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It was difficult at first. Trying to get used to him being… around. And in such close proximity to everyone on base. It worried Poe constantly.
It wasn’t easy for Poe to understand exactly why Rey had brought him back with her after everything that happened; after the fall of the First and Final Order. And while it was a hard pill to swallow, both Finn and Poe had reluctantly agreed to Rey’s wishes… To keep him on base with everyone under a careful, watchful eye.
And watch him he did. Very closely.
While he looked physically the same, there was something odd, something strange and completely different about him. He wasn’t so rigid as he had appeared so many times before. Seeing him without the mask was a shock to not only Poe himself but to everyone else around him. He took it all in stride with a hint of something shy.
It was obvious that he didn’t want to be in the spotlight. With the way that he tried to make himself somehow seem smaller, and given the size of him that was a difficult task itself. He hunched over and tried to avoid being directly in conversation amongst others. And really, the only time he seemed to light up was whenever he was around Rey… which Poe found very interesting.
There wasn’t anything official about it but Poe had seen hints of it here and there. It wasn’t that they held hands or made public displays of affection but it was more so the private and discreet details.
It was like there was a gravitational pull that no one else felt apart from the two of them. They were always next to one another and whenever they weren’t, however rare that was, it felt almost as if they were constantly searching for each other.
No one talked about it but Poe saw the soft look in Ben’s eyes whenever he stared at Rey. The way the corners of his lips would twitch slightly upwards whenever she laughed at something. And, when Poe thinks they figured no one was watching them, he saw the way their hands would touch gently, fingers curling against the others as if they wanted to hold but never did.
Poe once asked Finn if Rey ever told him anything about what was going on between her and Ben to which he only responded with a shrug.
It seemed that, as the days went by, everyone accepted Ben more and more. Even Rose and Finn, who at first were very adamant against having him on base, also shortly soon afterward appeared to become very close friends with the tall, melancholy giant.
Poe hears all about the apologies Ben gives to Rose and Finn. It makes it harder to hate him.
Consequently, with all of this welcoming going around slowly to the former leader of the First Order, it was only a matter of time before Poe opened himself up to the possibility of being okay with Ben there.
And it happened the day Poe rounded a corner one early morning to find Ben standing there by himself, staring up at the Millennium Falcon with a vague expression on his face, arms tightly crossed against his chest. As Poe got closer, he realized that it wasn’t vague at all. It was sorrowful.
“Hey, man,” Poe says, not realizing that he may have snapped him from a busy train of thoughts. He could tell that he had slightly startled Ben when he turned his head to face him. He nodded in response.
He turned to look back at the Falcon. So Poe did the same, standing beside him with a distance of a couple of feet between them. For no particular reason… well, just apart from that he always hated standing right next to him with their significant height difference.
(In the years to come, he would slowly edge closer to him without even realizing it.)
“Rey’s heading out today with Chewie to hopefully find us a suitable place…,” Poe said as if Ben wasn’t more than likely already aware of that fact. To which Ben didn’t mention his knowledge of it but he could tell that Rey had already let him know by the way he closed his eyes briefly as if there was a burden there. This wouldn’t be easy for him being so far away from her and Poe suddenly felt… sympathetic?
As a precaution, Ben was not allowed to go with Rey and Chewie, regardless of her protests for it. It came to the final decision that he would stay on the Resistance base with everyone taking shifts watching him, becoming more and more liberal to his freedom to do certain things.
“She’ll find it soon,” he told Poe, assuring both of them with the confidence in his tone alone.
The sympathy made it’s way straight to Poe’s heart as he took a single step closer to Ben, turning to face him. Scratching at the back of his neck, a nervous habit of Poe’s, he tells him the truth. “Look, man, I think it would have been … okay sending you with them but not everyone seemed to be on the same page…” he trails off.
Ben shakes his head, dropping his arms to his sides, turning his body to face Poe completely, “I understand.”
Poe’s hand drops from his neck as he nods.
“And, while I have you,” Ben adds, “I really wanted to just… apologize. And thank you. Directly.”
Poe’s taken by surprise and rendered speechless for a moment with the deep sincerity he heard in his voice. When he talks, he means every word. “I really appreciate that.”
He watches as Ben glances back up to the Falcon and scrutinizes him. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all… Maybe Rey saw something that everyone else couldn’t.
“Do you miss him?” Poe blurts out loud.
There is a significant pause and Poe thinks he might have maybe brought it up too soon although it wasn’t recent.
Without taking his eyes off the ship, he speaks in earnest. “I wish I had listened to him. And I will always regret it.”
The heaviness of his words are accompanied by silence as they both remember the famous smuggler before they both hear a feminine voice call out Ben’s name.
The pair of them whip their heads around at the same time as they notice Rey walking up to them. “Hey Poe,” she adds as if just noticing him. She looks extremely concerned as she stares up at Ben with a loaded expression and nervous eyes. “Is everything alright?” she whispers to Ben.
Poe instantly feels like he is intruding as he witnesses first hand the first public display of affection Ben takes as he wraps his arms around Rey tightly, bending over to do so. Her arms go up around his neck as she holds him tightly to herself.
Deciding it best to just quietly walk away from them, Poe heads in an entirely different direction to give them space. And while it’s still very early and there is no one around, he decides to keep an eye out for anyone heading their way.
But he can’t help himself.
Poe turns one last time out of curiosity and what he sees doesn’t surprise him in the slightest.
They break away only to a certain extent just for Ben to say something before leaning in and kissing her. Rey responds to it easily, pushing up on her toes to meet him halfway.
With that, Poe turns back around with a gentle smile on his face.
*
The first couple of days, he’s absolutely miserable without her and he doesn’t even bother concealing it.
Poe helps by taking Ben over to the command center by giving him Leia’s things. And talking to him about how she was when she was General. All the funny details made Ben smile and to Poe’s extreme delight, he even got a laugh from the brooding male. In return, Ben lets him know that Leia thinks both Poe and Finn are doing a brilliant job together.
Rose helps by bringing him to the maintenance hangar and appreciates how well he listens to her. She discovers early on that he is very knowledgeable and can actually really use his help. She keeps him busy by giving him tasks to help the upkeep of their fleet. He gets along with everyone nicely.
Finn helps by allowing Ben to talk to Rey via the comlink in the command center. After he talks to Rey about any developments, Finn hands off the device to Ben and walks over to the corner of the room, pretending to be very busy with organizing something. Ben talks in hushed tones to Rey which makes it very hard to hear but Finn’s curiosity gets the better of him and he strains to hear some of it. Finn knew all about what Poe saw but he wanted to hear it for himself.
Their calls always begin with a shy hello and end with a promise and a bittersweet goodbye.
*
When Lando arrives to visit, Ben knows he can’t hide forever from his uncle.
Upon landfall, Ben walks up to the crowd around Lando. When he sees Ben he looks him up and down. Then, with a smirk, Lando shakes his head, “Well, look at you. It’s been a while, kid.”
They walk around the base without a chaperone at Lando’s request. It’s hard to talk about the memories of his mother and father but when Lando hugs him, Ben finds himself quickly wrapping his arms in return. Standing there, Ben can feel hot tears prickling behind his closed eyes. “It’s going to be okay,” Lando whispers in his ear. “You’re on the right path.”
Ben spends the entire time with his uncle during his visit. When it’s time for him to depart for Bespin, Ben finds it even harder to say goodbye. Lando’s presence was comforting in many ways. Hearing all the stories about his parents made it feel as if they were still there somehow.
The pain of missing them hits even harder when he watches Lando’s ship take off.
He’s alone again.
That night he finds it difficult to fall asleep, the restlessness of his mind driving him insane.
He feels a familiar, gentle hand circling around his waist. He turns around quickly, his heart pounding. There, lying beside him in his small bunk, he sees Rey with a small smile on her face, holding up a finger to her lips as if to tell him to stay quiet.
His eyes roam her face and he wishes she were actually there with him. Rey nods in understanding, reading his thoughts.
She looks so tired.
I miss you.
I miss you, too.
He wraps her into his arms, thankful for the force allowing them this moment. His eyes shutter closed when he feels her hand snake to the back of his head, running through his dark hair and leaving soft scratches in its wake.
He doesn’t know when he falls asleep but when he wakes up in the morning, she’s gone.
*
Rose is walking with Ben toward the maintenance hangar one bright afternoon after their lunch break. After disposing of their trash, she is about to brief him on a project they’re about to walk back into and what she preferred his role in it to be when they pass Jannah walking inside the dining area with a large group of children.
Their eager eyes lock on Ben’s tall figure as they start breaking away, one-by-one, from Jannah on their walk inside for lunch and surround him instead.
They’re all talking at once and Rose can’t help but laugh as one of the girls wraps her little arms around Ben’s leg. Eyes wide, Ben holds up his hands in front of him as he reminds them to relax in a gentle but firm tone.
Jannah finds Rose and stands next to her, both of them shaking their heads in amusement. “Well, this is something you never thought you’d see, right?” Rose asks her rhetorically.
“They still call him Kylo,” Jannah admits. “I’ve told them countless times not to—” she’s cut off just as one of them screams out his former name.
Everyone around them seems to look over at this and some of the adults shudder with disgust. Others continue to watch with piqued interest.
“Hey, relax, relax,” he shushes and soothes, kneeling down to their height to come face to face with them. Suddenly at their height, they give him a little space and calm down to a degree. “Please call me Ben,” he tells them, shaking one of the children’s outstretched hands.
In doing so, the child exclaims to their friend right beside them, “Oh, my gods! He shook my hand!”
With a smile on his face, he lets out a chuckle as he turns his head to talk to a little girl who walked up to him shyly asking him if he had a girlfriend. “Mina,” a girl next to her gasped and whispered, “you can’t just ask him if he has a girlfriend!”
Then, simultaneously, another one of them says, “When I grow up, I wanna be just like you!” and Ben’s shoulders sagged a little.
“Maybe not the best idea…” he says then gets interrupted.
“I wanna be a great Jedi! Like Rey!”
“Ooh, me too!”
A chorus of them starts to agree and Ben nods his head with them. “You know… if you all listen to what Ms. Jannah tells you and behave, you’ll make the perfect Jedi student. And maybe Rey will teach you all one day.” When he starts to feel his knees burning from the position he’s in, he stands back up and looks up to Rose and Jannah who are both shrugging at him.
“What about you? Can you teach us?” one of them tugs at his leg.
“Focus first on your current studies and we’ll see,” he says, hoping not to give any false hope to the kid.
“Sorry about that… thank you for indulging them, Ben,” Jannah tells him kindly, rounding up the kids again and leading them inside for the lunch break, little hands waving at Ben. He waves back lightly.
He goes to stand next to Rose to start their walk back to the hangar but instead, he freezes as he feels the sudden urge, the need to search the area for…
Rey.
At first, he can’t be sure if she’s really there or if it’s the force playing a huge game with them. She’s a good distance away from him but she’s standing there, looking towards him, with a giant smile on her face. He’s rooted in place, unable to move his legs as he stares back at her. When someone passes by her, he watches them acknowledge Rey and she says something to them in return.
He takes off, running over to her.
He doesn’t care who sees it when he wraps his arms around her, sweeping her up off her feet and swinging her around in circles.
He relishes in the joy of her warm laughter in his ear.
When he puts her back on the ground, she’s going off about the planet her and Chewie found with help from Luke’s advice through the force. “It’s beautiful and it’s full of so many greens and blues, Ben! I think everyone will love it. It’ll suit them all nicely, it’s got access to—”
He crashes his lips onto hers and she lets out a small high-pitched whine before completely giving in to the kiss.
There’s a moment when he reaches up to place his hands in her hair and on her neck where he doesn’t think he could ever part from her again for so long. It felt like years had passed. Ben deepens the kiss and she responds with the same enthusiasm.
It feels surreal. Him being able to hold her like this. The way he’d always dreamed of.
“Hey, guys,” he hears someone say nearby and Ben pulls away reluctantly from Rey but never letting go completely. They both look to the sound of Poe’s voice as he’s walking by them with a smirk on his face, “maybe save it for later?”
Finn is trailing just behind Poe with a similar expression on his face, laughing as he walks by.
Ben nods and blushes as he realizes just what he’d done. Rey’s hand reaches up to cup his cheek to turn him toward her once again. Looking down at her, he sees the heat in her eyes. The burning adoration she has for him. He hopes she knows exactly how much he adores her too.
“So, the kids really seem to like you,” she lightly laughs.
“Yeah,” he reaches a hand up to his hair to brush it back, chuckling with her. “I have no idea why.”
A stray strand of hair falls back into his face and this time Rey is reaching to push it back. She tilts her head as she finds his eyes again and whispers to him, “I know why.” Then she turns faux-serious as she jokes, “Although, I have to say I’m a little upset you never told those girls you had a girlfriend.”
His head falls back as he lets out a bark of laughter. Rey snuggles closer to his chest.
“Next time, I’ll let them know,” he promises with a peck on her lips. He grimaces as he thinks of something when he pulls back. “I may have let them believe you might teach them the ever-amazing ways of the Jedi,” he jests.
“I heard,” she snorts. “I’m not exactly sure if I could do it by myself though…”
Rey can feel the moment his joy turns into distress. Swallowing, Ben turns completely serious. “You know they would never let me…” he trails off, shaking his head. “I could never.”
She reaches down to twine her fingers through his as she grounds him back to her. “You can. You will. Don’t worry, you’ll see,” she teases as if she’d seen some vision he isn’t privy to.
He leaves it at that. And, as much as he doesn’t want to, Ben untangles himself from Rey as he remembers he needs to get back to work. When he tells her that, Rey scrunches her nose at him. “You’re working maintenance on our fleet? You… Really?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” he rolls his eyes.
“Oh, no, it’s just… interesting,” she teases once more before she leaves him to it.
He watches on fondly as she walks away from him.
*
Later on that night, Rey slips into Ben’s room without anyone noticing and she crawls into bed with him.
She tells him everything that happened while she was away and he listens intently with heavy-lidded eyes. When she asks him if anything happened while she was gone, he can’t think of a single thing, instead choosing to her kiss her in the privacy of the four walls around them.
He touches her as if she were a sacred thing, something to worship. And he does worship her. The way he touches her that night, Rey elicits the unholiest of sounds, ones she didn’t even know she was capable of making.
She stops him when it gets to be too much to handle all at once with a timid hand on his bare chest. From above her, he stares into her eyes, waiting for her. He’s understanding, patient, and gentle with her. She trusts him with her entire life.
“Ben,” she whispers without the need to. She doesn’t want to ruin this fragile moment between them, “can I show you something?”
He only nods. Through the force, through their dyad, Rey shuts her eyes, keeping her hand on him as she focuses on a vision she’d seen long ago. She prays that the force will allow her to show Ben.
Then—
The warmth hits from the suns setting in the distance, beyond the horizon. There are sounds of children’s laughter, echoing as it shows two: a brunette boy and a raven-haired girl. The boy slightly older than the girl. They’re chasing each other in a field full of flowers towards the fading light. There’s a feminine voice calling out for someone. It settles in. It’s Rey’s voice as she sighs happily, “Ben.” A tall figure appears as they stride ahead and it’s Ben. He turns to walk backward, grinning at Rey, then rushes over to catch the little girl as she giggles when he pecks kisses all over her face. Setting her down, he ruffles the little boy’s hair and kneels down to him.
The focus shifts and from the same point of view, there is yet another. A baby swaddled in what is evident to be Rey’s arms. She holds the baby tightly as they sleep soundly before glancing back up to see Ben there, closer now. “I love you,” he tells her before looking down at the baby in her arms.
It fades.
Rey feels Ben’s thumb brushing away the tear that escaped her before she opens up her eyes. “Is that what you saw…” he chokes out, “when we touched hands?”
She nods. “I don’t know if it’s meant to happen any longer but… You saw something too.”
He shakes his head, “I could only see your past. Nothing that far ahead.”
With his silence, she thinks this might not be something he had wanted to see. Maybe not like this. Or ever. And she begins to shy away, letting her limp hand drop to her side as she turns away. “Hey,” he quickly whispers, bending his head even closer to her. He kisses her cheek and places his forehead to her temple. “I do love you… so much. I’m sorry if that wasn’t already apparent. I should’ve maybe told you soon—”
She thinks her heart could physically burst from the joy she feels. It practically radiates off her as she turns to kiss him, cutting him off mid confession.
“I have loved you for so long, Ben,” Rey admits when she breaks the kiss.
They kiss deeply the entire night; he kisses the gasps she lets out in heated moments as she kisses the deep groan he emits when she leaves a particularly dark mark on his neck with her mouth.
When blinding white light flashes behind her closed eyes, she starts to scream out his name but it gets muffled by Ben’s mouth over her own. She comes down from a high unlike any other and she feels the heat of Ben’s body on hers as he drops his forehead down to her neck. She can hear him in her ear as he’s breathing hard and heavy when she suddenly feels him tense up.
Finding the little remaining strength she has, she runs a hand through his soft, dark hair. His arms shake around her as he lets go and drops his dead weight on top of her.
She finds that she loves the feeling.
When he moves to lay beside her, he gathers her up in his arms, kissing her neck. “I love you,” he whispers tiredly.
They fall asleep to the comfort of knowing that they’ll both be there when they wake up.
*
It turned out that Ben had been wrong all along. And, to not much surprise, Rey was right.
They would find themselves following the vision she had. Even more so, they found themselves teaching others the way of the Force—they never taught the ways of the Jedi or Sith. They taught within a gray area, somewhere in the middle. Where both sides could meet in harmony.
Whatever doubts he had before, all vanished when Rey took his hand.
She pulled him along with her without even needing to, knowing that he would always follow her wherever she went.
One thing that always remained evident to Ben Solo was only this: so long as he was with Rey, he would always be on the right path.