I am SO, so sorry for not updating in a couple months. This was...extremely hard to pick back up after TROS and I can't thank you all enough for being so patient with me. I wish there was some fluff in this but, there isn't. It's very Rey-centric and no Reylo in this one, unfortunately. But I promise, we're almost there!

Leaving the Silencer without a plan as to how she'd make it to Jakku wasn't the smartest choice she had made, but Rey had been fortunate when she found a fisherman who was going there that night in Batuu's harbor. Returning to the island where her parents had abandoned her years ago made her feel as if she had been living inside an hourglass for the last couple of months.

How could she have been so happy one minute, only to have it all slip through her fingers the next? It was a terrible dream. It had to have been.

A few hours later, though, when she arrived at the front door of the shack Rey had called home, reality showed her that it wasn't a dream she was living in, but a nightmare. A nightmare she wouldn't be waking from anytime soon. She cried for the majority of the night until sleep claimed her just hours before dawn.

Rising at daybreak, she prowled the beach for anything worth food and supplies at the market, instead of going to Maz's as usual. Maz would have had questions. Questions she would have wanted answered. Explaining to the old woman why she had come back was inevitable, and all Rey wanted to do for now was simply forget.

Thank God the universe seemed to have been on her side for once.

She slid into that routine again the following days afterward. Looking for objects buried in sand anchored her thoughts, curbed the need to ask herself why her parents threw her to the gutters. She'd gone over that with herself many times before, the outcome shouldn't have surprised her.

Yet, hearing the truth had managed to undo every stitch on her heart. And no one was to blame but herself for foolishly thinking that her parents could still come back for her when she'd known it wouldn't happen.

So what did that mean for her and Ben? Did her subconscious feed her lies about him as well? What if the compass led her to him so she could discover the truth about her parents—to give her peace knowing they were gone forever, to let her finally move forward in life. Nothing more, nothing less.

Rey blenched.

She knew that wasn't true. Whatever this was - this feeling cemented deep in her heart - it felt real, like a part of her was missing. Ben had cared about her, despite her imperfections, despite the fact she was an orphan, a nobody. Life without him was...empty. And painfully hollow.

She missed feeling whole, missed not being alone; even though being alone was what she had wanted. She missed him. His eyes. His voice—she missed that rumble in his voice more than words could describe.

It had only been four days since she left the Silencer and without Ben beside her, four days on Jakku felt more like a hundred. And her loneliness never ceased to worsen whenever the moon began its evening ascent.

Sometimes, even the brightest and starriest skies weren't able to keep darkness completely away.

Lounging on a cot in front of her shanty's window, her locket singing its lullaby on the windowsill, Rey mulled over Ben's words to her. How impossible it was to ignore the hurt in his eyes, the desperation in his words, as he begged her to stay.

How could he have wanted her still when she'd called him weak just minutes before? Held him responsible for the Stardust's casualties when that ire should have been directed at Hux.

Always, always blaming Ben. Always barging in with guns ablazing, and never asking questions beforehand.

Her eyes watered, blurring the skeleton key that her forefingers and thumbs held pinched in between. A key that appeared as an ordinary chest key to anyone else but unlocked something meaningful to Rey. Something valuable but priceless, and more precious than all the diamonds and rubies that money could buy in the world. And she wondered, briefly, where his heart was hidden.

Days. Weeks. Whatever measure of time had passed before they reunited again, would Ben still feel she owned his heart? Perceived her as his true north as she did him?

Fuck. So much for not thinking, Rey. Bravo.

She counted her losses on sleep and watched the sunrise the next morning. Come time for her mid-afternoon stroll to the market, Rey was running solely on fumes. Her brain comatose, she hardly registered the second she nudged shoulders with a man she'd presumed dead after the Supremacy's assault on the Silencer.

"Rey!"

Behind her, the voice shouted her name again, louder this time, and she froze mid-stride in the middle of the walkway. The last person she had expected to see when she threw a glance over her shoulder was Finn, a naval uniform replacing shoddy pirate garb.

"Finn?" she gasped, wondering if he was merely an apparition of her head games until he grew closer. "Oh, my God it is you!" Relieved to see him alive, she pulled Finn into a warm embrace. "What are you doing here?"

"I was gonna ask you the same thing!" He backed up a step from Rey, eyes bulging and perceiving her as he would a ghost. "I thought you were dead until I heard you've been on the Silencer all this time. But, since you're here and not there, what the hell happened? He didn't hurt you, did he?"

Put off momentarily by the fusillade of questions, Rey blinked in response. "What? N-No! No, I swear it wasn't like that at all. Ben never tried to hurt me. He's…He's not that monster, Finn. Not anymore," she frowned, arms folding over her chest. Impossible as it seemed, she needed him to understand that Ben Solo wasn't the evil pirate captain that legends had depicted. "That man who gave his life to save his father's, I've seen him. He's still Ben Solo and he's...he's wonderful."

He considered her words, brows quirking. "You sure there isn't more you want to tell me? If I didn't know any better, I'd say it almost sounds like you fell for this guy while you were there."

There it was. Again. The assumption that Rey was in love with Ben. First Zorii had called her out on her feelings for him, and now Finn. If her feelings really were that transparent on the outside, perhaps she did love him?

"Holy shit," Finn snorted, taken aback. "I'd actually meant it as a joke. But you are in love with him, aren't you?"

Too bad she didn't trust her heart's intuition enough to confirm or deny it.

"It's a little more complicated than that," she sighed, avoiding the question. In all fairness, the marketplace wasn't exactly the ideal setting for discussing her relationship with the pirate captain, either. Too many busybodies lurking about and word tended to spread like wildfire here, and farfetched rumors concerning herself and Ben was the last thing she wanted to deal with now. "To tell you the truth, a lot has happened since we saw each other last," she went on, lowering her voice a notch. "A lot. I do have feelings for him, yes. What they are and where I should put them, I'm still trying to figure out."

Finn grunted, indicating he wasn't buying her story. Okay. Fine. Whatever. Not like denial was written on her forehead or anything, right? She rolled her eyes.

Somewhere, she overheard women cackling. Squealing pigs and hens clucking. Steel hammering steel from inside a blacksmith's shop around the corner. It was a full, awkward moment's pause that granted her opportunity to remark on the apparent makeover Finn had received before he could press any farther.

"Anyhow, I see you ditched the pirate look. Does Hux know you're here?" she prodded, wrinkling her nose. Maybe it was more likely that Finn hadn't been on the Supremacy during the attack than she thought?

He shrugged. "Not that I'm aware of, no. Took him a few days to even notice you onboard. But I can wager that my being gone is the least of his cares right now."

"True," she scoffed, curiously tilting her head. "Of all the islands you could have gone to then, what made you come here?"

Finn bit his bottom lip. "A few weeks ago, Hux came here and met with this elderly woman named Maz. He's been looking for a compass that can point him to Solo's heart, and I think he's figured out where it is."

Rey's mouth went dry. "Maz Kanata, the pawnshop owner here?" Finn nodded, and she instantly felt sick to her stomach. If Hux suspected the compass was in her possession, then she was most definitely his prime target.

However, the rational part of her attempted to reason that Maz would never betray her—or Ben. For that, she was certain. Soothing the bristling hairs on her arms and neck, declaring otherwise, was another story. A storm was brewing, a storm irrelevant to the weather outside, and she couldn't pin how or when.

"There's more…" he winced. "I was with Hux that night and after he left, I made a choice. I saw some pretty messed up shit and I knew there was no way in hell that I could ever be like him. I wasn't going to help him, and the So—"

"I don't recall giving you permission to stand around and yack all afternoon, Big Deal," the gruff voice cut in rather brashly, startling Rey. Snapping her head, she glimpsed the naval commander joining them on her right. To her surprise, unlike other military officials she had passed every so often there, he acknowledged her with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it lopsided grin, then pointedly fixed his eyes on Finn. "Hope I didn't interrupt anything too important?'

Clearing his throat, Finn corrected his posture. "No, sir. I, uh—I was just heading to the fort before I ran into my...friend, here." Apologetic, his gaze flicked over to Rey. "I'll catch up with you later, okay?"

Nodding, she smiled at him weakly. While Finn quickly took his leave, the commander did not. In fact, for some reason, he quietly hung back, brows puckering towards the direction her friend had scuttled off to.

"I'm sorry if I caused him any trouble," she offered, and the commander looked at her, somewhat befuddled by her comment. "There was this...incident...a while back and I thought I'd never see him again. Then on top of it, the other day, I found out my family was killed after they left me stranded here years ago and I deeply hurt someone who I really care about as a result and it's like," she huffed, "everything in my life is suddenly falling apart."

Rey blinked, realizing she'd got a bit carried away in her musings. Eyes panning down to her boots, splotches of dried mud caked on their toes, she meant to apologize during those some-odd seconds of utter silence when the commander spoke.

"You got a name, kid?"

Lifting her gaze to the commander's, she found no judgment on his face. Just the impression he was someone who understood what it was to have suffered a tremendous loss. Someone well-versed in the terminal effects of war. His eyes, fatigued and sad. His smirk, catawampus and forced. Quirks that reminded her of Kylo Ren, before Ben Solo burst through those chips in his outer shell.

"I'm Rey," she responded softly. "Rey Turner."

Something changed in him, then. His smile vanished as if learning her name had obliterated every ember his soul had nourished. "You're Rey?" he rasped.

A pause. Furrowing her brows, Rey struggled to regain the use of her vocal cords. "You-You've heard of me?"

He nodded. "Your friend might have mentioned you once or twice. Periodically. Alright, you've done me a favor cause now I won't have to deal with him worrying over you every damn minute of the day." Rey couldn't help but snicker under her breath at his dry humor, and she murmured an apology for any grievances Finn had caused him. He snorted, though she could hardly deem it a laugh.

"Listen, Rey," he grimaced, pushing all prior lightness between them aside. Shifting on his soles, the commander brought his hands to his waist and took a sharp breath. "My wife and I...we were told that you saw our son."

Who this man was, precisely, didn't occur to her in that instant. Not until the dust had settled inside her brain did the significance behind his final two words click. Our son. Our son.

.

Han Solo. He was Admiral Han Solo. Ben Solo's father. And Rey, there was so much she needed to tell him.