Chapter Text
At times when the Tatooine dusk wasn’t such a burden or when a steady breeze passed over the desert, a traveler, perhaps seeking a way around the populated Mos Eisley or simply on their way home, would note the abandoned homestead once belonging to a man, his wife, and their nephew. Perhaps thinking they’d missed a turn or went the wrong way, it would take the occasional traveler a moment to understand the once-abandoned homestead was now reclaimed. The homestead, once charred with fire damage was now illuminated. If curious, a traveler might dip their ear to the home listening for any sign of who might live there and while it was mostly quiet, there was the promise of something more. Even fewer of these travelers could claim a penchant for meddler behavior, but again, a couple did and on such an evening as the Tatooine desert provided a steady cool and calming sunset there was one traveler who dared themselves closer to the brimming homestead. It was the laughter that caught their attention. A soft lilt of joy coming from a woman and when the traveler peeked down into the homestead’s courtyard they caught a glimpse of the woman, her tended form resting in a chair at the galley’s table, a game of Sabacc placed before her, and with her a man. The woman covered her smile only to reveal it again for the man who responded by reaching over the table and brushing the woman’s cheek with his thumb.
“Just a couple of lovers.” The traveler scoffed and renewed the track they’d been walking. Utterly disinterested in a full homestead and one they could no longer rob supplies from without notice, the traveler looked over their shoulder once more to shake their head.
“A couple silly kids.”
“Ben, when am I ever going to play Sabacc?” Rey held her single card out so Ben could see, while the man effortlessly shuffled through the deck looking for the two of staves and the three of sabers. In a gap of a memory, Ben felt like his father, just winding an evening away with a game. The thought, and the pain that came with it, stung, but as he often did, Ben glanced at Rey, taking her in as a breath of air before delving back into the inevitable that came with every hint of the past.
“You’ve never played before?” Ben handed over the two cards to add to the one Rey held.
“With who? One of the Teedos?” Rey smiled over her cards before looking up to Ben.
“That’s an idiot’s array. That’s the other way to win, but it’s rare. You’d need the idiot card, a two of any suit, and a three of any suit.” Ben paused, thought about what he’d just said and shrugged.
“What?” Rey asked, picking up the cards and looking them over.
“This game is easy for people who…”
“Who? What? Can use the Force? Are you talking about cheating?” Rey accused.
“I may have helped Lando win a few games. They never suspected a kid.” Ben spoke of the memory with more ease than usual, and as Rey watched, this memory didn’t come with stifling pain, no furrowed brow or sudden push into silence.
“Hear me out.” Ben took his unseen hand and held the cards so that only he could see them, locking eyes with Rey, he smirked.
“Read my mind,” Ben spoke quietly, it was a dare. Narrowing her eyes, Rey leaned forward, pressing her gaze into her competition. Ben left his mind open, unguarded, but the more Rey stared the more distracted she became by the warmth in Ben. She knew it always to be there, but such warmth still left Rey breathless. Laughing to herself at first, the fit was impossible for Rey to hold back. As she rested her head against the table in full chuckles while reaching out for Ben’s hand, she flipped the cards over and laughed even louder.
“Oh, I wasn’t even close.” Affable eyes watched the woman, the locks of hair escaping their held place, and suffusing red beginning to cover her cheeks. All at once, voices of old rushed Ben’s thoughts, the ones who held stifling lies over his head and damned him for every soft smile he let loose from his lips. Ben ignored the thoughts, brushed them away, and collecting the cards he rose from the table. A quick kiss on Rey’s exposed neck and he promised his return after a final mediation.
“I’ll be in in a minute.” He called over his shoulder before ascending to the top of the homestead, to a spot he’d come to enjoy meditating from, a place where the setting sun rested as if waiting to say goodnight. Warm, but not hot, comfortable. It was the way of this life Ben and Rey had begun creating. They were only at the foundation, only the beginning, but it was everything and enough. Every moment with Rey was a breath of fresh air, a reminder of his humanity, of life itself. Despite being in each other’s head, there was still so much to the woman, an intricacy Ben had all forgotten humans capable of, but within Rey, a constant summons growing and bounding made her both entirely known and renewed. Lately, it had been Rey at the center of his mediation, a welcomed distraction, but one Ben rummaged over.
Life was a bartering affair, one claiming Ben as both free and indentured, just as the desert is both vast and unforgiving. Acceptance, understanding, passion, deliverance these were the words sifting in his mind even when he wasn’t aware and when he was aware, they usually were accompanied by the doleful bellows of the past. His mother, his father, his uncle, Snoke, Vader, those voices as ghosts, both from real memory and manipulated, came in the night, judgment in hand, and sieved into his breath chocking him.
What have I done to my father, that same tortuous question and all of its followers stripped away Ben from the inside out, and then there was Rey. In her alacrity, in her heart and mind, in the way she held Ben and accompanied him on those ceaseless tours of the past, it was as if he’d never served the dark side. Sometimes, to Ben’s own breaking point, he could never piece together what it meant to be of blood-stained hands and loved as if he’d never spilled a single drop. It was in those darkened furrows that Rey would put her lips to his ear and allay those voices with the remembrance of the place he’d come from. What were moments to him, but something longer to Rey, translated as beyond time with his family in a place both close and far, here and there. After Exegol, after Ben’s body disappeared, he was reunited in the light with those who loved him and from that place, wherever it might be, Ben learned of what he must do.
Then there was that freedom, an uplifting redress that came every time Rey opened her hand to accept his, and this is what kept the man lost in meditation, desperate for an answer as to what it meant to only see her at the center of his path.
Our path, Ben thought, it was them now. Not just him, not just her, but both.
Ben stayed in the sunset until he felt the light draw away with promise of tomorrow, and rising to his feet he smiled at the idea of what came next.
For Rey it was a twice-daily joy when Ben returned from his morning and evening meditation, both happening to take place when she was still in bed. The desert’s boasting heat embedded itself in Ben, forming him into a living star and one that Rey held with. Weather sensing a troubled mind or perhaps wishing for the day not to be over, Rey guided Ben’s head to her lap and with one hand lost in his locks and the other holding an old journal open, she read.
“I think we left off with the rancor.” Ben mentioned and flipping a couple of pages ahead, Rey found the place left from the night before. At ease, but adrift, Ben tried to concentrate on the account of an old merchant who crossed the desert in search of her missing ship, but it was of little use. Reaching to the top of his head, Ben took Rey’s hand and bringing it close he combed over her countless tiny scars, dirty fingernails from the Falcon, numerous grooves, light freckles, and all over her palm the lines like rivers. Meditation or not, it seemed Ben was incapable of parting from the path that claimed him, the same path he only wished to better understand. A heaviness strung its way into Ben’s thoughts and after Rey realized Ben’s mind was far away from where he was now, she closed the book, turned off the lights, and laid next to him.
Never rushing his thoughts, Rey kept her eyes muffled with his. There at the very edge, but always everywhere, as well, Rey waited until either Ben fell asleep or returned. What little light caught Rey’s eye became more than enough for Ben to moor himself to despite the clouded recess he found himself in. Unlike the recent past, when such interior travels resulted in darkness met madness, with rage boiling over, now was different. Ben could venture into his pain, into what crept along his mind at night without the fear of never returning or meeting some demise in the form of the past.
All vapor and no sight, Ben let the hidden world around him sink further into him until his dreams claimed him. He wanted to know the answer, the reasoning for his constant distraction. To the man, who waged countless battles and before those times traveled kilometers on foot with his uncle, this journey within himself felt tenfold and unending, perhaps even eternal. When clarity did come, it was by another’s breathing, a soft inspiration, and with it a building evaporation. Beyond where Ben stood was Rey with her back to him. Ben stood unfooled by the sight; he’d had enough visions to know that when the answer is right in front of him it was, indeed, not the actual answer. Still, he approached Rey. Her hair was down, the clothes she wore were ones he’d never seen, and at her feet verdant grass wafted with unseen sunlight. Closer now, Ben noticed Rey was holding something in her arms and at her back, he leaned over her shoulder to look just as she lifted a hand to pull back a thin sheet and beneath it…
Ben rose from sleep, a gasp breaking the still night. Chest heaving, Ben shook off the vision, but it refused to leave, it clung to him even as his mind filled with vapor once more. At his side, he sensed Rey was close to waking up herself and wanting at least one of them to get a full night’s rest, Ben left. Outside, beneath Tatooine’s cascade of skylight, a balmy desert raised no concern of the future and when Ben ascended to his preferred mediation spot, he was met with a kind breeze and forgiving soft sand beneath his bare feet. Placing a hand over his chest, the man searched diligently for his heartbeat, for the physical part of himself that signified life. It was still there, beating furiously and with promise. Bile began to build up in Ben, a forlorn despise came with every beat as he remembered the lives he ended and the evil he’d done.
A hollow pierce brought Ben to his knees and squinting his eyes shut as hard as he could, the man bit his tongue if only to keep the cries locked in his chest and constricted to their confine. The sand beneath his palms, Ben gripped the earth, squeezing it until he felt the small rocks within draw blood. A harsh, captured sob released itself and so came with it a torrent as Ben sought something real. Mourning, grief, misery, a single shred of doubt, anything to hold onto as he buried himself within his punishment. There would be no relent from this pain, no giving into the idea of resolve, not for him and never, and Ben believed this. He believed it even if it meant death for himself.
This is what I deserve, Ben reminded himself again and again, but those destitute words began breathing with others. It started with the same soft inspiration Ben felt in the vision and ended when the last of the hot tears turned cold against his cheek. Panting, his eyes locked on the stars above, Ben fell into meditation, absolved to letting go to what so desperately called to him, and again what he found was Rey. Only Rey.
“I don’t…I don’t deserve this life and most of all…I don’t deserve Rey.” Those spoken words twisted away at his mind, at the bare string drawing from him to Rey and back again forever. The connection threatened to open now, under the moons with Ben raising useless concerns of the past, to a Force that already spared him.
“It’s not just about me.” The vapor drew back, promising a clarity to Ben that would never leave.
It’s about us, Ben lowered his head with an appeal of gratitude almost too heavy for his heart to bear, and this too went untaken. Ben remained at the place where the homestead met the desert until the suns rose and extolled him with light unending.
Rey was up, she’d been up the moment Ben left, and from their room sensed the circling conflict tearing Ben from the inside out. She was tempted to go to him, but a moment within her own meditation consoled her to the understanding it was best if she stay put, so she did. Alone in the darkened room, Rey leaned against the wall and pulled a blanket over her, her mind at ease. This time was different, she told herself. He’d feel differently about himself, change his mind about the future and his place in it. Rey knew it was only a matter of time and that when Ben finally began to see himself how she saw him, then slowly he’d accept himself again. It wouldn’t be easy and there was the immense possibility Ben would never fully acclimate to a world free of the howling trauma that stained his past and bled into his future, but as Rey repeated to Ben daily, she’d be there no matter what.
“It’s our life,” She could say that now, could yell it if she wanted, but somehow keeping the words warm against her lips was more pleasing, almost like a taste she could sense and hoped Ben did too every time they kissed. A smile, Rey thought silly, broke over her face, and she shook her head.
“That’s the thing. I want a life with him.” After traveling to Hoth and returning to Finn with the First Order made illness and the cure, Rey hoped things would be different. That after helping others somehow, Ben would see the good in himself, but he didn’t. His external wounds healed, but he continued to stifle his own humanity at times if only to remind himself of the wrong he’d done. The oath Ben swore to her, the oath he’d given to her father, was one that sat heavy on Ben, Rey could feel it at times nearly drowning the man in thought. To be lacerated by a weapon so infinitely that it boils from the base of one’s soul and reaches the skin in the form of starved love and forced solitude was something Rey both understood and would give anything to see healed in Ben. She touched Ben constantly if only to remind him it was the way of their humanity, that just because his past rolled with thundering fists to his body didn’t mean he was damaged beyond repair.
When the door to their room slid open, Ben entered. Head down, lost in his thoughts, the man leaned against the closed door behind him. It was inevitable, the moment Ben glanced up he knew Rey would be waiting for him and that the change, however small, within himself would be there for her to see.
Ben wasn’t expecting the daze waiting for him when he met Rey’s gaze. Tickling at first, but declaring a more prudent hold, it was as if each fight, each threat, each look, each quiet conversation wrapped up in their connection before now was just a trickle, a maddening drip of what could be. If on Starkiller Base Ben was in awe of Rey, he was now in a stupor; a soul-hold undeniable, unanswerable, and overwhelming. No matter what the world screamed into his ears as long as Ben kept his eyes on Rey he’d know the way and that truth, while ponderous, claimed a future no one could touch.
Taken aback, Rey thought of Ahch-To and that dark night with nothing but a fire and embers to show the young woman Ben’s face. An act so simple as briefest touch revealed the bubbling idea that there were endless possibilities between her and Ben. Rising from their bed, Rey stepped toward Ben until she could hear his breathing and nearly his heart. Undoing her hair, Rey allowed the locks to touch her shoulders, and then reaching for the fringe of her top, she pulled it away. The room’s cool embraced her, what light there was outlined her form, and from where Ben was standing, he could feel the warmth of her skin lightly touching his. Loosening the rest of her clothes, Rey stepped out of them and left them to the floor.
Breaking a code so defining to her survival on Jakku, Rey abandoned the articles of protection required to keep her from the sun’s heat or a competitor’s weapon. At first, the action seemed mad, but the more she stood in her skin the more it felt like that single act of vulnerability professed an honesty even the most potent weapon couldn’t cut down. Offering an open hand with shaking fingers, Rey waited for Ben’s answer. Ben searched the woman’s eyes, traveled from their surface and into the place he was beginning to find more and more of himself within. He waited for a refusal that would never come and upon sensing a hand that would never leave him, Ben gave his hand to Rey.
Even after shedding his clothes, outside’s heat still enfolded Ben giving Rey the thought her hands would never be cold. In his hair, along shoulders and a scar-free back, Rey grazed her hands until she found Ben’s chest and a heart madly serenading a sworn life. Chest to chest, Ben felt Rey’s heart and the endless answering call gently tapping against his skin. Ben revered every measure of Rey, his parted mouth at her neck, her chest, and lips uncovered the too many nights she spent in tears and all alone. As if willing it all away, Ben replaced those damning nights with dreaming tender as he kissed her a necklace she’d never lose. So quick to ignore his own pain, Rey sensed in Ben what he’d hidden from the world. Her buried face in the crook of Ben’s neck brought with it a maddening whirlwind so torn and fractured its owner had nearly become an echo of a human. In unison, the duo pulled away enough to meet each other’s eyes and while truth presented itself as both deeply loved and admired, there was that edge of bruised beginnings and brokenness.
Reaching for Ben’s face, Rey ran her thumb under the man’s eyes, along the stream of skin where his scar once boasted from, to his ears where Ben had heard far too much about falling and blood, and finally to his lips that only sounded in dearest words. Together, in some humorous act that had been caught by the other, the couple healed over each other, sewing those unseen wounds while ignoring their own. The smallest chuckle escaped Ben, and Rey, as well, smiled at their similar wills before wrapping her arms around Ben’s neck.
In a passing day unhindered by time, Ben and Rey remained inside and in each other’s company. When words were spoken they were most fondly swathed in living dreams and fervid oaths and when there were no words it was simply another first kiss or caressing hand, the ever gentle embrace Ben formed with Rey and the joyful lips she ran over skin she never wanted to be parted from.