Work Text:
Rey post Exogol: a thread.
The shock of it all didn’t wear off for weeks.
Her so-called “triumphant return” to base after Exogol had been filled with relief and pain in equal measure. Poe, Finn, and Rose had all hugged her so close that she was certain at the time that all would be well and that the jagged, aching hole in her heart was more imagination than naked truth. She had returned, yes. Had even defeated Palpatine and ultimately allowed for the destruction of the Sith Fleet. But what nobody knew and what no one could ever know was that she hadn't done it alone.
As she sat curled up on her bunk alone in the Falcon, Rey wept silent tears for what felt like the millionth time.
“How is it that my soul knew you my whole life but my heart only knew you for a moment?”
The black fabric in her hands had grown soft with her musings over time and no longer smelled like him, but she breathed it in as deeply as if it were the fresh, cool air to starving lungs.
“People still talk about Kylo Ren. There’s an ongoing search throughout the galaxy to find any information as to his whereabouts and/or his fate.”
She paused then, smiling wetly into the garment.
“I should probably say something... but I won’t. Even the talk of your other self makes me feel like you’re somehow still here and that I will find you. I’m not ready to give that up. People should know what you did for them, Ben. The whole galaxy should know what you sacrificed for them. It’s only right. I can’t live in a world where you, the real you, is unknown and, therefore, doesn’t exist. I want them to know.”
With a strangled sob, Rey succumbed to another wave of anguish and fell to her pillow while clutching Ben’s tunic to her aching chest.
Distantly and ever so softly, a warm voice spoke from within the Force,
“Any good thing I ever did in my entire life, I did for you, Rey. No one else mattered.”
“Ben?”
She gasped and reached out to the warmth within the Force. It was so, so small and fragile. So barely tangible that she almost missed it. At the last possible moment, just before it blinked out of time and space itself, she latched on and she felt WHOLE.
“I’ll come back for you, sweetheart.” he whispered.
And Rey felt hope for the first time in long, long while.
***********************
A Reylo Christmas
A Thread Fic
#reylo
Hollow.
That was the word he'd use to describe this gnawing feeling in his chest.
Every standard year this day would bring an ache that he would spend hours in painful meditation trying to bury deep within his mind but to no avail.
This year, like every other one he could remember, he shut himself off from the Force and the life-giving current it brought. Dark. Light. All of it was snuffed out in an attempt to hide from his dead self and the Winter Solstices spent alone with a cold droid and a vacant tree.
All was quiet and dark in his chambers as he sat at his desk and watched the star lines streak past his eyes. As a child, his father would tell him stories of hyperspeed and how the heavy snow zooming past the windshield of their blazing airspeeder looked exactly like a starship in hyperspace.
He closed his eyes and allowed that small memory a moment to live in his aching heart.
"Ben?"
He startled out of his reverie at her timid voice. Warmth was emanating from her very eyes as they took in his tragic state.
"Don't call me that."
He couldn't bring himself to fully look at her. Though their meetings like these had become somewhat commonplace over the last year, the two of them had all but refused to acknowledge each other when they did happen. A quick glance, a stiff and resolute set to their shoulders was all they would allow each other.
Tonight, though, he hadn't felt her come and she had spoken his name so softly.
She didn't respond. Ben sighed and tore his eyes away from the viewport and set them upon her.
Rey was cast in a warm light, her hair falling in soft waves against shoulders that were wrapped in a large, forest green blanket. Her eyes were sparkling with firelight and something else he couldn't quite describe. She looked beautiful, as she always did, but also somewhat sad.
"Why do they put lights on trees this time of year?"
Lights. Fae lights. That was the sparkling in her eyes he didn't recognize at first.
He shut his eyes once more, swallowing down a lump the size of a porg, and turned away from her. He couldn't do this.
He didn't have the aid from the Dark Side to quell this emotion, these aching ghosts from his past. He wouldn't answer.
"Ben."
His fists clenched and he swore discreetly under his breath before he turned to her. She had gotten up from whatever seat she had been occupying on her side of the universe and had come to lean against his desk before him. Less than an arm's length away. He could feel the heat from her body begin to warm his countenance.
"Back in the times of ancient Chandrilla, long before the settlers arrived, the native people would gather in the center of their villages on the coldest, longest night of the year and hold vigil over each other with candles and fire. They called it the Winter Solstice."
He chanced a glance at her and found she was enraptured. Drinking in every word he spoke.
"Back then, the coming of Winter meant isolation and death for many outlying villagers due to famine, hypothermia, and old age. One year, a young couple took it upon themselves to travel to each and every house in their village, far beyond the boundaries, and to every elderly townsfolk, and bid them come to their home on the night of the Winter Solstice. They would feed, clothe, and watch over each and every one of them through the long night to ensure their safety and well-being. Their kindness inspired other families to bring their own candles, food, and firewood to the Solstice vigil. So, on that night so, so long ago, all the people of one small village in ancient Chandrilla gathered together, looked after one another, and survived the longest, coldest, harshest Winter Solstice the planet had ever seen. Not a single soul was lost... or forgotten."
In a moment of pure emotion, Ben reached out and took Rey’s hand in his. He didn't look at her though he knew she was staring straight through to his very core.
"Every Winter Solstice since then, people have gathered and celebrated the gift of togetherness and community. The lights represent the candles and fires from that night a millenia ago, and the tree represents the strength and protection that the community provided for one another.”
A moment passed and nothing else was spoken. Just large, cold hands clasped in tiny, warm ones from opposite sides of a galaxy.
"Ben Solo."
Came Rey’s impossibly kind voice. Her right hand drifted up to brush stray hairs from his face and then pull his chin and eyes up to hers. He blinked.
"You're not lost and you've never been forgotten."
With a small, unsure breath, she placed a gentle kiss upon his head before holding his sad face in both of her hands.
"Happy Winter Solstice, Ben."
In that moment, something within him broke. A dam, or a levy. Something massive and life-altering. He choked on a sob, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into him.
"Happy Solstice, cyar'ika."
Whole. He felt whole and complete here in her arms.
********************
TIDES idea
It happened on a gray and dreary Thursday morning. The docks were already teaming with fishermen and their boats, the smell and taste of salt and gravely beaches heavy on the senses.
Ben Solo and his father were preparing for their third trip out for the season, heaving hundreds of pounds of bait and food stores to fill the belly of their fishing vessel, the Millennium Falcon, when a group of serious-looking main-landers shuffled onto the dock just beyond their view.
Ben could hear what sounded like a trio of excited squeals coming from the wooden dock and rolled his eyes followed by a guttural growl.
"Biologists." Han Solo practically drawled. "Damn your mother and her study-abroad program. These kids will never learn the true nature of the sea."
"They're MARINE biologists, dad.”
Ben grumbled, not in disagreement. "Don't let them hear you forget that part. They will slap you real quick with the breakdown of their particular specialty and how much grant money it takes to maintain their 'grossly under-appreciated' studies."
Han let out his usual bark of laughter, slapping his son's shoulder none too gently.
"Oh, right. How could I forget?" Ben never ceased to be amazed and somewhat appalled by the level of sarcasm that came from his father's mouth at times. Always too heavy handed.
"Hey, Chewie!”
Han shouted up to the crow's nest.
"Fire her up! Do me a favor, kid, and get this last 100lb-er of bait down below deck. My back is really killin me." Han feigned a backwards stretch and a wince as he side-eyed his son.
With the heaviest of sighs he could muster,
Ben grabbed the barrel and shouted a profanity back at his father in Russian. Han hated the Russians.
Just as Ben went to swing the bait over his shoulder and head towards the stern, the loudest of the excitable marine biologists slammed right into his broad chest in a flurry of brown, green, gold, and crimson. Before he knew it, he was staring right into the most blazing set of hazel eyes he had ever seen. They held joy, wonder, sunlight, and... pure, unadulterated rage.
In the haze of wonderment and planet-altering, the top of the barrel had come clean off, emptying all of its fish-gutted contents onto the small, fiery gremlin standing before him.
"Erm... oops?"
A shrill cry, an indignant stomp of a squelchy foot, and a hearty shove to Ben's torso later, Euridice Niima... or Rey, as he would come to learn...went tumbling into the black, choppy waters of Dutch Harbor.
"Fuck." He mumbled, before shrugging off his Buffalo checkered flannel and diving in after her.