Epilogue

Rey giggled as Bridget squirmed in her arms, futilely resisting her mother's attempts to fit a warm wooly hat on her head. Winter had seem to come to Ajan Kloss suddenly that year, displacing the tropically temperate summer and even autumn with an initial snowfall and temperatures that were borderline nippy.

"Your daughter is ready, if also a little cranky," Rey called to her husband in the next room. "How are you doing with Thing 1 and Thing 2?"

Adem, her husband of four years, emerged from their room with Jacen and Jainia, the almost three-year-old twins. They were both chittering each other in some made-up language only they could understand, from their perches in the baby backpack now strapped to Adem's chest. Slung across his shoulders was Jaina, while Jacen was in a hoist across his stepfather's chest.

Peering at her love and their children, Rey couldn't help but giggle, smile bright and happy. "You look ridiculous."

Adem chuckled in good fun. "No one's supposed to look comfortable in this, never mind sexy, love." Slipping an arm about her waist and pulling her close, he softly kissed his wife on the lips. Rey's mouth upturned against his in a soft smile. Nestled between them, Jacen tried to tug on the wooly hat of his younger sister, who squawked in indignation. Rey and Adem broke their kiss with giggles.

"Come on, we're supposed to meet Poe, Neek'o and Kitt out in the meadow."

"They were going to greet the Ticos at the landing platform then?" Adem asked, as the whole motley crew wrestled their way out of the Solo-Hux apartment.

"Yup." Rey checked her wristchrono. "The transport from Solaris should be landing just about now... Finny told me in his last holocall that she's really excited."

"I should think so!" Adem slung an arm over his wife's shoulder. "It will be her first time seeing the baby, since the delivery."

The little family headed through the jungle trees, marveling at the white powder clinging to the tops of the canopy. Rey had never experienced snow as a little girl on Jakku, and her first time witnessing the phenomenon - during her and Adem's first months of marriage - had filled her with a childlike wonder that her husband still recalled fondly.

Emerging from the jungle treeline and onto the meadow dotted with frost, Rey caught sight of a dark-skinned man and tan-skinned woman, helping two men and a little boy lay out the expansive picnic blanket. Keeping a tight grip on Bridget at her hip, she loped across the permafrosted meadow grasses with a cry of delight as she lunged herself into Finn's arms.

"Hey there, little Jedi!" Finn rumbled as Rey broke away to side-hug Rose with a happy squeal.

"Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" Poe chortled, shaking hands with Adem as he cackled with laughter. "Got the Daddy Day Care down, eh, Hux?"

Adem just grinned good-naturedly. "Hardly." He didn't really bristle at all at his surname anymore. Overtime, he had come to reclaim it as something good, in his work alongside Finn to re-introduce freed and defected Stormtroopers into larger galactic society. Rey was very proud of him for it, and would always be happy with herself that she had agreed to partially take his name. That sense of identity meant something to the man she loved, as much as having a last name had always meant something to her.

Dancing around Poe and Adem, Rose's eyes were only for the little bundle in Neek'o's arms. "Can I hold her?"

"Sure," Neek'o smiled brightly. "Careful, though, she's sleeping."

Rose handled the little pink bundle gamely, kissing the tanned forehead that so resembled her own.

When the time had come, a year ago, for Poe and Neek'o to have another baby, they had approached Rose to be their surrogate. Having come to accept the painful fact that she and her husband would never have children of their own, Rose had jumped at the chance, and three months ago, Paige Dameron had been born. Rose, the proud birth mother, had been moved to tears when the Damerons had announced they would be naming their daughter after Rose's sister - the child's biological aunt. Leaving the little girl behind to return to their home on Solaris had been hard for Rose, but holocalls had made up the distance, and Rey knew she would want to visit little Paige whenver she could.

As Rey turned away from her extended family to place Bridget down on the blnaket, looking back over the meadow, she saw - or thought she saw - a blue and translucent figure staring at her lovingly from amidst the gentle snow flurries. At that precise moment, she felt a surge in the hole in her heart where the Bond with her deceased husband used to be...

Seeing the blue figure catch the sunlight peeking through the overcast clouds, Rey smiled. In the end, Ben had been right all along - love would be what would save them, was all that would save them. And although he hadn't lived to see the best of his days, grow old with her and raise the twins now playing on the picnic blanket, in a way, love had saved her and Ben. And Rey now had a large, extended family, and had found another man who loved her - and whom she loved in return - just as much as her first husband had.

With that comfort in mind, Rey smoothed out the skirts of her sundress as she sat down to enjoy the picnic.