Rey sits next to Finn, across the dejarik table from Jannah and Rose, who are currently trouncing them five rounds out of six.

"Oh come on!" Finn exclaims, when the two girls win once again. "You've never even played until today!"

"Haven't you ever heard of beginner's luck?" Rose chuckles as she resets the board.

"Finn, instead of pouting, would you like to join me up here?" Poe voice carries down the hall from the cockpit. "I wouldn't mind having my co-pilot back."

Finn groans and leans further back into the booth, crushing Rey's arm beneath him.

"He's just jealous we're having fun and he's still on the clock," Finn shouts in mock annoyance.

"I heard that! And technically we're all on the clock — you just happen to be shirking your responsibilities," Poe says back.

It's been like this since they began their flight back to Ajan Kloss. Everyone is in an exceptionally good mood, riding the high of last night's ease and transitioning straight into a cheery morning.

Rey hadn't been able to enjoy it much last night, but she went to sleep — exhausted after hours of patrolling with Ben — feeling lighter than she had in quite a while, and she was thrilled to find that lightness still existed when she woke up this morning.

Ben, though not playing with the rest of the group, is for once not holed up in his room. Chewie had pulled him away almost as soon as they'd left Akiva to help with a few repairs Rey and Rose hadn't finished yesterday. Ben had agreed immediately, citing his dedication to helping out in any way possible, though Rey suspects both his and the wookie's motives had been more driven by a desire to spend time together than any pressing need to tinker with the Falcon.

They're all the way on the other end of the ship, but Rey can sense him — the Force bond is humming gently in the background of her mind as it so often seems to now. She had hoped he'd join them eventually but that doesn't seem likely now that they're so close to the flight ending. But she can tell he's enjoying himself and that's good enough for her.

Also on the good news front, Poe hadn't so much as batted an eye when Chewie had whisked Ben away. There'd been no warning to keep an eye on him, no insistence that he return to his room by a certain time. It could mean nothing, but she's choosing to believe it's a step in the right direction. She owes herself that kind of optimism.

"C'mon, Finn, I'm lonely up here," Poe calls out.

Finn gives a little eye-roll — a performance mostly for the benefit of Rose and Jannah and Rey — before extricating himself from his seat and heading back to the cockpit.

"Okay," Rey says, patting the now-empty seat. "If this is two on one, one of you needs to be on my team or else this is completely unfair."

They'll be back on solid ground soon. But for now, they reset the table and start on another round.


It's easy to fall into a routine after they return to the base, and after a few days, Rey can predict every beat of her day with perfect accuracy. She wakes up at the same time everyone else does, she trains with Finn in the morning, eats lunch with her friends in the secluded corner Poe loves, then spends her afternoons training with Ben — a necessity they'd agreed on after that horrible day on Akiva, that's possible now that Poe seems more comfortable with Ben being out and about with the rest of the base. By the time she goes to sleep each night, she's too exhausted to do much more than send a good night to Ben across the bond before passing out.

It's nice, in some ways, to have a routine. The monotony is familiar — conditioned as she was by her years on Jakku to expect more or less the same events from day to day. Physical labor (scavenging replaced by training courses), distinct meal times (minuscule portions replaced by heaping helpings), and interactions with the same people over and over (people she loathed replaced by people she loves).

She wakes up today at the same time she has been since they returned from Akiva, and puts on virtually the same outfit, secures her arm wraps in place and wonders why she even bothers, considering she's no longer in any need of protection from the desert sands or heat. But it's part of the routine. And the routine is nice. So she wraps them on all the same and heads out to the clearing in the woods.

Finn is already waiting for her when she gets to their usual spot. He's deep in concentration, sitting cross-legged on the ground, a halo of rocks floating in a circle around him.

He's picked all of this up so quickly and so smoothly. They might never know just how long he was tapped into the Force before he actually realized what was going on, but if Rey had to take a guess, she'd say it was probably quite a while.

She approaches slowly, not wanting to break his concentration, but he cracks an eye open as soon as she's within a few feet of him.

The rocks, she notes, stay put.

"Pretty good, huh?" he grins.

"Very good. In fact…"

She moves her hands from behind her back to reveal she's brought not one, but two lightsabers to today's session.

"Take your pick," she says.

"You sure?"

"Honestly I feel a little bad making you wait this long. But I thought if you have the luxury of taking your time, we might as well use it."

Finn looks down and examines the two sabers before finally settling on Leia's. Something inside Rey unclenches when she does, and she realizes that was the one she'd subconsciously hoped he'd choose, because that's not the one she's started to think of as Ben's.

It's ridiculous to think of either of the sabers as anybody's — they don't really belong to them, weren't forged by them — but still.

Finn tests the weight of it in his hands. He hasn't handled this one before, but it shouldn't make too much of a difference to him, considering his interactions with the other saber were relatively brief.

"Ready?" she asks, after she feels she's given him ample time to admire the weapon.

"What's first up today?" Finn asks in response.

"Thought we'd take a nice stroll through the training course."

Finn's face lights up brighter than the blade of his saber.


Afternoons, though similar in structure, stand out in stark contrast to the mornings for two reasons: one, she and Ben are evenly matched and two, sparring with him has a decidedly different energy than sparring with Finn does.

It had taken a full afternoon for Ben to even feel comfortable out in the clearing with her. He hadn't said anything — he hadn't needed to — but it became exceptionally obvious after his fourth half-hearted attempt to parry.

She hadn't said anything — she hadn't needed to — she'd dropped her lightsaber and taken his face in her hands. Immediately she'd been barraged with all the exact images she expected to see — the snowy forest on Starkiller Base, the lightsaber splitting in half against the fiery backdrop of the Supremacy, red and blue slashing through the waves and rain of Kef-Bir.

She hadn't even needed to think about it before replacing all of those images in his head with ones from her own — the two of them back to back on the Supremacy before it exploded into flames and heartbreak, the way they moved in perfect sync on Akiva, that moment on Exegol when she saw his face and everything suddenly fell into place.

He'd taken a deep breath, covered her hands with his own, and kissed her once on the forehead before bending down, grabbing her lightsaber, and handing it back to her.

Things have been better since then. Much better. Fun, even.

They're not afraid of hurting each other, they both know exactly what the other is going to do right before they do it — the bond wide open as it's been for each of these sessions. The environment is controlled and the danger is non-existent, leaving them able to do nothing but push the limits of both their abilities and their bond.

Rey likes watching him like this. That's something she already knew, but now she gets to savor it in a way she can't on a battleground. She's able to watch the way he twirls the lightsaber in his hand, slicing through the air like it weighs nothing, wielding the Force like it's an extension of him, like it's bowing to his will rather than the other way around.

She's watching him right now, which is why it's so easy for him to get the upper hand. She feels Ben pull her to him. She glides through the air, the tips of her toes dragging through the dirt. She could stop him if she wanted to, but she'd rather not. Ben's already deactivated his saber so she makes sure to do the same with hers. It would be an incredibly stupid twist in their journey to accidentally impale him now, after all of this.

The gliding stops when they're face to face, noses practically touching. He's holding her up to his height, but the hold he has on her is so light she could easily drop out of it if she wanted.

"I win this round?" he asks as if he doesn't have her suspended in the air.

"It's only fair I give you this one. Otherwise you'd be zero for four today."

"How generous of you," he chuckles before pecking her on the lips and gently setting her back on the ground.

They call it training, but it doesn't really feel like that. What she does with Finn in the mornings, that's training. This… this is closer to a game.

"Don't get used to it." She refastens her hair where it's fallen out of its ponytail. "I was distracted."

"I know," Ben grins. "I can see into your mind, remember?"

"One more round?"

"Sure. Just a second."

He puts his lightsaber on the ground, then after tossing an overly-casual grin in her direction, pulls his shirt off.

She doesn't have time to school her features into something close to neutrality — she's too busy trying to remember how to breathe.

"What?" he says. "It's hot."

Well. It certainly is.


Rey makes it to the impromptu meeting Poe called a few minutes late. But considering the meeting seems to consist only of herself, Rose, Jannah, and Finn, punctuality is not particularly vital.

"Is this everybody?" she asks.

"Yep, small meeting," Poe says.

"Then did you really need to call us into the war room for it?"

"C'mon, Rey be a professional. There's a certain structure to these things. A sense of propriety that needs to be maintained."

Rey looks him dead in the eye.

"Really?"

Poe looks right back at her and suddenly they're in a silent staring match. The fact of the matter is she doesn't really care all that much where they have the meeting, but she's too competitive to break first.

"… And I wanted a change of scenery," Poe finally huffs.

"There it is."

"You keep me on my toes, Rey. I appreciate you."

"I'm sure you do."

Rey takes a seat next to Jannah as Poe launches into the business of the day.

"I got word this afternoon that there's a group of allies that needs a little assistance on Felucia. It doesn't sound like there's any danger, they're just trying to rebuild and they need some supplies. It looks like it wouldn't be more than a day-long mission."

"Of course," Rose says. "Just the one planet? I kinda assumed there'd be more like that."

"Well…"


The week goes like this: Rey, Ben, Rose, Jannah, and Finn, all led by Poe, live on the Falcon, traveling to any and all planets that reach out to them.

And Rey finds herself falling into yet another comfortable routine.

It's more restful on the Falcon than it is on the base — largely because she's no longer able to devote hours to training. Instead, she runs Finn through minor exercises and meditations during their spare time and she and Ben just toss random objects at each other using the Force when they have downtime mid-mission.

By nature of the limited amount of space in the Falcon, Finn ends up hanging around for many of Rey and Ben's sessions, and Ben for many of Rey and Finn's. It's uneasy for the first day or two, considering that up until now the two men have only had a handful of civil conversations, but with each day that passes, they seem to become more and more comfortable around each other. And it's helpful not just on a personal level for her; Ben's able to fill in gaps in knowledge and provide his own tips, always offered carefully, more of a question than a command. He helps with Finn's focus and form, careful to make corrections verbally, never touching, never getting too close.

She misses the Ben that only she gets to see, the one in the woods who's playful and flirtatious and doesn't seem to constantly be afraid of saying the wrong thing. But she understands, and she knows that that will take time, and she knows just how rewarding waiting can be.

Rey and Ben aren't really needed on most of the missions — the majority of calls they get are from allies or Resistance members who returned to their home planets to begin the rebuilding efforts. But they come along anyway, just in case there's some unexpected danger.

They never stay anywhere for too long, sometimes they only stay for half a day, which is the part of this arrangement Rey likes the least. It would be nice — especially on peaceful planets — to get to explore a bit and see all the corners of the galaxy she never thought she would.

But instead, they meet in the main hold every morning, go over their agenda, touch down on whatever planet is up next, and stand guard while Poe and Finn handle the majority of the diplomacy. Then they re-board the ship, eat dinner as a group, and retire to their rooms — Poe and Finn in the Captain's quarters, Rey, Rose and Jannah in one room, and Ben in another.

She's fairly certain no one would so much as raise an eyebrow if she were to join Ben in his room instead of sharing with the girls, but he's still so insistent she not sleep in the same bed as him. If she couldn't sense the utter devotion he feels toward her most of the day and the way that shifts to tight panic whenever it's time to go to bed, she might be insulted.

But instead, she just smiles when they stand outside her room and he kisses her on the forehead and says he'll see her in the morning. And once she's lying in bed she stays awake, waiting for him to send her a final good night, Rey through the bond. And when he does, she sends him one right back.


One of the greatest benefits of this trip has been that Ben has finally gotten comfortable with the idea of eating dinner with her friends.

He's wedged in next to her, actively trying not to take up too much space, one hand clutching a fork and the other clutching her knee. They're all sitting around the dejarik table they've repurposed as a dinner table, eating one final meal before heading back to Ajan Kloss, and — for the fifth time this week — debating the party Poe promised them that still hasn't happened.

"Why wait? I say we do it tonight!" Rose exclaims.

"Are you nuts? We've gotta give people a heads-up of at least a day," Poe replies.

"Yeah, because everyone will really be so against having a night off," Finn deadpans.

"Whose side are you on?!"

"If I contact Kaydel now," Jannah chimes in, "the party can start the second we touch back down on the base."

Jannah starts to rise out of her seat, but Poe motions for her to sit back down.

"We'll have it soon, I promise," Poe says. "But I can't be the only one who's completely exhausted."

The others grumble their assent, and Rey makes a mental note to ask Ben about the spike of nerves she felt from him the second the party was brought up.

It's nothing, he sends through the bond.

Are you sure?

Mhmm. Just haven't attended a party in… a while.

She reaches for the hand he has on her knee.

Me neither. Guess that's another thing we'll have to figure together.

He gently bumps his shoulder against hers.

That doesn't sound like much of a hardship.


By the time Rey wakes up in the morning, right on time with the rest of the base, it feels like the past week never even happened and she's already fallen into the old routine. Get up, get dressed, meet Finn in the clearing.

They meditate, they practice harnessing the Force, they go through the training course at half speed, and she throws in some basic sparring at the end.

"You'll have to build one of your own eventually," Rey says as he hands her the lightsaber back when their time for the day has come to an end. "Or one of us will, at least."

"I wouldn't mind building one. It'd be cool to have one that was completely mine."

Finn sits down on the ground, still a little out of breath. Their session is technically over, but Finn made it clear first thing this morning that he'd like to participate or at least observe the start of her and Ben's session. "Seeing two masters at work," he'd called it. Funny, she doesn't consider herself, a person who's just learned enough control to not blast a lightning bolt at everything that angers her, a master. But that must be how it looks from the outside. The extraneous twirling and the sharp slices through the air. It looks masterful when Ben does it. So why shouldn't see look like a master too?

"Now that I think of it, that does sound pretty good." She sits next to him. Ben won't be here for a few more minutes. "Sort of a Jedi rite of passage we both missed out on."

"About that," Finn sighs. "Using the Force and being a Jedi don't necessarily go hand in hand, right?"

"Right."

"Okay good. Because I've been thinking about it — actually Jannah and I have both been thinking about it — and when this is all over, I'd really like to set to work on some sort of rehabilitation for former stormtroopers. We don't have all the details figured out yet, but it seems like the right thing to do. If there was me, and her, and all of Company 77, then there's gotta be others. People who defected, or wanted to but couldn't. It's just… I never asked to be a stormtrooper. None of them did. And it feels wrong to condemn people who didn't have a say in who they became, without giving them a choice to become something else first."

It's not something she'd ever thought of before, but now that Finn's said it, it seems so obvious. So right.

"That's an incredible idea, Finn," Rey says.

"Thanks. I mean, I've seen first hand what good a second chance can do."

The overly heavy sound of footfalls echo through the forest as Ben trudges his way to the clearing. It's a habit she's noticed he's picked up over the last week — walking just a little louder than he needs to, always so certain to make it clear he's not trying to sneak up on anyone.

He makes it into their line of view just in time to hear Finn continue.

"The First Order's taken so much from so many of us. But I'm starting to think it might not be impossible to get some of it back."

"Well put," Ben grins a little hesitantly as he joins them and sits down next to Rey. "For what it's worth, I'm starting to think the same."

It's amazing what a week in close quarters can do, she thinks, as she sits fully at ease between the two men who mean the most to her in the world. It's amazing what bonds people can forge when they're forced to do nothing but trust each other.

She can only imagine how much stronger those bonds might be now that they're choosing to trust each other.


The rest of the day follows its usual routine — Finn heads off for a strategy meeting with Poe and Maz, leaving Rey and Ben on their own. They finish running the course just in time to freshen up for dinner, which Ben does not join her for. It's not that he couldn't — he's had an open invitation to sit with them since Rose first offered — but he tells Rey that he and Lando haven't gotten to spend nearly as much time together as he'd like and now seems like a good time to fix that.

"Tomorrow night, I promise," he says, ducking down to kiss Rey on the cheek before heading back into his room.

She sits with her friends at dinnertime, as the great party debate continues with no resolution in sight.

She eats her fill and greets Ben and Lando when they join the group for the last few minutes of the meal.

After bidding everyone a good night, she and Ben break off from her friends. He takes her hand the second she's standing — he's more open about doing that now — and she heads for the long route toward his room, but he doesn't follow. Instead he tugs her to his side and bends down until he's close to her ear.

"Actually," he murmurs, "can we go the other way this time?"

The other way. The way that passes directly by Leia's memorial.

"Of course," she says.

They walk mostly in silence. Night is falling over the base, power generators and fires are dotting the camp like stars that have fallen from the sky.

A few people wave or nod in their direction as they pass by. It wasn't so long ago that walking this openly around the base with Ben seemed like an impossibility. Or a hazard at best. Now most of the Resistance regards him the same way Poe does — polite though not amicable, accepting if not welcoming.

The memorial isn't lit anymore. Sometime in the week they were gone, upkeep of it has slipped. Or it's just the natural progression of things. People live, and die, and are remembered for a time. And then life goes on.

She didn't bring any light source with her, and it doesn't seem like an appropriate moment to ignite her lightsaber, but it's not like there's very much to see here anyway. And it's not like it even needs to be seen for its significance to be felt.

His grip on her hand threatens to crush all of her bones.

"Sorry," he mutters, loosening his grip at her mental wince.

"'S okay," she mutters back.

She's not sure what they're supposed to do from here. The entire concept of having time to mourn and having loved ones to mourn at all is still too new to her.

"Growing up, Lando and Chewie were my family too. And I'm glad they're here and I can still barely believe they were willing to talk to me, much less forgive me. But my mother was… I wish I could've talked to her, just one more time. Just to thank her or apologize or show her that I…" he trails off, letting his words die in the silence of the night.

"I think she knew. She always hoped you'd come back."

"But I never really got to tell her. On Exegol, I told you I saw her and she sent me back, but I didn't actually get to tell her any of the things I wanted to."

"I still think she knew."

"She didn't, for so long. None of them did. Even when I was doing everything I could to fight against the voices, and then after… I just wish they could see it wasn't all in vain."

This isn't the first time Rey's caught glimpses of his childhood in his mind — the loneliness, the fear, the distrusting glances — but it's somehow all the more crushing now. Now that it's accompanied by waves of guilt and regret and sorrow so thick it's suffocating. If she's feeling it this strongly secondhand, it's a wonder he's even still standing.

Sometimes it's hard for her to reconcile Luke and Leia and Han's obvious shortcomings in child-rearing with the fact that they were so nurturing to her. It's hard not to be mad at them when she looks up at Ben — his head hung, eyes clenched shut, wishing so hard to take it all back that his thoughts ring in her head like words spoken out loud. And she wonders how they couldn't have seen it from the very start — all that light within him. And yes, darkness too, but darkness that had to be tended to and grown, like a weed the light could have choked out, if anyone had truly believed the light in him existed. It's hard to stand at Leia's memorial, to remember a woman who gave so much to so many people, and yet still had the capacity to make grave mistakes.

But, she thinks, perhaps the best way to honor a person is not to turn then into a legend or a deity, but to acknowledge their humanity and all that encompasses — their triumphs and failures, their wisdom and their fallibility. To remember them as they truly were.

Ben hasn't said anything for minutes, but his grip on her hand has been steadily increasing, creeping back to uncomfortably tight. But she doesn't want to break the silence, so she doesn't say anything either.

She just stands next to him and remembers — Leia, the general, the closest thing she'd had to a mother, the human being who had a whole life before they met that Rey only knew a fraction of, and understood even less. Not a myth, not a legend. A person who managed to impact the lives of so many other people.

It's not a bad way to be remembered at all.


By the time they walk back to his room, all the lights on the base have gone out. She's usually too exhausted to be out this late at night, which is a bit of a shame. There's something different about this black night sky, something she appreciates more here than she did on Akiva. There's a peacefulness to it, something comforting in the quiet. Though she supposes that may have less to do with the sky and more to do with her state of mind.

Because she is at peace right now. Ben's calm — he's been calm ever since he lifted his head and gave a single nod to indicate he was ready to go — and his mood is rubbing off on her.

They amble in silence, aware of their destination but not really making any attempt to get there in a hurry. She's going to be exhausted in the morning. Maybe she can let Finn run the course himself.

When they finally make it to his room, Rey pushes up on her tiptoes, ready for the next part of this routine — a whispered good night, a chaste peck on the lips, a promise to see each other tomorrow.

But true to today's theme, Ben breaks the norm yet again and crushes her to him, his hold on her just a little looser than it was at the memorial.

"Do you— would you mind staying?" he whispers.

She almost laughs at the question. The only thing that keeps her from laughing is her certainty that Ben would take it the wrong way. Would she mind? Of course she wouldn't. How could she ever mind that?

The bond is still flung wide open — like a fresh wound exposing raw flesh underneath, like a door to a room in a safe home. So she doesn't need to elaborate on just how much she doesn't mind staying with him, because he can feel it. And she can feel the moment he feels it because he relaxes his grip on her just enough to let her move and guide him into his room.


She hadn't really expected to spend the night. She'd assumed that they'd talk and cuddle, and grasp at each other in the clumsy careful way they do when they have the rare luxury of alone time, but she hadn't thought they'd actually fall asleep side by side, fully clothed, on top of the sheet covering the bed.

Even as they'd been falling asleep, Rey had assumed it was only a matter of moments before Ben politely, gently, sent her back to her own bed. Even when he'd made no such suggestion, instead pulling her closer to him as sleep began to overtake them both, she'd told herself she'd get up in just a minute.

And yet, here she is, definitely still in Ben's room, having fallen (at least until a few seconds ago) fast asleep. She's not really sure how much time has passed. It doesn't feel like much at all based on how exhausted she still is, although that could just be the effect of a long, physically and emotionally taxing day crashing down on her all at once.

But she doesn't have much time to consider the whys and hows of falling asleep when the cause of her startling awake is right in front of her.

Ben's… distressed. There's not quite a better word to describe it. He's still completely asleep, but he's thrashing around so much he's very narrowly missed smacking her in the face a few times. In fact, she's sure he would have by now if her reflexes weren't so quick.

On top of the thrashing — and worse, somehow — are the noises he's making. Somewhere between a whimper and a moan that she feels vaguely embarrassed to be listening to, as if she's intruded on some sort of private moment.

The bond is usually not open when they're asleep, or if it is, she doesn't notice. But it is right now. She could look into his mind, see exactly what's plaguing him like this. She almost does… but Ben's had enough people in his head without his consent. The last thing she wants to do is add to that number.

So instead she pushes herself up to a sitting position and catches Ben's arm the next time it swings in her direction.

"Ben," she whispers.

It has no effect.

"Ben, wake up," she tries a little more forcefully.

That doesn't work either.

She won't go into his head — not when he's opened it to her unconsciously — but that doesn't mean she can't let him into hers.

She strokes his arm carefully, shuts her eyes, and sends as many calming images and thoughts as she can conjure through the bond and to him.

First he stops moving, then he falls silent, then he startles awake, much like she did a few minutes ago.

He's clearly disoriented when he sits up, looking around the room wild-eyed but unseeing.

"Ben," she says one more time.

That finally seems to anchor him back to reality.

"Rey," he turns to look in her direction.

She looks right back and after a few seconds he regains his focus, looking at her instead of through her.

"Rey," he repeats, finally starting to sound like himself again. "You— you're still here."

"We both fell asleep."

"Are you okay?"

Ben twists to face her fully. She loosens her grip on his arm and the second she does, he reaches out to grab her. He runs his hands over her shoulders, her arms, then moves back up to cradle her face.

"I'm fine," she says. "Are you?"

"Bad night. It's not, ah, uncommon."

"Ben you told me you sleep fitfully but I had no idea it was this bad."

"I know," he frowns. "I'm sorry. You can go if you want. I won't be upset."

Rey's able to sense his thoughts and emotions often enough that she knows he still feels a little jolt of surprise every day that she doesn't walk away from him for one reason or another, and it's a sign of how far they've come this past week that he doesn't immediately shut down or fall into self-loathing, but it still breaks her heart a little to see just how easy it is for him to expect to be rejected.

But these things take time, and he's been far too patient with her for her to stop being patient with him now.

"No, no, Ben," she reaches up and takes one of his hands off her face, interlacing his fingers with her own. "I mean I wish you'd told me earlier because I would have been far more insistent that you not have to go through it alone."

It's mostly dark in the room, save for a sliver of moonlight streaming in through a crack in the door, but she thinks she can just make out the shimmer of tears in his eyes before he pulls her into a crushing hug.

"Thank you, sweetheart," he says more into her hair than her ear. "Are you sure?"

"I'll answer the question as many times as you want, but just know my answer won't change. I'm sure."

He's still clutching her to his chest by the time they drift back to sleep.