Chapter Text
It was quiet. So quiet that it put him on edge. Sleep had come easily and without
incident that night. He was exhausted, certainly, but for the first time in as long as he could remember there had been no dreams, no nightmares. The voices in his head were gone.
Normally Kylo would’ve allowed the pain and frustration of his defeat to consume him, drawing him into the darkness. But something had changed. Without Snoke, he was finally free in his own mind. He realized then just how much control his former master had exercised over his thoughts. Ever since he was a child he’d been plagued by nightmares and voices, all calling him to the darkness, feeding him doubt and pain. He believed it was his curse, the part of him that truly was a monster. How different would it all have been without them?
It did not matter. He could not take away all that he had done and all that he had suffered. As he lay on his mattress, surrounded by dark sheets, his mind drifted back to familiar territory: loss. He lost his master. He had lost the Resistance. He had lost to Luke. He had lost Rey.
Rey.
He wanted to hate her, to destroy all memory of her completely. Yet he didn’t. Snoke had used him to get to her, that much was true, but the connection remained. Despite Snoke’s death and despite her rejection, he had seen her one last time before she closed him out for good, his failure complete.
I’ll destroy her.
He meant it when he’d spat the words at Luke, without her name attached, without her face staring back at him. But seeing her again, looking down at him from what he knew must have been the Falcon, he knew the truth.
He couldn’t kill her. Just like he couldn’t kill his mother when the time came.
Rey had shown no fear, and somehow, no anger. But her hazel eyes no longer widened with compassion either. She was disappointed. She had come to him, trusted him for some ungodly reason. She was naive and foolish to believe she could turn him back, to bring him home. But she had cared enough to try. She had cared enough not to kill him as he lay defenseless on the ground of the throne room. And he had retaliated without mercy.
He had felt something similar from his mother as his TIE-silencer flew toward the bridge of the Raddus. She loved him. She worried for him and wanted to know he was safe. After everything he had done, she’d still just wanted him to come home. Just like his father, just like Rey.
But his mother was gone, and this was his home now. He was Supreme Leader of the First Order. The Finalizer, where he currently found himself, and the Order was all he’d known for the past six years. Rey was sputtering across the galaxy in that pile of junk his father had called a ship, destination unknown. How could she possibly consider that home? How could Rey choose that over everything he had offered her?
He sat up again, his anger returning. He had allowed himself to feel too much compassion, to question himself for too long. Of course he could kill her. He had killed his own father. He had allowed his own mother to die on board that rebel ship, too shocked to stop it. If he could watch his own parents die, he could certainly bare to watch her. Rey was just a scavenger from a sand covered rock. A nobody. Nothing.
Except she wasn’t.
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Rey sat alone in one of the gunner compartments of the Falcon, Anakin’s broken lightsaber resting in her lap. The Falcon was full of people, new friends and allies, and yet she found herself drawn here, where she could look out at the vastness of space and be alone.
The significance of this choice was not lost on her. She knew she should’ve wanted the comfort of her friends, of Finn and Leia and Chewie. Even Poe seemed like someone she would enjoy getting to know in the coming months. But right now she wanted to be here, alone with her thoughts among the stars.
In reality, she was never truly alone. While she had severed the connection with Kylo as she’d boarded the Falcon, she knew better than to believe it was gone for good.
She’d expected that it would be following Snoke’s reveal and subsequent death, but as she’d ushered the remaining Resistance fighters onto the Falcon she felt that familiar buzz as the world around her fell away and it was only him and her. He’d looked so broken on his knees, but she had no pity for him in the moment. He could’ve come with her. Should’ve come with her. But he’d chosen another path, the path of hate and anger and destruction.
When they had touched hands in the hut on Ahch-To she had seen him standing by her side. Now they seemed farther away from that vision than ever before. She wanted that, and he had wanted it too. But it would not be so simple. The Force had plans for them, and it was not her place to bring them about before they were meant to be. She knew this, was content with it even, and yet she found herself replaying his proposal over and over in her head.
You come from nothing. You’re nothing. But not to me.
But not to me.
He’d saved her life. And when they’d fought side by side something fell into place, a symbiosis that allowed them to work perfectly in sync. She’d sensed his conflict in the elevator, but not until he’d walked toward her and offered her a place by his side did she realize the full depth of his emotion. It terrified her, but not in the same way that she had once been afraid of him. This was something else entirely. He wasn’t trying to manipulate her or beat her down. His eyes were full of longing, his voice full of desperation and apprehension. She’d wanted to take his hand, to walk away and know that they’d never have to be alone again.
She just wanted it with Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren.
No matter what she’d seen in his eyes as she ended their connection, and no matter what she saw in the vision on Ahch-To, she could not allow herself to forget the choice he had made.