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It’s surprisingly easy to build an academy for Force-sensitive youths: younglings, one of the Jedi texts calls them, and it’s strange but adorable, much like the grubby-faced Force-sensitive children with hope in their eyes who begin to filter into the ad hoc temple on Yavin IV in the year after the final battle.
“Jedi,” they whisper amongst themselves, in Basic, in Togruti, in Cantonican and Huttese. So many little faces of so many species who look to Rey as the savior of the galaxy. They stare at her lightsaber in wonder when she unholsters it and ignites the golden blade, and she tells them of the Jedi who came before her, the names and voices that had come to her in the darkness when she stood on the brink of death.
“You really knew Luke Skywalker?” one human girl with rich red curls asks, her eyes wide as she lingers past bedtime, and Rey smiles at her, takes her by the hand and leads her to the student quarters. “I heard he was the strongest and bravest Jedi ever.”
“He was very strong and brave,” Rey says, “but there was one Jedi even braver. He was brave enough to give up everything to save the woman he loved.”
Small faces appear from a row of beds as they enter. “Will you tell us the story?” a twi’lek girl pipes up, and the others around her nod in eager assent.
Rey gives them a wan smile, smoothing the redheaded girl’s wayward curls with her hand. “One day,” she says. Promises. “One day soon.”
A swell of disappointment, but one look from Rey reminds them: a Jedi must know patience.
The twi’lek girl is persistent, though, and dares speak up again. “What was his name?” she asks, ignoring the sharp elbow she receives from the Togruta beside her.
Rey’s smile tightens, and she closes her eyes. “Ben,” she says softly. “Ben Solo.”
She leaves her students to murmur amongst themselves. Takes the path out of the temple, down the smooth stone stairs, into the winding, humming vines of the jungle. She’s taken it so many times before that it’s like breathing, and she finds the overlook abutting the canyon as distant stars wink high above.
To her students, in the light of day, she is Master Rey Skywalker, a name chosen as a tribute to the dead that fits her like someone else’s skin.
At night, she is Just Rey, the lost scavenger of Jakku who longs with all she is for this last bit of salvage, and she feels the cool, thick air of the jungle on her face, reaches out with everything she has into the dark depths of the Force, searching, feeling, trying.
Somewhere, in the slipstream of the force that binds all things, she knows the man who carries half of her soul must still exist. That the dyad that causes her heart to beat must be unbroken, or else how would she stand? How could the Force, this thing she teaches her students to trust, to abide as the great good, the great balance, be so cruel otherwise?
Every night, she stands at the precipice and reaches out.
Every night, she fails, and leaves another piece of herself behind.
Every night, Ben watches from beyond the veil and longs for her.
It is cold in the Beyond, and dark. Somewhere, his family beckons. He has tried to follow them, had felt the touch of his mother’s hand as he met his death, unflinching, and felt himself fade into oneness with the Force.
Rey would live on. That had to be enough, even as the feel of her in his arms lingered, even as he cursed himself for wasting the limited time he never knew they had in darkness.
She had kissed him. Called him Ben and smiled at him with stars in her eyes. He had felt her love shining for him in every angstrom of the Force, and when it had called to him, at the end, he had heeded without regret, the last beats of his own lifeforce given to his love freely.
But peace remains elusive. There is no Leia Organa, no Han Solo, not even Luke Skywalker and the bitter taste of loss, betrayal, the chance for reconciliation hovering like a wary lothcat at the edge of the beyond, all sharp teeth and looming danger.
Rey had called to the Jedi, there at the last. Her heart beat beside his then, and Ben felt their strength, their power, their peace flow into her veins as she stood and faced Palpatine.
And he felt it after, as they fell silent, as they disappeared and he faltered in climbing from the pit, something ripping violently from his chest.
Even with his leg broken and his spine cracked, even after years of torture at Snoke’s — Palpatine’s — hands, Ben had never felt a pain quite as awful, quite as intense, quite as agonizing as the moment he knew Rey was gone.
But he’d brought her back, and he watches from the star-spangled darkness of the Beyond as she lives, as she builds a future for the Force. Ben speaks to the other Jedi sometimes, asks them what is his place here, even as he gazes out to Rey’s quiet existence in the healing space of the waking galaxy and tries to tell himself that he is happy for her.
The Jedi do not answer. Rey’s smile does not meet her eyes and fades when she thinks no one is looking.
But he is. It is cold, empty, and the loneliness yawns forth like an endless, unblinking sea of stars. This is death and not, something in between, and Ben’s only solace is watching Rey’s life and yearning to once more stand beside her.
She had taken his hand, just for a moment, and he knows it haunts them both. Ben, watching as Rey cries quietly at night, as she touches her skin and breathes his name into the night. Sometimes he walks the paths of the Beyond, finds himself in the past and rages, seethes, wishes that he had understood so much sooner, when there was still a future for them.
And Rey, the mantle of the Jedi on her shoulders, too heavy a burden for any one person to carry, the light in her eyes fading little by little as she gives and gives of herself, sidesteps her friends’ questions, patiently answers her students’, and every night, just like on Jakku, she is alone.
Ben had told her about the rare nature of the dyad, how they two together were one, two halves of a complete whole.
No one had told him what happened if that bond was ever torn asunder.
Rey begins to dream of stars.
It’s almost like those last moments on Exegol, when she could feel her life draining away and she watched the spirits of the Jedi flare to life above her like endless pinpricks of light.
This is different, somehow, like a sphere of darkness has been shot through with a handful of galaxies, cool starlight threaded through a night with no end, no beginning.
Her life flashes around her like a series of stuttered holos. Being abducted by Kylo Ren on Takodana. Force bonds on Ahch-To. A final moment of silent confrontation on Crait.
No, Rey realizes, turning in the starlight. Not her life. Not just her life.
If she focuses, she can see the faint shape of him, there at the edge of the darkness, that same torn sweater she remembers from the final moments she hadn’t known for what they were. She’s running before she knows it, taking wing through the stars, falling through the blackness, and even in the silent void she’s screaming his name.
Rey wakes before she can reach him, her fingertips ghosting through cold fog, and she presses her forehead to her knees.
Ben’s shoulder tingles where Rey’s fingers had passed through him.
She was dreaming. Perhaps he still is.
He’s still not sure what this is. On the other side, Rey is curling up in her bedroll and crying into the night, and he would burn the stars to reach her, to hold her, to feel her skin against his and spend every moment working to bring back that smile he had only seen at the end.
Let me go to her, Ben calls to the stars, to the Force, to whatever holds him here, or let me pass on.
The stars are silent, distant, cold.
Finn is progressing in his studies. He has a charm and ease to his Force use, a rapport with others that Rey, more muted and slower to trust, has always struggled to obtain.
Finn, at his heart, is a councilor. Rey is a warrior, with no war left to fight.
She is grateful when he takes over teaching duties for the day, and she retreats back to the jungle, closes her eyes and reaches out for what must be the thousandth time.
Every night, she has dreamed of him.
Every night, he has slipped away.
Ben Solo, she had finally told her students just the night before, as the youngest, a small Squamatan, dozed in her arms, was the son of General Leia Organa and Han Solo, heroes of the Rebellion, and he saved me. He saved everyone.
One day, they will learn about the darkness, about a man named Kylo Ren, about the shadowed legacy of a corrupted senator from Naboo.
But for now, they whisper amongst themselves.
“Have you heard about Ben Solo?” they say, in the reverent tones of the young. “He was a hero, you know.”
And he loved her.
Somewhere, Rey knew, he still did.
He must.
“Hello, Ben.”
It’s the first person he sees outside of Rey’s faint outline in her dreams, and Ben is wary.
The man is close to his own age with sandy blond hair, canny eyes, a smirking grin.
Ben can see the shape of his mother in his countenance, and he knows, then, to whom he is speaking. “Grandfather,” he says carefully. “I thought I heard your voice for a long time. But it was...”
“The Emperor. Palpatine.” Anakin Skywalker nods. “I know. I’m sorry, Ben, that I couldn’t protect you from him. We failed you.”
Ben gazes through the darkness to Rey’s meditating form. She’s grown thinner, and he worries for her. “Are you here to carry me across?” he asks. “Have I earned my freedom from this place?”
Ben’s heart aches at that. He’s longed for peace. Yet the idea of a peace without Rey’s face, even from afar, even without being able to touch her, speak to her, brings little comfort.
Anakin grants him a smile, and Ben cannot fathom it. “You did what I could not,” his grandfather murmurs. “You saved her. You saw her death, and you stopped it.”
Ben shakes his head. “I didn’t. She died.”
“And you gave your life to bring her back from this place. Something that I, that Darth Vader could never do for the woman I loved.” Anakin looks to the darkness behind him, his smile growing. “She’s calling me, now.”
“I’m happy for you,” Ben says, and he is, though not for himself. “She’s lonely,” he says in a rush, and Anakin looks to him in sympathy. “Rey. The woman I loved. The Jedi left her, at the end. They called to her, they gave her strength, but when the moment came, when the life bled out of her, they left her. I...” Ben hesitates. “I would stay here. If I could.”
“Here, in the beyond?” Anakin frowns. “Why?”
“To see her. To give her some solace, even if only in dreams. To—” He’s floundering, searching for a way to explain himself to the only man who might deign to listen. “To make sure she’s not alone. I told her that, once. That she wasn’t. I can’t break that promise.”
Anakin’s eyes are soft. “Even if it means unending loneliness for yourself, here?”
“Even then.”
Anakin looks thoughtful, gazing back to the glittering stars stretching out behind him.
Then, he smiles, and for a moment Ben can see the roguish youth that Anakin Skywalker must have been before he had donned the dark mantle of Darth Vader.
“Would you give her anything? This woman?” It is a loaded question, and he is being carefully watched.
“Yes,” Ben says, without thinking. He has no need to. It’s a simple truth, one he’s realized since the moment he understood that he loved her. Since he discovered that, unthinkably, she loved him too.
“If she asked it of you, would you move the stars for her? Do the impossible, break space and time apart with your bare hands?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” Anakin smiles at him, placing his hand on Ben’s shoulder, and there is pride, and a touch of mischief, in his eyes, “you’ll understand why I have no choice but to listen to the request of my Padme, now.”
Anakin’s hand tightens, and he pushes.
The stars spin wildly, the darkness tilting out from beneath him, and Ben falls.
Be with me.
Be with me.
Be with me.
Rey sits cross-legged on her bedroll in the sweltering heat of a Yavin summer night, clad only in her breast band and leggings, ignoring the sweat dripping down her brow.
Her eyes fly open as the Force rends, as the galaxy tilts on its axis and a thousand stars flare to life around her.
She blinks, and Ben is in front of her, disoriented, breathing hard and staring at her in abject confusion.
He says her name, and Rey cannot breathe.
She can only move forward in a tangle of limbs, on her knees, reaching forward with trembling fingers to card through his hair, touch his cheek, the way she had when she’d woken from a dreamless death in his arms and knew that somehow, her Ben had returned to her.
Could the Force have been so cruel as to take him away?
Could it be so benevolent as to have returned him to her now?
“Rey,” he says again, and she surges forward, throws her arms around his neck and kisses him with every ounce of longing, of loss, of love she’s cried into the nights, with only the stars to hear.
He’s warm. He’s flesh, he’s here, whole and hale, and his arms go tight round her and his lips are soft as he kisses her back.
“How?” Rey manages, when they finally part some minutes later, still clinging, touching, and Ben’s hands are as reverent as her own.
“I still don’t know myself,” Ben says. He regards her for a moment before declining his head and drawing her into another lingering kiss, and Rey feels her heart might burst from the fullness of it.
Ben, she thinks, just like the last time, only now he’s steady beneath her hands, his heartbeat strong in her ears. Ben.
The night is still sweltering, Rey’s back drenched with sweat, but for a kinder cause as she rises above Ben, rolls her hips against his and pulls him up to kiss her. He breathes her name against her lips, and he cannot seem to stop touching her anymore than she can him.
Rey has no experience with sex and imagines Ben has even less, but this is something beyond the physical, something sacred as they join together in starlight, as the Force hums around them and the jagged tear through the dyad, through the balance mends once more in their touch, in the soft breaths and declarations of love between them.
She is Just Rey.
He is Just Ben.
They are perfect.
They are holy.
They are as endless as the stars.
The beyond is cold. It is not meant for souls to linger within its starlit darkness.
But sometimes, it is too great a temptation to slip between, to see the future stretch out before them.
A praxeum in a jungle, ably handled by a man with dark, laughing eyes and an easy grin, the Force bright around him.
A collection of younglings, carrying the future in their small, sturdy arms.
And there, a temple on a rocky island surrounded by great, swollen waves.
A pair of humans hand-in-hand on its shores, balance strung between them along with the chubby hands of a toddler with dark hair and the galaxy in her eyes.
Anakin’s gaze meets Ben’s across the years, across the stars, and his grandson’s smile is a calm one. A peaceful one, as he holds his wife and young daughter in his arms.
One day, he and Rey will return here together. One day, the child they carry between them will have another war to fight and look to her parents’ spirits in the stars.
But for now, there is peace.
For now, there is a promise kept. There is hope, there is love.
There is the Force.