Prologue

Black.

Red.

Smoke.

Heat.

A flash of light and the resulting wave of energy blasting them apart. 

In two very different locations across the galaxy, two young Force users jerked awake from their disturbed sleep at the same instant. Harsh, labored pants sounded in their respective chambers as both of them tried to leave behind the events of that fateful day.

Awake and asleep, memories of what had transpired on the Supremacy haunted Kylo and Rey. 

Kylo

Even as he tried to adjust to the reality of having the First Order essentially under his command, Kylo still hadn't come to terms with how the span of a day had upended his life. He had gone from servant to master, from a commander on a leash to the Supreme Leader, with just one stroke of his grandfather's saber. But he had also gone from ally to friend to enemy over that very same lightsaber. 

Kylo Ren was now the Supreme Leader of the First Order and the Resistance was at its lowest. He had faced down his uncle and mentor the way he'd wanted to from the time he'd left Luke's temple. But the one thing that he kept coming back to, the one enigma he kept trying to unravel, was Rey. 

She might be many things - a young woman, a survivor, the last Jedi now that Luke had become one with the Force, and a beacon of light to the Resistance. But to him, Rey was simply his other half in the Force.

And for the life of him, Kylo couldn't understand what had happened. He'd thought that they both saw the same visions when their fingers had touched across the galaxy through their bond. Her coming to him, to the Supremacy so soon after their bond had cut out, had only strengthened his belief in his assumption. 

And after their fight against Snoke's praetorian guards, he'd offered her exactly what he'd seen during his vision - the two of them standing side by side, ruling the galaxy and bringing balance to the Force.

But she'd rejected him. Not only had Rey refused to join him, she'd left him behind, unconscious and defenseless on a spaceship that was splintering apart. A ship filled with officers of the First Order, who wouldn't think twice before putting a blaster bolt through his brain if they ever found what really happened in the throne room.

Even after all of this, Kylo couldn't find it in himself to hate her. In fact, it surprised him quite a bit that while he felt hurt, disappointed with how things had turned out between them, and maybe a bit bewildered at the turn of events, the infamous Kylo Ren rage that used to engulf him like a suffocating blanket seemed to be entirely absent.

Whether that was due to having his mind to himself for the first time in his life or due to the fact that this was Rey, the woman he found himself incapable of considering an enemy, he didn't know.

In fact, Rey was as far from his enemy as could be. Her blazing light constantly pulled at the tiny flicker that stubbornly remained lit in his dark and ravaged soul. She was the first person after Le- his mother, who made him want to be better. Kylo may have given up on saving his soul, on going home, but Rey seemed to stubbornly believe that he could. And without even being conscious of it, the Ben Solo living inside Kylo Ren had started to wish she was correct.

Rey had become his guiding light. The bond they shared was his gravity. 

It had kept him grounded when Snoke had torn through his mind time and time again in attempts to turn him into the mindless monster his erstwhile master had wanted to make him after the events of Starkiller base. And it was keeping Kylo sane now, even when Rey wasn't by his side, had explicitly rejected his offer to rule the galaxy together and run off to save her so-called friends in the Resistance.

That the Force saw it fit to bond a creature like him to a shining light like Rey made Kylo want to believe that maybe, just maybe, all wasn't lost after all. Maybe someday, if not in this life then the next, if not in this universe then in another, Ben Solo or Kylo Ren, no matter who he was, might find happiness and peace after all. 

Rey

If Rey could be described in one word, it would be 'survivor'. Sheer determination and a never-say-die attitude had helped her survive and get past every single test she'd faced in life. Until now. 

This problem she faced couldn't be defeated by perseverance or determination and it left the young Jedi at odds with no idea how to proceed. 

Life on Jakku was difficult but not complicated. No matter what Rey had faced in life, she'd always been able to approach problems with a clear head. Her emotions had almost never interfered with what she needed to do to survive. Most problems in her life on Jakku had clear cut solutions. If you wanted to live, you had to learn to protect yourself and your hoard. Feelings and emotions didn't enter the equation. 

So now, faced with the emotional maelstrom that Kylo Ren had ignited within her, Rey didn't know what to do. Even as she wanted to hate him for putting her in a position of having to choose between him and the life of her friends, Rey also found herself wishing she could've taken his hand. 

What had happened when they touched hands on Ahch-To, how he'd slain his master, how for one exquisite moment, they'd danced as one, fighting back to back against Snoke's elite guards… The images flashed before her tired eyes while she tried to work on the Falcon's hyperdrive. The Force too seemed to have it out for her as Rey found it almost impossible to sleep without reliving that day once more in all its life-altering glory. 

She'd tried going without sleep but with almost everyone in the Resistance stuffed into the cramped quarters of the Falcon, it hadn't gone unnoticed for even a day before she'd received well-meaning but ultimately useless advice from half of them. Having so many emotions was in itself new and complicated to the young Jedi but now, Rey had to navigate them without worrying or alarming her friends and the rest of the Resistance. That they'd started to regard her as some kind of legendary figure who could fix it all with the twirl of a now non-functional lightsaber piled on the pressure. 

While the bond still seemed to be present, it hadn't been active, keeping her from close company with B- Kylo and that was her saving grace. 

Rey believed in the Resistance and saw first-hand how hard her friends worked just to survive another day. She had also seen just what sort of a monster Snoke had been and how much of a dictatorial regime the First Order was. Every righteous part of her screamed that she should be fully committed to the ideals of the Resistance and not even think about straying. After all, they had given her unstinting support, generous friendship and mentorship, and they'd taken her into their family and given her life more purpose than just survival. The First Order had done nothing but maim and destroy millions of innocent lives. Ideally as a Jedi, Rey should be fighting for justice and to bring about peace. As a survivor and a fighter, she should be battling the First Order in any way possible to help protect the lives of those who couldn't defend themselves. 

But Rey knew her Ben Solo shaped blind spot was preventing her from being who she needed to be, who the Resistance needed her to be. The Force had connected her to Kylo Ren in a bond that even the precious Jedi texts she'd stolen from Ahch-To couldn't seem to define. Without even having to confirm it, Rey knew that the bond, instead of disappearing after Snoke's death, had strengthened every day. So had the confusion she felt about Kylo Ren.

The man who the galaxy knew as Snoke's brutal Dark Side Force user and master of the Knights of Ren, she knew as the sad and lonely boy who had been preyed on since before birth by the dark. His fate had effectively been sealed since before young Ben Solo could do anything about it. But did that absolve him of all the crimes he'd committed or abetted as Kylo Ren? 

Rey didn't know and as far as she could tell, neither did he. But Rey also knew that she was the only one who understood him even remotely and he was the only one who had any chance of understanding her. Understanding and accepting not just the cheerful Rey who tackled galactic wars like she did a faulty hyperdrive on the Falcon but also the Rey who had abandonment issues and feared opening herself up to anyone in case they left, the Rey who'd never outgrown her insecurities about food and shelter and the Rey who believed she still had to earn her place with the Resistance or they would leave her behind.

The two of them, equally broken and damaged by life, had been bound together by the Force for some reason. Maybe they could heal each other given a chance. Maybe together, they could make a difference in the war that was consuming the galaxy. Or maybe, this was all wishful thinking… Maybe the Ben Solo she'd gotten glimpses of was a figment of her imagination and Kylo Ren was all that was left. 

But then Rey remembered Leia saying that hope was like the sun… Maybe she was right to pin her hopes on the son. If Rey weathered the night, she would see the sun, and with the sun might come answers she desperately seeked. 

A quick flash of images glimmered across her subconscious, making Rey smile for the first time in days. Different versions of Ben and Rey, all going through some version of their story.

But it was the last image in the series that had seared itself into her brain and made a permanent cherished place for itself in her heart. 

Wiping tears that had formed without her knowledge, Rey knew with an undeniable certainty that the visions she'd experienced just then were of the future… their future. Even if it wasn't in this future or this universe, but somewhere, somehow, some version of Rey and Ben would get their chance. 

And that was enough.