"Serenity"
Rey turned to Ben. They'd been on the run for about six months now.
"You're not the villain Ben. They just don't know you like I do."
"Rey, back then, and even now, I'm no good for you. I can't be what you want me to be, who you've painted a picture of me to be. You knew it, I knew it. It's better for us to leave it that way. It makes it easier for all things to come to pass. It's the only way to bring this to an end. I'll break you. Like how I broke Luke, and Han, and Leia. I'm not going to do that to you." His voice trembled at the end.
Rey was accustomed to disappointment. She was used to not letting others in. She was used to being tougher than anyone else combined. She was the Resistance's most reliable soldier. Saved the day, saved worlds, saved the galaxy. There was no place for vulnerabilities, weaknesses. She was tired of fighting.
She had waited all her life searching for someone she didn't even know, a shadow of a familiar face, the small hand in her memories that told her with a soft voice that it was okay to jump.
"Ben. I made a choice. You asked me to take your hand. I hesitated, but I took it willingly. I'm here. I knew what I was doing, leaving behind, risking. It was not Kylo that lured me here. I took your hand, Ben; your hand."
"Do you regret it?" he asked her, the finality of it settling in. They knew. She saw for the briefest of moments, the young boy she used to know, who thought she hung the stars across the sky.
"Why are we here Ben?" she replied, closing her eyes, choosing not to answer anymore. She put her mask back on.
"I don't know." He couldn't look at her.
"Why did you ask for my hand, ask for my heart, to let you in, for me to come with you, leaving everything behind?" She couldn't breathe.
"Because I couldn't help myself," he said in a clear voice.
The unabashed honesty wasn't selfish. It was who she has always known him to be, and loved innocently, wholeheartedly, and unapologetically. He was impulsive, overreactive, overprotective, hot-headed, temperamental, and so, so lonely. He allowed self-conflict, self-imposed turmoil, and fear of breaking everything around him rule his heart. He was passionate, and had conviction that what he was doing, was neither good nor bad, but was right. The whole of him; his flaws, his fears, and features, made Ben magnetic and inexplicably bonded to her spirit – the other half of her whole, and the most genuine person she knew. The hardened side, the soft side, all of that made him her Ben, whose arms she blindly jumped into the arms of as a child, and again now.
She did not covet him, or his whole heart. They had for so many years otherwise been galaxies apart, and on other sides of the war. She only wanted the smallest fraction, the secret corner that only they knew, to acknowledge and love unboundedly, the real Rey. Nothing more. Just as long as the one who knew her as well as herself, and had convinced her that the whole her, not the her that everyone else sees- and wants to see, saw her as worthy, beautiful inside and out, and deserving to be loved as she is. Dysfunctions, emotions, and all. Expectations, affection, attraction, no label was needed to define or even give shape to it, she just wanted him, to love her in this unique way that could only be given to her by him.
"I just want the world to see you the way I do." She gave him both a smile on her face and in her voice. A small crack in her mask. She looked outside at the stars. She remembered how just gazing outside at the vast void of space connected them, their Force Bond. But now, even standing in the same room, next to him, it was severed. Did she save him, save herself through all of this? Was he the best version of himself; was she the best version of herself? She wasn't wrong about him. Because if she was, that would mean maybe that he was wrong about her too. Where can her heart go?
"I just needed to see you one more time Rey. And make sure that you were okay. And to tell you in person, that I'm not who you think I am, I can't be who you want me to be – but I see you, the real you."
"But Ben, you are. Everything you've done, everything that you are – I see only you. From before, and even more so now. Even in this very moment. I didn't need you to BE anything Ben. But now, I can't even feel you anymore."
Sometimes there is an invisible voice next to your heart. You want to listen to it, and follow it where it wants to go no matter the cost. There was no reason to feel any sort of way, any sadness, any betrayal, any pain, any emotion.
In her soul, she was used to writing a letter to herself to be stronger than the moment before as she stood there. She wrote it, and sealed it away for later. This was no different, just a new page, with the same pencil and smudges at the edges of the sheet as she wrote, erased, and rewrote.
"I loved you, Rey. Deeply. Once upon a time. I still see you. We'll always be connected, and a part of each other's lives now. The future is unwritten. And in every version of mine, I see you there in it."
She glanced at her heart that she had been carefully removing, one more time, warmly, affectionately, solemnly, before it cracked as she asked herself a silent and broken, "But why?"
"Ben, do you remember the island with the high cliffs, waves, and yellow flowers when we were kids? The last time I saw you?"
"Of course, it'll always be special to me. It was healing."
She closed her eyes, leaving him behind on the ship so all that surrounded her was serenity. The horizon kissed where the sky and sea met in shades of calm blue. She stood on the cliff. Far below, the sound of crashing waves around weather beaten rocks and wind whistling through a tunnel carved by time and the natural order of things were a comforting embrace.
Behind her was Ben, frozen and standing in place, forever on this green cliff. She walked around his figure, gazing upon his face, following the dip of his dimples- slightly uneven on both sides of his cheeks, his eyes- a dark brown that took secrets to the grave, the shape of his nose- something that always bothered him but she adored anyways. She lingered momentarily on his lips and his hands- willing herself to seal the warmth away into the box that held the shape of what remained of her heart. She tippy toed and leaned forward, reaching her hands to both sides of his face, stopping millimeters from cupping his cheeks and poking the mole on his right. Her eyes traced the outline of his ears, to his jawline, to his neck where she used to fit under his chin.
She turned around and nestled herself under him, her back coming only close enough to his chest for the silhouette of them to look like a final embrace in their shadow cast by the sunset upon the island. She was alone so she cried a final time until the sunlight dissipated and their shadows blended away into approaching darkness, letting the wind carry her tears to the ocean below, mixing the salt and sea.
The sky bled bright orange and yellow to streaks of purple and blue, painting a portrait in the sky that served as a backdrop to their story's epilogue. It was truly a beautiful sight to see.
A small chill, like a whisper, told her winter was here. It froze her asunder, and Rey walked towards the edge of the cliff. The small yellow flowers that adorned the coast crystalized as she walked past them, each petal becoming encased by ice, glistening and refracting in the last of the sun's rays kaleidoscoping fractured memories. She bid each flower goodbye, forevermore to be in the shade, and comfort of the night. Never growing, never dying. Just preserved as the distant echoes of waves and wind continue to carve out the insides of the sea caves below; reverberating all the things said and unsaid. The world continues to move.
Rey looked at the box one more time in her hands.
She dropped her heart to the bottom of the ocean. She watched it free fall it as it glimmered; warmth and light attempting to touch it one more time, before turquoise enveloped and swallowed it whole, to take it to where and when the tide wanted; to the shore, to the sea, she wondered where it would be. But she set it free.
He gazed upon her, unmoving, thoughts impenetrable. This was for the best. He sighed, relieved as she began to smile at him. Everything was going to be okay.
Then she began to fade.
When she was no longer in his sight anymore, he heard her.
"No one ever really leaves completely. I hope that you find what you are searching for, and that one day, people will see you, the way I do. You'll always find me among the stars."
And as quickly as she came, she was gone, leaving behind a wake of stardust.
He scooped it in his hand, letting it slip through his fingers like sand.
Her voice would not haunt him sleeping nor awake.
Her eyes wouldn't ask him questions he couldn't answer.
Her raw heart wouldn't make him feel so torn and unable to be who he thought she wanted him to be.
She was at least well, and alive in this universe.
"Be safe," he heard her bid softly, like a kiss goodbye.
Everything was where he wanted and willed it to be.
He found his serenity; calm, peaceful, and untroubled.
He was finally free.