Rey pulled Ben to his feet. She tried to hold him up with the Force, but she couldn't find a method that didn't cause him more pain. She let him go, and he crumpled to the ground again.
"Please, Ben, get up," she begged. His eyes were sorrowful and full of pain, but she wouldn't give up on him. Pulling him to his feet again, she tried to support him until he stumbled. He collapsed to his knees, his hair falling over his eyes as he bowed his head in exhaustion.
"Leave me."
"No." She tried to lift him again, but he stopped her.
"Rey..." he grabbed her hand to force her to look him in the eyes. "I can't. And you'll only grow weaker by the minute with that poison inside you. Please... leave me."
She shook her head as she sobbed. "I can't leave you," she cried. "I made a promise and I intend to keep it." His agony drilled into her bones even though she still sensed his mental shields in their bond. She suspected that this pain she sensed from him was only the blunt edge of the torture he was suffering.
The exhaustion dimmed the brightness in his pleading eyes. "This isn't about promises. I'm dying. You need to leave me, so that you have a chance to get to a medbay."
"Would you leave me?" she demanded through tears. Ben didn't answer, but he didn't have to. She could see the answer in his eyes. "Then don't ask me to leave you."
He was right about one thing, they had to leave. The ship was falling apart, Ben was deteriorating quickly, and she needed to find his droid. "I'll be right back. Please hold on." Rey stood and surveyed the debris around them, attempting to find a suitable path to the floor above them. The memories of the last time she had climbed debris tormented her thoughts. They had climbed out of the ruins of his grandfather's castle together. He had refused to go with her then too, but they had worked together to escape. They would do it again. She would help him, she would save him, as she had after Concordia.
With a running start, she leapt onto the debris and jumped for the floor above. Her fingers nearly slipped off the edge, but with a little help from the Force, she pulled herself up. The smoke was thick as she began her search, her path only illuminated by the flashing red alarms. In the darkness, she nearly stumbled into a hole in the center of the corridor. "Blue?" she called across the chasm.
As she had in the wreckage of Star Destroyers a thousand times before, Rey leapt across the chasm. "Blue?" she called into each room, squinting her eyes in the darkness. The droid didn't answer her. He probably hates me. "Blue, please, I'm sorry!"
Three doors up on the left, Ben's voice rasped in her mind. It was relieving to know that somewhere on the floor below he was conscious and following her in the Force.
She ran through the third blast door to find a room full of weaponized droids. Last time he ran away, he hid with other droids.
The walls were lined with shelves of droids of all different models. Rey searched the corner where several dark astromechs with head-mounted cannons were discarded. She knew she was in the right place when she heard the soft whimper. "Blue?" Metal clinked on metal as the droid pushed himself further behind the others. "Blue, I'm sorry. I'm not... I didn't... I'm sorry." Rey lowered herself down on her hands and knees on the surprisingly warm floor. "I never wanted to hurt you, or Ben, but the... bad thing... inside me is gone now. I won't hurt you, I promise." The droid remained hidden from her. She could hear the uneven hum of his internal drives, he was critically damaged as well. I promise I'll fix you, too. "Blue, Ben needs you. Please."
The droid slowly, cautiously, emerged from the shadows. She offered a hand to guide him, but he stayed out of her reach. With opened palms in supplication, she spoke softly to the frightened astromech. "Ben is hurt. This ship is broken, and we have to take an emergency shuttle to get him to a medbay, or... do you understand what it means to die?"
The word clearly meant something to Blue, because he was pushing past her before she could finish the sentence.
By the time she found her way out of the room, Blue was using his tethers to cross the chasm. She sprinted after him, not bothering to slow down or plan her steps before launching herself through the smoke after him. When she landed on the other side, he had disappeared from sight, but she knew he hadn't run again. He wouldn't leave Ben to die. Finding her way to the remnants of the Carbonite room, she found that he had already repelled down to his 'master,' who had moved precariously close to the edge of the pit in the floor.
His string of beeps and whistles were hurried as he rattled off the directions to Ben's personal emergency shuttle. There was no sign of the frightened droid as he explained his concerns over the amount of time they had, reminding her he could get through the security measures for the escape shuttle, but only as long as some power remained operational.
Though his internal drives had begun to grind and spark, the droid was focused and... brave. He bounced over rubble and into the corridor without the slightest hesitation and Rey had faith that if it could be done, he would do it. Blue would get them off this destroyer. In return, she would make certain his master survived long enough to make it to the shuttle and get help, he would live to know how brave his droid had been in the face of death. And Blue would survive to tell the story. That was a promise.
When Rey returned to her bondmate, his eyes were closed, but she could still feel his heartbeat in the Force. That was enough. She wrapped her arms underneath his and around his chest. She cried out as she tried to drag his considerable weight. Absorbing energy from the Force around her, she provided herself just enough strength to pull Ben over the debris, and into the corridor.
Another explosion rocked the ship. Alarms were blaring as fire burned holes in the floor from the levels below them. The corridors were empty; the ship held thousands and yet there was not a single soul in sight. Rey pulled her shirt over her mouth, coughing from the toxic air. She slowed her breathing as best she could with the Force, understanding the grim reality that they would both die if she lost consciousness.
Her lungs were raw from the heat, each breath shot white-hot pain through her chest. Still she pressed on, she was a survivor, and so was Ben. Everything would be alright, just as it had been before. He had faced death on Starkiller, Concordia, and Ilum. And those were just the instances she had been present for. He could survive this too. He was quiet, but she grasped tightly to their bond. As long as he was in pain, he was alive.
"Talk to me, Ben," she begged. "Why did you finally do it? Why did you leave? If you would have stayed, you would be safe. You knew you were going to die, why did give up on something you sacrificed everything for? It was the most important thing to you. Why did you give up power over the entire galaxy?" She wanted to make him angry, as angry as she was. Anger would give him strength.
Her plan backfired, however, when her strength fell away with his pained words. "Because," he coughed weakly, "it was nothing compared to what I gave up in return. You are my entire galaxy, Rey. You are the only person in my entire life worth fighting for and worth dying for."
Rey choked back a sob and searched the darkness for more strength to drag him. "Don't talk like that, if I'm worth dying for, then I should be worth living for."
Ben coughed again, the nauseating rattle of the fluid in his lungs consumed her thoughts. Would they make it? Did they have enough time? Could a medbay help him? Everything will be okay. Grasping to the bond in comfort, she searched deep for more strength to quicken her pace.
"I should have left sooner," he rasped. "I convinced myself it was to protect you, but I was too afraid to leave."
Rey bit her lip to hold it together. He needed her. "Don't be sorry, Ben. You did it, you're free, and now we can be together." His body grew heavier, but she could still hear his labored breathing; there was still time.
Black smoke billowed from the life-support vents, suffocating the corridor. Crimson streaks stretched like grasping claws of death on the floor behind them. The lights flickered, then cast the struggling pair into darkness. At once, Rey was nauseous and lightheaded, the corridor was heaving around her as the inertial dampener failed. It was a disheartening sign; if the ship was losing systems, the power would not likely return. If it didn't return, Blue couldn't slice his way into the emergency craft.
Without warning, the ship pitched to the side and her feet lost contact with the floor. The artificial gravity generator had been compromised. "Ben!" She grasped for him in the weightless darkness, but couldn't reach him. She was tumbling in an uncontrolled mess of limbs, reaching for a wall to direct her trajectory toward her bondmate. Not that she could see anything in the pitch darkness, but she could hear his rasping breath.
There was no light, no sense of direction, and the only other sound in the eerie silence – besides the ringing in her ears, a lingering effect from the sirens – was the sound of durasteel creaking as the destroyer barreled through space toward certain death. They floated helplessly for a moment before the lights flickered back on – and in the split second they remained in limbo in the air – Rey saw spherical bubbles of red hovering above Ben's unconscious body. With the lights returned the artificial gravity, however, and they dropped violently to the floor.
Ben hit the black tile with a sickening thud, not even a moan escaping his lips. She stood, a throbbing ache in her head numbed her senses. Her balance took the worst hit, without the Force she wouldn't have been capable of walking, let alone standing. A pulsating hum deafened the sound around her, her shoes were melting to the floor from the heat from the fire below. Just as she had lifted his heavy weight up enough to wrap her arms around him again, bile rose to her throat as the ship slowed rapidly.
It had likely been negligible in their overall speed, but it was enough to pitch them forward down the corridor. The angle became too steep and they began to slide, accelerating quickly over the sleek tile. She feared they had already entered Ilum's atmosphere and were making their final descent straight into the ground. There wasn't much to do but hold onto Ben as best she could and await whatever fate was destined for them. The steep incline leveled out on its own, however, and she immediately wrapped her arms around him again and dragged him frantically to the escape pods. She could feel the weakening effects of the poison in her veins, but she pushed herself harder. They were in a race against time as the internal systems failed.
"Stay with me, Ben."