Chapter Text
Out the blackness she first feels energy.
His energy – their energy.
Then she feels warmth, blooming across her abdomen. She realizes it’s from the weight of his hand. Hers reaches out of its own volition to cover it. And then her eyes open.
He swims into focus in front of her, his eyes glassy with unshed tears. And then she jerks upward at the realization – he’s different.
She’d seen it in the midst of her battle with her grandfather, in their Force bond. His eyes, once filled with conflict, instead had gleamed in resolution. His mouth, once a permanent scowl, had barely upturned in a smirk and spoke volumes to her in that brief moment.
Now here he is, in front of her and all around her, a strong arm cradling her back while one hand cups the nape of her neck. She can’t help but stare in wonderment.
Gone is the scar she’d given him so long ago on Takodana, likely healed by her touch when the waves were crashing around them on Kef Bir. Gone is the misery and barely-contained rage. In its place is, simply… him.
She can’t help the smile. “Ben?”
And then his eyes brim over with tears. His lips press together in a shaky smile and her hand reaches out to cup his face. He doesn’t need to answer in the affirmative. She can feel it. He’s back. Ben Solo. The man whose hand she has wanted to take for what feels like a few lifetimes.
The man whose lips she can no longer resist kissing.
When she leans into him, she sucks in a breath and feels him do the same at the sudden rush of energy – their bond – springing to life around them. His arms sweep her up against him fully and she’s never felt so fulfilled.
She pulls back to look at him again and that’s when he smiles, a sight so beautiful she feels as though her heart might burst out of her chest. But the headiness of their kiss and his smile and the fact that they conquered the dark side – together – suddenly fades into the background as she sees his expression change.
He looks pained. His breath catches in his throat and then he’s sinking away from her, collapsing to the ground while their eyes remain locked.
“Ben…” She cradles his head before it hits the stone beneath them. “Ben?” Her hand lands on his chest and he covers it with his own, squeezing feebly.
Panic seizes her as she realizes what’s happened – he had expended his energy waking her up. “No, no, no, no, no,” she whispers, searching the air in front of her desperately for a solution.
This isn’t the work of the Force – the Force was not a transfer of life, it was energy. It was supposed to be all around them.
Rey squeezes his hand more tightly and snaps her eyes shut, attempting to steady her breathing. “Please…”
She reaches out with the Force, weak tendrils in a vast nothingness, searching for the thousands of Jedi that had just helped her.
“Be with me. Please.”
This isn’t the end of Ben’s story, she won’t let it be. Not when she’s only just gotten him back.
“Luke… Leia… anybody, please!” she shouts, and she listens in vain as her voice echoes in the silence.
She looks down at Ben, their clasped hands growing sweaty in their desperation to hang onto each other.
“Rey…” His voice emerges a crippled whisper. “Rey, I need to tell you—”
She stops him with a shake of her head, his image blurring behind a wall of tears. “Don’t. Don’t say anything, just rest.”
It’s then that she notices his free hand cupping his left side. She reaches for it and pries it away, now able to see the blood pumping out with his every shaking breath.
“Ben…”
He had been mortally wounded – again – when the Emperor had struck him off the cliff. And yet he used what little energy he had to revive her.
“Stay still,” she tells him, and he nods and closes his eyes.
Both hands cover the wound and she closes her eyes once more, steadying her breathing as she tries again to reach out with the Force.
She envisions her energy as tendrils of light – she seeks his wound in the darkness and wraps those tendrils around it. As she takes measured breaths in and out, nostrils sucking in and mouth expelling, she feels a bit of his energy return. It’s not much, but it’s something. She has to try harder.
But the tendrils of light weaken – their light dulls in her mind’s eye and she feels herself shaking. She shuts her eyes harder, concentrating with all her might.
Easy…
She hears a voice in her head, the familiar alto cadence snapping her eyes open in surprise. She first meets Ben’s gaze, his expression mirroring her own. And then she looks up.
There in front of her, just past Ben’s shoulder, stands Leia.
She looks ethereal – bathed in blue light just as Luke had been back on Ahch-To. With both hands still pressing on Ben’s wound, Rey feels him shift slightly beneath her, craning his neck to look over his shoulder.
The shock in his voice is evident. “Mom.”
The name sounds strange coming from his lips and especially when paired with the sight of her former master, the woman who had taken her under her wing even though she likely could feel the dark potential in Rey.
Leia steps toward them, her energy filling the air between them. She kneels just behind her son’s head, a gesture of her hand indicating that he should lie back. Ben does so unquestioningly, still staring in surprise up at the image of his mother.
With a wry smile so perfectly Leia, she tells him, I didn’t give my life to get you back, only for you to lose yours.
“His wound,” Rey breaks in, drawing Leia’s attention. She knows her voice is weak, and she sounds like she’s on the verge of crying, but she does nothing to mask it. Leia, even as a Force-induced mirage, would have been able to see through it anyway. “I can’t… I can’t close it. The Force, it—”
It’s weakened, Leia tells her. The amount of energy expended to not only summon all the Jedi but to then turn it on the Emperor has drained most of the Force energy on this planet.
She then looks down at her son and quirks one eyebrow. Your little resurrection trick took what was remaining.
Shocked, Rey looks down at Ben. “You resurrected me? I thought – I thought maybe I had just been unconscious, not…” She swallows hard, unable to say the word.
“You died,” Ben tells her, not meeting her eyes. Instead, they focus somewhere in the middle-distance. “I had to bring you back.” He then raises his eyes to her, the look in them almost startling. “I couldn’t lose everything.”
Before the implication sinks in, another blue light swims into view, materializing into Luke.
There’s not enough light energy left on this planet to heal his wounds, he says, his hands templing in front of him. This planet didn’t have much light Force energy to begin with. Everything that remains is from the dark side, and the dark is not meant for healing.
“W-What do we do?” Rey asks, tightening her hand around Ben’s. "I can't just let him die!" Looking down at him, she wants to echo, I can't lose everything.
Luke and Leia exchange a look, their light fading in and out like a glitching hologram. Rey looks down at Ben to find him already staring at her, searching her face back and forth as if he's heard the unspoken thought.
Finally, Luke speaks. Leia and I may be able to summon enough energy to bring your ship to you. But you need to leave immediately. If you wait much longer…
He never finishes, but Rey can fill in the blanks and isn’t willing to entertain that thought for a moment.
“Then please,” she beseeches them both.
The twins exchange one more look and then nod in unison, each closing their eyes and bowing their heads. In front of each of them, their fingertips and thumbs are pressed together – a triangle she’s seen Luke’s hands form before when summoning energy from the Force.
Ben’s thumb strokes the back of her hand and she looks down at him. His other hand leaves his side to clasp around her wrist, their entwined hands resting over his heart.
She feels it thumping under her, its beat stilted and feeble. She swallows. This has to work. She’s only just gotten a glimpse of Ben Solo.
When she looks up at Luke and Leia again, their eyes are still closed but the blue light around them has grown stronger – brighter. Luke’s right hand begins to raise and Leia’s left mirrors it.
The ground rumbles beneath them and she can hear rocks falling. Ben pulls her toward him with what little strength he has and ducks his head toward her, his arms shielding her from the falling debris.
She’s surrounded by him – his arms and his scent and it’s too much for her to consider this failing; to consider that these may be her last moments with him.
Hot tears squeeze past her closed eyelids and she can feel them dripping onto his sweater as her hands try to encircle him. But he’s on his back and the ground is rumbling so fiercely now that she doesn’t dare move.
She breathes in and feels a sudden resurgence of energy. Something large crumbles nearby and she lifts her head to see her ship crushing the Palpatine throne beneath its weight, having been drawn down from the planet’s surface.
Go, she hears Leia tell her, and then she and Luke vanish into thin air, leaving Rey and Ben alone once more.
She scrambles to her feet, her hands grabbing at his sweater and his arms as she tries to pull him up with her. He struggles and just barely gets to his feet before his knees buckle. She wraps one arm around his waist and fits herself into his side, propping him up just enough that they can both stumble toward the ship.
“Hurry,” she breathes, a bit redundantly, as she punches the button to lower the door.
They fumble inside and she gets him to a bunk against the wall just as he collapses into it. She wants to remain there with him – to breathe with him and cling to him for just a moment – but she knows there isn’t time.
She rushes back to the door and closes it before she gets herself to the pilot’s seat. She draws in a shuddering breath, her bones protesting any further movement. She’s still pretty weak herself, and a voice in her head reminds her that she had died.
She wants to collapse. She wants to fall into a dreamless, deep sleep until she and Ben are both fully healed. Instead, she punches the ship’s ignition and it shudders to life around them. With a few lever pulls they’re hovering in the air, then rising back to the surface.
She momentarily surveys the damage all around her – numerous ships belonging to both the Resistance and the Final Order are in pieces in every direction. A dim voice at the back of her mind urges her to do a quick scan for her friends, but she knows she can’t. She has to get them off the planet. So she stows her concern and steers them around the flaming Star Destroyers, X-wings and Tie-fighters until they traverse the atmosphere.