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It’s a difficult thing, missing someone you never really had. Someone who never really was.
Rey tries not to think of it that way, as missing. The Force flows through her so easily now that she’s accepted its course through her veins, this warm, filling light that seems to bind her to the rest of the galaxy, to the breathing pulse of it and everything that inhabits it.
But she’s alone in it, the last of the Jedi, a lonely inheritor to a world she barely knows.
A world that for just a brief moment, the space of a heartbeat, the count of bated breaths at the brief touch of fingertips, she’d had someone to share it with.
Someone who understood.
Someone to be lonely with.
It would be easy enough to pass it off as momentary weakness: frustration from being dismissed by Luke Skywalker, anger and helplessness as she fought to save the Resistance from afar, consuming loneliness that nestled deep and clung to a soft voice and a listening ear, however foul its owner. She’d been tired, frightened, alone.
He preyed on you, Rey imagines Finn or Leia saying, if she’d trusted them quite enough to tell them the truth, to tell them just how deeply things had run and what she’d wanted so badly to believe. He never cared about you. Everything was a ploy to convince you to fall to the Dark Side with him and betray us. That’s what the darkness is: lies and manipulation. When it came down to you or him, it wasn’t a choice. It was never a choice. ‘You’re nothing,’ remember?
She shuts her eyes sometimes and tries to block out the rest of the sentence, the part that seems to linger and echo across her dreams.
It would be easy to tell them, she knows. There’s certainly enough time for it, now that the Resistance has retreated to the Outer Rim to lick its wounds, a skeleton crew of somber-eyed soldiers whose jubilation at surviving the evacuation of Crait has dimmed and darkened as days turn to weeks.
The First Order has placed bounties on all of them, anyone who has even a whisper of a connection to the Resistance. The rewards are generous.
The orders are declared on behalf of the Supreme Leader himself, and the name “Kylo Ren” is uttered in acid-spit tones reserved for the kind of low swears that would make a Hutt’s ears burn. The first time he appears on the Holonet, mask firmly in place, emotionless and cold, Poe launches a thermal detonator through the command room viewscreen, and Leia doesn’t even reprimand him.
So it would be easy to tell them. It would be easy to spin the narrative that Rey has told herself every night for weeks, over and over until it’s as easy as breathing: that Kylo Ren had attempted to sway her to the Dark Side, that he’d usurped the command of the First Order for his own power and gain after using Rey to clear a path to the throne, that there was no light left in him, only twisted ambition, cruelty, greed.
If only.
If only…
Rey still starts when she feels it, as she does now, the Force drawing tight like a bowstring, the energy around it turning dark and cold.
She remembers how her heart had broken and her blood had chilled when Snoke had taunted her about creating the bond between herself and Ben Solo.
Laughable now, given the staggering strength of it in the wake of his death. She feels Kylo, feels Ben down to her bones, sees him and everything around him.
Rey recognizes the familiar sparseness of his chambers, the obsidian tile, the dimness of the stars outside the viewport. His back is to her, his gloved hand clutched around a cut-crystal tumbler half-filled with a dark amber liquid as he sits at a twisted metal desk.
The same as it has been the last three times the bond has opened.
She wonders if she could touch him again, and the aching longing of the thought chafes against the story she’s almost convinced herself is true.
He doesn’t speak, and neither does she.
Rey closes her eyes, rests her head back against her thin pillow and counts her heartbeats until the bond finally fades away.
For now.
---
The bond is an unpredictable thing. Mercurial. The Jedi texts – what she can glean from them – say little about anything resembling it, only that’s it dangerous, that it can forge a deep connection where there should be none.
You don’t say, Rey grouses as Kylo materializes at her side as she walks down a long base corridor. She can see his spine straighten just a little, hear the quickening of his heartbeat thrumming through the bond, but there’s nothing else to it, and they both keep their eyes straight ahead and pointedly ignore one another until the image fades.
There’s a soft sense of loss through the bond when it closes, always.
In the very beginning, Rey had shoved it back through to Kylo – even without speaking, the bond seems to magnify and echo emotions, and she had been so indignant that he would dare to yearn for her, after his own actions had driven them apart, that she’d lashed fury and spite searing-hot through the Force.
Part of her had hoped it hurt him.
Instead, there was quiet acceptance, resignation, emptiness.
You are a monster, Rey had said once.
Yes, he’d responded, without malice.
I am.
---
He’s been drinking again.
Rey can feel it bleed through the bond in the same way that his emotions do (exhausting, heavy, overwhelming). It’s just the shape of it, a dizzy hum at the edge of her consciousness, her vision blurring just enough for her to imagine how far gone he must be.
“You okay, Rey?” Poe asks. He stops dealing sabacc to the rest of the table, raises an eyebrow at her.
“…yeah,” she lies, offers him a half-hearted smile as she pushes her chair back. “I’m just not feeling well all of a sudden. I think I’ll turn in early.”
“You’ve been getting those headaches a lot lately,” Finn observes from her left side, and he stands, places a hand on her chin. “Is it the Force?”
“I don’t think the Force works that way,” Rey says, and her smile is genuine. She glances to the rest of the table, the assembled Resistance pilots watching her with wary eyes. “Really, I’m fine. I’ll be fine,” she amends at Finn’s skeptical glance. “Go ahead and deal me out. And watch Snap’s cards, Finn – he cheats.”
There’s a raucous roar from the table, good-natured indignation and cries of mock outrage, and Rey slips quietly from the cantina, rubs at her temples as she makes her way back to her bunk, punches her security code into the door panel.
Her eyes widen, heart freezing in her chest at the sight of the black-clad figure sprawled out across her bed, one arm flung across his eyes.
“I think I’m dying,” Kylo says, his deep voice muffled by his sleeve.
Rey swears darkly under her breath and shuts the door behind her with a hard slam. “Good,” she says between tightly-gritted teeth. “Go die in someone else’s bed.”
Kylo says nothing and flops onto his side, flinging the blanket over himself.
Force, how she misses the days when they couldn’t see the other’s surroundings, much less interact with them to the point of stealing blankets.
Rey scowls as she kneels at the edge of the bed, clutching the edge of the blanket in her fists and tugging as hard as she can, just as Kylo growls and Force-pulls it back with all his might.
It’s ridiculous on its face, her head pounding and the taste of whiskey in her mouth as she tries to wrench her blanket away from the visibly-drunk Supreme Blanket Hog of the First Order.
“Let go,” she spits at him.
An irritated grunt, another hard pull, and Rey swears again as she half-climbs over him and attempts to unravel the worn blanket from around him.
Her eyes widen as Kylo suddenly shifts onto his back, just as she finds herself tangled up in the blanket, and before she quite knows what’s happened she realizes she’s sprawled out on top of him, arms and legs and blanket all tangled together at once.
“Kriff,” Rey swears again as she struggles to find an escape from the blanket, as she feels herself burn and flush down to her toes as every part of her seems to be touching him somehow (he’s hard muscle beneath her forearms, against the backs of her legs, and Force, she knew he would be, from the moment the Force saw fit to send him to her bare-chested). “Kriff, kriff, kriff…”
“You’re not exactly helping my headache, you know.” Kylo’s voice is deep and dark at her ear and she resists the urge to bite him.
“It’s your own damn fault for projecting here when you’re drinking again.” Force, she wants to rinse her mouth out, the taste of the whiskey he favors is godawful.
Kylo pauses, and she can feel his hesitance even through the liquored haze he’s passing through the bond, fuzzing the edges of both their consciousnesses. “Bad memories?”
Rey freezes, feels dark liquid eyes watching her carefully, and words from months past seem to hang between them.
Sold you for drinking money.
He must be staring into her thoughts, because she feels one arm come up tentatively and brush against her side, not close enough or tight enough to be a comforting hold, just a hesitant touch that’s gone before she can react.
“Don’t.” She closes her eyes, and she feels the burn of tears.
“I never would have given you away,” Kylo mumbles, lolls his head back against the pillow. “Filthy scavengers never knew what they had. Threw away the most precious thing in the galaxy.”
Rey stares at him, and she can’t quite describe the tumble of emotions in her chest: anger, indignation, hurt…
Curiosity.
“You called me nothing,” she reminds him, latches on to the familiarity of anger, the way she always seems to with this man.
Kylo looks up at her, eyes dark and burning. “To them,” he says, and his voice carries a deadly weight that belies his hazed state of mind. “To the people who should have known better. Who should have treated you better.”
“Unlike you.” The words are harsh, and she tries to pull away, but Kylo’s hand grasps her wrist, and she gasps at the feel of his ungloved fingers against her pulse point.
“Yes,” he says in a low voice. “Unlike me. I told you as much that night, there in the throne room.” He exhales on a shudder. “Every night, it’s like I never left. I see you, and what I saw, and I rip my heart out and hand it to you, and every time you leave.”
Rey’s heart feels like it’s breaking. She wants to pull her hand from his, wants to run and put the distance between them she had before.
Instead, she finds herself laying her hand against his.
“They said the liquor would help,” Kylo continues, murmuring. “That it would still the mind, maybe stop me from screaming your name at night. I don’t think it has.”
“You chose this.” Rey feels the hot slide of a tear down her cheek, watches it land on his equally-damp skin. “You gave me no choice but to leave.”
Her eyes widen and she gasps as Kylo suddenly surges forward, catching her wrists in his hands and flipping them so that she’s on her back, pinned down with him hovering over her, large and imposing, his face close to hers.
“And you think,” he says harshly, desperately, “that I don’t regret that every minute of every day?”
“Do you?” Rey asks, and she hates how breathless her voice sounds.
Hates even more how she doesn’t even try to resist when he stares at her with eyes gone liquid-dark, dips his head and kisses her.
It’s a sloppy, inelegant thing, a soft melding of lips, and she can taste dark liquor on his tongue.
Ben, Rey thinks, feels his forgotten name in the gentle touch of his fingers to her cheek, the way he kisses her as if she’s worth the stars.
“This was supposed to be my victory,” Kylo whispers against her lips, gentle brushes that leave her dizzier than the liquor had. “Rising up from under Snoke. Taking the First Order in hand. Destroying Skywalker. A chance to rebuild the galaxy to something new. Something right.”
He exhales on a shaky breath, and he pulls back just far enough for her to see tears shining in his eyes. “Everything’s wrong somehow,” he says, and she can hear him breaking apart even if she couldn’t sense his splintered resolve spearing jagged shards through the bond. “What I saw, when we touched hands…”
“It was supposed to be us,” Rey finishes for him. She can scarcely breathe, her voice breaking on a sob as his arms come tight around her, as he presses his forehead to hers. “Ben.”
“I know,” he murmurs, and one hand slides beneath the fall of her hair, tilts her up for another kiss, deep and warm.
It’s just the liquor, something in Rey tries to tell her, the same voice that screams to her during long nights that this man would hurt her, that his heart is cold and would leave her aching, yearning, empty. He doesn’t mean it. It’s not real, Rey, don’t let him…
Ben sighs, drawing back to press kisses to her eyelashes, the bridge of her nose, the ridge of her cheekbone.
“Liar,” he mumbles, sleepy and drunk (on her or on the liquor, the soft part of her wonders). “You love me. Have since the moment I was the one to care for you on Ahch-To, since our hands touched and you saw my heart for what it is.”
Rey closes her eyes, allows him to pull her into his arms, and it’s heavy and awkward with half his full weight on her, but for just a moment, she can pretend that he’s here, that this is real.
That it ever could be.
“It would be tragic, then,” she says, and she barely recognizes her own voice, the way it’s thin and seems ready to break at a moment’s notice, “if you loved me as well.”
Ben laughs, a dark, humorless thing, and Rey manages a faint smile as he curls onto his side and tucks her in against his chest. “You know,” he says softly. “You’ve always known. Lie to yourself all you want. It won’t change what is.”
“Neither will this,” Rey says after a moment. She can feel the deepening flush of the liquor throughout her blood, the way it makes her bold. “I hate that I love you, and I know you hate that you love me.”
Ben is quiet for a long, long moment.
“Loving you is the kindest fate the Force has ever seen fit to give me,” he says finally. “The cruelest is that you find it a curse.”
Rey rises up on her elbows, and the look she gives him is pained. “Come home, Ben,” she whispers. “Let us be what we were meant to be.”
“You think it so easy.”
“You think it so impossible,” she counters, and she can feel him sigh even as he wraps an arm around her shoulders.
“I would burn the galaxy for you,” Ben says, and he trails his fingers along her spine.
Rey takes his free hand in hers, tilts it so she can press a warm kiss to the inside of his wrist.
“Show me that you’ve found something in it worth saving instead,” she whispers. “Show me Ben Solo still breathes.”
“The man you loved died years before you knew him, Rey.” He’s drowsy, and she can feel them both slipping into the drunken haze that has long-since taken hold of them.
“I still have hope,” Rey murmurs, and she feels it in the gentle touch of his hand against the notches of her spine, the soft kisses against her hair.
“If that helps you get through the night,” Ben says quietly.
She wants to fight him, to rail back and claim his soul for her own, to draw from the soft, sleepy affection he seems to bleed into her.
But sleep finds her before she can, old words and unspoken promises fading on her tongue as the world slips away.
---
The Light is punishing her, Rey decides the next morning, as she blearily stares at a steaming mug of caf in the base cantina.
She’d woken awkwardly sprawled in her bed, as if her body sought the warmth of another no longer there, and even two hours later her mouth is still dry and it feels as though a steelpecker is hammering at the back of her head. She’s already emptied the meager contents of her stomach twice.
“Rey!”
Poe’s voice is agonizingly loud and far too cheerful, and Rey nearly throws her mug at him as he sits down across from her at the cantina table. “Force, you look awful. Rough night?”
Rey takes another long drought of caf. “You could say that,” she says after a moment. Kriff, if she ever sees Ben so much as looking at a sip of liquor ever again, she swears she’ll sever the bond herself, sod the Jedi texts that say it might kill them, it had to be better than…
“…no idea what the bastard is playing at, but at least it buys us some breathing room for now.”
Poe is looking at her excitedly, clearly expecting a response, only to sigh as Rey blinks at him. “Rey, did you even hear me?”
“Um. Just the end part. I think?”
Poe’s face falls a fraction, but his eyes are still bright. “The First Order rescinded the bounties,” he repeats. “All of them, on the entire Resistance. By decree of the Supreme Leader himself.” Poe rolls his eyes, oblivious to the way Rey has gone stock-still across from him. “We know it has to be a trap somehow, so make sure you’re packed up and ready to evacuate by 2100 hours.”
He grins. “But still. It’s the first bit of hope we’ve had in awhile. And you know what Leia says: hope’s like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it…”
“…you’ll never make it through the night,” Rey finishes quietly.
She hides her soft smile behind her caf.
Morning has dawned.
And she knows in her heart that the man she will allow herself to love still lives.
For the first time, the doubting voice in her chest is blissfully silent.