Chapter Text
Rey stumbles forward, eyes blinking rapidly, stars lighting the edges of her vision.
I did it, she thinks. She can still feel the spirits of the Masters with her. They are proud. One in particular is more gloating than the others. We did it.
She staggers, tries her hardest to keep her footing. Both sabers fall to the floor. The edges of her vision go black.
I did it.
She falls.
In the Millenium Falcon, Finn falls against the wall, sunken by a feeling.
She’s gone.
”Rey,” he begins to cry. “No.”
A single hand protrudes out from the chasm, gripping itself to the edge of the opening. Ben Solo pulls himself up and onto the ledge, heaves himself over determinedly. He sees her body lying still on the cold ground, and his gut wrenches. He thinks to fly to her, seeing nothing, feeling nothing — nothing but her and the unwanted relief left by the sudden lightness of their tether, her opposite pole dissipated, the invisible line normally taut with tension now snapped and limp. The Emperor could still be before her, alive, bolts of vibrating particles of the force sparking from his newly re-formed fingertips, and he wouldn’t have noticed. Because Rey is dead.
He falls, the pain from his definitely broken leg, fractured arm, and fractured ribs pushing past his concern to the forefront of his consciousness. He tries to center himself, to use the force as his strength, but he cannot even begin to calm himself enough to attempt such an act. He pulls himself up from the ground and begins to drag his fatally injured body over to Rey’s unmoving one. He drops beside her, every joint, muscle, and bone screaming in agony, and immediately scoops her up into his arms.
As he holds her in his lap is when his worst fears are imagined. There is no flow in her veins, no beat in her heart, no life in her eyes. Her eyes which are opened and look straight to the skies. Her eyes which do not meet his.
No.
He pulls her to him, holding on to whatever fragments of her soul might be left, if one were to believe in the presence of such, clutching for dear life that her body might not dissolve into the force and leave him forever. She cannot leave him. Not now. Not after they’ve just won. Not after she’d saved him. Not after he’d returned to the light. If she goes now, what had it all been for?
Her body.
It’s still here.
She’d saved him once.
There’s still a chance.
He lays her down, then, his free hand moving at once to the spot on his abdomen where she’d slain him before, the spot which she’d selflessly and with the last hope she’d had left healed with a touch only moments later. There is still some of her left. It’s inside of me. That’s why she is still here. That’s why she has not moved on.
He places his hand now to her abdomen instead, exhales slowly, and closes his eyes. If there is still some of her left inside of him, he will give it back.
He isn’t sure how... he hadn’t even known it to be possible. He’d only seen it done once before. But if their minds are still linked, and she knows how to use the force to heal, then the knowledge is somewhere inside of him, too. He just has to find it.
He stills. He draws himself in. He finds the force. He feels it around him. When at first it was erratic, chaotic, unhinged in this space, it has now stilled and soothed. He feels it within himself, deep down in the very core of him, where a soul might be if one believed in such old-world things. He manifests it as a tangible thing in his mind. He lifts it up and over and down through his arm and into Rey‘s middle. When he doesn’t feel immediate movement from the lifeless body in his arms, he ought to worry, but that is not the jedi way. A jedi, he may not be, but a jedi his first master was.
And a jedi Rey has just proved herself to have become.
It happens in this order:
He feels the line tighten with the weight of an opposing force at its opposite end,
he feels her take a single breath,
and her hand shoots up to top his own.
It is dark where Rey is. And there is nothing. An endless expanse of nothing in every direction.
She had expected to see the Masters, to be enveloped in Leia’s arms, in Luke’s. But there is no one and nothing. Not even herself.
Not even herself? Where is she?
There is no time here. There is nothing.
Then there is something. A pressure on her abdomen, or where her abdomen would be. And a tension. A dipole bond struck in the force. A dyad — one soul, two bodies. Her body, she can feel it. She feels her middle first, a hollow glow, then the glow spreads to her extremeties. She moves her hand atop his without thinking. Ben.
At the first thought of him, she is back in her body, and the nothingness fades to light, and she is looking up at the rock ceiling but sees him in her periferals. She looks to him as quickly as she can and sits up even quicker.
“Ben?”
He sighs in life-altering relief as she blinks up at him incredulously. Endless thoughts pass silently between the two of them, staring at each other like they’re each the first and last thing the other has ever and will ever see, before she speaks.
“Ben?”
She takes his face in her hands. She can’t believe it. He’s real and he’s here and he’d brought her back. She can’t believe it.
He looks upon her in a way he never has before, raw and honestly and without shield or fear of judgment. He looks at her like he is perfectly content that she is the last thing he will ever see.
She kisses him.
His body reacts immediately and without premeditation, his arms flying out to wrap around her. He can’t believe it... he never thought he’d ever be worthy enough to deserve a kiss from Rey. Rey, who completely and utterly loathed him.
But this is not the kiss of a woman who loathes him.
Rey feels his surprise, his relief, as her lips press firmly against his. She never thought she would ever get to kiss Ben Solo, never thought she would ever get to hold him, to have him. And now he is here, and he is allowing her to.
They part, and the glow from their bond encompasses them. Ben, despite the innumerable amount of pain he feels, smiles for the first time since his youth, he thinks.
Rey can’t believe how beautiful it is, how lucky she is. She is going to kiss him again, she thinks.
And then he falls.
She falls with him. “No, no, no, no, no,” she murmurs. “Stay with me, Ben. Stay with me.”
Ben succumbs to his wounds. His eyes flutter shut.
Rey gives him a once over for the first time. She lays a hand over his chest and tunes herself in to the force to find his wounds. When she does, she feels them herself and winces. The burn hole in his abdomen has even opened back up and she realizes that he’d transfered his life force over to her in order to bring her back. He has several broken bones — she can’t know for sure if he’d landed at the bottom of the chasm or had used the force to guide himself to the wall of rock and gripped on, slamming himself into it.
His heartbeat is slowing. She lowers herself onto him, her ear to his heart, panicking. “No!! You cannot leave me!!” She looks up to the ceiling, directing her next words to the Masters, if they’re still there. “You cannot have him!! I need him more than you do!”
His heart stutters once, twice, and then evens out very weakly and slowly, like an echo of a heartbeat. “Stay with me,” she whispers to him. She lays a hand on his leg and attempts to heal it, but after only a few seconds her head becomes too light. At least one of them needs to be conscious if they both intend to survive this.
She looks up to the rock wall, past the wall, to Luke’s x-wing fighter. She’s still weak herself; she knows she can’t carry Ben’s body all the way. She closes her eyes. “Finn. Poe. Chewie. Someone. Hear me.”
In the Falcon in the sky, Finn stops short in his tracks. “Rey!” he laughs. “She’s alive!”
Chewie bleats.
Finn directs his next words to Lando. “Lando, we’ve gotta get down there. Rey needs our help.”
Lando immediately turns the ship around.
Finn leans forward against the co-pilot seat anxiously. ”We’re coming, Rey.”
Rey sits up and takes Ben’s hands in hers, sudden relief washing over her spirit. Someone had heard her. She’d felt it. Someone is coming. “Hold on, Ben,” she whispers. “Help is coming. Hold on.”
Within minutes, she hears the unmistakable purr of the Falcon’s engine lower itself onto Exogol, and minutes later an anxious Finn and Chewie are running through the slant opening and into Palpatine’s lair. Finn breathes a bit easier when he finally sees Rey and finds that she’d incurred no major injuries. Chewie bleats her name to announce their arrival.
Though first intending to stay with Ben, Rey can’t help herself when she sees the two of them. “Finn!” she cries and goes to him. Of course Finn had heard her! Of course, is all she can think, although she does not think of what this revelation truly means.
The friends embrace and Finn squeezes her tightly. “Thank God you’re okay.” He begins to lead her away. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Rey stops. “No, I need your help.” She swallows, knowing Finn will be apprehensive. “He helped me defeat Palpatine. I think I... I think I died. But Ben... he brought me back! And I can’t load him into Luke’s x-wing myself. I’m too weak.” She begins walking back to where Ben lies.
“Wait—“ Finn starts. For the first time he noticed Kylo Ren’s unresponsive form. “Ren’s alive!? ”
Rey has already taken hold of Ben and begun to lift him up. “Yes, but not for long if we don’t get him to a med bay, and quickly.”
Finn is utterly aghast. “You’re not serious, Rey?! I’m not going anywhere near that... thing!” Because Finn does not see Kylo Ren as a man, but a wicked creature, a monster. He wants to add “...unless it’s to blast him!” but thinks better of it.
Rey attempts to take all of Ben’s weight, but she stumbles. He is too heavy. She is too weak. “Please, Finn. He’s not what you think he is... He saved me. He saved all of us...” She feels her eyes well back up again with tears helplessly. “We need your help.”
Her usage of the pronoun we is not lost on Finn, and he realizes that something between Rey and Kylo has definitely changed, and whatever that change is, it is likely permanent. This angers him, not because he feels possession over Rey, but because this is the man that has been hunting her relentlessly. This is the man that murdered his own father. This is the man who’s performed countless acts of senseless genocide on multiple planets. He doesn’t deserve to live. Rather, he deserves to be left here to die in this Sith palace where the Sith will all died today, too.
Rey looks at Finn pleadingly, a tear or two falling at the realization that Finn could refuse and that she has no back-up plan. “Chewie?” she asks helplessly.
Chewie is uneasy. Help the man who he watched kill his best friend? The man responsible for this entire senseless war? Not likely.
Rey stands her ground. “I won’t board without him,” she announces softly. She knows this is a horrible manipulative ultimatum, and she is worried if she has become a horrible manipulative person in the wake of losing someone she loves. “If you let him die, you let me die.”
At this, Chewie comes to her aid immediately. “Chewie... are you serious?!” Finn shouts in disbelief. “This is completely insane!”
Chewie, still raw from Leia’s passing, reminds Finn of two things: who Ben’s mother is, and that both she and Rey’s wishes are more important than his and Finn’s hatred.
Finn sits on this for a moment before ultimately following behind Chewie with a reluctant sigh.
With their help, Rey is able to transport Ben onto his father’s ship. She idly wonders how many years it has been since he’d last come aboard it. They lie Ben, still unconscious, down on a bench, and his long, large form overwhelms it. Chewie goes to the co-pilot’s seat as Jannah comes to their side, shocked to see Kylo Ren de-robed and de-helmeted. “Is this who I think it is?” she asks.
“Do we have anything we can patch his abdomen wound with?” Rey asks, all but ignoring Jannah’s initial question.
Although Jannah believes she has indeed just looked upon the Supreme Leader of the First Order, she also, amidst her shock, believes that she trusts Rey more than she fears him right now. As she begins to look around the ship’s various compartments and containers, Finn tries his hardest to meet Rey’s eyes, to silently ask her his most demanding question — is this Kylo Ren they are saving, or is this someone else?
Rey, however, keeps her eyes locked on Ben, her attention to his wounds, repeatedly checking and rechecking his pulse to make sure he is alive. Jannah returns with bacta spray and bandages and Rey is forced to break contact with Ben to let Jannah apply it, and Rey does finally look up at Finn, and he does not appreciate the favor she asks of him.
“I’ve got to get Luke’s x-wing out of here,” she says. “Will you watch over him for me?”
Jannah’s head pops up to take in Finn’s reaction, for she will follow his order, whatever that may be. Finn makes eye contact with her. Rey looks back and forth between the both of them. Finn begins to ask. “Rey—“
Rey silences him with another plea, and this time her voice breaks a little as she holds back a sob. “Finn. I promise, if you do this for me, consider it the last thing I will ever ask of you. Please.”
Finn nods once, Rey’s words cutting him to his core and his adoration for her overtaking his animalistic desire to defeat his enemy while he lies undefended.
With a final sweep of Rey’s eyes over Ben, she brushes his hair out of his face, her palm lingering for a moment on his cheek, and murmuring something to him so softly that Finn can’t quite make out what she’s said, but it had been “Stay with me, Ben,” she turns to exit the Falcon. “I’ll explain everything later,” she promises Finn.
It is then when Finn realizes, with a putrid taste in his mouth that tastes like a kick to his gut, that the unfathomable has happened... that Rey is in love with Kylo Ren. Everything that Rey has been silently battling — her lineage, her pull to the dark, her incomplete jedi training — looks twisted and mutilated in this new light.
He wants to kill the man who lays before him. He has obviously manipulated Rey’s complicated feelings for him. He wants to kill him. He takes a step towards him.
Jannah speaks. “Finn, is this really... Are we to—“
Chewie, back at Finn’s side, stops Finn with a hand on his arm and Jannah with a sound from his mouth, again reminding Finn of Leia. This is Leia’s son. Leia gave her life to call out to him. She gave her life so that he might hear her call.
Finn marches angrily away and into a separate wing, while Jannah, feeling torn over Chewie’s revelation, watches as he leaves, unsure of whether to follow. She looks down at whom she now knows has just become the Resistance’s captive. She presses another bandage over Ben’s forearm.
In the x-wing, Rey follows the Falcon’s flight path toward the nearest planet of Endor. She desperately wants Ben to awaken so that she can confirm that he is going to be okay, but she silently pleads that he will remain unconscious until she is back by his side. She hopes and prays that Finn or Chewie or Lando would not behave untoward if he came to. He is not who they think. She hopes she had somehow communicated that, at the very least, by threatening to die at his side on the ground of her grandfather’s Sith palace.
On the planet’s surface, Rey exits the fighter hastily and commands the nearest Resistance worker to call for immediate medical attention to the Falcon. She stops in her tracks when she hears a voice call her name, softly in reality, but carrying to her through the force.
“Rey.”
Rey’s eyes scan the field until they reach a pair of thickly framed ones.
“Leia’s dying wish was for her son to live,” Maz Kanata tells her.
Rey understands this to be a warning.
Ben cannot be healed here.
Ben will be killed here.
She looks past Maz and sees Finn and Poe rush to each other, embrace tightly, and share a kiss. She sees Chewie grab Rose and lift her into the air. She sees the Resistance and, consequently, her new family, cheer and congratulate each other and cry and hug and kiss. She should be down there with them, sandwiched between Poe and Finn and wrapped in Chewie’s furry arms and thanking Rose and Beaumont and Connix. To her weak and frenzied mind earlier on Exogol, bringing Ben to the nearest occupied planet was the only option. But Maz has just reminded her that she, the last jedi, has just personally escorted the Resistance’s number one enemy into their midst.
She’d made her choice when she’d rescued Ben. She sees that now. Her heart falls immediately, her lip quivering, and she cries yet again, for she cannot seem to stop. By saving Ben, she is giving up quite literally everyone and everything else that she has after, for so long, having no one at all.
She lets herself imagine, only for a moment, if she would have made the same decision to bring Ben along with her had she been in her right mind after he’d arisen her from the dead.
And her answer is this: undoubtedly.
No one truly knows him. But she does. He didn’t deserve to die there, just like she didn’t deserve to have to walk out of there without him.
Dragging her gaze back to Maz, she nods once in understanding. Chewie will be upset with her for what she is about to do, and she silently asks Maz to comfort him.
Rey’s attention is then drawn to a pair of twin sisters called Netta and Voletta who are running towards the Falcon carrying what little medical equipment they have afforded whomever awaits them inside. To them, it will be Kylo Ren, Commander of the Knights of Ren and Supreme Leader of the First Order.
Rey boards the Falcon and hurriedly starts up the converters. As the ship hovers above the ground, Rey makes eye contact with Finn one last time, calling to him through the force.
”Forgive me,” she says.
Finn breaks their gaze in resignation. He will not forgive her today. But she had been right — he doesn’t truly know her. Not in this way. He hopes spitefully that maybe Kylo Ren does.
But Finn loves her. He loves her enough to let her go.
So it is now that Rey does what she does best — leaves without explanation or goodbyes.