Hello everyone! I figured that, instead of making one mega chapter as I was originally intending, I'm going to post smaller chapters for the next three or so posts. I think its going to keep things more organized and make their separation feel even more drawn out. No Padme or Anakin in this chapter but there's a friendly face that I think we all miss. It's not just Padme and Anakin's love story that they are following anyway.

XOXO

Lights and shadows. Ripples and blinks. Broad shoulders atop a rigid back. Clenched fists hiding familiar, gently fingers. Walking, walking, walking away.

"Ben!" Rey saw his retreating form and called out to him before she could stop herself. Their surroundings were blurry but the sight of him was true.

"Yes, scavenger?" Thoughts, memories, their very surroundings were unclear but Ben knew he had to get away from her even though he was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. He turned to face her. Why was she the clearest thing? In reality and in his dreams, he only ever saw her.

"I thought you decided to stay," the silence filled in the unsaid words of with me. I thought you decided to stay with me.

Flashes of Poe and Rey together, both memories and Ben's self destructive fantasies, filled both of their minds. "Well, the pilot you ran into changed my mind."

"Ben, we need you!" I need you.

"We?"

"Yes." We the Resistance was what she meant, wasn't it?

"Oh, what about what you need?" He was tired of talking in circles with her.

Images of Ben's fingers on her skin as she wore his grandmother's dress, images of their lips pressed together innocently, hotly, curiously, hungrily, images of them laying in bed together filled both of their minds.

"I need? I don't know what you're talking about." Surroundings started to clear around them, shaping into a corridor.

Ben shook his head, fed up, "You probably don't." Did he imagine everything? Was this dream more real than his interactions with her outside of it? His words felt like his own but he didn't feel completely in control, the words all felt used before.

"And what precisely am I supposed to know?" Rey found herself asking. They felt the familiarity of an argument start to bubble between them.

"Come on! You want me to stay because of the way you feel about me." Images of Han Solo echoing the same words flashed between them.

Leia, young and in one of her many all white outfits responded as Rey did. "Yes. You're a great help to us. You're a natural leader."

"No! That's not it." Both men protested their movements shadowing one another, their frustrations and attractions mimicking each other, "Uh huh! Come on."

Rey and Leia stared. Their eyes blinked in understanding until the colors matched. When they laughed, the laugh came out as one sound instead of two and then the women became one instead of two. "You're imagining things," Rey said, shaking her braided head.
The closer Han and Ben moved to her, the closer they moved to each other until they also became one. "Am I?" Ben asked, looking down at her. "Then why are you following me? Afraid I was going to leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?"

Both of their eyes flickered to the other's mouth before Rey protested defensively, "I'd just as soon kiss a Wookie."

"I can arrange could use a good kiss!" Ben turned to leave but before he could, their surroundings began to ripple and shadow.

"Well, scavenger, looks like you managed to keep me around for a little while longer."

"I had nothing to do with it. This is your dream, after all."

"That's a good story. This is your dream too. I think you'd be having dreams about me whether we were bound together by the force or not."

"I don't know where you get your delusions, laser brain."

The darkness that surrounded Ben and Rey shifted into shadows and shadows into a white room. Ben looked down and saw a worn jacket covering a white tunic on his frame and trousers with an infamous stripe up each leg that were tucked into boots instead of his usual black garments. He pursed his lips and looked at Rey, who was standing in front of him. Rey was examining her white clothes before her hands went to her braided hair.

Their focuses were both pulled from their clothing change when Chewie's loud, good humored laugh burst through the silence. Ben found himself making a smirk at Chewie and saying, "Laugh it up, fuzzball. But you didn't see us alone in the south passage." His attention shifted to Poe, who was sitting near them in white robes, looking at Rey in curiosity. Ben felt jealousy jolt tightly in his chest and added possessively but with a masking humor, "She expressed her true feelings for me." Ben Solo might have worn a physical mask on occasion but Han Solo masked himself with humor and charm.

Rey's eyes narrowed, looking between Poe and Ben before indignantly sputtering, "My…! Why, you stuck up,... half witted… scruffy-looking… nerf-herder!" She felt her cheeks burning as her eyes shot daggers at Ben.

Ben made a face back at her, "Who's scruffy-looking?" His eyes moved back to Poe, "I must have hit pretty close to the mark to get her all riled up like that, huh, pilot?" Ben hardly had any control over his words in whatever godforsaken force-made fever dream he was experiencing but a certain pride and possessiveness puffed up his chest at his words, feeling the truth and belief in what he said. He affected Rey. In ways Poe never could.

A vulnerability clouded Rey's features, if only for a moment, before a mask of her own fell over her face. She focused on Poe even though her words were for Ben, "I guess you don't know everything about women yet." She leaned down and pressed her lips to Poe's out of spite and to prove a point. The kiss felt like nothing to her but Ben's reaction she could feel. She turned to face him. He schooled his features to not give him away but the tension rippling from his form told her that she hit her mark.

Their eyes locked before the shadows started taking over the room, distorting the dream until it was another place and time.

Green. Rey was surrounded by greenery. She didn't feel the presence of Ben anymore. She wondered if she pushed him away even more with the kiss she shared with Poe. It wasn't really her that kissed him, though. Her actions felt like her actions but it was as if everything was already scripted and set to happen. The dream felt like the ones she's had of Padme and Anakin. It was confusing and out of her control but more revealing and raw than anything else she had experience in real life. Still, Ben was gone again. Instead of feeling his presence, she felt another that she had only started getting to know before it was taken from her. Han Solo sat in front of her, amidst the plants and brush that surrounded her.

Her eyes searched his face, never having seen him young before. She saw what Leia fell in love with. She saw much more Ben in him than either of them probably care to admit.

"You love him," Han said. She could almost hear Ben's voice behind Han's. Maybe he was still there, hidden somewhere deep inside his father. "Don't you?"

"Yes," Rey answered and knew the response was absolutely her own.

Rey and Ben woke up in their separate beds, both feeling very alone and unsatisfied. One filled with sadness and bitterness so overwhelming that all that came out was anger. One filled with guilt and confusion so overwhelming that all that came out was listlessness.

It had been ten days.