Title: For Darkness, Stars
Chapter 1: Prelude
Fandom: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with references to all canon universes and non-canon supports as necessary
Author: Kira Solo
Summary: "…Between us the bond deepened, growing into something that could not be undone." (Bastila Shan) A story that explores the depths of the bond between Rey and Ben Solo in an emerging future where one's destiny might be shaped by the pull towards a higher purpose — a Force whose will is greater than the desires of those that are drawn together because of it. REYLO.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rey/Ben Solo
Warnings: Language, violence, scenes of a sexual nature, angst
Notes: Apparently ten years is long enough to hold fandom at a distance. If you and I hung out once before under a different pseud, you may remember me as Lucia de'Medici or maybe you caught a whiff of this fic as I was posting it for a time as Noctuary while it was still called, "The Reach of Stars." I've endeavoured to keep it canon compliant, but as with most fanfiction, there eventually results a paradigm shift in the characters if they're meant to change - to see a new arc with surprising results, otherwise I'd be Rian Johnson or JJ Abrams and making a lot more money than I do at present and taking different sorts of liberties involving tea towels and a naked Ben Solo. Standard advisories are as follows: this is an angst-ridden, difficult story that grazes its fingers across the dark more than once. If you are looking for fluff and a sweet, dewy-eyed Rey romanced by a charming Ben Solo who hasn't suffered significant negligence at the hands of his parents, this is not the story for you. This is, however, a story that explores the depths of their Force Bond, meanders through a history populated by ghosts, and recalls the old order of things in a world where one's destiny was shaped by the pull towards a greater purpose - A Force that sought balance throughout all things. It's set in the direct aftermath of The Last Jedi.
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For Darkness, Stars
Chapter I: Prelude
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The First Order regroups, collecting its forces for the onslaught that will eradicate General Leia Organa's Resistance from the galaxy once and for all. As the remaining party flees for the outer rim, seeking out new allies amidst whispers that the Force kindles a light of hope in the darkness, Rey struggles with her burgeoning powers — cut off from the one person who might've helped decipher the rising tide within her. Across the system, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is fraught with his own problems; the first and most impossible being that his force bond with Rey remains, haunting him, still.
...
For the third night in a row, she couldn't sleep. Wedged into the Falcon's second bunk, the one that didn't contain porg feathers and the lingering scent of wookie, Rey nudged the blankets further towards her feet, and turned over once more.
She'd had no trouble sleeping on a stone slab on Acht-To, waiting for Luke to grant her an audience, but the nights were longer and ever more persuasive while the remining Resistance fleet sought asylum as far from First Order reach as possible. It was one thing not belonging in a place where you were stationary, and another altogether when they weren't entirely certain where to go to continue avoiding the obvious. At last bet, the outer rim was an option that was still being contemplated by General Leia, at worst, the remains of the Resistance had a handful of transports and the Millennium Falcon on standby. In three nights, she'd managed to shut the door on Crait much in the same way that she'd shut the door on himat Crait — Rey closed the thought off, exhaling sharply through her mouth, and inhaling through her nose. Her skin prickled, her attention roving across the bunk's hide interior, the worn scuffs in the wall where it had been kicked too many times in dreams by its previous occupant, Han.
She pushed the thought from her mind with a deliberate, calculated shove that actually rattled a plate and cup across the room, sending it clattering to the floor, slipping between the slats. The cup rolled, disturbed by the ferocity of it. Rey inhaled. Exhaled. Wiped her mind of his face, tipped up at her as he knelt. He might've attacked her. He might've forced open the door and dragged her out to meet him — conclude their conversation.
That he hadn't — that he'd met her stare and let her go — left her tossing in bed once more.
The bunk was too comfortable, for one: Rey would have a better time of sleeping if she extracted herself from the mattress and curled up on the floor, letting the Falcon's ridges and dips reshape her into something a little more at ease in her discomforts.
The bunk was hers, now, and still smelled of its ghosts. The bunk was hers, and for everything she found in Ben, she forced herself to recall that he was the one responsible for her inheritance of the Falcon. That was hard. That made it all worse, somehow, and it was only a matter of moments before she'd swung her legs out and leapt away with nervous energy, stalking back to the little cubby below the table across the room, pushing it aside, and dragging open the drawer.
Eight manuals waited, their spines facing upwards, their contents available and willing but so far out of reach even though they were right in front of her. No, the way was not lost, but the path seemed all the more difficult to tread given the cirumstances — so much harder, knowing that this was a different sort of solitude to be experienced amongst friends. Alive, alone while surrounded by those that cared for her: Chewbacca, Finn, General Leia, even Poe Dameron, who's keen overservations and easy smiles kept the darkness between systems from becoming ever-reaching. There was hope, here, but also an acute, echoing absence in her mind: a darkness that spilled open and yawned against the reach of stars that spun around their ships.
Rey's fingers hovered, uncertain. She closed the drawer, sitting back on her heels, her gaze level with the split halves of the lightsaber waiting for her, broken, on the table. More things inherited, and more challenges waiting for her as she skirted around them, fearing the obvious: that she couldn't do this alone.
"Ben?" Rey whispered, her breath little more than a puff that caught in her throat, breaking the single syllable, turning it unbearable in the silence that followed.
She remained there for a time, waiting, though the doorway that linked them remained shut — locked with a knee-jerk reaction to prevent herself from remaking that bridge between them. She'd slammed the door on him too hard, perhaps, and in retaliation, he'd slammed his back in her face. An impasse. Rey swallowed back the burning in her throat and rose, pushing back the tide of oblivion that threatened his absence in her mind, that shut him away from her, that cleaved them apart and broke their tentative companionship. Only death pushed people this far apart. Only death went where she couldn't follow.
They must be as good as dead to one another.
She moved across the room and back to her bed, tired in ways that had nothing to do with sleep, and everything to do with the restless, relentless humming in her bones that spoke of dark chasms and cold water; the silence in her head left behind in Ben's absence, and that strange, uncertain tightness that she fought back just enough to let the Force flow around her.
Rey sat and crossed her legs, folding them under herself, and shut her eyes — drowning in that hum, that sweet breath that smelled of the ocean and the island and glimpsed only the briefest shadow that rose in memory and dissipated as if on a breeze.