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Empress Rose and her Knights were adventuring in the forests of Endor’s second moon, searching for relics of an age gone by. The wars of an age long-passed had left their marks upon the beauties of the galaxy, but now that peace reigned, and all people and creatures were cared for with the Empress’ just and righteous wisdom. But as an engineer at heart, and ever curious about the ancient world and what knowledge could be gleaned out of the fragments of a more violent time, the Empress had taken an interest in searching for the ancient relics. It was still early in the day, and the mist danced through the lush and verdant trees.
“Knights,” the Empress said to them, “and most loyal friends: I send you forth to explore and return with what you have found.”
The other knights gave their ascent to these orders, but Lady Commander Rey hung back.
“I shall stay by your side,” said the Lady Commander to her Empress.
Empress Rose agreed, and the two of them set off through the woods together, for they had been fast friends before the war, and remained so in times of peace.
After a time, the two of them came upon a crashed portion of a space-going vessel. The Empress jumped off of her speeder and Lady Commander Rey did so as well, both curious about what they could find within the wreck. Just as the Empress had a heart of a tinker, so too did Lady Commander Rey have the heart of a scavenger.
They made quick work of the wreck, searching and recovering many kinds of things that were of great interest to both of them, and it soon became apparent that they would not be able to carry back with them all that they had found. As such, Lady Commander Rey returned to her speeder to radio for some additional help.
Curiously, however, her radio did not appear to be working.
“Could it be broken?” Rose said. She came over to stand beside her Knight and examine the radio for herself. When neither of them could immediately discern the cause of the disruption, they tried the Empress’ radio—but that, too, was not responding.
A cold trickle of fear poured down the Knight’s spine. She brought her hand to rest upon the hilt of the saber at her hip, and scanned the forest around them. Still empty, now each rustle and hoot of animal or bird made her senses alight with awareness.
“Both of them should not be malfunctioning,” Rey told her Empress. “Something is wrong. Stay close to me.”
The Empress looked through the forest as well. But it was a sudden Snap! Crack! Of a hologram coming to life from within the pile of items they had recovered which made Rey’s saber ignite in response.
All in one fluid movement, the Lady Commander moved to place herself between the hologram and the Empress, brandishing her saber, ready to defend.
But the hologram merely smiled at them in a cold and, frankly, condescending way.
“Ah,” the figure said, somehow still looking down its nose at them, although it was on the ground and tilted slightly at an angle. “Scavengers. Then the war is over, I suppose. Pity.”
“Pity?” replied the Empress in indignation. “You think it a pity that the war is over?”
“Of course I do,” the hologram figure replied smoothly. “War is the most profitable occupation in the galaxy.”
Rey could feel the pulse of pure annoyance coming through the Force from the Empress at the hologram’s unctuous words. The figure was a Twi’Lek, by the look of him; he was dressed in patterned robes that shimmered even in the light of the holo-projector, and a heavy necklace of gaudy gilt and stones hung round his neck like a collar.
“Much more difficult to get rich with peace.” He finished his thought, nearly spitting out the final word in disdain. “Anyway, all of that is moot if you’ve found me. I suppose you want to know about my little surprise safety measure?”
“Your what?” Rey scowled at the hologram, searching fruitlessly for it in the Force. “What are you, anyway?”
The Twi’lek grinned, a too-wide, hungry smile that made her skin crawl. “A businessman. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“You’re a hologram.”
He shrugged. “Profit is profit. There must be some shred of my brilliant business mind saved in these data banks. And before long, someone on my crew will come and bring what I’ve recovered back to me—or whoever has killed me and taken my business.”
Rey resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“You can have your junk,” she spat, glancing around at the piles of discarded ship parts she and Rose had unearthed.
“Oh, I think I’ll have something more than just junk…”
The figure hadn’t even finished his words before a loud BUZZ-SNAP noise made Rey’s head whip around. To her horror, she saw her Empress suspended in midair by a crackling blue light.
“My lady!” Rey ran to her, pressed her hand instinctively against the field, then recoiled as a searing shock traveled through her skin. “Rose!”
The hologram’s cackle of delight crackled with energy.
Rey whirled to face it, saber drawn. “What did you do?”
“I did nothing!” The hologram Twi’lek laughed again. “She did it all herself! See?”
Rey looked and, indeed, Rose was holding something in her hands. Must have picked it up, tried to examine it… the Empress was ever-curious.
Damn her!
Rey hastily bit back her own traitorous anger. It wasn’t the Empress’ fault, it was Rey’s—she ought to have sensed, ought to have known…
“Release her!”
“Or what?” His expression was smug. “Destroy me, and you’ve got no chance of releasing her.”
“So it’s ransom you wish?”
“Of a sort…”
“Name it.”
The hologram laughed. “So urgent. Really, I remember what it was like to have a body and all those… feelings … you have to deal with. Desperately inconvenient. I wish for entertainment. Stars know how long I’ve been down here.”
“ Entertainment ?” Rey was centimeters away from swiping her lit saber through the hologram’s neck, little that it would do for her.
“A riddle, perhaps. Ah! Yes! A Riddle!” The figure laughed. “Answer this, and I will free her: What does a Man truly desire most?”
“Man desires power!” Rey exclaimed. “Obviously. Why else would you do such a thing?”
“Ah, Man does desire power,” the hologram figure nodded serenely. “Wealth, Power, Acclaim… Man desires many things… But that is not the answer.”
The Lady Commander let out a growl of frustration, her eyes returning once more to her imprisoned Empress’ form. The figure—whatever he was, whether a memory of a life or a trapped consciousness—was clearly mad. Unable to be reasoned with. There must be some kind of safety mechanism, some release she could find… or some place where a well-landed blow from her saber might short out the—
“It’s frighteningly indestructible,” the hologram figure said with a wide grin. “You won’t fight your way out of this one, warrior .”
“I will not leave my…. Her side,” Rey said, correcting herself through gritted teeth, still aware enough through her anger and frustration to know that if the figure knew whom it was he now held captive, perhaps the rate of ransom would be more than just a riddle.
“Ah, but you must,” the figure replied. “If you wish to find the answer, that is. I will not give it, but perhaps there is someone here who could?”
“What in the galaxy do you mean by that?” Rey demanded.
The figure merely laughed, and flickered, and then was gone.
The force-field, however, remained.
Rey went to it, reaching her hand to the hazy yellow fire that entrapped her Empress within. Rose spun slowly, her eyes open and staring at nothing, not asleep and yet not awake. Rey did not want to leave her. She could not leave her.
It was her sworn duty, to protect and defend her Empress against all threats, and now… now she was told the only way to free her was to leave and search for some answer to some riddle.
Indecision tormented her.
At last, though, the radio on her speeder crackled to life, and Rey ran to answer it.
“The Empress has been captured, I repeat, the Empress has been captured!” Her voice cracked as she spoke into the device. “Come to my location at once!”
And in a flurry, all of the Knights did as they were bid.
They stood around the captured form of the Empress for some time, each of the Knights trying in vain to free her. Rey stood off to the side, her eyes downcast, shame and worry overwhelming her, though she told herself that she had not been at fault. Still, it burdened her.
Commander Finn came to her side and gave her a consoling smile. “Steady, now, my lady,” he said. “You have no blame in this. If what you say is true, you could not have prevented this.”
“I could have seen the trap,” Rey countered, with little heat and more self-loathing. “I could have sensed it. I am her sworn Knight! How could I have failed her?”
“You did not fail her,” Finn replied. “You could never fail her. We know your heart is as true as ours.”
Rey looked up at him, and saw the truth in his eyes. She nodded, but did not feel particularly consoled.
“The hologram told me that the only way to release her was to solve a riddle,” she said. “And yet none of the answers any of the men here have said have done so.”
“ What does Man desire most?” Finn repeated, looking up at the sky through the circle of soaring evergreens. “I can answer nothing more than to work towards a worthy purpose, to know the trust of one’s friends, to seek knowledge and truth.”
“Her captor is, I fear, not such a worthy man as you, then,” Rey said bitterly, and clasped hands with Finn. “He told me to search in the woods, and it is growing dark yet; we will not leave her, and we cannot move her from this place. Was that another trick?”
“I suppose you won’t know until you go forth and seek out such an answer as pleases him,” Finn replied.
Rey’s eyes widened. “You believe he spoke true?”
Finn shrugged. “I believe any solution is better than none at all. Do not trouble yourself; we will all stay with her and guard her.”
“You must do what I could not,” Rey said, and gave his hands a squeeze, which he returned. “You must keep her safe.”
Finn nodded. “I will do everything in my power to do so. Now: Go!”
Rey set off into the forest on her speeder, feeling the wind in her hair and a heaviness in her heart that would not abate. She was to blame; she ought to have seen it, sensed it. She should have done better. It was her greed and curiosity that had unearthed the device to begin with…
Thoughts rushed through her head faster than her speeder could carry her, but even as she went, neither her eyes nor her senses could detect any living being, other than the inhabitants of this planet, who regarded her with a certain distant curiosity, but did not draw near.
Perhaps an Ewok could tell her the answer to his riddle; what would a Man—an Ewok Man, at that—desire most? But they did not approach her, and she did not wish to chase them down. It seemed rather disrespectful to do so on their own planet, after all.
Rey flew and flew, onwards and onwards, reaching back with her senses to check in on the Empress and reassure herself that she yet lived, and all was well. She was doing so when a figure rose up before her in the woods, and she turned so sharply on her speeder she nearly was flung off of it.
“Who goes there?” Rey called out to the figure, once she had caught her breath. “Show yourself!”
The figure did not move. All around it, the forest was dark, as night had fallen and the trees now seemed as paper cutouts against the starry sky. This figure, however, was so dark it seemed to draw the light into itself. It seemed to devour all things that went near it, and even reaching out with her senses, Rey could not touch its mind.
And yet, somehow she knew that this being could give her the answer she sought.
Fear made the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rise, a cool night breeze making her sweaty skin shiver.
“Show yourself!” she called once more to the figure.”
“If I do, Lady Commander, will you turn and flee?”
His voice—deep and resonant—and the Force energy that rolled off of it hit her like the beat from a drum. But neither the voice nor the feeling was what made her blood run cold.
“How do you know me?”
“You were sent for me,” the figure replied calmly. “And here I am.”
“Yes, but how—”
Not all things are as logical as you wish, spoke that deep voice into her thoughts. Rey recoiled, and her thighs clenched tight around the body of her speeder, her hands white-knuckled on the grips. Surely ones such as us know that there are powers unseen by the common eye.
Ones such as us… Rey did not know whether she thought the words to herself, or whether he could hear her; she swallowed thickly.
Such as us… The Force that surrounded him was like the rush of air beating down at the base of a waterfall. She could feel the spray hit her face, and she shivered.
When he spoke next, however, there was the faintest tint of amusement in his tone.
“Do you wish to know the answer or not?”
“I wish to know the answer.” Rey stepped off of her speeder, and planted her feet on the ground. “There. I surely cannot outrun you. You have my word—the word of a Knight.”
The figure gave a low chuckle, and moved slightly. What she had taken to be its form was, in truth, a cloak, she realized. It hung from broad shoulders and fell to the floor, pooling there. The figure moved again, and moonlight glinted off of the black mask it wore.
It was then that Rey gasped.
It was rude to stare; Rey knew that it was terribly rude to stare, and yet she could not tear her eyes away from him. The mask seemed to be carved from polished ebony wood, or chiseled from obsidian, and it was shaped into a fearsome, monstrous face. Half in shadow from the hood of the cloak, she could pick out features here and there: Were those fanged tusks around the mouth? Were there a pair of twisted horns curling back from the face? Was that a deep-ridged brow, crowned with jagged shards like thorns? The darkness made him all the more frightening, but the Lady Commander steeled herself against the fear.
“So,” the man said—and the mask moved. No! It was no mask; it was his face, his true face, somehow. “Now you see me as I am.”
“What…” Rey fought the urge to take a step back. “What are you?”
“A man.” There it was again: that tint of bemusement. “One who can provide you with an answer, if you agree to the terms of my bargain.”
“What do you want?”
“You would give anything to save your Empress, would you not?”
Rey did not answer. Instead, she merely thought: If you can peer into my mind, then you know the answer.
The figure chuckled—a dark and dangerous sound.
“And would you trade your freedom for hers?”
Before Rey could even process this, an image appeared in her mind: She was clasping hands with the creature; they were being bound together by a braid wrapped seven times around their joined hands; he draped a cloak made of night itself over her shoulders.
“You want me to marry you?”
The figure said nothing, only stood there, tall and still like a statue. If it weren’t for the sudden shuttering of his mind against hers, Rey could have sworn that he was ever so slightly…
Nervous?
Rey grit her teeth together, searching for some other answer, some other way to find what she needed. She stretched out with her mind, finding her Empress still as she ever had been, held in that stasis unit, her heart beating slowly. Life was still within her, but one could only wait so long.
We have to get off of this place—she has to return—and if that means I remain, then so be it.
No words were spoken, but the figure before her nodded once, slowly, and Rey felt as if she had been pinned by his gaze like a specimen to a board. She was not afraid of him, only afraid that they would not bring that hateful captor an answer in time.
The rest of her future, after she was bound to this creature, she would concern herself with later.
“Very well,” Rey said, afforming out loud what both of them already knew she had assented to. “Let’s get this over with, then.”
“Warm words from my bride-to-be,” came the creature’s sardonic reply. He nodded at her speeder. “Go. I will travel behind you.”
“Do I have your word?” Rey asked. “I will not leave here unless I have it.”
“Only if I can have yours, Lady Commander.”
Rey was genuinely affronted by this. “Where I come from, a Knight’s word can be relied upon.”
“Then let us clasp hands on our bargain.”
She did not want to touch him, and yet she could not deny him his request. Soon, after all, they would be married. Then, by rights, they would see each other laid bare and be much more vulnerable. Rey did not know if this being made his home here in the forest, or if he, too, had fallen like the remnants of the war. If he was some otherworldly being, some trickster, working in concert with the one who had trapped her Empress to begin with. But what would he gain by doing so?
Control over the Empress, Rey thought, as she slowly moved her hand from its place over her saber. That’s a fine thing to acquire…
You underestimate your allure, came the creature’s reply.
“Get out of my head,” Rey countered. “That is the other term of our bargain: No more of… that, unless I give you leave.”
The creature inclined his head, and, all at once, she felt him withdraw from her mind.
The absence left her feeling strangely cold. But it was the chill of the night air, not anything like familiarity or comfort, she was sure of it.
“Very well.”
Rey walked towards him, and he took one step, then another, until they were within close reach of one another. She had to look up to make out any of the details of his strange, carved face. Rey had not thought to be wed to anyone in particular; she was devoted to her duties, and the thought of being a wife had never really crossed her mind. She had friends, of course—close friends, her beloved and trusted fellow Knights—and some of them took lovers or were wed, but that was not a path she had ever seen herself walk down.
Now, though, it was before her—as was her groom-to-be: A creature of darkness and shadows and power unlike anything she had ever felt before.
Rey extended her right hand to him, and he met it, clasped it in his own. Leather gloved hands met hers, huge and firm. It felt like a human hand, with the same number of fingers as her own. Moonlight glinted in his eyes as he watched her; Rey could not discern any emotion on his face, and tentatively, she opened her mind up to the current of the Force.
She gasped.
Once, when she had sat by her friend and fellow Knight, Poe, as he’d tuned the strings of his lute, Rey had felt them as they had come into proper pitch. She herself was not gifted with instruments, save for the instruments of war and the tools she had used as a child, scavenging parts in the sandy wastes of her homeland, but it had been similar to the way the Force felt when the magic welled up inside of her. There was a resonance, like a tuned string, singing in the Force from the place their hands were joined.
All at once, she closed her mind, finished the handshake, and pulled away, retreating to her speeder.
“How will you travel there?”
“I will be there,” was his only answer.
Rey did not want to say that she was afraid. Instead, she swung her leg over her speeder and shot off into the night, weaving her way through the trees as quickly as it would carry her.
When she pulled into the clearing, the rest of her fellow Knights were there in a protective ring around the Empress. Her figure was as it had been when Rey had left her: Frozen in place, eyes open, holding the ball-like device which had ostensibly triggered the trap. The Knights greeted Rey as she arrived, ignoring the hologram figure, who was singing a little song in a language Rey did not recognize.
“What news?”
“Did you find something?”
They pressed her with their questions, and Rey could not form any answers at all before all of them stood and drew their weapons, defending against the newest arrival: The towering creature, with his stone-masked face and his body formed of shadows.
“Stand down,” Rey told them. “He is friend.”
Rey was not entirely sure if that was true, but he was to be her husband, and had promised to uphold his end of the bargain by freeing the Empress. Therefore, he was as close to friend as one might find on this world.
Slowly, he approached.
By the cold blue light of the Empress’ containment field, Rey could see more of him, and his shape. He was tall and long-limbed, broad-shouldered under a massive furred cloak. The hood of his cloak, she now saw, he had thrown back, and waves of ink-black hair fell down his back. His eyes were like black stones set in the carved stone face. And that face… masklike it was, etched with fearsome symbols that encircled his eyes and his mouth.
She did not like to look at his face. She could not look away.
“What is this thing?” Finn said, his weapon still drawn despite her admonishment.
“Peace,” Rey assured him. “Trust me. He says he can help us.”
In exchange for my hand in marriage, Rey did not say.
Instead, Finn—who was staring up at the creature—slowly lowered and sheathed his own weapon.
The creature nodded at him, then turned and stalked to the hologram. When the Twi’lek figure saw it approaching, he laughed with pure glee.
“Ah! You found your answer, did you?”
“And you will stand by your word?” Rey said, joining the towering, masked creature as he stood before her Empress’ captor. “You will honor it?”
The incorporeal Twi’lek waved her concerns away with a transparent, dismissive hand. “Yes, yes.”
The creature looked to Rey; she had the clear and distinct feeling that he, too, was asking for her honor, for her to stand by her word. She nodded at him.
He bent low, then, and whispered some words to the hologram. All at once, the figure disappeared—and so, too, did the field surrounding the Empress.
Rose fell to the ground, landing on the soft forest floor with a thump. Her knights ran to her side, and Rey did as well, half-expecting the creature to try and stop her, to demand her compliance with his orders, to take his side of the bargain here and now—but he did not.
So Rey ran to her Empress’ side, joining her fellow Knights.
She half hoped that when she looked back, the creature would be gone—lost into the darkness that pressed in around them. It was traitorous of her, she knew, but she could not help it. Now that her Empress was safe—
“Who is that?”
The Empress was looking over at the tall, shadow-shrouded figure who stood silently by, watching.
“He is—” Rey began, but the creature stepped forward and bowed low.
“Your Majesty,” he said, in a voice that was as subterranean and inhuman as ever. “I come to ask you to give your Lady Commander leave to be released from her official duties.”
Rose looked to Rey in surprise. “What is this about?”
Rey told her.
“I have given him my word,” she said, when the tale was told. “I will not forswear my oath.”
Rose clasped Rey’s hand in her own. “Your honor does you credit.” And then, to the creature: “If this is what my Lady Commander wishes, then it shall be done.”
It was as simple as that. Rey squeezed her Empress’ hands in return, and then slowly got to her feet, facing the towering creature. Her husband-to-be.
“What does he mean?” Finn asked her. “Rey, what bargain has this creature made with you?”
The look on Finn’s face when she told him was more than just shock. It was revulsion, and his protective instinct just as she would have had for him, had their situations been reversed. Her fellow Knights were like brothers and sisters to her; she looked around as the understanding dawned on them.
None of them would betray her word, or rush to fight him. But none of them, she could tell, were at all content with her answer. But it was her bargain to make, and she had made it.
“Very well,” Rey said. She unclipped her crest from her cloak and set it into the Empress’ hands. “Serving you has been my highest honor.”
“I wish you peace and every possible happiness,” Rose replied, and kissed Rey first on the right cheek, then the left. “Thank you.”
There was no more time to delay. Already the party had tarried too long on the surface of the moon, and as the rest of the Knights escorted their Empress to the waiting shuttle, Rey stood beside the tall and silent figure, watching them depart. Her heart was aching, her pulse beating furiously out of fear and trepidation, her muscles coiled and ready to run to join them. But an oath was an oath, and she would never break her oath. It was a more than worthy trade, her freedom for the Empress’ safety. What was one Knight’s life when compared to the Empress of the Galaxy?
I am no longer a Knight… Rey thought sadly as the ship took off. She watched it until it was no more than a faint star in the sky, lost among the millions already scattered overhead.
She turned to the creature beside her, and looked up into his face. “I do not know your name.”
“Kylo,” he replied. She sensed a momentary hesitation, though, before he said it, as if it had not always been his name.
Rey decided not to press the issue. There were many reasons why a person might wish to change their name.
“I am Rey,” was all she could think of to say.
“You gave up your freedom so easily,” he said, after a moment had passed. “Why?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Rey replied, still searching the skies for the last hint of the shuttle she still so desperately wished to be upon. “It was necessary.”
Silence settled between them, but it is not entirely comfortable. She felt on edge, like the start of a training session with a sparring partner. But he was certainly not one of her Knights, and all of her instincts told her—
Well, it did not much matter what her instincts told her.
He was her husband.
Or, at least, very soon would be.
“How do you propose we… do this, then?”
The towering figure beside her looked down with a jolt of surprise, and Rey hastily clarified: “Marry, I mean. Not… well, I suppose I did trade away that, too…”
Her cheeks warmed with a sudden flush. She wondered if he can feel her discomfort the way she could so palpably feel his. Despite the fact that she’d warned him to stay out of her thoughts, it felt impossible to keep herself from projecting like a deep-space transmission. And that frightened her.
What are you?
Who are you?
“There are…” he began haltingly, a curiously human cadence to his voice despite his alien appearance: “Traditions, among my people.”
“Are your people native to this world?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Again, Rey did not press.
“And you wish for me to… live here with you?”
I’m starting to believe you didn’t have anything close to resembling a long-term plan…
The figure beside her let out a deep sigh.
“Get out of my head, please—”
“I wasn’t,” he protested. “You’re just impossible to ignore… My apologies.”
“Tell me,” Rey said, turning to face him with a ferocity of emotion welling up within her, one she chose to believe was anger and nothing more. “Why could that horrible man know the answer to his ridiculous riddle, and none of us could?”
“Because it is embarrassing,” Kylo softly replied.
Rey could barely suppress the laughter as it bubbled out of her. A fearsome, frightening, unnaturally powerful creature such as he could be embarrassed? It was altogether absurd.
“But if I am to be your wife—”
“I shall tell you,” Kylo grumbled. “But please, I beg you: Do not laugh at it.”
With her senses on alert, and her mind open to the Force, albeit tentatively, Rey schooled her expression and prepared herself for something truly absurd.
Slowly, he leaned down to bring his mask closer to her ear.
“Sometimes,” Kylo began, voice softer than the wind. “Sometimes, I… I like to be the little spoon…”
Shock was not a strong enough word to describe what Rey felt at this revelation. It certainly was not strong enough to describe the ripple of the Force that surrounded them both like a great, cosmic exhale.
“What…?”
Kylo let out a low noise, and his voice… his voice was different, somehow. Less deep, less frightening, more…
Human.
Rey pulled back from him and stared up into his face. Into his eyes.
His eyes…
They were still deep and dark as obsidian, but they were human now, set in a human face, with all its imperfections. He had a strong nose, a full mouth, skin that looked as touchable as the mask had been forbidding.
“I… I never thought it could be…” Kylo looked down at his hands, now free of their leather gloves. Bare, pale skin in the moonlight, and the light of incredulity in his eyes. “A dark wizard cursed me to take that form, told me that… that if I could find a bride who would take me as I am, then I would wear it by day or by night, but never both.”
“Why not?” Rey heard herself ask him, still staring at his face, unable to believe what she was seeing, what she was feeling. It felt like she had come home. “I would be your big spoon…”
The expression on his face made her heart leap in pure exaltation.
“You would?”
Rey nodded.
Reverently, he clasped her hands in his. “Ben. My name was—is—Ben.”
“Ben.” Rey smiled up at him. She could not explain it; her heart was singing .
But as light as she now felt—how strange, how wondrous, how unexpected—his face still wore a somber expression. He clasped her hands more firmly, as if she were a dream and he was about to wake within the moment.
“So you must choose, if you will… will have me. I can be like this, as you see, by day, or by night.”
Rey’s brow furrowed.
“The wizard’s terms,” Ben clarified. “A bride that would have me would have to choose. If I am like this by night, then by day…”
He swallowed thickly, the strong column of his throat bobbing and moving, the emotions flickering around his expressive face, so very unlike the mask he had been bound to wear.
“You’ll be as you were?”
Ben nodded.
Rey stared at him. How could such a stranger now feel as dear to her as her own soul? It was beyond strange, like something out of the ancient tales. And she had never felt as if she could be in those stories, despite reading them as a girl, dreaming of them before she had put her childishness behind her. Then she imagined what it must have been like for him, to be cursed, to wait, to hope, to scheme and bargain and still be at the mercy of someone else.
She shook her head.
Ben’s face fell. “You… you will not have me?”
“I will not choose for you.”
For a long moment, the world was still around them. And then, scattered starlight began to fall. It dusted like tiny gemstones, little kyber crystals falling like mist. Each place it landed on Ben’s skin glowed faintly, until more and more and more fell, and they were covered in it. She felt the change, too; felt the way the curse clung to him in one last, desperate attempt to lay claim to him—and then, breaking like a wave cresting on the shore, it was done.
He exhaled. Drew in a new breath like it was his first.
Looked down at her, and smiled.
“ Rey… ” She had never heard her name sound so sweet, never felt such comforting warmth and acceptance. Without hesitation, she rose up and pressed her mouth to his.
After the kiss had passed (and it took a good, long while) Ben held her tightly to himself and confessed: “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go with you—anywhere. Anywhere .”
And so the two of them hailed the shuttle, and Rey brought her husband up into the stars. With the Empress’ blessing, their hands and lives were bound together for all eternity, and he gladly watched and, in time, joined in on her training as she resumed her Knightly duties. There were other nightly duties, too: Ones in which the Lady Commander made good on her promise to always let her tall, proud warrior be the little spoon as often as he wished it.
And, reader, he wished it.