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bright boy, i can help you
if you let me take your hand,
bring you right to promise land,
bring you right to promise…
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Rey climbed into the escape pod, set the controls, and sailed off towards the Supremacy. Despite Luke’s - and then Chewie’s - pleas for her to reconsider, she set forth on her plan without a second thought. Even if it had been Finn who begged her to stay, she would have left all the same. The Force had shown her the way forward, and she was following the path it set. She didn’t know exactly where it would lead to, but what she did know was that no one else mattered. No one but her and Ben.
The whole journey, she daydreamt about what might happen when she got there. How would he look? Would he be as happy to see her as she was to see him? She’d met Kylo Ren, who she didn’t much care for, but what would it be like to meet Ben?
When she dropped into moments of panic, she drew herself out of them by reminding herself why she’d decided to go to him in the first place. He needs me. He needs someone to help him find the light again. He needs someone to believe in him. I believe in him.
Rey knew how badly he needed to hear that. She let her mind wander off again as she imagined how it would feel to say it to him in person.
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bright boy, i could love you
if you let me be your wife,
love you so for all my life,
love you so for all my…
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As she landed and Ben’s face came into view, she looked at him in wonder, unable to stop herself from smiling just a little as she saw him there in front of her. She’d seen versions of him in dreams and through the bond many times over the past weeks, and now she was finally gazing upon the real thing. Though he maintained a straight face to keep up appearances in front of the storm troopers beside him, there was an undeniable glimmer in his eye. Rey could have sworn she could feel his delight through the bond, though his outward composure remained entirely intact. When he stepped aside to let the storm troopers cuff her, she went along with it willingly. Ben wasn’t going to let anyone harm her. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
Once they were on the elevator and starting their ascension to Snoke’s throne, she felt a twinge of doubt begin to creep up from the pit of her stomach, the confidence she’d felt just moments ago wavering as it all started to become real. She turned to look at him for reassurance and felt the worries dissipate immediately. That little bit of light in his eyes reminded her that it was Ben she was standing with, the fragile but beautiful Ben she’d somehow coaxed out from deep within Kylo Ren’s closely guarded core, and that her presence was going to give him the strength he needed to fully break through and reclaim himself.
She stepped closer to him as she told him what she’d seen when they touched hands, or at least the most urgent pieces of it: that he would turn against Snoke and back to the light, with her assistance. His retort was not the response she’d hoped for, but it didn’t discourage her. Ben Solo was the galaxy’s only hope, and there was no one alive or dead who could convince her that he would let her down - not even Ben himself.
Rey’s head spun as she stood before him, the silence that had fallen between them giving her thoughts room to bounce off in every direction. Mostly, she thought of what would come after this. His rejection of the dark side was only the first piece of the future she’d seen for him, the scope of which had been much larger than she let on. As soon as she had the vision, Rey had become drunk on the idea of it coming true, deciding she’d do whatever it took to make it happen. It wasn’t just the future of the galaxy that hinged upon Ben Solo, but her own as well. He was her future. They belonged together, her and Ben, and if things went as she’d seen, they’d be together when all was said and done. All the years she spent longing for her family, scratching tally marks on the wall to count the days, had been leading her to this moment: the family she was destined to find was standing in front of her now, on that elevator.
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waiting by the water,
you return with eyes cast down
bright boy, what has made you frown?
bright boy, what has made you…
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With a saber strike through the head, the last member of the Praetorian Guard collapsed behind Ben, wisps of smoke rising from the hole in its helmet. The air around them was heavy with ash and heat, but it was unclear whether the true source of that heat was the smoldering debris or the energy between them, electric and wild and wanting. Rey’s heart was full - overflowing, really - as she looked at Ben, high off the thrill of the battle and alive with love from head to toe. She was so proud of him, and deeply in awe of him. His stare, locked into hers, tugged at something deep within her, a new piece of her she couldn’t identify. She tried and failed to determine what it was.
Suddenly, she remembered there was a world that existed outside of that room, and her thoughts turned to the embattled Resistance, crumbling under First Order fire. She called out for Ben’s help, and when she heard no response, she turned around to check on him, worried he might have fallen unconscious from some injury she hadn’t noticed. When she realized he was willfully ignoring her, staring at the half-empty throne with a mix of emotion she couldn’t quite read, her heart sank. Something wasn’t right.
As he started asking her to tear down the old world with him, to abandon everything she’d come to love so they could build something new together out of the rubble, the last traces of the joy that had enveloped her just moments prior disappeared, a grand sense of doom immediately taking its place.
“Don’t do this, Ben,” she pleaded, barely able to get the words out. “Please don’t go this way.”
She wondered if there was anything she could say to change his mind and remind him of who he truly was. Without Snoke there to manipulate him, Ben had no one to answer to but himself. He was free now. But freedom didn’t seem to be enough.
He offered her his hand, and she felt herself split in two, probably not much different from the way he was feeling. Half of her wanted to leap forward and take it, binding herself to him like she’d seen in her vision, but the other half knew it wasn’t Ben’s offer she would be accepting. Deciding which half to listen to was one of the hardest choices she’d ever made. Hesitantly, with doubt forcing a tremble into her hand, she reached out towards him and chose the lightsaber instead.
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waiting by the water,
sun is setting by the sea
bright boy, please return to me,
bright boy, please return to…
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She'd had a chance to take his life on the Supremacy, when she woke up after the blast and discovered he had yet to regain consciousness, but couldn't bring herself to do it. When the opportunity presented itself again, a stroke of luck at the end of a battle she had been certain she was about to lose, she took it. In the same instant that she secured Kylo Ren's death, impaling him with his own lightsaber, she was struck by the weight of another: Leia. Suddenly, she understood what had just happened. What she thought to be a moment of weakness on his part had actually been a moment of strength, Ren lifting his head above water just enough to hear his mother's loving call, her final act. Leia had used up the last of her energy to reach out to her son and try to save him, and Rey had used that very same moment to kill him.
As Kylo Ren sat there slumped against the wreckage of the Death Star, breath growing weaker with every exhale, Rey looked down at him, heart and mind racing with grief, shock, and guilt. Defeated and defenseless, his venomous exterior had fallen away, and what remained was a sad boy, longing for his mother, thinking of how greatly he had failed.
In the span of a moment, Rey saw the history between them flash before her eyes. The pain and fear she discovered in him in the interrogation room when they first met; their long talks on Ach-to in the early days of the bond, when she began to realize there was far more to him than she previously thought; the way he’d listen to her, comfort her, help her through everything she was going through, and her him; the future she saw when their fingers touched, the blurry but unmistakeable outline of a life well beyond the boundaries of anything she’d ever imagined for herself, a peaceful one full of companionship, understanding, and love; the heartbreak she felt when she failed to bring him back into the light after they defeated Snoke, the future she’d come there to fight for slipping through her fingers the very second she thought she had it in her grasp; the game of cat and mouse they’d been playing ever since, her heart aching every time she had to look into the lifeless eyes she’d seen light in not too long ago.
She wasn’t sure which of her wild emotions led her to bend down and rest her hand over his heart. Perhaps it was the guilt, or an act of compassion for Leia, or perhaps she couldn’t bear seeing Ben again, even the smallest glimpse of him, and thinking it might be the last time she ever would. Whatever it was, she suddenly found herself drawing up her own life force and pouring it into him. This was only the second time she’d tried healing through the Force like this, and she wasn’t sure it would work on wounds so grave. But as the moments passed, she could feel his skin knitting itself closed where the lightsaber wound had been, and the scar on his face fading away, and, if she wasn’t imagining it, the darkness that pooled within his chest evaporating beneath her fingers.
When she opened her eyes and returned to the present moment, she realized she’d started crying at some point along the way, the tears warm and distinct on her cheeks against the ocean spray that blanketed her. She knew she had just saved someone, but she wasn't sure who that person was. His stare, intense under the mix of confusion and amazement that hung on his face, gave no clues either way.
It occurred to Rey that this was the first time she’d touched him since Ach-to, save for the time they collided during their battle against the Guard. Though she’d just thought about it minutes prior, she let her mind wander back to Ach-to again as her hand rested on him, this time opening the memory up for him to see. She played through it all piece by piece, sharing how fond she grew of Ben back then and how she would think about him long after their conversations ended, wondering if they would ever have a chance to spend time together face to face like they did through their bond. She felt he was the only person in the galaxy who actually understood her and probably ever would. Despite everything, that hadn’t changed.
As she finished with the memory of climbing into the Falcon’s escape pod, nearly bursting at the seams with belief in Ben Solo, she pulled her hand away, using it to wipe the tears off of her face; new ones quickly fell where the old had been. Revisiting that night brought those old feelings back to the surface, and they bloomed in her chest just as they did the first time she had them. Looking at him now, she simultaneously wished she’d reached out again sooner and wondered if it would have even made a difference. If it hadn't been enough back on the Supremacy, it probably wouldn’t have been enough in the days after. The present moment was a different story, though. She had him there in front of her, unarmed and intensely focused on everything she was thinking and feeling. Maybe it was worth telling him now, that thing she never had a chance to tell him back then.
Rey couldn’t find the words to say it aloud, her throat too tight with emotion to let any sound out, but she spoke it through the bond, which was more than she’d had a chance to do the first time around.
I still believe in you, Ben.
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bright boy, i can help you
if you let me take your hand,
bring you right to promise land,
bring you right to promise…
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A subtle twist in his face told her he heard her message, but he said nothing back, instead continuing to stare at her in stillness and silence.
His lack of response only made her tears come more quickly. She couldn’t stay here any longer looking at him like this, wondering if something was going to happen, wondering what Leia would want her to do now, wondering if he hated her for wounding him.
Rey focused her energy and managed hold the tears back long enough for her to get a few words out. “You were right,” she said, her voice shaky, but tender and honest. “I did want to take your hand. Ben’s hand.”
As soon as the last word left her mouth, she grabbed Luke’s lightsaber and took off, disappearing into the mist. It fell in line with something he knew quite well about Rey: she had a flair for dramatic exits.
He sat for a long while, thinking over everything that had just happened: his mother’s final message, Rey’s fatal blow, the selfless way she gave up some of her own life force to undo it, the blinding light it filled him with when she did. It left him with a clarity he hadn’t felt for many years, and as she took him through her memories and showed him the parts he missed the first time around - how hard she’d fought for him when no one else would, how she appreciated the parts of him no one else seemed to be able to see, or even cared to look for, how she willingly risked her life to go to him because she believed in him so much that she would take her chances with death to help him - he started to see everything for what it was. The dark side was a prison, a trap he’d been stuck in for far too long. His bond with Rey, their Dyad, was the meaning of everything. And the light, which encompassed him now, was where he was meant to be from the beginning.
When the cloudiness in his mind subsided and he finally felt like he had his bearings again, Ben Solo stood up.