Chapter Text

It was almost three months after the debilitating defeat on Crait that nearly left the Resistance shattered. The decimated fighting force was only recently able to pick up the pieces and rise again, a time when hope burned anew that Rose first heard the term “Force Bond”. And even though it was explained to her what it was, she didn’t really understand.

Rey had told her about the Force for certain, on more than one occasion. Rose could even recite a definition for it if pressed. But truly she couldn’t understand . It was like explaining colors to the blind, or a melody to the deaf. The Force was beyond her senses and thus, beyond her comprehension.

So on that day, when Rey told her what a Force Bond was, Rose didn’t really understand .

But one day, she would.

--

Being friends with Rey seemed entirely inevitable.

The girls had been bunked together in a dorm room after the Resistance re-inhabited an old Alliance base on the cold, mountainous planet of Nod Kartha. The base had been constructed nearly thirty years ago, but between political bickering and an increase Pirate presence, it had been abandoned before the Alliance even properly set up shop. The General had secured an uneasy truce with the “Privateers” of the planet, as they fancied themselves. The First Order expansion wasn’t exactly doing them any favors, and the tentative allegiances that the Pirates once held to the Alliance ensured that the two groups kept to themselves.

There were enough dorms for every member of the Resistance to have three rooms apiece, but the General insisted they treat it like the rest of their ranks were bound to fill the rest of empty rooms, merely momentarily off base. Just a minor setback. “Plus, the less energy we use per room, the more we can divert elsewhere.” she said to Rose one morning, pointing at a weapons system she would be repairing.

Rey was plenty nice, and a good friend to Finn. Rose often watched the two spar with wooden weapons. Or on rare occasion, Finn’s electrified Z6 baton against Rey’s saberstaff (though if she was being honest with herself, it was really Finn she was interested in watching). Rey was a frightening, wild creature in a pitched battle, striking like a graceful Pamarthen lioness. Afterwards the three retired to the girls’ shared dorm, chatting and laughing easily. Despite being the most powerful figure on the base, the Jedi was all goodness when not wielding a lightsaber with deadly skill.

They were often paired together for shifts in the hangar as they worked on repairing ships. Rey tearing them apart with ruthless efficiency and Rose putting them back together with expert precision. She also had to admit a partner who could levitate tools and grapple tricky cables with her mind was endlessly useful. They assisted each other diagnosing complicated problems and fell into a easy camaraderie almost right away.

Not that Rey was always easy to get along with. Rose could talk anyone’s ear off that was willing to listen. But Rey, a loner from Jakku, seemed to have some sort of social limit before she became overwhelmed. Her words spoken and listened to had a count and once that quota was hit she often excused herself to meditate in some hidden alcove or tuck into a wall panel to rewire circuits out of sight. No slight was meant, but Rose had to admit it stung a bit whenever she saw Rey’s retreating back, especially when there were so fewer among their number now. It was a time when any face was welcome, even if it wasn’t the one woman she wished to see more than any other. But every day Rey’s limit grew, and the scavenger opened up a little more, helping to fill that unfillable void.

And sometimes Rey was just...weird. She could blame a bit of it on her non-exposure to other people and growing up in near isolation, but some of it had Rose wondering. At times Rey stopped talking in the middle of a sentence or out of nowhere her head snapped up to look at some unseen thing, or cocked her head to listen to some unheard voice. The first few times had Rose looking up expecting Finn or Poe to appear, but there was nothing, no one. Just Rey being Rey.

Still, they were undeniably friends. Something sorely needed among the Resistance these days and clung to all the more tightly.

--

“Where did you get that!?” Rose gasped as Rey presented her with a bottle of Corellian whiskey one day three weeks after they met.

Rey gave her a cheeky smile. “I stole it.”

“You what!?” sometimes it was easy to forget her friend was more than just another mechanic. That she was a Jedi. A scavenger of Jakku. “You can’t just take things!” Rose petulantly exclaimed.

“Oh, well I guess I should just return this to the marauding Pirates then, so they can give it back to whoever they stole it from.” she said, her expression narrowing only slightly into a mild glare, though she was still smiling and still offering the bottle. Rose didn’t object any further, instead gathering up two glasses for the indulgent drink.

“Have you ever had this before?” Rose asked as she poured a small measure of the amber liquid into each glass.

Rey shook her head, her lips parting for a half-second as if to offer an explanation, but she quickly shut it. Rose understood. Rey hadn’t drank before. Hadn’t eaten candy before. Hadn’t soaked in a bath before. So many times life outside Jakku gave Rey unimagined indulgences and the one thing that always soured them was the pity of others. So Rose offered her none.

“Ok, then be careful, it packs a punch. In the best kind of way.” Rose responded quickly with a grin. She lifted her glass, Rey mirroring her.

“To good friends with sticky fingers.”

The glasses clinked and the amber liquid disappeared down the girls' throats, filled a second later by a chorus of coughing.

“R’iia, you weren’t kidding!” Rey sputtered.

“You want some more?” Rose offered.

Rey eagerly held up her empty glass.

---

Half the bottle had been depleted and an hour of jovial conversation and rancorous laughter filled the air. Rose was definitely a content and happy drunk more often than not, and Rey turned out to be incessantly talkative. The pleasant buzz in her head made her not mind in the least as Rey divulged more about herself than she had in three weeks previous and the whole month following. Endless babble about Jakku, her former “employer”, droids, Finn, Poe, Leia, and porgs.

Eventually though the conversation dipped into more depressing topics, seemingly inevitably. How could it not, given this time, this place, and these two people? Loss was a biting bitter thing that gnawed at the corners of their consciousness, often out of sight, but never for long.

“I miss her so much.” Rose had wept, tears streaming down her face. Her fingers continually brushing over her Haysian smelt pendant. “I feel like a part of me is just missing. Like some mornings I forget and I expect to see her in your bunk. Sometimes I think you are her under the covers, but then I remember.” There was an unspoken agreement that had developed in the course of their conversation; they would only give each other the raw truth here. Even if it hurt. Like bloodletting, they would bleed the truth until it purged them. Rey had a hand on Rose’s shoulder, squeezing comfortingly. She knew the scavenger girl was unused to touching others, but in that moment Rey didn’t care. They were friends, and Rey always helped her friends.

“When I remember there is just this...this hole, this gaping emptiness. A part of me that’s gone and I don’t think will ever heal. It never stops hurting.” Rose broke down entirely then, and Rey gathered her up in a firm hug. Full on sobbing with a blotchy face and runny nose, but Rey only offered a rag to the remaining Tico sister once her weeping subsided.

Rey had divulged her own pain not long after. “I know no one will ever choose me.” Unlike Rose, who had stared into hazel eyes as she mourned her sister, Rey focused on a particular point on the wall and her eyes were dry. Never once did she face Rose, instead her locked gaze intently bore a hole into that one particular spot. “My parents left me in that desert, sold me to Plutt for some drinking money. Everyone has something, someone they care about more than me. Finn left me once.” Rose nodded knowingly, she’d been told by Finn how the fear of the First Order had overwhelmed him. He likely had no idea what it meant to Rey to see him abandoning her on Takadona. Finn was the closest friend to both of the girls, a man they both held dear, if in different ways. But they knew if Finn had to choose, Rey or Rose, who he would pick. There was just the truth here.

“There was...someone. I thought he understood me, that he knew what it was like. He told me that I’d never be alone.” her eyes, still staring at those point on the wall, hardened. “I believed him. Maker help me, I thought for just a moment…” she closed her eyes then, as if whatever she was seeing was now too much to bear.

“What happened?” Rose asked softly, already knowing the answer.

A truth. No matter how much it hurt.

“He chose something else.”

--







That day, the day the Bond was first revealed to her, started as normal as could be. It was mid-morning on the base, and for once, something resembling warm in the high summer of Nod Kartha (though Rey would vehemently disagree, still cursing the mild temperatures as “kriffing frigid compared to Jakku”). Rose was elbow deep in a X-Wing engine, wondering where Rey and her crazy powers were and why she was working alone, when Finn had rushed in. He gently but firmly grabbed her by her other elbow, almost bodily dragging her to the landing pad. There was a look on his face that made her stomach turn in worry.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We’ve got company.” Finn said ominously.

“What?” she said, still bewildered by the former Stormtrooper’s demeanor.

“There’s an Upsilon-class shuttle landing right now, and every soldier is out there to meet it. The General gave the order twenty minutes ago, like she was expecting it.” Rose’s eyebrows shot up. Why was a First Order ship allowed into Resistance airspace? She’d helped repair the anti-aircraft weaponry herself, why hadn’t the General shot the enemy out of the sky? And why was Finn in the hangar with her?

“Why aren’t you there?” Rose asked, following his hurried steps.

Finn looked at her incredulously. “I-I had to find you first.” he said by way of explanation, though it really didn’t explain anything at all.

Still, time for talk ended as they met up with the bulk of the Resistance. While their numbers were still desperately low compared to what they had been three months ago, they had rallied. General Organa was a force to be reckoned with in the Galaxy, and she never stopped fighting. It seemed every day more flocked to their cause.

Twenty guards were armed to the teeth with blasters aimed at the ship that had only just landed, the wings retracted upwards. The engines ‘plink, plink plink’-ing as they cooled was the only sound in the yard, nearly silent as a grave. Every eye was trained on the ship, the tension so thick that the thin mountain air seemed almost heavy with it. The General’s voice cut through the stillness like a sharpened blade.

“Hold your fire.” It was more warning than order. The tone of Leia's voice taking on an unfamiliar edge that Rose hadn’t heard before. Who was on that ship?

The seconds seemed like minutes until the whine of hydraulics sounded and loading ramp slowly lowered, a figure standing at the top end of the ramp revealed. He was garbed in all black, tall and broad shouldered, with a pale scarred face smattered with beauty marks, framed by dark hair and burning with dark eyes.

It was the enemy of the Resistance.

It was the Supreme Leader of the First Order.

It was Kylo Ren.

The shock of the assembled men and women was palpable. Rose inhaled sharply, her heart thundering in her chest. Finn tensed, his grip on her arm tightening and pulling her close. Despite how much the crowd wanted the man in front of them dead, their loyalty to Leia Organa was stronger. No one moved a muscle.

Except for one woman.

“Ben!”

Rey darted out from somewhere in the crowd. If anyone had been inclined to shoot a second before, none dare move to fire now. The last Jedi sprinted up the ramp to meet the dark figure looming there. And if the identity of the ship’s occupant was a surprise than what happened next was total shock.

She leapt up at him, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug.

And Kylo Ren embraced her back, long arms looping around her body and holding her tightly. He held her like she was the most precious thing in the galaxy.

Rose would never in a million years think that the scene unfolding in front of her would ever occur, but her eyes didn’t lie. Eventually she couldn’t look on it anymore, whether from sheer impossibility that her friend was hugging a mass murderer, or that the scene felt too intimate, too private for her to be so baldly gawking at. The only place she could think to set her gaze on was at Leia. The General’s mouth was in hard line, her expression set and every bit the interminable steadfast Resistance general. But in her eyes there was a tiny ember of emotion Rose had see many times from the Resistance leader.

In her eyes, was hope.

--

“This is stupid,” Finn hissed in her ear, standing a little closer than what could be considered friendly. Rose glanced around, wondering if anyone would take notice of their proximity. Only Poe Dameron was at their side, and like everyone else, his attention was entirely focused on the dark figure haunting the landing bay as he descended the ramp. The guards surrounded him immediately once he and Rey reached the bottom, herding him towards the base proper. Towards his mother.

“If he wanted to, he could stop all the blaster bolts before they even hit him. Or just rip the blasters out of the guards hands.” Finn continued, his brow angrily knitted together in a scowl. Rose hated that look on his face. His was better suited to smiling.

Poe seemed to match his expression, something rare to see on the usually upbeat pilot. “He could invade their minds, make them toss away their weapons themselves.”

“Really?” Rose asked. She knew Finn and Poe had direct interactions with Kylo Ren, though they didn’t speak much on it. She’d heard all sort of tall tales of the new Supreme Leader, his brutality, his powerful darksider powers, but testimony from her trusted friends made the threat all the more credible. “So why are we all standing around here then and not ducking for cover?” she said, only partially joking. In truth she really wanted to flee back to the hangar, but she knew exactly why her friends were determined to potentially put themselves in harm’s way. After all, she’d done it herself, landing her in the med bay for a week and recovering two weeks more. All to save Finn.

And now they would all save Rey.

For some reason she hadn’t left Ren’s side. Was it some weird Force power that had her hugging a murderer? The the towering man bowed his head in front of General Organa and she couldn’t tell what the gesture was for. Paying her respect, in deference, in supplication? Rose couldn’t see his face from this angle to judge either way. His hands were outstretched, palms up, offering the General something. It was a black hilt, with unfamiliar cross-guards that took Rose a moment to identify. It was his lightsaber, and he was offering it up in surrender . Leia's face only became harder lines, her gaze judgmental, weighing the person before her scathingly. But Rey looked up at him with the oddest expression. Unbidden a thought emerged in Rose’s mind.

Maybe Rey was the one doing the saving this time.

--

Rose didn’t get to see her friend until late that night, long after the kitchens had stopped serving food. She’d grabbed an extra meal and waited on her bunk as the two moons circled past each other and her glow lamp was a droning buzz that lulled her to a barely conscious state. She sat up with a start at the grating sound of the dorm door sliding open on rusted track wheels. Rey stumbled inside appearing even more exhausted than Rose. Her hazel eyes widened as she caught sight of the mechanic.

“Oh, you’re still up?” she asked, surprised.

“Yeah...I grabbed you dinner.” Rose answered, gesturing to the cold meal sitting on Rey’s bunk. The taller girl’s face split into a grateful smile.

“Thank you, I thought I’d just have to wait until morning to eat.” she said before sitting on her bunk tucking in with her usual voracity. If there was an issue with the food’s temperature, Rey didn’t express any of it.

“I also...was hoping you’d tell me what was going on.” Rose hesitantly asked, her voice quiet. She didn’t fear her powerful friend, but she did fear upsetting her. She saw how much the weight of everything pressed down on Rey at all times. How a Nobody was now that last hope of the Resistance, the last Jedi. There were so many burdens for her to bear, and Rose was loath to add to them. But she had to know why .

There was silence then. Rey had stopped eating. Rose couldn’t ever recall anything that had Rey deemed worth interrupting her eating for. Finally she nodded. “I owe you an explanation.” she said finally. She took a deep breath, steeling herself and launching into her story, one Rose figured she’d already told several times today, repeating it by rote.

“Ben- Kylo Ren, and I are Force Bonded. That means our minds are linked and we can communicate to one another. It started while I was away on Ahch-To. When we first made contact with each other, we fought. After a time we started having more civilized conversations and I thought we had come to an understanding. I went to him on the Supremacy , hoping he would join us after he killed Snoke.” Rey’s hazel eyes grew a degree colder. “We know how that turned out.”

“After Crait we tried ignoring the bond. When we couldn’t we resumed fighting. Things were said.” Her lips curved into a smirk, “Mostly by me, I knew far more languages to swear in than he does. After we ran out of steam, we just...talked. At first about inconsequential things. Just what the other was doing, always avoiding information that would compromise the other. We avoided bringing up what happened. Eventually things got...personal.” Rey was pointedly looking at her food then.

“We got close. We care for each other.” Rey said softly. She braced herself before looking up at Rose.

And Rose could only stare back, stunned.

After the seconds dragged out, she finally asked, “So why is he here?” thankfully free of any inflection. Rey was her friend, but Kylo Ren was a monster. His influence had killed billions. Her sister. And now Rey...cared for him? She knew she needed to understand, but keeping her lashing anger in check wasn’t easy. Her stunned surprise did help smother it.

“I convinced him to defect.”

Rose could only gasp in response, before her eyes narrowed. “How do you know it isn’t a trick?” Rey didn’t see offended, if anything she was expecting this question.

“The Bond.” she answered. “I can see into his mind, his intentions, just as he can see mine. It wasn’t easy, I’ve been trying to convince him to leave from the beginning.” She paused, regarding Rose for a moment, then seemed to go off script once more.

“Do you remember that night we had the Corellian Whiskey?” Rey asked seemingly out of nowhere.

“Yeah.” And the headache the next morning , Rose thought, but didn’t voice aloud. She wanted to see where this was going.

“The man I told you about that night, the one who left me, it was him. He was there then, he could hear what I said about him. After he killed Snoke, he wanted me to turn my back of the Resistance, to join him. I couldn’t, of course, and he didn’t understand. I kept trying, every time we spoke, trying to pull him back. To be honest I think a small part of him wanted to leave since Ha--Starkiller, but he just dug his heels in. It always led to our most bitter fights. That night was the tipping point. I got him to understand that between Snoke and his own actions, he couldn’t get everything he desired. He had to determine his future, and the things he wanted were in direct opposition. He couldn’t have one with the other, he had to choose.”

Rose looked a little puzzled, like she was only seeing part of the picture. “What did he choose?”

Rey turned to her then, exhaustion weighing her down, like the last few months had been a toil culminating to this day. But then she smiled, a pure a wondrous thing, like she’d been given the greatest gift. The most precious thing in the galaxy.

“He chose me.”