Chapter Text
Leia is freshly 40 and feeling every year of it. Every day in Galactic City is a new chaos of political upheaval and a mad scramble for influence. Partaking in supply negotiations, union disputes, and maintenance oversight on this planet is only a fraction of her role as a resistance leader, and it’s as draining as her father’d always warned.
Leia’s only balm waits for her behind the doors of Cantham House, in the residential suite she shares with her husband and son.
As she sheds her formal robes and heads into the main room, he looks up from his holobooks to greet her.
Her son is 16, now, but his eyes haven't changed since he was a toddler. Han’s always said Ben got them from her, but as always, she knows better—it’s his father’s warm hazel that tempers the searing, rich brown of Ben’s eyes.
Leia watches him quietly as he turns back to his schoolwork. He’s quiet, tonight. Moreso every day. She’s noticed he’s grown…distant. More petulant—his fuse shorter than his mother’s on a good day, running his mouth off faster than his father on worse days.
She’s tried to chalk it up to hormones; his changing body and the growing pressures of school, his notoriety as the Organa-Solo’s legacy.
There’s something more, though. She can sense it. A darkness.
Leia isn’t sure whether or not to take Luke up on his offer. Teaching Ben to control his gifts could help.
A part of her is tempted. But a larger part stubbornly wants to keep him close.
She thinks it might work; that she might repel the darkness by wrapping him up in her own gritty little light. She knows there’s a dark force out there, somewhere, reaching for Ben. Reaching for new Skywalker blood to take and shape in it’s twisted claws.
She worries. She constantly worries that her light is not enough.
Leia shuffles into the living room toward Ben and runs a tired hand through her son’s hair. She feels him lean into the gesture—so slightly it might be her imagination—and lets herself believe this is enough, for now.
It’s only a few days later that she feels a sudden shift—a strong ripple in the force. It momentarily blinds her in the middle of a union negotiation.
It’s dizzying. Immediately, Leia frets whether Ben’s felt it, too. If it could disorient a force sensitive, it had to have hit her son like a freighter.
She excuses herself to her office and comms her brother.
“A child’s awakening in the force,” is his best, sparkly-eyed guess over the holocron. Leia can hear a few stray shouts and laughter somewhere in the background. Of course. His students would’ve felt it too, she thinks. “A strong awakening.”
“A strong light.” Leia stresses.
“Very strong....” Luke trails off, considering. She can sense the breadth of her brother’s curiosity from systems away. “Ideally, I would leave tonight to find them-”
“‘Ideally’?”
He sighs. “There’s a darkness, Leia. It’s been growing, seeping into the dreams of some of my older students-”
“The same darkness we sense reaching for Ben.”
“The same,” he sighs. “And I'm-” he pauses to stroke his greying beard, leaning closer to the holo in an effort to further hush his tone. “-Hesitant to leave them. Any of them. Even with Ashoka here...it’s a fragile time.” Leia watches a crease appear between his brows. “But this new signature is one of the strongest I’ve felt since Ben. And I fear that this dark force…it will have felt the awakening, as well. At the very least, we must ascertain their safety. They may need protecting.”
Leia nods in agreement.
“Might I suggest a family trip?”
“In what? To where? For how long?” She doesn’t let her brother interrupt. “Even if I weren’t overseeing these union negotiations...I can’t up and leave for an unidentifiable amount of time while the rebels are just getting their footing here. The leadership struggle is contentious as it is. And Ben...to pull him out of classes…” She raises a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, a terrible idea pounding in her temples. She sighs. “Han’s been looking for an excuse to yank him into one of his crazy adventures for years.”
“And here’s his chance,” Luke laughs. “Where’s that bastard off to now?”
Leia heaves a galactic-sized eye-roll. “Some super secret escapade with Calrissian in the Outer Rim. Funny that it just so happens to align with a highly illegal forgery auction on Ryloth. Should be on his way back tonight, if he actually follows through on his promise.”
Her brother’s eyes positively glitter. The shit just loves stories about Han’s misadventures. “Comm him, Leia.”
“You comm him.” She hangs up on her brother’s laughter, sits for a moment in resigned silence, sighs, and enters Han’s commcode.
It isn’t until she’s arrived home to a feverish flurry of Teenage Boy that Leia knows she’s made the right decision.
“Mom?” Ben calls from his room.
They’d know each other’s force signatures anywhere in the galaxy—it makes Leia smile to hear him ask. He must be distracted. “It’s me,” she calls back, shedding her formal robes and making her way to her son’s room in the far hall. “You talk to your father already?” She asks.
“Yeah," Ben hollers. "He said he’ll be back tonight and that we can leave first thing in the morning.”
Leia huffs to herself, "sounds about right.” Her son is in the middle of haphazardly stuffing a pack when she reaches his doorway.
“I felt it, mom.” Ben stills, straightens. Leia watches his eyes stray aimlessly around his room. He looks...a little untethered, almost. Dazed. It’s so unusual to see him like this. To see him excited. “It was bright,” he says, eyes finally landing on the palms of his trembling hands. She instinctively moves to take them in hers. They’re already so much larger.
“You sure you’re alright, Ben?” She has to look up to meet his eyes, already so much taller. “We didn’t want to overwhelm you with this.”
He’s still looking down at their hands. His voice is light years away when he replies, “I don’t-” he swallows, “-know. I feel...weird, not bad.”
She catalogues the moles that streak across his face and neck like constellations, so familiar she could map them like a star chart.
To see him like this is like watching a flower bloom—unwinding under an unseen light. Strange, but lovely to see. She smiles. He finally meets her eyes.
“You think you’ll be able to trace the signature, Ben?”
He hums a soft assent. “There’s a...tugging. I’ll feel them, the closer we get.”
Leia nods to herself. “Luke said the burst was too raw to be an adult. He thinks you’ll be looking for a kid.”
“A kid?”
Leia half-shrugs. “That’s what Luke said.”
Her son looks away, adorably contemplative.
“You’ll have to be very gentle.” His eyebrows pinch. Leia laughs and reaches a hand up to his cheek. “You’re better at it than you think.” His eyes have lost some of their glaze when they meet hers this time. “We don’t know if the child will want anything to do with us, remember. It’s very likely they won’t want to leave their family, their home.”
Ben’s mouth pulls down as if he hadn’t yet thought of that. Of all things, Ben Solo: eager to meet a stranger. “But we could establish a...communication, at least,” he says, quietly. It’s unbearably sweet. She's tempted to pepper him in kisses.
“Of course." She caves and kisses his cheek.
Han Solo is pushin’ 50 and in a damn tizzy the next morning. Ben is already shuffling around in the Falcon—finding a nook for his pack, Han thinks. He can hear Ben and Chewie tossing navigational coordinates back and forth from where he stands outside on the landing pad.
Amidst the sudden flurry and last-minute arrangements for this little force-kid search party, he hasn’t had a moment to let it sink in that he’s finally finagled his son back onto the Falcon. It feels good.
As for the rest of this ‘awakening’ mumbo jumbo, it itches. Seems like a bit of a needle-haystack situation, if you ask him. But Ben being so eager to make the trip...well, Han will search every haystack in the galaxy if it makes his kid happy.
…Still. The specs are vague at best.
“Ohhh, a child. Riiight, that narrows it down,” he grumbles.
“Oh stuff it,” his wife chastens. “Ben will find them.” She leans up to kiss his cheek, and Han misses the warmth even as he feels it.
So he wraps her in his arms and looks down at the only woman in the galaxy crazy enough to put up with him. “‘Think so?”
She smiles that damning smile up at him. “Ben’s like his father. The odds could be stacked against him, high as the moons, and he’d still beat them.”
Ben is 16 and doesn’t know what the kriff he’s doing.
It happened so fast. One minute he’s studying for his holoexams, trying to forget about the horrible day he’d had at school, and the next…struck by lightning from the inside-out.
It was so many sensations at once; a cool shock down his spine, a searing warmth spreading from the pit of his stomach down to his toes, back up through his chest and into his hairline, all in the wake of a goosebump tidal wave. It was blinding—a surreal flash of light—fading real slow, blotchy and singed around the edges like sun spots.
And finally, a there-and-gone pair of wide, hazel eyes. Ben had blinked, and they were gone. Left behind was a blurred impression of a figure. A small one. Hot and overbright, like a newborn star.
And even once he’d crashed back into reality—the sensation so vivid Ben was breathing heavier from the force of it, like coming up for air in a depthless body of water—what was left in its wake was an odd sensation, somewhere in the center of his chest. A lingering…strain. Like a tug. Immovable as a hook, with a line being very lightly pulled. Painless but- secure. Ben wasn’t sure he was the rod or the fish.
Hours could’ve passed by the time he heard his commlink beep.
“Hey, kid, got a minute?”
Ben was a little surprised he’d had the presence of mind to accept the comm. He’s sure he would’ve been closer to hysterics over the terrifying sensations if he hadn't already started to theorize what it could mean.
“Mom?” Ben asked without preamble, still a little breathless. He had to know if his theory was right.
He could see his dad’s eyebrows pull together. “She’s fine, bud, just left the office. On her way back to make sure you’re okay after…the whole…” his father made an awkward, vague gesture in the air, “-disturbance.”
“I felt it,” Ben said, voice steadier than he felt.
His father assessed him through the holo. “You alright?”
Ben wasn’t looking at his dad, focused again on the strange tug, but he answered, “yeah, I just feel...my chest kind of-” It was impossible to describe, so Ben left the rest unfinished. “I’m fine. I think it was a person.”
His dad nodded, face still concerned, but also—like most things force-related—uncomfortable. “That’s what your mother and Luke said. An ‘awakening’.”
Ben let out a relieved breath. It felt good to hear that he’d been right. That it hadn’t just been him, for once. He hated talking about the force, too, these days. It’s always something bad, or wrong. Something no one else has ever experienced—some corruption inside of Ben, and Ben alone.
But this...it's something bigger. Something bright and weightless, for once.
“Listen, kid, Luke and your mother think it’d be best if you and I go and find this...person. Make sure they’re okay. Neither of them have the time or the fuel for the search,” his father paused for obvious effect as he gave Ben what his mom coined the ‘Solo Smirk’. “But I do.”
The tug in Ben’s chest gave a sharp heave—and with it, a sudden rush. “We could go find them? Mom would let me- you’d let me come with?”
He felt himself smiling. Excited. Ben could barely understand it himself. He hates the force. Hates people. Strangers, especially.
This is something else. Something Ben couldn’t name until days later, sitting in the cockpit of the Falcon, parked on the sandy dunes overlooking Niima Outpost:
Fate.
The tugging in his chest has been pulled so tight, nearly painfully, that when it’d cut off abruptly during their landing, Ben had felt it like a slice through a limb. He’d panicked for hours. Anxious that something terrible’s happened. Then, finally, on the third morning—while his dad is off tooling around in the market, Ben and Chewie scanning the desert from the cockpit—
a soft tug.
Rey is 6. One more than 5. She scavenges all by herself. She knows a lot about ships and parts. One time she found a whole ionization reactor from a TIE V38. This other time, she fixed up a holo she found in her AT-AT all by herself. She used it to teach herself how to read and how to write in standard, because Rey’s sure that 6-year-olds should know how to read and write in standard.
She’s sore and hot and thirsty but doesn’t say so. None of the other scavengers do. Everyone here is always sore and hot and thirsty.
Rey hasn’t been to the outpost in a few days. She'd found the motherload in a sunken speeder, but got in a nasty scrap with a nosy uthuthma ten times her size. She would’ve lost her spoils if it hadn’t been for a big rush of adrenaline. Or something like it. It was hard to describe. She’d been close to collapsing when the powerful feeling had sort of taken over from the inside-out, and when she’d shouted for the uthuthma to leave, he had. Immediately. Without another word.
Rey smiles, remembering. She is stronger than she looks.
Even though the feeling had knocked her out—she’d crawled under the tarp and slept longer than she’d ever slept before—and even though she still feels shaky and extra tired, Rey is sure it had all been worth it when she drags the small sheet of metal behind her, topped with her findings.
It feels like her stomach is eating itself. Today is one of those rare days where she’s so hungry and tired that she wants to cry, but knows it’s a waste of water to cry anyway, so she’s just really mad, instead. It’s better to be mad. She’ll never cry in front of anyone, especially Unkar. Not ever again.
So she gets mad.
“One quarter portion, girl.”
“That’s not fair! The paint is new- look! It’s worth three times the portions!”
Han’s eyes dart up from the vintage blaster he’s been eyeing in one of the outpost tents, following the squeaky outburst until landing on a speck of a girl.
Kid’s shorter than a Jawa—definitely a human child. He thinks she’d barely clear his knee, and only because of the topmost bun on her chestnut head. She’s got three of ‘em, he notes, watching the exchange.
The kid takes the insignificant portion—so small it couldn’t feed a bulabird—and stalks back into the marketplace with her emptied, sheet-metal sled trailing in the sand behind her. The closer she gets, the better Han can see her little scrunched up face; pretty fearsome scowl for someone so tiny.
She heaves herself into a chair that’s too high off of the ground, though she climbs it like she’s done it a thousand times. She sets to scrubbing a scrap part big as her head in the big metal dish sitting atop the table. Her face is splotchy and sun-tanned—dirty from labor. Her cheeks are puffed out, scowling as she scrubs.
He watches her for a moment, wondering where the hell her family is and why the hell she’s scrubbing parts and bartering for portions all alone in this desolate desert outpost. Han’s gut lurches at the familiar sight. It’s not uncommon in shit-pit planets like Jakku; orphans working to stay alive without anyone’s help. He’d spent his childhood similarly, on another shit-pit planet.
She seems to pick up a conversation with the ancient lady seated across from her. The lady seems to be soothing her. Han wonders if they’re related, or just fellow scavengers.
”What’re you lookin’ at?”
Han hadn’t realized he’d been staring. Her accent is a bit of a shock. Not a native, then, he thinks. “Just heard the commotion, ‘s all.”
Her scowl is tempered by the grease stains on her clothes, face, neck, and tiny hands, but she doesn’t look any less menacing for it. She’s only just returned to her scrubbing when Ben comes crashing into the Marketplace, an awkward hurricane of limbs. He stumbles through the back of the tent Han’s standing in.
He catches Ben’s eyes with a quirked brow and a subtle tilt of his chin in the direction of the little girl.
His son looks unsteady in the sand, chest heaving from his sprint as he lifts the cloth sheet separating the tents.
By the look on Ben’s face, Han’s sure they’ve done it.
But the girl doesn’t notice.
They watch, synchronously dumbstruck, as she collects her things, swipes the stray baby hairs off her sweaty little forehead, and marches over to an ancient model of a land speeder she’s definitely not old enough—or large enough—to be driving, and takes off, just like that.
The hook had pulled so hard, so suddenly, that it seemed like Ben’s body’d been yanked off the Falcon by the force. He’d shot off the freighter like a sandspeeder, heart and feet pounding.
The marketplace—he needed to get to the marketplace.
He’d run so hard lungs were aflame, right up until he’d found his dad’s force signature and skidded into the tent. Gasping, he’d followed the tilt of Han’s head until his eyes landed on a tiny girl. The aching tug of a line he’d desperately followed all the way here, to Jakku—to her.
She'd been sitting. Right. There.
“Gotta be her, right?” Han says. When Ben looks up at him, his father’s eyes are still on the horizon, where the girl had vanished.
Ben just nods, still shaken. He doesn’t understand why the Force Hook keeps faltering if they’re this close. “It’s just- she was right there...the tug-” he huffs, dropping his hands to his knees to steady his breathing. “It keeps- shorting out or something.” Ben’s shaking his head until suddenly something horrible occurs to him. He straightens to meet his father’s eyes, feeling feverish with dread. “Dad, did you see- did she look sick? Or injured?”
Han shakes his head, brows drawn together. “She looked tired. Burnt. Hungry, for sure—Jakku’s a pretty ruthless place to live, ‘specially for a little kid.”
Ben feels another powerful tide of panic. “We have to follow her,” he says, already running back toward the Falcon. They’re heading up the ramp when Ben pants, “I think she’s sick. I think- I think the awakening drained her.” His hands are trembling. He watches his dad and Chewie take the controls with a stuttering intake of breath. “I don’t know, dad. This feeling just isn’t supposed to...stutter like this. It’s supposed to be strong—strong enough to navigate by.”
“Don’t worry, kid.” There’s a familiar, steely confidence in Han’s voice that Ben desperately latches to. “We got a fully-stocked medkit and a crate of portions in the back. We’ll find her.”
Ben nods, swallowing, and turns his focus inward, concentrating harder than he’s ever had to. It takes a few moments before he feels something. It’s the weakest tug yet, and Ben’s voice cracks with renewed worry when he blurts, “south. Follow that ridgeline.”
They spot the abandoned AT-AT easily from above.
His dad and Chewie land slow, careful not to kick up too much sand, but Ben drops himself out of the open airlock before the Falcon’s even touched down.
There’s another weak pulse. He follows it, and her little footprints, barreling through a porthole in the side of the fallen walker. It’s difficult to hear anything over the sound of his own rattling breath and pounding heartbeat.
It doesn’t take long—there aren’t a lot of places for her to be, the space is so cramped. With one hand trailing on the low ceiling, he winds his way toward the back, hunched uncomfortably. He crawls over what looks like a small, makeshift workbench and into a narrow space, where the girl is collapsed in the center of a folded tarp.
Ben feels his face crumble, seeing her. His first instinct is to scoop her up; to check for a fever, injuries, anything that could be hurting. But first, he realizes, he should check if there’s anyone else in the AT-AT.
Where the kriff is her family?
“Ben? She in there?” Han calls from the porthole.
“She’s here,” Ben twists in place to listen and look for any sign of another person. “See anyone else?”
When his father’s swept the cramped space and calls a firm, “Just us, kid,” Ben determinedly moves toward her.
He has to kneel to reach her in the confined space. He reaches out and shakes her little arm gently, hoping to wake her without scaring her. Another spike of panic lances through him when she doesn’t stir at all.
He takes in her grease stained clothes, face, arms, hands. Several small scars, too; one along her calf, a few across her hands and knuckles, even one behind her ear.
Jakku’s a pretty ruthless place to live.
Ben pulls her carefully into his arms, attentive of her head as he ducks and maneuvers his way out of the AT-AT. His dad already has the medkit open on the top of the hologram board, Chewie making his way around the ship to open the cooling vents, when Ben gently deposits her on the bunk behind the lounge seat.
Ben grabs the canteen of water his father passes him. Her breathing looks too slow. Chewie mewls at him to “elevate her head and legs,” and Ben doesn’t hesitate. His dad hands him a cool, damp rag for her forehead.
…Something still feels off. Somehow Ben knows this isn’t just heat exhaustion. It’s something more, deeper.
He’s never felt younger than he does when he turns to his dad and chokes out, “it’s not working. It’s something else, I- I don’t know what-” and he feels a stinging in his eyes. He looks at the girl again. He can’t feel the tug. He hates that he can’t feel the tug.
He feels his dad’s hand on his shoulder. There’s a silence that swells painfully, when suddenly his dad snaps his fingers. It cracks through the silence so hard that Ben startles. Han leaps up and disappears around the corner, back in moments with his commlink. “‘Something else’? Could be a force thing, Ben.” His father’s voice is low as his eyes flicker to the girl. “Your mother’s told me before about Luke using some- healing force crap on his students-”
He doesn’t have to finish. Han's already dialed, Ben’s eyes wide as the comm miraculously reaches his uncle.
“Hey, Luke, it’s your BFF, Han—listen, we got the little force supernova here in the Falcon, and we think she’s force drained or something. Think you could give Ben a few tips on how to do that healing thing?”
Ben takes the holo from his dad with intense determination. His uncle’s voice crackles through the holo, quick and clinical. “How weak is her signature?”
Ben pulls every cell of focus inward, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. “I can still...feel it...but it’s pulsing. Slower than before.”
“Ben, I’m going to need you to listen very carefully, and you’re going to have to work as fast as you physically can, even if it tires you.”
Ben feels another spike of panic, but quells it--for her sake. “Okay.”
“Close your eyes.” His uncle instructs. “Breathe deeply. Center the force in the palms of your hands...can you do that?”
Ben hasn’t opened himself up to the force like this in years. He'd chosen to turn away from it entirely when the nightmares started to get worse. But he knows he's strong with it. Tracing the girl’s signature had been second nature. Like finding his parents or Luke or Chewie in the force. But opening himself up to it like this...it’s like turning the faucet all the way on, as opposed to the very, very light trickle it's been set to for so long. It’s more difficult that he’d imagined. There’s a dark pressure at the base of his skull that he can feel seeping as the channel between himself and the Force widens. The same pressure he feels when he’s had a nightmare...or heard the whispers….
But there’s something new--something warm, where his link with the force used to feel much, much colder.
It swells and grows at a much quicker rate than the dark pressure, nearly banishing it altogether.
And suddenly-
“Ben,” a tinkling, young voice. A glowing orange light that sears the edges of everything around it like-
Like sun spots.
It's her.
He can’t- see her, though--he can only hear...
“Have you found her?” His uncle’s voice is a balm inside his head, deliberately deep and reassuring. Calm. Ben measures his breath and sharpens his focus to the tingling in his palms.
“Yes. But I can’t...see her yet.”
“But you can hear her?”
“Yes.”
“Good, Ben, good. Focus the energy in your hands...reach for the girl in front of you. Her physical self.”
Eyes still closed, Ben reaches a palm to the side of the girl’s small head--so small that his hand spans the length of it. Her round, soft cheek is hot in his palm. Her orange signature bursts around him, engulfing Ben in its heat.
“Ben?” This time, when she calls, it’s a question.
Rey….
Her name is Rey.
He realizes her signature is still...flickering. It’s less obvious when they touch, but still--it isn't the strong, steady hum he knows it should be. “Rey? I’m here!”
“Ben...I’m really...tired.”
Ben’s focus quivers at the broken sound. His control slips, panic and fear and worry pounding at the sound of her voice--a voice that belongs everywhere; past, present, future. She’s an irreplaceable part of all three. She can’t break. She can’t fade-
Ben feels so scared. He doesn’t know how to reply, how to slow everything down--everything’s happening too fast, and they haven’t even had the chance to meet.
“Breathe,” his uncle’s cool voice slices through his rising panic. “She’s still with us, Ben. We both know how strong she is. You have to be strong, too." Ben works to school himself. "She needs to feed off of your strength for this to work.”
Ben’s breath is shakier than before, but he focuses his fear and worry into a sharper determination. “How do I do that?”
“The tingle in your palm...is the force still focused there? Do you have it centered?”
Ben has to center it again...it takes him a few moments, but he manages it again. Rey is still hot under his palm. A good sign. He draws himself straighter, forces more of his power where that contact is glowing. “...Yes.”
“Now, weave your strength with hers. Find her light, surround it with your own. Find her.”
It’s a lot easier said than done, but Ben thinks he understands. He’s never had to find his own light, and it feels pathetically small, once he does. But as he searches for Rey, he can feel it...expanding. Growing brighter with every determined step he takes within the Force.
That’s when he finally sees her.
The force is a strange sort of...plane. It’s the only way Ben can describe it. In the past, the place Ben had entered--the plane he’d found when opening himself up to the force--had always been dark and cramped. Loud--like static. Difficult to breathe in. Draining.
This plane is...the opposite, in every way.
Everything is bright. Not- blinding, though, just...colorful, where Ben had only ever experienced monotones, before.
Little Rey is lying on the metaphysical floor of this plane. A bright orange sun spot. Ben absently wonders what his own color is.
He approaches her.
Decides to lie down, too.
She takes his hand. Like she’s done it a hundred- a thousand times before.
Fate, he thinks again. He is completely unafraid of it here, with her.
They’re just sort of- suspended in the cosmos. It’s a very strange sensation. Impossible to describe. The warmth of her hand feels real.
He lets his light reach out for hers. Again, to physically describe it is impossible, but the best he can do is imagine their light signatures- hugging, really.
“Good, Ben!” He smiles at the elated sound of his uncle’s voice. “Keep doing what you’re doing,” Luke says. “Hold it.”
“Who’s that?” Rey rolls her head to the side to look over at him, so he does the same.
For some reason, it makes perfect sense that Rey should hear Luke’s voice, too.
“My uncle. He’s helping me heal you.”
Rey dimples when she smiles.
Ben smiles, too. “Is it working?” He asks.
He watches her little brows pinch. “I think so.”
Ben’s brows pinch, too. “Do you feel...stronger? Less tired?” The fear is still there...somewhere. Lingering like a raincloud somewhere in the distance of this otherwise peaceful plane. It’s like nothing Ben’s ever felt. His mind feels weightless. Totally weightless. And quiet. So much quieter than usual.
Rey pokes him in the side.
It feels real enough that Ben jerks away a little. “Ow?”
Rey giggles. “It's so much better here!” She laughs and laughs. “Here I can poke you." It doesn’t make much sense, but Ben doesn’t ask any questions. She’s 6, after all. She jabs at him again and he wiggles away playfully.
On the outside of himself, he can feel it working. The Force Healing. He can feel her light expanding, her strength growing.
To test it--to make sure it’s working inside and out--Ben stands. “No more poking.” He warns, smiling down at her.
She takes the bait easily. She hiccups another toddler-like giggle and launches herself from the floor to chase him.
“There she is, Ben, there she is!” He hears his uncle shout, as triumphant and relieved as Ben feels. The light around and between he and Rey expands further, finally settling into a steady, soothing hum. It’s such a strange sensation. So strong. Even as they give chase in the Force--it wraps around them completely.
“Healing is no easy feat, Ben.” He's never heard his uncle sound so proud, and it's a euphoric feeling. “You did a fantastic job. Time to rest….”
Ben feels Rey knock into him in the force-plane where they're still bound together. “Got you!” She shouts, arms wrapped around his leg like it’s her trophy.
Ben feels himself slip easily to the floor, worn out in an extremely satisfying way as Rey blinks at him from above. It’s an amusing mirror of their previous positions.
“Ben?” Rey asks, her voice quieter, edged with confusion.
He reaches out a hand to take hers. “I healed you, Rey. It worked."
There’s a very slight rumble around them as her clear, hazel eyes shine with worry. "But why are you fading?"
Kriff, Ben thinks, and pulls her down, so she’s on her knees beside him. “It’s okay,” he hurries to soothe. His eyes and limbs feel heavier than ever, but he fights it long enough to convince her that he’s better than okay, and that he isn't leaving. He realizes how important it is, somehow, that she knows he isn't leaving her behind. “You'll see me soon. I just need some rest.”
She sniffs and nods. “Thanks, Ben.”
He closes his eyes, and the last words that hang between them are, “anytime, Rey.”