"Ben."

His smile was nearly beautiful enough to knock her back into death's arms. He was covered in dirt and blood and sweat, his dark hair pasted to his forehead in wet strands, but the profound wonder of seeing him smile for the first time was enough to make him the most radiant thing in the universe.

His grin settled into a softer, more pensive expression. "You did it," he said quietly, his dark eyes full of awe.

"I did it," she repeated. She had hoped saying it would make it more real, but it did not. It still felt like a dream. The absolute darkness Ben had pulled her out of was still weighing heavily on her memory like a deep fog, and ever since she opened her eyes the world had looked sharper and brighter.

She was still laying in his lap, cradled by his arms, and she suddenly felt quite awkward. The position was shockingly intimate for two people who had only ever touched hands before. His face was so close. His arms suddenly burned at her back and her neck, and she shimmied to the side and leapt to her feet.

"Come on, then," she said with a bit of forced brightness. She offered her hand down to Ben, who looked taken aback. The sounds of the battle above them, which had seemed completely inaudible while his face had been so close to hers, were now at full volume. "There are…ships to destroy."

Ben's confusion quickly turned to quiet amusement at her discomfort, and he took her hand. "Yes," he said as he stood. "Ships."

The noise of the battle continued to pound and shatter the air. But when they stood, they did not move.

Ben looked her up and down. "You look like you need a medic."

"You and me both, then," Rey said. The hole she had put in his shirt, which still revealed the healthy skin of his stomach underneath, looked like an odd error in the larger picture of his wounded body. "We have a fair number of medics back on the base."

She suddenly sensed a sharp wave of guilt and fear from him, and took an involuntary step back to steady herself from the surprise. Their bond seemed even stronger than before; it felt like his emotions were seeping deep into her bones.

"I'm not going to the base," he said, his expression guarded.

"Well, why not?" she demanded. He looked at her like he was trying to be extremely patient.

"Because the Supreme Leader of the First Order," he said simply and slowly, "is not going to a resistance base."

Rey opened her mouth to respond before her thoughts caught up, then immediately closed it when they did. Oh.

Her mind struggled to unite two very different opposing facts. The first was that bringing Ben back to the base would not only be dangerous for him, but would also be incredibly painful for the resistance members who had suffered and lost loved ones at his hands or orders, or with his complicity. The second was much simpler: she could not leave him.

"Well," she said rather stupidly, "you can't stay here."

He gave her another of those very patient looks. "No, I can't."

"We can leave together," she said, stepping closer. She felt like different parts of her brain were racing in different directions, scrambling to find an answer to a problem that didn't have one—or had too many. "Find somewhere to go. There must be planets that don't know your face, we can find a way to get some money or things to trade—"

"Rey," he said softly and she caught his gaze. It looked like he was reading some far part of her soul. Maybe he was. He waited a silent moment before saying, "You don't want to do that."

She realized suddenly that his shoulders were sagging, his hands at his sides had a slight tremble, and his face carried enough sadness and exhaustion to make her want to cry. She felt that exhaustion too—her knees were begging her to let them bend, to let her fall back to the ground, and when she lifted her hand to rub her forehead in frustration, it felt like it weighed as much as Luke's X-wing.

The worst part was, he was right. She wanted to go back to Finn, to Poe, to Chewie, to BB-8. She wanted to go to their little corner on base where she and Finn and Poe liked to sit up and night and swap stories, wrapped in blankets, her head on Finn's shoulder. They were her family, they were home, and she wanted more than anything in the universe to just go home. And it struck her like a lightning bolt that her friends were probably above her head, fighting for their lives. How selfish she was. Her friends could be dying, and all she could think about was how to stay with Ben.

"Go to your friends," he murmured. "Don't worry about me." She scowled.

"Of course I worry about you."

"You'll know immediately if I die," he deadpanned, and she rolled her eyes. Honestly. "I mean it. I'll find you. It's like I said before—"

"I can't hide from you," she finished. "I know."

The walk back to their ships was slow, and silent. Ben was limping quite badly and had to walk with his arm over Rey's shoulders for the last bit, which she found she did not mind. When they arrived, Ben released her shoulders, looked down at her with a faint smile, and Rey felt a quick pang of panic. What if they couldn't find each other? What if the bond disappeared, now that the Sith were dead? What if she never saw him again?

"Ben—" she blurted, quickly turning towards him, but he had already grabbed her hands.

"The bond won't fade," he said firmly, eyes searching her face. She rubbed her thumbs over the backs of his hands, and he held on tighter. "This bond doesn't belong to the Jedi or the Sith. It belongs to us, and to the Force. Do you believe me?"

She nodded.

He whispered good and touched her cheek gently, before turning and limping toward his TIE fighter. She watched him go with an ache in her chest.

: : : :

If Poe and Finn noticed that she was distracted, they did not tell her. She joined in their excitement and celebration as the entire base collapsed in gleeful anarchy. Drinks were found and passed around, bonfires were started, people came up to hug her and shake her hand and ask Did you see Palpatine? and Did you kill him? She freely said yes to both questions, but declined to answer the ones that involved the word how.

In the late evening, after one of the questioners left, Finn looked down at her in a way that wordlessly communicated his curiosity. She simply shook her head with a sad smile, and he threw an arm over her shoulders. She took another drink.

Late at night, as the bonfires were slowly dying but the drunkenness and chaos had only increased, his name finally came up.

"What about Kylo Ren?" shouted one young man. "He's still out there!"

"Let him stew," someone else called. "There are more of us. We'll get him eventually." Some people whooped.

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was because she had been desperately waiting to see him through the bond tonight, and he hadn't shown. Maybe there was some small part of her that honestly thought it was a very intelligent strategy. Whatever it was, Rey found herself shouting over the din: "I killed Kylo Ren."

There was a pause where everyone around her looked her way. She stared back.

"Yeah!" someone screamed, and the crowd quickly erupted into cheers and applause.

"It's done, it's over!" a woman cried. Finn, arm still around her shoulders somehow, was looking down at her with a mixture of shock and awe. Poe, on her other side, was proudly slapping her back (rather roughly; he had consumed a lot).

The crowd's eyes turned from her, returning to their loud conversations. She felt strange. Would this come back to bite them later? Should she feel relieved? Did she? Why hadn't he reached out yet?

She took another drink.

It wasn't until she was already in bed, on the edge of sleep, that his familiar presence filled her senses. She opened her eyes: he was there, lying across the room from her, bandages on his face and arms. The blood and dirt had been cleaned up. Even his hair looked like it had been washed, and he'd changed into clean, comfortable clothing. He caught her gaze and the corner of his mouth quirked upward.

"And you were worried," he said. She smiled.

: : : :

Tattooine was so similar to Jakku, Rey was finding it difficult to navigate. She kept seeing features she thought looked familiar, which would throw her into a state of déjà vu she kept having to pull herself out of.

She walked out of the Falcon and into the sunlight. Not much was left of the Skywalker homestead; most of the smaller features had been buried in sand, and piles of sand climbed the outer walls of the main hut like they were consuming it. He was sitting on a low wall outside the hut, waiting for her, and stood when she approached.

Ben was still in all-black, which Rey found extremely amusing (they were on a desert planet). His hair was slightly shorter, and there was only one new scar from Exegol—a small mark on his temple. He looked, otherwise, almost younger than he had when she first met him. There was a peace in his expression that lightened it, a relaxation in his shoulders that made him look like a man who'd never known hardship.

Rey, of course, could still see it in his eyes and feel it in his heart, in their bond: the pain he'd never truly be able to leave behind.

"Can you believe anyone chooses to live here?" he asked drily as he opened his arms and she fell into them. His black clothing was ridiculously hot and smelled like sand and sunlight.

"Hi," she said happily into his neck.

"Hi to you," he said, releasing her. "Are you ready?"

"Not yet," she said. "I want to see this place. I want to see where they came from, Luke and his father."

"It's not much," Ben said with distaste. "Even less now than when I saw it as a kid. The desert will finish the job soon."

Rey's enthusiasm was undimmed. Ruins were always interesting to a scavenger. She took his hand and laced her fingers through his, looking up at him. "Show me."

They explored the homestead, hand in hand, until sunset. The desert had reclaimed quite a few of the inner rooms, but Rey still loved running her fingertips over the walls and imagining what it had been like before. Ben told her what stories of Luke's he remembered. Every time Rey pocketed some useless trinket, Ben would smile quietly to himself.

Later, she finally folded Luke and Leia's lightsabers into a blanket and laid it on the sand. Ben put an arm around her waist. "Together?" he asked, looking down at her.

"Together."

She closed her eyes and reached out, and felt him do the same. The sand beneath the lightsabers roiled and crumbled. Soon they were buried deep.

She sighed and opened her eyes. The end of an era. She looked up at Ben to see his reaction, but he was looking off into the distance with an almost fearful look on his face.

"What?" she asked, following his gaze.

"Do you see them?" he whispered softly. And she did. Luke and Leia, side by side, smiling at them.

She put her arm around his waist, and his arm tightened around hers. "You don't have to be afraid," she murmured.

"I'm not afraid," he replied. "I'm…ashamed."

"You don't have to be that, either. They know, Ben." Rey put a hand on his chest and looked up at him. "They know."

Ben didn't take his eyes off of the hazy figures, but she felt his body relax a bit. His expression looked more thoughtful. "They do, don't they?" he said hesitantly. Rey looked at Luke and Leia; they looked like two people completely and utterly at peace in every way, and were gazing at them with what felt like absolute love.

Soon they faded into the Tattooine sunset, and Rey gently wiped a tear from Ben's cheek.

"Let's go home."