Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Your breath catches. Winter on Takodana dusts the forest in glittering white and rims Nymeve Lake with ice. Wood smoke’s tang hangs in the crisp air. It’s hard to believe you’re actually here, yet a curious sense of expectancy flutters at your throat.

From the rubble of the First Order’s attack arose not only a new castle but a new queen: Maz Kanata, the poet queen, revered for her patronage of the arts just as she was once revered as the pirate queen for her antiquities collection and hospitality to smugglers and scavengers.

Maz barely reaches past your waist, but she assesses you with knowing eyes and escorts you to an armchair near the fire. She hops onto a low table crosscut from an ancient wroshyr tree. Spry agility belies her millennium in standard years.

“A grand reopening gift from my boyfriend.” She strokes the burnished trunk. Then an orange finger wags at you as she spouts two rules: “All are welcome” and “No fighting.” She promises to return for your order and trots away.

You try not to stare, but stars, you’ve never seen such an assembly of varied species. Back home you’d call it a zoo.

A folksong drifts from the great hall’s shadows, strangely familiar, though you’ve never heard these lyrics or this melody. A rich, mellow voice croons to an instrument plucked and strummed like a banjo.

You squint to make out the minstrel, a human male who appears about your age. Your eyes meet his for a fleeting moment and a string pulls taut in your soul. Who is he?

But then his music sweeps you into its current and carries you on a wave of feeling. The notes sink and surge; the unfolding story captivates and transports you. Your pulse races with anticipation, plummets with fear, soars with joy, swells with—

“He has a gift, doesn’t he?”

You snap from your reverie to find Maz squatting on the table again.

“Indeed.” You can’t recall the last time an artist or his music has touched you so swiftly or deeply, but you’re not about to confess as much. “What’s the song?”

A funny expression, maybe nostalgia, overtakes her aged features. “‘The Ballad of Kylo Ren.’”

“What a coincidence,” you say. “We’ve a similar tale on my home world called ‘The Ballad of Tam Lin.’”

Maz hums, leans forward, and adjusts her goggles. The lenses magnify her irises to comical proportions. You’re not sure what she sees, but she must be satisfied since she settles back on her haunches. “There’s no coincidence in the Force, child. I would hear your tale.”

You don’t have any experience with the Force, but you tell her the old folk yarn of forbidden woods, their fae guardian, Tam Lin, and the fair maiden, Janet, who dons her green mantle and ventures into the forest. What has she to fear when the lands belong to her father? She plucks a double rose and meets young Tam Lin, who plucks her virginity. She returns home, only to discover she’s pregnant, but refuses to name any local man as her lover.

You explain how Janet braves the forest to seek Tam Lin again and learns he’s not fae at all but a mortal knight enchanted by the fae queen and destined as a tithe to hell. But the heroine proves as fierce as she is fair. Following Tam Lin’s guidance, she holds fast to him despite fearsome transformations, covers him in her mantle, and defeats the fae queen’s magic. Then Tam Lin is free to be her husband and their child’s father, presumably to live happily ever after.

When you conclude, Maz gives a sage nod. “If you live long enough, you hear the same story in different tales.”

“Which story?”

“The only story,” she says, “of love so steadfast and true that no sacrifice is too costly to rescue the beloved.”

“Where I come from, we call those ‘fairy tales,’” you soften your cynicism with a gentle smile, “because they defy belief.”

Maz claps her hands as if you’ve confessed something silly or amusing and sets her bangles jingling. “Let me introduce you to our performer. But first, I should tell you the story that inspired ‘The Ballad of Kylo Ren’ and you judge whether or not you believe it’s true.”

She summons a droid named Emmie to fetch you a hot mug of Keshian Spiced Milk, with assurances it will warm you body and soul, as well as a bowl of cambylictus berries, when you admit to never having sampled the chocolate-dipped delicacy.

“Imported from Naboo for the Festival of Love.” Maz cants her head with a conspiratorial wink. “This is a love story, after all.”

Flames crackle in the enormous hearth, you nestle deeper into the supple nerfhide, and Maz pats the wroshyr wood, inviting you to rest your heels. But as much as you desire to listen, your heart thrills at the prospect of meeting the musician.

“How do your fairy tales begin?” She shoves her goggles atop her scalp and taps a ringed forefinger to her lips.

“Once upon a time,” you offer.

“Ah, yes.” Lines fan like sun rays around her bright eyes. “Here we say, ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’”

***

Chapter Text

You’re pregnant. Except Rey wasn’t. Why wouldn’t Major Kalonia believe her?

Her feet pumped back and forth where they dangled off the exam table. She needed to move. The small clinic aboard the Tantive IV was compact and dingy gray with age. An aseptic tang in her nose and mouth heightened the persistent nausea.

See? You’re pregnant.

Only her white-knuckled grip on the edge kept her perched on the bed. She could run and never return. She could run until she no longer heard Dr. Kalonia’s diagnosis playing over and over in her mind: You’re pregnant.

She wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She’d only braved the dreaded medbay because Rose said her months of vomiting and now the thickening at Rey’s waist might be something serious.

It was serious, just not a baby.

On Jakku, babies were a death knell without a partner to pick up the slack, not to mention the medical complications that could claim the lives of both mother and child. That’s why Rey had chosen the only failsafe means to guarantee she’d never conceive, cheaper than contraceptives and more reliable: abstinence.

It’s true her menses hadn’t resumed since leaving Jakku, but then her cycles had always been infrequent. So whatever was growing inside her, it wasn’t a baby. She needed to wait for the results, no matter how desperately she longed to escape. She needed to know what it was.

Rey studied the flimsiplast that Dr. Kalonia had handed to her with apologies for the monochrome image. Apparently the Tantive’s med equipment was outdated. Rey wouldn’t know the difference. She’d never seen a physician in her life, until today.

That spot was purportedly a static capture of the baby’s heartbeat. When the probe was pressed to her belly, the same spot pulsed, a rhythmic rushing sound filled the medbay, and Rey nearly fell off the table. The doctor claimed the surrounding gray mass was a boy around fourteen weeks’ gestation. You’re pregnant.

Rey had been with the Resistance over three standard months. She ate well even when she didn’t feel like it, old habits from a lifetime of food insecurity. Being accustomed to only dehydrated polystarch and vegmeat portions, she credited the puking and weight gain to the quantity and variety of new foods. Or at least she did until Rose threatened to report her.

Dr. Kalonia said a DNA test would pose minimal risk to the fetus and take less than ten minutes to process, if there was a match in the galactic registry. Then Rey’d know the father.

As if she’d been sleeping around. As if she didn’t know already. There was no father. Because it wasn’t a baby. But that meant something was alive inside her. Panic threatened to close Rey’s throat. She tried to slow her breaths and focus in the Force like Leia had taught her.

Dr. Kalonia needed to hurry. Ten minutes was beginning to feel like eternity.

***

As if summoned by Rey’s thoughts, General Organa appeared in the medbay entry at the same moment Dr. Kalonia stepped from the closet that doubled as a lab. The two elder Resistance leaders exchanged a fraught look.

The general was unreadable, as tightly controlled in the Force as ever, but the major’s emotions roiled behind her placid façade. Rey didn’t have the headspace to untangle them. But it couldn’t be good, not if the news upset the normally calm physician and required their leader’s presence. She didn’t want to guess what was wrong. Her imagination had conjured all manner of horrifying possibilities.

Leia touched a panel and the door slid closed. Her cane tap-tapped across the scuffed floor in an ominous countdown.

The women stood shoulder to shoulder before her. Why didn’t they speak? She couldn’t bear the suspense.

“Just tell me,” Rey blurted. “What is it?”

“The good news,” Dr. Kalonia said, donning her most soothing professional voice, “is that there’s a positive match in the DNA registry.”

“You still think this is a baby?” Rey asked, dumbfounded.

“Without a doubt, my dear.”

Rey’s heart pounded hard enough to bound straight out of her chest. “That’s impossible. I’ve never—”

“Rey,” Leia interrupted in a tone that brooked no opposition. “The father of your child is my son.”

“Wait.” She must have misheard. “What?”

“Here.” Dr. Kalonia offered her datapad.

No matter how hard Rey stared at the screen, the rows and columns filled with Aurebesh and numerals swam before her eyes. Then several cells stood out and she nearly dropped the device: Match = Ben Organa Solo (error margin 0.2%).

Leia didn’t call him ‘Kylo Ren.’ She said ‘my son.’

Dark spots flecked the edges of Rey’s vision and her gut roiled. She might have fantasized about Ben a time or two—okay, maybe a lot more, if she were being honest. Touching fingers across the galaxy might have tingled through her body all the way to her toes. She might have dreamed about the vision she saw and the future they should have shared.

Maybe she did reciprocate his longing, but they’d never done anything to make a baby. Not even close. Not while he remained Supreme Leader of the First Order. Not while he refused to recant the dark and embrace the light. Her stomach twisted. For Force’s sake, they hadn’t even kissed, not even in the lift on the Supremacy when they were both tempted.

“Gonna be sick.” Rey shoved the datapad at the doctor, a basin appeared, and she heaved. Ugh.

Dr. Kalonia passed her a water cup and towel before relieving the general of the basin—and Rey’s breakfast. How embarrassing. At least she felt too ill to blush.

Rey wiped her mouth and grimaced. “Sorry.”

“It was the same for me.” Leia gave Rey’s thigh a maternal pat. “Harter prescribed jogan fruit, so Han bought them by the truckload. Remember that?” She flashed a smile at the doctor. “He was so worried.”

The two women laughed at the shared memory. Rey didn’t join them. She craved jogan fruits and hoarded them because they stayed down.

“If it’s any comfort,” the doctor said, “the nausea should subside, now you’re into the second trimester.”

“But back to the matter of paternity.” The humor faded from Leia’s face and a whiff of her fear filtered into the Force. “When you were abducted on Takodana, is there any chance that he—”

That he what? Rey blinked. Then it hit her and revulsion rose with the implication. Ben would never hurt her—well, maybe with a lightsaber but never like that. She fought down another wave of nausea. “No. Absolutely not.”

“You were unconscious,” Leia pointed out.

“So you can’t be certain,” Dr. Kalonia said.

“I—I saw his memories.”

Leia arched a narrow brow. She was unconvinced.

Rey sighed. “I took BB-8 off Jakku to escape the First Order, but from Kylo’s perspective, I’d stolen a treasure that belonged to him: the map to Luke. On Starkiller, he probed my mind for what I’d seen, but I pushed him out of my head and I—somehow I pushed into his. I saw what happened while I was unconscious.”

Rey had seen how he carried her close to his chest and onto his ship. How he refused to let anyone touch her. How he fidgeted with her bindings and tightened them with gentleness—and regret. How he smoothed sweaty tendrils from her forehead before snatching his fingers back, donning his mask, and waking her.

But she’d seen so much more. She witnessed his greatest fear. She tasted his loneliness, bitter and astringent. She could taste it still. She touched his light, an unceasing flame that burned blue-hot at the core of his being.

Something happened to forge an enduring connection from those moments, and it wasn’t Snoke. It was the baby. Where did that thought come from?

Leia pursed her lips. “You went to him on the Supremacy.”

“Yes, but—” Rey looked between her Jedi master and the physician in disbelief. Did they suspect a tryst? When would they have had time? Leia, at least, knew the story; Rey had confessed to her aboard the Falcon. “Kylo escorted me straight to Snoke. After we defeated his guards, we fought over the Skywalker saber. The explosion knocked Kylo out and I escaped.” She wasn’t proud of or happy with the outcome, but it was the truth. If she neglected to mention the offer of his hand, it was irrelevant.

“You haven’t seen him since?”

Would Leia sense Rey was lying if she said no? She hadn’t seen him in person, but she caught glimpses across their Force bond. Mostly, she tried to close him out. It seemed he did the same. But in a weak moment, she chased his shadow through the Klosslands jungle. She didn’t catch him, but she did stumble onto a waterfall kilometers from base.

“Trust me.” Despite the awkwardness, Rey held her master’s perceptive gaze. Leia would know if Rey tried to compel her with the Force, so she didn’t. “I haven’t been intimate with your son, or anyone else for that matter, not ever.”

Dr. Kalonia crossed her arms. Rey didn’t need the Force to read her skepticism.

“I believe you.” Leia nodded. “Anakin Skywalker was rumored to have been conceived by the Force without a father. Something similar might explain how it is you’re carrying my grandson.”

Leia’s grandson?

That’s right. Reality came rushing back. Rey was so preoccupied with denying any active role in the whole debacle that she overlooked the most important point. She had her answer. This wasn’t a monster or a faulty test. This wasn’t something temporary like an illness to be treated or a tumor to be removed.

This was a little human growing inside her—and not hers alone. Rey was pregnant with Ben’s son. Chills swept over her.

Fear, panic, anxiety—every emotion with which she’d struggled since she stepped foot into the medbay—succumbed to the urgency to tell Ben. He needed to know.

This would change their lives forever.

***

Chapter Text

On Ajan Kloss, life thrummed in the Force as luxuriant and thick as the humidity. Rey shoved broadleaves aside and threaded through the dense flora toward the waterfall, too lost in thought to appreciate the abundance.

Escaping her friends was critical. She told them she’d run the training course, which she did, and spend the remainder of the day in solitary meditation, which she would, if she ever arrived at her destination. She’d made the trek before, but either the clearing was farther than she recalled or she’d lost her way in her abstraction. More likely the former, given what she now recognized as a Force-enhanced ability to navigate.

Finn seemed to sense the disturbance in her emotions. He threatened her with BB-8, cautioning about unseen dangers, as if Rey hadn’t faced down steelpeckers and ripper-raptors since she was tiny. Their jungle moon didn’t host any large predators. The tree-dwelling zymods with their poisonous reptile tongues were easily avoided. Finn meant well, but he was raised in a First Order crèche and knew only ships surrounded by Stormtroopers. No wonder open jungle made him uneasy.

She pushed an enormous leaf aside and squeezed past, but it sprang back and whipped her in the head. She grimaced.

Leia had pulled Rey into a tender embrace and murmured in her ear, “Never fear who you are.”

When she stepped back, sadness further burdened her master’s eyes. An unguarded thought slipped past her defenses: Leia would leave her post as general and abandon the Resistance to raise her grandson, if necessary. Rey knew what prompted it. Leia hadn’t been able to block her horror when Dr. Kalonia suggested the pregnancy could be terminated.  

Rey shared her reaction, quick as a reflex. It didn’t strike her as odd in the moment, but it did now. She ducked under a branch, sprang onto a fallen trunk, and clambered across a ravine. She’d never thought about having kids, except to avoid their procreation. She knew nothing about being a parent and couldn’t even remember her own. A baby would interfere with her role in the Resistance, which was still uncertain. Rearing the son of the rising galactic dictator would seriously complicate matters, and yet— 

And yet.  

Maybe it was hormones. Maybe it was the Force. Maybe it was her bond with Ben. Whatever it was, she was overcome by an intense feeling of connection and a fierce, protective instinct. When she was small, a happabore cow was separated from her calf. Rey abandoned her tools in the sand-baths, fled to safety, and watched with wide eyes as the normally docile beast tore through Niima Outpost searching for her young. Now she understood.

Never fear who you are, Leia said. Whatever else she was, Rey would be a mother. What an extraordinary and disconcerting revelation. She shivered despite the heat and humidity. She longed for family and she’d have her very own. She longed for Ben and she’d have his son. Did she dare hope this could bring him home?

The music of tumbling waters broke into her thoughts, light pierced the green shadows, and the trees yielded to a modest clearing thick with ferns. Rey paused at the edge and pressed a hand over her womb. Hello there, little one. Don’t worry. We’re going to find your father, but no matter what happens, Mummy’s got you. 

The falls were not especially wide or high, nothing large enough to catch a pilot’s eye on overflight, but something in the sound and sight mesmerized—as if an invisible giant stood on the cliff above and emptied crates of diamonds in an endless, tinkling cascade. She had yet to become inured to such extravagance; she hoped she never did.  

Rey crossed the clearing and leaped onto one of the large, flat boulders lining the pool. She folded her limbs, exhaled the tension in her shoulders, and prepared to meditate. This was where she’d seen Ben last—and hoped to find him again.

***

“Kriff!” Rey swore at the trees. “Kriffy kriff kriff!”

Where the Force was he? Why wouldn’t Ben answer?

She’d meditated until her legs fell asleep. She paced and talked aloud. She begged and pleaded. If anyone were eavesdropping, they’d think she was losing her mind.

She lowered every mental barrier she’d erected to keep him out. She opened herself to the Force—or tried to anyway, but what did she know? The general might be tutoring her, but even Leia acknowledged the brevity of her Jedi training and the limits to what she could teach.

Whenever Rey reached for Ben through their bond, she met only a cold wall, smooth like glass and black as obsidian.

Perhaps it was for the best.

How would Ben respond? Would he be angry, possessive, and accusatory? Kylo Ren was capable of immense cruelty; he’d killed his own father. What did that mean for his son? Would he demand the baby be raised in the First Order? Would he mentor his son in the dark side and protect him from her light side influence? Rey snorted. He could try, but nothing would part her from her child.

Maybe this was a fool’s errand. Maybe this was the Force telling her to leave off.

Well, Rey’d like to tell the Force a thing or two. She whipped the Skywalker saber from her belt and ignited the blade. Her repairs were rough, but they held. She shouted and lunged at a nearby bush.

Maybe the Force shouldn’t have gotten her pregnant, hmm? Stab.

Maybe, if the Force wanted this baby so badly—slash—it should have arranged things in the usual way. Swipe. It should have turned Ben to the light and then they could have—could have— 

She lowered the lightsaber, imagining, and her cheeks burned.

Why was she embarrassed? She hadn’t done anything. This was the Force’s fault. Not Ben’s. Not hers. Even if nothing in life felt more right than her son and even if he somehow resulted from that initial merging of their minds, as she was beginning to suspect, they still hadn’t chosen this. Frustration boiled in her veins. She yelled and focused all her strength into one wild, ferocious swing.

Her arms juddered to a halt, and she nearly stumbled from the unexpected block. Blue sizzled against red.

Ben stared her down. Of course the dark-sider finally appeared when she was angry. She should have tried the lightsaber sooner. Sweat clumped his hair and rolled down his temples. Purple crescents draped beneath his eyes. His face was sallow and gaunt. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

He wasn’t wearing his customary heavy layers but something looser and lighter, though still black. His feet were bare and his arms too—thick with muscle, corded with veins, and glistening with perspiration. Her heart skipped a beat. She must have caught him sparring or practicing forms. His unstable plasma spat against hers.

“I’m in my personal training room,” he said in answer to her unspoken observation. His eyes darkened and narrowed. “You can’t hide it. Not from me.”

“Hide what?” She’d better confirm what he knew—or thought he knew. He leaned his weight into their hold, the soil buckled beneath her heels, and she slid backward.

“You’re pregnant,” he growled. That wasn’t a surprise then, but the next part would be.

“And you’re the father.” She retreated and released the lock. “That’s why I summoned you.”

“Trust me.” He barked a bitter laugh and stalked after her. “I’d never forget making a baby with you.”

“Not like that.” Goosebumps peppered her skin. She’d never forget either. “It was the Force.”

“Who’s the father, Rey? In whose arms did you seek comfort?” He taunted as they circled, blades raised and ready. Betrayal rolled from him in waves and pounded against her like the breakers against Ahch-To’s cliffs. “The traitor? The pilot?”

Her grip tightened around her hilt hard enough to fracture. Ben had shielded his thoughts in their bond, but he couldn’t mask his emotions. That he should envy some unknown man was the height of irony and might be almost comical, if she weren’t fuming. He assumed she’d slept with someone else? She didn’t owe him anything, but neither could she violate her own soul. No other man in the galaxy held her heart but him. Couldn’t he sense that? Of all the infuriating, idiotic, nerf-brained—

She snarled and bared her teeth.

He charged. She blocked swing after swing. He pursued her around the clearing, coming close but never marking her skin with his blade. His blows fell swift and hard. She parried each one in a strange role reversal. Usually she was attacking his defense.

His saber cleaved through a tree and the trunk crashed into the ferns between them. She jumped back. This was all wrong.

He bellowed and sprang over it. She caught his blade above her head on his descent. Heat threatened to singe her hair.

“Let go and fight me!” He towered over her, shouting and shaking with frustration. “Why are you holding back?”

“Maybe because I’m pregnant with your son?” She gasped out the words and strained against him, but the angle didn’t afford any leverage. The advantage was all his. “It was the Force—similar to your grandfather—but with your DNA. Let me show you.”

Her words seemed to break through, and he took a long stride back. He stared at her, his quillioned blade blistering the ferns and hissing like a serpent as the rage drained from him.

“You’re telling the truth,” he said at last, his tone flat.

“If you weren’t so blinded by your kriffing jealousy, you’d have realized that from the start.” Rey bit her tongue. Accusations wouldn’t help. She disengaged her blade and rolled her shoulders.

“Fine.” He extinguished his blade and stepped near. “Do it. Show me.”

Her heartrate rocketed the instant his fingers hovered near her temple as they had during his first mind probe.

“Center your thoughts,” he said. “Your mind’s whirling like a storm.”

“I wonder why.” She glared but without any real venom.

His mouth canted to one side—in censure, amusement, fondness? It was impossible to tell.

“Shh,” he said. “Close your eyes.”

She did and became aware of his mind leaning into hers, an odd pressure seeking entry. He possessed the skill and power to rip into her head by force and take what he wanted, as he once boasted, yet somehow she knew he wouldn’t.

“Never again.” His whisper puffed against her forehead in confirmation. “But you’re making this more difficult than it needs to be. Quit resisting.”

Though it contradicted every instinct and prior experience, Rey willed herself to relax and open to him.

***

Ben’s conscious rushed in as if a floodgate had been raised on a river. He was everywhere and nowhere.

Rey couldn’t see him, but she could feel him within her, so different from that first time, not foreign or frightening. No, his essence was—what was it? She reached for his Force-presence, intent on pinpointing the sensation, but he turned her aside, albeit gently.

The tests. His voice prompted in her mind. Show me.

Right.

He rifled through her memories, pausing at his mother’s words: you’re carrying my grandson.

When he withdrew, the void left behind clamored for him, as if he belonged within her, as if space were carved into her very soul that only he could fill. She’d been left with the same emptiness after Master Luke interrupted their moment on Ahch-To and after Ben shattered her hopes in Snoke’s throne room. Did he feel it too? Her eyes came open slowly.

Fine muscles twitched in his jaw and his nostrils flared. He wasn’t pleased. How naïve to have thought he might be. His roiling amber-flecked eyes were twin mirrors of struggle and conflict. “I don’t understand how it’s possible, but I—”

“Ben.” Her worry rose to meet his. “What’s wrong?”

He sank to his knees and sat back on his heels. Long arms wrapped around her middle and crossed partway up her back. He pulled her into him and pressed his cheek to her belly.

Rey didn’t resist, but she held her hands in the air above his shoulders. Where should she touch him? This much physical contact was shocking when they’d never been more intimate than the brush of fingertips (not counting that stray thigh-grab in combat).

The width of his sturdy shoulders shook, and something crumpled inside her. Oh, Ben. She rested her palms on his crown as if in blessing. She threaded her fingers into the sweaty hanks of hair and combed through the tangled locks, a little hesitantly at first, but with more confidence as his inner turmoil abated.

In the Force, the dark began to slough off him like a shed snakeskin, not in its entirety but enough to reveal a gentle, glowing light. She sighed. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. His spirit quieted, and she cradled his head to her stomach, swaying slightly. Peace flowed between them. No, not between them but among all three of them.

Ben was communing with their baby.

It was a miracle. The Force capered and cavorted around them. She perceived it with her higher senses like streamers in every shade, light and dark, floating on the air in jubilant celebration. She heard it as a stirring melody and soaring harmony undergirded by bass notes. Had she ever known such exquisite splendor? She blinked back tears. This was how they were meant to be.

Ben pulled away enough to prop his chin on her waist and peer up into her face, a telltale shimmer to his eyes. She lowered her hands to his broad shoulders.

“He’s happy,” Ben said. Awe resonated in his voice and emanated from him in the Force.

“He knows his dad.” Rey swept a mess of hair away from his eyebrow and smiled.

For this one moment in time, everything was perfect.

***

Chapter Text

Rey leaned against a boulder and watched Ben pace the clearing. From his perspective, she was probably leaning against a bulkhead on his ship.

A maelstrom of strong emotion crackled around him as he stalked through the ferns. He accused her of stormy thoughts, but his Force-signature made hers look positively tranquil. If he were physically present on Ajan Kloss, he’d have worn a path in the vegetation and collected soil between his toes. But he was stomping across the mats in his training room and wouldn’t even dirty his soles.

“There’s only one solution.” He stopped and spun. “We have to break the bond.”

His words lanced her soul. She shuddered and crossed her arms over her womb. “Our son exists because of our bond. How could you even think it?”

“You don’t understand.” Ben sank his head in his hands and groaned. “No one can know. No one. You’ll need to wipe the memories of those aware already. I’ll show you how.” He meant his mother and the doctor. “From this day forward, we have to be strangers—or enemies, if that’s what it takes.”

They were far from strangers, and they certainly weren’t enemies, not anymore. That changed the moment Ben knelt and embraced their son. If nothing else, they were parents fighting for the life of their child, which was ironic because they’d never been lovers. Yet they’d passed beyond friendship, thanks to this mysterious link that drew them closer than any two beings alive. If what they shared was a foretaste, then she couldn’t begin to fathom the fullness of true union. What they were defied classification.

Sorrow rolled over him like an ocean swell. “You’ll need to wipe my memory, too.”

No. Never. Not after she’d witnessed his joy with their son, not when they were so close to having everything. She’d been lonely as long as she could remember; the thought of forfeiting him nearly undid her.

“That’s not an option,” she said. “I won’t do it.”

“We have no choice. Neither of you can be associated with me—especially not our son.” Tension stiffened Ben’s neck and back. His unrelenting gaze pinned her in place, as if he could command agreement with his eyes alone. “This is the only way I can protect you both.”

Why would they need his protection? Snoke was dead. The entire First Order submitted to the Supreme Leader and, whether she liked it or not, he was poised to reign over the galaxy. What remained that could possibly threaten powerful Force-users like them? Yet fear streamed from his shoulders as thick and heavy as Kylo Ren’s ebony cloak.

“Then help me understand.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you afraid?”

He shook his head, and the wildness in the gesture set her heart pattering. She pushed off the rock, strode to him, and seized his wrists. “Tell me, Ben.”

Panic twisted his features, so like the first time they’d battled in the snowy woods that she nearly let go. Then he had been grievously wounded by Chewie’s bowcaster and distraught with grief over Han. What was he hiding?

He tried to wrench free, but she maintained an iron grip.

“No, you have to tell me. We have a baby, a son, yours and mine. That makes us a family. Whatever this is, we face it together.” She softened her voice and entreated. “Let me help you.”

His eyes cut to hers as they had in the lift, perhaps recalling the same moment. He ceased to struggle and went still. Was he weighing her offer at last?

Then he began to speak, quiet and low but with urgency. “I thought I was free. For seven long years, I served Snoke. He lured me with promises of power but delivered torture. I was never strong enough, quick enough, or dark enough for my master. When I killed him, I thought it was the end. I thought I was liberated. I would start fresh.” His voice grew raw with yearning. “I wanted you to help me. I had visions of us building a new order together.” His lips compressed to a seam. “I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Disappointment and desolation had snuffed out his hope. She had snuffed out his hope. Guilt hollowed a cavern in Rey’s chest.

“Don’t. It wasn’t your fault.” He loosed a hand to tap his temple. “He’s still in here. He still speaks to me.”

That couldn’t be. She’d witnessed Snoke’s bisected corpse dissolve into the ether. Did he retain some sort of spectral existence? Dread pulled at her like quicksand. She released her grip on Ben’s wrist and trailed her fingers down to take his hand.

Small lines formed between his eyebrows. “Or something like Snoke but not Snoke? Maybe worse. He can’t influence my thoughts when I’m awake. I don’t know how much he can perceive. Not everything. Maybe he’s too weak or too far away. I can push him out, except when I dream. When I dream, he—he—” He trailed off, terror plain in his eyes. “I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep.” That accounted for his pallor and the sunken half-moons beneath his dark lashes. “I don’t know where he is or what he is. I’ve been trying to find him, but I—so help me, Rey—I will not serve another master. I will be free even if it kills me.”

“I didn’t know.” She pressed her fingers to the angle of his cheek and searched his tormented eyes. It explained so much, not only his appearance but his distance in their bond. He wasn’t closing her out. He was trying to shield her from whatever new evil had arisen to plague him. Her heart fractured. “I’m sorry.”

“Now you see. That’s why you have to run away from me as far and as fast as you can.” He removed her hand from his face, and her heart seized as if he meant to snap their bond. He folded her fingers within his own. “Snoke haunted me from the womb. I’ve never known a day alone in my own mind.” The knob in his throat bobbed and his voice cracked. “You have to protect our son. You have to save him from sharing my fate. Promise me, Rey.”

She nodded, not wanting to cry, but helpless to halt the silent tears scalding her cheeks. “I promise.”

He nodded, kissed her fingers, and released her hands. The love Ben bore for this child had altered his path, even if he didn’t realize it. He’d hardened himself against the light, against his parents, even against Rey following Crait, but this helpless babe had pierced his armor as if it were flimsi thin.

“I promise,” she repeated, “to protect him.” With each word, her voice grew stronger, taking on the force of a vow. “And I promise he will not share your fate because this will not be your fate. You will be free. You will be a father to your son. I swear it.”

“I’m not worth the risk”—he backed away and raised his palms—“not to you and not to the baby. I’m one of the strongest Force-users alive and I can’t evict him from my mind, though Maker knows I’ve tried. What could you do? You’re formidable and you have solid instincts, but you lack training. No, I have to find and face him.”

He spun and marched toward the tree line. In his quarters, he was probably headed toward a door.

“That’s not good enough.” She chased after him, circled in front, and forced him to halt. “Maybe I’m not strong enough alone, but you just confessed you aren’t either. Have you thought of that? What if it takes both of us to free you?”

“Rey.” He scrubbed a hand down his face, made more haggard after his confession. “I don’t even know where he is. Let me go.”

“No.”

He smoothed flyaway hairs behind her ear and released a gut-deep sigh. “You are one persistent woman.”

She planted a fist on her hip and cocked her head. “I’m told it’s one of my best qualities.”

He huffed, but the faint crinkle around his eyes hinted at a smile.

Rey’d never seen him smile. To be deprived of that discovery suddenly seemed a loss of surpassing magnitude. She wanted to witness his full mouth spread wide in happiness. She wanted to hear him laugh, unburdened and free. She wanted to catch the light when it danced from his soul. She wanted to rejoice with tears over their son in his arms. She wanted to know the tenderness of his touch and taste the intensity of his passion. When had everything changed? When had all her hopes come to rest with Ben Solo?

***

Rey reclined atop the boulder where she’d meditated. Her knees were drawn up to press her back into the stone’s retained heat and relieve the pressure on her lower spine.

Cloudless sky arched overhead in uniform blue. The sun quickened its descent toward the horizon. The treetops would soon cradle Ajara’s crescent like an enormous melon rind, and the gas giant would dominate the night sky. Birds twittered from the high branches as if anxious to conclude their songs before bedding down.

Maker only knew how long Ben could stay. They’d never interacted across their bond for an extended period, but the Force seemed content to allow them all the time they wished—which was a small concession, considering it had landed them in this situation to start.

Ben curled on his side next to her. His broad palm covered hers, skin sticky with humidity, and their hands rested together above their son tucked safe in her womb. Ben had shown her how to identify the baby’s Force-signature, to sense his heartbeat and the savor of his emotions.

Their son’s contentment shone with an undimmed purity. She’d never felt anything like it. Wondrous. Amazing. She would carry this little miracle, this sliver of Ben, everywhere she went. Someday she would meet him, watch him grow, witness him become a man and maybe a father. Had she ever been asked if she wanted children, she would have demurred. She’d had no idea.

“Weighty contemplations,” Ben murmured, his eyes closed. With their bond unobstructed, thoughts and feelings flowed unfettered between them.

“Hey.” She shook his arm. “You said not to let you fall asleep.”

He hummed. “So tired.”

“Ben.”

“What, sweetheart?”

She entertained a private smile. He’d called her ‘sweetheart,’ but then he was groggy with exhaustion and half-asleep.

“I asked you to marry me,” he mumbled. “I’d call you ‘sweetheart’ every day.”

She’d like that, being married, being his sweetheart. A trill of anticipation shivered through her. She liked this Ben with his inhibitions lowered. What else might she prompt him to admit? Wait. That was it. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

Rey sat up and shook Ben’s shoulder. He was heavier than he appeared. He didn’t stir, except to reclaim the hand that had been resting over their son and slide it under his cheek.

“The Snoke-shadow-thing in your mind”—she prodded at his firm chest—“you said he terrorizes your dreams?”

Ben nodded without opening his eyes.

“He only comes to you when you’re asleep?”

He cracked one eye.

“Listen. I have an idea.” She swiveled her lower legs beneath her and bounced on her knees. “You haven’t been able to expel him from your mind while you’re awake, but what about when you’re asleep? If your defenses are lowered, maybe his are too. Maybe you could follow him back to—to wherever he came from and disable him there.”

His other eye peeled open to reveal a matched pair of red-rimmed lids. He yawned. “That’s the trouble. I don’t have control in my dreams. It’s how he gains access. I don’t think I could simultaneously remain asleep and consciously attack in the Force.”

“You don’t have to,” Rey said. “You be the bait. He’ll be lured by your slumber like usual, but I’ll hide in your mind. He’ll never expect me. He’ll come to torment you, and I’ll pounce.” She’d be like a nightwatcher worm that hid beneath Jakku’s sands, alert to the slightest vibration.

“I doubt we can surprise him.” He adjusted his arms to fashion a better pillow. “And I don’t think a psychic attack through the Force would prove fatal, unless his physical form was particularly frail.”

“But I could sever his link with you.”

Ben frowned.

“Could he hurt the baby if I were in your head?”

“I’m not sure. He might find some means to torture him like he does me—or discover where you are. There are too many unknowns. Like I said, it’s not worth the risk.”

Excitement zinged along her nerves. As a scavenger, she used to feel this same anticipation on the cusp of an especially good haul. This was going to work; she knew it to her bones. She squeezed the dense muscle of his upper arm. “There’s too great a chance for success not to try.”

“Rey, no.” Protest dragged from him, but he was too weary to rally much resistance.

Rey clenched her jaw. He could object and call her stubborn, but she outnumbered him two to one. “Don’t ask me to live my life without you, Ben. Don’t ask me to raise our son without you. I won’t do it.”

He sighed.

“I’m going to set you free.”

***

Chapter Text

Rey swiped her last nerfsteak bite through the sauce and popped it in her mouth. Flavor exploded as piquant and earthy as the first taste. What had Ben called it, a cloudberry reduction? Utterly divine and so much better than ration bars. She couldn’t quite stifle her hum of pleasure. No wonder Ben had smirked, told her to wait, and returned with a feast. Plus she wasn’t the least bit nauseated.

Across from her, Ben turned aside to stare at the falls. He rearranged the napkin over his lap and shifted his legs for the hundredth time. He must be uncomfortable atop their boulder-turned-table, even while insisting he was fine.

Sunset spun the water into a fountain of molten gold and streaked dark fire through the thick waves framing Ben’s strong profile. She’d been attracted to him from the moment he removed his mask, much as she denied it, but in the sunlight’s gleam and with his own light glimmering in the Force, he was downright breathtaking.

Her heart stuttered. Ugh. As if the meal and their surroundings weren’t distracting enough, Ben’s presence made it nearly impossible to stay focused, but she’d try. Someone needed to.

Rey shoved her food into one cheek and spoke around the wad. “So, erm, I should expect to see terrifying images in your dreams. We’re talking shape-shifting, monsters, fire?”

“And more. Expect the unexpected.” Ben turned to her, a haunted look dimming his eyes. “He orchestrates visions to disorient, manipulate, and paralyze. Listen, Rey,” he placed his fork across his plate and grew serious. “It’s critical that you hold me fast and fear me not. You can’t let go, not in the face of your worst fear, not for any reason.”

She swallowed and could have traced her bite as it traveled each centimeter down her esophagus. “Why?”

“It’s the only way to be certain that we’re holding onto each other and not an illusion.” His lips compressed to a thin line. “If, as you suggest, we’re able to track him to his lair, then our connection will double as an anchor for one another.”

Her throat closed, dinner suddenly leaden in her stomach. “What happens if we’re separated?”

“We could become lost or unmoored in the Force. If that happens, it’s possible to go insane or never wake again.”

“Is that all?” She rubbed her upper arms. “Will you even be aware of my presence?”

“Enough that I won’t hurt you, but I can’t predict what I’ll see.” He chafed the stone’s rough surface. “I have a bad feeling about this. There must be another solution.”

“I’m sure it’ll work.” She lurched forward to seize his hand. “Trust me. Please.”

He pulled his fingers from her grasp, and his jaw rippled, maybe in thought, maybe in frustration. He expelled a weighty sigh. “Then, here’s what we’ll do. If my right hand is gloved and my left is bare, that will signal I’ve gained enough awareness to recognize you and our mission. If my head is uncovered, that will signal I’ve gained more control over my actions. But without those tokens, you must assume I’m under his influence.”

She nodded.

“There’s one more thing.” He picked up his fork and scooted uneaten food around his plate.

Would he be offended if she offered to finish for him?

He must have heard her thought because he slid his meal toward her without comment and continued. “If you don’t comply with his demands, he punishes with Force-lightning. I’ve never been burned outside my dreams, but it’s hot as Mustafar’s lava and normally requires outside stimuli to wake. In that event”—he scanned the clearing and the pool—“throw me in the water.”

“You’ll drown,” she exclaimed.

“No, I’ll wake up. What happened to your optimism?” Another faint foreshadowing of a smile flitted across his face. They were like an archaic piston engine, one up when the other was down.

Before she could speak, Ben plucked a chocolate-covered camby fruit from a bowl and pushed it between her lips. She nearly swallowed whole in surprise. The juicy berry burst on her tongue in a tart-sweet eruption.

“I’ll return to you, Rey.” The luscious fruit faded beside the intensity in his eyes. “You have my word.”

***

When Rey didn’t come back to base, the Resistance would search for her, unless the general counseled otherwise. Even so, whatever justifications Leia fabricated were bound to be suspect. Rey would have to trust Leia’s intuition in the Force.

Finn would be a wreck until assured she was safe. Rey should have brought her comm in order to contact them, but she hadn’t wanted to be interrupted or easily tracked. Oh well.

It must be approaching midnight. Stars twinkled beyond the gas giant’s blue-purple rim. The faint light nourished the moon’s lush flora even while the sun slept. She had wanted to implement their plan immediately, but Ben insisted delay would give the appearance he was avoiding sleep, as usual. Any unexpected changes might arouse suspicion.

Rey even indulged in a long nap while Ben watched over her. It seemed selfish when he hadn’t slept, but she would need to remain alert once he succumbed to slumber.

Her crossed legs cradled Ben’s head, and she stroked her fingers through his hair until the lines in his forehead eased. Such closeness boggled her mind. On Jakku, anyone who dared touch her became acquainted with the business end of her staff. It was a hard habit to overcome in the Resistance, which teemed with promiscuous huggers, and she’d been forced to apologize to more than one teammate. Too much physical contact made her twitchy and claustrophobic—except when it came to Ben. Something about his skin meeting hers comforted in an endless feedback loop. He was water in her desert; she couldn’t get enough.

He tipped his chin to peer into her face. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I want to,” she said. She needed to. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she declared she wouldn’t live without him, especially now that he was willing to leave everything for their son’s sake.

“But for your sake first. I don’t want to leave you in any doubt.” He caught and tugged her hand forward to pepper drowsy kisses along her fingertips. “I love you, Rey.”

Her heart faltered and nearly stopped. He loved her? Truly? He said it so easily. What did she know of love, an orphan abandoned by her parents? Yet wasn’t love what bound her to her son and drove her need to defend him at all costs? Could she not say the same of Ben? She would brave anything to rescue him; she’d already tried once.

Because she loved him.

The reciprocal words trembled on her tongue and caught on her breath, but Ben’s hand went slack and drooped to his chest. His eyes shuttered. He was asleep.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, trailing a nail along the ridge of his brow and down the ravine of his scar. He didn’t stir. She dare not linger to admire his face in repose. There would be a lifetime for that, if she succeeded.

All that remained was to watch and wait.

And win.

***

Slipping into Ben’s sleeping mind without his awareness to welcome or guide her was akin to diving in a pool without reference for the surface. Snippets from his day swirled around Rey and through his subconscious. They were like fragments of holos, some as short as a flash, others longer. Rey featured in many.

Ben returned to the same one over and over. He knelt and pressed his cheek to her belly. A flicker of light reached for him and connected with a spark of joy and recognition. Their son. His heartbeat accompanied the images.

The vision shifted to a baby with a shock of black hair cradled in Ben’s strong arms, his head bent tenderly over the child. Was this how he imagined their son would look? The tableau dissolved too swiftly for Rey to catch details.

Then the fragments merged together and solidified. Ben stood face to face with another Rey—a dream-Rey—in the clearing. An old memory flared: Ben had stolen a kiss once at the Jedi Academy and received Luke’s dressing-down for his labors. He never tried again.

He took dream-Rey’s face between his hands, but she was so entranced by his gaze that she didn’t seem to notice he was nude while she remained clothed. Then they were kissing.

Heat flushed Rey’s cheeks. Was this some sordid fantasy? It certainly wasn’t a memory.

She didn’t know where to look, trapped as she was in some bizarre out-of-body experience. Was it possible to envy oneself? She’d shove dream-Rey aside and step into her place, if it didn’t mean taking advantage of Ben’s subconscious.

She turned her back on the couple. She couldn’t keep watching like some voyeur, but waking Ben would defeat their purpose. He’d warned her not to fear what she saw; it never occurred that he might mean this. What she needed was a distraction.

Ben’s dreamscape paralleled reality. Ferns carpeted the ground, trees lined the clearing, and the waterfall made sweet music. Rey ambled along the perimeter, finding patterns in the bark and bending the branches—anything, really, to ignore the fantasy unfolding behind her.

The glassy black wall that earlier blocked her in their bond came into view, but its solid appearance had melted into a murky fog. That was odd. She reached out and, not meeting opposition, plunged in to her elbow. Cold seared to the bone, and she yanked her arm back. Apprehension slithered up her spine. At her feet, smoky tendrils exuded from the wall and trailed into the ferns, coiling and writhing.

What in the worlds? She toed one, it reared up like a snake, and then dropped back and continued toward—

Ben! They were going after Ben.

Rey flung her body at the manifestation of his dream-self and his illusion dissipated. A bleak cavern replaced dream-Rey and the clearing. Ben was clothed in black, stretched full-length on an interrogation chair, and strapped nearly upright. Her heart sank. This was her fault. She was supposed to hold him and not let go for any reason, but she’d allowed a silly fantasy to distract her. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

Ben’s eyes were closed and his head jerked from side to side in agitated movements. She reached through their bond to locate his distress and offer comfort if she could, but their connection had gone dark and silent. She attacked his bindings. When her best efforts failed to release him, Rey sighed. She was too late.

He was in the grip of the mind-shadow.

She straddled his legs, pressed her chest to his, and wedged her arms behind his shoulders and neck. Her position was awkward and uncomfortable, but she would hold on, come what may.

“Ben,” she crooned. “You’re not alone. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

***

“Long have I waited.” The throaty words reverberated in Ben’s mind. They were non-directional, but the malevolence in the dream-shadow’s voice was clear as the greed in Plutt’s pinched eyes.

“Who are you?” Rey said.

“Come to me, and I will show you.”

“Where are you?”

“Pass through the veil of darkness and you shall see.”

Rey flicked a glance at the roiling miasma. The inky wall wasn’t a barrier in her bond with Ben at all. No, the wall separated Ben and this thing that lurked in his mind. Apparently, it was permeable only in sleep, just as he surmised.

This was exactly what she needed to know, and the solution was too easy. If she left Ben’s sleeping conscious behind, she could follow the mind-shadow by his own invitation and find some means to sever his connection. But Ben warned her not to let him go under any circumstances. He was her anchor as she was his.

“Release him,” the creature said. Could it read her thoughts?

“No.”

“Come to me.” The power of Force-persuasion broke over her and slipped like oil between her fingers. Her grip loosened.

She wound her fists tighter into the back of Ben’s tunic. Whoever he was, this Force-user desired to part them. Ben was right. Whatever else happened, she must hold fast to him.

“I know about your family.” The booming pitch turned soft and wheedling. “Come, and I will tell you of your parents.”

Temptation was a ribbon tied around her heart and tugging at her chest. She’d wished to know what happened to her parents for so long, but whatever he said, she couldn’t trust him.

“Refusal to hear the truth will not change it,” he said.

She wouldn’t be drawn into these games. She must not become sidetracked. This wasn’t about her.

“Leave Ben.” She ground out the words, low and forceful. “Now.”

“My child.” His tone was at once patronizing and mocking. “Do you not know? I have been every voice inside his head.” His voice modulated in illustration.

Darth Vader. Snoke. Palpatine. Sidious. Somehow she recognized each one, or maybe Ben’s subconscious communicated their identities to her. He was the master behind the curtain, the puppeteer behind the show. A sequence of images replayed faster than she could assimilate, but the message was clear. This being had claimed, groomed, counseled, consoled, wounded, abandoned, mistreated, and controlled Ben from before he was born. Her nape bristled with rage. “You’re the old emperor.”

“Such righteous fury. Very good, little Jedi. Anger is the shortest path to the dark side.” He hissed. “Did you think something so paltry as death could hold me?”

Her ire deflated like an empty water bladder. Stars. How was a nobody from a backwater planet to conquer a Sith lord that couldn’t die? If Luke and Anakin Skywalker together didn’t succeed, then what hope had she? Could Palpatine even be defeated? Her spirit quailed before such odds. Then Ben’s head lolled against her arm in his troubled sleep, as if to remind her why she was here, and her courage rose again. She had not come this far to back down.

“You may have cheated death.” Rey clung tighter to Ben. “But love is stronger than the grave.”

“You think something so paltry as love can save him? Fool! The last Skywalker belongs to me.”

She sensed Palpatine circling her like a predator, examining and probing for weakness. She peeked around to catch sight of him but found nothing. Tentacles of oily vapor crowded at their feet, a sea of shadowy anemones waving in an unseen current.

She buried her forehead in Ben’s neck and gritted her jaw against his shoulder. “You can’t have him. I won’t let you.”

“You will not let me?” His wicked cackle echoed from every side and vibrated in her joints. “Then let us test how strong you are.”

***

Whatever held the oily tendrils at bay released them and they twined like smoke up Ben’s form. Rey sat on Ben’s torso and wrapped her legs around him to free her hands and bat the plumes away, but they only dissipated and regrouped.

When they reached Ben’s head, they branched into wisps and sought entrance to his ears, nose and mouth. Rey fanned and blew, but for every tendril she disrupted, two more formed.

Ben’s body seized. His back arched beneath her weight and his mouth gaped open. A tendril plunged down his throat.

“No!” Rey slapped his cheeks and shook his shoulders. This needed to end. They could reevaluate and try again, now that she knew what—who—they were facing. “Wake up, Ben. Wake up!”

His eyes opened.

Relief washed over Rey.

But he only stared, unblinking and unseeing.

She waved a palm before his face. “Ben?”

***

Chapter Text

Rey’s heart plummeted like a leaf swept over the waterfall. Ben’s eyes may have opened, but he hadn’t awakened. His sleeping mind remained in thrall to nightmare. She plunged into his dreams once more and clung to his form.

A groan wrenched from Ben’s depths and his body convulsed within his restraints. What was happening? His torso thickened between her arms, his bindings burst, and his clothes transformed to segmented plates. The interrogation chair vanished or maybe absorbed into his armored back. His neck stretched and distorted into a thin stalk and then his face—his beloved face—compressed to a rectangle, oval eyes glowing scarlet.

A nightwatcher worm. They patrolled Jakku’s sands, consuming anything that moved at night.

The eye stalk bent over, eerie red assessing her. She shivered with revulsion. No matter how he might appear, this was her Ben. Hadn’t he warned her about the terrors and shapeshifting? She wrapped her hands around the jointed appendages with their vicious claws and held fast.

But the segmented legs tucked into the belly and the worm stretched up and up, the abdominal plates shrinking to scales, until a giant serpent towered over her. She could barely stretch her arms halfway around its girth.

The head drew back under a flared hood, and it hissed, fangs dripping with venom.

Rey fought every instinct to flee and scrabbled for a handhold in its scales.

“Rey.” Ben’s urgent voice called from behind, and she craned her head over her shoulder. “Help me.”

The giant snake coiled around Ben, squeezing tighter and tighter. She knew what would happen. His organs would compress in excruciating agony, but she couldn’t let go. His face reddened with strain. “Please. I’m being crushed. Save me.”

Her pulse raced. It was an illusion. Surely it was an illusion? She hadn’t let go. Ben was the snake, not the victim. But what if she was wrong? What if—

She closed her eyes and breathed.

Hold me fast and fear me not, Ben had instructed.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered as much for herself as him. “I’m here.”

Ben’s scream tore over her shoulder, and Rey whipped around in time to see a rancor shove him bodily between drooling teeth.

She slammed a bicep against her ear and ducked her eyes behind her forearm to block the sight and sound of jaws snapping closed. Even in a hallucination, she couldn’t bear to watch Ben’s facsimile crunched in half.

Something sharp dug into her abdomen. The baby! The rancor gripped her in its other foreleg, talons pressed to her belly, though not hard enough to impale. I won’t hurt you, Ben had said.

She scrabbled at the rancor’s toe, but the creature threw back its head, howled and morphed again. The claw holding her transformed to a slimy tentacle wound around her middle. A rathtar. Her nightmares often featured Finn being dragged through Han’s ship. She hoped never to meet such a creature again, but the thing rolled her ever closer to its sucking, tooth-lined maw.

Fear turned liquid in her gut. She was going to be eaten alive. She gritted her teeth and pinched her eyes closed as she was thrust inside the horrid, reeking mouth.

All went dark and still.

***

A sickly green light flared.

Where was she? Rey fought panic. She needed to keep a clear head. Where was Ben? Had she lost her hold on him?

She spun around. A figure stood a stride away, back to her and cloaked in a dark cowl, but the silhouette was too small for Ben.

Rey stepped forward and touched a shoulder.

The thing whirled with a flash of filed teeth. Rey leapt backwards and scrambled to keep her footing. The bowed head raised. The face staring back was hers, except with the blade-like cheeks and porcelain skin of a fae queen.

A hilt snapped into dark-Rey’s fingers and her staff sizzled into existence. She twirled paired crimson blades and stalked forward, malicious intent in her eyes.

Rey’s hand flew to her lightsaber. She could strike down her evil twin and eliminate this darkness that shadowed her soul once for all. Holy purpose sang through her. Yes.

Her sapphire blade flamed to life and clashed against dark-Rey’s, once, twice, three-times. Something familiar resonated in the strike of blue on red. The very harmonics in the lightsabers called to her soul.

Wait. Was this phantasm also Ben?

She disengaged her blade and let the specter advance until her dark alterego was close as a mirror image, crimson saberstaff held on the diagonal between them. Dark-Rey growled with sharpened teeth, and Rey cast her arms around the other woman. Plasma seared from hip to shoulder. The burn was nearly unbearable and her nostrils filled with the stench of scorched flesh, but she locked her wrists behind dark-Rey’s shoulders and refused to let go.

Dark-Rey wrestled and shrieked, the sound broadened and deepened into a roar, and her chest expanded until Rey’s grip broke.  

When she looked up, she met the cold, vacant planes of Kylo Ren’s visor.

“Ben?”

Kylo peeled her from his chest and set her away. Neither bore lightsaber wounds. His right hand was gloved; his other was bare.

Rey sagged where she stood and nearly wept with relief. This signal didn’t mean he was in control, only that he’d recovered some degree of awareness. Still, she was comforted.

His ungloved fingers slid down her arm, seized her elbow with painful strength, and Kylo’s hard voice distorted through the vocoder. “Come, Scavenger.”

“Where?” she said, unease prickling at her nape.

He marched her toward the veil of darkness. “Palpatine awaits.”

***

Entering the diaphanous cloud was like plunging into a blizzard of soot and ashes. Icy fingers slithered around Rey’s soul and she trembled with cold. At the point she doubted they’d ever exit, they passed through to the other side and emerged in knee-deep black fog.

Kylo Ren’s helmet had vanished and Ben’s dark locks brushed his shoulders, which meant he’d gained some control over his actions. Since their bond remained mute and inactive, she couldn’t confirm what was directed by Palpatine, and she didn’t dare speak aloud, lest they expose their strategy. She would have to believe Ben led them here as planned.

The ground fog thinned as they proceeded. Inky mist curled along the gravel crunching beneath their feet and then solidified into a phalanx of hoses that snaked into the distance.

They followed the hoses like a hyperspace lane. A cavern took shape around them, too vast and shadowed to gauge the ceiling height or wall span, if either existed. Enormous statues towered into the gloom far above, faces blurred with distance or age. The air sapped moisture from her lungs as if sprinkled with diatomaceous earth.

They rounded a corner and approached a plinth, topped with a throne that looked like it had been blasted from black stone. The backrest speared outwards in large, rough spikes. A dark, hooded figure floated down toward the seat.

No, the creature wasn’t floating. It was connected to the complex array of hoses, tubes and wires and supported by a mechanical arm. Rey knew enough about machines to recognize extensive life support. He was dependent on the hoses that fed back into the miasma bordering Ben’s mind.

Palpatine was a parasite.

***

“Welcome, my young apprentice,” Palpatine said as the arm lowered his form near. Milk-white orbs peered from a face that was death animated. His fingers were decayed to the bone. Rey swallowed back a gag—and here she’d thought morning sickness was bad.

Ben dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Master.”

Rey stood beside him, still hand in hand.

“Well done, my boy.” Palpatine sounded pleased. “You have brought me the girl, just as I wished.”

Anxiety bloomed across Rey’s chest. Had she been deceived? Was everything an elaborate charade to lure her into Palpatine’s lair? Had Ben not forsaken his loyalty to the dark?

Palpatine cackled. “But she is not who you think she is.”

Ben lifted his head and spat. “Who is she?”

Fine hairs bristled beneath Rey’s forearm wraps. He sounded just like Kylo Ren.

The emperor smiled and his crabbed lips peeled back from discolored teeth. Had she ever witnessed a more grotesque sight?

“She is my vessel.” The opaque eyes settled on her. “My granddaughter.”

Granddaughter? The one-time emperor and bane of the galaxy was her grandfather? He couldn’t be. Rey dreamed of family but not this—never this. This was worse than a nightmare.

Ben’s hand slipped from her grip and she scrambled to grab him, shocked back to vigilance. Wasn’t this yet another ruse? She couldn’t afford to be distracted, not while Palpatine’s sightless gaze was upon her—and not only her projection in Ben’s mind but the real her.

He could see her through the Force, she realized with sudden horror, where she meditated atop the boulder on Ajan Kloss. He would find her wherever she went. He would haunt her to the end of her days and the furthest reaches of the galaxy. She would never escape. He’d already forged the link Ben feared, which meant their baby—

“What is this, a child?” Palpatine mused. “Conception without intercourse. The life force of your bond must have the power of life itself.”

She’d revealed their secret! Palpatine had discovered their baby. Adrenaline surged through her. He had to die. Immediately. Rey palmed her lightsaber but hesitated to draw from the holster.

“That makes you a dyad in the Force, a power unseen for generations.” Palpatine grinned, raised his hands, and pointed his skeletal fingers at them. “And that makes this so much simpler.”

He was summoning dark side power to himself. Rey perceived it like a dust storm building on the horizon. There was no time. If they had traveled through the Force from Ben’s mind and into Palpatine’s, then the emperor wielded control in this place. He could probably hear their thoughts and would be near impossible to surprise. If she attempted to strike, he would either rip the lightsaber from her hands or block her swings. But she could—

Rey dismissed the thought before she could entertain it, flung her lightsaber away in a blatant act of surrender, and drew fear around her like a blanket on a bitter night. Shadows swallowed the weapon. Palpatine was too powerful. They’d never defeat him. She was terrified. She would do anything he asked. Anything

She ignored Ben’s fingers squeezing hers in question.

Palpatine tipped his knobby head back and crowed, too drunk on victory to question her sincerity.

She would serve as his vessel. She would hand over their son, if only the emperor would allow him—and Ben—to survive.

Her hilt spun end over end and clattered to the ground.

Rey twitched her fingers as Ben had done in Snoke’s throne room. The blade kindled with a blue shimmer, and she pulled it through the hoses in a single, swift motion. A clean cut.

The tubes severed in a distant hiss of gray steam and a spurt of yellow fluid.

“No!” Palpatine wailed, lips pulled back from rotten teeth and cloudy eyes pinched. “You cannot know what you have done.”

“I’ve won.” Rey tugged Ben until he pushed to his feet, swaying as if he were ill or intoxicated. “Ben Solo is mine.”

“I would have given you everything, my boy.” Palpatine’s pitch raised every few words. Cut off from what had sustained him—from Ben’s life force—he contracted in on himself like a balloon collapsing in slow motion.

Ben tensed, shoulders rounding toward his ears.

“All I have would have been yours, Lord Ren, heir of Vader.” Palpatine stretched quivering hands toward him, his voice pitiful and pleading. “Help me. She’s killing me. You can save me.”

Ben stepped forward.

Rey clutched his hand and dug in her heels. She spoke with as much calmness and clarity as she could muster. “He only wants your power. You can be free.”

“Stop her,” Palpatine ordered.

Ben’s head swiveled back and forth between them, eyebrows and mouth drawn tight.

“Ben,” she said and smiled, “I love you.”

He blinked, the confusion churning behind his eyes cleared, and he held her in his gaze with a piercing intensity. Their bond remained stifled, but he gave a small nod and she felt in her soul as plainly as if he had spoken: I am with you. You are not alone.

Ben stepped back beside her.

Palpatine screeched, leveled his fingers, and Force-lightning erupted in a blinding stream. Light wreathed Ben’s body, snapping and crackling, and traveled into Rey where she grasped his hand. Her lungs wheezed and her heart fluttered.

Don’t let go, she chanted. Don’t let go.

Ben twitched and jerked to his knees. Rey’s muscles seized, but she managed to remain standing.

“If I cannot have him,” Palpatine croaked over the drone of discharge, “you will not either.” He flicked his fingers to increase the voltage, and his already macabre face sagged further in the heat.

Ben crashed to his side, pulling Rey down beside him. His eyes rolled back. Her limbs tingled hot then cold, and she could barely feel his hand within hers. They wouldn’t survive this. She needed to do something. What was she supposed to do?

“Stand with him,” the words frothed at Palpatine’s mouth, “and you will die with him.”

Rey’s vision guttered, but she stretched her other arm across Ben’s chest. Hold me fast and fear me not. She was growing lightheaded. Hold me fast. Her pulse turned erratic. Hold me.

Palpatine gurgled out a maniacal laugh and still lightning poured from his desiccated form.

What had Ben warned about the Force-lightning? She couldn’t think. She couldn’t remember.

She wove her fingers tighter despite the spasms in his hand and pressed more firmly into his side, even as sensation faded. Her nerves must be failing. They would die here, lost in a catacomb of the Force, a child yet unborn and a family yet unmade.

Force have mercy. She flung a last desperate plea into the void. Be with me. Be with us.

White-hot light blitzed through her mind and left darkness in its wake.

***

Chapter Text

Rise, Rey.

Alone, never have you been.

Voices pierced the darkness.

In the night, find the light, Rey.

In the heart of a Jedi lies her strength.

She focused on the chorus surrounding and sustaining her. The Jedi had answered.

Rise in the Force, Rey.

She grabbed hold and pulled, up and up through the pain and the murk—

Rise, Rey. Wake up.

She gasped awake and sat up on the boulder beside the waterfall’s pool. Early dawn blanketed her with dew. Ben lay prone, his body quaking beside her.

“Ben!” She planted both hands on his shoulders and shook him hard. “Wake up!”

His eyes twitched behind his lids, still trapped in the nightmare, but he didn’t rouse. That’s right. If Palpatine struck him with Force-lightning, she was to throw him into the water. Shoving his bulk over the edge required all her strength augmented by the Force. He splashed into the pool, floated for a second, and sank from sight.

Rey hung her head over the lip and scanned the blue-black depths.

Was he even underwater? Ben’s actual body was on a First Order starship somewhere else in the galaxy. Only through their Force-bond—what had Palpatine called it, a dyad?—did Ben intersect with her physical existence on Ajan Kloss. When she shoved him into the water, she might have done something as simple as shove him off his sleeper. Why, then, didn’t he appear like he’d promised and holler at her for knocking him to the floor?

Sun rays breached the small clearing at a steep angle. They speared into the dusky pool, transmuting it to blue-green, but even so, the light didn’t penetrate the depths. Rey could dive in and feel around for him, but her swimming skills were rudimentary. She nearly drowned during her misadventure in Ahch-To’s dark nexus.

Igniting her lightsaber in anger had summoned him yesterday. She stroked the weapon. Fear and anger were close cousins. Maybe she could call him again? Except he was no longer Kylo Ren. Meeting their son had changed him.

What’s the simplest answer? Leia’s voice asked in Rey’s memory. That’s usually the best place to start.

That would be their bond. Rey shoved anxiety aside, closed her eyes, and probed their connection. It was quiet but not with the same muffled quality in Ben’s dreams. The seething black wall had disappeared, thank the Maker. She pressed farther and was swept into intermingled currents of light and dark, not in conflict but in harmony. Ben was alive. Somewhere. She exhaled a held breath and soaked in the comfort of his presence mediated through the Force. He didn’t feel distant at all.

Ben, she called. Where are you? I’ll come for you.

Rey. His laughter rang in her mind. I’m here.

Where? She opened her eyes and squinted into the brilliance. She scanned the pool, the encircling rocks, the waterfall. The cataract fell in a liquid crystal flume and shimmered with pale rainbows in the morning light. Something moved behind it.

She shaded her eyes and stared. Ben?

A pale figure stepped from behind the cascade and sidled along the rock face.

“Ben!” She yelled.

He waved and continued his careful progress across the rock. Why didn’t he hurry?

She leaped off the boulder and sprinted toward him.

He faded from view for a few seconds. Then she rounded a bush and he was there, picking his way down the stones and concentrating on each successive step.

Rey stopped, her eyebrows arched into her hairline, and her cheeks heated in an instant flush.

Ben was nude, devoid of a single garment, his skin uniformly pale, save for swathes of dark hair. The scar she’d given him had vanished. The sunburst scar he should have borne from Chewie’s bowcaster was missing. In fact, not a single scar marred his expanse of smooth flesh.

Maybe she shouldn’t stare, maybe she ought to cover her eyes and afford him privacy, but she could only gawk at the working of his muscular frame, the flex of arms, chest and stomach, the roll of strong thighs with each step, and— Oh stars, her face must be on fire.

Ben didn’t seem to notice either her ogling or her jumbled thoughts. He remained intent on his next footfall, placing his feet with care and not lifting his eyes until he waded into the ferns and halted before her.

“He’s gone. Palpatine’s gone.” His mouth broadened into an unrestrained smile that transformed his face and shone with light and joy. “You saved me.”

“You’re free.” She cupped his jaw with one hand and swept her thumb along the corner of his lips. Stars, had she ever known such elation? She might weep with the sweetness.

Then his hands were on her cheeks, his attention on her lips. She stood on tiptoe to meet him. Kissing was better than a dream because this was what she’d seen, not a fantasy at all but a premonition. She draped her arms around his neck. His skin was cool and slightly damp, but his body heat warmed her.

The kiss swept them toward an ecstasy of union; nothing separated their souls or minds. His hands drifted down her back, pulled her closer, tighter, until he pressed into the small mound of her belly, where their son was throwing off sparklers of delight into the Force. She smiled against Ben’s mouth and he chuckled.

He pulled back slightly and the warm brown in his eyes unfocused. Disquiet arrested his higher senses. Rey probed for what had alerted him, but Ajan Kloss brimmed with life and she couldn’t discern anything amiss in the Force.

He barked a sharp laugh. “They’re coming. Your friends, I think. They’re worried. My—my mother’s with them.”

Of course they were. Their timing was impeccable. Rey sighed. Would they be able to see Ben? This wasn’t how she meant to find out.

“Then, go.” Rey planted her palms on the wide, firm planes of his chest and another thrill rushed through her. Later. She gave him a little shove. “You can disappear to your side of the bond, and I’ll be fine. I’ll—I’ll try to summon you again when it’s safe.”

“Rey.” He smiled with such tenderness that her heart threatened to melt behind her ribs. He lifted her hands and traced his thumbs along her knuckles. The savor of apology filtered across their bond. “I can’t. Something happened when you pushed me into the water. I’m really here.” He looked around. “I can see the jungle and feel the ground beneath my soles.”

No wonder he’d been treading like a tenderfoot. “But—but you’re naked as a newborn!”

“No pun intended.” He smiled and then sobered. “It’s true. I’ve been reborn.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

She whirled, assessing. “If you hide in the jungle, I’ll—I’ll—” She could steal a ship and come back for him. It might take a while, but she’d leave ration bars and he wouldn’t starve. They could escape, seek some quiet corner of the galaxy, and raise their son.

“I don’t want to run,” he said. “I’m not going to hide.”

“Ben. They’ll—”

“Shh.” He smoothed his fingertips across her lips and her protest died.

The whine of speeders wailed above the crash of plummeting falls. They had moments at best.

Rey looked him up and down, trying to contain her embarrassment. “Let’s cover you at least.”

A crooked grin tipped his mouth. “Don’t like what you see?”

She would’ve punched his shoulder, but her hands were busy retrieving the knife from her boot. How could he tease in such a moment? But then, should she expect anything less from the son of Han Solo?

“Don’t you understand?” He tipped her chin to meet his earnest gaze. “I’m free. I have what’s most important to me in the entire galaxy: you and our son. I’ve never known true peace, not once in my life, but I feel it now”—he pounded a fist to his chest—“like sunrise in a snowy wood, clear and quiet and pure. That puts everything else in perspective.”

Her sole experience in Ilum’s snowy forest had been the opposite, but she knew what he meant. She sawed one trailing end of her cowl from her shoulder and shoved the wad of white material into his arms. “Still, no one should see you naked except me.”

“Is that a promise?” He arched a brow as he wrapped the long panel around his waist and tied the ends. The gauzy fabric didn’t conceal much and he looked like some mythic god breathed to life, but it would have to suffice.

And just in time too.

***

Rey grabbed Ben’s hand as a company of Resistance members broke through the trees. Four double-mounted speeders fanned around the clearing. The foremost riders leaped into the knee-high ferns. Chewbacca raised his bowcaster with a growl, and Finn and Poe aimed twin blasters. Rose’s sidearm remained holstered where she joined Dr. Kalonia and Beaumont Kin.

The general dismounted with care, accepted her cane from Maz, and began her slow trek toward them.

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t shoot,” Poe ground out, never shifting his glare from Ben, even though he could not have presented a less threatening appearance, unarmed and bare as he was.

“Make that two,” Finn spat.

The Force vibrated with tension. Rey’s pulse sped through her veins. They had one lightsaber between them, and Ben could stop blaster bolts with the Force. She didn’t want to hurt her friends, but if it came down to it, she’d choose the father of her child.

Leia’s husky voice rasped out in command. “Hold your fire.”

Rey buzzed with the anticipation crackling in her veins. Standing motionless was torture. Her hand trembled in Ben’s, while serenity radiated from him. How could he be so unruffled?

The general neared, one arduous step after another.

Perspective, remember? Ben spoke across their bond, squeezed Rey’s fingers, and his calm seeped into her. Everything will be fine.

Leia gazed at her son, lips parted a fraction and soft light illumining her careworn eyes. “Ben?”

He released Rey’s hand and closed the remaining distance to the general. Chewie hollered a warning in Shryiiwook, but neither mother nor son seemed to hear. Maybe they didn’t care. They certainly didn’t stop. Rey’s heartrate had slowed, but she still hovered her fingers over her hilt in readiness to defend. The Resistance trio didn’t lower their weapons, but neither did they shoot.

Ben bent into Leia’s open arms. Despite her petite stature, she somehow managed to fold him into her chest, tuck his head against her shoulder, and stroke her fingers into his thick, wet mop of hair. Her rings flashed with the morning light.

He murmured into her ear. “Rey did it. She set me free.”

A riot of emotion, both light and dark, sounded dissonant notes in the Force, but one rang bright and clear over all: Love.

Leia pulled back to cradle the long lines of his face between her palms. “My son. My precious son.”

Rey’s forearms stippled with fine bumps and her throat constricted. Someday she would know such a bond and share such a love with her own son—with Ben’s son.

“Mom.” Ben swallowed, though it did nothing to soothe his jagged voice. “I—”

Leia smiled. “I know.”

***

Chapter Text

The general ordered the Resistance cohort to stand down and waved them closer. They complied with reluctance, every hard eye glued to Ben. A cacophony of strident thoughts and feelings snarled in the Force.

“Friends,” Rey said and flashed Ben a reassuring smile. He’d said everything would be fine, and she intended to make it so. A straightforward answer should cut through the confusion.

The Force within him remained settled, but his vaulted brows were skeptical. I’m not sure this will go how you think.

She’d heard that before, but she knew what she was doing. Rey wove her fingers between his and raised their joined hands. “Meet Ben Solo, General Organa’s son and my—my husband.”

Rose gasped, Poe swore, and Finn’s jaw went slack. Maz beamed.

Had she said something amiss? Despite the delay between proposal and acceptance, Ben had offered his hand and Rey took it, which made them married as far as she was concerned. Mutual agreement comprised about the extent of marriage on Jakku. But given how everyone was gaping at her, maybe the customs from their home cultures involved something more?

Generally, yes, but this works for me. Ben’s humor burbled in her mind. Good. His opinion was the only one that truly counted.

Rey glanced to Leia, who merely inclined her head for Rey to continue, her expression impassive. Was she amused, shocked or horrified?

“And—” Rey drew the word out in suspense. Giddy happiness tumbled through her like the ceaseless falls at her back. Her smile widened until dimples tightened her cheeks. “We’re pregnant.”

Ben choked. Way to make an entrance, sweetheart.

The waterfall splashed into its pool and birdsong ricocheted in the tree canopy. The company stared, motionless as Jakku’s sitter atop his pole. The effect was precisely what Rey hoped. Everyone’s shock shifted from the former Supreme Leader standing in their midst to the new life she carried.

At last, Chewbacca broke the silence and barked something in strangled Shryiiwook that sounded like “pup” and “grand-pup.” If Wookiees wept, this might be what it sounded like, but he was impossible to understand because the entire party began shouting.

A furry hug tore Ben from Rey’s grip. He was lifted bodily from the ground as if his massive frame weighed nothing. Mammoth paws clomped him between his shoulders. She couldn’t tell if Chewie was reproving or supportive. Either way, Ben would bear the bruises to prove it.

Rey shook her head, but then she too was surrounded, hands touching her arms and patting her shoulders until the claustrophobia from their nearness tempted her to shove them away with the Force.

You okay? Ben called across their bond. His steady tranquility streamed into her until her fists unclenched at her sides.

I am now. Thank you.

Anytime, he said and returned to his own conversation.

Quieted by Ben’s spirit, Rey assured Dr. Kalonia that all was well after her night under the stars. She even managed to tolerate Rose’s impetuous embrace.

“I knew it.” The little engineer stepped back and pumped her fist. “Congratulations! See? You should have listened to me and visited the medbay sooner.”

“Really, Rey?” Poe shook his head. “We’re fighting a war here. We need you as a pilot, but no, Jedi stuff comes first, and then it turns out you’re slumming around the galaxy”—he waved toward Ben and his eyes blazed—“with him?”

“It’s not like that,” Rey said.

“Really?” Poe repeated and planted his fists at his waist. “Then explain to me how it is because the last time I checked there’s only one way to have a baby.”

Poe thought that she and Ben had been—?  No, that’s not how it was at all.

“More than one, actually,” Rose added, her tone sunny, “if you count adoption and assisted reproduction, not to mention other species—”

“You’re not helping.” Poe glared.

An explanation sprang to Rey’s lips and died as swiftly. What should she say? The Force did it? While that might be accurate, they’d never believe her. She’d already been through this once with Leia and Dr. Kalonia, and the doctor still doubted. Besides, sharing what happened could do more harm than good. Ben would have enough difficulty assimilating into the Resistance without giving her colleagues another reason to think less of him. They didn’t need to imagine that he had somehow seduced or coerced Rey. Let them assume it was mutual consent.

In the end, did it matter if they knew? Maybe Ben was onto something about perspective. The Ben-shaped hollow in her soul had been made whole, and she carried their baby. The secret of his conception was a beautiful mystery, one that deserved to be celebrated and recounted with joy. It was her son’s story, after all. She would save it for him. They would tell him someday, she and Ben, when the time was right.

“Well?” Poe prompted.

Rey shrugged one shoulder and raised her eyebrows in concession. Let him interpret her non-answer as he would.

Poe rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb at the former darksider, who was deep in discussion with his mother, Maz, and the Wookiee. “What’s with his kilt anyway? Caught you mid-romp and only had time to rip the linens off a sleeper, huh?”

That was going too far. Rey spluttered. Could Poe not see they were in the middle of a jungle without a single sleeper in sight?

“Hey, buddy.” Finn set his hand on Poe’s shoulder. “Quit grilling her. You don’t have to like it, but it’s done, all right?”

Poe crossed his arms.

Finn turned to Rey and searched her face. Hurt flowed from him in a cold undertow, his reaction louder and stronger than the others. Sometimes she wondered if he was Force-sensitive.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a quiet voice. “I know you’re disappointed.”

“This is so far past disappointment that I don’t know what to call it. What he did at Tuanul, on Starkiller, at Crait? He’s—” a madman echoed in the Force, but he didn’t say it. Finn rasped a palm across his scalp. “Be honest, Rey. Is this what you want? Truly? Because if it is, if he is, then I’ll try. Maker help me, I don’t know how, but I’ll try to understand.”

“Moofmilker,” Poe mumbled.

Rose jabbed the pilot. “Finn’s a better man than you.”

“Never said he wasn’t.”

“Yes,” Rey answered Finn. “Ben’s what I want. What we share is good and right in the Force, for both of us, maybe for the entire galaxy. I can sense it. Together we’re balanced and at peace. I—I love him.” The newness to the confession felt awkward, but the truth overwhelmed her. “And I love our son.”

“A son?” Poe smacked his brow. “That’s just what we need. Mini-Ren.”

“Solo,” Rey corrected.

Poe shook his head. “This gets better and better.”

“I told you, silly.” Rose ignored Poe’s dramatics to slide a consoling arm around Finn’s back. “Don’t you see? The Supreme Leader of the First Order defected because he loves our Jedi and she loves him.”

It was an oversimplification and Rey wasn’t a Jedi, but she didn’t disagree.

“And that’s how we win,” Rose grinned, “by saving what we love.”

***

EPILOGUE

They’d waited long for this day, waited for their son to mature, waited for a nudge from the Force that the time was now.

Ben was nearly finished explaining the wondrous mystery of Lukas’ conception. His version varied from Rey’s, but she inserted commentary now and then—when she wasn’t preoccupied with the new baby nestled against her breast. Dainty pink lips puckered in sleep and formed a sweet rosebud. A quiet smile touched her mouth. After three boys, she wasn’t sure how to raise a daughter, but they’d figure it out.

Rey lifted her gaze to her husband. Speaking with their eldest son animated Ben’s features, which remained striking, though the lines had multiplied and deepened around his mouth and gray feathered his temples. Outside their family, he could be stern and commanding, but within their home he was generous, humble, keenly observant, occasionally teasing, and ever watchful over her and their children.

Lukas likely had never heard his father utter so many words in a single sitting. As he listened, his long, slim fingers wove a calming melody from the Nabooian hallikset they’d presented to him years ago. He probably sensed his parents’ anxiety and sought to soothe them. He was a capable pilot and decent with a lightsaber, but reading emotions and responding with music was his true gift in the Force.

It seemed impossible that fifteen standard years had passed since he was small enough to cradle. Rey remembered the moment Dr. Kalonia settled him in her arms, exclaiming “just like his father” over his size and mess of black hair. Lukas stared back with those gray-blue newborn eyes and the first glorious rush of motherhood engulfed her heart, never to recede.

Ben regretted that he’d been away leading the assault against the Final Order and missed Lukas’ birth. Still, he reached through their dyad and across the galaxy to channel her labor pains in the Force. Four times he endured the same. Ben couldn’t envision a better means to redeem the painful lessons from his dark years than bringing good from the torment he’d suffered.

When Rey stormed the Klosslands jungle to find and free her groom, she never could have fathomed this future. Life held ups and downs, sure. The twins drove her crazy most days. But, stars, how Ben adored her. Oh, what joy to live in the quiet certainty of loving and being loved; in the wonder of being known to the depths of her being; and in the profound union of body, heart, mind, and soul.

Ben paused mid-sentence.

Sorry, she said into their bond. I didn’t mean to distract you.

You always distract me. His tone and inflection weighted the phrase with suggestion.  

Then let me distract you later, she said with a laugh. Right now, you’d better conclude your story.

Promises, promises, he grumbled but resumed speaking.

Their son didn’t comment on the momentary lapse, accustomed as he was to their Force-dyad dialogues.

Sitting beside his father, their resemblance was unmistakable, though Ben was broader in the shoulders and thicker around the middle. Lukas possessed the same lanky height and awkward features of Ben’s youth. In another decade or two, he was bound to catch up with his dad and break hearts all over the galaxy.

Sometimes Rey thought Dr. Kalonia should have tested for her genes, so little did her son share his mother’s looks, but Ben only laughed and claimed Lukas inherited her temperament. He might owe his compassion and quick smiles to Rey, but if he was like anyone in the family, it was a dice throw between his paternal grandfather and great-uncle.

She restrained her fond smile, not wanting to interrupt again. To Ben’s endless irritation, Master Luke’s Force-ghost took to haunting him soon after he embraced the light. Apparently, Luke was prevented from entering his eternal rest until he’d reconciled with his one-time padawan. Ben turned out to need his uncle too. Rey naively thought she’d be enough, but in those early months, when healing from a lifetime of darkside influence and integrating in the Resistance proved difficult, no one was a wiser confidant or more patient advisor than Luke. They chose to remember and honor him with the legacy he’d never have otherwise, a son named Lukas Skywalker Solo.

Lukas grew into his namesake’s patient spirit and startling blue eyes, but he was equally driven by Han’s wanderlust, never delighting more than when they took the Falcon to new places and encountered new faces. She could envision him planet-hopping like some galactic troubadour before he settled down to form his own family.

More than anything, that’s what she wanted for her son: a love like she shared with Ben, steadfast and true, that bound their hearts and united their souls. The Force would need to bring someone special to be worthy of Lukas. But she was rushing ahead, when he had years yet at home. Rey intended to relish each one. 

***

“You’re welcome to ask Nana for her account. She’s been eager to share with you.” Ben clapped large hands to his thighs. “But it’s the truth. That’s how you were conceived.”

Lukas stopped strumming and bobbed his head. A crooked smile crept across his generous mouth. “Epic.”

Rey raised her eyebrows. That was it? One measly word was all he had to say about the revelation that the Force had worked a miracle not only in giving him life but in bringing his parents together and ultimately ending a galactic war? How anticlimactic.

What did you expect? Fireworks? Ben chuckled across their bond. He’s not the twins.

Well, that’s a mercy, Rey said.

“Thanks, Dad.” Lukas stood, squeezed Ben’s shoulder, and crossed to where Rey rocked his newborn sister.

She paused to beam up at him, her heart full. “You’ve always been special and always will be. Just know how much we love you and how proud we are to have you as our son.”

“I love you too, Mum.” He leaned down to brush his lips across her cheek and then straightened. “You know, I think maybe I’d like to write a song about this. I might call it ‘The Ballad of Kylo Ren.’” He shifted to encompass both parents in his request. “You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“Of course not, sweetheart.” Rey traded a long, meaningful look with Ben. “It’s your story to tell.”

***