InsaneJournal

Ren pulled open the door to the Bureau, asking at the desk and hardly taking the time to hear the response, because at this point he could feel his mother's presence in the Force.

He had wanted to see her again, wanted to see her so badly, but right now - now that there was the possibility of it? - he was all nerves. Would she remember things from home? The same things he did? She was here and alive, but that didn't necessarily tell him much about what she knew. And of course there were all the things from here. Things he would need to explain to her about Fen and Eliot, Fray - the baby.

He swallowed, and made his way down the hall, finding the door that he'd been pointed to and he knocked briefly, barely waiting before he pulled it open, although he didn't move immediately into the room, but stood- hovering - uncertainty in his eyes.

"Mom?"

The door opened, and Leia's instinct was to immediately stand. She'd been here before, of course, but behind a desk, creating false documents for the Displaced. She didn't think she'd have to come in again through a dizzying portal, full of new memories. Parts of the Bureau were open to powers, and she could sense her son getting closer with every moment.

Her son.

Not Kylo Ren.

There was something different about him, and even in her last moments she hadn't sensed that. She'd hoped for it for so long that feeling it now made her nervous. Would she say the wrong thing and ruin it all over again?

She didn't stand for long though, swifting crossing the room and grabbing her son's arms, just above his elbows. "Ren? How long have I been gone?"

The use of his name, the one he'd chosen before, and the question itself was the answer he needed, and he didn't immediately answer, instead he wrapped his arms around her without stopping to answer. He'd wanted to give her that hug since he'd remembered with Rey, and when he knew she wouldn't be startled by it, he took the opportunity to do so, for a moment saying nothing, and when he pulled back, he swallowed. "A… year? I think… it's been close to that."

So much must have happened in that span of time. They could be in the midst of some new plague for all she knew. Leia was grateful for the hug though, so much so that she was more than a little choked up. Staying silent for a brief instant felt like the best thing.

She looked at him. He always looked so haunted, and now they knew why. All this time, Palpatine had been behind it all. How? She didn't know. Leia touched the side of his face.

"That damn long, huh?"

His eyes felt a little moist and he swallowed, pulling a grin to his lips despite the well of emotion that was tightening his chest. "Yeah, we had a whole cruise and everything," he told her, trying to keep it a little light, even though he was just so damn glad she was here. "Um, you can… if you want to call me Ben, it's fine." He told her softly. "Or Ren. I -" he hesitated. "I'm just so glad you're here, mom, and that you remember."

Had it worked? Had she been able to save her son after all? Even if she hadn't been able to see it with her own eyes in their world, the idea that she'd helped bring him back was overwhelming to her. She laughed, but it tapped into the emotions she'd been feeling.

"Has another me been here?" When she left, the other her had disappeared. Amilyn had disappeared. Han had disappeared. Had they all just left him behind? "I didn't mean to leave you… Ben."

There were so many things he wanted to tell her, but the words were still coming difficult around the emotion of seeing her again, and he supposed there would be time. He could tell her how he helped Rey and the resistance, that he'd done what he could. And for all Ben had felt so wrong for months, even back when he'd gotten married, there was something that felt like relief to hear it from her lips.

He swallowed and shook his head and found her hands and held onto them tightly. "I know you didn't. You were here for awhile, and Dad too, both of you were younger though… and you didn't remember Eliot or Fen, or the wedding, and you didn't know me…" and she knew as well as he did how much that entailed all of the good things and all of the bad. "Oh. Mom, Fen's pregnant," his eyes lit up slightly, his delight in it obvious. "She's due in a month or so." And Leia would be here to see a grandchild born. "I have so many questions for you."

Leia wasn't keen on discussing their world in a random room in the Bureau. She wanted to get wherever it was she considered home. Likely the house that looked like the Falcon inside. Again. It really had been home to her for so long, and even years away from that couldn't change it.

But then it clicked in her head.

"Fen's pregnant! Why in the worlds didn't you start with that!" Leia beamed and squeezed his hands. She was going to be a grandmother!

This made him laugh and the laughter was a release, like letting go of a breath he hadn't really realized he was holding. "Because I'm an idiot," he told her, squeezing her hands. "But are you ready to go? We can go, I'll take you home, and I'll tell you everything you missed here. Fen's pregnancy is just the most important thing there."

"By all means," Leia answered, gesturing toward the door. She'd spent enough time here as far as she was concerned. She'd let her son lead the way, if only because she needed to be able to show the relief she felt that she was certain that what she'd done had worked. That she'd been right to have hope in him. "And tell me everything."

He nodded, and then fell mostly quiet as he walked through the Bureau towards the main entrance and out into the Tumbleweed sunlight. He'd brought the car - not the ridiculous van that Eliot had asked for over Christmas (no matter how practical it might be, Ren wasn't ready to start driving it) - and he used the Force to reach out and unlock all the doors before they reached it, pulling open the passenger one for his Mom.

As he slid into the driver's seat he glanced over at her and after a heartbeat, he added: "Rey and I got memories from home. At the same time. Again." He put the key in the ignition, but didn't turn it just yet. "I think we're connected even here," he noted quietly.

He didn't know if his mom remembered more than what she had before. It seemed as if they had been more or less on the same date when she'd been here before, but now he had nearly a year more than that - and it hadn't all been good - and it maybe hadn't been enough in the end, but he had at least turned a step, a page in the right direction to a different end. Even if it had been an actual end that he hadn't really wanted, and he wasn't certain he wanted to talk to his mom about or try to explain. And maybe he shouldn't have brought it up at all because there was no way to talk about it that wasn't going to bring up probably the fact that he knew he didn't survive much past his own memories. His hand went to the key, a fidgeting response to start the car, but he didn't start it, and instead he looked over at her.

When she'd been here before he'd tried to figure out words, and sometimes he had, and sometimes he didn't think he had at all. And from where he was standing right now, all the things he'd messed up - the ways he'd been lied to and the way he'd believed those lies - sometimes maybe even knowing that they were but fearing there was no other option then. There wasn't a way to shift a past that had hurt someone you cared about a lot, not just in the quiet and intimate way of what he had done to Han, but in the larger extent of a galaxy his mom had fought for and he'd thrown his energy into destroying. His gaze flickered, silent and anguished. He'd wanted to see her again at home. Maybe he would somewhere beyond all of it? But right now she was here. And he'd wanted that too. So badly.

"Anyway, uhm, I've missed you." A beat. "And I'm sorry… for -" he breathed out a shaky breath. "Everything." So much. So many things.

Leia wasn't immune to her feelings; she was just particular of the ones she shared with people. Some of that had been taught to her growing up under Breha's and Bail's tutelage. The people needed their leaders to be strong and honest, and sometimes that meant controlling your emotions so you could be that leader.

Of course, some things were hard to keep under wraps, like Han's death. Luke's death. The utter destruction of her homeworld, including her parents. She still had to pick up the pieces because no one else was going to do it for her. She'd let them down. She'd let the galaxy and her son down.

She couldn't tell him that there were some things that couldn't be fixed. All the lives, the planets destroyed in the name of the First Order. After he became Supreme Leader, all of that was placed on him in so many people's eyes. Leia knew she had to do something at a specific point in time, and until that moment, she had to wait and keep the galaxy's hope alive as best she could. After all, it was her family who had torn the galaxy apart, wasn't it?

"We can't change the past, Ben, but we can work on a better future. It seems you've already started that here." Leia reached out brushed her son's cheek. "And I know you're sorry. I can sense it."

He nodded, blinking a little more quickly than normal, but it wasn't enough to hide the moisture in his eyes and he wanted to lean over again and give her a hug, but it wasn't really easy to do in the car and so he settled for a smallish smile instead. For a moment he was quiet, trying to figure out the words to speak.

He remembered, maybe would always remember, that feeling on Starkiller Base, and how he'd felt after killing his father. And for so long his feelings had been so volatile - pulled this way or that. Powerful when he had a moment of certainty, but weakened - or at least his perception had been - when he didn't or when his heart pulled another way. And then he'd been here, and there'd been who he was at home, the knowledge of the paths he was choosing there, and what he'd been trying to do here, and there was a split - undeniably different from the experiences he'd had each place. But now that was no longer true either. It didn't undo the past, but the future felt possible again.

"I feel whole again," he whispered. "I can't change or fix things at home, but I can do better here."

"That's all I ever wanted for you — was for you to feel whole, to feel like yourself." So many times she'd been desperate for her son to come home, not the person that he believed himself to be at Snoke's command. Not the person he thought the galaxy wanted. She just wanted him to be him, in whatever way that meant. Selfishly, she'd hoped that it involved her, of course, but if not, she could deal if it meant he was not haunted.

Leia paused. "Did it work? Did you stop Palpatine?"

He nodded, slowly, glancing away and out the windshield. "Rey remembers more than I do, but yeah. We did. Together." He breathed out slowly, a little shaky with emotion still. "I- helped her get out of it. And she did. She does."

Leia could sense what he meant by Rey remembers more than I do. It wasn't hard to figure out. The Skywalker legacy was never to outlive everyone else; it was to stir up as much trouble as you could before your untimely end. Leia had never felt so sad in her life.

"Then the galaxy is saved, and we can all rest." She reached for his hand once more. "Here, we can do all the things we were never able to do back home. All the family dinners and grandma stealing the grandchild for an afternoon. We'll make the best of things here, and we can stop thinking about that other world. It's not ours anymore. This one is."

He looked over at her and nodded, smiling despite the lump in his throat. Eliot and Fen were here, Fray was here, and soon the baby would be -- with whatever name they would give it. And now his mom was. And there weren't the same things there were at home, including none of the pressures they had both carried -- something he realized now with his own impending Fatherhood maybe better than he ever had at home. "Yeah, it is," he said certainly. "Let's get you home, and then I'm gonna text Eliot and we'll get started on those dinners as soon as you're ready for one."