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A Path to Broken Stars

Summary:

Since usurping the throne of Alderaan a decade ago, Emperor Snoke has banned the use of magical powers within the kingdom. Only Snoke himself and his elite Imperial Guard are allowed to wield magic for their own cruel, destructive ends.

Rey is an orphan of Snoke's war of conquest and survives as a scavenger in the wastes of Jakku. The threat of death for using illicit magic is no concern of hers - until it is.

Kylo Ren, the most fearsome of all of Snoke's masked warriors, sees something in Rey she'd rather he didn't. To protect her from Snoke, he hides her away in his abandoned ancestral home, teaching her how to wield the powers she barely understands. Rey's lonely - until she starts being visited at night by the mysterious Ben, whose face she can never look upon, but whose soul shines to her despite the darkness...

Or: A quasi-medieval retelling of Eros and Psyche, with lashings of Beauty and the Beast.

Notes:

Welcome to my first Reylo longfic! This was inspired by discussing the Eros & Psyche myth with my beta Reylonging, and the result is this...

When I say longfic - I've set myself a Covid quarantine challenge to write this month. So far this story is over 50k words and will be over 75k by the end of the month. In total expect this to run to over 200k. Chapters will come every two weeks, and because I have a good stockpile there's not much danger of me running out anytime soon.

Come say hi on Tumblr! where I'll be posting sneak peeks of each chapter.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

story cover

The din of war lies heavily over the ancient castle of Alderaan. The clash of swords, the beat of horse hooves, the screams of the dying. The stench of death is also folded over them like a cloak, ripe and sickly sweet. 

Queen Leia feels all of it and tries her hardest to ignore it, like every breath doesn’t make her stomach roil in protest. It will do her no good to become overwhelmed, not while the battle still rages.

Her sight is limited, given that she is hunkered down in a stone passage deep within the castle, one that leads to a safe hiding place outside of the city walls. Only the royal family know about these passages, and times like these prove why some secrets are necessary to keep.

“I can’t leave, Han,” she says, gripping her husband’s forearms tightly. “Not until I know our son is safe.”

She can’t feel him. Ben wasn’t in his chamber when the first shrieks came, though his bed had been slept in. Some of his armor was missing too, suggesting he’d leaped into action in the moments Leia had spent dazed and disoriented at being woken so abruptly. She tries to reach out to him through their mental bond but she is still too shaken. Her powers, already frail through lack of practice, are failing her. She can’t concentrate enough to find him, and that scares her more than any danger posed to herself.

Han takes her grip stoically. He’s never been the kind of man to wear his emotions loudly, and his ability to keep her calm is one of his many good qualities. Perhaps what, all those years ago, had led to her choosing a cavalier from such humble origins as her consort.

“I still don’t understand how Snoke’s forces got in here,” he says. “Nobody’s ever breached Alderaan’s walls, not in nearly a thousand years, and he did it so quickly? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” Leia asks. “It’s obvious. We’ve been betrayed.”

She says the words so lightly, but she feels them resonate through her husband with all the gravity they carry.

“Who?” Han shakes his head as a fresh round of screams goes up from the courtyard below them. “Snoke has no allies in this castle, not since his exposure.”

“He must do,” Leia replies, and she winces as she hears the clear sound of a death rattle rasping from a throat outside. One of her subjects breathing their last. Who—one of her loyal guards? A servant, somebody with no capacity to defend themselves against Snoke’s mercenaries? 

Not Ben. Please not Ben

Whoever it was, they were a soul she failed in her duty to protect.

She should have never let Snoke into her home when he’d arrived here eight years before, claiming sanctuary against persecution in his home land. He’d been charming and clever, and an apt tutor for her son. At least until she’d discovered him dabbling in dark magic, and plotting treason against her.

“The only way he could have breached the ancient magic protecting the castle is with help from someone on the inside,” she continues. “Those wards cannot be undone from the outside—I don’t even understand how they were taken apart by anyone not of Skywalker blood. And now I fear it’s too late to expel him.”

The attack had come in the hour before dawn, the enemy forces creeping across the kingdom under a blanket of fog which kept them hidden from sentries. Before the alarm went up, half of Leia’s guards had already had their throats slit.

Han had already urged her to leave, as soon as they’d retreated into the hidden passages, but Leia now recognized this isn’t a temporary action. They aren’t sheltering in here to ensure she survives the battle and can emerge to reclaim her throne once Snoke’s forces are routed. From everything she has seen and heard—it’s not her throne anymore. She’d lost the battle before she even knew it was under way.

“If I leave Alderaan, I fear we will never return,” she confesses to Han. “Not once Snoke has this land under his power.”

It’s Han’s turn to grip her, dipping his face towards her to mask the difference in their respective heights. “I don’t care, princess. I would give up this kingdom a thousand times to save you.”

His old nickname for her almost raises a smile to Leia’s face. No matter how long she’d been on the throne, he still wouldn’t surrender the teasing epithet he’d used since the day they’d met.

“Not without Ben.”

“I will find him,” Han swears. “I will find him and I will bring him to you. But you need to go. If something happens to you, our people will lose hope and the kingdom will lose the protection of your blood.”

Before she can protest—before she can remind her husband that she has her own sword, and her own kind of armor, Han is gone, slipping into the darkness of the passageway and out through one of the hidden entrances to the castle complex.

Being unable to see what’s going on in the world beyond is unbearable to her. There’s a way, even within these walls, that won’t betray her position or draw Snoke’s attention to her feeble magic. She creeps through the passage, keeping her steps light so the sound cannot echo and betray her position. At the first bend, she chooses the right hand fork and begins to climb a staircase that spirals halfway up the tower it wraps around.

Here and there, small fissures in the stone have been built in to allow the outer courtyard to be observed through a series of small mirrors. They reflect the outside world onto a larger mirror pinned to the wall, so there is no danger of being spied through the fissures or a careful arrow breaching her hideaway. There are other viewpoints like this scattered among the passages, clever engineering employed rather than the kind of magic which could be detected by a skilled user. Her ancestors always liked to use both where possible: that’s why when the castle wards failed, boiling oil and razor wire formed their own traps. 

She had underestimated Snoke so much.

When she approaches the mirror, at first she only sees her own reflection, dim and warped in the darkness of the passage. She seems older than usual to her own eyes, almost stooped, the silver in her dark braid standing out brightly and the lines around her mouth deeper because of her frown. The frown deepens as she straightens her shoulders, holding her solitary candle aloft. She is Queen Leia of Alderaan and she does not wilt before an enemy.

But the candle light changes the reflection to show her the scene outside, and she has to clap a hand over her own mouth to quiet her gasp at what she sees in the world beyond. Already it’s apparent that the battle is coming to an end.

No. This was no battle. This was slaughter.

The bodies of the castle’s inhabitants lie piled around the courtyard, blood pooling so deeply that the flagstones have disappeared under a crimson lake. If Ben is out there—

The only moving figure is Han. He holds his crossbow ready to fire, pivoting as he moves to ensure he isn’t surprised by somebody coming at him from his flank. He’s not stupid enough to venture into the center of the courtyard, keeping to the edges as he makes his way to the gatehouse.

Two figures enter the courtyard from the northern gate and Han freezes. 

Leia recognizes Snoke. How could she not? His face is a horror, a patchwork of scar tissue. He’s tall and spindly, his long fingers and limbs always reminding her of a spider. His gold cloak is ridiculously ostentatious and shows no bloodstains—nobody died directly at this hand tonight.

She doesn’t know the creature next to him. Equally as tall—both of them having inches on Han—and broad, but entirely clad in black, head to toe, from boots to cloak to gloves. Even his face is covered by a mask. Not a sliver of skin is shown, and Leia fears she is looking upon a demon. She shivers, because she can’t see the creature’s eyes, but she senses the dark magic and rage pouring out of it. There’d be no mercy to be found in those eyes.

At first she thinks they haven’t seen Han, that he will make his escape unscathed. But, with her breath tight in her throat, she can only watch as Snoke extends a hand in front of himself, flexing his fingers so that Han is plucked off his feet and flung to the ground.

Not that it keeps him down. He’s already pushing himself to his knees, firing off a crossbow bolt in Snoke’s direction without waiting to get back to his feet.

His aim is true. But the black-clad creature grabs the bolt out of the air, crushing it in his fist.

“Kill him,” Snoke instructs, and the creature nods, advancing on Han, who is now upright once more.

Han says something, but it’s too soft for Leia to hear from this distance. A plea of some kind. He even reaches out to the creature, as if he is appealing in some way. The creature pauses and Leia holds her breath, offering up a prayer to her ancestors. 

A moment later, she’s almost brought to her knees. A ripple of pain— agony —has pulsed out from the courtyard. Leia doesn’t understand. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought it emanated from the creature, but he stands, tall and whole, not a wound to be seen.

Whatever Han has said, it doesn’t work. The creature extends its sword, already dripping with blood, and plunges it into Han’s abdomen.

Leia screams. It’s foolish, as good as asking for them to come kill her next. But oh, how can she keep this anguish inside, the sudden swell of pain that is Han’s life force being cut short? She feels it; she feels the moment he leaves her, and she can’t keep that locked inside her, so it rips from her in a wordless wail.

And underneath that, the first flare of Ben’s energy that she’s felt during the entire siege. It’s there, thready and oddly hard to connect to, but she feels him.

Two heads turn in her direction.

“Find her!” Snoke commands the creature.

At least she has the sense to run.

Down this time. It’s pointless to go upwards, not when that will leave her pinned at the top of the keep. Instead she plummets down the stairs, as fast as her feet will take her, until she is so far down that the entirety of the castle is above her head. Cellars, dungeons and moat, she is below them all. 

She reaches out for Ben, just for a moment, each jolt of connection the only thing stopping her from running back to Han’s prone body. Wherever Ben is, he’s alive, and it’s the only thing keeping her moving. He feels close by—getting closer with every step, even as she keeps moving, and she hopes this means he’s found his own way into the passages. He’s the only person left who knows about them.

This route runs underneath the moat and out into the caves that line the river bank. There’s a boat stashed, waiting, for a moment like this, and she can smell the river before she reaches it, sour and damp.

The cave is utterly still and dark when she emerges, the gentle lapping of the water amplified by the rock. She is able to find the boat using her candle, wedging it on a ledge beside the mooring ropes. She fumbles to loosen them. Ben is coming closer, and she is ready to go as soon as he reaches her. She’ll need his strength to help row.

From here, the river flows underground, and according to the maps disappears into the depths of the earth. Only she knows that it can be navigated, as it was by her great-grandfather, until it emerges in the wilds of Naboo. Her mother’s birthplace and a safe haven for the royal family of Alderaan for eons.

She steps into the boat, struggling with the knot of the final rope. A footstep crunches on the soil inside the cave, and she breathes a sigh of relief as Ben’s presence hums through her. She says his name as she turns to look at him—

It dies in her throat.

The masked creature looms over the boat, Han’s crossbow pointed at Leia’s heart.

She closes her eyes, allowing herself a moment to compose herself. She can still feel Ben, but also the angry, unstable presence she’d felt earlier. 

They’re one and the same.

The edges of his fury are dark and raw, spitting hot sparks out around him like a smith’s forge. Where has this come from? This isn’t her son, the quiet, eager boy who’d always felt like a shaft of light to her.

Now she knows what Han said in the courtyard.

“Ben,” she whispers. It’s a plea, but also an elegy. A prayer. A sound of mourning.

What has Snoke done to her son? What has she allowed him to do?

Leia knows now, of course, who betrayed them.

She can’t see his face, but now she understands who stands before her, she can read his body language. Indecision pours off him in waves, his shoulders almost quaking with the effort to keep himself contained.

“You don’t have to do this,” she murmurs. “Whatever he’s said—whatever he’s promised you—it doesn’t have to end like this.”

She holds her hand out to him. Thinks of all the times she’d cradled his head when he was a little boy, drying his tears with her gowns. She tries to ignore the image of him cutting Han down, and remember the tender, shy boy who’d always wanted her attention and affection.

The arm holding the crossbow wavers, its aim sliding lower.

“Ben, my only child. I can forgive you for anything .”

“Anything?” His voice through the mask is all wrong. Distorted and raspy. It’s like a lick of ice down her spine.

“Everything,” she promises.

The crossbow falls to his side, and she keeps her hand raised. Waiting for him to take it.

“We can undo this together,” she says soothingly, even though she has no idea how to even begin to turn the tide against Snoke.

She’s focused on Ben and can’t sense Snoke.

Not until his sword is at her throat.

“I’m afraid it ends here, your majesty,” he tells her in his gloating rasp. “Time for this land to be forged anew. A stronger hand at its till, using magic as it was always intended.”

Leia is perfectly still, casting a sad gaze up towards her son.

“Well done, my dark apprentice,” Snoke continues. “You have already proven your worth twice today. You’ve shown that your bloodline is not so corrupted yet. Your final act—the one that will prove your loyalty to me—is clear.”

Leia waits for Ben to move, but though he raises the crossbow a fraction, he does not strike.

Snoke waits a beat and no more. “A pity.”

He turns, raising the sword for a full killing blow, but Leia has already anticipated his move. She throws herself to one side, her outstretched hand yanking the crossbow from Ben’s unresisting grasp with her magic. Snoke’s blow instead slices through the rope still holding the boat to the river bank.

Leia fires the crossbow at him without taking the time to aim, without giving them time to anticipate and block it. It strikes him in the shoulder and he falls to the ground with a roar, while the boat is sent careening out into the current.

She falls, seeing stars, aware that the stinging pain in her leg is because she was also sliced by the sword there. She must make a tourniquet to stem the blood flow, but she has to fight past the way the world is swimming around her. Leia must survive this.

It’s why she reloads the weapon with another bolt, pushing herself upright to try and finish Snoke off. This time she does aim, but it’s no good when the world is spinning so giddily around her. She fires at Snoke’s prone body, but instead hits the dark mass to his side. Ben.

She feels the resulting howl from her son as much as she hears it, but she doesn’t have the strength to even whisper an apology to him. All she can do, as she collapses backwards, is hope that she didn’t hit anything vital. That his armor was worth a damn. That he knows she wasn’t aiming for him at all.

The boat jerks around the bend and out of danger from Snoke—there is no path he can follow her on down here. Before the darkness falls, she lifts her head. This cave is her last view of Alderaan. The wounded creature beside Snoke is the last time she sees her son.