Apologies for anyone waiting for the next chapter of Dawn of the Valkyrie. I got sick in November, which killed all the muses, and then I saw Rise of Skywalker and my muse would not shut up about this, so here we are. I will probably be bouncing back and forth between the two, fair warning.

Regardless, enjoy!

Inhale

Exhale

With the beacon on the Falcon now broadcasting her location to her friends, Rey finally lets her exhaustion catch up with her. On Ahch-To again for the first and last time since before Exogol, she's ready to actually rest for the first time in years. While ordinarily she'd be able to bolster herself with the Force, the act rubs up against the broken parts of her too painfully. So she's aged even more than usual, a combination of her early years on Jakku and the strain of using the Force without helping herself. Fifty years to the day and she's had enough.

Enough of traveling, she's seen the galaxy and all its wonders and dangers.

Enough of helping people, no matter how much she enjoys it.

Enough of just plain living, always having to deal with a constant ache in her chest.

She stumbles up the steps to the stone huts. Every breath is labored, like the weight of the universe is suddenly pressing down on her lungs. She settles down on the bench by the hut that had been Luke's, leaning back and bracing herself against the cool rock.

Inhale

Exhale

She knows she's not going to last in time for them to arrive. Now that she's letting herself rest, she just doesn't have the strength left to hold any longer. It hurts, knowing none of them are going to get a proper goodbye, but it hurts more clinging like she is. At her age, she thinks she's entitled to a little rest. Especially after all the shit and heartache she'd been forced to go through in her youth. No matter what her friends might have thought, part of her stayed dead that day on Exogol when Ben left her and she never really recovered from it. They would never be able to understand the always aching pain from the loss of her dyad partner, for all that she only truly had it for less than an hour. She really thinks that Finn is the only one who guessed that there was something more to her story, but he mercifully never pushed her. She wonders if his Force sensitivity warned him that to do so would break her, because it would have.

Inhale

Exhale

A single tear slides down her cheek as she lets her eyes flutter closed.

"Please," she whispers brokenly one last time. "Be with me."

As always, there is only silence. He never comes.

Inhale

E

x

h

a

l

e

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Rey opens her eyes.

This is rather surprising to her, given that she's fairly certain she just released herself into the Force.

The dry, stifling smell of the desert hits her full on as she reflexively inhales despite her shock. She gags at the taste and grit of sand that coats her tongue, something she hasn't experienced in years for all her wandering. After burying the lightsabers on Tatooine, after taking on the name Skywalker for her Masters and for the lost half of her soul, she'd found herself unable to set foot on a desert planet again unless her situation left her with no other choice.

And then.

And then the bond she lost those fifty years ago blooms painfully, beautifully, achingly into life and in her mind is—

Ben?

She sends her plea out into the Force, allowing herself to hope for the first time since she first lost him. The silence that follows nearly kills her. If this all ends up being just a trick, she doesn't think she'll survive the fallout.

Rey?

Ben Solo sounds so confused and lost, but all Rey can do is cry as she hits her knees. Cry and cry and cry because she can feel it in her bones. Ben is alive. Ben is alive and damn any gods that try to stand in her way of finding him again.

Rey, what ha—

His voice cuts off so suddenly that it's only because she can still feel him, a warm and steady pulse nestled in the back of her mind, that she doesn't lose her tedious grip on her emotions. Of course, then she immediately notices that her body is not that of a seventy-year-old woman anymore. She's in the prime of her youth, and that means she's on Jakku. She's on Jakku before her life was irreversibly changed by a defecting Stormtrooper. Before she learned of the Force and that by blood she is a Palpatine.

She's also out under the sun, with BB-8 frantically rolling in circles around her practically screaming.

Rey, Poe and Finn stole a TIE fighter and are headed down to Jakku, Ben abruptly says. What the kriffing hell is going on?

I don't quite know, she returns even as the blessedly familiar silence descends. She raises her head to see Ben towering over her still in his Kylo Ren garb. The sight of him freezes her in place, making her unable to stand even though that's the one thing she wishes to do. Stand and throw her arms around the impossible man she's missed for so long. Ben, while she just stares up at him with tears silently streaming down her face, tears off his helmet and gloves before falling to his knees. Now level with each other, there's a single heartbeat of stillness before Ben lurches forward to throw his arms around her. Rey sobs as his weight settles against her body. Her only constant companion these last fifty years has been BB-8, for all that she traveled from people to people as she traveled from planet to planet. She clutches at him, fingers tangling in his cloak in a vain attempt to make sure he won't disappear on her again.

"I'm here," His voice echoes in the air and she feels the rumble of it against her chest. "Rey, I'm here."

"I missed you," she chokes out past the lump in her throat. "You left me and I missed you."

"I know." One of his hands cradles the back of her head. Against her will she leans back into the touch, as it draws her away from Ben. His expression is as broken as she feels. It makes her feel marginally better, seeing that. He hadn't been much for showing any sort of emotion before. "But the galaxy needed you far more that it needed me, and I was right."

She uncurles a hand to slap his chest. "I needed you!" she shouts. "You left me right when I needed you the most!" She ducks her head to press her forehead against his steadily beating heart. "You never—" Her breath catches in the back of her throat. "You never came back," she whispers hoarsely.

And he hadn't. For the rest of her life, she'd been visited by generations of Force ghosts. They'd just appeared whenever, offering help and training and stories. But never Ben. For all that his family visited, for all that she learned from Luke and Leia and even Anakin Skywalker, Ben never came back. Not even at the end.

"I gave you everything," Ben says, a thumb sliding across her cheek. "Everything that I was and everything that I could have been."

"You didn't—"

"Cyar-ika." Rey jerks back upright at the endearment she'd learned from Anakin during his many stories of the Clone Wars and the traditions of his Clones, never having expected to hear it from Ben's own lips. "There was no other choice for me. I was too newly turned back to the Light. Without you there to tether me, I would've just Fallen again, only harder and faster and further."

Rey shakes her head. "No, you—"

Ben just smiles sadly at her. "I came back for you only lose you mere hours later. It would've been inevitable."

"While ordinarily I'd let you have this moment, because Force knows you deserve it, you both need to get moving." Sand goes flying as both she and Ben whirl around towards the sudden voice. Standing over them haloed in a hazy blue light, Anakin Skywalker looks apologetic but resolute. "Rey, you have a Stormtrooper to go save and a ship to steal. Ben, if you want to make it to Jakku in time, I'd suggest hurrying to the flight deck."

"Grandfather," Ben breathes out.

Anakin's lips twitch up into a rueful smile as he tips his head to Ben. "Grandson." His expression becomes a tad mischievous when his eyes slide over to her. "Granddaughter."

Rey feels her cheeks warm at the acknowledgement even with his actual grandson alive again. He and his children hadn't said anything about her claiming the Skywalker name, but it's nice to know that the Patriarch is okay with it. That she can still claim the family she chose as opposed to the blood she'd been born with.

"Grandfather, my bond with Snoke—" Ben starts. The reminder makes Rey's blood freeze in her veins. She refuses to lose him to Snoke again.

"We can help you break it," Anakin assures him, "but you'll be weak and out of it for a time afterwards, even with Rey to hold you steady. If you want to do it sooner rather than later, you need to get to Jakku before Rey and Finn leave on the Falcon."

"Did we really came back to the beginning?" Rey asks softly, the enormity of their situation finally sinking in. Because that's the only plausible explanation, for all that the impossibility of it rings in her ears and sings in her veins.

"You did, but none of us have any idea as to the how or why." Anakin sighs. "Can we save any further questions for later? You both really need to get moving."

Only then does Rey remember the droid that brought them all together. BB-8, who's started thunking against her leg in a futile attempt to get her attention. She's staring down at the little orange and white droid when her breath catches in the back of her throat. They're going to have to stop this connected moment in time. She's going to have to walk away from the man she's ached to see. And all of a sudden, she's afraid. Afraid that all of this is just a dream, that Ben will slip away the moment she turns her back. She lifts her head. "Ben, I—"

He interrupts her with a finger to her lips. "I will come for you, Rey." His conviction all but stirs the air. "I came for you then, I'll come for you now."

Rey is a survivor. She persevered through years on a desert planet waiting for parents never able to return. She watched the murder of a man she could've called father, survived the loss of her Jedi Master only to become a Master herself, and endured the passing of the only motherly figure she can remember. She learned the truth of her origins and still managed to call the other half of her soul back to the Light. And yet, despite all of that, she still feels like that scared, abandoned little girl again as she whispers, "Promise?"

Ben gifts her with his boyish grin full of dimples and overflowing with love. "Always."

Their connection closes and Rey is left kneeling in blistering hot sand with a Force ghost and a droid who she's starting to worry is going to blow a circuit.

"Niima Outpost is that way." Anakin jerks a finger over his shoulder. "It wouldn't do to be late."

No, no it would not.

Finn is pretty sure he's dreaming.

Why he's dreaming of the day he fled the First Order, and so vividly too, he really doesn't know. Instead, he stumbles into Niima Outpost with a desert dry mouth begging for water that no one is willing to give him. He finally turns towards the animal watering trough with a barely contained grimace, only to have a canister that sloshes with liquid shoved under his nose.

Well that's new.

He stares at it in disbelief before dragging his gaze upwards. Up the arm holding the canister to the youthful face of the woman he'd gladly call sister who he hasn't seen in years. Not in the flesh at least. She's frowning at him, something he knows to usually try and avoid. Frowning Rey means unhappy Rey, and unhappy Rey generally means shit's about to go down.

Then she waves the canister in front of him while ordering, "Drink."

He takes it and does as he's told. Liquid hits his tongue, and while it's warm and metallic tasting, it's also light years better than he remembers that trough being. "Am I dreaming?" he asks, hoping that dream Rey will be as knowledgeable as living Rey and be able to tell him what the kriffing hell is going on.

She blinks at him. "No." Then she takes his hand when he's pretty sure that he's the one who started the hand holding thing and starts dragging him through the multitude of stalls after instructing him to "Follow me."

"Are you sure?" He will admit to himself that when he's had these dreams before, he's still been swept away by the adrenaline and terror he experienced that day. Now he's floating in a sea of calm, which is really kriffing weird.

"Very."

"I think you might have whammied him a little too well," a male voice drawls, and Finn near about jumps out of his skin. He whips his head around to gawk at the glowing blue man keeping pace with them for all that he passes right through things. He raises an eyebrow when he notices Finn's attention. "Well now, there's a surprise."

Rey comes to a rather abrupt halt, nearly causing Finn to run smack into her. "Master Skywalker, I thought you said we needed to move quickly. Surprises aren't exactly helpful at the moment," she stresses, looking directly at the weird man.

"Wait, you can see him too?" Finn yelps, having just started to ponder if he's well and truly lost it because he's apparently imagining people now. The fact that Rey is talking to what Finn figured was just a figment of his imagination is jarring to say the least.

The tightening of Rey's hand around his own is the only sign of surprise from Rey that he can perceive. "Finn, are you seeing a robed man who's blue?" she asks hesitantly.

He doesn't even realize that neither of them has told the other their name. "Yes! Is that supposed to be significant?"

Rey doesn't get the opportunity to answer. The weirdness of the dream might have made him momentarily forget about the troopers who'd been sent after him and Poe and BB-8, but the red blaster shot that flies by both his and Rey's heads is a deadly reminder. They both start sprinting, all thoughts beyond reaching the Falcon pushed to the back of Finn's mind. They come out of Niima Outpost at a different angle, so when the Quadjumper that Rey's leading him towards blows up again, they're not scrambling to turn on the shifting sand to head to the Falcon.

Finn is surprised to see BB-8 already inside, cussing Rey out as only a droid can while she makes a bee-line to the cockpit. He jumps down into the gunner's seat, scrambling to get his headset on.

"Stay low, stay low!" he only just remembers to warn Rey as the Falcon lifts from the ground. It's a much smoother take off than he remembers. "It—

"—confuses their tracking, I know!" Rey shouts back. "Just concentrate on shooting down the fighters!"

"Hopefully this time the gun won't jam," Finn mutters to himself as he swings the laser cannon around towards the rapidly approaching fighters. He'd really rather not have to relive that particular chase, so maybe the weird dream will let him avoid it. The first fighter goes down in a shower of sparks and flames. It's been years since Finn's seen any sort of real combat, so he feels entitled to a loud, "Yes!" and victory fist pump. Finn glances up the ladder briefly at the sound of Rey's laughter. When he looks back at the remaining fighter, another has joined it putting the count back up to two again. "Kriffing hell!"

"Finn?"

"Another fighter just appeared." Even with the hum of the ship between them, Finn will swear on everything he believes in that he still hears Rey's sharp intake of breath. "Rey?"

"Don't try shooting that one just yet."

It takes a moment for her instruction to sink in. He honestly doesn't think he heard correctly. "Rey, they're going to shoot at us if I don't!"

"Not that one. That one won't."

So helpful. So kriffing helpful. "And how exactly do you know that?"

The blue glowing man appears right beside him. "Because my grandson is on that ship, General Dameron, and I will be very displeased if he dies again, to say nothing of the fact that you'll break your sister's heart as well."

Finn shrieks, automatically swinging the gun around and nearly tumbling out of his seat in the process. "Grandson?!"

"Yes, grandson," the man stresses. "Does the name Ben Solo ring any bells?"

Ben Solo? Finn knows him better as Kylo Ren, no matter what Rey told them had happened at the end of it all. But regardless of who the man had been in the end, he'd died back on Exogol fifty years ago. And Finn doesn't remember Kylo Ren being part of the chase on Jakku.

"Shit, I need to wake up," Finn groans, thunking his head on the back of his seat. If he wakes up, then they can head out after the beacon Rey had started late last night. It's been six years since he's seen or heard from her, and it'd taken all of his husband's charm to keep him from flying off the instant they'd gotten it. Something about how they weren't all that young anymore, and that a good night's sleep would do them all good. Poe further promised that they'd be out the door the next morning as soon as possible. Finn had eventually conceded, knowing Poe was right even if he didn't like it.

"There's no waking up from this, General," the man retorts. "Now leave the fighter with my grandson alone, but feel free to get the other one before it—"

A blaster ray hits the cannon, and with a mechanical groan it locks up.

"Damn it!" He gives the handles a jerk, even knowing that it won't budge.

"Finn?"

"The gun's locked in the forward position, I can't move it." Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the fighter he just knows has Kylo Ren on it pull forward and make towards the Falcon. Surprisingly, the other fighter stops firing, like the pilot is afraid they'll hit Ren if they keep up their barrage. It's a legitimate worry. The punishment for hitting a commanding officer in the First Order isn't something Finn likes remembering. "Rey…"

"Trust me, Finn, please. And be ready."

Of course she has to ask that of him. She knows he'll always back her when she asks that, even dream Rey. So he just mutters a curse under his breath while continuing to track the approaching fighter for all that he can't do a damn thing should this whole dream go belly up. The gun never moves, even when it results in them falling out of the sky. Those are the worst versions. He never likes the dreams that end in fire and screams.

It's when the fighter disappears over the top of the Falcon that something shudders through the air. Finn grits his teeth against the tingling that itches under his skin. His knuckles protest when his grip on the cannon handles tightens because of the helplessness he's feeling. He hates feeling helpless. A dull roar builds in his ears only to abruptly cut off when he hears boots hit the floor of the Falcon. He barely has time for a shaky exhale of breath before the ship's engines rev and they're flipping through the air. Instinct takes over when there's suddenly a fighter in his line of fire. His fingers squeeze around the trigger and the ship goes up in flames. It startles him out of his daze and when the other ship comes back into sight, Finn's focused again. That one goes down as well, and then they're hurtling up into the stars. It's only once they're clear from Jakku's atmosphere that he tears himself out of the gunner's seat and up the ladder. He reaches the top just in time for pressure to suddenly build and build and build and—

SNAP

Finn staggers sideways, catching himself against the Falcon's wall. His chest heaves as he fights for air, his lungs adamantly protesting the abrupt rise and fall in pressure. He really doesn't know why he hasn't woken up yet. There's been enough scares already, he doesn't need anymore. Stumbling around the last bend into the main hold, Finn's mind comes to a screeching halt that the sight that awaits him.

Rey is sitting on the floor with an unconscious Kylo Ren out cold in her arms. It's a little weird to see Ren's head hanging limply over Rey's arm and his body slack. Finn remembers Ren as always moving, practically vibrating with energy constantly. The stillness is unnerving. The weird blue guy from earlier is kneeling beside them both, a hand on Ren's forehead, while two other see-through blue beings have a hand on the man's shoulders. Another man and what he thinks is a Togruta.

"He'll be alright?" Rey asks, looking at each blue being beseechingly.

"A little rest and he should be back on his feet in no time," the standing man assures her.

"We probably won't be able to visit for a while," the Togruta comments. "Skyguy used up a lot of energy shielding Ben from the backlash as much as he could."

"Worth it," the kneeling man mutters, rocking back on his heels before rising fluidly.

"Thank you," Rey breathes, ducking her head to bury her face in Ren's hair. Her shoulders start to shake. "Thank you, Master Skywalker. I don't—"

"Kid, anything to stick it to Palpatine."

And then they're gone, and Finn is left with the alarming realization that this isn't a dream at all. So he does the only logical thing he can think of.

He faints.