Chapter Text
Snoke’s arrogance led to his downfall, just as Rey had forseen. She just didn’t know how it would happen, or expect it to come with such immediacy. Kylo felt her surprise through their link, her momentary horror, and he might have been amused by her innocence had not circumstances compelled them to immediately engage in a battle with the Praetorian Guard, all of which were Force-Sensitive enough to make them a threat, had Kylo taken them on alone. Even with Rey’s help, it was a near thing.
But the beauty of their battle, the way they could reach across their link to fight in perfect sync, left him in awe. How could she fight by his side, their movements a perfect dance of death and precision, trusting her life to his and watching his back, and not feel what he did?
Snoke lied about their bond. Kylo knew that the moment the old mynock said the words, trying to cheapen what the Force had done in bringing them together. In regards to Rey, only one thing the now dead Supreme Leader got right. As Kylo’s powers mounted, growing in the Darkness, the Force made its own balance through Rey.
Light rose up to meet Dark, and Rey, untrained, untried, still a novice in the ways of the Force, was in every way his equal and opposite.
If only she understood things the way he did.
The instant Snoke died and their bond remained, she must have known the monster lied. The only reason he would have done such a thing, and attempt to kill Rey rather than train her himself, would be if he feared her, or what she could become. If the history of the Sith taught Kylo anything, it was that the Dark Side masters were always looking to trade up in apprentices.
But Rey did not understand their connection.
And perhaps it had not been wise to attempt manipulation of her feelings, of her loneliness, to turn her to the Dark side. His path diverged from Snoke long ago due to the old Sith's obsession with constantly whipping Keylo's emotions into a frenzy.
In the end, the Force favored her and what remained of the Resistance. Like vermin, they scampered away, living to fight another day, slipping through his fingers.
Kylo stood in the remnants of the old Rebel base as his men swept the area, following protocol, making sure nothing of value had been left behind.
“A waste of time,” Kylo muttered out loud, looking at the hand where his father’s dice had been, clenching it into a fist.
Hux came closer. “What was that, my lord?”
The sycophant coward had come close to death many times over the years, but Kylo recognized his usefulness as the Supreme Leader had. Despite his inability to squash the Resistance in a massive military maneuver, Hux could think outside of the academics of his military studies. He knew how to get results from people under his command. He could be valuable, at times.
And Kylo knew indiscriminately killing his military commanders would not serve him well in the long run.
“They are gone,” he stated firmly, opening his hand. “We must return to our ships and put our effort into our spy network. They will go underground, to regroup.”
Hux looked around at the Stormtroopers, digging through technology too old to be of any use. “Very well, my lord. At once.” He turned and began issuing orders to his officers, and Kylo’s will trickled down through the chain of command.
Kylo turned and left the bunker, fixing his expression in such a way as to ward off any who would dare speak to him. He made straight for his command ship, not even glancing at the crater where Luke Skywalker’s false image had baited him, tricked him, and ultimately defeated him. Watching the old Jedi laugh at him brought back all the pain and humiliation of the past, even the fear from the night he knew his uncle tried to kill him. Luke Skywalker, a legend in truth, held more power than Kylo had anticipated.
Snoke could use the Force to choke someone from a system away, but only if he had a visual of his target. He could never have forged that bond between Rey and Kylo. Luke, using all his power, had projected an image of himself that looked and felt real. Even still, Kylo could not make contact with that image and once he knew Luke to be a vision, it was over. He no longer felt his uncle’s presence.
But Rey. He felt her. He felt the environment she was in. He touched her and felt her skin's warm against his.
No one was powerful enough to create a bond such as that, with two mortal humans, and Kylo Ren knew it.
But the Force itself, a mystical thing, a presence binding him and every life in the galaxy together, created a link between the last member of the most powerful Jedi dynasty and a scavenger girl.
Which meant the two of them would come together again and again until they fulfilled their destiny. The Force willed it so.
The primary users of the Dark Side of the Force were unimaginative brutes. They always tried the same tactics, and those tactics failed spectacularly. Train in secret, lust for power, revenge, live in hatred. Then slip out of the shadows to confront the enemy at last. Rule underlings with a whip in one hand and promises too grand to ever fulfill in the other.
Even at their best, the Sith never ruled for long. The Old Republic’s rein over the galaxy lasted many times longer than Sidious’s Empire. Because there was one lesson the Sith never learned.
Snoke failed to understand what Ben Solo’s mother taught him, many years ago, when he was just a boy. She poured a cup of sand in his palm and told Ben to close his hand without losing a single grain. As the young boy’s fingers began to obey, sand slipped out with each movement. Panicked, he closed his fist faster, as tightly as he could, but then there was no room for all the grains and more fell from between his fingers.
“This is what the Empire never understood,” Leia told him, wiping the sand off the table and back into her hand. “The tighter the grip, the more people try to escape it. Just like the sand.” She held her palm out, flat. “Pour it onto my hand.”
He gave her the sand remaining in his grasp and just watched, and waited, while she held it silently in her palm, fingers still. “But give the sand a stable environment, and it remains.”
Her political acumen astounded everyone who knew Leia Organa Solo. Kylo heard story after story about her youth surprising people, her wisdom astounding them. But Leia came by it naturally, even before she knew the whole truth of her parentage. As a child of the most loved Queen of Naboo and the Chosen One from the Jedi prophecies of old, she was a force of her own. Even her power, with its limitations in the political arena, frightened the New Republic's senate enough that they pushed her out.
With the lesson of the sand, Kylo learned the secret of ruling an empire. Present a stable environment. Deal with your enemies, lest they upset the balance of your hand, but give peace and you will rule forever.
Wiping out the Resistance, or attempting to do so, proved a mistake of enormous proportions. Kylo knew he ought to have taken a step back from Snoke’s plans, but Rey’s rejection stung and an entire military fleet looked to him to avenge their leader.
Now he had only given the Resistance the very things they needed to rally people to their cause. They had a legend in the return of Luke Skywalker, a martyr in whatever fool flew that craft into Snoke’s ship at light speed, and a new hero in Rey the Girl from Nowhere. And they still had Leia, General Organa, at the helm. With Leia's leadership, Luke's mystical draw, and Rey's triumph over the new Supreme Leader, they would draw resistance fighters like insects to honey.
Kylo wanted nothing more than to shove his lightsaber deep into the walls of the ship, or beat every First Order lacky within his sight into oblivion, but he maintained in control. For the first time in his life, Kylo answered to no one, he had supreme power, and he must maintain composure. Despite all of this, he felt the empty chasm within grow larger, and darker. Colder.
“You're still lonely,” a quiet voice whispered into his mind.
He froze, standing in the middle of the corridor, and looked around for Rey. Her mind spoke to him as clearly as if she stood beside him, saying the words aloud. “Where are you?” he asked, eyes not seeing her.
“On your father’s ship,” she answered. “But I don’t feel like seeing you just now.”
Kylo narrowed his eyes and quickly withdrew into a small office, sealing the door shut behind him. “You are concealing yourself from me? How?”
This connection still felt strange and each time they communicated he learned something, about her, about the bond. They could share physical sensations through this bridge, but how? They could see each other more clearly than a hologram's image had ever been.
“Always curious,” she responded, her voice soft. “Even in the middle of all this, you want to figure out whatever freak thing this is, between us. People have died, Ben. On both sides, we have lost a lot of lives.”
Kylo sighed and ran his gloved hands through his hair, frustrated. “That happens in war.”
“You could stop it. All of it. You’re the Supreme Leader now. I can see it, in your head. No one has questioned your rule.”
He closed his eyes and reached out to her, through the Force. “Do you know what I see in your head?”
“Tell me.”
“Hope. A misguided, senseless hope that the Resistance made it out. Look around you, Rey. Who, exactly, is left? Not an army.”
Her voice came through softer, as though she moved away from him. “It does not take an army, Ben. It only takes one man.”
“I am Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order,” he shouted at her, his voice echoing off the walls of the room in which he stood. “Ben Solo is dead.”
“Like the past?” she asked. “The past you try so hard to outrun, but it keeps finding you, doesn’t it? We are who we are, Ben. Changing your name doesn’t change who you are. Knowing the truth of my parents' doesn't change who I am, either. I have to go now, Ben. I have other things to do.”
And she disappeared, her presence withdrawing the way it would if she stepped out the door. He was aware of her going, of their connection closing, and then she was gone.
Kylo Ren screamed in frustration and opened his eyes, grabbing the first thing in sight and physically hurling it into the wall. How dare she walk out on him? Again? He held the most powerful position in the galaxy, won at her side, in battle. How could she not understand what that meant? She ought to be here, with him, establishing a new order. Instead she ran away, closing the door of that damn ship on him, just like his father had on too many occasions to count. Rey should've been different. Rey should've stayed, should've understood the bond they shared was unique and powerful, instead of casting it and him aside to run off with Rebel scum.
She abandoned him, like everyone else. Used him to get what she needed, and vanishing.
Chairs and tables were quickly flung across the room, smashing into each other, into control panels, and for several moments the only thing in Kylo Ren’s mind was destruction.
Rage.
But then Rey stood in front of him, arms crossed, and glaring.