CHAPTER NINE

Poe ends the meeting with a promise to reconvene in two day's time to go over upcoming assignments. Rey will, of course, be present for that one and — her heart beats even faster just thinking about it — it will be her job to relay necessary information to Ben.

Logically she knows that whatever the assignment is will be dangerous. She and Ben are the two strongest fighters on the base even after returning from the brink of death. Of course whatever mission they're sent on will be hazardous, but the thought of getting to finally, finally, fight by his side, in the same place, at the same time, is enough to override any of the nerves she probably should be feeling.

Once everyone starts to disperse, Rey fights the urge to rush immediately to Ben's room and instead forces herself to stay behind with her friends. She's been running away from them, into battle, into Ben for so long, and they've just given her too generous gift for her to run away now. She owes them at least a proper thank you, an hour or so of uninterrupted time. Now that she knows she has time to spare.

The room clears quickly — most of those in attendance waste no time in loitering, eager as they most likely are to relay the non-confidential parts of the meeting to their other friends on the base. Surely confirmation of the rumor that the former Supreme Leader is among their midst will have circulated the whole planet by nightfall.

As soon as the last person leaves, Poe slumps down in a chair, looking like he's aged before her very eyes.

Now it's just Rey and the three people she's spent the most time with over the past year. Finn is still by her side, Rose moves from her seat to the now vacant seat next to Finn. And Poe is facing them, hands in his head, eyes shut.

She's not used to all of four of them being so quiet around each other. But perhaps this is what peace time (though she's apprehensive to label it as such just yet) is — a quieting. An end to the restlessness of unfinished business. The luxury to take a deep breath and enjoy it.

So she accepts the moment for what is is, even though she knows it's fleeting, even though she knows the work is nowhere near done. For just a few seconds she can sit, silent in a room with people she loves, and just breathe.

Rey tries — she really tries — to relax. But the adrenaline that was coursing through her veins is quickly seeing itself out, leaving her feelings both drained and on edge — uncomfortable in the quiet but unwilling to shatter it.

It's Rose who finally ends the moment for them all.

"How long was that meeting?" she yawns. "Feels like we've been in here for hours."

"Poe might need to work on being a little more succinct. Maybe a few less run-on sentences," Finn replies, the teasing edge to his voice clear.

Poe groans into his hands.

"I have huge, impossible shoes to fill, you know. I'm doing my best to sound leaderly."

"And you're doing a very good job." Finn reaches to close the distance between himself and Poe and places a hand on his knee. "Seriously, you are."

Silence falls over the group again. Is this what it's going to be like, Rey wonders, when the last remaining threats have been eliminated? When they don't have anything they have to talk about, will they even care to talk about anything any more?

The thought tightens something in her chest. It feels vaguely like panic and it takes her longer than a few seconds to identify the source. To identify the fear that maybe without a war to hold them all together, there will be nothing to hold them together at all.

She doesn't notice the way her breathing has sped up until she realizes that Rose is staring at her. And so is Finn.

"You alright, Rey?" Rose asks.

"I am," she nods as she struggles to catch her breath and to push away fears of loss and abandonment she thought she'd long since done away with. "I am, just… today's been a lot. Thank you. Thank you all."

"Thank yourself," Poe finally lifts his head. "You did good up there today."

"You did good," Finn echoes.

She feels suddenly bashful; all of the fire that possessed her when she stood in front of the crowd has been extinguished by tears of relief she hasn't shed yet but knows she will.

"I— I know this was a hard decision for you all and—"

"It wasn't," Rose cuts her off.

"What?"

"It wasn't a hard decision. Not for me at least."

"I'll be honest," Poe sighs. "I don't like it. But not liking something doesn't make it wrong. Any other outcome would have been an injustice and a betrayal to our own beliefs. I don't wanna be friends with the guy, I don't want to eat dinner with him or shake his hand or share inside jokes, but that doesn't mean that he hasn't earned a chance to prove himself. He deserves a place here just like anyone else. So no, it wasn't a hard decision for me either."

Yet another silence falls over the group, still uncomfortable to Rey in its unexpectedness. She really hadn't prepared for this — she's been so single-minded in her goal of keeping Ben here that she hasn't considered, for days, what the aftermath of that decision would be. And she certainly hadn't imagined any scenario in which they were just… like this.

But the crushing fear doesn't return because there's a quality to this silence that she still isn't quite used to, but she can feel it coming off of her friends in waves — companionship.

They're not quiet because they have nothing to say, they're quiet because they don't need to say anything.

So she sits, and ignores the way her leg is bouncing and the way her head is still spinning and simply enjoys being in the presence of her friends.

She's not sure how much time passes but eventually Finn sighs.

"We've got your back. We always will," he says.

He technically could be saying it to anyone in the room — and it would ring true for anyone in the room — but Rey knows the sentiment is meant for her.

She thought she'd used up all of her words earlier, but suddenly she finds there's so much she still wants to say. She wants to tell them how much their trust means to her, to reassure them that she'd never ever do anything to endanger their lives, to destroy what they've built.

But there are no words that would properly convey the depth of her gratitude.

"I— thank you," is what she settles for instead.

It seems to be enough.

His door is closed, as it always is, but the thrill of pushing it open and seeing him isn't tainted with the fear of anyone noticing and asking what's behind that door, anymore. Because they know. Because everyone on the base knows that Ben Solo is here and that Rey cares a great deal for his well-being, even if they don't know exactly how deep that care goes.

So she pushes the door open confidently, without glancing behind her shoulder or squeezing through the smallest opening she can manage.

Rey knows it's been less than a day since she last saw him, but there's something different about seeing him in person rather than through the bond. He's real, and solid, and propped all the way up in bed, the pen in his hand gliding across a sheet of paper.

She only gets a moment to observe him before he stops with whatever he's writing and turns to look at her. The corners of his mouth tilt up, unsurprising given the amount of pure joy he must be feeling her give off.

But still, when he says, "Good news, then?" there's a tinge of hesitancy to his words.

"Good news," she nods, allowing herself to fully beam for the first time in days.

His smile reaches his eyes, crinkling their corners. That's already enough to make her want to run to him immediately, but the slight glistening building up in those corners clinches it. She practically launches herself at him, grateful that he can anticipate her actions well enough to open his arms to her right in time.

She finds herself half on top of him as his arms wrap tightly around her back. She can feel him rest his head atop hers and she buries her face in the crook of his neck, allowing herself to marvel for a minute at how perfectly they seem to fit together. Like two pieces of a whole.

Silence, it seems, is the theme of the evening.

Rey stays pressed against him, crushed tightly to his chest, inhaling the faint smell of bacta he's covered in. One of his hands remains firmly on her lower back, but the other traces up and down her spine in a motion so calming and so familiar it seems impossible to her that she survived so many years of her life without it.

And all at once the relief she's feeling doubles and he holds onto her even tighter and she thinks she could stay here forever — and she actually could now that she knows he doesn't have to leave. And finally the tears that she forced down when she stood in front of the crowd are pricking at her eyes and some small part of her just wants to hold onto him and cry on his neck until she falls asleep.

"What are the terms?" he asks. She can feel the vibrations from his throat as he speaks. "They're not bad, really." She sniffs. She's sure he can hear her and thus sees no need to move her head. "No sitting in on confidential meeting briefs, no free range of the base, quarters separate from everyone else, at least for a little while."

"That's all exceedingly fair."

She nods against him. "Oh, and you're going to be sent to fight in missions."

"Well, I would have done that any way."

Rey finally pulls back just enough to look at him, their noses practically touching.

"And I made them agree to send me on all the same missions."

Ben quirks an eyebrow.

"Are they aware that's a privilege, not a punishment?"

"They're very excited to see us in action."

"They are?" Ben huffs out what almost sounds like a laugh.

"Poe is, at least."

"Well," Ben sighs, "last time we worked together I got thrown into a pit and and both of us briefly died, so we can only go up from there I suppose."

"True," she brushes her nose against his, "but we did sort of save the galaxy from certain doom."

He closes the minuscule space between them, brushing his lips against hers ever so gently.

"Tell me every detail," he mumbles against her mouth.

"What?" Rey pulls back enough to look at him as she strokes his cheekbone with her thumb.

"Tell me exactly how it all happened, what you said, what they said. I just— I need to be sure this is real, that this isn't the only good dream I've ever had."

She wants to dig deeper into that, but there will be plenty of time to ask questions later. Time to ask him what he was writing before she came in, time to ask him what he meant when he said he sleeps fitfully, time for all of it.

Suddenly time is stretching out — not in the barren, desolate, dreary way it did when she was waiting for an unknown future on the sands of Jakku. Instead it's like time has opened to her, the way the galaxy opens when she's in the cockpit of the Falcon, the way the forest of Ajan Kloss is densely populated with trees, each coming from a set origin but branching in a million different directions. Plenty of time for everything.

As much as she'd like to look directly into his eyes the whole time she tells him about the meeting, the chance for distraction is too high — she could very well abandon her train of thought in favor of staring at him instead, now that she's allowed to. Now that she doesn't have to worry that the next time she looks in his eyes will be the last time.

So she flips herself over onto her back and nuzzles into Ben's side as he wordlessly wraps an arm around her, their movements so smooth it's as if this is a choreographed dance they've been doing for years.

He doesn't interrupt her much, as she talks. She eases into the story, starting all the way at the beginning with Poe's brief, but she can feel him tense as she describes their initial reactions to hearing he's on the base. A pang of guilt goes through Rey for not thinking to soften that part of it for him.

"No, no," he mutters, his grip on her shoulder tightening slightly. "It's fine, it's… good. It's good to know how far I've got to go."

"Not nearly as far as you've already come."

She knows even before she turns her head that he's not going to be looking at her, but will have his eyes fixed on some invisible point on the wall across from them.

And she's correct. He's staring straight ahead, his lips pressed into a tight line that tilts downward at the corners. She can't tell if his eyes are watery or if it's simply a trick of the fluorescents. She gently nudges his side all the same.

"Hey, Ben."

He doesn't move. If it weren't for the circles he's started to trace on her shoulder, she'd think he was paralyzed.

"Ben—"

"What if it's never enough?" He keeps staring at the wall, a small waver in his voice the only thing that betrays his stoic expression. "What if there's just too much damage done and they never want me here?"

"Don't be ridiculous, they've already agreed that you can stay."

"But what if they never want me?"

She can see it so clearly, the lonely child who became a troubled teen who became a broken man, tethered to a cause and a master that only cared about his power and never him.

And she knows, yet again, part of what drew her to him even when they were on opposite sides of the war. That shared fear — that she must have sensed even before she knew she sensed it — that perhaps there's no length you can go to to make yourself wanted.

But that fear is a lie, she knows that now. Because Ben's family wanted him and everyone on this base wanted her and she's sure that they'll come to want Ben. And even if they never do, she wants him and she knows that he wants her, and maybe they've never really been as alone as they once thought they were.

"I guess there's not much use in worrying about that just yet," she finally sighs. "But if they get to know the same Ben I know then I can't imagine it ever being something to worry about."

She can feel him relax just a little bit, but she's hesitant to take that as a sign that she can keep going until she looks back up at him and sees that he's finally torn his eyes away from the wall. She squeezes the thigh that's pressed against her own — or rather, she tries to; his muscles are still so taut it's more like squeezing a rock than a leg.

"Okay," she settles for a pat instead, "breathe. We're getting to the good part."

He finally, finally relaxes all the way and pulls her even closer into his side.

She doesn't mince words — she details every concern and every question that was directed at her. She can tell he's trying not to react too visibly to anything she says, but she can also sense how difficult that is for him.

She does gloss over some of the details of her speech, though that's only because she can barely even remember exactly what she said. She goes over it all in as much detail as she can though — not just because he asked but because it's actually kind of fun to tell, now that she knows the outcome. Without the haze of fear and desperation, the meeting is somewhat of a good memory.

"It was Maz first," she can hear herself on the verge of rambling but it doesn't seem like Ben has any plans to her. "Maz vouched for you and that was huge and honestly I thought that might have been enough, but then Finn stood up, which I didn't expect at all, but he made some good points—"

"I hope you thanked him for me," Ben tilts his head down and presses his lips to her shoulder.

"I think some day the two of you might get along. He brought up how it's possible for anyone to turn just like he did, and Jannah, and, um, Hux was a spy, and—"

"Wait, Hux? General Hux?" If she couldn't feel the shock coming off of him she'd think he was angry with how sharply he'd spoken.

"I'm pretty sure. I never met him, but he gave Finn and Poe a lot of trouble last year."

"General Armitage Hux?"

"Did you know him?"

Rey isn't sure what response she was expecting but the sharp bark of laughter that bursts out of Ben's mouth certainly wasn't it. She recovers from the surprise of hearing him laugh just in time to appreciate the fact that she's hearing him laugh out loud for the first time.

"Yeah, yes, I knew him," he replies. "I was told the spy had been killed. No one told me it was Hux. He turned?"

"I'm not sure you could actually call it turning. Finn said his actual words were that he 'needed you to lose.'"

"Wow," Ben grimaces, "he must have hated me even more than I knew."

Rey studies Ben for a moment as he stares at nothing, frowning, almost certainly about to get lost in his own head again. She cranes her head up and places a kiss on his cheek and it shouldn't surprise her at this point how natural that feels, but it does all the same.

"If it makes you feel any better, it sounds like he hated everybody. Not an ideal way to live, I don't think."

Ben just hums and looks back down at her.

"What happened next?"

Rey gets through the rest of her retelling of the meeting without interruption. He just sits, and listens, and watches her. She doesn't realize they're breathing in tandem until she's finally stopped talking. She doesn't know if he's timing his breaths with hers or if that's just something the two of them are doing naturally.

"So that brings us back to what I'd said before, about restrictions," she sighs.

Ben doesn't say anything. He just nods once, his eyes boring into hers.

"I can't tell exactly what you're feeling right now," Rey continues when it's clear he's not going to say anything yet. "But I hope you're happy about this. I think it'll work, and we knew this would be hard, but—"

"Rey." It comes out even deeper than his voice usually is. "I'm extremely happy about this. I just— I wish I could have told them myself. I want them to know how serious I am about all of this."

"They'll know."

"I want to make sure you know, too."

"I know, Ben."

He looks at her for another long moment then inhales deeply — the first time their breathing isn't in sync for she doesn't even know how many minutes.

She doesn't have anything else to say. He doesn't seem to either. So they sit there, on the slightly-too-small bed, sides pressed against each other, her head on his shoulder, his hand covering hers.

Comfortable silence.

Rey thinks she might finally be starting to understand what that means.

AN: It's been a crazy month for me, but I promise I'm going to get more consistent with updates!