Krillien had vanished, once again leaving Ben alone to confront his most haunting nightmare: the voice inside his head. It had been there as far back as he could remember. Long before he knew to call the voice by its proper name - Snoke, Supreme Leader, Master - it had lurked in the shadowy recesses of his mind, waiting patiently for his most vulnerable moments to begin its chilling litany of condemnation.

As a child, he had believed the voice to be reassuring - had even referred to it as "friend." Whenever he felt alone - whenever his father left again on another of his smuggling trips, whenever his mother was too preoccupied with strengthening the New Republic to spend much time exploring the wonders of Chandrila with him - he knew he could always rely on the voice to be there, echoing his own hurts.

When he grew a bit older, he began to wonder if not everyone heard voices. He had thought it normal, assumed that it was simply a thing everyone dealt with and so no one ever spoke about it. Krillien had tried to convince him otherwise. Repeatedly, he had pleaded with Ben to ask his uncle or his parents for advice, to admit that something was off. But how could something be wrong with the voice that had always been with him?

By the time he understood more of how the Force worked - in large part due to his uncle's training and his own explorations and study of the more forbidden artifacts leftover from long forgotten ages when the Jedi and Sith had openly waged war - he was too accustomed to the voice's presence to bring it up in conversation. If he spoke up now only to find that he had been wrong, that not everyone had a presence lurking in their minds, then Luke would question why he had never said anything. Why would he believe you? the voice would whisper. If there is something wrong with you, then surely Luke already knows. He doesn't trust you - none of them do. The voice was surely right, he reasoned, because it had never led him astray before. He let the matter drop and soon forgot why he had considered telling anyone in the first place.

Shortly thereafter, the excruciating pain began. Before, he would occasionally experience a dull ache in his head when he didn't agree with what the voice was saying - sometimes it spoke ill of his mother and he fought back in anger. But then the pain had been almost constant, pounding against his skull whenever a fleeting thought of dissent swept across his mind. Snoke had been forming him, he recognized now, molding his thoughts and beliefs to mirror his master's own.

Childish interpretations of friendship had long since passed. What he had once wrongly misconstrued as a helpful student-teacher relationship had been dashed to pieces. It had taken him far too long to piece together his true lot in life. To Snoke, he was nothing more than a servant, a weapon with which to strike down enemies.

Krillien had been right all along. Until now, he had never actually understood the role he had been playing his entire life.

But now he finally understood. Whereas Rey had come from nothing and made herself a valuable member of the Resistance and a shining beacon of hope to the galaxy, he had come from everything - the Sith, the Jedi, royalty, war heroes, and legends - and yet had fallen from grace. He had essentially become nothing.

He had tried to blame his parents for giving up on him, had placed all remaining fault on his uncle for failing him. But the truth of the matter was that he was weak: he had allowed Snoke to slowly and meticulously extinguish the light inside of his soul until his entire being was nothing more than a black hole of bitterness, anguish, and rage.

In the end, he had no one to blame for his fall except himself.

Somehow, against all clear line of reasoning that he could see, admitting that he alone was responsible for his fall brought a sense of calm, of freedom.

In the dark caverns of his mind, he stood slowly and began walking - his destination firmly decided.

As he passed by, he refused to heed the call of memories beckoning to him from far off. Krillien had graciously cracked open his own store of memories and offered him a new perspective on events that had long been twisted or scrubbed from his mind. His personal recollection of these memories were dull but he intrinsically knew that what Krillien had shown him was the truth.

His brief glance at the life he had left behind - been forced to abandon, he had once claimed - had left him curious to remember the rest. No, he realized, it wasn't simple curiosity that drove him down the echoing chambers of his mind to the darkest portion where his demons lay. He was furious - at himself, mostly, but also at Snoke.

He had to know what memories lay fractured and buried - what memories Snoke had cruelly torn from his mind in order to better control him. They were his memories; it was his life. He deserved to know. He needed to know.

For the first time, he boldly slammed open the ornately-carved door to the mock representation of Snoke's throne room that had embedded itself in his mind ages ago. Unlike Snoke's throne room that had been present on the Supremacy, this room was smaller, darker, less subtle in its implications of a sinister presence. Here, Snoke had no one he had to intimidate into submission. The guards, the red decor, the oculus viewing scope, none of it was included because none of it was necessary.

The sinister presence draped gracelessly on the highbacked, charcoal and ebony-colored throne was the only source of intimidation necessary to keep Kylo in line.

Ben opened his mouth to speak, rage flooding out from his every pore, but Snoke lifted one slim finger to silence his outburst before it even began. Out of years of habit, he froze and quickly retracted his words before they spilled out.

But anger burned too brightly within him to diminish simply because of a reflexive twinge of fear. Cowardice would not suffice. Backing down only ended with him wrapped in mental chains. There was no running from this confrontation - not now. Not when there was finally something worth fighting for.

Someone, really.

His right hand tightened slightly by his side, unconsciously grasping at the space where his lightsaber normally would be. Steeling himself, he stepped forward. Shallow breaths barely filled his lungs as he slowly forced his eyes upward to look the deceased Supreme Leader in the eye. Nothing shone in those cold black eyes besides a steady haughtiness. And a brief flicker of some emotion that Ben could not place.

"We're finished," Ben stated, shoving down his trepidation.

"Finished?" Snoke laughed mockingly. "We are never finished. I am already dead, fool boy. Try as you might, you cannot slay me again." He spread apart his hands and grinned sickeningly, "I have never left you before and I never will."

"You're only in my head," Ben argued, refusing to retreat. "If I shove you out, then you're as good as dead."

"Only in your head? What do you consider me?"

"A parasite."

A low, grating chuckle rose in Snoke's throat. "A parasite? I am more powerful than you could ever dream."

Krillien's words echoed in his mind: You see yourself as nothing more than a conduit for power…

"No," Ben replied, stopping at the foot of the dias. "If you were truly so powerful, you never would have needed me. And you worked so very hard to make sure I wouldn't interfere with your plans.

"But I remember," he whispered softly. "I remember that as the years went by, I forgot to question the lies you wove. I stopped struggling. I gave in because I thought I required guidance - needed answers only you could provide!"

A twisted grin still stretched Snoke's leathery skin, but another brief flash of foreign emotion crossed his face as he took in the determined, immovable form of his once-apprentice standing so boldly before him. "You cannot kill me a second time," he repeated. "Drive me out! What will stop me from seeking out another strong Force presence to attach to?"

The threat was immediately obvious. But how could it be achievable? "You will not harm Rey," he insisted, surprised by how calm his voice sounded even as emotions swirled uncontrollably within him.

"And how will you stop me? Force me from your mind and I become free to-"

"Your Force Ghost is bound to me," Ben interrupted. The realization was not so startling once he considered the facts. "It was unintentional, wasn't it? You never planned to embed the remnants of your soul in my mind forever." A sense of elation swept through him; victory was not so far out of his grasp as he had once thought. "All those years you whispered to me in the dark, attempting to turn me, to control me, and you never thought ahead far enough to imagine what that sort of connection could create."

Snoke was silent, his face quivering with barely contained rage.

"You may be bound to me," Ben proclaimed, "but I am not bound to you. You do not control me any longer."

A memory came to life before his eyes: Rey, her strained and conflicted features bathed in soft firelight, spilling out her worst fears to him from across the galaxy. She had been so distressed, in such desperate need of some sort of comfort. Her loneliness and need for a source of validation had beaten mercilessly against the remaining stones surrounding his heart. Here was a kindred spirit, someone who understood the ache of having everyone in your life desert you. The words had tumbled from his lips before he had a moment to consider them, to mull over the consequences of comforting the woman who, by all accounts, was his enemy. "You're not alone," he had said, having never spoken truer words in his life.

The last thing he had expected was for her to repeat the sentiment with unequivocal sincerity in her voice. In that moment, all his doubts had been pushed aside; fear was a foreign concept. What was war, what was power, what was the entire galaxy compared to this fearless woman in front of him who held no disgust in her eyes, no fury for who he was? No speck of terror wracked her strong, beautiful frame as she reached across the fire - through the flames that had long burned him, past the darkness that had sought to suffocate him - intent on expressing her sincerity with the simplest touch.

He had been drawn to her warmth and compassion, unable to stop the draw of the Force itself that seemed to be pulling them together. Then again, he hadn't tried to cut the connection - hadn't wanted the moment to ever end. With each passing millisecond that their hands hovered closer together - aching to touch but fully conscious of the numerous times each had been scorned in the past - he hardly dared to breathe, afraid that any sudden move on his part would remind this brazen source of light of his true character. But then their fingertips had brushed together and, in a stunning moment of clarity, he knew he would never be the same.

The memory vanished just as quickly as it had crept up, but the hope it had inspired remained in his heart. His anger remained, clear and strong, but a distinct and foreign sense of peace cocooned his mind. The darkness alone could not aid him.

"You will not bow before Snoke," Rey had claimed. And how right she was turning out to be.

"Your reign has come to an end. Finally." Spots of bright star light began to appear in the throne room, driving back the heaviness of Snoke's oppression. Unlike the white, silky threads of light that he had attributed to Rey when she repaired portions of his memory, these splotches of light were dull and unassuming, yet steady.

"Perhaps I cannot kill you, but nor am I going to release you."

All traces of haughtiness had been wiped from Snoke's face the moment he began noticing the grey shadows. "You have no other options!" he hissed, expression contorted into a sneer that Ben suddenly remembered from his recurring nightmares as a young child. However, unlike then, he was not afraid of the monster lurking in the shadows, pulling strings from behind the scenes.

"Oh, I can think of one option." The barest hint of a grin pulled at the corners of his lips as he took in Snoke's aghast expression.

Without giving his former master a chance to react, Ben compelled the throne Snoke was sitting on to begin shifting. Tendrils of metal unwound from the throne, wrapping tightly around the scarred alien's limbs. The towering headrest bowed low, bending in half in order to cover the monster's face. The rest of the throne followed suit, contorting and twisting until the entire structure resembled nothing more than a large cage, from which there was no escape.

Though no sound could penetrate the folds of the prison, Ben could not resist making one final comment to creature who had bound him in servitude for so long, "She was right. Underestimating me was your downfall."

Burden lifted, he straightened his shoulders, surprised by the weightlessness he felt. His mind was clear, free from outside influence. It was unnatural.

A spark of fear ignited within him, but he refused to turn and give the caged beast a parting glance. There were no voices in his head, nothing to steer him in a chosen direction. He was finally free. And it was terrifying.