Hidden

By: Discord

A/N: Posing as a couple who've lost everything to the First Order, Rey and Ben arrive on Carajam after the Emperor's defeat to hide themselves away and heal the scars within. Post TROS, with one obvious tweak. Light on angsty redemption (by Reylo standards), heavy on the come-hither stares.

Although I've been writing for a loooong time, I've yet to break into the Star Wars universe. Constructive feedback, suggestions, and fact-checking welcome!


Chapter I – The Otherworld Calls


Rey was wrenched back from the darkness by a warmth at her waist. Feeling returned to her limbs, and she brought a weak hand to the warmth, finding it was a palm splayed across her stomach.

Disbelief crowded out all else, and Ben's dark eyes met hers with shock so full of hope it banished the vestige numbness from her frame.

"Ben?" She breathed, gazing at a face both familiar and foreign. Sitting up, she let her fingers travel through the air, hovering near his cheek. His hand was behind her neck, supporting her, and unfiltered relief made him so open—so whole—it was like she'd gone back in time to glimpse the man caged away long ago.

Searching this new face – so different from the one she'd first seen when he'd removed his helmet and tried assaulting her mind – Rey surged forward. Ben rushed to meet her, parting his mouth as she claimed it, connecting in Exegol's shadowed tomb in trembling celebration.

They had done it. They had defeated the Emperor. Together.

Ben's hand slid down, pulling her closer, and she felt its strength and shake as he responded with measured pressure. The kiss was full of triumph – she had brought him from the Dark, and he'd saved her from the Otherworld. His lips were warm on hers, gentle and unyielding at the same time.

Rey wanted to savor the kiss, to live forever in a single moment, but the urge to memorize him – to make Ben's soft joy eclipse the rage of Kylo Ren – had her pulling away quickly. She roamed his features, proving to herself they were real. A smile of wonderment grew in her as he stared back, flitting over the lines of her nose and jaw with the same hint of awe. It was like he'd never seen her before. Like he'd waited his whole life to feel the elated acceptance in her gaze.

He matched her smile with one wide enough to show teeth, and Rey's heart leapt. The promise it held, a future without black robes or masks, left her nearly breathless. All she'd fought for. Made true.

But her soaring heart plummeted an instant later when his mouth's upturn suddenly slipped, and his eyes fluttered closed. Ben grew heavy in her arms, and she bent to catch him as he fell, resting his head on stone.

Horror doused all else as she gaped down, uncomprehending. He began to fade before her eyes, and Rey immediately grabbed his shoulders, calling to him through their bond.

Ben! She cried. Don't go! Stay with me.

Nothingness answered, and she clung tighter, even as she felt him give way in her grasp.

I need you, her mind pleaded. Stay, Ben. Please!

From the murky swells of despair threatening to swallow her whole, their current stronger and more raging than the just-won fight with Palpatine, a voice responded, sounding far away.

You did it Rey, you saved me.

Tears crowded and spilled down her cheeks, dripping salty wet into her mouth. So, stay for me, she urged. I don't want to be alone.

Let me go Rey.

No!

I won't really be gone—.

NO! She screamed inwardly, not wanting empty Jedi mantras. They'd bring no comfort when she left this nightmarish hellscape. Hunting through the invisible threads of energy in the air, still charged and weaving around them, she searched for his signature. The one she'd felt on Ahch-To, Crait, and Pasaana. Finding it with a small gasp, Rey concentrated on its dimming ebb, visualizing herself hauling him back to her plane. I won't let you!

Waves of Force shook as she anchored him in their frothing churn, dragging him to shore.

The voice didn't answer, but the shoulders she gripped lost their translucent haze, returning to reality in tangible layers that grew solid.

Rey blazed with hope, using her power to yank the last of him back from the brink in a desperate seize. She watched him, and caught movement beneath closed eyelids.

"B-Ben?" His name was more tremulous this time, laden with an anguish she fought not to be consumed by.

He opened his eyes, weary and worn. "You're not alone," he murmured. "I'm here."

And then she was hugging him, and sobbing, and the dark confines around them blurred as everything else ceased to matter.


His whispered words were the only ones he'd spoken. They had been found quickly, Rey calling out through the force to Finn and the Resistance while she'd helped Ben rise to a sit. Whisked away from the Emperor's demolished throne in a rush of supporting arms – the pilots hefting Ben to a staggered stumble exchanging wary looks – they'd been brought aboard a medical frigate and treated immediately.

As soon as she'd emerged from her bacta tank, she'd been summoned to a hastily assembled tribunal. Rey had convinced them to place Ben in her custody for rehabilitation, citing he wasn't fit yet to stand for his crimes. Her account of his actions in Palpatine's temple had less impact than the fact it was the face of hope and hero of the Resistance asking for leniency. She had won the tribunal's acceptance only by a slim margin, vowing her oversight would be strict, vigilant to any signs of his return to the dark side. Grumbled mutters floated up into the air even as the verdict was decided, and she knew her petition would be readily overturned by dissenters if she didn't make Ben disappear for awhile.

Two days later, with the galaxy celebrating all around them, Rey sat on the corner of his bed, trying desperately to coax him into conversation. Armed guards were posted outside the door – just a precaution, the tribunal assured – and she was glad its reinforced durasteel muffled most noise. No need to have an audience while she talked at, rather than to, Snoke's former apprentice.

The man looked almost catatonic, except for his eyes – they followed her every movement, focusing on an errant hair she swept behind her ears, or the hanging thread of her sash as she idly fidgeted with its end.

The only other responses she could elicit were physical ones. If she slipped her palm into his and squeezed, his fingers would reflexively curl around hers. When she'd brush a hand along his cheek, a line of clenched teeth would appear in his jaw.

"I don't know what to do," she mumbled, staring out the large window of his recovery room. They were near the planet Takodana, Maz Kanata's home-world, surrounded by the remaining ships not yet departed that had followed them to Exegol. "Why won't you talk?"

She felt his gaze bore into the back of her head and turned from the window, meeting it with a lift of her chin. "I don't care if you're mad at me for bringing you back," she asserted. "You made a promise."

Ben exhaled heavily, looking away.

"So, it's to be scoffs and glares then?" Rey felt irritation rise. She shot it at him through their bond. Palpatine had stolen vast stores of their energy for his revival, but it was already replenishing itself, and their connection seemed stronger than ever. "Kylo Ren explodes into frenzied property damage, and Ben Solo simmers in unvoiced hostility?"

Ben closed himself off, tamping down his feelings from her. The dismissal stung, and Rey stared into her lap, groping to remember how their moment of closeness had felt. So much had happened in so short a time. The galaxy's greatest threat had been vanquished by a nobody – the Emperor's claims of her ancestry didn't change that status. She had died, Ben had died, and she had fought on his behalf to prevent him being strung out and eviscerated for Kylo Ren's atrocities. Somewhere in all that, they'd been gifted a glimpse unto themselves, a glimmer of happiness no one else could impede upon, but it had slipped away in the harsh glare of aftermath and consequences. Confusion, regret, and sorrow swirled through her, and she made no attempt to hide them from their connection.

Ben's next sigh was soft. "I can't be here Rey," the statement was a thin, resigned thread in the air. "I don't deserve it."

At that, her eyes snapped up. The momentousness of his speech was swallowed in the defeat it bore. "I don't care," she countered. "You are here, and I deserve it."

He turned back to her, surprise edging out the morose stupor in his countenance. "I can't live only for you," he supplied evenly, watching her with an intensity so like Kylo Ren's.

Rey frowned. "We'll see about that."