Chapter Text
"Hold your head high, dear. You've done nothing that you should cower for."
Rey bites her lip and glances sidelong at Leia as they stand together in the narrow turbolift. Rey attempts to straighten her spine the same way the general seems to, but there is an iron resoluteness to the older woman's posture, a cold steeliness that belies the invisible weight bearing down on her.
"How long will this take?" Rey murmurs. The journey to the deepest floors of the Resistance base seems endless — the journey to this moment even longer.
"Not long." Leia's eyes flicker to the descending numbers on the turbolift panel, each lighting up in turn. "Ben has already been found guilty of..." There's a brief flash of pain on her patrician features. "...well. You've read the charges."
"Didn't really need to. I saw most of them firsthand." Rey pauses. "He hasn't made this easy."
Leia smiles, pinched and humorless. "On the contrary. Determining his guilt was quite easy indeed. My son was not subtle about his crimes."
"I don't know if he's subtle about anything, really."
Leia is quiet for a moment, and it seems to Rey as though it's just a fraction harder for the general to hold her head up. "I'm still trying to save him," she murmurs. "You've read the recommendation, I'm sure. I don't know if I'll be able to overrule them by myself."
Without thinking, Rey takes Leia's hand in hers and gives it a reassuring squeeze. "You won't be alone," she says softly. "You'll have Luke and me. And we've both agreed that exile is better than... that."
Leia takes a deep breath, squeezing Rey's hand back and offering her a weak smile. "You've grown so strong since that first day on D'Qar, Rey. I know I haven't asked for it, and the Force knows he doesn't deserve it, but the compassion you've shown my son..." Her eyes close for the space of a heartbeat. "You have my thanks, Rey. I don't think we ever would have brought him home without you."
A flash, a memory, a glowing lightsaber bisecting through a twisted creature, a dark stone chamber rattling with Force lightning, roars of rage and a heavy body draped protectively over her.
"I don't know," Rey murmurs. "I think home is still quite a ways off for him."
They spend the remainder of the ride in tight-lipped silence, hands clasped, each floor taking them closer to the final moments of judgment.
Immediately, Rey can sense the change in atmosphere from the tense, charged proceedings of Kylo Ren's trial (such as it was, a brief two-hour recitation of crimes, uncontested by the weary defendant). The room is lighter somehow, the tribunal members more relaxed.
One glance at the empty defendant's chair and she understands why.
"He's not here?" Rey hisses to Leia as they enter the spacious room. "They're going to sentence him without hearing from him?"
"The tribunal asked him to speak," Leia says matter-of-factly, nodding to Luke where he sits at a long table across the room and steering Rey towards him. "He declined. He was appointed counsel and refused to speak to them." She sighs. "Leave it to my son to start showing every ounce of his father's stubbornness at the worst possible time."
"We can't do this without him being here to speak for himself." Rey's brow is furrowed, and she shoots an irritated glare towards the assembled tribunal members as they ascend the dais and take their seats.
"Rey." Luke rises to his feet and places a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Be calm. Center yourself. You'll be no help to him if you're too agitated to express yourself clearly."
"I didn't say I wanted to help him." Rey can feel familiar tension bunching up in her shoulders as she takes her seat at the end of the table, Luke beside her and Leia on the opposite end.
She can feel the both of them staring at her, appraising, and wills steel into her spine and a steadiness to her gaze as she looks to the assembling tribunal.
Taking a deep breath, Rey closes her eyes and presses back, deep into her mind, seeking the familiar yet unpleasant tendril of energy that usually snakes along beside her own Force signature, the dark curl that is the tangled Force bond she shares with Kylo Ren.
With Ben Solo.
How terrified she'd been of their connection, when they'd first learned of it on Ahch-To. How infuriated she had been with the Force, that it would see fit to tie her to this hulking beast of a man, this pitiless murderer.
A memory of a gentle brush of hands, a bright flaring of the Force across ghosting fingertips, and Rey shuts her eyes tighter.
A year now since Ahch-To, longer still since Starkiller, and Kylo's side of the bond has largely dimmed to an annoying presence rather than a painful push of consciousness. He's always there, somehow, skulking at the back of her mind, buried deep and bound to her.
But now, as she reaches out, follows that tendril of the Force to the man behind it, there's an iron-fast wall, silence and steel as Kylo resolutely shuts her out.
When they'd first brought him to the Resistance, after he'd staggered into sight, bloodied and weak, supported almost wholly by Rey and his lightsaber in her hand, they'd placed him in chains and imprisoned him in a Force-shielded cell, watched over by droids in the hopes that they might be able to withstand the Supreme Leader's notorious destruction.
Instead, Kylo had been passive, withdrawn, saying nothing even at his own trial other than short, one-word confirmations or denials.
The tribunal members had breathed a sigh of relief, and noted the effectiveness of the Force shielding in rendering Kylo a neutralized threat.
Rey, for her part, could still feel his Force signature, feel the power that still rolled over him, dimmed and muted but very much present.
Luke and Leia undoubtedly could sense it as well, yet they remained silent, and Rey followed suit.
Those closest to him, she knew, understood that it was less the Force shielding than the total upheaval of his life, the realization of years broken and wasted that had rendered Kylo silent, withdrawn, defeated.
Two father figures in his life, and he'd slain them both. The second as much retribution for the first as it was a desperate attempt to save her life.
Rey closes her eyes and manages another half-hearted push against Kylo's mental wall even as it holds fast.
She tries to send him brief flashes of those last moments deep in Snoke's throne room: the dark lord dead and halved, the chamber shaking with the force of his death, the Praetorian guards defeated and scattered, Kylo bleeding yet draped over her protectively, shielding her from the fallout even as his pain screamed through the bond.
An eye for an eye, Ben, she whispers to him, hoping that he'll hear, that he'll understand even as she herself doesn't quite.
A life for a life.
"The findings call for execution in even the most lenient interpretation, General Organa. You know this."
The chair of the tribunal is a graying, bespectacled Tarsunt with a cool, appraising stare, and Rey watches as Leia raises an eyebrow at his clipped tone.
"Under whose laws, Dand?" the general asks coolly. " I was unaware that the Resistance had codified sentences for charges such as these. Hence this tribunal's presence."
The Tarsunt does not smile. "We have not weighed this lightly, General. There can be no other punishment meted out to the Supreme Leader of the First Order."
"The First Order has been defeated, their remaining fleet scattered or captured, in no small part due to the detailed intelligence provided to command by Kylo Ren."
"Intelligence which we had no guarantee was accurate!"
"But was." There's fire in Leia's eyes, and the diminutive woman has risen to her feet, staring down the tribunal with the passion and grit that Rey imagines has grown only more terrifying with age. "Not to mention the fact that our investigations have proven that he was the one who transmitted the initial warning about Starkiller Base to D'Qar. It could be argued that the Resistance itself would have been defeated long ago without that intervention."
"Are you prepared to argue this, General?" The Tarsunt stares at her over his glasses. "Does a mother's love so blind her to the need for justice?"
"This is not justice." Luke has risen to stand beside Leia, and Rey can feel the calmness he radiates even as the tension in the room rises. "This is vengeance. There's a difference."
"The leader of the First Order, a man who personally executed so many of our own forces, has fallen into our laps. You expect us to spit on the graves of our fallen and allow him to live?" a blue-skinned Squamatan pilot interjects, her pointed teeth bared in anger.
"He gave us the information to destroy the First Order's fleet and ended this conflict," Leia fires back.
"The least he could have done, considering..."
Rey presses her thumbs to her eyes as the room devolves into a volley of back-and-forth shouting until the Tarsunt angrily calls for order.
"Enough bickering like children," he says, white fur bristling. "What do you then propose, General? A parade of gratitude? A statue raised in tribute somewhere in the Core worlds?"
Leia exchanges a glance with Luke, who nods. "We thought exile a fitting punishment. A year's hard labor, perhaps, far out of Republic territory but closely supervised."
"Time to reflect on his crimes," Luke adds quietly. "To understand the gravity of it. It's difficult for him, being back in the Light after so many years. But death isn't the answer to it."
The Tarsunt stares at Luke and Leia for a long moment, exhaling on a deep, heavy breath before turning his attention to Rey. "I'd like to hear from the girl," he says finally. "You've no doubt noticed two telling vacancies within this tribunal: Commander Finn and General Dameron both recused themselves on your behalf. And now you sit with those arguing for leniency."
He leans forward on his elbows and props his hands against his chin. "I understand that Kylo Ren tortured you, Rey." His voice is soft, almost fatherly, and Rey bristles at it. "A brutal interrogation, similar to the one he dealt to then-Captain Dameron. We were lucky to save your friend Finn's life from the wounds Ren inflicted upon him in battle — a battle for you, as I understand it.”
He leans back in his chair. “You witnessed the destruction of Hosnian Prime, the power of Starkiller Base, the battle of Crait. So very many lives lost under Kylo Ren's blade and to the forces of the First Order."
His gaze is pointed, dark, accusatory. "But tell me, girl. Tell me what you think this man's punishment would be."
"Damn it, Dand, you can't do that to—"
"You weren't there." Rey's voice is quiet but firm as she stands, and she can feel the tremor of the Force beneath her skin, in her blood. "At the end. You didn't see any of it. None of you did. " She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. "What those last moments looked like, what it felt like when Snoke fell."
She can feel Luke and Leia watching her, can feel Leia's total stillness.
Rey swallows hard, feels the sting of angry tears as she opens her eyes and stares down the Tarsunt.
I didn't want any of this, she thinks bitterly towards him, towards the absent figure whose Force signature is silent beside her own. I didn't ask for the Force, I didn't ask for the weight of it all, I didn't ask for our fates to be so damned intertwined. But this is what the Force wills. And this is what I have to do.
"He saved my life," she says, and her voice is tight in her throat. "There, at the end. I wouldn't bend, wouldn't give up the Resistance, and Snoke told him to…” A beat, a flash of memory, and her heart clenches painfully. “But he — Kylo — he killed Snoke instead."
The memories run fast and dark: Snoke's disbelief and fury as the Skywalker saber ignited, Kylo's hand coming sharp around Rey's wrist and pulling, the dance of their blades against the Praetorian guards, fighting back-to-back so easily, as seamlessly as if they'd always stood together, and there, in the very last moment, a roll of lightning, a flashing blade, agony spearing white-hot through the bond as Kylo fell, shielded, held.
The tribunal is silent.
Rey blinks back the memories, blinks back the tears she doesn't quite understand.
"He saved my life," she whispers. "It's my turn to save his."
She reaches blindly under the table, past Luke, to clutch Leia's hand.
She meets the General's eyes, sees her own tears reflected back at her.
His mother understands.
The tribunal deliberates for hours.
Rey spends much of that time hunched down in her chair, biting at her fingernails.
There's still a kernel of darkness deep within her that she hasn't managed to vanquish completely, and it whispers to her that there's still time, she can change her mind, didn't she want to see Kylo destroyed, this man who had hurt her and her loved ones so? Didn't she want to watch the sun rise over the gallows as he was sent to his death, just a fraction of the pain he'd meted out handed back to him? Wasn't that fair? Wasn't that just?
"Here." Rey starts as Luke appears silently beside her, handing her a glass of water. "You look like you could use this."
Rey throws back the contents gratefully, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. "Are they almost finished?"
"Leia should be back in a minute or two. Says they've reached a decision."
Rey is quiet, thumbing at the edge of the glass. "And if they don't agree with us?"
Luke says nothing, merely places a comforting hand on her shoulder.
The tribunal members file in silently, once more taking their places upon the dais. Leia returns at Luke's side, and Rey feels her heart clench as Luke wraps an arm around his sister's shoulders and stares, stony-faced, to the Tarsunt as he clears his throat.
"This tribunal has reached a decision in the sentencing of Kylo Ren," he says formally, powering up a datapad and beginning to read. "Upon careful consideration of testimony and mitigating factors to the stated crimes, we hereby sentence Kylo Ren to one year's solitary confinement in the Outer Rim territories."
Leia clutches Rey's arm, and the general is unable to contain a strangled sigh of relief.
"This will include monthly deliveries of food and essential supplies via remote drop on droid-controlled missions," the Tarsunt continues.
Leia's grasp is painfully tight, and Rey can feel the wary relief radiating from her and Luke.
But Rey is a hardened veteran of bargaining, and she appraises the Tarsunt with the shrewdness of a hungry scavenger waiting to hear a price.
"However."
She tilts her chin up, waits.
"This year of isolation will be total. Ren will not be entitled to possession of any... shall we say diversions: no datapads, no holos, nothing that would be categorized as reading material or entertainment. There will also be no off-world contact of any kind. No letters, no transmissions, no comms."
The Tarsunt levels Luke with a sharp gaze. "You wanted the prisoner to have the time to 'reflect' on his crimes. Under such conditions, I imagine he'll have little choice."
"That's not fair."
Luke and Leia stare at her as Rey narrows her eyes at the Tarsunt, who folds his hands and eyes her patiently.
"You've never lived like that, have you?" Rey continues, ignoring Leia's troubled glance. "In that kind of quiet, that isolation? Because I have, and it's a brutal thing, to be alone like that."
"Rey." Luke's voice is gentle but warning, and she bats his comforting hand away.
"I understand you did it for a number of years, Rey." The Tarsunt's tone is blunt, forceful, the threat of a harsher decision behind it. "As did you, Skywalker, if you'll recall, and neither of you as punishment for crimes against the galaxy. Surely you don't consider one year's isolation a fate worse than death?"
The word hangs in the air, heavy, foreboding, and Rey bites her tongue.
"Besides, girl," the Squamatan notes, glancing at the Tarsunt, "we did allow a provision of mercy, if it should be too overwhelming for the wretch."
"And what might that be?" Rey bites at her.
The Tarsunt stares at her for a moment.
"We've discussed the logistics with a member of our munitions team. He assured us that it's possible to load a depleted gas cartridge into a blaster. Just enough for one shot. Just in case Kylo Ren should find it necessary."
Rey's blood runs cold.
Distantly, she hears the Tarsunt reading out the prohibited list of items and communication channels, everything from commlinks to satellite droids.
She pushes back from the table, rises and makes her way to the far doors exiting the chamber.
Luke and Leia call to her, and she can hear a rumble of disquiet through the tribunal members.
Rey ignores them all, fairly slamming the doors behind her as she exits the chamber.
She didn’t know what she wanted for Kylo... for Ben when all was said and done.
But it wasn't this.
The Resistance base's holding cells are sequestered far underground, beneath even the tribunal chamber, far from natural light, fresh air, any semblance of freedom. It's a gleaming-white compound, flooded with artificial light, rarely-used.
There had been a number of high-profile captures in the wake of the First Order's defeat, but justice had been far easier to determine for those; their crimes were straightforward, officers and the rank-and-file alike refusing the peace of surrender in favor of a fighting retreat.
Rey had heard that the sheer numbers had necessitated the re-opening of a penal colony two systems over, at least for now, until identities could be verified and sentences carried out.
The base compound holds only one prisoner.
Rey's shoulders are straight, her gaze narrowed and purposeful as she strides down the corridor towards his cell, willing her steps not to falter as she approaches the Force-shielded bars.
It's like being stabbed, every time she sees him. He's lounging on his narrow cot, seemingly at ease as he scrolls through a datapad, one leg crossed over the other, his back slouching against the duracrete wall.
"Well?" he asks, and his deep voice seems to echo through the corridor. He doesn't look at her.
Rey grinds her teeth, wills her hands to uncurl from the fists she's clenched at her sides. "You didn't come to the sentencing."
Kylo smiles, humorless. "Why would I, when I figured you'd tell me the results?" He powers down the datapad, sets it to one side. "Even though we both know you don't have clearance to be here. How many guard droids did you disable along the way?"
"Six."
"Impressive." He looks at her then, and even though there's a hint of a smile on his lips, his eyes are tired, reddened, and there's a scruff of beard along his chin.
He looks exhausted.
Rey tentatively reaches out through the bond and finds herself shut out yet again.
"Don't." Kylo closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall. "I'd rather not have you in there."
Rey laughs, bitter and humorless, and curls her hand around the bars of his cell.
"Really," she says. "Like I would."
"Save your indignation for my funeral, Rey. Have they set a date?"
"No. They didn't vote for execution."
Kylo is quiet for a long moment, slowly opening his eyes to stare at her, something inscrutable in their depths.
"Exile," Rey continues, and the word hangs between them. "There are conditions. I'm sure they'll explain them to you when they announce it formally. They were still hammering out the details when I left."
"Conditions." The word is flat, unfeeling.
"No contact with the outside world. No diversions. They'll send you food and supplies via remote drop, but you'll have to make your own way outside of that."
"I see." Kylo's voice is disturbingly unaffected, and he seems to be staring at a point somewhere past Rey's shoulder.
Rey scowls at him. "Maybe it's not paradise, but you'll be alive. And I'll have you know, it wasn't easy to keep your neck out of a hangman's noose. We fought hard for you."
"Yes, well." Kylo's lips twist into a sneer, and he turns his back to her. "Thank you for your impassioned defense."
Rey snarls, slams her hand against the cell bars. "You ungrateful brat," she hisses. "Your mother called in every single favor she had, swore blood oaths and bargained in back rooms just for a shred of hope of saving your life. Luke has every reason in the world not to stand up for you and he did."
"And you?" He's not looking at her, and the words are strangled.
Rey closes her eyes, rests her forehead against the bars. "You know why I did it."
She reaches out again, finds the wall shutting her out lifted just a little, so slight he likely isn't even aware of it, and she slips beneath it, finds the path to his innermost thoughts, down, down, down...
Rey’s eyes fly open, and she staggers back, feels his pain and anguish like poison burning through her veins.
"You wanted to die," she manages, can barely speak over the rolling wave of his emotions, and she cuts herself off before she drowns in it. "You wanted them to sentence you to death. Damn it, Ben."
"There's no other way this ends for me," Kylo bites back. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he's huddled in on himself. "No way it should, not after everything."
His pain is radiating outward, and it's everything Rey can do to hold fast, anchor herself beside the bond and not be caught up in it. "That's the easy way out," she says, willing him to look at her. "The coward's way. You're many things, Ben Solo. But I've never known you to be a coward."
"And what do you know?" He's at the bars before she can even blink, towering tall, his dark eyes boring down into her. "You don't know half of what I've done. Just because you're in here," he says, jabbing one finger against his temple,"doesn't mean you know every life I've taken, everyone I've hurt, everything I've done that eliminates any other path to absolution than the one that sees my last breaths at sunrise."
He's breathing hard, wild-eyed, and Rey suddenly hates the force field wrapping around the bars and keeping her from him, from offering a steady hand to anchor him back in reality.
"Would you have seen me off, Rey?" he asks, and she falters, can never quite understand the way something in her jolts in those rare moments when he says her name. "Would you have been there in the last moments? Would you have told my mother that I..."
Kylo seems to deflate then, and he falls to his knees, rests his head against the bars and closes his eyes, pained. He says nothing further.
Rey feels a knot of unshed tears in her throat, and she tucks her hands against her sides, averts her gaze. "It doesn't matter," she says. "That's not your path. Not now."
"You should have left me," Kylo grinds out. "In the throne room, during the trial, during sentencing. You should have had an ounce of self-preservation and run as far and as fast as you could."
"It's not that easy and you know it," Rey bites.
Kylo sighs and closes his eyes, nods in weary understanding of the same reasons he'd always found himself seeking her.
Because we're bound.
Because we must exist side-by-side.
Because you saved me.
"How long?" Kylo murmurs. He's still kneeling by the bars, avoiding Rey's gaze.
"A year," Rey says quietly. "I don't know if they can extend it. But it was a year when I left. Luke said it'll give you time to reflect. Maybe learn. Seek forgiveness."
"Optimistic timeline."
"I don't think it has to end there." Rey chews her thumbnail, glances down the corridor at the sound of approaching voices. "I think this is just the beginning."
Kylo tips his head back from the bars, stares up at her, and the dark eyes she's grown used to seeing narrowed in anger are empty, defeated. "I suppose we'll see what happens in a year,” he says. “Assuming I don't die in exile."
Rey feels a cold shiver down her spine.
Just one shot.
Just in case.
"Promise me." The words have passed her lips before she even realizes she's said them.
Kylo stares at her.
"Promise me you'll come back in a year," she continues. "Promise me you'll live that long."
Because this isn't over.
Because there's so much we haven't discussed.
Kylo is silent, rising from his knees and moving to sit down heavily on his cot, his head in his hands.
He doesn't speak for a long moment.
Then, barely a whisper:
"Promise."
Rey seeks the thread of his consciousness through the bond, tries to find meaning behind his closed-off posture, the way he's staring at her like a wary, caged creature, but the walls are once more firmly in place.
It takes six days to finalize the logistics involved in Kylo Ren's exile. Rey removes herself from the deliberations, spends long hours in the base gym as she catches bits and pieces of arguments about this planet or that one, types and amounts of food rations, conditions and contingencies to be held for the next year.
Leia tells her of each development, and the general's eyes are often red.
The day of Kylo's departure from base is overcast, cold, and Rey does not see him off. Instead, she stares at the chrono in the gym, curls her fingers inside the boxing gloves on her hands, and tries to imagine the scene occurring down-base at a quiet launching pad.
"Ready to vent some frustration, Rey?"
She turns her attention from the chrono and breaks into a relieved grin as Finn appears through the gym's double doors, sparring gear in tow. "You read my mind," she says, leaning in as he wraps a comforting arm around her shoulders.
"Speaking of mind-reading." Finn falters for a moment, glancing toward the south end of the base. "Are you..."
Rey closes her eyes for a heartbeat. "I don't want to talk about it. Not now."
Finn nods and slips on his punch mitts, striking them together. "Right. No talking about anything dark and gloomy today. Just you and me and that badass right hook of yours. Put 'em up."
Rey laughs and easily settles into a practiced series of punches and jabs. It'd been Finn who had first insisted on teaching her how to throw a solid punch, her experience in bare-hand combat somewhat lacking compared to the comfortable range of her staff and saber.
She drifts back, remembers to not long after the Battle of Crait, bearing fresh scars from her frantic battle at Kylo's side and his thoughts terrifyingly tangled with her own, when Finn had slipped the gloves onto her hands and set her in the practice ring.
"I don't know anything about all of this Force stuff you're caught up in," he'd said, "but if you ever go up against him again, I want you going in with every advantage you can possibly have."
The 'him' had hung unspoken between them, in the faded burn scars along Finn's shoulder and spine, in the rolling darkness that lay parallel to Rey's own consciousness.
"Been awhile since we did this," Rey says, rolling her eyes with a grin as Finn blocks a particularly pointed jab. "Since things were calm enough to do this."
"Not sure if they're all that calm now," Finn grunts as Rey slams into him. "The First Order may be gone, but there are so many systems who collaborated, power vacuums, broken treaties..."
Rey grins. "Listen to you. You sound like a senator."
Finn hesitates just a fraction too long, and Rey halts in her punching, eyes him quizzically. "Finn?"
He avoids her gaze, slipping one hand from its mitt to rub at the back of his neck. "Not a senator," he admits, "but, well, Leia, with the New Republic re-forming and trying to bring everything back together... she said she wanted, well, someone she could trust."
He offers her a helpless half-grin. "Her words, not mine. Nothing super political or anything like that, just making sure that the Resistance is 'well-represented'. Whatever that means."
"Where is she sending you?" Rey feels suddenly cold, and she glances to the chrono, registers that Kylo's ship must be gaining atmo at that very moment.
"Coruscant. Into the belly of the beast, I guess."
"Just you?"
"I..." Finn flushes, and Rey stares at him curiously. "Me and Rose. You know, after Canto Bight, I think she — we decided that we, um. We work pretty well together."
Rey can't help the slow smile that crosses her features, and she removes her gloves and tosses her arms around Finn's shoulders in a tight hug. "I think you do, too," she murmurs, then grins wide. "'Big Deal.'"
"Oh Force, I told you not to bring that up again."
"Rey?"
They pull apart at the sound of Leia's voice calling softly from the doorway, Luke silent and somber at her side.
"General." Finn stands at attention, and Leia smiles fondly at him.
"At ease, Commander. This isn't a formal call. I just wanted to discuss a few logistics with you before your transport is scheduled to leave."
Rey stares at her, then at Finn. "Wait. When are you starting this mission of yours?"
Finn hesitates, glancing at the chrono and avoiding her gaze. "2100 hours," he admits.
"Today." Rey's voice seems to catch on the word.
Finn frowns a little in worry, squeezes her shoulder. "I just found out yesterday. And I didn't want you to worry, not with everything going on."
"No, no, it's fine," Rey waves off his explanation, the open concern in his eyes. "I just," she starts. There's a knot in her throat, a sharp pain in her chest. "I'm so happy for you, Finn."
"Really?" He's unsure, appraising her face, rubbing her shoulder in comfort. "Rey, if you don't want me to go, I'll tell them to take their mission and..."
"Commander." Leia's voice is humored but stern.
Finn winces. "Sorry. But seriously, Rey."
"It's fine." Rey manages a smile, lets Finn draw her into a tight hug and holds it as long as she can.
He's her best friend, one of the dearest people in the world to her, and she loves him so much, this frightened man who'd become the next great hope of the Resistance, a hero, one of the brightest lights in the galaxy. He can help so many people, help bring about the next stages of peace in a world balanced on a knife's edge and facing the void.
Instinctually, Rey knows this, understands this.
But, she thinks, closing her eyes, allowing herself to be held and comforted for just a fraction longer...
She's tired of doing the right thing.
She's tired of having to be strong.
And she's tired of people leaving.
"Rey?" Finn's voice is quiet at her ear, thick with concern.
Kylo's end of the bond is silent, unreachable. Finn is pulling away.
Rey manages to smile and hold herself tall.
"You'll do great," she says.
Leia speaks quietly with Finn for long moments as Rey ducks her head and walks to Luke's side.
The Jedi is taciturn as he glances sidelong at Rey. "You seem unsettled."
"I couldn't feel him," Rey mutters. "This morning, when he was supposed to depart. He's shut me out ever since the sentencing, back when I visited him in his cell."
"Where you weren't supposed to be, of course." Rey glances at him in annoyance, but Luke merely offers her a faint smile. "His ship departed on time. The tribunal finally settled on Arbooine as his destination. Leia fought hard for that — they'd wanted to place him on a far more desolate world, batted around the ideas of something iced over or deserted like Jakku. Arbooine may be isolated and a whole lot of nothing, but it's green and wooded and peaceful. The Rebellion used it as a remote outpost during the war."
"Better than he deserves, most likely," Rey gripes. "I'd have dropped him straight down onto Jakku. See how he manages to gain his portions or navigate the Goazon Badlands."
"Angry with him, are you?"
"Aren't you?" Rey bites. She crosses her arms tightly over her chest, the memories of her and Kylo's last conversation rattling deep. "He wanted to die, Luke," she says quietly.
Luke nods. "I know, Rey. I know."
Finn takes his leave with one last tight hug around Rey's shoulders. "I'll see you soon, okay?" he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
Rey nods, closing her eyes tight. "Always."
Kylo's side of the bond is still dark. Silent.
"You didn't mention it, there at the sentencing," Leia says over a cup of caf, and Rey stares at her.
The base cantina is quiet, empty but for herself, Leia, and Luke at one of its long tables, cups of steaming caf between them.
"The bond you two have, whatever it is." Leia fixes Rey with a pointed look. "When they listed out all of the restricted forms of communication during his exile. You didn't bring it up."
Rey is quiet, turning her hands over in her lap. "No one asked," she says finally. "Did you mention it these last few days?"
Leia sips her caf but says nothing.
"We thought it better not to call attention to it," Luke finally offers. "The tribunal was already uncomfortable with your defending Ben, and more than a few of them are skittish and superstitious when it comes to the Force." He frowns. "This trial has been a tightrope walk, Rey. One wrong step can have grave consequences."
Rey furrows her brow and stirs her caf. "But if the tribunal doesn't know about the bond we have, why can't I feel him? I didn't even feel his side of the bond when he left."
Luke and Leia exchange a long glance.
"Ben needs total isolation to find something approaching inner peace, to seek that balance with the Force that he's never been able to achieve," Luke says after a moment. "That's why we'd advocated for his exile in the first place — to give him the time, the space, the silence to reflect on everything he's done."
"And maybe give us the space to forgive him," Leia says quietly. "In time."
"And what does this have to do with me? With the bond, or whatever it is?"
Luke sighs and runs a hand through his graying hair. "We spoke to Ben before his departure. He agreed to shutter his side of the bond for the duration of his exile. To keep you out."
There's a sudden spike of anger deep within her chest that Rey doesn't understand, and she finds herself rising to her feet before she even realizes it. "And you didn't ask me? You didn't tell me?"
"Rey," Leia starts, reaching one hand out comfortingly.
"He's keeping us out as well," Luke continues. "Rey, he can't heal from everything he's done if he's still tethered to the people who care about him."
"I don't," Rey bites, slamming her spoon down next to her caf. "I just. I wanted..."
Luke and Leia look at her expectantly, but the anger rushes out of her all at once as she realizes she does not know what to say.
Luke takes a long, slow draught of his caf. "Rey," he says, "from the moment we realized what existed between the two of you, that day on Ahch-To, you've followed me and begged me to break it, to find a way to release you. You have that freedom now, at least for awhile. Why not use it?"
Rey's hands ball into fists beneath the table, and she can't help but glare at Luke, his utter calmness, the untroubled way he sips his caf.
They're his family, he and Leia.
She's just a scavenger from the wilds of Jakku, a latent Force-sensitive caught up in something far too grand and inadvertently shackled to the sad-eyed boy they'd lost.
And yet it's beyond her capacity to describe it to them, how deep the bond between she and Kylo runs, how irrevocably tangled they've become in the last year.
How she feels his loneliness at night, how he breathes in hers and somehow they're so very lonely together.
How their conflict and compassion is multiplied and mirrored back at each other, and it's acid-tinged pity and bone-deep empathy all at once.
How she's felt his pain and anguish every minute since Snoke had turned ice-blue eyes to her and commanded him to kill.
Ever since he couldn't.
And she can't describe, not to them, not even to herself, how she thinks to his exiled home far beyond the stars, thinks of him alone in the silence, and is afraid for him.
"Rey?" Leia's voice is soft and pulls her from her reverie. "Rey, are you all right?"
"You're right," Rey says quietly, sits back down and stares into her caf. "This is the best thing for him, I'm sure."
Luke nods, but it's a heavy, somber thing. "Time will tell."
Outwardly, Rey offers him a half-hearted smile, sips her cooling caf.
Inwardly, she reaches out across the stars, seeks that dark tendril of the Force that has lain beside hers for the past year, and is dismayed to once again find nothing.