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Rey still couldn’t quite believe her luck sometimes.
What else could she call it, when she had been able to bring back Ben from death? When she had travelled beyond this galaxy, this very reality, to reclaim him for the living? However hard things had been, surely they would get better now. He would be better soon and they would be happy. As they trekked down the cobbled path to the village they were visiting, she covertly looked over at his tall frame and smiled, ignoring the pain where it interfered with her joy. She had him now and she would never let him go again.
“Who are you?” asked their informant, wary and unconvinced that he wasn’t selling out his life by ratting on the biggest slavery ring in the system.
“Rey,” she said as Ben hovered behind her. He was still uncomfortable with talking to anyone who wasn’t her, but that too would surely soon pass.
The informant frowned and Rey could feel a long sigh bubbling up, pretty sure she could guess what was coming next.
“Rey who?”
Why did everyone need to know that? It wasn’t like a surname would carry more meaning to this man than her first name had, like there weren’t plenty of places in the galaxy that went without. It’d be a better use of their time to ask her where she was from or why she was here but no…
Rey thought back to Tatooine, to the name she had given there when she had still been numb and lost and had said the first thing that came into her mind, taking that name because anything was better than the one she had been saddled with. Perhaps she had thought it was someway of keeping the connection to that family alive, when Ben had been…
She had an idea. “Rey Tico,” she said with a smile - and could feel Ben stir behind her.
It was a nice name. Hopefully she could ask Rose one day whether she was fine with Rey borrowing it.
When they left the informant and began their journey to the supposed slavers’ market on this very planet, they mostly walked in silence. It was during these walks that she couldn’t stop thinking about… Well, however much she would like to convince herself otherwise, it had been… weird since Ben was back. It wasn’t like she could blame him. He had come back from the dead, after all, from who knows what kinds of horrible or at the very least disturbing experiences. A part of Rey wished she could just make it all go away, simply take his hand and caress his cheek and tell all the suffering to leave him, but since she knew this was beyond her ability she tried to ignore it. It was still better to have him here than not. So, so much better.
“Tico?”
Rey turned to him, to meet those glistening eyes that hadn’t stopped looking at her in that way, even after coming back, after all of it. “You don’t like it?”
“Why Tico?”
She shrugged. “It’s a friend’s name. It fits well with my first name, you know.”
“That’s not how names work.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t just… just choose whichever one’s the most pleasing to you. It’s not something you can escape.”
Rey frowned, a little irritated at his attitude. “Big words from the man who went around calling himself Kylo Ren for years.”
Ben flinched at the name and Rey wished she hadn’t said it. Why bring up the past when… “And we saw how that turned out.”
This was admittedly a good point. “Well, I don’t know what last name my parents used, so if people keep deciding Rey isn’t good enough I’ll have to come up with something. Unless you have any better suggestions?”
She gave him a pointed look and he looked back, brow furrowed. Somehow, she had thought when he turned, after she brought him back, that there wouldn’t be this much sadness. That it would be this hard.
They went to scout out the market and Rey briefly considered calling in reinforcements. But it would take them a while to get there, if they could spare any resources at all while the fledgling republic was still trying to get on its feet. Another round of victims lost to these monsters.
“You don’t have to do this,” Rey told Ben, not wanting to give him the impression she was just dragging him around. Hoping that wasn’t what she was doing.
He shook his head. “I have to try and make things better.”
That night, she kissed him, feeling the shape of his cheekbones with her hands, feeling where his ears lay under his soft flowing hair, all as she explored his lips from every side, pushing from below and feeling her upper lip press against his teeth, from above as their noses brushed against each other then collided, tilting his head to one side as her tongue flicked out, tasting him. There was a time she had thought she would only get the one kiss. That the memory would be the only thing to haunt her and warm her and make her feel until she lay down in her grave and died. And they were both so raw, so hurt that it made this hard, but she couldn’t wait any longer and she couldn’t waste their time any more. Rey wrapped her legs around Ben Solo as his hand pressed into the lower half of her back and he moaned as she pushed further into him.
When they parted lips, she didn’t move, still sprawled on his lap and looking down into his eyes. His eyes were wet, lips parted in silent desperation. Every time he shivered, she shivered with him. He was often closest to crying when they were this close, as if he were overwhelmed by her proximity. She knew the feeling.
“We’ll need a name for that order,” said the slaver.
It was hard standing there, talking normally to the man when at every moment she wanted to pounce, to stick her lightsaber through him or at the very least punch him hard. Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to give a false name and move on to their plan. But… well, she kind of wanted to leave a mark. To tell the rest of their miserably profession - I’m coming for you. They deserved to be afraid for once.
“Rey,” she said brightly. She could feel Ben shift beside her like he was about to object, so she reached out and gently touched his hand. A silent trust me.
He stilled.
“Last name?”
Rey briefly considered, then gave the slaver a friendly smile. “Kenobi.”
A few hours later and the galaxy had one less slave market. That had to count as a victory of sorts.
It was odd, seeing Ben fight again. The way something dropped away from him and the weight on his shoulders seemed to lift, temporarily replaced by the thrill of battle and the power of pure instinct. He had grown no less deadly as a result of his brief stint with death, spinning around ferociously as he tore into his foes with the lightsaber she had picked up again from Tatooine - that had felt a little bit like grave-robbing, which was her speciality. Occasionally, when she wasn’t desperately fighting to stay alive herself or protect the former slaves in danger of being caught in the crossfire, she couldn’t help but watch and admire him. Another emotion clawed for her attention, too - that of guilt, because here she was, putting him back on a battlefield he would’ve gladly left behind. But somewhere along the way, they had both come to understand that they couldn’t just retreat from the galaxy, not yet. So where Rey went, Ben followed. It wasn’t so bad, if they were together.
“Right,” said Rey, “I need to get more food for these people while we organise transportation away from this planet. Can you make sure they’re all right while I go to the village? And… if you could somehow document them…”
“Name and where they’re from?” asked Ben.
“Or where they’d like to go,” added Rey with a nod.
“Sure.”
“Thanks.”
Ben inclined his head awkwardly, as if he didn’t know what to do with the thanks. She was about to go when he spoke again. “Why Kenobi?”
“Huh?” said Rey, her brain needing a moment to process. “Oh. Well, one of the droids was showing me this thing… apparently he was an important Jedi back in the day.”
“He trained Skywalker - my uncle, I mean.”
Rey nodded. “It’s as good a name as any, right?”
Ben pursed his lips and frowned at the ground. But he still didn’t say anything and Rey once again had to stop herself from sighing.
“This is the last round trip,” said Rey. She and Ben were standing to one side as they watched their huddled passengers board the large transport ship. They looked a little less scared than when Ben and her had first freed them, a whole lot readier to talk or even trust either of them. A part of Rey had wanted to leave immediately once the fighting was done, hope the aftermath would take care of itself. But of course, she couldn’t do that - not really. It was their job to stick around, even for the hard parts.
Given that the round trips had meant that either her or Ben always had to stay behind, it hadn’t been much fun for either of them. Even with the force bond still flickering between them when they were separated, she’d find herself waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweat, beset by a panicked certainty that she had lost Ben again, that he was gone.
But that was all over now and she refused to let him out of her sight again for quite some time. Possibly forever.
He didn’t answer her, probably because she had stated the obvious. Sometimes she felt compelled to break the long silences between them. Sometimes she just wanted to shake Ben and ask him what she could do to stop him from hurting, how she could stop the dead from holding on to him even now, if he still felt the way he had… then. He did, she thought. He does. But it was hard to remember, sometimes, how alive he had been.
“Rey?”
She turned to look at him, was struck by the way he gazed at her, tears pooling in his eyes.
“What is it, Ben?” she asked, stepping towards him as worry grabbed at her heart, making it beat all the harder.
“I just -” he said, mumbled almost, took a deep shuddering breath. “It was too much…”
Rey paused, brow furrowed a little as she tried to parse his words. “Ben?”
“Too much… with you gone…”
A swell of emotion hit her, feeling like a wave splashing against the rocks on Ach-To might, so very easy for her to drown in. She removed the rest of the distance between the two of them as one of his hands reached out, almost blindly, to touch her cheek and then pat her hair and run his fingers through the loose strands. Rey reached forward and took his other hand, entwining their fingers together and putting her other hand over his as he looked down on her, tears threatening to spill over.
She knew he still felt that way, at least. The rest, they would figure out together.
“This is where my grandmother was from,” said Ben. “I should’ve come sooner.”
Rey stared down at the gently rolling waves, out beyond that the endless swathes of green. It was everything she had ever dreamed of, but better. The air shimmed around her and part of her did wonder whether it was all just some spectacular fantasy. Life seemed too cruel to allow her to explore this endless green with Ben. That part of her was always waiting for the galaxy to tear it all away from her again, because deep down she knew she didn’t deserve an existence this happy.
“It’s beautiful,” said Rey, voice cracking a little. What would her life have been like if she had grown up here instead?
“They never told me much about her. Probably because they never knew her. I wasn’t even convinced she was real until…” They had gone to the palace, to the dusty wing of tall statues and colourful paintings where all of Naboo’s queens and senators were commemorated. “I wondered what kind of woman she was, to fall in love with…” He trailed off again - he did that more and more. Like he was trying to talk, like he was trying to make an effort for her, but couldn’t quite put the words together well enough. It was hard not to push him, hard to give him the space and time he needed to… Well. Hopefully it would get better.
“She was Luke and Leia’s mother, right?” asked Rey.
Ben nodded.
That would make her Vader’s wife, if Rey’s understanding of the Skywalker lineage wasn’t failing her. Yeah, from everything she had heard about Vader she could understand that being a bit of a tough sell, especially for a woman like the late queen of Naboo.
“She died before the birth of the Empire, didn’t she?”
“As far as I know.” The unspoken addendum - if they didn’t lie about that too. He folded his arms, almost as if hugging himself. “I wonder how she’d feel about her people becoming slaves.”
Rey saw the familiar guilt and self-loathing in his expression. It was almost like he couldn’t see her, then, like he was too busy scratching and clawing at his soul to perceive her or anything else around them, this beautiful planet or the memories it offered of a woman whose legacy he had inherited. Rey felt helpless sometimes in the face of the depth of his regrets and pain. All she wanted was for him to let it go and move on. She had punished him enough, he had punished himself enough, the galaxy had punished him enough - it was enough, it was too much, it was just pointless suffering and pain when he was doing exactly what he should be doing and doing the best he could to make things better. Make them right.
Maybe it would be easier if he had never died. He shouldn’t ever have died and it was her fault.
She moved to stand in front of him, stretching up with both hands to clasp the back of his neck, slowly forcing him down. He barely seemed to notice until their foreheads were touching, his cool skin resting against hers as their noses pressed against each other and all she could see was him and those dark eyes. All he could see was her.
Ben stared at her, then - silently but aware. He shuddered, each muscle contraction eventually making its way through her too. As if they were one.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “You’re not alone.”
Rey stood there, determined to give him all the time he needed. She wouldn’t move until he did. Not until he was ready.
They stayed there, forehead to forehead, for a long, long time. Then he tilted his head and bent down for a kiss, a hungry one filled with longing, tasting more and more of her with a shuddering inhale, like he could barely breathe but wanted to smell all of her -
Rey responded, letting him lean into her, thrilled by the feel of his hands on her and how he seemed to need all of her, needed to feel as much of her as he possibly could… It made her happy, to think that he could want something again, that he wasn’t just along for the ride but had his own desires that gave him a reason to still be here. She didn’t even know how to describe the feeling of knowing that what he desired was her.
Once the transport ship was safely back from where Rey had… borrowed it, they needed a lift back off this planet so that they could track down the rest of this slavery ring. Who should be nicely scared by now. Rey voted for the stowaway option but Ben said it was too risky and likely to provoke unnecessary conflict. Even though Rey personally thought this was a risk worth taking, she wasn’t about to disencourage any sense of self-preservation Ben might be regaining, so she agreed to the commercial route.
“Name?” asked the trader when she paid for safe passage.
She tried to stop herself from smirking. “Rey Binks.” It was somewhat gratifying to hear the loud exhale that came from the person next to her at the pronouncement, who presumably recognised the name from when they’d looked at all the senator paintings in the Naboo palace.
Good. Let him squirm.
When they were inside, Ben leaned over to mutter to her - “If you’re trying to make your name spread, you should probably stick with the same one each time.”
“I don’t change the Rey bit.”
“You know what I mean.”
Rey raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you have any suggestions for which one to stick with?”
Ben’s expression closed off and he stared down into the ground. “No.”
“It’s not like it even matters which name I’m using here. The guy who’s giving us passage is hardly gonna care enough to pass on my name. It’s just for her own bookkeeping.”
“She didn’t even ask you for a surname this time.”
“Yeah, I thought I’d skip that part. I don’t know why people are so insistent about it, plenty of people don’t have one.”
“Imperial hangover, I assume,” said Ben. “Most people got into the habit of using the name of their people, name of the town they were living on, planet even… Of course, these practices may not have spread to Jakku.”
“Middle of nowhere,” muttered Rey.
“It’s not central enough to be the middle of anywhere, even nowhere.”
Rey looked up at him, a little taken aback by the snide remark. She had almost missed those, who knew what that said about her. “Well,” said Rey, letting her old aggressiveness slip back in, “we can’t all be related to Naboo royalty, can we?”
Neither of them pointed out the obvious. Still, though, it was nice to fall back on their old habits of communicating. It probably didn’t make a lot of sense to be wistful for a time when they had both been trying to kill each other. Then again, not a lot about them made sense.
It was when the ship was bathed in red that Ben very nearly lost it. While Rey was focusing on staying steady as the ship lurched, all the while scanning her surroundings to try to determine what exactly the problem was, Ben had let out a strangled yowl of anguish that was nearly drowned out by the siren and had sunk to his knees.
When Rey noticed, she rushed over to him.
“Ben?”
He didn’t answer, eyes clenched tightly shut, head lowered so that it was almost at his knees as he hugged himself.
Most of the other passengers were too busy worrying about the unsteady ship to worry about the man in their midst who appeared to have gone into a near catatonic state. One nearby man called, “Is he all right?”
Rey turned and nodded with a tight smile. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she called back, not needing any more attention.
She bent down to Ben’s ear. “Ben? Ben, can you hear me? It’s me.”
“I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to,” whispered Ben, the words tumbling frantically from his mouth before he moaned. “Why, why, why -”
“Ben, please listen to me. Ben, everything’s fine, you’re safe.”
“I should have turned the hilt around and stabbed myself with it.”
Rey stared at Ben in shock as her mind worked furiously. She quickly glanced around at the red light, put two and two together. “Oh,” she breathed. “Ben. Ben, I’m so sorry. I know it hurts. Ben, you’re here with me now.”
“Should’ve been me, should’ve been me -”
“No. No, Han wouldn’t have wanted that. Ben, he would never have wanted that. He loved you, more than anything. He would be so happy you’re alive.”
“Dead. I’m dead.”
Her heart sank. “Not any more, Ben. I brought you back. You’re here with me. Ben, it’s me. Rey. Please, be with me. I need you to be with me. I can’t deal with it if you’re not -”
“It’s all wrong. I’m all wrong.”
He was hyperventilating in earnest now as Rey managed to pull him around just enough that his head was on her lap as the ship lurched around them. I hope we don’t crash, some part of her mind still connected to the world murmured to her - she barely registered it.
“There’s nothing wrong. It’s all right, Ben. You are… you’re meant to be here. It’s me, Ben. It’s Rey. I’m not going anywhere.”
They stayed sitting there a long time, Rey murmuring the most comforting things she could think of in Ben’s ear as his breathing gradually slowed. Eventually, she felt a large hand grasping at her thigh, could feel his legs press against her back. He was clinging on to her.
They must’ve been a weird sight to everyone else. But no one disturbed them. After all, Ben and Rey were far from the only ones who hadn’t escaped the war or all the ones before.
They barely spoke until they had left the ship far behind and had checked into an inn close to their next target. Rey did all the talking, booking a room and making sure Ben actually followed her. At some point they would need an actual ship but right now she didn’t have any way of paying for one. It was taking all the Jedi tricks she had to her disposal to make things work. Of course, she could always get in contact with her powerful friends in the Republic…
She sighed as she opened the door, knowing it wasn’t something she could put off forever. But the thought of that conversation made her feel ill. If only she could track down Chewie… Surely he’d help…
Only once she’d finished putting down their limited belongings and had taken off her coat did she realise that Ben was still standing at the door, staring blankly ahead. No way for her to know what was going on in there. She’d considered reaching out with the Force but… that seemed like a recipe for disaster on so many levels. And at the end of the day she just wasn’t brave enough.
“Ben?” she asked cautiously. “Do you want to eat something?”
He didn’t answer.
“Ben. Please, sit down,” she said, gesturing at the bed.
Ben walked over and sat down on the bed. He still wasn’t looking at her.
“Ben… Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Nothing. “I can’t help you if I don’t know.”
“You don’t need to help me.” His voice was devoid of emotion.
“What if I want to?”
“Why?”
Rey looked at Ben was sitting, his black hair falling freely over his face. She slowly shook her head, feeling the despair well in her. “I can’t do this without you.”
“You’ll manage. I only help a little.”
“No,” said Rey, infuriated by how thick he was being, “not that. This, all of it. Living in this galaxy.” He wasn’t even looking at her and it made her so mad. “You think I’ll manage? I can’t. I didn’t. I didn’t deal with it. I just kind of… I don’t know. It was like everything left me. Like I couldn’t even string two thoughts any more, I was just… doing stuff. As if I’d been programmed that way, like a droid. Ben, I - I’m sorry, I needed you so much. I couldn’t not try.”
Ben didn’t answer.
“Somedays it’s like… I’m not sure whether you even wanted me to. I can’t tell when I’m looking at you and you don’t talk to me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ben.
Was that all he’d taken from everything she’d said? “It’s good that you’re here,” said Rey. “For me. But I just… could you please tell me? If it’s good for you too?”
Silence.
“Ben…”
“I don’t want to be like this,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Like what, Ben?”
“Coming back… like this. I’m different.”
“It’s my fault,” Rey blurted out. Then wished she’d chosen different words. “Ben, you did this for me and - and of course it hurts, seeing you suffer. But it doesn’t change anything for me. I don’t blame you for that.”
“This isn’t who you -” He stumbled over the next word. “If you cared, this isn’t who… who it was for.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“This” - he gestured up and down at himself - “is nothing. It’s… it’s just fragile and broken. It always was but now… there’s too many cracks. I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologising.”
He looked at her, gaze hollow. “How could I ever stop?”
“You beating yourself up over everything isn’t gonna help anyone,” she said harshly. “Of course you’re broken. Guess what? So am I. But don’t you dare give up on yourself, not after all this.”
“Why don’t you?” asked Ben, clearly frustrated. “Look at me, there’s barely anything left.”
“Ben. I’ve seen some of the worst of you, just like you’ve seen… pretty much the worst of me. I wanted you then. And now… now you’re with me. That’s all I need. And… and you are fighting, you’re fighting to make things right.”
“I don’t deserve this.”
“I don’t care,” said Rey. “I’m sorry, I just can’t. Not after everything. I chose you, Ben. It’s my choice. And… I just can’t lose you again.”
“Maybe…” He trailed off, the word hanging in the air between them.
“There’s no maybe. It’ll break me. Like it did before.” She swallowed, trying to breath normally as tears trickled down her cheeks. “I don’t want to be broken any more. Please.”
A pause. “I’m tired,” said Ben quietly. “Is it fine if I…”
“You don’t need to ask me,” said Rey. “But yeah, we have this place till morning.”
He had already fallen asleep by the time she had done everything she needed to do. He fell asleep so fast, these days, like it was his natural state. Dead to the world. It felt nice, though, joining him. Despite everything, wrapping an arm around him and pulling him close and snuggling into his warm back was just… good. Safe. She would hold him close and never let him go again.
Rey was beginning to understand that some days were better and some days were worse. The day on the ship had been particularly horrible, but there were other days where Ben barely talked and seemed completely closed in on himself - and that didn’t feel much better. And it wasn’t like she didn’t mess up, she knew that - snapping at him or using the wrong words or just not being able to adapt to… all of it. But sometimes, he had some of his old humour back, and with the separation following their first trip to a slavers’ market longer in the distance they gradually began to explore what it might be like to be around each other all the time, not as enemies, as if they had a shared future together. She could provoke and prod him and make up all sorts of fake names - which he reacted with increasing irritation to - and he could push back and sometimes she would kiss him in the evenings and it was almost like… Yes. Rey could imagine wanting this forever.
On their next trip, they took a speeder as far as they could on their way to an old abandoned hideout the slavery ring used to use, hoping to find some more information on how to track down the rest of the scoundrels. Rey flew it, the speed and wind rushing past her letting her escape in the thrill of flying for a little while. It didn’t hurt that she could feel Ben’s hands planted on her hips.
Eventually, they had to disembark when they got to terrain unfriendly to the speeder. It was one of Ben’s good days and he did a little hop when he got off. She smiled at him.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it?”
“Bit dusty for my tastes.”
It wasn’t a desert planet, thankfully, but rather a stony plateau with treacherous cracks running crisscross their path. Well, treacherous for other people, perhaps. As they progressed, they began doing increasingly ridiculous jumps, trying to outdo each other at every point. When Rey did a double backflip, she personally thought that ended the competition. Ben disagreed.
So they were bickering in an increasingly lively way when they came across an old woman, wandering the stone plateau with no civilisation in sight. They both halted, eyeing the woman suspiciously.
“Where are you going?”
“A cave close to here, used to be a hideout,” said Rey. “Don’t suppose you know it?”
The woman regarded her with a frown. “It’s been abandoned a long time.”
“Yet you’re still here,” said Ben to Rey’s surprise.
“Someone has to be.” The woman pointed behind her to her left. “Go that way. Not long left.” She looked at Rey. “What’s your name, kid?”
Ben let out a groan, apparently not caring about being rude. Which gave Rey an idea.
“It’s Rey,” said Rey, pausing dramatically and resisting the temptation to look Ben dead in the eyes when she said the next part. “Rey Skywalker.”
At this, Ben actually hissed. Rey tried not to laugh as the woman looked from one to the other, bewildered but also vaguely exasperated.
“Well,” said the woman. “Good luck to you.”
She gave them a little wave and without another word wandered off again. They both watched her go, Rey bemused by the odd interaction and its sudden end. Then Ben rounded on her.
“Rey Skywalker?”
Rey rolled her eyes. “See, I knew you’d react like this.”
“React like what?”
“It’s just a name! That she’d leave us alone!”
“It’s not just any name!”
“You’re protective of the name Skywalker now?” asked Rey, starting to walk again and trying to pretend like she wasn’t enjoying getting a rise out of him.
“One name after the other, you go through them -”
“So what? Who cares?”
“But this isn’t just a nice little name you -”
“You don’t think I’m worthy of it?”
Ben let out a strangled laugh of disbelief. Which was still a laugh. “You can’t seriously think that.”
“I don’t know, you’re the one -”
“But Skywalker, like it’s -”
“Oh come on, I can’t believe this bothers you so much more than the others.”
“This is different!”
Rey shook her head, getting exasperated. “Why?”
“Skywalker? Skywalker? Why would you take that name?” exclaimed Ben, gesticulating furiously before hopping over a long crack.
She followed him. “Luke trained me and -”
“He barely trained you for two days tops! And I doubt he approved of your plan to ship yourself to the Supremacy -”
“No,” interrupted Rey, “I threatened him with a lightsaber, asked him whether he tried to kill you then when he refused to help I took the Falcon and left him there.”
This briefly paused Ben’s tirade. He stared at her, open-mouthed. “You did what?”
Rey shrugged. “We had our differences.”
With that, he was back at it. “Then why would you take that name? You barely knew him -”
“It’s a name with history!”
“It has a terrible history -”
“Wasn’t your grandfather called Skywalker?”
Ben’s mouth moved in silent indignation before he found more words to express his outrage. “He rejected that name!”
“And then he took it back.”
“That’s not - you aren’t taking that name for him so -”
“It’s a name connected to a lot of people who mean something to me.”
“Most of whom never used that name! Why would you choose Skywalker -”
Rey felt frustration that came close to boiling into anger, stopping in front of Ben and stepping towards him as she jabbed her finger at him. “You complain about every name I take but to do my job properly apparently I’m going to need one. You don’t suggest anything so how about you just -”
“I know what name you should take, “ he interrupted and stepped forward in turn, something of the old fury back in him. They were very close now. “Just because you don’t -”
“Oh, really? Really, go ahead and tell me then, what name should -”
“Solo! You should take Solo!”
Ben froze the moment the words came out of his mouth, gaze darting like prey that had been caught in a spotlight. Rey was barely doing better - for a moment she was seriously tempted to run for it and suspected he was having the same thought. They stared at each, both breathing heavily, both utterly at a loss as to what to say to that.
Rey was the first to get her mouth to work again. “That’s your name,” she said quietly.
Ben needed to swallow twice to get out a sound more coherent than a helpless moan. “It - just that,” he started eloquently, then halted. “Not that - if you -” He stopped again and his head did a kind of twitch in a way that communicated pure helplessness. He looked at her like he needed her to save him from drowning, which was bad because she was a terrible swimmer.
Rey thought of Han and thought of Ben and the name Solo and an entirely different flavour of family it represented that felt even more foreign to her than Skywalker. “Are you sure you’d want me to?”
Ben’s mouth hung open as he continued staring at her, his dark waves of hair so close she could feel the air it moved brush her forehead with every breath. He seemed to be struggling to process her words and their implications. “Rey,” he breathed. Tried again. “You’d want it?”
“Of course I would,” said Rey, forehead creased as she reached out a hand and placed it on his broad chest. “It’s - more than I could ever even dream of…” She shook her head jerkily, as if trying to get rid of an unwelcome thought.
“Why?” Why would you want that name?
“Because it’s yours.”
Ben looked less shocked and more like the forces of gravity had stopped applying to him. He swayed a little, moved his hands aimlessly as his face twitched with uncertain emotion. He looked like he was about to start crying.
Well, better if he had something to cry about.
Rey reached up and clasped the back of his neck, bringing their heads a little closer to each other as they stared into each other’s eyes. “I want you, Ben Solo,” she said. “How often am I going to have to say it for you to understand that?”
Ben wet his lips, took his time making the words come out. “But… forever?”
Rey nodded. “I want to be happy with you.” She took a deep breath. “If you want that too.”
“I -” started Ben, jaw clenched. “There’s so much I…” She waited for him. Then, in almost a whisper, he said, “I want that too.”
“Good,” said Rey, grinning up at him and thrilled to see his answering smile, the way it rearranged his whole face. She pulled him down and kissed him hungrily, taking what she had wanted for so long but never had had for herself, wanting him so much and electrified by how much he wanted her. When their lips parted, it was with the knowledge that it wouldn’t be for long. “So. Rey Solo,” she said, testing the words out.
A shiver ran through Ben at the name as he gazed happily, helplessly down at her. The smile hadn’t gone away - and, looking at it, Rey could believe he wanted to be alive, that they would actually make it and somehow heal and help heal this galaxy, that they could incredibly, miraculously, impossibly, make it work.
“Rey Solo,” he said. On his lips, her name was a promise.