Apart from Poe, and then later, Rey, Ben hasn't ever had friends. He avoids most people, and because of his propensity to be defensive with biting words and cut-throat insults, most people have learned to avoid him too.

It's the perfect arrangement for someone with his level of contempt for the human species.

Or at least, it was, until very recently.

He never thought that he'd enjoy living with another person, or that he could be genuinely content with sleeping on a lumpy sofa bed, without his own space, with only a few of his own things.

But he had been. He'd liked living with Rey, a lot.

Too much, really. Because now that it's over, he misses it terribly. Misses her, misses Beebee.

This is best though, he tells himself, living on his own again. He has his bed and his things and his space.

Unfortunately, he has his solitude too, and his crippling, suffocating loneliness.

In the quiet, there is too much time to think. He does little else in the days after he moves back into his apartment.

He tries to do the things he used to enjoy when he lived alone, but he can't get lost in books anymore, he can't even watch sports. He doesn't give a shit who wins or who loses, it all seems so pointless now.

He drinks a lot, in those days when he doesn't have Beebee, but it doesn't touch the ache in his chest. It doesn't soothe the heartbreak.

If anything, he misses Rey more when he's drunk than he does when he's sober. At least when he's sober, he can lie to himself, he can tell himself this is good, this is necessary, time and separation will force him to move on, to get over her.

Drunk Ben can't fool himself, though. Drunk Ben knows it's a farce, that he's too far gone to ever come back from this, from her. He'll be even more of a wretched mess than he was before he knew her, and even less of a passable human being.

He's fucked.

The only silver lining he has left is that he can still see Beebee often. She's the only thing standing between him and a psych ward. She keeps him busy when she's around, which is healing, because it's almost what Poe had done for him in the past, when he'd broken his back. He'd distracted him with videogames and movies and board games.

Beebee keeps him distracted with diaper changes and child proofing and The Wiggles, but it's a distraction none the less. And, odd as it is, he enjoys it. He enjoys taking care of another human being, making her happy, spending time with her.

So much has changed in the month since Poe died. It feels like it was years ago and just yesterday all at once. When he finally meets with his therapist again, a few days after moving out, the man is visibly surprised at all the adjustments Ben has made in so short a time span, without a single outburst of his explosive temper.

It's progress, he says, but Ben thinks it was just Rey. Somehow, she helped him through the terrible grief of Poe's death, helped him stay calm just by being around, and even now, without her, he's far more subdued.

Or maybe he's just too miserable to do much of anything apart from mope.

He barely even wants to go to work, which is new for him, because Ben has never needed a job, he just liked having one.

Still, despite his desire to be anywhere else, his boss, Mr. Snoke, gives him even more responsibility. He says it will help take his mind off of whatever it is that has him so down lately. He lets him finally take a stab at directing, an opportunity he would have jumped at a month ago, and one he really couldn't give a shit about now if he tried.

And he doesn't try. So he, of course, blows it. The Hawks win what is dubbed as the "Best game of the year!" and no one at home gets to see it, because Ben hadn't been paying attention, and hadn't switched to the right camera angle in time.

Everyone in 'the box'-which is just another name for the room they're all forced to work in together during games, surrounded by screens and sat at a large desk covered in buttons—is pissed, and when Mr. Snoke enters the room later, they're all expecting to be yelled at.

Instead it's Ben, it seems, who will get the brunt of it this time. "Got a minute?" Mr. Snoke wonders.

And this is it, he thinks. He's going to be fired now.

He deserves it of course, but he'd rather quit than give Snoke the satisfaction of letting him go.

"I gave you a nice big break and you fucked it all up. What do you think, Solo, should I learn my lesson with you, or give you another chance?"

He has never known Snoke to give second chances, especially after a fuck up as big as the one he'd just made.

"The last one," Ben answers, but he isn't going to beg him for it.

"You do a better job than anyone here. You have a gift, I've seen it. Sports isn't just about memorizing plays and stats. It takes insight, feeling. I don't know what's going on in your personal life lately and I don't care. You've got talent, but you're all over the place. I need you to be in one place, Solo, can you do that?"

Ben isn't quite sure what that means, but nods his head anyway.

"Can you be in Phoenix?"

"Sir?" He asks, confused.

"A spot opened up, directing for the Sun's. They called and asked who I'd recommend. I told them you."

"Me?" After the utter failure of his first directing gig, Snoke is recommending him to do this full time? It has to be a joke, but the old man nods.

"It's a big beak kid. I'd take it if I were you. Might do you some good to get away from here for a while anyway. Let me know what you decide."

What Ben decides is that maybe Snoke has a point. Maybe it would do him some good to get away for six months.

He and his mother work out the logistics of how he'll keep his time with Beebee—while she tries her very best to talk him out of going at all—and after, he guesses that it's time to tell Rey.

Talking to her is always hard lately. He stumbles over words and can't meet her eyes. He misses the way they used to have easy conversations, the musical sound of her laugh, her dorky jokes, how she always talked with her hands.

He misses everything about her, if he's honest.

He shows up to her bakery to tell her the news, because somehow, the idea of saying goodbye there feels marginally easier. They won't be completely alone, like at home, and he can resist the urge to do something stupid, like try to hug her or let those three accursed words slip again.

She's surprised by his announcement, but she handles it well. He hadn't really expected differently.

Nothing about saying goodbye to her like this feels right though, there are so many other things he'd like to say.

Things like I'll miss you. Or, I'd rather stay.

But she doesn't ask him to, and he knows that she won't.

When he leaves, she wishes him luck.

She has no idea how badly he'll need it.

The night before he's supposed to leave, he gets no sleep.

There are a million reasons, but in the end, they all center on one person, just as every other aspect of his life does.

Rey.

He, as usual, can't stop thinking about her. Can't stop feeling like he doesn't want to leave, that maybe, just maybe, if he tried one last time to tell her how he felt, it might be enough.

But he can't. It took so much for him, with his host of anxiety issues, to put himself out there the first time.

And he'd been rejected, then.

He can't stop picturing her face that night, though. She hadn't looked like someone who was just letting him down easy. She'd looked afraid, upset, and she's looked as sad ever since.

Most of him believes that it's just wishful thinking, that he wants it so badly he's purposely misreading it. When he said goodbye to her, she'd looked shocked but nothing else, nothing to hint that she might actually miss him too.

But a small, nagging part of him also can't help wondering if maybe he's wrong. If maybe he's making a mistake.

By the time he arrives at the airport the following day, he still hasn't figured it out.

He pulls his laptop from his carry-on bag, to check his emails while he waits for his flight to be called.

Instead of opening his browser, though, he gets distracted by another icon on his screen. A video he took to send to his mother a few weeks back, of Beebee walking.

She's in nothing but a diaper and pink converse shoes, stumbling around like a drunk. Rey is in the background, cheering her on and for a moment, Ben had zoomed the camera in on her face, to capture the brilliant smile that was there, the first real one he'd ever seen from her.

She's strikingly beautiful, and it feels like a stab in the heart to see her looking so happy and peaceful. She hasn't looked that way since.

He wonders what made her that way in the first place. If, like him, it was the sense of accomplishment, the feeling that they were doing something right, that maybe Beebee losing her parents didn't mean she couldn't live a normal life.

But could she now?

Was flying to Arizona every two weeks really what was best for her?

And Rey, the way she looks in the video...she isn't smiling at Beebee then, but at him.

From beside him, an elderly woman gestures at the video on his screen and grins. "You have a beautiful family," she tells him, "You're very lucky."

And he is, isn't he? Or, at least, he was.

So, what the hell is he doing sitting here?

"Thank You," he tells her, hurriedly packing up his laptop and shouldering his backpack as he gets to his feet.

This may be the single stupidest thing he's ever done, and certainly it's the biggest risk he's ever taken. His heart pounds in his chest and his brain wars with itself over whether or not he's making the right choice, but his feet push forward anyway, right out of the doors and into a cab.

Ben does the only thing that feels right in that moment. The only thing that makes sense.

He goes home.