Bonded || Kylo Ren

Episode III: Turned Tides

Rise of Skywalker

"you call it madness, i call it love." – Don Byas

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"You lied."

She whipped her head around at the sound of his voice. Flinching only because she had thought she was alone, not because he frightened her. No, she couldn't be frightened of him. Not after everything that had happened, and what she now felt for him.

She swallowed, her mouth feeling dry and her mind numb. Unable to find the right words she continued to stare at him. He was holding onto the broken pieces of that mask – the mask of Kylo Ren. His eyes were still staring at the mask as she stood dumbfounded before his attention fell to her.

"You lied to me," his voice dropped into a whisper.

An emotion overwhelmed his features. One that she had only briefly seen before, when he had asked her to make an impossible choice and she couldn't do it. Only now it wasn't masked with that temper of his. And it was tearing her apart.

"Ben, I've never lied to you," she said assertedly.

"You left me."

"That's not true." Her brows furrowed as she stepped towards him. "You know it isn't. I tried to help you and you gave me no choice. What was I supposed to do?"

There was a long pause. His eyes looked between hers, a torn expression written on his face. One that reflected her own as she stood in front of him. He towered above her, robed in black and wearing scars she had given him, and yet he looked so vulnerable.

"You weren't supposed to leave me."

Rey stretched out her hand slowly, her heart pounding like it had on Ahch-to. He stared at her hand, watching it as it held onto his.

"We're connected, you and I," she said softly. She watched as his gaze returned to her.

"Rey," he murmured lowly. The very sound of her name spoken so tenderly made her cheeks flush with colour.

She had known that he had felt something for her. She had seen it in his eyes when she had first reached out to meet her touch and when she had closed the ship's doors on him when they were in Crait, but now it wasn't clouded with his loyalty to Snoke or the First Order. It was real – what she felt for him and what she assumed he felt for her.

Her emotions stirred, an uneasy feeling settling in her stomach at the thought of losing him. He must know what he meant to her, that she needed him. That this war was so much bigger than them and yet it needed them the most.

"You think leaving all this behind is the only way. It isn't. We could turn the tide in this war and end it."

"I've done too much," he said self-loathingly.

"Yes, but there's always forgiveness."

There was a beat of silence before.

"Could you?"

"Yes." She placed her other hand gently against his chest, over his heart. Her voice thickening with emotion. "You could come home Ben. Come back to me."

He gently ran his thumb against her cheek, and she closed her eyes in a brief moment of relief. "Back to you," he echoed.

And with the warmth of his touch still against her cheek, she opened her eyes to find herself alone again.