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quietwings-fics · 3 months

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I Knew You, Once

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Star Wars Ship: Gen (Rey & Ben Solo, Poe & Rey, Leia & Rey) Additional Tags: Character Study, Relationship Study, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Brother-Sister Relationships, Rey Needs A Hug, POV Rey (Star Wars), Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Young Ben Solo, Young Rey, Family, Angst, Attempt at Humor, One Shot, Ben Solo is Kylo Ren, Rey is a lesbian btw it's mentioned like once its important to me, Not Reylo, Growing Up Together, Betrayal, Force Bond (Star Wars) Wordcount: 1351 Podfic Length: 09:06 Summary:

Rey is the only one who never calls him Kylo Ren.

She understands why the others have to. They need to separate the man who is slaughtering defenseless villages and the boy who used to play hide-and-seek with her between the X-Wings. Leia can’t fight a war against her own son, but she can fight Kylo Ren. Han is trying to mourn him, and by mourn, Rey means he’s trying to forget that Kylo Ren exists. Luke, before he leaves, before he abandons them, calls him Kylo Ren because that’s the name he was given when he fell to the Dark Side and only when he finds the light again can he become Ben Solo.

To Rey, that’s all bullshit. Kylo Ren is just a mask, and if you took it off, Ben would still be there, staring back at you.

So, she never calls him that, not in meetings with the resistance, not when talking to the General, not when Poe is saying goodbye on his next mission and she is saying back, “Be careful. Ben almost caught you last time.” When she feels resentful, she likes to think she’s taking away his power, the glamour of the Dark Side he’s used to disguise the fact that he used to just be a man. When she’s so sad she can barely talk or leave her room, she likes to imagine that Luke is right, and that every time she says his name, she’s bringing him back, just a little.

She still dreams of him. Not the monster he’s become, but the boy she grew up with. They used to be inseparable. She’d start a sentence, and he would finish it, and they’d both grin like they’d planned the whole thing. They dashed through crowds without ever losing track of each other, pulled pranks on Poe that left all three of them laughing, and always had each other’s backs. They hid away in the Falcon, Rey fumbling with a mechanical puzzle box Luke had gifted her when she turned twelve, and Ben with his ‘serious’ face on that he thought made him look more adult. It kind of made her want to throw the toy at him.

“Uncle Luke is going to train me to be a Jedi.” She nodded absently, and Ben frowned, annoyed. He reached out right as she had almost solved it, and the toy flew out of her hand and into his. She felt a protest form and die on her tongue when she realized what he’d done.

“That’s awesome!” Ben was at that age where the most important thing in the world was how cool he appeared to others, and when she held out her hand, he floated the toy back to her, carefully, brow furrowed in concentration. It took him weeks to perfect even that, but he never told her. He wanted it to seem effortless. Years later, when she’s trying to learn herself, she laments how easy it was for him, how she’ll never be as good, and Leia is eventually the one to tell her that the first time he tried to use the Force, he hit himself in the face with a rock he was trying to make hover.

“You could be one, too.” He leaned back, proud, already certain she’d be by his side. Because why wouldn’t she? Rey turned the box over in her hands. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She knew she could feel the Force, humming in the air around her and burning in her lungs when she and Ben got into a rare fight. If Ben could use it, so could she.

“Maybe,” she answered, finally. “Maybe, I’ll be a smuggler. And then I can come flying in to save you.” She’d been raised on the stories of the rebellion, most of them from Poe, who liked to embellish. For a moment, Ben scowled, but it vanished as quickly as it had come, and Rey wrote it off, like she did every time. She wishes she hadn’t. She wishes she’d seen the pattern long before it led him to the First Order, not because she could have stopped it, but because it would have saved her a lot of heartache to understand why he could turn on them. The Skywalker family legacy weighed down on him in a way she never experienced, and instead of letting go, growing beyond it, he let that resentment fester until all he wanted to do was tear apart the tapestry his mother and uncle wove out of a broken and divided galaxy.

He still hasn’t seen the irony in doing it all in Darth Vader’s name.

“Wait for me,” she’d told him firmly, on that last day before he left with Luke. “I’ll be ready soon. I’ll come join you. We can both be Jedi.” By then, she had made up her mind. Wherever Ben went, so did she. She thought it’d work the other way around, too. He hugged her, and he promised, said he would always wait for her. She had no reason not to believe him. Ben had spent his childhood with her running after him, three years younger and never as fast as him, but he’d always let her catch up. He’d always waited.

Until one day, he didn’t.

Rey woke up screaming, clutching the sides of her head like there were blaster bolts bouncing around inside it. She was screaming for Ben, begging him, trying to make him hear her and stop doing whatever was hurting her, hurting them. She’d never felt anything like that pain, and in the back of her mind, it still lingered, her senses dulled to it purely by how long it had been happening, but the first time was agony. She’d lived so long with Ben a part of her that she couldn’t have ever been prepared for him to try and rip them apart.

He almost killed Luke. He took the other students, killed the ones who wouldn’t follow him, and chose Snoke to be his new master. And he made Rey do it, too. She had nightmares through his eyes of tearing the school apart, the smell of a lightsaber cutting through flesh making her sick when she escaped the dream. She’s still not sure if Ben knew he was damning her with him, and she doesn’t care if it matters or not. He still did it. She’s still dreaming about it and every other monstrous thing he’s done.

That’s why when Leia says that there might still be Light in him, she laughs bitterly. She’s been in every corner of his head as he’s been in every corner of hers, and if there’s still a chance, she’s yet to find it. Poe, at least, understands. He watched Ben grow up too, if from another perspective, already an adult when the First Order rose to power. He’s the only one who knows she still has nightmares. She’s learned to muffle the screams. Poe doesn’t try to fill up the space Ben left, either, but he stays, tells her pilots’ gossip and makes terrible jokes and gives her tips on how to flirt with the other girls on base that he isn’t remotely qualified to give. Ben was her brother, or another piece of her soul, depends on who you ask, but Poe’s her friend, and that’s worked out much better for her so far.

Ben Solo is Kylo Ren is a monster and a murderer and a terror upon the galaxy and is still Ben. She wants to hate him, but can’t, and wonders if she could forgive him, but can’t, and wishes she could do what everyone else does and believe the mask he’s chosen and the name he’s been given and the lies he’s weaved around himself, but can’t. She’s going to have to face him one day, maybe even fight him, maybe even kill him, and she’s not sure if she can do that either. The worst part is that she misses him, even though he doesn’t deserve to be missed.

It would be so much easier if she could just kill Kylo Ren.

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