Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ren is getting married to the love of his life. 

Rey stepped through the grand double doors of the banquet hall, the train of her gown catching the light, casting tiny specks of light on the floor. She walked arm-in-arm with her father, radiant and beaming, her joy unmistakable even across the sea of guests. A hush of silence fell over the room as guests admired her, some even wiping away their tears.

When her eyes found his, she inhaled slightly, her smile blooming wider. There was only love in that look, unguarded and honest, making Ren smile back.

He still couldn’t quite believe it. How he managed to get her to date him, let alone marry him, Ren does not know.

The day had been beautiful, even with the minor disasters. Poe, his ever-reliable best man, had somehow misplaced both his bow tie and shoes two hours before the ceremony. Ren nearly lost his mind before Hux tracked them down in the backseat of one of their cars. At least it wasn’t the rings, Hux had said dryly as he handed the items over.

His parents had visited earlier that morning, smothering him in hugs and quiet tears, his mother whispering how proud she was, his father clapping his shoulder with wordless approval. Relatives, old friends, and blurry acquaintances all stopped him before the ceremony, shaking his hand, offering their congratulations and well-wishes.

And now, here she was. Rey.

Beautiful as the day he met her, maybe even more, standing in front of him, having completed her small journey.

He held out his hand and she took it without hesitation.

He is marrying the love of his life and everything is going perfectly, but he senses an odd stirring in his stomach as he tosses a final glance into the crowd; to a spot just a few feet away from them and a few inches from Rey’s shoulders. 

There, smiling with uncharacteristic politeness, was Nova Piett, the bane of Ren’s existence.

Growing up, there were three things Ren knew for certain.

First: purple was his favourite colour, despite what his wardrobe might suggest.

Second: he was more of his mother’s son than his father’s, in that he will never be a pilot like his dad. Like his mom, he liked the the mechanics of power - in business, not Senate. He drew the line at politics.

And finally: Nova Piett was everything but polite.

Ren had known Nova for as long as he could remember. She’d shoved her way into his life with the same kind of reckless certainty she brought into every room, and a bold claim that they knew each other from past lives.

Ren, being seven years old and rational, decided she was just weird. And persistent.

He’d never had close friends growing up. Other kids found him too strange, too serious, or just too quiet. But Nova? Nova was a storm of energy and stubbornness, and she latched onto him like gravity. She followed him at recess. Sat next to him at lunch. She was loud, excitable, and endlessly chatty. And always, always, with him.

She hugged him every time they met. She grabbed his hand like it belonged to her. She’d chatter on endlessly about what she’d done that day, or what she planned to do next. And she always ended with, “Wanna come with me, Ren?”

He almost never did.

Still, it wasn’t long before his mom started liking her. Nova had that effect on adults; the kind that made them smile, shake their heads fondly, and wonder aloud where all her energy came from.

Playdates became regular. Their parents started getting together. They were treated like childhood best friends before Ren had even decided if he liked her.

No one bothered to ask if Ren wanted to be her friend. Not the adults, not Nova.

It was like she’d already decided. Like she’d known something he didn’t.

Ren met Poe Dameron in the fifth grade.

He was the first friend Ren ever made who wasn’t Nova. More importantly, he was the first person who stayed friends with Ren after meeting Nova.

Poe Dameron was the kind of boy who made everything look easy; golden-skinned, fast-talking, with a smile that could win over teachers, classmates, and cafeteria staff all in the same day. He had an effortless charm that Ren envied a little and trusted even less.

Where Ren merely endured Nova, Poe welcomed her. He laughed at her jokes. Asked about her day. He even liked that she followed them around during recess like she had a claim to both of them.

Nova, of course, was delighted. Ren, less so.

One afternoon, during the rare moment when Nova wasn’t trailing them down the hallway, Ren finally voiced his frustration.

“She’s so annoying,” he muttered, scowling as he kicked at a loose pebble. “Always clinging. Always talking.”

Poe raised an eyebrow. “But she likes you the best. Don’t you like that? She does everything you ask her to. That’s kind of a great friend, no?”

Ren huffed. “It’s suffocating.”

Poe laughed. “Why don’t you tell her to back off?”

Ren didn’t answer right away. He scrunched up his nose, then gave a half-hearted shrug. “She’s a family friend. Even if I wanted to, I can’t get rid of her.”

Poe chuckled and gave him a friendly clap on the back. “Well, high school’s coming. She’ll make new friends soon, probably forget all about you. Who knows, you might even miss her.”

Ren scoffed and ducked out from under Poe’s hand. “Yeah. I don’t know about that.”

Still, it was the three of them that made it through the end of elementary school. And somehow, they became a trio.

But even as the years passed, and they shared classes, birthdays, and summer trips, Ren never quite warmed to Nova the way he did to Poe.

He wasn’t sure why.

Maybe it was because she never gave him the option of being friends.

The thing is, Nova did make other friends in high school.

Plenty, actually. People liked her; she was smart, sharp-witted, surprisingly charismatic when she wanted to be. But somehow, despite all that, Ren still found himself orbiting her more often than not.

The childhood playdates had mostly stopped. He had enough autonomy now to decline the forced hangouts without consequence. But that didn’t stop his mom from trying.

“Benjamin Solo,” she scolded gently one afternoon, “be nice to her. She’s always been so sweet to you.”

“She’s weird, Mom,” he groaned. “And people keep thinking we’re dating because she won’t leave me alone. How am I supposed to get a girlfriend like this?”

Leia raised an eyebrow. “Well, why don’t you date her then? She’s a lovely girl.”

Ren gagged. Loudly. “No, thank you.”

Even so, he did manage to date a few girls in high school - a miracle, really, considering how aloof and difficult he was most of the time. But none of those relationships lasted more than a few months.

There was always a common thread.

“You talk about Nova way too much.”
“Seriously, if you like her that much, why don’t you just date her?”
"Do you like Nova more than me?"

Each breakup left him reeling. He hadn’t thought he talked about Nova that much; maybe in passing, or when trying to explain that no, nothing was going on between them, and yes, he was absolutely sure she wasn’t going to randomly show up at their date.

(Though, come to think of it, Nova never did show up when he was dating someone. She made herself scarce. Quiet.)

In hindsight, that might’ve been part of why dating was appealing.

No Nova. No noise. No shadow.

Until the relationship ended, and she reappeared.

Close, but never too close. Present, but quiet. Never asking questions about the relationship or the breakup, offering silent support. Just… there. 

He wouldn’t admit it aloud, but he liked her best in those moments.

Then, like clockwork, she’d spring back to life. Loud. Clingy. Always with a hand on his arm or looping hers through his. Just as he was considering maybe, maybe, she could be his friend for real.

It drove him insane.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe she likes you?” Poe asked once, during a particularly pathetic breakup spiral. “Like… has liked you. All these years?”

Ren stayed quiet.

“And maybe,” Poe went on, “you dating around like it doesn’t matter? Hurts her?”

Of course it had occurred to him.

He wasn’t stupid, despite what Poe thinks sometimes. He saw the way her eyes lingered. The way her laughter always softened around him. But Nova never said anything. Never acted hurt. So, he told himself it was nothing.

Then they carried on like it meant nothing.

And Ren tried to truly understand her. But eventually, he gave up.

So, when graduation came, it was still the three of them - Ren, Poe, and Nova - standing side by side.

Things shifted when they entered university.

For starters, Poe got himself a boyfriend. Naturally, the boyfriend happened to be in Nova’s classes. Because of course. Ren had long ago decided Nova was like a fungus—clingy, persistent, and somehow always growing around anyone remotely associated with him.

The boyfriend's name was Armitage Hux - red-haired, sharp-boned, and clinically refined, with the kind of quiet, curated superiority that screamed trust fund baby. Ren had assumed Hux would stay in his lane: cold, detached, and perfectly content to keep the world at arm’s length. So, it came as a mild shock when Nova and Hux… clicked.

On paper, they made no sense. Nova was loud and unpredictable, all fast opinions and faster feet. Hux moved like he was made of glass and spoke like he hated wasting breath. But somehow, they became inseparable; an unlikely duo glued together by debate, dry wit, and an unnerving ability to understand each other without saying much at all.

Poe was delighted and relieved. Ren was confused.

University passed in a blur of caffeine-fueled lectures, sleepless nights, and barely-met deadlines. A rinse-and-repeat cycle of academic burnout and morning-after optimism. But through it all—through the exams, the essays, the endless group projects - Nova was still there. Not always in his classes, but always finding him between them, or waiting after, usually with Hux in tow.

And once they were together, it was like elementary school all over again.

Nova in his space. Poe chatting nonstop. Hux offering dry, unsolicited commentary like some aristocratic ghost haunting their trio. A constant hum of activity and presence that stuck to Ren long after he was finally alone.

He didn’t particularly like Hux, but he tolerated him. The man absorbed some of Nova’s attention and made Poe happy, so that was enough for Ren to look the other way.

By the time graduation came around, Ren found himself walking the stage alongside this little group he still refused to call his. And waiting for him at the other end was the future he’d always known—inheriting his mother’s company; soon-to-be the CEO of one of the country’s leading automotive tech firms.

His future promised structure. Purpose. Distance.

Surely, Nova wouldn’t be able to follow him there.

Right?

Ren adapted to his role as CEO faster than anyone expected - faster than he expected, even. His parents beamed with pride, their legacy in capable hands. And while the whispers of nepotism lingered in corporate hallways early on, they faded soon enough, drowned out by quarterly profits and quiet efficiency.

He was good at it.

Focused. Methodical. Sharp when it mattered.

It was most likely because for the first time in years, there was no constant buzz at the back of his mind; the ceaseless chatter and endless energy that was Nova Piett.

He often found himself glancing out the window, watching the city move in slow, steady rhythms. There were no loops of chatter filling the air. No tugging at his sleeve. No crashing waves of hyperactive enthusiasm.

It was... peaceful.

For once, Ren was finally just Ren, and he was not the boy shadowed by Nova’s overbearing brightness.

Ren was neck-deep in quarterly reports and the slow crawl of resource forecasts when he first met Rey.

She was introduced as the newly hired Executive Vice President of Resources, reporting under his uncle Luke, who, everyone knew, was quietly preparing to retire. Ren had expected another stiff, corporate clone with too much jargon and not enough clarity.

Instead, in walked Rey.

Confident. Sharp. Calm. She spoke with the kind of assurance that didn’t ask for space - it naturally filled it.

Where Nova had always been brash and loud, like she had something to prove to everyone in the room, Rey was centered. Steady. She didn’t need to prove anything, she simply was.

They worked well together. Her insights were clean, her timing impeccable, and before long, she became a regular part of his daily circle, joining the familiar rhythm of Poe and Hux.

And then, it happened.

His mother summoned him for a “quick catch-up” in the executive boardroom, her tone dangerously breezy.

“Ren,” she said, sliding into the chair across from him like a woman with excellent news. “I’ve got something exciting to share.”

He felt the pit form instantly in his stomach.

“Kandri is retiring,” she continued, “and Nova will be stepping in as your co-CEO.”

Ren blinked. “What do you mean, co-CEO?” His voice cracked on the word like a teenager, which he absolutely resented.

Leia smiled with that terrifying blend of motherly warmth and corporate finality. “Isn’t it great? Just like old times. Poe, Hux, and now, Nova too. You and her, leading the next era together.”

Ren stared at her, willing her to say she was joking. She didn’t.

His hands tightened on the table edge, jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.

“She’s starting tomorrow,” Leia added brightly, patting his arm like she hadn’t just detonated a bomb in his meticulously Nova-free life.

Ren very seriously considered quitting on the spot.

The peace he had known, the quiet that allowed him to breathe, to grow into his role, all shattered like glass under a sudden storm.

Almost instantly, the subtle buzz returned. The low hum of Nova’s energy was back, a constant presence in the corridors and the boardrooms.

He found her in every corner of the office; bounding into meetings unannounced, firing off emails with brash demands, pulling him into conversations he didn’t start and had no interest in finishing.

Rey noticed it. She didn’t say anything, but Ren caught the way her gaze would flick to him when Nova entered a room; how she tracked the way his shoulders tensed, the way his focus fractured.

Ren, who had spent years learning to manage his life around Nova’s tempest, now had to relearn how to coexist with it, and this time, not as a friend or childhood shadow.

This time, she was his equal. Co-CEO. A partner, in title if not in peace.

And the quiet moments he’d treasured? They became scarce and precious. A luxury he could no longer afford.

It slipped through his fingers like sand, and Ren couldn’t help but mourn it.

Ren noticed it almost immediately; the shift in Nova the moment Rey was promoted to Chief of Resources.

It wasn’t dramatic, not like her usual flair for disruption. No, this was quieter. Sharper.

She became… distant.

In meetings, she was all precision and poise. Her interactions with Rey were marked by clipped politeness and an unnatural formality, like she was holding her breath the entire time. It was jarring. Nova had never been one to tiptoe around anyone, let alone someone as warm and even-tempered as Rey.

She looked at Rey like she was seeing a ghost. Like she couldn’t decide whether to say hello or run the other way.

Even Poe and Hux noticed it, exchanging concerned glances over coffee or in late-night chats. They tried to reach out, tried to poke and prod their way through the fog she’d built around herself.

Nova brushed them off every time. Smiles too small. Eyes too tired.

Ren should have been relieved. He’d spent years wishing she’d quiet down, give him space, stop orbiting his every move.

But now? He hated it.

Nova was harder to ignore when she was quiet. Harder to dismiss when her silence became a wall between them.

Eventually, at Poe’s insistence - and after another strained meeting where Nova didn’t say a word unless prompted - he snapped.

He stormed into her office without knocking. “What the hell is going on with you?”

Nova barely looked up from her screen. “Good afternoon to you too, Ren.”

“Drop the act. You get moody, sure, but this? Even the employees are noticing. You're ice cold.”

She paused, then slowly leaned back in her chair. “What do you think about soulmates?”

He blinked. “Seriously?”

“Humour me.”

He crossed his arms, frowning. “It’s a romantic excuse. People use it to justify bad decisions. Why?”

Nova gave a breathy laugh. “Yeah. I used to think it was real.”

“You’re deflecting.”

“Do you remember,” she said, softer now, “what I told you when we were kids? That we’d met before?”

He scowled. “You said that a hundred times. Some past life theory?”

She nodded. “Will you let me tell you about it now?”

Ren sighed and started towards the door. “To think I was actually worried about you.”

He almost missed the way her expression faltered - how her guard slipped for just a second.

“Do you like her?” she asked suddenly, voice thin. “Rey. Do you?”

He stopped. Turned just enough to look over his shoulder.

“That has nothing to do with you,” he said flatly.

And walked out.

So much for Poe’s advice.

After that disaster of a conversation with Nova, Ren actually started seeing Rey differently. His interest shifting into something far more personal than professional, and he was pleasantly surprised to see it wasn’t one-sided.

Rey’s touches lingered longer than necessary during meetings. Her teasing became more personal, more pointed. What had once been casual workplace banter had begun to toe the line into something far more intimate.

Eventually, he worked up the nerve to ask her out for drinks.

I thought you'd never ask.

The smirk she gave him that day was unforgettable.

He and Rey connected in a way he never had with any of his ex-girlfriends. Where he leaned into brooding and pessimism, Rey brought a calm, positive light.

Their relationship moved faster than he was used to, which made him anxious. He worried about the day that it would no doubt burn out just as quickly, but that day never came. Days bled into months, and soon, it became clear they needed to come clean to the company about their relationship; they would’ve been dating for at least half a year by then.

The reception to their relationship was with mixed reactions. Poe was hurt that he wasn't told earlier, though he admitted he was happy for them, promising to treat them to a congratulatory dinner soon. Hux was genuinely shocked and asked how Ren had managed to “fool the girl” into a relationship, though his small upturned lip betrayed how he felt. His parents were thrilled, mostly because it was the longest relationship he’d ever had, something they proudly announced during their first introduction with Rey, much to his embarrassment. Their coworkers were a mix of supportive and indifferent, while HR immediately flagged concerns about a potential conflict of interest. They only backed off after it was clarified that Rey reported to Nova, not Ren, and once Ren gently reminded them who signed their cheques.

And then there was Nova.

Nova was not happy.

Nova had been away the day they announced their relationship; she was off to a business trip that was supposed to last weeks. Ren was outside his office door about to go in, looking over reports he just got from Hux, when he heard his name called out loud, unmistakably Nova.

He turned, already bracing himself.

Nova stood there, arms crossed, but her posture wasn’t as sure as usual. Her eyes flicked over him, curious and cautious.

“What now?” he asked, voice tight, preparing for the worst.

She stepped forward, hesitant for once. “I heard you and Rey are... together.”

Ren blinked. Of course she did. News like that didn’t stay quiet.

“Yeah,” he said, keeping it short.

Her expression faltered, like she’d just been punched in the gut.

“And you’re serious?” she asked quietly.

He nodded. “We are.”

She looked away, lips pressed tight, then back at him, her eyes glistening. 

“Look, I know you know I love you. I've been so obvious,” she said quietly, “and I’ve been okay not saying it out loud before and to just let you be, but I feel like this is my last chance."

Ren swallowed knowing what was about to be said, torn between wanting to get it over with and keep feigning ignorance.

"I'm in love with you Ren. I loved you since I met you. So could you please reconsider dating Rey? And choose me this time?”

Ren blinked. She sounded small and unsure. Not the loud, pushy Nova who always got under his skin.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. He sighs.

She moved in closer, and that familiar desperation was already surfacing; the same neediness that had followed him since they were kids, now dressed in older, shakier words.

“But you promised you’d find me again, remember? On that purple planet. You promised you will recognize me. We talked about it when we were kids. We’ve done this before, in other lives. And you loved me then. You recognized me.” She took his hand and squeezed tightly. Her hands were cold and shaky.

For a beat, he just stared at her, caught off guard, then let out a breath through his nose and shook her off. Of course it was this nonsense again.

“I don’t know why you keep clinging to these fantasies, Nova, and I’ve let them slide before, but not anymore. You need to stop.”

She stood there like she’d been slapped, but he pressed on, not cruel, just blunt, because dragging it out would be worse. “I don’t feel that way about you, Nova. I never have.”

“But Rey - ” she started, her voice catching.

“Rey is different,” he cut in. “She doesn’t chase. She doesn’t make me feel like I owe her something. I want to be with her. With you, Nova, I’ve always just felt… cornered.”

The silence that followed was thick. Suffocating.

“What should I have done differently?” she muttered, more to herself. “In the past, you liked it when Rey was energetic and bubbly.”

It wasn’t a question for him, but he answered anyway. A final line drawn in the sand.

“Nothing. There’s nothing you could have done to make me fall in love with you.” He ignored the burn of the words as he said them.

That did it. Her posture faltered, but she caught herself before fully crumbling. Tears escaping as she looked down and let out a slow, shaky breath.

“Right,” she said, almost to herself. She nodded.

She stepped back, retreating down the hall like a shadow fading into nothing.

Ren didn’t follow.

He just went in his office, shut his door, and tried not to think about the look on her face.

The change between the two of them was palpable. For once, it was Nova avoiding him.

It was different from when she retreated to herself; she was acting normal with Poe and Hux, but clams up when he or Rey were in the room.

At first, it just felt like peace. Meetings ran faster. Hallways were quieter. No one hovered near his office with some odd anecdote or irrelevant observation about the vending machine. It was easier to breathe.

But a week in, the silence started to itch.

“What’s up with you and Nova? Is she avoiding you?” Poe asked casually, scrolling through something on his phone.

Ren didn’t look up. “No.”

“She skipped your morning updates. That’s not like her.”

“She’s probably just busy,” he muttered.

Poe raised an eyebrow but let it go.

Ren told himself it didn’t matter. Nova wanted space? Fine. Good. Great. Things were better now. Clearer. Cleaner. She wasn’t pushing anymore, wasn’t trying to wedge herself into places he didn’t want her. She had finally, finally, backed off.

And yet.

He found himself looking for her sometimes, mid-meeting, expecting some off-topic quip or theatrical sigh. She didn’t even sit across from him anymore.

And when Rey commented over lunch - “Nova seems… off. Is she okay?” - he had to bite back the instinct to deflect.

He wanted to say yes, but the answer tasted wrong.

Instead, he muttered, “She’ll be fine.”

Rey gave him a look but didn’t push. Thank god.

Later, alone in his office, he stared at his reflection in the dark glass of the window and felt something twisting, low and tight in his chest.

He didn’t miss her.

He didn’t.

He just has this ringing in his ear that not even Rey could quiet anymore.

He told himself it will all go back to normal soon. Nevermind that he didn’t know what he meant by normal.

Ren threw himself deeper into his relationship with Rey, telling himself it was what adulthood looked like—knowing what you want, settling in, having it all figured out.

The first night he stayed at Rey’s was an accident. They were working on a proposal presentation that turned into a late dinner that turned into a bottle of wine, then a lazy decision not to drive home.

The second night, he brought his charger and toothbrush.

The third, a change of clothes.

By the fifth, Rey was clearing space in her dresser without needing to ask.

“You basically live here now,” she said, brushing her teeth, a hint of a smile in her voice.

Ren looked up from the bed, shirtless, exhausted beyond the usual tiredness that came from endless meetings, and emotionally hollow in a way he didn’t want to examine.

“Is that a problem?” he asked.

She shrugged. “No. I like it.”

He leaned back on the pillows, nodding.

He moved in after the second week.

By the fourth week, they were moving to a bigger place together.

He also began complimenting her more. He often found himself telling her how steady she was, and made sure she knew how grateful he was, and how lucky he felt with her.

Rey listened and accepted all his attention with grace, only making a small quip about it once.

 “All these flowers, Ren? Why do I feel like you’re trying to convince yourself of something?” She asked one morning after receiving her bouquet of the day, in a tone that was playful. She was teasing him. 

She was smiling while she admired the flowers and missed the slight flinch he gave in response.

“I’m not,” he said too quickly. “I just don’t want to mess this up.”

“What exactly are you trying to prove?” Poe asked the same day, giving him a judging look. “I get flowers for anniversaries. Maybe once a week if I’m feeling romantic. But every day, man? You secretly invested in a florist or something?”

Ren didn’t respond.

Ren and Rey would be celebrating their first anniversary when he proposed. He had been planning it for a while now, but he felt it was ideal if he waited until they were at least a year into the relationship before popping the question.

The restaurant he chose was quiet; not romantic, not dramatic, just quiet.

Private. Safe.

Ren had picked it for that reason.

Rey sat across from him, her sleeves rolled up, hair a little messy from a long day, her smile soft around the edges. She looked at him the same way she always did—steady, grounded, clear-eyed.

He sometimes envied that.

He should’ve waited for dessert. Or a walk. Or something less clinical than reaching into his jacket pocket before they’d even finished their drinks.

But he was tired.

And he needed this done.

He placed the small black box between them, not opening it right away. Just letting it sit there like a second thought.

Rey looked down at it, then back up at him. She didn’t look surprised.

“You’re sure?” she asked, not teasing, just gently confirming.

Ren’s jaw twitched. “Yeah. I am.”

A beat.

Then he opened the box. The ring was simple. Elegant. Like her.

He didn’t give a speech. He didn’t need to. He just asked the question. Something flickered in Rey’s expression, she looked at him searching.

“Is this about her?” she asked quietly.

Ren didn’t flinch, but something in him went very still.

“No,” he said, eyes steady on hers. “This is about you and me.” He reached across the table and took Rey’s hand.

And that, for now, was the truth he chose to believe in.

They decided to break the news to the company as soon as possible.

The boardroom was full, the executive team gathered for what had been called a “brief leadership update” making Ren remember when they told the team about their relationship for the first time six months ago.

Ren stood at the head of the table, Rey beside him, her expression composed, with the confidence he loved - as always. He cleared his throat once, more out of habit than nerves.

“This won’t take long,” he began. “Rey and I have an announcement to make.”

Rey reached for his hand under the table. Ren let her take it.

“We’re engaged,” she said plainly, her tone warm, professional.

A beat of silence. Then polite applause.

Poe clapped first, a little slower than usual, his grin not quite reaching his eyes.

“Congrats,” he said, sincere but cautious. “Wow. Big step.”

Hux gave a single, measured nod. “Unexpected.” He paused. “I mean, in terms of corporate planning.” His smirk was vague, not the usual sharp-edged humour. “Still - congratulations.”

HR looked vaguely alarmed (for a second time this year) until Rey clarified, “I still report to Nova, not Ren. No policies broken.” A quiet laugh rippled around the table, easing a bit of the awkward tension that started to suffocate the room.

Ren’s eyes flicked across the room - automatically, inevitably - to Nova. She was here for this, this time.

She was not clapping.

Not upset. Not angry. Just… still. Her gaze fixed on the table, unblinking, unreadable.

She glanced up, caught his eyes for half a second, then offered a small, tight smile - the kind that didn’t touch her eyes - and hurriedly offered her own applause.

Ren felt it like a cold draft in a warm room, but he said nothing.

He looked away, and squeezed Rey’s hand once.

“Thank you,” he said, and clicked to the next slide. “Now, about next quarter’s restructuring - ”

Business resumed, but the tension stayed.

And for the first time, Ren wondered if they all felt it too.

A few weeks after their engagement, Ren started looking into wedding venues and bridal catalogues. He tells himself he was being proactive just like how any good and responsible fiancés were. 

Poe gave him a look that said you can’t fool me. Hux didn’t bother hiding his sigh.

Rey, to her credit, was happy, if mildly amused.

“So… are we rushing?” Rey asked one night, her eyes skimming the sleek, overpriced venue brochure Ren had tossed onto the table.

“I just want things settled,” he said, taking a sip of his wine. “With work getting busier, it makes sense to lock things in early.”

Rey tilted her head. “You know, most people enjoy being engaged for a while first.”

“Most people don’t have our schedule,” he deflected, kissing her cheek.

She let it go.

Ren didn’t say the quiet part: if he kept moving, he wouldn’t have time to listen to the part of his mind that was always screaming.

Nova never stopped avoiding him, so naturally, he returned the favour.

At least, that’s how he justified it. That’s how he explained the silence to Poe, to Hux, and even to himself.

He wasn’t being petty. He was respecting boundaries. She wanted distance? Fine. She could have the whole damn city.

It became a bit of a problem when they started drafting guest lists, though.

Paper was everywhere.

Invitation samples. Envelope liners. Wax seals. Colour palettes. There was even a stack of blank name cards waiting to be calligraphed, each one a neat placeholder for a future guest.

Poe was cross-legged on the floor with a clipboard, tapping his pen against his teeth. “So if we cap it at a hundred, that gives us room for both sides, the execs, and - ” he glanced at Hux, “your terrifying aunt with the fur coat.”

“She’s not terrifying,” Hux said primly, flipping through a swatch book. “She’s just legally blind, married five times, and doesn’t believe in apologies.”

Rey laughed from the couch, hair pulled back, her fingers stained faintly with ink from testing envelope liners. “Okay, we have the core guest list done. Just some stragglers left - old friends, childhood people…”

Her eyes flicked up to Ren. “Anyone else you want to add?”

Ren hesitated.

Poe hummed a slow, deliberate note beside him. Hux didn’t speak, but Ren could feel both of them go still as if they already knew how he would respond.

He imagined writing the name down.

Nova Piett.

It shouldn’t be a question. She was co-CEO. A family friend. Practically fused into the architecture of his life. Honestly, she shouldn’t be a straggler, but the pen in his hand felt too heavy.

“Ren?” Rey’s voice was gentle.

He looked up. “Yeah. I’m thinking.”

He told himself it wasn’t a big deal. Guests with less history had been invited, it would be weirder not inviting her. He could chuck it to formality, even. But she hadn’t spoken to him in weeks, not beyond what professionalism required. She hadn’t asked about the wedding. Hadn’t looked at him longer than necessary.

Maybe that was the peace he always said he wanted. So why did it feel like guilt scratching at the back of his throat?

Poe leaned in. “Nova, right?” he said casually, reading Ren too easily. “She would be expecting it.”

Ren kept his expression neutral. “Maybe.”

Rey looked between them, then said nothing - just gently slid a blank card toward him. Not a push. Just an offer.

Ren stared at the card for a moment too long, then, finally, he picked up the pen.

He didn’t write her name, just folded the card in half and set it aside.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

Poe didn’t press, but had a slight look of disappointment. Hux made a mark on the seating chart. Rey nodded once, quiet understanding in her gaze.

The list moved on, but Ren’s thoughts didn’t.

It was late at night when his guilt finally caught up to him.

The apartment was quiet, save for the hum of the city outside the window and the occasional creak of old floorboards settling beneath the weight of stillness.

Ren sat at the dining table, long after Rey had gone to bed. Her mug - half-finished chamomile tea - still sat near the sink. The wedding binder she’d left behind lay open in front of him, a sticky note poking out from the “Final Mail-Outs” tab.

He shouldn’t be looking through it. Everything had already been decided. Sorted. Scheduled.

And yet, here he was.

Tucked inside the back pocket of the binder was a single, unused invitation. One of the last. Cream cardstock, minimalist gold foil, no embellishments; just names and details and a line for an address.

Ren stared at it like it might combust in his hands.

He told himself this wasn’t about her. That he wasn’t thinking about the way her voice had cracked that day, or how still she had gone afterward. He told himself he was over it; that this wedding was about moving forward, not dragging the past into the aisle.

But the card was still there.

Still blank.

He reached for a pen.

Paused.

Then, deliberately, he wrote out her name.

Nova Piett

Her address came easily. It always did. He had it memorized long before he realized he had, not meaning to.

He slid the card into an envelope, sealed it carefully, then just sat there; the envelope resting beneath his fingertips like a weight he wasn’t sure he should carry.

He could still throw it away. Pretend he never picked it up.

But instead, he got up, found a stamp, and laid it gently on top of the outgoing pile Rey had prepared earlier that afternoon.

No one would question it. Not Rey. Not Poe or Hux. Not even himself. If he could just stop thinking long enough to fall asleep.

As he turned off the kitchen light and padded toward the bedroom, he didn’t feel peace. Not quite.

But the buzzing in his ears was quieter.

He tells himself that was enough.

And now, here he was.

Standing at the altar, dressed in a suit that feels too sharp on his skin, holding the hand of the love of his life.

Rey. Steady, warm Rey. The calm after every storm. The person he chose.

But as she squeezes his fingers and smiles up at him, he feels it again - that tug. That quiet ache. Like something was missing. Or like something he’s tried too hard to forget was trying to claw its way back up.

His gaze flicks past her shoulder, toward the crowd.

Nova was still there. Smiling politely. Applauding with everyone else.

Like she didn’t once beg him to remember.

The applause swells as they kissed, with Rey’s hand in his.

The ceremony is over. Just like that.

There’s laughter, flashes from cameras, Poe shouting something irreverent as he wipes at his eyes. Hux looks suspiciously misty too, though he'll deny it until his grave. 

Golden light pours in from the chandelier above, refracting off crystal and polished silver. Waiters begin to move, the string quartet shifts into a soft waltz, and someone near the back uncorks another bottle of champagne with a loud pop and a cheer.

Rey is glowing; cheeks flushed, eyes bright. He leans in when she whispers something only for him, just under the swell of the music. He nods, smiling. Kisses her temple.

It all feels very far away.

People dispersed toward cocktails and candles, toward the promise of dinner and dancing. Somewhere, a waiter drops a tray and laughter breaks out.

Ren should feel relieved. It's done. They're married and it was perfect. It looks perfect.

Ren tells himself that means something.

But behind the clink of crystal and the rustle of gowns and suits, he hears something soft, fleeting. Not real. A voice from long ago, a memory barely out of reach.

I will find you, in the next life.

He turns, scanning the edges of the ballroom, toward the columned exit, where the light doesn’t quite reach, where the crowd thins out around coats and discarded glasses.

But Nova is already gone

No lingering look. No dramatic exit. Just… absence.

Just a brief, empty space in the crowd, and a folded place card at her table, untouched.

Ren stares at it for a breath too long, something pulling taut in his chest.

Then Rey squeezes his hand, the music swells again, and the moment passes.

Another toast rises. Another photo is taken.

Ren smiles for both.

Chapter Text

By the time the last glass of champagne is emptied and the final sparkler burns out, Ren tells himself he’s never been more certain of anything.

The ballroom has cleared, laughter and music now only faint ghosts in the air. Rey is in his arms, tucked beneath the soft linens of their honeymoon suite, skin warm against his, hair still scented faintly of roses and celebration. Her breathing is slow, peaceful.

This is what he chose.

This is the life he wanted, isn't it?

He closes his eyes and tells himself he is content. That the tightness in his chest is just the aftermath of a long day. That the sound of silence was comfort, not absence.

That he isn’t thinking of anyone else.

At the end of it all, Ren falls asleep in the arms of the love of his life.

And tells himself the pit in his stomach is just hunger.

When Ren comes to, it feels like coming up for air after being underwater for too long. The feeling is disorienting, the sudden shift in reality jarring, as though he's been holding his breath and is only now allowed to breathe.

It’s like finally being out of a bacta tank.

Ren blinks, confused by the metaphor.

What’s a bacta tank?

Before he could think too hard about it, he becomes aware of his surroundings. The sound of waves crashing against the shore fills his ears, rhythmic and constant. The warmth of the sun spreads across his skin. He breathes in and the air is thick with salt; the wind tugs gently at the trees that sway above him. He’s standing, or maybe he’s walking, he isn’t quite sure yet, but the space feels endless.

There, in the distance, standing at the edge where the water meets the land, is a figure.

Her dress is soaked, the hem heavy with water that rises as the waves crash and retreat, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Or maybe she doesn’t even notice. She stands still, like she’s waiting for something, or maybe waiting for nothing at all.

Ren doesn’t think. His feet move toward her before he has a chance to question why. Each step brings him closer to her, and with it, something inside him stirs. Memories flash in vivid bursts. He doesn’t know why, but it’s like waking up.

A café.

A medical badge. 

A salute.

A lightsaber.

Past lives.

And there, her eyes, looking at him as if they’ve seen all of him.

Nova.

She looks him over, slow and deliberate. It’s strange, the way she looks at him. Resigned. Quiet. The kind of resignation that comes after too much waiting, too much pain.

He reaches for her, his hands trembling.

But she doesn’t move closer.

Another wave crashes over them both, soaking his shoes, the water creeping up his ankles. The sudden chill of it jolts him into a sharper awareness.

She’s wearing the same dark red dress she wore to his wedding.

And he’s still in his suit.

Wedding.

His wedding.

Ren takes a breath, and it feels like something is missing. The sun is still high, but something about the world around them feels off. He left with Rey after the ceremony. They were supposed to be on their honeymoon now. But he’s here, with Nova, in this place that feels too familiar to be a dream.

What is this place?

The question wasn't from either of them, but the answer echoes back in his mind anyway.

I don’t know, but I often dream of it. Even reconditioning cannot erase it.

He feels a shiver of recognition.

Why are you showing it to me?

The answering voice was soft, younger.

You looked like you needed to be in some place bright right now. It’s always so dark in space.

Ren touches her arm. She doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t flinch. She just lets him.

He feels a surge of heat and regret. He can’t remember the last time he initiated contact with her in this life. He thinks about the time when he rejected her, when she had held his hand and begged him to choose her.

Why didn’t he choose her? Why didn’t he hold on tighter when he had the chance?

Her brown eyes catch the sunlight and she looks so tired.

So much has slipped past me, he thinks. Has it really been twenty-three years?

“Nova, I—” He cuts off, unsure of how to proceed.

“I thought I’d have this life with you,” she says quietly, “since we finally found each other so young. Just like we did back in the First Order." She turns to the horizon, "The Force can be so cruel.”

The wave laps up around their ankles again, pulling at him, tugging at his focus. She shrugs him off gently, not harshly like he might have expected, not like how he always had, but enough to create distance. She walks slowly toward the sand, her shoes abandoned where she left them.

Ren follows, desperate, not wanting to be away for too long.

He sits beside her, the feel of the sand beneath him grounding him, even as his thoughts swirl in a chaotic spiral. The ocean stretches out before them, vast and endless.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, though he knows it’s not enough. It’s never been enough. “I brought this upon us. I promised I would find you, but I just kept hurting you.”

Nova stares out at the ocean, her voice barely a whisper. “You’re happy, aren’t you?”

A pause.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen you look so fulfilled in all of our lifetimes. The closest one was when you had that café with Rey in the previous life.” She doesn’t wait for him to speak, her words continuing to tumble out, soft and resigned. “Maybe this is what the Force wanted all along. You with Rey. Perhaps you were supposed to be with her in that first life too, when you first found her. And I was the outlier that disrupted that.”

Ren can’t stop himself. He scrambles for her hand again, desperate to feel the warmth of her touch, the comfort of the familiarity that has eluded him for so long.

He tries to push away the memory, but he remembers anyway, that moment of rejection, the moment when she had reached out and he had pulled away.

“You always begged me to consider you,” he says, his voice breaking. “I should have. I should have let myself love you. I—”

“I loved you,” she interrupts softly. “I loved you so much. And I tried so hard, Ren.” Her voice trembles, tears escaping the same way they did when she first confessed. “But it’s okay now. I’m letting you go.”

“No, please,” he begs, the words slipping out in a rush. “There has to be a way.”

But Nova still doesn’t look at him. She just stares at where their hands are joined.

“I’m so tired, Ren.”

The words hit him like a physical blow, and something inside him snaps. The guilt that’s been simmering in his chest floods over him, and he feels it like a heavy weight pressing down on him.

“I will fix it this time. Please. I’ll talk to Rey. I’ll explain. I’ll—”

Nova shakes her head.

“This dream,” she says, removing her hand from his again; her voice tinged with melancholy. “It’s how it always ends for me. The end of a life. It’s a cycle that always repeats.” She hesitates before continuing. “It doesn’t matter anyway, I would’ve left by now.”

Left?

“What do you mean?” he asks desperately, reaching for her, but stopping short. “Please, don’t go.”

Nova’s figure begins to blur, fading into the mist and the waves, as if she’s slipping away, like she’s never been real to begin with.

Ren tries to speak again, but can't find his voice.

“I wish you happiness, Ren.”

The world around him shifts, the sunlight flickering as if something is changing. The water ripples, and the moment collapses into itself.

Ren wakes with a jolt, gasping, his chest tight, his hand clutching at empty air.

He’s in their bed.

Rey’s arms are around him, her steady breathing the only sound in the room.

And the pit in his stomach grows deeper.

Ren had expected the soft glow of newlywed bliss to carry him through the days after the wedding. What came instead were memories; fractured, vivid, and unbidden.

They arrived in waves, sudden and disorienting. One moment, he was sipping coffee in the hotel lounge. The next, he was doubled over in the hallway, breath short, heart pounding, the echo of another life rattling through his bones.

They cut the honeymoon short.

Rey - warm, devoted, endlessly patient - watched him with worried eyes. After enough episodes, she gently insisted they see a doctor.

Tests. Scans. Evaluations. Nothing.

No answers.

Now, Ren sat in the quiet of their apartment, the gleam of his wedding band catching the light. It should have been a comfort. A promise. But today, it only reflected back a version of himself he wasn’t sure he recognized.

He turned the wedding band slowly on his finger, the metal colder than he remembered it being a month ago. He couldn’t stop thinking about the dream - about Nova - and the aching sense that it wasn’t just a dream and that it held a deeper meaning.

In the blur of doctor’s visits and sleepless nights, he hadn’t had the chance to ask about her. Not properly. Not aloud. It felt strange now; too much time had passed. Too much silence.

But he wanted to try.

Ren wiped the counter one last time before reaching for his apron, mentally checking off items on his opening list as he surveyed the café. It was a bright, crisp morning; sunlight spilled through the tall front windows, pooling gold across the warm wooden floors.

Behind the glass display, rows of pastries gleamed: croissants, fruit tarts, sugar-glazed buns. Chalkboards hung above, smudged with yesterday’s handwriting. Behind him, the new espresso machine hummed softly - the one they’d finally been able to afford a year after opening.

Laughter drifted from behind the Employees Only door, and Ren couldn’t help but smile. A moment later, Rey emerged, tucking her phone into her apron pocket. She crossed the space with a soft grin and a quick kiss before moving to flip the sign on the front door.

“Ready for the day?” she asked.

The bell above the door jingled sometime after the morning rush had faded. A woman stepped inside, bundled in a coat, scarf, and knit beanie.

One of their regulars.

She was pale and thin, with hollow cheeks and dark circles under her eyes, yet there was something in her gaze that Ren could never quite name.

“Nova! Here for your usual?” Rey called brightly, waving her over.

Nova smiled faintly and nodded. “Yes, please.”

She was quiet — the kind of person who listened more than she spoke. Rey did most of the talking, and Nova seemed perfectly content to answer softly, then turn the conversation back toward her, genuinely curious about whatever Rey had to say.

Ren hadn’t interacted with her much, despite seeing her almost daily for months now. When he and Rey worked the same shift  (which was most of the time) he usually stayed away from the counter, preparing drinks instead of taking orders.

Nova kept a simple routine: a medium mocha and whichever pastry caught her eye that morning. After chatting briefly with Rey, she’d take her order to go, then return later in the afternoon for another coffee and a sandwich, often lingering outside at one of the porch tables for nearly an hour. Sometimes she came back again in the evening for pastries.

She and Rey had grown close; Nova had even become one of Rey’s favorite customers. Around her, Nova sometimes became unexpectedly animated, though with Ren, she remained polite and distant.

He sometimes wondered if he’d somehow offended her, though he couldn’t imagine how. More likely, it was just him; he’d never been particularly good at being friendly with anyone who wasn’t Rey.

Poe and Hux visited on a quiet Sunday, bringing pastries and half-hearted jokes that didn’t quite fill the room.

“How’s the office?” Ren asked, trying to sound casual.

“Ever the workaholic,” Hux muttered with a snort.

They spoke for a while - operations, schedules, some vague updates that Ren barely followed.

Then, carefully, he asked, “And Nova? Is she managing okay on her own?”

The silence that followed was immediate and telling. Poe and Hux exchanged a look.

Poe cleared his throat. “It… surprised us too. We didn’t want to worry you on your honeymoon, and then, well, everything else happened…” He gestured loosely to Ren’s hunched figure. “But… Nova quit. The day after the wedding. She left town. No one’s heard from her… not even her parents.”

Ren blinked, the words slow to settle. If he hadn’t already been sitting, he was sure his legs would’ve given out.

“What do you mean, quit?”

Hux stepped in. “Exactly that. HR informed us the day after your wedding. No warning. One resignation letter. No forwarding address. Poe, Finn, and I have been covering what we can, but there’s no CEO. The board is giving out the final approval.”

Ren didn’t reply. He stared down at his hand. The ring felt heavier than ever.

He recalls the dream.

“I would’ve left by now,” she had said.

Was this what she meant?

The words echo with new weight, suddenly too real, too literal.

Ren stood up abruptly, the chair scraping against the hardwood. Poe startled, Hux raised a brow, but neither spoke as he began to pace, one hand raking through his hair, the other clenched at his side.

“She said - she said this would happen,” he muttered to no one in particular. “I thought she was speaking metaphorically. I thought it was just a dream.”

“You dreamed about her?” Poe asked, incredulous.

Ren didn’t answer.

Because the truth was, it wasn’t just a dream. It never was with Nova.

He stopped mid-step, breath catching as a horrifying realization set in:

He didn’t know where to find her.

Not really.

Not anymore.

Twenty-three years of knowing her - of fighting with her, growing up beside her, running a company - and still, when it came down to it, he didn’t know where she went when she wanted to disappear. Didn’t know her favorite hideaway. Her safe places. Her escape routes.

She had always known him that way. Always read him like a map. And he - he didn't bother.

“I need to find her, but I don’t know where to begin,” he said aloud, his voice quieter now. Hollow.

Poe looked down, rubbing the back of his neck. Hux, for once, said nothing.

The silence thickened around them, making space for regret.

“We asked everyone we could think of,” Poe said, breaking the heavy silence. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, voice quieter than usual. “Friends, old coworkers - hell, even the barista at that corner café she liked. No one knew she left. They were just as blindsided.”

Ren’s throat tightened.

“I went by her place myself,” Hux added, arms crossed but less guarded than usual. “No one answered. The mailbox was stuffed full. Lights off. It looked like she hadn’t stepped foot there in weeks.”

Ren's stomach turned.

“We reached out to her mom about two weeks ago,” Poe said gently, “She didn’t know much back then. Thought Nova was just giving herself space, maybe taking a break. But we can try again. She might’ve heard something since.”

Ren could only nod, his thoughts spinning, the dream replaying like a film strip burned into the backs of his eyelids. “I would’ve left by now."

Hux shifted, then sighed; a rare, uncomfortable sound coming from him.

“Sorry, Ren,” he said, voice lower than before. “We didn’t think it would… hit you this hard. Not after everything that went down between you two.”

Ren looked at him, startled. Hux never apologized, and certainly not to him.

But there was no mockery in his face. Just something bordering on… regret.

Poe stood up and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, grounding the moment. “We’ll find her,” he said, firm and resolute. “You’re not doing this alone, okay?”

Ren swallowed hard, nodding once, but the weight in his chest didn’t ease at all.

Ren found himself standing on a beach he somehow already knew. Not from this life, but from some other one.

The light was too soft to belong to any real place.

A few steps ahead, someone sat near the shoreline, drawing lazy circles in the sand with her fingertips. Her hair lifted with the breeze, catching the sun in strands of light. When she turned, the world seemed to still.

Nova.

But she looked different. This Nova was radiant. Her cheeks held color, her eyes sparkled with life. The heaviness that once shadowed her features was gone. She looked whole.

She smiled when she saw him, that small, knowing smile that made something inside him crumble.

He understood now — the pull he’d felt toward her, the ache that had no name.

Nova Piett of the First Order. The woman he had loved before he even knew what love was.

He went to her, legs unsteady, and fell to his knees in the sand beside her. The tears came before he could stop them; hot, unstoppable.

Nova reached out and cupped his face with both hands, her touch warm against his skin.

“Don’t cry,” she murmured and hushed. “This was a happy life, Ren. Wasn’t it?”

He shook his head, gripping her wrists as though to keep her there. His tears wet both their hands. “No,” he said, voice breaking. “It wasn’t. It can’t be. Not again.”

Her smile trembled, but her eyes stayed kind.

“It was for me,” she whispered. “The happiest life, besides the first.”

The sound of the ocean swelled around them. A breeze lifted her hair. She leaned closer until her forehead touched his.

“Don’t be sad,” she said. “I’ll try harder to stay by your side in the next one.”

He closed his eyes. The air tasted of salt and sunlight. He wanted to stay - to stay and never wake - but the wind shifted, the warmth faded, and the sound of the waves began to recede.

When he opened his eyes again, the sea was gone.

Ren blinked up at the ceiling. The soft hum of the café’s refrigerator filled the silence, grounding him. Morning light seeped in through the blinds, cutting pale lines across the floor. His apron was still on the counter beside him.

For a moment, he didn’t move. His heartbeat was heavy in his chest, his throat tight. He could still feel the ghost of her hands on his face - warm, real, impossible.

He pressed his palms against his eyes, as if he could hold on to the dream a second longer. But already, the image was fading: the sand, the sea, her smile. Only the ache remained.

When the front door opened, Rey’s voice broke through.

“Ren? You okay?”

He looked up, startled. She stood in the doorway, framed by the morning light, holding two coffees.

He managed a faint nod. “Yeah,” he said. “Just - dreamed of the ocean.”

Rey smiled. “That sounds nice.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “It was.”

And for the rest of the day, whenever the bell above the door chimed, he caught himself glancing up, half-expecting her to walk through it again.

By the time Ren fully remembered her, she was no longer coming to the café.

When Rey first heard that Nova had vanished, her reaction was immediate and earnest.

“Oh no,” she said, eyes wide. “Is there anything I can do? Should I help you look for her?”

Ren felt the words land like a stone in his chest. Her sincerity - so warm, so full of concern - twisted something deep inside him.

How could he explain it? The years he’d spent deliberately avoiding Nova’s name, her presence, her voice. The way he’d kept her at arm’s length as if proximity itself would ruin everything he’d built. And now, here he was - married to someone else - suddenly chasing shadows of the one person he swore he didn’t need.

He’d fought himself for years not to be in the same room as Nova. And now, he was turning rooms upside down, cities inside out, just trying to find her.

He’s never felt more like a scumbag.

But guilt, however loud, couldn’t compete with the nagging pull in his chest, or the unraveling mess of memories that didn’t belong to this lifetime. He needed answers, even if they were buried in lifetimes long past.

So he shoved the guilt down and pushed harder into the search.

He met with his mom not long after placing the company under temporary leadership. Poe, Hux, and Finn had agreed to hold down the fort. Rey stayed behind as well, promising to help with day-to-day operations while he extended his medical leave. Her support never wavered. That only made it harder.

He sat across from his mom in the kitchen of his childhood home, his coffee growing cold between his hands.

“Mom,” he asked slowly, “have you heard anything? From Nova’s mom? Anything at all?”

His mother’s expression softened with worry. She reached for his hand across the table.

“Oh, sweetheart… Kandri’s beside herself. She thought about filing a missing persons report, but - ” she hesitated, sighing. “Apparently Nova left the country. No warning. She left a note asking not to be searched for."

Ren didn’t realize how much hope he’d been holding on to until it drained from him all at once.

He and Rey decided to go back to being just business partners. Ren couldn’t keep pretending. Continuing the relationship while mourning someone else felt cruel, even if he never said her name aloud. It wasn’t fair to Rey, and she knew it before he even finished speaking.

Rey felt betrayed, and he hated himself for it. Hated that it was him who caused that look on her face, but holding on meant using her. And he found that even worse.

They agreed to keep running the café together. It was doing well, and it was where most of their savings and years of effort were tied up. The first few weeks were clipped, mechanical, every exchange polite to the point of pain. But slowly, things smoothed into civility. The routine of early mornings and evening closings filled the gaps where their closeness used to live.

By late January, the rhythm had almost become comfortable again.

Almost.

It was a slow afternoon and the sun had already begun to fade, the smell of coffee lingered as customers trickled by. Rey was wiping down the counter. Ren was sorting receipts behind the register. The door opened with a small chime and a woman stepped in. Ren noticed her eyes and nose were red as she hesitated near the display case, gaze unfocused, like she wasn’t really seeing the pastries at all.

Ren caught himself watching her long enough to creepy, but there was something about her face - her eyes, the curve of her mouth, the way she held herself - that stirred something faint and familiar. He couldn’t place it, not right away.

When she paid, she gave Rey a small, wavering smile. And that was when it clicked.

Rey’s expression shifted too, realization dawning with the same flicker of confusion.

“Are you…” Rey began carefully. “Are you related to Nova, by any chance?”

The woman froze. Her hands trembled around her purse. Her brows knit together, as if the question itself hurt to hear.

“I’m her mother,” she whispered. Her voice cracked on the last word.

Ren felt the air go still.

Rey’s face softened instantly. “Oh - I haven’t seen her in months,” she said, her tone gentle. “She’s one of our regulars. Is she… is she okay?”

The woman’s face crumpled. She pressed a hand to her mouth, trying and failing to hold back a sob.

Rey was around the counter in an instant, her robe sleeves brushing against the woman’s coat as she put an arm around her shoulders, guiding her to one of the corner tables.

Ren, heart pounding, moved to the door and flipped the sign to Be Back in 10 Minutes. He locked it, then turned to find Rey rubbing slow circles on the woman’s back as she wept quietly into her hands.

When the sobs began to subside, Ren busied himself with the boiler - anything to keep his hands from shaking - and brewed a pot of tea. He brought it over, set it on the table, and hovered awkwardly until Rey gestured for him to sit.

The woman dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, voice small and raw.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Nova - she…”

Her throat tightened. A trembling exhale. Another sob she couldn’t quite swallow.

“She passed away recently.”

Ren didn’t move. Couldn’t. The world tilted, sound collapsing into a sharp, hollow ringing. He barely heard the rest of her words.

“She was ill for the longest time,” the woman went on softly. “We thought she was getting better. But a few months ago, she started to decline again. And last month…” Her voice broke. “Last month, she got worse so suddenly. We couldn’t - ”

She stopped. The rest caught in her throat.

Rey reached out and took her hand, squeezing gently.

Ren stared down at the tea cooling in front of him, unable to look up. His reflection wavered on its surface - pale, motionless, unbelieving.

He thought of the beach. Of her voice in the dream. “Don’t be sad. I’ll try harder to stay by your side in the next one.”

It wasn’t long before he was cleared to return to work. The doctor signed off on everything, so he had no excuse to stay home any longer.

The office hadn’t changed. Operations ran smoothly, if more demanding now that he was the sole CEO. He couldn’t have been more grateful to his team for having picked up the slack where they could, but still, he felt the weight of the company heavier than he had in the past.

How had he managed this on his own before?

But despite how much he was buried in work, he couldn’t stop searching for her.

There were no real leads. Nothing solid. But the search became routine, embedded into the rhythm of his days. Poe and Hux would stay for dinner once or twice a week, bringing takeout and fading optimism, and the four of them would go over names and places. People they hadn’t tried. Theories they hadn’t considered.

Ren began to keep a journal.

It starts with a name.

Just one.

He wrote it down in the corner of a notebook Rey gave him last Christmas - one of those recycled-paper ones with a linen cover and a quote on the front. The page stared back at him, her name alone on the first line, the rest of the space waiting.

Nova.

He told himself it was for closure. He said the word out loud, once, just to test how it felt in his mouth. Closure. It didn’t sound right.

A few days later, he found himself digging through old email threads. Unsent drafts. Archived photos. There was a folder in his inbox marked “Misc.”, it hadn’t been opened in years, but it still held copies of shared presentations, inside jokes buried in file names, and an email with an attachment of a photo from a leadership retreat in Santorini. It was a selfie Nova had taken. She was in the foreground, grinning. He was behind her, a bit out of focus, coffee in hand, looking unimpressed - like he didn’t want to be in the picture at all.

He stared at it for too long.

His thumb hovered over the trash icon. He didn’t press it.

The automatic doors of the psychiatric ward slid open with a muted hiss, releasing a faint hum of fluorescent lights and the sterile scent of disinfectant.

Ren adjusted the strap of his satchel and stepped inside. His reflection flashed briefly in the polished glass; clean-shaven, pressed shirt, though his eyes were a touch too tired for his age.

His first day as Dr. Keene’s resident.

Another beginning. Another institution. Another chance to do things right.

He’d just come off a rough rotation under Dr. Thorne, an attending known more for his cruelty than competence. Three months of leave hadn’t completely shaken off the burnout, but he was ready to try again. Two more years and he could finally practice on his own. No supervisors, no impossible expectations; just him, his patients, and sweet indepndence.

Dr. Keene’s office was at the end of the hall. He knocked twice.

“Come in,” a voice called - calm, measured, with the kind of authority that didn’t need to shout.

Dr. Keene looked up from her desk as he entered. She was in her fifties; she wore her grey hair in a low bun, and welcomed him with a small smile. Her eyes while sharp, were kind the way Dr. Thorne's never were. Her office was warm; books lining every wall, sunlight spilling through half-open blinds.

“Dr. Solo,” she said, standing to greet him. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you, ma’am. It’s good to be here,” he replied, shaking her hand.

“I’ve looked through your file,” she continued, gesturing for him to sit. “Your references from Thorne’s department were… interesting.” Her lips twitched slightly. “But I don’t hold another doctor’s temperament against their residents. You’ll find I run things differently here.”

“That’s good to hear,” Ren said, a quiet relief bleeding into his tone.

She smiled faintly. “We’ll start you light. Four patients to begin with. You’ll shadow me during intake sessions, then gradually take over their follow-ups. You’ll find the files in this folder.”

He flipped it open, scanning the list:

Daniel M., 32 — Generalized anxiety disorder. Admitted at age 30. Signs of improvement.

Kira L., 41 — Obsessive-compulsive disorder, depressive features. Admitted at age 40. Long-term care required.

Theo J., 19 — Post-traumatic stress disorder. New admission. Plan for care pending.

And lastly —

Nova P., 25 — Major depressive disorder. Multiple suicide attempts since adolescence. Admitted at age 17. Long-term inpatient.

He lingered on the last file for a moment. “She’s been here since she was seventeen?”

Dr. Keene nodded. “Yes. Nova’s one of our longest-term patients. Complex trauma, chronic ideation. She’s bright, at times painfully so. That’s part of what makes her condition difficult to manage. Insight can be both a gift and a curse.”

Ren nodded, slipping the folder shut. “Understood.”

“Good,” she said, standing. “Let’s make rounds.”

They walked through the halls filled with the quiet shuffle of slippers on linoleum, the occasional soft laugh or distant hum from one of the patients. The ward was calmer than he expected.

By the time they reached the last room, Ren’s nerves had settled. He was learning the rhythm of the place: soft tone, open stance, patient eye contact.

Dr. Keene stopped outside a door with a pastel-blue nameplate: Nova Piett.

She turned to him. “Nova is fragile, but she’s polite. Usually quiet unless she feels safe so don’t crowd her.”

Ren nodded. “Got it.”

Dr. Keene knocked gently, then opened the door.

The room was simple; a bed, desk, and window overlooking the courtyard. A young woman sat by the window, legs drawn up, tracing patterns in the condensation on the glass. When she turned, Ren noticed how pale she was - not sickly, just… dimmed, like someone who hadn't been under the sun in so long.

“Nova,” Dr. Keene said warmly. “Good morning. I’d like you to meet someone.”

Nova stood slowly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Her gaze flicked from Keene to Ren - and froze. Her expression shifted, confusion flashing into something rawer.

“Ren…” she whispered, her voice shaking. “You’re finally here.”

Before he could react, she crossed the space between them and threw her arms around him.

Ren stiffened. He wasn’t sure what to do; his training told him not to escalate contact, but instinct made him stay still, just long enough to avoid making her feel rejected.

Dr. Keene’s voice broke in, firm but calm. “Nova, this is Dr. Solo. He’s not Ren. Let him go, please… you’re making him uncomfortable.”

Nova blinked, reality rushing back. Her hands fell away instantly, retreating like she’d touched something hot.

“I - I’m sorry,” she stammered, backing up. “I didn’t mean to - ”

“It’s all right,” Ren said quietly, though his tone was more clinical than comforting. “No harm done.”

Dr. Keene gave Nova a small, reassuring nod. “Why don’t we sit down? We’ll talk a bit, all right?”

Nova hesitated, then nodded, sitting back down on the edge of her bed. Ren followed Dr. Keene’s lead, standing near the wall, as an observer, not participant.

As they spoke, he jotted quiet notes. Speech coherent. Affect subdued. Orientation intact. Emotional recall heightened.

As he listened, he can’t help but feel empathy, curiosity, and a faint ache for someone so young who’d been living in such darkness for so long.

When they left the room, Dr. Keene murmured as the door closed behind them,

“She’s harmless, but her mind’s a labyrinth. Don’t take what she says personally. Some of her delusions are... persistent.”

Ren nodded, flipping the page in his notes. “Understood.”

Still, as they walked down the hall, he found himself glancing once at the closed door out of quiet pity.

Twenty-five, and already so tired of being alive.

He’d seen it before.

He’d see it again.

And it still hurts every time.

Ren settled into the rhythm of the ward faster than he expected.

Mornings began with rounds, afternoons with one-on-ones. Between charting and case reviews, he started learning the subtle, unspoken tempo of each patient - who needed silence, who needed structure, who needed him simply to listen.

Nova Piett was the last on his schedule every Tuesday and Friday.

She’d been hesitant at first, still embarrassed about the first meeting. But slowly, painfully slowly, she began to trust him.

Their sessions rarely followed a predictable pattern. Some days, she spoke in long, unbroken threads - about books she’d read, dreams she’d had, memories of a house by the ocean she swore existed. On good days, she even laughed softly at her own tangents, eyes clear and bright for a fleeting moment.

Other days were harder.

On those, she came in hollowed out, words dissolving into tears halfway through. She’d twist the hem of her sleeves until her knuckles went white, whispering, “It’s exhausting, being here. I don’t know how to keep pretending I want to stay.”

Ren had learned, by now, not to fill the silence too quickly.

He let her speak.

He let her cry.

He let the storm burn itself out before reaching for words.

He made sure he always scheduled her last so she could take as long as she needed.

One late afternoon, Nova was sitting cross-legged on the couch, her hair unkempt, expression soft but alert during one of her better days.

They’d been talking about identity. About how names can feel like armour, or like ghosts we drag behind us. It was part of a cognitive exercise, meant to help her externalize her sense of self.

Ren had his notepad balanced on his knee. “Do you ever feel like your name doesn’t fit you?” he asked.

Nova tilted her head, considering. “Not really. I feel like I’ve been ‘Nova’ for multiple lifetimes already. But sometimes, when I try to not be ‘Nova’, I try to think of different names. But, none of them ever really stuck.”

He nodded. “That’s a common feeling. Especially when you’ve been through trauma or periods of change. Names carry… history. Sometimes they feel heavier than they should.”

She smiled faintly. “That’s a very doctor thing to say.”

He chuckled under his breath. “Occupational hazard.”

Nova’s eyes lingered on him for a moment too long. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

Her tone softened, but her gaze was piercing - too intent for comfort.

“Why do you call yourself Ren if you’re not Ren?”

Ren froze slightly, blinking. The question was so gentle, so sincerely asked, that it took a second for its weight to land.

“I’m sorry?”

Nova looked down, fidgeting with the drawstring of her sleeve. “Dr. Keene said your name is Ben Solo. But everyone here calls you Dr. Ren. Even your badge says it.”

He glanced at his ID clipped to his coat - Dr. B. Solo. There was no “Ren” anywhere.

He exhaled slowly. “No one calls me that, Nova.”

“Yes, they do,” she said earnestly, as though trying to convince him. “They’ve always called you that. Even before this.” Her voice faltered. “Before you stopped remembering.”

Something flickered in her expression - not hysteria, not delusion, but heartbreak. Like she had just realized she’d said too much.

Ren sat very still. His mind catalogued the moment with clinical precision - delusional episode, identity transference, possible temporal displacement narrative - but something about the tremor in her voice stayed with him longer than the words.

He wrote something in his notes, then said quietly, “Nova, I think maybe you’re remembering something that feels very real to you. But I promise, I’m not this person you’re talking about.”

Nova nodded faintly, tears already spilling. “But you are,” she whispered. “You promised me.”

Ren didn’t know what to say to that. So he didn’t. He simply sat there, listening to the sound of her breathing break apart in the quiet.

When the session ended, she left the room without looking back.

Ren sat alone for a long while after, pen still in hand, staring at the name she’d spoken -

Ren.

It lingered in the air long after the door closed.

It was still innocent, in the beginning.

Just a handful of names.

A few messages sent with careful wording, the kind that sounded casual enough to hide the panic underneath.

“Hey, just checking in. Have you heard from Nova?”

Most go unanswered.

A few come back with polite confusion, or the vague sort of regret people use when they’re not sure who you’re talking about but don’t want to seem unkind. One or two don’t even recognize the name at first, and he rereads those replies several times, convinced he must have misspelled it.

He tells Rey it’s for peace of mind.

He tells himself it is.

But peace never comes.

And the list grows.

It grows quietly - in the margins of his planner, in the notes app on his phone, on scraps of paper tucked into his briefcase. Names, emails, cities. Little threads he thinks might lead somewhere if he just keeps pulling.

He starts calling international contacts from Nova’s consulting days - an engineer in Kyoto, an environmental analyst in São Paulo, a diplomat they’d both once met at a sustainability summit in Quebec. Some remember her; most don’t. Those who do recall her vaguely, as if she were a colleague from a dream: oh yes, Nova Piett, she was sharp - what happened to her again?

By month four, Poe and Hux exhausted their contacts, having asked every mutual friend and acquaintance, even old classmates dating back to elementary school.

No one knew where she was.

As the company evolved at a dizzying speed, Poe and Hux suspended their search. Ren couldn’t.

Ren begins checking her social media accounts late at night, half-hoping to see a new post or profile picture, half-dreading that he might. There’s nothing. No updates, no likes, not even the small, anonymous accounts he knows she used to scroll through in silence.

A week later, her profiles vanish completely. Deleted.

Even her work email, the one that always sent back an auto-reply, stops existing.

He tries again anyway, typing her name in the address field like a ritual, watching it fail to autocomplete.

It was like she never existed.

It started off small - a few offhand comments in the break room, the kind of teasing that wasn’t meant to sting but did anyway.

Ren had just poured his second cup of coffee when one of the nurses, Mara, grinned at him over the counter.

“So, Dr. Solo,” she said, dragging out the Doctor just a little too long. “How’s your favourite patient doing today?”

He didn’t look up from his cup. “I don’t have favourites.”

“Mm-hm.” She smirked. “Sure you don’t. Word is, Nova only talks to you these days. Poor Dr. Keene must be feeling replaced.”

A couple of the other nurses chuckled. One of the residents, a tall guy named Rafi, added, “She asks for you by name, man. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

Ren sipped his coffee, letting the burn of it give him something to focus on. “She’s making progress,” he said flatly. “That’s what matters.”

“Hmmm... Progress,” Mara repeated, mock-serious. “That what we calling it these days?”

He set the mug down a little harder than he meant to. The sound made the room go still for a second.

“I’m calling it good clinical rapport,” he snapped. “Something I’d hope all of you aim for with your patients.”

There was a brief, awkward silence before someone coughed and changed the subject.

Later, during rounds, one of the senior residents pulled him aside.

“Hey,” Rafi said quietly, glancing toward the nurses’ station. “Don’t take it too personally. People talk. She’s young, you’re new, and she’s got a history of fixation. You’re doing fine.”

Ren nodded, but his jaw stayed tight. “It’s unprofessional,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” Rafi shrugged, “so is half the gossip in this place. Comes with the job. Just don’t feed it.”

Ren said nothing. He knew Rafi meant well, but the words lingered - fixation, talk, young. He hated how quickly those could warp something honest into something cheap.

That afternoon, when he walked into Nova’s room, she was sitting by the window, drawing on a sketchpad.

She looked up, smiling faintly. “You’re late today.”

He forced a small smile back. “Busy morning.”

She nodded, then tilted her head, studying him. “They were talking about me again, weren’t they?”

Ren blinked. “Who?”

“The nurses,” she said softly. “I can tell. They look at you differently when I’m around.”

He hesitated, unsure how to respond. “People talk,” he said finally. “It’s not important.”

“It is to me,” she murmured. “Because they think I’m crazy. And that you’re - ” she stopped, biting her lip. “You’re the only one who doesn’t look at me like that.”

Ren felt the weight of her gaze, the fragile trust behind it. He shifted slightly, keeping his tone gentle but firm.

“My job isn’t to look at you in any particular way, Nova. It’s to help you get better. That’s all.”

She smiled again, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Let’s talk about your drawings,” he said, steering the session back to something more productive.

The warning came two days later.

Ren was finishing up his notes when Dr. Keene called him into her office. The blinds were half-drawn, casting narrow slats of light across the desk. Her tone was calm, but there was weight behind it - the kind of tone reserved for conversations that mattered.

“Sit down, Ben.”

He did, setting his tablet aside. “Is this about Nova?”

Dr. Keene exhaled slowly. “You’ve noticed it too, then.”

Ren stayed quiet.

“She’s been more stable lately - more engaged, less withdrawn,” Keene continued. “That’s good work. But… it’s also drawn attention. Some of the nurses think she’s becoming overly dependent on you.”

“I’ve kept things professional,” Ren said.

“I believe you,” Keene replied, hands folded neatly on the desk. “But professionalism doesn’t always protect you from perception. You’re new here, and she’s a long-term inpatient with a history of attachment behaviors. You have to be careful. Even small things like tone, word choice, gestures can mean more to her than you intend.”

Ren nodded, jaw tightening. “I understand.”

The silence stretched until Keene finally sighed, setting her pen down. “All right. For now, keep your sessions brief. Maintain standard distance, document everything. If her delusions start blending with your sessions again, we may need to transfer her to another resident.”

He nodded. “Understood.”

But as he left her office, the words another resident unsettled him.

Still, he had a reputation to uphold. So he kept his distance. Starts laughing at the jokes to show he's in on it - that they're laughing with him, and not at him.

And each time he did, the bitterness spread.

One night, Rey caught him in the living room at 2AM. The light from the hallway cut across his face, illuminating the strain in his jaw, the exhaustion in his eyes. He was hunched over the arm of the couch, phone pressed to his ear, his voice low but urgent.

“Yeah,” he was saying. “Florence. Sometime after the wedding. I just need to know if she ever booked the flight.”

Rey stood there for a moment before stepping inside. Her robe was wrapped tightly around her, bare feet silent against the floor.

She didn’t ask who he was talking about. She didn’t need to.

When the call ended, he looked at her. Didn’t try to explain.

“I needed to know,” he said quietly, “if she ever booked that flight to Florence.”

Rey just nodded.

There was something soft in her eyes - pity, maybe. Or something gentler. Sadder. A quiet understanding that made his throat ache.

She didn’t ask why it mattered.

And part of him was grateful for that. Deeply, achingly grateful.

But another part of him - darker, angrier, more lost since Nova’s disappearance - wanted her to ask. To demand answers. To call him out. To say the thing neither of them had yet:

This isn’t about closure anymore, is it?

Because maybe then, he can give it up. Let go of this obsession.

But she didn’t.

So he didn’t.

Nova grew quieter. Her drawings stopped. She sat through group therapy sessions with vacant eyes. The nurses mentioned she was sleeping more, talking less. She still asked for him - always politely, always with that flicker of something he didn’t want to name - but he started sending one of the interns instead.

Then came the first real break.

It was a Wednesday. Her chart said she’d been refusing meals. When Ren walked into her room for a brief check, she was sitting by the window, hospital bracelet loose around her wrist, eyes red-rimmed.

“I thought if I stopped talking, you’d come back,” she said quietly, without turning to him.

Ren froze. “Nova, I never left.”

She shook her head, tears spilling freely now. “You did. You stopped seeing me.”

He wanted to remind her he was her doctor, that this wasn’t personal, but the words caught in his throat. She looked so small, so utterly lost, that for a heartbeat he forgot the walls between them.

“Why does everyone leave?” she whispered. “Why do you?”

He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, she pressed her palms to her eyes and started to sob - deep, shaking, painful sounds that tore through the sterile quiet.

Ren stood there, useless, torn between instinct and protocol.

By the time Dr. Keene arrived, summoned by a nurse, Nova had curled up on the bed, trembling, whispering something over and over through her tears.

Ren couldn’t quite make out the words.

It sounded like a name.

His name.

Later that evening, Ren found himself in Dr. Keene’s office again.

“She’s regressed over the past month,” Keene said, flipping through Nova’s chart. “The detachment, the withdrawal, the fixation - it’s all worsened since you began keeping distance.”

Ren felt his stomach twist. “You told me it was the right thing to do.”

“I did,” she said gently. “And it was. But she’s not a simple case, Dr. Solo. Her attachment patterns are fragile. When someone she trusts pulls away, it feels like confirmation that she was right to expect abandonment.”

“So what do I do?”

Keene closed the file and looked up at him, expression softening. “You take a step back officially. I’m reassigning her to Dr. Hall starting next week.”

Ren opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. There was nothing to say. She was right, this wasn’t helping Nova.

“I understand,” he said quietly.

“She’ll be upset,” Keene warned, leaning back. “But you’ve done what you can for her. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is hand them off before we become part of the problem.”

Ren nodded again, though his chest ached. “Will you tell her?”

“I think it should come from you,” Keene said after a pause. “Tomorrow, during your last session.”

The next morning, Nova was already waiting when he entered the therapy room. She looked better; she had a blanket around her shoulders, hair still damp from her shower.

He sat across from her, clipboard untouched.

“Dr. Keene thinks it would be best if Dr. Hall takes over your sessions,” he began, voice quiet. “It’s just a change in your treatment plan, nothing else.”

Nova’s smile was small, brittle. “Because I broke again?”

He shook his head. “Because you need something different. A reset.”

She stared at him for a long time. Then, softly: “You’re leaving me again.”

Ren swallowed hard. “I’m not leaving, Nova. I’ll still check in. Just not as your doctor.”

Her eyes glistened, but she didn’t cry this time. “Then I hope next time, in the next life, you don’t have to be my doctor.”

Ren froze. Before he could respond, she stood, tugged the blanket tighter around herself, and walked to the door.

She didn’t look back.

The week after their final session, Ren tried to throw himself back into the routine - paperwork, patient notes, coffee gone cold on his desk. He told himself it was for the best. That distance was a form of care. That he was doing the right thing.

He lasted another three weeks before the exhaustion caught up to him. Dr. Keene noticed first.

“You’re burning out,” she said one afternoon, her tone neither judgmental nor kind. Simply factual. “Take some time off, Dr. Solo. Recharge. You can’t help anyone if you’re running on fumes.”

He didn’t argue.

He packed light and left for the coast that same weekend - the same one he used to visit as a student, where the sea air had a way of making everything small and distant. He spent his mornings watching waves break, his nights barely sleeping.

By the sixth day, he almost felt normal again.

On the seventh, his phone rang.

It was Dr. Keene.

Her voice was calm the way people sound when they’re preparing someone for the worst. “Ben,” she said softly, “I need you to sit down.”

His gut twisted.

“She was found early this morning,” Keene continued, her voice a slow echo in his ear. “It looks like she went peacefully. No struggle. The nurses said she’d been… different, the past few days. Quieter. Almost serene.”

Ren didn’t answer. His hand tightened around the phone until his knuckles went white.

“Ben,” Keene said again, gently, “there’s nothing you could’ve done.”

But he wasn’t listening. He was thinking about their last session - the blanket around her shoulders, the way she said you’re leaving me again, and how defeated she looked as she walked out the door.

He hung up without another word.

Ren was waist-deep in water when awareness hit him.

He gasped, stumbling as cold waves lapped against his chest, the pull of the current strong and unfamiliar. The horizon stretched endlessly around him - no shore in sight, no sound but the rhythmic breathing of the sea. Panic rose in his throat.

He didn’t remember coming here.

He didn’t even remember falling asleep.

Then he saw her.

A few meters away, a figure floated face-up in the water — unmoving, pale, hair fanning around her like a dark halo. His body moved before his mind could catch up. He waded through the current, arms breaking the surface as he reached for her, pulling her limp form against him.

“Hey - hey, come on,” he muttered, half-command, half-prayer.

He hauled her toward the nearest stretch of sand he could find, though he didn’t remember seeing land a moment ago. His lungs burned, but he didn’t stop until they reached the shallows, until he could lay her down safely on the shore.

He brushed wet strands of hair away from her face -

And froze.

“Nova,” he breathed.

Her eyes fluttered open at the sound of her name, dark as the water itself. And just like that, it all came back. The memories hit him like a collapsing wave.

The war.

The Order.

The house by the ocean.

Her deaths.

Every life they’d lived, and every time he’d lost her.

He pressed a trembling hand to his temple, choking on the weight of it all. “No… no, it can’t be - ”

Nova sat up slowly, water streaming from her dress, her expression unreadable. “Ren?” she whispered. Then, with a faint, trembling smile, and a soft, careful touch on his cheek: “Do you remember me now?”

He looked at her... and there she was. Every version of her. The Grand Marshall, the prisoner, the patient. All of them staring back at him through those same tear-bright eyes.

Ren’s throat constricted. “I remember,” he said, the words breaking as they left him.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The waves hissed against the sand, retreating, returning, like the echo of time itself.

Nova looked out at the endless horizon. “You always find me too late,” she said quietly. “In every life.”

“I tried,” he said. “God, I tried.”

“I know.” Her voice softened. “But it’s not your fault. It never was.”

He shook his head, desperate. “I didn’t want this… you weren’t supposed to - ”

“Die?” she finished for him, softly. “I wasn’t supposed to die in the war either. Or on that planet. But we never really get to choose how we leave, do we?”

Ren stared at her, helpless. “What do I do now?”

“Live,” Nova said simply. “And when you find me again, don’t remember me only when I’m gone.”

The tide was rising again, foam curling around their feet.

He reached for her hand, but his fingers passed through her like mist. Her outline shimmered, fading with each heartbeat.

“Nova - ”

She smiled, one last time. “Next time, Ren… maybe we’ll get it right.”

And then she was gone; dissolved into the silver light of the sea, the ocean swallowing the last of her, leaving only the whisper of her name and the echo of her touch.

Ren stood alone on the shore, the waves washing against his knees, the world unbearably quiet.

When he woke, he was still crying, and the sound of the tide still echoed in his ears.

That night, he drove until the highway blurred. He didn’t know where he was going until he was standing outside the hospital again, the psych ward windows glowing faintly against the dark.

He stood there for a long time, watching the light in her old room.

It was off now.

And for the first time, Ren realized what she had meant when she said she hoped, in the next life, he wouldn’t have to be her doctor.

He whispered it into the cold air, voice breaking on the words.

“Next time, Nova… I’ll find you sooner.”

The collapse came without warning.

One moment Ren was in his office, standing over a spread of reports and quarterly projections. The next, the numbers blurred on the screen, the letters tilting and sliding off the page. His pen slipped from his hand. He heard the clatter of glass and then everything went black.

When he woke, the room was dim, lights lowered. His head rested on a folded jacket that smelled faintly of Rey’s perfume. 

Rey was kneeling beside him, one hand on his shoulder. Her face was pale with worry, her voice quiet but firm.

“Ren,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

He blinked, eyes gritty, throat dry. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Just dizzy.”

“You passed out,” she said sharply. Her voice trembled, somewhere between anger and fear. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday, have you?”

He started to argue, but stopped when he saw her expression; the one that left no room for excuses.

Later, in the executive lounge, she made him sit down. Someone had brought food, but it sat untouched between them. Through the glass wall, the city glittered below, indifferent to the slow unravelling happening inside this building. 

Rey sat across from him, her posture tight, controlled. “Ren,” she said quietly. “You have to stop this.”

He didn’t ask what this was. They both knew.

“I just need to know what happened to her,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “I can’t let it end like this. Not when I know something’s wrong.”

Rey’s hands were clasped around her mug, knuckles white. Her rings glinted at him tauntingly, “You’ve been saying that for months. You barely sleep. You skip meals. You disappear from meetings. You’re chasing someone who clearly doesn’t want to be found.”

He flinched. “That’s not fair.”

“It’s true.” Her voice wasn’t cruel, just tired, almost pleading. “You’re scaring me, Ren. You wake up shaking. You talk in your sleep. You tell me about these dreams, about her, and…” She exhaled, steadying herself. “Maybe you should talk to someone. A psychiatrist, maybe. Just someone who can help you through this.”

He looked away, jaw tight. “I don’t need that.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “You do.”

The words hung between them fragile and final.

For a long time, neither spoke. Outside, the neon lights of the city blinked on, painting the room in pale blue and gold.

“I’ll stop bringing it up,” he said finally, voice low. “The dreams. I’ll stop talking about them.”

Rey’s eyes shimmered in the dim light. “That’s not what I meant.”

He forced a faint, empty smile. “I know.”

But he didn’t.

She reached across the table, her hand brushing his. “Please, Ren. This is too much. You have to move on. She left. And maybe… maybe she wanted to be left alone.”

He swallowed, throat burning. Her words felt like stones dropping through him.

“I know,” he said again, half-heartedly. Because no - Nova had wanted anything but to be left alone. She had stayed by his side despite how poorly he treated her, because she didn’t want to be abandoned… especially not by him.

You did, though, didn't you?

She nodded, but he could see she didn’t believe him.

That night, after Rey had gone to bed, Ren sat alone in the dim glow of the living room.

He stared at his phone. Her name was still there in his contacts, the number long disconnected. His thumb hovered over it, as if touching it might conjure her back.

Rey was right.

He knew she was.

But he also knew he wouldn’t stop.

Ren’s transporter touched down with a quiet hum, the engines winding down to a low mechanical sigh. Dust lifted from the compound yard as the landing gear met the packed earth. Beyond the glass, ranks of soldiers moved in tight formation.

He stepped out, boots sinking slightly into the dust. The wind carried the faint smell of oil and smoke and the stink of death.

“Captain Solo!” A young sergeant stood at attention near the steps of the command building, spine straight, salute crisp despite the fatigue visible beneath his eyes.

Ren returned the salute with a sharp motion and strode past him, coat snapping against his legs. His head throbbed again, the same dull pain that had been haunting him for weeks, a pulse behind his eyes that never fully eased. Every time he woke from sleep, the echo of some forgotten dream slipped away before he could grasp it.

Inside, the corridor smelled faintly of disinfectant and rust. Major Sterling was waiting in his office, a man of broad shoulders and thinning patience.

“Sir,” Ren greeted, snapping another salute.

“At ease, Captain.” The Major’s tone was clipped, his expression grave. “I have a special assignment for you.”

Ren nodded once, waiting.

“One of our hidden facilities was infiltrated by enemy spies last week,” Sterling continued, sliding a folder across the desk. “We’ve managed to capture several before they could transmit intelligence. Command wants them dealt with quietly. No press. No paperwork. Just… closure.”

Ren opened the file. Photos. Names. Faces. Young, most of them. One of the reports detailed a woman, mid-twenties, caught near the communications bay.

Espionage.

High-risk.

To be executed.

He closed the folder. “Understood.”

“Good. You’ll leave within the hour. I trust you’ll handle this discreetly.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sterling studied him for a moment. “You look like hell, Captain.”

Ren forced a thin smile. “Long week.”

“Get some rest when this is done,” the Major advised. “You’ve earned it.”

Ren only nodded and turned to leave.

The hum in his skull worsened as he stepped back into the corridor. It wasn’t just a headache; it was something heavier, like the echo of a name he couldn’t remember, pressing against the inside of his mind. Every night he dreamed of water and a voice just out of reach. And every morning he woke up with nothing but the ache.

He walked out into the light, the sun glinting off the metal transport waiting to take him to the holding site. His squad was already assembled, made up of soldiers who knew better than to ask questions.

“Mount up,” he ordered. His voice was curt, colder than he intended. The men scrambled into formation, silence heavy between them.

Ren rubbed the bridge of his nose, the throb returning sharper now, almost rhythmic.

The ride to the outpost was short, but felt endless.

The transport cut through desolate stretches of grey terrain; forests stripped bare, rivers turned to mud. The rhythmic rumble of the engine was almost hypnotic, a constant drum against Ren’s skull that made the pain behind his eyes flare.

By the time they reached the perimeter fence, the sun was sinking low, and heavy clouds loomed above. The compound was small. A temporary facility built for holding prisoners before they were “processed.” A handful of guards waited by the gate, faces drawn and wary.

“Captain Solo,” one of them said, snapping to attention. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Ren disembarked, the gravel crunching beneath his boots. “How many?”

“Five spies total. Three men, two women. Orders are for quiet disposal.”

Ren nodded once. “Take me to them.”

The guard led him through narrow corridors, past locked doors and flickering lights. The smell of damp metal and sweat hung thick in the air.

When they reached the final holding cell, the guard hesitated.

“This one's quiet,” he said. “Hasn’t spoken much.” Ren frowned. The guard gave a half-hearted shrug and opened the door.

The room was small, with concrete walls, a single chair bolted to the floor, and light swinging overhead. A woman sat in the corner, her wrists bound, dark hair tangled around her face. Her uniform was torn, marked by ash and dirt. But when she lifted her head, her eyes were sharp, alive, and startlingly familiar.

For a moment, the world seemed to tilt.

Ren froze mid-step. Something flickered deep inside him - a pulse of recognition that made his breath catch.

Her lips parted, and her voice came out trembling, soft at first, then desperate:

“Ren?”

He blinked, startled.

“Ren… it’s you,” she said, rising shakily to her feet. “You found me!”

The sound of her voice hit him like a strike to the chest. His heart lurched, confused.

“What did you just call me?” he asked, his tone cold.

She took a step forward, chains rattling. “It’s you - I knew you’d come. I waited, I - ”

The guard moved instinctively between them, but Ren lifted a hand. “It’s fine.”

The woman’s expression shifted when she saw the insignia on his uniform; the realization sinking in.

Her breath hitched, hope faltering.

“You don’t… recognize me,” she whispered.

Ren didn’t answer. The air between them felt charged, magnetic, and his chest ached like his heart was trying to remember something his mind refused to.

“Who told you that name?” he demanded quietly.

She shook her head, tears glinting in her lashes. “You did. Once. A long time ago. You told me I will be the first to know, when you get your new name.”

He wanted to ask more, but the words caught in his throat. The headache returned, sharp and relentless, and he pressed a hand against his temple.

The guard shifted uncomfortably. “Captain, sir, should we proceed?”

Ren forced himself to straighten. The moment broke. “Lock her down. I’ll handle her last.”

The woman - Nova - flinched at his tone, but didn’t speak again.

As Ren turned to leave, she said softly, almost pleading, “You promised, Ren. You swore you’d find me in the next life.”

He stopped, but didn’t look back.

He couldn’t. He had his orders.

Outside, the air was cold, and the headache was easing away.

The rain hadn’t stopped.

It fell in cold, unbroken sheets across the camp - a steady hiss against the tin roofs and the hollow clang of water on metal. Ren hadn’t slept.

He sat at the edge of his cot, boots still on, head bowed into his hands. The headache had returned with a vengeance; sharp, pulsing behind his eyes. And beneath it, the ghost of a woman’s voice echoing in the dark: You promised you’d come back.

By dawn, he’d memorized every word of his orders. Five enemy infiltrators, captured during the raid on the western outpost. Interrogations complete. Sentences confirmed. Execution by gunfire before nightfall.

He was to oversee it. Personally.

He told himself it was just another task - another tally to his ever-growing list. But as he stared at her name, something in him faltered.

PIETT, NOVA. Espionage. Treason. Execution authorized.

The letters bled together.

And for a long moment, he could only stare.

His conversations with Rey grew shallow.

At first, it was subtle - the kind of distance that could pass for quarter-end exhaustion. He stopped asking about her day, about the endless negotiations she handled. When she spoke, he’d nod at the right times, murmur a distracted “That’s good,” while his eyes stayed fixed on his phone.

Rey stopped trying to fill the silence.

Dinner became a routine of quiet chewing and clinking silverware. The TV murmured in the background, some documentary they both used to love. Sometimes she’d ask, “Are you even listening?” and he’d say yes though he couldn’t recall a word she’d said.

Their calendar still held reminders: Six-month Anniversary Dinner. Friday, 8 PM. Weekend Trip @ Lake House. But those alerts only earned a tired glance before he silenced them. There was always something else; a lead, a call, a meeting with Poe and Hux that couldn’t wait.

Once, Rey waited for him at the restaurant for forty minutes before realizing he wasn’t coming. He’d lost track of time in a dim conference room, reviewing passenger manifests and digital records. When he finally looked up, Hux was glaring.

“Go home, Ren,” Hux almost-hissed. “It’s midnight.”

Ren did. But the apartment lights were off when he arrived, and the dinner she’d left on the counter had gone cold.

He still tried, every so often. Brought flowers to her office - white lilies, because she once mentioned liking them. Planned a weekend getaway. Rare date nights. But each gesture felt hollow, rehearsed, like an apology without words; a way to pretend he was still trying when both of them knew better.

Rey didn’t yell. She just grew quieter. And in her silence, he could feel something fragile unraveling.

It was late when they finally wrapped up the day’s meetings. The building was nearly empty, just the quiet hum of the servers and the faint shimmer of city lights beyond the glass. Hux had already left, muttering about early calls and “wasted hours.” 

Ren stayed behind with Poe, a half-empty bottle of whiskey sat between them.

Poe watched him over the rim of his glass. “Rey looked tired today,” he said, voice careful.

Ren didn’t look up. “She’s been working hard.”

Poe leaned back, studying him. “She’s worried about you.”

“I know,”

“Do you?” Poe’s tone sharpened slightly. “I heard you missed your six-month anniversary dinner last week. You’ve been sleeping in the office. She covered for you twice this week. How long do you think she’s going to keep pretending everything’s fine?”

Ren exhaled slowly, rubbing his temples. “If you came here to tell me to stop looking, don’t bother.”

“I’m not here to tell you to stop,” Poe said quietly. “I’m here to tell you what everyone else already knows - you’re falling apart. And you’re taking her down with you.”

Ren looked up then, the weight of his stare a warning. “You don’t understand.”

Poe’s mouth twisted into a humorless smile. “No, I do. I’ve been watching this happen since we were kids.”

That made Ren pause.

“You spent all our childhood and adulthood trying to push Nova away,” Poe continued. “And now that she’s finally done that, now that she’s gone, you rush after her. You’re hurting Rey the same way you hurt Nova, Ren.”

Ren’s jaw clenched. “That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not,” Poe said softly, “but it’s true.”

Silence stretched between them, filled only by the faint hum of the city below.

“Hux is angry at you, you know,” Poe added after a moment. “Not for the company crap - he can handle that. He’s angry because he saw what you did to Nova. We both did. We saw how she loved you… and how wrecked she was after your engagement with Rey.”

Ren’s throat went tight. He didn’t want to hear this.

Poe’s voice dropped, quieter now, but sharper for it. “Who do you think helped pick up the pieces, Ren? Who do you think sat with her when she couldn’t even show up to work without crying? You think she’d appreciate this - you chasing ghosts, tearing yourself and Rey apart? What did she even give you up for?”

Ren said nothing. His fingers tightened around the glass until it creaked.

“She wouldn’t,” Poe finished simply. “Not now. Not ever.”

The words landed like a blow.

Poe stood then, finishing his drink and setting the glass down beside Ren’s untouched one. He rested a hand briefly on Ren’s shoulder. “Go home,” he said quietly. “Before you lose that too.”

When the elevator doors closed behind him, Ren was left alone with the sound of the city, and the echo of everything Poe hadn’t said.

Ren went home that night.

Rey was still awake, sitting on the couch with her laptop open, the glow reflecting off tired eyes. When he stepped inside, she looked up, surprised and cautious.

“You’re home early,” she said.

“Yeah.” He hesitated in the doorway, then added, “Thought I’d have dinner here. With you.”

Her smile was small, fragile. “There’s soup on the stove.”

They ate in silence. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either. Just quiet, like a truce neither of them had declared. He asked about her day. She told him about a new proposal. For the first time in weeks, he actually listened.

Afterward, they sat together on the couch, the city lights spilling across the floor. Her head rested against his shoulder, and he let his hand hover for a moment before setting it gently on hers.

It should have felt like peace. It almost did.

But then, as the clock ticked softly in the background, he caught himself tracing the faint outline of a memory - another night, another hand, another life.

Rey shifted beside him, maybe sensing the distance. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

Ren closed his eyes. Tried to breathe her in, tried to stay present.

But Nova lingered, as she always did, somewhere just behind the silence.

By the time he reached the holding cell, the world outside had turned to grey.

Nova sat on the same metal chair as before, her wrists bound, her posture unnervingly still. The guard at the door saluted, uncertain.

“She’s been quiet all morning, sir. No resistance.”

Ren dismissed him with a nod. “Leave us.”

The moment the door shut, she looked up - and he saw that she’d been crying. Not from fear, but from something like resignation.

“You’re early,” she said softly, her voice raw from disuse.

Ren stopped a few feet away. “I wanted to speak with you before the transport arrives.”

She scoffed. “Before you kill me, you mean.”

He didn’t reply. The silence was answer enough.

For a long moment, all they could hear was the soft tap of rain against the window slit.

Suddenly Nova gave a small, strangled laugh. “Of course,” she whispered. “Of course it would be you.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” he said quietly.

“Neither did I.” She shifted slightly, the chains clinking against the chair. “Funny, isn’t it? You’re the one they sent to finish me, and you don’t even know why this would be cruel.”

His jaw tightened. “I told you before - we’ve never met.”

She smiled faintly, though it never reached her eyes. “Maybe not here. But you’ve met me somewhere. You held my hand once, in another life. You promised it would all end differently.”

Ren flinched. For a heartbeat, he could almost see it - the ocean receding on a dying planet, two figures locked in an embrace as the world collapsed, and a whispered vow. Then it was gone, replaced by the metallic taste of duty.

He stepped closer, forcing his voice to stay steady. “You’ll be transferred to the field before dusk. The process will be quick. You won’t suffer.”

“That’s very kind of you, Captain.” Her tone was light, mocking, but her eyes glistened. “Better you than them, I guess.”

He said nothing.

She smiled through her tears. “It’s all right. I'll forgive you.”

The field was silent except for the rain.

Five prisoners. Five rifles.

Ren stood at the front, uniform drenched, the cold seeping through to his bones. The soldiers waited for his signal.

Nova was second in line. Her hair clung to her face, her hands bound in front of her. She wasn’t trembling. She wasn’t begging.

When their eyes met, she gave the faintest nod - as if to tell him it was okay.

Better you than them.

Something inside him cracked.

He wanted to call it off. To shout. To drop the weapon and walk away. But the chain of command was absolute, and his hands moved before his mind could stop them.

“Ready,” he ordered, his voice hoarse.

The rifles lifted in unison.

“Aim.”

The world narrowed to the sound of rain. The smell of wet earth. Her eyes, fixed on his.

“Ren,” she said softly, barely audible through the storm. “Forgive yourself after this.”

He hesitated.

For the briefest instant, he thought - maybe I can still -

“Fire.”

The sound tore through the field like thunder.

When the smoke cleared, the other soldiers began to lower their rifles - but Ren was still standing there, weapon trembling in his hands. The pounding in his skull became unbearable.

He dropped to his knees.

The rain fell harder now, washing over blood, over mud, over the hollow space where his voice used to be.

He didn’t remember when he started shaking, or when he started to cry. Only that somewhere, deep beneath the roar of the storm, he could still hear her voice - quiet, fading - calling his name.

Ren.

Rain.

Still falling. Still cold.

Except -

When Ren blinked, the ground beneath him wasn’t mud anymore.

He was standing barefoot on wet sand. The air was heavy with salt, the horizon swallowed by grey mist. Waves crawled against the shore, breaking and retreating in slow, rhythmic sighs.

But then -

The scene flickered.

For a moment, the sand turned to mud again; blood mixing with rainwater, the stench of gunpowder thick in the air. The sound of waves twisted into distant screams. Then the world flickered back, the sea calm once more.

Ren swayed, disoriented. His uniform was gone, replaced by something simple; a black shirt, sleeves rolled, hands still shaking. He looked around, breath shallow.

“Nova?”

His voice was swallowed by the wind.

He took a step forward, and the sand shifted beneath his feet, the texture soft one moment, gritty the next — flickering between two worlds.

And then he saw her. She looked just as he remembered... and nothing like it.

Far down the shoreline, a silhouette in the rain. She was standing where the tide met the land, her hair dark and soaked, her clothes clinging to her frame. When she turned, her eyes caught the faintest light - familiar, infinite, and unbearably kind.

Ren froze. His throat closed. “Nova…”

She smiled faintly. “You came.”

He wanted to run to her, but his legs wouldn’t move. The air between them felt heavy, like wading through memory itself. He swallowed hard. The waves hissed, fading into the echo of rainfall again. “Nova, I'm sorry… I didn’t mean to - ”

“I know.”

Her voice was quiet, but it cut through everything - the guilt, the static, the storm.

“I had to,” he said, his words breaking. “They gave the order, and I - ”

“I know.” She stepped closer, the rain sliding down her face like tears. “You always did carry too much of the world.”

He tried to look away, but she reached up; and though her hand didn’t quite touch him, the air warmed where her fingers hovered.

Ren’s chest caved. “You shouldn’t forgive me.”

Nova tilted her head. “Maybe not. But I do anyway.”

He shook his head, tears burning his eyes. “I don’t deserve it.”

“No,” she agreed softly. “But that’s never stopped me from loving you before.”

He gave out a sound that sounded like a sob. The world around them flickered again - the sea turning to a muddy field, corpses scattered like broken promises. Then back to the shoreline, clean and silent.

She looked past him, toward the horizon. “You’ll wake up soon.”

“Don’t leave,” he said, stepping forward, desperate. “Please. Not again.”

Nova smiled through the rain, but said nothing.

The sea began to rise, swallowing the sand, the light bending around her like glass.

“Nova - ”

Her voice came to him one last time, carried on the wind:

“I forgive you.”

And then she was gone - dissolved into rain, into light, into silence.

Ren fell to his knees, his hands sinking into wet sand.

When he opened his eyes again, he was still kneeling in the mud, the rain beating at his back. His men were shouting at him in the background, but he couldn't hear them. His hands were trembling, and somewhere, faintly, the sea was still calling his name.

He stood up, numb to everything.

He had a world to burn.

His relationship with Rey hit a plateau. 

Not where they were when they first started dating - all light and romance - but not the worst either.

They’d settled into something functional. Predictable. A rhythm that worked well enough to pass for peace.

Rey had started smiling again, though not as often. They had dinner together most nights, watched the news, and shared quiet mornings before work. Sometimes she even reached for his hand. It wasn’t passion, but it was stability. And for the first time in months, Ren felt something close to content.

Until that dream.

Until Phasma.

The latest memories didn’t come like fragments, they came like a flood. A battlefield under a crying sky. The smell of smoke, rain, gunpowder.

And her voice crying his name.

And when he turned… he saw what he’d done.

He killed her.

Ren woke shaking, drenched in sweat, the echo of her last breath carved into his chest.

He couldn’t look at Rey that morning. Couldn’t look at anything. He buried himself in work, trying to drown the noise, but even there, ghosts followed.

Weeks later, Finn stepped into the role of Co-CEO, the board’s decision to “balance Ren’s workload.” It was meant to be temporary, but everyone knew it wasn’t. Rey didn’t protest. Maybe she was relieved.

Then Phasma - Nova’s old executive assistant, now reporting to Finn - came by his office one afternoon. A quick, professional conversation, until she hesitated at the door.

“Ren,” she said quietly, “I thought you would like to know… there was a transaction that came through last week. Related to Nova’s old corporate card.”

Ren froze. “What transaction?”

“Just a reimbursement, to offset an accidental charge from about seven months ago. The charge was from a sea-side café, on the coast near Fairhaven. The amount was small, so I assumed it was nothing.”

But it wasn’t nothing.

That night, Ren couldn’t shake it. The thought of the café dug under his skin, refusing to let him rest. He wanted to go, needed to go, but the idea of it felt dangerous, like pulling at a loose thread that could unravel everything he and Rey were barely holding together. He lay awake beside her, listening to the soft rhythm of her breathing, wondering what it would cost this time - what piece of his marriage he’d have to trade for another ghost of Nova. But the more he tried to reason himself out of it, the more inevitable it felt. 

By morning, he’d already chosen.

He told Rey he needed a short leave to “clear his head.” She didn’t argue, but her eyes said everything she didn’t: she didn’t believe him.

Ren drove out to the coast two days later. The café sat on a weathered boardwalk, the sea stretching endlessly behind it. Next door, an old family-run hotel leaned slightly toward the wind, its paint faded from salt and sun. The air smelled like seaweed and coffee.

He ordered something just to keep from shaking. The owner was kind and talkative, the way small-town people often are. When Ren mentioned Nova’s name, her brow furrowed in thought.

“I’m not sure?”

Ren begins to panic. He pulled out his phone and tried to look for a photo, hating that the only one he had was the one from the leadership retreat.

“This woman.”

“Oh! Yes, she came here all fancy and dressed up. Stayed at the inn next door for about a week, a few months back. Lovely girl. Quiet. Always writing.”

Ren’s heart stuttered.

He asked if there was any record. The woman led him into the adjoining hotel lobby, to an old guest ledger filled with looping signatures. And there - dated just one day after his wedding - was her handwriting.

Nova Piett.

Seven nights.

His knees went weak.

He ran his fingers over the ink as if it might still be warm, as if she might still be near. The edges of the page blurred as tears welled, spilling before he could stop them.

She was here. This was where she began erasing herself; slipping quietly out of his world.

Ren sank into one of the old lobby chairs, pressing the open ledger to his chest. The sound of waves crashed faintly beyond the glass.

The owner hovered nearby, her expression cautious. “Is everything all right, sir?”

He drew in a shaky breath. “Do you know where she went afterward?”

The woman hesitated, then shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. She left after a week. Didn’t say much, just… walked down toward the beach before her cab arrived. The room she stayed in is available, if you’d like it.”

There was something knowing in her gentle voice.

Ren nodded. “I’ll take it.”

That night, he stayed in Nova’s room. The scent of old wood and saltwater clung to everything. He sat at the small desk by the window, the sea whispering outside.

This was his only real lead after months of searching. 

And it led to nowhere.

When he finally returned home, he said nothing to Rey. She asked if the trip helped, and he lied. Said it had.

That night, he lay beside her, eyes opened in the dark.

He dreamed again. And again. And again.

And in every single one, Nova was always slipping away.

Ben had only ever known darkness.

And yet, it was the one thing he feared most.

At first, it was a quiet kind of darkness - the shadow cast by the brilliance of his family. The galaxy adored them, praised their names like prayers. Leia Organa, beacon of the New Republic. Han Solo, hero of the Rebellion. Even his uncle, Luke Skywalker - the last Jedi. The stories made them larger than life. Legends.

And legends left no room for mistakes.

So Ben grew up in the shadow of their light, suffocated by expectations he couldn’t meet. Every whisper, every look, all of them weighed down by what he should be. He learned to smile when spoken to, to nod when praised, to hide the frustration that burned behind his ribs like acid.

Then came the dreams.

At first, they were nothing more than flashes - worlds burning, stars collapsing, voices he didn’t recognize. But they grew clearer each night, the voice within them stronger, warmer. It spoke to him when no one else would listen. Promised him understanding. Promised him he wasn’t alone.

He tried to resist it, he did, but he was only eight years old. And loneliness makes monsters sound like friends.

Then came the betrayal.

He still smelled the faint scorch of ozone in his hair, the singe where his uncle’s lightsaber had barely missed his skull. He could still see Luke’s face etched with horror, pity, and shame as the blade’s light flickered out. And in that instant, Ben knew: the voice had been right. The light would always turn on him first.

Now, adrift in the void, Ben tried not to fear the dark.

He tried to become part of it.

The shuttle hummed softly around him, its cabin dimly lit, his reflection faint in the viewport. Beyond it stretched the infinite expanse of space - cold, quiet, and eternal. Somewhere in that emptiness, his old life had burned away. Somewhere out there, Luke Skywalker was mourning a boy who no longer existed.

In the distance, the shape of a Resurgent-class destroyer emerged from hyperspace, black against the stars, colossal and merciless.

The Redeemer.

He could already feel the weight of it pressing down on him, the chill of its steel corridors, the unyielding order of its command.

His new home.

His new purpose.

His Master foresaw that he would find someone here; someone who would become his greatest ally. He forced himself to believe it.

Ben Solo closed his eyes and drew a breath that trembled only slightly. When he opened them again, the reflection in the glass was steady, colder - the boy fading behind the mask of something harder.

Soon, he told himself. Soon the light won’t touch me at all.

The shuttle’s ramp hissed open, flooding the hangar with sterile white light. Ben stepped out behind the Supreme Leader, the hum of the ship fading into the rhythmic march of crimson-armoured guards. Rows of stormtroopers lined the deck in perfect formation, their blasters angled down in rigid salute. The air was thick with the electric hush of obedience.

He felt it before he saw her - a ripple, a shift.

A single heartbeat that didn’t belong to the synchronized machine around them.

Then he found her.

Standing one step behind a tall man in a Grand Admiral’s uniform, she was a stark contrast to the rest: dark hair neatly pinned, posture perfect, her expression unreadable. She couldn’t have been older than him, though she wore the First Order’s grey uniform like she’d been born into it.

Her eyes, when they met his, were unyielding. Very much so.

Ben felt the Force coil around that moment, tight and deliberate, as if something unseen was watching.

“Grand Admiral Piett,” the Supreme Leader’s voice cut through the silence, low and resonant, “I trust everything is progressing according to plans.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” the Grand Admiral replied, his tone crisp and deferential. “The subjugation of neutral planets has begun. Our forces are expanding faster than projected.”

“Good,” the Supreme Leader said, his pale hand gesturing slightly toward Ben. “My apprentice will remain under your supervision. He has much to learn and much to unlearn.”

Then his gaze shifted to the girl.

“Is this the girl?" he asked

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” the Grand Admiral said, pressing a heavy hand onto her shoulder. “This is my daughter, Nova Piett.”

Ben watched her bow her head, then snap up to attention once more. Her voice was clear when she spoke, but Ben could feel the caution behind it. “It is an honour to serve you, Supreme Leader. My life is yours to command.”

The Supreme Leader’s laughter was soft, almost indulgent. “You may yet regret those words, child.” He turned back toward Ben. “She is to accompany you in the Redeemer, and you will learn together. Discipline. Power. Pain. The Order demands no less.”

And then he was gone. Robes sweeping behind him, guards following in perfect rhythm.

Silence filled the hangar once more.

The Grand Admiral straightened, his hand tightening behind his back. “Do you have a name, boy?” he asked coolly, not bothering to mask his disdain.

“They call me Ben Solo,” he answered, his voice low. “Though that won’t be my name for much longer.”

The man's jaw flexed. “Very well. We shall address you as such. I trust you'll inform us when you've settled on something more permanent.”

As the officers dispersed, Ben caught one last glance at Nova. She didn’t speak, didn’t even blink, her gaze lingered on him, curious and unflinching.

For reasons he couldn’t explain, the Force stirred again, quieter this time, almost tender.

He looked away first.

The quarters were larger than he expected. Two narrow sleeping rooms connected by a common space with a sofa and a single viewport. Sparse. Sterile. Impersonal. Like everything else aboard the Redeemer.

Ben stood just inside the threshold, his small duffel clutched in one hand. He could hear movement down the hall - the faint hiss of a refresher door, the quiet rhythm of someone unpacking.

They had told him that this was temporary. 

That the Supreme Leader’s apprentice and the Grand Admiral’s heir would share living space “for the sake of efficiency.”

Two rooms. One unit. A controlled environment.

He wondered if they realized how cruel that was. Perhaps that was the point.

Nova Piett hadn’t said a word to him since they arrived. She didn’t need to.

Perfect uniform. Perfect posture. Perfect silence.

She wasn’t cruel, not like the officers who sneered when he passed, but there was nothing soft about her, either. She moved through the space like it belonged to her already, unbothered by his presence.

And maybe that’s what stung most.

He’d been many things in his life - a disappointment, a burden, a weapon - but never invisible.

The first few days followed the same rhythm.

Training. Drills. Silence.

When she spoke, it was clipped and practical: “You’re off by two degrees.” or “Your form’s too heavy on the left.”

Never unkind, never indulgent.

She treated him not as a rival, not as a partner, but as another cog in the machine.

Then came the nightmares.

They always began the same way - the smell of ozone and burning metal, the faint echo of his name swallowed by the roar of fire. The temple collapsing in on itself. His uncle’s face, the shock, the betrayal at the sound of the saber’s ignition.

He’d wake gasping, soaked in sweat, the darkness pressing close like a physical thing. The first few nights, he kept it to himself. Bit his tongue. Willed his breathing quiet. But on the fourth night, his restraint cracked.

He woke with a half-scream caught in his throat.

From the other room came the rustle of sheets, then bare footsteps on cold metal. A light flicked on.

Nova stood in the doorway, hair loose, eyes heavy with sleep.

He turned away, wiping at his face quickly. “Go back to sleep.”

She didn’t move. After a pause, she crossed to the small table by his bed and set something down. It was a small, wrapped biscuit, the kind used in rations.

“Eat this,” she said, voice low but even. “It’ll help you sleep.”

He blinked. “What is it?”

“Biscuit with a mild relaxant. It’s from my own supply.” She folded her arms, expression unreadable. “You’re no use to the Order if you can’t function.”

The words landed wrong; colder than she meant. He flinched, the air tightening between them.

He’d heard those words before, spat at him by people who never saw him as anything but a mistake.

Something in him twisted. The Force stirred, unsteady and instinctive.

“You think I’m useless?” he said, voice breaking somewhere between anger and disbelief.

Nova tilted her head. “I think you’re exhausted.”

And then the air rippled.

The darkness inside him broke loose before he could stop it, then a wave of memory and pain flung outward like a reflex.

She gasped as her mind filled with his:

the temple burning, stone collapsing, a dozen young faces lit by firelight and terror.

Luke turning, blade in hand, eyes full of fear.

The sound of his own breath - ragged, like an animal - as everything he’d ever known went up in flames.

Then silence.

When it cleared, Nova was standing perfectly still, one hand braced against the doorframe. Her pupils were blown wide, her breath shallow.

He waited for her to recoil; waited for disgust, or fear, or judgment. Instead, she just looked at him.

Not afraid. Not angry. Just… curious.

“Is that what your nightmares are about?” she asked quietly.

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

Something in her shifted then; something subtle, invisible. Her gaze flicked to the viewport, where the stars stretched endlessly, cold and white.

Ben felt the pull before he saw it; the faint flicker of thought not her own, but something remembered.

A factory - dark, suffocating - men and women chained to their stations, sparks flying.

A child dragged by the hair into a backroom, laughter echoing through the corridors.

A planet buried under rot and waste, the stench of it so thick it clung to the skin.

And over it all, a man’s voice: cold, measured, familiar.

“This is what you’ll become if you ever stop being useful.”

The image vanished as quickly as it came.

Nova blinked, steady once more. Ben realized his fists had curled into trembling knots.

Neither spoke. The silence between them wasn’t empty anymore; it was heavy, full of ghosts neither of them had meant to share.

Finally, she straightened. “Eat the biscuit,” she said softly. “You’ll need your strength tomorrow.”

Then she turned and left, the door sliding shut behind her.

Ben stared after her for a long moment, the biscuit cold in his hand.

When he finally unwrapped it, the taste was dry, chalky, but not bitter. And when he closed his eyes again, the nightmares came softer.

Not gone, just… quieter.

And somewhere, just before sleep took him, he heard her voice in his mind; detached, practical, almost kind.

Rest, Solo. You’re no use to the Order if you can’t function.

This time, it didn’t sound cruel at all.

The next few days passed without incident. Or rather, without words.

Nova didn’t treat him differently, not outwardly. She still spoke with the same clipped precision, still corrected his posture during drills, still ended every exchange with a nod and nothing more.

But something had shifted.

He wasn’t invisible anymore.

Each morning, when he returned from early combat practice, a ration biscuit waited neatly on his bed. No note, no explanation. Just there.

He never mentioned it, but he always took it.

And the nightmares… changed. The fire still came, but distant now, like a memory muffled by glass. He could almost stand in the ashes without burning.

By the end of the week, they were better in training - faster, cleaner, almost synchronized. The instructors praised them for efficiency, unaware of what it cost them both to get there.

It was during a sparring session that it happened.

A split second of misjudged timing, the snap of a stun baton, the blur of motion, and she was too close. His instincts flared before thought could catch up. The Force surged through him, meant to deflect her strike, but his focus wavered.

Her arm caught the edge of his weapon.

The sound - the crackle of energy meeting flesh - froze him.

Nova staggered back, clutching her forearm, the scent of scorched fabric hanging heavy between them.

He dropped his weapon instantly. “Nova - ”

She straightened before he could reach her, jaw tight, face pale but composed. “It’s nothing.”

But it wasn’t. Blood was seeping through the fabric, staining the pristine white of her sleeve.

The medic team arrived before he could take another step. Regulations; no personal involvement between trainees, no “attachments.” They escorted her to the medbay, leaving him behind on the training deck.

He stood there long after the doors shut, the echo of her fall replaying in his mind.

The guilt followed him all day, through drills, through briefings, through the hollow corridors of the Redeemer. Every order sounded distant. Every step felt wrong.

When he returned to their quarters that night, the lights were dimmed, the hum of the engines constant. Her door was slightly open.

She was there, sitting on the edge of her bed, arm in a pale bacta seal, the faint blue glow tracing where the wound had been.

He froze in the doorway. “I’m sorry.”

She looked up, expression unreadable. “It was an accident.”

“I should’ve been more careful. I - ”

“Ben,” she interrupted gently. His name, spoken like that, soft, without rank or reprimand, silenced him. “You don’t have to apologize.”

He hesitated, then crossed the threshold. The faint smell of antiseptic filled the room. “Does it still hurt?”

“A little.”

Something in her tone made him step closer. Without thinking, he reached out. His fingers hovered just above her arm, not touching, just feeling.

The Force hummed, quiet and tentative, like the air itself was waiting. He focused on that warmth, that small pulse of life beneath skin and pain.

And then it flowed.

Light, soft as breath, flickered from his hand. The bacta seal shimmered. The angry redness faded into pale, unbroken skin.

When he finally pulled back, the mark was gone.

Nova stared at her arm and then at him. “You… healed me.”

He swallowed, uncertain. “I didn’t mean to. I just - ”

She smiled. It was fleeting, but warmth filled her eyes, and something in his chest stilled.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

He didn’t know what to do with that. No one had ever thanked him before, not for what he was. Not for what he could do.

He nodded, awkward, eyes dropping to the floor. “You’re welcome.”

Silence filled the room, warm this time. The ship’s engines thrummed softly beneath them, stable as a heartbeat.

For the first time since he’d come aboard the Redeemer, the darkness didn’t feel so heavy.

The nightmares came harder that night.

They weren’t the usual kind, not the fire or the temple or the endless, echoing screams.

These were quieter. More insidious. The kind that began in silence and ended with him gasping, unsure where he was. Invisible hands that kept him from moving.

Ben woke sitting upright, the sheets twisted around his legs, sweat cold against his skin. His pulse thundered in his throat.

He switched on the lights. All of them. 

The room filled with sterile white, every corner illuminated. Still, the dark clung to him, like smoke he couldn’t wash off.

He crossed to the viewport and pressed his face and hands to the glass. Beyond it, only space. Infinite, uncaring. Cold.

He’d been told that the dark was his ally. That it would cradle him, strengthen him. But all he felt now was the weight of its silence pressing on his chest.

He didn’t notice the door hiss open until she spoke.

“You’re awake again.”

Nova’s voice was soft, groggy. She stood in the doorway of her own room, hair mussed from sleep, still in a loose grey shirt and training trousers.

He didn’t turn. “You should go back to bed.”

“I wasn’t really sleeping,” she said, crossing the small shared space to sit at the edge of the sofa near him. “You were loud.”

He winced. “Sorry.”

She shrugged. “You talk in your sleep. Sometimes you shout.”

“I’ll keep it down,” he muttered, trying to sound like he meant it.

Nova studied him for a long, quiet moment. There was no judgment in her gaze; just observation, like she was piecing together a puzzle she didn’t yet understand.

Then she said, almost casually, “You can see into minds, right?”

That startled him. He looked at her sharply. “What?”

She tilted her head, unbothered by his defensiveness. “Through the Force. You can see memories. Thoughts.”

He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “…Sometimes.”

“Good.” She drew in a breath, then looked down at her hands. “Then I’ll show you something.”

He blinked. “Show me - ?”

Before he could finish, she closed her eyes.

The air shifted - subtle at first, then deeper, like a current pulling them under. The hum of the Redeemer’s engines faded until all that remained was the sound of wind.

Warm wind.

When he opened his eyes, the metal walls were gone.

They stood on a beach.

The sand was pale gold beneath their bare feet, glowing faintly under a sun that hovered low over the horizon. Waves rolled in gentle arcs, their edges silver with light. The air smelled of salt and rain, something clean and alive.

Ben gasped, every nerve in his body sparking with disbelief. “What is this place?”

Nova knelt down and let her fingers trail through the water, watching the ripples spread. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “But I often dream of it. Even reconditioning couldn’t erase it.”

He crouched beside her, his breath still uneven. The water lapped at their hands, warm and real. He could feel the grains of sand beneath his fingers, the sun on his skin.

“Why are you showing it to me?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

She looked at him then; not as the soldier she was trained to be, but the person beneath the discipline. The faintest smile ghosted across her lips. “You looked like you needed to be somewhere bright right now.”

Their hands touched in the water. A soft shimmer ran through the horizon, as though the world itself acknowledged it.

“It’s always so dark in space,” she added, voice low.

He stared at her, trying to remember the last time anyone had looked at him not as a weapon, not as a project to fix or fear, but simply as a person.

Something inside him ached.

He smiled; small, tentative, like he wasn’t sure he remembered how. “Thank you.”

Her expression softened. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“I do,” he said.

They sat together like that, the tide washing gently around their hands. The sea seemed endless, timeless; as if the galaxy had paused just for them.

For the first time in years, he didn’t feel hunted by the dark. He didn’t feel alone.

When he finally closed his eyes, he felt the warmth of her hand in his, the whisper of waves against the shore.

And when the ship’s hum returned - when the Redeemer’s cold air replaced the scent of salt - the warmth lingered.

Nova was gone, back in her room. The lights were still on. But for the first time, Ben didn’t need them.

He sat there in the quiet, a faint smile ghosting across his lips.

The darkness felt… distant. Manageable.

And in the back of his mind, he could still hear the echo of the waves - soft, endless, and kind.

Since finding the inn by the sea, Ren began taking unplanned leaves - a day here, a weekend there - always under the guise of needing “quiet” or “time to think.” He stopped calling it a search; he told himself he’d moved past that. But every time the city walls began to close in, he found himself driving back to that small coastal town.

He’d sit in the café with his laptop open and nothing on the screen, nursing the same cup of coffee for hours. Sometimes he’d walk along the shoreline near the inn, listening to the tide crawl in and out, convincing himself he wasn’t still waiting for her.

He wasn’t looking for Nova anymore. Not really. He just… didn’t know how to exist anywhere she had once been.

Then one evening, Rey found the credit card statement.

Ren came home late to find her at the dining table, the paper spread out in front of her. Her face was pale, her jaw tight.

“Are you cheating on me?” she asked. The words hit like a slap.

He blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

 Her voice trembled, not with anger, but something rawer. “On top of everything, Ren - on top of everything - you’re cheating on me?”

He froze, then stepped forward. “What are you talking about? I’m not cheating on you.”

Rey shoved the paper toward him. “Then explain these. Hotel charges. Meals. Gas. You take off without telling me, and this - this is where you go?”

He stared down at the statement. The inn’s name printed neatly in black ink. The café’s logo beside it. His throat closed.

“Rey, it’s not - ”

 “Not what?” she cut in. “Not another lie? Not another secret trip you can’t tell me about?”

The silence stretched until it felt suffocating. She stood, her hands trembling.

“Or did you finally find her?” Rey’s voice broke. “And both of you are going behind my back, being happy together, finally?”

Her expression twisted into something Ren had never seen before - hurt and fury all at once. Her words stirred something dark in him, something dangerously close to anger.

Do you think I’d stay here if I did find her?

The thought flashed through him before he could stop it, and the moment it did, he was horrified, disgusted with himself for ever thinking of it at all. And all the fight drained out of him.

He swallowed hard, guilt twisting like a knife. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice cracking. “I messed up. Again.”

Rey laughed bitterly. “Haven’t you noticed? You tell me you’re sorry more than you tell me you love me.” She met his eyes, tears glinting. “Be honest with me, Ren. With me and yourself.”

She took a step closer, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Are you in love with her?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no. He just stood there, eyes down, silence stretching between them like a confession.

And that was enough.

Rey’s breath hitched. “You have been, haven’t you?” she said softly. “All this time.”

Ren’s voice was barely audible. “I don’t know.”

But he did. And so did she.

Rey asked him to leave that night.

“Maybe you should stay somewhere else for a while,” she’d said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “Just until we both figure out what this is.”

Ren didn’t argue. He’d run out of things to say that didn’t sound like apologies. He packed a duffel bag in silence, the sound of the zipper far too loud in the stillness of their home.

He drove through the city aimlessly before ending up outside Poe and Hux’s apartment. The building was too bright, too alive, and he stood at the door for a long time before knocking.

Poe opened it in sweats and a hoodie, blinking. “Jesus, Ren. It’s two in the morning.”

“I know.”

“You look like you got hit by a truck.”

Hux’s voice came from somewhere inside. “If it’s the police, tell them we’re asleep.”

“Worse,” Poe called back. “It’s Ren.”

“Ah. Mr. Detective.” Hux appeared in the doorway, a mug in hand. He eyed Ren up and down. “You look like shit.”

Ren sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Can I crash here?”

“Couch is free,” Poe said, already moving aside. “Whiskey’s on the counter. Try not to cry into it.”

Later, the three of them sat on the balcony, the city lights pulsing below like distant stars. The bottle between them was half-empty.

“So,” Poe said carefully, “what happened?”

Ren took a long drink. “She found the charges.”

“The seaside inn?” Hux guessed.

He nodded.

“Ah,” Hux murmured. “The ghost getaway.”

Poe frowned. “You didn’t tell her why?”

“She wouldn’t understand,” Ren said flatly. “Hell, I don’t even understand. She accused me of cheating.”

“She thinks you’re cheating?” Poe asked.

“She knows something’s wrong,” Ren admitted. “Just not what. And I can’t tell her that I spend my days sitting in some seaside café because maybe she'll come by again.”

The words hung between them, heavy and uncomfortably honest.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” he sighed. “I feel ridiculous.”

“Man,” Poe said finally, rubbing a hand over his face. “You’ve really got it bad.”

Hux leaned back, crossing his legs. “He always has.”

Ren glanced at him. “Don’t start.”

“Oh, come on,” Hux said, smirking faintly. “You think this obsession came out of nowhere? I met you in university. You were an insufferable mess anytime her name came up. You’d roll your eyes, change the subject, claim she was ‘annoying.’” He made air quotes. “Classic denial.”

Poe laughed softly. “He’s right. You used to act like you hated her. Remember in high school? You’d complain about her being ‘too loud’ or ‘too nosy,’ but every time she’d talk to someone else, you’d get that look.”

Ren frowned. “What look?”

“The jealous one,” Poe said. “Come on, man. It was obvious.”

Ren looked away, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I was seventeen. Everything made me jealous.”

“No,” Hux said, voice quieter now. “You were in love and too proud to admit it.”

Ren didn’t respond. The silence stretched until Poe filled it.

“Remember that time in elementary when she pushed you into the pond behind the gym?” Poe said with a grin. “You chased her halfway across the field.”

“She ruined my science project,” Ren muttered.

“Yeah, but you let her borrow your hoodie after,” Poe said. “And didn’t ask for it back for, like, three weeks.”

“Because she said she lost it.”

“She didn’t,” Poe said. “She wore it all the time. Everyone knew it was yours.”

Hux chuckled. “She used to bring you coffee during finals in uni, didn’t she? You complained every time, said she was ‘hovering.’”

Ren exhaled a shaky laugh. “She was.”

For a long while, they sat without speaking. The hum of traffic drifted up from the street below, steady and indifferent. Finally, Ren said, “I’ve been having dreams.”

That got their attention.

“About her?” Hux asked.

Ren nodded. “They’re not like dreams, though. They feel like… memories. From other lives. Different places. Different versions of us. But she’s always there.”

Poe exchanged a look with Hux, uncertain whether to laugh or worry.

“You sound like Nova,” Hux said finally, his voice low but not unkind.

Ren’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I know.” The words came out small, almost regretful.

“Do you want to tell us about them?” Poe asked carefully.

Ren considered it. “I don’t know where to start.”

Hux gave a small shrug. “What was the first one like? Or when did they start? Nova told me a bit about hers; the night you announced your engagement.” He cringed slightly at the flicker of pain on Ren’s face.

Ren took another swig of his drink. “It started during my honeymoon with Rey. I dreamt of a beach. Like I was really there. Nova was waiting. She said she’d have left by then. When I woke up, I started seeing flashes of things I know never happened to me.” He gestured vaguely. “Which explains the doctor visits. And the short honeymoon.”

Poe and Hux stayed quiet, letting him continue.

“Next thing I know, Nova’s gone.”

“What kind of memories?” Poe asked, his voice low. “I’ve been curious, but I didn’t want to pry.”

“A few versions,” Ren said. “I was a café owner once. Then a doctor. Then a soldier.” He gave a disbelieving laugh. “Then some kind of… knight, I guess? Dressed in black, in space. With telekinesis and laser swords.”

Hux and Poe both blinked.

“Okay, you’re clearly messing with us,” Hux said with a sniff.

Ren briefly thought that maybe this was how Nova had felt when he dismissed her. It didn’t feel good.

He gave a wry smile. “I killed her in one of them. Saw to it personally. In that soldier life.”

Both men stared.

“Jesus, Ren,” Poe muttered.

“I know. It’s messed up. And every time, it ends on a beach. With Nova. Must be why I keep going back to that inn.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Hux said quietly. “Is that why you’re so—” He stopped short. “So fucked up?”

Ren could only shrug.

Another stretch of silence passed. The city wind carried the faint sound of a siren, the clink of glass as Poe refilled their drinks.

Poe sighed, setting the bottle down, then leaned towards him. “Look, man. I don’t know if these dreams mean something, or if you’re just drowning in what-ifs. But you’re wasting another good woman if you keep this up. Rey’s trying, but you’re somewhere else entirely. You can’t live in both the past and the present, you’ve gotta decide for yourself soon.”

Ren stared into his glass, the city lights flickering in the amber liquid like small, dying stars.

Ren didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. Poe was right, and they all knew it.

Ren felt it in the Force first. That thin, invisible tether between him and Nova, the one that had always hummed strong and sure, suddenly wavered.

Then it dimmed.

Like a light flickering out in a long, dark corridor.

It had been a long time since he’d felt panic - true, unfiltered panic - the kind that coils deep in the chest and spreads like fire no matter how tightly one tries to contain it. His Master’s teachings spoke of discipline, of control, of emotion as power to be wielded, not endured. 

But now, sitting cross-legged on the cold stone floor of the cave, his breathing hitched. The shadows around him seemed to pulse, responding to the storm inside him.

He tried to focus on the lesson, the quiet hum of energy that flowed through every living thing, the stillness of the dark. But it was no use. The disturbance gnawed at him, sharp and insistent, like a distant scream carried through the void.

Something was wrong.

He could feel it.

And then -

Pain.

It struck without warning; a flash of blinding white, searing and cold, followed by a whisper that tore through the silence.

Ren.

Ren rose abruptly, the movement echoing off the cavern walls. The ceiling was low, forcing him to stoop until he stepped out into the open air of the citadel’s outer grounds. The horizon burned with the faint orange of distant lightning storms, bathing the jagged cliffs in a muted glow.

It had been too long since he’d seen her - two years since that last day on the Redeemer. Two years since he’d kissed her goodbye, a clumsy, desperate thing that had burned longer than it should have. They had been fifteen then, and she was fierce and bright in a way that defied the Order’s endless grey. He’d told himself that memory alone would be enough to sustain him.

He’d been wrong.

He reached out through the Force, the way he always did when words or distance made no difference - searching for the familiar warmth of her mind. It used to come so easily. She was always there, steady and golden beneath the cold currents of the dark side.

But now, when he reached there was only static.

Empty, broken noise.

His stomach twisted. He tried again, deeper this time, pushing past the interference. Still nothing.

It felt as though someone had taken a blade to the thread that connected them and severed it cleanly.

Something had happened to her.

He clenched his jaw, fighting down the tremor in his hands. Snoke’s voice echoed in his mind then, low and deliberate. Attachment is a chain, my apprentice. You must learn to break it.

Ren’s breath came ragged. His fingernails dug into his palms until they drew blood. He didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

Instead, he swore to himself that no matter what they did to her, he would find her again.

The Redeemer felt different than he remembered; colder, quieter, its corridors dimly lit by the pale hum of the overhead lights. The air carried the scent of oil, metal, and sterilized dust. Everything was the same, yet hollowed out - as if the ship itself had forgotten something too.

Ren moved silently through the halls, the hood of his robes drawn low. He ignored the curious glances from passing officers and troopers, their salutes stiff and uncertain. He had no patience for ceremony, not tonight.

He had come for one reason.

To find her.

The reports had been clinical; “Squad Leader Nova Piett, status: active, performance exemplary, cognitive stability confirmed.” Words on a datapad, stripped of all meaning. No mention of who she was. Of who they had been.

He told himself he was prepared for this. That if she didn’t remember him, he would not let it break him.

Then he saw her.

She was walking down the corridor, still in uniform. The fatigue of a long shift showed in the curve of her shoulders, but her stride was purposeful, like always.

He stopped.

“Nova.”

The word came out softer than he meant it to, breaking the silence like a fragile thing. It carried everything he hadn’t said in two years, and every night he’d reached for her through the Force and found only static.

She paused.

Turned.

Her eyes met his, blank and unfamiliar.

There was no recognition. No spark of memory.

Still, he smiled - small and uncertain. But it faltered, the hope behind it shattering in the space between them.

She didn’t answer.

And he felt it, the hollowness where her mind used to glow warm and golden, now scrubbed clean, sterile and cold. He reached out instinctively, just a brush through the Force, a whisper meant to comfort, to remind.

Her breath hitched.

He saw it in the way her hand trembled at her side, how her eyes darted slightly, as if hearing a voice she couldn’t place. Then something shifted, a faint a spark beneath the surface.

Ren exhaled shakily, the tension breaking into a quiet, shuddering sound. Tears welled before he could stop them, slipping down his face unchecked.

He reached deeper - carefully, gently - not to take, but to give.

Memories.

The faint sweetness of a biscuit shared in the dim light of their quarters.

Laughter muffled behind closed doors.

Her hand brushing his beneath the surf of an imagined beach.

The warmth of her mind touching his when she whispered, You looked like you needed to be somewhere bright.

The sound of his voice, small and uncertain, saying: You’re the only friend I have.

He felt her gasp through the Force before he saw it. Her aura flared; bright, golden, and alive.

The memories came faster now, unraveling like thread; moments they’d shared from childhood to the day they parted.

He saw them both as they had been - two children standing before the officers at eight years old, shoulders too small for the weight placed on them. He’d hated how everyone looked at him - a Skywalker name in a place that had no use for one. She hadn’t looked at him that way. She’d just stood beside him, calm and certain.

At ten, they’d been given separate rooms - an unnecessary gesture of discipline. But every night, he’d knock on her door. She never asked why.

He’d sit on the floor of her room, watching her read reports by the faint glow of the viewport.

“Can you be my friend?” he’d asked once, voice cracking from hesitation.

“We’re not supposed to have friends,” she said, breaking his heart, but then her eyes had softened, “but I already am.”

He smiled, relieved, grateful. “You’re the only friend I have.”

Eleven — the day he left for Snoke. He could still feel the weight of her stare as he walked away, the words he hadn’t said clinging to the back of his throat.

Twelve — his return. Changed, harder, quieter. He’d stood in front of her and said, “My name is Kylo Ren.”

She’d been the first to hear it. The first to say it back. The first to believe him.

Years blurred together; training, missions, nights where silence meant safety. They’d become inseparable, not by command but by gravity.

And then fifteen — the morning she left for her assignment and when Snoke summoned him again. Wind whipping through the hangar. He’d caught her hand, just once, before she could go.

Her eyes met his. And before he could think better of it, he kissed her.

A promise he could never speak aloud.

Now, here she stood again. Older. Sharper. But beneath the surface, the same.

Ren’s breath shuddered as her body trembled, as if the flood of memories was too much, too fast. He wanted to stop, to give her space, but she clung to them — to him.

Her eyes flickered. Recognition dawned.

And then her voice, hesitant, echoed across the thread that bound them.

Ren.

It was barely a whisper, but it shattered him.

More tears burned behind his eyes. The corridor blurred at the edges, her voice the only thing anchoring him to the moment.

She swayed slightly, catching herself on the wall. The Force rippled around her, calm and warm, the way it always used to be.

“You remember,” he said, his voice breaking.

“I remember.”

The sound of it made his knees nearly buckle.

For the first time in two years, the thread between them thrummed evenly again, alive and unbroken.

He reached for her hand, hesitant, as if afraid she might vanish if he touched her. But when his fingers brushed hers, she didn’t pull away.

Her hand was warm. Real.

Ren exhaled, closing his eyes as a wave of relief flooded through him, then drew her to his arms and held on tight.

They stood like that for a long time - two figures in a forgotten corridor, surrounded by steel and silence, the galaxy outside cold and endless.

But between them, something lived again.

And Ren swore, quietly, fiercely, to never let the Order take her from him again.

A few weeks passed, and Rey still hadn’t spoken to him beyond the bare minimum.

They shared a house but not a life, passing each other in the hall like strangers who happened to wear wedding rings. She’d stopped setting a second mug out in the morning. The small, careful acts of their marriage - the texts, the half-smiles, the quiet goodnights - were gone.

Ren told himself to wait. Give her time. But by the third week, the silence had hardened into something unbearable.

He found her in the kitchen sorting through the week’s mail, still dressed from work, her hair pulled back tight. The light caught the edge of her rings as she turned an envelope over in her hands.

“Rey,” he said, quietly.

She didn’t look up. “What?”

“I need to tell you the truth.”

That made her pause. The paper in her hands stilled. “About what?”

“Where I’ve been going.”

Now she looked at him; steady, but already bracing for impact. “Go on.”

So he told her. Everything.

About the café by the sea, the small inn next to it. About finding Nova’s handwriting in the guest book. About going back there again and again because it was the only place he felt close to her. About the dreams - the ones that didn’t feel like dreams at all. The battlefields. The other lives. The endings that always found her, and him, and the same impossible grief.

Rey said nothing for a long time. The ticking of the kitchen clock filled the silence between them.

“And you think these dreams mean something?” she asked finally, her tone even but brittle.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But they feel real. And I can’t make them stop.”

She looked down, exhaling through her nose. “Do you love her?”

He hesitated. That single moment stretched like an eternity. 

And then, for the first time, he didn’t lie.

“Yes.”

Rey’s face didn’t crumble, didn’t break. It just… fell still. Like a candle snuffed out. “Okay,” she said softly, standing up. “Okay.”

She packed that night. Told him she was going to her parents’ for a while.

“Maybe we both need space,” she said, her back to him as she zipped her suitcase. “To figure out what we actually want.”

He didn’t argue. Didn’t reach for her. He just stood in the doorway and let her leave, knowing he didn’t have the right to stop her.

Two days later, his parents showed up.

He hadn’t called them, but somehow they knew. Rey had reached out to Leia and Poe, apparently, had filled in the rest.

Leia was the first through the door, still wearing her coat, eyes sharp but soft around the edges. Han followed behind, hands stuffed in his pockets, carrying the air of someone who’d been preparing himself for this talk the whole drive over.

Ren hadn’t shaved in days. The house looked as hollow as he felt; half their things gone, everything else untouched, like time had stopped mid-step.

Leia looked around once before turning to him. “You’ve made quite a mess, my darling,” she said quietly.

“I know.” His voice cracked. “I didn’t mean to.”

“You never do,” Han said, settling into a chair with a sigh. “Doesn’t stop you from doing it anyway.”

Leia shot him a look but didn’t disagree. She joined Ren at the table, resting her hands together like she was trying to steady the world between them.

“Rey called. Said you two are taking time apart,” she said. “And Poe told us what’s been happening. The dreams. Your… old friend.”

Ren’s throat tightened. “You mean Nova.”

Leia’s expression softened at the name. “Of course I mean Nova.”

Han leaned against his palm. “We’ve known that girl since she was eight, kid. Used to come by the house with you after school. Built half your damn science fair projects together. You think we didn’t notice?”

Ren rubbed the back of his neck. “Notice what?”

“That you two were joined at the hip, even though you deny it,” Leia said gently. “You bickered like an old married couple by the time you were twelve. You’d swear you hated her, and then we’d catch you defending her behind her back. I thought you’d figure it out someday.”

Han gave a small, wistful huff. “We all did. Hell, even Nova’s parents thought you’d end up together. When you brought Rey home, I thought maybe something changed…that you’d finally moved on.”

Ren stared down at his hands. “There’s something else going on. Something you won’t understand. You won’t believe.”

Leia rubbed his arm comfortingly. “Try us, darling.”

He hesitated, then began. About Nova, the café, the inn. About finding her name and feeling like he’d stumbled across a ghost who’d never really left him. About the lifetimes, the versions of himself he didn’t understand. He told them everything.

When he was finished, Leia sat quietly, watching him with a mother’s patience, one that carried both empathy and sorrow.

“Ben,” she said at last, “I saw it years ago. You don’t convince yourself you hate someone without actually caring. You were so young, so angry, and I thought I would be meddlesome if I said something. I thought you’d sort it out with Nova if we let you be.”

Ren swallowed, his throat tight. “I don’t know why I made the choices I did, but I know I want to see her again. To at least apologize. Still.. I’m hurting Rey - ” he breathed in and exhaled slowly.

Han shifted closer, resting a hand on his son’s shoulder. His voice came rough but kind. “Kid, I don’t care about all the dream nonsense or past lives or whatever this is. What matters is what you do now. Rey’s not the villain here. Neither’s Nova. But you can’t keep them both on the hook while you figure out what you want.”

Leia nodded. “You need to be fair, Ben. To Rey, to Nova, to yourself.”

Han squeezed his shoulder once, then let go, and leaned on the table. “If you love Rey, then you’ve got to let Nova go. You sit down, fix your marriage, and stop chasing ghosts. But if you can’t - ” he paused, giving his son a long, measured look, “if every time you close your eyes, you’re with Nova, then you let Rey go. You don’t get to drag her through this half-life with you. You pick a direction and you live in it.”

Leia nodded again, her voice soft but unflinching. “You need to decide, Ben. Not out of obligation, not out of guilt, but because you finally know where your heart really is.”

She smiled faintly, though there was something sad in it. “We always thought it would be Nova. Maybe it still is. But if it’s not, you owe it to everyone - to her, to Rey, to yourself - to stop pretending.”

Ren’s throat burned. “What if I don’t know how to choose?”

Leia reached out, brushing a lock of hair from his face like she used to when he was a child. “You do,” she said simply. “You’ve always known. You just never had the courage to admit it.”

Han gave him a small smile and pushed off the table, “Figure it out, kid. Before someone else makes the choice for you.”

When they left, Ren stood by the window, watching their car disappear down the street. The house felt even emptier than before.

Ren stood in the dark, his parents’ words echoing in his head; the past and the present colliding like waves against a shore he couldn’t seem to leave behind. And in the quiet stillness, he made his choice.

The Supremacy’s throne room was bathed in blood-red light. The air was heavy with incense and silence, the kind that pressed against the ribs, suffocating in its stillness.

Ren knelt before the Supreme Leader, head bowed, the hiss of the doors sealing behind him echoing like the closing of a tomb.

Rey stood between two Praetorian guards, her wrists bound in durasteel cuffs. Even in restraint, there was defiance in her stance - the same spark he’d felt on Starkiller, the same one that had driven her blade into his face and left his scar still faintly burning.

He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t.

Snoke’s voice slithered through the chamber. “My faithful apprentice returns - victorious, yet defeated. You bring me the scavenger who bested you. Tell me, boy, do you know why?”

Ren’s jaw tightened. “She is strong with the Force.”

“Strong?” Snoke’s laughter was like glass. “She is nothing. A child born of chance, guided by delusion, and yet she has undone you.”

Ren’s fists clenched, but he said nothing.

Then the doors hissed again.

Bootsteps - measured, metallic, and precise.

He didn’t need to turn. He knew that rhythm by heart.

“Grand Marshal Nova Piett,” Snoke announced, his tone curling with approval and mockery in equal measure. “You will witness this, as I correct what sentiment has made weak.”

Ren finally looked up.

Nova stood at the top of the steps, her black uniform immaculate, the long hilt of the Darksaber clipped to her belt. She wore a mask of indifference, but Ren knew what her eyes held as they exchanged a glance before she looked ahead to nothing.

Snoke leaned forward in his throne. “This girl,” he gestured lazily toward Rey, “is the one you let live, Grand Marshal. The Jedi child you both failed to end when you had the chance.”

Nova stiffened as her eyes shifted towards Rey's direction. 

Ren felt his own control slipping. “She was inconsequential,” he said quickly, standing. “I brought her here to - ”

“To prove yourself?” Snoke interrupted, his voice dripping venom. “No. You bring her here to fail again.”

Ren’s breath hitched, fury twisting in his gut, but before he could speak, Snoke turned his attention to Nova.

His pale fingers lifted from the arm of his throne, and the Darksaber snapped from Nova’s belt as if yanked by an invisible wire. It sailed through the air, its hilt glinting black against the red light, then halted midair before her.

Nova didn’t flinch, though Ren could feel her pulse spike in the Force - a sharp tremor of dread she couldn’t suppress.

Snoke’s voice rolled through the chamber, low and venomous.

“Come, Grand Marshal. Let us see the strength you hide behind your ranks and medals.”

The Darksaber’s hilt turned upright, and then, impossibly, it was in her hand. The Force had placed it there, fingers forced closed around the grip as if shackled by invisible iron.

Ren’s breath caught.

Snoke’s grin widened.

“This ancient thing is wasted on you.”

Before Ren could react, Snoke’s hand curled into a fist.

The Darksaber ignited - the blade flaring to life in a roar of black energy - and then, with a violent crack, it shattered. The sound was deafening, like thunder splitting the air.

Nova’s scream tore through the silence as the weapon exploded in her grasp. Shards of the kyber and molten metal burst outward, taking with it chunks of her flesh; the bright, acrid scent of burnt fabric and iron filling the chamber. The force of it threw her backward, and she crumpled to the floor, clutching what remained of her arm to her chest.

Ren took a step forward before he realized it, the movement of pure instinct.

“No! Stop!”

The guards crossed their weapons, barring his path.

Snoke turned his gaze on him, eyes alight with cruel amusement.

“Ah… her knight comes to her rescue.”

Ren’s throat tightened. Every breath scraped like fire.

Nova struggled to push herself upright, blood pooling dark from where it spilled on the floor. She didn’t cry out again. She only looked up at Snoke, eyes glazed but defiant.

Snoke flicked his fingers, and the Force lashed out again, slamming into her chest like a wave. Her body lifted from the floor and hurtled toward him. He caught her midair without touching her, holding her aloft by the throat, the broken pieces of the Darksaber still glowing faintly on her arm, mixing with blood.

“Such potential,” Snoke murmured, studying her like a discarded tool. “Such loyalty. And yet…”

He leaned forward.

“You would waste all that power for love.”

Then, with a contemptuous flick, he tossed her aside.

Nova hit the floor hard, sliding across the polished black surface before coming to rest against the base of the throne. Her breath shuddered out, shallow and ragged.

Ren’s hands trembled at his sides. The air around him seemed to vibrate, heat curling in the space between breaths.

Snoke turned back toward him, smiling as if nothing had happened.

“Now, my apprentice,” he said softly. “Show me you have learned.”

Ren didn’t move. The throne room seemed to shrink around him - the red walls pulsing like veins, the air heavy with smoke and ozone.

He could still feel her. Nova. Her pain rippling through the Force, sharp and staggering. Every breath she took sounded like a fracture.

His fingers twitched. His lightsaber hilt rested against his side, but his mind wasn’t on the weapon. It was on her hand - burned, severed, and bleeding.

Snoke laughed, a low, mirthless sound that slithered into every shadow.

“You hesitate. You still think yourself divided between light and dark, between what you love and what you fear.”

He lifted his hand, and Rey was dragged forward like a puppet, forced to her knees.

“End her,” Snoke commanded. “End the scavenger. The last obstacle to your ascension.”

Ren’s breath hitched, and for the briefest instant his gaze darted toward Nova, motionless near the base of the throne.

“You underestimate Skywalker and Ben Solo.” Rey said, defiant.

Snoke leaned forward, his voice a thunderous whisper.

“I can see his mind,” he said. “I can see his every thought. He turns the lightsaber to strike true. And now - he ignites it - and kills his true enemy!”

Ren’s thumb brushed the activator.

But not on his saber.

The blue blade beside Snoke’s throne came to life, slicing through the air  and through Snoke himself.

The Supreme Leader froze, disbelief etched across his disfigured face. Then the blade cleaved through him in a single, blazing stroke. His body slumped in two silent halves, falling like a broken idol.

Rey broke free of her cuffs as she dropped to the floor. The guards moved instantly, weapons snapping to readiness, but Ren was already there, his red blade igniting with a snarl. Rey caught the signal, and for a heartbeat, the throne room erupted into chaos.

Blades clashed. Sparks flew. The crimson guards fell one by one, their cries echoing against the walls.

It had been a while since Ren felt such power flow freely from him, but he didn't revel in it. He ran toward Nova the instant the last praetorian fell.

The throne room crackled with the dying hum of sabers and the hiss of molten metal. Sparks rained down from the shattered ceiling. Snoke lay in two pieces, on his throne and on the floor, his smoldering robes pooling like ink.

Nova was sitting up now, pale, eyes glassy. Then her eyes focused to meet his; wide, disbelieving, and shining with something he hadn’t seen there in years. Ren dropped to his knees beside her, his breath catching. His lightsaber deactivated with a hiss.

“Nova.” His voice was rough, low, trembling. He removed his gloves and reached for her arm, trying to summon the Force to stop the bleeding, to heal it. But he cannot focus, his mind splintered by panic and dread; his eyes zeroing in on the blood that was staining his hands. Her blood.

He gathered her carefully in his arms despite the way he was trembling, mindful of her injury. She dropped her head against the crook of his neck, his heart thundered beneath her cheek, unsteady and human in a way that the mask of Kylo Ren never allowed.

“Everything is fine now,” he murmured, his voice barely more than a rasp. “He’s gone.” He said quickly, tightening his hold just enough to steady her. “You’re safe now.”

He adjusted his grip so she rested more comfortably against him, her weight pressing into the armour still scorched from the fight.

From the center of the ruined chamber, Rey still stood among the wreckage, eyes wide, disbelief and fear etched into her features.

“Ben, why…” she began, her voice trembling, confusion threading through the word.

Ren looked up at her, jaw tight, the flicker of something raw behind his eyes. He wanted to answer, to explain, but there was no language left for what he’d done.

Then, from somewhere beyond the throne room, came the deep, resonant whine of the engines of the Millennium Falcon, cutting through the silence.

Ren exhaled sharply, the sound ragged.

“Go,” he said at last, his tone low but commanding. “While I still allow it.”

Rey hesitated. Her eyes darted between him and Nova - the broken woman in his arms, the shattered remnants of the Darksaber on the floor beside them.

“Ben…” she whispered, one last plea.

But he said nothing more. His silence was answer enough.

Rey turned and ran, disappearing through the collapsing doorway as the Falcon’s engines grew distant.

For a moment, the only sound left was the soft hum of dying circuits and the shallow rhythm of Nova’s breath.

Ren looked down at her, brushing a strand of hair from her face with the same hand that had ended Snoke’s life minutes ago. The contrast made his stomach twist.

“Everything’s fine now,” he said again, quieter, almost to himself.

Nova’s eyes fluttered halfway open. Her lips moved, barely forming the word.

“Ren…”

He swallowed hard, pressing his forehead against hers. “I’m here.”

The firelight flickered over them, red, gold, and dying.

And in the silence that followed, with Snoke’s corpse cooling behind them and the last sparks fading from the air, Ren rose to his feet, Nova in his arms.

He didn’t look back.

The planet shuddered beneath them.

A low, final pulse rolled through the sand - slow and deep, like the echo of a dying heart.

Ren felt it before she did.

It thrummed up through the earth, through the bones of their little home, through the soles of his boots. The air tasted of metal and ash. Below the cliffs, the violet ocean had grown eerily still, drawing back in one long retreat as though the sea itself were exhaling for the last time.

He stepped out from the doorway, the wind cold against his face. Nova followed him; no armour now, no blaster at her hip. Just her worn flight jacket, frayed at the sleeves, the same one she’d worn on missions long before the title Grand Marshal had ever touched her name.

When the first crack split the horizon, she didn’t flinch. Her eyes found his. “You feel it too,” she said quietly.

He nodded once.

The Force roared within him - fractured, wild, and no longer his to command. It scraped like static against his mind, carrying with it every dying breath of this world. He felt the sand collapsing beneath their feet, the tide dying in the distance, the heartbeat of the planet slowing, and yet, for all his power, he couldn’t stop any of it.

Once, he had bent galaxies to his will. Now, he couldn’t save a single thing he loved.

It was almost poetic, in a cruel way.

He had spent his entire life fighting to be more than a weapon, a name, a shadow, and all it had given him was distance.

Distance from her.

From the one person who had seen the boy beneath the mask.

He had spent more years apart from Nova than beside her.

And now, with the world crumbling around them, he saw every wasted moment for what it was - a wound that would never close.

Nova turned toward the sea, watching the last of the light shiver across the horizon. “You’ve always carried sorrow, Ren,” she murmured. “All your life, you’ve been grieving something you could never name.”

He wanted to tell her that he finally understood what it was; the quiet ache that had haunted him since boyhood. That it wasn’t power he had longed for, all along.

She reached up then, her metal hand cold but gentle against his cheek, carrying devotion in her touch. “Don’t be sad for me,” she said softly. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

Her eyes met his, and for the first time since he’d known her, he saw no duty in them, only peace and acceptance. “I’m happy,” she whispered, “because I’ll die yours. Not my father’s. Not the Order’s.”

He brushed a streak of ash from her cheek, his thumb trembling. “You shouldn’t be happy about this,” he said. “You deserve more than dying beside a monster.”

Her smile was faint. “Then maybe,” she said, “in another life, you won’t be one. We won’t be one.”

He closed his eyes, voice breaking. “Then maybe… in another life, I’ll be someone worthy of you.”

The horizon split wide.

A deep rumble rolled across the cliffs as the sea collapsed inward like a hollow, soundless implosion. The air shimmered with heat and dust. The smell of salt turned to smoke.

Ren pulled her into his arms.

He could feel her heartbeat - erratic, uneven. Her breath brushed against his neck, warm. He held her tighter, as if he could hold the world together through her.

“I wish…” he began, voice cracking, the words barely forming. “I wish we’d met in another life. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere the war never touched. I’d have built you a home by the sea, not a grave beside it. We could’ve had time.”

Nova’s lips curved faintly. “Then dream it,” she whispered. “If not here… somewhere else.”

Ren pressed his forehead to hers, the tears blurring the last fragments of colour around them. His whisper trembled. “I will find you… in the next life. I will recognize you, and spend a long life with you.”

The world gave its last breath.

The sea was gone.

The sky dimmed to nothing.

He stayed there, unmoving, her body flushed against his as the planet fell silent.

The Force around him hummed weakly, flickering; alive just enough to ache. It pulsed once through the sand, through the bones of the house, through him, and faded into emptiness.

Ren held her until the very end, his promise still warm on his tongue.

And somewhere beyond the edge of the galaxy, a voice laughed - low and knowing.

Rey had been staying with her parents for a month, coming home only once to collect more clothes. When they did see each other, they spoke in short, careful exchanges, like strangers navigating the ruins of something once tender.

Ren had already decided what he needed to do. The words had sat on his tongue for days: we need to end this. Rehearsed in silence, never spoken. He told himself he’d wait for the right moment, that he owed her at least that much.

So when it finally happened, he wasn’t surprised. Just relieved. And a little ashamed that she had beaten him to it.

She was waiting for him at the apartment that used to be their home, seated at the dining table where they once shared breakfast and quiet evenings. A small stack of papers rested in front of her, and beside them, her engagement and wedding rings, placed neatly on top, catching the afternoon light.

The sight reminded him of the night he’d proposed. Same placement on the table; the ring like an afterthought.

Rey didn’t speak at first. Her expression was calm, distant, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

Ren sat down slowly, his stomach hollow. He reached for the papers. Her signature was already there, her name written cleanly at the bottom of each page. It was almost merciful.

He picked up the pen and signed.

The faint scrape of ink against paper was the only sound between them.

When he set the pen down, Rey gave a small, bitter laugh. He looked up.

“You didn’t even read them,” she said quietly.

He flinched, guilt pressing hard against his ribs. But there was nothing left to say.

“I’m sorry, Rey,” he said, his voice low.

“I should’ve known,” she murmured. “When you proposed the way you did - the look in your eyes. But I loved you anyway.” She looked up, meeting his gaze for the first time. “Did you even love me?”

Ren’s throat tightened. “I did,” he said softly. “And I hope you believe me. You’re an incredible woman - better than I ever deserved. I hope you find someone who gives you what I couldn’t.”

Rey’s eyes glistened, but her voice stayed steady. “For what it’s worth… I hope you find her too.”

It was the closest thing to forgiveness either of them would ever get.

Ren sat at the dinner table alone that night, the silence his only companion.

He took off his ring, then set it on the table.

And it felt like removing a mask.