AN: This chapter is rather short in comparison to the others, but it's important haha, and I think it ends where it needs to. :)

Takodana was as green as she remembered it, and even the rubble seemed familiar. The ships of the red flaggers were waiting beneath them somewhere, but the alliance had other plans. The alliance landed a mile away from the enemy, settling softly in the trees to start their approach unseen.

Rey's troops took the east, and Ben's took the west, marching silently through the forest and toward Maz's tavern.

The woods were too quiet, too ethereal and green. Every few minutes a bird would sing, but without speech the world was eery. She and Ben walked alone, directly North and towards the tavern while the troops separated from them to circle the captured tavern.

Rey didn't know what they would find when they finally arrived, and she couldn't help dreading the confrontation with the tavern and all she had ran from.

In the midst of the silence and subtle footfalls, Ben said, "We're almost done."

He was reaching with his words, trying to send comfort through the bond.

She nodded, grateful. "I know."

She was so tired of the fighting, of the constant push to survive. Being thrown into war once more, right when she had begun to think about peace, felt somehow worse than the fighting had before.

It was as though all things were building up to this moment, when she and Ben would confront Hux and finish things once and for all. With the Knights and Snoke behind them, he was all that remained.

When the tavern stretched out in front of them at last and they emerged from the trees to march toward the rubble, walking over fallen stones and places where bodies had lain, Hux turned his arrogant head to meet their eyes.

There were six flagger ships surrounding the tavern, pointing toward the building as though the entire thing was a target, ring upon ring. Rey knew that somewhere, still hidden in the trees and completely silent, her and Ben's soldiers were waiting with adrenaline in their bones.

Still it was unnerving to walk forward, with nothing beside her but Ben, with dozens of blasters aimed at them.

"There you are," Hux said.

"You made it easy to follow you," Ben said, and Rey felt it when he saw his mother, when his face hardened in anger.

"You wanted to be found," Rey said, words slipping behind Ben's as easy as though they had planned it.

"Let them go," Ben said, moving his hand to the saber at his side as they walked.

Hux smiled and held a hand out to the flaggers, telling them to stop aiming. Behind him, Leia and Maz stood proudly and without fear, hands cuffed in metal. They didn't look hurt, but they looked exactly as Rey had expected them to look, as though they were bait.

Huh took a step closer. "I think you'll find its better this way." He opened his arms, eyes widening and burning with crazed ideas. "Look around you, commanders! Look at what you've walked into!"

Rey nodded. "A trap."

"You think we wouldn't know?" Ben asked, saber in his hand but not turned on.

"We're a step ahead," Rey said.

"And now, you're going to let them go," Ben said, slowly and carefully, eyes pouring into Hux's.

"Why would I do that when I have what I want?" Hux asked. "It's done now. The Force will die with the four of you."

Rey smiled, and shook her head, unclipping her saber to hold it at her side. "You think you know the Force."

"You can't kill it," Ben said.

"We're not the last of our kind," Rey said, and switched on her saber. Blue shifted on the ground, and beside her, the red of Ben's saber flicked on threateningly.

Hux's brows furrowed. "You're lying," he said. "You are the last in existence without Skywalker, without Snoke."

"And you plan to kill us," Rey stated, nodding.

"You might try," Ben said. "But the problems you think the Force brings you won't end with us."

"There are children out there," Rey said, "and they are as one with the Force as we are."

Ben cocked his head. "But then, you always were in the habit of killing children. You haven't changed, Hux."

"And look at you, commander. Snoke would have been disappointed."

Ben laughed. "Good."

Hux exhaled loudly and snarled, then waved a hand at the flaggers once more. The troopers brought their blasters to their shoulders, readying to fire.

"It doesn't matter. The problem of the Resistance and this new alliance will die today, because of your foolishness," he spat.

"Because of the trap," Rey said, smiling grimly.

"No. You forgot who we are," Ben said.

Rey spun her saber for the first time during the entire encounter and then, in rings around the enemy ships, hearts pulsing for freedom and the need for war to end, the alliance sprang to their feet and out of hiding, blasters ready.

The troopers weren't sure where to fire. They turned, alternating between Ben and Rey and the alliance surrounding them.

"One last chance," Ben said. "Surrender. Join the alliance."

Hux snarled, upper lip curling cruelly. "I'd rather die."

Then an alliance member shot him in the head, and the soldiers met war cry with war cry.

* * *

If the galaxies themselves were crying, Ben thought this was what it would feel like. The armies were flooding each other like charcoal and red and white ribbons, taunted and pulled this way and that by the struggle of life and death.

A blaster shot grazed his arm when he stuck out his saber to protect an alliance member, but Ben was too full of adrenaline to even notice the burn. He twisted and cut as he fought, fueled not only by the adrenaline inside him but with the meaning of the entire war.

For so long he had been holding onto the past, which was ironic because he himself had said it was time to kill it. He had been holding onto Snoke and his childhood and pain, so tightly he was blinded by the aggression and fear that came with being one with darkness.

He was one with darkness, and one with light, and thus he was one with Rey, who fought beside him and for him and for the alliance he had started on a dream.

He fought on, moving away from the red-haired body lying in the rubble, fought closer and closer to his mother and to Maz, the old woman who knew him when he was a boy.

"Ben," Maz said knowingly when he undid her restraints, when he turned to undo his mother's too.

A nod. It was all the time he had.

Ben ran back into the fight, back into the ribbons of soldiers, back to Rey's side, and didn't stop pushing onward until all the flaggers were lying in the dust.

* * *

Quiet.

A whoosh, as she flicked her saber off. A click as she put it back on its belt. She breathed.

She couldn't stop looking around her, wondering if what had just happened was real, whether Hux was really dead and whether the alliance had just won. Was this it? Was this the end?

She shook with adrenaline, with the after-effects of it pulsing through her veins, and she could feel so many things.

In a daze, she moved through the rubble and the smoke and the armored bodies strewn across the dust. She stepped closer to Maz and Leia, and Ben who stood by them looked at her deeply.

"So," Maz said softly, "you came back."

Rey wasn't sure if she was talking to Ben or herself, but she nodded anyway. The knowing woman smiled, wide eyes crinkling with wisdom, and Rey thought somehow she had heard those words before.

Maz looked at her, and Ben, and hummed quietly before turning and walking away to check on the others.

Rey turned to Ben. She still didn't think she should believe the war was through, not after what had already happened. But Snoke, and the Knights, and now Hux, they were all dead. The red flag was dying before Hux escaped. Perhaps now it was dead for good.

So Rey looked at Ben, and he looked at her.

She could feel his relief, and his tension, his bewilderment at the entire war and whether it was over. She could feel each humming emotion he felt, and as always it nearly brought her to her knees to feel both their thoughts.

She thought Leia might be watching them, and thought the troops might be celebrating, but for the time being she didn't truly see anything but the face before her, didn't feel anything but him.

The knowledge that she wasn't alone made her reach out her hand, fingers full of adrenaline and suppressed lightning. Ben didn't take her hand and for a moment she was confused.

Then Ben stepped closer and closer and pulled Rey into his arms, tilting her head back to kiss her true and deep. Her hand fell, then found his back, his hair.

Leia didn't even have the decency to seem surprised.

They stood twined and soft in the rubble, and neither knew who was holding the other up.

She was back on the dock, wind in her hair and tasting joy on his lips, and she didn't care that they were out in the open or that everyone could see them locked together. She knew what was between them was as right and natural as the changing of the seasons. She needed it like breathing.

She smiled and pulled back. "Took us long enough, huh?" She whispered.

Ben laughed and pulled her mouth back again, and her fingers locked into the folds of his commander's jacket to hold him closer than they had ever been before.

AN: Hehe. Feedback?