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“Aunt Beru would have liked what you’ve done with the place.”
It is surprisingly easy, Rey has learned in the past month, to get used to living with ghosts. Luke’s voice doesn’t even startle her anymore, and she barely spares him a glance over her shoulder before she goes back to the task at hand. She’d gone into town this morning for supplies, only to get sidetracked as soon as she’d spied a familiar sight nestled amidst other desert plants on offer at a small stall.
She’d purchased the little spinebarrel immediately, along with six other potted plants she’s now lining up on the counter of the Lars family kitchen. Rey merely hums in acknowledgement of her former master’s presence, her attention thoroughly fixed on the task of finding the perfect spot for her new companions.
But of course Luke hasn’t shown up just to comment on her choice of decorations. “You said you weren’t staying,” he reminds her, and Rey doesn’t have to turn around to sense the disappointment in his eyes.
Living with ghosts might be easy, but ignoring them is infinitely harder. Rey turns around with a sigh and clutches her precious spinebarrel close to her chest. “It’s not like I’m putting down roots,” she jokes weakly in a transparent attempt to avoid the matter at hand, and holds up the little potted plant in her hands until Luke crosses his arms in disapproval and stares her down.
“I’m not staying forever,” Rey finally says, “just until… until…” Until she can learn to breathe through the pain. Until she can get used to the wound in her soul. Until she can live with the fact that there will forever be a part of her just out of reach. “Just for a while,” she tells Luke, even as everything she’s left unsaid fills the space between them.
He’s kind enough to let her get away with it, at least. “That’s not what you told your friends,” he points out with a frown. “Didn’t you tell Finn you’d only be gone for a month, two at most?”
That is, in fact, exactly what she’d told Finn the day she left in search of her very own kyber crystal, just a week after the end of the war. Celebrations had started dying down by then, as what remained of their leadership started focusing on the task ahead, but the air had still been filled with a sense of joy that was physically painful to be around. “You need to stop eavesdropping,” Rey huffs, a slight scowl tugging at her lips as she turns her back on Luke again and goes back to her plant arrangements.
“And you need to move on,” he counters without hesitation, without thought, without mercy.
It has been just a little over a month, less than five weeks since… since the end of everything. Since that day on Exegol, now immortalized in galactic history. Since Ben gave up his life for her and left her all alone in the galaxy and doomed her to a lifetime with a hole where her heart should be.
“I will,” she whispers, a shaky exhale as she squeezes her eyes shut and wills the lump in her throat away. “I will, I just… I can’t… I don’t know how to.”
It’s terrifying to acknowledge that for the first time in a long time, she has no idea what comes next. At first there had been the Resistance, and the debriefings, and the celebrations. Then there had been Lothal, and the task of crafting her own saber, and the responsibility of dealing with Luke and Leia’s. But now… now there is only the familiar comfort of sun and sand and solitude, and the horrifying realization that she has not even a single clue as to what comes next.
Even at her lowest point, even in her darkest moments, Rey has always had an idea of what to do next, of how to make it through the night. But not now, not this time, not when it feels like a part of her will always, always be trapped in the eternal night of Exegol.
A presence brushes against her, too warm to be Luke’s.
“No one ever knows how to move on, Rey,” a softer, kinder voice says, and she turns to find Leia seated at the Lars’ dining table, the very same one Luke must have had all his childhood meals at. “We just take it one step at a time,” the general tells her with a shrug, “until one day you look back and realize how far you’ve come.”
Rey sets her plant down, collapses into the seat opposite Leia’s. “I don’t even know how to take the first step,” she admits, reaching for a familiar comfort that is now, like so many other things, forever out of reach.
Leia reaches for her in return, stops just short of passing through her fingers. “We might be able to help with that,” she whispers almost conspiratorially, and turns to share a look with her brother who’s still standing in the kitchen doorway.
Luke comes forward to sit down next to his sister. “Leia and I have been talking,” he says, eyes bright in a way Rey has only seen in old holos of the twins and Han in the years immediately after the war, before they realized how many battles were left to fight. “And it feels to us like maybe… maybe things didn’t turn out quite the way they were supposed to.”
“And we’re not the only ones who think so,” Leia adds with a smile brighter than any she’d given Rey during their time together. “There are a lot of powerful people here with us, Rey, and a lot of them agree.”
So does she, but… but it is what it is. The war is over. The galaxy is at peace. And the price… the price has been paid, no matter how unfair or awful or wrong she might think it is.
It is what it is… but the twins aren’t acting like it. “What are you talking about?” Rey asks, her voice barely a whisper as she tries to snuff out the smallest flicker of hope Leia’s smile has given her, the faintest murmur of maybe, just maybe… Luke’s words have given voice to.
It is a terrible thing, to be afraid of hope, but it is a lesson recent events have carved into her very soul.
“You know,” Luke says, sounding light-years away as his eyes take in their surroundings, as he takes a good long look at the childhood home he never said a proper goodbye to, “I used to think closure is overrated. But now…” he sighs, and finally turns his eyes back to Rey. “Now it’s all I can think to offer you, Rey. One last journey, to find closure.”
“And more importantly, a way to move forward,” Leia elaborates, and the twins share a moment, a look, a smile that Rey instinctively knows is not meant for her eyes. She looks away until Leia reaches toward her again, her fingertips somehow warmed by the general’s proximity even though she isn’t really here.
“So what do you say, Rey?” she asks gently, and Rey has always admired Leia’s composure, her serenity, the way she could appear to be at peace even as the galaxy burned to ashes around them, but this… this is true peace, her eyes bright and clear and hopeful as she smiles at Rey. “Are you ready to take that first step?”
Rey looks at the two ghosts seated across from her, her only companions in this self-imposed exile that was never meant to last. She scans the kitchen they’re in, the abandoned home she knows will never feel like hers no matter how many plants she fills it with. She thinks of sleepless nights imagining a future that will never be hers, of memories that leave her doubled over in pain, of echoes that take her breath away.
This is no way to live.
This is no way to spend the life he gave his up for.
She turns back to Luke and Leia, offers them a smile of her own, and takes that first step.
“Tell me more.”
In the end, there isn’t much the twins can tell her, only that she’ll know exactly where to go and exactly what to look for when she lands on Ahch-To.
Luke had laughed at the scrunched up look on her face upon instructing her to return to the watery planet, while Leia had simply offered her a serene smile and the assurance that she would never have to go there again after this. “One last trip,” the general had said.
It’s one too many. Ahch-To has always been full of ghosts, but that never bothered her before… before she started hoping for them. Alone in hyperspace, struggling to fly the Falcon on her own after deciding not to pull Chewie out of retirement and sending BB-8 back to Ajan Kloss, Rey allows herself to wonder if maybe this is the closure the twins spoke of.
Because what else can it be, if not ghosts?
And who else can it be, if not Ben?
Once, not so long ago, perhaps this could have been about her parents. It had been about her parents, that dark and stormy night when he first took her hand. But now, after everything, after Palpatine… she has her answers, her closure. She remembers her father’s face, her mother’s touch, and she knows, the way she always has, that someday she will see them again, someday she will get the chance to ask them about their choices and their motivations and their mistakes.
And that’s… that’s enough for Rey, for now. Her parents are a faded memory, a distant future, something to be set aside until the time comes.
But Ben… she never could set him aside, even at his worst. You’re hard to get rid of, she’d told him once, and even in death that remains true. Luke and Leia might haunt her in obvious ways, but Ben… Ben is every stray thought that steals the breath right out of her lungs, every missed beat of a heart that struggles to go on, every dream she allows herself to hold tight in the dead of night.
Ben is everywhere, even when he’s not, even when he’s nowhere to be found. She’d searched for him, those first few days – hoped against hope, tugged on the fraying thread in her mind, looked beyond Leia’s shoulder every single time she appeared. He has to be out there somewhere, or so she tells herself because the idea of Ben just… not existing anymore hurts nearly as bad as the idea of him not existing with her anymore.
But… but sometimes at night, when the pain is too raw for her to allow herself the comfort of dreams, Rey thinks of death instead – hers, specifically.
She thinks of how easy it had been, to finally let go after a lifetime of fighting to hold on. She thinks of how peaceful it had been, after an existence shaped only by struggle. She thinks of how death had felt like… nothing, nothing at all, her soul floating along in an endless sea of stars.
On those nights, even as Rey hopes Ben has found peace after a lifetime of turmoil, even as she prays death is kinder to him than life had been… selfishly, she begs for her memories of death to be wrong, for his experience of it to be different, because she cannot fathom a world where he’s just… gone, where everything that once was him is now reduced to nothing.
Maybe, hopefully, this is the closure Luke and Leia and all the other Jedi have decided to offer her. Maybe for some reason, this will be the only time, the only place Ben will ever be able to manifest himself to her. And Rey… Rey will happily take it, even if it’s nowhere near enough, even if nothing short of a lifetime with him could ever be enough after everything they went through, everything they were put through.
She’ll still take it, stars, she’ll take it, anything to see him one last time, to say a proper goodbye, to tell him…
There are so many things she never told him – things she assumed he’d already seen in her mind, things she told herself there was no point in saying, things she thought they’d have time to talk about someday. But now there is no someday, now he’s no longer in her mind, now she wishes, how she wishes, she’d told him everything anyway.
Now her very being feels like it’s been torn apart, and a part of Rey thinks that maybe her momentary brush with death had been preferable to the reality that is life without the literal other half of her soul.
Maybe it won’t be ghosts after all. Maybe the closure Luke and Leia are offering her will be an act of kindness, of mercy, of release – of severing the bond that ensures her wounds will never heal. But…
She’ll refuse it. If their idea of closure, of mercy, of a gift, is to take away her bond with Ben, to take away the last piece of him she has left… closure can go jump off a kriffing cliff.
Rey cannot – will not – lose him again.
Ahch-To is… different, somehow, the way everything is different now that the shadow of darkness that once curled around the edges of existence itself is gone. She’d mentioned it once to the twins, when she’d gone searching for a crystal on Lothal, and Leia had suggested that perhaps the galaxy was balanced at last.
Not that it’s much of a feat, balancing the Force now that there’s barely anything left to balance, now that she’s all that remains of the Jedi and the Sith. Maybe Ben… Kylo had had the right idea back then, when he’d suggested that they let it all die and start anew.
And maybe, just maybe, if she’d known then what she knows now, if she’d taken his hand…
Rey pushes the thought out of her mind and focuses on landing the Falcon. Maybes lead to what-ifs, and what-ifs lead to if-onlys, and those… those never end well. She closes her eyes and concentrates on her surroundings instead, reaching deep into the planet to see how balance has given way to harmony, how light and dark no longer simply co-exist, but intertwine to form something else altogether.
That something else, whatever it is, calls to her just as surely as light and dark always have.
It’s a jerky landing, the Falcon closing those last few feet of distance between it and the ground in a sudden movement Rey almost thinks of as a tug, a pull, a call from the island. That feeling only intensifies when she steps off the ramp and onto Ahch-To itself, her feet firmly planted in dirt that has seen endless cycles of life and death and rebirth.
She knows, just as Luke and Leia had predicted, exactly where to go and what to do now.
There are no malicious whispers this time, no magnetic draw to the once-dark center of the island. There is only a pull, deep in her bones and her blood and her soul, that guide her feet to where she needs to be, one step and another and another until–
When Rey dives into the cavern, the water is as cold as ever. But this time the sun shines above her as the waves rock her ever closer to the mirrored surface of the cave wall, a blinding sight of sunbeams splitting into a thousand prisms of light.
She falters as soon as her feet touch solid ground, frozen solid by memories of what has come before and fears of what might come next. The last time she was here, Rey had left feeling more alone than ever; the thought that history might repeat itself, that this search for closure might only hurt her more, leaves her with an unbearable ache in her chest.
Slowly, her eyes adjust to the light and begin to see past the dazzling rainbows to find the mirror. But still her feet refuse to move, every fiber of her being resisting the wishes of the Force for fear of what the mirror might show her… or perhaps what it might not.
Rey closes her eyes, and looks for strength in the place where once there had been another mind, another soul, another part of her. She and Ben had lived in each other’s minds for a year, had occupied a shared space in the Force, had literally been created as two halves of a whole, and still none of it had been enough. After everything they’d gone through together, she can count on one hand the number of times they had touched each other with kindness and warmth and care. Rey can barely even remember the press of his lips against hers, not when the memory is so tainted by his death and her anguish. And she never… she never had the chance to tell him, or show him, or even let him see in her thoughts…
It has to be him, Rey decides as she opens her eyes.
Ben is the only closure she needs, the only reason she’s here, the only thing the Force could offer her – even if it’s just to say goodbye, even if it’s just to tell him, just once, all the things she left unsaid when she admitted to him that she had wanted to take his hand, a lifetime ago.
“Please,” she whispers, her voice needle-thin and barely audible even to her own ears, even in the crypt-like silence of the cave. And then, before she can find the strength to go on, to face this moment and give voice to her deepest desires, the mirror begins to cloud over.
Her ears ring, as if she’s been thrust into the vacuum of space. Her blood runs cold, colder than any ice planet the last year has taken her to. And her heart… her heart beats in her throat, a frantic hummingbird flutter of fear and anticipation and hope, foolish hope, deadly hope–
In the mirror, the silhouette of a human begins to takes shape. It’s barely a shadow, little more than a blur, but her greedy eyes rove over every vague detail, from the waves in his hair to the broadness of his shoulders to the movement of his long legs, taking slow, hesitant steps toward her…
Suddenly, the ringing stops. Suddenly, she feels warm again for the first time since he left her. Suddenly, her heart is right back where it should be, whole and healed and beating wildly as she breaks into a sprint.
Rey stops just short of the mirror, gasping for breath as the shadow moves closer, and closer, and… she almost misses it, the slightest hint of a smile he gives her once he’s close enough to see, obscured by the fogginess of the mirror and the tears in her eyes.
She lets them stream freely down her face as she raises a shaking hand, as he does too. And then, with every last bit of strength and courage and hope left in her wrung-out soul, Rey presses her hand to the mirror–
–and feels the cold, hard surface melt at her touch, giving way to the warm, familiar comfort of his hand.
Ben’s hand rests in hers as the veil between worlds slowly but surely parts to reveal the rest of him. She sobs his name even as her lips curve into a smile, even as he laces their fingers together and steps closer, close enough for her to feel his solid, warm, real presence.
When he whispers her name in return, Rey wants nothing more than to jump into his arms, to hold him tight and never let go, to reach for the missing part of her soul.
But doubt and fear and wounds not quite healed stand between them and keep her rooted in place. “How?” Rey murmurs, even as she finds nothing but wonder in his eyes, even as he squeezes her hand and holds on for dear life. “How is this happening?”
Because this… this is not a goodbye, this is not the closure she was promised. This is a second chance… A way to move forward, Leia had promised her with that secretive little smile.
A future, Rey realizes just as Ben finds the strength to take the final step, to close the distance between them and take her into his arms.
“Rey,” he whispers fiercely, his breath warm against her chilled skin, his lips brushing her temple. “Rey. Rey. They told me this might happen, that there was a chance, but I… I was so scared, too scared to hope–”
It is a terrible thing, to be afraid of hope.
He’s shaking in her arms, Rey distantly realizes as Ben drops his head to the curve of her shoulder. His tears pool in the hollow of her neck, spill over her collarbone, trace a familiar path her own have followed countless times.
In the end, it’s the scalding heat of his tears that finally, finally washes away the last of her fears and doubts, leaving only hope in their wake.
“Ben,” she sighs as she runs her fingers through his hair the way she’s always dreamed of doing, the way she’s spent the past month wishing she could have. It’s a struggle, trying to take even the slightest step away, to put even the tiniest bit of space between them. He holds onto her like he’s never going to let go again, and it’s not until Rey gently tugs on his hair that he finally rises up once more, allowing her to cradle his face in her hands, to trace the memory of his scar with disbelieving eyes, to touch his lips with a shaking hand…
“I thought,” Ben says, shuddering as her finger follows the curve of his bottom lip, “I thought that I would… would die happy, knowing that you got to live, knowing that you felt the same way. But–” Words fail him then, and Rey can only hold him close as the memory of that day threatens to unravel them both.
He had been happy, she remembers. He’d smiled at her for the first and last time so brilliantly, so beautifully, that for one perfect moment Rey had thought that nothing in the world could go wrong, that everything would be all right… and then he’d been gone before she could tell him so, before she could even say–
“I love you,” Rey tells him now, her hands still cradling his face like something precious as Ben’s eyes shine with tears. “I love you, Ben. I never got to tell you, I thought I’d never get to tell you–”
She’s the one shaking now, tears clouding her vision and hiding him from her once more.
“It’s okay,” he says before she can lose herself in her memories, leaning down to ground her with the touch of his forehead against hers. “It’s okay now, I’m here now, and I love you too, Rey, stars I love you, I’m never leaving you again, I promise, I swear–”
Rey, child of the harsh desert, has never heard sweeter words, sweeter promises. In time she hopes to hear them all, but for now… for now this is enough, for now she cuts him off with a kiss, eager to relearn the feeling of his lips against hers, of his love made manifest.
Ben smiles into their kiss, and it feels like the sun is rising for the first time since Exegol.
He is warm, so warm, everywhere they touch – his lips on hers, his hands on her waist, his mind and soul brushing against hers in a familiar touch. Rey has spent hours under the scorching suns of Tatooine in search of this gentle warmth, the kind she should’ve known she’ll only ever find with Ben Solo.
When they finally part, Rey rests her head on his chest and humors her fears and doubts for the very last time.
“What is it?” Ben asks when she closes her eyes in concentration, warm lips brushing against her temple, warm hands wrapped firmly around her waist.
“The last time we did that,” she murmurs, listening to the steady, strong beat of his heart, “you disappeared on me.”
His heart skips a beat, right before Ben lifts her by her waist to find her lips once more. “Never again, sweetheart,” he promises fervently, sealing it with more kisses than she could have ever dreamed of. “Never again, never.”
They stay like that for the longest time – her wrapped around him, him holding her tight – until it finally sinks in that no one and nothing is going to stand in the way of him making and keeping that promise.
And then, once tentative hope has finally given way to joyous relief, Rey takes Ben’s hand.
“Let’s go home,” she says, unable to resist a smile as she does.
Ben, he just gives her that beautiful, blinding smile of his and trusts her to lead him out of the cave. “I like the sound of that.”
It’s nearly sunset, by the time they’ve trekked across the cave and up a narrow spiral of stone-carved stairs hidden at the far end of it. The last fading rays of sunlight lead them to the Falcon, and it’s only then that Ben falters for the very first time since he stepped back into this world.
“It’s not going to be easy,” he tells her quietly, eyes fixed firmly upon his father’s ship docked at the base of the hill.
He offers up no further explanation, but Rey doesn’t need to prod at their healing bond to know what he means. Getting on his father’s ship, building a new home in the galaxy his mother fought for, living with everything that has happened, both to him and because of him… none of it will be easy.
Rey squeezes his hand, and offers him a smile when he finally turns to her. “Together,” she reminds him.
He searches her eyes for the longest time, until that smile he wears only for her slowly blooms once more. “Together,” he echoes, and so together they walk away from the past and into the future.