AN: Things are happening . . . Okay I'm not going to say anything else lol. Enjoy!

When she woke, the world was blue and she was alone in the bed. For a moment, there was quaking fear that came with solitude, with wondering what had happened to him. She shook those thoughts away. They were foolish and left over from the terrible things that ran to her in the night.

Her fingers fumbled over the laces of her boots. She tried once to grab them, and missed, and tried again, and missed then too. Slowly she found the stupid strings and tied them, then stood to look for her weapons.

She tucked her saber into her belt and her blaster into the holster at her side, and pulled the commander's jacket with its many scratches and stitches onto her shoulders.

Then Rey looked around her. She was standing in her room, the room where she imagined it had all began. She stood where he had asked when she would leave, to go fight in the war, and where she had still been denying everything that trembled in her heart.

The universe was poetry, ending and beginning the same. War before her and behind her. Balance within her and around her.

In the blue light of the early morning that poured through the thin windows, she walked through the hall to go first to the computer room. Perhaps it was habit. Perhaps it was the bond telling her to walk there.

When she opened the door, the lights in the computer room were flicked on, and for a moment she was confused because she saw no one. She walked forward, not saying anything, and finally she saw Ben at the far end of the room, almost completely hidden behind one of the monitors closer to her.

She came closer, and she knew her boots were making noise, and she knew the bond was twisting around both of them and announcing her presence, but he didn't turn and he didn't speak.

His commander's jacket was puddled on the floor, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up, forearms bare to the fluorescent lights flickering above them.

"Ben," she murmured, and he turned sharply.

He exhaled, and understood the question in her tone. "I'm looking at what the trackers are sending us," he said, voice filled with exhaustion. His eyes were bloodshot.

A glimmer of relief shifted through her. "The program worked, then. We know where she is?"

Ben faced the computer once more, then tapped on an icon to bring up a map. It was a string of red light, showing each time the trackers sent out data.

"They're still flying," he told her. "They've been flying for hours, ever since yesterday."

Rey recognized the tension and fear in his voice, and knew he was thinking they needed to leave now, if the travel time was this long.

"Have they jumped to hyperspace?" Rey asked.

Ben shook his head. "No. Of course, that only means they could want us to follow. We could be walking into a trap if we follow them."

His voice was growing fainter, his heart contracting with emotion. She could feel everything she felt, and she wondered how he managed to breathe when he was in so much pain.

She was so unsure what to do, what she could say to make up for the fact that his mother was captured, that the General was being held by the same group who killed for sport and not for necessity. When she realized there was nothing she could say, she simply sat in the chair next to him, close enough to touch, and waited.

"She's my mother," Ben said quietly, staring at the computer and letting his hair separate his eyes from hers. He said nothing for a time. "She's their general. She means everything."

Rey knew this. It was why Rey felt the loss of the General too, why Poe was angrier than most at her capture. Still, nothing she had felt compared to what the man before her was suffering.

"They should have made the jump," Ben said. "They want us to follow them." He pressed the map and it zoomed closer, following the tiny red dot representing the ship that soared through space.

His hand fell. "I can't lead the troops to their slaughter. I can't give my mother up."

For the first time he turned to her, and she made herself meet his eyes, made herself look at the terrible pain already washing through the bond.

"Tell me what to do," he begged.

Rey watched his eyes flicker and felt his emotions like rain on her skin. She paused, trying to ignore her aching chest long enough to speak, long enough that what she would say would mean something.

"Leia gave you that jacket because she believed in you," Rey said, gesturing at the thing lying on the floor. "She believed in you when you came to us and that's how the alliance was born."

He watched her and she continued. "I'm not going to tell you what to do. Your rank is supposed to be higher than mine, since you were Supreme Leader." She paused. "Look, I believe in you too, alright?"

His brows furrowed, as though he was surprised to hear her say it. Maybe she should have said it sooner.

"I do," she said. "And the fact that you're asking me makes me think you've already decided. It's an impossible situation, Ben. The troops are looking to you more than me because she is your mother. But they trust you and they'll follow you, whatever you decide."

Rey said nothing for a time, letting her words make the leap across the bond as she bent down. She grabbed the jacket and handed it to him, as she had once before. Rey knew he knew what the jacket meant. She also knew he knew what Rey was asking him, when she held it out to him again.

Ben took it in his hands, knuckles brushing faintly against her own. It was so soft it seemed impossible, as always, for a moment of gentleness to creep between them unannounced. He brushed his dark hair away from his face and stopped trying to hide behind it, let the crude mask destroy itself.

Then she said, "I know what you decided. I can feel it. I can't tell you either of the choices was the best one to make, but if we plan this right everything will be fine."

The fluorescent light flickered, casting unnatural shadows on his face and making his tiredness more apparent.

"The galaxies are looking for a hero," he said.

"Screw them. They don't need one."

* * *

Ben stood in the front of the alliance base, in the deep swirling blues of the early morning. The grasslands were still wet, still palpitating with settled rain and blood. The bodies were gone, but their ghosts depressed the air the soldiers before him were breathing. Gaunt faces stretched thin. Fear.

But they looked to him, looked up from the grasslands and across the landing strips. The alliance waited with faces like the moon.

"These are dark days," he admitted first, because it was the truth and the people needed to hear it. "The war is not over, and the red flag still flies. Far too many of our soldiers have died, and the medbays are overflowing with injured."

Beside him stood the rest of the commanders, and Rey. Her breath and proximity kept him going when he spoke again.

"My mother, your general, was taken yesterday. Thanks to the work of a program and the soldiers in the middle circle, we know Hux's exact location." Ben paused.

"I have to ask something terrible of you. I know you're tired. I know you want the war to be over. I want that too. Peace will come," he said, echoing Rey's past words.

"But today we have a war to fight, and today I must ask you to keep going. The commanders have consulted the hackers, and we know the tracking devices are not faulty. Now, we need you to fight. Will you fight?"

A flicker of silence. Then, booming and echoing across the wet grasslands, dimming even the light of the sun as it peeked through the clouds, came the shouts and the war cries of thousands of soldiers.

"Will you fight?"

Deafening war cries that resounded every heart. Yes. They would fight.

* * *

"Ben!"

He was just about to walk onto the ship, just about to lead the troops to the flagger base, but the voice behind him and the bond that tethered them gave him pause. He turned and met her eyes, which were half-full of fear and desperation because she understood how dire things were.

For a time they simply watched each other, wondering what to do with the moment they were given. Ben remembered a different time they were separated, when the bond had been ripped from them and they hadn't given each other a proper goodbye.

So he came closer. He was braver now, perhaps. It was why even when the crowds were watching, even when the troops were waiting, even when his mother was held prisoner, he managed to reach out and tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, fingers lingering on her skin.

She caught his hand when it dropped at last and gave him a sad smile, a nod. "See you soon."

The troops were watching. Finn and Poe were watching. They saw his hand in hers, and they saw the shift between them. Nevertheless, no one spoke a word and the moment they were given was theirs and theirs alone.

They might have been back on the dock, feet over the edge and sunlight on their lips. He could almost smell the salt, almost taste peace. He wanted that, and because he wanted it he knew they had to keep fighting.

They let go. He turned. She turned.

"Let's go," she told her troops.

He felt it when her heart caught in her throat, when it choked her breath and settled heavy within her. But he also felt it when the troops followed her, when their boots marched for her and beside her-and the knowledge of who she was to him and so many others made his own heart catch in his throat.

Then his troops followed him, and the soldiers separated right left Rey Ben right left, as though the alliance was unzipping itself to follow the two of them.

His troops were watching him differently and he knew it was because of what he had done, what emotions he had shown when Hux had held his mother by the throat. He didn't know. Maybe it was also because of Rey and what had just happened.

But slowly, as Rey had, the alliance was trusting him.

* * *

The rest of the day was as monotonous as the hum of the ship's generator, and it was easy for Rey to tire herself out simply by sitting and staring at the stars as they slow-danced by. Traveling without the liquidity and blueness of hyperspace gave her so much time she began to notice more beauty in the vastness outside the window.

She was alone in the cockpit of the Falcon, which a healed Chewie had insisted she travel in. Chewie was somewhere else in the ship, likely roaring at Finn.

A dark silhouette outside the window announced a nebula, speckled and edged with blue-green starlight and pinpricks of red stars, as though the entire cloud was a noblewoman's dress fashioned with moondust and lace. It was the first nebula Rey had seen, and the beauty of it made her feel incredibly alone.

Selfishly, she missed him as she gazed upon the universe, upon each patch of deepness that was pricked with bloody stars. The universe cried in color, and ached in dust, and never before had Rey seen such all-encompassing emotion, except in the eyes of the man who seemed very far away.

Then the bond hummed, deep as the darkness before her and bright as the light around her, and she knew he had felt what she did.

* * *

The day slipped away behind Ben as time marched steadily forward, swallowing his hours as he alternated between the stars and the computer screen before him. He watched the red dot move, gently and purposefully.

He watched the stars, saw the beauty outside the window. He poked the bond, felt her emotions.

He stayed in front of the computer, watching the red dot move, analyzing the troops they had taken with them. It was midnight before the red dot stopped.

Yet it stopped, and the signal the tracking device was sending out seemed louder as the location came into view. Ben knew this place.

* * *

Rey had almost forgotten about Takodana, about Maz, but when the red dot stopped moving across her screen and the signal stayed the same each minute, she remembered everything she had ran away from when she was there.

Now the saber was beside her, and was a part of her.

Now Ben too was a part of her. How strange things were.

Rey huffed, exhaling and leaning back in her chair to think. What could the red flaggers want on Takodana? There was nothing there, nothing but an old Force-user and a healing planet still bruised from the fighting there.

The red flaggers still aligned with everything Snoke believed in. What would Snoke have wanted with Takodana?

* * *

He could feel her bewilderment, and he wasn't sure if it was his or if it was hers. He had been wondering the same thing, until the bond made him think of something.

The Force connecting the two of them, the Force-user alive on the planet Hux was taking his mother, who was connected to the Force herself.

Four people played a role in this situation, and when Ben made the connection between himself and the others, dread bubbled mercilessly through his veins.

Bonded Force-users being lured to Takodana. One already there. One arriving with hands cuffed. There were four of them involved, and each of them had a connection to the living, breathing thing the Force was.

When did Hux start believing in the Force? Ben wondered sarcastically. Was it when he heard about Snoke torturing Rey or when he saw the Praetorian Guard dead on the throne room floor? And why were they being pushed together and manipulated?

But, he and Rey were not being manipulated because they knew what was going on. They would be one step ahead, close enough to the true answer to be guarded and strategic with every command they gave their troops. The mission was to save his mother.

Perhaps it would later become a mission of saving the Force.

* * *

When she woke in the small cot, someone was pressed next to her, and arms were holding her. For a moment she thought them to still be back at base, and she closed her eyes once more. Then she realized she was tucked into a small cot with Ben, and that they were sailing through space on separate ships.

Disappointment. She knew whatever was happening was simply the bond playing tricks on their minds.

"You're not here."

"Shh. Go back to sleep," he murmured as his fingers danced in her hair.

Rey decided she didn't care if it was impossible. She needed this. She let exhaustion pull her down under, and held on tighter to the person who wasn't truly there but felt real all the same.

Until morning came and he finally flickered and disappeared, Rey knew nothing but his arms around her.

AN: This was shorter than the last chapter, but it needs to end here for everything I have planned for the next one. :) Feedback?