Chapter 6

The thrusters had barely powered down before Poe and his companions were lowering the gangplank and running off the Falcon. They came to a crashing halt when they saw what was waiting for them on the tarmac.

A crowd of Resistance fighters had gathered, most of them adorned in black. Mourning clothes. Oh no...

Poe quickly spied Lieutenant Connix, holding baby Padmé in her arms. "What happened?" he demanded, trying to keep his voice from breaking.

"She... she was crying out for someone named Ben, at the end. More and more desperate. Almost as if... she was trying to contact him, but couldn't get through."

Finn and Rose looked at each other. "The Force Bond," the former Stormtrooper breathed. "She must have shielded herself off from it for too long. Maybe... it gave her energy."

"Or maybe she just lost hope that we would bring Ben Solo back." Rose theorized.

At the mention of that infamous name, Connix spotted Ben for the first time. "Kylo Ren," she breathed, eyes wide, and she took a step backward.

Captain D'Acy suddenly rushed forward, a blaster drawn. "Hold on, Commander! We'll get him in cuffs immediately!"

"That won't be necessary, Captain," Poe held up his hands to block D'Acy from getting a clear shot at Ben, even as he looked past his subordinate's shoulder to get a better view of what was behind the crowd.

A golden coffin lay on the tarmac, with a glass casing, through which Poe could clearly see the body of Rey, the Last Jedi. It appeared, almost, that she was sleeping. Poe barely registered Connix's report in his ear: that Rey looked so beautiful, even in death, that the Resistance could not find it in their hearts to bury her.

Ben had now too clearly seen the coffin where the mother of his child lay, and his voice took on an edge of panic. "Let me through." The request only resulted in D'Acy trying to stick his blaster up the former Supreme Leader's nose.

"Not on your life..."

"Let him through," Poe ordered.

D'Acy nearly dropped the blaster. "But, sir...!"

"Did I ask for your opinions?!" Poe growled, an annoyed drawl dripping from his voice. "Stand aside, soldier! That's an order!"

D'Acy reluctantly obeyed, and Ben hurried through the crowd towards the coffin. The crowd seemed to part for him, as if he was a religious figure. Or perhaps the plague. At the moment, it didn't matter which, at least not to Ben Solo.

Using the Force, Ben removed the glass covering and lowered it gently to the ground. Sitting astride the coffin, he gathered Rey lovingly in his arms, and was horrified to see that her head lolled limply to one side - not unlike how it had when he had carried her off, bridal-style, from Takodana and aboard his shuttle.

Except in that moment, she had simply been unconscious and not... dead...

It was like a dam had burst with no warning. Clutching Rey's body close, Ben was overcome with deep, wracking, sobs. A mad denial. A refusal to believe - that the single light in his life, his last chance at happiness, had been ripped away from him. And he had been just - just - too late to prove to Rey that he could be the man she wanted after all.

"Rey! No... no..."

Even the hardest of hearts in the Resistance were moved. Whatever they thought of Kylo Ren, no one watching the sight before them could doubt his love for the young woman who had inspired them time and time again. As his sobs gradually subsided, Ben now stroked his paw of a hand over Rey's face.

"Don't leave me..." his plea coming out in a plaintive whisper. "I love you!" Then he bent his voice close to her ear: "This belongs to you... and always will."

With that, Ben held Rey close and gave her the sweetest kiss imaginable.

It had always been said that the Force works in mysterious ways, especially over affairs of life and death. Or perhaps this was a manifestation of the fairy tales Ben's parents had used to read to him as a child. For in the next instant, it was as if Ben's very kiss awakened her. Awakened Rey. Brought her back into the conscious world of the living.

Her dainty hand brushed his cheek, as she closed her eyes and tentatively kissed him back. Ben pulled away in utter shock, gobsmacked, to see Rey beaming up at him, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Ben..." she sighed, her voice filled with joy and... pride... "You came back to me..." Her voice grew slightly stronger as she declared. "I knew it was you!" She knew that it was he whom she had loved all along. She and Ben shared another, almost desperate kiss and clutched at each other in a warm embrace, as the Resistance erupted in cheers. Glancing over Rey's shoulder, through the tendrils of her sweet-smelling hair, Ben caught the glance of Lieutenant Connix, holding the baby that he now realized through the Force... was his daughter... his and Rey's daughter...

"Can I please hold my little girl?"

Connix gingerly obeyed. Ben and Rey held their child between them, smiling into each other's eyes and looking down on Padmé with bursting pride.

"Why didn't you tell me? Through our Bond?" Ben asked in wonder.

Rey bit her lip shyly. "I was afraid if you knew about her, it would make you vulnerable to any of your enemies within the First Order."

Ben gazed at her, eyes full of love, scarcely able to believe how she could care so much for his safety that she would keep the birth of their child a secret. He beamed. "I feel bad to have missed it. How enchanting you must have looked - your womb laden with our child!"

Rey smiled and blushed scarlet. She gave him another chaste kiss.

Poe watched the couple kiss. Watched as the little family was reunited against all odds. He knew, as did most everyone else, that it was a rather unconventional couple, and yet... he felt happy for them.

Captain D'Acy, however, was unmoved. "His abandoning absolute power just for her... it could be a trick. I don't like it. He must stand trial and be executed for his crimes."

Poe rounded on him. "Fool and blind one! Ben Solo and Rey are bound together by the Force! They are meant to bring balance to the Force itself! If you were to demand he be killed, you would throw the galaxy out of balance for generations, never mind leave an innocent baby without a father! Or do you want to be remembered for such a massive fuck-up?"

In the military, greater forms of verbal abuse were often employed than they might otherwise be in greater, polite society. Such vulgarity came with the profession. And in this case, the admonishment seemed to do the trick. Captain D'Acy certainly did not want to live in infamy within the history books, no matter how much justice he wanted to see. And if Poe Dameron, his commanding officer, was so adamant that Ben Solo be given a chance - an astonishing reversal from even months prior - D'Acy supposed that he had just been given an order of sorts. So he shut up.

Poe could not have avoided a trial entirely, however. In the interest of preventing what could have become a mass mutiny against his leadership, Commander Dameron ordered that Ben Solo be subjected to a military tribunal. Had it been legal, Poe would have found a way to rig the verdict by whatever means necessary - backroom deals, pressuring the jury - if it meant that Ben would be free and Rey and baby Padmé content. As it was, Poe and Finn and Rose could only watch as the proceedings played out.

All three of them rapidly testified in Ben's defense, as did Rey. In her dramatic testimony, Rey - the Last Jedi - confessed her undying love for the former Supreme Leader of the First Order, and even her wish to one day marry him, if he would have her. This she did all while holding her baby - the product of her and Ben's coupling through the Force - in her arms. With such emotional entreaties, no juror could keep their hearts entrenched in stone.

Ben Solo avoided the death penalty. He was charged with various crimes against the Galactic Republic, but his sentence was handed down as exile. To live in exile with his bride-to-be and their child.

And so, Ben Solo and Rey were quietly married in a Resistance courtroom, presided over by a judge of the law, not long after Ben Solo was, essentially, freed. With baby Padmé, the couple fled to the island planet of Ahch-To. There, they would establish a Grey Jedi Academy, teaching youth - their daughter eventually among them as she grew - in both the Light and Dark Sides of the Force. Occasionally, young Padmé's Uncle Finn and Uncle Poe and Auntie Rose - dear friends of her parents - would come and visit the Academy. During these visits, she would listen, enraptured, as they told her the story of her birth, and how they had worked together to free her father from the Dark Side.

All was well.