A/N: Well, this is it...the LAST chapter! *sniff!* I want to thank everyone who read/faved/followed from the bottom of my heart, your support is much appreciated!
A special shout-out to everyone who has left me a review, it's been such a joy to read all of those and each and every one of them made writing this story so much more gratifying: THANKS!
I'm also super grateful to my amazing beta Emmeth Nigh, your feedback has been invaluable and your friendship even more so: thank you so much!
I hope you'll all like this final chapter and, as always, I'd love to get your thoughts on it! :D
CHAPTER 33
"E-Even your sor-sorcery...won't be fast enough to...to stop the bolt spli-splitting her skull..." Hux sneered through his ragged breathing—wincing mid-word now and then as if he was sporting enough injuries and bruises to make the process of speaking particularly painful. He increased the pressure of the barrel of his blaster pistol against her temple.
Rey frantically searched Ben's eyes for the hint of a plan—for some sign that their bond still existed. His tired gazed flicked subtly to the joint linking his shoulder to his torso. There was no blood. No gaping wound. Instead, a tiny dart had embedded itself deeply into the vulnerable nook.
'It's...It's the same tech...tech as the collar...' Ben's voice sounded faint and far away in her head—as if he needed to shout it up at her from the bottom of a well. It must have nearly knocked him out to even project the handful of hoarse and weakened words from his mind into her own for all color had drawn from his face and he swayed on the spot.
'I will help you take it out.' She hurriedly sent the thought his way, accompanying it with a powerful wave of the Force that she allowed to leech from her own energy.
Ben's eyes widened with the overwhelming current sweeping through him, his breath halting. He took a faltering step back, then quickly found his bearing again.
"I'm done playing your games, General," Ben bit back, reaching for his shoulder and yanking the dart out with a tremendous effort and only managing it because of her borrowed strength. She could feel Hux tremble in fear and ire as Ben pulverized the parasitical invention in his clenched fist, her heart throbbing madly through the vein trapped beneath the barrel of Hux's weapon.
"You will...still be...t-too late!" Hux sputtered venomously.
Ben flung out an arm so fast even Rey had trouble anticipating the movement before it happened. The Force coursed back into him again, surging through him like a river released—their bond blossoming into life in its wake.
The blaster pistol felt hot instead of cold now Ben crushed it with a fist closing around air. He wrested it from Hux's grip, the man tottering to the side with the force of it. Ben was in front of him in seconds, his saber nothing more than a red blur hacking away at the cowering figure with a hungry buzz.
Hux crumpled to the beach, hitting it face down. He didn't move anymore, his vivid red hair mingling with the blood that oozed from under his body—the long-coat sprawled around him like an oily shadow.
"Aaargh!"
There was a sudden movement to their right and Yara Ren bore down on them; her robes soaked and heavy and the dark saber leaving behind a trail of hissing vapor rising up from the sea it cleaved.
The Knight's ancient weapon came up with an arc that was graceful despite the hatred that goaded it—shedding water droplets like glistening pearls that felt hot and salty on Rey's face. She parried the attack smoothly, spinning out of the way of the next while Ben effortlessly batted the one after it to the side. The Force lightning that Yara shot at them melted in the greedy, crackling rim of his saber until it completely dissipated with an unimpressive zrrrom.
Yara relentlessly kept up the offensive: strike after strike; blow after blow; refusing to accept defeat. Her energy in the Force was wild and erratic. Dangerous. They both felt it. Attuned as they were to each other. Ben had already sustained a deep cut to his side and leg, Rey felt blood drip down her brow and felt the muscles in her arms ache and begin to grow heavy.
And so they baited and struck—one always keeping their distance in the pattern of their fight: Ben would deflect and strike as she hung back; he would circle her and Yara as Rey gathered the Force and unleashed it against their opponent.
It would pay to be patient. The Knight's fury would ultimately be no match against their combined power. They were moving as if they were the same being—even their separate bodies could no longer hinder their oneness.
Rey reveled in the sensation: in anticipating his every move; in feeling his presence overlapping with hers; in one mirroring the other so seamlessly it became irrelevant who mimicked who. And through all of it the bond between them flowed free and unrestrained, a cocoon of anchoring energy that was spun from the thread between them.
"You're fighting the wrong Knight, my Empress," Yara jeered, her mask close to Rey's now their sabers had momentarily gridlocked. "You think you're his equal, but you're just his puppet. It wasn't Snoke who forged that link between you. It was Kylo Ren who did that."
Rey clenched her jaw, swallowing with difficulty as she stared back into the hollow tunnels that represented eyes in the Knight's intricate mask. Her flutter of uncertainty coincided with Ben's spike of fear—with his surge of deeply felt shame.
"What are you talking about?" Rey snapped, regretting it instantly when Yara let out a grating laugh.
"Why do you think you fight like him? Not all filthy scavengers from nowhere have these powers thrust upon them, now do they? It wasn't fate," she spat the last word, her mask tilted in mockery. "Kylo Ren simply needed an empty vessel to fill with his pathetic conflict. To pass that burden on to you. To infect you with it. To watch it destroy you. A nobody who would never know what was happening to her—who he could deploy as a ruse to discard of my true Master: Supreme Leader Snoke, not Emperor Kylo Ren. And now you're nothing more than an apprentice on a chain. He will crush you to become stronger and stronger, and when Kylo no longer has any use for you..."
Yara deliberately let the end of that sentence trail away, her distorted voice like a beguiling chant. Rey couldn't stop listening to the accusations. Considering them. She felt sick to her stomach for her own doubts.
It wasn't true—
Rey stopped her thought short when she understood the expression on Ben's face. His signature trembled ever so slightly in the Force around him.
He was afraid...
"See?" Yara goaded, increasing the hold on her weapon and moving it closer towards Rey's face, inch by straining inch. "He doesn't deny it because it is true..."
Rey's hesitation lasted another, paralyzing moment. But then calm and certainty washed over her. She had known. Somewhere. And it didn't matter. Not anymore.
The Force was everywhere and in everyone. She had felt that. Not understood it until she had roused it in that old woman in the greenhouses. She did understand now. It was impossible to resent Ben for waking it in her. How could she?
She had been all on her own, eking out a pointless existence in a desert where life was rare but never precious because of it. Despite his power he had been just as lonely. Lost on the path he had gone down. As cut off from his family as she was from hers. Conscious or not, he had linked their fates together. Not to use her. Not even for her to save him.
To simply no longer be alone…
Yara let out a cry of triumph when Rey loosened her grasp, convinced she had overcome her foolish adversary. The Knight kicked the saber out of her hand, giving her a rough push so Rey stumbled backwards.
Yara dipped her mask as if in benevolence and pity, her dark saber snarling. "I'll break that bond for you—"
There was a flash of red and Yara broke off in surprise, side-stepping the spinning weapon by a hairsbreadth. She laughed derisively, her mask distorting it to a callous sound even as Ben's saber slammed into Rey's palm.
"Then again, seeing you have kindly disarmed yourself, maybe I ought to punish you first, Kylo Re—"
Yara's body jerked with a sudden spasm. Saber still raised above her, she dropped her gaze to the red blade that stuck out from her midriff. Her mask trembled as if with indignant incredulity. Then she gagged and coughed, blood trickling under the rim of steel and down her throat.
Rey pressed her eyes closed and deactivated the saber—its faint buzz was followed by the macabre thud of the Knight's body hitting the sand.
"There was no other way."
Ben's hand cupped the side of her neck and Rey blinked up at him, his thumb rubbing her jaw with soothing strokes. She nodded, gratefully relinquishing the saber to him as his fingers tugged it gently from hers.
"I know—"
The roar of engines drowned her sad whisper and both of them swiveled to face the far end of the beach and the assault tanks that emerged there—the space around those crawling with stormtroopers.
"Time to go." Rey hastily lifted Ben's arm and ducked under it, wincing as her bruised body protested against his weight. Turning around and Force summoning Keeva's saber to the hand circling his waist, they had only taken a handful of wavering steps when there came another droning hum.
With a skillful arc, a shuttle swept into view. It tipped its wings horizontally so it hovered low and parallel to the beach, blocking their way forward. Sand was whipped up in powerful gusts that raged around them, buffeting their bodies from all sides.
A familiar face appeared beyond the opened ramp, his white stormtrooper armor battered and dirty.
"This way!" Finn bellowed, motioning towards the interior of the shuttle with his blaster, his other hand keeping a grip on the doorframe so he wouldn't fall out.
Grinning broadly, Rey made a beeline for him and the shuttle—it was hard to believe their luck. Ben leaned heavily on her for her support—they hobbled more than ran to their only means of escape.
And then a voice rang out among the swelling volume of the approaching army. It sounded vicious. Deranged. And horribly familiar.
"You will never win! Flee...flee all you want...Y-you will never bring the First Order down!"
It was Hux. He limped his way passed Yara's lifeless shape, clutching the ugly gash across his torso that was dripping blood all over his dirty and crumpled uniform. Rey caught a glint of silvery steel, seeing but not recognizing the small blaster pistol that slid from his sleeve into Hux's waiting hand.
The bolt grazed her cheek as it whizzed past. The general's aim had been mercifully off. He had missed her—
A terrible dread took hold of her heart, constricting it to bursting point. She snapped her head back, let go of Ben's arm slung around her shoulders and sprawled her fingers. Time slowed around her as she begged the Force to help her—it sharpened the world around her until she could sense what felt like every particle of the blaster bolt. She quenched its momentum in her fist, morphing it into an elongated crimson beam that hovered frozen in its place—buzzing and crackling restlessly.
She let out a shuddering breath, searching Finn's face for the same exhilarating relief. But there was something off about his expression. His mouth was half opened as if he had been struck dumb halfway through another shout of encouragement. His eyes, too, had something dazed in them—the pupils large and fixed on her. Then she noticed the red glare bathing his white armor and his face in the same sickly hue.
No...
She stared, horrified and transfixed at the smear of laser impaling Finn. Skewering her friend.
No!
Hux's cold laughter reached her as if through a stifling mist, echoing cruelly against the inside of her skull.
"Say goodbye to...to your precious trooper rebellion—"
The Force raged around Ben, and there was overwhelming darkness in it. But there was also light. Vengeance and self-forgiveness, acceptance and regret bundling in a raw flux of power that rushed at Hux.
Hux was hurled off his feet, landing hard on his back. He coughed, spluttering to get air into his lungs. Then his rasping was joined by armored soles hitting the beach and orders scrambled through a stormtrooper's helmet.
"A-ah... Finally," Hux panted, getting to his shaking knees. "Kill these...t-traitors!"
The handful of stormtroopers didn't move, they stood, transfixed, and stared at Finn: his body trapped in the same white armor as theirs—the blasterbolt passing right through it and keeping him somewhere between life and death.
"What are you waiting for?!" Hux bellowed, his face reddening with his rage. "Shoot them you mindless bastards, shoot th—"
His voice sputtered to an abrupt and disbelieving halt when the stormtroopers' blasters pointed collectively at his chest.
"W-what?! What do you think you are doing?!" Hux struggled to raise himself, an indignant finger flailing at the stormtroopers, his knees digging further into the sand. "I am your superior officer! You will not fire on your General—"
The salvo was short and unceremonious; flashes of red peppered Hux's body that jerked with each violent impact. Then there was silence and he crumpled into an undignified heap—face twisted in rage, his eyes unseeing.
Rey had barely registered what had happened. Her mind had gone numb. There was no room for any thought to enter. For reality to sink in. She couldn't let it.
If she did...
Her fingers contorted with the strain of holding on. The blaster bolt was buzzing louder and louder, shaking violently against the Force that still trapped it.
Something changed in Finn's expression. The light in his eyes converged to two shimmering points. He let out a labored breath, sucked a ragged one back in as if steeling himself to do something.
To let go...
"No, no no!" Rey muttered feverishly, shaking her head at him; at the utter wrongness of that inevitable truth.
'Rey...'
Ben's voice was a far-off echo in her head that barely reached her.
'Rey. You need to let go.'
She shook her head again, frantically balling her hand even tighter, she could feel the particles in her grasp threaten to splinter with the pressure.
Finn's brows contracted, a muscle in his jaw flexing and she felt the sharp pain flowing from his chest. She held her breath as his lids started to slide shut over the receding warmth in his eyes. His lips twitched in something like a proud smile. Then the lines in his face softened and the radiant pulse of his life faded into deafening silence.
(...)
Turning away from Hux's dead body and the stormtroopers who had finally exacted their revenge, Ben closed his hand over her trembling fist. The ever-closer sounds of tanks and marching troopers rang in his ears. All around them, sand shot up like fountains with the impact of enemy fire. Overhead, the screeching of another wave of TIEs was swelling to an invading pitch.
Without a word Ben poured his energy into hers. He followed the Force flowing from Rey's balled hand until he found the suspended particles of the blaster bolt that had already caused its devastating damage. He pried her desperate hold on it loose, then quashed its inherent speed and volatility until it simply fizzled out of existence.
Finn's body slumped, then toppled backward so he lay awkwardly sprawled on the top of the ramp. The sight of it jolted Rey into motion.
She shot a glance at the other end of the beach, a harassed look appearing on her pale face at what she saw there. Not meeting his concerned gaze, she grabbed his arm, ducking under it so it was around her shoulders again and they set off as fast as they could.
"This way," Ben called over his shoulder to the stormtroopers. They didn't hesitate but pulled off their helmets and abandoned them—leaving them scattered around the General like pale skulls.
With the stormtroopers close on their heels, there were more near-misses than Ben liked to count as they covered the remaining distance between them and the shuttle still hovering inches above the beach. Connix appeared in the doorway just as they ascended the ramp.
"What took you so lo—" she stopped abruptly as she spotted Finn, her tense expression morphing into one of stunned incredulity. Rey lowered her head as far as it would go, the Force around her fluctuating and Ben instinctively pressed her tighter against his side as they boarded.
Connix snapped out of her frozen state. Her face set, she crouched down to help the stormtroopers who had joined their cause haul Finn's body inside with as much respect and dignity as she could muster.
The shuttle rattled now it started to come into range of the oncoming wave of the First Order army. Ben and Rey had only just followed the corridor to the cockpit when Connix called out a strained but loud "Go!" from behind them. Ben could feel the transport canting as it took off, the ramp closing with a reverberating shudder.
The cockpit was crowded, every occupant, save for Rose sitting hunched over the controls in concentration, flicked a quick towards them. A half dozen stormtroopers clustered together in a corner, their faces wan but elated at what they had started today. Among them were Dax and Ika, the Knight leaning heavily against the wall and looking exhausted, her rose-gold hair taking on the color of ash as the shuttle sped through the thickening clouds.
Leia stood at the center of all of them, like a much-needed beacon, both of her hands grasping the back of the co-pilot's chair to stay standing as their getaway transport swerved left and right in order to shake off the pursuing TIEs.
At least they were already too high for any groundfire, Ben thought grimly, but he wasn't sure if that wouldn't still be a better bet than heading straight for the Star Destroyer lying in wait for them above the planet.
Connix brushed past him and Rey, shaking slightly as she wiped what looked like blood on her torn and stained uniform. She didn't say anything when Leia took in her face, but her eyes which were wide with shock told the General enough.
"I'm sorry..." Ben said in a low tone as he and Rey joined both of them in front of the viewport. The dark space around them was crawling with ships: private craft weaved between TIEs locked in dogfights; assault landers flew in opposite directions—some launching from the Dominance's massive hangar bay, others flocking towards it as if in search of a safe harbor.
Like Connix, Rey was unable to say anything and he felt her frame tremble against his arm as she repressed the raw hurt coiling in her core. Feeling powerless but desperate to help her, Ben groped for the thread between them, trying to anchor them both in its reassuring presence.
"We got you out," said Leia simply, having followed his line of vision to Rey, her light almost brimming her shadowed contours. "Both of you. Well," She nudged her head to indicate the thronged cockpit at large. "We might have picked up a few more along the way—"
"Hold on!"
Rose's warning was swallowed up by a loud explosion that rocked their entire vessel; there were outcries of surprise and thuds as people lost their balance and hit the floor. The ship itself let out an ominous moan of durasteel and there was an even more terrifying crack as the first fissure snaked across the viewport. Then the next appeared. And the next. Each branching off in multiple directions and expanding from one end of the viewport to the next as if they were trying to reach each other.
'Can you do this now?' Ben asked as Rey squared her shoulders, her energy still coiling and unpredictable.
'Yes,' she assured him, tugging at their bond as if wanting him even closer. 'Together.'
'Together,' Ben repeated, answering with a similar pull. They gathered the Force around them, molding it as a protective layer of pressure that only just managed to hold the disconnecting shards of the viewport in place; it rattled with a violent, nerve-wracking series of clink-clink-clink.
"Make for the Dominance! They're waiting for us!" Dax called out urgently from behind, helping a barely conscious Ika to her feet. Then another current flooded the cockpit, solid and warm. It effortlessly joined the web he and Rey had woven with the Force.
"Save your strengths," Leia told them, her face filled with vigor and enviable tranquility. She had stretched out both hands towards the broken viewport. The clinking muffled somewhat while a TIE zoomed past and shot down the fighter that had fired on them, then looped out of sight again just as quickly.
It was mesmerizing to behold his mother's display of her Force abilities. Rey stood equally entranced at his side. Ben had known, of course, that she had them. Known also the sliver of fear that had always made her turn away from them. That fear was not wholly gone yet, he could sense it pulsing in the deepest part of her. But there was something far stronger there too. Strong and growing in strength. A memory. A presence longed for and missed. Someone lost and reclaimed.
Him...
"Better hang on to something!" Rose shouted at the top of her lungs to be heard over the groan of the dying shuttle. They shot through both shields, their clearance codes evidently still working since no alarms sounded and the shields merely shimmered indifferently at their passage.
The transport veered to one side, before Rose managed to tip the left wing up and restore its precarious balance. She cut the engines and touched down nose-first. The shuttle skidded across the hangar bay, sparks flying past the hull because of the friction before the transport slid to a complete halt with one last bone-jarring jolt.
The short reprieve of the sounds of the shuttle breaking apart lasted but a moment, then their collective panting and gasping was abruptly smothered as the viewport shattered. The countless fragments burst outward like glossy hailstones. There were yells of fright in response, nearby, helmetless troopers ducking out of the way or raising arms protectively before rushing over to help.
Not all of them were troopers, though. There were civilians among them, their clothes creased and threadbare, their faces hollow and their hair lank.
The Chandrillan protesters...
"They helped us secure the Dominance. It's ours now," Dax explained helpfully, casting a look through the ragged remains of the viewport too. Her caramel-colored skin seemed to glow with excitement, an expectant light gathering in her eyes.
"This way," she addressed the others, leading them out of the cockpit. One by one, her fellow defectors trooped out after her, two supporting Ika between them. Ben nodded at the Knight, the hint of a grateful smile playing across her tired features in return. Then the troopers and Ika were gone. None of the Resistance members had moved.
"They don't know yet," Leia broke the heavy silence, casting a gauging look at Connix even though it hadn't been a question. Connix hung her head, working her jaw as she fought back tears.
"Know what?" Rose asked, dabbing at a nasty cut in her lip; she must have slammed into the controls at some point.
"Know what?" she repeated, a note of fear creeping into her voice now. She rose slowly from her chair, eyes flying between Leia and Connix then feverishly roaming through the cockpit.
Ben felt Rey cringe at the glaring absence of Finn; experienced the same shiver running down his spine too.
"No..." Rose said through gritted teeth, "No. He can't... He can't be—"
Choking on her words, Rose balled her fists and strode from the cockpit. The four of them listened to her receding footsteps—they resounded in Ben's skull. Rey cowered in his hold when the first cry of grief drifted over from the one cabin on board.
Swallowing down a dry sob, Connix rushed towards the heart wrenching sound, Leia too turning to follow.
"No."
Ben looked down at his mother's hand on his chest, stopping him and Rey in their tracks as they made to join her.
"You two get some rest. There will be time. Later." The corner of her eyes crinkled as she took in their faces, weariness receding in her radiant light. Then they glazed over with the sheen of fresh grief and left, her posture suddenly that of a woman whose new loss served only to remind her of all that had been taken before.
Ben hooked his saber on his belt, turning Rey around in his arms, his fingers curling around hers. 'Rest sounds good.'
After a long moment, she nodded. It was all she could do. She had a faraway look in her eyes, the Force around her ebbing dazedly towards and away from her.
He led her out of the cockpit, squeezed her hand to keep her walking as they passed the cabin and the sounds of crying, and down the ramp. The hangar bay was a beehive of activity; troopers and Chandrillans, even the odd officer were milling about, shepherding First Order prisoners and escorting the last civilian ships and landers to available landing pods.
They ambled along the shuttle, the same exhaustion and soreness making their limbs slow and stiff. Rey kept close to the transport, a hand trailing its dented and scratched hull. They walked along the bay doors, a gaping window that framed the remnants of the battle as it played out beyond it. A single TIE fighter screeched inside, one wing trailing smoke. It hadn't even landed, or the extinguisher droids reached it, when the Star Destroyer jumped to hyperspace without much more than a subtle tremor.
Ben felt her fingers entwine with his, pulling him back to a standstill behind a battered lander blocking them from the busy hangar, streaks of hyperspace stretching out on their other side. He gladly gave in, angling towards her and reaching for her other hand too.
She worked her jaw, eyes shimmering as she dropped her gaze and tried to get the words out. "I... I almost..."
Rey swallowed hard, he felt her heart beat frantically in his own chest and he burrowed his fingers even more in hers to steady her—to steady himself.
Were they really standing here? Together... Alive...
Their bond surged with the realness of their proximity, Ben could feel Rey's signature soar and plummet at the same time with his own tentative elation.
"Ben...!" she all but sobbed, her voice suddenly tumbling out in a stutter riddled with gnawing fear as much as immense relief. The sound of it went right through him, he didn't even need their bond to feel the same tremor rock him too.
Ben raised his hand still holding on to hers and pressed a desperate kiss against her knuckles. He closed his eyes, taking in the scent of her and letting out a shuddering breath as the tangibility of her finally hit him.
'I... I almost lost you...' she said in a trembling whisper in his head, seemingly unable to say it out loud. He looked up to see tears streaming freely down her cheeks; wavering pupils drowning in shocked amber. He reached out to brush off the drops clinging to the rim of her jaw, wanting to stem their flow even as he felt the same tears burning in his own eyes.
'But you didn't. I didn't die, Rey—'
'You would have.' Her breath hitched, something like powerless reproach gathering in her eyes.
He looked back at her, absorbing her hurt and despair as his own rushed out to meet them. 'Yes.'
Maybe it was the truth of it and the steady voice in which he confessed to it that calmed her down—that anchored him too. Ben watched her face as her expression grew softer, morphing from rebellious to accepting. Then the amber of her eyes gleamed and she didn't need to put it into words.
She would do the same for him...
They settled against the lander, their backs resting against it and their faces cast in the pale glow of stars streaming past; every single one taking them further away from the war that had now truly begun. It was a temporary moment of safety that would become even more rare and precious soon.
Eventually, after what could have been hours or mere minutes, Rey stirred, the spike of grief echoing in his own bones. 'Finn... It's as difficult to believe he's gone as it is that you're really here...with me.'
He grasped her hand tighter in his own. 'I'm with you, Rey.'
She swallowed hard, nodding to herself, then returned his gesture with a meaningful increase of pressure of her own hand.
'How are we going to do this? All of this?' she asked soberly.
'We're not alone in this fight. Not anymore,' he needed to remind himself of this staggering change as much as he wanted to assure her of it.
Rey nodded, the motion proud and eager, but there was sadness and guilt in it too. 'We can't walk away from this,' she said, the words sounding like a statement that could no longer be a question.
'No,' he answered her simply, like her envisioning a life on a forgotten planet and also struggling to let go of that. For now.
'One day,' she promised him fervently, the Force around her whirling around them both.
Ben couldn't hold back a radiant smile, her wish needlessly contagious for his own chest swelled as if it needed the extra space to only just contain the same burning wish. 'One day.'
A comforting silence ebbed between them, not chasing away fear for the future but restoring the hope they needed to make it through this final fight.
'What was that?' Rey asked after a while, her voice faint and clear at the same time. 'When you... When you defeated Hux?'
It felt like a weight lifted off of him at the curiosity in her tone. There was sorrow in it, fresh and overwhelming, but also a desire to know. To understand. To learn and do better next time.
Next time...
That one truth threatened to send the world spinning and he dipped his head—briefly closing his eyes and reveling in the bond humming between them.
'Ben?'
He huffed out a half-laugh, amused at how surreal it was to be alive. To have her with him.
'I guess the light and dark aren't that far apart. Everyone holds both. Along with a promise of a balance between the two. Something I learned at last from my mother.'
Rey smiled, her curving lips struggling with the feeling of it. He mirrored it, feeling that lightness expanding in his chest. Ben drew her closer, planting a kiss on her sun-freckled forehead.
'How do those sand grains taste?' she quipped.
'Not bad.' Ben leaned back to meet her eyes, hazel sparkling like wildfire. 'Kind of fitting for a girl from Jakku—'
Rey didn't let him finish. She fisted his tunic with both hands, pulling him down and pressing her lips against his in a bruising crash.
Their kiss made every fiber in him tingle, their bond responding in kind; it twined around them like a perfect storm.
He could taste the saltiness of her barely dried tears on his lips when they pulled apart, both of them cast in the blue glare of stars stretching across space. Ben cradled her against his chest, one arm circling her waist, a hand cupping the back of her head.
If the stars were willing, they could make it through this war.
They could have a lifetime together...
Ben pressed his lips against her hair, tears of joy stinging his eyes and his fingers digging into it as he whispered, "I love you, Rey from nowhere."
Her breath hitched, her hold on his tunic increasing. He could feel the Force around her flare in a wild, happy current. Then her mouth moved against his chest, "I love you too, Ben Solo."
Their bond danced with their hearts, wrapping them in its soothing thrill. They both knew it was only the beginning, but they had been granted a part in it.
The two of them.
As if aware of his thought, Rey's eyes flickered between tentative excitement and something deeper and far more alluring. His smile mirrored hers for the fraction that it took for her to kiss him again, her teeth ever so briefly sinking into his lip in her desire to be even closer. He responded in kind, for one glorious moment pushing away any thought of what may yet come. Right now, it was just him and Rey.
The two of them.
Drawing back a little, Ben thought he could glimpse that little girl in the hazel of her eyes; he knew Rey saw their daughter in his in the way she stared back at him, their bond flickering bright as a flame.
One day, it might even be the three of them…
The End
A/N: So...that's officially a wrap for Eclipse! It's been an amazing journey, thank you for sharing it with me! I'm actually playing around with the idea of a sequel seeing there's still plenty left to write about these characters and I'm not sure I can stop myself from continuing at some point...
However, and I'm hoping you'll be as excited about this as I am, it will have to wait until I finish my new project which I've just embarked on: an Episode 9 rewrite! :D There were things I liked about TROS, but more that I didn't to be honest...which is excellent news because it's been the perfect inspiration for a bit of AU fun hehe I'm not going to give away any spoilers here but rest assured that one person we all know will NOT die... ;) Hope to get your feedback and support for Mosaic as well, I'll start posting next week!
Thanks again for sticking with Eclipse to the end and take care: May the Force be with all of you!
