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Space feels cold, after.
Rey knows this is because the environmentals in the Falcon aren't working right -- that when the ship took damage in the battle over Exegol, some relay or sensor got fried and one day soon she's going to have to devote a few hours to finding it and fixing it -- but there's also some small part of her that can't help but wonder if maybe it's not the ship so much as it is her.
She took damage on Exegol too. Maybe she's the one who needs fixing?
Heavy steps sound behind her, preceding a muttering of curses, before a blanket drops into her lap. "Here," he says gruffly, dropping into the co-pilot's chair next to her. "Kriffing ship is colder than Hoth." He reaches up to flick the reset switch on the auto-climate, and thumps on the panel when it doesn't immediately light, swearing again.
Wrapping the blanket around herself, Rey hides a smile. "It's not so bad."
"Says the girl currently shivering." He casts her a look. "You know, we could just get a new ship." He thumps the panel again. "With a climate system that works."
"We're not selling the ship."
"Scrap, then. Doubt anyone would pay for it anyway."
She almost points out that nobody had wanted it for scrap either, all those years on Jakku, but thinks better of it. He doesn't need any help insulting the Falcon. The navcomp beeps as they drop out of hyperspace and she changes the subject. "Coming up on Tatooine."
He frowns but doesn't say any of the thoughts clearly swirling on his side of the bond, focusing instead on the controls in front of him. She watches him run through the approach checks with a deft familiarity, his hands light and sure despite the ship's quirks. His sleeves are pushed back and every so often she catches sight of the lines on his wrist.
Ben looks over and raises an eyebrow at her. "What?"
She shakes her head. "Nothing." Turning forward, she watches the planet fill the viewscreen. "Just -- thank you." She knows he's only here because she is.
He snorts a little, flicking one last series of switches, and then leans back in his chair as she takes over the controls. "At least it'll be warm."
Warm is, of course, an understatement. She feels the heat in every push of wind, in every drop of sunlight, when she steps out of the ship. Memories of Jakku sweep to her across the near empty plain, and when she descends into the homestead, she almost expects to see her own belongings -- the computer she used to teach herself how to fly and read and identify the inner components of a hyperdrive system, her helmet and her bunk and her doll, spinebarrels flowering resiliently in drifts of sand.
Ben chooses to stay on board but she can sense him at the edges of her mind as she walks through Skywalker's childhood home, as she buries Luke and Leia's lightsabers in the sand, as she says goodbye.
"You could probably see them again," Ben says, when she returns to the ship, and she wonders if he saw them too, through the bond.
"Probably," she agrees. Closing the ramp, she stands in front of him and reaches up with both hands, her palms on his neck and her fingers sliding through the soft hair at his nape. She tugs lightly until his forehead lowers and can touch hers. "But not today."
He breathes out slowly and wraps her in his arms. "Not today."
Even with a bunk full of blankets, and the heat from the planet outside baking into the ship's plating, the Falcon is still too cold.
"Later," she promises, rolling onto her back and pulling him on top of her. "Tomorrow I'll fix it."
He drops his face into the space where her neck curves into her shoulder and leaves another curse there about the ship's lineage. Snickering, she drags her fingers through his hair and down his shoulder, scratching lightly until he groans.
Slow, deep touches. He bleeds his warmth into her as they kiss, the marks on her wrist flaring with every taste of his mouth, his body pushing down as hers rises up. The bond cracks wide open between them; he loves her and she echoes it back to him a thousandfold.
They burn.
Afterwards, he runs his fingers over her wrist and tells her what he learned while she was at the homestead. He has been studying the Jedi texts she took from Ahch-To, searching for an explanation of the marks that appeared on their wrists on Exegol. At first she had thought them scars, the preceding wounds gone when they healed each other after she defeated the Emperor, but scars fade and these --
"No change," she observes, and he nods.
"I found a reference to something called a soul link? Soul tether? It doesn't refer to dyads specifically, though, so it might be something unrelated. Maybe a ritual? The language is obscure, and part of the page is missing, but there is a mention of an identifying physical feature appearing. A set of identical marks."
She turns her hand out of his grip and traces the silvery grey lines on his own wrist. "Soul marks," she says.
He shrugs a little. "I don't think they're anything dangerous. A symbol of a connection maybe too difficult for most to achieve? I don't think it's happened very often."
Like their bond. She thinks, then, of the way they'd held each after the Emperor's defeat. Of how he'd started to cool in her arms after healing her, his presence fading, and how she had cast out desperately before the bond could disappear entirely, passing him her warmth. Holding him to her. Connecting them.
Marking them?
On Exegol she had wielded the power of all the Jedi that came before her. What could have been difficult for her then?
Ben brushes his mouth against the top of her head. "Yeah."
She heads outside again in the evening, sunsets on the horizon and BB-8 at her feet. Ben joins her this time, his form strong and tall beside hers, and she slips her hand into his, their fingers threading and wrists pressed tight, his marks against hers.
"Where to now?"
She shrugs. "I don't know." Finn and Poe, she knows, will always have a place for her where they are, but she won't go where Ben can't. "It's your turn to pick."
He shrugs. "I don't know either." One of the suns sinks below the distant sand dunes, twilight stealing across the sky. Ben looks over his shoulder at the Falcon, and sighs, before turning back. He squeezes her hand. "Someplace warm?"
She smiles.
The End
