She has never given his eyelashes much consideration, but now she has time to count every one as she waits for some sign of recovery. She doesn't know how long it took to bring her back from the dead and for all she knows she might be waiting hours for him to wake. She is conscious of the tight press of people surrounding her and of the small space they have made where she kneels next to the fallen man. She decides that if this has failed, if Ben never regains consciousness and has been killed by the incompetence of his trial arrangements she will make the lives of every last Republic commander involved in the administration a misery from now until the day they die. She doesn't move her hand from Ben's chest and she feels that the blood on his tunic is beginning to coagulate, now that the wound beneath is healed.
He still doesn't open those long, curling lashes, cut from the same glorious template as the hair framing his too-pale face, and she reaches out to smooth it back from his forehead, in case he is finding it annoying in his sleep.
She doesn't feel tired. Usually, after performing a Force healing she needs a few quiet minutes to readjust to the sensation of being slightly less. She can feel that although the Force is limitless and all encompassing, it is a piece of her life she is transferring with the touch of her hand, which may be marked in days or years but will mean that she will be slightly earlier in her grave than she would otherwise have been. This time there is no such reservation. She feels the same as she did before with the same energy, the same determination, the same zing of life running through her veins. If anything, she feels better. More free somehow, as if she has been carrying a burden and she has finally set it down. This healing seems to have re-kindled the spark inside her rather than snuffed part of it out, and she isn't sure why. She stares at Ben and wills him to wake up, hoping that she has done enough, but suspecting she should have done more.
There is a shifting within the crowd, a muttering, a thinning of the knees which surround her and she can sense that their mood is changing. No one expects him to survive, he has been gone too long. Rey knows that Ben wasn't dead when she reached him, he was fading fast but he wasn't quite gone and she has more trust in the Force than the people around her, who have begun to sidle away. A reckoning will be coming for them – one of them has done this, and the Republic will need to find out which one it is. Rey doesn't move her hand, and she continues to count eyelashes.
The instant he moves she spots it. At first it is no more than a twitch, the roll of a covered eyeball, but this is soon followed by a couple of rapid blinks, and then his depthless eyes are open again and she is the first thing he sees. There is instant recognition, then more than that as his eyebrows raise and the corners of his mouth lift into the first hint of a smile. He heaves a great sigh, which sounds much like relief and she is pleased to feel the ruptured muscles of his chest engage under her hand as he sits up.
He doesn't glance at the rest of the room, and continues to stare into her eyes as if the mere sight of her brings him strength. She doesn't move, searching his expression for traces of pain, confusion, any concrete indication of his mental state. His hand comes up, but there is an unusual hesitation before he touches her face, running a gentle finger along her cheekbone, cupping her jaw with his palm.
He swallows a few times before he is able to find his voice. 'You healed me,' he grates out eventually. 'You brought me back.' The way he says the words suggests he finds them surprising.
'Of course.' She offers him a smile which is meant to be reassuring, because he must realise that no matter what revelations have come out in court, she could never have left him to die.
He makes a noise which sounds much like a gulp, or maybe it is a choked off exclamation, because he doesn't manage to articulate properly and leans in for a kiss instead. She isn't sure he is up to this, and nor does she want their relationship dissected even more openly than it already has been, but he is newly resurrected, and she finds she can't deny him this. His lips meet hers, his eyes flicker shut and her mouth is soft as she accepts his first tentative contact.
Then he opens the bond.