Archive of Our Own

“Peanut, you awake?”

Hidden under a mountain of blankets as she is, it takes Rey a while to make out Finn’s question. “Still alive,” she croaks back, and whines when he begins to tug at the covers. At least he has the decency to keep her curtains shut, so that she isn’t blinded by what little sunlight they’ve been blessed with this winter morning when he finally pulls away the last of her blankets to find her.

She can’t be a pretty sight, because Finn grimaces before a cool hand presses against her forehead. “Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own? It’s not too late for me to cancel, Poe can deal with his family on his own–”

It takes more effort than she’d like to bring one hand up and bat Finn’s away, every single part of her weak and sore with fever, but she’s not about to let him know that. “Finn, stop babying me and just go already. You love Christmas with the Damerons more than Poe does,” she reminds him.

“I do,” Finn shrugs, “but I love you more than Christmas. And Rey, I think if we threw you out into the snow right now you’d burn right through all of it. At least let us bring you to the hospital first, I’m sure Shara won’t mind us being late–”

Rey steels herself and uses one last burst of strength to yank the covers out of Finn’s hands and back over her head. “I’ll be fine,” she calls out through a yawn. “Now go before you make me get out of bed and kick you out of this apartment.”

She picks up on indecipherable grumbling even through the four layers that separate her from Finn, but eventually he relents with a heavy sigh and a pat on her shoulder. “Just… call me if you need me, okay? Promise me, peanut.”

His voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away, maybe even underwater, as sleep drags her back under. Rey has one last fuzzy memory of giving in to Finn’s request, but she’s asleep again before he can say anything else.

A series of insistent knocks on their front door wakes her up just a few minutes later, though. It has to be Finn again, doubling back for something he’d forgotten. Probably his keys, since he’s knocking on his own door, but then how would he have locked the door in the first place?

“Oh,” Rey mutters to herself as she finally pokes her head out from underneath the covers. Thin beams of weak winter sunlight have snuck in through the cracks in her curtains, which means it’s definitely been more than a few minutes since Finn left, which means it’s definitely not Finn at the–

“Rey!”

Yeah, there’s that theory proven right. The voice calling out for her from the other side of the front door is barely audible here in her bedroom, but she can hear just well enough to know that it’s not Finn. He must’ve asked one of their other friends to stop by and check on her, but who’s still in town on Christmas Eve?

It’s a masculine voice; that much becomes clear when the call comes a second time as she slowly drags herself out of bed and across the small apartment. She’s making good progress, until he speaks again for a third time just as she’s passed the kitchen, just as she’s finally close enough to realize–

“Rey?”

The voice sounds suspiciously like… It can’t be, but there’s no way she’s wrong, no way she’s forgotten his voice this quickly, no way she’ll ever forget it. But why would he of all people be knocking on her door at – Rey squints at the novelty clock hanging above the front door – seven minutes past noon on Christmas Eve?

“Fever,” Rey reminds herself out loud, cursing her body for wreaking havoc on her senses and her heart like this. It’s probably just one of their many other guy friends, doing Finn and Poe a favor. Nodding to herself in approval of her theory, Rey finds the strength to continue her slow journey toward the front door and cautiously crack it open to see who her mystery visitor is…

… only to find that her fever-addled brain was right all along.

He’s got one hand up in the air, as if he’d been about to let loose another round of knocks, and his fourth attempt to call for her leaves him like a gentle exhale as they catch each other’s eyes.

“Rey.”

She, on the other hand, is too stunned to say anything in return. Because there, on the other side of her apartment door, stands Ben Solo – ex-fiancé and partner of five years, person who should have been her husband of two months and one week by now, man who broke her heart six months ago instead.

Seconds or minutes or hours pass – enough time for the shock to wear off and exhaustion to sweep back into her system. She clutches at the door a little tighter for support, and watches the way Ben’s eyes dart away from hers to observe the movement with a slight frown.

It’s enough to spur him into motion, apparently, because he lifts his other hand to reveal a lunch bag. “I brought soup,” he says quietly, his first words to her since the day he let her walk out of his life.

Rey thinks of asking him what the hell he’s doing here, what the fuck he thinks he’s doing waltzing back into her life like this.

She thinks of slamming the door in that stupid face she’s missed so much and ignoring his unwanted presence until he leaves her alone again.

She thinks of undoing months of so-called healing to rip open all of her wounds and resume that fight they never really settled, the one she’d chosen to walk away from instead.

But the thing is… Rey grew tired of fighting Ben Solo a long time ago. Maybe that’s why they ended up like this, why they ended at all. And that thought, more than the fever, more than anything else, drains her of what little fight she’d had in her to begin with.

So she opens the door with a sigh, and steps aside to let him back into her life.

On an unusually sunny late October morning, Rey finds herself admiring the way beams of sunlight set the diamonds of her engagement ring ablaze and create little rainbows in their wake. Odd, how something she’s had for less than twelve hours can feel so much like a part of her already, so right.

A heavy arm slings itself around her middle as Ben rolls onto his side, pressing his face into her thigh. She tears her eyes away from the ring to shoot him a fond smile, running her free hand through his hair as he slowly blinks awake and peers up at her.

“Why’re you up?” Ben mumbles, warm lips brushing against her bare skin.

Rey shrugs and slides back down into bed so that he can hold her properly. “Too excited to sleep, I guess. I’ve just realized something, by the way.”

He’s fully awake now, a slow, lazy smile stretching across his face as he reaches for her left hand and draws it closer so that they can both admire the heirloom ring he’d slid onto her finger just last night, the ring he later admitted he’d been carrying around since their first anniversary three years ago. “What is it?” Ben asks softly, bringing her hand up to his lips to brush a feather-light kiss across her palm before he lets go.

“Weddings,” Rey tells him as she moves to mimic him, the both of them resting on their sides and facing each other. She tips her head back to give him a quick kiss before adding, “We’ve never talked about weddings. Do you have any idea what you want?”

Ben shrugs, but he’s still wearing that lazy smile and his eyes are bright too, lit up from within and without as more sunlight pours into their bedroom. “I want whatever you want.”

And that has to be the standard answer, the easiest answer for grooms who’d like as little involvement in planning their own wedding as possible, but somehow Rey knows that’s not why Ben is saying it. That’s never why he’s happy to go along with her plans for everything, even though he tends to have grander ideas for anniversary dates and summer vacations and dinner parties; he just really, really wants her to have everything she wants, and trusts that he’ll be happy so long as she’s happy. It’s worked out for them so far, but if a wedding is meant to set the tone for the marriage it gives birth to, then Rey doesn’t want them to do their usual thing this time around.

Her marriage to Ben will be one of the most important things in her life, Rey already knows, and she wants them to start it off the right way, as a team. “I don’t really know what I want,” she claims, a half-truth at worst; she’s entertained the odd daydream here and there in her four years with Ben, but it’s true that she hasn’t really decided on anything yet. “What about you? Did little Ben ever imagine what his big day would be like?”

She means to tease, to joke, but after a moment Ben furrows his brows in concentration and Rey suddenly finds herself eager for a real answer.

“I didn’t… I mean, I never gave much thought to the colors and the cake and all that stuff, but… I was three when my parents got married, remember?”

Of course she does; the highlight of her first visit to his parents’ place had been Leia breaking out the wedding album to show her adorable pictures of little ring-bearer Ben. There’s even a fuzzy old VHS of Ben toddling down the aisle with one hand carefully balancing a small pillow and the other clutching at his Uncle Luke for balance, tiny face scrunched in concentration as he kept his eyes on the rings he’d been tasked with.

“I don’t remember much, but I know there were a lot of people, so many people I’d never even seen before and haven’t seen since. And I just… I don’t know. That doesn’t seem right to me, that my parents – my mom – had all of these people who didn’t even really matter at their wedding, people who probably didn’t even really care about them or their happiness and were only there out of some sense of obligation. So I guess the one thing I’d want is to keep it meaningful, you know?” he asks, reaching out to tuck a few stray locks of bedhead behind Rey’s ear. “If this is about celebrating our love, then I only want to be surrounded by people who genuinely care for us and are happy for us. Something small, just close friends and family.”

A small wedding, coincidentally, happens to be the common thread running across all of her varying wedding fantasies. Rey rests her hand over the one slung around her waist, and laces their fingers together before giving Ben a small squeeze.

“That sounds perfect,” she tells him with a smile, and so it’s decided that they’ll surround themselves with love and only love on the day of their wedding.

Ten minutes after she lets Ben back into her life, Rey finds herself leaning against her kitchen doorway and watching him from a safe distance as he makes himself comfortable in her kitchen and uses her stove to warm up his soup and goes through her cabinets for bowls and spoons. Well – her and Finn’s kitchen and stove and bowls and spoons, all of which Ben probably remembers from the numerous times Finn had them over for dinner throughout the course of their relationship.

A small part of her is irritated at how easily he navigates her space, but a bigger part just aches at the familiar sight of him putting together a meal for her. The soup is homemade from Leia’s secret family recipe – the one she’d made Ben teach her the first time he got sick during their relationship; the one that had become a staple in their shared household, a secret form of communication whenever one of them felt that the other was working too hard or needed more rest. She honestly can’t remember how many times they’ve made this exact soup for each other, and now she’s watching Ben heat it up and ladle it into two bowls for them while she tries to come to terms with the fact that her ex-fiancé is apparently here to play nurse and spend Christmas Eve with her.

She’s still struggling to make her peace with the idea when Ben finally turns around and sets two bowls down on the kitchen island-slash-dining table, and then looks across the room to give her a pleading look.

“Fine,” Rey huffs as she slumps into the closest bar stool and drags one bowl toward her. From the corner of her eye she can see Ben settling down and pulling his soup closer as well, but Rey doesn’t look up. It’s for the best, really, given that tears start welling in her eyes as soon as the familiar taste of the soup invokes dozens of cherished memories and reminds her of what she’s lost, of what he’s denied the both of them–

But that’s a dangerous path to tread in her mind, one that will only lead to more tears, and so Rey defaults to the mantra that’s kept her together since the day she turned her back on him: better mad than sad.

With that in mind, she decides to break their silence. “I’m surprised Snoke doesn’t have you slaving away on Christmas Eve this year,” Rey says through gritted teeth, barely suppressing the snarl that that name naturally draws from her.

Ben, to her surprise, merely shrugs and continues focusing on his soup. “I’m sure he’d like that, but I’ve made it clear that I don’t really give a fuck what he wants outside of office hours,” he says so calmly, so casually, as if this doesn’t change everything.

Rey, meanwhile, has to try really hard to keep her spoon from splashing into her soup. Her hand shakes as she takes a few careful sips to buy herself some time, blinking and processing and weighing potential replies until she finally settles on a relatively harmless one. “Good for you,” she mutters, just loud enough to be heard across the kitchen island.

For the longest time, the kitchen is filled with nothing but the too-loud sounds of her spoon accidentally scraping against the bowl a little too hard as she tries to put up an unaffected front. It’s only when Rey pushes her bowl away that she realizes Ben stopped moving a while ago, that Ben’s been watching her this whole time.

When she finally finds the strength to look up at him, he’s staring at her with the most heartbreaking look she’s ever seen on him, his eyes reminding her of pictures she’s seen of his childhood dog and its sad, pleading eyes during big holiday meals.

Still holding eye contact, Ben murmurs, “I wish I’d done it earlier.”

And Rey… god, Rey wants nothing more than for him to have done so too, for them to be able to go back in time and shake some sense into past Ben before he ruined everything and broke her heart and destroyed their future.

But she never gets what she wants, not really. The piles of unsent wedding invitations gathering dust under her bed are evidence enough. So instead of getting her hopes up, instead of giving him the power to break her all over again…

Instead of all that, Rey abruptly gets up with an ugly, painful scrape of her chair against the floor and turns her back on Ben as she makes her way out of the kitchen.

It’s oddly reminiscent of the last time she’d walked out on him, damning silence and quiet resignation and all. The thought weighs her down, stops her by the doorway.

“Yeah,” Rey sighs without turning back, “me too.”

She disappears into her room before Ben can say something in return – or worse, not say anything at all.

According to Leia’s expert advice, it’s only polite to send save-the-dates six months in advance, especially since some of their friends and family will have to fly in for the wedding.

And so, a rainy April evening finds Rey and Ben and multiple versions of their potential guest list sprawled out across their living room in an attempt to finalize at least this one aspect of their wedding planning.

“Babe,” Rey speaks up with a slight frown as she comes upon a series of names that don’t ring a single bell. “Exactly how many Naberrie relatives are we expecting, and why do all of them have different last names?”

“Hmm?” Ben hums in acknowledgement, looking up from his own list of her guests. In a last-ditch attempt to trim the list down to their original idea of fifty or less, they’ve taken to scrutinizing each other’s guests to identify potential exclusions. “Wait, let me see that.”

He reaches out for the list, but Rey – sprawled out on her stomach with her legs crossed at her knees and her feet comfortably swinging in the air – decides to roll closer instead and face-plant into his lap. It feels unbearably silly, but at least it draws an increasingly rare laugh out of Ben. She doesn’t get to hear that precious sound much these days, not with Ben as overworked and tired as he is from all of those long nights and weekend meetings he keeps getting roped into.

Besides, she’s planning her wedding with the love of her life – Rey figures she’s allowed to feel silly and light and maybe even a little bit fluttery.

“Oh, those aren’t the Naberries,” Ben tells her as one hand instinctively moves to the back of her head to comb through her hair. “They’re some of our biggest clients and a few potential ones too, so Snoke figured it’d be a good idea to invite them.”

And just like that, all feelings of the silly, light, and fluttery variety vanish into thin air.

“Ben,” she groans, though it’s muffled by his tee shirt. “I thought we agreed on no work guests?”

They had, just two weeks ago when Rey first noticed their guest list had somehow ballooned from a manageable fifty-seven to a rather alarming ninety-nine. It’s why she’s crossed out a bunch of her colleagues, and has allowed Ben to mark several more for reconsideration.

He’s still running his hand through her hair, but it’s not as soothing anymore. “I know, sweetheart, but Snoke really thinks–”

Rey drags herself into an upright position so that she can look Ben in the eye when she scowls, crosses her arms, and says, “Well, if Snoke has such strong wedding guest list opinions, maybe he should save them for a wedding of his own.”

To her dismay, Ben simply laughs at the idea rather than take note of her irritation. “It’ll be okay, Rey, I promise. It’s only thirty people at most–”

“Thirty?” she echoes with horror. “Ben, we’re trying to trim this back down to fifty. Thirty is more than half of that!”

“About that,” he hedges, setting the list down to give her his full attention. “I was thinking… maybe we keep the fifty quota for friends and family, and just count these thirty separately?”

She reaches for the list Ben’s just set down, along with all of the others marked as his guests, and takes a good hard look at them only to realize… “Ben, more than half of your guests are people from work. I thought we wanted something small and intimate?”

“Small went out the window the second you agreed to let my mother invite our entire family, Rey,” he tells her wryly, snatching the papers out of her hands. “Besides, what difference does it really make? It’s still just going to be you and me up there, we’ll just need more chairs at the ceremony and more food at the reception–”

The idea of being surrounded by strangers at her own wedding reception was bad enough, but the ceremony? Ben intends to have complete strangers bear witness to the most intimate moment of their lives?

Rey can’t believe what she’s hearing, what she’s seeing. How is this the same Ben who promised her the wedding of her dreams, the same Ben who hated his parents’ wedding despite barely remembering it? How is this still her Ben, when he consistently sides with and picks Snoke over her these days?

“This isn’t even a wedding anymore,” she snaps, more harshly than she’d intended or even realized herself to be capable of. But the more she thinks of it… “It’s a fucking networking event, Ben. And I’ve been to enough of those to know that I’m not spending my wedding surrounded by strangers and alone in a corner while you and your boss make the rounds.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Ben’s eyes soften, and for one beautiful, golden moment Rey thinks she’s finally gotten through to him, finally made him see sense, finally snatched him back from the jaws of that slimy old bastard. “C’mere,” he mumbles, holding his arms open. “That’s not going to happen, I swear. I won’t leave you alone like that.”

She’s just about to fall into his arms when he ruins it all. “It’s our wedding, Rey. We’ll make the rounds together.”

The world comes to a stop, and then crashes.

Rey yanks herself back and stumbles to her feet instead, ignoring Ben’s open arms and questioning look as she picks her way through the mess of papers scattered around them. “I’m going to bed,” she tosses over her shoulder as she storms out of the living room. “We can talk about this again when you get your priorities straight.”

In the morning, Ben’s already left for work by the time she wakes and she can’t tell if he spent all night working on the guest list or if he simply chose to sleep on the couch. But when she finds the updated list still cluttered with twenty of Snoke’s guests, she’s just angry enough to not care either way.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Rey can hear the sounds of Ben moving about in the kitchen, cleaning up after them and putting away the dishes. When the apartment finally falls silent, she squeezes her eyes shut and tells herself this is it, this is the moment he packs up and leaves without even a goodbye–

But then he shuffles past her slightly-ajar door, and not two minutes later she hears him turn on the TV and settle into Finn’s creaky old couch.

It looks like he’s planning to stay for a while, then – which is more than she could say of him during their last few months together, Rey grudgingly reminds herself. She’s spent too much time since that day wondering if maybe she’d overreacted, if things had still been manageable or salvageable, only to remember how awful it had been to feel alone around the one person who’d promised her she’d never be alone again. And sure, she’s lonely now too, lonelier than ever before maybe, but somehow it doesn’t hurt as bad, knowing that she’s choosing to be lonely rather than allowing herself to be forgotten and abandoned again while Ben slaves away at work.

Only… he doesn’t do that anymore, it seems.

With a cry of frustration, Rey puts an end to her thoughts going in circles by reaching for her phone for the first time since she was so rudely woken up by her unexpected ghost of Christmas past. She scoffs when she finds a flurry of texts from Finn and a handful from Poe as well, the earliest of which is timestamped just ten minutes after they were supposed to leave the apartment.

Finn:
Okay, please don’t kill me but

Finn:
It’s Christmas, peanut. I couldn’t let you spend it sick AND alone

Finn:
Also Poe maaaybe still meets up with him sometimes and maaaybe let it slip that you aren’t feeling well and we won’t be around for a few days

Poe:
IT WASN'T MY IDEA

Finn:
And… I have to be honest, peanut

Finn:
We all know how much you’re hurting

Finn:
And Poe says he’s hurting too

Finn:
Enough that the both of us thought maybe…

Poe:
Okay fine maybe it was, but it’s a shared idea.

Poe:
With Finn.

Poe:
He needs to take AT LEAST 50% of the blame

Finn:
Anyway that’s not the point

Finn:
Just… please let him help? For me

Finn:
I’m just worried about you, that’s all

Finn:
We can talk about the rest when I get back

Finn:
Love you, peanut

Rey… god, Rey doesn’t know what to feel or think or say. She knows they mean well, knows they only acted out of love and concern for her, but… a little warning would have been nice. And what were they even thinking, letting Ben ambush her like that? Oh sure, she believes he’s been hurting too, isn’t so blinded by anger or her own pain that she’d deny him his, but he was the one who ruined everything, he was the one who picked Snoke over her, who watched her walk away without even trying to stop her, who gave up after barely two weeks of trying to call and text and communicate through their friends.

Ben has known all along exactly what he needed to do to fix things, and it’s still taken him six months to do so. Even if he were to quit his job and tell Snoke to go shove his head up his ass, it would be too little, too late at this point… right?

“Don’t even think about it,” she mutters out loud, forcing herself to concentrate on the here and now instead of what could have been and what could be. The here and now is Finn’s desperate, pleading, well-intentioned texts waiting for a reply, a reply that Rey decides she’s not quite up to giving him just yet. She’s too soft-hearted to snap at him, but too hurt and betrayed to let him off the hook just yet. Besides, she doesn’t want to be held accountable for whatever she says in her feverish state.

So Rey does what any other person in need of a distraction would do: she scrolls through Instagram and likes a bunch of photos of all her friends spending the holidays with loved ones. And when that’s done, she goes through her messages and writes back to a dozen holiday wishes. And when those are handled, she taps on the Facebook app in an act of sheer boredom and desperation… and promptly regrets it.

Because the first thing she sees is Facebook’s oh-so-helpful reminder that exactly one year ago today, she’d posted a picture of her and Ben spending their first Christmas Eve together as an engaged couple.

Her phone is sent sailing across the bed, landing on her pillow with a thankfully soft thump. Rey pulls her knees up to her chest and curls into herself, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths until the moment has passed, until her tears recede, until the white-hot pain fades back into the constant, dull ache she’s grown used to.

And then, like the masochist that she is, she reaches under her bed for a photo album.

With only four months left before the wedding and everyone’s schedule growing increasingly packed due to a variety of work and personal commitments, the wedding party takes to having the occasional marathon planning session at Leia’s place, during which they typically knock a good chunk of planning and preparations out in one afternoon.

Their second marathon session revolves around the venue, and Leia starts by happily announcing that they’ve indeed managed to secure the Amidala Gazebo and its surroundings for October 17^th. Despite the fact that the entire botanical garden itself is named and was built in honor of Ben’s grandmother, it’s popular enough that Leia had to pull some strings to make this happen. Now that it’s a done deal though, everyone is smiling and clapping and cheering in celebration – everyone except Ben.

“Ben?” Re calls quietly, hoping not to attract attention from the others. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, just…” He makes the mistake of speaking at a normal volume, and suddenly the room falls silent as everyone turns to the two of them. “Does it have to be October 17^th?” Ben asks the room at large, only to be met with blank looks.

It would make for a funny sight, especially since even Poe seems to have been shocked into silence, but Rey can’t quite pause to appreciate the moment as a familiar wave of dread begins to swell. “I mean…” she begins calmly, evenly, trying her best to give Ben the benefit of the doubt even though a part of her already knows. “Since that’s the date we told everyone to save, I’d say yes, it does?”

“It’s just,” Ben stops and darts his gaze to his left, and that’s when Rey realizes he’s had his phone right next to him all along, keeping tabs on work even on a Sunday, even as she sits right next to him trying to get his opinion on lighting options for the venue.

The wave of dread pulls Rey under, ushering in a familiar sinking sensation in her stomach that threatens to turn into nausea. “It’s just, Pryde is flying in that weekend for a meeting, and Snoke has me running point on the…” Ben trails off, finally reading the room or maybe catching sight of the stricken look Rey knows she’s wearing.

He reaches for her hand and gives her a reassuring smile. “It’s fine, forget it. Don’t worry about it, I’ll just get everything done in the morning and then rush over. The ceremony starts at four, right?”

And the worst part is, he actually looks like he’s trying his best, actually looks like he thinks this is okay.

Rey snatches her hand back while everyone else remains deadly silent.

“Rey?” Ben asks, the smile on his face faltering.

She takes a deep breath. “Are you seriously telling me,” Rey says quietly, biting off each word with deadly precision, “that you intend to go to work on the day of our wedding?”

“It’s just a half-day, sweetheart,” he says, and someone – Finn, maybe, or Poe – sucks in a sharp breath at him doubling down on this. Neither of them turn to see who it is, though, trapped together in a brewing storm that separates them from the others. “Don’t worry, I’ll be on time, maybe even fifteen minutes early–”

So he’s planning to leave her and his family and her friends to manage his work guests while he’s off handling even more work, and then waltz in maybe fifteen minutes before their wedding, and then spend the evening networking with clients.

“I’m done,” Rey announces as she stands up, looking around to see everyone else graciously pretending to be staring at their phones or their hands or their laps. “I’m fucking done,” she decides, and walks away.

“Rey!” Ben calls after her, and promptly gives chase. “Sweetheart, calm down, we can talk about this, I know weddings are stressful but–”

She whirls around so fast she nearly knocks into him, hot on her heels. “Not the wedding,” she snaps, because how is it possible that he still can’t see what’s happening here, what he’s doing to them?

What he’s already done to them, Rey realizes with a wave of quiet resignation as everything comes crashing down on her, every cancelled date and lonely night and entire weeks away at a time when they should be closer than ever–

“Not the wedding, Ben,” she says again, softer this time, though she can’t tell if her voice is calm or just small, weak, broken at the thought that… that… “Everything. All of it. I’m just… I’m done, Ben.”

And even after everything, she takes no pleasure in seeing the hurt she’s been carrying around on the inside for months finally reflected in his eyes.

“Rey…” he whispers, taking a step back as if her words have him reeling. The way he’s looking at her… god, it’s like she’s just taken a knife to his heart.

She wavers then, just for a moment, tells herself that maybe it’s not too late, maybe now he’ll finally understand what a mess they’ve gotten themselves into and work with her to fix it–

Their moment of silence is broken not by an offer of peace, but the Imperial March. It’s coming from Ben’s phone, which she realizes now is in his pocket, which he’d found the time to pick up even in his haste to go after her, which even now he automatically reaches for before he realizes what he’s doing just in time to stop.

The ominous tune plays on, Snoke’s custom ringtone for summoning his loyal servant.

Rey would know; she was the one to set it. She sees the way Ben’s fingers twitch, the way his entire frame is tense with the need, the instinct to respond to Snoke’s call, and gives him a small, sad smile. “I’ve been telling you for months to get your priorities straight,” she reminds him gently, too tired to summon any real energy or fight within her, too sad to wrestle with what she already knows is a predetermined outcome. “Moment of truth, Ben.”

The music finally stops then… only to start again seconds later. And this time, the siren call proves too strong for Ben to overcome. “Just a minute, Rey,” he pleads, looking her in the eye even as he pulls his phone out. “It’ll be just a minute, sweetheart, I’ll tell him to call back later–”

She’s already walking away.

“Rey, wait, Rey!”

And she doesn’t turn back to see if he follows, doesn’t even need to. Because the music stops and his voice replaces it almost immediately.

“Sir, I’m sorry but now is not a good– Oh. I understand. Yes, I’ll be there right away–”

The first wave of tears hit her then, as he lets her walk away without a fight, as he picks someone else over her again and again and again.

“What the fuck, man?” she hears Finn growl even as Ben continues to placate his boss rather than her, and seconds later her best friend is the one who comes after her, who drives her away, who lets her cry on his shoulder in the botanical garden where she and Ben will no longer be getting married.

“Rey, can I get you more–”

It’s her fault, really, for not shutting the door. She’d just wanted to be able to keep tabs on him, to know what he was doing and when he was leaving, and so Rey had pushed the door almost all of the way closed instead of shutting and locking it behind her like she should have.

Now it swings open under Ben’s fist, only to reveal her curled up in bed with tear-streaked cheeks as she relives the better parts of their relationship.

The album had been an engagement gift from Leia, filled with candids their friends and family had taken over the years, instances when their love had shined so brightly the people around them were compelled to capture the moment in time.

“Rey,” Ben sighs once he realizes what he’s looking at, and she’s getting so sick of hearing him say her name in that pained voice when once upon a time he only ever said her name with a smile. He rocks forward almost instinctively, stops and slows himself down to hesitantly move closer as she admits in a defeated whisper–

“I can’t do this anymore, Ben.”

He stops cold, five feet of distance between them yet so much more. “I’m sorry,” Ben says, looking at his feet. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have– I knew coming here wouldn’t change things, I’m not here to pressure you into anything, I swear, I just… I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you to spend the holidays alone–”

“You left me alone a long time ago,” Rey points out – not accusatorily, not angrily, simply… a statement of fact, gentled by her resignation and acceptance and old hurt. He still flinches though, as if after all these months it’s somehow news to him that he broke his promise.

“All the times I had to show up to our friends’ places on my own because Snoke called you in,” she points out, because he deserves to know what he did wrong, because he needs to know what he did wrong if they’re– Rey stops there, doesn’t let her silly hopes get ahead of herself. “All the nights our bed was too big and too cold without you while you worked late. All the days I spent alone in the home we were supposed to share. Ben, you promised–”

She hadn’t planned on breaking down like this, hadn’t expected those memories to still hold so much power over her long after they’d done their damage. But her voice breaks, and her vision blurs, and a single sob rips past her lips as Ben closes the distance between them to pull her into his arms.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry, if I could do it all again, if I could change everything so that I never hurt you–”

Rey shakes her head, long past the stage of if and maybe, long past dwelling in circles and hypotheticals and daydreams. There’s no going back, she sees that now, but maybe, just maybe… there could be a way forward.

“I just…” She wipes away her tears and takes a deep breath, looks him in the eye when she asks, “I just want to know why, Ben. Why did you choose work over me? Why wasn’t I enough?”

And he knows, he knows exactly what it means for her to have to ask that, exactly what it means for him to have made her feel that way, because in the blink of an eye Ben is crying too. “Rey, no. You’re… you’ve always been enough, sweetheart. Always. Fuck, you’re more than enough, you’re too good for me, always have been. I’m just this huge fucking disaster of a human being with nothing to offer you, but I thought maybe… maybe if I made something of myself, maybe if I worked hard enough so I could give you everything… then maybe, maybe I would finally be good enough for you.”

Rey doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream at the fact that they’ve wasted all this time, gone through all this hurt, just because… god, they really are perfect for each other, aren’t they, the two lonely, broken kids forever thinking they aren’t worthy of each other, forever worrying that they’re not enough?

“Ben,” she says and laughs and cries, “Ben, you idiot.”

He freezes. “What?”

“You idiot,” Rey says again, and can’t hide the odd mix of despair and affection in her voice this time. “You’ve always been enough for me. You filled my life with love, you gave me a home, you promised me a future and a family. Ben, you already gave me everything I ever wanted.”

Ben stares at her for the longest moment, blinking at her like she’s just told him the earth is flat. “You… but I… that would mean…”

“You were enough,” she tells him with a nod. “That was enough, Ben.”

She watches as he closes his eyes, as realization gives way to regret gives way to grief gives way to…

When Ben opens his eyes, there’s the slightest spark of hope in them. “Rey, do you think maybe… I mean, would you… Could it be enough again? Just us?” he asks haltingly, hesitantly.

After months of waking up in tears in this very bed, chasing after dreams so cruelly ripped away, it takes Rey a moment to realize that they’ve actually found their way to this point. A moment’s pause, though, is all it takes for Ben’s eyes to grow dull again as he lets her go and stands to leave. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… I don’t deserve a second chance, I know–”

Rey panics and reaches for his hand, yanks him back to her with what little strength she can muster from her heavy limbs. “I can’t do this anymore, Ben,” she tells him again, and watches as the fog in his eyes finally lifts. “I can’t be apart from you anymore. And that doesn’t mean I’ve completely forgiven you, doesn’t mean I’m not still sad and hurt and mad, but… but…”

But she’d rather be sad and hurt and mad with him than on her own, rather cry into his shoulder than her pillow, rather fix what they broke together than forge a new path alone.

And somehow, Ben sees that. “Rey,” he says, clutching both her hands as he drops down to his knees. “Sweetheart, I know I don’t deserve a second chance. But you deserve absolutely everything in life, and if you let me I’ll spend the rest of our lives giving you anything you want.”

His plea reminds her so much of his proposal, of his promise to give her everything in the world. But she’d never wanted everything, had she?

Rey hadn’t known the difference then but she knows better now, knows what they need to move forward. “All I want,” she tells Ben carefully, pointedly, “is you and us and our life together. That’s all I want, Ben. Nothing else.”

“Then that’s what you’ll have,” Ben promises her, all earnest eyes and sincere words, “and nothing else.”

It’s a good enough restart, Rey supposes, to a story that was never supposed to end anyway. “Good,” she says with a grin, and watches as a smile lights up his face. “Now get up here,” she commands with a tug at his hands, “because everything hurts too much for me to get down to you.”

The smile falls off Ben’s face immediately. “Wait, shit, I should’ve asked– are you on cold meds? Is this all for real, or should we talk again later, or–”

“Still an idiot,” Rey mutters with a smile as she leans down to silence him with a kiss.

“Your idiot, though,” Ben whispers between kisses, and all feels right with the world again.

.

.

.

Just a little past sunrise on December 27^th, Finn and Poe cautiously tiptoe into their darkened apartment in the hopes of avoiding Rey’s wrath. Judging from the lack of communication they’ve had with both Rey and Ben in the past few days, their plan might not have worked out as well as they’d hoped.

Finn can only hope Rey will forgive them for their meddling before the year is up.

As terrified of his best friend as he is, he still makes a dutiful stop by her room to make sure that her fever really has broken as Ben had claimed in his single Christmas Day text to Poe. He cautiously twists her doorknob, slowly eases the creaky door open, and blinks a few times to make sure that his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Poe whispers into his ear as he sneaks up on him, and Finn can only smile in response as a sleeping Rey shifts in Ben’s arms, the two of them still dozing with slight smiles on their faces as the winter sunlight bounces off a familiar ring on Rey’s finger.