**spoilers, although I hope you've all watched it by now**

A/N: Okay, so I watched Rise of Skywalker… and got inspired to write my first ever Star Wars fanfic because the end of the film made me so f***ing sad. Like, literally heartbroken. Is no one allowed to find love in the Star Wars universe nowadays? C'mon, Rogue One, Solo, now this? I just want one happy ending, okay! I mean, they're all still amazing movies, but is this too much to ask?

Ugh, sorry for the rant. Point is, I had to write a happy ending. It's not perfect but I've been sitting on it for like a month and need to just post it before I tweak it to death. Don't worry, there is a chapter two, and it will be posted within a few days of this one. Enjoy :)

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Ben dragged himself up out of the chasm, only to see Rey's body slumped lifelessly on the ground. His mind and soul protested loudly at the sight, and despite his injuries he limped and crawled his way to her side and rested his hand on her cold skin.

No, he thought desperately. This could not be the end.

He had heard the last of her fight with Palpatine as he pulled his shattered body out of the pit, but this was almost the worst outcome he could have imagined.

Above them, the Resistance was finishing off the fleet. The free peoples of the galaxy had won, but Ben could feel the Force, still crying out.

He had always been dangerously attuned to it. He'd felt it all his life, and while it had allowed the Dark side to influence him when he was young, now, sitting next to Rey, he felt all of the Light protesting her death along with him.

He gathered her up in his arms, closed his eyes and reached out. He was weak, but still he fed Rey a steady stream of the Force, begging it all the while: please, take mine, give it to her, please, please…

He felt it like a bolt of force-lightning when her heart began to sluggishly beat again. She did not stir, but her skin was flush with life, and Ben felt as overjoyed as if she had stood and danced an Endorian jig. He smiled and laughed weakly, ignoring the pain of his cracked and bruised ribs.

It was over, he thought. Any moment, and he'd fade into the Force, join his mother, his uncle, his grandfather –

But he didn't. He breathed another breath, and another. The Force had spared him. It was far more than he deserved, he knew.

"Thank you," he said quietly, and the Force gave a satisfied hum. He stared down at Rey, resting in his arms and wondered what he should do.

His plans had not gone much further than destroying Palpatine and ensuring Rey's survival, and now he had accomplished both of those things.

His parents were dead and his former empire demolished in the sky above him. He had nowhere to go, and he had not exactly made friends he could run to during his time with the New Order.

He stared up at the falling fleet of fiery Star Destroyers and wondered what in the galaxy he was supposed to do now.

As he watched, a ship broke away from the rest, making a long, calculated descent downwards.

He'd recognize the Falcon anywhere.

He knew he had to leave now. Kylo Ren was dead, but that would mean nothing to the Resistance. Perhaps his mother would have cared that her son was back, but no one else would show him mercy, except, perhaps… her.

But Ben was nowhere near optimistic enough to hope that she could get him absolution in the eyes of the entire galaxy, and he wouldn't put that task on her. She would take it on without him even asking, he was sure, but neither of them deserved the consequences.

He looked down at Rey one last time, and carefully shifted her off his lap. He rose slowly, and staggered away, mind focused on only on getting away before her friends arrived. He made it, barely, reaching an alcove in the rock and sliding to the ground just as several sets of footsteps (and the distinctive rolling noise of that damned BB-model droid) rushed into the throne room.

Slumped against the wall, he could not see her, but he heard her awaken, greet her friends – breathlessly, joyfully – and then ask, like a saber to his chest: "Did you see B – Kylo Ren?"

Their answers were all to the negative, of course, and then she spoke again.

"Oh," she said. "P-Palpatine threw him, but I hoped, maybe…"

It was the last he heard before his exhaustion overwhelmed him, blackness sweeping down like an impenetrable curtain.

When he awoke and made his way out at last, on broken bones and a fractured heart, his ship was still there waiting, somehow intact in the sea of downed starships and debris. He paused for only a moment, and then walked past it, to the old battered X-wing that had also been left behind.

The controls were as familiar and easy as they had been so long ago, when he'd learned to fly it the first time.

He knew where to go now.

It was easy to see the old Skywalker wind farm from the top of the hills; the flat desert plain hid nothing. He saw her arrive on the speeder, and slide down into the sand-covered home. She emerged some minutes later, holding something, which she buried in the sand.

He had never been so tempted to reactivate their Force bond as at that very moment. It was still there, plaguing him constantly on the edge of his consciousness.

He shook his head, dismissing the pull of it. It had been almost a month, and she thought him dead.

She wasn't for him; she belonged out there, up with the stars.

Down on the desert floor, she pulled something off her belt, and flicked it on.

The gold of the lightsaber shone so bright as to compete with that of the twin suns setting in the sky before her.

Ben smiled at the picture she made – she was a golden ray of light – and retreated, down into his home once more.

He did not look back.