Ben takes a step toward her and then freezes.

Rey takes a step and freezes too.

It feels like a hundred years since she last saw him.

It feels like they just parted moments ago.

It feels like she just watched him fade away into nothingness in front of her. It feels like finding his TIE fighter on Exegol next to her X-Wing and then waking up far away with friends who can never understand what she went through, what she lost.

"Rey," he says, his voice hitching on the single syllable.

She breaks then, running up the last of the hill to stand in front of him. She has no idea what to do with her hands, with her body. She looks up at him, meets his eyes, glances down at his lips, remembers the smile that graced his face, remembers the feel of those lips pressed to hers. It had been such a gentle kiss, her first, soft and sweet and over far too quickly.

Ben is watching her now, a little warily, his eyes still so wide. He doesn't make any motion to step forward, to embrace her. He's wearing a cloak, brown and a little tattered. He clutches it around himself like it's a lifeline, and when she looks down, she's surprised to see his bare feet and lower legs peeking out from under it.

She feels a blush come across her cheeks.

She doesn't know why, but those feet, big and strong, and so very vulnerable, have her mind going in directions she doesn't quite expect.

"Rey," he repeats.

She looks back up at him. "Ben?"

He nods.

She smiles and steps toward him. All she wants to do is fall into his arms, let him wrap her up in those strong arms, feel his body, alive and warm and breathing, against hers. "Aren't you going to…" She shrugs, holding her arms open a bit. She doesn't quite know how to ask for what she wants.

What do you want, Rey?

"I…" he starts to say, clears his throat. His arms pull the cloak tighter around himself. "You…uh…you didn't happen to bring my shirt, did you? Or may pants?" His cheeks are a little pink, and he starts to lift his hand to his hair, before he startles a little, and returns it to where it's been wrapped around his side.

"I have the shirt in my X-Wing…" Her voice trails off, and her eyes move down his body, back to those legs of his, and oh kriff. "Are you naked under that thing?"

"You…uh…might have noticed that when I disappeared, I left everything behind?" The color deepens on his cheeks and she can just barely see the tip of one red ear sticking out of his hair.

"Oh…oh Force," she mutters. "Of course."

"Luke's…uh…not really my size."

"Right." Of course he's not. No one is Ben's size. Luke was barely taller than her, and while she might be tall for a woman, she is certainly quite a bit shorter than Ben. And that's not even mentioning the sheer breadth of his chest.

"I didn't expect to live," he says softly, and Rey feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

"Don't you ever do that again, Ben Solo." She reaches out and wraps her hand around his arm. "Don't leave me."

"I won't."

"Never," she says, and her eyes bore into his.

He nods. "Never. I promise."

She watches him for a moment longer before stepping closer, going up on her tiptoes. "Ben," she whispers.

"I'm here," he says.

"You're real." The words are a little breathless. She can feel the heat radiating off of him, can feel the firmness of his forearm beneath her fingers. He's real and solid and here. He's also naked beneath the cloak and that sends a little frisson of desire down her body.

He nods and his eyes flit to her lips. "I am."

"Ben," she whispers, and then she goes up on her tiptoes. She's surprised that he meets her this time, dipping his head so their lips can meet. She feels him smile against her lips, and she slides her tongue across his lips, his teeth, before he makes a small noise in the back of his throat and opens his mouth to let her in.

It's a heady feeling, his tongue sliding along hers. She never quite really imagined what this would feel like, but she likes it.

He opens his arms and wraps them around her, pulling her in close. When her arms come around him, under the cloak, he groans. Her hands come to rest of the bare skin of his back, and she realizes that she's pressed against his body. His very naked body.

And there's something hard pressing into her stomach.

She pulls back from the kiss to look up at him. His eyes are dark, the pupils blown wide open. "Rey," he murmurs, and she wraps herself even more tightly around him. "Oh kriff, Rey…"

And then it happens.

It hits her like a blaster shot, almost taking her straight off her feet.

Instead, she clings harder to Ben and hears him mutter a curse as he holds tight to her.

The bond.

It opens.

It's stronger than before, hot and white, and wrapping them in its security, in its beauty. She feels tears in her eyes, down her cheeks, and feels Ben shaking as he clings to her. She whispers his name as their minds reforge the connection. She can feel it, racing like lightning across their nerves, reconnecting synapses and creating new pathways between their minds.

She comes to with a gasp, her eyes opening as she realizes her face is pressed tightly into the skin of his chest. Memories flit through her mind, lazily, as if she's watching some old holovid that skips every once in awhile. Do you have a cowl…you are a monster…

He's not.

Not anymore.

He feels like every nerve in his body is on fire, alive in ways he's never felt before. He wraps Rey…Rey…in his arms, inside his uncle's ratty old cloak and pulls her tight against him. He can feel every inch of her, warm and alive there pressed up against him. Her hands come around him, wrap around his back, pressing into the bare skin there and he shudders as the bond races through every bit of his mind.

It's almost too much.

He can feel his knees buckle, can feel her holding tight to him. In a way, her strength holds him up, keeps him from collapsing into a heap.

He doesn't know how he manages to not collapse, even with her there to add her strength.

He sometimes still feels barely alive.

Everything spins and then he hears her gasp, feels her push back, and for a moment he's standing bare before her, hands hanging loosely at his sides, cloak open.

She's staring.

Her eyes trace the lines of his body and he knows he's hard, his cock jutting out toward her like it's seeking her warmth and the bond that's now thrown wide open. When her eyes come back up to his they're wide, her lips are parted, and she looks like she wants to say something.

He stands mute for a moment longer.

A cowl or something…

"Oh, kriff," he mutters, grapping both sides of the cloak tightly around himself. "Rey, I'm…"

She clears her throat. "No, don't apologize." She's still watching him and there's this look on her face. Curiosity, he thinks. "Was that…for…" She can't seem to quite finish the thought, waving her hand up and down herself as her cheeks turn bright red.

"Yes," he answers, and then cringes. "For you…all for you."

"Wow."

"Rey," he starts to say and she steps closer, pushing up on her toes to kiss him softly.

When she returns to her feet, she shakes her head. "How are you here?"

"On Ahch-to?"

"Alive," she says.

He lifts a hand to cup her face, searches her eyes. He can see the tracks her tears have made down her cheeks, can see that they're close to overflowing again. She shakes her head again and when she tries to look away, he cups her face with his other hand as well. "I…I don't know. I'm not sure I was ever really dead. I went…someplace."

"Someplace?"

He heaves a sigh, "Have you ever heard of the world between worlds?"

She's watching with a furrow between her brows. "I don't think so."

He nods. "It's a concept I've only ever heard spoken of in the vaguest of terms. I don't really know if it's where I went." He closes his eyes, feels her hands come up to touch his. "But then I was on Exegol and you were gone."

"I couldn't feel you." Her voice is shaky as she speaks. "Not in the Force. Our bond had gone quiet. Like you weren't there. Like you'd never been there."

"I suppose in a way I wasn't here. But I wasn't dead. Not really. Sort of…"

"Halfway in between?" she finishes with.

"Yes," he murmurs. "I'm here now."

"And you won't leave again?" Her voice is so small, so small and scared and he feels it rip right through him.

"I came back," he says and he sees her head shoot up. People don't come back for Rey. He knows this. She confided him that the first time anyone ever came back for her it was his father. And Finn. And Chewie. They'd come back, tried to save her at the same time his father tried to save him.

There was a poetry there.

"You came back," she whispers.

"I will always come back." She looks up at him then and Force, he just wants to…to…kriff, he has no idea what he wants to do. He'd imagined this moment any number of ways.

With her coming to him and letting him teach her the dark side of the Force.

With them running away together, leaving all this behind. No First Order. No Resistance. Just them.

With them ruling the galaxy together. The Supreme Leader and his Empress.

And in all of them, he's pretty sure he was not dressed in his uncle's abandoned robe, naked and shivering on the top of some kriffing cold and windy island.

She nods then and steps back. "We should take shelter." Her eyes look past him, up toward the sky and he turns to follow the path of her gaze. "There's a storm coming."

"Great…more lightning?"

She smiles. "No, just a lot of rain. They come nearly every day here."

He cocks his head to the side. "You enjoy that, don't you?"

"On Jakku, there are sand storms. And water is a commodity that is rationed out, that people fight to the death for during the bad times." The corners of her mouth turn down and Ben reaches out a hand to try to smooth them away. She turns her head into his palm before continuing. "Here water is so plentiful that it's avoided. I stood under the Falcon and let it drip down the sides around me. I stepped outside and let it soak me until I shivered and needed to retreat to my hut to dry my clothing and warm up by the fire. I'd never seen anything like it."

"I'll give you all the water you want. All of it," he pledges, one of his hands curling into a fist.

"I just need you," she says, and then looks past him again. "Come, Ben. My hut is nothing but rubble…"

"Kriff, sorry about that."

She reaches out to take his hand. "You didn't destroy it."

He shrugs. "Luke had every right to be concerned about you. I was a monster."

"You never were," she says. "That's where he was wrong. Come," she says again and turns away. He feels the wind pick up, and he wouldn't have thought it possible, but the air gets damper.

"It's really going to rain, isn't it?" he says as he feels the first drop hit the tip of his nose. They're really not that far from the hut she's aiming for.

"Yes. Come on," she says and tugs him after her.

He goes easily with her. He'd follow her to the ends of the universe if she asked him to.

And then the sky just opens up. One moment there are just a couple drops hitting him and the next it's like a complete deluge. "Oh, kriff," he mutters.

"Told you," she says.

And then he stops.

"Ow!" Rey says as she's yanked back. "What are you doing?"

And he just doesn't even care. They've died. What's a bit of water? He shakes his head, his soaked hair flying out around him, droplets hitting Rey in the face. She flinches and then smirks. "We can't get any more wet," he says.

She holds out the hand that's not in his, catches some of the drops in her cupped palm. And then flings them at him.

He laughs.

He feels light, he realizes, like he's somehow floating, basking in the warmth and light that's Rey.

"It's not just my light," she says. "It's yours."

"It's ours," he says. He wants to reach out for her other hand, but knows that beneath the now sodden cloak he's still kriffing naked.

"Ours," she repeats.

He leans down then and kisses her. It's soft and sweet, and she tastes like the rain. He can't get enough of it, kissing her again, and then again. Each kiss soft, each kiss chaste.

She wraps her arms around his neck. "Come on. Let's get in out of this rain and dry off."

He lets her lead him this time and doesn't stop here.

She leads him into one of the huts. It's not hers, not the hut. That one still lies in pieces. Even the Caretakers have not bothered to put it back together. It lays there, a testament to their first reaching out to each other, hands touching across the galaxy.

Now they're here. Together. The hut they step into is dark and damp, and she steps away to light the fire.

"Do you…" he starts to ask, clears his throat. "Do you have that shirt?"

"Oh…right." She does. She's tucked it away in her pack, intending to carry it with her everywhere she went, that little part of him that she has left. But now she has him. She rummages around and pulls it out. "Here."

He takes it from her, and then they're just left staring at each other. "I…" he starts to say. "Um…"

"Oh kriff. Right." Naked she remembers. She'd felt it, her body melded to his, her hands wrapped around his naked back, the heat of him, the sheer breadth of him pressed tightly to her. "I'll just turn around?"

He doesn't say anything.

Just stares.

And then finally nods.

She does as he asks, turning her back to him. She hears rustling, the sound of something hitting the ground, something wet and soggy. Some more rustling, and a curse. She turns without thinking and finds Ben with his back to her. He's wearing the shirt, but nothing else, and before she can stop her eyes, they trail down to his backside.

His very naked backside.

His very nice naked backside.

She lets out a little squeak and turns back around.

"Rey?"

"Sorry," she mutters.

"Did you…"

"I thought you were done," she cuts him off with.

"Oh."

"I didn't see much."

"Not…much?" His voice cracks on the last syllable.

"Sorry," she says again and can feel her cheeks heat.

She hears more rustling, and then a sigh. "You can turn around."

When she does, she finds him sitting next to the fire, the wet cloak draped over his lap. She's struck for a moment, by him in that shirt, memories of his suddenly being there on Exegol. When all hope was lost, when she thought she'd have to give in to Palpatine or lose everything, he had been there. Stripped of everything she had known as Kylo Ren. No mask, no armor, no sparking crossguard lightsaber. He was standing there, holding his mother's lightsaber, and saving her.

And it had been the two of them against the world, against the Emperor and all the Sith.

Now he sits by the fire, his hair again plastered to his head, his cheeks tinged pink, his lips red and parted slightly as he watches her with wide, dark eyes.

She sits down next to him and unwraps the cloth from her arms, setting it out carefully next to the fire. "I wish I had anything more for you to wear," she murmurs.

He shrugs. "At least I have something dry."

She nods at that, pulling off her boots and wringing out her pants and top. She shivers and scoots a little closer to the fire. It's still damp in the hut, but it will heat up in no time. It will be humid, horribly so, as their clothes dry, but it's better than being soaked to the skin and cold.

"Was there nothing better in Luke's hut?" she ventures with. She's not sure if she should bring up his uncle. She's heard only too often about his confrontation with him on Crait. Even now she can feel something twist in the air between them.

Panic.

"No," he says, the word clipped.

She nods, putting her hands out toward the fire as they fall silent. She knows only some of what happened between uncle and nephew, knows only that the great Jedi Master Luke Skywalker once raised his lightsaber to end the life of an innocent boy, sending him straight to the enemy he so feared was turning Ben to the dark side.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry," she murmurs.

Ben's head shoots up. There are lines of pain around his mouth and so Rey scoots closer to him, pulling herself around the fire until she's sitting next to him. She reaches out, takes his hand.

"It was a long time ago," he murmurs, turning her hand over in his, linking their fingers together. His thumb traces lazy patterns over the skin of her hand and she shivers. "Are you cold?"

"Maybe a little," she admits.

He reaches out an arm.

"I'm soaked."

"I don't care," he responds with, pulling her closer to him. She goes willingly, tucking herself into his side.

The Force sings around them.

This is where they're meant to be.

There are whispers in her head though, whispers that tell her she wants more, the Force wants more, somehow. When she looks up at him, he turns to look at her, and even though their faces are too close for her to really make out his expression, she can see the way his eyes move down to her lips and back up.

She closes the distance between them and presses her lips to his and she's finding that she really does enjoy this. Kissing. She'd never cared much about physical intimacy before. She was just trying to survive, first on Jakku as she scavenged ancient wreckage for enough old tech to buy a few portions. She was scavenging for her life. And then with the Resistance, when there were bigger things to worry about than scratching an itch she doesn't often feel.

She knows others didn't think the same. She thinks of seeing Finn sneaking about the base late one night, and watching him disappear into Poe's room. She's heard couples in the midst of their passion, and wonders why it wasn't something she wanted to pursue with anyone.

She knows some had been interested, though if that were just so they could say they bedded the Jedi or not, she doesn't know.

But she knows, as she kisses Ben now, that it was this man that held her back. She doesn't want to do that with others. It's his lips, his large hands, the honey-brown eyes that she always sees in the back of her mind somewhere.

The kiss is awkward, a little sloppy from the angle they're necks are bent at. Rey moves then, pushing herself to her knees and straddling him, all without breaking the kiss.

"Oh," he murmurs against her lips, his mouth opening with a little gasp. She deepens the kiss, touching her tongue to his. She loves the way he's so responsive, wrapping his arms around her and pulling in close, letting out a little growl in the back of his throat. She wants him to…to…she's not sure.

Take control.

Show her what he wants, what he can do to her.

But he doesn't. He lets her control the kiss, groaning when she tugs a little at his thick hair. And she's really not sure where to go from there, so she continues with the kissing. When she sinks down a little on her knees to rest on his lap, he lets out a soft hiss. "Oh kriff," she says, pulling back. "Did I do something wrong? I've never done this before, and…"

"What? No. It's just…" His voice trails off, and she realizes that there's something hard pressing against her. Hard and hot, and…

"Oh," she says.

He cringes. "I'm sorry," he mutters.

"No, no, it's just…it's natural, right?" she says, and it's her turn to cringe. She likes it though, knowing that she's arousing him, that she could make him want her just by kissing him.

"Right," he says.

"So…" Her voice trails off. How does one exactly ask if the other wants to do such things? She never has. The opportunity had been there, on Jakku, and she had certainly seen enough over the years to know at least a little something about it. She'd been propositioned once or twice but turned them down. It's not like any sort of birth control was easy to obtain on Jakku, and she had seen what became of women who got pregnant on that world. Children sold off into slavery from birth, dying alone in the sands, desperation and the inability to provide for their children that led to far too many infant burials.

She didn't want to be part of that statistic, and so she had stayed away from it all.

But here, now. Now she wants, and it sends a shiver, half-excitement and half-fear, down her back. "Ben?" she whispers.

He won't meet her eyes and so she reaches under his chin and pulls his face up to hers. Still, his eyes flit around, never quite settling on anything. And he can't seem to get a word out. His mouth opens, closes. She can see his lower lip tremble a little.

"You don't want to?" Rey asks.

"Want to what?" he says, finally managing to glance at her. There's color high up on his cheeks and she's not sure if it's due to the increasing humidity in their little hut, the heat from the fire, or something else.

"You know," she says. "Sex?"

He coughs, sputters, and she's surprised when he stands, dumping her back onto her backside on the ground. He holds Luke's still wet cloak around his lower half like a towel, keeping all that still hidden, a sort of mystery she finds she'd like very much to unwrap.

"Rey, you don't just…" He runs one hand through his still damp locks, as he paces away from her. "I mean…kriff."

"Oh," she says. "I did it wrong, didn't I? I wasn't supposed to ask."

He turns to stare at her. "I…I don't know." An odd look crosses over his face, half grimace and half surprise, his lips twisted oddly. "Is that how people get to such things?"

"It was always a transaction on Jakku," she says with a shrug. You look like you could use more portions, pretty lady. How about we go out back? A little something for me, a little something for you… It had never gone further than her very polite no, or on a couple occasions, her staff to their groin, but it's all she's seen of such things really.

"I don't think it's supposed to be like that," he mutters.

"Oh, kriff, I have no idea what I'm doing," Rey says. "I'm sorry…it's just…"

"You want to?" he asks. "You're not just…I don't know…" He waves a hand in the air. "Making a transaction?"

It's her turn to choke. "What? No. It's just…how do you start this? Surely you must know." She's so out of her element here. She knows how to fight, how to defend herself, how to find water where none seems to be. She knows how to move rocks with the Force and the signs that a sandstorm is almost upon them,

But this?

"I have no idea," he mutters. His hand is back in his hair and it takes her a moment to realize that the tips of his ears have gone red and he looks just as terrified as she is. Maybe this isn't the right time…

"You…"

"I've never done this either," he admits with a slight laugh. "I know, I know," he says. "How, right?"

"You were Kylo Ren. You were the Supreme Leader. I thought…I just assumed…"

"That I had some sort of experience?" He laughs again, a short bark that cuts off quickly. "Hardly. I was a Jedi Padawan from before I hit puberty and ever even thought of such things. No attachments, remember?"

"But sex doesn't have to be about attachments," she points out.

He reaches out to grip her shoulders, and now his eyes bore into hers. "It is. For me, it is. The attachment is important, it's the most important thing."

"Okay…" she starts to say.

He watches her for another moment, and then returns to his spot near the fire. Rey is left standing, watching, until he holds up a hand toward her.

A flash of memory.

You're not alone.

Neither are you.

I wanted to take your hand…Ben's hand.

And so she does, coming back to straddle his lap again, hands cupping his face. He's watching her with a quiet, serious look on his face

"And then there was Snoke," he continues with.

"Always in your head," she murmurs.

"It was Palpatine, apparently," he admits. "All that time. I never understood where Snoke came from, why he was so powerful. He was some malformed clone of Palpatine. He was in my head for so much of my life. Not exactly conducive to…amorous pursuits." His lips curl up at the corner, and she can't quite tell if he's on the verge of a laugh or just grimacing over it all.

"But then after you killed Snoke…"

"There was a time I heard no one in my head. It was…freeing in a way. But also strangely lonely. I didn't quite know what to do with myself. And so I spent that time chasing after you until I heard the call of something that took me to Exegol, that took me to Palpatine."

She hates hearing that name.

She refuses to believe she's really related to that evil and terrifying old man.

He's dead, Rey. He can no longer hurt you. No matter who he claims to be…

"So no," Ben says, reaching out to cup her face with one large, warm hand. "There was no one. Ever."

"Me neither," she says, putting her hand over his. "But I'd like there to be. I mean…with you." She leans in to kiss him again, and the Force sings in agreement.