A/N: Inspired by a beautiful piece of Reylo art (see cover). I couldn't find the artist's name, but I will keep looking. If there are any lore mistakes or spelling/editing mistakes, let me know!

"I didn't see him last night."

The look of hope on the general's face melted away into the lines that distinguished her age, experience, and pain.

"Maybe tomorrow." Leia said lightly.

Rey didn't believe that tone at all. And not for the first time, she wished she'd never told Leia that her son sometimes visited her in force visions.

The first time she told Leia about Ben, the older woman had been worried about Rey. "Are you hurt? Is he trying to poison your mind like Snoke poisoned his? There's always two."

"No, it wasn't like that. He wasn't. We just talked."

And Rey could have hit herself. Because on that night, Leia's hope renewed. It was good for the morale of the resistance, but Rey could see the toll it took on the mother.

Still, the resistance needed every angle it had. Since going on the run, they'd suffered even more loss. Leia had mentioned that soon they would all have to go their separate ways. Too many targets in one place could mean the end of the resistance.

Rey was already packed, not that she had much to take. Not that she wanted to go or leave Finn and Poe. Or the general. And where would she go? Luke had suggested the forest moon of Endor.

Leia spoke again. "As a boy he was quiet. Angry, too, but I didn't realize that until it was too late."

Her voice startled Rey out of her thoughts. She just looked at her sad face as the memories left the former princess temporarily unable to speak.

"At six, he already knew more about droids and piloting than Han and I combined. He was just a baby when the dark side targeted him. And where was the light?" Leia shouted. "Where was I?" She seemed close to tears for a moment. "I thought he was just like Luke. Thoughtful. I never knew Luke as a child, though. I never thought about his struggle with the dark. And I didn't think of Vader. Didn't remember that Vader was a child, too, once, before he became the monster."

Rey's mouth dropped open. She hadn't heard Leia speak this much about anything, really. But she listened, because she needed information about Kylo. Whether it was to turn him or kill him, she needed to know him. So, she kept quiet and Leia continued.

"Vader killed my whole planet. My family…" her eyes watered and she seemed surprised, as if she hadn't known the pain was still there. "Some nights, I'm grateful it was Luke who faced him. I – I'm still so angry, Rey. I would have given in to the dark. It's why I never wanted to train like Luke."

For a moment, white-hot anger flashed in the woman's eyes and Rey believed she would have been the most terrifying one of all. There was something Rey could recognize in that look. She was grateful the general wasn't her enemy.

"I thought Ben was different. He was always helping. Even when I should have shielded him. One night after an attempt on my life, he cleaned out my blaster wounds. Some days I think I wouldn't have made it through that night without him. In those days, he was my strength…

"When Luke told me he had almost killed another student in practice, I was shocked. It was so far from how I knew him to be. I should have sent him away, like my mother sent me away. But I wasn't strong enough to make that decision. After so many years apart, I wanted our family to be together, finally…"

Rey couldn't take the regret in her voice. She grabbed the woman's shoulders, probably violating protocol, and shook her harder than she should have. "You did the right thing. No child should – " She choked – "should have to wonder about their parents."

Leia cupped Rey's face. "You will find the truth about your parents one day, Rey."

Rey looked away. She was bringing to lose faith. Did blood even mean anything? She saw the pain that had come to the Solo and Skywalker 'family.'

"I came to say I'm leaving." Rey felt a stab of guilt at the look of shocked pain on the old woman's face - and to say it after Leia told her so much.

But then the pain was gone, replaced with practicality and diplomacy. "Of course, Rey. It's past time we went our separate ways. Take everything you need."

Rey nodded, but hesitated. Before she could second-guess herself, she pulled Leia in for a hug.

The woman gripped her back with a surprising strength and Rey had to fight the voice that whispered she would be losing her family by leaving, too.

Leia kept her close. "Wait, I wanted to ask you…Luke told me what happened with Vader. How – not every part of him was lost. I couldn't have done it, but Luke found the good in him. I told you about Ben as he was because…even if you can't save the man, save my son. My little boy."

Rey was quiet. That was Leia's secret hope? That some part of Ben's spirit might survive Kylo's death?

She suddenly felt weighed down by her request. How could the two people closest to Ben have given up hope for his future? His dad didn't and look where he is now.

Rey gave the general a quick nod. "I will."

She was speeding away on the Millennium Falcon when her surroundings shifted. She left Chewy in the cockpit so she could get some rest when she was hit by a strange wave of dizziness. Like falling while standing still.

She regained her balance while her eyes focused on a new scene. It hadn't happened like this before. She searched for his looming presence but didn't feel anything. She was in an open-spaced apartment overlooking a bright and bustling city. Despite the lights outside, the apartment was mostly dark. Rey's eyes fell on a small figure on the couch.

His skin was perfect, unmarred by battle, with only a few marks from birth on his face. But his eyes – his eyes always gave him away. They were no less haunted than usual. He was staring out the window where she had been looking. He was clutching a book. She could hear guards speaking indistinctly outside the door. Bloody bandages littered the floor next to the couch. Rey knew this night…Leia had just told her about it. This is a memory. The force hadn't done this before. She continued to observe him, wondering why the force had decided to show her this vision.

His eyes slowly drifted to hers and her mouth fell open when she realized he could see her. His gaze unnerved her, made her more uncomfortable than even the adult Kylo could manage. "If you're here to kill my mother, you won't get far." The book shifted to reveal a blaster he'd been concealing. It was pointed right at her chest. "I'm not some two-bit assassin. I don't miss."

Rey didn't doubt it. She would have smiled at the Han in his voice if she weren't still reeling. "I'm not here to hurt anyone."

He seemed to take measure of her before nodding.

Does he have to look at me like that?

He slipped off the couch and began to gather up the bloody clothes and bandages to throw them in a nearby wastebasket.

Rey made a move to help and in less than a blink of the eye, the blaster was trained on her. It had been on the couch and although he was quick when he made the grab for it, Rey had still seen the blaster fly through the last few inches to his hand. He had used the force.

Rey held up her hands. It was smart of him to be weary. "You're gifted." She slowly began to help him.

His face didn't change, but the gun hid itself. "No one else thinks so."

"I'm sure that's not true." She said immediately and without thought.
"My parents don't like it. The guards are afraid."

"It can be dangerous," Rey agreed slowly. "but it doesn't have to be a bad thing." She reached out and floated the last of the sodden rags to the bin.

His eyes widened and his stare grew from weary to hungry.

Oh. That look is much worse. She didn't like the way her outreached hand was shaking, so she quickly dropped it.

It was too swift a movement and it made the boy flinch. She sat on the couch in a calmer manner.

He paused before sitting at the opposite end, the same place she saw him when she first arrived in the memory.

"They want to send me away because of it."

Rey couldn't have guessed why he decided to tell her that. There must be something on her face that both the boy and his mother would speak to her like this.

"You need a teacher." Why Rey found herself repeating those words, she couldn't say.

"I need to protect her," he said stubbornly. He looked like he hadn't slept. Rey wondered if he could.

"The guards–"

"Didn't do anything tonight!" He said in a loud flash of anger.

Ah, so there was his mother in him, after all. "The general isn't dead, though is she?" Rey asked.

"General?"

"Princess, I mean."

He seemed bemused. "Senator, actually."

"Right." Rey nervously patted her leg. "Perhaps she believes you will be safer, if you go."

"I would be," he acknowledged. "Anyone would. This place, the other senators – you can't trust anyone here." There was that haunted look again. "Even my mother's allies – she met with them tonight and look what happened!" He was on his feet, rage flaring. He slammed his book into a vase, shattering it. She sent a quiet mental command for the soldiers to ignore it. She wasn't sure if they'd received it, if they were used to Ben's fits, or if they simply were that useless.

Rey rose, too. "Ky – Ben," she tried to calm his fury. His hand twitched and Rey wasn't sure if she saw the blaster move or if she simply felt the ripple through the force. It made her angrier than she'd meant to become.

"You will sit down and if you so much think of that blaster one more time I will toss you so far into the air for so long that your feet long for the ground!" So help her she was threatening a child!

He didn't seem upset anymore, though. He sat back on the couch. "We can do that?" He got that interested gleam in his eyes again.

We.

"I can. I could kick your –" Rey stopped herself. She was not going to fight him. What was it about him that was so infuriating, even at 8 years old? "I don't want a fight," she just finished instead. Kriff, I do not want to hurt you.

"Why are you here, then?" He finally asked.

She sat down to match him. Is that really the only reason you think people come to see you, Ben? To hurt you? Rey didn't know the answer to his question. "I'm here to help you sleep."

"How?" He seemed skeptical.

"I'll watch over you." She promised.

His eyes darted to his mother's room. "Both of you." He was still full of so much doubt. "Reach out, use the force, feel my intentions," she instructed him. "You'll see."

He closed his eyes.

"Concentrate." She reminded him.

She could see the moment he succeeded. He out the smallest breath and some of the relentless tension left his features. "Who are you?" He said in wonder.

Without warning, a darkness clouded the room. He shouted in fear the exact moment they both felt it. A woman, assassin by the looks of her, crashed through the glass and had her weapons trained on them both. The stranger's red eyes flickered towards the bedroom.

Ben was shaking and his breath was uneven with fear and anger. Before he could reach for his blaster, Rey had leveled it at the woman using the force. Blast after blast caught the startled woman in the chest, long after the initial spurt of green blood splashed from her chest. Rey kept firing it, fury making her lose reason. The Durosi assassin went crashing backward through the window. Rey fired it out at the open glass a few more times before a hand on her wrist broke through her anger.

The look on her face made him cringe away, but it cooled her wits. They might need the blaster again. It was no use wasting its energy on someone who would now be clearly dead.

The guards made no attempt to enter the room, despite the commotion. She couldn't even hear them anymore. Paid off or dead. Leia hadn't mentioned a second attack. Had Ben even told her? "She's gone." Rey said unnecessarily.

He seemed in awe of her. He hadn't even had time to move from his spot on the couch when the woman came through. And Rey had been so angry…she hadn't felt that angry in a long time. "You killed her." He said.

Rey tensed.

He finally sighed. "I'm glad. But there are always more."

"Not tonight," she promised. "Rest now," she practically begged. "I am here."

He started to lose his rigid hold on his body. His eyes closed. "Who are you really?" He asked.

"I'm no one."

Without opening his eyes, he asked, "Not to me."

What a strange echo of a conversation.

"Are you an angel?" he asked.

He didn't wait for a response before half-collapsing. He crawled to her and rested his head on her lap. He'd been exhausted. Rey's fingers only paused a moment before she put her hand on his head to smooth his soft hair. She kept her senses open for any threat.