Chapter Text
Three weeks had passed since the battle of Crait and very little had changed. The Resistance possessed two ships now instead of one, which was a heartfelt relief after days of sleeping on the floor of the Falcon and waiting in line to use the fresher. Rey knew it wasn’t fair to begrudge the survivors, but after three weeks of over-crowding, it was difficult not to.
Luke would have criticized her for the selfish thought, as if he had any right.
As soon as she had room to work again, Rey busied herself with repairs and improvements to the battered old ship. There was no denying it needed them, but there was no denying either—at least not to herself—that she was working to keep from thinking. Even the daunting task of repairing the Millennium Falcon had a limit, though, made narrower with their dwindling supplies, and she was left not with her usual sense of fulfillment after a job well done, but with restless, aimless emptiness.
For the first time in her life, something inside her had been complete, and now it wasn't, and it was so much harder to go back to the way she had been before.
For three weeks that felt three times as long, Rey had lived with a looming sense of uncertainty. There had been no sign to indicate whether the connection between herself and Ben Solo remained after Snoke's death. The thought was a nauseous worry-hope that robbed her of sleep and dulled her appetite. It left her listless and ill in a way that she had thought reserved for children—a way that she had felt only during those earliest days on Jakku, before hunger and hardship forced her to grow up.
He made her feel like a child again, and she could almost hate him for it.
When she had done all she could on the Falcon and been informed twice that nothing needed her attention on the new cruiser, she moved on to a more personal project. She could not mend Luke's lightsaber. One quick examination had made that clear, but she had a knack for mechanics, and she thought—she hoped—that if she took it apart, she could learn how to build her own. The crystal was broken in half, but her careful study of the internal mechanisms suggested that a crystal half the size would still be enough.
The project excited her and kept her head comfortably occupied right up until she sat down with a box of tools and all of her materials in front of her. It was... She knew where to begin, logically, but turning intent into action was surprisingly daunting. She sat on the floor and she stared at the pieces until she became angry with herself for wasting time. It wasn’t like her to be scared of experimental work, but this didn’t job feel like repairing ship components or rebuilding a trashed droid. She picked up a piece, put it back down, reached for a different one, changed her mind… and then she went to fetch Luke's books.
She had skimmed them a bit, but though the text was readable, it was an ancient dialect, taking minutes sometimes just to make sense of a phrase. As wordy and dry as the books were and as often as she doubled back to check her translations, she had made very little progress.
Two of them had diagrams, however, and she was sure she had seen something that looked like a lightsaber.
Flipping through the brittle pages, she longed for Luke's insight, as frustrating as the old codger had been. Leia had tried her best to explain the Jedi Order and the Force as she knew it, but she had little more to go on than her own instinct and childhood history lessons. Regardless, Rey spent as much time as she could with her, though Leia seemed always busy, forever talking or typing away at her desk, working herself to the brink of collapse when no one else had anything thing to do but wait.
Rey had asked Poe about their leader’s work, a bit timidly, and he had explained with the usual tone of reverence that Leia was composing and sending out coded messages, interviewing every remaining member of the Resistance for potential connections to resources, and most importantly, she was working to keep their spirits up. She was the princess who had watched her whole planet die and carried on to see the Empire fall. She was the General who kept the flame of the Resistance burning in the storm. Poe may have led them out of the deathtrap on Crait and Rey may have cemented her place as their hero with her timely show of the Force, but it would take more than either of those one-off displays before the Resistance could follow anyone the way they followed Leia.
So Rey read and took notes well past the start of the night cycle, aware that she needed to exhaust herself if she wanted to sleep at all. More than once, her thoughts would drift back to her old AT-AT home, to nights spent digging through a sand-worn droid's memory storage, or methodically working through the levels of her flight simulator. As little as she knew about the oldest version of the Jedi religion as described in her stolen books, she had one advantage; she was accustomed to slow, steady, patient learning. There had been so little else to occupy her time during those long, dreary nights on Jakku.
At least it hadn't all been a waste.
In spite of her best efforts to banish it, she laid down to bed with that bitterness. She had given up her youth for people who didn't want her. That was the long and short of it. That was what she was trying to come to terms with. She had thought herself grown up too fast, but it had been the act of a child to deny that truth. Worse still was the thought of how much longer she might have stayed had chance or the Force not stepped in. She wanted to think optimistically, to believe that she would have one day accepted the truth on her own, but she knew how easy it was to wait, to follow routines, to pretend for one more day—always one more day—that she was where she was meant to be.
Her chest ached with remembrance and she curled tight around it, reminding herself pitifully of a wounded sandcat. That hungry life was light-years away, but she was still going to bed empty inside.
Somewhere as she waited on the edge of sleep, Ben appeared.
So accustomed was she to seeing him in dreams that for too long as she lay in the near-darkness, she thought him only that. He was stretched out on his side, facing her as if they shared the same bed. She thought him to be sleeping too, but then his dark eyes opened and he blinked once, twice, slow and wary, studying her with that unbearable softness on his face. He seemed so childlike to her in those quiet moments—so full of wonder and patience, and that damnably familiar yearning.
Far too late for her liking, Rey's brain caught up with her eyes and a rush of alarm sent her bolting out of bed. He was gone in the same instant, a candle flame snuffed out by the breeze of her passing, but he had been there. She was sure of it. The air thrummed in the wake of the Force and she had her answer at last. Snoke was dead, but the connection lived on.
.
Leia was frustratingly unconcerned by the news. Rey had waited as long as she could stand, not wanting to disturb the General’s rest. Then she had left the Falcon docked with the larger ship and gone to see her, strung tight with anxiety and lack of sleep. Leia had only closed her eyes at the news, took a long breath, and offered Rey one of her strange, unhappy smiles. "You told me he can't see your surroundings. Is that still true?"
Just to be certain, Rey cast her gaze around the General's new office, noting only stark furnishings and smooth surfaces. Any compromising information was already out of sight. "I don't know. I think so. I couldn't see his."
"Then you're not a liability. Don't speak of our location or plans when you see him and it won’t be a problem."
“It is a problem." Leia’s dismissal made it sound too easy. Anger pressed at the back of Rey’s teeth and she ground them together to hold it in. When she felt like she could keep her voice level, she continued. "He's the leader of the First Order. I don't want to do this. I can't..."
"Are you afraid of him?" Leia asked her when Rey trailed off.
"No, I..." She exhaled, tried to force the tension out of her shoulders. "No."
"Are you afraid of yourself?"
Rey met and held Leia's gaze. It was the only answer she could bring herself to give.
"Rey..." Leia stood up, though it seemed to take an effort, and moved to a table in the corner with a kettle and a jar of powdered tea. With the steady, precise motions of someone performing a ritual or an well-practiced dance, she measured out the tea into two waiting cups and poured. "You've faced the darkness already. I trust you to know better… but f you find yourself slipping and you need to talk, come to me." She turned and handed Rey the hot drink as if it were the physical embodiment of her offer. "I wasn't there enough for him. I can try to be for you."
Reluctantly, not quite convinced, Rey nodded.
"And Rey," there was hesitation now, and eyes cast down on her own cup as she carried it back to her desk. "If you see him again, tell me." Unspoken were the words, ‘let me know how he is.’
It was a request that should have rang hopeful, but all Rey heard was grief.
.
Whatever had given Rey and Ben their three-week reprieve, it was over. She saw him again during her midday meal.
She had taken a tray of food to what was currently her work table to ruminate over the books while she ate. This time she felt the connection before she saw him, heard that sound without sound, and she didn't need to look up to know where he was standing.
She threw a fork at him.
He flinched, but only a little. "I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't a blaster shot."
she picked up Han's blaster and leveled it at his chest.
"Ah…" he said opaquely. "So you do want me dead."
He was using that tone of voice again, as if he could see right through her. She really would feel murderous if he didn’t stop. "Shut up."
"Like everyone else."
"Go away."
"You know I can't control this." It infuriated her the way he stood still, arms at his sides, feet planted. She couldn't read his intent. She couldn't tell whether he was planning to act or to wait. he reminded her of a wild predator at rest, not yet interested in fighting, but more than capable of it.
Exhaling sharply through her nose, she put the blaster down. "I thought Snoke was the one who connected us. He's dead. Why is this still happening?"
"Snoke lied."
"Then how do we make it stop?"
His expressive brown gaze rested on her face. She could feel it like a touch, soft while the rest of him was taut and stiff. "If this is what I think it is, we can't. Not now." His voice was as soft as his eyes, and touched deeper still.
She was too weak to hold up her own mask under the onslaught. Blinking, she averted her eyes. "What is it?"
"I don't know yet. I have more research to do, but..." His hand moved at his side, fingers closing as if to grasp something where there was only air. "There is something called a Force Bond. The Jedi and the Sith kept records of it. It can be broken, but I don't know how."
"So find out." She managed to raise her head again, armed with another saber-bright glare, but he was gone.
Rey’s chest squeezed and squeezed and wouldn't release, tied up in what felt like rusty razor wire. A knot was forming in her throat and her eyes stung. How could he have said that? How could he have still thought that she wanted him dead? After everything, how could he for one moment think that her feelings were so simple? Han hadn't wanted to kill him. Neither had Luke, even when he had thought he had to. Leia certainly didn't, and Rey...
She folded in on herself, pulling her feet up onto her seat and pressing her nose to her knees. Tears came with pathetic ease these days, embarrassing her.
She wanted him back.