Ben’s hands tightened around his lightsaber. The hilt, as always, sat awkwardly in his palms. The various bits dug into his skin or caught on his fingertips. It pinched and prodded at him until he’d sometimes have liked to throw it aside and build a new one, past experience be damned. He really should have. Luke had suggested as much for years, poking at his various failures with a keen eye, demanding that they give it another shot. But Luke had also taught him that the components of a lightsaber, the kyber crystals inside of it, every bit of wiring, every smooth inch of its casing, called to a person. And this lightsaber had always called to him. It might have been Luke’s and it might have belonged to Anakin Skywalker long before that, but it was Ben Solo’s now.
It would, he thought, always be his, even if it never felt quite right.
This lightsaber was his and Luke had finally seen the truth of it after the third time the construction of another hilt had ended in burns and fried twists of copper and melted plastoid. He’d tried. Force knew how he’d tried.
Once, Luke had suggested that there was no such thing as trying, that doing was the only thing that mattered.
Trying. Doing. Neither made the slightest bit of difference to Ben.
The results were always the same. Nothing ever fit. But he always made do.
Across from him, Lady Kira watched him with something like wonder in her eyes, something like zeal. They glinted with interest, those eyes, with intrigue and possibility. The red of her lightsaber caught in them, darkened them. For a moment, he thought it was a drop of sweat that traced the line of her cheek. It was only after looking closer—so much easier now that they truly knew one another, the best and worst—that he realized it was the start of a tear track—and that she was crying. Even though her chest still heaved from the exertion of battle, Snoke’s Praetorian Guards in pieces around them, and hair a wild tangle around her face, she was as placid, as certain, as he’d ever seen her. And yet, tears.
But she wasn’t crying because she was upset.
Always before she’d been in conflict with herself, torn between what he offered her and what she took for herself. You’ll join me, he’d said in that turbolift, so certain of it that he could still taste the truth of those words now. Her vulnerability then had cut him to the very core, so deeply that he thought his heart’s blood might flood the rest of his body and drown him. You won’t be alone.
Instead, she was crying with relief, so formidable that it filled the throne room, threatened to steal the air from every corner of it. He felt it all through the Force, overwhelming, a tide to be ridden or run from, anything less would end with him being pulled under, subsumed in it, just another form of drowning.
I’m always alone, her delicately accented voice had said once, the first time the topic had come up, so small and unlike her that he’d startled at the sound of it echoing through his mind. Even halfway across the galaxy, she knew how to hurt him. You of all people should know that, Ben Solo.
“Ben,” she said, her voice cracking. Her step wavered as she reached for him, picking across the detritus that littered the floor.
He wanted so very desperately to take her hand in his, pull her close, pull her as much to the Light as he could, what little of the Light he could share with her. It was all he had, but he would have given it to her willingly.
Green pulsed in the corner of his vision, magnified by that hideous piece of equipment Snoke had forced him to look into before. “The Resistance…” Jogging over to it, he peered through the lens. Every moment another transport caught fire.
Ben felt every death, each soul ripped out of him through his rib cage. It hurt, but not as much as it should have. They were his friends, his comrades. His enemies were slaughtering them.
All he felt was despair. But not for them.
“Let them go,” Kira said in the kindest tone he’d ever heard from anyone. “Let them all go. The Resistance, the Jedi.” She came up behind him, rested her hands on his arms. Her breath brushed across his cheek; her lips were soft against his earlobe. “We can end it all. We’ve killed the Supreme Leader. I didn’t think it was possible. There’s no one now who can stop us.”
“General Organa…” His hands fisted at his sides and he screwed his eyes shut. Do or do not. There is no try. “Come with me,” he said, weak, so weak. He would tremble with it if he weren’t so numb. Everything he’d fought for. Every battle they’d lost, every mission that wasn’t enough… “We can save the Resistance.”
He wasn’t the Jedi he was supposed to be.
That fact had made his father happy once upon a time, but everyone else…
“We won’t need the Resistance,” Kira replied. “Let them go. We can handle the First Order ourselves. We can make the galaxy safe. We can do what your mother and uncle couldn’t. We can do what they thought you were destined to do.”
“I have no destiny,” he replied, feeling the truth of it for the first time. Every dream they harbored for him was for naught. He would never be the perfect warrior-creature his uncle wanted; he’d never be the hero-politician his mother needed. He would only ever be Ben Solo.
And the only man for whom that truth was enough was dead and gone, lost in the skirmish on Takodana, all because Ben had been there with his father instead of where he should have been. D’Qar was so much more well-protected than the Millennium Falcon, after all. But he’d insisted, bored to tears and wanting to do something for once other than train, and his father had been more than happy to oblige—we can always use the help, right, Chewie—and now the only reasons to leave this ship were being blown out of the sky by First Order cannons.
“I know you don’t,” and though she didn’t couch her words in gentle deflections, they weren’t accusatory; they weren’t hateful. They were a full and fundamental understanding of who Ben was—and what he wasn’t. “There is no such thing as destiny. There’s you and me and the power to stop this madness.” Her hands slid across his chest, settled across that wound in his breastbone that would never heal, seeped warmth into his skin despite the chill of her touch. Her body pressed against his back and her cheek settled against his bicep and he’d never felt quite this secure before. She was watching the destruction now, too, and her breath hitched at it. “I don’t want to be alone. Stop this madness, Ben. We can do it with a word.”
He closed his eyes, thought of nothing but her for a moment. The scent of ozone and the sharp tang of destruction clung to her, the same as it did to him. They were one and the same.
“You’d be a hero,” she said. “You’d be everything they wanted you to be. You’d be worthy in your own eyes.”
She slipped around and in front of him, blocking his view of the transports that continued to explode behind her. Her ice cold hand cupped his jaw, pulled him forward by the chin. “But no matter what, you’re already worthy in mine.” She was resolute. She was lit from the inside with purpose. She was beautiful and she saw him as more than what he wasn’t, more than all the things he could not do. “We’ll stop this. We’ll destroy the First Order and rebuild the galaxy as it was meant to be. It will be safe because of you.”
Ben’s eyes flicked to the transports one last time.
She turned his head again. Her fingertips were five freezing points against his skin. “We’re not enemies, you and I.”
And then she pressed her lips against his, soft and so very sweet. Her hands caught in his tunic, yanking the fabric taut across his chest, yet still her touch was gentle.
More deaths peppered the back of his mind with the pain, suffering, the betrayal of his people by their own folly, their too-strong hope for change from without. It barely registered compared to the glow of conviction he felt from her. They could end it. From the inside. He saw that much now. She was right.
She’d always been right.
“Say the word, Ben.” Her voice was low and intimate. She’d never lied to him and the bond that Snoke had forged between them proved she wasn’t the unrepentant evil he’d been led to believe she was. What else could they do but bring about a change together? His mother had tried her way; her brother, his. It hadn’t worked. None of it had worked.
For a moment, he couldn’t speak, but that moment passed and it was easy. It was so easy to say that word she wanted. It was so very much easier to let go.
“Yes.” He looked her in the eyes and he did not flinch. “Yes.
“You’re not alone.”