The first time it happened, Rey was borderline delirious.
The cooling metal walls of her AT-AT home were nothing but a distant haze as she curled around her thin and ragged blanket, shivers racking her body. Though her teeth chattered incessantly, she knew it wasn't because she was cold; no, rather it was because she was too warm.
While her limbs froze, her face and chest were blazing with an unnatural heat, her body desperately trying to burn away whatever virus it had picked up at Niima Outpost.
Another shiver quaked through her and Rey squeezed her eyes shut, aches and pains flaring all through her body. Faintly, a voice in her head told her that she should get up, that she needed to try and make one of the sickness-remedies a drifter had been kind enough to teach her years ago. The concoction would help, she knew it would. However, at that moment she couldn't bring herself to move, her body far too heavy and her mind far too foggy to perform the steps necessary for the task. She curled in on herself further, inwardly cursing because she hadn't thought to make it earlier. Hadn't thought that it would get this bad.
It was then that she felt the persistent hollowness that resided in her chest expand, suddenly and hopelessly. It expanded and expanded until it threatened to engulf her entirely in its inky blackness. There was no one to help her, no one to care for her. For almost as long as she could remember there hadn't been, and there certainly wasn't now. There was only her. Rey drew in a sharp and shallow intake of breath, a fever-driven panic washing over her.
What if this kept getting worse?
What if she didn't get better this time?
What if she died?
Would she die alone?
Would she die before her parents returned?
The trembling intensified and Rey felt her thoughts spiral, her anxiety level steadily rising with the same intensity as the sweltering Jakku sun. Her heart began to beat erratically and her breaths only came out in unsteady gasps. Along with her panic, her despair continued to grow—grow and grow and grow, threatening to overtake her, to consume her entirely until—
All at once, it stopped.
The storm within her suddenly calmed and the room around her grew quiet, the air permeated with a comforting stillness. Slowly, Rey felt the tight bands of muscle and sinew all along her body begin to loosen themselves, a surprising exhale of relief escaping her lips. The death-grip she had on a fistful of blanket began to relax as well and Rey found herself briefly cracking her eyes open through the haze. What she saw was another pair of irises staring back at her, and not just that, but a face as well. The tiniest gasp flew past her lips.
The features of the face were masculine and sharp, yet at the same time almost boyish, still touched by the ghost of fading adolescence. He was staring back at her with exhausted and slightly wide eyes, his bewilderment undercut by a calm and engulfing sort of misery. She knew the feeling.
Seeing him there, his face mere inches from her own, was somehow surprising and expected all at once; as if her mind did not know him or how he had come to be there, but her soul did. Her soul did not wish to share this information with her, but it did possess it and as a result, seemed to welcome his presence with open arms.
They both laid there in silence for a while, the only sound in the room being their quiet and slow breaths. It was then that Rey's muddled mind caught up with itself and began to offhandedly catalog little details about her visitor. Like the slope of his nose or the beauty marks that drew constellations across his face, or even the way his pitch-black hair was splayed across her poor excuse of a pillow.
He was dressed in all black, she noted, arms wrapped around himself as if to keep warm or shield him from some invisible wind she could not perceive. The thought of it sent another feverish shudder through her and without thinking Rey practically leapt forward.
Impulsively, and perhaps a little desperate, she wrapped her arms around his torso and buried her face in his shoulder, sighing a little as her hot forehead made contact with the icy cold skin of his neck. The breath he sucked in at the sudden contact was barely audible, as if he hadn't believed she was real until that moment. He made no protests about it though, simply allowing his tense arms to slowly relax around her.
She all but melted into his frame and he even drew her closer after a beat, each somehow in desperate need of the warmth the other provided. There was something else there too, something more than shared body heat or mutual comfort. There was a gentle hum, not quite audible but definitely there. It passed through them and encircled them, wrapping them in a cocoon of unseen energy.
Rey felt the warring temperatures in her body start to equalize, leaving her neither cold nor hot, but contently warm. Her phantom seemed to become more comfortable as well and even bordered on sleep, despite the fact he still clung to her as if she were the only source of heat on the entire planet.
Rey didn't mind it, welcomed it even, and she soon found her eyes drifting shut, the steady thrum of his pulse point by her ear slowly lulling her to sleep.
The scavenger awoke the next morning feeling as though she had slept for days. She stared up at the rusted and sunlit ceiling, deciding that it was a nice feeling. The next thing that registered in her perception was that she felt exponentially better, the only traces of her previous sickness being a few faint aches she had yet to shake off. Unconsciously, Rey rolled over onto her side and outstretched her arm, the open space beside her suddenly feeling very empty. She could not quite put her finger on why, but the feeling remained.
Her memories of the previous night were fuzzy and fragmented, quickly receding into the depths of her subconscious. There was a part of her that thought for a moment that perhaps there had been someone there with her, some fractured memory of being held so tightly and securely bubbling to the surface of her mind.
Rey quickly brushed it aside, knowing that it was quite impossible. She decided that it had been nothing more than a fever-induced dream.
There hadn't been anybody for years.
...
The Captain's quarters of the Millennium Falcon were much more accommodating and comfortable than anything Rey had ever slept in before.
The blankets, though far from new, were warm and thick, the pillows beneath her head still possessing a great deal of fluff. The mattress itself was a bit lumpy but Rey barely noticed, too preoccupied with the comfort of sleeping on an actual mattress instead of the cobbled-together cots she had been making do with her whole life.
The gentle hum of the Falcon's engines filtered into the room, bringing an odd sense of peace along with it. It was then that it occurred to Rey just how tired she really was. She had not slept since leaving Jakku and it was finally beginning to catch up with her.
She closed her eyes and burrowed under the blankets, the aches and pains from her fight in the snowy forest of the Starkiller Base finally rearing their head. An image of Kylo Ren's bisected face flickered through her mind and Rey caught herself shuddering.
She couldn't fathom why the memory affected her in such a way. She did not care for him, in fact, she told herself she downright despised him and that she would kill him if they ever met again. Yet still, something about the images of that crimson and searing wound left an odd twist in her gut. Something about the thought of it being inflicted by her own hand felt wrong.
Rey shook her head sharply and curled tightly around herself. It didn't matter, it just didn't, it would all be over soon and she would never have to see Kylo Ren again.
Along with Chewie, the young scrapper was on her way to Ahch-To to retrieve Luke Skywalker. She would give him back his lightsaber and he would return to the Resistance and aid them. And then, if she were fortunate, maybe she could get him to teach her more about the Force, maybe she could use it to find her parents. They could go and live somewhere nice once peace was restored to the galaxy.
It was all very simple in Rey's mind, all very clear. She had a goal that she was determined to achieve and a vision of the future that was almost tangible. Rey comforted herself with these thoughts as she began to drift, her mind lapsing into the misty aether between wakefulness and sleep.
That was when she felt it again, the familiar presence that she could only ever recall in dreams. It had been so long and she could scarcely remember his face, but her soul once again recognized him. Once again greeted him like they had known each other for eons.
The sounds around her fell away, as though someone had opened a window and they had all escaped. The Captain's quarters now felt a million hyperspace-jumps away and Rey was suddenly staring at the turned back of a lone figure. He was laying beside her but he wasn't asleep, his breathing far too deliberate and strained. Even in the low light, she could tell he was tense, so very tense, muscles rigid beneath his black nightshirt.
There had always been a misery about him, a misery that echoed her own, but there was something more pronounced about it now, something raw. As though an old wound that had never quite healed had been carelessly reopened.
He was in pain, he was suffering.
Rey had never spoken to the phantom of her dreams before, but as she laid there in the stillness, staring at the solid wall of wound up tension, she honestly considered it. However, in the end, her own apprehension got the better of her. She didn't want to break the spell, didn't want to risk him vanishing away as he always seemed to. Instead, she decided to use the wordless language they had before, to speak to him in the only way she really knew how.
Delicately, Rey adjusted herself and inched closer, one arm sliding under his and coming up around his shoulder. She then laid her head atop his, nose nuzzled in the mop of raven-black hair.
He was rigid as she did all this, as if still wary of any sort of contact. However, he soon began to relax in her embrace, his hand somehow finding hers in the darkness. He gripped it tightly and desperately, breathing out a heavy release.
He allowed himself to relax, and for that fleeting and brief moment, he felt safe and cared for. He was at peace.
...
Nothing had happened the way it was supposed to. Not a single thing.
Luke Skywalker was gone and for good this time.
The resistance was still in shambles.
Kylo Ren had not returned to the light as she had foreseen.
And to top it off, Rey was now the only Jedi in all of the galaxy and everyone was looking to her for some kind of guidance that she did not possess.
These were the thoughts that troubled her mind as she laid in the cold and dark cabin of the new resistance base. And kriff was it cold. The world they now found themselves on was nearly desolate and isolated, the planet a few clicks too far from its orbiting star to be even vaguely comfortable. They were positioned in one of the warmer regions but that didn't change the fact that the nights were miserable.
Rey pulled the thin and scratchy Resistance-issued blanket tighter around herself, desperately missing the bed on the Falcon at that moment. She resigned herself to another uncomfortable sleep cycle and closed her eyes, trying in vain to silence her loud and overlapping thoughts.
That was when he showed up, of course it was.
Rey felt the bond open, his unmistakable presence flooding the room. Annoyed, her eyes snapped open, preparing for another verbal spar. The sight she was met with was...not what she expected. She expected to see him standing across the room, arms cross and amber eyes burning with the cold intensity they had the days following the battle of Crait.
That wasn't it at all.
Instead, Ben was laying less than an arms reach away, clad in what she assumed was his own sleeping attire. His expression was far softer and open than she had thought it would be, laced with a bit of surprise and something else...something hauntingly familiar.
Stunned, the thoughts of anger and yelling momentarily faded away as Rey found herself swept up in the odd feeling of having lived this moment before. She didn't know when or how, but it was far too familiar to simply brush off. She held his gaze in silence and he did the same, neither daring to speak because they could tell this was a feeling they both shared.
Curiously, she searched the depths of her mind for the cause of whatever this was and he decided to help, doing the same with his own. One of them must have found it because after a moment it all came rushing back.
The memories, buried in their subconscious and laced in the Force came bursting to the forefront. And suddenly, it all clicked into place. Those stolen moments and lonely nights all arranged themselves in a clear picture, illuminating the truth that had always been there.
She remembered the first time it had happened, remembered thinking she was going to die. Rey was thrown a fragment of memory, and it occurred to her that he had thought he was as well.
While she had been burning up, he had been lying on the ground of some ice-covered planet, freezing to death as Snoke forced him through his brutal training regime. It was very likely that one or both could have died had the Force not connected them.
It was then that the magnitude of their bond truly dawned on her, the depth in which it was woven into them becoming clear. Snoke was a liar because even he wasn't powerful enough to have created something as strong as this, something as completely binding as the connection between them.
And suddenly, as reality truly sunk in, Rey felt all the anger and hurt come rushing back, made worse by the revelation of how deeply they were actually intertwined. Ben didn't need the bond to figure out what she was feeling now, her expression clearly painting the picture for him.
He opened his mouth to speak but snapped it shut when Rey suddenly and swiftly turned her back to him. That didn't surprise him, but what she did next truly left him puzzled. She moved back until she was pressed flush against his chest, taking his arm and pulling it around her with a disgruntled huff.
Rey might have been angry with him but she was not about to pass up the opportunity to steal some of his body heat, not when the window across from her was already completely frosted over on the outside. And besides, it was now clear they were long past the point of pretending this was something new to them. It wasn't, and it seemed to her that the least he could do was repay the favor she had unknowingly bestowed upon him by not letting her freeze to death too.
Ben remained perfectly still and frozen for a moment, never having known there was such a thing as angry cuddling. Then, something in his brain finally kicked back on and he soon realized (with slight panic) just how cold she really was. Without any further prompting, he pulled her closer to his chest, his arms wholly encircling her.
"What the hell, Rey. You're like an icicle," Ben hissed under his breath, reaching down to pull one of his own heavier blankets over them both.
There was a part of him that wondered about the logistics of the blankets now occupying two places simultaneously, but those thoughts were quickly dashed away when she actually replied to him.
"That's what happens when you've been chased to the far reaches of the galaxy," Rey bit out, though it ended up sounding a bit more melodramatic than she had intended.
Ben wanted to tell her that it wasn't entirely true, that she didn't have to run and that she could come to him any day or hour and he would happily receive her. He wanted to tell her that it was all he really wanted at this point.
In the end, he decided to hold his tongue, instead focusing on rubbing his hands along her arms to warm them. He knew where that conversation led and he had neither the desire nor the energy to go down that path tonight. He just wanted to sleep; sleep and to keep her from freezing.
A silence had settled over them, yet, by some miracle, it wasn't a tense one. There was still so much to be said, so many problems to deal with and obstacles to be faced, but through it all there was still a fundamental understanding between them.
"You're not alone."
"Neither are you."
They had meant what they said in that hut. It was a promise, a vow, one they both intended to keep.
Rey finally began to warm and Ben shifted to get more comfortable, his arm snaking around her waist and his lips pressing gently against the hairline of her temple. In response, Rey's shoulders suddenly went slack beneath his embrace, as though it had required some great defiant effort to keep the tension there. She let out a heavy sigh and reached up to hold the arm that was curled underneath her shoulder and over her chest. She pulled his arm closer to her and tucked it beneath her chin, unconsciously rubbing soothing circles across his skin.
Ben planted a few more kisses, one atop her head and another on the shell of her ear. Neither of them spoke for a while, and Ben resigned himself to the quiet. However, it was short-lived, the words that next cut through the air so quiet and strained he almost missed them.
"I'm sorry," Rey all but choked out, sounding as though she was on the verge of tears. "I didn't want this to happen, any of this. I was just so sure it would all go the way I thought it would, so sure it was simple. Stubbornly so."
Ben was taken back by the sudden shift in her tone and soon found himself leaning over to peer at her face. She was in fact crying, fresh tear tracks streaking down her cheeks and seeping into the pillows. He felt his gut twist, knowing that he was, in one way or another, the cause of her distress.
"If anybody should be apologizing it's me, sweetheart," he answered with an almost self-loathing inflection, his arms tightening around her. "I didn't—I didn't handle the situation well at all. I was being an idiot," he muttered, his voice now muffled by her hair.
"I wasn't exactly being diplomatic about it," Rey admitted with a slight sniffle, rolling back over to look at him. "I didn't even try to talk, I just went straight for the saber. I just—I panicked. I'm sorry, Ben," she whispered, reaching up to touch the side of his face.
"And I wasn't exactly giving you a lot of options," he replied, his hand covering her own. "I'm sorry too."
A quiet revelation echoed across the bond, surprising Ben a little. He wasn't sure if he had been meant to hear it, but he had, and they both knew it.
"But you did want to take my hand," he murmured quietly, his brow furrowed. "Why didn't you?"
There was no malice in his question or his voice, just genuine curiosity.
Rey looked at him for a moment and then replied. "You could've killed me, why didn't you?"
An image of her back in the throne room flickered through his mind, bringing along with it the white-hot surge of panic he had felt when Snoke had ordered him to kill her.
Ben wasn't sure if her words were meant as a challenge or a way to change the subject, but he answered truthfully nonetheless.
"You know why," he told her, his voice resonating clearly in the darkness.
Her gaze softened, and she moved her other hand up, fingers gently tracing the contour of his cheekbone, pausing to linger on the fading line of his scar.
"I did want to take your hand," she admitted just as he dipped his head down and pressed his forehead against hers. "Ben's hand," she all but whispered, the emphasis on his name awakening a strange sensation in his chest.
And suddenly he understood, he understood why she had rejected his offer and closed the door. It wasn't about the galaxy or the politics or anything else. It was about him. She had wanted him for who he truly was, not the person he was desperately trying to be. Just as he had wanted her for who she truly was, lineage and place in the story be damned.
He finally understood, he truly did, and he knew what he had to do. In an act of impulse, (or perhaps it was him making a promise) he tilted his chin up and pressed his lips to hers.
...
Rey felt as if she had been run over by a speeder, or perhaps even trampled by a luggabeast. Her limbs felt heavy, heavier than they ever had before, and it was as if every last ounce of energy in her body had been bled dry.
Weakly, she cracked her eyes open, Ben's crumpled and unconscious form there to greet her. White-hot tendrils of lightning arced above them, ascending skyward and tearing apart everything in it's path.
Rey reached out, her hand brushing against his as it lay motionless on the cold stone floor. He jolted the moment she touched him, eyes flying open, wide and aware. He let out a pained groan an instant later, the effects of the lightning taking its toll.
Somehow, Rey found the strength to move and slowly drag herself over to him. He managed to lift one of his arms, helping to pull her the rest of the way. Her head dropped unceremoniously onto his chest.
The bond stirred weakly between them, and she could tell they were feeling the same thing. They were both in pain, both afraid for the other. Afraid that Palpatine had been right, and that their coming together would spell their doom, and subsequently, doom for the rest of the galaxy. Rey dragged in a labored breath, hands balling into fists against his shirt.
He's wrong; a single thought entered her mind.
Rey suddenly lifted her gaze to look up at Ben, a new strength awakening in his eyes. His hand found its way to the back of her neck, fingers threading into the loose strands of hair there.
"He's wrong," he repeated, verbally this time, his tone firm and reassuring.
At his words, Rey felt her own strength begin to grow. "He's wrong," she echoed, a fiery determination set ablaze within her.
And oh, how true it was. He was wrong about her and about Ben, he was wrong about their bond. No, more than that, Palpatine wasn't just wrong, he was a liar. A liar like Snoke and all the others before him. Their coming together would not be their undoing, it would be their salvation.
Rey felt the connection wax strong between them, filling them both with an almost preternatural strength and resolve. A single thought resonated across the bond, echoing back and forth between them like a never-ending feedback loop.
Together.
The thought existed in both their minds simultaneously. It was a promise, a vow, and a plan of action. Rey gave a gentle nod and Ben mirrored it. In a blink they called their sabers to them, rising to their feet and crossing the blades as they hefted them high above their heads.
They weren't just connected, they were the dyad, and they were going to end this.
...
Rey was awakened by gentle rays of light, golden slivers peeking through the window and scattering themselves all across the room.
She shifted ever so slightly where she lay on her back, careful not to jostle the sleeping form that was resting on her own. Rey smiled down gently at the mess of hair that was currently using her chest and shoulder as a pillow, lifting her arms to slowly curl her fingers into the soft black strands. Though he was sound asleep, Ben's arms still held onto her tightly, solid and reaffirming as they wrapped around her sides and shoulders.
Rey supposed she probably should have felt squished beneath his much heavier frame, but she didn't. On the contrary, it was actually quite comforting and assuring.
It reminded her that he was there, honestly and truly there. After years of galaxy and void stretching between them, bridged only by their connection and the Force, they were together at last. Together with nothing and no one to stand between them. They could rest now, rest and plan their future together. Rey beamed down at Ben as he remained tranquilly oblivious, his features so relaxed and soft in the pale morning light.
The room was steadily growing brighter as the sun began its journey across the sky, but Rey decided she wasn't ready to get up just yet. Wasn't ready to relinquish the comfort that enveloped her. The best part was that she didn't have to, not anymore. She could stay as long as she liked and not have to worry about him disappearing. Not have to worry about them being once again torn apart by a war or some unspeakable evil. He was with her, and he was her's, now and forever.
Rey reached out and closed the curtain with the Force, plunging the room into a slumberous darkness. She sighed contently and pressed her lips into Ben's hairline, closing her eyes and allowing sleep to once again reclaim her.