Sulit [ Ben Solo ]

X.

CHAPTER TEN
[ pretty eyes! ]

When her world slowed and went quiet the next time, she was sitting in her hut alone, old tears drying on her cheeks. One minute she was staring into the fire at her feet, and the next he was there, gazing at her from across it.

"Ben," she murmured. "It's late."

"I know." Yet, though it was late, he could not sleep. When he tried, he felt her pain and sadness, and ended up there, with her. "What happened?"

She was surprised at his question, but answered anyway. "I asked Luke if what you told me was true. He wouldn't answer, and I knew. It made me wonder if I ever knew him at all. I don't think that I've really known anyone since the days of the Empire. I'm certain that no one knows me. I know that they love me, I know that they care, but they can't possibly know or understand me."

She didn't blame her friends. No one could possibly know or understand. She'd been alive so long, pulled by the light and the dark for so many years, no one could fully understand what she felt.

"I know you." Perhaps he did. He'd been inside her head so many times, been with her in the Force, perhaps he could know her. "I understand."

She raised her eyes from the fire to his deep brown eyes. "I know you, too."

She did. She knew, and she felt everything he was feeling or thinking. All of his feelings filled her, his thoughts drifting into her mind as they connected. She wondered if it was the same for him.

"Come to me," he said, quietly. "You don't belong there."

"And I belong with you?"

"Don't you feel it?"

She couldn't lie. "I do." She nodded her head, pausing for a second before reaching her hand out to him, slowly, tentatively. She held it out with her palm facing him, fingers splayed and waiting. He glanced down at it, hesitating.

Then the glove came off. The glove that made his hand Kylo Ren's slid off, and it was Ben's hand reaching toward her. He slipped his fingers between hers, and then their hands were locked together. Even in the warm hut, his hand was cold. As they made contact, she took in a deep breath. A thousand different futures whirred by in her mind, a thousand different possibilities.

But in all of them, one thing was the same. Kylo Ren would be Ben Solo once again. When she gazed into his dark eyes again, she saw him denying it, but knew he'd seen it too.