Chapter Text
“You’re clear for landing. Welcome back, Rey.”
Rey hummed absent-mindedly and guided her ship to the Resistance loading bay. It had been a rough few days and with the trip to Tatooine now behind her, she was excited to unwind.
She looked down at her clothes, noting there was barely a section that was still white. Even her armband had sand caked around it, the grains rubbing against her skin. She may have lived on Jakku for her entire life, but that didn’t mean she was used to sand getting in every nook and cranny.
First things first: get the armband off, at the very least.
With a tug, Rey unravelled the thick material only to reveal more sand. Her lip twisted with annoyance as she rubbed away the sand. Just as she was about to get up and go about her day, she noticed small lines that were previously hidden. She would’ve missed it entirely if she wasn’t inspecting her arm after rubbing away the sand harder than needed.
Squinting, she brought it close to her face. Three lines. Maybe she scratched herself? No, even she knew that wasn’t it. The lines were too perfect, too evenly spaced.
She pursed her lips and immediately got up. She didn’t want to think of what else the lines reminded her.
Lost in the blue
They don't love me like you do
Standing in her ‘fresher with a towel wrapped around her torso, Rey silently exhaled through her nostrils and listened to the water dripping down the drain. Sonics were more convenient, but nothing could ever beat a real shower with fresh water streaming down one's body. It was small things like this that helped her through the day. She felt cleansed, which was better than the state she was in a few days ago. Showers took her mind off the mess that was beyond the refresher doors, and distracted her long enough to feel somewhat at peace.
In the solitary confines of the ‘fresher, Rey didn’t have to pretend for anyone.
For fifteen minutes a day, Rey was able to relax and admit the source of her unease: being with the Resistance.
She never saw eye to eye with Poe, but between getting a crash course on how to be a Jedi and running from planet to planet to avoid First Order search parties, Rey hadn’t had time to see how different she was from the rest of them. And how alone she was in their world, especially since everyone she would have spoken to was now gone.
The Resistance was celebrating for a long time, which was fair enough, but the whole galaxy was still in disarray. Leia Organa was gone. The New Republic was in tatters and as far she knew, no one who remained had an inkling of how to run a planet, much less a galaxy. All the officials perished after Hosnian Prime’s destruction. That was months ago, but with Palpatine’s resurgence, there were more important things than trying to reassemble a working government—like trying to survive when the First Order controlled all the remaining Core Worlds.
Now, with Palpatine gone, there was much rejoicing, but Rey had been greeted with celebrations when she arrived on Ajan Kloss and continued as she left for Tatooine. Even now, the Resistance was still going strong with drinks being passed around as if they were water.
It was jarring and it felt wrong, especially since no one knew what happened on Exegol, and if they did, they couldn’t fathom the heartache Rey experienced since then.
She was alone, and there was no way to change that.
Not long after she arrived on Ajan Kloss, Finn told her that he was Force sensitive.
Such news should have brought some sort of excitement from her—a smile, a gasp, or even a shriek, but instead, Rey merely stared at him. Her soul was too raw. She couldn’t conjure an ounce of happiness for him, for doing so felt wrong, like she was trivialising what she had with Ben.
Ben…
Oh, Ben.
Rey swallowed the thick lump in her throat and snapped one of her three hair ties she kept around her wrist. She snapped it again and again. When the stinging sensation in her eyes faded, she furiously rubbed the fogged up mirror with her palm. She couldn’t dwell on him. She mustn't. So many years of her life had already been wasted because she had been hung up on parents who were never coming back. She couldn’t do this again, not with him.
But it was useless. She hadn’t given herself a chance to really mourn what had happened—she forcibly filled her spare time either celebrating or carrying out ‘Jedi business’, as Poe eloquently put it.
With the hot shower already unwinding her tense shoulders and pulling down her defences, tears began to pool in her eyes and threatened to fall before she realised what was happening.
She stared at the distorted image of herself, eyes shining with unshed tears. Rey was tired and broken.
She didn’t think this would hurt, especially since she had gone through this before, but she was wrong. If anything, it hurt more knowing that they were a dyad in the Force.
A sob escaped Rey’s lips and that was all it took to unleash the floodgates.
Tears streamed down her face and her shoulders trembled. A finger hooked under one of her hair ties but she didn’t move to pull it. Instead, she threw her face into her hands, unable to stand the sight of herself, and cried until her eyes were sticky and swollen.
She needed another shower, and if she happened to cry again then the water would wash them away. No one would know about the breakdown she just had. No one would know of the emotional pain she had been dealing with.
It was for the best.
Those chills that I knew
They were nothing without you
Safely absconded in her room, Rey sat in her bunk, exhausted with eyes still tender from the hour she had spent in the fresher.
She stretched her arms above her head and her shirt sleeves rose over her shoulder, exposing her arm. With her eyes still glassy and head thick with emotion, she surveyed her surroundings but happened to look at her arm and froze. Lines, possibly ten, all neatly lined up without breaks, stretching across her skin. She rubbed at them with her thumb, heart rate picking up the harder she rubbed, but nothing happened. The marks weren’t raised and they didn’t smudge. They were just there.
She blinked repeatedly, not quite sure what to make of them.
Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe she needed sleep. Yes, that had to be it. There was no reason for lines to mysteriously appear on her skin. None at all.
But when the next day came, she couldn’t pretend to be surprised to see the lines still there. She counted them properly, and again for good measure.
Eleven. Eleven neat lines on her arm.
Rey rolled over and took the holopad from her bedside table, swiping the screen to bring up her calendar. She counted under her breath then fell back with her arms crossed over her eyes.
Eleven days had passed since Exegol.
She groaned and wished she hadn’t woken up.
It occurred to Rey that this could possibly be karma for what she had almost done on Tatooine.
It had been just a fancy of hers. After finding out her whole family—parents included, because being sold to Plutt on Jakku could never be considered the better option—were absolute garbage, she just wanted to be part of something better. She thought choosing one legacy name over another would satisfy her.
The moment she uttered the word ‘Skywalker’, her stomach curled and she knew it wasn’t right. This wasn’t the answer. The lady with the eopie hadn’t heard her yet, only tilting her head to the side and moving closer to her to hear her better.
“What did you say?” the woman asked, still pulling her eopie beside her.
“Rey. Just Rey,” Rey replied, clearing her throat.
The old lady continued on, brushing her off as if to say their brief conversation was merely to quench her curiosity, but insignificant at the end of the day. They were just names after all, the afterthought hitting her the moment the word ‘Skywalker’ left her lips—this planet had no use for family names. Like Jakku, Tatooine was one of slaves and broken souls beyond the reach and rule of Core Planet control.
Rey turned around once the woman passed on, expecting to see the ghostly figures of Luke and Leia, but she was mistaken. She was alone. Not even ghosts could keep her company forever, especially not in a place where she had no business staying.
She wasn’t a Skywalker and like hell was she going to claim the name Palpatine.
“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to,” Rey recounted. “It’s the only way to become what I was meant to be.” Rey stared up at the ceiling, hanging on the precipice between screaming and crying again. “How can I when you left me?” she mumbled.
Rey traced her lips with her fingertips, remembering the feel of his lips on hers—the way he surged forward and matched her eagerness with a hunger and desperation she never felt before. Her toes curled and her chest tightened from the memory alone: it was the first and last time she felt like she belonged somewhere with someone, only to have it immediately ripped away.
Destiny was cruel, but humans were even crueler.
It wasn’t until later that Rey realised how significant those marks were.
When Rey could no longer stave off the hunger clawing at her stomach, she dragged herself to the cafeteria only to be surprised when Rose slid into the seat across from her. She hadn’t expected to see anyone in the cafeteria this late at night.
“How are you doing?” Rose asked before Rey could get a word out. Rey admired Rose’s straightforwardness. If she had one more casual, superficial conversation, Rey was going to snap.
But that didn’t stop Rey from responding the same way she always did. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” Rose looked at her seriously. “Rey, I know we’re not close and this might be out of line, but you haven’t been fine since we destroyed Palpatine’s fleet.”
“Why would it be out of line?” Rey asked, that one detail sticking out like a sore thumb.
Rose was taken aback. “Well, because you’re you?” She let out a laugh of disbelief at how clueless Rey was about her reputation. “Rey, you’re the last Jedi. You took down Palpatine and Kylo Ren.” She paused for a beat, waiting for Rey to reply, and when she didn’t, Rose continued. “I thought you would be ecstatic like the boys are, but instead, you’re hiding away from the celebrations.”
“I’m not hiding!”
Rose fixed her with a raised brow and pointed at the chrono on the wall. “Really?” she drawled.
Slowly, Rey’s rigid demeanor melted away. There was no use arguing about something that Rose could clearly see. “When did you notice?”
“Probably the moment you came back to Ajan Kloss. I wanted to congratulate you, especially since I was so glad to see you were alive and well, but then I noticed that when people weren’t congratulating you, your face…dropped. You looked dejected, for lack of a better word.”
Rey let out a wet laugh, thickness having formed in her throat. “Leia died, Rose, and everyone is just partying? Sure, they’re celebrating her life but does anyone even know why she died? Really know?”
“She died protecting the ones she loved—”
“No, she did not.”
Stone cold silence hung between them, awkwardness growing by the second. Rey stared at the table, too scared to meet Rose’s eyes. There would be some distrust or judgement, especially of how Rey spoke out like that.
“Then what happened?” Rose asked gently. “You don’t need to tell me, but I can see it’s eating you up inside. Do you want me to get Finn instead? He wants to become a Jedi so badly, maybe you’d be more comfortable opening up to him—”
“Leia did it to distract Kylo so I could attack him,” Rey said, softly. She couldn’t admit to almost killing him—not him. “I can’t pretend to know or understand what their family life was like, but something went wrong. There’s something wrong with this world, Rose.”
For how could Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan, give up on her own son, but have unyielding faith in Rey, knowing she was a Palpatine the whole time? It didn’t make sense, which only made Rey think that something was seriously amiss. There was a sort of injustice, for everything she knew about Kylo—about Ben Solo—was that he was a Jedi in training, doing what he assumed his family wanted him to, only to be betrayed by the very people he had trusted.
She thought back to what Rose had said earlier—You took down Palpatine and Kylo Ren. The whole galaxy had no idea what transpired. Rose was living proof, along with Poe and his unwavering determination to destroy the First Order and Kylo Ren’s legacy.
Rey finally looked up from her hands and saw Rose frozen, half out of her seat, ready to get someone she thought would be more suitable for this conversation, but also ready to listen. “What do you know about Kylo Ren?”
Rose looked at her in confusion as she sat back down. “He was a Jedi Killer, wasn’t he? That’s what was broadcasted to the galaxy, wasn’t it? Kylo Ren, the Jedi Killer,” Rose repeated with a nod. “And it’s even more tragic that he fell to the dark side, knowing he was the child of Han Solo and General Organa.”
It was interesting how Rose put it—broadcasted to the galaxy. For someone who had dedicated his life to the ways of the Jedi, only to have his own uncle try to kill him in his sleep, Rey doubted Ben had been thinking straight enough to slaughter all his fellow classmates. Why would he? Of course, there was the possibility that he fell hard and fast to the dark side, but Rey knew Ben. They were a dyad in the Force, after all.
Something dark had happened that night at the Jedi Temple and had never been rectified. In a way, Rey could empathise with Ben. They were both naive and placed too much trust in the wrong people, not that either of them could have known. They trusted family and were let down by them.
“What happens if we find out that everything we knew about Kylo Ren was wrong? Or at least, that there was an extreme misunderstanding about why he fell to the dark side?” Instead of avoiding Rose’s face like before, Rey held her stare. This was important and it was the least she could do for him. And if it didn’t work out, then Rey would come clean about her lineage. It wasn’t fair for Ben to be misunderstood, even in death, while she remained unscathed with her hidden bloodline. It was the least she could do.
“Do you think he’s innocent?” Rose asked quietly, searching for something in Rey's eyes.
“Not completely innocent. After all, he became the Supreme Leader. It’s hard to have no blood on your hands at that point, but—”
“But we probably have just as much blood on our hands too,” Rose finished, her voice surprisingly somber.
“Rose?” Rey watched her carefully, hope growing in her chest.
“Finn was a stormtrooper who rebelled, which inspired Jannah and Company 77. How many more wanted to rebel but never had the courage or even a chance?”
“You’ve given this some thought.”
“Yeah.” Rose sighed. “Yeah, I have.”
This was more than Rey could have dreamed. When she woke up that morning, the last thing she expected was to have a heart to heart conversation with a key Resistance member and for them to agree that possibly, this whole war wasn’t as black and white as everyone was lead to believe.
It was nice not having to pretend for once, to have a genuine conversation without forced smiles and sore cheeks. She walked Rose to her quarters—spending time with Rose was like a breath of fresh air—and planned on going for a calming walk before retiring back to her own quarters.
As Rose bid her goodnight, Rey pulled her in for a hug, surprising herself and the small engineer, but she needed this. It was a relief and it felt like a huge burden was taken off Rey’s shoulders.
Rey didn’t want to let her go, but it had already gone longer than a standard hug and she didn’t want Rose to think that there was something wrong—more than what they had already discussed.
Begrudgingly, Rey loosened her hold and was about to let go when another line appeared on her arm before her eyes.
Rey remained still, staring at the new mark with disbelief.
Then she let go, almost pushing herself away from Rose as she furiously rubbed her arm.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked, watching the last Jedi rub her skin red.
“These marks,” Rey muttered. “These marks keep appearing.”
Rose had to physically stop Rey by grabbing her wrist. “What marks?”
“You don’t see these?” Rey gestured at her arm, the skin now a warm pink with dots of red under the surface. She ran her finger over the lines and pinched her skin, pulling it taut as if it would make it clearer for Rose to see.
Rose shook her head. “Rey, there’s nothing on your arm. Did you want me to get a medical droid to get you checked out?”
“No,” Rey said quickly. She pulled her arm away and returned to her side, trying her best to look cool and unaffected. “I got bitten by a bug a few days ago and I thought it healed. It’s probably just a phantom itchiness.” She offered Rose a weak smile before hurrying back to her room. She didn’t look back, too preoccupied by this new information.
Rey was willing to bet that the marks were only visible to her. She could try asking Finn if he could see them to eliminate the possibility of the marks being dyad-related, but Rey knew there was no point.
For every day that passed since Ben vanished from her life, a new line appeared on her arm.
The Force was keeping track of how long they were apart, which meant that there was a possibility of a reunion.
But there was also a possibility that this was a cruel joke on the Force’s part. Who knew, maybe the Force wanted to decorate Rey in millions of lines. Perhaps that was what she got for being a Palpatine, but that couldn’t be it—the Force worked in mysterious ways but always had a reason.
Even if there was a way to see Ben again, Rey had no idea how to find him.
After all, he was dead and part of the Force now, wasn’t he?
Rey was dreaming of her time on Ahch-To. More specifically, she found herself back in the sea cave, standing before a mirror that refused to show the answers she always wanted. As before, it was blank with blurred figures moving behind it.
Rey lifted her arm to the mirror and as before, the frost melted away.
She expected to see her reflection, but instead, Ben’s face looked back at her. He looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to make the first move.
“Ben?” Rey breathed, feeling breathless by the second. She tried reaching out for him, only to be blocked by the ice barrier.
It was cold—Rey could see the puffs of mist leave her lips—but her rapid heart rate made it feel like it was a million degrees. Her skin felt like it was on fire and as she dragged her fingers across the mirror-like surface, sections of it melted away, still leaving the couple cruelly divided.
Rey could touch Ben. She was allowed to feel his warm skin under her fingers, but bars of ice separated them.
He was imprisoned, or maybe she was the one who was trapped. Being forced to live with half her soul missing felt like a punishment crueler than any.
“Ben, please. Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me.” Rey knew she was muttering nonsense. She was keenly aware this was a dream, but as she felt her consciousness stir, she desperately grabbed onto the front of his sweater and pulled him close. She needed him, she needed to taste him again.
He was soft and sweet and bitter and brutal.
Ben devoured her, his tongue sliding over hers and consuming her will to live. He gently cradled the back of her head, and kept it in place. There was no escape from him, but Rey had no desire to move away. She pressed herself closer, the bars separating them digging against her body as a reminder that they were a broken dyad.
She was in ecstasy—she finally felt complete again—but tears rolled down her cheeks. Sobs built at the base of her throat and despite her efforts to keep them down, they fractured the kiss she was so desperately trying to hold on to.
Looking at him, there was sadness in his eyes, under layers of patience and expectation. Rey pressed their foreheads together and gazed into his eyes.
“Come back to me,” Ben said softly, his lips barely moving.
“What? But Ben, you’re—”
“Come back to me,” he repeated again, closing his eyes, unable to look at her anymore. “Be with me. Please.”
The monosyllable word was said with such pain and despair, it burned a hole in Rey’s memory. She nodded and took Ben’s hand in hers, gripping it tightly in hopes it would get him to look at her again.
His eyes remained shut.
“If there was a way to be with you again, I’d take it in a heartbeat,” Rey said, sincerity in her words as she snapped out of her dream.
This wasn’t a dream, despite being surrounded by a neverending blackness with white lines criss-crossing everywhere. Rey had never seen such a place, but it felt familiar at the same time. Not familiar in a comforting way, but she knew enough to know that she wouldn’t fall into the void below.
She felt tired, and her feet were sore, but she kept walking for reasons unknown. There was an empty determination, an undisclosed destination she was going towards which, logically, should confuse her, but she wasn’t confused. She just kept walking. A part of her had a feeling that she had been walking for ages, but that didn’t deter her from going forward.
This place was peculiar. A backdrop of space was around her, and she stood suspended on a white-lined pathway. There were other paths above and below her, the possibilities endless as far Rey could see. It should’ve felt overwhelming—to be in an absolutely unknown and foreign place—yet there wasn’t a drop of panic in her system.
It was peaceful. There was no need to be anywhere, no place to be, no one to please and follow. No lies, just endless space.
Eventually, Rey looked down at herself and was surprised to see the thin black sweater she had hidden under her mattress. She had been tempted to hide Ben’s clothes in the chest with the Jedi texts, but she knew that was more likely to be discovered. Hiding it under her bed allowed for quick retrieval whenever the loneliness got too much to bear—which was often.
Rey could pretend she was in Ben’s arms with his sweater hidden under her mattress.
But now was not the time to ruminate about nights more painful than Jakku.
Pinching the hem between her fingers, Rey pulled the sweater taught to analyse it, and realised her hands were not hers. No, these were much larger and softer than she was used to.
Rey held her hands close to her, rubbing her thumb and fingers together, before running her fingers over the palms and between the webs of her opposing hand. There was a section of thicker skin at the junction of her thumb and index finger, almost like a callus.
There was a large portal nearby, and as she started towards it, Rey suspected what she would see. With every step, her newfound hands roamed over her face, over every bump of a mole, to the scar running down the right side of her face—the place she knew she had once marked.
Standing in front of the portal, Rey saw herself as Ben Solo, one hand over his right cheek and the other tangled in his hair. Her fingers didn’t stop there. Both her hands drifted to her neck, gently ghosting over perfectly spaced lines that wrapped around her neck like a collar...or a noose.
Rey took a step closer to her reflection and ran her finger across her neck. While she had lines etched upon her arm, Ben had lines around his neck. Did he know about them?
She exhaled and any sound was sucked into a void, leaving nothing but the loud silence behind. There was nothing but her shallow breathing as she took another step forward until her nose almost touched the portal.
With the fingers of her left hand still against her neck, her other hand came up to drag her fingers across the surface.
It felt like she was on Ahch-To again, in that frigid cave, except it was warm here, and she was Ben Solo.
She blinked, wide-eyed, and so did he.
She was him.
She opened her mouth, and his voice left it.
“Stay here. I’ll come back for you.”
Rey’s eyes widened at the sound of his voice, the way certain words rolled off her tongue and sent shivers down her spine. They were so close, but still so far.
“I’ll come back, sweetheart. I promise.”
Her eyes softened and determination pierced her voice.
“I’ll come back, sweetheart. I promise,” she repeated, louder a second time. She would make him hear. She would make him remember, and he would wait for her, because she was coming for him.
Rey was going to find him, even if it killed her.
“I promise.”
And everyone else
They don't matter now
In a blink of an eye, Rey was back in her body, in her room, where she stood in front of her mirror with a pen in her hand. It took her a moment to regain her bearings, her head spinning from suddenly appearing back in her brightly-lit room.
Her eyes were drawn to her left arm, which was exposed as if presented to someone, with her hand curled into a fist.
Small dots were drawn along her forearm, in a seemingly random pattern.
Rey had no use for pens. Her writing was crude and she always found it uncomfortable to hold onto those thin metal sticks, so there was no way she had made those marks.
There was only one other person who could’ve.
“Ben,” Rey whispered, dropping the pen so she could gently caress her skin. The ink smudged, which meant that the marks were fresh.
Rey relaxed but immediately froze when she uncurled her hand. Her heart leapt and her throat painfully throbbed as she read the smudged writing on her palm.
When she was in Ben’s body, Ben was in hers. While Rey had looked around that peculiar world, Ben had left clues on how to find him.
Grabbing the pen again, she noticed that it was easier to hold this time. It felt natural and right the way the pen sat between her fingers.
She ghosted the pen’s tip over the smudged dots that started to resemble starry marks on her arm, careful not to accidentally draw any lines, no matter how faint they would be. The dots were in a random pattern, but they must have some significance. A constellation possibly? If it was a constellation, it would be one that was viewable from that world, which was more than what she had a day ago.
She was going to find her other half. Nothing else mattered. Everything became clearer with every nod of her head. The Resistance, the New Republic—there was no reason to stay, not when her dyad was trapped.
Rey hastily scribbled a note for Rose. She had to leave now. It was going to take time, but it was going to work. This was her last chance at a life that didn’t feel incomplete and empty in some way. This was her last chance at balance—no, this was her last chance at happiness.
Whatever happened, there was no turning back. Rey held no regrets.
She outlined the neat words—find me—penned onto her palm. They were already smudged and the last thing she wanted was to rub off the one piece of evidence that what she had with Ben was real. His message gave her all the faith she needed to believe he was alive.
“Wait for me, Ben. I’m coming,” Rey whispered, pressing her palm against her chest, failing to notice that only two hair ties remained around her wrist.
You're the one I can't lose
No one loves me like you do