The Balance In Between - A Reylo FanFiction

take my hand, my whole life, too

A heartbeat passes. Two.

Three.

He remains in front of her, hand stretched out hopefully still, despite the long, drawn out silence and her utter lack of response.

He doesn't push. Doesn't beg any further than that breathy, broken, "Please."

He's normally too proud to beg--but for her, for what thrived between the two of them, he would grovel and scream and rip the world to shreds. Rey knows that now. Knows the depth and the ends to which he would go to keep her close and safe and with him.

The leather of his gloves crackles as he stretches out his fingers expectantly.

Her first instinct is to run and he can sense that. There are no barriers in either of their minds now, not after what just conspired. Not after the give and take of the Force bond throughout the fight with the Praetorian guards. The push and pull of light and dark, shrouding and encompassing each other in guidance as they brawled for their lives.

For this moment. This everlasting span of breaths where their future, both near and far, was to be determined with what Rey chose.

Master Luke had asked what she'd seen when she reached out into the universe.

Light. Dark.

Life. Death. Rebirth.

But also gray. So much gray. A balance in the world, in the Force.

She only saw that when she looked at Ben Solo.

Her second instinct is to grab her fallen weapon and defend herself, for she fears that the moment she denies his proposition, if she denies it, he will fly into a tantrum and whatever truce had been brought about would be severed.

He feels this as well. But he does not grow angry, or even irritated. He does not lie and tell her that he wouldn't try to stop her--because he would. He would drag her away kicking and screaming, and she knows that.

She also knows that even if he did so, he would regret it. He wants to give her this choice. He wants to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Kylo Ren--Ben Solo--holds out his hand.

He offers her the universe on a silver platter but all she wants is him.

She wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, too.

"If I take your hand," says Rey at last, trepidation shaking in her voice, "we have to go far, far away from here. From all of this. The First Order, the Resistance . . . I won't stay if you mean to turn me against my friends."

His hand does not fall as he huffs, returning to his usual impatience. It's evident that he's scoffing at her blind compassion for those in the Resistance's ranks. Friendship meant nothing to him. Rey's heart clenched; when was the last time Kylo had even had someone to call friend? Someone to protect, to encourage, to love?

It has been many years, he whispers down the bond. You are my first . . . friend in an age.

Rey brushes along the thought he sent her way, mostly because it broke her heart further, and ground out, "You said you wanted to create a new Order. I assume you mean to take Snoke's place as Supreme Leader with me at your side as your docile little apprentice."

"More than that," he interrupts, dark eyes blazing with heat. "You'd be more than my apprentice, Rey."

She remembers what he said in the elevator and the image he had sent in referral to what he had seen in the vision of the future they'd shared. Rey at his side, lethally elegant in all black with a slashing crimson smile on her cruel mouth. Darkness in her eyes, in her soul. Darkness all around her. An empress of the Dark Side.