Kylo Ren had not expected the gaping hole that became his chest. If there had been a cord connecting them together, he expected it to snap with the distance. He was quickly realizing that there would be no such comfort, as if the absence of her would be more easy to survive than the tenacious reality of her. She was most certainly a ghost that haunted his every breath and action, creeping into him like slow and gentle poison.

Or at least, he wanted to believe she was poison.

If he saw himself through her eyes; he was Ben, Ben, Ben. As much as Kylo Ren tried to rear up and take back over, it got increasingly more difficult to pretend as if she hadn't integrally changed the very fiber of his composition.

Hux had showed up what seemed like milliseconds after she was gone, finding Ren standing half naked and bandaged in what felt like wreckage. It was wreckage; what they had done to the planet had completely changed it's make up as well. The townspeople who had been eating the vines for years died, and the First Order swept the planet and recovered so many bodies that they began to lose count. They all looked peaceful as if they had been suffering for many a year and were finally allowed to rest. Ben had not expected to cause so much death, and he felt it with an intensity that he knew he shared with Rey, no matter how many leagues and paces across the galaxy she got away from him.

There were those that lived, the strange creatures that lived below and those that had managed to escape underneath the ground, coming back above ground in bits and pieces. The First Order burned what they could find of the traitorous plant, wanting to keep it from ever happening again. Ben was sure that whatever had happened had been directly related to the Jedi, but his knowledge of their almost ineffectual past manouevres didn't make it difficult for him to comprehend.

Hux was inherently displeased, though Ben knew it was because he had been hoping that he would get lucky and Ben would die there. Ben could see that his time away had suited Hux just fine, and that the traitorous man would turn on him the moment the perfect opportunity presented itself. He had weighed the options, obviously. Ben didn't really need to read his thoughts for that, he made it obvious enough.

They were there for a whole two weeks before the deed was done; the vines burned, and then, the Jedi temple.

Ben had watched it burn, reaching out to the thing in between that had always been there, finding that the exalted fire released ages old ghosts from the confines of a building that meant little to him and even less to a Jedi (he was sure). There were those that held on merely because they had no longer been human, really, and those that simply held on because they could find no reason to let go. He wondered at a Jedi, burning away into a mystical blue light only to traipse back across the force and into the physical again. He felt Luke as surely as he felt the wound in his shoulder, but the old man never showed himself.

When Ben boarded the destroyer, his clothing had been mended and cleaned, just as he had. He was Kylo Ren again, and he meant to stay as Kylo Ren. Unfinished business, and his legacy would make it possible for him to forget the scavenger. It would make it possible for him to forget how she called him Ben, and how she no longer looked at him as if he were a monster. Maybe she was the only one who no longer looked at him like he was a monster.

He thought with Snoke dead that he might be free of her, only able to remember how she had looked when she had pleaded with him to 'don't go this way', or the last time he had seen her before she had shut the door of the Falcon on him. How strange it was to see her carried away on his father's ship; it brought him back to a time when he'd wanted his father to return so badly he would have done anything for it. This longing wasn't the same, surely. She had made her choice. He could not wait for her any longer.

It came upon him like a quiet drizzle of rain. Drops and then, suddenly, an outpouring. It was a small little heartbeat, pulsing along with his own, echoing out across the force. It drove him mad. There were days when he couldn't get away from the sound of the pulsing organ, and it began to distract him to such a degree that even he hadn't realized that Hux had begun to enact his plan to assassinate him. Hux didn't see Kylo Ren as his great leader, he saw himself as one, and some might have agreed he was better for the position.

Ben found he cared less and less as the days went on.

If this was what he really wanted, it did not feel as if he had gained anything at all.

He began to dream of his grandfather in bits and pieces, back when he had been a young man, back when he had fallen in love with his grandmother. He saw her belly grow big, full of life, creating the woman that was to become his mother. He didn't sleep well, for fear of these dreams that were plaguing him. A little too late he realized that he didn't have as much time as he had thought. Hux had implemented assassin droids, many of which were skilled and would not stop the onslaught until their master told them to stop it, or they met their goal. Ben did not find them to be difficult targets, but he knew Hux would not give up so easily.

When the droids did not serve their purpose well enough, he moved onto other options, and Ben found himself weakened by his lack of sleep, by his own madness, and by the onslaught that Hux now provided. If he could not succeed with one well planned attempt, he would succeed by sheer force of will and the hope that eventually, Kylo Ren would slip up. Hux saw him as a feral thing, backed into a corner. He was to be pitied, not respected. Ben should have struck back, but he found no desire to do so. Whatever business he felt he had, whatever had drawn him so strongly back there had abated, completely.

The heartbeat sung out loud in his head, growing stronger each day.

It was dead of night when Ben got out of bed. He left behind all of the items that might have denoted him as Kylo Ren, dressing instead in the wool of civilians, though he could not stray far enough to wear earth toned colors. He was not one to run from a fight, but how could he fight for what he no longer wanted? When he put on his cloak, it was not one of military issue. He pulled the hood up over his features, hoping they would be shadowed enough. It was difficult to go unnoticed without some aid of the force, but he managed to sneak off of the ship, and into his own, without much notice from anyone aboard the sleeping dreadnought.

It was said that it was easy to get onto a ship and not off of it, but Ren was not being held prisoner. He kept himself as quiet as possible, flicking switches on and watching as the ship 'booted' up before he pulled away from the ship that had been his home for many years. He felt no sorrow at leaving it, it was full of remnants of the past, remnants of a man he'd killed just to be free of. Would he always stand alone because of how in between he always seemed to be?

He let the force guide him in the direction it chose, though his intent was to seek out Rey, and the source of the noise that now frequently pulsed away along with the throb in his temples. Her name whispered at him like a sweet promise, and he forced himself not to think of her, the strands of her hair at the nape of her neck, the full force of her smile, the way she moved a bit like he did when she fought. She had taken from him, and it might have been amusing if he'd thought of how he'd threatened to take everything from her.

He was not what she deserved. He had to find her, anyway. He knew it would be the only way to regain some of his sanity, if he'd had any to begin with.

The process was not as easy as he was expecting. Wherever they'd gone, they'd hidden themselves well enough, and Ben could no longer rely on the force bond that they'd struck up. Something was overriding it. Maybe she had become strong enough of mind to block it through, but he couldn't sense where she was when he reached out to her across the stars. He had a vague shadow of her, colors and lights, but nothing that could be useful to him in her search.

Something directed him, though, and when he was lost, he resorted to old methods his father had taught him: asking around at the local cantina. He used his force abilities when he could, but without the mask it seemed people might not recognize him. He had shown his face, and there were those that gave just a spark of recognition, but he was able to shadow himself without being realized. He knew Hux would come for him eventually, but for now he managed to keep himself hidden. He did not wish for so much time to pass, but by the time he'd narrowed down the whereabouts of his fathers' ship, a few months had gone by without much notice to him. Time seemed to be something he didn't need to focus on.

The planet might have been a dead one, but no planet was ever truly dead. There was an old mining post which lay empty, as settlers had likely moved when they realized the planet would not be providing any other resource. It had been allowed to recover, now a fertile land of green and blue. It was interesting that she had chosen this place, but perhaps not so interesting as he might have thought.

He was drawn in the direction of the beach, where he could hear the waves rolling in and out, leaving behind salt and weed upon the shore. His large, boot clad feet left wounds in the sand that were quickly recovered. Nothing ever left a mark here for very long, not at the surface, anyway.

He sensed her companions before he sensed her, off at the fringes of his consciousness. She came on him like a wave herself, and he sucked in a lung full of air and held his breath without realizing it. He watched her in his way, sitting on the sand with her feet bare and her hands dug into the cool depths of it. He was not to remain invisible, not to her. He had never really been able to hide himself from her, he had let her into his very soul the moment he had poked around in her thoughts.

She turned, not fully looking at him at first. Finally, she realized he was standing there behind her. Maybe she thought it was as if Snoke had been controlling it, and she didn't realize he was really standing there. When she stood, brushing the sand away from herself, he realized her stomach had grown. She looked as if she was smuggling something underneath her shirt, and then it dawned on him where the source of the sound had been coming from.

His child.

He dropped the pack he carried with him, hearing it thump into the sand before he took a few hesitant steps forward. She followed suit, and before long they were standing in front of one another. She looked up at him, that same mixture of defiance and tenderness on her face. She no longer knew how she should feel about him, and he no longer knew how he should feel about her. The lines had most certainly been blurred. Finally, he reached out to touch her growing belly, feeling the life force within, steadily pulsing away.

"Did you know?" He asked, curiously.

"No, not until Rose told me," She said simply, her features flushing pink and her eyes dropping to the sand. "How would I have known?"

"I heard the heartbeat all the way across the galaxy," He admitted, though now that he stood in front of her it had quieted.

"Is that why you're here?" She asked. He could sense the small vein of anger beneath her words. "To see it for yourself?"

"I have been too long," He finally said, looking into her eyes. He knew by the look on her face he was right. "I should have come sooner,"

"Yes!" She said, already exasperated with him. "I didn't think you would come at all," She admitted.

"It took me awhile to find you. Something has been blocking your image from me,"

"Me," She admitted readily. "I couldn't...it was too painful,"

"Yes," He agreed. "I'm here because I love you," He finally said. He remembered what she had said last time: I know. "Don't say it again," He said.

"What?"

"That you know,"

"I do," She said, argumentative.

He reached up, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. She looked up at him and he saw in her eyes that she loved him too, negating the need for her to say it...no matter how much he might have wanted to hear it. He watched a tear streak down her features, and he swiped it away with the pad of this thumb.

"Say it," He said, a smirk lifting the corners of his mouth.

"I love you too, you great, hulking-"

He kissed her, stopping the flow of insults at the source. She gave a slight noise of protest before she leaned into it, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her up against him. They were interrupted by the sense that they were being watched, and when the kiss was broken they turned to find Finn and Rose staring at them, mouths agape with surprise. Chewbacca was there, looking quietly between the two parties. Rose had the politeness to clamp hers shut, while Finn just kept looking at the two of them like it was the worst thing he'd ever seen.

They turned from one another, hands dropping to their sides. Rey reached out for his, and they stood there before them, hand in hand. Finn scoffed.

"Is the wookie staying for dinner?" Finn asked. Chewie gave a groan of protest.

"You mean Chewie?" Rey asked, being facetious. "I don't know, why don't you ask him?"

Finn scoffed, again.

"Better invite him in, then,"

a short epilogue for all y'all that bugged me 'bout it. force child. probably gonna be problematic. just like his dad. if you're reading neon lights, i swear i will update it eventually. i'm feeling a bit burned ouuut guys.