…And now for some shameless fluff.

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It doesn't translate into words—something more like a gentle breath, the faintest awakening—but after three and a half days of deafening silence it is like a jolt of electricity. The next thing Ben notices is that he's looking down at the other people in the room—they're still seated around the table, frowning up at him with varying degrees of severity.

He can't speak; she's stirring, slowly coming back into consciousness, casting about and trying to remember.

"…it?"

The pilot is on his feet, frowning intensely. "Kylo, what is it?" he says, and Ben gets the sense he's saying it for a second time.

Ben glances briefly at—Finn. Her best friend. Before Ben can even say a word, the man is pushing out of his chair—"Rey's awake!" He trips over his own feet in his hurry to leave the room, almost landing flat on his face. Finn.

It's not his mind saying the name. Finn? Safe? Rey is frantic, remembering seeing the man take a hit.

Safe, Ben tells her. He sends her the mental image of the Stormtrooper tripping over himself and rushing from the room.

Hux is her next thought, still panic-tinged. Hux is—

Dead, Ben assures her. It's over.

A feeling of struggling. Can't move—

Med bay, Ben supplies, sending her an image of herself in the bacta tank when he last saw her not more than two hours ago.

And then Rey comes into full awareness—of him—and the connection slams shut.

Ben is one of the last to leave the meeting room, making quick work of the walk to where Rey is being treated. He tries her mental barrier once, twice, gently—but there's no budging the wall she's put up. Her room is swarming with people and he hears her voice—soft, a little creaky, laughing. The pilot and the Stormtrooper are crowded around her with about ten others, a med droid beeping gently in the background. Ben doesn't register anything they're saying, positioning himself so he can see Rey's face.

She's pale. Still bandaged in places—a shoulder, a forearm, a thigh. These are things he knows without having to look, details he'd memorized between meetings and curfew. These people—they saw how he stood with Rey in the battle that ended the First Order; yet all his movements are monitored as if he has allies anywhere else—as if he ever did.

Rey offers a weak smile to her friends, looking around the crowd of them—until she spots Ben in the back. Her eyes widen, just the slightest bit, and it is the Stormtrooper who glances sharply at Ben next. He has a low conversation with Rey as the pilot carries on about something else; soon, the doctor returns, announcing that the room must be cleared to check Rey's recovery.

The people around the bed begin to leave obediently, the Stormtrooper and the pilot among the last. The Stormtrooper gives Ben a significant look as he passes, one that says, You too, pal. Ben turns to follow them out, but Rey speaks softly—"Wait."

Ben whirls around.

"Not you, Finn," Rey adds, and Ben notes the other man still standing behind him, a storm on his face.

"Rey, with your injuries, Kylo Ren—"

"I can take care of myself," she says crisply, staring the other man down. In a moment, the door slides shut behind him.

Rey can't lift or turn her head much in the tank, but she catches the doctor's attention. "Will it be very long?"

"No, Madam Jedi," the doctor answers.

"Rey. And you'll give us some privacy after?"

"Yes, M—Rey."

The doctor begins her work and Rey settles back into the tank. Ben stands at the corner of the room as the doctor runs tests, poking and prodding and drawing samples as the droid scans Rey's injuries. Soon the doctor injects something into Rey's injured shoulder. The doctor massages the spot and Rey winces, but the moment passes before Ben can even open his mouth to object.

"She needs rest," the doctor says to Ben on her way out, turning back and giving Rey a significant look as well.

Ben clears his throat then, suddenly searching for his voice. "I won't keep her long," he promises, hating the thin tone that issues from his lips. It betrays how little he feels in control of the situation, how desperate he is to know what Rey is thinking.

She's closed the connection, so he can't be sure, but by now she should be remembering—

"Your back," Rey says softly. At first he hears it as "you're back," but the worry on her face reveals her meaning.

Ben moves closer, just beside the tank so she doesn't have to crane her neck to see him, feeling suddenly like this is déjà vu—if the tank were an escape pod, the ship somewhere else. "Half a day in a bacta tank," he shrugs, as if it is nothing. The blast he shielded her from was close-range, searing. He's glimpsed in the mirror where the skin is pink and ribboned, where even the latest advances in medical technology won't stop him from having another scar.

Rey purses her lips and studies him. Her expression isn't friendly and open as it was with her friends—there's something else going on in there as her eyes search his face. Ben pushes again on the barrier, just the slightest.

"Stop that," Rey scolds him quietly.

"I'm—so used to hearing you," Ben excuses himself, resting his hands on the edge of the tank. He tests his grip, unsure of what else to do, squeezing at the metal and glass with his fingers.

"It was your choice to join us?"

Ben knows the answer she wants. But he gives her the truth: "It was my choice to join you and you alone. Whatever else comes with it—I accept."

"Ben."

He lifts his eyes at his given name, and with a steady look she lets down the barrier.

When she spies Kylo Ren, apart from the action, she makes her way easily to him, striking down men as she goes. The mask—he's wearing the kriffing mask. As she moves toward him she wonders if he's a decoy, but even with all his shields up she can sense him through the force—it's him alright. Ren moves further out of the action, almost as if he's trying to avoid her, but she pushes forward until she has him cornered away from everyone else.

He shouts something at her, but she can't hear over the sounds of the chaos. Rey grits her teeth and charges.

Instead of moving to defend himself, Ren drops his weapons. Rey expects a trick, but she's nearly upon him and he remains passive, arms at his sides, palms open. For weeks he's been pushing at her barriers, trying to get back into her mind, trying to say something. She wouldn't let him. She assumed it was a trick. Now—

At the last moment she extinguishes her saber, but she can't stop her momentum. She crashes into him headlong and with an undignified oof he collapses onto the floor with her on top of him.

"What the hell was that?" Rey demands, grabbing a fistful of his tunic when the breath comes back into her.

"I'm not—" He moves his arm, is only half-successful. "Get this karking mask off me."

Rey helps him quickly, eager to her his unmodulated voice.

"I'm not fighting you anymore," Ren says when his face is exposed.

Rey is stunned by this admission. A moment passes as she gapes at him, both of their chests heaving from the exertion of battle. Ren—no, Ben—Ben's expression is the same as it was in the throne room, intense and pleading. Beneath his fierceness she sees the face of the man who sat with her over a crackling fire, who promised in soft tones that she wasn't alone.

These months and months of waiting, of hoping Ben Solo would make the right choice—the hardest thing was turning away from him when all she wanted was belonging. The longer her time dragged on with the Resistance, the more deeply she felt that, as a place, as a home, it was still imperfect. She needed to be with Force users. With the one Force user who understood as well as she did what it was to feel abandoned. The one Force user who felt a pull to both Dark and Light. The one Force user who wanted to give her the galaxy—who didn't understand it wasn't his to give. Who didn't understand it was never the galaxy that drew her to him.

"You said I was nothing," she accuses; her voice breaks and she realizes she's crying.

"I was wrong." He wipes at her tears with two fingers. "Rey. You're everything."

Shouts from behind her jolt her back to the reality of battle, and she scrambles to get off of him. He is slower to move; as he sits up, she offers him a hand up. "Fight with me, then."

Ben takes her hand as he stands, squeezing it once before letting go.

"I'm sorry," Rey says from the bacta tank, closing off the bond again.

Ben blinks to clear the memory, to see the woman in front of him. "Sorry?"

"I promised you wouldn't be alone, but I left you."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does." She meets his eyes. "It happened and it matters, just like it matters that you spent the better half of the last year trying to kill all of us."

"Not all of you," Ben corrects.

Rey gives him a sharp look, her jaw set—the expression says, Not good enough.

He isn't sure what to do now. Whatever he thought would happen when she woke up, this isn't it. Ben turns to leave, but Rey calls out to him again. "I could forgive you."

He looks back at her over his shoulder.

"Someday? I could forgive you. It's not—it's not hopeless." She sighs, licks her lips. "Could you forgive me?"

Ben isn't sure how to feel. He mimics her answer: "Someday."

Rey sighs again; her expression is one he can't read. They don't seem to be getting anywhere. Ben turns and reaches for the door.

"Wait, Ben—"

When he turns back this time she's struggling to sit up and against his better judgement he's rushing to push her back down, insisting, "You can't just do that, you're going to hurt yourself," with her insisting back, "Then help me, you nerf-herder." Soon Rey is more or less upright, bandages and wires still coming off her at strange angles, wincing from the pain in her shoulder.

Her hands go to his face, framing it, and he hadn't realized their faces where quite that close until she has him trapped. His breath comes in small, shallow puffs, barely daring to make a sound as if it would break some sort of spell. His mouth has fallen open of its own accord, shocked by the turn of events.

"I'm still angry with you," Rey hisses, and then she's pressing her lips against his, quick and firm. "I'm still—" She kisses him again, again, each time no more than a press of lips, and his eyes fall shut. "I don't forgive you yet," she mumbles before the kisses move from his mouth to his nose, his chin, his cheeks, his scar. The Force hums with every brush of her lips against his skin and Ben thinks he could live in this moment forever. Kisses land on the corners of his mouth, his eyelids. "I don't forgive you yet."

She opens the bond to him again and it's more than he could have dreamed of, the intensity of this thing she feels for him, the joy and relief and the thing he won't name because who is he, Ben Solo, father-killer, to have anyone who feels that for him ever again.

It's her turn to wipe the tears from his face.

He leans forward to rest his forehead against hers, and with more contact between their skin comes a new undercurrent like molten liquid. Rey desires him, intimate things she hasn't even experienced, and Ben's eyes fly open.

His passion cools when he sees her complexion, remembers she isn't healed. "You need to rest," he whispers, placing his hands over hers to remove them from his face. He slips an arm beneath her back to help her recline in the tank.

She bumps the wall with her elbow, yanking on some wires, wincing. "I'm still angry with you."

"I know," he soothes her, leaning in and pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her lips.

There's a sound of the door opening behind him but Ben lingers, leaving light kisses at the corners of Rey's mouth before turning to see who's there.

"You're supposed to be at—" The Stormtrooper stops midsentence, glancing between the two of them. His lip curls when his eyes land on Ben.

"Finn," Rey says sternly.

Ben gives him a cool look. "Yes. I'm coming."

"I'll go too."

"No you won't," the Stormtrooper says at the same time Ben says, "Absolutely not."

Rey moves like she's going to try to sit up again, and Ben stops her, holding her in. "What part of rest don't you understand?"

"The part where it says I can't do anything."

The Stormtrooper throws in his two cents. "That's basically the point?"

"Fine! Go! Go do—stupid man things, I don't know!"

Ben exchanges a look with the Stormtrooper.

"You with all your… hair… and karking… ears." Rey's words are slurring, her eyelids drooping, and before Ben can say another word the doctor returns to the room.

"That'll be the medication kicking in," the doctor explains. "Gentlemen, I have it from here. She'll come round in about six to eight hours and then you can see her again, hm?"

Ben follows the Stormtrooper out of the room and toward the meeting room they'd left some time ago. It's quiet in the hall save the sound of their footsteps.

"I'd threaten you on her behalf, but I guess that's—nothing new, coming from us."

It's a candid admission, and Ben glances at the other man out of the corner of his eye. "What'd you say your name was again?" His tone is casual, friendly, and he pays extra attention to the moment so he can recount it to Rey later, earn a measure of her forgiveness.

"Finn." Finn coughs awkwardly, in the way that Ben knows he's not really coughing. "Do you prefer… er, 'Kylo,' or—"

"Ben."

Finn looks at him in surprise before nodding once, as if in agreement. "Right. Ben."