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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, every Force-sensitive felt her birth.
Maz Kanata focused her thick lenses and squinted as if it would somehow enable her to see the unseen. In all her long centuries, in the rise and fall of empires, this was something new. Light burrowed into the Force like a seed, and the Force embraced it with the nurturing dark of a womb.
Master Luke Skywalker asked his students at the Jedi Praxeum if they felt it, this new light wrapped in dark. There were eager nods and a thorough discussion of what such a phenomenon in the Force could mean. At ten years old and the latest to join their ranks, Ben Solo refused to participate and only observed with keen eyes and flushed ears. The light that bloomed into being behind his ribs and pulsed in time with his heart, white-hot as a star and beautiful as a rose, was too intimate to describe and too precious to share.
Leia Organa Solo, Princess and Senator, brushed a kiss to her husband’s jaw and sighed into the gloom of the Millennium Falcon’s cabin. Han mumbled in his sleep and tugged her tighter under the shelter of his arm. Ben was going to be okay. Her heart broke to leave him behind—her precocious son with his gentle soul and volatile temper—even if he was with her brother. But just now, with the way the light flared in the Force, she knew by instinct or the intuition borne of a mother’s love that, no matter Ben’s path, all would be well in the end.
Deep in the Unknown Regions, Emperor Palpatine raged. How could this be? How could bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh be born with so much light when she was destined to reign from his throne as the next Sith Empress? Though it cost him dear, he employed dark arts to peer into the shadowed future: his granddaughter would be his undoing. But her parents had already stolen her away and fled—more the fools, they, to think they could elude him. He appointed an assassin, Ochi of Bestoon, to execute them all, and as a failsafe, he cursed the girl. He would find another heir.
***
On a transport bound for Jakku, three Force-spirits huddled in a pale blue halo over the infant asleep in her pod. Her parents slumbered nearby, exhausted from their fear and flight.
“Let’s get on with it,” Qui-Gon whispered. “We only have a moment before the council discovers us.”
“Can you blame them?” Obi-Wan cast him a glare. “Considering what happened before? And this time we know her lineage—we can’t blame ignorance.”
“Hey, I’m right here.” Anakin elbowed between his elders in mock-offense, well aware they didn’t regret training him. “She may be the daughter of darkness, but look at her—so full of light.” He couldn’t quite place it, but there was something familiar in the spectrum of her radiance.
“This is no time to bicker like old hens.” Qui-Gon rested two shimmering fingers on the baby’s shoulder. “Daughter of darkness, I bless you with courage to meet every challenge and with compassion that you might always extend kindness and understanding to those you encounter.”
Obi-Wan touched his fingers to her other shoulder. “Daughter of darkness, I bless you with fortitude that you will never lose hope and with goodness that you may always persevere in the light.”
A tendril of dark Force snaked between them and Obi-Wan jolted back. “What is that?”
Qui-Gon leaned closer to examine the smoky coils. “I can’t make it out, but it almost looks like—”
“Sith runes.” Anakin shuddered even as slashing symbols formed over the child. Why did the dirty work always fall to him, just because he was youngest and trained in the dark side? “A parting gift from her grandpa, no doubt. ‘In the twilight of her twentieth year, the daughter of darkness will prick her finger on a briar and die.’”
The trio attacked the curse by every means within their power, but even the formidable might of their combined knowledge was insufficient to break it.
“It’s bound by their blood,” Anakin said. “We can no more undo the curse than we can alter her genes.”
“Then I guess we must root out every briar in the galaxy,” Obi-Wan observed and, at his companions’ incredulous faces, raised his eyebrows. “Is that not a worthy quest?”
Qui-Gon stroked his phantom beard. “It’s up to Ani’s blessing now.”
Anakin considered the sleeping child, the sweet bow of her mouth, her button nose and dainty lashes. He’d never held his baby girl. Maybe he’d have a great-granddaughter someday, so long as Ben eschewed Jedi celibacy. Ben. That was it. That’s where he’d seen this same light—in Ben. It’s what made her beam so bright, even from within her innate darkness. Somehow the child’s light was interwoven with his grandson’s. How was this possible?
Anakin flicked a glance at his mentors. If they’d noticed, they would have mentioned it. But the union was subtle enough that even he wouldn’t have noticed, had he not invested years trying—and failing—to reach Ben and block that vile creature, Snoke, from ravaging his mind.
An idea came to him. He wasn’t interfering, not really, because the Force had already bound them. It was an elegant solution, at once the highest blessing he could bestow on the girl, the best hope for his grandson, and the deepest outrage for Darth Sidious.
He traced ephemeral fingers across her untroubled forehead. “Daughter of darkness, I bless you with true love, with a love so strong and steadfast it will surmount every obstacle—even death itself.”
“What kind of blessing is that?” Qui-Gon groused. “A Jedi should be free from attachments.”
Who ever said the girl would be a Jedi? Anakin shrugged one shoulder in feigned nonchalance. “This way, should she prick her finger on a briar, she’ll fall into a death-sleep until her true love awakens her.”
“You’re still a hopeless romantic.” Obi-Wan folded his arms and tucked his hands in opposite sleeves. “You know that, right?”
Anakin only smirked.
***
Amidst the desert sands, tempered by sun and wind, by loneliness and privation, the daughter of darkness grew into a young woman of courage, compassion, goodness and light. Her name was Rey. Her Force-spirit godfathers watched over her, though the council issued grave warnings against upsetting balance in the Force and barred any further intervention.
When her compassion for a lost astromech droid eventually led her to a lost boy in a mask, her courage rose in the face of fear and her goodness in the face of evil. In time, she came to see not a monster but a man, twisted and scarred, forged like her in the fires of loss. She saw not Kylo Ren but Ben Solo.
Her eyes were opened to the light still burning in his depths, and her hope rose against all odds. The Force had bound them soul to soul, and love awoke to bind them heart to heart. But it was not to be. When Ben offered his hand, Rey did not accept. For the son of light would not forfeit his darkness, nor the daughter of dark her light.
***
Every Force-sensitive in the galaxy felt her fall.
On an immortal plane in the Force, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan squabbled and censured their old padawan. Of all with whom Rey could have fallen in love, it had to be the young dark lord intent on bending the galaxy to his will. Just look at him—how would she ever awaken from her death-sleep now? Anakin chided his old Masters. “Where’s your faith?” And in a bout of compassion, or maybe unwillingness to abide their grousing, he revealed the union he’d witnessed at her birth. Obi-Wan stared at Qui-Gon. “I wonder, could they be—?” Qui-Gon’s mouth puckered beneath his moustache. “Highly improbable.” Anakin looked between them in suspense. “What? Tell me.”
Maz closed her eyes and shook her head. The light that had blazed into existence with so much hope and promise succumbed to painful travail with the dark.
The Knights of Ren abruptly halted their sparring. Weapons dangled from their hands as they stood gasping. Their leader, Kylo Ren, toppled to the training mat with a mighty crash. His gloved fingers scrabbled at his helmet and shucked it off to reveal dark eyes blown wide and distant. He choked and wheezed. His massive frame convulsed, his limbs twitched and stilled, and he fell insensate.
Leia—widow and Resistance general—pressed a palm over her heart and dropped to her chair. Agony lanced through her chest. She’d suffered the same twice before, once when Han died and again when her brother became one with the Force. This felt like Ben. She reached for her son across the lightyears, but a black hole yawned where he ought to be. Tears swelled in her eyes and constricted her throat. His loss was inevitable; it had only been a question of when. She’d deceived herself indulging hope these last years. She inhaled and exhaled deep breaths to rein in her emotions. The Resistance remained in dire straits, flitting from base to base, after the First Order annihilated them at Crait. She could not afford to grieve.
Finn—former Stormtrooper FN-2187 and defector to the Resistance—felt it even as he watched it happen. Felt it as if he’d depressurized too quickly and stumbled through a wave of dizziness.
Deep in the Unknown Regions, Emperor Palpatine crowed and invoked the Sith Eternal’s praises. “The wait is nearly over, my faithful,” he proclaimed. “The great light has been snuffed out and the curse is fulfilled.”
***
Leia’s lingering sense of dread solidified when Finn hurried to her the instant the Falcon landed. Anxiety rushed and garbled his words. All she could make out was something had gone terribly wrong with their mission to Kashyyyk. And with Rey.
Chewie strode down the ramp as if the unconscious girl in his arms were no burden at all.
Leia’s heart sank.
They settled Rey on a cot, summoned a medic, and awaited the assessment. She was not alive. There was no pulse, no breath, no brain activity. No autonomic functions. Yet neither did she display the usual signs of death.
Finn told what he could, which was little enough. The Wookiees served Kelsen fruits while they negotiated a covert alliance with the Resistance. Rey’s enthusiasm in licking the sweet juice from her hands amused and gratified their hosts, who then invited her to pick as many of the violet globes as she wished. As best Finn could tell, she pricked her finger on the thorn of a Kelsen-briar and collapsed unconscious, never to wake again.
Although Rey had not completed her Jedi training, Leia suspected it was only a matter of time before she would become one with the Force as had those who preceded her. Maz agreed.
They took turns keeping watch. At first the vigil was limited to the inner few. But as days stretched into weeks, the rotations spread through the Resistance.
Beaumont Kin, professor of esoteric history, and Threepio, master of languages, poured over the ancient Jedi texts Rey had rescued from Ahch-To. They scoured relentlessly for answers, but none were to be found.
Rey did not decay nor did she fade. Her stasis remained a mystery.
***
When Kylo woke in the Steadfast’s sterile, gleaming medbay, he clutched his chest. He must have suffered a heart attack, all those shocks from Snoke’s Force-lightning finally catching up with him. But the med-droids assured him that he remained in peak physical health.
He stumbled to his quarters, half-blinded by agony, and crumpled to the floor as soon as the door hissed shut behind him. The pain was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. All his dark side training was defenseless as a forest before an avalanche.
He awakened cold and stiff on the hard surface and dragged his body into the sleeper. He slept and woke, forced himself to eat the food that was delivered, and slept again. His dreams were a black abyss of nothingness. In this at least was mercy, that he was not haunted by nightmares.
His mind was a jumbled fog. Most days he barely managed to dress. He sat for long hours in his diamond-shaped viewport to the stars, certain an answer hid in their vast depths. He lost all cognizance of time.
His wound was a ragged, gaping hole at the center of his being. It consumed him. He could think of nothing else. Yet he could not examine it without blacking out from unendurable pain. He couldn’t understand what had happened. He could hardly recall his own name. He existed, floating from one cycle to the next, a specter among the liminal shadows.
***
Over a meal in the mess, Rose Tico told a fairy tale, her favorite as a child because the heroine shared her name. A princess was cursed to prick her finger on a needle, and she fell into a sleep like death for one hundred years. (Wasn’t it curious that something similar had happened to Rey?) But only the kiss of a prince could break the enchantment. Kaydel Connix shared another version of the same tale, except the princess was named Aurora and it was true love’s kiss that woke her.
The story caught on the collective imagination and gave the beleaguered Resistance a focus for their hopes.
Rey would have been mortified were she aware of the countless lips pressed to her forehead, cheeks, and mouth on the chance she would draw breath and stir. But she remained lost in her endless sleep and neither blushed nor moved.
Finn was devastated when he summoned the courage to kiss her and nothing changed. He was her first and best friend. Surely no one could love Rey with a devotion or purity exceeding his.
In the secrecy of night, even Leia tried, closing her eyes and rallying the Force to pour all her mother’s love where her lips met that sweet, young brow.
But nothing rekindled Rey’s light. Her bright flame in the Force remained extinguished.
***
During one of Kylo’s extended meditations, the stars whispered to him. Their white-hot light blazed from stark, cold space. The bright in the beautiful dark. And he remembered. His counterpart in the Force. The brave scavenger and almost Jedi. The missing piece to his soul. Rey.
He groped for the cord that bound them, for that place where she ought to be, and nearly fell unconscious. He retched, hung his head between his knees, and dragged in slow breaths. The wound. All at once he understood. Rey had been torn from him, their inexplicable bond severed. It would have been less painful to have his heart stripped from his chest.
Kylo fell into grief like he fell into the black abyss of sleep. He lost himself in mourning. What was his life without her light burning in his soul? Because the light that bloomed behind his ribs as a padawan, that had merged and mingled with his own until they were indistinguishable—the same light he could never succeed in quenching—that had been unceremoniously ripped from him, was her light. He had lived with the consolation of her warmth, never knowing it was her, since he was a child. And now she was gone.
The realization of his dreams, the vision of ruling the galaxy with her by his side, everything for which he had striven since he committed himself to the dark side collapsed like a tower built from a Sabacc deck. He regretted his final choice in Snoke’s throne room raining fire, regretted the thousand choices leading up to that moment. Regretted his father most of all, because if any choice prevented his return, it was that one—the unforgivable act. If only he had left when Rey had asked, had taken her hand and left it all behind. What was any aspiration without her? She defined hope.
He couldn’t remain, not with the First Order. The Steadfast felt too small. Constricting. The need to be free compelled him. He didn’t know where he would go or what he would do, but he had to leave. His wound would never heal, not without Rey to weave her light with his, but perhaps he could find some way to halt the hemorrhage.
Stealing a First Order ship and slinking away wasn’t difficult, not for a Force-user like Kylo Ren. He vanished with the few belongings that mattered to him.
A different man entirely emerged from the first promising spaceport. Ben Solo, flush with untraceable credits and dressed like a smuggler, piloted his nondescript freighter into hyperspace. He never looked back.
***
The weeks stretched into months, and the harried Resistance was obliged to resume their hunt for allies and asylum. Rey was not forgotten, but grim reality overshadowed all else.
The First Order grew increasingly aggressive under the regime of Supreme Leader Pryde and rumors that he served a maleficent power hidden in the Unknown Regions. No one knew for certain what fate befell the masked monster, Kylo Ren, but whispers of treachery and assassination filtered across the galaxy.
Leia grieved for her son as she grieved for Rey. Was it coincidence that the two strongest Force-users alive should fall at the same time? She doubted it, but what could she do? The Resistance demanded all her energy, and she was too harassed to devote more than a passing thought in the quiet before she fell into restive slumber.
Life swirled around Rey where she lay on her bier like the island Kylo Ren once glimpsed in her dreams, rocky and green and unmoved by the pounding surf or ocean currents.
***
It took months and all his credits. Months of trading work for information. Months of asking questions, searching minds, hunting ancient lore, and following fruitless leads. But Ben Solo knew something about perseverance and found what he sought: a name and a location. The name was “dyad,” a term so rare it had not been spoken aloud for a thousand generations. And the location was Ajan Kloss, current refuge for the Resistance band perpetually on the run. Only his mother with all her experience in strategy and politics and her instinctive use of the Force could hide so well.
Ben knew he had succeeded at last when he received clearance to land and guided his tattered ship through the rainforest moon’s atmosphere.
If anyone knew about Rey, the Resistance would. If she was missing, he would search for her. If she was kidnapped or imprisoned, he would rescue her. If she was dead, he would—he would have to find some way to go on without her. Or without the hope of her, for it was that hope which had propelled him these past months. If he could only know what happened, then perhaps he might find peace, if not healing.
Leia waited alone where his boarding ramp met the ground, a tiny figure crowned with Alderaanian mourning braids. It never occurred to him that she might grieve for more than Han.
Ben knew what she would see. The nerf-leather jacket swinging wide at his chest. The bold stripe on his trousers that tucked into his boots. The blaster holstered at his thigh. He looked like his father.
He stopped before her.
“Ben.” She reached up to clasp his stubbled face between her cool palms.
“Mom.” He dropped to his knees on the thick bed of moldering vegetation and bowed his head beneath her chin. He wrapped long arms around her small frame and let her hold him as if he were still a boy. Let her relief and anger, sorrow and delight blend with his in the Force.
Let the tears slip down his cheeks until they bloomed on her brown fatigues like roses left to wither on the bush.
***
Ben shortened his strides to keep pace with his mother as they wove among the terminals arranged under a concealing net. There would be time later for the painful truths that had driven them apart. For now, he borrowed a page from his mother’s brusque demeanor; he’d learned from a master. “I need to know what happened to Rey.”
“Rey?” She flashed narrowed eyes at him. Then her mouth settled into a stern line and she shook her head. “She died on a mission to Kashyyyk some months ago.”
Ben stumbled, the wound threatening to consume him anew. He took a deep breath and exhaled the pain.
“I felt it, when she fell.” It was a wild understatement but true enough. And now he must face what he already knew: Rey was dead.
“Many felt it.” Leia reached for his hand, then stopped herself when he flinched. He craved her touch, but it was still so new. “She never mentioned you were acquainted. Apart from the battlefield, that is.”
“We were—” His throat bobbed. He didn’t blame Rey for keeping their—what should he call it, relationship?—a secret. How much should he say? “We had a connection in the Force. A bond.” His mother could make of that what she would. She’d shared a bond with her brother after all.
“I didn’t know.” Her brow creased, though whether from sympathy or at the implication her Jedi had been consorting with the one-time enemy, he couldn’t decide. “Chewie brought her body back, but she hasn’t faded into the Force yet, if you’d like to say good-bye.”
He blinked, all thought flew from his mind, and his heart nearly stuttered to a stop. “She hasn’t—?”
“Come.” Her hand caught his this time and she tugged. “She’s just here.”
Before he could process his mother’s words, he was dragged to the side of a bier. A snowy linen covered the inert form. Leia reached to unveil her, but Ben arrested her arm.
“Let me.” He hated how his voice quavered. “Please.”
His mother stepped back—and the look she gave him—Ben felt as if she could see into his very soul. Maybe she could. She squeezed his upper arm.
“It’s good to have you home, son. I’ll be on the Tantive”—she nodded toward the old Organa vessel towering under the rainforest’s canopy like a castle behind a defensive thicket—“if you need anything.”
***
Ben settled his bulk onto the little bedside stool. He could do this. He breathed in the Force to quiet the throbbing in his wound and untucked the shroud with utmost care.
Rey was revealed inch by inch. Her chestnut hair was braided in Alderaanian style, symbolizing either hope or courage, he couldn’t remember which. His mother’s doing for sure. Her pale forehead remained unlined and at peace. Dusky eyelashes fanned across her cheeks, the freckles almost faded into nonexistence. And the sweet line of her mouth—how many times had he caused those lips to purse or pinch or pull into a grimace? Not once had she smiled for him.
He withdrew the sheet farther, exposing the graceful sweep of her neck, her delicate collarbones. The unexpected elegance of her white wrappings crossed over the gentle swell of her breasts. She appeared tranquil. Motionless. The vibrant energy that had animated even her slightest movements was absent. Blank. It was disconcerting to sit in her presence yet feel a void in the Force that mirrored the void in his soul.
His grandfather’s lightsaber rested beneath her folded hands.
He reached, his palm hovering above her, hesitant. Would she mind? She had come to him on the Supremacy believing he could change. Isn’t that what he’d done? She insisted on calling him Ben long before he dispensed with Kylo Ren. Names aside, she’d seen him for who he was and not for the mask he wore. What would she think of him now?
Yes, he decided. She would welcome his touch.
“Rey,” he choked out as his larger hand covered both of hers. “I’m sorry. For everything. Forgive me.”
Her skin was cool but not cold, soft but not clammy. Nothing sparked. No visions flared. Vitality didn’t sizzle through his veins, not like that first time their fingers met across the lightyears separating them. The vision he’d seen then—of them standing together—would never be realized.
Ben waited, studying her immobile features, feeling his heart pump in his chest, hoping against hope that she would wake. Somehow. She was lovely in repose. Were it not for the gaping hole in his soul and in the Force, he could almost believe her asleep. Almost.
But she would dissolve in a cloud of light and become one with the Force. He didn’t want to bid her farewell. His throat tightened. If only there were something he could do. And he could, couldn’t he? Hadn’t he trained as a Jedi all those years ago? He’d never been adept with Force-healing, but he could try. The price would be his life in exchange for hers, but Rey was more than worth the sacrifice.
Ben laid his ear on her chest where he might catch the first beat of her heart before his ceased. Was it mercy that held her here, awaiting this moment? If he succeeded, it would justify his miserable existence. Excitement quivered in his throat, a living, foreign thing after months of intimacy with sorrow. He closed his eyes and poured his life force into her.
Or tried to, anyway. But she was a sealed vessel. It was like trying to fill a capped bottle. He couldn’t bear it. Was he to be denied even this last chance at redemption, when he could finally choose the good?
***
Ben lifted his head from Rey’s chest and stroked his fingers across her braided hair.
“You were right to hope,” he said, recalling her eagerness on the tense elevator ride to Snoke’s throne room, how she leaned toward him with such confidence. “I’m sorry I turned too late to be there when you needed me.”
She didn’t answer.
He trailed his fingertips down the angle of her cheek, slow and gentle. Cupped her jaw in his palm. He could kiss her. He’d wanted to kiss her in life. Did he dare to kiss her in death?
Would she want this? He hadn’t missed how her eyes dropped to his mouth, there in the lift, when she offered to help him. He’d bitten out a harsh reply because she made him feel things—soft things—when he needed to steel himself against Snoke. And hadn’t his heart flooded with her longing at the end, her eyes glossy with tears and mouth trembling to match his own? He’d felt how it required all her willpower to refuse his hand. What stopped her then was no longer an impediment.
He dragged the rough pad of his thumb across the supple rim of her mouth, even that small contact enough to send tingles speeding to his heart. Her lips pulled to the side and sprang back as if blood still circulated. One kiss.
Just once. He’d regret it forever if he didn’t.
He bent over her, pulse humming like a lightsaber within his veins. A drop of moisture fell and glistened on her sun-dappled cheek. He swiped it away. Nothing should mar her countenance, not even his tears. Someday he would weep for them both, for all they had lost, for all that might have been.
“Rey. Sweetheart,” he whispered against her mouth. “I love you. I will always love you.”
He pressed his lips to hers.
He lowered his eyelids to sear the feel of her into his memory, to capture each sensation on his sensitive skin. Smooth as shimmersilk. Sweet as a briar rose. Soft and yielding. And wholly unresponsive. It was all wrong. Gooseflesh shivered up his arms and raced down his spine, prickled along his thighs. The burning in his wound climbed to unbearable heights, and his head swam.
It felt like she inhaled, like she drew the air straight from his lungs.
Ben jerked away.
Her eyelids fluttered up on hazel irises and she stared at him.
He stared right back. It was too wondrous to be true. All the grief, all the longing, all the sorrow and despair conspired to trick his tormented mind. He’d finally gone mad and broken completely.
***
Every Force-sensitive in the galaxy felt the dyad awaken.
If Rey and Ben hadn’t been quite so engrossed, they might have seen the triumvirate of Force-spirits studying them. Obi-Wan tilted his head and knit his eyebrows. “I thought restoring the dyad would bring balance, but the Force is still canting to the dark side.” “It’s Palpatine,” Qui-Gon said. “They’ll need to defeat him first.” Then he nodded with sudden insight. “And they alone have the power to do so. Forgive me, Anakin, for questioning your methods. As always, you were several steps ahead.” The younger man wasn’t even tempted to flaunt an “I told you so.” His heart was too full with the unfolding vision of true love. And great-grandchildren.
Maz shoved her goggles up her forehead and her ancient eyes creased in a beatific smile. “At last.” The agonizing labor was over. Like a mother doting over her newborn, the Force beamed upon this magnificent fusion of light and dark it had birthed.
The Knights of Ren looked at one another where they lounged on the Night Buzzard en route to the secret Sith stronghold on Exegol. “Did you feel that?” Vicrul asked. “Yeah,” Trudgen answered, “that felt like Lord Ren and the scavenger.” “Nah,” Cardo said as he removed his helmet, “that wasn’t Kylo—that was trademark Ben Solo.” “Which means he’s returned to the light,” Ap’lek whispered. Kuruk remained silent. Ushar just shook his head. “We’re karked.”
In the state conference chamber aboard the Tantive IV, Leia cried out in joy and clasped both palms over her heart. She’d felt this before, when she learned Luke was her twin, when Ben was born, when Han—clueless hero that he was—finally admitted he loved her. She shook her head with a private smile and muttered, “I know,” though no one could see whom she addressed. She sprang from her seat with renewed strength and hurried from her family’s legacy ship, cane forgotten and trailing a column of concerned colleagues like a comet’s tail.
Finn felt it like a sun bursting behind his eyes.
Deep in the Unknown Regions, Emperor Palpatine howled and his skeletal fingers shriveled. “No! I cursed her,” he shrieked. “The traitor. After all I did for him—the last Skywalker. I would have given him everything, an entire empire. Just like his grandfather, the ungrateful boy, to repay me with this!” A susurration swept through the Sith Eternal gathered in the shadowed chamber and recalled him to his audience. “Fear not, my faithful,” he cackled. “I have foreseen it. They shall come and we shall show them true power.”
But his bravado was a lie, even if his words were true. For the first time in his long, wretched existence, Darth Sidious was afraid. Very afraid.
***
Ben closed his mouth, terrified to speak, terrified to break the enchantment and dispel the miraculous sight before him. It didn’t matter if he was hallucinating. He would hold onto the fantasy as long as he could.
Rey pushed to her elbows, sending the heritage lightsaber tumbling into the dirt. Those pretty pink lips he’d just touched with his own tipped toward a smile and she blinked. “Ben?”
Her voice— her voice was soft as a breath, rich with wonder. If this were real, if this were not some product of his fevered imagination, wouldn’t she be weak from atrophied muscles and her voice raspy from disuse? But she seemed as fresh as if she’d just awakened from a night’s rest.
“Where—” Her eyes flitted across their surroundings, answering her own question. She shoved to sitting and twisted to face him, her legs swinging down to the ground. “Are you really here? This isn’t—this isn’t one of our Force-connections?”
Something thickened in his throat and snagged on his voice. He could only nod and shake his head and smile.
The smile broadened on her face in return—tremulous and disbelieving—and it did things. She beamed, glorious as the stars, and everything inside him turned molten. Even if she were an illusion, the rush of heat pooling in his stomach was real enough.
She scanned between his eyes. “The conflict—it’s gone. And the light—Ben, you turned.”
That’s right. The last time she’d been with him, he was still Kylo Ren, begging for her to join him and clinging madly to the dark side, to his shadowed dream that they’d reign together. It felt like a lifetime ago. He’d entirely misinterpreted that vision. Maybe she’d done the same. Because it wasn’t about being dark or light; they were both and always would be. No, the vision was about being together.
He trapped her fingers when they reached for his face and kissed her callouses, before turning his head and rasping his cheek into the bowl of her palm. Her light flowed into him, familiar and warm, a comfort and balm, spilling into the abyss of his wound. He was finally convinced.
This was real. She was real. She wasn’t going anywhere and neither was he.
“Sweetheart,” he said, his cheek still nestled in her palm. “I turned for you.” Except he hadn’t turned for her—she was already gone at that point. “Or rather, thanks to you.”
“Ben. I’m so happy.” She brought her other hand up to cradle his opposite cheek, her thumb sliding through the moisture beneath his eye. Parallel lines tracked across her forehead. “Why are you—what’s wrong?”
“When you”—he swallowed hard—“when you fell, it tore a hole in my soul, and I thought—I couldn’t—” He couldn’t bring himself to speak it. That her death nearly destroyed him. If he tried, he’d—he’d start sobbing or something equally undignified.
Then somehow she was straddling his lap, and it yanked him from the remembered grief that had threatened to tow him under. His arms were full of Rey, his only thought to catalog every contact between their bodies—how her firm thighs pushed into the crease of his, how her arms braced on his shoulders, how her apple-scented breath heated his face.
He hardly knew where to rest his hands. They traced down her back, thumbs mapping the shape of her sides—her breathing hitched—until his palms came to rest on the flare of her hips. So close. So real. So much. The little stool, too small for him alone, creaked beneath their combined weight. Did she have any idea what this was doing to him?
But he didn’t have time to indulge that thought either because her arms tightened around his neck. He yielded to her pressure and buried his face in the curve of her shoulder. Her mind threaded into his, spooled out like beautiful ribbons of light, her thoughts the gentlest caress, and she combed through his memories with a tenderness that melted his soul.
Their months of separation passed in moments. In shared reflection. In timeless union. His agony and despair. His rebirth as Ben Solo and relentless quest to find her. His discovery of their dyad and the beautiful promise inherent in two who were made to be one. And all the while, her quiet rest on a green, rocky isle battered by waves, waiting for him.
I’m sorry I left you alone, she said.
And he acknowledged the truth, that it had taken her loss to shock him awake. But she was never truly gone.
It only felt that way, he said. Nothing can separate us. Not even death. He burrowed deeper into the solace of her neck. Her skin smelled like sunshine, not the desert heat that sapped life from everything it scorched, but golden light in a garden, coaxing leaves to unfurl and buds to open. She smelled like home.
When the light bloomed again behind his ribs and pulsed in time with his heart, white-hot as a star and beautiful as a rose, she felt it happen just the same as it did in his memory as a boy.
The first time must have been the moment you were born, he said. And he looked with her across an empty expanse, the desolation of her past. You were never alone.
Nor were you, she said with understanding and a trace of awe. It only felt that way.
He sensed their union renewed, closer and deeper than it had ever been before, as if they inhabited each other’s hearts. Their light mingled and merged until it was indistinguishable. Their dark blended and blurred. He saw it weave around and within them, braided in an intricate design, the dark and the bright and the soul of a dyad.
She saw it too. What does it mean?
He knew the pattern of this braid. It means ‘whole, complete, and beloved.’ But of all that could be said, the last was most important.
My beloved.
The words resounded in the Force with brilliant warmth and echoed with fiery dark. Maybe it was him and maybe it was her, but the starting point made no difference in an endless circle.
He lifted his head from the hollow of her neck, trailed his nose past her jaw until he could nuzzle her own. Her smile stretched against his cheek and her fingers wove into his hair to tug at his crown.
“Rey,” he groaned, his voice low and resonant.
He closed his arms around her back and pulled her flush against him, until her breasts compressed into his chest and her heart pounded beside his and their ribs expanded with shared breath, as if he could join their bodies as they had their souls. The very blood in his veins burned with love and joy and life.
“You kissed me,” she murmured, her accusation sweet on his skin, “while I was sleeping.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind.” He hoped she was too near to see how his ears flamed, though surely she could sense his embarrassment. “Do I need to apologize?”
Her silvery laugh caressed his ear as she nipped at his earlobe—so much for not noticing. “No apologies, my love, just payback.”
His pulse shifted into a gear he didn’t know existed.
This time there was nothing passive or one-sided in how her mouth moved, in how she parted his lips and deepened their kiss. His heart threaded with hers, and they were lost to love steadfast and sure, stronger than death, deeper than despair, brighter than the brightest star.
***
Rose covered her mouth with both hands to stifle the ecstatic cry that mounted in her throat.
Finn stood gaping beside her, even though he was the one who’d hauled her from the hangar in the first place, shouting for all to hear as they raced across the base, “Rey’s awake! Rey’s awake!”
After a moment’s scrutiny, Finn wrinkled his nose. “I do not need to see this,” he said and then added, “Wait, doesn’t he look like—”
General Organa silenced him with a severe eyebrow—and then winked up at Chewbacca when he ululated something in Shryiiwook. “It may be a little soon to tease your nephew,” she said, “but I’m sure Han would appreciate the sentiment.”
“Now that right there,” Kaydel elbowed Rose’s far side with a self-satisfied smirk and never once looked away from the passionate scene playing out before them. “I told you Sleeping Beauty was awakened by true love’s kiss. I would like—just once in my life—to be kissed like that.”
“I’d be glad to show you how it’s done,” Poe offered with a waggle of his dark brow. At Kaydel’s quelling look, he mumbled something about little Benji having all the luck, being such a kriffing nerf-herder from the time they were boys, and he really ought to speak with Rey about her taste in men.
“Language, Commander,” General Organa said, though her rebuke was half-hearted at best.
Threepio remarked it had been one-hundred and sixty-seven days since Rey fell into the death-sleep and three thousand two-hundred and eighty-five days since he’d last seen Master Ben, and wasn’t it good, Artoo, to have her awake and him home? But the odds of that happening—oh dear, oh dear—he might have fried a circuit attempting to calculate what was beyond reckoning.
When it was clear Ben and Rey wouldn’t be surfacing for air anytime soon, Chewbacca spread his broad, shaggy arms to shepherd the crowd of gawkers away. Maz and General Organa flanked him on either side, their diminutive stature belied by their indisputable authority in ordering the onlookers to allow the couple their privacy.
“But you never told me your son was a prince.” Rose sighed dreamily as she shuffled backward. “She really is Little Briar-Rose, and you know what that means—”
General Organa leveled a last affectionate—and perhaps nostalgic—gaze over her shoulder at the tangle of limbs and lips that was her son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law, if she were any judge.
“It means,” Rose said with conviction and no small measure of delight, “they’re going to live happily ever after.”