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eleanor-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

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so a smuggler walks into an orphan’s bar... - ONE-SHOT

When eight-year-old Rey's parents drink themselves to death, they leave her with nothing but a broken heart. Well, that and the only decent bar on the planet.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, Han Solo gets a bad feeling about dropping his son off for Jedi training and decides to take Ben under his wing instead.

Ten years later, a smuggler walks into an orphan's bar...

So um, I might’ve gone a little overboard for my last canon-divergence fic of the year/decade/pre-TRoS era. Here’s twelve thousand words of smuggler!Ben and bar owner!Rey slowly but surely working toward their happily ever after.

Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter or Ko-fi?

The first time Ben Solo stumbles upon Jakku, he is a man on the run.

With his mother furious about his first solo smuggling run and his father too scared to defend his life choices, he’s left with no choice but to stay away until the whole mess dies down. It’s a tried and true tactic for dealing with Leia Organa, passed down from one Solo man to another, and Ben knows in a week or two some galactic emergency or another will successfully divert his mother’s attention from his not-so-legal activities.

Until then, he just needs to lay low – maybe spend a few days visiting his uncle until he gets sick of Luke lamenting the lost opportunity to pass on all he knows to his own flesh and blood, then pop by Takodana to pay old Maz a visit until she traumatizes him with her musings on Chewie’s… attributes, and finally cap it all off with a nice few days in Canto Bight to scout out some new opportunities before returning home just in time for his mother’s birthday.

First things first, though: he needs fuel, and urgently. It’s not an ideal situation to be in when one happens to be in the middle of kriffing nowhere, drifting dangerously close to the Unknown Regions, but the Appenza’s navigation system offers him a ray of hope just before Ben starts cursing his luck: a tiny, desolate system with only one planet to its name, the infamous Jakku.

There are two things Ben knows about Jakku: one, that this is where the dying Empire made its last stand; and two, that that was the only thing of any importance that ever happened on and to the planet.

Well, make that three things: three, it’s about to refuel his ship and save his ass.

With no other viable options, he charts a course for the desert planet and soon finds himself landing near Niima Outpost, his best bet to refuel according to the HoloNet. His ship draws a few looks, new as it is, but Ben would take this scrutiny over all the trouble and danger he’d gotten himself into while flying the Falcon any day, every day.

It doesn’t take long to find the right people and strike the right deal; just ten minutes after making planetfall, Ben finds himself with a refueling ship and an hour to kill. There doesn’t seem to be much going on in this tiny ramshackle outpost, but a familiar flag catches his eye before he resigns himself to spending the next hour in his ship.

“It can’t be,” Ben mutters even as he chuckles under his breath and shakes his head in disbelief at the image of Maz Kanata so far from home. The flag bears an exact replica of the statue that welcomes all wayward travelers to her castle in Takodana, along with the name Maz’s Castle in stylized Basic. Why she would choose to set up a location here of all places is a mystery, but then again no one’s ever claimed to understand any of Maz’s choices.

He follows the flag to one of the very few solid-looking structures in the outpost, and a sign hanging above the double doors assures him that this is, indeed, a location of the popular galaxy-wide chain. Inside, the bar is smaller than most of the locations he’s been to, but the set-up is comfortingly familiar. He spots less than a handful of locals, easily identifiable by their worn-out and climate-appropriate clothing, along with a dozen or so traders and smugglers and passers-by scattered around the place. But none of them manage to capture – and hold – his attention the way the girl behind the bar does.

“Welcome to Maz’s!” she calls out with a grin, waving at him with the rag she’d been using to polish the bar. Hers is the first friendly face he’s seen since his arrival, and Ben can’t help but gravitate toward her, planting himself in the seat closest to where she stands. “Not often we get new faces around here,” the girl tells him as she sets down her rag, and something about the way she speaks doesn’t quite sit right with him until he realizes–

“Your accent,” Ben hears himself blurt out to his horror, and immediately shuts his mouth. “Shit, I’m sorry, I– I was just surprised to hear a Core World accent so far from home, that’s all.”

She laughs, and the sound is even more of a revelation than placing her accent, a little giggle all light and airy and brighter than the scorching Jakku sun. “It’s a long story,” she says as her laugh fades into a smile, and leaves it at that. “So, what can I get you?”

He’d reconsider his order if this were any other bar so far from the Core, but Ben can’t imagine any establishment of Maz’s without some top-shelf stuff, even one so far out in the Western Reaches. “Corellian whiskey please, if you’ve got it.”

The girl raises an eyebrow at him, but turns around to pluck a bottle off the shelf anyway. “Fancy,” she quips as she pours him a glass and Ben roots around his pockets. “You really are from the Core, aren’t you?”

“Chandrila,” he tells her as he slides a few credits across the bar, and accepts his drink with a murmured thanks as he takes a sip. “I’m Ben, by the way.”

“Rey,” she offers in return, and Ben can’t quite hide the way he smiles at how perfect her name is for her. It only grows wider when she says his name in that proper accent and cheery voice of hers. “So, Ben – like I said, it’s not often we get new faces around here. What brings you to Jakku?”

“Huh,” Ben says to buy himself some time, weighing exactly how much to reveal. Rey’s given him no reason to distrust her, but he’s spent far too long bearing the names Organa and Solo to just throw caution to the wind whenever he sees a pretty face. Never mind that her smile makes him want to do exactly that, that her laugh puts him at ease in a way nothing else can. “Really? Place like this, I figured just about everyone passes through.”

She scoffs, though her smile remains. “No one passes through Jakku, not unless you’re on a one-way trip to the Unknown Regions.”

Ben tilts his head. “Can’t imagine why,” he deadpans, looking at her with a completely straight face. “Seems like a charming place, if you ask me.”

Rey bursts into laughter – a proper, full laugh this time – and he takes in every single detail even as he joins her. She laughs with abandon, lips parted and head thrown back and eyes bright, and he can’t imagine a more beautiful sight. Her eyes are not quite brown and not quite green, a kaleidoscope of gold and olive shimmering in the sunlight pouring in from the windows on either end of the bar.

And in the Force… he closes his eyes for a brief moment, and feels nothing but warmth in the Force, set ablaze by her presence. She’s not quite Force-sensitive, not as far as he can tell, but her energy is so vibrant he’d easily believe otherwise.

That, above all else, convinces Ben to finally let his guard down. He’s no Jedi, but he knows the Force, has known it since the day he was born and will walk with it until the day he dies – and the Force has never led him astray.

“I’m on the run from my mother,” Ben says, and relishes the way Rey instantly rests her elbows on the bar and leans in closer, giving him her full attention. “She’s… let’s just say she doesn’t fully approve of my life choices.”

“So you are a smuggler,” Rey grins, sounding pleased with herself.

Ben, ever the victim of terrible timing, nearly chokes on his drink. “What– wait– how did you…?”

She reaches out as if to take his hand, only to stop herself at the last second and rest her hand next to his instead, almost but not quite touching. “Calm down,” she murmurs gently, though the proximity of their hands has the opposite effect. “You won’t get into any trouble for that here. It’s just– news spreads fast, here in Niima. News about a brand new ship and a well-dressed man who refuses to give out his name? That spreads even faster. But, like I said,” Rey shrugs, “there’s no trouble here, not unless you’re looking for it. We’ve got smugglers coming and going all the time – you leave us in peace, and so will we.”

His instincts, honed from nearly a decade with his father and Chewie, are at war with the Force. No smuggler is ever really safe anywhere, especially not a Solo, but… but if Rey says so…

“I thought you said you don’t get many new faces passing by,” Ben reminds her, relaxing despite himself as he downs the rest of his whiskey.

“Jakku’s not a particularly exciting place, not even for smugglers,” she tells him as she slowly inches her hand away. “We just get regulars, and even those are dwindling in numbers now that most everything from the big battle has been picked cleaned.”

It’s almost jarring, hearing her refer to the Battle of Jakku so casually; flying past the hollowed-out carcasses of downed Star Destroyers and AT-ATs on his way to the outpost had been equally surreal, after a childhood filled with history classes on the Empire’s doomed final stand.

“So you see why a new face around these parts has us all curious,” Rey continues, resting her chin in one hand as she looks at him. “Why Jakku, anyway? Core World smuggler like you, you could probably go anywhere else in the galaxy to wait out your mother’s wrath.”

Ben winces at the reminder, even though Rey had meant it teasingly. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there are surprisingly few places you can hide from your mother when she’s a senator like mine is. And anyway,” he hurriedly adds, hoping to gloss past that little bit of information, “I’m not actually here to stay. Just needed to refuel so that I can make the jump to my next destination.”

The smile on Rey’s face is gone now, as she shifts away from him just the slightest bit. It’s the senator thing, it has to be. Realistically, Ben knows not everyone is a huge fan of the New Republic, not even those who’d suffered the most under the Empire’s rule. Here on Jakku, one of the struggling planets the new government has been accused of forgetting and turning its back on… well, he really should’ve thought twice before mentioning his mother’s affiliation with the government.

In his haste to change the topic, Ben completely forgets his earlier blunder and takes it even further. “What about you? How’d a young lady from the Core end up bartending here in Jakku, anyway?”

He’s got to be the luckiest bastard in the galaxy, because thankfully Rey doesn’t react to his rude prying by throwing his drink in his face the way he’d been expecting. “I’m no lady,” she says instead, with a little laugh, “and I’m not just the bartender, for the record. You’re looking at the sole proprietor of the finest – all right, only – bar in the whole Jakku system.”

It’s adorable, the little note of pride that enters her voice and the way she straightens up a bit, the way she gestures at their surroundings with a little flourish. “Probably the youngest one too,” Ben adds, playing along. “You can’t be… what, more than twenty?”

Rey gives him a knowing look, but subtlety has never been a Solo trait anyway.

“Less than, actually,” she tells him anyway. “I’ll be nineteen soon.”

Ten years. She’s a whole ten years younger than him, and Ben can’t really bear to focus on that right now. “Wow, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” And then, after a moment’s consideration of that life and all the possibilities it holds and the vast nothingness that surrounds her in this desert, he adds, “Are you… are you planning to stay here? It’s just– like you said, things are dying down around this part of the galaxy, and if people stop visiting then… well…” he trails off with a shrug, coming to the belated realization that he’s being rude and invasive yet again.

It’s like something inside of him is clamoring for every single bit about her, of her, that he can get his hands on, for the opportunity to get to know her even though he’s set to leave in… less than an hour.

The reminder feels like ice running through his veins.

Rey seems oblivious to his internal panicking. “This is all I’ve ever known,” she says, as if that’s all there is to it.

“But–” A desperate idea occurs to him then. “But is it all you want? Because if you want more– if you want to leave…” Ben takes a deep breath, tries to play it cool. “I mean,” he says with a shrug, “I do happen to have a brand new ship waiting for me just outside.”

She smiles at him, but Ben’s heart drops because he’s seen that smile, he knows that smile, his mother might not have been around for much of his childhood but she’d been around just long enough to drill that smile and what it means when a woman flashes it at him into his head.

It’s a polite smile, it’s a thanks but no thanks smile, it’s a no means no, Ben, even if she can’t find the voice to say so to someone with your size and your name and your power smile.

“And you probably shouldn’t keep it waiting much longer,” Rey says softly, and after a moment’s hesitation she does reach for him this time, rests her small palm on top of his hand and gives it an almost apologetic pat. As far as consolation prizes go… well, he’ll take it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he turns his hand around to lace their fingers together, keeping his grip loose enough for Rey to pull her hand away at any time.

She gives him a little squeeze instead. “It was nice meeting you, Ben. Stay safe, yeah?”

“You’re acting as if we’ll never see each other again,” he says with a forced little laugh, trying to keep his voice light and teasing even as his heart grows heavy at the thought.

Rey shrugs, and takes her hand away, wraps it around herself instead. “You were never here to stay,” she reminds him, sounding almost… almost disappointed by the thought. “And no one comes back to Jakku. Can’t blame them, really,” Rey adds, throwing in a hollow laugh of her own.

And he knows she gave him the smile, knows and understands and respects what it means, but… but surely all of this – the hand-holding and the dim eyes and the hollow laugh – means something too.

The Force tells him it does, reminds him once again how warm and vibrant and familiar she feels to him. And because it’s never led him astray, because he desperately wants to believe in it, because Rey should be a stranger but stars, that couldn’t be further from the truth–

“Well, I guess I’ll be the first,” Ben says as he reluctantly gets up, and knows in that moment that nothing will keep him from fulfilling this promise. “I’ll see you soon, Rey.”

“See you soon, Ben,” she echoes weakly, with the mere ghost of a smile. She’s clearly not convinced, but there’s something in her eyes as she watches him walk away, something that he recognizes in himself.

Hope, Ben thinks as he walks back out into the desert, and prays it’ll be enough for the both of them until they meet again.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The second time Ben Solo lands on Jakku, he is a man on a mission.

News spreads fast, he remembers Rey telling him two weeks ago, remembers every single word and look and smile she shared with him. Still, he hurries over to the bar anyway, hoping to beat Jakku’s gossips to the punch and surprise her.

Judging by the look on her face when she glances up from the bar and sees him in her doorway, by the audible gasp that escapes her parted lips and the barely visible sheen of emotion in her eyes and the slight tremor in her hands as she sets down a glass, he’s somehow pulled it off.

“You came back,” Rey whispers as he comes to a stop just two feet away, separated by the bar between them.

“I came back,” Ben says with a nod as he slides into the seat he already thinks of as his, and rests his hands palms-up on the bar in a silent offering. Rey takes them in her own with a shaky smile, her touch warm and comforting and familiar even though it shouldn’t be.

In the past two weeks, he’s realized there are a lot of things about him and her and them that shouldn’t be – but over his dead body is he going to question any of them. Instead, he holds her hands until she pulls away, and watches her reach for the bottle of Corellian whiskey without prompting.

The bar is slightly busier today, with patrons calling Rey away from him more often than not. “They brought in a good haul this morning,” Rey tells him as she assembles another round for a band of scavengers in the far corner, “so it’s time to celebrate.”

“Good for them,” Ben says, though he wonders what exactly is left to qualify as a good haul in picked-apart wreckages older than him.

Rey smiles as she begins to load the drinks onto a tray. “And good for me,” she points out. “Between their endless celebrations and my favorite customer coming back for the good stuff, business is booming.”

It’s a good thing she heads off to deliver the drinks then, because Ben’s pretty sure she wouldn’t have believed him if he’d tried to dismiss the pink in his cheeks as sunburn.

Eventually, the scavengers grudgingly agree with Rey when she cuts them off after four rounds and suggests they keep their precious credits for more responsible uses. The place is left half empty after they leave, and a relieved Rey chooses to slump into the seat next to his rather than return to her spot behind the bar.

“Hello, stranger,” she grins as she moves her chair closer to his, playfully bumping his shoulder before she spins around in her chair so that she can keep an eye on the remaining patrons.

Ben takes a moment to adjust to the fact that she’s right next to him, closer than she’s ever been, and then turns around as well. This way, facing the door and the windows on either side of it, he can see the blinding Jakku sky slowly fade into a beautiful swirl of pinks and oranges as the sun begins its gradual descent.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Rey asks after a moment, and he turns to find her observing him with a little smile on her lips. “I know it isn’t much, this desert wasteland of ours, but even in a place like this… there’s beauty to be found, if you care to look.”

I wasn’t even looking when I found you, Ben thinks to himself, and nearly says so out loud.

Instead, he shrugs and smiles and says, “I guess it’s not so bad, after all.”

Rey laughs out loud, attracting curious looks from the handful of others surrounding them. “Oh no, it’s a hellhole, trust me. The view’s nice and all, but everything else?” She pauses for a moment, seems to weigh her words before she speaks again. “I wonder sometimes, what my life would’ve been like if I didn’t have the bar. I’ve seen how it is out there, how everyone else struggles day in and day out only to get the bare minimum, just enough to carry them through the next day of scavenging. I… I honestly don’t know if I could’ve made it through that,” she admits quietly.

Ben reaches for her hand without thought. “Rey… I probably don’t know enough about you for this to mean anything, but… I think you’re stronger than you know. I think there’s nothing out there you can’t do, if you put your mind to it.”

He doesn’t explain himself, can’t quite put into words how vivid and brilliant she is in the Force, but he doesn’t need to. Rey curls her hand around his, and her lips curve into a soft smile.

“And I think you’re probably the nicest person I’ve ever met,” she says, only to ruin the moment by adding, “Oh, except maybe Maz. Probably wouldn’t be alive without her, so I can’t forget good old Maz.”

Rey lets go of his hand and spins around, gestures for him to do the same before she points out a little statue of Maz sitting on the highest shelf of the bar. “Have you ever met her? They say all smugglers have, at some point or another.”

Ben can’t help but laugh. “Maz? I’ve known her my whole life,” he tells a stunned Rey. “No, really – she’s an old friend of my dad’s. And funny story, she’s actually why I decided to come check out this place the first time I was here. I saw the flag and I just had to drop by.”

“Small galaxy, I suppose,” Rey shrugs, her eyes dancing with mirth. “I’ll have to tell her about this the next time she drops by; you know she loves these little coincidences.”

“Coincidence, or fate?” Ben says before his brain can catch up to his heart, and instantly regrets it. He could play it off as a joke, could even spin it into something Maz would say, but… but it’s not a joke, not to him. Sure, Ben believes in coincidences – even with the Force flowing around and through every living being, sometimes things just… happen, and that’s that. But for him to have ended up in this system of all the stars in the galaxy, to have chosen Niima Outpost of all the settlements, to have caught a glimpse of Maz’s flag and then made the uncharacteristic decision to leave his ship unguarded in a strange place just to check it out…

He knows, with a certainty that his father would laugh at and his uncle would approve of, that nothing about him and Rey is coincidental. But maybe their second meeting isn’t the right time to tell her that, and so Ben settles for a change of topic instead. “How do you know Maz, anyway? I mean, apart from the obvious, of course.” He waves his hand around, gesturing vaguely at the establishment they’re in. “How’d you come to run and own the place?”

Somehow, Rey had seemed less unsettled by his suggestion of them being brought together by fate than she is by his seemingly innocuous question. He’s about to backtrack and tell her she doesn’t need to tell him anything she doesn’t want to when Rey lets out a little sigh and then squares her shoulders as if bracing herself for battle, fixing her eyes on the window beyond his shoulder as she begins to speak.

“When I was four, my parents heard that Maz was hiring, looking for people interested in exciting business opportunities. I guess there’s no business opportunity more exciting than running a bar for a couple of alcoholics,” she says casually, too casually, and throws in a bitter little laugh. “They got their shit together just long enough to pass the interview, and then uprooted our family from Coruscant and moved all the way here. And then… well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how that equation would work out, does it? Alcoholics surrounded by a free flow of alcohol every single minute of their lives.”

For some reason, it doesn’t quite surprise him that Rey’s an orphan. Maybe it’s just based on his perception of Jakku in general, and its reputation in the galaxy as the place where the lost and the lonely go when there is nowhere and no one left for them to call home. But her next words… her next words shake him to his core.

“I was eight, when it finally happened. And I… I didn’t even cry, Ben,” she whispers, her eyes finally meeting his with a glassy, faraway look. “I found my parents dead in a puddle of their own sick, and I didn’t even cry. I just… I knew it’d been coming, I suppose, so I just did what I had to do. I figured Maz would come eventually, if she realized something was wrong, so I boarded up the place and waited. And sure enough, she arrived a week later to find my parents barely hidden away in the shallow graves I’d dug out back and me surviving off bar snacks and water.”

Ben can’t help the way he flinches then, at the thought of little Rey trying her best to dig graves for her parents in the shifting sands of Jakku. He wants to hold her close and promise her nothing bad will ever happen to her again, he wants to rip apart the fabric of time and space to make sure nothing bad ever happened to her in the first place, he wants so badly to be able to do something, anything–

But Rey doesn’t seem to be in search of comfort. “I thought of leaving – I mean, I was just a child, I couldn’t fathom going on like this completely on my own, especially here of all places – but Maz stayed around long enough to set things up for me, arranged for people to come help and train and take care of me until I could take care of myself. And I’ve been running this place ever since,” she concludes with a shrug. “So um, to answer your question without the tragic backstory,” Rey adds with a touch of self-consciousness, dropping her gaze down to the bar top as she bites into her lower lip, “I inherited the place, plain and simple.”

That finally spurs him into action, the sight of her retreating from him. Ben reaches out for her hand, and waits until she turns to look at him to say, “You really are stronger than you know, Rey. Strongest person I’ve ever met, and I think my mother would kill me for saying that,” he adds in an attempt to lighten the mood.

It works, because Rey laughs and fully turns her body to him as she rests her elbow on the bar and uses her free hand to prop her head up. “You know, that’s only the second time you’ve mentioned your mother and I’m already terrified of her. Which senator are we talking about, here?”

And it’s stupid, it’s so, so stupid what he’s about to do, but how could he possibly lie to Rey after all she’s shared with him, after all she’s trusted him with? Ben takes a deep breath, and makes a choice.

“Have you heard about the senator from Chandrila?”

Rey lets go of his hand and nearly falls out of her chair as the arm holding her up fails her. “Shut up. Your mother is Leia Organa?”

In light of the obvious awe in her voice and her eyes, Ben is forced to reconsider his assessment of her political opinions from the last time he’d broached the subject. But if her reaction that day hadn’t been about the senate, then what…?

Before he can ponder it much further though, Rey’s punching his arm. “You’re Leia Organa and Han Solo’s son! You’re Luke Skywalker’s nephew!” she whisper-hisses, careful not to broadcast his identity to the rest of the bar. “Ben, you– you’re unbelievable! You let me think you were just some random guy!”

“I am just some random guy,” he insists, rubbing at his arm. Unsurprisingly for someone who’s had to fend for herself in the desert, Rey packs quite a punch. “My family are who they are, but that doesn’t mean or say anything about me. I’m not some war hero or Jedi knight or royalty–”

Rey, however, seems to think otherwise. “Oh my kriff, you’re a prince,” she gasps, though he appreciates the fact that she looks more irritated than starry-eyed by the realization.

“Only in name,” Ben tells her – and then, a thought occurs to him. A thought that is, as much as it pains him to say it, probably exactly the kind of thing his father would’ve come up with. “Though I do have a palace I can whisk you away to, if you want.”

To his eternal mortification, Rey does not laugh. She smiles, but just barely as she quietly notes, “That’s the second time you’ve offered to take me away.”

Ben gulps, and can only hope it was not audible. “No pressure,” he quickly assures her, not quite sure what to make of her reaction and the little smile that’s still playing on her lips. “Just, um… just letting you know that the offer still stands, if you ever change your mind.”

She’s quiet for the longest time, but the wait is worth it when Rey says, “Someday. Someday I’ll leave this place and go explore the galaxy, see for myself what oceans and forests and mountains look like.”

His heart aches for her, for the obvious longing in her voice and all the things she’s been deprived of and everything she deserves but isn’t ready for. “When you do…” Ben says softly, carefully. “I’ll be right by your side – if you want me to, that is, I’m not saying you’ll be stuck with me or that a ride off the planet comes with terms and conditions or–”

It’s worth the humiliation, the slight laugh Rey gives him as she reaches out and slowly, hesitantly curves her hand around his cheek. If he leans into her touch with a sigh… well, that’s between the two of them, and Rey has the good grace not to comment on it. “I’d like that,” she says instead, with a smile it physically hurts him not to kiss. “I’d like that very much.”

“Okay,” he whispers, his lips perhaps a touch too close to her hand, and they lapse into a warm, comfortable silence as the sun dips beneath the horizon. When it’s finally time for him to leave, to get back to his ship while he still has one, Rey stares at him with a look of intense concentration on her face until she suddenly throws herself into his arms and burrows into his chest.

“I’ll see you soon, Ben,” she murmurs against his racing heart, which skips a beat when he senses the hidden question in her tone.

“See you soon, Rey,” he promises, and leaves with the knowledge that this time, she believes him.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The third time Ben Solo visits Jakku, he is a man following his heart.

It’s barely been two weeks this time, but he can’t help himself. None of the jobs his father contacts him about seem worth his time, none of the sights he normally marvels at measure up to Rey, none of his family’s many properties across the galaxy feel like home anymore.

Jakku calls to him like a beacon, with Rey at the very heart of it all.

When he finally has her in his arms again, a part of Ben wishes he didn’t have to leave. It’s wishful thinking though, and he shoves the thought aside to focus on the present, on Rey and the way her eyes light up when she sees him again and the way her touches have grown bolder and more comfortable. The longer he stays, the harder it is to even consider leaving – and then, nature makes the decision for him.

Rey’s laughing as he regales her with the tale of a childhood dance lesson gone wrong, her setting aside clean glasses for the night and him stacking chairs up onto the tables, when they first hear it. Ben’s heard the wind wail before, but this is a shriek, a painful sound accompanied by the harsh grating of sand relentlessly battering the walls and windows of the bar.

“Oh no,” Rey says as she looks out the window into the darkened desert. “Ben, I think you’re stuck here for the night.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he teases even as he comes to stand next to her, their concerned faces reflected in the window. “Is the bar going to be okay?”

“It’s survived far worse,” she tells him with a shrug. “Your ship should be fine too; the storm doesn’t look too bad, just bad enough to keep everyone indoors.”

Ben casts a look around the empty bar. “I’ll be fine,” he assures Rey. “A blanket would be nice if you could spare one, but I’ve slept in worse.”

When he turns back to her, she’s looking at him with a barely suppressed smile. “Did you really think I was going to make you sleep here? On the floor?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure the bar’s not wide enough for me–”

“Ben,” Rey laughs with a shake of her head, and then reaches for his hand. “Come on, there’s plenty of room downstairs.”

He supposes it makes sense, building underground rather than upward in a place so susceptible to volatile winds, but Ben’s still a little too puzzled by the developments of the last five minutes to really pay attention or react as Rey leads him behind the bar and turns off the lights in the main area before she guides him down a staircase ordinarily kept out of view by the shelves.

“I turned my old room into a storeroom,” Rey tells him as the basement comes into view, a closed door ahead and another to their left. “And the cot was built for a child, so it’s not like you’d fit anyway.” He doesn’t quite realize what she’s getting at until she reaches for the door in front of them, and opens it to reveal a decently-sized room that has to be hers, clothes stacked in semi-neat piles on a threadbare couch and hardy little desert plants lining the walls and…

And one bed, just about big enough for two.

Rey shuts the door behind them. “’Fresher’s through there,” she says, letting go of his hand to point out a door next to her couch. “I’ve got an actual shower, so hopefully my humble abode will live up to your smuggler standards at least, if not your princely ones,” she adds teasingly.

Ben gives her a slight laugh as he curiously heads toward the ‘fresher and opens the door to find that she was serious about the shower. “How?” he asks in bewilderment as he twists a creaky knob that prompts water, actual water, to flow out of the showerhead. It’s nothing to brag about, not even by smuggler standards, but he imagines this has to be the height of luxury for a desert dweller.

“Not bad, is it?” Rey asks, coming to lean against the ‘fresher door with a smile. “What a lot of people don’t know is that this bar stands on the exact spot of Niima the Hutt’s original temple, and she spared no expense when she had that constructed. This is probably the only structure on all of Jakku with running water, courtesy of a pipe that runs deep into the planet, all the way down to whatever source of water’s left from before the Calamity.”

“I’m guessing Maz knew that when she decided to set up shop here?” Ben asks as they make their way out of the cramped ‘fresher and back into the daunting sight of her bedroom and its single bed. It’s not that he doesn’t welcome the opportunity to lie next to her, of course he does, but he doesn’t want Rey to feel like she has to invite him into her space.

But then again, he’d made it clear that he was perfectly content to stay upstairs and she’d been the one to bring him down here…

Rey turns her back to him and starts digging through her piles of clothing and sheets and towels. “Probably,” she says, carefully retrieving a small bundle of clothing from the precarious stacks. “I wish I had something for you to change into, but…”

Right. Clothes to change into, so that they can get to sleep. Together. In the same bed. “I, um,” Ben clears his throat. “I’ll be fine.”

“Right. Good,” Rey nods, suddenly bashful. “Do you mind if I shower first?”

“Go ahead,” he says, and waits until the ‘fresher door closes behind Rey before he closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and takes several deep breaths.

“She wouldn’t have volunteered if she wasn’t comfortable with this,” Ben reminds himself, and a cursory sweep of the Force reveals that Rey is comfortable, her presence warm and soothing and electrified by the slightest bit of excitement.

Sufficiently comforted, he makes it through the rest of the evening with little trouble. In fact, it’s all a little… domestic, Ben decides as he comes out of the ‘fresher to find the lights off and Rey already in bed, arranging two pillows next to each other and folding back the blanket on what he assumes is his side of the bed in invitation. She blinks at the sight of him stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, but invites him into bed with a pat on his pillow anyway. He switches off the light in the ‘fresher, plunging them into complete darkness, and waits until his eyesight has adjusted before crossing the room.

“It gets cold at night,” Rey explains as he holds up the blanket in a silent question, and promptly shuffles into his arms when he finally lies down next to her. “You’re much better than a blanket,” is all she offers up as explanation, along with a contented little sigh.

He takes that as permission to properly wrap his arms around her, and closes his eyes when Rey happily swings an arm around his waist in return. She’s so small and warm and soft in his arms, so comfortable and at home this way that he can’t help but relax into their shared embrace as well. Sleep is already beckoning when Rey suddenly whispers into the night.

“Ben?”

“Hmm?” he hums, lips brushing her forehead.

“The first time we met… why did you offer to take me off this planet, even back when we were complete strangers?” Rey asks, and suddenly every single part of him is wide awake and tense with nerves. He won’t, can’t lie to her, but there’s very little he can say to a woman he’s only met three times while holding her in his arms in her bed without scaring her off.

But first– “You’ve never felt like a stranger to me, not even that first day,” he admits, figuring that’s safe enough for now. “There’s just… there’s something about you, Rey.”

He can feel her smile against his chest. “I feel it too,” she murmurs, and presses a kiss to his neck.

And that’s when Ben begins to stammer. “I’m not… it’s just… I’m not saying you can’t look after yourself, I know you can, but… I was just worried, I guess. Is it safe for you here? And okay, I guess it is since you’ve been on your own since you were eight–” He cuts himself off with a wince then, wondering how his attempt to evade the true depth of his feelings for her had ended up with him reminding her of her painful loss.

For the first time in his life, Ben finds himself empathizing with the way his father always, always finds a way to make things worse when he tries to talk himself out of some mess with Ben’s mom.

Thankfully, Rey doesn’t pull away from him, doesn’t even tense up in his arms. “I wasn’t alone, not really,” she mumbles, lips warm against his skin. “I had Maz’s people, remember? They stayed with me for a bit, and then they’d come check up on me every once in a while. Besides, I wasn’t in any real danger. None of the locals would have hurt me, not back then.”

Ben shifts to get a proper look at Rey, careful not to jostle her in the process. “Why’s that?”

She lifts her head from his chest to return his gaze. “This is your third time here. Have you ever seen any kids around?”

He considers the question for a moment, runs through his brief time here on Jakku… and realizes that he has never seen anyone younger than Rey. “I… I never noticed.”

“Children are precious here,” she says. “Jakku is no place to raise a child, so barely anyone tries to. The kids we do have, we all take care of. So in a way, everyone you see here kind of played a part in raising me.”

It’s an odd concept, but one he’s certainly familiar with on a certain level. “They do say it takes a village,” Ben finally says.

“Especially when you don’t have parents,” Rey adds quietly, and it’s perhaps the first and only time he’s heard her actually sound forlorn by the fact.

His first instinct is to comfort her, and he rolls with it before he can overthink the execution. “Sometimes even when you do,” Ben says, and waits for Rey’s reaction to determine what comes next.

She turns on her stomach and props herself up with one hand, staring expectantly at him in the dark. Ben sighs and rolls onto his back, closing his eyes as he slowly gathers his thoughts and weaves them into words. “Turns out, growing up with a princess and a smuggler for parents isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be.”

He can’t believe he’s telling her his pitiful sob story about his parents when she grew up with none, but Rey reaches out and runs a hand through his hair and… and for the very first time, Ben feels like this story he’s kept close to his chest all his life might actually be worth sharing, and sharing with her.

“I’m not… I’m not saying they’re bad people. They’re amazing people, who’ve done amazing things, but… doing amazing things takes up a lot of time – time that normal people might have spent on comforting their kid after a nightmare or explaining the Force to him when he started lashing out or sticking around for a bit after dropping a bombshell revelation about his grandfather instead of running off to the senate to protect your reputation–”

Rey’s hand is still carding through his hair, soothing and grounding him before he can get lost in his own memories.

“They… they tried their best,” Ben says, more for his own benefit than Rey’s. “Eventually, my mother decided to send me to my uncle for training. She’s strong with the Force, always has been, but she’s spent her whole life trying to suppress it. So when my abilities started growing out of control, she thought maybe I needed Luke more than I needed her.”

She’d thought wrong, but Ben tries not to focus on that, on what could have been. “My dad… he agreed, at first. He still thinks all this Force stuff is mumbo-jumbo, but he just wanted the best for me. So I packed my things, said goodbye to my mom, and got on his ship. I don’t know if it was something in my eyes, or my voice, or maybe just paternal intuition kicking in eighteen years too late, but my dad, he just… he kept looking at me, and then just as we were about to arrive he turned the ship around. And then he said…” He turns to Rey, finds her hand in the darkness and allows himself a smile at the memory. “I’ll never forget it. He said Force mumbo-jumbo or not, you’re still my son. And I’m still your father, dammit, and it’s about time I start acting that way.”

Rey squeezes his hand, and smiles back at him as the hand in his hair slides down to cup his cheek. “And that’s how you became a smuggler instead of a Jedi?”

“And that’s how I became a smuggler instead of a Jedi,” Ben echoes with a nod, curling his free arm around her to pull her closer.

“Are you… are you happy?” she asks, still looking up at him. “With how life turned out?”

He shrugs. “If you’re asking if I’d rather be a smuggler or a Jedi, the answer is definitely, one hundred percent smuggler. I admire my uncle and all, but the life he lives, the life he’s chosen… it’s not for me,” Ben says, a realization he’s long since made his peace with. “Besides, growing up I always wanted to be a pilot just like my dad, and I guess this is about as close as it gets.”

Rey hums in acknowledgement, burrows closer to him to rest her head on his chest. “How about you?” he asks, resting their joined hands on her hip. “Are you happy with how your life turned out?”

She’s quiet for so long Ben begins to think that maybe she’s fallen asleep, or maybe she doesn’t want to answer the question. Just as he’s about to give up and close his eyes though, Rey speaks.

“I mean… most days, I’m okay with it,” she says, and he looks down to find her eyes open but fixed someplace else. “These days, I’m especially okay with it, now that… now that I’m not alone anymore.”

Ben holds her tighter, presses a kiss to her forehead. Rey sighs and looks up at him, gives him a smile. “I’ve got a better life than most people here, so at least there’s that. And… and really, this is all I’ve ever known, Ben. If I leave… when I leave… I won’t even know where to start.”

He pulls them both into a sitting position, looks her in the eyes when he promises, “I’ll be right there with you, every step of the way.”

Rey shuffles closer and reaches up, wraps her arms around his neck and slides her fingers into his hair. She looks at him, just… looks at him, for a short eternity. And then–

“I know,” Rey whispers, and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him like she can’t stop herself, like her life depends on it, like the floodgates have finally been opened and there will be no closing them ever again.

The storm rages for three days, but by the end of it Ben is sure they’ve barely gotten three hours of sleep combined. When they finally step out into the sun on the third day, they sport matching swollen lips and dark circles as Rey walks him to his ship, unashamedly strolling hand-in-hand with him in full view of the entire outpost.

When the Appenza finally comes into view, Ben can’t resist the urge to ask. Deep in his heart he already knows her answer, but everything else has changed, everything, so why not this?

“Sure you still don’t want to come with me?”

It comes as no surprise when Rey shakes her head with a small smile. “Not yet,” she whispers, but at least this time she softens the blow with a goodbye kiss.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The fourth, fifth, sixth, tenth, twentieth, thirtieth time Ben Solo comes back to Jakku, he is a man in love.

He starts taking jobs almost exclusively in the Western Reaches, so that he can visit more frequently and stay longer. After a while, her regulars don’t even blink at the sight of him behind the bar with her anymore, the two of them huddled close in near-constant conversation, almost always holding hands or brushing shoulders or trading playful kisses.

Rey’s bed becomes as familiar to him as his own, a little sanctuary where all their worries disappear. They share secrets under the cover of darkness, paint futures in the golden light of dawn, grasp at each other with all the desperation and want and joy of young lovers every spare moment in between.

Over bar snacks one afternoon, they laugh and bond over the fact that Maz had been the one to give both of them The Talk. In Rey’s case she’d simply had no one else to do it, and one day Maz just sat her down and told her everything there was to know before offering her a contraceptive implant. In Ben’s case, his mother had tasked his father with the responsibility, and his father had predictably pushed it to Chewie, and Chewie had promptly recruited the help of Maz.

Two months after their first kiss, a case of Jogan fruit on his ship opens up a whole new world of possibilities for Ben, and a whole new world period for Rey. He brings her fruit and flowers and all sorts of things she’s never had the chance to see or touch or taste, and tells her each time that her happiness is all the payment he needs. Well, a few kisses wouldn’t hurt either.

One morning, when Ben awakes with the sudden and terrifying realization that he’s overdue for a check-in with his mother as part of her very strict terms for allowing him to continue smuggling, Rey hands him an ancient, patched-together datapad and tells him the story of how she’d hacked into Unkar Plutt’s network one day just for fun, and continues to make use of the highly-encrypted channel for her own purposes.

Another day, when a sandstorm much like the one that had brought them together rolls in, Rey plops herself on top of him to keep him in bed, and asks him to tell her about everything that’s out there, every single world he’s ever visited. He tells her about the lakes of Naboo, the forests of Takodana, the beaches of Chandrila, even the lost mountains of Alderaan, and she promises him that someday, someday he’ll have the chance to show her all of it.

Eventually, her cajoling and pleading finally pay off and Ben acquiesces to a little after-hours display of his skills, using the Force to move bottles around on her shelf and even call some over to the bar, Rey asks him if he ever regrets it, not being a Jedi. And Ben… Ben tells her everything: about how brightly he’d burned even before he’d come into this world, about the tendrils of darkness that had started reaching for him then and hadn’t stopped until years later, about how ultimately love had been just what he’d needed to banish the voices once and for all, the love of his family and for his family. But love, he tells her, is not for the Jedi, not even in this new age – and what he holds in his heart, what he feels for her… he wouldn’t give it up for all the secrets of the Force, for all the power in the galaxy.

A few months later, nearly a standard year since they first met, he arrives to find Rey laughing her head off before she shoos a band of older women away. The people of Jakku, she tells him later, have a tendency to exaggerate; how else does one keep oneself entertained in the desert, after all? The latest story to take Niima Outpost by storm is the sordid tale of one Rey of Jakku and her revolving door of handsome, rich lovers, all of whom keep her business alive with their drink preferences and court her with priceless artifacts sourced from all over the galaxy and fall to their knees begging for her hand. It’s almost impressive, how much they got right aside from the lovers, plural bit.

“You are all there has ever been for me,” Rey assures him when he pretends to be put out by the thought, “and all there will ever be.”

And so life goes on around them while they settle into a new normal, parting every so often only to always, always come back together, finding love and acceptance and belonging with each other for the very first time in their lives.

Everything is perfect… until it almost isn’t.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The last time Ben Solo arrives on Jakku, he is a man trembling in concern and anger and fear.

He’s four days early for his next scheduled visit, but somehow still too late. By the time he makes planetfall, a full day has passed since the message first interrupted his monthly check-in call with Luke. His uncle had been blathering on as usual, something about an awakening in the Force, when the feed of Luke probably bragging about a new student had been briefly interrupted by a single word: HELP.

And somehow Ben had known, even before he’d traced the anonymous message back to Jakku and Plutt’s network, exactly who it had come from.

He’d made preparations to rush to Rey’s side immediately, but an unexpected run-in with the Kanjiklub had delayed him by entire hours until he’d finally given in to the swell of fear and anger inside him and knocked them all out with a pulse of dark energy.

That’s probably going to get him an earful from Luke but frankly, Ben doesn’t really give a single flying kriff right now. Right now, he’s trying not to let his fear cripple him as he lands in an eerily empty Niima Outpost. The streets are deserted and so is the marketplace, even though by now it should be filled with scavengers cleaning up their finds of the day and getting in line to present them to the revolting Crolute. Even more worrying is the absence of said Crolute and his thugs, and the sight of Plutt’s beloved concession stand torn apart and thoroughly emptied of his precious rations.

A rising wave of panic threatens to swallow him whole, until Ben forces himself to close his eyes and reach out.

What he finds nearly knocks him to the ground.

If Rey had been brilliant before, now she is blinding. Even with fear and anxiety and anger clouding her energy, her presence in the Force burns brighter than a star, blotting out everything and everyone else. And with this transformation comes an undeniable truth, one Ben cannot believe it’s taken him this long to realize.

“Rey,” he murmurs, and breaks into a run.

Ben, she whispers back, in some secret corner of his mind that less than a handful of people have ever been able to find, let alone reach.

Ben Ben Ben, she chants – cries – pleads in the space between them until he comes upon the bar, doors and windows completely boarded up. But Rey’s already moving, already prying blocks of wood and sheets of metal off the door with a raw strength that cannot possibly be just her own, until finally there’s nothing standing in between them, until finally she’s in his arms again.

“Are you okay?” Ben asks, hands roaming up and down to check for injury even as Rey clutches him tight and sobs into his chest. “Rey, sweetheart, I’m so sorry it took me so long, are you hurt, what happened, I’m here now, I’m here,” he babbles in relief, his and hers and theirs, inseparable in the Force.

She’s quiet in his arms except for the wet sound of sobs and harsh, ragged inhales, and he holds her until her tears run dry and her breathing returns to normal. “Help me,” Rey croaks, her first words in Force knows how long, and pulls away from him to begin the arduous process of boarding the door up again. It’s a flimsy layer of protection, one that won’t actually do anything, but if this is what she needs to feel safe then this is what he’ll do for her. Together they replace all the layers of wood and metal, and then create an additional barricade using every single chair and table in the bar.

When it’s done, Rey wordlessly takes his hand and leads him downstairs, and she doesn’t bother turning the lights on before she pulls him into bed and curls up in his arms, her exaggerated breaths the only sound in the darkness that curls around them.

In, out, in, out, in, out – and with every repetition, the beacon that is her energy in the Force pulses like a gentle heartbeat, dimming and then flaring back to life in the most extraordinary, beautiful light show Ben has ever seen. He’s content to just stay that way, to hold her and mimic her breathing and marvel at her presence, until Rey finally speaks.

“I killed him,” she whispers, her voice painfully raspy; it’s only then that he wonders when she last drank, when she last ate. “I killed all of them,” Rey adds, her voice thick with regret and pain and fear as hot tears drip down his chest.

“Shh,” Ben whispers soothingly, pulls her closer and starts to rock her the way he vaguely remembers his mother doing once, a long time ago. “Shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re safe now, I’m here, Rey, I’m here–”

“He– he–” It’s painful, the way she gasps for breath with each word, the way guilt threatens to snuff out her light. He can only hold her close and pray she’s as attuned to him in the Force as he is to her, pray she can feel all the comfort and love and protection he has to offer. Maybe, just maybe, it works, because soon enough Rey calms down enough to fill him in without sounding on the brink of a panic attack.

“It was Plutt,” she whispers, a loose fist curling into the front of his shirt for comfort. “He’d heard about all the gossip the others were spreading, all the lies about my new smuggler regulars and all the business I was getting and the expensive gifts I was hiding in my place. That kriffing blobfish got it into his head that he deserved a cut of my profits, so he rounded up his goons and stormed the place two days ago.”

She’s shaken by the memory, just as Ben is shaken by the timestamp. Two days ago, two whole days ago and she’s been alone ever since, while he was in Naboo with his mother and rolling his eyes at his uncle and wasting time with the karking Kanjiklub.

Rey pauses, burrows impossibly closer to him. “When the fight broke out… it was me against twelve of them. Even with my blaster, I could only take down so many of them before they outnumbered me. They… they knocked it out of my hands, and then Plutt reached out, for my neck, and…”

Just hearing about it makes his blood boil, makes his heart bleed. But Rey is here, he reminds himself, here and safe and alive in his arms, and she needs him to focus on the present, not the past.

“And then… he was choking on thin air. They all were.” Her voice sounds so small, so scared.

“The Force,” Ben finally murmurs, willing her to feel the way his presence curls around hers, the way his soul instinctively reaches out for hers.

Judging by her quiet acceptance, Rey had come to the realization on her own at some point in the last two days. “I never knew, never even thought…” she whispers, sounding half-awed and half-terrified. “But Ben, I… I killed them all. I’m… Maker, Ben, I’m a monster.”

“No.” His response is immediate and forceful as he pulls away and wills Rey to look at him. “No, never. Listen to me, Rey, listen–” he all but begs when she begins to shake her head in denial. “You were scared, and in danger, and the Force chose to come to you in that exact moment, sweetheart, chose to save you no matter the cost. That wasn’t you, no, it wasn’t–”

“I could feel them,” she chokes out, eyes clouding over with tears once more. “Ben, I could feel them slipping away and I didn’t– I didn’t stop, didn’t know how, didn’t want to–”

He leans down and presses their foreheads together, wills her to breathe with him until she stops shaking. "Listen to me,” Ben says sharply, leaving no room for argument. “You were in danger, you had no other choice, and you did nothing wrong. Those men deserved it, and you know that, Rey.”

She’s quiet for so long, and even with their newfound closeness he can’t tell what she’s feeling, refuses to barge into her mind to see what she’s thinking. He can only hold her until finally, she continues her story.

“I buried them,” Rey tells him, her voice eerily flat and detached and steady. “I buried them out back, right next to my parents, in even shallower graves. I locked up the bar and hid down here, but it wasn’t enough. That night I heard the ripper-raptors tear their bodies apart for meat and I thought… I thought to myself finally. Finally they were of some use to this kriffing desert.”

And for a moment, for the most fleeting of seconds, Ben can see how the blinding warmth of her light could easily turn into something else, something that sends a chill down his spine.

But he of all people knows better than to let those possibilities cloud his perception. “When was the last time you ate something?” Ben asks quietly, brushing those thoughts aside before Rey can sense them and focusing only on her warmth, her light.

“I’m fine,” she claims unconvincingly.

“Rey, please, let me–”

She curls her arms around him tighter, trapping him like a vise. “I’m fine. I just…” She softens, voice and grip both, and relaxes into him with a sigh. “I’m just so tired, Ben, I haven’t slept in days.”

He thinks of the boarded-up windows, of the barricade, of the tendrils of fear that continue to stain her Force signature.

“Hold me?” Rey asks, with a voice like the scared child she never got to be.

Ben kisses her forehead. “All night,” he promises, and stands guard over her while she drifts in and out of uneasy sleep and dark nightmares and the prison of her own mind. They spend the rest of the night in silence, save for a few soothing whispers on his part when he slowly draws her out of her nightmares, Rey feigning sleep even when she’s clearly awake and Ben letting her as he draws soothing circles into her back.

Eventually, the chrono mounted above the ‘fresher door displays a dimly-lit 0500, the only source of light in the room. The sun has risen in Jakku, and with it so has Rey, finally giving up her act to roll onto her back and stare at the ceiling instead.

“The second time Maz visited after… after my parents,” she says slowly, quietly, her voice scratchy in that intimate, first-thing-in-the-morning way he’s come to cherish, “I begged her to take me back to Takodana with her. I was so lonely, and sad, and scared, and I just… I wanted to not be all of those things, any of those things, anymore.”

It doesn’t matter how many times Rey talks about her childhood – his heart breaks for her every single time.

“And she said… she said she’d like nothing more in the entire universe, but it wasn’t my time to leave yet,” Rey tells him with a little scoff. “Worst thing to tell a child who’s desperate to get off a planet, but you know how Maz is. She wouldn’t change her mind, no matter how much I cried and begged. All she told me was that I’d know when it was time… and I’ve been waiting ever since.”

And finally, finally all of the pieces fall into place. “So that’s why every time I asked…”

Rey rolls onto her side to look at him. “It wasn’t time. I thought it was at first, I hoped it was. I mean, stars,” she breathes, the faintest hint of a laugh in her voice, and relief crashes into him like a tidal wave. “A handsome smuggler shows up out of the blue and offers to show me the galaxy? That’s the stuff holodramas are made of. But even then, even with you… it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like it was time yet.”

The words are out of his mouth before he’s even consciously aware of forming them, a desperate man’s attempt to hold onto the first sign of light at the end of the tunnel that has been this endless night. “Handsome, huh?”

Ben regrets them instantly, chides himself for making light of her confession and teasing her when she’s clearly not ready for it yet, when this isn’t the time for jokes–

But then, in the darkness his eyes adjusted to hours ago, he sees Rey roll her eyes at him and feels her little hand shove at his shoulder in retaliation. He smiles in relief, and slowly, ever so slowly, so does Rey, a soft little curve of her lips that shines brighter than the desert sunlight breaking through the horizon.

They stare at each other like that, two smiling people appreciating a rare moment of calm, until Ben gathers his thoughts and his nerve. “You said it wasn’t time then,” he says carefully. “What about now?”

Rey’s smile fades, but she slips one hand into his as she slowly considers her words. “Now something… now there’s this thing inside of me–”

“The Force,” Ben reminds her and him both, still marveling at the truth, still berating himself for not realizing it that very first day. No one, no one, burns that brightly in the Force without having the kind of connection to it that he has, that she has.

“Yeah, that,” Rey murmurs, sounding worlds away as she considers her new reality. “I feel… I feel like it’s telling me to leave, to get the hell away from Jakku and never look back.” She pauses, squeezes his hand before she looks up at him with a dozen questions in her eyes. “Can the Force do that?”

“The Force works in mysterious ways,” he tells her, echoing the same bantha fodder he’s been told his whole life and finally knows to be true. How else would he explain ending up on Jakku of all the planets in the galaxy, finding Rey of all the Force-sensitives in existence? He’s always suspected that the Force must have played some part in leading him to Rey all those months ago, but now there’s no denying it.

She laughs, and it’s not quite the sound he’s come to love but it’s close enough, Ben supposes, given the circumstances. “Maz used to say that all the time. Maker, I’d get so irritated at her.”

“Everyone says it,” Ben shrugs. “Trust me, it never gets any less irritating. But… but it’s true,” he reluctantly admits.

Rey hums in acknowledgement, and busies herself by smoothing out his crumpled shirt for a while until she’s ready to speak again. “Ben… Ben, what do I do?” she whispers, and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard her sound so helpless, doesn’t want her to ever feel this way again.

And for that to happen… there’s really only one way, isn’t there? For the very first time in his life, Ben regrets not taking his heritage seriously, not knowing enough to help Rey now. There’s only one person out there who can help her… and he’s probably already waiting, Ben realizes, finally connecting the dots between Rey’s incident and the awakening Luke had spoken of.

Slowly, reluctantly, he resigns himself to the idea. “Luke… Luke felt it, your awakening,” he tells Rey, the words heavy on his tongue and his heart. “He can help you. I can… I can take you to him.”

Her reaction is instantaneous, Rey tensing in his arms and then pulling herself away to stare down at him. “No,” she says firmly. “No, I don’t want to be a Jedi.”

He can’t deny the relief that brings him, can’t deny that he wants nothing more than to go along with her wishes. But Rey deserves a proper teacher, deserves someone who’ll know what to do with her brilliance rather than just blindly worship it the way he has since the day they met. “Sweetheart, just because it wasn’t for me–”

“No,” Rey insists, and kisses him all hard and desperate and bruising before he can go on. “After everything you’ve told me,” she pants harshly against his lips, “do you really think I could ever live that life? To give up everything, to give up you–” Her voice cracks, and a strangled sob follows.

Ben quickly pulls her back in, his heart overflowing with love and awe for this woman. “Okay,” he murmurs between soft kisses, “okay, we won’t go to Luke.”

That leaves him with approximately zero other ideas, but Rey seems to have one. “Take me with you,” she says suddenly, lips barely parted from his.

“What?” Ben asks a little too sharply as he rears back in shock, in surprise, in hope.

“Take me with you,” Rey repeats with a shrug. “You could teach me, right?”

He wants, more than anything in the galaxy, for that to be true. But… “Rey, I barely have any training myself, I wouldn’t even know where to start–”

She silences his doubts by reaching out to curve her hands around his face, her thumbs gently caressing his cheeks. “Ben. I don’t need training. I don’t want to be a Jedi, I just want to be in control. You know that much, right?”

And… he does. Ben might not know much, not as much as he would’ve had his father decided to drop him off at Luke’s that fateful day, but he does know enough to stay in control, to stay away from the darkness, to let love and light and life balance everything out.

Most of the time, anyway.

“Ben, take me with you,” Rey says for the third time, and whatever objections he’d had before disappear into thin air. “Unless…” she adds before he can say yes, pulling her hands away from him, “unless the offer is off the table?”

“No, never,” he rushes to assure her, reaching out to wrap his arms around her waist and keep her close. “I want you with me, Rey, always. But are you sure about this? About leaving, for good, with me?”

Rey has a whole collection of smiles for him, but one of his favorites might be the one she flashes him when she thinks he’s acting like the stupidest creature in all the galaxy. “Ben, my heart breaks every single time I have to watch you leave without me. Do you really think I’m going to put myself through that again now that I can finally get off this godforsaken rock?”

This is happening. This is really, finally, actually happening. “I’ll never leave you again,” he swears, and pulls her closer to scatter kisses everywhere his lips can reach as Rey laughs and squirms away from him. “Never again, Rey. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She reaches for his head and holds him still, pulls him in for a long, lingering kiss. “I love you too. So get me the hell off this planet and show me the galaxy, Ben Solo.”

And so he does.

It takes them a while to actually get out of bed and pack up Rey’s things and make all the necessary arrangements, but later that day, as the sun sets upon Jakku, a smuggler and an orphan walk out of a bar hand-in-hand… and they never come back.

. . .

Some years later, Luke Skywalker receives an invitation to the grand opening of a new Force academy, one that exists in between – or maybe outside of – the Jedi and Sith ways.

The invitation is signed by none other than Ben and Rey Solo, retired smugglers and galactic adventurers looking to finally settle down and build a home.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

Hello, friends! First things first: if you made it through all 12000+ words of this, I wish I could give you an actual cookie or some other prize because that's amazing, thank you for sticking around! This ended up being twice the projected word count and took double the amount of time allotted to write, but it's the first time in a long time that I got completely sucked into a story and wrote for hours on end in some sort of feverish need to delve deeper and get to know these characters better, so I hope that translated into the final product.

Next up, I'll be working on a much fluffier (and hopefully shorter!) one-shot to lighten things up before we head into TRoS. I'll see you soon! Until then: thanks as always for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and please don't hesitate to like/reblog/leave a comment!

#reylo #reyben #rey/kylo ren #rey/ben solo #kylo ren/rey #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #my fics #fic: smuggler bar #fic archive

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

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@lightaroundthecorner I say this too often, but you’re the sweetest <3 This was so challenging to write for all the reasons you just mentioned and more, and I can’t even begin to tell you how much of a relief this comment of yours is. Thank you so much!!

let the past die (show the way the world could be) - ONE-SHOT

Five years after the rise of the New Empire and the replacement of the Stormtrooper program with a new Peacetrooper program, Beta Rose Tico finds herself being separated from her Omega partner Finn when he’s drafted to serve a year of active duty.

Worried for her partner and fuming at archaic anti-Beta discrimination laws, what’s a woman to do other than go on a galactic road trip to meet the rulers of the empire themselves and push for change? (And maybe, just maybe, learn the truth behind the unexpected fall of the First Order and the rise of the two most powerful Force-users in recent galactic history while she’s at it.)

Gift Fic #2 of my holiday giveaway collection goes out to AO3′s @dagagada, who saw me flailing about this mess of a fic that *Stefon voice* has everything, and decided to claim it anyway. (No but seriously, this fic really does have everything. Check the AO3 version for tags if you need to!)

Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter or Ko-fi?

Keep reading

#*insert every happy tears gif ever*#seriously you're too good to me <3 #reblog: reylos

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

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the way you make me feel (is kinda annoying, actually) - ONE-SHOT

Rey’s childhood leaves her with a warped defense mechanism, the kind that makes it hard to trust people and leaves her suspicious of all kindness and frames even the most basic human wants and needs as a weakness.

So naturally, she doesn’t have the best reaction to her instant connection with her new TA.

(In other words, Rey’s not sure who she’s more annoyed at: Ben Solo for being so attractive, or herself for being so attracted to him.)

Here’s a (hopefully!) fun modern college AU in which Rey really, really doesn’t want to be attracted to Ben Solo but oh no, she is anyway. Oh, and what’s this? Actual feelings on top of physical attraction?? Double oh no. (Yeah, full disclosure: this is not my best work.)

Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter or Ko-fi?

“So then he took me to this underground poker night thing, and I swear I saw Professor Ackbar at one of the tables–”

Finn’s retelling of his fourth date with Poe is cut short when he bumps into Rey, who’s just bumped into Rose, who’s abruptly come to a complete standstill in the very doorway of their lecture hall.

“Rose, what’s–”

“Guys, look!” Rose whisper-screams before Rey can ask why she’s suddenly decided to do her best impression of a live statue. “New TA alert!” she squeals as quietly as one can in a half-empty room with at least sixty other people present, pointing at Hux’s usual desk in the corner in the least subtle way known to mankind.

“Thank fuck,” Finn cheers a little too loudly, garnering them curious looks from other students filing into the room. “One more day with Hux and I would’ve gotten rid of that weasel myself.”

Rey is vaguely aware of Rose scoffing at his bold proclamation and Finn defending himself, but all of that fades into background noise when she finally catches sight of the newcomer occupying the TA’s desk. He appears to be completely focused on a pile of loose papers spread before him, allowing Rey’s eyes to rove over his dark curls, furrowed brow, prominent nose, plush lips…

Thankfully, Rose puts an end to her uncharacteristic gawking before the man himself notices by hooking their arms together and leading Rey to their usual seats in the third row, cheerfully greeting familiar faces as they pass. And Rose isn't the only one handing out bright smiles and friendly laughter – the air of relief, of sheer joy in the room is palpable, after weeks of suffering through Hux’s miserable presence and the uncertainty of not knowing if Holdo and the dean would side with a bunch of undergrads over one of their own.

Really, Rey muses as everyone settles into their seats and Holdo sweeps into the room precisely on time as always, they should’ve known better than to doubt their professor.

“Good morning, everyone!” Holdo calls out, her gentle, lilting voice accompanied by a blinding smile. “Before we start, let’s address the white elephant in the room, shall we? Armitage Hux, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed given the general air of celebration in this room, has been removed from his position as TA. He has also been removed from the department, and in fact from this campus entirely. His unethical and discriminatory actions and what they represent go against everything I, the dean, and this university stand for, and I can only offer you my sincerest apologies for not catching onto his behavior sooner.”

“But I can promise you this debacle will never happen again, certainly not on my watch and not on Mr. Solo’s here,” she says, gesturing at the man sitting just behind her. “And on that note, I’d like to introduce you to your new TA for this semester. Ben, why don’t you come up and say a few words?”

The man – Ben Solo, apparently – nods with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, but plasters on a polite smile and proceeds to stand up anyway.

“Jesus Christ,” Rose mutters as Ben walks toward Holdo. “Is there a height requirement to TA this class or something?”

Rey merely shrugs, her eyes intent on following the movements of this absolute mountain of a man. Because sure, Hux had been ridiculously tall too, but Ben Solo… Ben Solo is a whole different breed, tall and broad and built and…

Oh no, he’s hot.

Blood rushes to Rey’s cheeks at the realization that she finds her new TA attractive, broad shoulders and lush hair and thick lips and all, and of course that’s the exact moment his eyes happen to meet hers.

“Hi, everyone,” he says, and Rey can’t even bring herself to react to his voice because he appears to be addressing her directly, making her skin prickle and her throat dry and her heart pound. She drops her eyes down to her hands, and doesn’t look up until she feels him look away. “Um, I’m Ben and, as Amilyn here just mentioned, I’ll be your TA for the rest of this semester. I’m also a second-year grad student here at Chandrila U, so uh, that’s one thing I guess we have in common. Oh, and I’m really, really glad Hux is gone too, so make that two things.”

Faint laughter ripples through the room, and the effect it has on Ben is devastating: his eyes light up, his smile relaxes into something closer to a grin, and a little puff of laughter escapes him. What makes all of this ten times worse is the fact that he’s looking at her again, and Rey nearly gives into the smile tugging at her lips in response before she realizes what she’s doing.

She quickly puts a brake on the stupid, girly smile and twists her lips into a scowl instead, internally berating her apparent lack of self-restraint. She’s been attracted to people before, and it’s never fun brushing that aside and pretending nothing’s amiss, but this… this is stupid on so many levels: this is a man she doesn’t know, this is a man in charge of her grades, this is a man she absolutely cannot allow herself to crush on, no matter how deep his voice is or how distracting his lips are or how compelling the sad look in his eyes–

Belatedly, Rey realizes that she’d forgotten to duck her head while lost in thought and that she now appears to have been scowling at her new TA for the past ten seconds for no reason at all.

This is what happens when she allows outsiders and hormones and feelings to complicate things.

She looks away then, and scrutinizes the abysmal state of her nails until a scraping sound indicates that Ben Solo is once again safely tucked away in his little corner desk. The next time she looks up, Holdo has returned to the lectern and is pulling up her slides for the day.

Class passes by in a flash after that, as it always does. Holdo is known for interactive and informative lectures that are always succinct and lively, making her a campus favorite. It’s the reason why Rey, along with more than a third of her classmates, opted for a notoriously heavy poli-sci class as their elective in spite of all the ‘easier’ options available to them, and it’s a decision she’s almost never regretted.

And with Armitage Hux, TA from hell, abuser of power, and thinly-veiled racist/sexist/classist pig, finally gone, Rey can now confidently say she has zero regrets about signing up for this class.

At the end of lecture, Amilyn raises her voice to be heard above the din of nearly a hundred and fifty students rushing to pack up and hurry to their next class or lunch. “One last thing! Ben and I have been hard at work all weekend regrading your papers in light of Hux’s misconduct, and your new grades will be available in an hour’s time. All right, class dismissed!”

Sitting in the third row gives Rey and her friends the distinct advantage of being closer to the doors, allowing them to rush out before everyone else gets stuck at the bottleneck. Today, though, another person manages to make it out with them.

Ben Solo passes through the doors at the exact same moment as her, his arm brushing her shoulder as they walk out. He murmurs an apology, one Rey is fully prepared to acknowledge with a simple, wordless nod, only to follow it up with a question. “Rey Niima, right?”

Her name said in that voice, coming from those lips, has Rey twisting her face into a grimace in reaction to the unusual fluttery feeling in her stomach right now.

“Yes,” she says, directing a glare at the retreating backs of her traitor friends scurrying down the hallway to avoid the TA before she turns to face him. “That’s me. Is something wrong?” Rey asks a little too sharply, courtesy of a lifetime of learning to hide her uncertainty and weakness behind a façade of ice-cold irritation and aloofness.

A sharp spike of regret lances through her when the slight smile on Ben’s face wavers.

“No, nothing’s wrong, not at all,” he mumbles without quite looking at her. “Sorry, it’s just… I recognized you because of Poe, Poe Dameron?”

It makes sense, Rey supposes, that the two grad students would know each other. But then wouldn’t he recognize Finn and Rose as well?

“And I just…” Ben runs a hand through his hair with a heavy exhale, and Rey’s fingers twitch with the impulse, the want, to do the same. She curls them into her palm instead, digging into her skin so hard she knows she’ll leave a set of angry red crescents behind. “Um, I just wanted to say… your paper was exemplary. If there was any doubt before that Hux was unfairly marking you guys, his treatment of your essay would’ve been proof enough.”

“Oh,” Rey says softly, completely taken aback by this unexpected turn of events. She’s also relieved, so relieved to know that she’s passing this assignment after all – exemplary, he’d said – that the tension in her shoulders just… melts away.

Ben seems to take that as a sign of encouragement, because he barrels through the rest of his thoughts. “The connection between neoliberalism and the shrinking welfare state isn’t new, but the way you wrote about it and the strength of your arguments and the sheer scope of your knowledge and the way you defend your stance – it’s just… the paper really stands out, in a class most people are just taking as an elective. That’s all,” he concludes almost sheepishly, clearly cutting himself off to keep it short.

And Rey, Rey can feel herself straining toward him like a flower to the sun, her starved soul eagerly lapping up every last drop of validation and praise. But…

But old habits die hard, and her first instinct is still to treat kindness – especially unwarranted, unexpected kindness – with suspicion and casualness, to pretend that his words have no effect on her.

So she shrugs and says, “Elective or not, it still affects my overall grade.” And then, because she likes to think she’s made some progress in the last three years, Rey allows herself a barely-there smile and adds, “So um, I’m glad to hear I did well. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Oh, uh, sure, no problem–”

She’s already turning away as he speaks, intent on getting the hell out of here before she can do something stupid like actually smile at him or get lost in his eyes or give him any hint of how much the opinion of a total stranger means to her.

“Yeah, thanks again, see you around!” Rey tosses over her shoulder, and wills herself not to break into a run as she chases after her friends, who have been waiting just around the corner like the absolute assholes that they are.

“Oh my god, Finn,” Rose squeals as Rey catches up to them. “Is she blushing? I think someone’s blushing,” she adds in a sing-song voice.

Finn laughs and teasingly jostles her as the three of them fall into step. “I didn’t even know you were capable of turning this pink, peanut!”

“I hate you both,” Rey mutters at her friends, but even their knowing looks can’t keep her from turning back to get one last glimpse at Ben.

He’s still standing where she’d left him, looking completely still… and lost.

Rey almost allows herself to feel bad for him.

❄ ❄ ❄

Their subsequent interactions don’t go any better.

The second time they meet outside of class, it’s for a quick feedback session that she’d taken three whole days to talk herself into setting up. Rey splashes cold water on her face ten minutes before Ben’s office hours start, takes deep, calming breaths throughout her short journey from the library to the grad student lounge, and instantly regrets every single life choice she’s ever made when she walks in to find him waiting for her.

Even worse, he appears to be genuinely happy to see her, spinning around in his chair to greet her with a wide smile.

And worst of all, he’s traded in the black sweater from last time for a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up that somehow – impossibly – makes him look even bigger as he gestures for her to take an empty seat next to him so they can both refer to his screen. She’d emailed him her two ideas for the final research paper ahead of time, along with a brief outline for both, and it’s actually really nice to see that Ben’s clearly taken the time to go through everything she sent him and come up with valuable feedbacks and concerns for both ideas.

What’s not so nice, though, is the fact that she keeps getting distracted by his exposed forearms, and then she get visibly flustered about it, and then she grows irritated at herself for being this way, and by the end of her twenty-minute slot with him Ben’s smile is completely gone. Rey can’t even blame him, not with her distraction and irritation conspiring to make her seem ungrateful for and uninterested in his feedback.

All in all, it’s a disaster – and yet, somehow not nearly as bad as the third time they meet.

Two weeks later, Poe somehow manages to talk Ben into joining them for their weekly happy hour over at Maz’s. It’s bad enough when he shows up without warning, but Rey knows things are about to get really bad when she realizes that he’s in a tee shirt this time, a tight tee shirt paired with jeans that show off way more than his usual slacks.

Rey tells herself that it’s natural to feel hot in a crowded cantina, that she’s only overheating because she hadn’t had the time to change out of her sweater and jeans before heading here straight from the library.

A hush falls over their table when Poe shows up with their new TA of all people, but Finn and Rose quickly recover from their shock to seamlessly weave Ben into their ongoing conversations about midterms, holiday plans, and more. Rey, however, takes a little longer to adjust.

And maybe, just maybe, her external silence while she internally snaps at herself to get her fucking hormones under control comes off as a little unwelcoming, because at some point she feels Ben’s eyes on hers only to see him quickly look away when she finally lifts her head, his lips devoid of a smile and his shoulders slumped in what she can only assume is discomfort at being around her or disappointment at her behavior.

He gets over it quickly enough though, falling into easy conversation with the others while Rey makes the occasional contribution here and there, though only when prompted by Finn or Rose or Poe. She feels Ben’s eyes on her every now and then, but they manage to avoid each other until Finn and Poe finally slip away to join the crowd gathering on the makeshift dance floor and Rose goes off to say hello to some friends at another table a few minutes later.

After what feels like an eternity of uncomfortable silence and avoiding his eyes and growing steadily warmer to the point of discomfort and nausea, Rey nearly jumps out of her seat when Ben finally speaks.

“Would you… that is… I was wondering if…” He closes his eyes for a moment and clears his throat, and Rey thinks she catches the faintest hint of a flush on his cheeks when she finally finds the courage to look directly at him.

It turns into an outright blush when he opens his eyes to find her staring at him. “I, um, I’m going to get another round,” Ben tells her, tipping his empty beer bottle at her. “Can I get you a drink?” he asks with a little smile.

And she knows, Rey knows he’s just asking out of politeness, just asking because it’s the friendly thing to do and he probably doesn’t mean it that way and honestly, even if he did it wouldn’t be the end of the world–

But suddenly it’s just too much too bear, the heat and the noise and the way that stupidly cute shy little smile makes her feel, and before she knows it Rey’s slipping out of the booth and collecting her jacket. “No thanks, I’m done for the night,” she abruptly announces, words tumbling past her lips in her haste to get out of the cantina and into the cool October night before she passes out or spontaneously combusts or something.

Rey thinks she hears a disappointed little oh as she brushes past him, but she chalks that up to her imagination and doesn’t look back as she steps out into the night. Later that evening, alone in her bed, Rey spends the entire night tossing and turning and dreaming about Ben Solo. Her Saturday morning plans are completely messed up the next day, when she finds herself trying to catch up on sleep instead of going for a run and stocking up on groceries and working on her paper.

Her wasted Saturday only confirms her suspicions: Ben Solo is a distraction, the way he makes her feel is annoying, and there is absolutely no space for him in her life.

So when things suddenly take a turn, it’s probably for the better. Rey should probably be happy. Things will probably go back to normal now.

But it doesn’t feel like anything’s better when Ben stops looking at her in class the next week.

She doesn’t feel happy when he runs into her and her friends at their usual coffee shop a few days later and he acknowledges Finn and Rose by name, only to give her a wordless nod and then brush past her.

And it definitely doesn’t feel normal when Poe convinces Ben to join their group for brunch two Sundays later and she doesn’t feel his eyes on her even once.

After nearly a month of being ignored by Ben, Rey can’t tell who she’s more annoyed at: Ben for disrupting her life and making her feel this way, or her for letting herself get all messed up over a man who’s practically a stranger. All she knows is that she’s crankier than she’s ever been, and that doesn’t bode well for Rose and the sympathetic looks she keeps giving Rey every time Ben acts like she doesn’t exist.

She finally snaps after class one day, when Holdo informs her that Ben’s too busy to handle office hours so Holdo will be stepping in for Rey’s scheduled consultation regarding their upcoming midterms instead. Rose walks her out of class with a supportive hand on her back and looks at her as if someone’s just run over Rey’s beloved puppy or something, and it all finally gets to be too much.

“Stop it,” Rey hisses, shaking Rose’s hand off her. “Stop acting like… like I’m broken, or someone died, or something. Just stop.”

Her friend just gives her a sad little shake of her head. “Rey… I wish you’d get it together and fix this, for both your sakes. Poe thinks maybe you really hurt his feelings.”

The accusation – gentle though it may be – lands a little too close to home for Rey, who’s spent half her nights dreaming about Ben’s smile and the other half losing sleep over all the times she wiped it right off his face.

“Or maybe,” she snaps back defensively, “he’s just an asshole for no reason and I was right to treat him exactly the way I did.”

Rose simply crosses her arms and gives Rey a look, the very rare kind that signals she’s run out of patience for someone’s bullshit. “Honey… I love you, but I’m starting to worry that maybe you’re the asshole in this situation.”

Rey storms off without a word.

She’s always been good at running away from the truth like that.

❄ ❄ ❄

Two more weeks pass.

Midterms come and go and get graded, and Rey sees red when she receives a B- while all of her friends score As and B+s.

It’s like Armitage fucking Hux all over again. She knows she deserves at least a B+, knows this isn’t about her work but about her, and like hell is she letting another asshole TA unfairly target her.

Her rage carries her all the way across campus and into the grad student lounge, potent enough that she doesn’t even hesitate when she realizes she and Ben are the only two people in the quiet room.

He doesn’t notice her at first, grading away with headphones in. Rey takes a probably unhealthy amount of satisfaction at the way he jumps when she announces her presence by slamming her palm onto his desk, and barely waits for him to take off his headphones before she says, “I demand a remark.”

She’s prepared for an instant refusal, for bullshit excuses, even for him to outright ignore her, but Rey is not prepared for the way he just looks at her, staring into her eyes with an indecipherable look in his.

It’s… unsettling, the way he looks at her, the way it makes her feel. “I worked my ass off studying for that goddamn test, which you would know if you hadn’t bailed on me when I made an appointment with you about it, so I know for a fact that I deserve better. Which means you’re going to pull up my paper and remark it, even if I have to stay here and go through it word by word with you until you treat me fairly like a decent goddamn person–”

Ben’s shoulders slump, but strangely she’s the one who suddenly runs out of steam. He’s not looking at her anymore, choosing to stare at the floor instead as one hand nervously fiddles with the pen in his grip… and there, under his hand, laid out on his desk, is her midterm.

“I’m sorry,” he says so quietly she almost misses it, even in a room with absolutely no other sound. “You’re… you’re right. You deserve better, and I was being unfair. Childish and unprofessional and–” Ben sighs, and drags a hand over his face. “God, I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll fix it right now, I was about to anyway, I regretted it the second I– Anyway, if you want to go to Holdo about this…”

She’s a little too hung up on childish and unprofessional to realize what he’s saying at first. What cause has she ever given him to be childish and unprofessional to her and her alone?

Unbidden, the image of Rose rolling her eyes flits into Rey’s mind – and with it, some of the last words they’d ever exchanged on the topic of one Ben Solo… and his hurt feelings.

Rey’s anger melts away, and so does a bit of the ice wall around her heart when she sees the way Ben is staring blankly at his desk, shoulders curved into themselves in absolute defeat and guilt and… maybe, just maybe, hurt.

His last words finally catch up to her, and she finds herself curling a hand around his shoulder before she’s even consciously aware of choosing to do so. “Just… just fix it, and don’t do it again,” she tells him softly.

Ben doesn’t turn to look at her, but she knows she’s not imagining the way he leans into her touch just the slightest bit. “Never again,” he vows and slowly, ever so slowly, turns around to look at her.

And something inside her, the same something that keeps her up at night with memories of him and reminds her of him at the oddest times and makes her heart ache as she looks at him now, compels Rey to hold out her hand and offer him a smile. “Truce?”

His hand shakes as he slowly reaches out to meet her. It makes no sense, the way her hand fits perfectly in his even though his absolutely dwarfs hers, but Rey manages to beat back an instinctive flare of irritation at the discovery and keeps her smile firmly plastered on instead.

“Truce,” Ben murmurs in agreement, and gives her a small smile in return.

She cherishes it more than she probably should, the lingering smile on his lips as they remain that way, hand in hand, until the sound of approaching footsteps snaps her out of the moment.

The sound of Poe’s voice hits her like a bucket of ice water, and Rey drops Ben’s hand as if she’s been burned, ignoring the way his face falls when she rips her hand out of his.

“Oh hey there, Rey!” Poe says cheerfully, heading straight for them. Thankfully she’s had her back to the door this entire time, conveniently hiding their hands from Poe’s view. “Nice to see you in our neck of the woods for once. What’s up?” he asks, throwing himself down onto a nearby chair and rolling it over to them.

“Just wanted to discuss my midterms with Ben, that’s all,” Rey tells him, summoning the most natural-feeling smile she’s capable of right now. “I was just about to head out, actually. I’ll see you at Taco Thursday?”

Poe nods enthusiastically. “Definitely. Finn won’t stop talking about it. Wait,” he suddenly says, turning to Ben with narrowed eyes. “You still haven’t gotten back to me on that! I’m not letting you bail on me again, buddy.”

Guilt slams into Rey like a freight train. She’s noticed Ben’s increasingly frequent absences at their group outings this month, but she’d desperately tried to protect herself from the truth by linking it to what Holdo had said about him being busy with his research this month. The way Ben’s eyes flit to her before he turns to Poe, though, tells her everything she needs to know.

“I’m sorry, Poe–”

“You should come,” Rey says before she can overthink it, before Ben misses out on yet another evening with friends just because of her.

He and Poe turn to her with matching looks of wide-eyed surprise, and the sight is enough to coax a real smile out of her.

“I should?” Ben asks.

Rey nods, ignoring the way Poe’s mouth is slowly curving into a grin as his eyes jump from one of them to the other as if he’s observing a ping pong match. “Yeah, definitely. It’ll be fun.”

She’d much rather focus on the way Ben’s smiling at her anyway, a genuine, fragile little thing full of hope and joy while he gives her the softest, warmest look she’s ever received.

“Okay,” he finally says.

“Okay,” she echoes, knowing that she’s smiling like a fool.

“Okay!” Poe cheers, pumping his fist for exaggerated effect. “Taco Thursday, here we come!”

“I’ll see you guys then,” Rey says with a little laugh, and waves goodbye at Ben even as Poe starts to talk his ear off about bro time and the idea of a taco competition and god knows what else.

He waves back, eyes on her until she finally, reluctantly turns her back to him and leaves the lounge. She walks for all of two minutes before she turns a corner and slumps against the wall, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths to steady her racing heart and quell her wide grin.

Ben Solo might be a distraction, but the way he makes her feel… isn’t all that bad, Rey supposes. Maybe there’s some room for him in her life after all.

❄ ❄ ❄

Rey does not so much decide to let Ben into her life as she decides to just… allow it to happen.

True to their promise in the grad lounge, they fall into a tentative truce – and it’s almost as if the universe takes that as a sign and decides to run with it. Suddenly there are secret smiles shared in every single class, near-daily run-ins around campus that include friendly hellos, and, of course, an endless string of group outings organized by a gleeful Rose and a scheming Poe.

(Finn, bless his heart, simply tells her to trust her gut the day he finally catches on to what’s happening and leaves it at that.)

With each smile, each hello, each group brunch or lunch or dinner or happy hour that somehow always ends up with the two of them sitting and talking together… Rey feels every facet of her defense mechanism slowly melting away, leaving behind only her undeniable connection with Ben and the fact that he’s worth being attracted to, worth caring about, worth making herself vulnerable to and for.

She doesn’t really have the time or energy to do anything with that realization though, not with finals just around the corner. The last leg of the semester is an endless nightmare, with major papers due and ‘surprise’ revision quizzes and, of course, finals themselves.

There’s barely any time to eat, sleep, and breathe, let alone think and feel and reach out, until she makes it out of her last final the Friday before Christmas relatively unscathed. It’s been a miserable two weeks, but the relief of finally being done –for now – gives Rey a much-needed burst of energy to drag herself over to Maz’s later that day where everyone else is celebrating the end of finals and the semester as a whole.

She draws the line at dancing though, telling Finn and Rose that she can barely keep her eyes open when they try to pull her into the fray.

“You should’ve just stayed home,” Rose says with a concerned frown as Finn disappears to get her another round before they leave her to her own devices.

She would’ve, if not for the fact that this is probably her last chance to see Ben this year. She’s not all that familiar with the schedule for grad school, but surely even they get to go home for the holidays.

Rey doesn’t tell Rose any of this, though. “If I’d stayed home, I probably would’ve crashed for twenty-four hours straight or something like that,” she says instead, which isn’t all that far from the truth.

Finn returns with her drink a few minutes later, and the two of them fuss over her a little more until Poe and Ben show up.

He smiles at her, and Rey fights off the sudden and strong urge to curl into him and go to sleep in his arms.

“Perfect timing!” Finn says as he gives his boyfriend a quick kiss before Poe heads off to get drinks for Ben and himself. “Ben, you’re not much of a dancer, right?”

“That’s probably the understatement of the century,” Ben says in that dry way of his, drawing laughs from the rest of them. And then, before Finn can even ask, he nods. “You guys go ahead and have fun, I’ll sit with Rey.”

Rose and Finn need no further convincing, immediately disappearing into the crowd gathered in the center of the room. Poe stops by their table just long enough to drop off their drinks, and quickly follows suit.

And then, as is so often the case with these group outings, it’s just her and Ben.

“Too tired to dance?” he asks, moving closer to be heard above the crowd.

Rey slumps onto the table with her head cradled in her folded arms. “Finals broke me,” she mutters into her arm, not quite sure if Ben can even hear her.

He does, somehow, and gives her a quiet laugh in return. It warms her in all the right ways now, coaxing a slow, lazy smile from her as she turns to look up at him.

“I’m sure all of your hard work will pay off,” Ben predicts confidently, and Rey lets out a little hum in reply before they fall into a comfortable silence. She doesn’t fall asleep, can’t with all the noise in the background, but she closes her eyes for long stretches of time and pretends she doesn’t feel the warmth of Ben’s gaze on her every time she does.

It’s nice, what they have together. Warm and easy and comfortable, so comfortable that Rey isn’t really thinking straight when she allows a combination of exhaustion and alcohol and, quite frankly, affection and fondness and want to thoroughly lay waste to her verbal filter.

“I’m hostile toward people I want to fuck,” she finally admits, eyes half-closed and words more than a little slurred.

The booth seems to shake along with Ben when he startles at her blunt confession. “What?” he asks faintly, as though she’s knocked the wind out of him. She opens her eyes to find him staring at her all wide-eyed like a deer in headlights and shit, that shouldn’t be attractive but of course it is, everything about him is.

And the best part is, that’s just one of the many reasons why Rey somehow finds it within herself to shake off her exhaustion, pull herself upright, and finally take a leap of faith. “That was crude, sorry,” she says with a little smile, biting back a laugh at the way Ben just blinks at her.

“It’s just…” And this is the hard part, the bit she’s never actually put into words, not even for Finn and Rose, not even for herself, but for Ben she’s willing to try and finally make sense of it all, of the warped defense mechanism her childhood had forced upon her without her even consciously knowing it. “Where I grew up, how I grew up… I couldn’t have any distractions or weaknesses,” Rey begins, and finds the strength to go on in the way Ben hangs on to her every word like he actually cares, in the way he leans in and blocks out the rest of the world behind him so that she can share this secret with him and only him. “And for the longest time, my greatest weakness was wanting. There were… so many things I wanted, people above all. Parents and friends and just… someone who cared, that’s all.”

To his credit, Ben stays quiet and lets her go on even though it looks like it physically pains him not to say something at this point. He finds a nice compromise by placing one hand next to hers on the table in a silent offer, and Rey smiles as she takes him up on it and slides her hand into the familiar, comforting hold of his. “Eventually, I learned that having feelings for someone, wanting them, caring about another person’s opinion of me or even caring for another person period… all of that made me vulnerable, in one way or another. I learned that I couldn’t afford any of that, and so I trained myself out of it. I stopped wanting, stopped trusting…” she pauses, takes a shaky breath, “stopped feeling, for the longest time.”

And Ben, Ben just squeezes her hand and gives her a small smile and nods for her to go on.

“Then I moved here three years ago, and everything changed. Suddenly it was okay to like being around people and to want to make friends and even to want someone. But my brain didn’t quite get the message, I think,” Rey says with a laugh, “because whenever I do find myself attracted to someone – not that it happens often, I honestly can’t remember the last time before you –, I just get really, really weird and silly and pissed about it, like how dare you be appealing to me and make me feel things I didn’t ask to feel, and then…” She shrugs. “Well, you’ve seen firsthand how much of an asshole I can be when that happens.”

At some point during her word vomit Ben’s hand had grown slack in hers, and so Rey lets go and busies herself with peeling the label of his bottle while he processes her little – well, not so little – ramble.

It takes a while. Quite a while, really, so much so that Rey starts to wonder if she’s just made an absolute fool of herself by throwing caution to the wind just this once. Just as she’s about to give up and shut down and run away from him, though, Ben finally speaks.

“Um,” he says, and it’s the look in his eyes, uncertainty swirling with the slightest bit of hope, that keeps her in place even as he struggles to form more words. “Um, so you… does that mean… because you just said– And I’m not your TA anymore, you should probably know that, Amilyn and I finished grading the finals two days ago so… I mean… if you want…”

He sounds so hesitant and uncertain and shy, and Rey’s heart is so full of endearment and fondness and affection for this ridiculous man. She takes pity on Ben, figuring she owes him a break anyway, and finds enough courage for the both of them to take one last leap and ask, “Can I kiss you?”

Thankfully, he doesn’t leave her hanging this time. “Please,” he breathes almost immediately, almost reverently, and catches her as if he’s been doing it all their lives when she promptly throws herself into his lap. His lips are so soft, just as she’d known they would be, and at first he kisses her so sweetly it makes Rey’s heart ache. It doesn’t take long for him to get comfortable though, for him to coax her to part her lips while his hands settle around her hips, for him to make her heart race.

And Rey, Rey is living for this, has dreamed of it for far too long to even think of stopping him now, even as the loud music and endless chatter insist on reminding her of just where they are. It isn’t until Poe alerts them to his presence with a wolf whistle that they finally part, though Ben still keeps her firmly within his arms even as they turn to find all three of their friends staring at them with smirks of varying degrees.

“Get a room, lovebirds!” Poe finally cackles, prompting Finn and Rose to burst into laughter as well.

Rey waits for dread to put out the fire in her veins, waits for her instincts to kick in and attempt to extricate herself from the situation, waits for her automatic reaction of making up for a moment of weakness by turning herself into a fortress.

It never comes – not any of it, not even the slightest blush of humiliation. She relaxes into Ben’s arms as the realization finally washes through her and settles into her bones: it’s not a weakness, what she feels for Ben Solo. Frankly, it’s exhilarating.

On that note, she allows herself a smile so wide her cheeks hurt. “Great idea, Poe,” she says casually, and turns back to a grinning Ben. “What do you think?”

Ben leans down and gives her a chaste kiss. “Yes,” he murmurs against her lips, “yes to everything.”

And so, with the very, very vocal blessings of their far too enthusiastic friends, they make their way out of the cantina and into the night. And sure, it’s still really unfair for Ben to be so hot and smart and nice, for him to look the way he does as he drapes his coat around her before ushering her to his car, but funnily enough, Rey can no longer find it within herself to be annoyed by any of that.

Ben Solo might be the biggest distraction of her life, but that’s okay. The way he makes her feel is new and foreign and all kinds of wonderful, and Rey decides right there and then that she’s definitely going to keep him in her life.

❄ ❄ ❄

Hey, remember when I came back from hiatus last month and assumed at some point I'd get back into the swing of things and remember how this whole writing business works?

I have never been so wrong in my life. But I'm also having great fun stringing together words and stories even though I have no idea what I'm doing anymore, so at least there's that. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I hope this was as much fun to read as it was to write! As always, please don't hesitate to like/reblog/leave a comment!

#reylo #reylo au #kylo ren/rey #rey/kylo ren #rey/ben solo #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #my fics #fic: kinda annoying #fic archive

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

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let the past die (show the way the world could be) - ONE-SHOT

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“Please rise for Their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and Empress of the New Empire.”

Rose has always found this part of the holo a bit funny, if only because the actual audience in attendance that day had been entirely comprised of the empire’s staff and soldiers, all of whom had been standing long before the imperial couple had made their appearance.

Today, though, she’s too intent on capturing every single moment of the recording to react with her usual huff of amusement. The speech had lasted for twenty minutes, starting with the usual themes the couple had been fond of at the beginning of their reign five years ago, messages of letting the past die and building something new from the ashes, something better. From there, the emperor had segued into the announcement that the Stormtrooper program was to be discontinued effective immediately, and in its place the empire would implement a Peacetrooper program which would draft every able-bodied young adult citizen of the empire into a year of service, during which they would be stationed at various points throughout the galaxy in order to maintain peace as well as gain new insight into the lives and cultures of their fellow citizens.

The whole thing had sounded good in theory at the time, but then again anything would have seemed better than having children ripped away from their families to be turned into mindless soldiers. It’d worked out decently in practice too, at least for Rose – she’d ended up being called to serve that very first year, and her time with the program had taken her far from her home planet of Hays Minor to see how other systems had suffered from or escaped First Order control, how the New Empire was slowly but surely dismantling the legacy of its predecessor in an attempt to secure a better future for everyone.

The experience hadn’t been the worst of her life, not even close – and then, on her very last assignment in Coruscant before she was due to go home, she’d met Finn.

Finn, a Stormtrooper trainee who’d been released from servitude along with all of his fellow soldiers right before he was supposed to go on his first mission. Finn, a lost boy who hadn’t touched the ground or seen the sky since he was a child and couldn’t for the life of him figure out a new normal once he was released from the life he’d been forced into, the life that had been all he’d ever known. Finn, who’d ended up leaving Coruscant and the empire’s promise of helping former Stormtroopers reintegrate into society in order to go back to Hays Minor with her and rehabilitate her home.

Finn, who’d received notice of being drafted two months ago, just a month after they’d agreed to get married.

Rose shakes off her memories of that dark day and returns her focus to the holo, to her last hope of keeping Finn safe and sound and home with her.

“We understand that this is new, and that change can be confusing and worrying,” the empress had said once her husband was finished explaining the new program, “but above all else we want to reassure everyone that this is meant to bring us together, not tear us apart. A standard year might be short to some of you and long to others, but in any case we do not intend to separate families.”

And here, she’d turned to give her husband a look Rose has never quite been able to decipher, a look that the emperor had, much to the entire galaxy’s shock, returned with a smile softer than anyone had believed the stoic former Darksider Alpha to be capable of.

The imperial couple had shared a moment then, before the empress wrapped up their announcement. “On that note, exemptions and accommodations will be made for mated couples, those with children, and more. A department has been set up within the new Peacetrooper program for the sole purpose of determining and facilitating these exemptions and accommodations, and we urge you to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.”

The thing is, Rose has reached out – multiple times in the past two months, even. And every single time, she’s been met with the same response: the romantic partnership exemption clause is only applicable to mated couples or couples raising toddler-aged children or younger. Beta-mix couples, even if married, have been deemed capable of surviving the separation without significant or long-lasting ill effects due to their unmated status.

The cold and callous response sounds so out of line with what the empress had promised that day on the steps of the newly-erected Coruscant Palace, a bright and welcoming structure that couldn’t be more different from the former Imperial Palace. Rose had had her doubts about the imperial couple when news had first spread about them, just like most of the galaxy, but in the years since she has come to grow relatively fond of them, especially the empress. The orphaned scavenger from nowhere has proven herself to be a fair, emphatic, and trustworthy ruler in the six years since she and the emperor first overthrew the First Order, long before she’d even taken up the mantle of ruler.

So if the empress says that the Peacetrooper program isn’t meant to separate loved ones, then Rose can only trust that she means it. Because someone with eyes that kind, someone with a smile that bright as she and the emperor bid their subjects farewell and disappear into their flagship, marking the end of the announcement and the holo-recording… someone like that gives Rose hope, always has since the day she first stood by her partner’s side and promised to make the galaxy a better place.

That hope had been enough for the galaxy to warily lower their weapons in anticipation of a better future then, and it’s enough for Rose to go on now.

Three days later, she calmly bids Finn goodbye, promises him they’ll be together again soon, and watches him board the transport that’ll take him lightyears away from her.

And then she goes off on a trip of her own, to meet the empress.

👑 👑 👑

Unsurprisingly, securing a meeting with one of the rulers of the New Empire is easier said than done, even for a minor politician and union leader such as herself.

Luckily, Rose isn’t doing this alone.

She starts by turning to her sister Paige, who’d spent two years serving in the Resistance prior to the First Order’s downfall and still keeps in touch with a lot of her friends from that period of time. One friend in particular happens to be her former commanding officer Poe Dameron, who now leads the coalition-controlled Galactic Peace Forces. More importantly, Poe Dameron is still close friends with one Leia Organa, former leader of the Resistance, current senator of Chandrila, mother of the emperor, and mother-in-law of the empress.

Rose’s journey is long and arduous, leading her from Hays Minor to Coruscant to Chandrila with a dozen minor stops in between to make sure she’s on the right path and heading to the right people. Nearly everyone who learns of her quest either laughs her off or suggests she’d have more luck going directly to the emperor, since he’s the one in charge of the Peacetrooper program.

That might well be true, but two things from the holo-recording convince Rose she’s on the right track: one, the emperor might be in charge of everything else, but the empress is most definitely in charge of him, traditional Alpha-Omega dynamics be damned; and two, the look in the empress’ eyes when she announced the exemptions, the emotions in her voice when she spoke of keeping families apart… She’ll understand, Rose knows she will.

Maz Kanata, proprietor of the cantina Rose drops by on her last refueling stop before she heads to Chandrila, is one of the rare few to agree with her.

“Child, have you seen that boy? You know what they used to say, back in my day?” She beckons Rose closer, lowers her voice conspiratorially. “Alphas may rule the galaxy but Omegas, Omegas rule the Alphas,” she says with a knowing wink and a hearty laugh, and Rose would bet a good amount of her credits on Maz speaking from experience.

But it’s rude to ask, and Betas lack the ability to distinguish between Alphas and Omegas by scent alone, so Rose supposes that will have to remain a mystery for now. In any case, it’s nowhere near her list of top priorities; that list reads more like this:

Secure a meeting with Senator Organa and hope she takes Rose’s side.

Hope the senator can arrange for a meeting with the empress.

Try to convince the empress in the hopes that she’ll convince the emperor.

There’s a whole lot of hope involved, but Rose thinks – rather optimistically – that that might endear her to the senator. After all, even though it’s been years since the Resistance demilitarized and transitioned into part of the empire’s new coalition government, Paige still talks about how fond the then-General Organa had been of giving speeches about the importance of hope.

As she finally arrives at Chandrila, Rose can only hope the senator still feels the same way.

It’s midday when Rose surfaces from the Hanna City spaceport, which isn’t too far away from Senator Organa’s office near the Chandrila Senate House. The coalition government is currently based on Naboo, but Senator Organa is known to spend most of her time here in Hanna City. She also makes the occasional trip to her son’s flagship, the next of which Maz had informed Rose is planned for just four days from now.

In other words, Rose has four days – well, less than that – to convince a senator that she’s not a security risk and that she has a valid reason to speak with the empress. It’s a challenge, but not an impossible one, and Rose spends the half-hour ride from the spaceport to the senator’s office rehearsing the speech she’s spent the past week preparing.

Only to find out when she arrives that Senator Organa’s already heard the whole story from at least three other people.

“You poor thing,” Senator Organa says as soon as she opens her door to find Rose on the other side, and quickly ushers her in. “It’s ridiculous that this is still happening, but I guess they’ve been too busy undoing all of the other insane laws and policies out there to notice this one. Anyway, I’m sure Rey will side with you as soon as she finds out what’s happening–”

Rose, who’s barely just settled down into a chair opposite the senator’s, nearly falls out of her seat. “Wait, so you– you’ll bring me to see her?”

Senator Organa blinks as she retakes her seat, and then laughs. “Honey, I didn’t have you come all this way just to tell you no.”

“Stars,” Rose breathes to herself, on the verge of relieved tears. All these exhausting months of worrying, all these long days of travelling and planning and hoping– “Thank you, Senator, thank you so much–”

“Just Leia is fine, dear,” the senator – Leia – says with a smile and a wave of her hand. “And you’re welcome, but I must remind you that nothing is guaranteed yet. I’m sure Rey will side with you, but she’ll still have to discuss this with my son first, and then they’ll have to go through the council and the senate and all that mess…” Leia rolls her eyes at the thought of it, no doubt familiar with (and fed up by) the complications of bureaucracy by now. Rose is, and she’s only served on city council for a term; she can’t even begin to imagine politics on a galactic scale like this.

Still: hope has brought her this far, and she’s determined for it to carry her the rest of the way.

👑 👑 👑

“How much do you know, about my son and Rey and the whole mess?” Leia asks four days later, just as they board the ship set to take them to the Spinebarrel, the imperial couple’s flagship.

Rose peels her eyes away from the viewport and the sight of Chandrila in all of its lush, natural blue-green glory, a far cry from her home planet even after five years of rehabilitation. “Um,” she says as she moves to sit next to the senator. “Just whatever all the holo-documentaries say, I guess. That he found her while he was still serving under Supreme Leader Snoke, and together they grew strong enough in the Force to take him out.” All accounts, whether factual or speculative, tend to be fuzzy about this particular phase of the imperial couple’s rise to power. “After that the emperor became the new Supreme Leader, but behind the scenes he and the empress worked to dismantle the First Order and transform it into something else. And then a year later, the New Empire was announced and the coalition government was formed.”

“I suppose that’s historically accurate enough,” Leia shrugs. “But it leaves out so much about the two of them as people. History tends to do that, doesn’t it?” she murmurs with a faraway look in her eyes, shoulders curling in on themselves for a moment. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, how very small Leia Organa actually is. She’s slightly shorter than Rose, a physical anomaly for an Alpha, but everything else about the senator makes her appear larger than life.

It’s only now, as Leia turns to her with a slightly sad smile, that Rose sees a person underneath everything else, all the layers of princess and senator and general. She supposes Leia Organa, of all people, would know how history and myths and bedtime stories treat their heroes.

“Is there…” Rose hesitates, wonders if maybe she’s prying. But Leia wouldn’t have brought this up unless she wants to talk about it, right? “Is there more to the story?”

Leia reaches out and pats her hand. “There always is. I’ve been watching some of them, you know, those documentaries, especially the newer ones that focus on how he had nowhere to turn, how Snoke manipulated that to prey on a scared, lonely child.” She pauses for a minute, takes a deep breath, and then smiles. “I don’t know if he’s working with them or if these documentarians are finally doing their homework, but I like that bits and pieces of the truth are out there, at least. Even if they don’t paint the best picture of my husband and me as parents.”

The question tumbles past Rose’s lips despite herself, curiosity getting the best of her. “How long had Snoke been targeting him, if… if…” If he was only a child when he became the monster we all had nightmares about?

“Ever since he was born,” Leia says quietly, solemnly. “Possibly even before that. I should’ve known better, should’ve taken my instincts seriously, but I was never one to trust the Force and all that. And in the end, that nearly ended up costing me my son. I was shaken, when I heard that he’d fallen, but when I started hearing about the sightings of him, about reports of his deeds as Kylo Ren… that’s when I nearly gave up hope. Should’ve known that’s exactly what Snoke wanted,” she mutters, “exactly why he made sure to have everything exaggerated and amplified so that I’d believe my son was lost to me even while he was still struggling with the conflict within him.”

This part isn’t exactly news to Rose; there’s been a revisionist movement of sorts surrounding the emperor’s past in recent years, reports of crimes that were never really his and horrors he couldn’t possibly have caused, all falsely attributed to him by order of Supreme Leader Snoke. But even with all of that, there’s no denying that the emperor did stray toward the Dark side, that he did commit some atrocities.

“So then how… how did he… break free?” Rose finally settles on, not quite sure how to put the emperor’s sudden change of heart and direction into words.

Leia merely smiles, the brightest one Rose has seen on her yet. “One day,” she says, her voice warm, “there was an awakening in the Force.”

Of course. “The empress,” Rose breaths, her voice near-reverent without her intending for it to be so. It makes sense now, that of course the emperor must’ve had a reason for his sudden rebellion, that he didn’t dethrone his master for no good reason and then do a complete one-eighty. But none of the stories, be they documentaries or terribly tawdry holo-dramas ‘loosely inspired by true events’, ever speculate about the empress’ role in shaping galactic fate.

Typical, really, that it’s never occurred to anyone that maybe the Omega Empress played just as big a role in these events as the Alpha Emperor.

“The empress,” Leia confirms with a nod and a fondness in her voice. “Though please, just call her Rey when we meet her. She hates all this fuss.”

Somehow, that fits perfectly with the mental image Rose has spent the last five years forming of the empress. She’s never actually seen Rey in person, save for one time from a great distance when the imperial couple made an appearance at the Peacetrooper base to thank them for their service, but a part of her feels like she knows what to expect, feels like they share more in common beyond both being orphans.

“Anyway, we should be arriving soon,” Leia informs her. “She arranged to meet us halfway, so that I can keep her company while my son is away welcoming the newest batch of Peacetroopers.”

Rose frowns in confusion, even as her heart jumps at the reminder of Finn and the induction process he’s probably going through now. “Doesn’t the empress usually go along as well?”

Leia hums. “Traditionally, but… let’s just say things are a little different this year. It’s not my news to share,” she adds vaguely with a secretive little smile.

It doesn’t take long, however, for that news to become apparent.

They arrive at the Spinebarrel not long after, and the door of the senator’s ship opens to reveal the empress waiting for them in the middle of a bustling hangar. A blinding smile lights up her face as soon as her mother-in-law comes into view, and Rose watches in stunned silence as the empress of the galaxy races up the ramp with a squeal and runs straight into Leia’s arms to be enfolded into the kind of warm, motherly hug Rose hasn’t felt in years.

There’s a moment of silence, until Leia backs away with a muffled oh as the empress straightens up into her full height. She’s taller than Rose had assumed, but then again everyone looks tiny next to the emperor, Rose supposes.

Leia looks up at her daughter-in-law with a look that can only be described as awe, and her voice is small and shaky when she asks, “Already?”

The empress smiles and places a hand on her flat stomach, and suddenly everything falls into place. She beams, her smile bright as… well, a proud mother, and curves her hand around her unborn child. “We were definitely a little surprised, but Ben mentioned you could feel him too?”

“Sure,” Leia says, “but not this early, and never this clearly or strongly.”

“Well,” the em– Rey murmurs, her smile turning fond as she looks down at her stomach and gives it a gentle pat. “Clearly we have an overachiever on our hands… just like their father.”

The two women share a conspiratorial little laugh at that, and some part of Rose’s mind registers with no small amount of amusement that they’re laughing at the emperor’s expense. A bigger part of her, however, is too busy dealing with nerves as Rey suddenly turns to her.

“Hello,” she says, eyes open and friendly.

“Oh, right.” Leia shoots Rose an apologetic smile before she gets around to introductions. “Rey, this is Rose Tico, from Hays Minor. Rose, this is my daughter-in-law and, of course, the empress of the New Empire, Rey Solo.”

The formality of the introduction, as well as the mere fact that she’s being introduced to the empress, is enough to make Rose forget Leia’s earlier words and give in to her automatic instinct to dip into her best attempt at a bow as she murmurs, “Your Majesty.”

Two warm hands instantly reach for her elbows, as a laughing empress helps her straighten up. “Please, none of that kriffing stuffy nonsense,” Rey says, her nose the tiniest bit scrunched up in distaste even as her eyes continue to sparkle with laughter.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose spies Leia giving her what can only be called an I told you so look. “Right. Um. Well, I’m Rose. It’s nice to meet you… Rey.”

Rey’s smile widens. “It’s nice to meet you too, Rose. Now why don’t we get you both settled in, and then you can tell me all about this mess we need to fix, yeah?”

👑 👑 👑

A short hour later finds her and Rey in the latter’s office for a talk before dinner.

“We’ve been living together on Hays Minor ever since,” Rose tells the empress, having covered her initial meeting with Finn and the two weeks they’d spent on Coruscant before he decided to follow her home, “and three months ago we finally decided to get married. But then…”

Rey sighs. She’s been an attentive and emphatic listener this whole time, just as Rose had known she’d be, and now she waits with bated breath for the empress’ insight.

“Every time I think we’re doing okay, every time I think we’ve finally made a dent in the past… we just end up finding more mistakes like this. Rose,” she says, reaching out across the desk to place her hand on Rose’s, “I’m so sorry you – both of you – had to go through this.”

“I just…” Relief and sorrow war within her, at the idea that this nightmare might soon be over but also at the fact that she’d had to go through it at all. “I don’t want him to be alone again. He’s been through so much already, taken from his family and thrown into the Stormtrooper program at such a young age, and now… I know things are different now, I know you’re trying your best, but now he’s been taken away from the only family and home he has again.”

Rey is quiet for a moment, and then she gives Rose a squeeze before pulling her hand back. “I know how you two must feel, trust me. Has Leia told you the story of how Ben and I met?”

Rose shakes her head. “Only that there was an awakening, and that’s how you found each other.”

“Awakening,” Rey scoffs with a hint of amusement. “That’s a nice way to put it, I guess. What really happened was that my… employer, I suppose, had been making these vague comments about how I was so useless it was no wonder even my parents hadn’t wanted me.” She doesn’t pause, doesn’t give Rose the time to consider a reaction. “Big mistake, about as stupid as showing a Teedo something shiny. Once he’d mentioned them, I wouldn’t stop asking – and he wouldn’t stop goading me, the idiot. So I kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing, until one day something inside me said if he won’t give you what you want, then take it. And I did – I used the Force on him without realizing it, reached into his brain without even knowing what I was doing. Turned it into a right scrambled mess, but not before I found what I was looking for, not before I found the truth.”

She stops then, but Rose senses this is not the end of the story. The room is heavy with charged silence as Rey takes a shaky breath and curls one hand around the edge of her desk, digging into it so hard Rose fears she might leave indents.

Finally, Rey speaks again. “I’d known the truth, all along. I’d just buried it because I wasn’t ready for it. And that day, Unkar Plutt paid the price for that – I choked him without even meaning to, pushed my anger and hurt out of me and into the world around me instead. That wave of destruction, of energy… it rippled across the Force, and somehow…” She smiles then, a small, serene curve of her lips as the tension drains from her eyes and her fingers let go of the desk. “Somehow Ben found me.”

“That’s… amazing,” Rose says, “that you two managed to find each other despite everything.”

Rey shrugs. “The Force works in mysterious ways. It wanted us together, two lonely souls trying to find our place in the galaxy. We found it the day he landed on Jakku, the second our eyes met across Niima Outpost.”

Rose has heard stories like this before, of course. Nearly every mated Alpha-Omega couple has that story, the one in which they caught sight or scent of each other from across a crowded room and instantly knew they had been biologically created for each other. But with the imperial couple, there’s another layer to their perfect match, another element to the myth: the Force bond that allows them to live and think and fight as one, that makes them nigh undefeatable if the battle stories she’s heard are true.

“I guess what I mean is… I know how important it is: staying together, once you find each other,” Rey tells her gently. “Ben and I, we had to rewrite the stars and reshape the galaxy to make that possible. But you and Finn–”

“How?” Rose blurts out, and immediately claps a hand over her mouth in horror. That was not supposed to happen, she had not meant to ask–

Rey tilts her head in question. “How did we do it?”

“Maker, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to– And of course you don’t have to answer, that’s so invasive and rude and–”

“Rose,” Rey says with a laugh. “It’s okay, calm down, calm down. Really,” she says reassuringly, watching Rose take several deep breaths, “it’s okay. I know everyone wonders, I know they think it’s some kind of epic adventure, but really… really, it was just two desperate people using everything we had at our disposal to stay together. Ben could never hide anything from Snoke, not in the beginning, so naturally that creepy old bastard found out about me as soon as Ben did. But then he authorized Ben to come find me and stay on Jakku for a whole week in the hopes that he’d get a new protégé out of it and that… that was his first mistake. Maybe we could have walked away from each other after the first day, but after a whole week? Nothing but the Force could tear us apart by then – and Snoke’s second mistake was threatening to do exactly that.” This time, Rose spots a hint of teeth in Rey’s sharp smile and for the very first time, she sees in the kind empress a hint of the savage warrior who’d taken down all of those who tried to cut down the empire and keep the galaxy suspended in never-ending bloodshed instead.

“By then, Ben and I had months of training together under our belt. After that first week he’d somehow found the strength to start shielding his thoughts from Snoke, and he’d fed him some lie about me being a member of the Church of the Force, about how it would take time to convince me to join him but that it would be worth it, that I would be worth it. So Snoke didn’t question his regular trips to Jakku, not until a whole year had passed and suddenly he gave Ben an ultimatum: on his next trip, he was to bring me back to the Supremacy with him no matter what – either as a willing new recruit, or as a prisoner awaiting execution. You see, Snoke believed that any Force user this powerful could only stand with him or against him, and that there was nothing in-between.”

Rose furrows her brow, chasing after a memory. “But… there is an in-between, isn’t there? You and… and the emperor speak about it a lot, especially in all those holovids about training a new generation of Force users.”

“You watch those?” Rey looks surprised, as if the entire galaxy doesn’t devour every single shred of information related to their rulers’ relationship with and use of the mythical Force.

“Everyone I know does,” Rose tells her casually, and finds herself mirroring the empress’ smile without even meaning to.

“That’s great! Because yes, there is an in-between – Ben and I discovered and explored it during all those months we spent training out in the desert, and we knew this was the key to the future.”

“So that’s how you defeated Snoke?” Because it’s still shrouded in mystery, the exact events of the day two relatively young and inexperienced Force users had taken down the most powerful living Darksider in the galaxy.

Rey nods. “That was a big part of it, but really… we defeated him together. We did all of that, all of this, together.” She waves her hand across her desk and the precarious-looking stacks of datapads and flimsiplasts, documents that hold the New Empire together and determine its future. “We could never have done it apart – that’s why it matters so much to us, keeping people together.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, Rose is reminded of the look Rey had shared with the emperor in that holo of the Peacetrooper announcement. “That’s why you came up with the exemptions,” she realizes.

“I never wanted to tear people apart, not after what I’d experienced my whole life,” Rey says quietly. “But I guess that’s been happening anyway. Ben and I tried, we tried so hard with the Peacetrooper program, but those were early days for us. There were still so many members of the old guard in place, so many compromises we had to make. I’m sorry we didn’t fight harder then, but I want you to know I’ll fight for you and Finn and all the other people who deserve to stay together now.”

All this talk about fighting only reminds Rose of what Leia had mentioned before, about the council and the senate and all of that. “It will be a fight, won’t it?” she asks reluctantly. “Even with you and the emperor on board, it’s still going to be difficult to convince the galaxy to give us Betas the same rights as everyone else.”

Rey huffs. “A steaming hot load of bantha dung, is what this is,” she rants with a scowl, “how we must always have a target to pick on, how there must always be someone lesser than. First the Omegas, thousands of years ago when they treated us as nothing more than broodmares. Then the Alphas, when our societies started moving past base instincts to learn love and devotion, when Alphas started waiting on their mates hand and foot.”

That had been a relatively recent phase of galactic history, Rose supposes, the so-called Age of the Omegas, when powerful kings and ruthless warlords had been brought to their knees simply by the whims and fancies of their Omega consorts. She thinks of old Maz, of the wink and laugh that had accompanied those knowing words. But it’s been a long few centuries since then, since the Alphas were the laughing stock of the galaxy. Because today–

“And now the Betas,” Rey continues, crossing her arms in obvious displeasure. “Just because you’re slightly different than the rest of us? It’s all so karking ridiculous!”

Rose shrugs; that’s about the nicest, most polite way she’s heard it phrased. Defective is the usual go-to when it comes to describing Betas; lacking something, broken somehow, lesser than, as Rey just said.

Rey stands up from her chair, a sudden move that has Rose wondering if she’s supposed to follow suit. The empress peers down at her, and with a viewport behind her it looks like she’s silhouetted by the light of a hundred stars. “When Ben and I agreed to do this, to try and fix the galaxy, we promised we’d get rid of all past mistakes and start over, finally make things right.”

She dips her head in a determined nod, and holds out a hand to Rose. “I promise you, Rose Tico: we’ll get it right this time.”

And finally, the blind hope in Rose’s heart gives way to anticipation and faith, faith in both Rey and herself to see this through.

👑 👑 👑

At dinner, Rey gives her both good news and bad news.

The bad news is that they’ll have to wait for the emperor to return before any progress can be made.

The good news is that the emperor is expected to arrive in less than twelve standard hours, at the beginning of the ship’s day cycle.

What she forgets to mention, however, is the fact that both the emperor and the empress are suddenly and mysteriously unavailable for the rest of the day as soon as the emperor returns to the Spinebarrel.

“Never quite made it out of their honeymoon phase,” Leia says in the morning as Rose trudges over to join her at the breakfast table, having been informed of the imperial couple’s… scheduling unavailability by a passing droid. “And now with the baby on the way– Maker,” she adds with a groan, before giving Rose a long-suffering look. “Just be glad you can’t feel them through the Force.”

She’s not sure what exactly Leia means, but she finds out later that day when the happy couple finally joins them at dinner, neither of them quite capable of looking Leia in the eye as they mutter apologies.

The emperor seems nice enough when Rey introduces him to Rose, but he’s silent throughout dinner, his attention completely devoted to making sure his wife has everything she desires and more. It’s sweet but odd, seeing the rulers of the galaxy act like any other mated and expecting couple: sitting together so closely they’re practically sharing a chair, constantly making skin-to-skin contact with each other, stopping every so often to cast adoring looks at and place light touches on the barely-there swell of Rey’s stomach.

It’s a far cry from the composed façade they usually present to the galaxy, that’s for sure, especially in the case of the emperor. To her and even his mother he is relatively reserved, but one look at Rey and he lights up like a starved flower drinking in the sun.

He remains that way even after dinner, the three of them making their way to his office after bidding Leia goodnight. Behind closed doors, away from prying eyes (except hers), the emperor drops all pretenses and instantly, unashamedly pulls his wife into his lap rather than letting her sit next to him on the loveseat they occupy, leaving Rose to settle into the armchair opposite them.

Rey falls into his lap with a little shriek of glee, a sound of pure happiness that sends a little pang through Rose’s heart as she’s reminded of all the times Finn has pulled similar stunts with her, all the longing she’s buried deep within herself to focus on the task at hand.

Force-sensitive as she is, it really should come as no surprise that Rey picks up on the sudden spike of pain in the room.

“You really do love each other fiercely, don’t you?” she asks softly, leaning forward to look at Rose.

“As much as any two people can,” Rose tells her without hesitation. “I know what they say about us Betas, I know what people think about mixed couples. But… but I don’t care what they say, I don’t care that everyone thinks Finn is wasting his time with me instead of a powerful Alpha, I don’t care that everyone’s just waiting for the day he finds his ‘true’ mate and abandons me. I know that’s not us, I believe in us, I believe that our love is as strong as any other conventional couple out there.”

“So let’s prove it.”

It takes Rose a moment to realize the quiet, rumbling words came from the emperor himself, silent up until now. Rey turns in his arms to look at him, seemingly as confused as Rose is – until a smile starts to light up her face.

“Love, that’s genius!” she proclaims, reaching up to take the emperor’s face into her hands and kiss him soundly. “When it works they’ll have no choice but to acknowledge–”

The emperor laughs, and pulls away from his wife’s lips by just the slightest bit. “Sweetheart, maybe we should get Rose’s opinion first?”

“Right, right,” Rey says, and then turns back to her. “Okay, so: the big deal with Alpha-Omega couples – or Alpha-Alpha couples, or Omega-Omega couples, you get it – is that we’re capable of mating, right? And that forms this connection that makes us hyperaware of each other, attuned to each other on a whole new level. So what if we can prove that Beta-mix couples are just as connected?”

They are, as far as Rose is concerned, but– “But how would we prove that?”

Surprisingly, the emperor – Ben, Rose reminds herself, Ben – takes over. “Of all the things that get heightened after the mating process, scent sensitivity is probably the main one. If we can prove that Finn is just as attuned and attached to your scent as he would be to an Alpha or Omega partner, we can prove that you need to be around each other just as much.”

The plan, once they lay it out, is so beautifully simple.

Next week, the Spinebarrel is due to host an annual conference of the galactic senate, a three-day event during which participating senators come aboard to update the imperial couple on their planet’s latest developments and raise issues of growing interest. Naturally, with all of these additional guests onboard, a significant number of Peacetroopers will be called in to ensure everything runs smoothly. Finn, by order of the emperor, will be one of them.

At the end of the first day, all guests will be invited to a welcoming gala in the ship’s large ballroom. There, Rose and Finn will be placed on opposite ends of the cavernous room, separated by thousands of other people. Finn will be given five minutes to pick out his partner’s scent from the crowd, after which Rose will be ushered toward one of the many, many exits from the ballroom – with the hope that Finn will have caught her scent by then, allowing him to follow closely behind. From there, Rose will make her winding way toward the hangar, all the way on the other end of the ship.

She will not be allowed to look back to see if Finn is on the right trail, and he will not be allowed to call out for her to check that she is ahead. And to prevent him from catching sight of her, Finn will be blindfolded as soon as he leaves the ballroom.

The process will be challenging but if they prove successful, if an Omega manages to pick out the scent of his Beta partner in a room of thousands and follow it across the titanic imperial flagship, then everything will change. Their success will allow for the repetition of the experiment with other Beta-mix couples, and that in turn will be used as the basis for the imperial couple’s push to make amendments to all existing legislation and policies which regard Beta-mix couples as inferior to Alpha-Omega couples.

At the end of the evening, a nervous but hopeful Rey turns to Rose. “Do you think it’ll work?”

Rose is silent for a moment as she considers the question, and then she asks, “Could you two do it – what you’re asking us to do?” She’s belatedly reminded of the fact that the Alpha-Omega couple in front of her is a special case, and rushes to amend her question. “Could any other Alpha-Omega couple do it?”

Ben nods, even going so far as to offer her a small, reassuring smile. “I see it happen all the time.”

And just like that, Rose knows her answer, knows what the outcome will be. “Then yes,” she tells a beaming Rey. “Yes, it’ll work.”

👑 👑 👑

Finn arrives on the Spinebarrel the day of the gala itself, just two standard hours before things are set to begin. They’re allowed a brief, private reunion as soon as he boards, giving Rose a chance to update him on everything she’s been up to since he left and everything they’ll have to keep in mind tonight.

She worries that maybe Finn isn’t quite paying attention to her careful instructions, though, because his expression had morphed into one of awe at some point during the retelling of her galactic adventure and it’s still stuck that way. “Rose, Rosie, you absolute miracle – you actually did all of this, you came all this way and talked the imperial couple into changing the world. Maker,” he sighs, gently cupping her face before he dips down to kiss her, “you are amazing.”

Rose laughs and pulls him closer, her heart singing with the comforting familiarity of their embrace for the first time in too long. “I told you we’d be together again soon, didn’t I?”

“And I’ll never doubt a single word you say ever again,” Finn vows, just as they’re interrupted by a knock.

“It’s time,” Ben’s unmistakable voice calls from the other end of the door, and for a moment Rose thinks she might panic, thinks they’re not ready–

But then Finn takes her hand, and one look in his eyes is all it takes for her to know that everything is going to be okay.

Brief introductions are made as soon as she opens the door, with Rey surprisingly recognizing Finn as the first friendly face she’d seen upon boarding the Supremacy all those years ago, and then they’re off to the gala, Rose and Finn trailing behind the imperial couple dressed to the nines.

The grand ballroom is absolutely packed, filled with senators and their retinues eating and dancing and socializing after a day of discussions and negotiations. In the midst of all this, the four of them somehow manage to slip in unnoticed even with the striking silhouette Rey and Ben cut in their fancy clothes and regal bearing, and Rey shuffles them off to a quiet corner to run through the plan one last time.

Two people, a human man and woman, appear just as Rey finishes her explanation, more for Finn’s benefit than anything else. “These are Mitaka and Kaydel, two of our most trusted staffers,” Rey tells Rose and Finn. “They’ll be helping you find your places and make sure everything goes according to plan. Now, are you ready?”

Rose smiles at the newcomers, shares a look with Rey and Ben, and then turns to take Finn’s hand in hers once more. “Yeah, yeah we’re ready.”

Rey’s face splits into a warm smile, and she steps forward to take both Rose and Finn’s free hand. “I’d hug you, but I don’t want to throw Finn off with all of these baby hormones.”

That brings their tense little circle a small laugh, at least.

“Good luck, you two. I know you can do this.”

Ben steps forward with a nod. “We’ll be waiting on the other side.”

And with that, the imperial couple disappears into the crowd.

With Kaydel and Mitaka politely standing to the side, Rose takes the opportunity to give Finn one final kiss – for now.

“We can do this,” he says fiercely against her lips.

“Find me,” Rose whispers, and then they go their separate ways for what is hopefully the last time.

👑 👑 👑

High above the ballroom, Rey and Ben settle into a hidden viewing box that’ll allow them to keep tabs on the action within the ballroom. A projector connected to a multitude of cam droids lights up the walls, feeding them live recordings of both Rose and Finn.

The small room is silent as they watch Finn prowl one length of the ballroom, kept in place by a dutiful Mitaka as he strains to distinguish Rose’s scent from the thousands of others in the ballroom.

It’s obvious as soon as he picks it up, the lines of tension on his face and in his shoulders smoothing away immediately. “Remind you of anyone?” Rey turns to ask her husband teasingly, giggling with delight when he simply picks her up from her seat next to his and plops her into his lap in response.

Ben holds her close as they watch the first five minutes tick by, his chin warm on her shoulder as they both cradle their child.

Before long, Kaydel is leading Rose toward an exit and patiently counting down the seconds of Rose’s two-minute head-start before she notifies Mitaka that it’s time to let Finn go. He darts across the ballroom, a strong start, but Rey tenses every time it looks like he might pick the wrong exit.

“Shh,” Ben soothes her after one particularly close call, dropping a hand to her hip to draw calming circles. “Love finds a way, remember?” he whispers in her ear, an echo of the promise they’d made each other in the early days, back when it seemed like the entire galaxy was against them and their relationship.

She and Ben had burned the galaxy down and rebuilt it from ashes in order to be together. Surely Finn and Rose will manage finding each other in a ship, even if said ship is the ridiculously oversized Spinebarrel.

“Love finds a way,” she murmurs, and allows herself to lean back into Ben’s arms and simply watch: watch as Finn finally picks the right exit and Mitaka swoops in to blindfold him, watch as Rose falters once, twice in her steps but determinedly keeps her eyes straight ahead and keeps moving, watch as Finn stops to doubt himself every now and then only to close his eyes, search for Rose, and let his heart guide him.

And then finally, at long last, they watch as Finn bursts into the hangar and blindly runs across the wide, empty space toward Rose, picks her up and swings her around in his embrace before they reunite with a joyful kiss.

Rey turns her eyes away to give them a moment of privacy, and smiles at Ben. “You know what this means.”

“Indeed,” Ben muses with a smile of his own, catching a glimpse of the Beta and Omega clinging to each other for dear life in a desperate embrace that is all too familiar to him. “I suppose it’s the dawn of a new era,” he tells his wife, catching her hand in his.

Rey laces their fingers together. “We’re good at those,” she quips with a confident grin, and settles into Ben’s embrace with a happy sigh just as Rose does the same to Finn on the screens in front of them.

#reylo #finnrose #rey/kylo ren #rey/ben solo #finn/rose tico #star wars #rose tico #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #finn #fic: world could be #fic archive #my fics

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

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keep calm and let HR handle it [COMPLETE]

Rey managed to go a full year without ever directly interacting with her new CEO, but now it seems like he’s dropping by her office every single week.

(Because what else is a love-struck fool to do when he falls for his head of HR other than find reasons to visit her department?)

OR: five times Ben gets summoned down to HR, and one time Rey gets called into the CEO’s office, based on this prompt from @optimisticsprinkles: “Rey as the director of HR at [office] and Kylo/Ben starts finding reasons to be sent down to HR”.

Oops, nearly forgot to make a masterpost for this fic. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone once again for the unexpectedly warm welcome this fic received. It really made me feel so much better about coming back from the long hiatus and diving right back into writing, so thank you!

Read it on AO3! Or right here on Tumblr: i | ii | iii | iv | v | vi

#reylo #reyben #rey/ben solo #rey/kylo ren #kylo ren/rey #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #fic: HR #fic archive

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

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i don’t wanna break your heart (i just want a brand new start) - ONE-SHOT

Months after things go horribly wrong with Ben, Rey plans to spend what was supposed to be her first holiday season as a married woman sick, miserable, and alone instead.

Enter Finn and Poe, completely unwilling to let their friend go through with that plan and completely willing to go behind her back to make sure it doesn’t pan out.

Also enter Ben, with a ton of apologies, homemade chicken noodle soup, and every intention of taking care of his ex-fiancée.

This December, I'll be writing a collection of one-shots for the holiday season. Gift Fic #1 is a modern AU getting-back-together for Twitter's @ft_shipper, who writes some truly beautiful tweet fics that are 11/10 worth checking out.

Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter or Ko-fi?

“Peanut, you awake?”

Hidden under a mountain of blankets as she is, it takes Rey a while to make out Finn’s question. “Still alive,” she croaks back, and whines when he begins to tug at the covers. At least he has the decency to keep her curtains shut, so that she isn’t blinded by what little sunlight they’ve been blessed with this winter morning when he finally pulls away the last of her blankets to find her.

She can’t be a pretty sight, because Finn grimaces before a cool hand presses against her forehead. “Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own? It’s not too late for me to cancel, Poe can deal with his family on his own–”

It takes more effort than she’d like to bring one hand up and bat Finn’s away, every single part of her weak and sore with fever, but she’s not about to let him know that. “Finn, stop babying me and just go already. You love Christmas with the Damerons more than Poe does,” she reminds him.

“I do,” Finn shrugs, “but I love you more than Christmas. And Rey, I think if we threw you out into the snow right now you’d burn right through all of it. At least let us bring you to the hospital first, I’m sure Shara won’t mind us being late–”

Rey steels herself and uses one last burst of strength to yank the covers out of Finn’s hands and back over her head. “I’ll be fine,” she calls out through a yawn. “Now go before you make me get out of bed and kick you out of this apartment.”

She picks up on indecipherable grumbling even through the four layers that separate her from Finn, but eventually he relents with a heavy sigh and a pat on her shoulder. “Just… call me if you need me, okay? Promise me, peanut.”

His voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away, maybe even underwater, as sleep drags her back under. Rey has one last fuzzy memory of giving in to Finn’s request, but she’s asleep again before he can say anything else.

A series of insistent knocks on their front door wakes her up just a few minutes later, though. It has to be Finn again, doubling back for something he’d forgotten. Probably his keys, since he’s knocking on his own door, but then how would he have locked the door in the first place?

“Oh,” Rey mutters to herself as she finally pokes her head out from underneath the covers. Thin beams of weak winter sunlight have snuck in through the cracks in her curtains, which means it’s definitely been more than a few minutes since Finn left, which means it’s definitely not Finn at the–

“Rey!”

Yeah, there’s that theory proven right. The voice calling out for her from the other side of the front door is barely audible here in her bedroom, but she can hear just well enough to know that it’s not Finn. He must’ve asked one of their other friends to stop by and check on her, but who’s still in town on Christmas Eve?

It’s a masculine voice; that much becomes clear when the call comes a second time as she slowly drags herself out of bed and across the small apartment. She’s making good progress, until he speaks again for a third time just as she’s passed the kitchen, just as she’s finally close enough to realize–

“Rey?”

The voice sounds suspiciously like… It can’t be, but there’s no way she’s wrong, no way she’s forgotten his voice this quickly, no way she’ll ever forget it. But why would he of all people be knocking on her door at – Rey squints at the novelty clock hanging above the front door – seven minutes past noon on Christmas Eve?

“Fever,” Rey reminds herself out loud, cursing her body for wreaking havoc on her senses and her heart like this. It’s probably just one of their many other guy friends, doing Finn and Poe a favor. Nodding to herself in approval of her theory, Rey finds the strength to continue her slow journey toward the front door and cautiously crack it open to see who her mystery visitor is…

… only to find that her fever-addled brain was right all along.

He’s got one hand up in the air, as if he’d been about to let loose another round of knocks, and his fourth attempt to call for her leaves him like a gentle exhale as they catch each other’s eyes.

“Rey.”

She, on the other hand, is too stunned to say anything in return. Because there, on the other side of her apartment door, stands Ben Solo – ex-fiancé and partner of five years, person who should have been her husband of two months and one week by now, man who broke her heart six months ago instead.

Seconds or minutes or hours pass – enough time for the shock to wear off and exhaustion to sweep back into her system. She clutches at the door a little tighter for support, and watches the way Ben’s eyes dart away from hers to observe the movement with a slight frown.

It’s enough to spur him into motion, apparently, because he lifts his other hand to reveal a lunch bag. “I brought soup,” he says quietly, his first words to her since the day he let her walk out of his life.

Rey thinks of asking him what the hell he’s doing here, what the fuck he thinks he’s doing waltzing back into her life like this.

She thinks of slamming the door in that stupid face she’s missed so much and ignoring his unwanted presence until he leaves her alone again.

She thinks of undoing months of so-called healing to rip open all of her wounds and resume that fight they never really settled, the one she’d chosen to walk away from instead.

But the thing is… Rey grew tired of fighting Ben Solo a long time ago. Maybe that’s why they ended up like this, why they ended at all. And that thought, more than the fever, more than anything else, drains her of what little fight she’d had in her to begin with.

So she opens the door with a sigh, and steps aside to let him back into her life.

❄ ❄ ❄

On an unusually sunny late October morning, Rey finds herself admiring the way beams of sunlight set the diamonds of her engagement ring ablaze and create little rainbows in their wake. Odd, how something she’s had for less than twelve hours can feel so much like a part of her already, so right.

A heavy arm slings itself around her middle as Ben rolls onto his side, pressing his face into her thigh. She tears her eyes away from the ring to shoot him a fond smile, running her free hand through his hair as he slowly blinks awake and peers up at her.

“Why’re you up?” Ben mumbles, warm lips brushing against her bare skin.

Rey shrugs and slides back down into bed so that he can hold her properly. “Too excited to sleep, I guess. I’ve just realized something, by the way.”

He’s fully awake now, a slow, lazy smile stretching across his face as he reaches for her left hand and draws it closer so that they can both admire the heirloom ring he’d slid onto her finger just last night, the ring he later admitted he’d been carrying around since their first anniversary three years ago. “What is it?” Ben asks softly, bringing her hand up to his lips to brush a feather-light kiss across her palm before he lets go.

“Weddings,” Rey tells him as she moves to mimic him, the both of them resting on their sides and facing each other. She tips her head back to give him a quick kiss before adding, “We’ve never talked about weddings. Do you have any idea what you want?”

Ben shrugs, but he’s still wearing that lazy smile and his eyes are bright too, lit up from within and without as more sunlight pours into their bedroom. “I want whatever you want.”

And that has to be the standard answer, the easiest answer for grooms who’d like as little involvement in planning their own wedding as possible, but somehow Rey knows that’s not why Ben is saying it. That’s never why he’s happy to go along with her plans for everything, even though he tends to have grander ideas for anniversary dates and summer vacations and dinner parties; he just really, really wants her to have everything she wants, and trusts that he’ll be happy so long as she’s happy. It’s worked out for them so far, but if a wedding is meant to set the tone for the marriage it gives birth to, then Rey doesn’t want them to do their usual thing this time around.

Her marriage to Ben will be one of the most important things in her life, Rey already knows, and she wants them to start it off the right way, as a team. “I don’t really know what I want,” she claims, a half-truth at worst; she’s entertained the odd daydream here and there in her four years with Ben, but it’s true that she hasn’t really decided on anything yet. “What about you? Did little Ben ever imagine what his big day would be like?”

She means to tease, to joke, but after a moment Ben furrows his brows in concentration and Rey suddenly finds herself eager for a real answer.

“I didn’t… I mean, I never gave much thought to the colors and the cake and all that stuff, but… I was three when my parents got married, remember?”

Of course she does; the highlight of her first visit to his parents’ place had been Leia breaking out the wedding album to show her adorable pictures of little ring-bearer Ben. There’s even a fuzzy old VHS of Ben toddling down the aisle with one hand carefully balancing a small pillow and the other clutching at his Uncle Luke for balance, tiny face scrunched in concentration as he kept his eyes on the rings he’d been tasked with.

“I don’t remember much, but I know there were a lot of people, so many people I’d never even seen before and haven’t seen since. And I just… I don’t know. That doesn’t seem right to me, that my parents – my mom – had all of these people who didn’t even really matter at their wedding, people who probably didn’t even really care about them or their happiness and were only there out of some sense of obligation. So I guess the one thing I’d want is to keep it meaningful, you know?” he asks, reaching out to tuck a few stray locks of bedhead behind Rey’s ear. “If this is about celebrating our love, then I only want to be surrounded by people who genuinely care for us and are happy for us. Something small, just close friends and family.”

A small wedding, coincidentally, happens to be the common thread running across all of her varying wedding fantasies. Rey rests her hand over the one slung around her waist, and laces their fingers together before giving Ben a small squeeze.

“That sounds perfect,” she tells him with a smile, and so it’s decided that they’ll surround themselves with love and only love on the day of their wedding.

❄ ❄ ❄

Ten minutes after she lets Ben back into her life, Rey finds herself leaning against her kitchen doorway and watching him from a safe distance as he makes himself comfortable in her kitchen and uses her stove to warm up his soup and goes through her cabinets for bowls and spoons. Well – her and Finn’s kitchen and stove and bowls and spoons, all of which Ben probably remembers from the numerous times Finn had them over for dinner throughout the course of their relationship.

A small part of her is irritated at how easily he navigates her space, but a bigger part just aches at the familiar sight of him putting together a meal for her. The soup is homemade from Leia’s secret family recipe – the one she’d made Ben teach her the first time he got sick during their relationship; the one that had become a staple in their shared household, a secret form of communication whenever one of them felt that the other was working too hard or needed more rest. She honestly can’t remember how many times they’ve made this exact soup for each other, and now she’s watching Ben heat it up and ladle it into two bowls for them while she tries to come to terms with the fact that her ex-fiancé is apparently here to play nurse and spend Christmas Eve with her.

She’s still struggling to make her peace with the idea when Ben finally turns around and sets two bowls down on the kitchen island-slash-dining table, and then looks across the room to give her a pleading look.

“Fine,” Rey huffs as she slumps into the closest bar stool and drags one bowl toward her. From the corner of her eye she can see Ben settling down and pulling his soup closer as well, but Rey doesn’t look up. It’s for the best, really, given that tears start welling in her eyes as soon as the familiar taste of the soup invokes dozens of cherished memories and reminds her of what she’s lost, of what he’s denied the both of them–

But that’s a dangerous path to tread in her mind, one that will only lead to more tears, and so Rey defaults to the mantra that’s kept her together since the day she turned her back on him: better mad than sad.

With that in mind, she decides to break their silence. “I’m surprised Snoke doesn’t have you slaving away on Christmas Eve this year,” Rey says through gritted teeth, barely suppressing the snarl that that name naturally draws from her.

Ben, to her surprise, merely shrugs and continues focusing on his soup. “I’m sure he’d like that, but I’ve made it clear that I don’t really give a fuck what he wants outside of office hours,” he says so calmly, so casually, as if this doesn’t change everything.

Rey, meanwhile, has to try really hard to keep her spoon from splashing into her soup. Her hand shakes as she takes a few careful sips to buy herself some time, blinking and processing and weighing potential replies until she finally settles on a relatively harmless one. “Good for you,” she mutters, just loud enough to be heard across the kitchen island.

For the longest time, the kitchen is filled with nothing but the too-loud sounds of her spoon accidentally scraping against the bowl a little too hard as she tries to put up an unaffected front. It’s only when Rey pushes her bowl away that she realizes Ben stopped moving a while ago, that Ben’s been watching her this whole time.

When she finally finds the strength to look up at him, he’s staring at her with the most heartbreaking look she’s ever seen on him, his eyes reminding her of pictures she’s seen of his childhood dog and its sad, pleading eyes during big holiday meals.

Still holding eye contact, Ben murmurs, “I wish I’d done it earlier.”

And Rey… god, Rey wants nothing more than for him to have done so too, for them to be able to go back in time and shake some sense into past Ben before he ruined everything and broke her heart and destroyed their future.

But she never gets what she wants, not really. The piles of unsent wedding invitations gathering dust under her bed are evidence enough. So instead of getting her hopes up, instead of giving him the power to break her all over again…

Instead of all that, Rey abruptly gets up with an ugly, painful scrape of her chair against the floor and turns her back on Ben as she makes her way out of the kitchen.

It’s oddly reminiscent of the last time she’d walked out on him, damning silence and quiet resignation and all. The thought weighs her down, stops her by the doorway.

“Yeah,” Rey sighs without turning back, “me too.”

She disappears into her room before Ben can say something in return – or worse, not say anything at all.

❄ ❄ ❄

According to Leia’s expert advice, it’s only polite to send save-the-dates six months in advance, especially since some of their friends and family will have to fly in for the wedding.

And so, a rainy April evening finds Rey and Ben and multiple versions of their potential guest list sprawled out across their living room in an attempt to finalize at least this one aspect of their wedding planning.

“Babe,” Rey speaks up with a slight frown as she comes upon a series of names that don’t ring a single bell. “Exactly how many Naberrie relatives are we expecting, and why do all of them have different last names?”

“Hmm?” Ben hums in acknowledgement, looking up from his own list of her guests. In a last-ditch attempt to trim the list down to their original idea of fifty or less, they’ve taken to scrutinizing each other’s guests to identify potential exclusions. “Wait, let me see that.”

He reaches out for the list, but Rey – sprawled out on her stomach with her legs crossed at her knees and her feet comfortably swinging in the air – decides to roll closer instead and face-plant into his lap. It feels unbearably silly, but at least it draws an increasingly rare laugh out of Ben. She doesn’t get to hear that precious sound much these days, not with Ben as overworked and tired as he is from all of those long nights and weekend meetings he keeps getting roped into.

Besides, she’s planning her wedding with the love of her life – Rey figures she’s allowed to feel silly and light and maybe even a little bit fluttery.

“Oh, those aren’t the Naberries,” Ben tells her as one hand instinctively moves to the back of her head to comb through her hair. “They’re some of our biggest clients and a few potential ones too, so Snoke figured it’d be a good idea to invite them.”

And just like that, all feelings of the silly, light, and fluttery variety vanish into thin air.

“Ben,” she groans, though it’s muffled by his tee shirt. “I thought we agreed on no work guests?”

They had, just two weeks ago when Rey first noticed their guest list had somehow ballooned from a manageable fifty-seven to a rather alarming ninety-nine. It’s why she’s crossed out a bunch of her colleagues, and has allowed Ben to mark several more for reconsideration.

He’s still running his hand through her hair, but it’s not as soothing anymore. “I know, sweetheart, but Snoke really thinks–”

Rey drags herself into an upright position so that she can look Ben in the eye when she scowls, crosses her arms, and says, “Well, if Snoke has such strong wedding guest list opinions, maybe he should save them for a wedding of his own.”

To her dismay, Ben simply laughs at the idea rather than take note of her irritation. “It’ll be okay, Rey, I promise. It’s only thirty people at most–”

“Thirty?” she echoes with horror. “Ben, we’re trying to trim this back down to fifty. Thirty is more than half of that!”

“About that,” he hedges, setting the list down to give her his full attention. “I was thinking… maybe we keep the fifty quota for friends and family, and just count these thirty separately?”

She reaches for the list Ben’s just set down, along with all of the others marked as his guests, and takes a good hard look at them only to realize… “Ben, more than half of your guests are people from work. I thought we wanted something small and intimate?”

“Small went out the window the second you agreed to let my mother invite our entire family, Rey,” he tells her wryly, snatching the papers out of her hands. “Besides, what difference does it really make? It’s still just going to be you and me up there, we’ll just need more chairs at the ceremony and more food at the reception–”

The idea of being surrounded by strangers at her own wedding reception was bad enough, but the ceremony? Ben intends to have complete strangers bear witness to the most intimate moment of their lives?

Rey can’t believe what she’s hearing, what she’s seeing. How is this the same Ben who promised her the wedding of her dreams, the same Ben who hated his parents’ wedding despite barely remembering it? How is this still her Ben, when he consistently sides with and picks Snoke over her these days?

“This isn’t even a wedding anymore,” she snaps, more harshly than she’d intended or even realized herself to be capable of. But the more she thinks of it… “It’s a fucking networking event, Ben. And I’ve been to enough of those to know that I’m not spending my wedding surrounded by strangers and alone in a corner while you and your boss make the rounds.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Ben’s eyes soften, and for one beautiful, golden moment Rey thinks she’s finally gotten through to him, finally made him see sense, finally snatched him back from the jaws of that slimy old bastard. “C’mere,” he mumbles, holding his arms open. “That’s not going to happen, I swear. I won’t leave you alone like that.”

She’s just about to fall into his arms when he ruins it all. “It’s our wedding, Rey. We’ll make the rounds together.”

The world comes to a stop, and then crashes.

Rey yanks herself back and stumbles to her feet instead, ignoring Ben’s open arms and questioning look as she picks her way through the mess of papers scattered around them. “I’m going to bed,” she tosses over her shoulder as she storms out of the living room. “We can talk about this again when you get your priorities straight.”

In the morning, Ben’s already left for work by the time she wakes and she can’t tell if he spent all night working on the guest list or if he simply chose to sleep on the couch. But when she finds the updated list still cluttered with twenty of Snoke’s guests, she’s just angry enough to not care either way.

❄ ❄ ❄

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Rey can hear the sounds of Ben moving about in the kitchen, cleaning up after them and putting away the dishes. When the apartment finally falls silent, she squeezes her eyes shut and tells herself this is it, this is the moment he packs up and leaves without even a goodbye–

But then he shuffles past her slightly-ajar door, and not two minutes later she hears him turn on the TV and settle into Finn’s creaky old couch.

It looks like he’s planning to stay for a while, then – which is more than she could say of him during their last few months together, Rey grudgingly reminds herself. She’s spent too much time since that day wondering if maybe she’d overreacted, if things had still been manageable or salvageable, only to remember how awful it had been to feel alone around the one person who’d promised her she’d never be alone again. And sure, she’s lonely now too, lonelier than ever before maybe, but somehow it doesn’t hurt as bad, knowing that she’s choosing to be lonely rather than allowing herself to be forgotten and abandoned again while Ben slaves away at work.

Only… he doesn’t do that anymore, it seems.

With a cry of frustration, Rey puts an end to her thoughts going in circles by reaching for her phone for the first time since she was so rudely woken up by her unexpected ghost of Christmas past. She scoffs when she finds a flurry of texts from Finn and a handful from Poe as well, the earliest of which is timestamped just ten minutes after they were supposed to leave the apartment.

Finn: Okay, please don’t kill me but

Finn: It’s Christmas, peanut. I couldn’t let you spend it sick AND alone

Finn: Also Poe maaaybe still meets up with him sometimes and maaaybe let it slip that you aren’t feeling well and we won’t be around for a few days

Poe: IT WASN'T MY IDEA

Finn: And… I have to be honest, peanut

Finn: We all know how much you’re hurting

Finn: And Poe says he’s hurting too

Finn: Enough that the both of us thought maybe…

Poe: Okay fine maybe it was, but it’s a shared idea.

Poe: With Finn.

Poe: He needs to take AT LEAST 50% of the blame

Finn: Anyway that’s not the point

Finn: Just… please let him help? For me

Finn: I’m just worried about you, that’s all

Finn: We can talk about the rest when I get back

Finn: Love you, peanut

Rey… god, Rey doesn’t know what to feel or think or say. She knows they mean well, knows they only acted out of love and concern for her, but… a little warning would have been nice. And what were they even thinking, letting Ben ambush her like that? Oh sure, she believes he’s been hurting too, isn’t so blinded by anger or her own pain that she’d deny him his, but he was the one who ruined everything, he was the one who picked Snoke over her, who watched her walk away without even trying to stop her, who gave up after barely two weeks of trying to call and text and communicate through their friends.

Ben has known all along exactly what he needed to do to fix things, and it’s still taken him six months to do so. Even if he were to quit his job and tell Snoke to go shove his head up his ass, it would be too little, too late at this point… right?

“Don’t even think about it,” she mutters out loud, forcing herself to concentrate on the here and now instead of what could have been and what could be. The here and now is Finn’s desperate, pleading, well-intentioned texts waiting for a reply, a reply that Rey decides she’s not quite up to giving him just yet. She’s too soft-hearted to snap at him, but too hurt and betrayed to let him off the hook just yet. Besides, she doesn’t want to be held accountable for whatever she says in her feverish state.

So Rey does what any other person in need of a distraction would do: she scrolls through Instagram and likes a bunch of photos of all her friends spending the holidays with loved ones. And when that’s done, she goes through her messages and writes back to a dozen holiday wishes. And when those are handled, she taps on the Facebook app in an act of sheer boredom and desperation… and promptly regrets it.

Because the first thing she sees is Facebook’s oh-so-helpful reminder that exactly one year ago today, she’d posted a picture of her and Ben spending their first Christmas Eve together as an engaged couple.

Her phone is sent sailing across the bed, landing on her pillow with a thankfully soft thump. Rey pulls her knees up to her chest and curls into herself, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths until the moment has passed, until her tears recede, until the white-hot pain fades back into the constant, dull ache she’s grown used to.

And then, like the masochist she is, she reaches under her bed for a photo album.

❄ ❄ ❄

With only four months left before the wedding and everyone’s schedule growing increasingly packed due to a variety of work and personal commitments, the wedding party takes to having the occasional marathon planning session at Leia’s place, during which they typically knock a good chunk of planning and preparations out in one afternoon.

Their second marathon session revolves around the venue, and Leia starts by happily announcing that they’ve indeed managed to secure the Amidala Gazebo and its surroundings for October 17th. Despite the fact that the entire botanical garden itself is named and was built in honor of Ben’s grandmother, it’s popular enough that Leia had to pull some strings to make this happen. Now that it’s a done deal though, everyone is smiling and clapping and cheering in celebration – everyone except Ben.

“Ben?” Re calls quietly, hoping not to attract attention from the others. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, just…” He makes the mistake of speaking at a normal volume, and suddenly the room falls silent as everyone turns to the two of them. “Does it have to be October 17th?” Ben asks the room at large, only to be met with blank looks.

It would make for a funny sight, especially since even Poe seems to have been shocked into silence, but Rey can’t quite pause to appreciate the moment as a familiar wave of dread begins to swell. “I mean…” she begins calmly, evenly, trying her best to give Ben the benefit of the doubt even though a part of her already knows. “Since that’s the date we told everyone to save, I’d say yes, it does?”

“It’s just,” Ben stops and darts his gaze to his left, and that’s when Rey realizes he’s had his phone right next to him all along, keeping tabs on work even on a Sunday, even as she sits right next to him trying to get his opinion on lighting options for the venue.

The wave of dread pulls Rey under, ushering in a familiar sinking sensation in her stomach that threatens to turn into nausea. “It’s just, Pryde is flying in that weekend for a meeting, and Snoke has me running point on the…” Ben trails off, finally reading the room or maybe catching sight of the stricken look Rey knows she’s wearing.

He reaches for her hand and gives her a reassuring smile. “It’s fine, forget it. Don’t worry about it, I’ll just get everything done in the morning and then rush over. The ceremony starts at four, right?”

And the worst part is, he actually looks like he’s trying his best, actually looks like he thinks this is okay.

Rey snatches her hand back while everyone else remains deadly silent.

“Rey?” Ben asks, the smile on his face faltering.

She takes a deep breath. “Are you seriously telling me,” Rey says quietly, biting off each word with deadly precision, “that you intend to go to work on the day of our wedding?”

“It’s just a half-day, sweetheart,” he says, and someone – Finn, maybe, or Poe – sucks in a sharp breath at him doubling down on this. Neither of them turn to see who it is, though, trapped together in a brewing storm that separates them from the others. “Don’t worry, I’ll be on time, maybe even fifteen minutes early–”

So he’s planning to leave her and his family and her friends to manage his work guests while he’s off handling even more work, and then waltz in maybe fifteen minutes before their wedding, and then spend the evening networking with clients.

“I’m done,” Rey announces as she stands up, looking around to see everyone else graciously pretending to be staring at their phones or their hands or their laps. “I’m fucking done,” she decides, and walks away.

“Rey!” Ben calls after her, and promptly gives chase. “Sweetheart, calm down, we can talk about this, I know weddings are stressful but–”

She whirls around so fast she nearly knocks into him, hot on her heels. “Not the wedding,” she snaps, because how is it possible that he still can’t see what’s happening here, what he’s doing to them?

What he’s already done to them, Rey realizes with a wave of quiet resignation as everything comes crashing down on her, every cancelled date and lonely night and entire weeks away at a time when they should be closer than ever–

“Not the wedding, Ben,” she says again, softer this time, though she can’t tell if her voice is calm or just small, weak, broken at the thought that… that… “Everything. All of it. I’m just… I’m done, Ben.”

And even after everything, she takes no pleasure in seeing the hurt she’s been carrying around on the inside for months finally reflected in his eyes.

“Rey…” he whispers, taking a step back as if her words have him reeling. The way he’s looking at her… god, it’s like she’s just taken a knife to his heart.

She wavers then, just for a moment, tells herself that maybe it’s not too late, maybe now he’ll finally understand what a mess they’ve gotten themselves into and work with her to fix it–

Their moment of silence is broken not by an offer of peace, but the Imperial March. It’s coming from Ben’s phone, which she realizes now is in his pocket, which he’d found the time to pick up even in his haste to go after her, which even now he automatically reaches for before he realizes what he’s doing just in time to stop.

The ominous tune plays on, Snoke’s custom ringtone for summoning his loyal servant.

Rey would know; she was the one to set it. She sees the way Ben’s fingers twitch, the way his entire frame is tense with the need, the instinct to respond to Snoke’s call, and gives him a small, sad smile. “I’ve been telling you for months to get your priorities straight,” she reminds him gently, too tired to summon any real energy or fight within her, too sad to wrestle with what she already knows is a predetermined outcome. “Moment of truth, Ben.”

The music finally stops then… only to start again seconds later. And this time, the siren call proves too strong for Ben to overcome. “Just a minute, Rey,” he pleads, looking her in the eye even as he pulls his phone out. “It’ll be just a minute, sweetheart, I’ll tell him to call back later–”

She’s already walking away.

“Rey, wait, Rey!”

And she doesn’t turn back to see if he follows, doesn’t even need to. Because the music stops and his voice replaces it almost immediately.

“Sir, I’m sorry but now is not a good– Oh. I understand. Yes, I’ll be there right away–”

The first wave of tears hit her then, as he lets her walk away without a fight, as he picks someone else over her again and again and again.

“What the fuck, man?” she hears Finn growl even as Ben continues to placate his boss rather than her, and seconds later her best friend is the one who comes after her, who drives her away, who lets her cry on his shoulder in the botanical garden where she and Ben will no longer be getting married.

❄ ❄ ❄

“Rey, can I get you more–”

It’s her fault, really, for not shutting the door. She’d just wanted to be able to keep tabs on him, to know what he was doing and when he was leaving, and so Rey had pushed the door almost all of the way closed instead of shutting and locking it behind her like she should have.

Now it swings open under Ben’s fist, only to reveal her curled up in bed with tear-streaked cheeks as she relives the better parts of their relationship.

The album had been an engagement gift from Leia, filled with candids their friends and family had taken over the years, instances when their love had shined so brightly the people around them were compelled to capture the moment in time.

“Rey,” Ben sighs once he realizes what he’s looking at, and she’s getting so sick of hearing him say her name in that pained voice when once upon a time he only ever said her name with a smile. He rocks forward almost instinctively, stops and slows himself down to hesitantly move closer as she admits in a defeated whisper–

“I can’t do this anymore, Ben.”

He stops cold, five feet of distance between them yet so much more. “I’m sorry,” Ben says, looking at his feet. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have– I knew coming here wouldn’t change things, I’m not here to pressure you into anything, I swear, I just… I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you to spend the holidays alone–”

“You left me alone a long time ago,” Rey points out – not accusatorily, not angrily, simply… a statement of fact, gentled by her resignation and acceptance and old hurt. He still flinches though, as if after all these months it’s somehow news to him that he broke his promise.

“All the times I had to show up to our friends’ places on my own because Snoke called you in,” she points out, because he deserves to know what he did wrong, because he needs to know what he did wrong if they’re– Rey stops there, doesn’t let her silly hopes get ahead of herself. “All the nights our bed was too big and too cold without you while you worked late. All the days I spent alone in the home we were supposed to share. Ben, you promised–”

She hadn’t planned on breaking down like this, hadn’t expected those memories to still hold so much power over her long after they’d done their damage. But her voice breaks, and her vision blurs, and a single sob rips past her lips as Ben closes the distance between them to pull her into his arms.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry, if I could do it all again, if I could change everything so that I never hurt you–”

Rey shakes her head, long past the stage of if and maybe, long past dwelling in circles and hypotheticals and daydreams. There’s no going back, she sees that now, but maybe, just maybe… there could be a way forward.

“I just…” She wipes away her tears and takes a deep breath, looks him in the eye when she asks, “I just want to know why, Ben. Why did you choose work over me? Why wasn’t I enough?”

And he knows, he knows exactly what it means for her to have to ask that, exactly what it means for him to have made her feel that way, because in the blink of an eye Ben is crying too. “Rey, no. You’re… you’ve always been enough, sweetheart. Always. Fuck, you’re more than enough, you’re too good for me, always have been. I’m just this huge fucking disaster of a human being with nothing to offer you, but I thought maybe… maybe if I made something of myself, maybe if I worked hard enough so I could give you everything… then maybe, maybe I would finally be good enough for you.”

Rey doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream at the fact that they’ve wasted all this time, gone through all this hurt, just because… god, they really are perfect for each other, aren’t they, the two lonely, broken kids forever thinking they aren’t worthy of each other, forever worrying that they’re not enough?

“Ben,” she says and laughs and cries, “Ben, you idiot.”

He freezes. “What?”

“You idiot,” Rey says again, and can’t hide the odd mix of despair and affection in her voice this time. “You’ve always been enough for me. You filled my life with love, you gave me a home, you promised me a future and a family. Ben, you already gave me everything I ever wanted.”

Ben stares at her for the longest moment, blinking at her like she’s just told him the earth is flat. “You… but I… that would mean…”

“You were enough,” she tells him with a nod. “That was enough, Ben.”

She watches as he closes his eyes, as realization gives way to regret gives way to grief gives way to…

When Ben opens his eyes, there’s the slightest spark of hope in them. “Rey, do you think maybe… I mean, would you… Could it be enough again? Just us?” he asks haltingly, hesitantly.

After months of waking up in tears in this very bed, chasing after dreams so cruelly ripped away, it takes Rey a moment to realize that they’ve actually found their way to this point. A moment’s pause, though, is all it takes for Ben’s eyes to grow dull again as he lets her go and stands to leave. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… I don’t deserve a second chance, I know–”

Rey panics and reaches for his hand, yanks him back to her with what little strength she can muster from her heavy limbs. “I can’t do this anymore, Ben,” she tells him again, and watches as the fog in his eyes finally lifts. “I can’t be apart from you anymore. And that doesn’t mean I’ve completely forgiven you, doesn’t mean I’m not still sad and hurt and mad, but… but…”

But she’d rather be sad and hurt and mad with him than on her own, rather cry into his shoulder than her pillow, rather fix what they broke together than forge a new path alone.

And somehow, Ben sees that. “Rey,” he says, clutching both her hands as he drops down to his knees. “Sweetheart, I know I don’t deserve a second chance. But you deserve absolutely everything in life, and if you let me I’ll spend the rest of our lives giving you anything you want.”

His plea reminds her so much of his proposal, of his promise to give her everything in the world. But she’d never wanted everything, had she?

Rey hadn’t known the difference then but she knows better now, knows what they need to move forward. “All I want,” she tells Ben carefully, pointedly, “is you and us and our life together. That’s all I want, Ben. Nothing else.”

“Then that’s what you’ll have,” Ben promises her, all earnest eyes and sincere words, “and nothing else.”

It’s a good enough restart, Rey supposes, to a story that was never supposed to end anyway. “Good,” she says with a grin, and watches as a smile lights up his face. “Now get up here,” she commands with a tug at his hands, “because everything hurts too much for me to get down to you.”

The smile falls off Ben’s face immediately. “Wait, shit, I should’ve asked– are you on cold meds? Is this all for real, or should we talk again later, or–”

“Still an idiot,” Rey mutters with a smile as she leans down to silence him with a kiss.

“Your idiot, though,” Ben whispers between kisses, and all feels right with the world again.

. . .

Just a little past sunrise on December 27th, Finn and Poe cautiously tiptoe into their darkened apartment in the hopes of avoiding Rey’s wrath. Judging from the lack of communication they’ve had with both Rey and Ben in the past few days, their plan might not have worked out as well as they’d hoped.

Finn can only hope Rey will forgive them for their meddling before the year is up.

As terrified of his best friend as he is, he still makes a dutiful stop by her room to make sure that her fever really has broken as Ben had claimed in his single Christmas Day text to Poe. He cautiously twists her doorknob, slowly eases the creaky door open, and blinks a few times to make sure that his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Poe whispers into his ear as he sneaks up on him, and Finn can only smile in response as a sleeping Rey shifts in Ben’s arms, the two of them still dozing with slight smiles on their faces as the winter sunlight bounces off a familiar ring on Rey’s finger.

#reylo #reyben #rey/ben solo #rey/kylo ren #kylo ren/rey #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #my fics #fic archive #fic: brand new start

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