Chapter Text
It takes Rey two months to do more than just smile and nod at the man she's shared her morning jogs with ever since she arrived at the University of Chandrila.
Two months, and all she can manage is a quiet, "Hey," as she joins him. But then he smiles, says it back to her, and best of all, starts making small talk with her every single day after that.
A week later, on a Saturday morning, he asks if she'd like to have breakfast after their run. They settle on one of the literal dozen new cafés in town, and spend most of breakfast talking about what Ben (she still marvels at finally knowing his name) calls an "over-saturated market".
"Right?" Rey asks once they've placed their orders. "Like, sometimes when I'm in one of those 'college was a mistake, what am I doing here?' moods, I think about dropping out and opening my own café. But then I look at all the ones we already have and realize that would probably leave me in more debt than this degree."
"This is going to sound weird," Ben says slowly, "but I do the exact same thing."
Rey laughs. "Seriously?"
Ben nods with a grin. "I'll tell you about my imaginary café if you tell me about yours?"
And so she does, and he does as well, and by the end of breakfast they've somehow fused their ideas to form a single vision that Ben declares "the best café of all time, probably".
And then he offers her a bite of his waffles because she's been sneaking longing looks at it throughout their meal while she demolishes her omelet, and Rey thinks she falls a little in love with him right there and then.
She falls the rest of the way throughout their next four years together, a head over heels, he's the one kind of love that has her occasionally daydreaming about weddings and kids and growing old together.
Which is what makes it so unbearably painful when Ben starts drifting away from her and into Snoke's orbit, when his future starts to revolve around the First Order instead of her, when he picks work over her and their friends and his family again and again and again.
In their last semester of college, Rey barely even gets the chance to talk to him about their future, never quite gets around to telling him about the amazing, life-changing, career-making job offer she's received from the country's top automotive engineering firm... which just so happens to be based in Coruscant.
But she doesn't need to talk to him to know that there's no way Ben would leave Chandrila, no way he would leave Snoke.
After all, she's had a whole year to get used to Ben picking his boss over her.
So in the end, Rey doesn't let him make that decision one last time. She makes it for him instead, by telling him a few days before graduation that she's leaving town for good.
Ben... Ben doesn't even try to make her stay, just laughs bitterly and mumbles that Snoke was right about her all along.
Rey runs out of their apartment in tears, skips graduation later that week to pack up her things while he's gone.
And then she leaves without saying goodbye.