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"So this is the latest report, just came in an hour ago," Poe says, tossing a datapad haphazardly on the table, "and they're telling us mop-up on Exegol is going to take at least two weeks. Kinda weird, to be able to let things stretch out for that long. Two weeks ago, we didn't even know Exegol existed."
Poe gets this strange undertone in his voice whenever he mentions Exegol these days. Sometimes it's accompanied by a side-eyed glance at Rey, like the one he's giving her now. Rey pretends she doesn't notice it, all her attention on the glass of Trandoshan ale in front of her. Poe and Finn barely asked her any questions about what happened to here there on the planet, in the Emperor's throne room, whether just because they respected her privacy as their friend, or maybe she just looked more traumatized than she knew when she finally dragged Luke's X-wing back to Ajan Kloss (after a brief stop elsewhere that is just one of the many things she's not telling them).
"You know you can tell them if you like," Ben whispers from across the galaxy. She can feel his fingertips brushing her arm and she shivers, hoping her friends will think she's only affected by the chill of the ale (and the crystal-clear frozen water in the glass that keeps it so cold, beautiful yet scarcely heeded by so many who take it for granted). She makes sure Poe and Finn aren't looking—heads drawn together as they lean over one of the many datapads that the leaders of the Resistance need to read urgently—and shakes her head slowly. Unless Poe and Finn finally decide to ask her, she's going to assume that they're avoiding the question on purpose, and so she's going to do what they obviously want and avoid the question too.
After all, up until the Emperor showed up a week ago, Kylo Ren had been their primary enemy: and yet his name hasn't been mentioned in Rey's hearing one single time since she got back. That can't be a coincidence. Poe and Finn have to know that she doesn't want them to ask about him. The question is whether they think he's dead, maybe even killed by Rey's own hand, guilt weighing her down for having had to kill her mentor's son, filling her with memories too painful to ever wish to speak of them—or whether they're avoiding the question because they've guessed that Ben Solo isn't quite as dead as the galaxy thinks he is, and maybe they've figured out that the amount of time it took her to reach Ajan Kloss from Exegol would have allowed just enough time for a detour elsewhere in the Unknown Regions, say maybe to Ahch-To. Maybe they even suspect...but no, they couldn't know about the kissing, could they?
Rey presses her glass of ale against her face as she feels her cheeks start to burn, but she reaches out for the memory all the same: the way she'd seized Ben's face and pressed her mouth to his, desperate to touch him, to reassure herself they were both alive. She can feel Ben smiling at the other end of the bond, somewhere behind her and lightyears away at the same time, and he pushes the memory of another kiss into her mind—this one much slower, the very last one they'd shared right before she left him on Ahch-To, all alone but safe. He'd been the one to initiate the kiss that time: he'd stepped towards her so carefully, and they'd both known he shouldn't be walking when he was still so badly injured and neither of them strong enough to heal it, but it was hard for Rey to remember much of anything when Ben was staring at her with eyes so wide and warm. She'd let him wrap his arms around her one last time, slowly and gently, as if they had all the time in the galaxy, and by the time his lips had finally brushed hers, all she could think of was how much she wanted to stay there forever.
But she couldn't stay, and so she'd pulled away, and she'd let him give her a hand up into the X-wing even though they both knew she was fully capable of climbing into it herself. And now she's here on Ajan Kloss with all of her friends, every single person but one in her life that she cares about, and all she can think of is how much she wants to be away again. But if she had disappeared at the same time as Kylo Ren, people might have come looking. And besides, the galaxy needs her. They're forming a new government here, and that's not easy (as Poe has ranted at length most evenings, and tonight's conversation will probably devolve in that direction too after another couple of glasses of ale), and the last Jedi will be indispensable for that process.
The last Jedi. It's a very lonely title, no matter how many voices from the past she hears in her head. Nobody here can really understand what that means, to be the last Jedi. There's only one person alive who could begin to understand what that's like, and he's halfway across the galaxy.
Ben can hear her train of thought, and laces his fingers through hers, his mind pressing against hers until their thoughts come together into a single heartbeat of you're not alone—not alone—not alone. It's nice, having him there with her, even though Rey feels guilty that he's stuck on a storm-tossed island with nothing better to do than follow her around in the bond and touch her once in a while.
"There are also Jedi texts to read," Ben says with a light laugh. "My uncle has never been known for his organizational skills, and he obviously didn't change that while he was here. I went through all of the huts and found a couple of books that you'll have to come retrieve sometime. But maybe I don't want to be reading, I'd rather be following you around and touching you once in a while. Or all the time."
"Rey, come on, what do you think?" Finn is asking her a question, and Rey has absolutely no idea what the topic is. She looks up at him and blinks a couple of times, trying to cast back over her memory of the last few seconds and figure out what he'd been saying, but the only thing she can remember is the heat of Ben's fingers against hers despite all the distance between them.
She sets her glass down and jumps up without directly replying to Finn. "I need to go meditate," she says. "Well, train. In the jungle." At least one benefit to being the last Jedi is that there's nobody who knows which weird stuff is really important Jedi stuff and which is just her being weird because she has a super-secret maybe-boyfriend sharing her thoughts.
"What, at this time of night?"
"Yes, now. It's a Jedi thing, sorry. We can talk about this more tomorrow, okay?"
"Yeah, sure," Poe says, refilling his glass. He's giving her that side-eye again, and that probably means she isn't going to be able to keep Ben a secret forever, but at least her secret's safe for now.
Rey checks that her lightsaber is secure at her belt, then runs deeper into the jungle that surrounds their camp. No matter how quickly she covers the ground with long loping strides, and no matter how much Ben holds still (his injured leg is only just able to take his weight, and he has a terrible limp whenever he walks, that makes Rey wince whenever she sees it no matter how much he tries to hide his pain and tuck it away from the bond), still they find themselves close together, never again to be separated.
Once she has gone far enough into the jungle that the living Force around her only warns her of a few birds and reptiles—most of them already sleeping even though it really isn't that late—and no sentient beings any closer than the camp that she just left, then she finally allows herself to be less careful about keeping her biggest secret. She turns and faces Ben, who is standing still in front of her. She can sense the sound of waves through the bond, but she can't sense what he's looking at there on Ahch-To because the only thing that seems to be filling his vision is her face. He thinks her eyes are pretty, she senses through the bond: rich and warm and wise, and it's strange because she's never thought that her eyes were anything special but as she sees them through Ben's eyes she can almost see all those things in herself, and the drab brown of her eyes suddenly becomes one of the most beautiful colors in the entire galaxy.
She reaches out, and lets herself finally run her fingertips over his arm the same way that he had touched her earlier. He places his hand over hers and lets her move it as she wishes, back and forth almost aimlessly, just enjoying the warmth of skin against skin, feeling as real as if they were both here on this moon, as if she hadn't had to leave him all alone.
"I'm not alone," Ben says fondly, pulling their linked hands to a stop. "You know I'm not."
Rey smiles up at him. "Yes, I know."
"So are you really going to train in the middle of the night in the middle of the jungle, or was that an excuse to get away from your friends?"
"It's been nearly a week since I held a lightsaber," Rey says. "I'm worried I'm getting rusty."
Ben laughs. "Rey, you bested me the very first time you held a lightsaber. I don't think you need to worry about getting rusty."
"Still"—with one last squeeze to Ben's arm, Rey takes a step back from him and ignites her lightsaber, holding it horizontally in front of her in a ready stance she'd read about in one of the ancient texts—"better safe than sorry, don't you think?"
Ben smiles slightly and reaches out with his off hand: after a moment, his mother's lightsaber appears in it, summoned from wherever he'd left it. He ignites the blue blade (still standing casually, blade extended out to his side nothing like any ready stance Rey has ever seen but she knows he can still bring it to bear fast enough if he needs to) but holds back, weight shifting back and forth between his injured leg and his good one, but not stepping any closer. "Are you sure the lightsaber won't be visible through the bond?"
"There's nobody around to see it," Rey assures him. She can sense that he has more concerns that he wants to raise, but their time here is limited and she doesn't want to waste it on his recently developed predilection for caution. "Defend yourself," she says, and rushes him.
Ben's fighting style has changed completely since he turned away from the dark. He no longer feels like he's trying to hide within himself, to manufacture a rage that could never be a match for the inner fire that burns in both of them now. He's just as strong as before, but there's a lightness to his movements now. Even as she charges him, he ducks underneath her blade, swerving his body down and to the side without even needing to reposition his injured leg, then brings his own blade up to parry hers while he comes out of the roll and regains his full height, using Rey's momentum against her to pull her to a stand-still, their blades still locked and humming between them. Rey disengages her blade, stepping to the side and bringing it up from beneath, and this time he shifts his weight onto this good leg and once again lets himself drop down and around to redirect Rey's stroke.
They're as evenly matched as they've ever been, and it's like a dance: blades moving towards each other and then away again and again, and their bodies doing the same. Rey can let go of the Resistance with all of its tragic past and all of their fears for the future, and she can focus only on the present. And in the present, she is not alone, she never has to fear being alone ever again. And there is no need to speak, because he can already hear everything that is in her heart, just as she can his, and that is how she knows that he wishes her back on Ahch-To just as much as she does. But in the meantime, what they have here is more than she ever dreamed of, and far and away enough to satisfy her.
One last time, their blades lock, and they stand so close together that the humming plasma is the only thing separating them. Even those few inches seem too far, and so Rey deactivates her lightsaber, and Ben follows suit. She reaches out to him, and thousands of lightyears are spanned in an instant as her thumb brushes his cheek. His hands land on her waist, and he pulls her closer. "I miss you," he whispers against her neck, and it's nothing she didn't already know but the words only make her cling to him tighter.
"I'll come back soon enough," she whispers. She can feel him debating whether to say something else, and so she settles the question by lacing her fingers through his hair and tipping his head towards hers. "Be with me."
He kisses her finally then, and it is like every time they have kissed before: time slips away, and she knows without a doubt that she could stay like this forever.
She won't, not today, but it's okay because then they'll have tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. So really, they do have forever, and she can't wait to taste it.