CHAPTER FOUR.
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It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

WILLIAM BLAKE
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THE LIGHT IS PEERING THROUGH the lazy branches of the tall palm trees that hang overhead like a canopy, one that smells of fresh, growing things, and it is easy to believe that she could be young and happy forever.

     Val can feel him approaching in the Force long before she hears his steps. She regards him for a moment, takes in the breadth of his shoulders and the deep frown lingering on his lips. It is one of the few times he isn't wearing his bucket. Silence engulfs them. Val has been thinking about this moment for years. She can no longer wait. She has waited long enough.

     Val opens her mind and feels the way their Bond pulses and thrums all around them. She hears the way his breath catches. The Force ripples with shock and the waves spread outward, each one knocking into her as she sits up, searching his face. His dark, fathomless eyes go wide as he drinks her in. For a moment, they're at a standstill: her, looking at him, trying to understand what he is seeing, and him, feeling as though he's being broken into pieces all over again as he takes in the sharpness of her cheekbones, the brightness of her eyes.

Kylo stands there, rooted to the spot, stunned, staring at Val like he can't believe she is real. Like he never wants to stop looking at her. He takes a tentative step towards her, as if afraid that if he moves too suddenly it'll turn out to be a dream after all.

Tara, his insides scream. Tara of the Temple. But that cannot be. Kind, good-natured Tara has been dead for a long time. He knows, because it was him who had left her to die. He hasn't been able to feel her signature in the Force for many years.

And yet—

    "Tara?" Her name is a broken sound on his tongue.

     Val tries to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat, but her mouth has suddenly gone dry as the desert itself. She takes a deep steadying breath.

THE TREES OF THE GARDENS are heavy with blossom. Around them the world is all noise: senators chatter, the birds chirp and sing, shuttles come and go. This forest of blossom is quiet, though, in the crimson spill of dusk, and Kylo watches Val—not Tara, never Tara—as the woman's blue eyes close fleetingly.

He towers over her, looming like a shadow.

     Kylo watches, fascinated, as the drifts fall in white and pink around her, catching in her hair, her gown, her lashes. She has not moved for hours, he knows. He does not know what to make of the stillness, of the expectant way her hands are folded into her lap. She is not Tara anymore, no longer the girl with grass in her hair and scabbed knees.

     She has bloomed into a force of nature, poised like she's been set in quartz. Cold but breathtaking. She is swathed in handmaidens, weighed down by a glimmering headdress and a stiff gown and her role as a young queen. The crown rests easily over her brow, like it has always been there.

     She is as beautiful as ever, Ben Solo thinks.

     Kylo Ren snuffs the thought out like a light.

She lifts her hand fleetingly and her guards quietly leave them alone.

Between them lay years of things unsaid.

     "You can say something, if you'd like." Val is staring out into the distance, unblinking.

     He looks at her like he looks at everything else—with poorly-concealed anger twitching at the corner of his mouth, eyes dark. She is unguarded and Kylo senses that her lightsaber is not here, if she still has it at all. Anger bubbles up as he realises that she is not in the least worried that he would hurt her, as if she still knows him. His head is at war with itself. So many wants clamoring to be a need.

     Kill the past, a voice demands. It starts here.

     Her gaze breaks as she blinks, head tilting although she does not gaze in his direction. Her voice is low; veiled in annoyance. "You're staring."

     A pause. "You've changed."

"That must be a surprise, considering you left me to die," Val snaps quickly, words dripping in regal hostility. She levels a glare at him.

Her anger laps at the shores of Kylo's mind like a knife passing over his skin. It grazes his composure. He's always been sensitive to the Force. Her hatred is making his stomach churn. It carves deep, cracking open his ribs and devouring his heart whole.

"You even have a different name now."

She shrugs. "As do you."

He almost smiles. It all feels so eerily familiar.

Val looks down as she stirs the fallen blossoms in her lap with her fingertips. "Tara died with Ben. You killed them both."

He hums in agreement.

  "Maybe it would've been better if we had both just blown each other out of the sky and crashed, killed each other from the start," she says quietly, remembering their first mission together. It had failed spectacularly, with both their starfighters crashing on one of Mandalore's moons. Val cocks her head, green eyes trained on him and sees recognition dawning on his face. "It would have saved us a lot of time."

Kylo frowns at her words, his dark stare darting away from hers before returning a moment later, his jaw tightening. "Time is inconsequential," he murmurs, sounding almost mournful. "You either have too much of it or too little. Never just enough."

Val glances at him, waiting as he falls into a long spell of silence, as he seems to weigh his words.

"Well," he says quietly. "Looks like it just ran out for us, then."

"No." Unadulterated conviction laces Val's words, and for a moment the emotion catches thick and harsh in her throat. Swallowing hard, the rest spills forth in a rush of raw honesty. "You took it from us. We could've had all the time in the world."

     There had been a time when her and Ben were so close, so entwined in friendship that it felt as if they shared thoughts. As if they could speak to each other with merely a look. So this is eerily familiar. Val senses that he is wondering how he didn't know from the very beginning. She has the answer for him; because he refused to know. Ben has always relied more on the Force for guiding than her. So long as there was no signature of hers in the Force, he had closed his eyes to the truth.

She fights not to stumble when his will crashes into her barrier. He has grown strong, but so has she.

     "Someone's been teaching you," he growls.

     Val hums. She purposefully lets images slip through her wall. R2-D2, who finds her, lying in a puddle of blood. Leia, who nurses her back to health. Luke, who teaches her a final lesson. His anger only grows.

She listens to his slow breaths as silence settles once more.

     "Did anyone know about—" He waves a gloved hand around.

"—this?" Val stifles a smirk at his mannerism. "I think Luke always knew. And Leia knew my aunt. It was her who sensed my sensitivity and brought me to the Temple," Val tells him. Her frown remains and she crushes a handful of blossom. "Other than that, no one will grieve for what was Tara."

I will, he thinks, remembering her smile. I have.