AN: You have all been so sweet to me! Thank you for taking the time to read this. Enjoy:

Her mouth fell open, brows drooping. Her hair caught in her eyelashes as she said, "You're leaving."

Yes, there was definitely something within him. He could barely breathe.

"Yes." He nodded.

She wouldn't look at him. What he was doing, it meant so much more to her than he could ever imagine. But he could. He knew her. It was the most terrible thing in the world, to watch her, to feel her remember.

She would be half of herself without him.

"I'll hate you," she murmured, watching the floor.

"No, you won't."

Hate was a funny thing. When did they stop? Maybe they never had, not after everything. There wasn't hate within her, just pain and tiredness and disappointment.

"I should go with you," she told him.

Those words. So much weight that trembled on those words.

"What about your troops?"

"I know," she said shortly, voice cracking.

She sat on the bed, and suddenly she seemed very far away. He tried with his words to being her closer but he could feel her slipping away, falling from him as he left her.

"It's wake-up call in twenty minutes," he told her.

She understood the hidden meaning. "This is a goodbye, then. You'll come back."

She scoffed the last words, and smiled dangerously, laughing as she recognized the irony. It was an awful laugh that hurt them both.

"I will," he promised.

She breathed. She felt his soul. She knew.

Maybe they were dancing, close enough to act but too scared to do it. They felt it when the other thought about moving. They felt it when the other stood still. Maybe they were fighting. Who could stay the longest? Who could hurt themselves and the other and still hold onto their humanity? They played a dangerous game and they played it well.

He promised. She knew. Then he left.

* * *

Rey went back to the computer room, even as the ships following him were taking off and the ground was trembling under her boots. She had said her goodbyes. Enough was enough. She wouldn't allow herself to cry, either. She couldn't do that weakening thing again.

So she went back to the computer room and sat in the chair they had each sat in. She needed to set up a program she could bring with her on her flight to the ice planet, one that would alert her about Ben's troops. And him. She needed to watch out for him while he was gone, and if she couldn't do that, she would at least have first hand knowledge.

She wrote the program and put it on a drive, and put that in her pocket. It clinked with her saber softly when she walked away.

Later, after another meeting was over, Leia pulled her aside and said, "You didn't say goodbye."

Rey understood the unsaid words. She hadn't been there to watch Ben's troops leave.

"I did," she told Leia, who gave her a sad smile.

* * *

In the evening she went to the training room, bringing her saber and practicing moves. She spun and danced as the blue blade obeyed her, and sweat dripped down her neck. She took off the commander's jacket for the first time in a week, throwing it to the floor just as Finn walked in.

"We're leaving tomorrow," he said, eyeing the discarded jacket.

She switched off her saber. "Yeah," was all she said.

"Rey," he began, stepping closer with furrowed brows, "I know you don't want to talk about it, but the lightning . . ."

Finn trailed off and waited for her to say something.

"The lightning," she said. She hadn't forgotten, hard as she had tried.

"Have you learned anything about it? What it means?"

Rey shook her head. "I haven't had any time. We only just found out about the Knights." She swallowed and felt Ben's presence more deeply in her mind when she remembered. "But I know some of my soldiers are watching me, waiting for it to happen again."

"You'll strong," Finn told her. "You'll be fine."

She nodded. She had to be fine. Because she had to, she transformed herself, sacrificing the feelings ripping at her soul in order to be exactly who who troops needed her to be.

* * *

He thought he knew what being torn apart was.

He didn't.

* * *

The beautiful yellow girl came up to the ships when Rey's troops landed.

With wide eyes, she looked up at Rey and asked, "Is the red flag coming again?"

This beautiful child. Small voice, small hands in small gloves. She couldn't lie to this child.

"We think they might," Rey told her. "But we'll protect you."

The child nodded, long hair full of snow on her back. "I thought so. The Resistance wouldn't let us die."

* * *

He could smell war in the air when he stepped from his ship, and he wore it like his own clothes when it came time to fight. Ben edged the farmland with his troops, the formations beginning with a wave of his hand. Yes, he could smell war.

It was tiptoeing in his breath and humming in his fingertips. Maybe that was adrenaline. Maybe he was simply made of war, and he was coming home to himself. He breathed the hot air in and out as the sunlight glinted across the grass.

It was a beautiful day. Then the sky opened up and the ships appeared like the promise of rain.

"Fire!"

Guns aimed at the ships, pounding and pulsing as the pilots tried to dodge the attacks and protect the two Knights' ships as they landed. A strip of farmland exploded behind him, sending dirt onto the soldiers and plants in the air.

His soldiers were running to the ships when they landed, firing at the vulnerable points even as the doors opened. Meanwhile he could see the Knights coming toward him, weapons ready. Only two of them had come, and they grew taller and wider as they ran toward him, deftly avoiding the shots by Ben's troops.

He switched his saber on.

"Is this what it's come to, Master?" One of the Knights asked, spinning his blade.

"Yes," he answered simply.

They came into him, one from the front and the other from behind, swinging their weapons so skillfully Ben knew this fight wasn't going to be easy. And why would it? He taught them. He screamed into the air when his saber crashed into the blade, and he ducked under the second just before it came down onto his shoulder.

He ducked and turned and pointed the saber back, letting them come at him. He matched a blow, and turned before his back was open for too long.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a red flag marching toward the farmland. It represented so much, and he saw it for only a moment, but it tempted anger and fueled his adrenaline as he fought. Spin and turn against the red flag, fight parry dodge blow block hit duck.

He came closer and swung at the two of them, cutting the path of a blade and using the Force to freeze the blow of the other. It only worked for half a second, but the pause was time enough. He cut off the hand of one man and turned to fight the other.

The galaxies were opening as he fought and he realized what was happening.

Then she was behind him and they were back to back, stardust on her skin and hair. Her saber was murmuring in time with his. Stars away, she was fighting on a different planet. And yet she was here, fighting beside him.

A moment of peace. They breathed.

Then they sprang apart and he cut down one of his Knights before the other could come and match his blow. War trembled in the sunny sky and shivered across the grass as it was stained bloody.

The second Knight looked between Ben and the fallen man and roared, terribly angry as he ran for the kill, as the dark metal he wore reflected the sun and turned blindly white. Ben squinted and matched each of his blows, fighting against everything he knew he didn't want to be, fighting against one of the people he had trained, fighting against Snoke a second time, and-

-fighting for Rey.

He could see her out of the corner of his eye, blue saber whirring against someone who wasn't there. Her face was bright and blue, although most of it was covered with a wrap, and through the bond he could feel war in her blood too.

There was an old idea, that soldiers fought hardest when they had someone to come home to. When he cut down the second Knight and the two lay unmoving at his feet, he realized the old myth was true.

Rey yelled at her soldiers, "Let's go!" Her image flickered away and the galaxies closed.

It was just him now, him and the fight before his eyes. Her presence in his mind was enough, the words spoken from her mouth just a second before was enough.

He smiled a half smile and fought on, ducking under the exploding farmland as the dirt sailed through the air and stained the bodies on the earth.

* * *

Rey blocked the shot and sent it back at the trooper, easily protecting one of her soldiers who hadn't seen the blaster pointed at him. Ben had just disappeared. They had been back to back for only a moment, but a moment of feeling him beside her was enough to keep her moving.

"On your feet!" She told the soldier, and then ran away.

The houses and igloos were still being worked on, and the shots coming from the sky weren't helping matters. A house caved in with a blast, trapping people in the rubble. Rey knew why there were more troops this time. She had expected it, and so she had brought three hundred of her own men to this village alone.

The red flaggers had brought more troopers too, which is why the houses behind her were still vulnerable to their attack.

Rey quickly looked at the cannons on the ground as she ran. Her troops were firing at the ships in the sky, trying to stop them from landing. With each blast from the cannon the ground trembled, but she steadied herself and continued running into the fire, blocking the blaster shots as they came.

She roared and leapt into the air, soaring and then landing gracefully on her knees as she brought her saber in an arc to cut a trooper in half. The armor sizzled and flickered as he collapsed and, breathing the icy air, Rey moved on.

Then Rey saw Chewie, shooting at a group of troopers and watching each of them fall. Rey also saw the single trooper, aiming a blaster at Chewie's back.

Rey ran. "No!"

She sprinted, saber burning and flickering in the icy air, boots so fast she nearly slipped in the snow, heart racing and pounding in her head as she thought only of that single trooper and how her friend-how Han's friend-was about to die.

The blast was shot, and she was so close. She reached with the Force and held the blast for just long enough she could push Chewie to the ground.

With a crash they landed on the snow, her saber flickering off so she wouldn't hurt him. She breathed. Everything was okay. She made it. Impossibly she had made it.

Then the shot hit her back, and the world disappeared and shrunk like a coward behind the crimson of her eyelids. Then darkness.

Then nothing at all.

* * *

They were winning. Ben knew they were so close to the end of the battle with the enemy falling left and right. Bodies were everywhere, and the white armor of fallen troopers looked almost metallic in the bright sunlight. The grass was ruddy and flooded with death. Still, in the sunlight, they were winning.

Adrenaline was joy in war, and it was raging its ugly head in the bellies of Ben's troops as they fought on, raising their voices to the sound of nonexistent battle drums. Ben cut an enemy down, and another, and another.

He could feel adrenaline in the bond too, and a terrible, guttural fear that hummed violently across the stars. What was happening? He kept walking through the field, stepping over the fallen as he went, listening as the bond rippled and then exploded.

Then part of himself was torn from him, and he stopped in his tracks-saber pointed down at the bloody earth, face grave and fearful in the sunlight that continued to blind them, hand clenched into a fist as though he could take all his fear and ball it up to throw away.

He could feel nothing. There was no Rey to lean upon. There was no bond that shimmered from his soul to hers. The tethering between them had shattered and the splinters were needling themselves and embroidering his heart. His soul was crumbling and ripping at the seams.

Rey! He screamed into the nothingness that was her.

* * *

"Get her out of here!" Someone was saying. "Take her legs, take her legs!"

Rey could feel herself being lifted from the ground, hands under her arms and legs. She was disoriented when she finally came to, when the battle was still raging and her back felt like it had disappeared.

White, agonizing pain. People were moving her away from the battle and the motion was only making her pain worse. The shot had pierced threw her entire torso, and there was crimson staining her commander's jacket. She groaned as they walked.

Then there was nothing but black.

* * *

They won easily, but it didn't matter, not when Ben didn't know what had happened to Rey, not when his mind and soul was missing part of itself. His soldiers looked at him with admiration when the battle was over, but he dismissed them. He should have saved her, even if it wasn't his job.

He should have been there.

And this emptiness? The absence of everything he wanted to be? He could barely think the words, could barely watch them dance in his mind, but they came anyway. This pain he was feeling?

Dit it mean she was gone?

Oh there was so much he could have done only yesterday. It didn't feel like he had seen her face just the day before, had spoken with her as she begged him not to leave her when she was falling apart. Now Rey was dead, and he was the one who had failed her.

You'll come back, she had said. I will, he had said. It was Rey who would never come back, not him, and he was supposed to continue leading the troops who watched him with admiring eyes and were proud to serve under him. He couldn't do this. He couldn't make a government from nothing without her.

He needed her, desperately. He hated himself for it, but oh, wasn't that where this all started? Burning, terrible, fiery hate for everything the other was. For everything the other meant, because they were both so selfish.

Rey was past tense. He couldn't breathe.

He thought he might be drowning in the absence of her, and without the bond and the strength he kept pulling from it he didn't know what he would do. Her mind was blank and empty and nothing felt worse than he could have every imagined.

He couldn't fight for nothing, not when he had been winning this battle for everything. How could he go back to the Resistance base and face Leia, his mother his mother his mother, who loved Rey so much? How could he face Finn or Chewie or any of Rey's soldiers?

Rey never said anything about their bond, so maybe they didn't know about their conversation. But he knew, and that was more than enough to tear him up inside. He couldn't live with the guilt.

He was peering into nothing and expecting to find someone with stardust on her skin and nebulas in her eyes, whose hair caught in her lashes and whose hands had shown him her favorite drink, who had been so strong and brave and he knew-the last thing he would ever know-had sacrificed herself for another.

He should have done so many things. He should have stepped closer when she begged him to stay, should have reached out with more than his eyes, should have been honest to himself and her.

But wishing wouldn't bring her back.

AN: I'm sorry!!! It'll be worth it.

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