Kylo Ren caught up to Rey on a narrow strip of wreckage on Kef Bir, the last resting place of the second Death Star. He'd seen her struggle in the Emperor's destroyed throne room, knew she was so close to uniting forces with him if for no other reason than to end the struggle inside herself. They were two halves of a single piece of the Force, his dark and her light, his light and her dark.

He would not lose her this time. "If she will not turn, you must kill her. You have no choice. She will only stand in your way." But Ren knew he would not have to kill her. She belonged at his side. She just needed to be convinced—at the point of his lightsaber if necessary.

Waves crashed around the pair violently. The blue of Rey's blade sizzled against the jagged red of his as he pressed the attack. She went down to one knee as her lightsaber dropped from her hand. He finally had the advantage. She had to stop and listen to him now.

Then he heard it.

"Ben."

His mother's voice surrounded him, warm and gentle. "My Ben." He turned. Leia stood before him, a glowing nimbus of light around her. She'd changed her hair, but remained ever regal, her elegant dress flowing from her shoulders, always the princess. She was older than he remembered. "I know," she said gently as if reading his mind. "So many lost years."

A sudden silence surrounded him, droplets of water frozen in a spray before his face. Rey knelt before him completely still, her expression frozen in a dark mask of anger. She didn't blink at the sight of Leia Organa appearing out of thin air.

"I made us a little time, but I don't have long." Leia stepped closer, turning her face up to his. She was so small, barely reaching his shoulder, but somehow her presence overwhelmed him. "Ben, I know what you've done. I know who you've been. Just please remember this. You are my son. Always my son. And you have always had my love."

A plume of light sprang from her and enveloped him, her love for him made tangible. He was consumed by its depth and its unconditional nature. "It's a lie!" the dark voice hissed, but her love burned the voice away. Her light was true and he leaned into it, welcoming it instead of spurning it. "Mom," he whispered.

Leia smiled at him. "I will always love you, my beautiful boy. My Ben." She reached for him, but as her fingertips grazed his cheek, droplets of water hit his face from the wave breaking over the bridge.

His mother was gone.

Not just the vision of her.

SHE was gone.

His mind reeled.

Mom? His mind reached for her but a gaping hole had sprung up in the Force. That constant pull of love and concern had always been with him no matter how hard he'd tried to ignore it, dragging his spirit into turmoil in the moments when he'd needed to be strongest, the most dedicated to his destiny. Her love had nearly dragged him off the catwalk at Starkiller Base.

Now it was gone, leaving a vast, cold emptiness inside him. Mom? His blade dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers. Rey caught it as it fell and followed through with her attack. Her thrust was true, piercing through his body just below the ribcage. Mom? He blinked again, his vision going dim as his knees buckled.

Rey gasped and caught him as he fell. Her anger evaporated as she felt Leia's death as well. He could see it in her eyes as they mirrored the shock and grief he felt. Then Rey knelt beside him, waves of concern radiating from her. She placed her hand on his torso, and he felt a surge of power pass into him, the warmth of the Force filling his entire body, knitting his punctured lung, remaking the cauterized blood vessels.

The swirl of black spots in his vision cleared as blood flowed once again to his brain, and her face sprang into focus. Her eyes were cloudy with pain and regret—for Leia? For healing him? For hurting him? He wasn't sure.

Then she was gone as well, leaving him confused and alone.

"Ben!"

He turned. His father stood before him. How could he be there? He couldn't lose his mother and then face his father again.

"He's not real."

"You're not real. You're just a memory," he declared defensively.

"Your memory," Han replied. His father looked at him with such sympathy. "Come home."

"She's gone." He made himself say it even though his throat closed up around the words.

"You don't have a home."

He didn't have a home, not anymore.

"No, son. It's not too late. What she fought for is still around."

His mother's love and his father's forgiveness poured over him. Rey's healing still burned through his body. The dark voice argued, but for once Ben found the strength to ignore it completely and made his choice. The red lightsaber went into the water, the sound of the roaring waves drowning out the splash.

In his heart, Ben Solo went home.

Somewhere ahead Ben felt the shift in the Force as Rey left the atmosphere, his connection to her stretching between them. "Rey," he whispered aloud. She couldn't face Palpatine without him. She didn't know what she was getting into.

-0-

In the end, Ben had to admit he hadn't realized what they were getting into either.

Fighting through the Knights of Ren to her side, he felt invincible once he'd reached her, right up until the moment Palpatine forced them to their knees with a simple gesture.

"You were a fool to think you could defy me. But you did bring her to me after all, didn't you, my apprentice? Now I will kill you both." The voice inside his head echoed Palpatine's as he taunted them.

He tried to break free of the Emperor's paralyzing grip, reaching out for Rey's hand with every ounce of strength, but Palpatine was indeed a master of the darkness. The renewal of the light inside him felt puny as the Emperor reached into him and began to feed.

Rey screamed. Their energies momentarily united and he tasted what it might feel like to belong to her fully, but that taste was ripped away along with his very life. Agony ripped him apart as Palpatine's withered form fleshed out fully before his eyes. Then his vision went dark.

He dragged himself back to consciousness, reaching for Rey.

The Emperor's voice was in his head from the moment he woke. "You cannot save her, foolish child! You are weak! And you have failed for the last time!"

He fought against the fear inside him. If he could touch her, connect to her, they might have a chance. But before his fingers reached hers a wall of force slammed into him, knocking the breath from his lungs and launching him backwards into the cavern that yawned behind him. He struggled to pull the Force around him but all his control had been ripped away. He fell helplessly for what seemed like forever, still only barely conscious, before slamming onto the rocks below.

Sharp agony shot through his entire body. He gasped for breath, his ribs screaming. Probably cracked, maybe broken. His right leg was twisted at the knee. He tried to stand, but it wouldn't support his weight. His head felt like it was splitting open. The world spun around him and he could barely breathe for the knife of pain being driven into his chest.

Above him, he could hear the sound of crackling lighting and the sizzle of a lightsaber. Rey was up. He could feel her. He knew she wouldn't give up. He could see her, but her image in his Force vision was so faded, so weak until the second lightsaber leaped into her hand. She was fighting back. He began to climb.

His fingers bled and burned. His muscles screamed. His knee felt like it was full of shards of glass.

"You will never reach her."

He had to get to her. The sounds of conflict roared above him, the clash of the awful power of the Emperor's darkness and Rey's incredible light. He could feel Rey's life being poured out into the effort.

"She will die and there is nothing you can do."

He had to get to her to help her. Together the two of them could do it.

"You have failed her."

Awful screams echoed above him.

"You will never-" The abrupt silence was so complete he nearly lost his grip on the narrow finger holds of the wall. For the first time in his life, the presence that had whispered to him, goaded him, directed him, deluded him was absent from his consciousness. Gone. Dead. She'd done it.

But something was wrong.

He was almost there. With a growl he pulled himself over the edge, gasping for breath against the sharp pains in his chest. Rey lay on the floor ahead of him, unmoving.

He couldn't feel her.

An icy wave of desperate fear ran through him. He limped and struggled to her side, barely noting the disintegrating body of Palpatine.

She lay on her back, lightsabers on the ground. Her eyes stared at nothing. He launched himself to the floor, pulling her limp body into his arms. He pressed his face into her hair.

Then he stilled himself and concentrated on the Force around them, the light and dark always at play. It wasn't too late. It couldn't be.

He closed his eyes and called on the light as he began to redirect his life energy. He would give her everything he had, whatever it took to bring her back. He moved his hand down to her side, but instead of meeting the solidity of her belly, it passed through. The weight of her body resting against him just evaporated. He snapped open his eyes just in time to see her fade away, her clothing collapsing against him like the empty cocoon of a butterfly.

"Rey," he breathed in horror. "Don't leave me. Please!" The bond that tied them faded into nothingness, the hole inside him all-encompassing now.

Around him the statues of the ancient Sith began to crack and break. The Emperor's throne crumbled to dust. It wasn't supposed to end like this. He should be the one to die. Not her.

"Why?!" he screamed, his broken ribs sending agony through him. He gathered her clothing into his arms, desperate to hold onto whatever was left of her.

The world was crashing down, his only consolation being that soon it would crash down upon him as well. Her scent still hung in the folds of her tunic. He breathed it in and prepared to die.

"Ben. Get out of here."

The voice came to him, insistent and purposeful. "Mom?"

"Go, Ben! This is not your time."

"She's gone. You're gone. Dad's gone." His breath caught in his chest. "It's all my fault. Please let me die too."

A faint shimmering blue image of Leia knelt beside him. "I can give you a little time to get out, but you have to hurry."

"No." The dust motes in front of his eyes had frozen in the air. The sounds of falling boulders had gone silent.

"Ben Prestor Naberrie Organa-Solo!" The sound of his full name coming from his mother struck him hard enough that he pulled out of his grief long enough to hear her next words. "If you ever want to see Rey again, get up and get moving. I can't hold on for long!"

"What do you mean, 'see her again'? If I want to see her again, I will die here and now and become one with the Force. I will see her there," Ben retorted, grief and anger making his voice rougher than he intended.

Leia's hand brushed across the hair that fell into his eyes, her touch rustling the strands lightly. "Are you so certain you are ready to become one with the Force?" Her smile was sad.

Ben hung his head, knowing that anger, fear, and loss still burned inside him. Was the light strong enough yet to take him to her side? "No," he admitted.

"Then get out of here. You will see her again. But you have to go. Now!"

He gathered Rey's clothing and both lightsabers and stood as best as he could manage. Leia's image shimmered before him. "I love you, sweetheart."

"I know," he replied, finally allowing his eyes to meet hers fully. "Deep inside, I always knew."

She smiled at him then pointed toward the exit. "Now get your ass out of here!" And the loving mother turned into the determined general.

He limped forward a few steps, gritting his teeth against the pain in his ruined knee. Rocks and dust hung suspended in the air around him. In all his days of using the Force, of pushing his abilities as viciously as he could, he'd never even considered that a Jedi Master might be able to manipulate time. But if anyone could, it would be General Leia Organa.

He limped and staggered past the falling statues, aware that they were no longer frozen, just moving too slowly to see-at least at first. By the time the exit was in sight, rocks were falling almost too fast to dodge, dust moving quickly enough to choke him. His knee had grown numb enough to walk on it at least after a fashion and he tried to run. The ground began to rumble beneath his feet, threatening his already precarious balance.

Only feet in front of the ships, his knee failed to hold him and he fell, giving his broken ribs a hard, agonizing jostle. He nearly lost consciousness, but the taste of blood in his mouth roused him. He hoped it was from a busted lip and not from a punctured lung.

He pushed himself up to one knee. Both ships sat before him.

He considered taking Luke's X-wing, but quickly dismissed the thought. Far too many memories good and bad were associated with that ship.

But he did want the rest of her things. He didn't want to leave any trace of Rey behind on this cursed planet. He pulled her large beige satchel from the cockpit. It was heavier than it looked. That appeared to be all she'd brought with her.

Then with a final grunt of effort, he pulled himself into the cockpit of his TIE fighter aware that he would be a target for the Resistance. Debris began to fall from the sky in earnest as the huge destroyers hanging low in the atmosphere continued to explode and crash. A sudden jagged shift in the Force ran through him as he felt the death of crew after crew, hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers meeting a sudden and violent end.

He wondered if any deserved mercy, much like Rey's friend FN-2-he stopped himself. "His name is Finn." He could almost hear her voice.

He'd never allowed himself to feel the loss of life before like that. It chilled him. "I'm sorry," he whispered to the Force around him. "I'm sorry."

The hatch closed over his head and he plotted a course that would take him out of the atmosphere and far away from Exegol. But to get on course, he had to dodge falling debris, rebel fighters, and–his eyes widened—a sky full of freighters, cruisers, barges, all manner of civilian craft.

"Mom, you won. Look at that. They're all here. You won." Inside him a little boy with a New Republic banner cheered.

Beneath him, the giant floating monolith crashed as the cavern finally collapsed fully on itself, dragging the X-wing into the chasm that he knew filled the giant chamber. The Sith were no more. And the lightsabers in Rey's bag whispered there were no more Jedi either.

His ship beeped at him. "Yes, I am injured. I would appreciate care." He settled back into his seat and concentrated on dodging debris and rebel ships as the medical unit began to poke at his injuries. The first injection eased part of the pain in his chest. He ran on instinct, checking his coordinates, navigating the tricky path back out of the Exegol system.

The medical unit did its job well. Soon he could flex his knee without much pain and could take a deep breath without feeling like Rey was stabbing him in the chest again.

Rey.

Her bag had fallen open during a particularly hard maneuver and some of the contents had tumbled out into the floor of the cockpit, including a small hand-made doll. He picked it up and stared into its tiny embroidered eyes.

Rey.

Who made this for her? Her mother?

Images he'd gleaned from Rey's memories pressed back into his consciousness.

A woman knelt beside Rey and pressed the doll into her hands. "We'll come back for you, Rey. We promise we will come back for you."

But they had not. Instead only a hundred yards from the slaver's hut, the couple had been taken at gunpoint to a ship. Rey had clutched the doll to her chest and cried as the ship blasted out of sight.

Overwhelming fear, loneliness, and sorrow clung to the little figure, imprinted upon it by the powerful emotions of a strong Force user. He became aware that tears were flowing down his face.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered to the little doll. "So sorry for everything."

"Ben."

He sat bolt upright, his ribs screaming in protest.

"It's okay now."

"Rey?" he whispered into the darkness of the cockpit. Stars streaked around him against the inky blackness of space. He clutched the doll in his fingers.

But there was no answer. "Rey!" he screamed out into the void. "Where are you?!"

The blackness hung around the ship, the only sounds that of the beeping medical unit who warned him he would undo all its repair work if he didn't keep still. A familiar rage rose inside him, but instead of tearing the cockpit apart in fury, he pressed the little doll into his chest, soaking up all its misery and adding his own. The medical unit continued to beep its warnings as even the vacuum around his ship filled with his despair.