AN: IDK, but I feel like I'm going to write a lot of random things in 2020. Also, 'Alexa, please play 'Rolling in the Deep' by Adele. Spoilers for TroS.

"All I needed was the love you gave
All I needed for another day
And all I ever knew
Only you."

Only You (actually, love the Selena Gomez take on this song)

"Be with me," she whispers, tears trailing down her face.

The silence in the abandoned Lars homestead is deafening.

"Be with me." Rey's voice raises, and she feels the acidic churn of the dark side ricochet in her system. The otherworldly visage of her Palpatine heritage. She hates that face, despises everything she stands for. But her other self is powerful. Dark, but strong. Malicious, but one minded.

No, a familiar voice echoes in the wind. Not this way.

She adheres.

She repeats the three words, over and over, and over again. A mantra. A hymn. An anthem. She says them until her throat is raw and she has no more tears. She shouts them to the very heavens. Her shattered voice rasps in the desert air.

The Jedi remain quiet.

Her opposite in the dyad is silent.

The bond is dormant. A thread still tethered, but only loosely.

Apparently, it was enough that she bring the end of Palpatine, but for the sin of her blood, must she remain alone? Her emotions shake the very thunder from the skies.

But all of her energy, her so-called magic abilities, her power is for naught.

Ben Solo does not appear.

Her studies take her to research other instances of dyads in the Force. There are so few scholars left, so she chases down ghosts. She returns to Ach-To, and in the cavern, there are no answers. She punches the rock, cracking it to its core.

In the end, she returns to Exegol. To the spot where Ben disappeared. To where Kylo Ren was redeemed. To the power of the Sith.

There is the slightest glimmer in the bond.

Cross-legged, she sits on the cold stone of the planet and meditates.

If Ben Solo is not in this world, she will find him in the next.

"Be with me," she whispers, leaving her corporeal body behind, and stepping into the World Between Worlds.