Chapter Text
Rey awoke some time later, her eyes fluttering open to the high, dark ceiling of the mansion’s ballroom.
She felt very peculiar, as if she was just coming back into her body; she stretched her limbs outward and it felt to her like they took just a second too long to respond.
She began to lift her shoulders from the couch upon which she laid, but found herself barred from sitting up at all. Her wrists and ankles had been tied by rope, separated and tied down to each leg of the piece of furniture which now served as her anchor.
Panic set in almost immediately. Her heart racing, she tugged helplessly on her bindings, but they didn’t budge even a millimetre. The last thing she remembered was Luke Skywalker’s grinning, malicious face looming at her from out of the darkness.
Luke Skywalker, the dead man.
“Ben…?” She called out, her voice trembling with fear. “Ben!”
Was he even there? Had his uncle done something to him, too? But what could a ghost do to another that would hurt it? With too many incomprehensible questions left unanswered, Rey’s head swam with all manner of terrible things. She began to scream.
“Please, somebody help me!”
“No one can hear you. No one with any power to help , anyway.”
Rey’s blood ran cold. She saw him then, walking towards her as though he had materialized out of the darkness itself; his face split by a skeletal, maniacal grin. Luke. The old-fashioned, wisened butler in prim, proper dress clothes. How long had he been hiding there? What did he have planned for her?
“Why…?” she asked, struggling with the rope. “What did you do to me? What do you want ?”
Luke sighed, as though he was disappointed in the fact that he now had to give her an answer.
“You are our key out of this cursed place,” he replied simply, walking slowly and confidently around her restrained form. “See, long ago, I made a grave mistake. The consequences of which I severely underestimated.
“My nephew was always starry-eyed, and too ambitious for his own good,” Luke grumbled. The resentment in his tone gave his words a sharp edge. “Some called it pride. Others called it skill. I called it arrogance.
“So, when he fell in love with a young English girl, the manner in which he courted her was just that: arrogant. Stubborn, too. She rebuked him at first, but even that did not deter him. He hardly ever stopped talking about the peasant, either.”
His wording gave Rey pause. “Peasant?” she asked. The woman in the painting, the one she could only assume to be Raewyn, did not look like a peasant in the slightest in her satin dress and pearls.
“She was a small, freckled thing,” he went on, “and she came here from England with barely a nickel to her name. Right away that told me she was only looking for a privileged husband to fund her new life in the New World. She lived at the boarding house, which was on the south end of the town at one time. She said she worked in the marketplace, though what she sold I can only imagine. Her body, most like.
“She was poor. Ill-mannered. Disobedient. She would never have obeyed him! And once she realized she had my nephew wrapped around her finger, she held on and took advantage of all she could.”
The expression on his face was dark. He had hated this woman, bitterly.
“He was going to marry her. She was not worthy of the Solo-Skywalker name. She was not worthy of this ; this life, these luxuries! I know she planned on getting me out of the house as soon as the deal was done. What could I do? I wasn’t about to let my nephew and his foolishness tarnish everything we—his mother, father, and I—had worked so hard to build! They would roll over in their graves if they knew!
“So I intervened. I caught Raewyn’s reply to his proposal and swapped it out with a suicide note. And then, to make it official, I fed her poisoned wine. She felt nothing as she passed; only a heavy desire to sleep. That was the largest mercy I could have gifted her.”
Other than letting her live, you mean? Rey thought, though she was too afraid to speak the words aloud.
“What I didn’t realize— couldn’t have realized—was that my actions that night would bring forth a curse so dark and unholy that there would appear to be no escape from it—until now.”
She felt his hand on her forehead and squirmed. The more she rocked her head side-to-side to try to rid herself of his touch, the harder he gripped her skull until she had no choice but to keep it steady.
His fingers began to comb through her hair. She felt her stomach churn. Her skin writhed in disgust.
“The culmination of my nephew’s heartbreak and my mortal sin thrust every living being in this house into purgatory. We are naught but ghosts, and yet we cannot leave these grounds. We are doomed to remain, forever unfulfilled, forever heartbroken. I thought it would always be that way, until I saw your flyer, caught in our front gate. The second I saw your face, everything changed…”
“Please,” Rey begged, “just tell me what you want from me. I’m not her . I’m not Raewyn! We look alike; that’s all .”
“Oh, but my dear, it’s so much more than that,” Luke was smiling again.
He finally released his hold on her and began to pace once more; faster this time, as though he was growing more agitated.
“You are her doppelgänger. It was Ben’s implacable heartbreak over Raewyn’s death that brought about the curse. If I can use you as a vessel for Raewyn’s lost soul, you will become her. Enough that I can bring you to my nephew and have this all be reversed.”
“You’re insane,” Rey spat. “You realize nothing you just said makes any sense at all?”
Luke looked nonplussed by this. “Tell me, Miss Johnston,” he said, “when you woke up this morning, did you believe in ghost stories?”
Rey felt her heart sink. “N-no,” she mumbled.
“No. And yet, here you are, smack in the middle of one. Surrounded by dead people. Considering that, are you really so surprised to have your beliefs proven wrong once again?”
He wasn’t looking for an answer; the question had been entirely rhetorical. He cackled—a deep, vengeful bubble of laughter that swelled until it echoed throughout the house.
“You can’t do this,” Rey snarled. “You won’t .”
“Hm, I suppose you can think whatever you want to at this point. It won’t change the outcome.”
She watched him reach into his coat pocket and pull out something small, coiled up in his palm. With both hands, he unfurled it, revealing a delicate necklace of silver chain, with deep red rubies trailing down like droplets in a V-pattern. It caught Rey’s eye immediately and made her gasp. Something inside of her shuddered and her fingers twitched; some unfamiliar, foreign urge to reach out and take it registered vaguely in the recesses of her mind.
“W-what is that?” she asked.
“Ah, do you feel it?” Luke inquired with interest. “It was hers , you see. Benjamin gave it to her. A rather pricey thing for a woman he was only courting, but of course at that point he’d already decided he was going to try and marry the wretched girl…”
He looked at the priceless jewelry with disgust and then shrugged, as though willing away a pesky thought.
“I’m going to use it to summon her from beyond the veil.”
He approached Rey very suddenly and fastened the necklace about her throat. The silver chain felt icy cold against her skin, but the rubies—the rubies had a warmth to them that seemed to come from within the jewels themselves. She could feel it against her flesh like the touch of another living person. And they thrummed—a neverending low reverberation that traveled throughout her entire body. A strange magic she couldn’t even begin to understand had taken control of her.
Frightened by her confusion, panicked by this shattering of her beliefs, her human instinct took over. She began to scream.
“Ben! Help me! Please help me! ”
“He won’t hear you,” Luke chastised her. “He isn’t coming to save you.”
But Rey felt differently. There was something there, between her and Ben. Some unspoken connection that they could neither define nor deny; it felt older than either of them and deeper than they could imagine.
When she called him, she believed he could hear her.
And he did. Within minutes he was in the doorway to the ballroom, where he had paused to take in the scene before him.
“Uncle? Rey? What is going on?”
Luke was surprised, but if his nephew’s appearance worried him greatly, he did not show it.
“Ben! Please help; he’s tied me up! He says he’s going to use me as a vessel to bring Raewyn back!”
Shock, fear, and pain flashed across Ben’s handsome face all at once. He rushed to Rey’s side and began trying to untie the rope binding her right wrist when the necklace caught his attention and he froze.
He recognized it.
Trembling slightly, he touched one of the rubies, but he pulled back almost instantly, as if it had burned him.
“Where did you get this…?” he murmured. “What are you doing?”
He glared sharply at Luke. His uncle only smiled.
“Ben! You can’t trust him! He lied to you, Ben. He’s been lying to you, all this time—”
“I did not!” Suddenly, Luke had come alive again, and now he looked enraged.
“He told you Raewyn killed herself, but she didn’t! He poisoned her and faked the letter!”
Ben’s face fell and his entire body seemed to sag forward a bit. He cast wide, disbelieving eyes on his uncle.
“Ben, I never. I wouldn’t lie to you—we’re family. This girl is just a stranger ; an outsider! How could she know the truth?”
“He gave her poisoned wine that night and hid her real letter away in a locked trunk,” Rey pressed on. Now that she could tell him what she knew, the terrible story spilled from her mouth and there was no stopping it.
Ben looked at her. “ Real letter?” he asked.
Rey nodded, her expression turning tender. “Yes. Ben, she wanted to marry you. She accepted your offer. You were so close to having everything you wanted...but he took it away from you.”
She felt terrible as she said the words. Watching his world shatter made her feel sick. He looked broken, defeated, and then, viciously angry.
He turned on his uncle like a provoked beast at the end of its rope; hackles raised, hands coiling into tight fists.
“Is it true?” He demanded.
Luke was quiet for a moment, considering his response.
“It’s because of you that I’m stuck here, like this ? All this time, you let me think it was my suicide that brought about this curse and it was you! ”
Luke pierced his nephew with a calculating stare.
“Ben...remember, the plan! I’m bringing her back to you. That’s what this is all for! You agreed to use this woman to try and escape our prison, did you not?”
Rey’s heart sank. “What…?” She whispered.
“That was before I knew what you’d done,” Ben snarled.
“Ben, you knew about this?” Rey asked quietly.
He turned to look at her with mild surprise on his face; he seemed to have forgotten she was there at all.
“Rey, I...I never agreed to treating you like this. I had my trepidation about the whole thing, but—”
“You knew what was at stake,” Luke interjected bitterly. “You knew what had to be done.”
Ben set his jaw. “No,” he said sternly. “I’ve changed my mind. This is over. I will not allow it to continue for another minute.”
He knelt down beside Rey and once more started to untie her bindings.
“You’re too late now,” Luke said. “I’ve already called her. She’s coming to get what I denied her, and there’s no stopping it.
“Soon, we will be free.”
“Ben...please…” Rey whispered, her whole body trembling in fear. “I don’t want this…”
“I know, I know. I’m so sorry,” Ben replied hurriedly.
He finally untied Rey’s right wrist. Her hand throbbed dully as the blood began to recirculate through her fingers.
“Whatever happens, Rey, I will not let you die,” he swore.
“And what about you?” She asked, though her throat felt very tight.
He gave her a sad half-smile.
“I’m already dead. Whatever happens now won’t change that fact.”
Perhaps this was of some comfort to him, but it only made Rey’s heart hurt more to think of it.
He was dead. This lovely, handsome man, with so much tenderness and love hidden behind his broken facade, was long dead. Had been, from the moment Rey laid eyes on him. And yet, her heart sang for him. It was all very odd, and made her feel strangely hollow. Unfulfilled, somehow.
Would things be any different if he were alive?
Luke’s announcement cut through the room like shards of ice, chilling the flesh of those who heard the two words, spoken so flatly, as if they carried little to no weight at all. In reality, they were the most frightening two words Rey felt she had ever heard in her life.
“She’s here.”
Ben froze. Rey’s eyes snapped back and forth, up and down, trying to see ‘her’ before it was too late. But there was no woman who appeared with a face eerily similar to Rey’s. That feminine voice which had led Rey on a wild hunt through the halls and grounds of the mansion did not speak up.
Instead, there was only a light. It began as a soft blue orb off in the distance, flickering as if it had very little power left. But before Rey could either define it or see it clearly, it grew, tripling in size and brightness until the entire ballroom was filled with a brilliant white glow.
Before Rey could fully comprehend what was happening, if that was even possible, the light overcame her. It became so bright and vivid that it blinded her. She couldn’t see Ben, or Luke, or anything other than the light itself.
And then everything went cold, and dark.
Rey had been tucked away, like an old memory, far in the recesses of her mind. Trapped, in her own head.
Her body, however, was not so restrained. Her eyes snapped open to reveal no pupil or iris; there were only two white orbs that seemed to have their own bluish glow, like the light that came before.
“No…” Ben whispered, faltering back, away from the thing he no longer recognized.
He turned to his uncle, seething.
“What have you done? ”
“Only what was necessary,” Luke replied calmly. “We are nearly done with this place, dear nephew. All you need to do is kiss her, and the curse will be broken.”
But as Ben looked at the woman who had formerly been Rey—because there was no denying she was no longer—the last thing he wanted to do was kiss such a stranger. This isn’t right, kept repeating in his head. This isn’t right.
And then, the thing spoke. Her voice was slightly higher-pitched than Rey’s, and she spoke with a much more formal air.
“Benjamin,” it said, “I’ve come home to you.”
It turned its milky eyes to him and smiled tenderly, its brows turning upward in the middle.
“We can finally be together for eternity, like we had intended!”
There was a part of him, albeit faint, that felt a sudden desire to succumb to the promise of that which he had long dreamed of. But it was like an aged memory; its lines were less defined, its edges were curled and delicate. It was as if he had just been tapped on the shoulder by a ghost, so that when he tried to look right at it, it faded away completely.
This made him feel very odd indeed. For centuries now he had thought this was what he wanted—to be with Raewyn, his one true love long since lost to him—forever. But then he’d met Rey, and he realized things weren’t quite so clear cut.
Yes, she looked like Raewyn almost exactly. Even wrinkled her nose the same way when she smiled big or laughed. But she was an entirely different sort of person in mannerisms and demeanour. And she, like her doppelgänger before her, had captured his heart in a very short period of time.
It felt like fate; if ever a thing was to feel so important, this was it. It was as though, no matter the reincarnation, no matter the era, no matter the physical or otherworldly barriers, their souls were linked, undeniably and irrevocably.
In every lifetime, they were destined to meet. To be thrust together, by no fault of their own. To fall deeply, deeply in love.
Just as he felt that undefinable love and respect for his long-dead betrothed, he felt it for Rey, too, and it was because of this that he could not allow this plot to go on any longer, even at the risk of his own peace.
“No,” he said firmly, “we can’t. Not like this.”
Rey’s—Raewyn’s— their face fell. Their lower lip quivered.
“But...why not?”
“Because, my love. This isn’t right. This isn’t the way it should be. I know you know it, too.”
“Stop this!” Luke interjected angrily. “Just get this over with already! There’s too much at stake for such floundering!”
“This girl—Rey—whose body you inhabit, she deserves to live her life, just as you deserved to live yours. We cannot take from her what was taken by you so long ago.” Ben explained gingerly, ignoring his uncle’s protests.
“But the curse—”
“Is ours to bear. Worry not, my uncle will pay dearly for what he’s done. But in the meantime, you must release her, Raewyn. Let go.”
Tears began to flow from those soft, hazel eyes.
“I don’t think I can,” she sobbed, taking a firm hold of his hand with her free one. “I’m too afraid of what will happen.”
“It’s very frightening, not knowing an outcome,” Ben agreed. “But I can assure you, whatever lies beyond will be far less painful than this.”
“Are you a fool? ” Luke shouted. “This is very likely our last chance to be freed!”
Ben rose, staring down his uncle coolly.
“You want your freedom? You think you deserve anything but the very worst the afterlife has to offer? No. I believe punishment is given when it’s due. Wherever you go after this, I’m confident it will only be worse.”
“You always were such a pessimist, nephew.”
Luke started to advance on Ben, but he didn’t get very far before that same blinding light filled the ballroom once again, stopping him in his tracks.
Both men turned and watched in stunned fascination as the light poured out of the girl on the couch in thick, swirling plumes, like smoke caught in the sunlight. It gathered strength until it became a great, vacillating orb in the air. It floated above Ben and Luke’s heads and traveled to the middle of the dancefloor. There it stopped, and a voice emanated from it.
“Ben, I’m ready...I’m ready to let go, if you will come with me…”
“What is this magic…?” Luke whispered to himself.
Slowly, he walked closer to the great, glowing ball, and peered into it. Ben followed at a good distance, and watched his uncle’s face change. Luke’s eyes went wide and disbelieving. His jaw dropped open in shock.
“I can see them—my sister and Han,” he murmured, utterly mystified. “It’s a portal, to the other side! It must be! Oh, it worked after all!”
Ben did not share his uncle’s hopeful joy, however. Suspicion clouded his mind. It all seemed too simple. So, he waited, and did not take one step closer.
Luke, on the other hand, could not be dissuaded by his nephew’s lack of urgency. It mattered not to him if the boy chose to stay trapped in this purgatory until the end of time. Luke Skywalker had only ever thought of himself; why should he stop now?
He reached out towards the light, as though trying to step into it. As soon as he came into contact with it, however, there was a bright burst of vibrant energy that crackled through the air like lightning. Luke screamed in such a way that Ben had never heard before; it was animalistic, more like the yelp of an injured dog than the shout of a human being.
Ben watched in muted horror as his uncle faltered back, clutching his hand to his chest, his face screwed up in pain.
And then everything happened very quickly.
Luke began to scream and cry, as fragments of him began to break away and disintegrate into thin air, beginning where the light had touched him.
“What is happening?! No! NO! ”
There was nothing Ben could do. He didn’t want to approach and end up the same way. To be fair, after everything he had learned that night, he didn’t feel much of an urge to rescue his uncle anyway. And so he watched, as Luke fell to his knees, crumbling into nonexistence before Ben’s very eyes.
With one final, echoing scream, Luke was gone. All that remained were Ben, Rey, and the pulsating light in the middle of the room.
Suddenly, a voice from behind him snapped him out of his shock.
“Ben…?”
He turned and rushed to Rey’s side. Her eyes, back to normal, were slowly beginning to open; those long, dark lashes fluttering against the scorching brightness of the strange orb.
“Rey, is that you?” he asked quietly.
Her eyebrows creased. She groaned in discomfort.
“Yes...what’s happening?”
He smiled, softly, beautifully, down at her.
“It’s over. You’re safe. But, I think it’s time for me to go now.”
“What do you mean?” She frowned.
“I can finally be free. I have to let go.”
“But—” She brushed her fingertips across the top of his hand, and he grasped her fingers in his. “How?”
Ben shrugged, still smiling. “True love, I suppose. It found a way to work its magic after all, just not in the way my uncle had hoped.”
“Oh,” she nodded sleepily. “So this means I’ll never see you again, doesn’t it?”
Knowing all he knew now, Ben felt no shame in answering her.
“Well, in a manner of speaking, yes, that’s what it means. But I don’t think that we will never see each other again, in some way or another.”
She looked confused, and incredibly tired as she asked, “How do you mean?”
He chuckled warmly. “I only mean that the universe has a funny way of repeating itself, and the next time we meet, things may be a little different, but a lot of things will remain very much the same.”
He bowed his head then and kissed her just below her hairline. She was so warm, and now that he could leave, he found that the longer he stayed in this realm, the colder he felt.
It was time to go.
“Goodbye, Rey. And thank you.”
He wasn’t sure if she heard him or not, for she had already succumbed to that heavy desire to sleep.
And so he turned away, and walked towards the light. As he got close, he saw his parents, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his bride. The light welcomed him with a pleasant warmth, and the promise of peaceful rest at long last.
***
Four months later
Rey rubbed her temples at her desk and rolled her right wrist in circles. She’d been filling out paperwork all morning and for most of the afternoon, and it was beginning to hurt. She’d woken up late for work that morning, her coffee had had grounds in it, and she’d torn a hole in her favourite pair of tights.
It was not shaping up to be a good day.
So maybe it was fate intervening when her co-worker, Julie, tapped on her desk with one long, acrylic nail and announced that she was going out for lunch, which would leave Rey solely in charge of any customer that came in or called. At the time, Rey didn’t think of it as fate. Rey thought of it as yet another reason why Julie was a lousy co-worker, especially on days when it was only her and Rey in the office.
The bells chimed as Julie exited the office, and Rey heaved a deep sigh. At the very least, she was alone, for a little while.
She pulled her hair out of the bun she’d fastened it in, in the hopes that it might alleviate some of the tension which had developed in her temples. She stretched out her fingers and her toes, and even got out of her chair and walked around the office for a minute. When she sat back down at her desk, she found she still did not want to finish filling out paperwork.
Only for a minute, she told herself as she rested her head atop her folded arms on her desk. She shut her eyes, inhaling the faint smell of her laundry detergent and the odor from the sanitizing cleaner the night janitor used on the desks.
She may have been just on the cusp of sleep when the doorbells chimed again, she wasn’t sure. Her mind had entered that fuzzy place just before sleep, where dreams may or may not have occurred—one could never quite know.
Her vision was blurry at first as her eyes adjusted to the light once more. All she could see initially was the bright whiteness of the front door, mostly obscured by a tall, dark shadow that slowly began to take shape as a person.
“Sorry to disturb you,” the shadow said, “the sign said you were open.”
It was a deep, male voice, warm and oddly familiar. Although minor, there was something unmistakably foreign about it—something as simple as an accent, or as trivial as a stutter.
“Oh! Yes, we are! I’m so sorry, I was just—”
Rey’s words caught in her throat as her vision focused. It should be impossible, she thought, for him to be standing before her like that. He looked just the same and yet, completely different. Dressed in a modern grey t-shirt, dark jeans, and sneakers, with perhaps a little more muscle tone than she remembered. His hair seemed to be slightly longer, too, and messier. But his face, with its telltale freckles, long, straight nose, and full lips remained the same.
“Ben.” She couldn’t stop the name from slipping through her lips in a disbelieving whisper.
“Sorry?” the man asked, raising a perplexed eyebrow.
Rey blinked, coming back into herself at once. Even though nothing about this made sense to her, even though her mind was reeling at double-speed, she knew enough to understand that this was not Ben Solo.
Not as she had known him, anyway.
Familiar words floated through her mind: The universe has a funny way of repeating itself.
“Um, that is to say...well, ugh.” She shook her head, willing away her own confusion, and gave him her best realtor smile. “Hello! What can I do for you?”
The stranger who both was and wasn’t a stranger smiled crookedly and stepped closer to Rey’s desk.
“Well, I’m moving to town for work in a month and I figured I should probably find a place to rent or something, so...do you have anything to recommend?”
Rey chuckled kindly. “You’ve come to the right place. Please, take a seat, and I’ll pull a few rentals for you to look at. My name’s Rey Johnston, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Rey,” the man said, smiling at her. His eyes, the colour of dark, amber honey, seemed to take every inch of her in with relish. He didn’t take his eyes off of her, nor could he seem to wipe that smile from his handsome face.
“I’m Kylo.”