Summary: He pleaded to the stars but his whispers reached no ears but his own, the echoing of his cries the only witness to his pain. But they were a dyad in the Force, the power of life itself, so one was never meant to live without the other.

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars or any characters affiliated with it.
Cover art by elithien.

"No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee."

Remembrance, Emily Brontë

Remembrance
Chapter Three

When Rey landed on the Resistance Base, a weight lifted off her shoulders as she saw her friends. Their happiness at the fact that the long long war was over and they were all still alive – the sensation of being able to breathe without worrying about the First Order finding them was a relief like no other.

But the moment she saw Finn and the smile on his face, Rey felt guilt replace that said weight. How was she going to break it to him – to everyone – that Ben was still alive? They wouldn't see two separate people, to them Kylo Ren and Ben Solo were the same being. To them, Ben being alive resulted only in the fear that he would come back and ruin the freedom that they just gained, to oppress them once again.

"Rey!"

For now, she would keep her mouth shut, because the sudden warmth that rushed over her gave her the strength to continue standing without caving under the guilt. Her secret would remain with her only until she knew that everyone was ready, no matter how long it took. So instead, she ran to her friends and allowed herself to be enveloped in the happiness that being with them brought her. They were celebrating; there was no need for her to ruin this moment for them all.

Days passed and in time, Rey began to pack. She ate, celebrated, slept, repeat; she was as well-rested as she could be at this point. A part of her knew that she needed to leave; there was just...so much more she that she felt that she needed to do. Whether that was to help aid Ben his journey away from the dark or to continue her own Jedi journey into places unknown, all that she did know was that her place was not here, amongst her friends as she once had hoped. It was a gut feeling, a continuous pull in another direction that she knew would guide her.

"What are you doing?" Yelping in surprise at the sudden voice, she whirled around and saw Finn, Poe trailing behind him. He was looking not at her but at the bag in her hands with confusion. "...You're leaving already?"

Rey felt a pang in her heart at the slight anger that flooded his voice. "Yes. I'm sorry but I don't know how to explain it – my place isn't here anymore, Finn."

There was a pause, an awkward second of silence as Poe finally caught up to them. "...It's him, isn't it?" Finn suddenly declared, looking up. Poe looked at them with confusion, only hearing the tail end of the question.

Heart skipping a beat, Rey instinctually feigned ignorance. "What are you talking about?" She kept a calm exterior but inside, she panicked. How? Why? Better yet: how could she explain Ben Solo without angering them all? Without sacrificing Ben?

"Kylo Ren." The moment his name fell from Finn's lips, the air between the three friends grew tense with a nauseating mixture of confusion, anger, and betrayal – all of which radiated from the two men. Rey opened her mouth, ready to explain the entire situation away without making it worse when he interrupted with his intense pacing, something she always saw him do when he was taut with anger. "Remember on Pasaana, when we fell into the quicksand? Do you remember how I wanted to tell you something?"

As she slowly nodded, Poe narrowed his eyes at Finn and held up a hand. "Wait, is this about that damned secret? The one you still refuse to tell me even now?" he interjected, trying in his own way to diffuse the tension with another question.

But Finn ignored him and looked at her instead, his face unreadable. "I'm Force-sensitive."

At these words, Rey forced her face into a blank mask that she was getting eerily better at controlling. There was only a single thought in her head at his sudden declaration: she was not surprised. She had sensed that he was more in tune with the Force than he had let on to everyone, and why he kept this hidden from her was more the surprise than anything.

"Nothing? You're not even shocked?"

"I…" With a heavy sigh, she too began to pace, albeit with smaller steps and less frantically. For a split second, Rey had thought that she should act surprise, as it seemed that that was the response that he sought, but she knew better – she knew Finn. He was her best friend, someone who she confided in and vice versa. To keep her true feelings only to herself would only be a disservice to them all, especially after what they all went through together. So, steeling herself, she responded in the only way she knew how – by telling the truth. "Finn, I knew – how could I not? You're my best friend and...and I sensed the Force's presence around you–"

Interrupting with a sound of frustration, he stormed up to her and placed both of his hands on her shoulders, holding her firmly in place. "That's not the point I'm trying to make! I'm – fine, whatever, you knew. Okay, that conversation is done–"

"No, it's not," Poe growled.

"Fine, it's tabled for now," he muttered and threw his head back. There was some unspoken conversation that lasted a few seconds between the two men before there was a grunt of acceptance from Poe, and despite her current predicament, Rey couldn't help but feel a sliver of amusement at the way they interacted. However, when Finn turned back around, she felt her heart drop even more. "But Force sensitivity issue aside, your refusal to deny Kylo's death means that I'm right." Not a question – a statement. "He's alive."

Once again, Rey's immediate thought went to denying it, but Poe looked at her from behind Finn, and underlying the confusion in his eyes too were hints of betrayal, and she knew that hiding this information would only backfire horribly in her face. Already, she was experiencing the repercussions of hiding what truly occurred from her friends.

"Yes." With a heavy heart, she said, "Ben Solo is alive."

At once, Finn staggered back like he had been struck as Poe caught him, keeping him steady.

She had expected screaming, yelling, fighting, a literal explosion of fire and chaos in the room they stood in, but she was taken aback from the stillness in the air that originated from them instead. No response, just plain silence.

Unlike the usual Poe she was used too, with the emotional responses he typically gave, instead he had an unreadable look on his face as he quietly asked how. She nodded and took a deep breath, going back to the memory of her fight with Palpatine.

But the unexpected happened. As Rey began to remember, her heart began to beat harder and faster in her chest as the air in her lungs suddenly disappeared. She felt herself beginning to hyperventilate, unable to take in the air she needed. It was as if all the blood in her body was replaced with ice, her mind going straight to her...her death. Anxiety flooded her system and she was unable to dive back out of the flashback. She began drowning in the terror of what had truly occurred, of the torturous pain that her grandfather forced her to go through.

For a split-second, she wasn't on Ajan Kloss, where the Resistance was based out of, and she wasn't with her friends in her small cramped room; no, she was on Exegol, thinking Ben had died and the voices of the Force in her head as Palpatine's lightning burned through her and–

"I died," she forcefully whispered, her voice cracking. She gulped, trying to rid her throat of the sudden dry spell, but instead, it only intensified the feeling of her stomach rocking with the contents of her breakfast. She had to turn down away from them, unable to look at her friends. "Palpatine had...somehow drained the bond I have with Ben for himself – he had said that it was like the power of life itself. I remember...falling and for one second, Ben was there, next to me on the ground – and we were still together, even though we weren't? But then Palpatine flung him into a crater and I thought he had died." Rey had to take a second to rearrange her thoughts, to ground herself back to the present, which was oh so very hard. She was barely there with Poe and Finn – most of her was stuck in a loop of the events that she was reliving. "So I woke up. Stood up against Palpatine. And then I–"

Before she could continue, footsteps forced her to look up. While Finn was still standing away from her, he was still closer than earlier as Poe placed a gentle hand against her arm. The warmth that he radiated towards Rey, despite knowing that she had been unable to do the one thing that the Resistance thought that she could do, made tears form at the corner of her eyes. It gave her a little more strength to finish speaking. "I channeled the Force into me. All that I could hold and even more – I allowed myself to be a conduit for the Light. I remember so many voices in my head that weren't mine, their echoes...I heard Master Skywalker – I even heard General Leia, Poe! I heard her. So I was defeated Palpatine. But I had no fight in me; I was so tired and I was in so much pain. I just...I couldn't go on, you know? You guys were safe, the Resistance had won, but I was done. So then...then I died."

Her voice cracked and her body felt like lead. At this point, tears were freely streaming down her cheeks, the terror of that night now truly dawning on her. She had disassociated herself from that terrorizing event, pushing it to the furthest corners of her mind. It had occurred only a little over a week ago, but this entire time, she had been avoiding the topic with herself. Forcing herself to forget the nightmares – to simply forget, in general. She hadn't truly digested that she had died – she had been dead.

"And the next thing I knew, I was with Ben and he had brought me back to life by sacrificing his own," she said with a sad finality, her voice barely even a whisper.

"I...I didn't know. Hell, none of us knew that Rey – why didn't you tell us?"

Sniffling, she forced herself to talk over the lump in her throat. "I'm sorry about saying nothing about Ben–"

Finn suddenly pushed Poe aside and enveloped Rey into a hug. "You know what, yeah, you should've said something about Ben but Poe wasn't talking about that!" Tightening his arms, he said, "You shouldn't have to deal with your own death alone, Rey."

His words echoed in her ears and when she looked at Poe from over Finn's shoulder, there was now a different look in his eyes. Replacing the betrayal was something different. They were filled with such a heavy sadness that, when he went to join the hug, Rey began sobbing into her best friends' arms, a broken girl.

Everything wasn't really okay, but for now, that was all right.

Once the emotions in the room simmered down to a more reasonable level, the trio spoke with one another. They said the things they truly felt, the fears that they were forced to face in their final battle against the Final Order. And once they could start smiling and laughing at the stupid jokes that Poe liked to make, that was when they knew that they were okay. Yes, Rey's secret had been a sharp blow to their friendship, but it wasn't enough to destroy the camaraderie that had bonded them together.

As much as Finn wanted to chase after Kylo Ren, he couldn't deny that the former First Order Leader had saved the galaxy alongside Rey. So he agreed to keep Ben's existence a secret amongst only the three of them under one condition: to aid the Resistance.

"How the hell do you expect him to help us? His face is known by everyone in the Galaxy, despite that dumbass mask of his and not to mention, there are only two Force users in the Galaxy that can fight and uh, it's Rey and Kylo," Poe argued, a hand on Finn's shoulder.

"The First Order – or Final Order, whatever the hell you want to call them – may have fallen, but there are still survivors. I know that they'll try to maintain as much control and power as they can. They won't have the strength that they did a week ago, but they'll still become a threat if we don't stamp it down now." Finn looked at a small map of a system that happened to be in Rey's room. "There are hidden bases all across the galaxy that we might not know about, hiding Stormtroopers with weapons that can still terrorize us."

"But how do you expect Ben to help?" Rey threw in, her brows furrowed in thought. "He told me that he left most of the plans and whatnot with the generals – there may be a chance that he might not have that much information that'll help us anymore." Especially with most of the First Order dead, many of the higher command people had died when Finn blew up one of the main star destroyers.

"He has to know something – anything, really! But Finn's right, we can't in good conscience leave him free without some sort of aid in exchange. I'm sorry Rey, I know that you say he's changed but we haven't seen him or spoke to him, and what he's done to us for years will take twice as long and even more to forget," Poe explained.

And she understood. Before she could form a response, the air around her blurred, her friends melting into the background as she felt and then saw Ben suddenly standing before her.

"Rey."

"...Ben," she breathed out with a smile.

She hurriedly explained what had happened, throwing in an apology that she couldn't keep him hidden a little longer. But unlike the frustration she had expected – it seemed that today was not her day in reading people – there was a strange sense of calm that he radiated. "I'll agree. I'll help the Resistance crush any First Order insurgents that survived the battle, to tell you of the locations of top-secret bunkers that might contain some of the council members that might have survived. It's a start to try and repair the terror I imposed upon everyone." With a sad smile, he said, "It's the least I can do."

Rey's hand slowly went up towards his face as she took him in – he looked pale and dirty, hair unkempt. but there was a brightness to his eyes that was nonexistent a mere week ago, and she felt inexplicable relief at what she saw. Repeating what she had done in the Sith temple, Ben gently placed his face into her palm with a smile, his hand covering her own.

"Okay." They both closed their eyes, the bond beating in a balance that spoke to them what words could not. And as it melted away and reality shifted back, Rey felt the same words leave her mouth again.

"Okay."

03: End

A/N: I'm sorry this chapter was late. All I can say for an excuse is over winter break my mental health deteriorated and once classes started up, with me leaving home and whatnot, I've been not too good. But I've been feeling a little better for the past few days so I really want to finish this story, so I promise that the next chapter will be done soon. Hell, it might even be up this weekend – that's how I'm feeling right now. So, please leave a review :) Even if I don't respond it really does make me feel a little better about my writing. But in all honesty, please take care of yourself you guys. Mental health is important.