The Force Awakens

Chapter 29

Physically, I was not in fighting condition after Snoke hurled me across his throne room. Mentally, my mind throbbed like an open wound as it pieced itself back together from his invasive probe.

But in the Force, I had never felt stronger.

I had been right about what I'd seen. Luke had been wrong. Kylo Ren wasn't lost to us. Under his dark shell flickered a spark of light. He could be redeemed.

I joined him in combat against the guards, and we made a most formidable pair. In a blur of laser blades, one red guard fell, then another, then two more, and then a second pair. The Praetorians' weapons clattered to the ground next to their bodies while slashed curtains fluttered down like funeral shrouds.

When my fourth opponent tried to decapitate me, I pirouetted and swung, cutting through his armor and knocking him down. Kylo Ren had more difficulty with the final guard. The Praetorian thrust his pole-arm at Ren from behind and pinned down Ren's lightsaber, forcing him to drop it.

"Ben!" I locked the activation matrix on my hilt and tossed him the blue blade. Plucking it out of the air, he quickly parried what would have been a mortal blow, rolling his wrist, turning the blade into the guard's helmet.

The last of the First Order's most elite warriors crumpled to lie with his comrades and Supreme Leader on the scuffed and smoking floor.

Ben caught his breath. I did the same. Our eyes met, and I saw in Kylo Ren the good person he wanted to be.

But beyond him, I also saw the massacre that was being waged in space.

I rushed to the wall where the curtains had hung. An enormous window showed the Destroyers converging on the Resistance cruiser while the Supremacy continued its assault on the transports. From what I could make out, only ten remained.

I turned to Ben. "Order them to stop firing. There's still time to save the fleet!"

Ben loomed over Snoke's body with Luke's lightsaber still drawn, as if he wanted to stab his master again.

"Ben!" I said again.

He looked up from the corpse. "That's my old name."

"What?"

"It's time to let the old things die, Annie. I want you to join me." He seemed to grow in stature. "Snoke, Skywalker, the Sith, the Jedi, the rebels—let it all die. We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy."

My chest tightened. The throbbing returned to my head. The hope that had sustained me started to wither and die. This couldn't be happening. I had felt the good in him. I had seen the real Ben—Ben Solo. My brother.

"No, Ben, don't do this! Don't go this way, please!"

He chuckled at my plea. "Do you want to know the truth?" he asked. "About yourself?" His eyes twinkled, cruel and sinister. "Or have you always known, and have just hidden it away?"

I didn't want to listen to him. I wanted him to stop the charade and return to us, my mother and me. But I also wanted to know.

"Let it go," he said. "You know the truth. Say it."

I knew only what I feared. And what I feared was the truth of the voice from my dreams.

Stay here. I'll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise.

That was not the voice of my father, as I had long convinced myself.

The voice was my own.

I had imagined that voice and repeated those words over and over as a child until they became part of my reality, even my dreams. They had helped me fall asleep and pushed me to persevere when the future seemed bleak. When the years went by and my father never returned to take her back, I never gave up the hope that someday soon he would and the nightmare of my youth would be over.

It was a false hope.

Was that what Luke had tried to prompt me to confess in the library? The truth I had locked in my heart and had never let myself admit? The truth that my father didn't really leave me, only to meet back up with him again and then die right before my eyes? That I wasn't enough for him once one of his children turned? That I meant nothing to him?

"I am nothing," I said at last.

"Our father abandoned us. Our mother was too preoccupied to care for us like a proper mother should," Kylo Ren said, spitting out the words. "They're dead to me, just like they should be dead to you."

I hadn't looked at it that way before. I wanted to see the good in them. My whole life had been one giant lie of my own making, a castle of dreams and echoes that had no foundation.

I shook all over. I might have survived Snoke's mental thrashing, but this self-admission could break me for good.

Ren stepped toward me. "You have no place in the story. You aren't enough to them. You are nothing." His tone became tender. "But not to me." He deactivated the blade. "Join me. Please." He held out his hand to me.

I looked at him, pale and ghostly in the starlight of the window. His request was sincere. He wanted to teach me. I could learn great power from him. He could help me attain my true potential in the Force. My past didn't matter. All that mattered was my place in the future.

I reached out to my brother. He smiled.