Trapped in the Otherworld
By: Discord
A/N: Ben watches Rey from the veil of the Otherworld and must decide if he's ready to join the Oneness forever, or lurk in the corners of her life as an ever-present specter. Unless he can enlist the help of an afterlife guardian and make it back to her….
Just a little one shot I cooked up on the last Sunday of NanoWrimo 2020 to pad my wordcount and finish a day early. Enjoy!
Ben Solo made two discoveries almost simultaneously.
The first was that he was dead.
Huh.
He couldn't muster any upset, a mild sort of numbness hazing any deeper feelings on the matter. Nothing hurt. His limbs had no weight or substance, and if he squinted, he could see through them to an undefined, dark ground below.
The second realization – jarring when it sank in – was that Ben knew he was dead. He was somehow awake and aware enough to know he'd passed on.
What?!
He couldn't be a ghost given form by the Force. He was no Jedi Master, and one saved girl didn't redeem a decade of atrocity.
Did it?
His thoughts turned to said girl, just as they had in life, and suddenly she was there, swept up in a flurry of arms as rushing forms celebrated and hugged among a lush jungle around her.
Ben peered at Rey, bloodied but happy, and fervently wished he was still alive. Glaring at the two men embracing her, his thoughts grew medieval.
Those were supposed to be HIS arms. He had sprinted into that Sith temple for her. Abandoned the mantle of Kylo Ren, so she would finally take his hand. Died so she could live.
His rage passed quickly, returning to the numb calm that descended like a thick fog. Ben continued to observe, and the longer he watched, the firmer his surroundings became. The murky darkness sharpened to Rey's forest, ferns at his feet and beaming sunlight overhead. Although he could see the clear sky and abundant fauna, he felt no heat from the day and no feathery leaves as he brushed a hand along a frond.
Odd. Was he in some half-life limbo?
No. There were no passed looks of recognition or fear among the Resistance throng now circling him. None saw him.
Returning to Rey, he identified the men – the traitor FN-2187 and Dameron, the obnoxiously glib pilot. The joy in their faces was almost brighter than hers, and he contemplated their motives as the hug went on for eternity.
Did they both want her? How had she kept the depth of her attachment to her friends from him? He'd known of Skywalker, the Falcon, the island. How had she hid these two evidently important figures from their bond?
Ben decided if one harbored affection for her, it was Hux's former trooper. The relief in the man's beam would've made him grimace if he could work his mouth enough to turn it down.
Wait. He'd tried touching the ferns, hadn't he? Ben concentrated, shoving away the creeping fog until he felt his lips pull into a thunderous scowl.
Hah.
Rey looked past the cage she was still trapped in, eyes flying wide as her gaze fell to his.
Ben stilled. The vestige numbness fled under her gaping stare and everything became stark and raw in a sweeping flood.
Could she see him?!
Ben's next discovery came quickly. He could only watch Rey. No amount of concentration or intent brought glimpses of anyone else.
He didn't like the darkness; it was as constant and oppressive as the blanketing apathy that wrapped around him anytime he was alone.
So Ben spied on Rey constantly.
While she chatted with the blasted, little droid that had carried the map to Skywalker.
As she tinkered away on the Millennium Falcon, the tenacious derelict that had stubbornly outlived them all, refusing to retire to a junkyard and quietly rot away.
And when she sat on the corner of her Resistance-issue mattress, blinking unseeing into an empty corner as if it'd grant long-sought answers of the universe.
Through it all, Ben hunted for any trace of acknowledgement from her, any flash she knew he was there. She never gave any. Her shock in the forest seemed a singular event, or something he'd fabricated in a desperate, pathetic flare of hope.
He was lurking while she sat among a pile of cargo bins, the amount of activity around her notably diminished. How much time had passed? A week? A month? He couldn't tell.
Rey was still at the jungle base though. Towering trees shaded the secluded platform and trailing vines stretched everywhere. She was curled over one of her precious Jedi texts, reading with a furrowed brow.
Ben made his eyes roll. Actions took effort, but her naïve reverence merited the energy.
He wanted to speak, to tell her those antiquated, infernal books – full of ramblings and stiff prose – would reveal nothing she didn't already know, but bringing forth words was too taxing. Whenever he'd tried, the fog would obscure Rey from view, dousing him in a heavy, lethargic detachment that robbed him of awareness for an unknown duration. When he would wake and seek her out, she was always in a different place, completing a new task, talking with a new person.
Ben stared, studying her slight frame critically. She looked smaller than she'd been in his arms at Exegol. Was she eating? He took a step forward, inwardly wincing as it drained his strength, and forced his other foot to woodenly shuffle to meet it.
Rey glanced up from her page, going rigid. "Hello?" She darted her eyes over her shoulder, searching beyond the bins. "Someone there?"
Ben's legs refused to carry him any further, melding into the ground like they were stuck in a Jakku sinking field. Knowing the numbness would probably knock him out for ages, he wrenched his mouth open anyway, drawing from a hidden reserve.
"Rey…," her name was a choked, barely-there thread in the air, more exhale that actual utterance.
She whipped in his direction, giving a strangled gasp.
And then everything went black.
Rey thought she saw Ben everywhere. Her mind, full of a sorrow she couldn't share, had first conjured him as Poe and Finn had clung to her like brothers, imparting so much love through their shaking arms she'd almost broken down and told them everything right there. How it was Ben Solo who had died in Palpatine's tomb, not Kylo Ren. How she had returned him to the Light and then he'd left her. When he had promised she wasn't alone anymore.
While her best friends embraced her, and she entertained a fleeting indulgence of true trust – Ben had appeared in a field of ferns, glowering in Ren-like wrath.
Rey realized she couldn't tell Finn or Poe anything because her tethers to sanity were fraying before her eyes.
She made two discoveries quickly. One was that the loss of Ben was unbearable. A stifling monster within, it simultaneously fought to claw its way out while also rending her apart from the inside. The second revelation was that she would gladly allow herself to slip into madness if it meant her mind continued supplying her with visions of him.
Her grief brimmed, overflowing in random moments of innocence, producing glimmers of prominent nose and black hair in the edges of her periphery. Admonishing BB-8 for his language, banging away at the Falcon's numerous patches of rust, or lingering in her quarters trying to rally for the day, struggling to rein back the hysterics screaming for release. Ben's presence hung all around her.
So by the time Rey glimpsed Ben standing among her hiding place of forgotten cargo, hearing him whisper her name, she decided going crazy was actually a little bit sublime.
Ben didn't return for weeks. She didn't know why. He'd never spoken in all her almost-caught moments, and she wondered if it had been his goodbye. Rey kept to herself, avoiding the Resistance members who'd taken up residence in a nearby town but still popped in frequently to check on her. When he finally rematerialized, it was by her bedside. She'd just been drifting off to sleep, finally succumbing to the blissful darkness beneath her heavy eyelids, when his outline began taking shape.
Rey blinked and sat up in a rush of fallen blankets, more alert than she'd been in months. "Ben," she breathed. "You're back."
His face didn't move, but his eyes looked stunned.
"Where'd you go? Why did you stay away so long?"
His chin shifted ever so slightly to the left; a paled version reminiscent of a headshake.
"You can't talk?" Rey ventured. "But you can let yourself be seen?"
His outline faded as he made his chin go up this time.
Rey surged to her knees, palming the air between them. "Okay, okay. It takes a lot out of you. I get it," she drank in his luminous form, trying to savor and problem-solve at the same time. "If you can visit me, maybe the veil separating us isn't fully solid yet? Maybe you can find a way back?"
Ben's gaze widened, and he began to disappear.
"Stay," Rey begged. "Please."
But he was already gone.
Rey's shadowed quarters sharpened into focus, and Ben reflexively sucked air he no longer needed into lungs that didn't work at the sight of her drowsy features. There was nothing but the fog to admonish him, so his pleasure at finally arriving in her bedroom for a nightly viewing received no reproving castigation.
He had planned to loom, hoping to catch a peek of uncovered collar, or a curve of hip obscured in sheets. He would have wished for more, but there'd been so much of her he hadn't been privy too – just standing before her, without the sparks of battling lightsabers, was novel.
When Rey shot to a sit, clad in nothing but a thin top that left little to the imagination, Ben decided being dead had its advantages.
She spoke, and his strange, new existence went completely sideways. "Ben. You're back."
He was vaguely aware she asked where he'd gone, and as he tried shaking his head, the torpor engulfed him in a vengeful swallow, robbing him of cognizance.
Rey rose to her knees, showing a swathe of skin as she bared her stomach. "Maybe you can find a way back?" She asked.
The clouds descended, and he was suddenly so tired.
"Stay. Please."
Amid the fuzzing apathy, he dimly wondered why she sounded so sad.
Ben decided to investigate his unexplored plane and exposed new truths swiftly. He was not alone. There were others. Cloaked figures floated in the darkness, watching as he'd watched Rey. Interacting with them proved far less draining, and he learned they were guardians of the afterlife, charged with overseeing the transition of new souls to the Otherworld. Some were counselors, others intercessors – incorporeal beings responsible for allowing direct contact with the Living World – and Ben talked at length of his predicament.
Yes, his death had been untimely.
And plagued with trauma.
No, he didn't want to stay, or ascend peacefully to the final circle of the afterlife, transferring his energy to the cosmos.
He wanted to live. Wanted to return to Rey.
The figures, faceless and robed in volumes of wavering gray, understood.
No. They didn't. She needed him.
They were a dyad; their souls were one.
Ben argued indefinitely. New counselors would come, trying to coax him to accepting his fate, and he would barrage them with adamant objections.
A year passed in the Living World while Ben made his case, and when a lone guardian took pity on his plight, stretching out a hazy limb to finger his forehead, the once-Jedi allowed himself new hope.
I'm coming, Rey. Hold on.
.
THE END?
A/N: Maybe I'll turn this into a little two or three-parter at some point. Depends on how long my muse is caught up in the lovely-agony that is Reylo.
I have another fic that opens on Exegol and Ben lives. Check out 'Hidden' if you're so inclined :)