nothing is whole and nothing is broken
(or: three places Rey and Ben could have run away, and the place they didn't)

Takodana
[in you and i there's a new land]

"The map. You've seen it."

This girl, this meaningless little scavenger, has seen the map to Skywalker.

He holds her stable and trembling with the Force, ensuring the coltish thing doesn't run or whip that blaster around to his face. She would; she's already tried. She wants to kill him. It radiates off her like heat from a lightsaber.

Well. Kylo Ren is used to people wanting him dead.

"Give it to me," he commands, reaching out. She squeezes her eyes shut as though that will protect her, but Kylo learned how to crack minds at the feet of the greatest Force user in the galaxy. The map to Luke Skywalker. He closes his own eyes beneath his mask. Show me the map to Luke-

- "Luke Skywalker. I thought he was a myth." -

- a child screaming her terror into the desert air -

- "It's true: the Force, the Jedi, all of it." -

- a silver lightsaber, scarred and forgotten -

- "Rey!" -

- a lonely ocean and a lonelier island -

- "The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead." -

- a waterfall of unformed, unknown, unbelievable power bursting through every crack and crevasse of the girl's soul and washing into his own. "Get out of my head!" she shrieks.

He snaps back into himself and releases her in his shock. "It's you," he says blankly.

The moment his grip loosens she whips around the blaster to, as he expected, fire at his head. Kylo blocks the bolt on instinct, then uses the Force to pluck the weapon from her hands and toss it into the woods.

Alone and unarmed, her terror and fury bleeds into the air around her. He can almost taste it on his tongue. He holds up a placating hand, deactivating his saber. "It's all right, Rey."

"What was that?" The girl takes a half-step back, too wary to take her eyes off of him. "How do you know my name?"

"I felt it." She stares at him, and Kylo adds: "Through the Force."

No look of comprehension. Nothing.

She doesn't know.

It's right there, all that strength, new and shining through her like a supernova, and she doesn't even realize it.

They've known for years that Skywalker had shut himself off from the Force; otherwise the Supreme Leader would have found him by now. Snoke assumed the awakening they'd felt had been Luke rejoining the fight at last, Kylo's equal in the light to be destroyed. Nothing else could account for such a sudden influx of power. But it's not Skywalker who has awakened. It's her.

This is not how he thought this day was going to go.

"Rey," he tries again, "don't be afraid."

Her laugh is harsh and bitter and tinged with hysteria. "You just chased me through a forest with a laser sword-"

"You shot at me," he points out.

"-and you're wearing a mask - don't tell me not to be afraid!"

That is... fair.

He tucks the hilt of his saber into his belt, then reaches up and releases the mechanism on his helmet. The forest air is humid against his skin. Whatever Rey was expecting - a monster, probably - it wasn't this, because her surprise at the sight of his face doesn't require the Force to read.

(She's… not unattractive, he notes in a purely academic way. There's something fresh about her, like the bright green of early spring leaves.)

"You had a vision, right?" he says, setting his helmet on the ground. Her mind told him that she's seen something, something recently. It has shaken her to the core. She is questioning everything she thought she knew. "You're confused. I can help."

"I don't need your help."

"You do. You need a teacher."

"You're with the First Order."

"That's not relevant to this discussion."

"You went inside my head."

"I'll explain it. I'll explain everything, if you come with me. You don't have to figure it out by yourself." She still looks skeptical; an offering is required. "My name is-"

"-Ben," she says. Kylo frowns, but Rey's eyes light up just a little. "Your name is Ben, right? I saw it. Your name is Ben." Her eyebrows furrow. "And you're afraid."

No training at all, and she plucked that name right from his soul.

He should take her straight to the Supreme Leader. He should.

But... if he took the long route back to Starkiller, stayed out of hyperspace, he could spend some time teaching her how to refine this natural talent for connection. Teach her to protect her mind from Snoke… in the way he, Kylo, never could. Never even had a chance to.

Stormtroopers crash through the undergrowth while Kylo is still considering. "Sir, Resistance fighters. We need more troops."

Rey starts. "My friends," she says. "You… please, don't…"

She won't come with him willingly if he kills the traitors, and knocking her out isn't likely to earn her trust. "Pull the division out," Kylo Ren orders. "Forget the droid - I have what I need." To Rey, he says: "Come. I'll help you find your place in all this." He offers his hand. "I feel it, too."

She hesitates, but he's seen her mind. Just enough of it. And she's seen his. Just enough of it.

The girl he's heard so much about takes his hand.

A very long route to Starkiller. Perhaps with a few stops along the way.

The Supremacy
[a sanctuary, my sanctuary]

"Ben?"

He stands at the foot of the dais, covered in soot and sweat, staring at the severed torso on the throne. "The Supreme Leader is dead," he says.

Rey shudders. "Yes."

"I killed my master." Ben's voice is uncomprehending, as though someone has just told him that moons aren't real or hyperspace is a lie. "I killed him."

"We killed him." Okay, she didn't strike the blow, but doesn't mean she wasn't part of it. Rey certainly tried to kill Snoke. And if it had been Ben Solo on his knees in front of her, no force - or Force - in the universe would have held her back. "We did it together."

"Together."

The Supremacy trembles around them. She doesn't know what she used in this fight, the Light or the Dark, but her blood is singing. She can feel his blood, too - pulsing, pushing, screaming in pain.

"Rey," Ben murmurs.

The moment balances on a knife point.

She should probably wait for him to come to his own conclusion... but Rey survived the Niima Outpost, and you don't scratch out a living in the sand by letting the chips fall where they may. She strides forward and grabs Luke's lightsaber, standing between Ben Solo and the throne. "It's time to go," she tells him.

He blinks at her uncomprehendingly. "Go? Where?"

"I don't know. Back to the Resistance-" the look on Ben's face cuts her off and she hastily corrects "-or somewhere else. Anywhere." Anywhere other than here. "But we've got to leave."

"The First Order-"

"Who cares."

That snaps him out of it. The dazed look leaves his eyes; he focuses on Rey's face, scowling. "'Who cares'?" he repeats sharply. "I've given everything to the First Order. Everything. I've done-"

"I know what you've done." It doesn't matter is on the tip of her tongue, but it would be a lie. Of course it matters. "But you're the one who told me to let the past die."

The past can't be changed, but the future hasn't yet come to pass. And no future where Kylo Ren stays in this room is a good one. He will turn - if they are together, he will turn, she's seen it - but it won't be here and now.

"Come on, Ben," she says. "We have to go."

He shakes his head. "Without Snoke and the First Order, I'm nothing."

"Not to me."

He blinks.

Snoke's flagship is falling apart around them; it's now or never. "Please. Come with me." She saw their future. She saw it. She opens her mouth to tell him so, to make the argument for Leia, how the Resistance needs the spark of hope that can only come from a Jedi-

-but instead, the truth spills out - a truth that has nothing to do with Light and Dark, Snoke and Skywalker, Order and Rebellion.

Rey of Jakku confesses to Ben Solo: "I don't want to be alone."

His expression softens.

Rey extends her hand. She is not a Jedi. She does not hide on a forgotten planet at the end of the universe and let the future shape itself without her input. That is not who she is. She came here to take Ben Solo away, and that's exactly what she's going to do.

His fingers intertwine with hers. "Yes," he says. "It's time to let old things die."

And they run.

Ahch-To
[where fears and lies melt away]

"You're not alone." "Neither are you."

She's on the other side of the universe, but her finger brushes his as though they're only a foot apart. Ben hears his gasp mirrored in his own as the images flood him.

He sees Rey's past: a tiny confused girl exchanged for a handful of coins, the years spent scratching marks on a metal wall.

He sees Rey's present: not her location, but that she is lost, cold, and disappointed.

He sees Rey's future: whirlwind of light and wrath, blue and red flashing. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

And she is by his side.

Then it fades. Rey gazes at him in wide-eyed wonder as tears draw tracks down her cheeks. "Did you see it too?" she breathes.

All Ben can do is nod.

Hesitantly, a millimeter at a time, Rey slides her hand further into his. She is dappled red and orange; she must be near a fire. He can feel every warm inch of her skin as her fingers slide achingly slow along his palm. (It's the first time someone has touched his bare hand in a decade. Monks and knights are not supposed to need something so base as contact. They are not supposed to even think of it.)

"Come to me," he says.

Rey draws a shaky breath. "I want to," she admits, looking as though she's surprised by her own words.

"Then do it." Her touch lights sparks in his blood. "Come to me."

Her thoughts and feelings are unformed, but they flow from her mind to his through the Force and through their skin. Longing, loneliness (always loneliness), the same burgeoning ache for more that beats in his chest - but above that, fear. She has seen Snoke in his memories. He looms over her like a dreadnought. "No." Her voice breaks on the word.

But Rey's thumb traces the end of his sleeve, calluses gently scraping as she traces his wrist, his veins. His pulse flutters wildly beneath his fingertips, but this isn't real. It is only a trick of the Force.

It isn't enough.

"Then I'll come to you."

More fear, starker and specific. An image of he and Luke Skywalker swinging lightsabers at each other until they fall off a cliff, dashed against the rocks.

"No." Rey swallows, the tanned line of her throat moving. (Ben would touch that, too, if she permitted. He would stroke, smell, caress any inch of her body that she allowed. Anything, anything, only her palm, if he can only feel this, if he can only feel her mind brushing across his.) "Somewhere else," she says.

This throws him; he had been prepared for a refusal. He repeats: "Somewhere else?"

"It's a big galaxy." Tears still track down her cheeks, but Rey's expression is sure. Resolved. "Pick a planet."

Ben has served greater purposes, greater people, greater concepts than himself since the day he was born. Never, ever, has he had something simply because he wanted it. Of his thousands of sins, selfishness has never been among them.

For her, he will be selfish.

"Naboo," he says, naming the first place he can think of.

Rey nods. "I'll leave tonight," she promises. "And I'll find you there."

When her silhouette fades, Ben barely takes time to grab his lightsaber before he is out the door.

Crait
[what's left of me, what's left of me now]

An emperor kneels on a dusty floor.

Come to me.

A Jedi stands on a rising ramp.

Come with me.

But neither move, and the ramp closes.