Archive of Our Own

Rey closed her eyes, watching the colors fade from the darkness. When all was black, she opened her eyes again and stared toward the settings suns as long as she could stand it, then repeated the process. Over and over. Listless. Pointless.

As the shadows lengthened and merged into greater expanses of unbroken darkness, she resisted the urge to wonder if that was what was happening inside her soul. But when she found herself readily accepting — perhaps even longing for such a state because it would draw him closer to him, she bowed her head sharply and forced her thoughts elsewhere. When mental discipline failed her, she kicked her heel against the homestead wall and focused on the pain radiating up her leg to the exclusion of all else.

Her mind safely back in neutral territory, Rey stared down into the sunken confines of her adopted home. Dim light spilled from an archway that led to the kitchen, but, excepting only a few other random lights and indicators, all was dark down below. Kicking at the wall atop which she sat once more, she listened as dislodged pebbles and dust clattered softly down to the floor she had painstakingly unearthed after her arrival. She couldn’t know, of course, but she imagined the homestead now looked much as it had when Master Skywalker had grown up here. At least…she’d had trouble finding anything else today that she could work on.

Indeed, she’d had far more uncommitted time than she’d been quite comfortable with today.

Rey wasn’t sure how long she’d been on Tattooine now. First, it had been a matter of excavating and removing all the sand that had fallen inside the homestead’s walls. Since she’d committed to doing so only by physical means, it had taken quite a bit of time just for that, but she’d welcomed the work and the constant state of exhaustion it had engendered. Especially in those early days. Even now, she rather missed the simplicity of knowing what must be done at every turn, allowing her to merely do instead of ever worrying about thinking. Somehow, even the thinking had seemed easier when there was so much to do. Now, thinking had a tendency to go in unwanted directions, though she wasn’t entirely sure if that was a product of not having enough to keep her mind occupied or if perhaps she was ready to start permitting thoughts of Exegol to come back in.

Rey gasped in pain, the pressure at her chest constricting her breath as she struggled through the physical effects of that word on her. Now when she closed her eyes, shadows in the darkness coalesced into a cloaked figure suspended from a life-sustaining apparatus that reached out to suck her life’s essence out of her body, claiming it for his own. Frantic, desperate to halt the memory before it got to him, Rey shoved herself off the wall and into the thin air above her adopted home. Briefly, for an instant, she considered reorienting herself in such as way as to practically guarantee death when she landed on her head and snapped her neck. But the thought had barely formed in her mind before she was rejecting it, positioning herself to meet and absorb the impact of her leap without any help from the Force. As she straightened from her crouched position, feeling the creaks and aches in her bones that objected to the nightly ritual she put herself through, she pondered the edges of the seal behind which her power remained safely hidden. She should open it, she knew. She would have to eventually. But…she just couldn’t. Not yet.

At this rate, maybe not ever.

Ducking her head low as she walked, Rey made her way toward the kitchen, where she extinguished the last light she always left on then made her way to bed. As she lay down to sleep, she suspected that memories and images would haunt her, sensing that he’d been closer to her thoughts today than he had in quite awhile, so she meditated instead of simply falling asleep, forcing her mind to disciplined emptiness rather than merely hoping for the same. As, as she drifted off to sleep in a blissful absence of mental noise, it did occur to her that Jedi training indeed had its uses, even without the Force.

What did you do? What did you do?!

Rey gasped and bolted upright. Even before becoming fully aware she had just emerged from a deep sleep, she closed her eyes and emptied her mind, reaching past the frantic pounding of her heart and shallow panting of her breaths for serenity and oblivion. The tight feeling in her chest slowly eased, but the desperate echoes of her own voice still reverberated in her memory.

What did you do?

Furrowing her brow and gritting her teeth, she flung the thin blanket aside and lurched to her feet, stamping into what passed for a fresher on a desert planet. She jerked her clothing off with focused fervor and thrust her hands into the bin of fine grade sand, commencing her morning dust bath perhaps a touch too vigorously. By the time she was done, her skin was red and irritated in spots, and the rough fabric of her loose clothing further aggravated the mild abrasions. It was a small price to pay, though, since her mind was clear and she was in control.

Wandering into the kitchen, Rey had just remembered she would need to make a stop at the market after gathering the night’s harvest when she heard something unusual. Setting aside the small fruit she had selected for her breakfast, she stood absolutely still, as if her absence of movement here in her subterranean home might convince the approaching craft to pass her by without incident. But the longer the sounds lingered, the more obvious it became that her little homestead was its destination. Stifling a curse, Rey quickly retrieved her boots from her bedroom then hurried to the surface, hoping to waylay her unwelcome visitor.

As she emerged into the morning sunlight, she wasn’t surprised to see the small Republic shuttle, having recognized the whine of its engines as soon as she’d heard it. As she had suspected, she saw Finn in the pilot seat as he completed his landing, and Rey lingered at the homestead doorway, leaning against the mud wall with her arms folded in front of her. To his credit, he didn’t grin and wave excitedly. In fact, as far as she could tell, he didn’t even look directly at her as he focused entirely on a task that didn’t require all of his focus. She hadn’t been expecting him, technically, yet she wasn’t surprised he was here, either. In fact, if anything, she was surprised he’d left her alone as long as he had.

As the engines whined down, Rey watched Finn studiously hitting controls at the helm before turning to rise from his seat. Before he could have reached the ramp, though, it opened and a small droid came rolling out to her, nudging her foot in greeting.

“Hello, DO,” she murmured, stifling her dismay that Finn hadn’t brought one of the other droids — even 3PO. Although, as much as she disliked DO for associative reasons, she did appreciate his more aloof manner.

“Hello.”

Rey almost managed a hint of a smile as she received the little droid’s greeting, but any smile she might have achieved quickly soured as she recognized that was the easier of the two.

Finn approached her slowly, entirely devoid of the enthusiasm she knew was his norm. A pang of regret stabbed at Rey somewhere in the vicinity of her heart and she knew she was doing him a disservice. But the thought of him hugging her… She couldn’t handle it. There was simply no other way.

“Rey,” he greeted her stiffly, to which she responded in kind.

“What brings you?”

Finn prickled at her question, and Rey knew why. It was obvious what brought him. The same thing that always did. And she knew already he would be sent away with a disappointing answer yet again.

She wasn’t ready.

“You look good,” he said, looking her up and down with a nod and an encouraging smile.

Rey felt the muscles twitch at the corner of her mouth, but her attempt toward levity was halfhearted at best. Smiles weren’t in her. Friendliness wasn’t in her. Conversation wasn’t in her. Really, all that was in her was solitude. He knew this and he knew she would contact him when she was ready. Him showing up unannounced to check on her only to be disappointed that she wasn’t progressing at the rate he preferred didn’t do anybody any good. And the way his smile quickly died demonstrated that knowledge quite efficiently.

She knew this was hard on him and she regretted it…but not enough to change it.

“Finn, you know that I don’t—”

“I need you to help me with a quick mission,” he interrupted suddenly, and Rey couldn’t shake the instinct that he’d only just then decided to pursue this path.

Intrigued despite her, Rey cocked her head. “What mission?”

“Reconnaissance. On Jakku. There are rumors of a new crime syndicate. We’re trying to find out if there’s any truth to it before it gets out of hand.”

Rey narrowed her eyes. Well, at least she understood why Poe and the powers that be wanted her for this mission, misguided though they may be.

“I don’t have any clout on Jakku,” she challenged.

“But you know the traditions and customs. And you know who to trust and who not to. You do this recon with me, and you can be back here within two solar days. Anyone else will take at least four times as long for positive results, if they can manage it at all. And you know that.”

He was right, of course, on all counts. And he knew it. Still, there was something in his demeanor — tension in his stance or wariness in his gaze that put her on edge. He wasn’t being completely truthful with her, though she couldn’t tell if he was outright lying. There was a way to know for certain, of course, but she didn’t want to go there. Finn had only ever been her loyal friend. Sure, things were rocky now, but he wouldn’t harm her…not anything like opening herself up to the Force would. Besides, she knew the strides the Republic had made on Jakku and she was loath to let some upstart crime lord come and upend all that good work. There might not be much she could bring herself to care about anymore, but there was that at least.

“Two days,” she said by way of agreement, to which Finn immediately burst into a relieved smile and an impromptu congratulatory dance. When he moved in her direction, though, Rey swiftly backed up, maintaining the distance between them lest he try to reach out for any sort of physical contact.

“Two days,” she reiterated firmly, “and that’s it. Then you bring me straight back here and you don’t bother me again for at least a standard month.”

A pang of guilt struck Rey when she saw his crestfallen reaction to her dictate. She knew it was the timeframe that had him looking so despondent. The last time she’d imposed any duration on her solitude, in had been in terms of weeks. She knew that, from his perspective, they were heading in the wrong direction, with the intervals getting longer instead of shorter. But she couldn’t much bring herself to care at the moment.

She wasn’t ready.

To be honest, she wasn’t entirely sure she ever would be.

A fresh pang hit her chest with that thought. It had been hovering at the edges of her consciousness, of course, but she was pretty sure this was the first time she’d thought it outright, that she might not ever be ready to come back to the Republic. She knew they wanted her, for political reasons if not personal ones. Yes, she had once been a talented pilot and loyal fighter, but what they really wanted out of her was her status as the last Jedi even though she wasn’t really. There were others, now, like Temiri and Finn who had shown some aptitude with the Force, but they were even more floundering in the unknown than she had been when the Force had first awaken in her. At least she’d had Master Luke and— No. All they had was her, and she knew she wasn’t enough for them. They couldn’t rely on her, as much as they might want to. It was regrettable, but there was no other way around it.

Absently nodding at Finn’s nodded agreement to her conditions, Rey made a mental note to start making plans for her disappearance once she returned to Tattooine. As long as they knew where to find her, she would never be at peace. She would do this one last mission with Finn, then quietly disappear. It would be better for everyone.

“Alright,” Rey stated flatly, walking past Finn and following DO toward the shuttle. “Let’s go.”

It didn’t take long for Rey to confirm that Finn was not being at all honest with her. For one, he wouldn’t stop talking. At first, that in an of itself wasn’t all that suspicious since he passed the time to Jakku talking about their friends and the lives they were leading since she’d last seen them. But by the time he fell to talking about low-level staffers who she knew Finn knew she didn’t know, she felt reasonably certain there was another motivator behind his incessant chatter. When she tried to call him out on it, his voice had risen by at least an octave and he started asserting in a very fast tempo that everything was fine and why would she assume such a thing of him? To make matters worse, he then launched into a rehashing of all the Republic’s intelligence concerning this new crime syndicate on Jakku, evidently trying to convince her of its legitimacy but in actuality only driving her to be back of the shuttle to escape the constancy of his voice.

Rey attempted to settle herself into a meditative state at the back of the shuttle, but she had especial difficulty emptying her mind. There was nothing of particular importance in there today, but still she couldn’t seem to settle. She had just determined to give up the attempt, deciding that battling Finn’s talking was preferable to that, when the hyperdrive alert sounded. With a stifled sigh of relief, Rey gained her feet and made her way to the helm. But when the starlines coalesced around individual points of light, marking their emergence from hyperdrive, Rey had her confirmation of Finn’s deception. For a moment, she couldn’t react, could only stare through the viewport, her mind balking against her supposed friend’s reactions. But as she stared out not at Jakku at all, but at Exegol, the true import of the lie flooded her consciousness.

“No,” she whispered, then with increasing desperation. “No, no, no! Why would you bring me here?”

Rather than await a response, Rey lurched over Finn in the pilot’s seat and jerked back on the throttle. Her hands shaking, she reached to key Tattooine into the nav computer, trying desperately to make getting back to her quiet homestead the primary thought — the only thought — in her mind.

“Rey!” Finn objected, reaching for her hands to stop her. “You can’t do that!”

“I can’t do that?” she cried, yanking her hands out of his reach before he could touch her. “You lied to me, Finn! Why would you do that? I can’t be here. Get me out of here!”

“No, Rey, you need to listen to me!”

“No! I won’t! You lied to me and I will never trust you again! I can’t be here!”

“Rey! Listen to yourself!”

She didn’t know how it had happened, but she found herself held firm in Finn’s grip, his eyes wide and his jaw tight as he shouted into her face. Startled into a silence she hadn’t realized she needed, Rey heard the gasping of her breath as it filled the small confines of the shuttle, and only then became aware of the tears streaming from her eyes. She felt wild fright in the thumping of her heart and the trembling of her limbs, and couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so terrified.

“Palpatine is dead, Rey!” Finn shouted into her face as he maintained hold of her shoulders.

But Rey shook her head. That wasn’t what frightened her so.

“Nothing here can hurt you!” he insisted. “I’ve been here myself. I can feel the residue, but nothing of him anymore. He’s gone, Rey! I can feel it!”

“No,” she whimpered, tears flowing freely. “It’s not about him!”

“Then what?” Finn demanded, his frustration evident. “You never really told me what happened here. Why does this place scare you so much?”

What did you do?!

Rey cried out with the memory, collapsing to her feet and cradling her head against the invasion of sights and sounds from her past. But they were pernicious things, seeping in past her meager defenses until she was confronted by that which she avoided most: the image of him lying before her, still in death, his body fading to nothing before she could even understand he’d just sacrificed himself for her, screaming and weeping over his empty clothing, What did you do!?

For the first time since that day, since the last time she had been to this horrid planet, she wept over what she’d lost that day, the love and family she hadn’t known she had until it was too late. She’d pushed the pain down, determined not to make his sacrifice for nothing. But she’d done it too well, had buried everything deep enough that she was able to keep it down. And only now did she realize that it had been a poison in her soul, eating away at what was left of her until she was little more than a hollow shell of what she’d once been. She knew that, had been hiding in solitude on Tattooine to keep anyone else from knowing how horribly broken she was, how devastatedly lonely, and how little she deserved the great sacrifice he’d made for her, one that she knew no one else would understand.

“It’s Kylo Ren, isn’t it?”

Rey gasped and sobbed at Finn’s words, her hand covering her mouth as her widened, tearful eyes stared out at him. Taking in her reaction, he nodded then slowly, gently reached forward to take her hand in his.

“He was here, wasn’t he? He helped you take down Palpatine.”

For a moment, Rey could only stare, then she shook her head. She’d never told anyone he was at Exegol.

Finn nodded again as he focused on her hand cradled in his between them.

“I came back here,” he confessed, and this was entirely new information to Rey. “About two standard weeks after the battle, after you’d told us what happened with Palpatine. I needed to see where it happened. I don’t know… I guess I needed to see if I could…feel it. I guess I figured if I could feel something different here, with how much power you said he had, then it wasn’t just my imagination, that I really was feeling something of the Force.”

Rey stared, absorbed by Finn’s tale, her tears drying unforgotten on her skin. She wanted to know more, wanted to know what he’d found, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak

“As soon as I landed, I knew,” he confirmed. “I knew it was real. I could feel something that I knew was ancient and powerful but dead. I still don’t know how I know, but I knew it couldn’t hurt us anymore.”

She nodded vaguely, recognizing in his description the same Force sensation she’d noted after…

“But that’s not all I found,” he continued, drawing her attention anew. “I found the remains of the Knights of Ren. They were all killed by lightsaber wounds.”

Fresh tears filled Rey’s eyes as she realized he must have killed them so he could reach her. He’d sacrificed so much more even than she’d known. Everything he’d worked so long and hard for, even his compatriots. All for her…

“Kylo Ren wasn’t among them…”

“Kylo Ren was dead by then,” Rey interjected firmly, meeting Finn’s gaze directly. “Ben Solo was on Exegol. Ben Solo died—”

Rey choked on the words and couldn’t get them out. She fell to weeping for a moment but pulled herself together. She’d never intended anyone to know any of this, had planned to keep all this as a secret only for her. But now that Finn knew part of it, she suddenly felt determined that he should know all of it.

“Ben Solo died to save me, Finn. He died so I could live. He was my soulmate and, when he died, part of me died with him. I loved him.”

“Oh, Rey.”

“And don’t tell me it’s wrong!” she erupted. “Don’t tell me he didn’t deserve my love, Finn! Because he deserved so much more than I ever gave him and I never even got to tell him, Finn. I never got to tell him…”

What had begun as an angry tirade had quickly devolved into an agony of tears, and Rey found herself cradled in a friend’s embrace. She clung to Finn, weeping freely into his sleeve and bemoaning how little she’d been able to do in the end for the man she’d loved with all her being. Slowly, she regained control of herself, and the emptiness that had become her everyday seemed perhaps a little less empty. Looking back on it later, she thought maybe that was why she didn’t outright reject Finn’s suggestion as soon as he made it.

“You need to go down there,” he murmured gently, thrusting his chin toward the viewport and Exegol hovering in space beyond. “You need to tell him…everything.”

“He’s dead,” she moaned bitterly, dejected, as she extricated herself from his embrace and began the arduous task of figuring out how to close the floodgate of her emotions once again.

“It’s not for him, Rey.”

She paused, her gaze fixed on Finn as she pondered his words. If telling him all the things she never got to say wasn’t for him, then it was for her. Would it help? Could she actually fool herself into believing that whatever words she might say could pick their way through the ether and into wherever his consciousness was now? Even if it wasn’t actually true?

“Keeping it all in is destroying you, Rey. I can’t pretend to understand Ky— Ben Solo, but if he loved you it would kill him to see you like this.”

Rey stared at Finn, knowing the truth of his words but…still…

“It hurts…” she squeaked in a small voice, the tears starting again as she contemplated confronting all that anguish she’d tried so hard for months now to bury and ignore.

“I know, Rey. I know.”

In the end, Rey didn’t decide to land on Exegol. She merely didn’t stop Finn when he resumed his approach to the planet. She sat stone-faced in the forward seat and watched silently as their little shuttle penetrated the atmosphere the landed. There was so much of a blur over her memories from the last time she’d been here, the details shrouded in a haze of mystery since her mind had been so focused elsewhere. It was almost as if she saw it all for the first time…not that there was much to see. The near-constant lightning strikes were certainly the most notable feature of the barren landscape, and it seemed like there were fewer of them than there had been before, though she couldn’t be quite certain.

She had considered unsealing her access to the Force, but quickly discarded the idea. She already knew this was going to be painful enough without subjecting herself to the void that awaited her. After all, in the year between Crait and here, she’d had plenty of time to learn exactly what his presence in her mind felt like. It was the absence of precisely that sensation that had prompted her to shut herself off from the Force in the first place. Maybe someday she would find the strength to open it again, but she knew just dealing with her emotions was going to be enough for today.

“Rey…”

Her body jerked at the intrusion of Finn’s voice. Blinking herself out of a stupor she hadn’t realized she’d fallen into, Rey wondered how long she’d been sitting here, staring at the oddly-floating wall that protruded from the mist. Her heart was hammering inside her chest and her hands were wringing in her lap. She stared into the misty landscape, memories flooding her of things she’d experienced here, of things she’d gained and things she’d lost. She shook her head, questioning that this really needed to be done. What would it actually accomplish, other than to make her feel miserable? It was so much better to hide from her pain, even or perhaps especially if that pain was flowing from inside her own psyche. But when she thought to debate the merit of disembarking the shuttle, Finn met her with a stern though gentle expression on his face.

“What you’ve been doing hasn’t been doing you any favors,” he murmured softly. “Try something else…?”

She looked out the viewport again. She couldn’t argue that she hadn’t been happy since her last visit here. She didn’t truly hold out much hope that could change. But then she thought of him. If it had been him who’d survived and she who’d made that possible, she wouldn’t want him wasting away his life the way she was. …Would she?

Stifling a sigh, Rey climbed to her feet and slapped the ramp control. The moment she stepped foot on the stony surface of the planet, she was greeted by a lightning strike that cracked the air around her. Her heart pounding in reaction and anticipation. Looking back at Finn, she reminded herself that he’d been here, that he’d found no overt threat. She silently acknowledged she could open her senses to the Force and know for herself if there was any danger here, but she didn’t know how to do that without simultaneously opening herself up to the pain of his absence. No, she decided yet again. Better to remain blind. After all, if there was danger and something did kill her today, she wasn’t entirely certain she would qualify that as a problem.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No,” Rey answered Finn quickly, instantly assailed by imagining him witnessing the pain she knew was in store for her.

She looked up at him, trying to decide what else to say to him, but he nodded at her with an encouraging smile, gesturing with one hand to get her on her way. Recognizing his acceptance of her rejection, she nodded and turned her focus forward.

Rey didn’t recognize anything right away. She hadn’t realized how much destruction had taken place in the wake of the battle. The stands that had been filled with shadowy whispering figures were mounds of rubble, the life-sustaining apparatus that had suspended the emperor only half erect now. But once she had identified those ruins, she was able to pinpoint where she had fallen, where she had awaken in his arms…where he had died and faded into nothingness. 

Slowly, she sank down to the stone at her feet, awaiting some jolt that alerted her to the psychic energy that surely inhabited this place. But there was nothing, no presence, no awareness, no residue. It was as if this was any location in the universe, any place where anything had happened, rather than the unexpected opening up of her entire world, the recognition that everything she had ever longed for was within her reach, followed hard upon by its irrevocable loss. 

She had been disoriented when she’d first opened her eyes. Oddly enough, her first thought had been to align that moment with when she’d awaken on Starkiller Base, strapped to an interrogation table. And, in both instances, he’d been there. This time, though, he was so close, the twin masks of both his helmet and Kylo Ren, absent. He was laid bare before her, exposed and vulnerable. And in that moment she’d known without any doubt that she had awaken in the arms of Ben Solo, son of Han and Leia, not an official of the First Order or a purveyor of the Dark side. Even before his voice formed words inside her head, she knew the truth of what he said.

It doesn’t matter what I’m called, he’d said. I am yours.

Staring at the space between her feet, picturing what they must have looked like, her lying in his arms as they engaged in their private conversation in silence. And, for the first time, unencumbered by the shock of the moment that overwhelmed her and the ignorance of what was to come and how soon, Rey answered.

“Yes, Ben,” she whispered, tears flooding her eyes as she knew they would. “In that moment, you became mine and I yours.”

She had felt it in her heart, had known it as definitively as she did now, but, at the time, she hadn’t been able to think straight. As she had so often before, she had been consumed by the urge to kiss him. And, considering what she had learned about her bond with him and what they had just been through together, she’d seen no rational reason to continue denying the truth that lay between them. But that kiss, as fulfilling as it was, had occupied all the precious time she didn’t know they’d had. Had she known what was to come and how soon, would she have made the same choice? And, as she pondered the matter, she realized it really came down to a different question: did she cherish the memory of that kiss enough to outweigh her regret over the things she never got to tell him?

Torn by the question, Rey closed her eyes and allowed herself to do something she never did. Rather than shove away the encroaching memory of the kiss, the one time she was able to both express and feel the bond that lay between them, she allowed it to come. She indulged it, feeling the overwhelming emotion that came with it, battling in conflict over love and pain, and she let it come. She let the emotions war over her, feeling her heart break with the knowledge that such a moment of absolute belonging would never happen again, and she knew then that, no matter how much it hurts, she couldn’t trade that for anything. No, if she had it to do all over again and she knew those precious moments with him would be all she’d ever have, she wouldn’t have changed anything she did in that moment.

But him…

The tears came hot and fast, then, her grief breaking forth as though unchained, and she cried out her misery.

“Why?” she wailed. “Why would I want this without you?”

She knew he’d sacrificed himself for her, to save her. She knew he valued her enough to make that an obvious choice for him. But it wasn’t enough for her. She’d already spent the majority of her life alone. And now, after she’d glimpsed enough to know what it was she was being denied, she was back in solitude, counting days toward an end that she knew deep down would never come. He was dead. Gone. Torn away from her without even a body to bury. What was there left to live for?

“You knew,” she moaned miserably into the stones that greedily absorbed her tears as they fell. “All along, you knew. You never denied we should be together. You tried. Stars, Ben! You tried so many times. And I was just too stubborn to hear. How much time we could have had together! How much everything would have been different! I’m so sorry, Ben. I’m so sorry…!”

And there it was, the regret that truly haunted her. It wasn’t so much that he cherished her enough to value her life above his. She could understand that, recognize she lamented not having had the chance to make the same choice. What broke her heart every chance she allowed it was that she’d been too foolish to recognize what was right in front of her all along. She’d allowed the voices around her to drown out what her own instinct told her, that there was more to him than anyone knew, that it didn’t matter what anyone else thought of him, only what she knew of his soul. And what she had known and simply been too ignorant and prideful to see was that his soul, while mangled and tormented, was beautiful and wholly worthy of love. Yes, she’d seen it in the end, but how much time had she wasted by refusing to listen to him all those times he’d tried to reach her. She could forgive him dying to save her. That wasn’t the trouble.

What she couldn’t forgive was herself refusing to let him ease her loneliness.

As her misery engulfed her, Rey curled onto the stone floor, her knees tucked close into her chest as she tried to shut out life again. Now that the floodgates were opened, she couldn’t close them as she’d known would happen, as she struggled with the recognition that they would have been better off left tightly closed. Despite herself, though, she imagined pressure at her shoulder, the warmth that would come with his touch. On the few occasions in which she’d succumbed to her agony, she’d imagined this, as if he were there with her, comforting her. But it only tormented her, teased her with what could never be, and it was part of the reason she fought so hard to keep the misery at bay. The warmth at her shoulder faded, then, and rather than clinging gratefully for that absence, Rey’s emotions surged and she flung out, searching for it.

“Don’t go!” she cried. “Don’t leave me!”

Immediately, the warmth surged back to her, and it was everywhere. She shook her head, comforted and yet distraught by a sensation that she could only too easily imagine was him, there with her from beyond the veil between life and death.

“It’s like I can still feel you,” she moaned brokenly between her sobs. “Like you’re still with me.”

I am.

The words were so faint, so distant in the far recesses of her mind that Rey couldn’t be sure she’d heard them. In fact, the more she thought on it, the more she was convinced it was a product of her grief, a wish for a response rather than an actual response. And yet…

The warmth lingered. 

Here, in this barren, stony landscape, punctuated by lightning strikes that provide the only source of airflow, there was no warmth. No sunlight to pierce the mist. No fire to dispel the gloom. And yet, she was warm.

Tears momentarily forgotten in the face of this enigma, Rey sat erect. Her face spun about, eyes working to reach into the shadows that lingered about her, wanting and yet not quite daring to believe…

“Ben?”

Rey gasped aloud when warmth like an intimate breath moved across her cheek. Clapping her fingers to her skin, she realized it felt cold to the touch and yet the warmth remained.

Hastily, Rey clambered inside her mind, reaching for the seal behind which her Force access dwelled. Her heart thudding, she hesitated on the brink of ripping it open but quickly chastised herself. It was the same kind of hesitation that had led her to turn her back on Ben after he’d destroyed Snoke, and again on Kef Bir, and she wouldn’t allow herself to make the same mistake yet again.

Her senses opened with the flare of a blaster cannon, bursting into vibrant light and sound with a ferocity that took her breath away. Immediately, the shadowy spaces were made bright, nothing able to hide within her awareness of the Force. It was comforting and familiar, and Rey couldn’t recall in that moment why she had chosen to cut herself off from it.

…hear me!

The whisper came to her in the midst of the cacophony of Force awareness in her mind that had yet to settle. It was as if every instinct she’d ever harbored in the Force, having been denied for so long, was clamoring for attention all at once. And there, buried within the noise was the one small voice she wanted. She reached for it, frantically attempting to clear away what didn’t need her immediate attention, desperate to determine whether or not this was just her overeager imagination.

“Ben, is that you?”

Yes! Rey!

Gasping in reaction, Rey lurched to her feet, spinning about to search the space around her, but she was utterly alone.

“Where are you? Are you here?”

No whisper came this time, but Rey felt a brush of air against her cheek, like she had before, and her fingers flew there, desperate to catch whatever had caused it. But there was nothing and her desperation grew.

“Ben!”

Overcome by the certainty that she was losing her one chance at finding him, Rey ran. She ran blindly, not knowing where she went or why, only to stumble across the first rubble of what had once been the massive stands that had housed the shadowy Sith figures who had gathered to witness Palpatine’s resurrection. Only…there was hardly enough stone here to form a simple bench, let alone a massive structure the likes of which she remembered. And it was then that she contemplated something she had never thought to question before.

What had she really witnessed that day? And what was a lie?

Guided by a timely flash of lightning, Rey looked about her and realized she saw not one lifeless, decaying body. Palpatine, she remembered, had disintegrated in the nexus of his own Force lightning. Having felt the power of that moment herself, she felt reasonably assured that part had been real. But the legions of Sith? Perhaps they had been there in spirit, but clearly not in body. The same with the Jedi who had come to her aid, providing her with the strength she’d needed to defeat the evil emperor. In fact…had they really done anything more than merely bolster her confidence?

It was you.

“Ben!” she gasped, searching about her again.

His voice was clear now, though still soft. And this time, when she felt warmth brush her cheek, it felt like more than air, almost like flesh. But, still, when she reached to catch him with her hand, there was nothing there. Nothing to see or touch, only feel.

“Where are you?” she cried in frustration.

No words came, but warmth surrounded her and Rey laughed and wept with relief at the unmistakable sensation of Ben holding her in his arms. Lightning struck, then, and the warmth withdrew. But, for an instant, just as the mist illuminated, she saw him. Just a shadow, but he was right there at her side, gazing down at her with those depthless eyes she so missed. And, even in that flash of sight, she learned so much.

He was weak. And he was trapped. But, stars above and sands below, he was alive!

Rey leaped and cried out, joy such as she had thought to be forever beyond her reach subsuming her. But before she could get too carried away, she bolted back to where she had seen him.

“Have you been here all along?”

Yes.

She nodded, ignoring the twinge of regret it had taken her so long to come back here. But at the same time, she couldn’t contain her excitement.

“Alright,” she addressed the air. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back!”

She turned aside to run, but then stopped and turned back to where she’d seen him.

“I love you!”

She felt the unmistakable sensation of his lips pressed to hers and she kissed the air, smiling and laughing.

Then she ran. The moment the shuttle came into view, she started shouting and waving her arms. It wasn’t long before Finn responded, leaping down the ramp and running toward her, the panic on his face quite evident.

“It’s Ben!” she exclaimed as she collapsed into Finn’s arms, breathless and excited. “He’s not dead! Come help me!”

Ignoring the dumfounded expression on his face, she stood and gathered his hand in hers, pulling him along behind her as she focused on getting back to Ben.

“What do you mean, he’s not dead?” Finn demanded as ran alongside her. “You said he disappeared!”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “He’s trapped. You have to help me figure out how to get him out.”

Focused entirely on getting back to Ben, Rey didn’t notice Finn’s lack of response to her revelation. Or, more accurately, she noticed but didn’t care. She hurried straight to the mound of rubble, right where she’d glimpsed him, and turned about on the spot, searching the air.

“Are you still here?”

I love you, too.

Rey felt her cheeks flush with deep color and she bowed her face demurely. She shuffled her feet about as she stalled for composure, but Finn quickly lost his patience.

“So?”

She blinked at him. “So…what?”

“Is he still here?”

Rey couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips as she nodded.

“How do you know?”

“I can hear him. And I can feel it when he touches me.”

“Uh-huh,” Finn said, skepticism thick in his expression. “And what do you expect me to do about it?”

“You don’t believe me?” she asked, that possibility having not occurred to her.

“Even if I do…”

Though he had spoken heatedly, Finn quickly backed off, his voice trailing into nothing as he turned away from her. Rey stared at him, only now realizing how little incentive he had to helping them. Her first instinct, however, was to react with anger.

“You’re the one who insisted I come here!”

“To say goodbye!” he fired back. “Not to…whatever this is!”

“Find hope?” she challenged.

“Hope?! For what? That he can start another war?”

Rey’s eyes widened, incredulous. “You told me yourself that he killed the Knights of Ren!”

“That was when I thought he was dead!”

“Well, he’s not. And I’m not leaving here without him.”

Now it was Finn’s turn to express incredulity. “Rey!” he cried, throwing his hands up. “You can’t stay here!”

“Well, I can’t leave.”

“There’s no vegetation here, no shelter, nothing to live off of.”

“So, I’ll gather supplies and bring them here. It’s not impossible. I’ve lived with less.”

“Less than nothing? Rey, there’s nothing here!”

Sith.

“Wait! Shush! What?” Rey snapped, lifting a hand to stop the pointless argument with Finn, and turned sharply toward where she sensed Ben was. “What?”

Sith here.

“What’s he saying?”

Rey waved her hand impatiently at Finn as she tried to focus on Ben. “Do you mean there are Sith there with you?”

Yes.

Rey felt her chest contract in fear. “Are you in danger?”

No.

She breathed easier with that, but she didn’t know what to make of it either. She frowned, recalling her revelation that the legion of Sith she’d seen gathered to witness Palpatine’s resurrection hadn’t been real. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“Is he?”

Rey cast Finn a dark look, recognizing right away he was asking if Ben was in danger and feeling quite cynical about it.

“As though you care.”

“I care about you.”

“I don’t see much—” Rey began heatedly, only to cut herself off when she felt Ben’s hands frame her face. She sighed, nodding slightly.

“He wants us to stop bickering.”

Finn snorted his response but quickly bit his tongue. Rey chewed her lip, wishing she knew how to make Finn see reason, even as she recognized he was probably thinking the same thing about her. She only wanted to help Ben, but she didn’t know how. Her first thought had been to get Finn, because she knew he’d been studying the Jedi texts, but this was a Sith world. As much as Rey guessed those texts revealed how much the Jedi didn’t know about the Force, Rey would venture to guess they revealed even less about the Sith.

“Sith,” Finn said suddenly, drawing her attention. “What do we know about the Sith’s interest in Exegol?”

Rey shrugged. “They claimed it.”

“Why?”

Vergence.

“There’s a vergence here?” she exclaimed.

“A big one?” Finn demanded, effectively bypassing Rey’s translation services.

Perhaps. Never found.

“Maybe,” she reported. “But it was never found.”

“But there’s power, right? We all feel it.”

He’s…

Rey nodded, confirming Ben’s suspicion that Finn was indeed Force-sensitive.

“Where are the Sith?”

“With Ben?” Rey asked, not sure what Finn was asking, but then she felt the warmth of his touch on her hand, only to be removed, and she understood. “This way.”

At first, the going was slow, Rey having to make her best guess as to where Ben was leading them and becoming quite confused by his corrections when he stopped her. But then Ben touched her palm to guide her and Rey caught his hand when her grip reflexively closed. She came to an abrupt halt then, staring at her hand, feeling his fingers under hers though she still couldn’t see anything of him.

You can feel me?

Rey nodded, tears of happiness flooding her gaze as she searched the shadowy darkness for him. She stepped forward as she felt his tug, closing her eyes in contentment as she felt herself encased in his arms. She settled her head against his chest and wrapped her arms around him, reveling in the sensation of his embrace. From the corner of her eye, she caught Finn turning away from them with a disgruntled groan, and she sighed her own frustration. It occurred to her, then, that Finn’s reaction to Ben would probably be indicative of many members of the new Republic’s attitude where the former Supreme Leader Kylo Ren would be concerned. It was a problem, to be sure, but she firmly pressed the issue aside, determined to get him out of whatever limbo state he was in first.

“It’s getting stronger,” Rey said to Finn, stepping back from Ben. “I couldn’t feel him before.”

“Mm,” Finn responded noncommittally. “Guess we’re headed in the right direction.”

Rey ignored his snide comment and instead focused on Ben as she followed him, led by his hand clasped in hers.

“This is where most of the Sith are?”

Yes.

Rey smiled to herself, recognizing that his voice was more than a whisper now. She could even discern the timbre of his voice now.

“What are they doing? Are they aware of you?”

I’m not sure.

“Are they aware of us?” Finn asked.

No, Ben answered, and Rey shook her head for Finn’s benefit.

“What does this do for us?” Rey asked, impatient to make some progress in this endeavor.

“I don’t know,” Finn answered bitterly. “I just thought to get to where the Force is the strongest. You have to take it from here.”

The Sith, Ben said suddenly. They’re not like me.

“How?”

I don’t know… They don’t move the same way I do. They’re slower, less…interested?

“Are they dead?”

Rey stared at Finn. Had he heard Ben? Before she could ask, though, Finn caught her gaze and rolled his eyes at her. Yes, she decided, he could hear Ben now.

Maybe, yes. I think that’s it. They don’t talk either and don’t seem to notice that I am. They just…linger.

“Ben, maybe… Maybe that’s why Palpatine was here. He talked about a ceremony to inhabit my body when I killed him. Can that happen anywhere?”

I don’t know. I thought Sith apprentices killing their masters was just a tradition. I didn’t realize there was a tangible benefit to it.

“So probably not just anywhere, right?”

“Do you think those Sith are murdered masters, then?” Rey wondered

“That would make sense.”

I really don’t belong here, do I?

“No,” Rey answered emphatically, squeezing Ben’s hand. “You don’t.”

“Why aren’t you dead?” Finn interjected suddenly.

Rey turned on Finn with a stern expression, having had enough of his snide attitude, but he noticed her expression and quickly raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“No, no!” he objected. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean…”

He sighed without finishing his explanation, presumably because he couldn’t find a way of phrasing his question that wouldn’t be equally as offensive to Rey.

I gave up my life force to bring Rey back.

Rey watched Finn as he nodded, absorbing Ben’s explanation. She knew Finn knew the truth of it, his sensing her death having been one of the earliest and strongest indicators of his Force sensitivity.

“You gave it all up?”

I didn’t have much to give.

“So, yes, you should have died. Right?”

Yes. I expected to.

Rey squeezed his hand again, biting her tongue against the recriminations that flooded her consciousness. Someday, soon, she was going to have to have a long conversation with him about undervaluing his life.

“So why didn’t you? And how did you end up there?”

I don’t know.

“What’s different about you?”

“Me.”

Having lapsed into an observatory role, Rey surprised all three of them when she spoke up in sudden inspiration. Now, reconsidering the idea, she nodded.

“Well, us,” she clarified. “Palpatine said a bond like ours hasn’t been seen in many generations.”

My dyad.

Rey smiled, feeling her cheeks flush with color, but Finn’s reaction was more confused.

“Your…what?”

“Dyad,” Rey explained. “The emperor called us a Force dyad, one soul in two bodies.”

Finn stared with his jaw dropped for a moment before he managed to gather his thoughts. “I thought you were speaking figuratively when you called him your soulmate.”

You called me your soulmate?

Rey felt herself blushing again and wondered if this was going to keep happening.

“Aren’t you?” she asked, feeling anxious that she’d overstepped herself.

But he gently pulled her into his arms, causing her heart to hammer in her chest, her stomach flipping wildly inside her as she felt his breath on her lips as he answered her question with a soft, yes. But, still, her eyes searched incessantly for him, frustrated by her inability to see him even though she knew he was right there. And, having delved deeper into the caverns that pierced the surface of this world, the illuminating flashes of the lightning strikes were no longer available to provide a coveted glimpse of him.

Close your eyes, Rey.

She did as he instructed and quickly realized he was right. Here, in the darkness of her own making, all that mattered was what she felt. And she could feel everything as he leaned forward to gently brush his lips against hers. She pushed up on her toes, reaching for him just as he slowly acquiesced. Their lips pressed together, and Rey whimpered softly as she lost herself in the power of his embrace. Tears escaped the seal of her eyelids as she realized only a few hours ago she had been facing a lifetime of solitude and certainly nothing like this. Now, she didn’t know where their path would lead, but she knew neither of them would ever be alone again.

I love you, Rey.

“Okay, stop,” Finn interjected suddenly. “That’s enough. You can save that for when you’re alone.”

Rey laughed anxiously as she stepped back from Ben. She knew her face must be bright red again, and she felt bad she had completely forgotten about Finn. How odd that must have been, seeing her kissing thin air, and she could even recognize how awkward it had to be for him since he didn’t approve of her choice of kissing partner.

“I’m sorry, Finn.”

“Alright, so…yeah. Soulmate, dyad, whatever you want to call it, you’re it. I get it. You don’t have to prove it to me, okay? Deal?”

“Sorry,” Rey repeated, but Finn waved his hand at her, his mind evidently already returned to the task at hand.

“You said you share a soul?”

“That’s what Palpatine said.”

“Would he know?”

“I—”

Yes, Ben interjected, he would. Sheev Palpatine was legendary for his research into both Jedi and Sith traditions. If anyone would know of an obscure manifestation of the Force, it would be him.

“So it could actually, literally be true?”

Yes, Ben said once more, but now with a tone of awe in his voice. That’s it.

Rey frowned. “What’s it?”

“If you share a soul, neither of you can die without the other.”

Or live.

“Or live,” Rey agreed, thinking back on the half life she’d led in her months on Tattooine. “So when you should have died…”

I couldn’t.

“But I did,” she objected, confused.

“Yes,” Finn agreed, “but you said you were close to death, right? Maybe the Force thought you weren’t far behind.”

I wasn’t.

“But by the time you did die, you’d given Rey enough to survive, so you couldn’t die. So then…what’s the Force to do with you?”

Trap me in a netherealm between life and death.

“Why?”

“To wait.”

“For what?” Rey insisted, her patience thinning.

My dyad.

“Don’t start that again,” Finn interjected quickly in a warning tone.

“So how do we get you out?”

At Rey’s frustrated question, the tripartite conversation dried up. She sighed with tension, annoyed to realize how far they’d come in their understanding, only to realize it wasn’t far enough. They still had no idea how to get Ben out. They all stood there, waiting for inspiration to strike. But it didn’t happen. And it kept not happening.

Eventually, exhausted and discouraged, Rey settled herself on a nearby boulder and cradled her forehead in her hands. She felt Ben’s broad, strong hand grip and massage the back of her neck and she moaned softly in appreciation. After a moment, she looked up to smile at him, momentarily forgetting she still couldn’t see him. And as her eyes swept the nothingness, they happened to skitter across Finn, who was watching intently.

“This isn’t new.”

Rey frowned, uncertain what Finn meant.

“This,” Finn clarified unhelpfully, gesturing at her and where evidently he presumed Ben to be at her side. “You interacting with someone I can’t see. This has happened before.”

Now she understood, and she lifted her chin in defiance.

“Yes.”

“You never told me.”

“No. I never told anyone.”

Finn nodded, his manner dismissive yet still intense. “Tell me now.”

“It started on Ahch-To, during those few days when Master Luke was training me.”

And now the judgement seeped in. “Ah, Rey…”

She knew he was reacting to just how long ago this all started, and how long she kept it hidden from him. And she couldn’t blame him for being angry about that. How often had he told her how much he valued their friendship, the ability to tell each other anything? And the whole time she’d been hiding something pretty damn important.

She had no control over it—

“I don’t need to hear from you,” Finn interrupted firmly, his finger aimed up into the air but his gaze angled downward since he didn’t know where to look. “She’s not in any danger from me so she doesn’t need you defending her. Let her tell it.”

Rey sensed more than felt Ben withdrawing from the conversation and she took a surreptitious breath.

“We don’t know how it started,” she began. “Snoke tried to tell us he created our bond but…”

I never believed him.

“No,” Rey agreed. “Neither did I. It was on Crait that I learned to control it.”

“Crait,” Finn murmured, rocking back on his ankles as he reminisced in his memory. “It was right when you closed the ramp to the Falcon, wasn’t it? I remember thinking there was something strange about that.”

Rey nodded, remembering Finn trying to ask her what was wrong and she simply blowing off his concern.

“But it didn’t happen again after that?”

“No, I…” Rey hesitated, wishing she could get some visual cues from Ben on this, but suspecting he was waiting for her explanation just as eagerly as Finn was. “I knew how to control it, but it wasn’t easy. If I was tired or, I think, if he was really trying to push the connection through, it was easier to just let it happen. It was exhausting keeping him out of my mind.”

Good. I wanted it to be.

“Could you start it?” Finn wondered, to which Rey nodded. “Did you ever?”

Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded.

You did?

“Twice,” she admitted. “You were sleeping.”

You connected with me while I was sleeping?

Rey could hear the masculine pride permeating his question, and she was quite certain Finn could too, so she couldn’t entirely blame him when he impatiently interrupted Ben’s question with an irritated, “No, not now! Not going there! It’s time for my questions!”

Rey nodded obediently and Ben remained silent, but she could still feel the sense of triumph oozing from him. Yes, she thought with good-natured irritation, he could win this one. A few months after the Resistance had settled on Ajan Kloss, Rey had given into the constant temptation to check in on Ben. Though she’d tried to distance herself from him, his persistence had become oddly comforting. If nothing else, his efforts to contact her assured her he was still alive. But then, it had all stopped. Rey had tried and tried to dismiss her nagging concerns, but eventually she gave in and opened the link between them. When she’d found him sleeping and entirely unaware of her presence, she’d indulged, lingering far longer than she should have, utterly taken in by the sight of him sleeping peacefully. And, though she’d sworn the first time that there would be no repeat, she’d proven herself unequal to the task of resisting her own temptation less than two weeks later.

All the details of the events filtered through Rey’s mind in an instant, as she mentally prepared to answer Finn’s next question. But then he surprised her. Instead of asking anything whatsoever about why she’d spied on the First Order’s Supreme Leader — or, for that matter, why she’d never confessed to Command that such a thing was possible — he asked how.

“How?” Rey repeated, surprised and a little confused.

“How did you link, connect, bond, whatever you call it.”

“I told you, we don’t know how—”

Not the bond, Rey. He wants to know about the connection, how you were able to establish a visual connection with me.

“Oh! Through the bond.”

“The bond,” Finn stated flatly. “I don’t get it.”

“Do you have a space inside you where the Force lives? For me, it’s like a pouch. I don’t know…”

“A box,” Finn contributed.

A lake.

Rey’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “A lake?”

There were a lot of lakes where I grew up, he offered, and Rey could practically feel the shrug in his words.

“What of it?” Finn demanded impatiently.

“The bond lives in a pocket inside my Force pouch. It’s like a direct line to Ben. If I just look at it, I know he’s there. If I touch it, I can sense him. And if I follow it, I can see him.”

Finn nodded absently. “And…to shut him out?”

“I can seal it, refuse to open it. And if I concentrate enough, I can keep him from coming through.”

“And now? Is the bond there now?”

“Oh, I… I don’t know.”

You don’t know?

“I haven’t looked.”

Rey—

“Not yet,” Finn insisted, cutting Ben off. “When’s the last time you looked?”

“Last time I was here. When he…collapsed.”

Rey bowed her head, the memory of her overpowering emotions flooding her mind.

“It wasn’t there, was it?”

Rey shook her head somberly, knowing she shouldn’t be feeling the weight of that moment, but she felt it nonetheless.

“That’s why you thought he was dead. And why you couldn’t stand to see it anymore. You sealed it, didn’t you? And that wasn’t enough, was it.”

“No,” she agreed, tears threatening. “The bond had become so engrained with the Force for me. I couldn’t stand to use or feel one without the other.”

“So you closed all of it off, the whole pouch rather than just the pocket.”

She nodded, feeling weak and pathetic. She lingered in silence, face bowed against Finn and shoulders hunched against Ben. Thankfully, neither of them attempted to violate her privacy. And when Finn did speak, he was gentle, soft…exactly what she needed.

“I can’t blame you, Rey. For any of it. If I had a bond like yours and I thought it was dead, I don’t think I could stand to look at it and be reminded of it every day either.”

Rey nodded, appreciative of Finn’s sentiment, but still she didn’t move. As much as she loved Finn and longed for his approval, Ben was on a whole different level. She knew she had wronged him. Six months, he’d lingered in this half life, and she could have found him so much sooner, had she just been a little less pathetic and brave enough to carry on with the life he’d gifted her. Whether or not he actually had sacrificed his life for her, he’d intended to. And she had repaid him by withdrawing and isolating herself, essentially just waiting to die.

“Alright,” Finn said finally, gaining his feet. “I’ll give you a few minutes.”

Rey was just looking up, confused by his words, when she gasped in surprise, leaning back from the suddenness of Ben kneeling before her, gripping her hands. Dazed by the futile effort to find him in her visual field, she quickly closed her eyes, relegating his existence entirely to the senses that did work in his present state and trust in her memory for the rest.

“Ben,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”

No, Rey… Listen… I saw you. Just a couple times, I was able to leave here through our bond and I saw you. I saw your grief, Rey. I saw you mourning me. I know what losing me did to you, sweetheart, and it’s the same reason I had to save you. I would’t have done any better without you than you did without me. You have nothing to apologize for, my love, my dyad, my beautiful Rey. Just tell me you love me, and all will be well.

“I do, Ben. I love you so much.”

Then it doesn’t matter where we’ve been, Rey. Not anymore. It only matters where we’re going. Do you agree with me?

Rey nodded enthusiastically, feeling her forehead rocking against his, his full lips pressing against her knuckles as she clung to his invisible hands.

Then it’s time, sweetheart. Open that pocket. Let the bond thrive!

With a shuddering breath, Rey reached inside and did just that. For the first time in months, she unsealed her access to the Force and found it vibrant and alive. And there, with only one additional effort, the bond flared forth in glorious and brilliant light. Rey gasped, overcome by the indescribable sensation of Ben’s essence flooding through her as it never had before. Even the moment of their kiss, in the light of their newfound and newly acknowledged love for one another, it hadn’t been like this. He shone in her, brighter than a thousand suns. She felt every nuance of his being, his thoughts, his emotions, and it was all unfathomably beautiful. And there, foremost to it all, was what he felt for her. His love, his devotion, his commitment, his willingness to endure anything and everything for the sake of his dyad, the other half of his soul, and she knew he could sense the same in her.

“Ben!” she croaked, her voice shuddering and wavering in the magnitude of the experience.

“I love you, Rey! Gods, I love you!”

All at once, in the self same instant, Rey knew three things. One: she knew how to bring Ben back, and it was the easiest thing in the world, exactly the same as transferring a lightsaber to him through their bond when he’d needed it from her. Two: she knew that she had already accomplished it, that when she opened her eyes, he would be there, real, whole, and in the flesh. And three: that she would never be without him again. From this day forward, physical separation would never mean the same for them, for this Force dyad, as it did for any other entities in the entirety of the galaxy. They never could be separated, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Rey opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was Ben’s glorious smile. She sobbed and kissed his nose, and laughed in sheer relief and delight.

“Welcome home, my love,” she murmured to him, stroking his cheek and reveling in the knowledge that he was here, he was hers, and she was his.

She felt the wave of love that passed through the bond, followed hard upon by sheer exhaustion.

“You’re weak.”

He nodded, and she sensed the effort even that required. And, before she knew what was happening, he was falling away from her. Without thought, she caught him in the Force, gently easing him to the harsh stone floor. And she knew what she needed to do.

Only a little.

Rey smiled. You can speak in my head now?

It’s easier than actual speaking at the moment, he admitted.

He was, indeed, that weak. In fact, months in the Sith realm between life and death had done nothing for his physical well-being. He was every bit as weak as he had been when he’d been sucked into it, every bit as close to death. And, if Rey hadn’t already learned from this whole ordeal that he would never be able to go off and die without her, she would be more concerned. As it was, all she had to do was will her life force into him, just like she had on the Death Star ruins on Kef Bir when she’d given Ben Solo his first resurrection.

Then? she marveled, astonished to learn that’s when he considered the change to have taken place.

You killed Kylo Ren and brought back Ben Solo.

That’s all it took?

Well, no, not entirely. I’ll tell you the rest later. But now, you need to stop.

Not yet. I can give you more.

You don’t need to.

But I can and I want to and I’m going to.

Why, Rey?

Because I love you.

And before Rey knew what was happening, she was wrapped in Ben Solo’s very real, very alive, and very strong arms, and he was kissing her as he never had before. She responded with wild abandon, the life force transfer entirely forgotten and there, in the depths of a Sith planet, at a vergence of the dark side, Rey Palpatine, granddaughter of the galaxy’s most notorious Dark Emperor, knew true and sublime happiness in the arms of her former enemy.

“Oh, come on!”

Rey jerked back from Ben, startled by the vehemence of Finn’s objection. Confused, she turned to see him hiding his face from the pair of them.

“Couldn’t you have brought him back with some clothes on?!”

Only then did Rey realize Ben was as naked as the day of his birth, which was fitting, actually. And she laughed.

“You left your clothes here when you disappeared,” she realized, and he grinned, nodding. “Does that mean you’ve been bare ass naked for six months in a Sith netherealm?”

“Did I forget to mention that part?”

“That might have been a clue when Finn asked if the Sith were aware of you!”

“Good point, that,” Ben conceded. “Or maybe it’s just proof that they did know I was there and were studiously ignoring me.”

Off to the side, Finn grumbled something that sounds suspiciously to Rey like, “Impossible like that,” a sentiment with which Rey quite agreed. But, rather than embarrass Finn further, Rey only smiled and pulled Ben into a quick kiss…just because she could.

“Can we get out of here?” Ben suggested then. “I’d really like to get off this planet.”

Quite agreeing with him, Rey promptly rose to her feet and — really trying but not entirely succeeding at avoiding looking at Ben sitting naked on the floor at her feet — she hurriedly removed the topmost layer from her desert clothing and handed it to Ben. Finn, likewise, made the contribution of a black shirt he had removed from beneath his jacket. When at last Ben rose, clad in a too-small black shirt and a flowing white sarong, Rey had a hard time stifling her mirth…which of course just gave Ben an excuse to grab her and pull her into a kiss.

“Every time you laugh at me, I’m going to kiss you.”

“Please?” Rey promptly laughed, and Ben made good on his threat.

“Maker help me,” Finn moaned.