XIV. Epilogue

1. Rey and Ben go and see the galaxy…

I loved you before I was born.
It doesn't make sense, I know.

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.
And I've lived longing
for your ever look ever since.

LI-YOUNG LEE – I Loved You Before I Was Born

Their first port of call was Limaka, a small planet with extreme temperature swings, below thirty at night with tons and tons of snow, and forty degrees at day melting it all away again, humid and misty and brimming over with lush plants of every imaginable colour. They had midnight snowball fights, dozed under gigantic leaves at noon and went swimming in hot pools of crystal-clear water. Rey was so enthralled that they delayed their departure two or three times, but her appetite was whetted for more and after some weeks they left and went to J88 Beta, a most inhospitable planet which boasted 37 moons more than worth the journey.

"It seems as if they were dancing all around us, don't you think?"

The thought hadn't occurred to him before, but infected by her enthusiasm, he suddenly saw it too.

"Have you ever danced?"

"Good heavens, no. You?"

"Not really. I don't think it counts as dancing."

"Now you've made me curious."

So she showed him her memories of the only cantina in Niima Outpost boasting a music box. It had been not much more than a dirty hole in the ground where desperate people got unspeakably drunk, but she had liked the music, and sometimes, people had danced. Hidden away in a dark corner, she had given it a try, too, but had whirled around so hard that she had lost her balance, crashed into a pile of crates – and been kicked out ten seconds later.

She smiled with the recollection, but found him gaping at her. "That was you?"

"What?"

"That little girl in this memory – about that high, freckles, button nose – that was you, right?"

"I can't see myself in my own memories, can I? But there certainly was no other little girl, so I reckon it must have been me. Why?"

"I knew it! I always, always knew it! I knew your face was familiar!"

"What are you talking about?"

So he told her about the recurring dreams he had had for almost as long as he could remember, of some strange child that he was sure he had never seen outside of a dream. At some point, he had simply assumed she was a symbol of the Force, because he had started dreaming of her around that time that it had truly awakened in him.

"How old where you then?"

"Four."

"But I was barely born then. I mean – I surely didn't look like – however I did look." (She had never looked into a mirror before she was sixteen or so, and that had been a coincidence.)

He closely observed her face. "Nevertheless. I know it was you. Your eyes haven't changed at all."

She contemplated this and got an idea, so she showed him a memory of one of her dreams of her little rebel pilot. "Recognise him?"

He laughed. "Why, yes. That's me. Ada got the jumpsuit from somewhere – I wanted to be a pilot and wore it all the time…"

"Ha! That is my little rebel pilot," she answered. "You were my little rebel pilot! I always wondered why he was so short and why his helmet was so huge."

"The model for your doll?"

"You remember that?"

"Of course."

"I've dreamt of him – of you – so often. When things got rough, my little rebel pilot always pulled me through, he – you – would just fly away from all worries and take me with you."

"You did the same for me," he said quietly. She could sense his movement, which was echoed in his smile. "I am so happy you came for me."

"So am I…" She shot him a broad grin. "What do you think – shall we dance?"

"I don't think I can dance."

"How hard can it be? Come on."

"In here?"

She looked around the rather narrow cockpit – the hold wasn't much bigger either, and the ship's storerooms were too low for him to stand in. So she suggested they put on masks and go outside.

"We haven't even got music," he objected weakly.

"What's it matter! Those moons have no music either, and still they're dancing!"

Outside, she snatched his hands and they started whirling around merrily, faster and faster, harder and harder, giggling and gasping, until a sudden rift in the ground prompted their instant take-off.

x X x

2. …And Realise Their Full Potential…

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward... and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

WALT WHITMAN – A child said, What is the grass?

This may be the right moment to mention the fate of some of the other people they'd met. Captain Peavey and his crew had collectively evacuated from their stations before the Supremacy blew up. He became captain on a cruise liner, while Lieutenant Mitaka joined his homeworld's diplomatic corps, Lieutenant Draxo became a technical consultant with the successor organisation of Sienar-Jaemus and Sub-Lieutenant Karver followed his true calling and joined a band. Udu-u teamed up with Snaps and Nath, together they founded a telecommunication company. Bixby on the other hand threw his training to the wind and eventually became a croupier in Coruscant's most prestigious casino. Meanwhile, Sub-Lieutenant Egolu became a cook.

It should be noted that Ben and Rey didn't just idly journey through the galaxy. They also spent lots of time with the ancient Jedi texts, by and by deciphering their hidden secrets, and practised what they always called 'old Jedi tricks' even though they invented most of them themselves.

Some of these tricks allowed them to visit all those places that Ben couldn't have dared to go to otherwise for the legions of dedicated bounty hunters, be it because he altered his appearance to a degree that made him absolutely unrecognisable (his favourite was his disguise as an elderly Mon Calamari, hers a Patitite which she could carry around in her pocket), or because Rey simply projected or teleported there, which soon cost her no more serious effort at all as long as Ben kept on holding her hands during the process, adding his strength and keeping her in balance.

Because the ghost of Luke Skywalker, steeped in the Force as he was,

Rey often used her ability to project in order to see her friends which over time became his as well. He saw them often enough when looking in on Chewbacca and C-3PO. As a matter of fact, Chewbacca and Poe, Finn and Rose had gone and used the Millennium Falcon to establish a flourishing import/export business ("go on, call it what it is," Ben commented with a grin when she first told him, "they're smugglers. No need to mince words.") based in Takodana.

After a while, the bounty hunters ceased to be a problem; they had defeated all of them with ever increasing ease, style even, which served as much as a deterrent as the fact that those offering a fortune for his head began losing interest, and the sums to be got became lower and lower – not worthwhile losing an arm for, that is. This gave them far greater freedom of movement, which was helpful as every now and then, their intervention was called for.

They were happy to see that, all in all, the galaxy seemed to have found some modus vivendi that finally allowed for peace, stability, unity and progress, and that the laws he had spent so much time on devising had prevailed in most inhabited worlds. They were even known as the Laws of Solo – a reference to Leia Organa Solo, in fact, who would have been very satisfied with them indeed.

But sometimes some scoundrels took it into their heads regardless to get more cake than they should, so to speak, and if they couldn't be kept at bay otherwise, Rey and Ben put matters right, swiftly, effectively, and with far more wisdom than each of them would have possessed individually, because together, they were much more than the sum of their parts.

They still fought, but without anger or bitterness. If one could read what was going through the other one's head as well as the feelings in their hearts, it was inevitable to reach an amicable conclusion, since there could be no misunderstandings, no repressed anger or hurt, only a rational and benevolent weighing of the circumstances that took the other's point of view as much into account as one's own.

x X x

3. … And Something Else Entirely

I don't think Home's a place anymore. I think it's a state of mind.

BARBIE – Sandman

It had taken quite a number of strange weather phenomena, inexplicable natural disasters and three or four ceilings crashing down before Ben and Rey had realised that sometimes something strange happened when they touched. They had learnt to control it to a certain degree, even make good use of it, for example for safe teleportation. When they danced, full-grown trees would pop out of the ground on otherwise barren planets, spring tides suddenly surge through dry-as-dust deserts, planets spontaneously change their rate of rotation only to afford them the sight of a spectacular sunset or dawn.

They were watching one of those now, the fingers of her left hand tightly entwined with his right, marvelling at the twin suns slowly emerging over the horizon of the otherwise quite dreary planet of Patoch and painting the sky in a gorgeous palette of golden oranges, husky pinks and lavender.

"No matter how often I see it – I still think it's breathtaking."

"It is."

"Don't you think it's breathtaking?"

"I do. I just said so."

She turned towards him, her head tilted. "Yes, but I can tell your mind's not quite in it."

He found that she was right, but that it wasn't the beautiful dawn that was at fault here. He had simply been distracted.

'Distracted by what though?'

He couldn't really say, all the more when her gaze bored into his, with the suns' golden-red reflections glowing in her luminous eyes, which were absorbing him with the power of black holes and sapping him of any rational thought. The suns, as if appreciating that a whole planet had changed its course for them to be admired, did their all to appear to best advantage but were no longer much noticed by either of the two spectators.

Every day, every minute that Ben and Rey had spent together had closer aligned their minds, so much so that they only spoke for the pleasure of hearing the other one's voice, not because it was any longer necessary. Therefore Rey knew that – while considering himself the happiest creature in all the galaxies – there was something that he still wanted; she felt exactly the same vague need in herself, and was just as clueless about it.

'Come on. What is it?'

He smiled faintly. 'But you know that I don't know.'

'But how can that be? You always know everything.' They both chuckled. 'What is it that you want, Ben Solo?'

"For a start, I'd be content if this moment never ended," he said, unaware that the planet Patoch obliged and stopped rotating altogether, only so a young man could keep on admiring the reflections of two rising suns in the eyes of a young woman. "And you? What do you want?"

She was as arrested by the look in his black eyes as he was by hers; they had always had that effect on her, even when she had first seen his face in an interrogation cell, before she had discovered their true gentleness, their sparkling splendour when he laughed, before she had understood that he had a special smile reserved for no one else but her which made his gaze brim over with affection and adoration.

Not thinking twice (suddenly there was no need to think twice), she replied, "You."

"But you already have me." He shot her a grin. "You had me the first time you fired a blaster at me."

Well, yes – and no. She had suddenly become aware of his presence in a way she had never really consciously registered before, the heat radiating from his body, his scent that reminded her of snow and rain and forests and the sea, the fact that he was so tall that she had to crane her neck in order to look into his face when he was standing so close, the fact that the hairs on her arms and in the small of her neck seemed electrified and her skin tingled just by looking at him, looking at these mesmerising eyes, looking at that soft mouth that always seemed a little pouty even when he was smiling like now. She raised his hand to brush her lips against his knuckles, whispering, "All of you."

The sensation this caused him wiped the grin off and thoroughly bowled him over, she could tell; to be quite honest, she wasn't any less befuddled, all the more when her eyes once more found his with the well-established dazzling effect this inevitably had on her. Without any conscious thought of what she was doing, she gave in to impulse and drew him closer, then slung her free arm around his neck and pulled his face down to her.

'What are you waiting for? Kiss me already!' she thought and startled, he obliged as a matter of course, faintly wondering why the idea hadn't occurred to him before. It seemed so perfectly obvious all of a sudden.

At the other end of the galaxy – on Tatooine, to be precise – an out-of-control class 5 freighter crashed into the ground, demonstrating the results of the age-old experiment in which an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object. Ben was thunderstruck by the sensation of a thousand bolts of lightning striking him through the magnificent woman before him as he pressed his mouth against her mellow lips, liquefying his entire body and fusing them together as completely as their minds already were. The happily unpopulated ice planet Hoth 16 went through a sudden, unprecedented and very, very speedy phase of global warming which melted all its glaciers and was the reason for Hoth 16 henceforth being known as an oceanic planet. Meanwhile on Hoth 2, and since we're speaking of glaciers, a couple of massive ice shields broke off due to the innocent machinations of two infamous butterflies (between them, they had caused uncounted thunderstorms, none of which they had any idea of). In Mos Eisley, the heretofore universally unsuccessful composer Ela Xool was struck by an inspiration so powerful that the resulting opus 'Twilight of the Gods' would be played eons after Xool's death still. Due to an enormous fluke in its plate tectonics, the planet Kaller witnessed the birth of a brand-new yet instantaneously colossal mountain range rising out of a formerly level landscape and changing not only the planet's face forever but also its weather systems and future tourist trade. On Sotol, the single, gigantic bud of the eponymous Sotol flower, which blooms only once every century, jumped its natural schedule and spontaneously unfolded its petals, blossomed and craned towards the two suns in the skies above. The planet Mustafar began shaking under a series of earthquakes so forceful that they moved the planet's axis about 18 degrees. Underneath the now forever rising suns of Patoch, Rey couldn't have told where her own body ended and his began, a state exacerbated by the force with which he pulled her against himself and with which she pressed against him in turn. On Hoth 2, the broken-off ice accelerated with rapid speed and grew in mass and volume into avalanches of unheard-of proportions, razing anything in their way. In the opera house of Coruscant, after hours of laborious practise, famous conductor R.V. Amahan perished on a note of perfect happiness, unnoticed by any member of his orchestra as they finally reached the purest harmony ever heard. Aboard the abandoned star destroyer Endeavour, the dormant hyperspeed reactor inexplicably initiated a chain-reaction of cold fusion. The grounds trembled on Patoch as Ben didn't only experience the most earth-shaking sensation he had ever felt, which were multiplied to boundlessness because he also felt her feelings of dissolving underneath his touch, his caresses, the minutest of his every move while her mind tapped his and was infected by his rapture on top of her own and vice versa to the power of infinite. The orange skies over Yon Lo M'non 2 turned dark blue and were illuminated by millions of shooting stars, an event so startling to the unevolved inhabitants that it was the beginning of a cult. Aboard the abandoned star destroyer Endeavour, the hyperspeed reactor's cold fusion reached critical mass, emitting frenzied warning signals that were heard by absolutely no one. Hoth 16, suddenly landed with a gigantic ocean fed by more and more melting ice, saw the first (of many) colossal tsunamis in its history which rose to a height of one hundred metres and swallowed everything in its way for ten thousands of kilometres. In the Omega-Transame system, every single star died, resulting in a never before seen series of majestic supernovae, an extended and brilliant event that could be observed with the naked eye through half of the galaxy, including on Patoch – where it remained utterly unperceived. On Ivarujar one hundred and twenty-one volcanoes spit lava bombs into the darkened skies before erupting in earnest. Aboard the abandoned star destroyer Endeavour, the hyperspeed reactor detonated so violently that some of its pieces would later be found on planets six light years away. In the R77-81B system, the titanic twin suns which had circled each other since the beginning of time, crashed into each other. Far, far away from any known galaxy, a singularity popped into existence and went off with a big bang. And back on Patoch, on the verge of losing consciousness Rey sank onto the chest of her equally exhausted lover who enfolded her in his arms with the last morsels of strength he possessed.

Later, though she couldn't have guessed whether it were minutes or millennia, still panting and burying her face in his hair as she was weakly nibbling on his earlobe, she whispered without speaking, 'Now we both know!'

He just laughed and tightened his embrace on her. There was no need to answer because she was in his mind as much as he was in hers – both of which were perfectly aligned in this moment, radiant and resonant like a note hanging in the air after a celestial chord was plucked. Neither of them had read the sort of books which would have informed them that right about now was the perfect time to finally swear undying love, but it didn't matter because one only needs to say so if there is no better way of conveying the message, and with the same certainty with which she knew that she had two eyes and a nose in her face, Rey knew for a fact that he had waited his whole life for her and would never ever leave her again and that he needed her to be complete as he needed air to breathe, just as there was not the shadow of a doubt in Ben's soul that she was finally at home, that he was the belonging she had always been so desperate to discover. There was no need to say anything, really, but worlds to be born and suns to perish. And while they never had any children during their endlessly long lives, they begot countless universes.

x X x

October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale.

Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained to April, "of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content."

NEIL GAIMAN – Sandman

Thank you for reading, I'd be chuffed if you let me know how you liked it.