Chapter Text
The silver moon is high up in the night sky, shining on all its Hosnian subjects, drenching them in tendrils of white light she sends their way.
It sneaked inside Ben’s bedroom too, through the windows they left open in their haste to get to bed.
Ben hears it as if he is underwater, along with the wild flutter of the curtain in the night breeze,- the insistent vibrations from his commlink. He ignores it as his mind is in a place of bliss, his limbs loose and his body well used.
The ball of warmth shifts in his embrace, muttering something similar to his name in a shuddery breath. He pulls her closer, getting a lungful of her sweet smell, letting her wild hair tickle his face.
And commlink rings again, enough to break into his awareness, disrupting the gratifying comfort of her naked body against his.
Without opening his eyes, his hand flies to the nightstand, trying to find the offending device. He sends it flying across the room, it falls into the corner armchair with a small thud.
Bleary-eyed he raises his head to regard her sleeping form, she looks content and he removes a strand of hair that fell to her face, kissing her soft, warm skin.
There is a sweet ache all over his body, and a now familiar heat starts slowly burning all over, he reaches for her with a hand around her waist and her pliant body heeds his call as he tucks her against his chest.
Wonderful things are happening to him, and before he has a chance to wake her up to sate it, the comm link blinks from the velvet couch singing its irritating song.
“Kriff” he shouts, withdrawing his growing member from the curve of her ass. The curse, so loud in the room, echoes through and is heard many times, when it reaches Rey she emits a pitiful sound, and her body racks with a shake.
Rey never sleeps well, he knows that from the connection they have, his hand flies to her forehead and he caresses her until the frown on her face vanishes and she dozes off again.
Shadows make dancing images on the ceiling, he kept staring at it remembering the night they had. Was it everything he imagined? It was much more than that. His life has remarkably changed, there is a definite before and after now. Before he fell in love, and after.
The world outside is burning, he has new scars to prove it, the same world where Rey slept next to him and all he wants is to have nights like these and mornings where he can wake up wrapped around her.
Returning to sleep is impossible, as his mind is on hyperdrive, and slowly he removes himself from her hold, feeling elated that Rey whines at the loss of his touch.
Glowing in its abandonment, the comm link seeks his attention, and when he checks, there are a hundred missed comms from Kaydel and a hundred more messages, he combs through them swiftly, and the one from his mother shatters his residual sleepiness away.
D’qar compromised. All safe. Do not contact.
Ben can’t believe the haste in which things are changing. He doesn’t know if it is the work of the so-called First Order or one pissed-off emperor.
If they did find the base in such a short time, they have spies everywhere, and even though he wanted to keep her near him, all the time. Rey is in imminent danger.
He turns back to the bed, where Kira Palpatine is sleeping peacefully, her chest rising up and down with her deep breaths, sheets tangling around her legs, and her unruly hair spread out on the pillows.
Tonight, she will not have any nightmares, and he will do anything so that she will not keep revisiting them.
He needs to make some urgent calls and get things in motion.
She picks up in two rings, “Gods, where were you?” Kaydel looks like she is pacing in her small office in her townhouse, still in official clothes.
Once again, he feels immensely relieved that his staff was unscathed during the attack, “Sleeping” he grumbles.
“There is an urgent senate hearing in fifteen minutes, you better wear something to cover your sweaty chest.”
He looks around for a robe, but his office is surprisingly devoid of emergency clothing, “at the dead of the night?”
He gets an eye roll in reply, “Sorry, Senator. But your beauty sleep could wait,”
“You know I look horrible with dark circles,” he walks around his study trying to find a robe instead he finds a bottle of water to satisfy his dry mouth.
Kaydel smiles, “They are putting the bill to vote through, everyone is joining in,” and her shoulders hike up and down in a casual shrug, “Almost.”
“What?” the water threatens to spill out of his mouth, “a voting session?”
“The chancellor is pretty shaken after the events and he doesn’t want to delay things, and those who were against it also want to join in not wanting to look guilty,”
Her happiness is palpable, as she arranges tech and documents around her, ready to patch him through.
That’s an interesting turn of events, he is speechless for a second, “Ben, it will get voted through.”
“I hope so.”
In the end, he finds a robe and makes a pot of caf. And he tries to be presentable, wiping the sleep off his face and taming his sex hair.
And the bill gets voted through and with such a huge margin too, fear and guilt played their hand in twisting some of the senators into siding with them.
By the time it was over, there were streaks of orange in the sky, another day was here.
When his commlink alerts again, he is surprised to see his father’s face lit up on the screen, “Ben!”
He had never been this happy to see his old man, “Well, look at you returning a call like a well-mannered man,”
There is relief in his father’s voice, “Well, look at you, - not dead,”
There are a hundred crinkles around his father's eyes as the grin deepens, taking years off his face. And Ben watches as he visibly relaxes.
It looks like Han went through hell worrying about him.
“I am fine.”
“I know you are son.”
Something rattles loudly inside the falcon, Han shouts to Chewie to fix something, and a familiar chaos erupts inside his father's ship. He shakes his head, “Where are you headed?”
“I am tasked by your mother to see if you are in a single piece,” Han says wiping his forehead.
From the look of the plumes of smoke erupting from behind his father, he is not the one in danger of blowing up, “That is great, I called you to see if we can meet?”
Grey eyebrows shoot to his hairline, silently questioning him.
“I want you to meet someone.”
*
It is the kind of morning that makes you miss a couple of beats, and his heart is in grave danger of giving out watching Rey curled up in his bed, naked golden skin shining as the soft scattered rays warm her.
Her force signature glows even brighter.
“What are you so smug about?” Rey asks, without opening her eyes. Her instinct horned by years of training tells her that she is being watched.
“Lots of things.” He gets up from his perch and moves towards the bed.
The sleep-heavy lids lift slowly, and green alight eyes look straight into his, “Name one?”
A potent mix of love, possessiveness, and lust threatens to overwhelm him as his elbows bracket her head and he crowds her body with his, looming above her not touching but taking in her disheveled form, “Got the most beautiful girl in the galaxy in my bed.”
She traces the edges of the wound on his shoulder with her gentle fingers, “Most beautiful, ha?”
He kisses away the worry lines that multiplied on her forehead, tracing a path towards her ear, getting a sigh in sleepy pleasure, “And deadly.”
Blinking slowly, Rey smiles, a thing of astonishing beauty that he almost misses for a second when she slowly moves away the blanket from her body, an invitation to appreciate the swell of her breasts.
“I like that more” She whispers, hands flying to the scruff of his neck to pull him even closer.
He touched the freckles on her face, blooming in the morning sun, “And awfully cute when she wakes up.”
Rey’s indignation at being called cute dies on her lips, as he smashes his lips on her.
Taking his time, he gently coerces her mouth open with his tongue, and inhales her soft groan as his hand winds his leg around his waist, “What happens now?” Rey asks in a breathy gasp, clearly asking about what awaits them outside this little cocoon.
Her nipples hardened against his bare chest, their heartbeats clashing against each other, “Well, that depends.”
Rey whimpered as if she was in agony as his hips wildly bucked into her center, covered by the pooled sheets at her hips, “On what?” she screamed and Ben couldn’t hold a laugh, he threw his head up and laughed at her evident desperation.
Rather than scolding him, she pulled him back to her mouth and kissed him, so ferociously.
They kissed, sweating and panting, without any finesse, as arousal swelled between them, “Are you sore?” Ben manages to ask.
And Rey smiles against his lips, “You are insatiable, senator.”
“You are irresistible, assassin,” he tells her as fingers curl into the flesh of her hips.
Ben doesn’t ask her to let him in, she doesn’t allow him any doubt as her small fist winds around him and guides him to where she needs him.
And then they get lost in the push and pull of their bodies, and plunging deep inside the inviting warmth of her, he promised her everything, all his secrets, dreams, and himself.
And she rewarded him by clenching around him while shouting her love for him.
“There’s no need to be nervous,” Ben says as he leads Rey down the ramp of the Grimtaash and into the vanx’s den.
Rey disagrees. There’s plenty of reasons to be nervous right now.
For one, she’s on the Resistance Base - a place in which she feels she should be explicitly unwelcome.
The chaos of moving (the base on D’Qar having been recently compromised) will provide her with a bit of anonymity, but this will be temporary. Eventually, everyone will look up from their checklists and crates, and when they do, they’ll see her; Rey Palpatine. And they’ll know, she’s sure they will.
Ben is less sure, but he’s always been an optimist.
The main cause of her anxiety, however, isn’t her location or the people sworn to destroy the cause she spent most of her life fighting for; it’s meeting Ben’s father.
“He doesn’t bite,” Ben teases as the ship’s ramp gives way to soft dirt and grass.
Rey shoots him a quick gare; a warning to stay out of her head unless explicitly invited (even though she knows he can’t really help it). “Most parents aren’t especially keen to meet their children’s would-be assassins.”
Ben scoffs. “My father isn’t most parents,” he mutters before quickly (and warmly) adding, “and he is very excited to meet my girlfriend.”
Girlfriend. Rey feels heat rush to her face as the word runs around in a loop through her head. Girlfriend. Girlfriend. Girlfriend. It’s still very new. Foreign and exciting, and she’s sure she’ll never tire of hearing it.
“It’s just a coincidence that both happen to be the same person.”
“Ha. Ha.” Rey intones. “Can you be serious, please? For one minute?”
“Of course.”
“I just want him to like me.” It’s a fluke, really, that Leia had. That or a miracle.
Ben wraps a large hand around her far shoulder and pulls her into his side as they walk through the bustling base. The beings around her don’t know her face yet, but they will. Sooner rather than later. Rey hopes Ben will still walk with her like this when they do.
“He’s going to love you,” he assures her.
“How do you know?”
“Because I do,” he answers simply, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “And because anyone who doesn’t is a complete moof milker.”
Rey laughs. It’s still a bit of a strange sensation, laughing, but not an unwelcome one at all.
Ben is completely singular in his ability to put her at ease. It’s almost as though he’s able to reach inside of her and physically untangle all of her worries or fears. She thinks it must be magic - or maybe the Force.
Whatever method he uses, she’s grateful for it - for him. More than words can say.
They find Han in the mouth of a large cave that has - for the time being, at least - been converted into a hanger of sorts. At least six X-Wings (all in various states of disrepair) have been docked here, but what catches Rey’s eye is the hunk of junk nestled between them; a YT-1300 Corellian light freighter that looks like it’s seen much better days.
Its escape pod nose piece is missing and the landing struts seem to have been borrowed from at least three different ships, but the array of sublight engines along its rear are a thing of beauty - and certainly aren’t standard to the model.
“So this is your father’s famous ship?” Rey asks, reaching up to graze the tips of her fingers along one of the metal panels overhead. A fine layer of dirt sticks to her skin. It feels like she’s coating herself in history.
Ben snorts somewhere behind it. “If you can call this thing a ship.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t listen to him,” another voice - one deep and rough with age - says. “He’s just jealous that that little system-skipper of his can barely make one past lightspeed.”
An older man gingerly climbs down from an open panel near the ship’s gangway - detangling himself from a mess of wires as he does so - and makes his way over to where Rey is standing. He holds out a single calloused hand and she takes it.
“So,” he grunts, smirking at her as she examines the grease that transferred from his hand to hers. “You’re the girl I’ve heard so much about?”
Rey’s cheeks go hot. “I suppose.”
“Don’t imagine the kid talks about his old man much,” Ben’s father laughs. It’s a gruff sound, a bit like the snort of a happabore, but Rey finds it comforting somehow. “Name’s Han.”
“Solo. I know.”
“Figures,” Han rolls his eyes. “That whole business with the Rebel Alliance really shot my anonymity to shit. I hear you’re gonna be bunking with me in the Falcon for a little while.”
Rey looks up at Ben and smiles wanly when he squeezes her shoulder. He’s needed back at the senate for an emergency session but insists she stays with the Resistance while he’s away. It’s safer there, he assures her. Rey’s less certain of that.
Or maybe she’s just nervous to be separated again. It’s hard to tell.
“I am. If that’s alright with you.”
“Alright?” Han quirks one brow. “‘Course it’s alright. You’re family.”
That just about floors Rey. She doesn’t know what to say in return. No response seems worthy.
She’s family.
Ben twines his fingers with hers and pulls her hand up to his lips to press a kiss to the backs of her knuckles. It’s true, his eyes say.
Her heart’s never been so full.
Han doesn’t comment on her tears. Instead, he turns in the dirt and begins heading back towards the ship’s open maintenance panel.
Looking back once, he calls to her over his shoulder. “Say, how much do you know about ships?”
In truth, not much. They’d always been a fascination of hers, but on Exegol she’d had very little opportunity to explore that passion.
Han promises her that it doesn’t matter. He’ll take all the help he can get - plus, she thinks he rather enjoys having someone around he can teach everything he knows to. There’s a certain gleam in his eyes when he gets to explain the difference between a signal-augmented sensor jammer and an Imperial-age transponder. A quirk to his grin when she asks him which size spanner to use on the ion flux stabilizer that tells her he’s happy she’s there.
Mealtimes are quiet after Ben leaves. Han doesn’t talk much while he eats, but neither does she, and that suits Rey just fine. Silence is nice sometimes.
Sometimes it’s the worst thing in the galaxy.
She hadn’t been wrong to assume that the other members of the Resistance would eventually figure out who she was. They had - and quickly, too.
She realizes her cover is blown when she enters the supply tent one day.
Normally, the being behind the desk would smile at her in greeting and ask how they could help her. Now, their stare is cold. Full of betrayal and something that sticks in the back of Rey’s throat like fear.
The Falcon needs a new compensator, but no one seems to care. She asks for one as politely as she is able, but her every request is ignored.
This would have sparked rage in a different Rey - the one who still lived beneath her grandfather’s wrinkled thumb. Now, it only makes her terribly sad.
She returns to the ship, empty-handed and full of shame.
“I’m sorry,” she tells Han, fighting back tears.
The hand that comes to rest on her back is nearly as heavy as his tone. “You’ve got a heavy legacy, kid. I don’t envy you. Ben’s the same.” He sighs - deep and tired. “I’m going to tell you what I’ve always told him; folks are always gonna talk. They’re gonna look at you and see someone else’s face. What you’ve gotta do - all you can do, really - is know who you are.”
“What if I don’t know who I am?”
“That’d definitely make things harder,” Han concedes with a huff. “But I think you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to leave that old life of yours behind. That takes a lot of strength, whether you know it or not.”
Rey sniffles and pulls her knees into her chest. She closes her eyes but all she can see are the stoney stares of the people who know just how black the blood that runs in her veins is.
“You’re more than where you come from, and I think my wife would tell you that you’re more than who you’re related to. If you know who you are and live that to the fullest, people will see sense eventually. And if they don’t, they can hop out of an airlock for all I care.”
That earns a watery laugh from Rey.
“Thank you,” she says.
Han is kind - kinder, perhaps, than she deserves - and, as she learns in the coming days, fiercely protective of those he counts among his own. Which includes her, by some miracle.
She appreciates his support more than words can say. That, combined with his advice, allows her to walk around the base with her head held high, despite the glares. In spite of them, perhaps.
Time passes and the coldness that surrounds her presence fades slowly. She even makes a few friends; a mechanic named Rose, her sister Paige, a defected stormtrooper called Finn, and a pilot named Poe.
She adds all of them to the list she keeps in her heart of people she loves and trusts - a list Ben tops.
She’d dreamed for so long of having a family, and though this is never how she would have imagined it when she was a little girl, it isn’t something she would give up for the entire galaxy.
He has met Gurrecks less thirsty for blood than the people sitting in front of him.
Not two weeks have passed since the bill became law and they are out to collect their dues.
“Better be prepared than be sorry…” The middleman is laying his case thick, every pore of his body reeking of war and greed.
Ben rubs the side of his temples, still plastering the smallest smile known to humankind on his face, pretending to listen to warmongers presenting their case of increasing armaments and militarization in the outer sector, in their own words, - in case of an unfortunate event.
The chancellor is listening intently, alarmed by the recent attack and many confirmed reports from all over the galaxy, forcing him to prepare for the worst, which includes having tea with people who are going to profit from it.
A war is coming, and there are many favors to be collected, he is both a New Republic senator and Leia Organas’ son, so that’s a double-edged blade. He can cut them a good share from many ends.
And Ben wants nothing to be free from their sharpened fangs.
He is calculating how much time he has to sit and try not to force push these people before he can leave, and make a jump to Ajan Kloss.
It’s been a week since he saw her, and maybe his current mood where he wants to punch everyone in the face has something to do with it.
“Senator Solo,” The Araknis businessman demands his attention, “we did extensively talk about my business last time we had dinner.”
“Yes, we did,” he says without batting an eye.
How can he forget that night? The night he kissed Rey, the night she told him her truth.
“We talked about the chances of monopolizing the gem trade in the unknown sector and your family’s interest in the same.” Ben seethes internally but keeps his tone polite. “Now it seems you have traded precious stones with metal bullets,”
Undisturbed by his jab, Mr. Thif offers him a deceptive grin of his own, “Credit is credit, that’s where my interest lies and my proposal aims at providing the new republic…”
Ben doesn’t hear the rest of the sentence, as a familiar awareness floods his veins, and the air around him tingles, turning out all voices, and he feels the gentle tug at the end of their force bond.
They are separated by cosmic dust, cold space, and planets. Also, they haven’t mastered how to tune and control the bond over a long distance.
But it thrums, alive, and breathing. It flares hot and sharp, which happens when strong feelings they couldn’t contain spill out of their spirit, into others’ minds, anger, fear, and lust.
What he glimpses now is a deep-seated sadness, the handle of his chair groans as his hold tightens, “Are you alright?” he speaks in his mind multiple times, praying that it will reach her.
It took a few minutes, where he tampered down the urge to jump into his ship and navigate hyper lanes.
“Yes,”
He voices his doubts aloud through their connection and his stubborn girlfriend reconfirms, defiance lacing her voice. Begrudgingly, he sits through the meeting while counting every second that passes.
*
The falcon is eerily silent as he walks in, the ramp closes after him with a loud click.
Ajan Kloss tonight holds the promise of a thunderstorm and a cold night. Rey is bunking in the ship, in his old quarters rather than sharing a dorm in base, something she does whenever he is on the planetside.
He follows her force signature to the rec area, and finds her sitting alone, hugging her legs to her chest, and her gaze clashes with him as she takes her eyes off the misty windows.
“Heard you need a compensator?”
Something else he caught through the bond.
“Yes,”
And he gets that smile that instantly puts him at ease, “Where did you manage to get it?” her throaty voice squeaks with a child-like joy.
“I know my black markets,” he sits down next to her placing the heavy box on the sabacc table.
She immediately reaches for the component, turning the heavy object in her hands, tracing the edges, and checking the circuits, clearly avoiding him.
“And something else for my sweetheart.”
Rey rolls her eyes at the endearment but perks up when she sees a potted spinbarrel in his hand. The window ledge in her bunk, their bunk, is lined with the plants he always brings her.
Her fingers shake a bit when they touch the dark petals of the single bloom on it, and Ben waits for her to confess her troubles, “They know.”
Ben knows; Han left a comm for him and he heard it as soon as he made planetfall, understanding at once what ailed her.
She lets him take her hand and kiss the calloused fingers, “They will come around,”
It had to happen, today or tomorrow. Secrets won’t hold well when you make a powerful enemy, and Rey made one out of her own blood and flesh.
“They won’t if they knew I was sent to kill you” Shame mars her beautiful features, and he lifts her face to look at him.
“Oh… they most definitely will, considering some of them want me dead.”
Thunder licks her face, casting it in half shadow and light, “Really?” his deadly girl is ready to fight for him.
He manages a straight face as he whispers, “Yes because they are jealous of my dashing looks and charming personality.”
Rey laughs, and the hull of the ship echoes her cheer, and he lifts and pulls her to his lap, slowly and carefully, afraid that she might want to be left alone tonight, “You shouldn’t worry about them,”
He knows Rey likes being around the crew, and they were welcoming of her, and for the first time in her life, she was having some sort of camaraderie.
“I know who you are, and a time will come when the whole galaxy will see it too,”
He whispers against the warm skin of her forehead, “You have nothing to be ashamed or guilty about, I am not my grandfather and you are not yours,”
A sad smile curves her face, “Who am I, then?”
Everything, she is everything. His everything.
“You are a fighter, Rey.”
Her eyes softened and her nails dug into his shoulder as she pulled him into a hug. They hold each other when sheets of soft rain start pelting against the transparisteel windows, “You are a survivor.”
These heartbeats take up a rhythm against the rain, “And I am right here with you, anytime, if you ever need me to fight with you.”
They hold each other in comfortable silence, which only their breaths and fluttering wings of mayflies dared to break.
She shifts in his lap, “You are right.” The look on her face is anything but sad, color floods her cheeks, as her ravenous gaze licks heat all over his body.
“I know that” he lifts a brow in question, “but just to be clear what exactly am I right about?”
“You do know how to charm,” she speaks against his lips.
He leans in, kisses the small scar on her cheek, and then covers her face in soft kisses, “Don’t forget that I have dashing good looks.”
“And dashing good looks” and she smiles into the kiss.
*
Rey almost castrated him when he offered to hold her hand and go together to the camp the very next day.
Instead, she walked into the hangar alone with her head high and went about her business. And he had a stupid proud smile he couldn’t wipe from his face, the whole day.
He didn’t plan on staying for more than one night, but he did stay, another day, then an entire week.
At night, he listened to Kaydel’s screaming comms and threatening messages for delegating his entire office to her, while Rey slept peacefully in their too-small bunker.
Everyone at the base worked, Rey did too, and soon he was asked to attend numerous meetings, on strategy, and budgeting, by his mother’s second-in-command, Holdo.
There is a sense of purpose at the ground level which dims the glamour of politics, and maybe this is where he is needed more, where he belongs.
At night they went to the Falcon separately, him before Rey to read reports from his staff, trying to complete some lagging work, all the while impatiently waiting for his girlfriend to finish her shift.
“I am leaving the Senate,” he whispers one night, into the cold air of the falcon.
Rey was cleaning her lightsaber under the dim blue panel lights, silently, thinking that he was fast asleep, “Can you do that?”
“Yes, I will need an interim candidate, until the next election” he wipes his face with his hand, sitting upright against the metal hull.
“And join the resistance?” There is no mistaking the swell of happiness that flares through their bond.
It’s been a week since he started nurturing this idea in his head, and she must have picked it up somewhere, waiting for him to breach it, ‘and do what?’ Rey whispers in his mind.
“I am a decent enough pilot.” Ben gets up from the bed, his feet sure and intent clear as he traces a path towards her, “In the meantime, you could teach me some force tricks.”
Rey smirks as his hands find the sash of her robe, he misses the flick of her fingers when she force-pushes him back to the bed, and he stumbles down gracelessly, “Lesson one, don’t call it tricks.”
*
Their little bubble bursts when two unrelated things happen on the same day, first, his mother takes over the command of the base.
Secondly, they break the bunker coat of the falcon, along with shattering some window panes.
His mother puts him to work almost the same second, he tells her how the chancellor accepted his resignation and he is ready to join the resistance full-time. He was assigned an out-of-planet mission to raise funds for their cause.
When he came back a week later, tired and smelling of recycled air, but high with hopes of a shower and hot meal, both with his girl, he was just banned from Falcon, his father even took off his finger scan from her database.
Only him, not Rey, even though she was the one who screamed his name and shattered the windows with force.
He slept in the barracks with the rest of the crew, in a metal single cot that could only hold half his length and made Rey smile and then cry in pleasure, by showing her all the things he had planned for them.
The next morning, they woke up to terrible news.
A dark mood sets in the base, when they come to know that Ilum has fallen into First Order hands, after weeks of fighting.
The ever-strong Leia Organa asks them to remember the dead, cherish their life and dreams, and then, - to move along.
“I am looking for a decent enough pilot” Rey shouts, already dressed in flight gear as she enters the command center where he is neck-deep in paperwork.
“You have come to the right man.” He lifts an eyebrow, “Where are we going?”
He gets a smile dipped in uncertainty, “Jakku”.
Jakku is, unfortunately, just as Rey remembers it.
Very little has changed at all, actually. It’s almost as if no one on the entire planet has moved since the moment she left all those years ago. Time might just be the only thing on Jakku that can remain frozen.
Plutt still runs the Concession Stand, the sun still burns her skin, the sand still gets in her eyes, and the beings who live here still work themselves to the bone for every meager meal.
The planet is, according to the Senate, ‘not a priority’. That’s what they’d told Ben when he requested that some of the New Republic’s resources (food, water, credits, time) be diverted there in some kind of relief-aid mission.
It has no natural resources. No exports. Nothing of value at all - just old, dead ships and tired, hungry people.
Even the representative for the Lower Western Reaches (which covers Jakku, among other planets) had voted against the proposal. Which meant the job was left up to them; to her and Ben and the small group of volunteers they managed to scrabble together.
They raised the funds. They organized transport of their goods to the planet. They stood in the hot sun, offering free water and portions to beings who found charity as suspicious as a pole-snake’s head poking up out of the sand.
It’s been a lot of work and, between this project, the Resistance, and his continued work in the New Republic senate, Rey can tell that Ben has been increasingly worn down lately. He doesn’t complain, of course, but she can tell.
Maybe that’s why she pulls him away from their stall in the middle of the day.
“What are you doing?” He asks.
“Showing you around.”
“We can’t just leave.”
“Finn and Poe can handle things for a bit. No one’s out at this time of day, anyway,” she adds, gesturing around to the mostly-empty marketplace. “It’s too hot.”
Plus, she suspected that those two wouldn’t mind a little time alone - even if that time was spent under the cover of an only-slightly-effective tent in the middle of the desert.
She’s true to her word at first. She takes him to the work tent and shows off the different implementations used to clean off pieces of scrap salvaged from the nearby starship graveyard. None of it is terribly interesting, but it’s all familiar. Dully painful too, like pressing on an old bruise.
“I always believed that the cleaner I got something, the more portions I would get for it.” She says, fiddling with the bristles of a long, thin brush. “But I’m not sure if that’s true. I think I knew it wasn’t then.”
His hand finds her shoulder and, even in the heat, she feels grateful for its weight and warmth.
They avoid the Concession Stand for the most part. Plutt had shouted threats at them the day before when they arrived and set up their stall, but it had mostly been bluster. Mostly.
Even so, giving him space was never a bad idea. And it’s not as if Rey’s eager to reconnect with the old blobfish, either.
Eventually, she finds herself pulled towards her real goal; the true, selfish reason she’d grabbed Ben’s hand earlier and pulled him away.
Unfortunately, the place she wants to see isn’t exactly in the outpost - and she’s not about to walk across the dunes in the nice (if slightly impractical) boots Ben bought her - so, transport is required.
A scavenger relaxing in a hammock beneath a large, strung-up net agrees to loan her their speeder - a two-seated monstrosity with a cobbled together engine that emits a black, foul-smelling smoke the moment she turns it on - for a week and a half’s worth of portions. She gives them a two-week’s supply, knowing it will likely actually last them more than a month, and tells Ben to hop on the back.
“Goggles,” she tells him, her own already secured across her eyes. “If you value your vision.”
“Where are we going?” He asks as he wraps his arms around her waist.
She doesn’t know how to explain that (not without crying, which she doesn’t really feel like doing at the moment), so she simply says, “you’ll see,” and takes off towards the horizon.
The path towards her old shelter (because it was never a home) hasn’t changed, but, when she reaches it, she thinks that the AT-AT has. Just a little.
It’s smaller than she remembers and she has to duck to cross through the threshold of the pried-open door.
The place is picked clean, the meager belongings she’d once gathered here (a pilot’s helmet, a doll, a reconstructed stovetop, and a dead, potted flower) are long gone, but she had known it would be the moment she set her heart on traveling here. And she doesn’t even care about that - about those things - all she can see is the wall in front of her.
There are six-hundred and eighty-seven tallies scratched into the metal surface. Each represents a night she spent in this horrible place, waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Ben sits beside her in the sand (she doesn’t remember sitting down, but she must have, because she is), and rubs his hand across her back.
Because he knows. She didn’t tell him, but he knows all the same. Like he knows her.
Her past here is baked into her bones, so it’s in his too.
“They told me they would come back,” she says without prompting. “I think they tried to, but he got to them first.”
Palpatine had always told her that her parents abandoned her. That they sold her to Plutt for a bit of drinking money and then drank themselves to death on some outlaw planet in wild space.
But that wasn’t true. It never has been.
She thinks she’s always known that. Somehow.
“I really wanted them to come back.”
They were never able to, but she was. She’s here now, and maybe that’s why. To prove to the little girl who once lived here that someone could. To show her that she’s not alone anymore. To prove that she survived - and not because anyone saved her, but because she saved herself.
“I’m sorry,” Ben says.
She doesn’t tell him that it’s okay, because it’s not. Her parents are gone. Her youth was stolen from her. Nothing could change either of those facts.
Instead, she leans over and rests her head against his shoulder. She closes her eyes and allows herself to bask - even if just for a moment - in the love she feels radiating from his end of their bond.
He’s here. So is she, and that’s enough.
When she rises, she brushes the sand from her legs. She knows that she’ll find pieces of it buried in folds of cloth, stuck beneath her nails, and tangled in her hair for days to come. Like the past, it will cling to her for a while, but time (and a few hot showers, courtesy of the Grimtaash’s ‘fresher) will wash it away eventually.
She sets her hand on the AT-AT’s durasteel hull as she leaves, and bids this place a long-overdue goodbye.
“Thank you,” she says to the shelter that protected her from sandstorms and nightwatcher worms and the blistering Jakku heat.
“Thank you,” she repeats, this time to the parents who left her here in the hopes that this place, as harsh as it was, would keep her safe from Palpatine’s clutches. It didn’t, in the end, but they tried, and, for that, she will always be grateful.
Turning to Ben, she lowers a scuffed pair of goggles over her eyes. “Let’s go.”
It is not a dream , he assures himself.
It feels like one, plucked straight out of their fantasies, - of a young girl of five and a young boy of fifteen shared because the force had plans for them.
They have made it into a reality, the girl who dreamed of oceans is chasing its retreating blue waves, the ends of her dress is dripping water, her hair is wet from the wild splashes, and her feet are naked.
Her happiness, infectious.
Castilon is their last stop before Naboo, they are celebrating. A win against the First Order where they fought side by side. The resistance took back Ilum and destroyed the Star killer base, And second, a promotion as Rey was also made a commanding officer.
Two years have passed since she stormed into his life, stopping a blaster bolt—two years since he learned that he is capable of accepting love and of returning it a hundredfold.
Two years of heartbreaks, and stolen moments where he cursed the days for being too short and prayed the nights will never end.
Two years of war.
Like a dark cloud, it looms above them, unrelenting. Starships scattered in the sky dim the stars, and the buzz of commlinks reveals that of cicadas at night, planets are nothing but dots of red and black on maps redrawn based on allegiance.
War is never out of mind even though they have learned to ignore it, to hold on to carefree moments like this.
There is no other time like now. The circle of his grandmother’s ring in his breast pockets, and a hope burns his chest.
It won’t be the first time he has come up with this request.
A year ago, he mentioned it during a hurried dinner of ration bars, and nuna jerky while hiding inside the deep trenches of Crait. They were within the earshot of other resistance fighters, all of them looking out for incoming TIE fighters.
Rey scoffed then, shaking her head at the incredulity, more concerned about him wasting the poly-starch bread than plans for a future.
War came to Endor a few months later and he blurted it out again when they were huddled for warmth inside a single sleeping bag, force-healing their newly acquired bruises.
“You are asking this because Holdo said the bunkers in the base are for married couples only,” Rey whispered, her head tucked under his chin, her lips spreading in a smile against his chest.
“Well, that’s an added incentive,” he chuckled victoriously into her hair before sleep took them.
He selfishly wants her to bear his name, and wear his ring, and when the time is right, when there is peace, there are the wisps of another dream he wants to follow.
Something his, something hers.
Ben lifts his jittery limbs from his seat on the shore and shakes off the sand from his clothes. Patting his pocket one last time, he walks towards her.
His footing sure, and when she turns to look at him, she smiles, and as always, she knows.
Rey has never been to a wedding. In fact, before Ben had brought it up over dinner one evening a few months ago, she’d hardly been aware of the concept.
She knew about marriage - in a vague, nebulous sort of way. Han and Leia were married, which meant that they had chosen to be partners at some point in their lives, but that was about the extent of her knowledge.
There was so much more to it than she ever could have imagined. The pageantry of the ceremony and costumes seemed like a lot to her, but no more so than the legality behind it all.
What did a signature on a document logged with the New Republic government say that her own word - her vows - could not? She wasn’t sure, but Ben assured her that it was important. All of it was - to him, at least. So it became important to her, too.
Which is how she found herself here, in the middle of a bedroom in Ben’s family’s estate on Naboo, grinning down at the skirt of her bright, white dress.
It’s a little funny that the first wedding she’ll ever attend will be her own.
The door flies open then, bursting the bubble of her quiet moment alone, and Leia hurries inside, a stormcloud of nervous energy. She holds a vacuum-sealed garment bag in her hands and lays it down on the bed beside the empty one before hastily waving Rey over.
“It arrived just in time,” she says, pressing her thumb to a bio-lock at the top of the bag and allowing it to depressurize with a long, drawn-out hiss. “I wasn’t sure if it would or not. There was some kind of issue with the transport’s hyperdrive and, well… tragedy avoided.”
From inside, she pulls (what appears to be, upon first glance) a bolt of fabric covered in detailed and incredibly delicate beadwork. It’s only once Leia instructs Rey to turn around and places the fabric delicately atop her head that she realizes what it really is - a veil.
“This was my mother’s - my biological mother’s,” she clarifies quickly. “I would have loved to have given you something of Breha’s as well, but… no matter.” She adjusts the lace over Rey’s shoulder, smoothing it out with a careful hand. “I didn’t have this for my own wedding - I didn’t even know it existed at the time - but I’m glad you can use it for yours.”
“It’s beautiful, Leia. Thank you.”
“Well,” Leia looks a little teary as she backs away, the many layers of her deep maroon skirt swirling around her ankles. “Let’s not waste any more time. I’m sure Ben’s getting antsy.”
The wedding itself is held on a grand outdoor veranda overlooking the lake. Little blue and yellow flowers called Ryoo hang down from a terrace overhead. Petals and their sweet scent blow over the small crowd gathered on either side of a long, carpeted aisle.
Ben is waiting on the other side, smiling at her, his eyes shining with unbridled joy,
An officiant asks her if she takes Ben’s hand, if she pledges to honor and love him for the rest of her days. “I do,” suddenly become the easiest words in the galaxy to say - and, as it turns out, the best to hear too.
“I do,” Ben says and she jumps up into his arms, kissing him before anyone has the chance to give her permission.
She decides at that moment that it was all worth it - the planning, the sizings, the rehearsal - every second.
Everything before that had been worth it too, because it helped her end up here, right where she belongs.