Chapter Text
Later on, Rey realizes she’s has no memory of how she got back to the X wing. How did she get back up the winding metal chain? She is well-versed in climbing old wrecks, rarely takes a misstep, and never loses her balance or feels anything akin to vertigo. Years and years of exploring old imperial wrecks, hunger gnawing at her belly, and nothing but a length of rope in her hands, make her agile and strong. A year ago, she learned that something else in her nature--or the nature of the universe--gave additional reach to the length of her arms and a surer instinct to her footfalls.
It’s the only way she can explain the strength and stamina it would have taken to drag herself back to her only exit plan from Exogol. Herself--and the unconscious, two-hundred-pound elephant on her back.
How did she lift and carry him after he passed out? She couldn’t explain it. Somehow, they returned to the X wing. Rey remembered quickly strapping him into the jumpseat and taking off without a single look back to the ground. Her eyes were on the stars. She needed to get him medical attention and to see her friends.
Touching down outside the rebel base, Rey reaches over to him once more, checks his pulse and his slow shallow breathing, then scrambles down the X wing.
The rebels celebrating their victory over the Sith and the First Order is a sight to behold. But weaving through the crowd, Rey feels strangely detached. Only when she sees Rose, standing with Finn and Poe, does she feel the flood of relief loosed inside her. In that moment, she misses Leia more than words can say.
She knows Rose, Finn, and Poe feel the same way. They’ve all been through so much with her. And now she has to test their strength again.
She knows she is placing his life and hers in their hands. In their hands she must trust.
But Rey is no poor judge of character.
If they are shocked by what she reveals and asks of them, they do not show it. Rose leaps to action first, retrofitting a supply wagon to serve as a self-suspending gurney. Finn and Poe help her transfer him to the Falcon. Poe requisitions equipment and supplies for her. Finn collects extra blankets and clothing--probably from his own belongings--and gathers up as much food as he can. Chewie looks the Falcon over for any repairs and refuels it for her. Everything is packed and ready to go within half an hour.
She hugs each of them tightly. When she’s through hugging Poe, he stands back, looks at her with a strange light in his eyes, and hands her a data tablet. He says, “Read it, very carefully. When you have a quiet moment.”
“Okay,” she says, confused but too anxious to think about it.
Chewie is inside when she enters the Falcon. He sits on a small chair next to the gurney where Ben is resting. Rey hears a sniffling that sounds as though he’s been crying, but she’s never heard a wookie cry. She stands in the shadow and watches Chewie lift one finger to Ben’s forehead, sweeping away a lock of hair. But Chewie has seen her.
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks in Shyriiwook?
Rey’s heart fills with gratitude and joy at the offer. But she knows she can’t ask anyone else to join this mission.
“No, Chewie,” she says. “I’ll be fine.” Chewie looks at her, hard and appraising. “We’ll be fine,” she repeats. Chewie makes a sound of acquiescence. He stands and comes over to crush her in a hug. Then he’s gone, and she’s alone in the Falcon except for an unconscious Ben Solo, former Supreme Leader of the fallen First Order.
****************************
That was two weeks ago. Now settled into her bolthole home on Tatooine, Rey sits on the floor beside Ben’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall. He is still unconscious though he occasionally makes a quiet moaning in his throat. She wonders helplessly if he is in pain. But nothing she does can penetrate whatever processes are going on inside Ben’s brain and body. The med droid has proven a little useless because Ben has no significant physical injuries. The little cuts and bruises cleared away with repeated treatments of bacta ointment. The bacta cast repaired his broken leg completely.
But no matter what she tries, she cannot explain his condition. It’s like his cells are just devoid of electricity. His pulse is thready and weak. His lungs take only shallow, hissing breaths. The med droid’s biometrics measure only minimal organ functioning. He has a fever, but he does not have an infection.
He’s simply … dying. She knows, has a faint sense, that he drained his life force saving her. But some small trace remains in his body--too much for him to die and be at peace; too little to bring him back to wakeful consciousness. When she concentrates hard, she can just barely feel a miniscule buzz--a skein of the thread of life within him. But nothing more--she searches the beat and rhythm of the force for his signature--his unique pulse. But she feels nothing. She knows and fears that he is hanging by a thread. And there is nothing she can do but wait.