A/N: This was originally written for the Reylo Fanfic Anthology's For one is both and both are one in love Valentine's Day Exchange. The title of the story comes from the song Who Will Save You Now by Les Friction. I recommend checking it out as it's a beautiful song and seems very fitting for Reylo.

When she wakes up, she has no idea where she is. Her eyes feel swollen and her head feels like someone put it in a vice and squeezed. Hard. It's like she's been crying and beaten to a pulp at the same time. And she's not really sure if it's one or both or what.

"Hey," comes a voice. "Hey Poe, she's awake."

Rey groans. Finn. Why is Finn here? She feels like he's not supposed to be. Like he wasn't…before…

Before what?

There's darkness there, lightning, a voice that burrows into her head and won't let go.

She finally opens her eyes to see Finn leaning over her, his eyes dark with worry. "Poe," he says again and there's a strange urgency to his voice. "Hey," he says as she meets his eyes.

"Where…"

"Ajan Kloss," Finn says.

She tries to sit up.

That's not right.

She was on…

A medical droid whirrs near her, tsking as it settles its spindly arms on her shoulders and pushes just slightly. "You are not ready to sit up," it says in a grating metallic voice.

Rey sighs.

Ajan Kloss. She'd spent much time there over the past year, learning, training, preparing for a fight she couldn't even begin to understand. She still doesn't know who she was training to go up against. Not…

She feels a tear prick at the corner of her eyes as memories, disjointed and strange, rush back in.

She wasn't here. Not on Ajan Kloss. She had been on Exegol.

"Awake, at last!" Poe says and she wants to sit up again and shout something at him. He sounds so…happy.

She's not.

She can't be. Not after…after…

Poe smiles and Finn claps him on the back. "We won," Poe says, and yes, there's that spark of something. He doesn't know. He can't.

Can't know what…

"I don't…how…" she starts to say. The words feel raw in her throat, like there's knives there, cutting along her vocal cords. She takes a deep breath, swallows what feels like shards of glass. "How did I get here?"

She remembers the lightning.

Remembers Ben.

And there's darkness beyond that. She was on the dirty stone floor of Exegol, with the warmth of Ben Solo fading from her hands, and then she was…here. Where everyone sounds so kriffing happy while she feels like there's something tearing into the fabric of her soul, ripping out the seams and shredding it into the tiniest of pieces.

She's not sure what is left of Rey anymore.

She feels like…

Like…

"You don't remember?" Finn is asking and there's so much concern in his quiet voice that she feels a sob work its way up.

"Nothing," she admits.

Nothing but the soft press of lips against hers, the smile she never thought she'd see, crinkles at the corner of his eyes and that one tooth that's just a little sharper than the rest. She'd never seen him smile, his face more a mask than the one he'd used to hide himself from the world. Snoke, Palpatine, whoever it was, had taught him well.

Only his eyes had been fire. Fire and rage and a hurt that she'd not seen from anyone else. The eyes of a small boy still trying to cling to the mother that had considered other things more important, trying to push away from a father who'd flung himself into a life that boy couldn't follow.

Until the end.

The end when she saw his mother's confidence, his father's swagger, and just a little bit of something else that must have been all his own.

Finn watches her for a moment before speaking. "We found you…down on Exegol. You were nearly passed out and almost completely delirious. Rey, I felt you die." She flinches at the strident tone to his voice. "What happened?"

"I didn't," she says by way of explanation.

"Rey…" Finn says.

"You were wrong." She doesn't know what else to say, what to tell them. How much to tell them. She wants to confide in Finn. He's been one of her best friends, her first friend, racing across the sands of Jakku to escape her lonely life to this.

This, where she'd met her bond mate, one half of a Force dyad. Now gone. Her breath hitches at the thought and she reaches out, by force of habit, to brush against him. But there's nothing there.

Nothing.

"All you kept saying was 'he's gone, he's gone'. We found you clinging to your X-Wing and holding some scrap of clothing…"

Her head shoots up at that. Ben disappearing, leaving his worldly possessions behind. She feels the tears start and so reaches out, gripping Finn hard on the upper arm. "Where is it?"

"Where is…"

"The shirt. Where is it?"

Finn glances over at Poe, a small furrow between his brows. Poe takes that moment to step forward, and she's not sure if he looks concerned or annoyed. "I don't know," he finally says. "On Exegol still, I'd guess. We left it there." He shrugs.

Rey pushes off the bed, one hand reaching for Poe. She almost…almost…feels the power coursing through her with her rage, wanting to reach out, to choke, to destroy. But then it drains out and she sinks back onto the bed.

Finn looks worried.

Poe looks terrified.

"Maybe you should get more rest," Finn says, reaching out to disentangle her hand from where she still grips him tightly.

"I don't need sleep."

Poe takes a step backward. "No, Rey, I really think you do. You're not yourself."

"You don't know me at all," she snarls at him. No one does…no one, but him.

And he's gone.

Gone forever.

In the blink of an eye, she's gone from feeling whole, feeling like there was a chance for them. Her hand over his, Rey and Ben together against the galaxy.

And then…

This…

The galaxy is a cruel, cruel place.

She doesn't see the med droid that approaches from the side. She's too focused on whatever looks Finn and Poe are exchanging.

"Rey," Finn says.

And then there's a sharp pick in her arm. She turns quickly, sees the droid. But it's too late. The world fades into darkness.

Poe watches as Rey falls back. Even in a medically induced sleep, there's a furrow between her brows. "What happened to her?"

Finn claps him on the back. "Damned if I know." He's watching her and Poe has a sense that there's something else there, something he's not telling him. And then he finally sighs and turns to meet his eyes. "I felt her die."

"You…she…what?"

"I'm Force sensitive," he says by way of explanation, as if it's simply no big deal.

"You," Poe says. "You have the Force."

Finn shrugs. "I have something. I don't know. I felt the general die. And then…Rey. I felt it. She was gone, this great big hole in the Force."

"She's not dead," Poe points out.

"I don't know what happened. We went down to find her, and then I felt…something. Another shift. I don't know, Poe. I can't tell you what it was." He presses a hand to his temple. "I don't get all that mystical mumbo-jumbo she has."

"But you have it…"

"I do," Finn says and there's a catch to his voice. "But I don't understand it. How could she be dead…and then not?"

Poe looks back at Rey, where she slumbers on in their medbay. "There's a lot we don't know."

"Like that TIE fighter," Finn says, and there's a grim note to his voice.

"Exactly," Poe responds with. They'd found her, desperate and frantic, speaking words they couldn't understand. She'd been crawling toward the X-Wing, Luke's X-Wing that had been missing for years, crawling and sobbing and clutching a torn black shirt in her hands. They'd tried to get out of her what happened, but nothing she said was even remotely coherent.

Ren, they thought they'd heard her say.

And Poe had felt a darkness somewhere inside his heart. There was a TIE Fighter there, parked alongside Luke's X-Wing. An old one, probably straight out of the previous war, and he wonders if Ren had found it on the wreckage of the Death Star, if he'd gone after her, followed her to Exegol for some nefarious purpose.

Poe doesn't know what's there between them. Rey won't say, but they all know the relentless way he'd pursued her. More jilted lover than Dark Side apprentice. He could have killed her at any moment, struck her down when she tried to stop the transport from escaping, taken her out on the Steadfast before the Falcon could swoop in and take her.

But he'd let her go. Both times, he'd simply watched as she escaped. He hadn't seemed to care about anything else. Just her.

And Poe still doesn't know what that means.

Poe watches her for a moment longer before reaching out and grasping Finn's hand in his. "Come on, she's not going to wake up for some time."

Finn's still staring at her. "There are things, Poe," he says. "Things she's not telling us."

"And I don't think we want to know the answers," Poe adds.

Finn shakes his head, finally pulling his gaze away from where Rey rests, looking all the world like a broken doll. "Yeah. I don't think I do."

Altogether, Rey spends about five days in the medbay, half of it knocked unconscious by a well-meaning droid. On the last day, the droid approaches her and Rey turns on it, lightsaber coming out.

Poe and Finn find her standing over what remains of the droid, a feral snarl on her face.

"Rey?" Finn asks.

She blinks.

Looks up.

"Hey," she says. Her face tries to form into a smile, but it's like the muscles have atrophied.

What is there to smile about, anyway?

He's gone, the parts of him that were embedded beneath her skin, into muscles and bone, into the very fabric of her being, have been torn out. She's one half of a whole. She never realized, until now, how very much a part of her he was.

Even when he was hunting her across the galaxy.

Even when they'd been fighting, lightsabers crossing, sparks flying.

She knows now, and she'd take back every moment of that to simply see him smile one more time.

"Are you…" Finn starts to ask.

"I'm fine."

"We're going to the mess hall," Poe says, one hand raising slightly. "If you…"

"No, I think I'm just going to go back to my quarters." She looks down at the still smoking remains of the medroid. "It wasn't our only one, was it?"

"There are others," Poe says.

"None that were…" Finn starts to say, but Poe shoves at him slightly and his mouth clamps shut on the words.

"Okay then," Rey says. She tries for a smile again, but the look fades quickly when she sees the grimaces on her friends' faces. She steps over the droid and heads out of the room. Behind her, from somewhere, she hears Finn's voice, she is not okay, Poe.

He can't know.

None of them can.

But he knows at the same time, somehow she's aware of this. She's not okay. She'll never be okay. There simply is no okay. Not for her.

Her quarters are a barren, sparse thing. The Jedi texts, a change of clothes, a small pallet for a bed. But it's hers. A little place all her own where she can curl up and wish that she had died.

You had died.

She amends that. She wished she had stayed dead.

Living like this is no life. She has friends, certainly, and she supposes she has far more than Ben would have had, if he had been the one to live instead. But still, the world feels like an empty place, full of dark with no light, greys and blacks and a complete lack of color. The world bleeds around her, the color dissipating into nothingness.

She's half a soul.

Kriff, but it aches.

"Oh, Ben," she whispers, and she wishes she had his shirt to cling to. Some part of him that smelled like him, that she knows had been pressed to his skin. They'd left it behind, there in the dirt of Exegol, left it laying by the TIE Fighter that would never fly again, the one Ben had taken there to save her and that he'd never ever climb into again.

Kriff, kriff, kriff.

And she realizes that's what she needs.

She needs to find it, bring it home. It's all she has left of him. Memories and a shirt that may still hold his scent, even if it no longer holds his warmth.

Finn's curled up in bed, eyes drifting shut after a long night spent with Poe. They've been hashing things out with what still needs to be done after the defeat of the Final Order…and other things. He's not quite ready to go public with that yet, and so he crawls back to his room and falls into his own bed in an exhausted heap.

There's a thud at the door.

"What?"

Another thud.

It's not a knock. It sounds like something's being rammed into his door, and he's not sure if he should be annoyed or terrified.

Another thud.

And the sound of…beeps? Two sets.

Annoyed. Definitely annoyed.

He pulls himself to his feet and throws the door open. "Go bother Poe," he says to the little orange droid on the other side. D-O, BB-8's new sidekick, is running circles around the other droid while BB-8 continues to frantically beep at him.

"Gone," D-O says, continuing its frantic pace. "Gone…g-g-g-gone!"

"What?"

BB-8 beeps again and races off. D-O follows behind and Finn, a feeling of dread lodging somewhere between his stomach and his heart, reluctantly throws on a robe and trudges after the two droids.

He's not surprised when they lead him right to Rey's room. BB-8 pushes something on the panel by the door and the door slides open. Rey's not there. Nothing is there, not the Jedi texts he's seen her studying, not the clothes she leaves strewn about. It's like no one has ever lived in the room.

"Gone," D-O says and there's such a sad bent to its voice that Finn just feels cold.

"Yeah, buddy," he says, staring into the dark confines of Rey's former room. "Gone."

She takes the X-Wing. She knows they can trace it, knows they may be able to find her. And a part of her is counting on that. If anything goes wrong…

What could go wrong?

Retrieve the shirt, take one last look at where your happiness was complete and then torn away in almost the same breath, and then leave for the final time.

She'll return soon enough. Or she won't. She has everything that's hers. The Jedi texts. The lightsabers entrusted to her, the last one Ben ever held in his hand as they'd once again come together, fought together.

And nearly died together.

You should have left me dead, Ben. There's nothing here for me now.

She's half to the hangar when she sees Rose heading down the hallway. For a split second, she thinks about hiding from the other woman, but no sooner has the thought crossed her mind than Rose sees her.

"Rey?" Rose says, and there's such a softness to the other woman's voice that Rey feels herself have to choke back the tears that she's been so adept at keeping at bay. She knows she looks like a haunted thing. Her head is pounding, her mind numb, her soul torn asunder. She knows they don't understand, hears the whispers. She faced the Emperor alone.

And she wants to tell them the truth.

Tell all of them.

But what points is there? Who would believe her that Ben Solo had turned, had run to her aid armed with nothing more than a blaster, had held her in his arms and given her life…his life. He'll always be the monster to them.

"Rose," she says and shakes her head.

"What are you…" Rose starts to ask, but then nods, crosses her arms over her chest. "This is about him isn't it?"

Rey blinks.

Rose shakes her head. "They're all so willfully blind, aren't they?" she asks. When Rey gives her a blank look, Rose reaches out a hand to touch her arm. "The TIE Fighter? I know about it."

"You…"

"It was his, wasn't it? He was there...Kylo Ren." Rose says the last with a bit of a tilt of her chin.

"Ben," Rey says in answer. "Ben Solo." She offers up a choked little laugh, the sound of his name like a knife cleaving her heart in two. "He was no longer Kylo Ren. Not then."

Rose nods. "And so you're going to him?"

Rey feels that like a punch to the gut too. Oh, how she wishes that were true. That she had gone back to the Resistance and was sneaking out in the middle of the night to find him. "He's dead," she says, the words flat. She's surprised to see tears at the corner of Rose's eyes.

"You loved him," Rose says.

Rey stares at her for a moment. "I…I don't know." It's more than that, more than just love. Not that she knows what love is. Every time she's seen love, it seems to have torn people apart. Han and Leia, Ben and his parents. Love destroys, it eats you alive. And yet…whatever she had with Ben was somehow that and more. It was all-encompassing. It was her her everything.

Rose nods. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry," she says, a soft, sad smile playing about her lips.

Rey takes a deep breath. "He died saving me."

"Finn said you'd…"

"Died? I had. It took everything out of me to defeat my…to defeat the Emperor." She refuses to think of him as any sort of relation. "And then suddenly…I wasn't dead." She starts to move past Rose, and then turns back for a moment. "Let them know that, will you? What he did?"

Rose nods and reaches out to hug her briefly before stepping back. "Go find yourself, Rey," she says.

Is that what she's doing? Finding herself. She doesn't know. She's lost half of herself, and she can't quite bring herself to tell Rose that it's not just about loving him, but about having a part of your soul carved out, ripped to shreds, and no one knowing. No one knows of the bond, no one knows of how they'd poured their hearts out to each other, swore they'd never be alone again, and then had that all torn to pieces as the war and their opposites sides on it took its toll.

"Thanks," she says and then she's disappearing into the hangar. It's a terrible final word to a woman who has become a friend of hers over the past year. Maybe the only person she might have been able to open up to about Ben. She hadn't, of course, but she knew the opportunity was there.

Thanks and that's it.

She supposes she's not ready to say goodbye, not to any of them. Perhaps a farewell, see you again soon. She has no idea where she's going, not after she finds what is left of Ben back on Exegol. But she'll figure something out.

The flight is not an easy one, and Rey relives those moments where she had just left Ahch-to, flying to her fate on the planet of the Sith. Facing her grandfather. She still shivers at the thought. But he's gone. Dead and gone and this time for good. The galaxy feels lighter for it, even if it all weighs heavily on her heart.

She hadn't realized that, not really at least. How much his being alive, even in the half-state he was in, had weighed down the galaxy around them. What a strange thing, that. That one man could grow so powerful, could take on the embodiment of all the evils in the galaxy in his attempt to twist it to suit his needs. It's unfathomable.

She follows the twists and turns the Wayfinder leads her on, somehow more aware this time. It's familiar and yet not at the same time. She still has it…the Sith Wayfinder. She doesn't know why she's kept it. The planet is dead now, the Emperor and his Sith loyalists gone for good. But the Wayfinder, even its burnt-out shell, works.

It's taking her back.

Back to where everything was so wrong and yet so right at the same time.

Back to where she held him, kissed him, felt the warmth of his presence and the softness of his lips, tangled her hand in his hair and wanted to hold on forever. Where it was all ripped out of her, torn, ragged edges of a soul not entirely her own.

We're a dyad in the Force…

It's meaningless. All meaningless if he is not there with her.

She comes in down over the planet, the same way she did before. The world hasn't changed, and it sends a shiver down her spine. Lightning still strikes the ground intermittently, races from cloud to cloud. In the moments of light, she can see the crashed ships in the mists of the planet, can make out the Sith temple that had one nearly been her downfall.

She circles and watches the area near the temple during each lightning strike.

She's looking for the TIE that's been left behind, a lonely thing whose pilot will never be returning. She'll leave it there, a sort of testament to Ben Solo's redemption, to his coming for her, to his sacrificing himself for her.

She doesn't see it in the first lightning strike.

She circles again.

Doesn't see it in the next.

Or the next.

She's sure this is the right place. She can see the floating citadel, one side cracked and listing heavily to the side.

She can see the path through the middle of it.

Another lightning strike.

She comes in lower, and then she sees it. The place where she had landed before. The marks in the dirt are still there from where the X-Wing rested, footsteps moving away from it. She lands in much the same spot and leans back against her seat, pulls her helmet off.

Throwing open the top of the X-Wing, she pulls herself up and stares. She can see the imprints. They're as obvious as the ones she rested her X-Wing on top of.

But the TIE Fighter?

It's not there.

She takes a deep breath, casts her mind out into the Force.

You know what it means, comes a voice.

She leaps out of the X-Wing and steps closer to where she'd last seen Ben's TIE. She still has no idea how he'd gotten there, how he'd found it. She has vague flashes of memory of seeing it next to her X-Wing and breaking down. She gasps.

"Leia?" she asks.

Leia's dead. She can't be…

But then she sees through the gloom around her, a little bit of blue that becomes brighter, more solid. "Leia," she whispers. "I mean…Master…"

Leia is standing before her, blue-tinged and a little ethereal. She looks lighter, younger, a gentle smile on her face. "Rey," she says, and Rey feels herself crumble, sinking to her knees. Leia steps closer.

"Where is he? Surely, you've seen him," she says, trying not to choke on the words. "You must have seen him…"

"I have," she says.

"Then tell him to come here, show himself. I need…" She takes a gasping breath. "I need…"

"He's not here. Not with me."

"But…" He must be. He sacrificed himself. If his grandfather could become one with the Force, could manifest as a Force Ghost, surely Ben…

"Rey, look at me."

Rey does as she asks, looking up to meet her eyes. Leia moves closer to her, her steps a gliding thing, almost as if she's floating and yet not at the same time. She leaves no footprints in the sand the way Rey does.

She can still see them, the two sets of footprints leading to their doom. Hers look small there, evidence of her hesitancy and worry, of her terror and uncertainty. She had walked steadily to face him, but she knows she didn't know what her purpose was, didn't know what she had come there to do. She had been so alone, so scared, and yet so determined.

And then there are his. Long strides, confident. She's fairly certain he had been running if the distance between them is any indication.

"Where is the TIE?" Rey asks. Where is his shirt? The one that Poe and Finn had so callously tossed aside when they'd retrieved her.

"You're missing the obvious." There's amusement in Leia's voice.

"Missing?"

"Look again."

She stares at where the TIE had one been. Who had taken it? Who would dare? It had been the last ship Ben had flown, the only one he'd flown as Ben since his fall to the Dark side. How dare they…

It takes her a moment to realize Leia is pointing, not in the direction of the TIE, but away from it, back toward the Sith temple and the footsteps she had been following before.

"Footsteps," Rey murmurs.

"Yes."

"There are…"

"Two going in…" Leia's voice is soft, leading.

"Two going out."

"Yes."

Rey stares, frozen, and then she's moving, one foot in front of the other, following the staggering path of footsteps that is headed away from the temple, steps that were returning to the ships. There are two sets close to the ships. And as she moves further away, there's only the one.

One starts halfway between the citadel and where the ships were. There's one set of footprints and then suddenly there's two, following the same path. Neither look like the steps of a person who was doing all that well. Rey had been exhausted, barely coherent, her feet dragging. She can see those patterns easily in the sand, a step, a drag, another step.

The other is uneven, evidence that one leg was being dragged behind the other. Every few meters or so there's a hand print in the dust.

They lead to where the TIE had been parked.

They lead to Ben's TIE, the one that's no longer there.

"I…" she starts to say.

"Yes?" There's amusement to Leia's voice.

"He's alive?" she whispers. It's the only explanation and Leia's small nod is all she needs to confirm it. She can't feel him in the Force, her bond is still in tatters, but he's alive.

Somewhere…