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An explosion propelled Rey to her feet moments before the pallet she’d been hiding behind also burst into shrapnel and flames. She plowed her way forward without looking back, her hand hooked into the belt of the nearest Rebel recruit, squinting against the fountain of dust and dirt and ice that cascaded down on them both. The Force found a way for her, through the chaos, the blaster fire, the strafing run of four TIE fighters, until she finally dove into a makeshift barricade, still towing the recruit behind her.
“Rey!” Rose shouted in welcome, giving her a quick hug before handing her a blaster. “How’s the eastern side?”
“Not good!” Rey shouted back. “You?”
“They’re having trouble finding us. This magnetized plating keeps messing with their sensors.”
“Too bad we don’t have more of it,” Rey said, grabbing another blaster for the recruit she’d dragged in with her. “Here,” she told her, shoving it into her hands. “You’ll need it.”
“Got any extras?” the woman asked- girl, really- checking the weapon and looking around for another. “My friend could use the help.”
“Grab one of the stormtroopers’ blasters, then, we’re running low as it is,” Rose told her. “Get one of their riot batons too, if you can, those pack a punch.”
“On it,” the girl said, performing half a salute before diving back into the fray.
“Where’d we find her?” Rey asked Rose, taking a couple pot shots then ducking as a few bolts came her way.
“I don’t know, but let’s go back there and see if we can get fifty more,” Rose said, fiddling with a control panel. She dropped a tool and cursed, groping for it as Rey got off a few more shots. She was getting better at using the Force to support her aim but it was difficult to relax her conscious mind enough in battle to let it take over completely. Only half her shots hit.
“There!” Rose said triumphantly, slapping the panel shut and handing the repaired canon off to Rey. “Give them a couple blasts with that, see if you can create a hole down their center. Poe wants us to draw more pressure away from the flanks. Once you’ve gotten me some cover I’ll head east, see if I can find wherever Finn’s group went to.”
“Be careful,” Rey cautioned, hoisting the canon. It was an odd weapon, a mismatched cannibalization of First Order tech and some Rebel spare parts from who knew what star system, but it felt comfortable in her hands as she aimed carefully down the middle. “Just a moment,” she cautioned Rose, trying to feel out her shot. A blast of Rebel fire came from behind her and the stormtroopers in the center crouched, clustering together. “Now!” Rey ordered, not looking away as she fired, sensing Rose making good her escape. Rey’s first blast hit the stormtroopers dead center but the second jerked slightly to the left, only glancing the main group.
A sudden hum of energy distracted her as she ducked down, her eyes searching the sky. She groped for the radio in her breast pocket, still looking up. “Poe, he’s here,” she told him.
“Where?” Poe demanded.
“I don’t know. Above us, probably TIE fighters.”
“What direction?”
“Um…” Rey stalled, reaching out with the Force. “Behind, I think.” The radio cut out as she heard Poe yelling orders from far away. They’d carefully reinforced their main barricades but a direct strafe from a TIE would still do serious damage. She fired up her canon again, still scanning, and finally spotted the formation, swooping down on them from behind and slightly to the east. He was front and center, his TIE Silencer’s canon coming around to bear on the Rebel’s rear line. “Not if I can help it,” Rey muttered, hoisting her own canon. She was dangerously exposed but the Force was flowing strongly in her and she let it guide her actions, kneeling, aiming. The first red bolts began to rain down.
“Closer,” she told herself, feeling, reaching out in her mind. “Closer.” The bolts reached her but went wide on either side. She ignored them, watching his Silencer, watching his own canon coming into range. Not aimed at the Rebels; aimed at her. “Cheater,” she muttered, firing. She felt him do the same just a beat behind her, but he was too late; as she dove back into her shelter, narrowly missing the next round of laser blasts, she sensed rather than saw her own canon shot hitting his canon before his shot got off, blowing it to bits and tearing away a few of the armored panels on the belly of his fighter. As it sped past her it trailed a thin streamer of black smoke.
“Nice,” she congratulated herself, grinning at the TIEs, knowing he was looking for her. And he’d find her, just far away from here.
Her radio crackled. “Rey, report,” Poe ordered.
“It’s me, I’m fine,” she told him, crouching in the shadows of their complex mesh of barricades and heading farther west, toward the edges of their lines. “Heading to Delta point. How’re the fields holding up?”
“Doing well. He took a hit.”
“Yeah, tell Rose thanks for the canon.”
“I thought that was you,” Poe said, sounding pleased. “Don’t get too crazy out there, alright? When the signal comes I need you ready to go.” There was garbled interference for a moment then his voice came through again. “Finn wants you to double check your extraction beacon.”
Rey rolled her eyes, doing no such thing as she crouched behind the last blockade, sensing a couple stormtroopers down on the other line. Finn making her wear what was basically a portable panic button was bad enough, now he was making her check it in the middle of a battle? “It’s fine,” she told Poe, holding her blaster ready as she peered around the edge of the wall. A couple enemy bolts greeted her but she pulled back just in time before ducking out again and returning fire. She hit one but missed the other.
Her radio squawked. “Finn says he doesn’t think you really checked,” Poe told her.
“I really checked!” she protested, firing again. A glancing blow. The stormtrooper’s arm was singed but he was still on his feet. Behind her the TIEs came through again but their run focused down the center, far away from her. “Stop distracting me,” Rey complained, taking cover and watching them go by. “I would have had him twice by now if it wasn’t for you.”
“Check the damn beacon, Rey,” Poe ordered.
“Oh, fine,” she huffed, reaching down to her hip holster and flicking open the opaque waterproof casing. The button inside was still glowing a bright, intense yellow. “It’s working, alright? Cross my heart.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Poe said. “We’ll move as soon as you’ve drawn him past the line of sight on the western ridge. Do you think you can distract him by then?”
“Oh, I’ll distract him,” Rey said, trying to pass her eagerness off as confidence as she shot a more carefully aimed burst of blaster fire down the enemy’s line. This time she got the stormtrooper right in his helmeted face, clearing the way for her to leap out from her cover and dash across the empty no man’s land separating her from the sheer ice walls lining the western edge of the valley. Her light gray, camouflaged cloak helped her blend in to the scuffed and sooty snow of the ground they’d taken that morning and she made it to the cliffs without incident, wedging herself into the gap she’d scouted when they’d still been safely in orbit. “I’m about to go radio silent,” she reported, strapping her blaster securely into it’s holder and surveying the battlefield. “Any last requests?”
“Cut him in half, if you can,” Poe said uncharitably. “Finn says ‘may the Force be with you’.”
“With all of us,” she agreed, making sure to say it clearly before turning her radio off, stowing it away. She couldn’t risk the signal getting out, not for this next part; she had a long way to go undetected if this was going to work.
The ice fields of this planet were split with deep gaps, creating a natural maze, and without being able to risk a signal Rey had to trust in the Force completely to find her way through. The ground under her feet thrummed with constant movement as a current far below moved swiftly past, warmer water from the volcanoes on the horizon tunneling towards distant seas. She could feel several feet of thick ice between her and it but Rey still shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold as she slipped and slid her way forward. This planet was as different from Jakku as it could possibly be, combining her two least favorite things: water, and winter. She rarely missed the desert but now was one of those times.
Her mild discomfort, physical and mental, was still far eclipsed by the anticipation rising inside of her. Ben was here and he was circling the planet’s surface looking for her, she could feel it. After months of evading the First Order they’d finally meet face to face. It had to be timed perfectly, however, before the Rebel’s escape could be cut off by the arrival of the rest of the fleet. They would have minutes, at best, but even so she was looking forward to it more than she could ever admit to any of her Rebel friends. They thought she was just doing her part, and while it was easy to sell that story to them she’d never be so foolhardy as to try and convince herself.
The battleground she’d chosen was high up, surrounded by trees, with a treacherous slope she could escape to if he got too near. Delta Point. It was time. She turned back toward where the battle still raged and closed her eyes, opening herself to the Force completely, picturing him in her mind. It felt less like trying to find him and more like grabbing a lifeline that was already waiting for her.
“Ben,” she whispered, the breeze lifting as though to physically carry the word to him.
“Rey,” he responded, as close as if he’d been standing right next to her, and she could feel him seeking her in the Force.
“Took you long enough,” she told him.
“You’ve been hiding, desert girl.”
“I’m not hiding now.” The sound of a TIE engine echoed across the ice fields she’d just crossed through, coming closer, and Rey opened her eyes and smiled. A moment later it crested the trees, pointed directly at her as its landing systems fired, lowering it gently to the ground. The clear dome protecting the pilot’s seat split open and Ben stood, his eyes never leaving her.
“Something wrong with your fighter?” she asked, glancing pointedly at the trail of smoke still seeping out from underneath.
“Someone got off a lucky shot,” he replied humorlessly, disembarking and coming towards her. His stance was still easy but he remained watchful, his hand straying towards his lightsaber hilt. “Come to talk?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Still with the Rebels?”
“Still with the First Order?”
“Oh no, not just with,” he said, both his tone and his eyes expressionless. “I’m leading it now.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed with that?”
“Some people would be.”
She shook her head, frowning at him. “Why won’t you leave them, Ben? I don’t understand.”
“Well, whatever else they are they’ve never tried to kill me,” he said with a shrug.
“Luke is dead,” she reminded him.
“I know. I just regret I didn’t get to do it myself. You don’t know how he went?”
“No.”
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter,” he muttered, eyes scanning the horizon before coming back to her. “I thought this would be a trap but I don’t sense anything. Don’t tell me you came out here all alone.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, smiling at him just a little. “Should I be afraid of you?”
He stared at her, completely unamused, as usual. “I have to take you in.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re in the middle of a war,” he said, his lightsaber hilt jumping from his belt into his hand, though he didn’t activate the blade yet. “Because you’re a war criminal.”
“'Rebel scum’?” she quoted at him, circling slightly away.
“What’s your plan, Rey?” he asked, ignoring the jab. “You stay with the Rebellion, you protect them until they’ve taken their last, dying breath, then what? You’re going to resist the First Order all on your own?”
“Maybe I will,” she said, stopping her circling and taking up a more defensive stance, the Force as well as her own internal clock telling her it was time. “I’ve got something to show you,” she told Ben, holding out her hand, reaching in her mind. From within the trees it responded, a silver streak hurtling to her, her saber hilt already comfortable and familiar as it settled into her palm and she squeezed it slightly, reminding herself of the weight.
“A new lightsaber?” Ben asked, his expression holding steady but his eyes lighting up with the same raw, almost feral anticipation she felt pouring over her, the Force strong as a whirlwind between them.
“I’ve been practicing with it,” she said, igniting the blade, “but I haven’t gotten to really test it out yet.”
“A white blade,” Ben commented, though his own crackling red blade also ignited and he was having trouble keeping the desire she felt bleeding off him in the Force from showing on his face. “Unusual.”
“Enough talk, Solo,” Rey said, crouching into a fighting stance. “See if you can hold me off.” She went towards him before he could come up with a response, sending her lightsaber blazing at his head in a hot, white arc that crashed against his blade as it came up to meet it. He countered instantly, turning his momentum into a downward swing at her waist that she had to move to block, then turning away from her so her responding thrust burned through thin air.
They moved so quickly it was hard to keep track of him, would have been impossible without the Force to guide her. Dusk was falling but they remained absorbed, in their battle and in each other, guiding their lightsabers into whining arcs and parries that lit the air between them as though it was on fire itself. The plasma blades smelled of burning ozone, like overheated sugar, and made them both sweat even though the air was becoming cooler by degrees as time wore on.
Time. Rey stepped back from Ben reflexively, expanding her awareness beyond him. The Rebels would be putting the departure phase of the plan into action soon, if they hadn’t started already. She needed to get clear of him.
“Not bad,” she congratulated, welcoming the opportunity to catch her breath as she backed up another step and found herself on the edge of the slope. Excellent. She started down it, keeping her eyes above her and trusting the Force to guide her feet. Beneath her the ground thrummed again, a continuous sheet of movement reminding her of the waterfall rushing past just a foot away in places where the ice was thinner. “I almost think you’ve gotten better.”
“Your new lightsaber, where did you get it?” he asked, following her down the slope. His tone was impatient, the feeling of him in the Force thick with frustrated intent as he reached for her.
“I made it,” she admitted, ignoring the swell of her own feelings as they tried to respond to his, staying just beyond him.
“How, Rey?”
“It wasn’t that hard. I’m a scavenger, remember? I can build anything.”
“Stop running,” he scolded, standing his ground, his eyes blazing down at her. “Are we going to fight or not?”
“You like my lightsaber that much?” she asked, twirling it as she kept moving. “I should tell you about it some time.”
“Rey–.”
“I thought about making a staff but it was almost impossible.”
“Rey, enough!” he demanded, striking downwards with his own lightsaber, the blade cutting through the ice, sending a wave of water crashing on her from above. She should have been able to block it with the Force, or else use the Force to keep herself upright, but the insistent nearness of him was overwhelming her concentration and she didn’t react in time. The momentum swept her feet out from under her and she rolled down the rest of the slope, throwing out a hand at the bottom expecting to catch herself a split-second before she realized it was the hand with her lightsaber in it, still activated. The bright blade slid right through the ice as easily as Ben’s had and the current dragged her forward and down, into tumbling darkness.
The Force was around her, all around her if she could only reach it, but dark and icy panic had flooded Rey’s mind and she couldn’t focus enough to make any difference. Her blade went before her and she tried to slash at the ice and make herself a way out but was too far under to reach. She couldn’t swim, and the water was deep, beyond her senses. The burning light of Ben’s blade flashed in front of her but it was too little, too late, and she sank into herself as the extraction beacon on her hip sensed her abnormal heart rate and activated, drawing her friends toward their most dangerous enemy right at the moment she could do nothing to stop him.
***
Coming back was unpleasant, to say the least. Rey coughed up what felt like a fountain of water and vomit, rolling over on her side instinctively as she heaved, her body shaking and spasming. Ben’s hands were on her, the Force wrapping around her at his direction, making her cough again and again until her lungs were completely clear. He dragged her back around the moment it was done, staring down at her, his face white, everything else even blacker than usual, dripping wet himself as he pulled her onto his lap. Above him she saw familiar lights in the sky and realized the Millennium Falcon was circling, about to touch down.
“Don’t hurt them,” she croaked as his arm wrapped around her back and his gaze traveled up and down her body, checking to make sure she wasn’t injured.
“What?” he asked, his dark eyes snapping back to her face.
“Don’t hurt them,” she repeated, gesturing towards the Falcon more in the Force than physically, a strange weakness weighting her limbs. He looked that direction and cursed loudly, his free sword hand going reflexively to the hilt of his lightsaber, only stopping when she managed to grab it.
“I have to go,” she told him.
“Dammit, Rey,” he said, pressing his face into the side of her neck, every part of him tense, the Force around them straining with the pull of what he was feeling. “I should kill them all in front of you.”
“You can’t,” she said as behind him the ramp into the Falcon began to lower. “I was supposed to be distracting you.”
Ben made a strangled noise that could almost have been a laugh if it hadn’t sounded so desperate. “I have never been more distracted in my life.”
“Good,” she said, smiling into his hair as she twitched her hand. His lightsaber hilt detached from his belt and hurled itself across the ice, falling through the gash he’d made to save her and sinking into the waters below. Ben sighed, not moving to retrieve it. “Just tell them I disarmed you,” she suggested, pushing him away as gently as she could, retrieving her own lightsaber, which was lying on the ice a few feet from them. Ben stood too, watching indifferently as Rebels waited at the Falcon’s base, pointing their blasters at him, only Poe’s raised hand keeping them from firing.
“This is starting to become embarrassing,” he commented. “If I wasn’t the Supreme Leader I’d be fired.”
“You could always fire yourself,” Rey suggested, moving away from him. “I’ll be waiting, Ben. Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m waiting, too,” he reminded her, holding out his hand. Within a moment his saber hilt was back in his possession, trailing water behind it. “You always leave me, but you always look back. Someday you won’t leave at all.”
“I hope so,” she agreed, stepping into the welcoming circle of the Falcon’s lights. Finn was waiting impatiently at the top of the ramp, a blaster in each hand. Rey did look back, at the last moment, and saw Ben’s black silhouette in the darkness just as his lightesaber ignited.
“Chewie, get us out of here,” Poe shouted, seeing it too.
“You’re soaked,” Finn said, glaring behind her even though the door had sealed.
“Tell you in a second,” she promised, pushing past him and running to the pilot’s cabin. “Chewie, circle once,” she said, leaning into the empty co-pilot’s chair and looking down. As the Falcon turned Ben came into view, standing exactly where she’d left him with his red lightsaber burning, his face turned towards them. Chewie brought them around in a long, wide arc before altering course, taking them out to the stars.