Rey leaned in and wrapped her arms around his waist.

Hessitantly, he wrapped her in his arms, kissed the crown of her head and just held her, too overcome by her understanding to do anything but bask in it.

They held each other like that for a while before an incessant buzzing intruded on their moment of tranquility. With a sigh he reached out with the force and tapped the blinking red button.

"Ma'am, you have some pretty insistant visitors in Bay 77. They've just arrived in an X-wing and are threatening to, and I quote 'tear this place apart' if they don't see you immediately."

"Thank you, Gliss. I'll be right there." She said trying to sound as if she wasn't annoyed by the interuption.

Ben tapped the button to end the communique, "Friends of yours?"

"Unless I miss my guess," She grinned. "Poe and Finn have come to pay us a visit."

He groaned.

"Be nice. They're just worried about me." She squeezed him a bit tighter then let him go. "Come on, before one of them does something rash."

"You want me to come with you?" He was slightly startled and more than slightly dubious.

"Don't tell me you're afraid to meet my friends?" She teased.

"No," He scoffed then reminded her, "I have met them, we didn't exactly bond."

She threaded her fingers through his and said confidently as they walked out of their quarters, "They'll love you once they get to know you."

Poe Dameron and Finn were awaiting her arrival in Bay 77, and neither was particularly happy to see her holding hands with the enemy. BB-8 on the other hand was delighted to see her.

The little droid let out an electronic squeal that was nearly ear piercing before jabbering on in a series of beeps, whirs, chirps and tweets for several seconds, it's little round body shivering and trembling excitedly.

She dropped down to one knee and hugged the little droid, ignoring the three bristling men around her and the thirty or so stormtroopers surrounding all of them. "BB-8! I missed you too!" What came next was a rapidfire series of bleeps, bloops, whirs and chirps punctuated by Rey's answers to the little droid's questions. "No... No... No he never… Absolutely not… No… Yes… Yes, I'm sure… No, I don't… I promise!"

She rubbed BB-8 on the head and stood back up. "We wont be needing your services, gentlemen, thank you." She said, dismissing the stormtroopers before turning her attention to her guests.

She glanced from the first glaring face to the second and then to the third and busted out laughing. Three shocked faces turned toward her. "I'm sorry," she giggled. "But you three look like a bunch of gargoyles standing there glaring at each other." She stepped forward and hugged Finn, then Poe. "Thank you." She said simply.

"For what?" Finn asked, confused.

She stepped back and took Ben's hand. "For coming to rescue me." She smiled sweetly up at them. "But, as you can see, I don't need rescuing."

"All I see is my friend being brainwashed by an evil, manipulative, twisted…" Finn was just getting fired up when Rey cut him off.

"That's not true, Finn. Come on, lets find somewhere to talk." She invited and started toward the corridor.

"You have some explaining to do." Poe grumbled but followed without protest.

"Three calls in a month and you don't even show up for the conference! You bet you do!" Finn complained.

"I know I do." She agreed coming to a halt in the corridor, unsure of where to go.

'Left, third door on the right.' Ben thought to her as he read her indecision about where to take her friends.

'Thanks.' She thought and followed his directions.

"In here." She said, tapping a button to open the door to a sumptuous yet cozy lounge that was blessedly empty. It was furnished with three soft sofas in a creamy leather that smelled vaguely of dirt and flowers, rich wooden tables, live plants from several systems, and a state of the art holovid entertainment unit.

"Sheesh!" Poe said, his eyes as big as saucers. "Is that a real Alderaanian Orchid? I thought those were extinct."

Ben shrugged.

Once everyone was seated Rey cleared her throat and started talking. "I'm sorry I worried you guys, I really am."

"Why don't we start with… what the hell is going on here?" Finn demanded. "Twenty minutes before this guy shows up to his own meeting he makes an all channel announcement claiming that you're his wife and he's stepping down as Supreme Leader…?"

"It's all true." She said. "We were married this morning."

"Why?" Finn was astounded. "Why would you marry him? You don't even know him!"

"Do you remember what I told you before I left the base in Hadron? About having spoken to him three days before that?" She leaned forward. "We can see and talk to each other inside our minds."

"Since when?" Poe asked bewildered.

"Since shortly after we met." She said. "This pathway between our minds just randomly started opening up." The look of betrayal on both rebel's faces hurt her heart, but Ben's gentle rub on her shoulder encouraged her to continue. "We got to know each other through it a bit at a time."

"And you didn't think it might be just a tiny bit important to tell the Resistance that you had a direct line to the guy that was trying to kill us all?" Poe was clearly disturbed by her reticence.

"I would have but after the…" She hessitated. "Misunderstandings on Snoke's ship and Crayt the connection seemed to be gone for good."

"Misunderstanding on Snoke's ship?" Finn gasped, appalled that she would call the circumstances around the Supremacy's destruction a misunderstanding.

"I went there to try to get him to turn back to the light." She confessed uncomfortable with being grilled like this.

"Wait, what? You were on that ship?" Poe was having trouble believing his ears.

"I went there before I came to Crayt." Heat suffused her face. "I thought if I could turn him, we could end this war and save lives."

"What made you think you could turn him?" Finn demanded, incredulous.

"Well…" She got a bit tongue tied, searching for the right words.

Ben answered for her, his stiff posture relaxed a fraction and he leaned forward. "Because, just before that, when we touched hands from across the galaxy, she had a vision of the future."

"A vision of the future?" Finn was confused.

"In my vision I saw us standing together, hand in hand, surrounded by people who were smiling up at us." She explained.

Ben shot her a startled glanced. 'That's what you saw?'

'They were mostly children.' She smiled into his eyes.

'Ours?' His eyes went wide.

'Not all of them.' She winked then said aloud, "After he killed Snoke…"

"He killed Snoke?" Poe cut in, confused.

"He did." She confirmed. "Snoke ordered him to kill me but he killed Snoke, then we killed Snoke's guards together. I thought that meant he was going to join our side, but he wanted me join him, instead."

"I had a vision, too. What I saw lead me to believe that she would join me." Ben interjected.

"Wait wait wait, let me see if I have this straight. You two touched hands, in your minds, and had visions…" Poe repeated. "That made you both believe that you could turn the other…?"

The pair of Jedi nodded in unison.

"And these visions, they made you go to Snoke's ship?" When Rey nodded Poe looked to Ben, "And made you kill Snoke?" Who also nodded. "Then why did you attack us on Crayt with everything you had available?"

"Because when I asked her to join me, she tried to kill me. There was an explosion, it knocked me out and when I woke up she was gone." Ben explained. "I was mad with grief at losing her. I hoped that if I could kill all of you before she reached your base, she would have nowhere else to turn and she'd come back to me."

"So, you're telling me that you murdered almost four hundred of my people because of a lover's quarrel?" Poe was clearly outraged.

Ben sat back and nodded stiffly.

"Oh, that's just great!" Finn groused. "What happens if she leaves you again? Huh? You gonna burn the whole galaxy down?"

"He's not that guy anymore!" Rey stood up, growling angrily with fists clenched. "Look at what he's been doing in the past month!"

"He came to our base with over three hundred warships and kidnapped you!" Finn half shouted.

Rey felt murderous intent spring to life inside of Ben in reaction to Finn's tone. "No." She glared at Ben. "You stay out of this." Then she rounded on Finn and growled. "He did not kidnap me!" Her own volume increased as she explained, "He saw me falling to the Dark side and came to try to stop that from happening." She glanced at Ben apologetically. "We had an arguement, he told me how he felt about me and I didn't believe him! I got angry and my eyes turned yellow! He knew it meant that I was falling to the Dark side and it scared him so much that he came to try to save me! He had no intention of harming anyone. It was all just a big misunderstanding!"

"A misunderstanding?" Finn yelped. "Rey! Wake up! He's manipulating you!"

She wasn't sure who wanted to throttle Finn more, her or Ben. Taking several deep, calming breaths, Rey sat back down and waited for Finn to do the same. When he sat she said, much more calmly, "I know it's hard to understand, but he and I have a connection that is beyond anything you can imagine. When we're connected I can sense everything that he thinks or feels. We can share thoughts and memories without a word passing between us. I wish I could show you the truth of who he is…" She stopped and looked at Ben. 'Do you care if I tell them the rest?'

'Go ahead.' His voice, in her head, sounded resigned.

"He didn't join Snoke and do all of that evil stuff for the joy of it. He did it to protect me." She said almost reluctant to share the tale.

Sensing her reluctance, Ben spoke up, "Luke and I found Rey on Jakku when she was little more than a baby. We were looking for students to bring back to his Jedi Academy. Her parents sent her off to be trained by Luke." He purposely skipped the part where her parents weren't actually her parents and had sold her for a handful of coins. "She was scared at first, but not of me, I was just a boy and she took a liking to me. When I laid down with her, to get her to sleep that first night, I fell asleep, too. That's when Snoke found me. He had been stalking her in her dreams, but she was so little she could barely even talk. The dreams terrified her too much to do anything but whimper." He raked a hand through his hair, becoming more agitated with every word. "I didn't know I was in her dream until afterward, but I yelled at him and that's when he found me. He saw me and thought it was me he wanted, because of my Skywalker blood." He stopped to take a few calming breaths and Rey continued the story for him.

"It wasn't Ben that Snoke wanted. It was me. When Ben realized that, he chose to let Snoke continue to believe it was him that he wanted." Rey said, giving Ben a look of utter adoration. "He gave himself to Snoke to protect me."

She looked back at Finn and continued. "Eventually, Luke began to pick up on the darkness building in Ben. One night, Luke snuck into Ben's room and looked into his mind while Snoke was in there. Luke panicked and ignited his light saber. Ben woke up and thought Luke meant to murder him. He went berzerk and killed all of Luke's students, and burned some of the bodies to hide the fact that he had taken me." She glanced at Ben then back to Finn. "Do you remember, when we first met, how I kept wanting to get back to Jakku?"

"Yeah, you were really stubborn about that." Finn said with a frown.

"I thought it was my parents who left me there, but it wasn't. It was Ben." She squeezed Ben's hand. "He wiped away all of my memories and all of his memories of me, to hide me from Snoke. The vision he had when we touched was of those lost memories. He was turned immediately, I just didn't realize it at the time." She said sadly and let Ben tell the next part.

"I didn't quite realize it at first either, not until after our minds stopped connecting. It took losing her to realize that I could have this." He made an encompassing gesture with his hands. "Or I could have a chance with her. I choose her. I'll always choose her."

Rey took his hand and finished the story. "This galactic federation is entirely his idea. As soon as we're able to, we're handing this entire fleet over and heading off to somewhere beautiful where we can have a life and a family and never have to worry about being blown up by some madman lightyears away."

Both rebels stared the Jedi across from them in shocked disbelief. Slowly, by increments, both Finn and Poe began to relax.

Poe broke the silence. "So, you're not Kylo Ren anymore?" He asked Ben.

Ben shook his head and said, "Not anymore."

"Then I guess it would be rude to punch you in the face for torturing me." Poe sighed, disappointed.

"Not being Kylo Ren does not mean I wouldn't beat the stupid out of you if you tried it." Ben said in a threatening tone. Then he relaxed and grinned. "I'm hungry, anyone else want something to eat?"