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We'll meet beyond the shore
We'll kiss just like before
Happy we'll be beyond the sea
And never again I'll go sailing
Mist sprays up from the waves that crash against the island’s rocky shore. It clings to her clothes, to her skin and hair, and she thinks she must be cold, but she doesn’t feel it the way she should. There’s no space for cold, not with the ache she carries in her chest or the weight that rests on her shoulders.
She crosses her legs, slows her breath to match the pace of the tide, flowing in and out, in and out. An easy rhythm, so much steadier than the drum of her pulse in her veins.
“Be with me,” she says, voice cracked and raw from disuse.
The words carry on the breeze, are lost to the sea.
“Be with me,” she tries again, nails digging into the palm of her hands. The words echo back from the rocky ledge, a broken, pleading chorus that circles her once before fading back down into the earth.
“Be with me, Ben, please,” she says a final time, a plea to the air and the dirt and the gods and the dead. To not be alone in this. To see him once more.
The wind whips around her and the cold she couldn’t feel sinks into her bones until it’s the only thing that exists. The cold and the awful absence in the force where she once felt him.
And then, just as suddenly, there’s warmth. And weight. And the ghost of a touch across her cheek.
She doesn’t dare open her eyes, doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t move.
“I’m with you.”
The words connect with her chest, knock the breath from her lungs. Still, she keeps her eyes closed tight against the world, too afraid he won’t be there if she opens them. The force, after all, has played crueler tricks in its lifetime.
Then hands grip her shoulder—gentle, but strong. They trail up her neck and across her cheek before gently stroking the corner of her mouth.
“Don’t be afraid,” the voice implores in a cadence so familiar she finds herself nodding, the fear leaching from her body until her palms uncurl from clenched fists, resting open and flat against her thighs.
He strokes her cheek again and she thinks how just this is enough. To be able to call up his memory so vividly. To pretend for just a moment that he isn’t gone.
Then lips press against hers—warm and lush and so real she could cry from the cruelty of it all. This dark trick her mind has conjured up.
“Rey,” he implores, voice low but firm. Nearly too much to deny. “Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
And so she does, fully prepared to find the sun and the sea and nothing more. To be alone.
Instead, she finds Ben. Perched on the rock just in front of her.
He looks—nearly whole. Smiling down at her with the kind of smile she’d die to see again. All teeth and dimples and crinkled eyes. The kind of smile that makes her smile too, despite everything. The pain and the heartache and the loss.
“I’m dreaming,” she tells him. Tells herself. “This is a dream.”
He only smirks at this, dark eyes glinting in the sunlight.
“Search your feelings, Jedi.”
She crinkles her brow, afraid now to close her eyes. That whatever this is—a memory, a vision, or dream—will end once she does.
“Go on,” he urges, taking her hand in his.
She grips it tight, pulls strength from the weight of it in her palm before closing her eyes and reaching out the way she was taught to do all those months ago.
The force is steady around her. She feels the island. Life and death and decay. Peace and violence. The pulse of the force beating through her, the porgs, the trees, and the sea. And then—something else. Something faint, but steady.
She latches herself to it the way she grips so tight to his hand, draws it in until she can feel it up close. Until she can see the way it beats in time with the tide, with her own pulse.
“Ben?” she asks, uncertain and afraid.
“I’m always with you, Rey.”
He kisses her then. And it’s so much like the first time, but better. Slower. Steadier. With time enough to memorize the brush of his lips against hers, the way his muscles move and clench beneath her touch. How he’s warm and strong and eager to take whatever he can from her, whatever she’s willing to give. How she wants to give it all.
She pulls away after a moment, breathless and panting, and she thinks maybe now she understands.
That Ben Solo isn’t gone so much as he is lost. Out beyond the plane of the living, not yet resigned to the world of the dead. Trapped.
He smiles again as her realization dawns, as hope ignites once more in her veins.
“I found you once,” he says with a grin. ”Now it’s your turn.”
Rey nods, believing now even as he fades from her, that what he says is true. Because she feels it. She feels that piece of him beating steadily on, somewhere. Beyond the sea. Beyond the world she knows.
That’s where he’s waiting for her. And so that’s where she’ll go.