw them and confirmed what I always thought. They were nobodies. People that sold me off for money to fuel their terrible habits. Their dead."
Leia hugged Rey, seeing the tears pooling in the young girl's eyes.
"Rey, I'm not going to tell you what to do about this Forcebond because I don't understand it, but I do know that while Ben may want to still speak to you or, if you want, you to him, but be careful. One slip up and everything can go wrong. You were too quick to go to him the other day. Next time you won't be so lucky. Also, I probably wouldn't mention this to anyone but me. People aren't going to trust you if they find out you have a link with Ben."
Rey nodded as Leia got up out of the chair.
"Night, General."
"One more thing. You keep calling my son 'Ben' and not 'Kylo Rey'. Why?" Leia asked, genuinely curious.
"It's his name. It's a name he was given that he renounced when he went to the Dark side. Maybe in keeping his birth name in his mind, it'll remind him there are still people out there that are willing to help him and that his good side will win."
"One can only hope."
Leia kissed the girl on the top of the head and left the cockpit, feeling a little bit dazed for the first time in a long time and headed to bed.
Rey turned back to Ben who had stood there the entire conversation with his mother. Rey was unsure, but she swore she saw tears in his eyes as his mother maneuvered out of the cockpit without even a glance at him.
"You're mother really cares," Rey said.
But that's when Ben broke the connection, leaving Rey to herself.
Rey fell into a restless sleep about an hour later.
At least now someone who she could trust knew about the strange bond between her and Ben, even if it was his mother.