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Join me. Please.
His hand was extended towards her, palm up, his fingers ready to curl around her own. He’d been cruel in his desperate anger, when she hesitated, saying she’d been abandoned, that others saw her as worthless. Trying to make her understand why she belonged at his side, here. And as the tears ran down Rey’s face, there was nothing she wanted more desperately in the world than to take his hand, let him pull her in. To have somewhere she belonged, where she was wanted. A place she didn’t have to fight for or continually scavenge. Somewhere safe.
I thought I’d find answers here. I was wrong. I’d never felt so alone. She’d spoken to him, as though he were really there. It felt like he was there.
You’re not alone.
A handful of words, barely audible and yet they warmed Rey more than the blanket she'd had wrapped around her, trying to warm herself from the cold. Ben’s eyes were looking into her own. He was trying to tell her something, to reassure her. He was trying to be kind, as though he’d forgotten how to be. As though Ben Solo couldn’t say that Rey was surrounded by people who loved and cared for her. Perhaps too much emotion, or simply too many words. But he was trying to remind her of it all the same.
Neither are you. She’d said it, after a long pause, and lifted her hand slowly. Perhaps it was the gravity of the moment, the electric terror of what was happening but every flicker of movement seemed to matter so much more than usual. Once lifted, her hand reached out towards to him. Towards where he seemed to sit in her little stone hut. Maybe he really was there. Maybe they could touch…
He pulled off his glove. She’d heard the movement of the leather and cloth. Their bond was growing stronger. His face was changing as well. Seeming to soften in the light of the fire that warmed her. Less Kylo Ren and more the man she wanted to know. It was a longer moment still, of watching his bare hand and how his eyes seemed to change. Brown. Ben’s eyes were brown, not black. Warm and soothing in tone but they were so soft and afraid. It would take so little to push him back under the mask.
But he reached out, with a slowness that tormented them both. Both eager and terrified to see what would happen if they tried. If they explored this bond, what it meant for themselves, for the galaxy, what it would change. Their palms hovered just beside one another and both of the Force bound fools utterly forgot to breathe, until their fingers began to curl inward. Slowly, barely there increments of hands that were stiff from tension, the kind where you can almost feel a strange resistance in the joints.
And then… they touched. Their hands curled around one another and Rey smiled, lifting her gaze back to Ben’s face. He looked… awed and his hand was trembling even though she was holding it in her own. Almost like he was frightened. She’d squeezed his hand and he’d opened his mouth to say something… but she’d never found out what it was. Just as Ben had begun to speak, the walls of her hut were thrown apart by Luke Skywalker, who screamed in fury and seemed to sever the connection between them.
Luke had yelled at her. He’d also been bleeding, just a little, on his hands from where he’d attempted to brace himself. As he’d reconnected to the Force, felt what was happening, and dashed out of his own hut, the legendary Jedi had failed to notice several porgs playing in his doorway. They’d chattered at him angrily as he scrambled back to his feet, desperate to save what he could in the galaxy from his failed and furious former student.
Rey hadn’t listened. It wasn’t even a deliberate choice. It was that the words had flowed over her like the sound of the rain. All she could think about how frightened Ben had looked, how warm his hand had felt in her own.
He didn’t know how to explain it better. Kylo Ren had tried, he’d tried to show her how he saw the beauty in her, the value, the sparkle, that the rest of the galaxy seemed oblivious too. How was this woman left alone? How had no one seen her potential? It only made sense if her parents were drunks, foolish drunks who lacked the sobriety to see what was burning like a star!
But that hadn’t been the right words.
He couldn’t find the right words. He didn’t know sweet phrases, he couldn’t remember any coy flirtations that Father had used and, even if he could, he didn’t want to borrow that man’s words.
Rey was still crying. Silent tears that rolled down her face and broke his soul because he hadn’t meant to make her cry. She was the only person in this galaxy he didn’t want to hurt, whose feelings he wanted to protect.
In his desperation, Kylo Ren pleaded silently, withdrawing his hand to remove the glove and then offered her his bare hand once more. She’d touched him once. If she would take his hand again, he’d find the right words, somehow, he’d make it all right, he’d give her anything she wanted, he’d burn it all the ground, just let him do it holding her hand. And then he stepped just a little closer, and nearly whispered, one more time,
”Please.”
Please let it be enough. Please let her understand. Please see what he was trying to tell her, what he was trying to show her. That he would sink onto his knees for her, only please… His eyes shut, burning with tears because if Rey turned from him, what hope was there for him. Why did the Light keep pulling, what did the Force want from him, what was role was he meant to play in all this, he’d saved her the only way he knew how, she was his other half, they -
A hand, smaller than his own, had touched his. Palm to palm. Fingers curling inward around one another.
Rey took his hand.
He couldn’t believe it. But when his eyes opened, there it was. Her hand. Her beautiful, perfect hand. There were still tears on her face and her hand was trembling. She was afraid but sure, just as he had been in the hut. And he… he pulled her in gently, slowly. Afraid she would bolt but she didn’t. She let him hold her, let him bury his face in her hair. Let him cup her face with his trembling hands, tilt her features upwards and kiss her. That first kiss was perfect. Soft and gentle and everything he wanted to be for her. She smiled for him.
Rey smiled, despite the tears on her face and the exhaustion of her body and the chaotic hell that would soon overwhelm them as they tried to sort out what having killed the Supreme Leader and his guards meant. None of that mattered, because Rey took his hand and she smiled for him.
They’d figure out the rest. He’d never make her cry again. He vowed it to himself and let her feel the resolve flowing through him. Just so long as she would stay at his side, Kylo Ren would find a way to make the First Order a place Rey could call home.