Notes: Title from Of Monsters and Men's Human.

This has probably been done a billion times already, but I wouldn't know, so here's my take on it. I do have a solid outline and this will probably have around five chapters. The ending will go up, most likely, as I'm actually quite intent on the smut this time around. A lot of this is mainly character study of both Ben and Rey, with the plot wrapped around that. Hope you guys enjoy it and, as always, feedback is most welcome!

When Rey opens her eyes, the world around her is drowning in green.

Oh, no. She knows this feeling. Knows the sensation of being entirely entrenched in the Force; in another presence that she recognises even in her dreams by now – only in her dreams, given that it's the only way. So this is a dream. It has to be. The connection can't have opened again if there's no one on the other side and the familiarity of it with that knowledge in mind is suffocating. No, no, no.

"Ben? Are you seeing this?"

"Yes, keep it up." Rey struggles up to her elbows and looks around blearily, focusing with some alarm on the giant, seemingly floating tree right above her head as its roots disentangle from the ground completely. The wielder, a human girl with her back to her, tenses in anticipation before she tries to straighten it back up. "And when you're done, put it back exactly how it was. You know what Master Skywalker says about needless destruction."

He sounds distracted – he must have felt the Force opening the space between them too, but he couldn't possibly recognise it for what it is. Master Skywalker. This isn't a life after death, then. A vision? A memory? Neither had really happened this way before, not to this degree, but the only other option is too strange to entertain.

No, not too strange. Too hopeful.

"Ben?"

Several things happen at once – the girl yelps and loses her focus, Rey raises a startled, sluggish hand to try and stop the tree's descent, and the tree in question falls apart to smithereens a moment later.

"What are you doing? I could have killed you!" The girl looks equal parts angry and horrified, but it's not the outburst that shocks her the most – no, it's the fact that she's talking to her at all.

"You can see me?"

"Of course I can see you! Could have used a bit of a warning."

"I'm sorry, I—" She finally sits up, rubbing a hand across her eyes as if it's going to chase the confusion away. The little pocket universe that the bond opening usually seems to bring with itself doesn't work anymore, now that its regular rules are broken. It only makes sense, Rey supposes – after all, it's not timeless anymore. Rather, it had moved her in time. "There's someone here I need to talk to."

"You're in for a disappointment," Ben's voice floats over to her as he approaches them, the permanent tension etched over his features shifting quickly into irritation. The sight of him makes her freeze, but he's undeterred. "No one here is allowed visitations. How did you even find this place?" He doesn't wait for a response and extends a hand towards her, frown deepening when she doesn't take the offer. "Are you all right?"

"I am." She can't touch him. If she does, this— whatever it is is going to tear at the seams and vanish, and she can't have that. As long as she keeps him talking, he'll stay. It's worked before, after all. "I needed to talk to you."

"Do I know you?"

"Not— yet." That's promising. She doesn't sound all right, Rey can tell, and the two would-be Jedi exchange a look. She feels unbalanced and disoriented and not up to making a particular amount of sense unless forced to. And she will be forced to, soon enough, if she wants to let him know of their circumstances. "I know you."

Now he's confused. The girl is the first to speak. "You can take it to Master Skywalker, if you'd like."

"No," Ben cuts in, a panicked edge to his voice. "No, it's— I can handle this. We don't need to bother him. Let the children have their day with their Master."

"It's all right if it's for an emergency."

"Does this look like an emergency? It's one of her against fifteen of us at the Temple." Rey nearly scoffs. It's him all right. He might not be the Ben she knows yet, but this sort of flippant confidence would be displaced on anyone else. "I can handle this, Mack. Why don't you tell the others to get ready for dinner? I'll be right back."

"Okay." The girl – Mack – had assessed them both with her eyes and had clearly decided that the newcomer presented no danger. Just as well – Rey could use the privacy. Just as she makes to leave, Ben calls after her again.

"They don't need to know about this, all right? It's not that important."

She narrows her eyes at him, as if fighting some invisible impulse and oh, Rey knows the feeling all too well. Finally, though, she buckles. "It's not that important."

"Just forget about it."

"I will." It certainly sounds like it. "See you at dinner, Ben."

Rey waits until she's out of earshot before she speaks again. "You didn't need to do that. She would have trusted your judgement."

"I can't risk any of this being rattled off to Luke before I figure it out myself." When he sees that she has no intention of getting up off the forest floor, Ben lowers himself to the ground, only to continue his fidgeting there. "Listen— Is this about Senator Kalegare? Because I've said this already, and he was the only one to blame. I warned him that lightsabers are not toys and that he shouldn't goad younglings into using one near him while he treats this place like a tourist attraction. Luke said so too. If they couldn't sew his finger back on, that's not my fault. My mother can keep apologising until his ears bleed, but I won't. He should have known better."

"What? No." His nervousness makes sense now and curiosity pushes it out of the way as soon as the denial is out of her mouth. She might have been a little more disapproving if she hadn't seen him do much worse, but as it is, the visual nearly makes her laugh. "I'm not here about any— severed Senator fingers. I don't know how I'm here, actually."

He raises an eyebrow in response and Rey can feel him pawing at the Force surrounding them, looking for the source of her. It's strange, seeing him like this – like he's not quite finished yet. It's that same face she knows so well, that same presence in the back of her mind, but it's unlike any signal she's received from his general direction before. After the Death Star, the lightness of him had almost made her giddy; the way he'd snapped his shackles clean off just before the end. It's not the same now. There's a darkness weighing him in place, dragging him down by the ankles bit by bit, but it's not tearing him apart just yet. He's not using it to torment more power out of himself – hasn't been taught how, more like – but the possibility is there, lurking in those dark eyes.

It's not quite Ben Solo looking back at her, but it's a far cry from Kylo Ren.

His sharp intake of breath breaks through her reverie and Rey tenses at the realisation that he'd been looking through her mind for a source of this newest puzzle. "I know that name."

"Don't do that," she snaps, frantically pushing any boundary she can muster between them and pulling it as far up as it would go. It's not much use – the bond, traitorous as always, curls around them both and shows him everything he's asking for. "You don't understand."

"No, I don't." He's amazed at the mechanics of it; she can tell as much already. There's a small smile playing at his lips, a mirror of the one he'd given her when he had been trying to figure out the mechanics of the bond for the first time. It's a childlike sort of fascination and it makes her heart painfully stutter over its own rhythm. "You're saying you come from the future."

"I didn't say anything."

"My future."

She might as well have been trying to argue the morality of the privacy of thought with a brick wall, but then again, that's not precisely new. "Yes."

"I really shouldn't look, then." You shouldn't look anyway, she wants to say, but saves her breath instead – in just a few years, he'll be doing it as easily as breathing anyway.

Unless...

"In the future," Rey starts instead, the same desperate hope that had taken over her when she'd first woken up raising its ugly head again, "we have a connection. That's what you're feeling now. We can communicate across space— and across time, now, I suppose. You called it a dyad. A dyad in the Force."

"A dyad." He tests the word in his mouth and reaches out, hand dropping when she inches away from him. "Does it have any limitations?"

"Not many. I could touch you, and vice versa." She's the one to initiate it this time and her fingers brush over his. The bond surges up, but it doesn't feel as explosive as it had before – it's like there's less of a strain on it, now that they're in the same place. It's a terrifying thought, the dawning comprehension that it has melted so deep into their very beings that there's no stepping out of it now, but the fact that it had happened when it had sent her back in time is yet another bit of encouragement that she doesn't really need. "We could come in contact with inanimate objects around each other, too. We could never see each other's surroundings, and no one around us could see the other. That was about it."

"But you're visible now." He's making a conscious effort to stay away from her mind now – it's nearly palpable – but his interest is still pushing at her boundaries, curling around her like a snake. She can't blame him; had someone told her five years ago that they come from her personal future, she would have been dying to know what they knew too, especially if it were him. Then again, his life in the past seems a whole lot more eventful than hers had been. "Which means you might be here for good. If you are, it's because the Force willed it, no question about that. The Force must have been the one to create this bond to begin with. But why? What would make affecting the future so important?"

"I might have a few ideas." The thought all by itself is enough to make her head spin. She'd been resolute in her decision to stay away from everything and everyone for the rest of her life in the hopes that her presence wouldn't be the cause of yet more trouble; that she would finally break a cycle that seemed to have started decades – centuries, possibly – before she'd even been born. And yet, with this opportunity presenting itself so clearly, the urge to do something is irresistible. Perhaps she can't change all of it, can't save all the lives that had been lost, but she can save him. It's been a different kind of emptiness; the lack of him, alive and breathing, as a steady presence in her soul. She hadn't realised just how bad it had become until he had come to fill that space again, but it's like a breath of fresh air after months and months under the unforgiving heat of Tatooine and it's horrible, risking the future of the galaxy to save herself, but she'd been so alone. The Force had shoved this opportunity at her and now it's impossible to let it go when he's right here, so full of life.

"It would be a risk," he acknowledges, but there's something hungry even about his warning, as if he's just as eager to see the result as he would be to see time itself splitting apart on their whim. His mind pushes against the bond – yet another test – and he grins. It's more than a little sinister and it lacks the warmth she'd caught a glimpse of right before he'd left her, but it only makes sense – she's a stranger to him. He's a stranger to her, too, and the thought unsettles her somewhat before she manages to school her features back into something resembling neutrality. It's no point encouraging him further, especially since she'll have to stay if she wants to change the course of history. It's something to do, certainly, and for the first time in what feels like forever, Rey feels up to the task. "You could travel the galaxy until you pinpoint the moment when you disappear from your home and then go back to your own life; you don't have to play with the passing of time. If you stay, it could change things completely."

"I'm counting on that." If she sounds a little desperate, it's because she is. He doesn't know her yet, but he knows she's telling the truth; it has to count for something. If she manages to steer it all away from the approaching disaster, the magnitude of it might just be enough to save the world – her world most of all – from falling apart.

"It's strange that you ended up here now," Ben says after a short silence and she can see that he's lost in his head again by the hesitation in his eyes; as if the giddy warmth that the scarce knowledge of his future that she'd brought had evaporated in favour of suspicion. It's unfounded, given the bond's steady presence between their minds, but, "I've been thinking—"

It's right there, unfurling in front of her – the conflict in him. It's not yet time for him to turn, but it has to be close. It makes her stand on edge; this sudden responsibility she can feel rising inside her. Damn the Force for doing this to them, for showing her yet another way out when she'd seen none, for making yet another last-moment effort to shift the tide. He's our last hope, she had told Luke a year ago and about ten years into the future, and it rings truer than ever now. He seems aimless most of all, clueless about the place he's expected to take into the world, and it's nearly enough to break her heart. She might not have all the answers, but surely pointing him in the right direction couldn't hurt. Why else had she been sent here?

It's insanity, but what's one more in the string of insanities she'd committed to for him? Nothing. Nothing when compared to the possibility of being given this one last chance. "You've been thinking?"

The darkness chasing at his heels seems to retract at the sight of her, if only by a fraction. "It's nothing. All right," he adds as he gets up, offering her his hand again. "You can stay with me. No one else can know about this, least of all Luke. If you really are from my future, you know how he is; he'll only complicate things further. I want to know more – about the future, about this connection. I want to see what change will feel like. And then, I want you to tell me everything."

Despite the resentment rising inside her at his imperious tone, Rey intertwines her fingers with his to get to her feet. "How would we know change feels like anything? I could have already done it and you'd be none the wiser."

She thinks back to Tatooine and to a long life filled with the fear of her own abilities. Thinks about his life coursing through her veins, white-hot and piercingly bright right before he'd faded from her grasp. Thinks of the shapeless, endless grief that's been hanging over her for months and the desperate quest for some relief. Finally, the Force had listened when she'd called. If they have to do this all over again, they won't be alone this time. And if it can be avoided altogether...

She's getting ahead of herself, Rey realises. What happens now is what will stick. She'll make sure to make the most of it, for both their sakes. For the rest of the galaxy too, if they manage it.

"Yes," Ben agrees with an ease she's not sure she's ever heard from him before. Letting go of him feels like giving up when he disentangles their hands, even if he's not going anywhere. She'll make sure of that this time around. "I wouldn't be surprised if you have."