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Come on, Leia, please hold on. Just a little longer. Give him more time. Please.
Rey sat on a stool next to Leia's sickbed, slumped over with her head on her arms, listening to Leia's agonized breathing, the shallow rasp that signaled a life at its end. Her right hand held Leia's left - the one without all the sensors and tubes. Rey focused her strength on their physical connection. Skin-to-skin contact had shown her something from the Force before. Maybe it would again.
But to no avail. One minute Leia was there, and the next...
"She's with the Force now." Rey looked up at Poe. Her hopes for one last look, one final word, perhaps even a long-needed conversation, drifted away like Leia's Force signature from Rey's consciousness.
"Are you sure?" Poe Dameron pushed away from the medbay wall where he had waited, arms crossed, for the final message Rey had been certain Leia would give them. He walked to the bed and lightly touched Leia's now-smooth forehead. "How can you be gone?" he muttered.
A medical attendant droid checked the sensor on Leia's wrist as Rey stood and stepped away from the bed, crossing her arms in turn. "I regret to inform you that the patient is no longer living," the droid informed them in its flat, non-comforting voice.
Poe reached out to Rey, but she pulled away. "Rey," he began, stepping closer to her. "No one's ever really g-"
"Don't," commanded Rey, holding out a flat hand at him, barely stopping herself from force-throwing the new General across the room. "Don't you dare say that to me." She turned on her boot heel and walked out, leaving Poe to deal with C-3PO over the funeral details.
*
Don't you dare hide from me; I know you feel this.
Rey sat on the floor next to her bunk in meditation pose. But this was far from a relaxed communion session with the Force. Rey clenched her eyes and her fists tightly shut in equal measure. She would connect with him. She would pull him in if she had to.
I know you can hear me, Ben Solo. You need to talk to me. Right. Kriffing. Now.
And then, he was there. A light draft wafted through the room and the back of her neck prickled as she sensed him standing before her. She opened her eyes and looked up, up, up at his tall form, lean and draped in black, to where his dark eyes looked down on her.
Embarrassed to be caught in such a submissive position, Rey got to her feet and stared him down, as fiercely as she could from her lesser height.
"You called?" Ben asked sardonically.
If there were a way to slap the smug right off his face, Rey would have done it. How dare you. "How dare you," she repeated out loud. "I reached out to you so many times. How could you stay away? How could you hurt her like that?"
"Rey, I'm okay."
"I do not care how you feel right now. Your mother. Your amazing, lovely mother. You left her hoping until the end. How could you?"
"Rey, I'm okay."
“Stop telling me you’re okay.”
"I'm okay, Rey."
Stop it.
His constant denial broke something in her, deep and primal. A wisp of a sense of a memory. Her mother's slurred words and empty bottle telling Rey time to hide. Her mother begging Rey's father for alcohol. Hitting him when he didn't have any. Convincing him to sell off their furniture, piece by piece. A sofa. A table. Rey's bed.
Rey.
Years of loneliness. Then Han. Then Leia. How the grieving woman gathered Rey into her arms without hesitation, emotions shared before they ever exchanged a word. Her warm confidence in Rey's ability to save the galaxy with a couple dozen refugees and a broken lightsaber. Leia, delirious, calling and begging for Ben. Leia, sedate and unconscious, waking only once, to look Rey in the eyes and whisper two words: "It's okay."
Rey staggered, and blinked, and returned her attention to the tall, impervious man before her.
“Stop telling me you’re okay!" she yelled. "You had a mother who loved you. Who never stopped hoping you'd return. Who cried over you when she thought no one could see. How can you possibly be okay? STOP TELLING ME YOU'RE OKAY."
And then, she struck him. Her fist to his chest; once was enough break that barrier. Tears poured down her face as she lashed against him over and over. “You threw her away. You threw them both away. Stop telling me you’re okay,” she sobbed. "Stop it. Just stop."
Ben took the onslaught for a few seconds, then reached up and grasped her wrists gently in his hands, just firmly enough to halt the attack. He compressed Rey's arms to his chest with one hand, while his other arm pulled her shoulders to him, into an embrace.
Rey didn't fight back, just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
When Ben felt her shoulders slump, he knew she'd cried the fight out of herself. Maybe she would be able to listen to reason. He released her wrists and stroked her disheveled hair back from her forehead. Rey's fists grasped his tunic and she pressed herself to his torso as her sobs continued, but more quietly.
"It's okay, Rey," he murmured into her hair. "I should have told you myself. I was able to reach her. To tell her- to tell her all the things I should have told her years ago. To apologize. To tell her-" Ben broke off, but Rey felt the rest of the sentence: I loved her. "She's not- she wasn't strong in the force; she couldn't reply much, but she was happy, calm. She did say she'd tell you we are- we were okay. The plan is still on. We made our peace. I'm okay. Did she not get back to you... in time?"
Rey sniffled a bit, listening to Ben's heartbeat as she gathered her composure.
She looked up at Ben, hands now relaxed and resting on his chest. The grief was obvious on his face. Did Leia die before giving this crucial message to Rey? The crease between Ben's brows deepened, and tears sprang up in his eyes.
And Rey knew, she knew, he told her the truth. That Leia's sudden waking - her eyes surprisingly clear and untroubled, two whispered words - that was the final message Rey had been waiting for: "It's okay." Leia's son returned. Not just to her, but to the Light. The plan was complete. Ben would defect, would join the battle against the First Order from the inside, taking down as much of it as possible on his way out.
"It's okay," Rey whispered into Ben's chest. She looked up, her now-clear eyes meeting his tear-filled ones. "It's okay. I understand now."
"But, Rey," he started, and the tears in his eyes spilled over, dropping onto Rey's tunic. Something in his voice compelled her to caress his face, to run her fingers through his hair. He pulled her close to him again, and his voice caught. "Rey, I'm not okay."