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Rey had been sitting in that exact same position for hours now. The flames dancing in the fireplace lit the image in the mirror in warm tones and even though tears filling her eyes obscured her vision, Rey couldn’t have looked away from the mirror for anything.
Because there, in the image in the mirror before her, Rey sat as she did… but she did so in a meadow of flowers with butterflies fluttering around. Her lap that was empty now, was home to Ben Solo’s head, her fingers carding through his luscious dark locks while his features were lit by a completely relaxed, trusting and affectionate smile that she’d never seen in real life. And around them, two little cherubic toddlers played with the flowers and butterflies.
The mirror of Erised is of course, said to show your heart’s deepest desire. And Rey… well, she just wanted her family, she always had. Even if the definition of who made up said family, had changed over the years.
It’s done… Palpatine is dead. The war has been won.
The wizarding world celebrates for almost a month and then life goes back to normal. Poe and Finn are elected Minister of Magic and Head of the DMLE respectively after Leia Organa-Solo’s step down from all her positions, her health declining due to long term spell damage and everyone in the Resistance is helping to bring their world back to what it once was, before the wars.
Everything is going back to the way it was, everyone is happy… except for one or two.
Rey had disappeared since the night of their victory. She’d gone alone to confront Palpatine in Exegol, and shown up all dirty and bloody after having killed him… but the young auror had stayed for very little of the celebration and not even showed up for the award ceremonies organized by the Ministry afterwards. Finn had gone up to accept Rey’s Order of Merlin, First Class, on behalf of her and they’d lied to everyone saying that she was recuperating from the duel with Palpatine and would be back before they knew it.
But neither Poe, Finn nor Rose, or the rest of her small group of friends in the Resistance knew where Rey was. And although Rose and Poe were close friends with Rey, they didn’t know her well enough to predict where she might be or what she might be doing and everything Finn thought he knew, was proving useless. They’d tried apparating to her to no avail, of course tried to owl her but the birds just circled the building a couple of times and returned. They’d tried to send her patronus messages but that hadn’t worked either.
Finn had even contacted Maz, the old witch who ran the famous Takodana Castle, a Divination parlor at Diagon Alley… but she’d just looked enigmatically at them and told them that Rey was lost at the moment but she would get to where she needed to be. That her belonging was not in the past but with someone who could still come back for her. The encounter had left both Finn and Poe more confused than before, but given them no usable clues to Rey’s whereabouts.
Where Rey was, was possibly unplottable and probably outside the wizarding world. Poe had tried to consider that they weren’t able to reach Rey because she might not even be alive for them to reach but Finn had shut that train of thought right down. Rey was alive… he could feel it. And after staring at Finn with a weird and indescribable expression for about a minute, Poe had just nodded and never brought it up again. Though Poe was a friend of Rey’s and had known her for almost a decade now, Finn was definitely closer to her… had been so since their first day at Hogwarts.
Rey’s childhood before she was brought into the wizarding world at the age of 11, had left deep-set trauma in the young auror and caused her to be ever so cautious, never show her real emotions and always keep a distance. People who didn’t know her well enough would never be able to see past the sunny personality and smiling face to see that they never really knew her well enough or that while the lips smiled widely, her eyes seldom joined in.
Finn had been one of the people who could see beneath the happy exterior Rey maintained because they’d both been orphans who’d had no idea that their belonging was in a different world till they’d both gotten their respective Hogwarts letters. Finn had been Rey’s first and best friend in the wizarding world.
They’d been through thick and thin, dealt with studies and pranks, crushes and enemies, dreamy fourth year Gryffindor quidditch captains named Poe Dameron and vile fifth year Slytherins named Kylo Ren who’d turned into evil potion masters working for Snoke by the time Rey and Finn were in fifth year themselves. Seven years of Hogwarts and then one more year in auror training before joining the Ministry and serving as aurors for two years together. Finn thought he’d known everything there was to know about Rey… and he would’ve been correct until the last year.
Over the past year, Rey had become increasingly distant and secretive. Mad Eye Moody would’ve been proud of her ‘constant vigilance’ mode which made her jumpy, anxious and downright paranoid. Though Finn knew she was hiding something from him, he’d held back, thinking Rey would talk about it when she was ready… but war didn’t happen on anyone’s schedule and the emergence of the news of Snoke’s death at Rey’s hands, Palpatine coming back and having been Snoke all along… sort of put the brakes on any personal conversations for a while. And then, without a word, Rey had gone after Palpatine by herself.
The effects of Palpatine’s death were felt all across the various countries of the wizarding world before Rey had shown up, looking battered and exhausted. Poe had made his usual joke in bad taste… that she’d looked like death warmed over but Rey, who usually smiled at least out of politeness had just turned stony faced at that and practically shut down afterwards. And then, she’d disappeared without a trace.
While Finn and Poe were going wild searching for Rey, Rose had another idea… she’d gone straight to Leia Organa-Solo, the erstwhile leader of the Resistance who’d been admitted to St. Mungo’s after some long term spell damage and found the older witch as possibly no one had ever seen before. Leia Organa, the silk covered steel backbone of the Resistance, the strongest woman Rose Tico knew and one of the strongest Force sensitives the wizarding world knew too… was a broken witch. Waves of despair and heartbreak literally flooded the young empath, and Rose felt her breath almost stolen away by the strength of Leia’s grief.
In the wake of the Resistance winning the war and freeing the wizarding world from its decades long oppression from the evil Palpatine, the entire community was in a jubilant, celebratory mood… except the core of the Resistance. Finn was worrying himself into the ground about Rey, Poe reluctantly followed his friend around trying to help and here was Leia herself, almost a broken person. She’d lost her husband earlier at the hands of Kylo Ren, who Rose had had no idea then, was her son… then she’d lost her twin brother too. But even then, the older witch hadn’t so much as flinched. But now, something had happened to make her lose control… Leia now just looked old, sad and weak. And the empath in Rose could not stand by idly and watch the witch she’d looked up to as her mentor, fade away under her grief.
Rose had come to ask Leia about Rey and whether the older witch knew anything about where she might be, but now, she stayed to make sure Leia was able to weather the grief and sadness she was feeling because of whatever had happened.
Rose wasn’t to know until later, that both Rey’s disappearance and Leia’s condition was because of the same person… one man with two names, a legacy that had pulled him in two opposite directions – Benjamin Organa-Solo, also known as Kylo Ren.
The Rey that sat in the empty room staring at the ancient mirror might have been crying at the sight it showed her but the Rey in the vision couldn’t have been happier… her face literally glowed with contentment and love. She was not the scrawny little scavenger anymore… her frame had filled out with years of care and happiness. But the expression in her eyes, that was what had made the Rey outside the mirror cry out in pain when she’d first seen it… the one in the vision had no qualms expressing her love and affection for her family. She knew she was wanted, needed and loved. That Rey knew she belonged… that she wasn’t alone.
The mirror of Erised showed one their deepest desire. Many had fallen into its thrall and gone mad because their deepest desire was for an impossibility but the mirror wasn’t one to care. The mirror showed you what your heart wanted the most uncaring of what the images did to that very same heart.
Rey had been sitting in front of the mirror of Erised, in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts since she’d left the post-victory celebrations. She didn’t know how many days had passed and she frankly didn’t care. Outside of the mirror’s lovely images of what her future could’ve been, what it should’ve been had the world and magic functioned with any justice, Rey didn’t really care what was happening. The images changed… sometimes it was just her and Ben, sometimes the children laughed and played around them and some other times Leia, Luke and Han were part of the happy visions.
In there at least, she was happy… she was complete, she had her family, the way they were meant to be. Out here in reality, none of that was true. She was alone, half of her soul dead and gone, the dream of family that the Force had showed her earlier would never come true now and nothing was anywhere close to what it should have been.
In some back corner of her mind, Rey knew that her friends would be searching for her… that Leia and the Resistance would need her around to help rebuild after the war. But for once, all Rey wanted was to be selfish and think only of herself. Ever since joining the Resistance, Rey had been single-minded in her dedication to the cause. She’d boxed up all her emotions, her wants and needs in the face of the war between the First Order and the Resistance. Focusing on what she was fighting for, what the Resistance hoped to achieve and what could happen after the war was won, had kept her going through the year between Snoke’s death and her flight to Exegol and the final stand down with Palpatine.
Every time the force had tried to bond Kylo and her, Rey had resolutely held on to her beliefs that what she was doing was right and for the good of the wizarding world. She’d held on to the tiniest bit of hope that maybe Kylo could turn to the light, for his mother if not for her, and help them win the war against evil. For a whole year, she’d stayed mute and emotionless in front of Kylo, who’d been raging at times and broken at others… She’d pushed aside her bondmate, her dyad, the person she shared half her soul with… she’d shut him down because she’d known she was working for the betterment of the wizarding world, or at least she’d thought so.
With Kylo gone after the confrontation with Palpatine, the memory of every single time she’d rebuffed him, tried to shut the connection down, turned her back on Kylo both literally and metaphorically, had stabbed at her heart like a dagger of ice, shredding her from the inside and leaving her soul akin to a frozen tundra… cold and desolate. Her only comfort had been memories of the few moments she’d spent with him, both of them happy and free and smiling at last. She’d guarded them jealously lest she forget anything, even the minutest detail… right from the gorgeousness of his smile to the way the thin waffle knit black sweater had felt under her fingertips.
Now, with said sweater draped over her back and shoulders, positioned to simulate as if the person who should be wearing it had pressed himself up against her back, Rey could almost let herself believe the vision in the mirror. She didn’t dare to remove her eyes from the image lest her eyes catch, even by mistake, on to the reality of her solitude.
Someday… someday she might find the strength to look away from the mirror, to get on with her life… to help others rebuild and regain what they’d lost. But today, was not that day. And maybe that day might not come for a while. Rey knew she would find it in herself to live and exist outside of this beloved fantasy that played out in front of her, but for now, her heart hurt unbearably and this was the only balm that even started to soothe the ragged, jagged pieces of her soul left behind when Ben Solo had been snatched so cruelly from her.
Rey would live, she would persevere… she knew all about waiting and adapting. But for now, she could drown herself in the feeling of boundless love and safety that the Rey in the mirror of Erised felt, and hope that at least some version of her in all the universes got to live with that her entire life.