"Hey."
"Hi?"
She is still cradling his invisible body, still covered in his blood, but he isn't in her arms anymore. He is standing above her, everything around him coated in the thick fog of the force.
There is a weird pull, where she knows she should be panicking, but her heart isn't picking up, and she's staring at him, and he looks so young, like he did when she first saw him, like he does sometimes when he's nervous.
It's awkward, just for a moment, as she adjusts, staring up at him, then down to where he had been just seconds earlier, trying to make sense of it all.
As she looks down, she sees her clothes have changed, under the red are her Jakku rags, the clothes she hasn't worn in years, the clothes he first saw her in. Her eyes snap back to his.
He has the audacity to smile.
The force is swirling all around them, emitting a low sound that she can only describe as purring, having heard a loth-cat once, warm and sated under the brush on Lothal, do the same. The sound settles deep into her bone marrow, coupling with his lopsided smile, causing something inside her to jump.
It's like she is in a dream, and is only now realizing how surreal it all is, how all the pieces don't add up. It's Ben, it's Ben who is smiling down at her and she is just staring back, open mouthed and stupid. It's Ben and he is clear and crisp in this plane, where he has only ever appeared to her as a foggy approximation of Kylo Ren. It's Ben, and he's not gone.
She wants to stand up, wants to touch him, wants to press her fingers into his flesh to make sure this is real, but she's afraid if she touches him, he will disintegrate into the ether. So she stays stock still, not willing to break this, whatever this is, and tries to control her breathing.
But Ben can tell, like he can always tell, and he moves, quickly and slowly at the same time. And then, his hands are in hers and she is standing right in front of him. And then, his hands are on her face, tilting her chin up to look at him, and his smile is gone, but his eyes, they show everything, as they flit between hers.
"I'm here. You're not alone."
Her hands find his forearms and dig, testing him, and when she finds he is solid, that he is no longer like sand under her fingertips, tears prickle at the corners of her eyes.
"Ben," her voice breaks, raising softly at the end as if it were a question, as if she were questioning the fabric of reality itself, questioning his existence here, after feeling his blood running through her fingers, feeling him viscerally leave her
"Say it again," his hands, they tighten, ever so slightly around her face. He is shaking, she realizes, as her face gently vibrates with him. It's her first clue that he is just as bewildered and scared by this as she is. It is comforting, somehow, sharing this stupefaction with him.
"Ben-," she moves to say more, but whatever it is she was going to say is silenced, his lips crashing on top of hers. The breath she sucks in, surprised, lifts her heart up, and it feels like everything is lifted, everything is floating, his lips on top of hers. They are suspended, the both of them, for a moment, the feeling of lightness tethered by their kiss.
He breaks from her, slightly, her heart is stuck somewhere above her throat, and his lips drag across hers slowly, as if he couldn't stand for them to leave her, his breath hot on her face, "Again."
"Ben," it comes out in one breath, as his lips move up, kissing the tears that fall from her face, "Ben," she breathes again and his lips skim down to jawline, "Ben," his mouth ghosts her neck, before coming back up to her lips, as he punctuates his name falling from her lips over and over again with his kisses, his lips never daring to leave her skin.
He finds the strength to break himself away, finally, after they both are so warm, after being so cold for so long, and rests his forehead to hers, "I didn't know, if you would ever call me that again, I didn't know after Crait, after that, if you would ever-"
It's her turn now, to initiate the kiss, catching his lips to stop him from saying such ridiculous things. She feels it, then, when his lips uptick into a smile against hers. Her smile follows, until they are just standing there, like fools, smiling at each other, as the force swirls around them.
She notices, while looking more fully at him, that his clothes, too, have changed. He's wearing the robes she saw in her vision of that night at Luke's temple, his Uncle's saber casting green on his young face.
Something hits her then, the cold water of her shock pooling in her stomach. This isn't right, none of it is right. Pulling away suddenly, she looks between their bodies, grasping at reality.
The smile falls from her lips as her eyes skim his body, her head slowly shaking back and forth. There's no blood on him, none, his clothes, his hands, his face, they are completely clean, as if he just dried himself from the fresher. This can't be real. She held him, she felt him leave, she watched him die.
When she looks back up at him, his smile is gone.
"This isn't-"
"Rey," he interrupts, his voice soft.
She immediately moves, grabbing at his robes, tugging them up, not ungently, to reveal the pale skin underneath, where his major wound was pouring blood just minutes earlier, and finds nothing.
Her hands skim over his skin, and his abs contract under her touch, as if surprised at feeling her hands there again.
Looking back at his face, her arm immediately stretches out, and her fingertips, featherlight, skim the side of his face where his scar is. That scar, it exists, it's real, but not the Praetorian's wounds, there is nothing there at all to suggest that pain had ever touched him in that spot.
"How?" her eyes search his for answers.
Suddenly, his large hand finds her hip, and he squeezes, drawing her nearer to him.
"It was you."
"Me?" her head recoils back as if trying to distance herself from her own question as it leaves her.
"You don't even realize, do you?" something happens to his eyes, as he says it, they get darker and brighter at the same time, "You don't even know?"
At his questions, the air around them shifts, and a crackle runs through it like thunder. It is sudden and deafening, ripping through the static. They break apart instantly, standing back to back in balanced stances, waiting for the enemy to appear. They are both so well versed in battle that they forget for a moment that there could be no enemies here, would be none, this deep into the plane of the force.
Ben grabs for her hand behind him and they look around. All around them, it's still white and calm. There is no visual evidence of a change, nothing but the low roar of something ripping white hot through the fabric of this place. Their eyes meet, and they know, somehow they know what's going to happen next.
"Wait, no."
"It's okay, Rey."
"No, it's not enough time, it's never enough time."
"There will be. I promise you there will be."
She can feel it then, the tug in her stomach, the string to him tightening as it grows more taut, but he's still in front of her, not gone, not yet.
"Please," and Ben knows she's not saying it to him, but to the force around them.
She reaches up to touch him, but her hands don't land. He is there, but he's gone. A voice, deep and brass, envelops her from all angles:
"I'll come back for you sweetheart. I promise."
And then, all the sound turns off, sucked out with Ben. He's gone. Where he stood is a fading afterimage, searing pink and distorted, and then, that too is gone.
Her breathing picks up and she's alone. A breeze wafts through the plane, the air returning. She lets it skim over her, focusing on how it flows around her, trying to calm herself. And then, it's like he was never there, and the panic sets in fully, her mind brimming with too many questions to grasp just one, and she wants to fall, to give up, to scream, but her legs won't let her. She stays rooted as tears shimmer in her eyes, obscuring her vision. The pure white envelopes her, and she feels like she could lose herself in it, should lose herself in it.
But before she can break apart completely, before she can disintegrate into the cosmos, something else flickers into existence.
It shimmers in her tears as she blinks them out. A pinprick of something in the distance. It grows closer, and she isn't sure if she is walking to it, or if it's coming closer to her.
Shaking, her hands come up to wipe the fallen tears, and then, it's right in front of her, tiny and blue and beautiful. Its petals are just as she remembers, pale and delicate, but so strong, so resilient. Before she knows what she is doing, she is stooped down, her fingers resting on its stem, grazing its petals.
She feels her face unwillingly break into a smile, and the sound comes back, a dull hum.
It's the first flower she found on Jakku, the first flower she put in her AT-AT, the first small piece of beauty that gave her hope in a hopeless place. She knows, somehow, that this is the same flower, the exact same one, the one she thought she would never, ever see again, come back to her.
As the petals run smooth under her touch, a voice flows from behind her, arriving just now from the megacosm. It's bathed in a Coruscanti accent.
"Rest easy, you've had a busy day."
Rey straightens her spine. She knows exactly who she will see when she turns around.
"What do you mean? What does that mean?"
"Finn-"
"No, what does it mean?!"
"It means I don't know."
"You're a doctor, how can you just not know? She doesn't have any wounds, you said everything is okay, her brain, her organs, they're all okay. So why isn't she waking up?"
They've all not slept in more than a full day, maybe more than two, but Kalonia, her work has been ceaseless, her eyes deeply set into dark circles on her face.
"I-," she closes her eyes softly, for a beat, and then another, as if resting in a microburst, "I'm a scientist, Finn. I know science and medicine. I know the limits of the natural world. But I also am not so obtuse that I don't recognize the very real phenomena that sometimes finds its way into our universe." She takes a deep breath, and turns to look at Rey's still body before continuing, "What happened back there-that wasn't science, that wasn't medicine. I don't know how any of that works, and I don't know why she's not waking up. I wish I did, I wish I could make it better, I just don't know."
"She needs to wake up,"
Kalonia's nods as her eyes fix on the ground, swallowing hard.
"She needs to wake up," he repeats into the air, his desperation quieting him into a whisper.
"I know Finn," Rose, who is sitting next to him, close enough to hear that whisper, answers back, tightening her hand in his.
"It's over. It's over and we were supposed to...I don't know, see the galaxy, be normal. Be people, for once. And she just-she won't wake up," he's not talking to Kalonia anymore, or Rose, he's just talking.
Rose's head slumps on his shoulder as a tear rolls down her face.
The three of them all stare at Rey's peaceful body, watching her slow breathing, for a long time.
Until suddenly, the air in the room changes, the light becoming dimmer somehow, and they turn to see Ben Solo in the doorway.
No one moves for a very long time, their gaze shifted from staring at Rey to staring at him.
"You can't be here," Rose breaks first, hissing at Ben as she stands and moves towards him too quickly, before Finn reaches out calmly, intertwining his fingers delicately with hers, and stops her.
She spins, confused, and stills at Finn's solemn face, shaking his head no at her.
Turning back, Rose's eyes harden, but she steps back, allowing Ben to see Rey, making a pathway that he clears in two steps to get to her.
Still in his own patient gown, the grey cloth draped around him like a belted blanket, Ben knows better than to touch Rey, just yet, and so he stands awkwardly over her medbay bed, his size almost comical in the tiny room. He can't bring himself to look directly at her face, so his eyes settle on the IVs running precious nutrients to her, and on her arms, and their silvery scars.
"Ben."
It takes him a moment to react to the word, to that name being his again. When he understands that the Doctor is using it to address him, he visibly winces as if waiting for some lightning bolt to strike. He swallows it down and her name, her given name, comes out of him before he can stop it.
"Harter."
For a moment, they both puff up, and there is a feeling like there may be a contentious mission report or some formal posturing on the part of these two, as they stand tall against each other, but Ben's eyes, they can't leave Rey, and slowly, he begins to deflate as his eyes trace the hardware keeping her alive.
"Can we have the room?" Kalonia asks, and while her eyes don't leave Ben, everyone knows that her question is not directed at him.
Finn nods, and ascends, his hand still in Rose's, but she digs her heels in.
"You'll be here, the entire time?" Rose's voice is hard, fierce like she can be when it comes to those she loves.
Kalonia cocks her head to the side and knits her eyebrows, her eyes darting to Rose's face.
"You can't...don't leave her alone with…" Rose looks between Kalonia and Ben, but Kalonia doesn't respond, nothing in her expression gives, and Finn shuffles Rose out.
And then it is just the two of them.
"I haven't had a chance to formally discharge you. If you would like, I can perform the exit evaluation now," and it's as if nothing is wrong, the tension drained so suddenly from the room it is almost disorienting, as if Kalonia is simply a doctor and Ben her patient, and that's all there is to it.
Ben nods once, his fingers just daring to graze Rey's arm, his eyes still on her form.
"We don't have to go far," Kalonia reassures him, sensing his need to be close, as she pulls a chair from the corner of the room, positioning it next to the bed so Ben can sit.
Ben deliberates internally, as Kalonia runs through the diagnostics, on what he should say, could say, to this woman. He wonders as she checks his heart with her stethoscope, if he could just open his mouth, and ask her about his men. He wonders, as her light checks his pupils for constriction, if he could ask her how she is doing, after what he is sure were the horrors of the last twelve hours, if that would even be appropriate, seeing as how he was the major cause of those horrors. Once, while she takes a blood sample, running it through a floating med-droid to check for abnormalities, he opens his mouth, just to see what it would be like, if words were to come out of him.
But nothing does.
"Lift your shirt," it's Kalonia who breaks the silence, because of course it is. And he complies, noiselessly.
Kalonia's fingers, red and raw from how much she has washed them to avoid cross contamination, palpate his side, the same side which, not half a day earlier, had a huge, gaping hole pouring blood.
The skin there is purpled and warm, but there is no scar, no wound, nothing that would suggest a fatal wound ever touched the skin there.
Kalonia presses into it, feeling for breaks or fissures, and finds none.
"How does that feel?"
"Sore."
Kalonia straightens her spine and nods curtly.
"I don't think bacta will help much more, it's yellowing along the edges, which means your white blood cells are doing what they need to already."
Ben nods and pulls his shirt back down. Kalonia gives her back to him, charting her findings on a datapad, and Ben, again, opens his mouth, but, still, no words seem right.
Next to him, Rey takes a deeper breath, her breath sighing out of her, and he turns to look, but she is still unconscious, her face content and warm. His depth of field drops away until it is just Rey, everything else out of focus, as he stares at her. Situationally, his awareness goes down to almost zero when he looks at her, and so, when Kalonia positions herself on the other side of Rey's bed, he doesn't notice until she speaks.
"Do you want to tell me what happened back there on your ship?"
He opens his mouth, then closes it, looking at Rey as her body moves slightly with slow breath.
"You were...the amount of blood you lost, it was...it was too much blood to survive, even with the most advanced medicine. Even if I had everything I needed for a transfusion right there, it still wouldn't have been enough. Your brain, it should be dead, there wouldn't have been enough blood in you to get any oxygen to it."
She pauses and purses her lips, seeing Ben not responding, "I know it was Rey, I know it was something she did, and if you can tell me, I might be able to figure out how to wake her up."
Ben shakes his head now, "All she needs is time."
"What do you mean by that?" Kalonia's question is severe as it leaves her. There is always care in her voice, but now there is also an edge to it, like a protectress jumping in front of her young.
Ben takes a while to respond, unpracticed in how to speak to people. Kalonia, she could mistake his silence for impudence or arrogance, but she doesn't, she just waits.
"What she did, to save me," he looks up from Rey to find Kalonia intently staring, waiting, "The ancient Jedi, they called it the laying on of hands. As far as I know, it has only ever been done by masters because of how dangerous it can be, and only done very consciously. Rey, though," he turns his attention back to her, "She doesn't even realize when she does it, the force, it flows through her so completely, so effortlessly, that she doesn't even realize."
"Laying on of hands?"
Ben nods, "Force healing, is how most refer to it."
"Force healing," Kalonia repeats, as if trying to make sense of it in her mouth.
"I think there's just more it needs to show her, before she comes back."
Kalonia's face tilts to the side in confusion, but before she can open her mouth the question, another voice booms into the room.
"Kriff, there you are," and then Poe is suddenly there, his steps falling in the steady tempo of a march before he roughly grabs Kylo's shoulder and tugs, "Stand up. You can't be here."
"Poe," Kalonia's voice is soft over the stern pitch of the General.
"No, Kalonia, it's not safe for anyone, least of all him. If someone sees him here, if someone recognizes him, all hell will break loose and I can't control what happens."
Kalonia's posture stays straight in defiance, but the rest of her acquiesces, "I'm discharging him. I need the beds. Find somewhere for him that isn't a supply closet."
Poe takes his opportunity, making his voice as firm as possible to give an order to the former Kylo Ren, "Stand…"
But then, Ben is standing, and Poe is looking up, and up, at him.
"What did Leia feed you?" Poe questions, and they both are taken aback at how easily it comes out of Poe's mouth, how easy it is to link Ben to Leia. A day ago, he was Supreme Leader of the Galaxy, and now, already, Poe is referring to him as something akin to human.
"Let's go, keep your head down," his grip tightens, until he is like a vice around half of Ben's bicep, as if causing Ben discomfort would be some revenge for his own verbal slip up.
Poe starts leading Ben out of the room, but before they can make it out completely, Ben pauses, looking back at Kalonia.
"She will."
"Hm?" the Doctor pauses, her eyes move from reading Rey's monitor to Ben.
"She will wake up. Just give her time."
Kalonia nods, and Poe leads him forward, out of medbay.
They walk for a long while, down the quiet corridors of the Solace. Poe forces Ben's head down, but there is no use, as the only beings they encounter are MSE-6 droids zooming in and out of their holes in the wall, and one particularly drunk reveller, passed out in the hallway in front of his room, who Poe helps fully into bed, a slight detour on the way to what Ben assumes is his prison cell.
The ship is practically empty, everyone either helping in the medbay or sleeping off the initial celebrations of their victory.
They walk past the recovery quarters, past empty private rooms, past disused closets and conference rooms, all of which could be quietly converted into prison quarters, off to the side and hidden from the masses.
Ben glances at Poe every so often, confused, but Poe marches resolutely forward.
Then, they are in the dock, passing perfectly acceptable, perfectly cordoned off ships that the Resistance could hole him up in before execution.
Until finally, they stop. Ben's eyes look up, and in front of him is a YT-1300 Corellian light freighter, docked in the bay.
"No," Ben stops suddenly, jerking Poe back with him, "No, I'm not getting on that ship." It was a promise he made himself, long ago, to never set foot back in the Falcon, ever.
Poe looks up at him, his face widening into a large, malevolent grin, "Yes, you are, and I know just the room for you."
Ben can see her when he dreams.
It's hard, the first week, to sleep in his parents' old room, to deal with the ghosts of that place. To be enclosed in the walls of his quietly desperate childhood again.
And so, for a while, sleep does not come in anything but fits, hazy and quick, so quick that he is continually unsure if he actually slept at all. He has made camp on the ground, unable to stomach sleeping where they slept, unable to touch the foundation of those memories. Once in a while, he finds himself unconsciously staring at the bed in the boredom of his solitude, and the ghost of him, little, so little, sneaking in on lazy mornings, crawling between his mom and dad, interrupting their sleep, slides in to his conscious brain. The happy memories, they always sting the most, because his parents, they would never kick him out, ever. Sometimes Little Ben would tell them bad jokes punctuated with awful puns, and his parents would laugh. Sometimes they would just sing songs that he learned in nursery school, about parading ewoks and convorees stuck in rainstorms. There is a love in that room that is too deep to understand, and so mostly Ben just cries, imprisoned with those memories, waiting for Rey or waiting for death, he doesn't truly know.
But it is Rey who comes first.
He sees her, fuzzy and shrouded in the white of his subconscious, and his bones settle, after days of unrest. She is there, in his dreams, and suddenly, sleep becomes much easier. Sleep becomes everything.
He is a spectator, and a spectre, to Rey's training there. They can't see him, he's just a revenant in the periphery, and sometimes, it feels wrong, like an intrusion between master and student, but that's not what they are, not truly.
It is odd, seeing Obi Wan, the legend, though he never acknowledges Ben's presence in any tangible way.
Sometimes, old Ben appears not so old, reddish beard, brown robes, whimsy in his smile.
And sometimes, old Ben is very old, the force conjuring up a cane for him to hit Rey with if her form is lazy, but no matter what form he appears in, there is the same twinkle of something in his eyes.
And Rey, she is fighting, and laughing, and fury, and content. There is emotion from her that Obi Wan isn't stifling or pushing down. There is no code there, no misinterpretations of the force, no organized religion getting in the way.
It is as it should be, as it should have been, some sixty years prior.
Any of them could have been the chosen one, if they just had support. All of them were the chosen ones, Anakin and Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Ben Solo, they all were chosen. They all led to Rey.
But it was only her, in all her resilience and defiance, she was the one who sought what none of the rest of them truly did: connection. That's all she ever wanted, to belong, and to be belonged to. Like the force itself, flowing through everything, life and death, birth and decay, she didn't turn or run from any of it.
And now, after all this time, the force has corrected itself. It has redeemed the sins of the master, and created something, someone, who knows the pain of the darkside is not something to fight or to succumb to, but something that is necessary to endure, to sit with, to struggle in.
And now she knows, too, the mysteries unlocked to her by the force itself, through Obi Wan. She is the who will bring balance to the force.
Poe and Finn visit everyday after Rey is moved into a larger room, with more patients, her condition too stable after two weeks to warrant a private one anymore. They each come with a bouquet a day, from the worlds they dock on, helping to rebuild. On this day, it is Artorias, a small, peace-loving planet decimated by the First Order, they are coming from, their competing flower arrangements vivid against the dull grey of the Solace.
Finn strolls up beside Poe, who is primping and fluffing his arrangement in pride.
"Oh, I have you so beat today, old man," Finn presents his bouquet, formed with wildflowers, the same type Rey liked to keep pressed in the Jedi texts from the worlds they visited during the war.
"About time, your flowers have been looking scraggly this whole time." Poe replies, his smile roguish.
"How dare you," Finn's mock outrage is met with Poe's broadening smile, as they walk into the medbay.
It is Poe's smile which goes first, dropping into something bewildered first. He has a more direct line of sight to Rey, and when Finn tilts his head to ask Poe about something inconsequential, and is met with Poe's face in full on shock, Finn panics. Sirens start blaring in his head for Rey, and he has to force himself to look forward towards her bed, fearing the absolute worst has happened to his best friend.
It is then he sees it. Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, is at Rey's bedside, her hand in his.
It's as if Poe and Finn can hear each other's hearts beating, sure and fast in the busy room. Poe's face flushes red, with the former Supreme Leader just sitting out in the open, after these weeks of keeping him hidden for good reason.
In the week immediately following the fall of the First Order, the galaxy was war weary. They were so glad to be done with it, so glad to revel in the celebrations of freedom that rang out throughout the galaxy, so glad to be able to finally allow happiness back into their lives, that they forgot to care about the little details, about how it truly happened. But now, questions were slowly starting to form at the edges, and Poe, he knows he only has a limited amount of time before it crashes down. Ben Solo seems to have a goal to speed up that timeline.
Poe puffs up, incredulous, the flowers falling listlessly to his side, all his fluffing for naught. His breathing picks up and his face scrunches into a scowl, all the anger bubbling in him, about to be unleashed in a furious whirlwind.
Kalonia notices the impending maelstrom from across the room and starts walking calmly toward Finn and Poe, just as Poe starts forward, lunging really, towards Ben and Rey.
It is Finn, though, that grabs Poe first, spitting at him in a whisper to stop. Kalonia, only a few steps away now, eyes them. She glances to Finn and he nods, all the confirmation she needs to turn back around and start helping her patients again. Finn has this one.
"Wait," Finn whispers harshly, and Poe, Poe looks like he could murder everyone, but he listens.
"Why?" the question comes from the side of Poe's mouth, and he is almost shaking now, trying to keep his voice and himself under control.
Finn softens, "Look," Finn motions to the medbay, buzzing with patients talking, med droids chirping, with families and friends visiting. The only thing out of the ordinary is them, two grown men whisper yelling at each other.
"What?!" Poe's patience is wearing thin for this game.
"No, look," Finn's voice is sure and strong, quietly ordering his General to open his eyes.
So Poe does look. Really look. No one is screaming, no one is threatening Ben's life, no one is throwing medical supplies. No one notices him there, sitting next to Rey, his eyes only on her, not even noticing them yet. He is just another person, waiting for his loved one to wake. He isn't Kylo Ren, monster in a mask. He is Ben Solo. And no one knows who Ben Solo is, not anymore.
Poe turns around to Finn with his mouth open.
"They don't know. How do they not know?" The fact that Ben Solo was Kylo Ren was such old news to them, that they didn't consider that it was actually a heavily veiled secret to the Galaxy.
Finn's face is radiating hope so brightly it settles into Poe's cheeks too, and then they are smiling at each other, like idiots.
"We might get to keep her."
You are all amazing and I perpetually feel like shit for how long it takes me to post. Originally this was going to be the end, but then I was at 10,000 words and super overwhelmed so I broke it into two parts (and we still have an epilogue! so I upped the chapter count by one).
Thank you all so much for your patience and continuing to read. The angst is almost over, I promise. The HEA-Happily ever after? Hot, Explicit Action?-I'm not sure what that acronym stands for, but they both are coming SOON.