Star Wars: Edge of Hope

Chapter Twenty One: Whether By A String...

The TIE Whisper cuts through the inky sky vacant of any stars. The space near Mustafar had always combated for supremacy, no celestial bodies deigned to venture there...no light could survive near where true darkness had once reigned. Ben turned sharply back to the Destroyer. His mind was battling against everything trying to square itself to the task he had ahead of him. He could either save Rey by bringing her to the Darkside. Or kill her. The more he felt the image of her laying in his arms, the weight of her body, the endless vacancy of her eyes. The more he couldn't see past that image. Like his life began and ended with hers. A Dyad in the Force...the Two that are One...by uniting his power in the Force with Rey's they would shift the Balance to the Darkside. There would be no Jedi Order...no Resistance...no HOPE. Ben had never felt so alone as he did in the middle of the black sky stretching out past the field of his view. There was nothing here but cold reminders of a life without anything of beauty. It was nothingness, a void waiting to be filled, but no light could survive amongst all this empty emotionless sky. Ben felt the change coming over him, and no matter how he fought it, he knew there was truth in it. He had been in mourning for a life he felt couldn't be his. Ben saw the ground breaking apart beneath his feet, his hands reaching out for hers, but no matter how they grasped their hands swept through each others. Like two waves breaking against each other in the heart of a hurricane, there was more pulling them apart than pushing them together. The warning still ringing in his ears, his heart beat stuttered as it brought the image of her dead in his arms back to the surface. He watched as his lips mouthed the sound of her name. But there was no reply...he looked frantically around him, but all he saw was empty shadows. No one could hear him. No one was coming for him...so he pulled her close and held her almost willing his soul to leave too. It was the way it had to be. Neither of them could survive alone. The distance has already pulling them closer to the brink of madness than ever before. The moments together came and went, capriciously from second to second. He never thought he could need someone the way he needed Rey. She was the phantom limb his soul was missing. As he neared the ship, he could feel the familiar pulse returning to him, the Darkside entombing him once again. He shut down. He blocked out the voices calling him home....They weren't welcome there...in the dark...where it could corrupt them and twist them to torment him. But from the back of his mind her voice broke through...

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi...You're my only HOPE."

Anakin: You have a choice, Ben. You must succeed where I failed. Or all of this...the blood, the sorrow, the losses and the pain will have been for nothing.

Ben's own voice called out to him as he entered the launch bay and cut the Whispers engines.They didn't know her like he did, his mother had always looked at him like an answered prayer, and then he'd become the blackest of black marks held in evidence against her. But she still carried him with her, in her memories and in her heart, nothing was impossible. Even with their foresight she had never let herself believe it....she knew together they'd have the strength to fight it.If light could survive in her father's soul, it could live on in his, but what she didn't know was the light she was looking for had been next to her the whole time. Rey was the light, in body and spirit, for Ben. She was the only thing he cared about beyond self and duty. She was the one line he would never cross no matter the cost. Falling was never the plan, but to keep her safe he dove into the black sea until this lungs were choked off. She was all that was good in life. Her eyes saw through to the truth of him. While he was near her breathing was easy and his mind was calm. She was the living form of all that he had hoped to be. He couldn't let her fall and not be there to catch her before she hit the bottom. She was a story being enscribed on his spirit and his was the hand writing her future beside him. Two souls that love so equally and pure, despite the breaks in his armor and the bends in the pages, no one had offered salvation as sweetly as she had. But even knowing, his heart was born to be with hers, Ben couldn't find the strength to be the hand that led her to her doom.