Archive of Our Own

As the Falcon headed towards the outer rim, daily life of the small group of rebel survivors fell into place. Daily maintenance, a rotation of pilots flying the ship, trying to keep a low profile while they skirted away from The First Order and towards the allied planets that had ignored their calls for help. All of them drifting father and father from what they once called home.

Till, months after their initial struggle and in their relative peace, grief fell upon the Millennium Falcon once again.

Leia Organa was gone.

Rey sat hunched in the alcove that contained her bedroll of the hastily converted Hold 3. Bedrolls lay sprawled out from wall to wall to try and house the crew that was too large for the minimal bunks the ship held. It was quiet in the ship now, everyone mourning in their own ways while they sat docked at a small allied planet to refuel. They hadn’t had much time to mourn the ones they had all lost in the fighting till now, in the small pocket of peace they had finally managed to catch.

She let herself mourn now she was finally alone, sobbing silently into her arms as she let the grief of losing Leia wash over her. She didn’t move when she felt Ben’s presence, all sounds of the thrum of the ship washing to silence as their connection muted all other sounds. He didn’t speak either, letting her cry why he watched her from a distance.

Their bond hadn’t waned with distance. Even across the galaxy, with millions of stars between them, it was still as strong as when they had fought in the throne room.  They had spoken a handful of times, leaving her frustrated and him hurt to begin with, before it had mostly devolved into almost comfortable silence. Even though she wouldn’t admit it, feeling someone close through the Force, made her feel less alone. If she had admitted it out loud, he’d have agreed.

After a few long minutes, she finally did raise her head to address him. He had sat opposite her on his knees, all the usual grandeur clothing he sported gone, and leaving only Ben Solo in the place of Kylo Ren facing her. No more the monster that he was trying seemingly so hard to become, only the man who had saved her life in the throne room before insisting that they had to do things his way and falling back into that monster that seemed to consume him almost.

He folded hands in his lap as he watched her, quirking an eyebrow at her. “So you can see me.” He quipped, before finally addressing the question that had been sitting on his tongue in the silence. “What’s happened?” Even though he should have been trying to find them, he wouldn’t admit that he had let that fall to the wayside for now. She didn’t reply at first, biting her lip and swallowing the lump in her throat before speaking to him for what was the first time in a few weeks.

“She’s gone, Ben. Leia’s gone.”

Silence fell between them and neither looked away. Ben’s face fell blank for a moment, trying to process the words. He knew she hadn’t died back when they’d blown up the bridge. When he faltered and didn’t pull the trigger. He could feel her back on Crait, but as they got further away, the feeling had dwindled to nothing. They were too far for him to even feel her go.  His voice broke the silence, pained and quiet. “No…”

She knew him enough by now. She knew there was maybe still some fraction of good in him. She held onto that hope silently, still holding onto that future she had seen when they first touched hands through their force bond. Of the hope that he could free himself of the darkness that kept pulling him away. And in this moment, she saw it again; the spark of hope in her chest flickered under the suffocating grief.

Rey slowly unfolded her arms and moved towards him. He needed someone. He couldn’t be left to grieve this loss alone, even if he insisted he wanted to. Their bond had made it so neither would be alone much anyway. His eyes didn’t follow her, staring at the space she had been till her knee brushed his own, stealing his attention back to her face. Tear stained and full of the sorrow that he silently hated seeing in her features. “It was quietly, she-”

“Stop talking. Just- just shut up,” His voice cracked, fists clenching as tears welled. The word that he only ever said to her, bubbling past his lips with almost desperation not to hear more, “ P-please .”  He pushed his palms into his eyes, trying to swallow back the wave of grief that was raising up to knock the air out of him. Repeating in his head the mantra that Snoke had burnt into his damaged soul;

Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.

He felt her hand on his knee and opened his eyes, letting his hands fall to his lap like dead weights, the mantra petering off into silence. He should have felt relief, glad that the chains to the past were falling away from him. Instead he felt terribly numb .

“Ben… It’s okay to grieve.” His eyebrows knitted together in frustration. He didn’t want to grieve. He shouldn’t have been grieving her . Her hands moved from his knee to take one of his hands. And even though they were light years away, he felt it, the warmth of her own hands wrapping around his numb chilled fingers. And in that moment, the dam he was trying so hard to build up broke under the force of the wave of pain.

He gripped her hand tightly, his other balling into his hair as he let out a pained and sorrowful scream, curling forwards till he almost rested his head against her hands. Tears flowed free now, unable to stop as all the pain he had tried to bottle up over the last few months suddenly came rushing out. He wanted to break something, smash it into pieces and burn the rest to ash, but her hands kept him grounded, dampening the anger like a wet blanket smothering a fire.

Luke had been right back on Crait; His father had been haunting him. The choice he had made on that bridge had haunted him every day since. He had tried to choke it, smother it into silence but in the moments of quiet, it snuck back up on him like it snuck up on him now in his moment of weakness, wounding his soul to the bone all over again. Reopening that wound that had cut him so deeply the first time, that there was probably no chance of his soul ever truly healing.

IHe was alone in this universe now.

There was no connections to anything and what he had been led to believe would help him grow to what he should be, only fractured him and made him feel so alone .
So unbearably alone.

But he wasn’t alone.

She was here, in their unwilling bond that could only be severed by death itself. The bond Snoke himself had forged upon the foundations of Ben’s growing interest and love for the nobody who bested him in battle.

Rey freed one hand from his almost crushing grasp. He had made himself the enemy, but her heart bled for him. Carefully, gingerly, she ran her fingers through his hair, trying to sooth him. No, right now, he wasn’t the enemy, he was Ben Solo. The son of the woman who had become almost what she’d imagine a mother to be like. He was Ben Solo and he needed comforting. She let her own tears fall, quieter than his mournful sobbing, but grieving for the same person nonetheless.

Under Rey’s fingers, in the air between them, despite their light years apart, she could feel that spark that she had worried had been snuffed out forever; The small spark of light that still nestled deep in Ben Solo’s soul. It shone definitely through the darkness that had been parted when he opened up to her.

There was still hope.