Archive of Our Own

She felt him in her arms. The weight of him, the coolness of his skin against hers, and then just as quickly as he returned to her, he left. Again. It was the greatest pain she’d ever felt, knowing that he’d given everything he had left to save her life. Something inside her felt as if it had been shattered and removed, leaving her hollow and aching as she clung to the black cloth he’d left behind.

When he had crawled his way out of the pit and startled her as she’d cried into his shirt, it had been her greatest joy. Everything that had been torn from her had been returned and she’d called his name into the echoing space. She crawled to him, unable to stand, and he stumbled to her, dazed and weak.They spent hours like that, crying and holding each other on Exegol’s cold, dirty surface, feeling each other’s heartbeats and keeping almost irrationally close tabs on one another’s Force signatures. She was terrified, as she knew he was, that one of them was going to fade away to nothing again. Her hands had wandered across his chest, his arms, checking again and again that he wasn’t bleeding or broken.

They couldn’t explain why he wasn’t.

Now, weeks later, she could still feel him periodically checking on her even though they were just rooms apart. She couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t also keeping tabs on him, little pushes and pulls on their Force bond to check and see that he was alright when she couldn’t see him. Sometimes she could feel his panic when she wasn’t where he thought she’d be on the Resistance base, and she’d have to send him her location and her feelings of safety and calm just to stop the racing of her own heart.

It didn’t help that he was still awaiting trial. Poe had promised the remainders of the Resistance, and the entirety of the galaxy via the holonet that justice would be served, but not everyone had faith that it would be done in the manner they saw fit.  Rey was constantly terrified that someone was going to take justice into their own hands, despite his constant follower of one Ms. Tico, who offered to guard him herself. During the wait for trial, Rey spent more time honing her Force abilities to sense danger than she ever had while fighting the First Order while Ben had seemed more or less resigned to the attacks as they might so long as the target was him and not her.

It exhausted Rey to the point where she’d fall onto her hard bunk at night and pass out so quickly that she might as well have been tranquilized. Her sleep was fitful, and during the moments of the night when she’d wake, she could feel Ben, just as restless in another section of the base. Not going to him, not breaking protocol to lay by his side and feel safe, was the hardest thing she thought she’d ever done in her life.

Rose was unexpectedly their best ally when Rey arrived at the post-battle celebration and announced to the remaining leadership that there would have been no victory at all without Ben Solo. There had been a lot of shouting and anger, which was why she’d had Ben wait for her in her original landing point, miles away from where she was meeting with the Resistance. In the end, Poe and Finn heard her out and Rose was a large part of getting them to that point. Her insistence that anyone who was willing to all but give his life for Rey was worth at least a chance. It had been a surprise to Rey, given Ben’s hand in the battle that caused the death of her sister, but she’d been grateful for the support.

What had really solidified her position to have Ben not shot on sight was that Finn, after his girlfriend’s prompting, finally admitted what Rey had suspected for quite some time: he was Force sensitive. He had felt Rey die and come back. That Rey felt the same thing, but for Ben, had brought Poe some certainty that despite everything, he at least deserved a chance to use his second shot at life for good.

Good, of course, being whatever Poe defined it as being, volunteering to be Ben’s handler should a court rule in favor of letting Ben have his second shot. Rey initially thought that it might be somewhat vengeful given their history, but determined that it was the best option offered that didn’t end in Ben’s death or permanent imprisonment. 

Not everyone felt the same way Rose or Poe did, which was ultimately the cause for Rey’s concern. Leia’s passing polarized the atmosphere on the base, some seeing Ben as the prodigal son of their beloved late general, while others saw him as her killer. Even with several announcements that his fate would be decided with all factors considered, and with Rose tailing Ben, Rey never quite felt that Ben was safe.

Rey and Ben argued alone behind closed and locked doors that he needed to build another ‘saber, or that they needed to go and get his mother’s or uncle’s for him, because she was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to fend off a whole group of angry fighters who couldn’t look past his failings. She had just gotten him back, and she didn’t think that she could handle losing him again. However, she came to the realization that when he was fighting for himself, for anyone but her, he still didn’t trust himself.

“I just want you to be able to defend yourself,” she’d begged, “I’ve seen you take hits walking down hallways, ones you’ve seen coming, ones you could have stopped with the Force, but you don’t. At least a saber would be a deterrent. You don’t have to use it, people just need to know it’s there.”

He’d been so confident fighting at her side on Exegol, pulling and pushing the Force, using it to fight through those he’d once considered allies in order to protect her. He’d used her saber, taken it willingly and used it to fight with her. It had thrown her off balance to see him return to her without that self-assuredness, but she was piecing together an explanation as to why.

 He died to bring her back and this second chance they still couldn’t explain meant that he’d need to make choices that kept her that way. Choices required a moral code, and while she was still sorting out her own, she knew it wasn’t entirely different from the one she’d had her whole life. For him, many things had changed, and Ben Solo was still deciding what he stood for. The only answer he seemed to have was that he stood for her.

He fought for her and she knew he still would, but to defend himself against those who would not forgive him, was something he wasn’t ready for. He hadn’t even forgiven himself.

“I’m still figuring this out Rey. I’ve made mistakes and I don’t know if I’m doomed to repeat them.”  

It didn’t matter that Palpatine pushed him towards the dark, that the monster was dead. It didn’t matter that Rey had all the faith in the galaxy in him, that he’d saved himself and that he’d stay true to Ben Solo instead of returning to the man he was as Kylo Ren. He was scared of himself, she thought, or at least still didn’t believe that he deserved this second chance at living his life. She could see it in his eye when they fought, the disbelief that he was worthy of trust.

“You won’t Ben. You’re not going to hurt anyone.”

“You can’t know that.”

That broke her in the same ways losing him had, albeit less severely. When she saw him doubt himself. When he couldn’t meet her eye when they spoke about his lack of self preservation, it was like he was telling her to prepare for the day when she’d lose him again.. It made her want to scream, to ask him if he was going to abandon her too.

It wasn’t fair and she knew it, but it didn’t stop her from projecting it through their bond and feeling him shift uncomfortably on his feet over the implication of how his loss might hurt her. She only felt slightly bad about it. She was still recovering from her own temptations, but she was more open to using the Force than he was. She at least had the confidence that she wasn’t going to turn to kill anyone by accident when she used the Force to trip up someone who was about to get a hit in on Ben.  

She wasn’t sure that he was worried about such little things, but she took note when he didn’t use his abilities to make his life easier. He’d nearly cut himself off from the Force, from any element of his abilities beyond their bond. He was avoiding it as Luke had, evidently deciding that his past mistakes outweighed any good he could create going forward. 

She wasn’t certain that if someone tried to kill him, if he’d respond at all. That terrified her more than anything else.

Yet no one tried to kill him, at least no one  that they were aware. He suffered a few punches and trips as he was moved throughout the halls of the base, but despite Rey’s annoyance over his pacifism, he was truthfully no worse for wear. Rose kept an eye on him well enough to keep him alive to face trial, and despite it being an unpopular and by no means a unanimous decision,  Ben Solo was conditionally pardoned of the majority of his crimes as Kylo Ren. 

The few remaining members of the “old guard” were crucial to the verdict. Those who loved Leia so dearly knew that she would have wanted her son to have a second chance, and so it had been with their votes that he had been allowed to live. Poe, surprising even Rey, had been instrumental to the decision with his testimony that Leia never gave up on her son, and his argument that despite everything that Kylo Ren had done, Ben Solo had been instrumental in the Resistance’s final battle against the Final Order.

Rey felt a surge of joy at the announcement and pressed the flood of relief to Ben through their bond as she fought her way out of the stands the court had made her sit in after her own testimony on his behalf. She knew that it had been an attempt to keep the peace, separating her from him to assuage the fears of those who believed that they were plotting against justice or that he’d somehow brainwashed her. She hadn’t minded really, until she realized how long it would take to get to him, how long it would take to throw her arms around him.

Her emotions were met with a quiet acknowledgement and a wall that held behind it a mixture of emotion. She shot him the slightest indication of her hurt when she had to forcibly press against the barrier he’d placed in their bond to know what he was feeling. He held it back from her in its full intensity, but there was grief there that she couldn’t quite understand that made her temples ache.

She paused in the stand as a Resistance representative read out the full details of the sentence, listening while trying to determine why Ben wasn’t as relieved as she was. There were hundreds of conditions of his release that Ben had already agreed to, but none of them felt so foreboding to temper the excitement of knowing that he would live, that they would have a chance to have a life together.

In the end Chewbacca, flanked by Lando, who were both present as witnesses and speakers of what they believed Leia and Han would have wanted, were the one to remove the cuffs that had marked him symbolically as a Resistance prisoner. 

She didn’t need the bond to know how that felt for him. Strong as he’d been through the trial, she saw him look to the floor as Chewbacca said something to him in Shyriiwook that Lando quickly repeated in basic. 

She felt the tears running down her cheek as droplets wetted the duracrete floor beneath his feet. 

“You’re free little starfighter.”

As his shoulders went slack, under the weight of the decision, under the words of the men who considered him a nephew, Rey was finally allowed to leave the stand. She rushed to his side fast as her feet would take her and hold him as he shook. He was so much larger than she was, but she bore his weight as he leaned into her. She felt him stiffen and then fall into her further when Chewbacca and Lando patted his back and stepped away with the restraints. She let a hand slip into his hair, combing long strands through her fingers as she did her best to allow him to let go. After some time passed she felt the presence of the gawking onlookers lessen as they tired of watching them cry and left the room.

They were eventually given a moment of privacy as the rest of the onlookers and decision makers left the space. They fell to the cold floor, which felt terrifyingly close to the one they’d felt beneath them on Exegol. She could only be grateful that she hadn’t lost him again. 

The shackles were gone, but the tracker in his arm stayed. One of the “conditions” that they agreed upon when he was released on both Poe and Rey’s recognizance. Other terms included serving the Resistance as required; including reporting what information he knew about the remains of the First Order, going on missions, and any other “important” matters. He did not argue, maintaining throughout the entire post-trial that he’d do what was needed to repent.

He hadn’t even flinched when they’d sent a med droid to his side with a scalpel to remove some of the other “security measures” they’d implanted in his flesh that were no longer deemed necessary.

His eyes didn’t leave Rey’s the entire time.

🙚❄🙘

Due to Rey’s worrying and Poe’s orders, they were on a ship to Rhen Var.

They’d managed together, and not so gently, to convince him that he needed a ‘saber. 

Rey’s pleading became more effective after the trial, as she noticed him becoming a bit more comfortable with the idea of being at least somewhat forgiven. She wasn’t sure how long it was going to take for him to come around to the concept fully, but he seemed a little more comfortable with using the force in little ways. Either to sense trouble coming his way or to catch the occasional falling ceiling tile in the crumbling facility the Resistance had been calling home until recently.

Poe had really been the one to convince Ben to make the leap. Rey thought that maybe it was too much of a shove, watching the annoyance flare in Ben’s features when he was ordered to go looking for a kyber crystal. Rey had been encouraging Ben for his own sake, but Poe was more pragmatic. He had every intention of sending Ben and Rey into several situations that required self-defense. 

“Look Solo, like it or not you’ve got a job to do. Much as I would personally find it hilarious if you got your ass handed to you out there, it doesn’t exactly benefit the Resistance in rebuilding the free galaxy. So, you’re going to suck it up and arm yourself properly.”

Despite the “pep talk” Rey knew that Poe wasn’t particularly thrilled about arming Ben, who he still didn’t trust despite his defense of him in court. She was worried that Poe’s distrust would make Ben even more upset over the order, but she’d been pleasantly surprised by the realization that despite the many ways Ben had changed, he still enjoyed the idea of making Poe uncomfortable. She found it ironic that their antagonism was proving to make them better at cooperating, even if it was primarily through malicious compliance.

She would have chided him more for it, but at least it meant that they were all in agreement. If Ben wanted to earn an unconditional release, one that would allow him the life that his mother would have wanted for him, he needed to be armed to get there. 

“I still don’t know what we’re going to be facing out there,” Rey said with a sigh. “Ex-First Order, whoever has decided they hate the Resistance this week…”

“You don’t need to face any of it,” he replied, focusing on piloting the ship that was essentially their home since they’d first been allowed to leave the Resistance base together. “You can sit this out, Rey. I have a lot of wrongs to right, but you…”

“I’m not letting you do it alone,” she interrupted. She was getting as tired of this argument as he was, but they were both too stubborn to give it up. She settled herself into the co-pilot’s seat as they approached the ice planet. “Besides,” she added, “I’m not letting you have all the fun.”

From the corner of her eye she saw the ghost of a smile appear on his lips. It was rare to see him smile fully, like when they’d kissed for the first time, but every hint of a smile made her feel warm in a way that still felt too new.

Despite their kiss on Exegol, despite the fact that they shared a bed, everything between them was new. When they were on the base, she found herself often jealous of the effortless way Finn draped his arm around Rose’s shoulders, or the way Kaydel pressed a kiss to Poe’s cheek each time she left a room. It was simple for them. Other couples on the base who’d found love in the war and were comfortable enough to show their affections in more than stolen glances and the occasional finger brush.

“Ready to land?”

While Rey knew that their ongoing argument wasn’t over. She was content with the fact that they were on this mission together. She still had a lingering fear letting him out of her sight, afraid that despite the strides he’d been making, he’d let someone in the Resistance beat him half to death without putting up a fight. That he was going to make a saber seemed like a step in the right direction, and so they were chasing a rumor of a powerful kyber crystal said to be held in the remains of a Jedi temple on Rhen Var.

She answered by buckling herself into the chair and carefully, slowly, reaching her hand over to his, pressing gently to encourage him to take them down.

🙚❄🙘

It was cold. Worse than cold, with icy wind whipping at them from all sides as snow came down in blinding sheets. Rey was freezing in her parka, thinking about how the last time she’d been so cold, she was fighting Kylo Ren. She shoved that dark thought to the back of her mind, hoping that Ben wasn’t remembering the same.The only good thing was that she could take comfort in was the feeling of Ben’s gloved hand in hers, keeping them from getting separated in the blizzard.

“We’re getting close,” she yelled over the din. 

The tracker in her pocket pinged louder and louder as they made it closer to the temporary shelter that the Resistance had been kind enough to airdrop days before their arrival. It was now undoubtedly ice covered amongst snowdrifts. It reminded her of the desert a bit, just worse in unimaginable ways.

Sand might get into her boots and burn her skin, but with enough water and shade the desert had been survivable, even on the hottest days. She wasn’t sure that she would survive more than a few more minutes out in the cold, feeling chilled to the core in a way that made her think she may never be warm again. 

He squeezed her hand in return, letting her know that he’d heard her despite the environment and the layers they were both wearing over their heads. She squeezed back, checking that she could still move her fingers enough to do so. She wasn’t built for the cold.

As they trod across another snow drift they spotted the small bunker-like building, blessedly sitting in an area where the wind was whipping snow away rather than toward it. It was good luck. She sincerely didn’t think she’d have the ability to move at all in short order and she certainly didn’t want to contend with snow removal before she could warm up again.

As they hurriedly made their way towards it, the wind hit Rey so hard that she thought she would have been sent sailing were she had not been held so tightly by Ben. Holding on to her tightly, he stepped around her, angling his body against the worst of the wind. He was a somewhat effective windbreak, and while Rey hated that he was taking the brunt of the discomfort, she did appreciate it.

It didn’t go unnoticed. His little gestures were always clear to her. She always noticed the way he’d keep his eyes on her whenever they were amongst the Resistance and the way he tried to make himself small in tight spaces for her on the ship so she never felt too crowded.  She’d noticed that he would feign fullness when they ate, only to give her pieces of fresh fruit or whatever was best off his plate for her. He was kind and observant and gentle in ways that she could have never expected before he’d sacrificed everything, including himself, for her, and they managed somehow to get a second chance.

A chance that she knew he didn’t think he was worthy of.

In his wake, they made it to the shelter. He’d tried the door first, but even with his size and strength it wouldn’t budge. The ice had formed an inch thick layer on the front of the pod, proving that they weren’t as lucky as they’d initially thought. She tried kicking it, but it ultimately took a blast of Force energy before they could free up the hinge and actually open it.

He pushed her through the doorway first, before turning to close the door, fighting against the wind. She heard it close behind them with a clunk, as she tore the thick fabric from her head, unraveling it from around her mouth to take a deep breath of cold air.

It hurt to breathe, but her lungs were begging for air, unobstructed by cloth and wind. As she inhaled and coughed, she quickly moved to the control panel on the opposite wall, just beside a transparisteel panel that looked out on the landscape they’d just momentarily escaped. Hitting the power button with her stiff, gloved hands, she was grateful when the system kicked in. She honestly thought for a moment that it might not work at all, that the solar generator on the shelter hadn’t been able to collect enough light energy, and that she and Ben were going to be forced to march back through the frozen wastes to their ship and try another time.

Cold air blew, at first, from the vents in the ceiling above her, but as she turned up to face them, heat began to roll out. Shortly afterwards the lights flickered on to brighten the dim space and Rey let out a sigh of relief. They weren’t going to die of exposure after all. 

“Are you okay?”

She turned to see Ben wrestling with his hood and scarf, tossing them off onto the floor before crossing the small space to where she was standing, face turned up to the heat, trying to thaw the end of her nose.

“Better now,” she said, finally managing to take a breath in without coughing. “I’m not used to it being cold like that. Nights on Jakku got frigid, but not like that with the wind.”

He seemed not to take her at her word, looking her over anxiously. His eyes filled with fear until she reached out towards him in the Force, showing him that she was alright, just a bit cold.

He relaxed a bit, and she noticed that he had bits of snow and ice buildup on his eyebrows that broke apart and started to melt as they lowered from their concerned line. As small rivulets of water descended his cheeks and nose she realized that he must have been making that grumpy, concerned face the whole time.

She smiled and did her best to hold in a laugh as she imagined him holding that look the whole time. She almost wished she’d taken a moment longer outside to notice it in its full glory. Almost.

“It’s going to take a few minutes for it to get warm enough to do anything but stand here, but once I get the feeling back in my fingers I think I’m going to see what they sent us for rations.”

He stepped closer to her then, entering her space more fully. Leaning down a bit, he pulled off his right glove with his teeth and then tugged the other off. He rubbed his hands together for a moment, bending his fingers a bit as if confirming their function, and then reached out for her hands.

She gave them to him willingly, letting him slip the fuzzy mittens off for her. He shoved the mittens and gloves into his jacket pocket and then placed her hands between his palms and she was surprised by how much warmer they were than her own when he’d been wearing the less insulated option of the pair. She thought that it must be nice to be so big and warm all the time, and he laughed, a warm and distracting sound.

“Projecting?”

He grinned shyly  bringing their hands up to his face where he huffed warm air onto her fingertips. She felt the moisture in his breath condense on her cold fingers as she looked up into his eyes. There was a humor and a kindness there that put her at ease. She sometimes had a hard time remembering what it was like to see anger and hate there.

She never forgot just how close their bond made them though. How sometimes she knew exactly what he was thinking, and how he could do the same for her, word for word. She sometimes was distracted enough to not realize that she’d let him in, and that he occasionally did the same meant that she had plenty of days where she spent her time smiling and laughing at his thoughts that he wasn’t voicing. Even better were the days where he thought something about her so loudly that while he’d never said it aloud, she still knew he meant it.

He loved her.

She knew that well enough. He showed it constantly in his actions towards her, in little touches and looks, but the days he accidentally projected it, looking at her like she hung the moon, were her favorite. She’d never known a love like that, the unconditional way he was ready to cross the stars for her, the way he’d given himself to her fully, wholly, and of his own free will. She’d never had anyone come back for her before Finn, and while she loved him in a way that felt like she imagined having a brother would, the way Ben had shown up for her, the way he kept coming back to her against all odds, gave her a sense of peace she’d never known. That she would never be alone again.

She let herself relax, her eyes fluttering closed as he warmed her fingers. She felt his lips press into her fingertips, warm and soft. However, by the time she opened her eyes, the fraction of a second it took between the contact and her reaction, he’d released her hands and turned away. She saw the tips of his ears, a soft pink that she thought maybe was owing to a blush, not just the coolness, particularly as it was beginning to warm. She wanted to kiss them, as well as his cheeks and his nose, just to show him what it felt like to be so adored.

She saw him sit on a nondescript bench on the opposite side of the small space, still turned away from her as he tugged his boots off and began removing the remaining outer layers that protected him from the ice and chill. Unable to stop herself, she reached out to him, pulling at their bond and pushing the soft, warm, fluttering feeling he’d created in her stomach when he’d kissed her fingertips. It wasn’t the same as physically causing it in him, but it had to do. She watched his fingers fumble with the coat zipper and as he snuck a look back in her direction, she was also rewarded by another one of his shy half smiles.

It was a gift to have him like this. They still weren’t sure how he survived. They didn’t have answers for how he’d come out of the same pit twice, once giving his life for her, and the second barely in one piece, but blessedly alive. He didn’t remember anything between kissing her and coming back shirtless other than the climb up. He’d been so dazed and she’d been so busy trying to transition between mourning and joy that they hadn’t thought to investigate at the time.

A Resistance scout who returned to the site confirmed that the pit was just a pit, and Exegol  was abandoned. Unlike the conspiracy theories currently running through the galaxy, Ben was not a clone or less evil twin, or from a different dimension or something else that could have potentially been in the bottom of that pit. He was just Ben Solo, the man who had another chance.

They both were content to believe that it was the Force’s will, or maybe the work of Leia or Luke. Rey liked to think that it could have even been Han, but he nor his wife or brother-in-law had come to offer an explanation. At first the lack of answers had been frustrating, but after the lives they’d both had, they’d decided that taking a win, wherever it came from, was pertinent. 

She started to remove her own external layers as the small space warmed and as she regained feeling in her limbs. Once she managed to strip everything down to her tunic and leggings, she crossed the room to toss them atop the pile he’d already made.

“We should probably hang these up if we want them to be dry tomorrow,” he offered, reaching out to the pile and grazing her hand in the process.

He danced around her; he always did. Sometimes he would take the chance to touch her first, as he had in warming her hands, but mostly he gave her space, waiting for her to initiate, to ask, to insist. She was appreciative, since she still wasn’t used to the casual touches that were common amongst the Resistance, but she also wished that he’d give her the casual affection she saw between others. She wished that one of them would finally say that they loved the other out loud so that their intimacy wouldn’t have to be so careful, but she was terrified of what might happen if she said it first.

“Yes,” she replied. “Probably. Will you do that while I try to find something to eat?”

He nodded and lifted the pile easily and all at once, standing from the bench while she set her boots next to his by the door. He walked towards a door on the adjacent wall, which she assumed from the floorplan led to a small ‘fresher, and she walked towards the other side of the room to a small kitchenette. It was even smaller than the one in their ship, and certainly smaller than the one in the Falcon which Chewie told her Han added as a wedding gift to Leia. Kaydel told her that while Leia herself wasn’t much of a cook, she mentioned once how much she loved to watch Han cook. She wondered what it would be like to have that kind of domestic life with someone. To spend time just sitting, watching them cook, to talk about things that weren’t war or death.

The kitchenette really had no business being called a kitchen at all. It was a warming plate, a water dispenser, and a caf pot. She sighed and opened up a drawer that appeared to contain mostly nutripacks and freeze-dried rations. She would never object to food of any kind, but she admitted that she had become a bit spoiled since the battle with the Final Order on Exegol. Once the war was “officially” over, the Resistance found itself well treated, better funded, and with better supply lines than ever before. That Ben had always let Rey have the best of his meals as well made matters even worse. She never wanted to look at a portion of instant bread again as long as she lived.

“Anything good?” Ben asked, reemerging from the ‘fresher, evidently having decided while in the room to strip down additional layers. 

He stood before her now in just trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. Sometimes it was a little hard for her not to stare when he was underdressed, and she tried not to flush as she glanced from his arms up to his face.

“No Wookiee Cookies, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He chuckled and crossed the room to her side. “I didn’t think so. Ration packs, then?”

She nodded. “I’m not complaining.”

She didn’t need to tell him that some food was better than no food at all. He’d been in her head. He knew about the nights she spent awake with hunger pangs too strong to sleep through, wanting to cry, but keeping it in to conserve water. It was written guiltily across his face when she glanced up at him.

“You can complain,” he said. “You can complain, Rey. You can complain all you want, and I’ll listen, and I’ll try to make something edible for you while you complain. Next time we go somewhere, the food is going to be so good, I swear.”

There was a thickness to his voice that made Rey’s heart ache, because while she was just joking about the food, feeling bad about becoming spoiled, he truly was upset for her.

She nudged at their bond, trying to tell him it was okay, but what she received in return was his sadness when he thought about her not having enough to eat, and images of what she looked like the first time he’d seen her eat chocolate. He showed her how he planned to cook for her someday like he remembered his father cooking for his mother when things were going right and how he wanted to take her to restaurants with fancy desserts and wine. She could practically taste a cake he thought of to show her.

Then everything shifted and she saw a dream he’d had of feeding her a fruit she’d never seen before, bright red and cut into cubes. In the dream, he held out the fruit to her, her lips brushing his fingertips as she took it from him, juice wetting her lips as she ate.

They both blushed. Clearly it was a fantasy of his to see her eat well, and she thought that maybe he hadn’t quite meant to let her see it. She licked her lips anyway on reflex, and he didn’t look away.

“I think--” She paused for a moment, staring up at him, looking him in the eye. “I think that I would like that.”

She didn’t clarify if she meant what he’d originally offered, or whether she meant that she liked what she saw in his daydream. Both were certainly something that interested her. No one had ever wanted to listen to her complain before, and no one had ever wanted to sensually feed her fruit either. The splendor and indulgence of both appealed to her. 

He reached past her, caging her on one side with his extended arm as he surveyed their options. He grimaced, but pulled a few packs out and eyed their contents while she stood there, face inches from his chest.

“If I ever have to eat portion bread again I might cry,” she said, voice low, almost inaudible against the wind providing a constant background noise. “It’s all I had most of the time, and I never had enough of it. After a while, it just started to taste like failure, even though I knew that it was what was keeping me alive.”

He stepped closer into her space, all but forcing contact between her forehead and his chest as he moved to start cooking. She almost ducked out of the way until one of his hands pressed into the small of her back, coaxing her closer, encouraging her to lean into him.

A warmth filled their bond, and she knew he truly wanted to hear her complain about food while he tried to make something palatable for her.

“Sometimes I’d get lucky and there’d be some veg-meat that wasn’t spoiled, and after the rainy season there would be tuanulberries. One year, there was a really good crop and I was one of the first ones to stumble across them. I made myself sick eating so many. After that I learned that I could dry them out on sheets and store them in containers to add to the portion bread to make it taste a little better, but nothing was better than when I’d be able to have them fresh.”

She showed him through the bond, a much younger version of herself popping the small berries against her tongue on the roof of her mouth to conserve the flavor of the meager juices. They were sweet and sour and the skins were a bit bitter. Before she left Jakku, it was the most flavorful thing she’d ever eaten.

She felt him duck down, felt his lips in her hair as she tried her best not to tear up.

“I remember the first time I had real fruit, other than the berries. It was at Maz’s and she had something from every corner of the galaxy and she told us to eat and…” She did start tearing up then, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “I remember thinking that if I left Jakku-- if I went with…” she trailed off. They still hadn’t talked about Han.

“He would have taken you to every corner of the galaxy and made you try everything in the markets,” Ben said, whispering it into her hair like it was a secret someone else might overhear. “He would have loved you like a daughter.”

She could still remember him, in another place and another time, pulling that memory from her head, telling her that Han would have disappointed her. Now he was holding her close, soothing the ache in her chest, and telling her the truth as he saw it now.

“I think they both would have. Leia…” he trailed off, and Rey could feel him tensing as she leaned against him, “I think she already did. My mom loved you very much, I think.”

“They loved you,” she said, her voice low. “I saw it. Your mother never gave up on you, even in the darkest moments. She always thought you’d come back. Han was willing to…” She didn’t continue; he knew what Han was willing to do to get him back home. He’d sacrificed himself for it.

Ben let out a shaky sigh and Rey heard a packet open. 

“You know, I saw him again on Kef Bir, after you left. I still don’t know if it was my imagination or…”

“It was him,” she said gently. “Whether he was able to somehow come back to you for a moment, or whether you dreamed him up, it was him.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Rey heard the sound of more packets ripping, the click of the heat plate, and the clink of a dish being pulled from a drawer.

“He was stubborn.”

She wrapped her arms around him, her fingers knitted together against his back, holding him as she hid a shy smile. “Must be genetic.”

He ducked down, pressing his lips against her scalp again. She felt him swallow hard, and heard things settling onto the counter as he wrapped his arms around her in return.

“You would’ve made a great Solo,” he whispered.

She could hear the way his heart started to race, the way a warmth came over them that had nothing to do with the room’s actual temperature and everything to do with the way their bond was reacting to their conversation, to their thoughts and feelings.

“I’m not overly attached to Skywalker,” she whispered in return.

When he kissed her again, it wasn’t on the top of her head.

She felt him reach out first, asking permission that she freely gave without request for detail, and found herself being hoisted up by the backs of her thighs, to his height. When he kissed her, she felt light in a way that she never had before.

Her lips parted for him and he gladly accepted her encouragement to kiss her more deeply and fully. She nipped at his lip and he flicked the end of his tongue over hers as they explored together. New sensations overwhelmed her as he held her and kissed her senseless. She did her best to return the favor, her hands tangling into his hair as she breathed him in and laughed against his mouth when their noses bumped together.

She pushed her love for him into the bond, still not speaking it aloud, but letting him know nevertheless.

She hoped he realized just how worthy of it he was.

🙚❄🙘

They ate their meal with kiss swollen lips. It was some kind of sauced noodle dish that wasn’t nearly as bad as it might have been if Rey had to prepare and eat it alone. There was something about good company that made even rations taste a little bit better. He managed to find some tea amongst the caf rations, and with it getting dark outside, decided that it was the better of their options.

The warm liquid went down nicely, and Rey was feeling cozy when Ben went to the small ‘fresher to wash up before sleep. She’d let him go first.

They hadn’t packed much with them, just Rey’s ‘saber, his blaster, and a pair of datapads, but despite his complaints regarding military issue cleaning products, their little pod was comfortable and well stocked. The blizzards were frequent on the planet, an atmospheric cataclysm had long since taken the climate from temperate to icy, and such storms were the norm, but as Rey checked her datapad, she found that the prediction for a clearer morning was holding. It was a small mercy, allowing them the chance to quit the planet as soon as they properly investigated the Jedi temple ruins they heard were rumored to contain kyber. But as Rey thought about the searing kisses that she and Ben shared before dinner, how good it felt to be with him away from prying eyes with nothing urgent to do, she secretly hoped that it would hold out a bit longer.

“The water is a bit cold,” Ben said, as he reentered the room. “But that’s probably to be expected.”

Rey smiled to herself as she caught a peek of him exiting the small space without his shirt, hair damp and brushed back. This was both new, and reminiscent of a time before, when they’d still been on opposite sides of the war. She was glad that she could look at him like this without guilt now. It didn’t mean that her face wasn’t hot as she stared at his broad chest and the way water drops from his hair rolled across his pale skin to his waistband, but at least she could rest easy that it wasn’t a war crime.

“Do you want me to put my shirt back on?” he asked, feeling the weight of her eyes upon him.

“No.”

It was too quick of an answer, and too honest, but she was still feeling bold from their kiss. He wasn’t exactly shying away either.

To save herself from any more potential embarrassment, she stood and made her way past him to the ‘fresher. She quickly washed herself, spending more time staring at herself in the small mirror, trying to decide whether she wanted to sleep with her hair up or down, in her leggings and tunic, or in her leggings and her breast band, or stark naked, just to see what Ben would do.

When she spotted his shirt hanging behind her, she made up her mind, did her best to wring out her hair, and walked out from the small room with her hair loose, wearing nothing but his shirt.

It was warm against her skin and fell to her midthigh. He was much larger than her, and while it was once something that made her wary, she now had an appreciation for just how good it felt to be surrounded by him. Before Ben, she never realized that feeling small could be a good thing.

When she walked into the room, she was blinded by a flash of light that was quickly accompanied by a cacophonous rumble. After her vision cleared, she took in Ben, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out of the viewport at what appeared to be a thunderstorm and a blizzard taking place simultaneously.

The lights were set low, and as another flash illuminated the space, Rey shivered in a way that had nothing to do with either the temperature of the water she’d just washed in, or the temperature of the room.

She could see it all so clearly. A monster in front of her, flashes of light everywhere, choruses of chanting, and her friends, her new family, dying in the air above her. She remembered what it felt like to produce the electricity, accidentally as it was, through her own body. She remembered the singeing, burning sensation as it killed her. She couldn’t breathe, she was choking on it. She had no choices she could make, people were dying, she was dying.

Ben whispered, “Sorry. I just thought it’s beautiful when it’s natural, isn’t it?”

The sound was soft, his voice low and awed by what he saw outside the viewport. “No one is making it do that. It’s just lighting everything up on its own because of atmospheric pressure.”

Rey forced herself to cross the room to him, to take a deep breath with each step and remind herself that she survived. Her friends and Ben survived, and the war was over. She told herself that she was in control, that uncontrollable elements like nature were part of the Force too, and that they weren’t dark, but instead were as beautiful and scientific and real as Ben was making them out to be.

She closed her eyes against it all, and focused herself on Ben’s Force signature, walking towards him, blue and bright, in the darkness behind her eyelids.

He pulled her into his arms, held her tight against the storm, and when her eyes opened again, he reached out with the Force to flick off the light switches, and settled them both onto the mattress, close and comfortable.

“I’m sorry,” he said, softly. “I should have thought about how it would have affected you and warned you about it or covered the window.”

She hushed him, shaking her head as he tried to take blame for her fears. She listened to the thunder and tried to think of it like music, like a comforting heartbeat of the planet letting them know it was still alive and well despite the changes it underwent.

“It is beautiful,” she said as another flash lit up her view, followed by another roll of thunder. “I was just surprised.”

He smiled softly, and she saw his face illuminated by the lightning. It did a lot to make it less frightening, to see him in it, looking at her with such softness.

She felt his hand brush up her side, to her shoulder and back down to where his shirt sleeve met her at the elbow. 

“You’re not the only one surprised,” he said with an edge to his voice that was new to her. It surely didn’t voice displeasure, and she already knew that she liked it. There was a depth to it as he slowly rubbed the fabric between his fingers. “But I think I like this surprise.”

She thought about his dream, the one he’d accidentally given her where he fed her fruit and she licked her own puffy, kiss swollen lips clean of the juice that coated them. The tone of his voice made sense then, and she felt hot at the realization that he liked that she was wearing his shirt.

“I like surprising you,” she whispered into the darkness between them. “And I like it when you surprise me.”

She was nervous as she pressed herself against him, turning in his arms to be chest to chest. She felt his arousal press against her stomach as she pressed herself into him, and the newness of it, of feeling him like that, made her add, “Like this especially.”

She heard him swallow. When the light illuminated his face, she noticed the darkness in his eyes and was unafraid of it. Passion was one “dark side” attribute that she thought might be in both their natures. While she was sure that the old Jedi would have something to say to her about it, she couldn’t truly see it as something to reject. Attachment too, was something she wasn’t willing to part with. If it meant she’d never be a Jedi, she was comfortable with it.

She canted her hips into his experimentally and it felt right. As she moved against him, she was rewarded with a moan that slipped past his lips. She let a little sigh out in return, the pressure and friction feeding a fire in her lower stomach that she’d always had to care for alone.

She hoped that Ben was interested in helping her with it now.

“Rey,” he whispered, like a prayer, into the space between them, “Do you know what…” he paused for a moment, then sighed. “Of course you do. I--is this what you want?”

Carefully, slowly, Rey felt him shift around her, she felt his hands go to her hips, him rolling under her so that she was straddling him. He shifted his hips up and into hers, almost accidentally, as he moved, and Rey didn’t try to hide the soft sound that came from the back of her throat.

She recalled a time when he’d told her that she wasn’t alone, and to have him beneath her, to feel that he was real and solid and that he wanted her, reinforced it in a way she’d never experienced before. He was hers, she was his, and they’d never be alone ever again.

“Do you want me Rey? Because I want you. I’ve wanted you since you took my hand.”

She felt a lump in her throat as he admitted his attraction to her. Every touch between them had been so careful, so calculated and hidden so that no one would see how much he loved her. Now that they were alone, where she was safe and his love for her didn’t put a target on her back, she could feel his need in their bond. He’d been doing so well to hide it all away, and she hated that she hadn’t shown up wearing nothing but one of his shirts sooner.

“Of course I want you Ben. Force, even just the kissing before had me so…” she trailed off and decided that it was best to show him instead, leaning over so that she could find his mouth in the darkness.

He kissed her gently at first, but more fiercely as she started rolling her hips against him, feeling the way his length pressed into her was driving them both to drop pretense and just touch each other.

 His hands drifted from her hips, under the shirt edge and across her stomach and towards her breasts. He cupped them in his large hands, fingers tracing shapes against the sensitive skin and gently pinching as she ground herself against him.

“So perfect,” he whispered reverently into the darkness. “I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you.”

She hushed him and carefully leaned down again to capture his lips in hers. “You deserve me Ben. You deserve happiness and… I’m trying so hard to show you that. I...” she paused, whispering against his lips between kisses.

His soft sighs, and the sensation of shy pleasure she felt in the bond between them made her feel brave.

“I… will it ruin this if I say it?”

It was a fear to which she’d been holding since the Force, the universe, had given him back to her. Saying how she felt for him when everything was still so new felt dangerous. He loved her, she knew it, and she was certain he knew that she loved him in return, but there was something about speaking it that felt like dropping something fragile off a cliff and hoping it wouldn’t shatter.

A lightning flash illuminated his face again, his expression both soft and debauched as he shook his head almost imperceptibly for her. “If you’re going to say what I think, Rey, I think it could only make this better, because then I could say it too.”

She felt his hands shift from her breasts to trail up and down her sides and along her back. One hand took up residence against her hip, his thumb fitting nicely along the dip between her lower stomach and thigh. It felt right to have him touching her so intimately, to have his hands slotted against her like complimentary pieces to a puzzle.

“I love you, Ben Solo,” she whispered into the night, lightning letting her see the immediate full smile the words summoned.

“I love you, Rey,” he replied, squeezing her hip as she leaned back in to kiss him yet again.

They went on like that for a time, kissing and pressing their bodies against each other, until Rey began feeling brave enough to try more intimate exploring. She let her hands travel to the front of his pants, to touch him through the fabric. The sound he made was appreciative, as if he’d been waiting patiently for her to do just that, and so she rewarded his patience by running her hand up and down his length.

“Rey,” he whispered, “Rey you should-- kriff, you should know that I’ve never…”

She knew that. She was sure he knew that she hadn’t either, but she pushed it through their bond for good measure and was met with no surprise. They’d both been so lonely, and she knew that it would be alright now, that they were going to figure it out together.

“I’ll tell you what I want, if you tell me what you need,” she suggested, running her hand over his length again, opening herself to him fully so he knew that she was thinking about how large he felt under her hand, and how equally nervous and eager she was to take him.

He made a sound more like a growl than a groan, hips canting up slightly to press into her palm. His pleasure was clear in both the physicality of his reactions to her and through their bond. The needy sounds he made for her as she touched him, as she showed him how badly she wanted him, were echoed in the desperate way he pressed up into her palm, the ways his hands moved across her body, caressing, memorizing, and making their way lower and lower until she felt his fingertips ghost across her lower stomach.

He was just as devious as she was in his use of their mental connection, pouring images of his fingers shifting lower, of spreading her legs wide with his palms and touching her in ways she had only ever touched herself. What really had her excited was the fleeting image of another fantasy, one where his head was settled between her thighs, his mouth pleasuring her in ways she had never imagined herself. She couldn’t help but to sigh longingly at the thought. Ben’s mouth on her, those plush lips of his pressing wet kisses against sensitive skin, closing around her bud, and his tongue tasting her was an intriguing possibility.

He leaned up and kissed her with a ferocity she was still getting used to seeing in him outside of a fight. She thought, fuzzily as he held her close, that she’d be happy to see the day that he could expend all his passionate energy in the comfort of a bed with her. They’d been fighting for too long and too hard for the whims of the Force, for the galaxy, and she looked forward to a day where he didn’t need to fight.

“Do you want that, sweetheart?” he asked, breaking the kiss to let her catch her breath. “Do you want my mouth on you like that?”

Chest to chest, breathing his air and still straddling his lap, she replied with an unabashed and needy sound from the back of her throat. Sweetheart . It was such a simple word, a term of endearment, but it had her melting even more than the promise of his intimate attention had.

“Yes,” she pushed herself up onto her knees, giving herself room to move, to shift her hips against him, continuing the work her hands had been engaged in before he moved. “Ben, I’d love that.”

He kissed her again, quickly but hardly chaste, as she was all but soaking his trousers with her arousal, an act he was encouraging with his own pressing into her.

He slipped a hand, carefully and slowly, between their bodies and to the source of the wetness, sliding his fingers across her entrance as he leaned her back onto the bed with his other arm.

“You’re so wet, Rey.”

She thought he sounded a bit astounded by this and could only bite her lip when a flash of light revealed his almost reverent look as he wet his fingers with her arousal.

She knew how sex worked, even if she was new to it herself. She knew about the different ways to find pleasure from too many overheard conversations, dirty jokes and propositions from scavengers and smugglers on Jakku, and her own private explorations, but when Ben slipped his finger inside her she thought that she’d seriously underestimated how good something so simple could feel.

“This alright?”  he asked, voice deep and husky as his thumb gently grazed her clit.

He didn’t need to ask, really. She knew that she was wide open to him in more ways than one; their bond was filled with an intoxicating blend of pleasure, excitement, curiosity, and above all, enthusiasm. She consented to more of this, more of intimacy with Ben, in every breath, in every fragment of a thought she pushed through the bond.

“Yes,” she said, breathless, before sensing hesitation on his side of the bond and adding, “I usually… well, I curl my fingers in a bit.”

He responded as soon as she offered direction, evidently taking her up on her promise to tell him what she wanted if he’d do the same. She felt some of his nervousness wane as she let out another uncontrolled soft sound.

He ducked down then, his thumb slipping from her clit and his lips quickly replacing it. He was gentle when he kissed her there, but she was feeling overstimulated when it coincided with his decision to insert a second finger with the first.

“Ben!” she moaned, “Ben that’s--Force--that’s…”

“Too much?” he asked, slowing down, removing his lips from her as he spoke.

She reacted immediately without thinking, catching his face between her thighs as he shifted away, her hand going to the back of his head so quickly that she couldn’t even think to be embarrassed by it.

“Perfect,” she breathed, pushing the feeling of rapture and overstimulation and just how close she was to the edge to him.

She’d never felt the way he was making her feel, and she didn’t want it to stop. She didn’t want him to move, she didn’t want him to second guess what he was doing. She wanted him to keep going.

She felt his laugh more than she heard it. It rolled through him, a joyful sound, and with another flash of lightning she saw him smiling up at her from between her thighs.

“Okay,” he said, his voice soft as he stopped chuckling. “Okay Rey, just let me know if you need me to--”

She pushed gently on the back of his head before tangling her fingers in his still damp hair, and he stopped talking and obeyed. He recaptured her clit between his lips, then after licking and sucking, he let his mouth drift lower. She felt his fingers slip from her, she heard him curse under his breath, and then through their bond she understood what he was doing. He was tasting her, licking her slick from his fingers and moaning at the taste.

“Ben,” she said, breathless and needy, her fingers tightening in his hair, tugging lightly at the roots. “Ben, please.”

He understood, immediately ducking down and flattening his tongue against her entrance, licking her clean like she were his favorite meal and he was a man starving. When his nose nudged her clit she moaned, the contact unexpected but perfect as his hungry tongue, wanting more, pressed into her, causing her to cry out his name again.

Her hips rolled as she chased the warm tightness in her lower stomach. She wanted to come for him, to have him be the first person, other than herself, to ever give her that release.

He understood, one hand going to her hip, squeezing and caressing, while the other went to her clit to better focus on providing her stimulation there. His tongue pressed into her, moving side to side, licking her up and down and breathing hot air against her. She liked it, liked that she was in control as she rolled her hips into his mouth and tugged gently at his hair. She liked the way it felt something like worship, the way every groan in the back of his throat rumbled through her and felt like a prayer.

It didn’t take long before she felt the heat and almost electric energy roll through her. It wasn’t entirely unlike the lightning that illuminated his face. It was unpredictable and powerful, coming on in a flash and continuing with each stroke of his tongue, like the rolling of the thunder that came after the initial burst of light.

She cried out, moaning his name and several unintelligible half words of endearment as she came for him. She rode it out, tugging his hair and then, as the sensation faded, smoothing it under her fingers gently.

“Rey,” he said, slipping his tongue from her when her hands guided him, encouraging him to come up for air as she panted herself. “You taste so good, sweetheart.”

She melted into the bed, loving the way he was so attentive, both emotionally and physically, to her needs. After so many years of loneliness and feelings of abandonment, they both deserved this. She thought that there was no better sound in the galaxy than his voice, breathless and low, calling her sweetheart.

Her hand slipped from his hair, down to his cheek, her thumb brushing where his scar had been.

He pressed his cheek into her palm and she could feel so many feelings flood the bond between them. Feelings of love, pride, pleasure, joy, and peace flowed between them, and when he shifted up from her lap, pulling her into his embrace, she kissed him long and hard, tasting herself on his lips.

“I want you to call me that everyday,” she whispered against his lips, “Even when we’re back on base and you’re worried, I want you to call me your sweetheart.”

He kissed her then, soft and gentle and lingering as the lightning flashed and the wind howled outside the safe space they’d carved out in the shelter.

“I think I can do that,” he said in return, his voice soft and low.

She leaned into him then, firmly and fully, pressing him again to the mattress, a feat only achieved by his willingness to be pushed given the difference of their sizes.

“I want to try to give you what you just gave me,” she said, her hands going to his waistband. She meant it as an expression of the joy that he’d given her in offering to try to call her sweetheart more often, but she supposed that she also meant that she wanted to pleasure him like he had her.

He understood, lifting his hips up and reaching low to help her shift the fabric off his hips. His hands brushed against hers as they pushed the fabric low, and she slipped them off completely, tossing them somewhere into the far reaches of the room as he reached to the bottom edge of the shirt, his shirt, to do the same, until they were both entirely bare.

The room was warm, but still being bare, even in an entirely dark space with the man she loved, felt foreign for a moment. In the desert she was never bare. On Jakku, bare skin meant sunburns in the day, or the possibilities of insect bites or worse in the night. She’d never even been bare to clean herself before her time in the Resistance. Even if he couldn’t see her, it still felt new and it made her feel shy for a moment until his hands ran up her sides, feeling her curves and pulling her down to him.

“We don’t need to do anything else,” he said, misreading her pause, “We have time now. We don’t have to.”

She shushed him. It was sweet of course, for him to worry, but there was no need insofar as she was concerned. “I want you. If you’re willing.”

She could feel his smile through their bond and hear it in his voice when he said, “Oh, I’m more than willing, if you are.”

She felt the heat radiating between their bodies as he held her to him. She felt his length pressing into her stomach, free of fabric for the first time in her presence.

They’d already agreed to communicate their needs, and while she was comfortable with him, she did recognize the fact that beyond mechanics, she had no idea what she was doing. She knew that he hadn’t either, when he’d started touching her, when he’d put his mouth on her. She suspected maybe he’d seen a holo-vid or two more than her in his time given his knowledge if not skill, but didn’t ask. It was simple enough, she supposed, to begin by touching him again in the way he had liked before.

She sat up and he did the same, her hand shifting between their bodies to touch him as they sat, face to face, her straddling him on her knees. When her hand wrapped around him, his lips went encouragingly to her neck, making her shiver despite the warmth between them when he kissed the sensitive skin.

She stroked her hand up and down his length, again, trying not to make herself nervous about the size, knowing that her end goal was going to be attempting to take him inside her. His hand drifted down to hers gently, wrapping her fingers tighter around her by gripping her hand in his and guiding her strokes.

“Like this,” he said, lips still against her neck. “You don’t have to be so gentle and slow, sweetheart. I’ll let you know if it’s too much.”

She mimicked the pressure and speed of his movements. He made a soft sound in the back of his throat that she felt as he kissed her where her neck and shoulder met. She let joy leak into their bond when his hand left hers and he let out another appreciative sound.

“Just like that, sweetheart,” he said, breathlessly as his hands shifted to her back and her hair, his fingers twisting into the loose waves of it as hers had to his.

“Just like that,” he repeated.

She couldn’t deny a sense of pride at how quickly she was picking up on what he liked. His initial guidance had clued her in on speed and pressure, but it had been her other hand shifting lower, cupping his balls and gently rolling her fingers across, that had elicited the deepest moan.

He liked it when she twisted her wrist too, moving up and down in a rotation, rather than just straight. She felt him jerk his hips up into her hand when she started, heard the way he moaned her name approvingly.

“Kriff, Rey,” he said after a minute or so of her efforts. “If you keep doing that, I’m not going to last.”

She knew it before he said it. What had been so new to her just moments before, became comfortable and familiar through his praise and their bond’s warm tugging feeling. She felt his cock jump in her hand and along with it, a sudden brightening of their bond that told her that he was close before he found the words.

“Ben,” she whispered into the dark, her hand leaving him and her heart racing thunderously as she rose up on her knees a little higher.

His lips left her neck and he turned to face her. Even in the darkness she could feel the intensity of his eyes on her, and while he didn’t move to kiss her, she could feel this breath against her face, his lips mere inches apart from hers. She could also feel the racing of his heart as well as she could feel her own, the sound of it in her ears through their bond.

“Yes?” he asked, breathlessly as his hands went to her hips, already knowing, of course, what she was going to ask.

“Can we…”

He lifted up on her hips and she lifted herself off him and onto her knees. One hand slipped from her hip to position himself at her entrance, and she let out a nervous chuckle. He squeezed her hip to let her know that yes, he was more than willing and able to go there with her.

“Only if you want,” he added, a caveat to the meaning of the motions he was making.

She didn’t speak in return, feeling the tip of his cock at her entrance, she lowered herself slowly, inch by inch, onto him.

The sounds he made as she took him were filthy and reverent. His hand squeezed even tighter on her hip, with almost bruising pressure. She prided herself on it, on how well she was taking him, on how mad she knew it was driving him to have her move so slowly upon him.

“Ben,” she whispered as she lowered herself. “You’re so--” she couldn’t bring herself to say it. He’d been so cavalier in his praise of her taste, and she was nervous to tell him how large he was.

“You’re so tight,” he said, understanding and offering a groaning praise of his own in return. “Force Rey, you’re perfect.”

She lowered herself completely, feeling fuller than she ever had, and moaning against the simultaneous pleasure and discomfort it gave her. She gripped his shoulders tightly and he, blessedly understanding, did not move except to shift his hand between them and rest a palm, lovingly against her lower stomach.

She leaned into him slightly, supporting her weight against his lap and against his chest as she acclimated to the feeling of having him inside her.

“I’ve never felt so close to you,” she whispered, “and you’re in my head.”

His laugh was warm and genuine as he leaned slightly and carefully, to press his forehead against hers. “I understand.”

It was a blessing when he shifted his weight under her slightly, moving himself just the slightest bit inside her, giving her the realization that she could move, and that it felt good to do so. She thought, despite all rational thought, that he would have split her in two if they moved, but when she lifted off him slightly, experimentally, and lowered herself back down, it was rapturous.

“Ben!”

He groaned in return, the hand that had been on her lower stomach moving lower to pay her clit some attention.

She gasped at the feeling of his thumb rolling over her as she was full of him, and forced herself up a little higher before coming back down onto him again. The tip of his cock rubbed against the place within her that she could only ever reach while lying on her stomach with the most creative crooking of her fingers and wrist, and she felt a jolt up her spine that sent her reeling.

“Force,” she moaned. “Ben, this feels so good.”

She lifted herself up again and lowered herself, bouncing on his lap, bouncing on his cock, chasing the feeling of pleasure that came with each movement.

He groaned in return, his hands moving to her hips, to her waist, back to her clit, his mouth moving on hers, to her neck, to her shoulder. He moaned her name and called her sweetheart and swore with increasing frequency as she felt his cock shifting within her and his hips snap up to hers a bit sloppily due to lack of proper space to do so.

“Rey,” he groaned, “I’m going to…”

She knew he was. She wanted him to come in her. She had the implant, it would be fine, and she wanted nothing more than for him to find his end in her, for them to be bonded in this way.

“Me too,” she panted, chasing a wave that was coming closer and closer, chasing the electricity that was building, yet again, between them.

She went over the edge first, feeling the waves of pleasure roll over her as he bucked his hips in response to her every rise and fall upon him.

“Ben!” she called his name again, shouting it out over the sounds of the world around them, over the sounds of his panting as he came closer and closer to his own climax. “Please,” she added, half with it and half dazed by her own pleasure. “Please come for me.”

He kissed her when he came. His lips met hers, and he groaned into her open mouth as he filled her with his spend. She swallowed the sounds, met his tongue with hers as they kissed and rode out their ends together.

She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his shoulder when they broke their kiss. He held her too, one arm around her shoulder as the other cradled her head and ran a gentle palm across the crown of her head.

They stayed like that until both of their breathing returned to normal, and then, as they parted, he kissed her forehead and helped her rise from him and fall back onto the mattress, debauched and exhausted.

They didn’t speak as he pulled her into his arms and covered them both with a long blanket, cradling her against him as their bond swirled between them lazily, content, it seemed, as they both were.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” he said softly against her ear as the lightning flashed and the snow whipped outside the window.

She hummed in response and closed her eyes, falling asleep to the sounds of thunder and Ben’s breathing.

🙚❄🙘

The trek to the temple had been a quicker one than they hoped. The way seemed to be clear despite the storm, and when they arrived at the crumbling and ice covered stone, it was relatively simple to find a suitable entrance.

They hadn’t needed to bundle up as much as the day before, making mobility far simpler and allowing Rey to feel her fingers in his hand the whole time.

“Do you think that they actually left some kyber behind here?” Rey asked, looking around at the destroyed temple’s snow dusted remains.“It seems to me like they would have taken something so important with them.”

He shrugged at her side, stepping over the crumbling chunks of stone that littered the space before them. “I suppose when the weather started to shift they may have just evacuated with whatever they could grab. I don’t know that kyber was as rare then as it is now, so it was completely possible that they would have found it less important than some of the ancient texts they might have had.”

Rey nodded, trying not to run numbers in her head on just how much the remaining bits of infrastructure and materials would have been worth as scrap on Jakku. Meals came without a price for her now, but she supposed once a scavenger, always a scavenger.

She sighed and leaned into his side a bit as they walked, pleasantly surprised when his hand slipped from her grip and his arm wrapped around her shoulder instead. It was a small gesture, one that she took joy in as proof that they’d finally overcome the awkwardness of whether or not they were together, that he finally realized that she wanted him to touch her.

“We should probably look for some sort of record room and see if there’s anything left here that could help us locate a crystal.”

He nodded and she begrudgingly ducked from under his arm and began looking. She thought that maybe they might be able to meditate and determine the crystals’ location , or at least get a better understanding of the layout. She could feel Ben reaching out to the Force beside her, searching, and had to try her best to hold back the relief that flooded through her as he did so.

 No crystals were calling to her beside the one in the ‘saber attached to her hip. She remembered the way Ben looked at her when she’d made it with his begrudging assistance. She remembered the fear in his eyes when she first ignited it, and the awe and calm that overtook him when it lit a bright sunshine yellow. She could only imagine that he feared that it would be red. She knew he worried about that with his own, leading to his hesitation.

She thought she sensed less of it now, that he was a bit more open to that idea. It was something she hoped for, because while she knew he was worthy of this new life, she knew he was still afraid that he was going to somehow mess everything up. Her only fear was that his reservations would make him more vulnerable to getting hurt.

She knew enough about ‘sabers to know that it was a silly thing to fear. Red sabers were the result of corrupted, bled crystals. She knew that Ben bled his first ‘saber’s crystal, and she secretly wished that she still knew where she could find the blade, remembering how it had felt in her hands, residual light still in it, calling out to her. She wondered if maybe it would have been able to be healed.

It was an impossible dream. He told her that he’d tossed it into Kef Bir’s waters, and neither of them wanted to return for it. Nor were they interested in returning for the kyber that likely resided in the destroyed Death Star. There were parts of their past, despite it bringing them together, that neither wanted to revisit.

As Rey walked around the space; a small, surprisingly intact room, something in the temple’s center caught her attention. It was not particularly large, but the walls appeared to be covered in shelves, upon which some tomes and relics still sat. There were also layers of dust, but she thought it was a miracle that they weren’t ransacked, stolen, or destroyed by the elements. She turned to call for Ben to follow her, only to turn and find that he beat her into the space while she was busy ruminating over the past.

She stepped into the room where he was leaning over a book resting on a high table. He was gripping the surface tightly, and she could feel the struggle in him, the fight that came through their bond. He was upset. Angry, and trying to hold it in.

She crossed the room, not bothering to look at the book, and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face into his back and wishing that she were taller or that he wasn’t so large so that she could give him the reassuring, all encompassing hugs that he’d given her on occasion since the war’s end.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, holding him the best she could, and feeling the way his anger or disappointment, flowed out of him from the prolonged contact. She often wondered how different the world would have been if she’d been somehow, despite all the impossibilities of it all, been there to hold him when he was upset as a child. He was older than her, which was the first impossibility, but the fact that her grandfather had been the one twisting him for so many years made her wish that she would have been able to save him sooner, to undo his wrongs and right Ben’s life while he still had his parents in it, while he still had family to help love the dark away.

She was his family now. Or at least she thought, he was hers.

“The book talks about the kyber crystals that grew here. They were called the Solari: incredibly powerful, but they would reject anyone who wasn’t a strict light side adherent.We came all this way, Rey, we nearly froze to death and there was never even a chance.”

She squeezed tighter and was glad that they couldn’t see each other’s faces. He was crestfallen enough through their bond, through the slight quiver in his voice as he spoke told her everything she needed to know. She didn’t need to see him look like he hated himself when she loved him more than anything. She didn’t need him to see her hurt because he was hurting.

“Well,” she said, whispering into his back, sure that he could hear her in the still silence of the abandoned space, “Looks like neither of us would have been able to use it. I had my own flirtings with the dark.”

She flushed, thinking about her word choices for a moment, and realizing that while she didn’t mean it in the literal sense of her interest in Ben while he was still known as Kylo Ren, it technically wasn’t incorrect. She recalled Master Luke berating her about how she’d opened herself to the dark side for a pair of pretty eyes. Her affinity for the dark, her call to it at times, ran deeper than her connection to Ben, which alone was enough to keep her from using such a strictly Jedi attached crystal.

“Besides,” she finally added, “If we did nothing else in our entire lives outside the path of the Jedi, what we did last night, our attachment alone would have probably meant we couldn’t use it. I don’t know about you, but how I felt with you, Ben, it was better than any fancy lightsaber.”

He turned slowly in her grip and wrapped his arms around her. He was smiling sadly, the tension leaving from his body as he held her in return. His smile, as it grew more joyful, was radiant in the space, making Rey smile in return as he admitted the same and they laughed.

Eventually, Rey happened upon a small chest, finding a smattering of perfectly normal crystals and lightsaber components that were, evidently, set aside for the young padawans who used to train in the temple.

They sat on the floor together, her hands over his at times, as his hands had been over hers when she built her ‘saber. He didn’t need her guidance the way she needed his, but Rey could tell from the joy in their bond as he constructed it, that her support was a welcome part of the process. She sat behind him and at times in front of him as he used the Force to assemble pieces, using parts from his blaster, one that had been his fathers, to customize and work some of the fittings.

They talked about what they would do when things calmed down, the sort of life they might have and where they would like to settle. Ben told Rey that he wanted to show her the galaxy, to take her to all the places she’d never been able to see while stuck on Jakku. Rey said that she’d like to settle somewhere green someday. Somewhere where she could grow a garden, and maybe somewhere where they could teach young Force users to not fear their abilities or adhere to old dichotomies.

Ben was mostly silent, but when he ignited his ‘saber, its light shining a blue-green, she noticed his smile and how he gathered the rest of the crystals and components for safekeeping. It was enough to give her hope.

“Were you serious?” he asked, strapping the ‘saber to his belt and then helping Rey from the floor.

“Serious about what?” she replied, patting dust off her pants.

He looked shy for a moment, then grinned. Sometimes, she thought, he looked downright roguish when he wanted to. He inherited that, with his good heart, from Han, she thought.

“About not being too attached to the name Skywalker, because I do like the idea of you someday, maybe, and only if you want to…. using Solo instead?”

She grinned and stepped into his space, pushing up onto her tiptoes to kiss him.

“I was,” she said against his lips as he ducked down to meet her. “I am serious. I think I would like that someday.”

He kissed her then, pulling her close against him, their cold noses bumping together, warm lips busying themselves with showing their shared affection, and appreciation for the possibilities that lay ahead.

🙚❄🙘

A blonde man sighed, leaning against a wall out of sight on a balcony overlooking the hall of records. The Force was strong in the temple as he stared down at the couple below, and he thought for a moment about allowing himself to be seen but thought better of it.

The last thing they needed was more old ghosts following them around. 

Ben had seen him, however briefly, when he died, when he put his hands on his grandson and shoved hard, pushing him into the World Between Worlds, through time and space back into the pit with the hopes that the kid would have the wherewithal to grab onto something and crawl back out a second time. It probably wasn't the right thing to do where the galaxy and Force were concerned, but he'd screwed up enough times out of selfishness to know that sometimes selflessness deserved a reward.

"Someone in this family deserved a happy ending," he huffed, mostly to no one in particular. "Plus," he added, in case Obi-Wan or Yoda were listening in from their planes of eternal rest and ridiculousness in the Force. "Where will the galaxy be without Skywalkers or Solos to screw things up and set things right? Can't trust that important job to just anyone."

He flexed his metal hand when he watched his grandson take Rey's hand. He'd give anything to turn back time, for that to be him and Padme, but he took comfort in the fact that she'd be happy with the turn of events, to see that if he couldn't do right by her that he'd done right by their grandson.

"You know, I'm glad you did that."

He turned and smiled to see a young woman, looking like him in many ways and in more like her mother, young like him, the way he'd seen her last.

He thought for a moment that it was odd that she recognized him, given he didn't look old enough to be her father.

"Because if you didn't, I would have had to do it, and I don't think Luke would have ever let me hear the end of it."

He chuckled, "Your brother would have forgiven you for it, you know, if you had done it."

She sighed. "Yes well, he's happier to forgive than I am. I can't say I've forgiven you for anything, but I am glad that I have eternity to remind you of all the things you screwed up."

He smiled, though he knew it probably wasn't something he should smile about. "You know, your brother is much more like your mother. I don't know how you ended up being the political one."

"Dumb luck. And maybe Obi-Wan thought there was a little too much of you in me and that the Organas would be the only ones with enough energy to sort that out. Lucky too. I probably would have screwed things up if I'd finished my training."

"I don't think so," he answered honestly. "You would have done alright, you had your brother and your friend."

"My husband."

"Yeah," he said, thinking about Han with a bit of a scowl. "Him."

She laughed. " Mom told me you never liked him much, that she could tell."

He was confused.

"Your mother?"

She rolled her eyes. "Padmé Amidala Naberrie, Queen of Naboo, the only Senator that had half a brain.., other than Bail. I hope Ben knows I saved all her dresses and things. I think there's some notes somewhere that mention how Pooja has them for safe keeping, but who knows when he'll find them. Rey would look lovely in them."

"When did you..."

"She doesn't want to talk to you yet. Luke's working on her, don't worry."

"She wasn't Force sensitive. Leia, how?"

His daughter shook her head. "Everyone becomes one with the Force when they pass on. Just because some of us have greater control over it doesn't mean that we're the only ones with lives after the end. She's been in her own version of Naboo since she passed, in a lake house, Varykino I think. Just like how Han was in his own little slice of eternity, working on ships until I showed up and brightened up his afterlife."

He didn't know what to say, but Leia was already walking away.

"For what it's worth," she added, "I think she was impressed by what you did for my son. Maybe she'll see you sooner than you think."

Then he was left alone again in the temple with his thoughts, looking down at Ben and Rey, hand in hand, walking away from him and the relics of the past, and toward their own futures.

“Good luck, Ben,” he said, knowing he couldn’t hear him, but letting it be said anyway. “I hope that someday, when we meet again, you’ll be old and happy, and we’ll be worrying over your grandkids.”

At that, he smiled and walked away, letting the living do what they did best, carry on.