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As a junkyard-grubbing orphan from Jakku, Rey never had big wedding dreams. That ends up being for the best. Her special day doesn't have much in common with the glossy holomag spreads so wildly popular on the Core Worlds.
For one thing, it takes place in a crowded registrar's office in front of a long queue of impatient fellow citizens trying to get through their own administrative business as quickly as possible. For another, the groom shows up dressed all in black with a billowing cloak and a funereal expression. His mother, steely-eyed and grim, witnesses the signing of the deed and then immediately steers him off by the elbow to queue two buildings over for his spousal visa application package.
The whole affair, engagement included, takes two hours and forty-five minutes. Adding on the time Rey spent weighing up the decision to marry makes it a nice round three. She skips all the fuss about finessing guest lists and renting tableware and falling in love. It's efficient. Practical. It fits surprisingly well inside her comfort zone.
Her new name, if she wants it, is Rey Solo.
Ben will finally have a claim to citizenship in the reborn New Republic. He’ll no longer be vulnerable to the whims of hostile political factions keen to extradite him back to the First Order.
Leia will sleep easier at night.
There's no reason for anything else to change.
‘It’s warm in here,’ says Ben, dumping his rucksack on the floor and making a beeline for the thermostat. It’s a slower beeline than it might once have been. He’s favouring his left leg, still conspicuously hampered by that hip-joint blaster injury that never quite healed right.
‘Twenty-five degrees centigrade,’ Rey barks before he can reach his goal. ‘Fans on minimum, humidity filters on max. It’s the perfect internal temperature.’
‘Maybe if you grew up in the desert.’
‘If you think it’s too warm, just lose a layer. Why do you wear so much indoors anyway?’
With eyes like a man at the foot of the gallows, Ben takes off his heavy woollen cloak.
Getting married was the easy part. It turns out the hard part comes with being married, and as Rey absorbs the sight of their new living quarters with Ben’s boots by the door and his three small boxes of possessions piled against the wall, she feels her first real stab of doubt about their plan. The Immigration Bureau isn’t stupid – well, not that stupid. They don’t just hand out permanent residencies when you wave your magic marriage certificate. You have to be living together, running your lives together, acting like a proper couple. Proving there’s a reason why the two of you need to be in the same jurisdiction.
Rey knew all that when she signed the deed. But knowing is different from seeing, and the truth is, she hasn’t lived with another person since she was old enough to have a choice. When the Resistance first set up its base on Chandrila in the early days after the treaty, Leia offered Rey a home inside their small but comfortable compound. She turned it down. She’s used to living by herself, trekking back and forth each day between the bustle of Niima Outpost and the peaceful privacy of her own little AT-AT bunker. Wartime was different – wartime was crazy and close-packed and full of compromises. But as soon as stability returned under the treaty’s flimsy eaves, Rey left the fighters’ dorm and struck out on her own.
The thing is that she’s not really cut out for Resistance life in peacetime. Ideas that would once have been clear-cut madness have put down roots and flourished in the rich, blood-fed soils of her old battlefields. The First Order are the New Galactic Empire, now, and instead of illegally occupying territory, they outright own whole swathes of space on the other side of a border that runs from Endor up to Dantooine and back around through Mandalore. Tense but civil, the New Republic’s security forces cooperate with stormtroopers to protect the demilitarised zone against incursions by small bands of local rebels unhappy with the terms of peace. Instead of recruiting those rebels, instead of feeding their cause, the Resistance is now expected to help talk them down.
‘We do what we must,’ General Leia likes to say. ‘The treaty isn’t perfect, but it’s all that stands between us and mutually assured destruction. We owe it to the galaxy to give this peace a chance.’
That’s all well and good for the people living on the right side of the border. But they don’t talk about that anymore. They don’t talk about anything that happened during those last bloody days of the war, when a series of Resistance triumphs and the high-profile defection of Kylo Ren brought the fight to such a well-matched standstill that neither party could gain ground anymore. They don’t talk about what enabled the peace they're so devoted to protecting.
Which is one more thing that makes married life awkward. Without their brutal shared fight for survival as social lubricant, it turns out Rey and her new husband don’t have much to talk about.
‘You can have it your way in daytime,’ Ben says, mulish. ‘But we’re turning the temperature down at night. I’m the one who’ll be sleeping on the sofa, right under that damn vent. You can buy a heater for your bedroom if it bothers you.’
‘Joint pain gets worse in the cold,’ says Rey.
‘That must suck for people with joint pain. You should buy them a heater, too.’
‘You should see a physio about your hip.’
‘I don’t need a kriffing physio.’
On the upside, neither of them owns many physical possessions. It’ll be no great challenge to move back out if their marriage fails within its first week.
Rey’s new mother-in-law is smiling when she shows up to visit Rey at work. Leia has a beautiful smile – it’s warm and bright and wipes years off her age. ‘I looked for you at home,’ she says, holding out a hamper wrapped in cellophane and ribbons. Nestled inside are an assortment of gourmet treats that could have fed Rey for a month out on the dunes. ‘Housewarming gift. You’ll need some extra warming, if my son has his way with the thermostat.’
Only her hard-earned new manners stop Rey from tearing open the hamper so she can rummage through and start cataloguing its contents at once. She doesn’t need to do that anymore. Along with her comfortable subsidised housing, Rey’s veteran status – an important government term, apparently, for anyone who lifted a finger in the war – means she’s entitled to an allowance that more than covers her for food. After doing her weekly grocery shop, She has enough money left to put some into savings and pay the rent on the disused old warehouse where she runs her Force training school.
Out on the floor, her ragtag band of students are working on a meditation drill. It’s a rare moment of peace that lets Rey usher Leia through to the break room and pour her a cup of tea. The strong leaf blend masks the metallic tang from her rusty old boiler, and she serves it along with some still-good biscuits from last week’s group morning tea. Not the high society stuff Leia’s used to, but perfectly respectable Core World hospitality.
‘How are they coming on?’ Leia asks, gesturing out the observation window at the meditating students. ‘Any strong talents?’
Not really, is the honest answer – although whether that’s down to their innately mediocre potential or Rey’s lacklustre teaching skills, it’s hard to say. Her own Jedi training consisted of a few rushed lessons from Luke and an ill-advised battlefront crash course in Ben’s dark technique. The curriculum she’s built combines those with translated bits and pieces from the Jedi texts plus a healthy dose of Rey’s own personal instinct. Her class is filled with admirers from the war days, newly awoken Force-sensitives with varied but generally minimal flair for mind tricks and lightsaber combat. She’s training them anyway. Their powers will flourish with or without her. At least with guidance, they might be less tempted to chase the old ways with their rigid traditions and strict light-dark dichotomy.
‘They’re hard workers,’ Rey says, which is not a lie. ‘If the treaty holds, it won’t matter if they’re strong or not.’
‘Force users always find a way to matter.’ Leia nibbles on a biscuit. It’s unclear whether she’s being profound or just making small talk – her words always have that same politician’s gravitas. ‘And yourself? How are you finding Hanna City, now you’ve been here a while?’
‘It’s very … I don’t know. Cultured, I guess.’
‘It was a semi-rural backwater not so long ago. That arts precinct leading off government house? It used to be cane plantations. Don’t buy into anyone’s pretensions, Rey.’ Another nibble. ‘These biscuits are quite nice.’
‘They’re a bit stale, sorry. I opened them days ago.’
‘Waste not.’ Leia pops the rest of the morsel in her mouth.
The knowledge of what she really came to talk about hovers like fog between them, cloudy and thick to breathe. She could ask Ben herself, of course, and Rey is half-tempted to tell her so, but she’s seen how taut the strings between them are pulled and she knows how much it hurts to pluck them. Leia moved stars and planets to give Ben another chance when he defected from the First Order. Ben moved stars and planets to deserve that chance. But there are only so many broken things that either of them can hope to fix, and no matter how much love they pour in, their mother-son bond will probably always be fraught and slightly bitter.
So Rey swallows some of the bitterness for her, and washes it down with rust-tinged tea. ‘Ben finished his visa application. The bureau promised a thirty day turn around, but I’m afraid we don’t know exactly how long it’ll take. If they follow the letter of the law, we have to have been committed to each other for at least a year before I’m eligible to sponsor him.’
‘They’ll follow the letter of the law,’ says Leia. ‘No question of that.’ On a strict technicality, since the First Order have always modelled themselves as a sovereign nation, Ben's joining them meant that he renounced his Republic citizenship. His existence now, well past his wartime use-by date, is something of a thorn in the government’s side: they can’t pardon him or punish him without incurring public wrath, so they’ve deployed their standing army of bureaucrats to make sure no one expects them to do either. Leia has already tried for refugee status, skilled work migration and citizenship by descent. Ben, neck-deep in apathy, was refusing to lift a finger to help his case, and Leia was at her wit’s end when Rey bit the bullet and suggested marriage.
‘Well,’ Rey says, ‘it doesn’t change our plans. We’ll just have to stay married and outwait them.’
There’s a melting softness in Leia’s expression that’s not directed at Rey. Not really. ‘I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing. It’s an unbelievable weight off my mind, knowing he’ll be safe.’
‘It’s the least I can do.’
‘No. It’s above and beyond what anyone could ever have asked of you.’
‘He’s not a bad husband,’ says Rey, and hitches her smile up until Leia’s dark eyes crinkle in answer. It takes some exertion – there’s a dead weight inside her trying to pull the corners down – but Rey’s had practice, and she doesn’t let the strain show on her face. Some nights she lies awake and tries to imagine what it would feel like to have someone love her with the ruthless, unrelenting devotion that Leia loves her son. Mostly the scenario escapes her creativity. ‘Getting married doesn’t have to be a major change. Once we get used to living together, I’m sure life will go on as normal.’
Normal.
It’s a strange word, flexible in definition but oddly restrictive in practical use. Rey knows what it’s supposed to mean: that the war is over, that she’s grateful for the peace, that she’s glad to lay her weapon down and merge back into civilian life. Never mind that peace in itself is another brand new vocabulary item. Never mind that, before she joined the Resistance, Rey lived her whole life at war against her Niima rivals and Unkar Plutt’s greed and the brutal violence of Jakku’s weather.
Her memories of normalcy live in shared fights and desperate gambits and the raw exhilaration of another day’s survival. Stability used to mean the friends who came back for her; love used to mean the hair-trigger readiness to use her body as a shield for someone else. Being enemies with Ben meant sharing a bond so deep it shook their worlds apart and crushed their innermost convictions to rubble. Being friends meant training and fighting and breathing as one, until there was no enemy in the galaxy who could stand against their powers combined.
Then came the ceasefire, and the treaty, and the new New Republic, and Rey learned that people are different in war than they are in peace. She learned that what she thought of as her new life, Ben apparently saw as a passing alliance, and that once their blades withdrew, so did their effortless intimacy. Conversations became strained. Eye contact became fleeting and uncomfortable. Ben had a life to rebuild and a whole new past identity to reconstruct, and somehow, Rey couldn’t find a place for herself within all that.
So she left. Resigned from her post with the Resistance, which had already become unworkable in light of all the confusing laws and limitations the treaty imposed on their activities. She struck out on her own. Started her school.
Now they’re married, and Rey’s not fooled: all she really has left of Ben is a wistful echo of what could have been.
When she gets home from work, Ben’s already there. She knows before she steps inside just from the pounding bass behind the door, and once she opens it, she’s hit with a noise-wall of distorted electric melody accompanying what are truly the worst vocals she has ever heard in her life. The singer isn’t singing. He – or she, or they, there’s really no way to tell – is screaming, growling, howling, like a vibrosaw given sentience just to be tortured to death. Rey wouldn’t voluntarily listen to it at minimum volume. Ben has it turned up full blast.
Hot steam drifts out from under the ‘fresher door. There’s a half-eaten sandwich on the kitchen counter and a pile of black clothes on the floor. As Rey takes stock of the situation, the ‘fresher opens and Ben appears, wet from his shower and completely naked. For a long suspended second, he doesn’t notice her. Rooted to the spot, Rey stares at his bare chest, at the mottled blaster scar on his hip, at the thick free-hanging weight of his–
‘Fuck.’ Ben bolts back where he came from, leaving behind wet footprints on the tiles and a jumbled stream of expletives in Rey’s ears.
After a delay that’s both too long and too short for Rey’s pounding heart, he emerges again with a towel wrapped around his hips. He scoops up his discarded clothes, turns off the music and says, without looking at her: ‘I thought you’d be out for a couple more hours.’
‘I finished early,’ Rey mumbles back. Daring a glance in his direction, she sees a trail of dark hair leading down from his navel into the towel’s fluffy cover. Her imagination, fueled by recent exposure, fills in a vivid image of what’s hidden. ‘What the hell was that noise?’
‘Music.’
‘I know you’ve always had a thing about self-punishment, but no fair jury would ever sentence you to listen to that.’
Back when they were flying together on the Falcon, Rey often used to tease Ben about his ghoulish tastes in art and entertainment. Now the old habit rears its head automatically, to cover for the intimate shock she really wasn’t expecting this afternoon. They’re going to skate right past the nudity. She’s not going to mention it.
‘Who knew Bumfuck, Jakku had its own college of musical criticism?’ Ben shoots back.
‘Who knew your hair colour was natural? Until I saw the drapes, I assumed it was part of your angsty teen aesthetic.’
Oops. She’s going to mention it after all.
Ben gives her a disgusted look. ‘You know, you could have called out that you were home.’
‘As if you would have heard me.’ Rey matches his glare, determined not to look flustered by the fact that he’s still wearing nothing but a towel. Gone are the days when Ben could throw her off-balance with his unpredictable boundary violations. ‘But if you want to wander around naked in a shared apartment, I guess I can’t stop you. Married life, right?’
As soon as the words leave her mouth, Rey senses Ben’s mood change. She can’t for the life of her guess why that bit of banter bothered him when the rest of it didn’t – there’s never been any point trying to figure out what bothers Ben and why. But where before he was just being prickly for the hell of it, now, for his own secret reasons, he’s hurt. And when Ben gets hurt, he gets angry. Some things never change.
‘Try keeping your eyes to yourself,’ he snarls, grip tightening on his bundle of clothes. It’s a small apartment. There’s nowhere for him to go except back into the ‘fresher for the third time in the last few minutes.
It’s hard to slam a hydraulic door. But Rey sees the intention for what it is, even if the mechanism denies him a satisfying bang.
Ben turns the thermostat down to fourteen overnight. While he maneuvers himself into place on the too-small sofa, Rey cranks up a portable space heater in her bedroom and curls beneath an extra duvet.
It’s still not quite warm enough.
She can’t get the image of Ben’s naked body out of her mind.
Time passes, and Rey’s right – nothing changes.
She gets used to more layers at night and he gets used to fewer in daytime. She leaves for the warehouse every day to guide her students in each next step of their basic Force training. He leaves for the Resistance base every day to do whatever it is he does in the absence of a hands-on fight – to theorise, to strategise, to comb through intercepted data broadcasts just in case they happen to include Empire state secrets. They both lead busy lives that sometimes keep them apart for days, and when their paths do cross, Ben alternates between prickly temper and polite social interest in much the same way he’s always done. Some days, when Rey wakes up late and he’s already gone, she finds he’s left his caf pot half-full and warming on the stove in case she wants some.
But nothing changes.
Other days, when they both wake up early, Rey comes into the main room in time to see Ben clamber stiffly from his sofa bed. His limp has come and gone ever since he injured his hip, but it seems to be coming more often these days, as cramped nights on a shitty fold-out take their toll.
‘You know,’ she points out one morning, ‘I’m pretty sure you’re eligible to use my healthcare plan.’
‘Let’s hope I catch something really bad so we can get the most out of it,’ says Ben. He hasn’t had his caf yet.
‘I was just thinking it wouldn’t cost too much if you wanted to see someone about your hip.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my hip.’
‘Denial’s a strong drug, but I don’t think it works on joint injuries.’
Ben huffs an irritable sigh, which means he wants to say something cutting but has no ideas. ‘I slept funny, okay? My hip’s fine, I’ve just cricked a muscle in my neck.’
‘A muscle in your neck that's making you limp.’ He was like this when the injury happened, too. He refused all but the most basic field care, and that probably explains why it’s still causing him problems. ‘But okay, fine. Let me help you work the crick out.’
She might as well have grown a second head for the look he gives her. ‘Why are you sticking your nose in this morning?’
‘I’m sick of hearing you groan like an old man every time you stand up,’ says Rey. She’s starting to appreciate why Leia, despite all her good intentions, sometimes finds it hard to talk to Ben without snapping or strong-arming. He languishes in problems that could easily be solved with a bit more proactivity. ‘Here, sit back down.’
To her mild surprise, he actually obeys. That’s the upside of Leia bossing him around so much – for all his complaints, he’s quite compliant in the face of clear instruction. Rey comes behind the sofa and puts her hands on the base of his neck. Beneath a sleep-tousled curtain of hair there’s tough, corded muscle and a layer of gooseflesh that no doubt came from lying under the too-cold air conditioning vent overnight. She sets to work kneading out the tension. It makes things less weird if she throws all her body weight into the task, so that she’s clearly attacking his trigger points rather than caressing bare skin while breathing in the soft scent of his hair, or whatever else an idle observer might theoretically misinterpret this as. Ben’s head droops forward and a series of tiny shivers ripple out from her touch. Maybe because of the contrast between the cool air and the warmth of friction.
Anyway, nothing changes.
The holonews channels play footage from across the border, of diplomatic summits and trade negotiations between the Republic and the Empire. Upstanding senators shake hands with war criminals who engineered the murder of millions. Analysts talk about a post-war economic boom and how bilateral relief efforts are improving conditions on those planets hit second-worst by the conflict. (The planets hit worst, of course, are now nothing but space dust and memory, and so conveniently need no funds from the relief pool.)
‘It’s all such bullshit,’ says Rey aloud, as a televised man with a well-cut suit and a coif like Xeorge X'looney holds forth about how cutting an import tax deal with the Empire will help struggling Outer Rim ore miners prosper. He doesn’t say a word about what the Empire might do with their cheap supply. ‘Nothing really changes, does it?’
Ben, who’s in the kitchen, looks briefly up from the can of beans he’s prying open by its tab. ‘Sometimes I wish that were true,’ he says, and then busies himself again before Rey has a chance to ask what he means.
The blunt truth is that Rey knows no alternative to the treaty. The war was unwinnable, and the losses unsustainable, but none of that makes it any easier to swallow. Fighting is all she’s ever known. Compromise sits like a stone in her gut, cold and undigested. Once, a long time ago, she might have spoken to Ben about her fears. But she doesn’t know how to do that anymore.
And since she can’t talk to anyone about that, all that’s left is the other issue – the one that Ben can’t know about, that she doesn’t particularly want to share with anyone. But there’s only so much Rey can carry alone. She goes to the only expert she knows: Finn, who’s been living with Rose in a happily settled domestic arrangement since the two of them decided to follow Rey’s tracks out the door of the Resistance.
He greets her in his entryway with a hug and an ear-to-ear grin. ‘Feels like it’s been forever,’ he says, ushering her inside. It always feels like forever since she’s last seen Finn, and it always feels like no time at all has passed between them. His apartment is a nice temperature, Rey notices. Moderate. Neither too hot nor too cold. ‘Rose is at the flight garage, but her shift ends in a couple of hours if you want to stick around for dinner. I’ve got a roast in the – Rey? Rey, what’s the matter?’
Rey keeps her eyes trained on the comfortably worn carpet of Finn’s hall. ‘There’s no easy way to lead into this,’ she says. ‘But I need your advice. Something’s happening to me that’s never happened before, and I don’t understand it and I don’t know what to do with it. You’re the only one who might be able to help.’
‘You can tell me anything,’ Finn says, all earnest worry. So Rey takes a deep breath and relaxes her iron grip on her dignity. With Finn, at least, she doesn’t need it.
‘The thing is … Finn, I think I might have feelings for my husband.’
Back in her own home later that night, Rey lies awake and lets the conversation replay itself on loop. Lets is a strong word. Living through it once was bad enough, but the memories don’t seem to care much about her preference.
The worst part was Finn’s total lack of surprise. ‘You’re telling me this now,’ he’d said. ‘Just now, right this moment, you’re coming to the brand new realisation that you and your lawfully wedded spouse are more than cordial acquaintances.’
‘The spouse thing isn’t serious,’ Rey had protested. ‘That’s an immigration thing. It’s complicated, honestly. And really boring. We only did it to make sure the Republic couldn’t extradite him.’
‘For his war crimes. That he’s never been punished for.’ Finn’s mouth had tightened for a moment, and she’d seen the effort it cost him to swallow the rest of the diatribe attached to that opinion. Like Rey, Finn has always had objections about how they achieved their treaty with the Empire. They’re not all the same objections. ‘Hand on heart, though, I honestly thought you two were already fucking.’
‘Well, we’re not.’
‘Huh.’ Finn had given her a look that she’d have punched clean off the face of anyone else. Full of patience. Full of compassion. ‘Look, Rey. You and Ren – Solo, whatever – you’ve always had your weird only-two-in-the-galaxy thing. You were a package deal by the end of the war. Reading each other’s minds and all that spooky shit. I wouldn’t even let Rose read my mind, and that’s not because there’s anything special going on in here. It’s just way too close for two people to be.’
‘I don’t read his mind anymore. He pushed me out, you know. Once the fighting stopped. I couldn’t read his thoughts at all. Everything got so weird and distant.’
‘Have you talked to him about it? I know, it’s not as glamorous as a Jedi mind trick. It doesn’t even always work – but it’s better than doing nothing, right?’
That’s the thing that’s keeping Rey awake as she tosses and turns under all her extra duvets. She leapt at the chance to marry Ben because it felt like finally doing something after her idleness in the wake of the ceasefire. But even as she made the leap, she convinced herself that it wouldn’t mean anything. She sank straight back down into the mud and decided that losing Ben in all but name was just one more inevitable trade-off for peace.
That’s what galls her most about the treaty. Not the disarmament or the compromise or the fact that she doesn’t understand the legal details. It’s the way it’s nudged her into inertia. The way it’s throttled her ability to act and left her feeling like there’s nothing left for her to do. No more scope to change the world around her. Nothing for it but lie down and resign herself.
What a load of bantha shit. Not once in her life before now has Rey needed anyone else to tell her she’s allowed to chase the things she wants.
‘Ben,’ she calls out. ‘Are you asleep yet?’
No answer.
Climbing out of bed, Rey opens her bedroom door and pads out into the main room. In the dim ambient glow of the household’s various wall control panels, she sees the hulking mass of Ben’s body asleep on the sofa bed. It’s ridiculous, him sleeping there. He hardly fits. He’s curled on his side with his knees up and she can still see his feet poking out the end.
(He used to have the same problem on the Falcon, she remembers. Sometimes he’d nap in the co-pilot’s seat while she flew, because at least that was easier than jigsaw-fitting his long limbs into the bunk.)
‘Ben,’ she calls again. ‘Ben, wake up.’
Ben grumbles something into his pillow. On further prodding, that something turns out to be: ‘Fuck off.’
‘I will not fuck off. Come on, wake up. We need to talk.’
More grumbling.
‘Did you know I was in love with you?’
That works. Ben’s eyes snap open, and after a moment of blinking confusion he sits up, looking at her intently through a curtain of sleep-rumpled hair. ‘What?’
‘After the treaty. When you started going all distant with me. Did you know I was in love with you?’ Unable to wait for his answer, she goes on: ‘Because I was. I loved how well we fought together. How easily we understood each other. I was fighting to bring an end to the war, but a part of me wasn’t ready for it to stop. The truth is, if it weren’t for the treaty, I could have kept fighting by your side forever.’
‘I…’ Ben swallows. Few people would describe his volatile moods as a personal strength, but right now, his ability to go from zero to one hundred is something Rey appreciates. It would be awful to make this confession into the darkness and get nothing back – not a tear, not a tremor, not a hitch of breath. Ben provides all of those things in short order. ‘I knew you felt something. I wouldn’t have called it love.’
She doesn’t ask what he would have called it. No distractions. 'Were you in love with me?'
Another long silence. 'I've been in love with you since the first day we fought,' he says at last. Wary. Trembling. His wide eyes follow her through the gloom as she steals a spot on the edge of his bed. Because it’s more comfortable, and not because her knees feel weak or anything like that.
'But you never did anything about it,’ she says.
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t want to put you in that position.’
It’s Rey’s turn to stare. ‘In the position of knowing you cared about me?’
‘In the position of feeling responsible for my decisions.’ He shifts his weight, leaning earnestly towards her, and the whole sofa bed creaks and groans beneath them. Not so comfortable after all. Rey can feel springs jutting up through the stuffing, and it’s nicer than her floor mat on Jakku, but her standards have clearly evolved since then. ‘Rey, I left the First Order for a lot of reasons. You were one of them. Not the only one, but … well, you were there when it happened.’
When he turned, he means. The first day since Crait that they’d come face to face, and with his blade at her throat she’d made one final mad effort to persuade him that the darkness wasn't really what he wanted. She can’t remember the exact words she used, lost as she was in the adrenaline blur. She remembers how his face crumpled, and she remembers the look in his eyes. It’s similar to the one she sees now.
‘I was looking at a lifetime of unfinishable work,’ Ben goes on. ‘The treaty didn’t end the war, not for me. Every day from across the border we hear more about what the war machine I unleashed on the galaxy is doing to consolidate its power. I’ll never finish paying my debt. I’ll never be able to stop fighting them. You, on the other hand – you can do whatever you want with your life. But for as long as you felt obliged to stick around being my better half, keeping me on the right path, you were trapped.’
‘So you weren’t cutting me off,’ says Rey. ‘You were setting me free.’
‘Exactly.’
Rey wants to laugh. All this time she’s spent pining after a war that ended, Ben has been keeping the fight alive and thinking of it as some great noble service. There’s no excuse for two people with mind-reading powers to have misunderstood each other so badly.
She wants to laugh. Instead, she kisses him.
He tastes like the toothpaste he used to brush his teeth before bed. Up close, his skin smells like the linen soap he used in his morning shower. Rey remembers both products keenly from the war days – they used to share, sometimes, when supplies got low. Surprise as much as cooperation makes Ben open his mouth, and Rey delves her tongue in and urges him wordlessly to respond. It feels natural and familiar when he finally does. They are, after all, husband and wife.
His jaw is rough with stubble, but his hair feels soft like silk when Rey grabs a handful and uses it to pull him closer. With her free hand on his chest she feels his heart beat wildly, in sync with the roar of her own pulse in her ears. All her wants and frustrations and dissatisfactions are rushing to the surface: the fight she should never have left behind, the compromises she should never have made. She pours them all into Ben, and Ben yields to the onslaught and takes them all.
He also puts his hand up her nightshirt.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ says Rey, when the need for oxygen forces her to pull back a moment. ‘This sofa bed’s too small for you, and I know you said you’ve been cricking your neck. It’d be better for you to come share mine.’
‘Better for my visa application, too,’ Ben says, only slightly breathless. ‘Sharing a bed will make our marriage look much more legitimate if the bureau ever sends someone to check.’
‘Very true,’ says Rey.
There’s no point committing only halfway to a ruse. Now that they’re here, she can’t for the life of her understand how she failed to realise that right at the start.
Using Rey's generous healthcare entitlements, Ben finally goes to see a physio about his hip.
Turns out there's chronic inflammation in the fluid sacs around the joint. An easy fix. Stubborn denial wasn't quite cutting it, but steroid injections make short work of the root issue while a rehab exercise program sorts out the muscles he’d been straining to compensate. Sometimes Rey keeps him company through his workout, and turns his horrible music down to a civilised volume so they can chat while he runs through sets of leg lifts and short range-of-motion exercises for his weakened flexors.
This is how lives are improved in peacetime. Not through grand, sweeping gestures but through quiet daily acts of perseverance. Ben goes to work at the Resistance compound. Rey goes to work at her training school, but she’s thinking of maybe putting her hand up if Leia needs more help down the line. There must be something she can contribute besides laser swords and telekinetics.
Nothing really changes. The Empire is still a despotic regime run by ruthless evildoers who escaped their well-earned justice. The Republic is still a heavy-handed bureaucracy determined to stall on Ben’s citizenship claim as long as possible. Ben himself is still a daily nuisance, and it’s worse now that the two of them share a room, because he snores when he sleeps on his back and takes up way too much space when he sleeps on his side, and to fit in the bed Rey’s forced to press up against him and let him holder closer than she’s ever let anyone hold her before.
(Which has its silver lining, because he still turns the thermostat down so cold that she needs the extra body heat to get through the night.)
So nothing really changes, no – not on a large scale. It’s all in the details. It’s in the loose, safe comfort of her body when she wakes up in Ben’s arms each morning. It’s in the constant pleasant ache between her legs as they rush to make Finn’s false impressions of them true in as little time as possible. It’s in the way Ben melts when she lies him on his stomach and massages out the last of those gnarled sofa-bed knots, and how afterwards, sleepy and blissed out, he grabs her hand and pulls her down with him and doesn’t want to let her go.
It’s slow. It’s imperfect. It’s compromise. But now that she’s had a chance to settle in, Rey finds she doesn’t mind as much as she used to.