Chapter Text

Ren felt the pull to the dark the moment he stepped out of his fighter and onto the ruins of the Death Star. It was intoxicating and sickening all at once. Ever since his first connection with Rey in the med bay, he could not deny the pull he had to her and to the light. They were a dyad in the Force, she and him, and her light almost felt like a part of him. The darkness in him was beginning to waver, and it was harder to keep his mask of indifference.

This was the true reason for why he had the black mask remade. He told himself that it was to further separate him and his power from his subordinates. He told himself it was to advance the fear of the monster… but he knew he was slipping. He was no longer driven to do what was required of him as Supreme Leader. He knew from years of practice how to act his part under the careful eye of Snoke – it was how he was able to fool him before his death – but now it felt like he was always pretending, and he was disgusted with himself. The dark side of the Force no longer fulfilled his deepest desires. It was just a fix. He was only an addict – an addict that now hated his addiction.

As Ren stepped further into the wreckage, he let the feeling of Rey guide him. He noticed that he was also following the dark. The other Wayfinder was here, he could feel it now. He knew that the Emperor had hidden one, just as Darth Vader had on Mustafar, and the clue she found on Pasaana led her here. He idly wondered if he should have searched for the other before he went to Exegol, but it was too late for that. Now he had to deal with the consequences.

He stopped at the edge of a room to listen. The Force was thrumming with dark waves from the direction of the door at the other side. It was intense and slightly overwhelming. The light that too often made its way forward in his mind began struggling at its suffocating effect. A lightsaber activated, but he could not see her yet. Something made him decide to wait. Whatever was going to happen would happen soon enough.

As if in answer to his thoughts, the passage to the next room opened and Rey stumbled out, falling onto her back as she tripped. She dropped the emperor’s Wayfinder and it tumbled toward him. He caught it.

The two Force users stood to face each other, and Kylo stood impassively as Rey ignited her saber. It was the darkest he had ever felt her in the Force. Her darkness was heady and potent, and he had to fight to not get sucked under it. This was exactly where she needed to be when she turned to meet him in the dark side. This was what he wanted… wasn’t it? Why did it make him feel sick?

“Look at yourself,” he said. His words fell on deaf ears. She stepped toward him. “You wanted to prove to my mother you were a Jedi, but you’ve proven something else. You can’t go back to her now,” he said. “…Like I can’t.” He refused to acknowledge that his voice broke at the mention of her. He waited for her response.

“Give it to me,” she hissed.

Kylo gasped as if she impaled him. In a way, she did. The darkness emitting from her pulsed directly through their bond in the Force and threatened to freeze his thoughts. It ached in more ways than he was willing to admit. But he could use this. He could make her see now that his side was where she belonged. He just had to make her see that she closed all options to her, except this one.

“The dark side is in our nature,” he tried to reach her again, “Surrender to it.”

“Give it… to me,” she repeated. Everything about her was coiled like a snake ready to strike. All she needed was a red blade to go with the power in her gaze. But Ren refused to let this undermine him. He would remain in control here.

Ren lifted the Wayfinder. He knew that the kind of power she was seeped in stole every ounce of reasoning. It was a power trip he knew well. Her focus would not be swayed until the Wayfinder, the center of her focus, was out of the way. He needed her with him.

“The only way you are getting to Exegol is with me.” He bent the Force to his will and used it to crush the device in his hand.

The tension in her body snapped as she screamed at what he did. She charged him, swinging her weapon with as much power she could muster. In an attempt to break her streak of madness, he dodged her attacks without igniting his own weapon. But she would have none of that. Her assaults became faster and more driven. She pushed her anger into him through the bond and when he finally blocked her lightsaber with his, the darkness surrounding its addict crushed his resolve and he had to give in.

Their fight was brutal in a way neither experienced before. Once Ren gave into the control of the darkness, he completely forgot about the light. They were one in the Force. They pummeled each other in cruel, Force-strengthened strokes that fed on each other’s blackness.

The duel led them out of the wreckage and into the spray of the wild ocean, but neither noticed. The focus was solely on their opponent and on the kick and pull of the dark side of the Force. Ren barely even noticed FN-2187’s attempt to get to Rey until she forced him back.

They were too equally matched. The connections to the deepest parts of each other would not allow for one to be more powerful than the other in the Force. But Ren did have one advantage. His physical endurance could carry further. With the harsh pace of the fight, she was beginning to tire, and he pushed that advantage.

In one charged blow, Kylo knocked his opponent to the ground and kept her there, completely driven by the darkness to finish what they started. He never stopped to consider the consequences of what would happen in the aftermath of his final blow. Her saber dropped. He would end this.

As his arm lifted to bring it down again, Kylo felt a blinding burst of light from the Force punch inside him from somewhere across the galaxy.

He stilled and a voice called out to him.

Ben.

Mom! His mind reacted to her as helplessly as it did to Rey.

She is not your enemy.

Her words ringing in his head made him finally comprehend what he was doing. He dropped his weapon in shock. As his saber fell, Rey took the advantage and caught it. She ignited it with a scream and drove the blade up through is chest.

The effect was like ice; three beings were paralyzed for a moment across the galaxy. Rey gasped as she felt the connection of a mother to her son between their bond. “Leia.”

On the other side of the galaxy, Leia’s connection to her son faltered in his sudden pain. She lost the fight in holding it, and many arms of the Resistance fighters around her lowered her to the ground as she lost consciousness.

Kylo Ren’s chest was still frozen as his eyes found Rey’s. She finally snapped out of the dark raging through her and disengaged the weapon. With nothing holding him up, his body crumpled as it fell to the wreckage.

So this is the end, he thought. He always knew it would end this way. He never deserved anything better than death. As he vainly fought to get air into his lungs, something new found him in his dying moments. He found regrets. He thought of his mother and regretted never speaking to her again. He thought of his father and regretted killing him. He thought of his life and his decisions since the night at the Jedi temple, and he regretted his actions. The face of every being he killed flashed in front of him and he regretted them too. But he mostly regretted every moment not spent with Rey.

All of these things passed over him in a flash, leaving him in despair and a cold acceptance. This was nothing more than he deserved after everything he had done. In his halting thoughts, he barely registered Rey’s hand on his chest, but he did notice her light.

Rey was once again a blinding light in the Force, and her light began to seep into his body and mind. He wondered if this would be the only mercy he received as he died. But he caught his breath again, and his mind raced to catch up with what was happening. The pain in his chest ebbed slowly from its sharp burn, and his mind, suddenly free from pain, was able to process what she was doing. She was giving him her life Force. She was healing him. His thoughts stuttered to a screeching halt.

All he could do was feel. It was like his entire being was being put back into place as the wound in his chest closed. He felt his aches and pains ebb way and the ability to fill his lungs was euphoric. Then he felt Rey. The bond was completely open, and he saw her as raw and exposed as he was. She was a kaleidoscope of spinning emotions that he could barely keep up with. He felt her fear, pain, shame, and remorse. But he also felt something else that was strong and warm, and he couldn’t understand it.

When she opened her eyes and met his, the only word he could think was “why?”

Instead of answering that question, she answered another. “I did want to take your hand. Ben’s hand.”

Without another word of explanation, she took her saber and left him to deal with the aftermath of his collapsing world. He vaguely recognized that she took his ship.

Kylo Ren still felt like he was gutted and bleeding out. But another part of him, the part that desperately wanted to cling to the light, realized that it was his darkness that was bleeding out of him. Kylo Ren panicked and tried to find the place of mind that consumed him only minutes earlier with power and numbness. But the light inside him, the light she ignited, would not let him smother what he felt.

A near death experience will make anyone stop to think, but Kylo Ren had so many of these that he learned long ago not to pay attention to the call of it. Thinking was dangerous. It brought out the fight in him between the light and the dark. It was easier to just deny it battle. Why can't I ignore it this time?

His mother, the other part supplied for him. She must have foreseen this. In the midst of their battle she reached out to him, her monster of a son, and pushed her love in to break the spell the darkness had over him. He felt her still, a steady hum of confident light that he purposefully carved out of him when he took on his name. Her actions just now had reconnected him to her. But why?

His wounded darkness lashed out. You know why. They only show you attention…, he rallied the old defense, they only care to stop you, because you destroy what they love. At any other time before this, the fighting light inside him would relent and back down. But this time, there was a new response.

But I felt her love. Why am I destroying myself?

Kylo Ren felt his world tip a little further into the light. No! He squeezed his eyes shut as the truth of this new thought gripped him. He fought to hold onto his anger. His anger would keep him grounded in the dark. It was too little and too late from his mother. He had to believe that. No one could love him… except Rey.

NO! He screamed at himself. He could feel the hope at such a thought and fought to destroy it. He held on to his hate. She doesn’t love you, she can’t! However, his mind had already made the connection of what he felt from her to those memories long buried of belonging and feeling safe. He felt it as a child with his parents. He even felt it in the Jedi temple from his peers before that terrible night - before Snoke twisted it. It was different somehow from his mother’s love, and he still didn’t understand it, but he couldn’t push the thought from his mind once he made that connection.

Kylo Ren was floundering under the weight of the light. He was losing his grip on his anger and hatred as they gave way to new hope. Fear was all he had left. He could use that. He called to mind again all the regrets that flashed before him and reminded himself that he would have to face all of these if he let go of the dark. He would have to face everything he had done and suffer the consequences.

The light in him was quelled. As much as he wanted to fight this fear, he didn’t have the courage. He was being torn apart. Again. When would it end?

He didn’t remember doing so, but he was now standing on the edge of the wreckage facing the waves below.

“Hey kid,” a voice called from behind him. He would always know that voice. While Kylo Ren fought not to turn, the other part of him took control in his desperation for help. He met the eyes of the man who was his father. He knew this wasn’t real; it couldn’t be. It was just a memory of their last moments projected by the Force.

“I’ve missed you, son,” the apparition said. How that statement was a flame to the fight in him. Hope burned just a little brighter as the implications of this memory hit him. Had his father really missed him even then, he thought.

“Your son is dead,” he said. The words sounded empty in his own ears. It was a lie that escaped from the reflex of memory. He knew it, and the vision of his father knew it.

“No,” said Han, “Kylo Ren is dead. My son is alive.”

But it can’t be that simple. “You’re just a memory,” Ren said.

Han smiled like it was that simple. “Your memory.” They both knew Kylo was losing this battle. “Come home.”

“It’s too late,” He tried. “I can’t face her after…” killing you. He left the last bit unsaid, but his father heard it anyways.

“I might be gone, but your mother, what she stands for, what she fights for… that’s not gone.”

Han looked his hurting son in the eyes and pleaded one last time. “Ben…”

That name broke the last bit of resolve Kylo Ren had. He had to let Kylo Ren go. Let the past die. You don't have to kill it. Just let it go.

He met his father’s eyes. “I know what I have to do but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.”

Saying it out loud made what he was about to do real. He was scared and couldn’t stop shaking. What if I can't do this? What if I can't let go?

His father’s hand came up and held his cheek as he did on that fateful day when the dark won.

“You do.”

That was enough. His hand lifted his lightsaber. He felt the cracked red crystal inside and the darkness in him that named itself Kylo Ren. This was how it happened. Kylo Ren would die today, just not how he thought. But there was so much still that he wanted to say. The emotions in him burned but all he could find was one word…

“Dad…”

A smirk made its way to Han’s face. “I know.”

With a new resolve, a new hope, a new strength, and a new life, Kylo Ren breathed his last and Ben Solo cast him and his lightsaber to the graves of the ocean.

And it was finally quiet.