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Chapter Text

If the nightmares were what woke Rey up in the middle of the night, it was the strange noises that kept her awake. 

She heard all sorts of sounds in the captain’s quarters of the Millennium Falcon, docked in the wastes just beyond the Lars homestead: the wind whistling through the dunes, a sandstorm in the making; the groan of a Jawa caravan scoping out the ship before she suggested they explore elsewhere; various creatures prowling the wastes. Some were typical desert sounds she had to reacquaint herself with when she decided to seclude herself on Tatooine for a while. These she adjusted to easily. 

It was the crying that really got to her.

It always came in the deepest part of the night, where she was too far from morning to give up on sleep completely, but too alert to drift back into her horrid dreams; dreams where she watched Ben die and vanish, die and vanish, over and over, but his pain grew in each iteration, as if a knife plunged into her heart was twisting deeper and deeper every time.

She told herself she was just imagining it.

She was imagining the sound of Ben weeping. She was inventing the sensations of Darkness that crept into her mind late at night, cloying and harsh, prying at her skull, telling her that no one understood her, no one would love her, her parents resented her, you had nothing to go back to... you’re nothing, Ben Solo, nothing, and your death was too kind...

She had fled the Resistance, had come to the only place where she might be able to escape her ghosts, but they had followed anyway. Luke had appeared to her as a spirit. Leia, too, in time. 

Ben was just...gone. He had not appeared to her as a ghost like his mother and uncle. He was gone . She hated telling herself that, but after years lying to herself, lies etched by the hundreds, no, thousands on the wall of her AT-AT home, she couldn’t do it now. She had watched him disappear. He had given his life force for her so that she might live.

So she told herself that it was all in her head. It was exhaustion causing this, exhaustion and grief. The anguish she felt was loss, nothing more. 

This was her mourning. For so many nights, she couldn’t shed any tears, so she imagined them.

But the crying grew louder, louder, until finally, after weeks of loneliness and of sorrows she couldn’t voice, after weeks of being unable to cry, she wept. Each sob of his in her mind drew out one of her own until she was huddled in the ship’s galley with no way of explaining it to a worriedly- beeping BB-8 why she was bawling so ferociously.

When she had finally cried herself empty after weeks spent in mournful silence, she lifted her tear-streaked face from her knees and spoke to the night.

“Ben?” she whispered into the dark, lonely ship.

And for the first moment in many nights, there was silence. The weeping stopped.

A pain in her chest lifted. She sat up and tried again.

“Ben,” she called, her voice stronger now.

She was met with silence. A moment passed. Another.

“Rey?”

It was unreal. That couldn’t be his voice. He was gone. She was imagining things. 

But...he had never said her name like that before.

“Ben, sweetheart,” she murmured. “Where are you?”

There was silence again. “Where are you, Ben?” she called, her hands balled into fists.

Another moment passed. Finally, she heard his voice, deep and sorrowful. 

“I don’t know, Rey. I’m lost.”

“Ben, I’m going to find you.”

His voice was quieter when he spoke again. 

“I’m scared, Rey. Please…”

His voice faded until she could barely hear it.

“Ben?”

Fruitlessly, she began to dart around the ship, bare feet pounding against the durasteel floor panels. She felt him. He was near, somehow. But where was he? Where?

“Ben?” she called.

She slapped the release for the gangplank and stormed out into the blackness of the desert.

All was silent again, eerie, and there was no phantom light of Ben. Her opposite. Her other half.

Gone again.

“I’ll find you, Ben,” Rey whispered into the night, tears running freely down her cheeks now. “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

Her words seemed to disappear into the heavy air, but a voice called back, low and soft, before disappearing again. 

“Rey…” 

Rey was left alone again, shaken but determined.

She wondered for a minute if maybe she had imagined him. Maybe that wasn’t Ben at all, but another spirit, another ghost, another memory.

But she knew better. She had felt him, felt her Ben.

More than that: she had spoken to him. She had made a promise.

No more waiting in this wasteland of sand and ghosts.

She knew what she had to do.

She let herself back onto the ship, closing the gangplank behind her. Pulling a blanket around herself, she grabbed one of the ancient Jedi texts from the shelf in the galley.

Her masters were dead. Her guardians were all spirits. But she wasn’t the only Force user in the galaxy.

There might still be others.

Dathomir was a haunted place, a planet of ruins and beasts and nightmares, but she felt the Force snaking through it, jagged and erratic, but powerful.

It was Dark, but she was unafraid. The Darkness felt familiar to her now.

So many days in the bright light of the desert suns made the hazy, darkened atmosphere even more ominous. The foliage seemed to reach for her, as if trying to taste her, the shadows seemed to stretch for her. This place was trying to grab her, to latch on and drag her deeper. 

She wandered through an empty village, seeking any sign of life. She had researched this place; though reports from the Empire said the Nightsisters were no more, she felt the intoxicating, vital Force energy of the place and knew that wasn't the case.

Her heart felt heavy with dread as she trudged on, deeper into the eerie silence. She felt herself disappearing from the light as she followed the tug of the Force, venturing deeper into the heart of the world. It was like descending into Exegol. It was as if she was in that tomb once more…

She felt the chill of death creep over her skin at the memory. She had to stop, finally, to collect herself. She would never have to go back there again. She was safe. Ben made sure of that. 

She caught her breath, and continued. 

After wandering for hours, feeling eyes on her she couldn't see, she caught a gust of movement in the corner of her eye.

"I know you're there," she said, speaking through the nervous anticipation coiling in her every muscle. "I mean you no harm."

She raised her hands to shoulder-height. "I seek the wisdom of the Nightsisters of Dathomir."

The air felt like static, and within a moment, a green mist appeared around Rey, and two cloaked women emerged.

"We have no desire for visitors," one hissed in accented Basic. "You are not welcome here."

"What do you want?" the other demanded. "You surely do not wish for your death, but it is what you are likely to receive."

" I know ," Rey said quickly. "I know. I bring no weapons with me. I only bring my knowledge of the Force, and seek to learn yours."

The Nightsisters knew the path of death. They knew how to reverse it. They could help, Rey thought. 

"You are a Jedi?" one of the Sisters growled. "Your kind exterminated ours. It is through our strength alone that we have returned."

"The Jedi are gone," Rey corrected them. "I learned the ways of the last Jedi. I defeated the last Sith. The old ways are no more. I am all that is left."

Finally, she turned to stare at one of the Sisters.

"You use your knowledge of Force Magick to traverse the barrier between life and death," she said calmly. “I died. I returned. I have crossed that barrier. And the person who aided me...he didn’t come back.”

She felt a crackling in the air. More cloaked figures appeared. She turned to face all of them. “I don’t know how it happened. What he did...it was impossible. I shouldn’t be alive today.”

“So what do you want from us?” called an authoritative voice. Rey faced down the tallest cloaked figure. The texts had mentioned these fearsome women, the leaders of the Nightsisters. She had no doubt this was the Mother. 

“I want to understand,” Rey said. “I want to learn. But I don’t expect you to take me because I ask, and I don’t want you to. I want to teach. I have experience with the Force no one left in the galaxy has. I want to share that with the Nightsisters.”

There was a heavy silence. A smaller voice called out to her.

“And what is your purpose?”

Rey drew in a sharp breath. From what she knew of the Nightsisters, this would be the hardest part yet. 

“Just as I crossed the barrier between life and death...I believe he did, too, to bring me back. But he is trapped between.”

A beat. “Why do you say this?” the Mother asked.

“I’ve spoken to him. Heard him crying out at night. I thought I was imagining it, going mad. But he answered me. He’s alive, I know it. But he’s lost.”

Rey stepped forward and knelt, her face turned up to the Mother.

“I will undergo whatever trials you demand. I will follow your rules. I need to find him.”

There was silence for a moment.

“All this for the life of a man. Why would you go to such lengths for him? ”

Rey’s stomach churned. This had to work.

“I know you trust men as little as you trust the Jedi, and that I also understand. But he is...connected to me. The Force has bound us. His soul is half of mine, and I cannot live the life he has given to me until I repay the debt I owe him for it.”

Another moment of heavy silence. Rey lowered herself deeper into her bow.

“Please, Nightsisters. I know you have no reason to spare me, much less accept me, but I can’t live knowing that he is out there suffering for me,” she said. “I will give all my knowledge to you for even a chance to repay him. Please. Let me have this chance.”

Eternities passed as she knelt. Green lights flickered from above her, but she didn’t dare look.

She heard crunching on the dirt before her. A pair of boots and a red cloak. She looked up and met the gaze of the Mother.

“There is darkness in you, Jedi girl,” she said at last. “What you seek…the Magick you wish to use...it will ask more of you. You desire to grow this darkness?”

Rey had stared down her darkness before. It terrified her then. But now…now she was bold. Unafraid.

“Yes.”

“And what will you give it?” There was a glint in the Mother’s eye. “Your sisters will train you, help you get the answers you seek. We will ask for sisterhood. But there is a price for the knowledge you seek.”

“I will pay it,” she whispered. “Anything.”

“It is not us you will owe,” the Mother replied. “The Magick itself will lay its claim to you. It will demand a cost. You must be prepared. What will you give the darkness?”

She remembered Ben’s cries and swallowed the fear.

“Me,” she said. “All of me.”

 There was another moment of silence and flashes of green light as the sisters surrounded Rey on all sides.

“Then you are ready.”

The Nightsisters needed to see what Rey was capable of, so the next evening they issued a test in lieu of an introduction.

“Defeat the creature,” Mother Shelish commanded. “By any means.”

Rey affected confidence as they lead her from the Falcon to the lair of the chirodactyl, the large, flying beast that had tormented too many of the Nightbrothers. She strolled out into the center of the cavern, head held high.

This one was a juvenile, but it was still powerful, energetic. Unpredictable. The Sisters whispered fretfully to one another. They did not know how to take this newcomer, but they did not relish the idea of her entrails being dragged across the surface of Dathomir. 

But if she was telling the truth, if she had really trained as a Jedi...

The creature descended with several powerful gusts of its immense wings and a screech that echoed through the entire canyon. The young chirodactyl hovered angrily around Rey, thrashing its wings at her.

The Nightsisters watched in awe as she walked towards it slowly and, instead of reaching for the blade at her belt, raised a hand to it. It froze in midair, its body restrained but its eyes seeking frantically.

“Shhh,” Rey crooned. “It’s alright, little beastie. I didn’t come here to hurt you, okay?”

She strode toward it, her hand extended. It dropped to its feet gently with an enormous thud and the scattering of dust. Its wings remained stiff and unmoving, but the tension seemed to ease from its body.

Rey hummed as she approached its face, eyes level with hers. She extended her hand to its dark fur, stroking it in a small circle.

“See?” she murmured. “Not going to hurt you.”

A moment later the beast seemed to relax entirely, tamed beneath her touch.

“Well?” Rey called back to her audience. “Would you say this creature is defeated?”

Mother Shelish appeared beside her in a flash of green light a moment later.

“Impressive, Jedi,” she said. Rey didn’t dare fool herself into thinking there might have been genuine approval in her tone. “You subdued the beast without slaughtering it. Not many could have accomplished such a feat.”

Rey continued to scratch at the bat’s face as it twittered with delight, not acknowledging the woman beside her. Her thoughts had traveled to a time gone by on an island far away. 

“This is not the first monster I’ve calmed with just a touch.”

Chapter Text

Though the planet seemed initially reluctant to embrace her, Dathomir became home. The smell of decay grew as familiar to Rey as the tangy, metallic scent that flooded the air before a sandstorm. The terrain was hard and rough and gritty, but it was a different grit than Jakku or Tatooine, with their large, loose dune seas.

Once she had calmed the large bat, the Nightsisters’ wariness of her disappeared, and, like the chirodactyl itself, they were eager to welcome her. 

They taught her their codes and clothed her in their dress. They instructed her with patience, with something that seemed almost bordering sisterly affection. Though she struggled to feel the Magick, they were kind, supportive. 

It felt natural to her to reach out for the Force, but the challenge was finding the Magick beyond it, digging beyond her senses into the unknown, reaching into a darkened control panel knowing very well you might be grabbing for a hot wire and that you had to grab on, even if it shocked you. Especially then.

The other Sisters stopped their rituals to observe Mother Shelish coaching Rey, guiding her closer and closer to reaching the power. 

It felt like she was stretching so far to reach for it, but it kept slipping out from her fingertips. She was more likely to fall apart, her body and mind unraveling as she grabbed for the Magick before she could actually reach it. She tried, over and over, and each time she missed she wanted to sob. She couldn’t fail. Not when Ben needed her. Not in front of the Nightsisters.

When she’d slump over, panting and frustrated, somewhere in the circle she would hear a small voice whispering, “Keep going, Rey.”

“You’ve got this,” another voice said from across the circle.

“Keep trying.”

“You’re almost there.”

“Don’t give up. You can do it.”

And she’d take a deep breath and try again.

When at last the Magick hit her, it was like she was seeing new colors, colors her eyes couldn’t perceive before. It flooded her body like a stim, sending a prickling sensation through her fingertips to the crown of her head and her toes. She had to shut her eyes to center her thoughts on it. Focus, control. Control.

She thought of the throne room on the Supremacy. Of the primal fear of death at Snoke’s whim, of her anger at being held by invisible hands and forced to see her friends being massacred as they fled the First Order, of the passion of the battle that had caused her to stab Kylo in the stomach, and the shame that had nearly ripped her apart after.

Darkness. She needed to find it. Blanket herself in it. 

Become like Ben, no longer afraid of her own shadow, but cloaked in it so it could not hurt her.

With that thought, she reached out.

She released a shuddering breath, and opened her eyes, witnessing odd green sparks erupting from her fingertips and wrapping themselves around her wrist and forearm.

She heard the cheers of the Nightsisters, her sisters, as she closed her grateful eyes again, a lone tear escaping.

One step closer to Ben.

The Sisters were kind. They were caring. After a full evening of preparing spells and rituals, they would cook, eat, and laugh together until the early morning when they finally went to sleep until late into the day.

The change in her sleep schedule was not a problem. But the shared living situation was almost impossible for Rey. It wasn’t the people; Rey didn’t mind the new group. She had been used to living elbow-to-elbow in cramped bases and ships with the Resistance, and it was a struggle even then, after so many nights in isolation on Jakku, to rest easily with the sounds of others’ breathing and stirring so near to her ears. Here, the Nightsisters would wish one another good night before settling into their bedrolls, and occasionally whispering and giggling would break out from a nearby group as Sisters attempted heart-to-hearts by the dimming firelight.

Rey hadn’t managed any of those yet.

Then again, none of her friends in the Resistance had ever known about the dyad. 

She had never been able to tell them the truth. She wasn’t sure how to explain what Kylo Ren meant to her. As far as any of them knew or cared, he was dead. They didn’t know she had killed him once. They didn’t know he gave his life for her on Exegol.

Everyone here knew how she had come to Dathomir and a little of her history within the context of the war, but she had been comfortable sharing little else. BB-8 was a curiosity to them; droids were rare here, and many of the Sisters had never seen one before, much less one as complicated and friendly as BB-8. Though it was good-tempered, Rey could sense the older Sisters’ unease about its presence among them, and she had it frequently go to check on the Falcon , which was docked on a plateau just beyond the village.

She missed the droid’s company at night when the nightmares would jerk her awake, the pain in Ben’s heart too much to take and the memory of his cries in the night was still too much to bear. 

Be with me .

Even as her Sisters drifted to sleep, the room was alive with the crackling of the fire, stoked and maintained by carefully woven Magick, and the muttering and snoring of a dozen contented, exhausted women.

But in even in the large room, Rey still felt too confined.

Carefully, she slipped on her robe and tugged on her boots before heading out into the night.

She hadn't heard Ben's cries since she left Tatooine. She didn't know what to make of the revelation, but she hated feeling cut off from him, even from a sound as mournful as it was: the reminder that he was still out there. Half of her soul was calling to her from beyond the stars. She longed to answer. She was trying. She was learning the Magick. It would just take time.

Dawn was creeping, red and hostile, over the horizon as she left the village. Dathomir, even with its aggressive flora and fauna, didn't scare her. She had lived in worse. She had died in worse. Even alone, there was nothing to be afraid of here. She knew the Magick. She was a part of this place, ugly as it was.

Rey stepped onto the gangplank of the Falcon as BB-8 rolled out, scanning her suspiciously until it recognized her and beeped in greeting. 

"Hi, Beebee. Yes, Beebee, I missed you, too. I didn't mean to be away for so long."

She walked absently onto the ship. She had lost track of time since she had last been back to visit. Surely it hadn't been more than a week. And she hadn't been here longer than a month. Time seemed to both race and crawl with the days here. Maybe it was the uncanniness of Dathomir. Maybe she had just become that disconnected with the greater galaxy. 

If that was the case, she really didn't mind.

But the astromech was not tolerating her absenteeism. It beeped a frantic array of updates from the Falcon and new communications it had received in her absence. She'd gotten dozens of messages since leaving the Resistance; some holos that she had received not long after she arrived on Tatooine remained unopened.

She couldn't face her friends. She didn't think they'd understand.

She hadn’t even known what to say when she returned from Exegol. Leia had been the only one with an inkling of Rey’s connection to Ben, but even she had never known about the dyad.

She had wanted to tell Finn. She couldn’t tell Poe. She longed to tell Rose or even Kaydel something, anything , but with the General gone, so many of her duties had fallen onto their shoulders. She had thought about telling Chewie, the only living creature in the galaxy who might have known about her and Ben’s emotional intimacy on Ahch-To and later the Supremacy , but he was gone even before she had left to build her saber.

Like Ben, the First Order had vanished, and her friends were not just relieved; they were overjoyed. Rey could not fully share in their happiness. The war was over, but the emptiness had lingered. Things were supposed to feel better. Why did she feel more alone, more adrift than ever?

"Any urgent messages?" Rey asked nonchalantly. Beebee nodded its domed head and began to play. Little blue shapes of her friends appeared, like diminutive ghosts.

"Hey, Rey—whoops, that rhymed! Hey!" Poe began warmly. Too warmly. He wanted something from her. "Everyone's been thinking about you around here. Haven't heard anything, but BB-8 would tell us if you were in trouble. We'd fly right there, don't worry!"

Rey refrained from rolling her eyes.

"Anyway, I'm looking ahead at the rebuilding of the New Republic and I was wondering if you had any vision for the Jedi order. No rush! I mean, I know you've got your hands full too. Just send me a comm when you get the chance, okay? We all miss you and the Falcon and–"

"Hi, Rey!" Rose said, waving and beaming. "Just wanted to check up on you. I barely got to say goodbye before you left to go make a new saber. Just wanted you to know you are loved!"

"Rey, contact me when you can." Finn was shifting from foot to foot. "It's been a month. We're getting worried. I need to talk to you about—"

"That's enough, Beebee," Rey interrupted, and the droid dutifully stopped the holo. 

It beeped a few questions.

"No, I just...don't have the energy for memories right now. Thanks, though. Really."

As charming as it was to her to see her old friends again, it was as if a canyon had grown between them since the end of the war. Since Exegol.

She hadn't known what to say, and it had cost her dearly.

Finn, Poe, and Rose hadn't meant to hurt her, surely, but there was a wound that hadn't healed yet, one she didn't think they could bandage.

They had invited her to the victory parade on Bespin; she said she wouldn't go. 

She'd gotten quiet after her return, distant, always hiding away for reasons they couldn't guess.

"Come to the parade," they had said, brooking no argument. "You'll have fun."

They must have thought it was the right thing. They hadn’t seen her shrink into the crowd of people on the skywalks of Cloud City; everyone was so boisterous and joyous, and Rey could barely summon a smile.

They hadn’t seen her wince at the loud horns blowing and drum music erupting from everywhere, see her try to hide from the musicians leading the procession encouraging everyone to sing a song of victory.

They hadn't warned her about the effigies.

They couldn't hear her lonely heart break as she gazed upon the crude facsimiles of the Supreme Leader, of the man she'd loved. 

Many had borne the horrid mask she'd loathed so deeply, but there were a few that featured his dark hair crafted from scraps of yarn or lanky dead plants, his eyes crude and soulless, the mock countenance pulled into a blistering sneer.

Around Rey, the whispers had grown more deafening than the music had ever been.

He'd died in battle. Been killed by Palpatine for his failure. He leaped from the deck of the Star Destroyer to his death when he knew the First Order could not win.

None of them knew. How could they know? How could they know that Kylo Ren died in the ruins of the second Death Star and that Ben Solo had lived once more, however briefly, and had risked his life and eventually sacrificed his for hers?

There was one moment in the galaxy when Ben Solo had lived, and, broken and pained as he was, he had smiled so brightly that his luminous, beautiful face had shamed the stars as she had cradled it in her hands.

And the next moment, that smile and light that belonged to Ben Solo had been erased.

And Rey had stared into a mockery of the man she loved, a snarling, ugly beast that bore her lover's features.

She had glared back at the effigies as they passed, hot, angry tears pouring unnoticed down her cheeks.

When the fire had raised high over the crowd and the cheer rose overhead, Rey was already gone, racing to the ship as fast as she could through the surge of bodies crushing to get closer to the pyre where the legacy of Supreme Leader Ren would burn.

And the memory of Ben Solo with it.

Rey didn't realize she had been crying until BB-8 drew her back into the Falcon , where she stood shivering, clutching at herself.

She responded as best as she could to its harried whistles and beeps.

"No, I'm happy here, Beebee, really. I'm just...lost," she said quietly. "The Nightsisters are treating me well, but I need a night alone."

The droid chirped.

"That's very sweet of you, but you don't have to do anything for me. I just want to sleep here tonight. It'll be just like old times, yeah?"

Beebee agreed, wishing her a good rest cycle as it promised to continue monitoring the ship.

"I knew you could do it." She patted the droid affectionately on the dome. "I'll see you in the morning."

With that, she retreated alone to the captain's quarters, waiting, praying she'd hear Ben again.

She was met with only silence. Tears fell fresh over her cheeks.

There was something wrong with her. She hadn’t known she could feel this kind of grief, so profound and so selfish at the same time. 

She wanted Ben back because he was the only one she could talk to, she realized with deep sorrow. She had kept so many secrets from the Resistance, secrets that she was still keeping here. She was lying to herself and to others, creating a fragmented persona barely held together by the Force and the hope of his return.

Rey was not sure how to reveal herself to the other Nightsisters. She wanted to open herself up to them, to feel the life and hope and joy they carried. She had been guarded out of necessity with the Resistance when they couldn’t possibly know her secret history with Ben when they needed her and they were all she had. But now any chance of seeing him again hinged on not angering the Nightsisters with her truth, so she was somehow even more withdrawn and guarded. 

She was broken. She was clinging to the desire to retrieve him as if it were the only tether she had to this life. There was more to life than mourning, she knew, and he had given so much for her to experience it, but the emptiness inside her was so vast, she wasn’t sure that time was a potent enough healer to bring her the closure she needed.

She had to at least try. She owed Ben that. 

She padded over to the storage closet in the corner of the room. She'd taken so few things when she left the Resistance that she hadn't needed to use the closets and holds of the Falcon for more than rations, but there was one thing she treasured as much as the ship itself. 

Somehow, the torn black undershirt had never lost the smell of him, of something metallic and spicy, as if he had fused himself with the garment when he disappeared in her arms.

She missed him. This longing was not something she had to actively think about, but it was always there, waiting just below the surface to rise and bubble over. As she held the fabric of his shirt in her hands her eyes began to water of their own accord and the emptiness in her chest panged with want. She suppressed it well around the Sisters; she couldn’t lose her only shot of getting Ben back, and she couldn’t imagine they would be eager to continue to help her if they found out her real feelings for Ben.

She didn’t just want him back because she owed him for saving her life; he added light to it, even when he struggled with his own. When their hands touched across the galaxy, he had showed her there was a life for her where she felt loved and wanted with him. A future with no more loneliness.

She couldn’t let that vision be just a dream. She’d had too many painful dreams as it was.

She climbed back into the captain’s bed, burying her face in the shirt. 

Ben. Somehow the Force had chosen the two of them. Somehow he had disappeared where she could not feel or see him, only hear and mourn him.

Somehow, she would get him back. But for now his absence was an acute pain, a wound that kept tearing open before she could even let it heal.

She remembered his body fading just moments after they kissed, her skin still warm from being pressed against him, cradled in his arms. Their kiss, the only one they had shared, an admittedly clumsy but desperate act of affection and gratitude and longing, was still lingering on her lips as Ben slipped through her fingers. She hadn’t just cared for Ben because the Force had united them; she wanted him. 

Be with me.

Since he had taken that Force-cursed mask off, she had to reconcile with the knowledge that she found him strangely handsome, despite herself. It was easy to overlook his haunting eyes when he was cruel and cold and monstrous, but when he opened himself up to her as they had seen each other through the bond, she had seen him as he was. 

She had kissed him because she desired him. She had cradled his face in her hands because when the world around her had gone black, she couldn’t have been welcomed back into the world of the living by a kinder, gentler face. Ben, as she had always seen him in her heart, was waiting for her on the other side.

She had wanted to take his hand. She had wanted the future she had seen. She had wanted to feel their bodies entwined…

She felt her face heat with the revelation. She hadn’t let herself feel that for Ben before, or at least, she had denied it when she had felt it before. She had seen him naked from the waist up. She knew about these things, about the strange but beautiful bodies of men, and she wanted to feel Ben, to see him…

A dream. It was all a dream. But these dreams of him were all she had, and she didn’t want to suffer in want anymore.

She inhaled deeply of his scent, burying her face deeper into the surprisingly soft fabric and wiping away the drying tears on her cheek. She tugged the hem of her shift up with one hand, bunching it around her belly, and traced her trembling fingers over her thighs. She ran her finger between the hot, wet curls between her legs, seeking out the sparks of pleasure as she felt along her warm, sensitive skin. 

She closed her eyes, and, guided by the scent and memories, let visions of Ben flood her mind: Ben shirtless and proud, kissing her endlessly, his broad hands that had once spanned her side so easily now taking over for her much smaller fingers, touching her wherever, however. Ben filling her, loving her, curling himself around her protectively as he pleasured her with just his touch, a touch she had been forbidden from knowing by the same cruel Force that had drawn them together.

She cried out into the night as the tension she had carried so long in her body released. She eased into a dreamless sleep, comforted by the relative silence and the hard-won peace in her mind.

Chapter Text

Though Rey still struggled to open herself up to the Nightsisters, she found it was easy to get to know them as she began to pass along her knowledge of the Force during their evening gatherings. 

Some of the Sisters were eager to participate in the lessons; others watched from the fringes of the firelight, taking in Rey’s teachings from a safe distance. After a few sessions, even some of the more reticent Sisters were coming to join in on the evening’s opening meditations.

Rey found many struggled to feel the Force in the same way she had struggled to feel the Magick through the overwhelming onslaught of the Force in all her senses. Still, she remained as positive as she could in her instructions, taking things as slowly as possible for the majority of the group and working one-on-one with the more advanced students afterward. 

She wondered distantly if this was what it was like for Luke starting his new Jedi Order, but then she remembered how the ancient texts Luke had obsessed over discouraged feeling passion or emotion in studying the Force, as it claimed these led to the Dark side. Clearly, that wasn’t something that bothered the Nightsisters. As Rey began to teach some of the faster learners how to feel the Living Force and move some stones around, she would hear Sister Mishla, an older Torgruta, release a hearty “ Kriff ” after the collapse of every tower she built. Vadnie and Emolith, young Zabraks, would shove each other playfully to try to disrupt the other’s focus. There was a sense of affection, of community that Rey sensed being around these women, but she couldn’t quite understand its origin.

She learned gradually that the Nightsisters each used their skills to form some sort of role beyond simply serving in various fashions during the rituals. Mother Shelish’s role was obvious: she had grown up on Dathomir and knew the old ways of the Nightsisters. However, rather than being an unquestioned ruler, she preferred to lead democratically. Enne was the seamstress, repairing old, worn, and torn cloth, while Mishla was the tinkerer, responsible for repairing most everything else. Y’Kat minded the homestead, making sure every Sister was taking care of her own things and respecting the space. 

Allilu and Ibeo were primarily responsible for building the recipes for meals and cooking, though others took turns rotating to help. Efindinio and Nika were usually in charge of security and assigning night watch rotations with Illan acting as medic whenever one of the Sisters got into a scrape. G’litu was the spiritual heart of the group, usually assisting Mother Shelish most closely with guiding rituals, while Vadnie and Emolith were scouts, both on the planet and with an ancient console seeking out occasional information on the galaxy beyond. 

Most of them hadn’t come from Dathomir, Rey learned. They had, however, sought it out. 

Mother Shelish had wanted to reform the Nightsisters, but refused to repeat the old structure. Rey knew the legacy of the Nightsisters, of death and blood, of terror wrought by the Magick. But though they understood the history, the legacy of these rituals, Rey found that they were not nearly as horrifying as she had anticipated given what she had read in the old texts. 

“The old ways are gone,” Mother Shelish once said calmly, by way of explanation. “The only way for us now is forward.”

And that was what the Sisters had sought: a new way forward. 

Rey had only caught glimpses of their past lives. Ibeo bore scars on her arms from an abusive husband. Allilu bore similar marks on her back from a father who had punished her for falling in love with a man he hadn’t chosen for her. At least two of the Sisters had joined Mother Shelish to avoid loveless marriages and babies that bore the face of their cruel fathers. The younger Sisters had families torn apart by the war and knew little else but this family. 

They were all powerful, kind women. They welcomed Rey warmly. They shared all they had and never demanded of her more than she was willing to give.

She hated having to hide from them, but there was so much she wasn’t yet able to share. 

Nightsisters didn’t crave love. They didn’t seek husbands or partners or lovers. They had each other, the coven, the Magick binding them; they had no need for anyone else. Rey wanted Ben selfishly, to heal the emptiness in her soul, to erase the longing etched so deep in her heart she was hollow from it. She had lied to the Sisters who had taken her in kindly, who had given her the Magick, who were eager to learn from her. And each day the lie she had given them gutted her.

They would not accept her if they knew the real reason Rey had come to them, sought out their Magick. 

It was too late to tell them the truth, Rey thought, just as it had been too late to tell the Resistance about Ben. They would not trust her anymore once they knew. They would hate her for her deceit, for her dishonesty, for her weak, pathetic love.

She had to finish her mission. She had to get Ben back, damn whatever else would follow. She had fought this hard to find him again; she would fight the Nightsisters if she had to.

Whatever it takes , she vowed. 

After all, it was like Mother Shelish said: the only way for her was forward.

On the night of the first ritual, Mother Shelish guided them out into a little valley away from the village. The usually hostile creatures that roamed the wilderness beyond their little village seemed wary of the procession of Nightsisters and kept their distance. They had dressed in their ceremonial robes, handmade by Enne to fit their vastly different body types, and walked in pairs, Efindinio and Nika in the lead, Mother Shelish and G’litu at the end, with Rey, the unpaired Sister, walking alone before the leaders. 

Both of the moons were high in the star-speckled sky, and Rey could feel the Magick, so chaotic and wicked and wild, seem to writhe with delight here in the valley. The insects and birds and beasts all quieted their calls as the Sisters parted to form a circle in the center of a field. With a wave of hands, torches around the space ignited, casting the area in a warm amber glow.

Rey had witnessed a few other smaller rituals, but this was the first she had been invited to lead. Mother Shelish assured her it would be necessary to find Ben. 

“We cannot bring your friend back until we find where he is,” she said. “I have my suspicions that if you can still communicate with him, he has not passed on but is waiting. We are going to find him tonight so you can initiate contact with him. If my suspicions are confirmed, we will prepare for another ritual.”

Her pale eyes turned to Rey. “If you think you are up to it.”

Rey nodded in understanding, afraid to find out the implications of Shelish’s words.

The older Zabrak woman looked at her for a moment expectantly. Rey felt rooted to the spot.

Fear, an old friend, curled, thick and heavy in her stomach. She couldn’t be afraid now. She had to do whatever it took to get Ben back, even if it scared her. Even if it hurt. Especially then.

“Sister Rey, are you ready?” Mishla called from nearby.

Rey’s gaze shot to Sister Mishla, and she remembered herself. On shaking legs, she stepped between the Sisters and took her place in the middle of the circle, as she had been taught earlier. 

Kneeling on the mossy ground, she heard the Sisters begin their hypnotic chanting, the familiar green light of Magick emitting from their hands until it began to spread, thin tendrils of Magick connecting them like a chain. 

The Nightsisters were experienced witches. They had practiced this for days, learning the words and spells necessary to reach into the boundary of worlds; Rey had only to trust that she would be able to do her part.

The chanting continued, faster and more repetitive, a heartbeat in Rey’s head. Looking down at her fingers, she saw they, too, were glowing, attached to the chain created by the Sisters.

“Now, Sister Rey,” G’litu said. “Deprive yourself of one sense so your touch can expand your reach. Feel for the spirit of the one you lost. We will connect you.”

Rey reached into the pocket of her robe and drew out the long, thick ribbon she had stowed. Taking it in both hands, she covered her eyes and tied it behind her head, the knot nestling between the small twists in her hair. 

She took a deep breath, centering herself as the chanting droned on. Another. Another.

Ben. Ben Solo. I am looking for Ben Solo, her mind whispered into the Magick, into the nothingness.

Please, she added.

With a final inhale she felt out for the Magick, as if reaching for the chain the Sisters had forged. 

But instead of feeling the Magick in her hands, she felt hollowness, and silence rushed up to meet her. The chanting disappeared. The mossy ground beneath her vanished.

She felt weightless, light. She tried to take a step, and it was as if she was standing, and there was suddenly solid ground beneath her foot.

Another weightless step and her other leg felt anchored.

She took another deep breath. She wasn’t here, not really. Not that she could even tell where here was. But her consciousness was no longer on Dathomir in the valley with the Sisters, of that she was certain.

But was she near Ben? Had the Sister brought her to the place where his spirit wandered, lost and afraid?

She called out for him, taking phantom steps into a world she couldn’t see.

“Ben?” she called, her voice echoing. “Ben, it’s Rey. Are you here?”

She listened. 

Nothing.

The fear in her gut grew until it was paralyzing her.

I can’t fail I can’t fail I have to find him, have to bring him back have to--

“BEN!” she called, her voice echoing again. She wanted to rip the blindfold off. She wanted to hunt for him, try to see where he was that he felt so lost, try to find whatever trace of him she could, if he was even here (wherever here was).

But she had to keep her blindfold on. She had to do this right. She had to listen to the Nightsisters.

She froze, taking deep, greedy breaths to try to swallow the panic. She took uncertain steps forward. She called for Ben again.

More steps, more breaths. Another call.

Still nothing.

She just kept walking, listening.

Finally, she called again, shouting out his name and channeling all the sorrow she had felt since she felt his life slip away from her in the Force.

After the echoes settled, she heard the distant sound of sobbing, a low, mournful wail.

“Ben?” she whispered into the unknown.

The sobbing stopped. “Rey?” a deep, raspy voice asked. “Please, is it you? Tell me I’m not imagining things again.”

Rey had to swallow a relieved sob of her own. She knew that voice. It called to her, in the deepest part of her soul. 

“No, Ben, no, it’s me. It’s really me.”

She felt herself weightless again, and when Ben spoke again, it sounded like he was beside her. 

“Are you alright? You sound scared,” he said brokenly. “I know the feeling. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how I got here. My memory is...I just remember seeing you...seeing you dead. I but then after that...I don’t know what’s real.”

Rey felt a strange shiver along her spine. “I did die, Ben. You saved me,” she said quietly. “You brought me back. Don’t you remember?”

The silence was more than answer enough. 

“What happened then, Rey? I’m afraid. I keep seeing things, visions…”

A knot grew in Rey’s throat. “I...I can’t say, Ben. You disappeared on Exegol. You vanished...in my arms.” She inhaled, and spoke slowly. “I thought you died. I’m trying to bring you back.”

“Bring me back?” Rey almost swore she felt the gust of his breath against her cheek. He felt so close now, so close...

Her feet felt solid beneath her once again. She took a step towards him, or where she thought he was.

“I don’t know where you are now, Ben, but I’m going to get you out of there,” she said, drawing strength she didn’t know she had to keep her voice from quaking. “Please, don’t be afraid.”

“How...how did you find me?” he asked quietly. He was near. She could almost feel his warmth.

“I have help, Ben. I have friends...we’re going to bring you back. Whatever it takes, I’ll get you out of here.”

“Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t be a dream.”

Rey reached out her left hand and took another step. She almost drew her hand back as her fingertips made contact with something solid. Warm. 

Skin.

She moved her hand up slowly. His neck, she could tell. She walked her fingers up over his jaw and cradled his cheek, feeling the wisps of hair tickling her.

His breathing was shaky, and his form seemed to tremble.

“Rey?” She felt his face twist and contort, lines forming and relaxing beneath her touch. She felt hot tears fall against her fingers.

“Ben, I’m here,” she whispered, reaching up her other hand to cradle his face.

But her hand felt nothing.

“No,” she whispered.

“Rey?”

She felt the warmth disappear from under the fingertips on her left hand, as once again she grasped the air for where Ben Solo had once been.

“No!” 

She felt hands wrap around her shoulders, pulling her backward.

“No!” she shrieked again. “Ben, come back!”

Rey thrashed and squirmed against the hands restraining her, pawing at the empty air in front of her.

Suddenly she felt a tugging and a bright light. The blindfold was pulled off of her and she found herself staring into the green torchlight, several of the Nightsisters restraining her.

She looked at each of them, eyes wild, vision blurry. She felt the cool air on her cheek and realized she was crying, hot tears flowing freely from her eyes.

“Little flower, are you alright?” the familiar voice of Sister Mishla asked. It took Rey a moment of steadying breaths to realize that she was one of the bodies holding her. Enne seemed to be shooing away the other Sisters as Illan leaned over and began to examine Rey. 

“Take deep breaths,” Illan commanded. Rey complied, her frantic gasping probably doing little of actual value to calm her frazzled state.

“What happened?” Mishla continued, rubbing a soothing hand between Rey’s shoulders. Rey didn’t answer for a moment, trying to organize her thoughts, when another voice broke through her haze.

“Did you find him?” 

Rey looked up. Mother Shelish seemed to loom over her then, the other Sisters returning to kneel in their spots in the circle. Rey felt so small, so broken. So lost.  

She had found Ben. She had gotten so close to what she wanted. And she was about to lose him just as quickly.

She nodded, eyes downcast. They’d know now. They’d have to.

“Yes,” she whispered, her throat raw. “He was there.”

“That’s good, right?” Sister Emolith asked. “Is he okay?”

Rey started to nod again, but then another wave of sobs gripped her. Mishla and G’litu whispered comforting words and tried to get her to calm down, but there was nothing for it. She shook them off and knelt before Mother Shelish, waiting for the tears to break long enough for her to catch her breath and speak.

“I went looking for Ben Solo,” she said. “He saved my life; that is true. He saved me once from death at the hands of a shared enemy, and then again when he gave his life energy in the Force so that I could live again when I had been drained of my own. He and I...we are two halves in the Force. A dyad. He is part of my soul as I am part of his.”

She looked up to face the witch. “I love Ben Solo. I came to repay his life debt not only because of what he has done for me, but who he is to me. I have been haunted by him in my dreams and by his cries in the night. If you do not want to help me any longer, I understand. I will leave now. But now that I know he’s out there, I’ll do whatever it takes to get him back.”

Mother Shelish regarded Rey for a moment. She felt all eyes on her, but she did not look away from the Mother. 

Mother Shelish just smiled and folded her arms. “I know that. Why do you think I wanted to help you?”

Rey gaped. "You...knew?"

Shelish shrugged. "Not the specifics, but I guessed enough. There was love involved. I can always tell.”

“So you knew...but you still took me in? I thought love was forbidden for Nightsisters.”

Mother Shelish raised an eyebrow. “Just as you had clearly researched the Nightsisters before you arrived, so have I learned much about your Jedi.”

The willowy Zabrak began to pace. “The Nightsisters and Jedi have different understandings of what you call the Force. They believed our Magicks are the Darkness of the Force, which they fear. Am I correct?”

Rey nodded.

“The Jedi did everything in their power to avoid facing that Darkness. They couldn’t allow themselves to feel love without fear of it becoming that hated Dark. They constructed an Order that banned love, yet simultaneously demanded partnership and community, Masters and Apprentices who had to fight together but never love each other, lest that love exposes them to Darkness. Tell me, Sister Rey: do you know a community without love?”

Unbidden, the image of the parade on Cloud City came to her mind. Finn and Poe and the rest of her Resistance companions laughing at the garish effigies of Kylo Ren raised high. Her friends who didn’t know her at all. 

“I...might,” she answered. 

Mother Shelish watched her in silence for a moment. “The Nightsisters never feared attachment as the Jedi did. They never feared love and community, but embraced it. That was always the way. Sisterhood. That’s what you have experienced here, yes?”

She didn’t wait for Rey’s tepid answer. Mishla squeezed her shoulder comfortingly.

“The old Nightsisters are gone. Purged, much like the Jedi, with tragically few survivors. I spent some time away from my homeworld learning all I could about my old order, about the Jedi, and in my learning, I discovered that there is more than just one type of community, one type of Sisterhood, one that expands beyond Dathomir.” 

She gestured at the women and girls seated around her. “I found these Sisters, all who had suffered loss, who were full of what the Jedi called Darkness, like you yourself. But they had compassion. Curiosity. A desire for something more. We’re rebuilding. We’re learning. When the time comes, we will go out and seek more women like our own who could use Dathomir as a place of refuge, who are able and willing to wield the Magick.”

Mother Shelish stepped closer to Rey and knelt down, meeting her gaze. “Like you, child. The Jedi you have read about might have wanted you believe that you are less for your attachments. But you are more. You are made stronger by your connections to others, stronger by the relationships you foster. Your relationship with this man, this Ben, is strong enough to bring you back from death. I see no reason why you will be unable to do the same. But you won’t do it alone.”

She offered Rey a hand, and with the help of Mishla and Illan, Rey rose on her now-stiff legs. She looked at the faces of the Nightsisters, her Sisters, in the firelight. 

They approached her, forming a tighter circle around her. 

“You will have us,” Enne said.

“Our strength to draw from, if you will welcome it,” Vadnie added.

“You will have to give of yourself; what I warned you is true,” Mother Shelish continued. “The ritual will demand you sacrifice. But you will not walk alone.”

“And when you stumble, we will be there,” Illan concluded.

Rey’s vision blurred with grateful tears as she swept into the embrace of each of her Sisters in turn, including Mother Shelish. She whispered her thanks until she was hoarse, and barely remembered the trek back to the village from the valley.

The Sisters helped Rey get ready for bed, Allilu brewing Rey a warm mug of tea to promote sleep and pleasant dreams while Y’Kat prepared her bed and Ibeo helped her into her shift. Enne dabbed at Rey’s face with a warm, wet cloth to clear away the dirt and tears, and Mishla whispered reassurances as she tucked Rey into her bedroll. 

That night, Rey drifted to sleep to the tune of a lullaby she didn’t know sung by a Sister she finally learned she could trust. 

Chapter Text

Nights became different in the homestead. 

When darkness crept across the planet, they would wake, facing the ghastly flora and fauna that crept across the world, refusing to be intimidated by the ghosts haunting their shadows, and facing their fears rather than running from them. 

By night they would prepare for the next full moons, the next ritual. They would practice their Magick and the Force and everything in between. Rey would hunt the horrifying beasts that roamed the planet and cook for everyone and learn to weave with her Sisters.

But before she tucked into her bedroll, Rey would talk to her Sisters, and get to know them, where they came from, how they became Nightsisters. What they loved and what they lost. And they would, in turn, ask stories of her. 

She no longer felt the dread of hiding, the fear that held her back from friendships with the Resistance, who didn’t understand the Force and couldn’t be brought to understand her connection with Ben. And by firelight, as her Sisters prepared for bed, she told stories. 

They listened to her tell of the man with the black hair and the sorrowful eyes who had smiled only once for her before he became lost to the galaxy. Of the masked monster concealing a great, loving heart. The story of their bond, the dyad, was told many times and absorbed with great interest every telling.

And when the nightmares of loss and death came again and woke her from her sleep, her sisters comforted her, soothing her until the sobbing passed.

They sang her songs and wiped her tears and cheered her up, reminding her that as long as she lived, as long as she was fighting for him, her love was not lost.

“He’s there,” Sister Mishla said, stroking her hair beside the fire one night. “In the World Beyond. You can get him back, little flower.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do it,” Rey whispered. “I haven’t been the same since Exegol. Since he disappeared. I have these bad dreams...dreams where I’m still dead...dreams where he’s suffering. There are ones where I save him, dreams where I can’t.”

Rey snuggled down deeper into her Sister’s lap. “I’m afraid I’m not enough.”

“Look at me,” Mishla said, nudging her chin up. “I’ll have none of this.”

Rey met her new Sister’s piercing gaze. “Remember this, little flower: just because you are not whole does not mean you are broken.”

She gingerly picked up the black shirt, Ben’s shirt, which Rey had rescued from the Falcon and kept at her bedroll.

“Is this no longer valuable because it’s torn and full of holes? No, it’s the most precious thing to you.”

Mishla gave Rey another squeeze. “Don’t be afraid, little flower. It will not be easy, but your Ben will find you. He’ll come back.”

Many nights had passed.

The woman, these sisters, had prepared well, and when the moon was right and the Magick was calling, it was time to seek a favor from the galaxy.

The torchlight cast long shadows as Rey entered the valley, this time leading the procession of her sisters. Her fingers clutched her lightsaber, her knuckles tight and straining with apprehension, but her mind cleared of all but her purpose. 

“You ready?” Mishla whispered a pace behind Rey.

Rey glanced over her shoulder. Beside her, Enne was flashing Rey a gesture of positivity. Rey smiled, then, and nodded. 

The day of moonrise had been spent in furious final preparations, practicing incantations, painting the markings, and coaching Rey through the ritual, over and over until she knew it better than her own name. 

She couldn’t let doubt enter her head any longer. She knew what she had to do. She would not be doing it alone.

She stepped into the center of the clearing, her Sisters taking their places around her in the circle. She looked at each other face around her in the low, flickering firelight, different species, different ages, but each bearing painted markings, drawn from the ancient Nightsister traditions, applied by a thin brush hours before. These markings would connect them, bind them, establish their purposeful devotion to the Magick. 

Efindinio stepped forward and placed a bowl at Rey’s feet. Illan laid blankets beside it. The last preparations. 

Y’Kat placed a black bundle at Rey’s side. That was unexpected, but Rey remained silent through her shock. Ben’s shirt. The last piece of him she had, there in case she needed it. 

Rey focused on the gentle buzzing of the Force through the women around her, the Magick in the heart of the planet. Ben, where he resided in her heart, and the distant imprint of the Force on the garment beside her. 

With a nod at G’litu and Mother Shelish, the Sisters began chanting lowly, one voice, haunting and certain. The ritual had started. 

No turning back.

And if this succeeded ( when) , Ben would be with her again, body and soul. 

The green light grew from the hands of her sisters as they repeated the words of the ritual, the rhythm beautiful and wild and chaotic, and she began to move her hands and say her own words, her own ritual, creating a circle of light in the air. 

“Sister Rey, you have created a passage to the World Beyond,” Mother Shelish said. “You must pay the blood price the Magick demands.”

Rey nodded, ignoring the fear in her stomach.

This had to work.

She raised her left hand, the hand that had cradled his face on Exegol, that clung to him as he disappeared in the Force; the hand that had reached through the galaxy and beyond to caress his cheek. This was the hand she would offer in exchange for his passage. 

Rey ignited her lightsaber, the blade glowing golden in the ring of green light, and she held her hand into the circle of Magick she herself had created. 

Be with me .

With a deep breath, she closed her eyes and sliced the blade through her wrist. Her arm burned from the sudden intense pain, her muscles and sinews reeling from the shock. 

But her severed hand vanished into the portal she created, and as she stood there trembling, she saw the circle change; instead of showing her Sisters, a new plane appeared. She hastily extinguished her saber, letting it drop to the ground as she stumbled through the portal into the unknown.

The world around her was dark, lit in places by portals, other gateways glowing hazy and dim, but she could barely process where she was. She took deep breaths, trying to think through the pain, but it was relentless. Her system was going into shock. She knew that was a possibility; Illan had warned her of this risk. But this was Ben. This is what she had to do. He had given everything for her. She could do it. 

The Force was too turbulent to read, to decipher. There was no path, no ground; she was completely disoriented and was certain that her sudden loss of limb wasn’t helping. There was a haunting whispering flooding her ears. This place did not welcome her easily. It probably didn’t forgive her for her last intrusion. She had avoided them once before to come back to life. She needed to find him quickly.

She only had one chance. 

If she were to fail, Ben’s sacrifice would have been for nothing. 

“ BEN,” she called out into the strange vastness. “ Ben, where are you ?”

In her mind, the whispers answered, harsh and grating; the voices of the dead, warning her, rejecting her. 

She dashed forward, unsure of where to go. She had to keep moving. Keep moving. He had to be close. The ritual was supposed to create a portal to him.

She thought of the dreams. The memories. 

Scared. He had been scared. Haunted. 

And her dreams...perhaps they were not just dreams. Perhaps they were visions. Perhaps he was showing her what he felt. Ben...how he suffered. 

She cradled her mutilated arm against her chest and closed her eyes, remembering her last dream. 

The pit. Climbing out of the pit on Exegol, that gaping canyon into nothingness...how it haunted her. In her dream Ben had been trapped, drawn down by the souls of those killed by Snoke and Palpatine. The death and destruction he had been unable to stop.

She imagined herself on Exegol, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself in the ghastly place where she had been when she returned to life, alone and staring at the clothing that was still warm from Ben’s vanished body. But there was no empty black shirt. There was only the deep hole into the bowels of the planet, and she knew what she would find there.

Be with me , she prayed. Please.

Cradling her arm against the loose fabric of her robe, she rushed over to the edge, a phantom wind whipping at her hair and flowing clothing.

Ben was there. She couldn’t miss the shadow of his hair and clothes against the rock.

He clung to the slope, his face buried in his extended arms.

This was his nightmare, she realized. This was his punishment. In their separation, Ben was reliving his sins, reenacting his worst pain. 

This, she understood, was the closest his soul could get to finding relief: paying for all the sins he had caused. Climbing out from this hole over and over again.

She could not reach him. She couldn’t pull him out. But she knew somehow that she didn’t need to; she just had to draw him to her.

“ BEN ,” she cried one final, desperate time, breaking through the grating voices clouding her mind. 

His head snapped up to see her face peering over the edge of the pit.

His eyes blinked in confusion, the overlapping memory and nightmare fighting for dominance. Then understanding dawned on him: Rey had not been able to help him from the pit before, and if she was here now, this was no nightmare. The cycle of agony was breaking.

Around Rey, Exegol began to disappear, and the distance between her and Ben closed in an instant. As she knelt in the world of darkness and light, he too, came to kneel before her, her eyes seeing, but unbelieving.

“Rey?” he asked fretfully, gaze raking over her form. She realized with horror that he might not recognize her. 

With all the visions competing, he had only memories layered upon terrors and nightmares to see her in. He had known Rey before she had lost him; he might not know her now. 

The burning of her lost hand was taking over. It was almost too much. Her body couldn’t take much more, but she had to do this. Had to. Had to.

She tugged her hood back, revealing herself fully, her face painted with markings obscuring her features. He might not know her now. Might not believe her.

Be with me . 

“It’s me Ben,” she said weakly. “It’s Rey. It’s...it’s me. I c-came back. I promised. Promised I-I would…”

The world was getting hazy, the voices growing again, eager, hungry. 

He didn’t believe it was her. He didn’t see her. This place had changed him, just as she had changed in his absence…

She felt as if she were curling into herself. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring Ben back. She couldn’t meet his gaze and see the confusion, revulsion even. She couldn’t look. 

She would be trapped here, lost to the World Between Worlds, leaving her Sisters behind, ruining Ben’s sacrifice, leaving him trapped here in his nightmares…

She felt a hand on her face, a hand, broad and warm as she remembered. Ben drew her to face him, his eyes scanning her in the ethereal half-light, and he mind was silent.

“You’re real,” he whispered, though the phrase was almost a question.

“Y-yes,” she stammered. Her heart was racing, panic gripping her through her shoulders and neck to the base of her skull, but as he touched her, she seemed to feel the panic and pain ease, just slightly, ever so slowly. “I-I’m...I’m bringing you back.”

“Back?”

“...Alive.”

Ben looked at her in disbelief.

“Nightsister Magick,” was all she said in response. “Retrieving...from the Force...bringing you back.”

“That was you...really you I felt?”

“Yes.”

“You found me,” he said, awestruck.

She swallowed and nodded. He was touching her but seemed so far away. Ben...get closer.

“We...we have to go, Ben. Please. The portal...they’re waiting.”

The world around them seemed to stretch and reform until the only thing was the gateway, green and luminous.

This plane was telling them, in no uncertain terms, it was time to go.

Ben helped Rey to her feet. She felt the world heave around her, and she could barely focus.

Carefully, she turned to him.

“It’s you,” he whispered once more in disbelief. 

Arching herself onto her toes carefully, Rey pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

“Me,” she said, leaning her weight against him. 

He braced his arm around her waist as she dragged the portal closer. There was a flash of bright light and suddenly an impossible weight crushed down around her as she fell onto the mossy earth in the valley once more. The chanting ceased and the green light receded as her Sisters rushed to help her. It took her a moment to collect herself, to process the onslaught of sensations, to realize where she was. To realize she was safe.

She pressed herself upright, her head still spinning, and she heard a curious murmur from her Sisters.

The weight bearing down on her was Ben, who had returned to life by sprawling on top of her, naked and battered but very much alive. 

He groaned. She was almost certain the sound was not in her mind anymore.

She looked at her Sisters to make sure they had heard it. Several were still staring scandalized at the nude human man before them, but Ben turned his face to her, looking exactly as he had on Exegol, his hair falling in a dark halo on the moss.

He smiled, that toothy grin she had loved so dearly in his absence. He gestured at his head.

“I like what you did with your...yeah.”

In the next moment before the Sisters descended and began tending to the wounded couple in their midst, she had pressed her lips to his, to his cheek, his forehead, his temple, his jaw, every piece of him she could reach.

He was real. He was here, and the emptiness in her chest was filled by his Force presence, bright and harmonious and singing with hers.

The rituals changed from summoning and retrieving to healing. Illan worked to address what remained of Rey’s arm, applying a salve while Nika used the Magick to calm Rey’s body from the shock. Ben Solo, once more corporeal, still bore the injuries from his battle on Exegol. He was covered with a blanket for his modesty as Enne, Vadnie, and Emolith tended to him. 

Rey tried to fight to be closer to him, to help him, but Mishla held her back.

“Let your apprentices take care of this, Master Jedi,” she said. “Watch.”

While Enne soothed his mind, Vadnie and Emolith took hands, channeling the healing Force and passing their hands over his wounds: the dark bruises along his hip, leg, and back receded, and Ben groaned as the fragmented bits of bone slid together under his skin.

After several moments, the girls broke concentration, panting from strain, but both smiling eagerly. 

“See, Rey?” Vadnie said. “Just like you taught us.”

It was a long while before Rey and Ben were recovered enough to be moved back to the homestead, Nika and Efindinio hoisting Ben between them as he limped on half-healed legs. A bed mat was placed alongside Rey’s where Ben was left to rest. Their healing was incomplete and would take time, but as the sisters fell asleep, Rey knew that bad dreams would no longer be a hindrance; they had left the nightmares behind. 

She watched Ben’s chest rise and fall in the dim light, afraid to close her eyes lest she loses him again.

“I know you’re awake,” she whispered. 

He opened one eye to peer at her. “Is it that obvious?”

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s the dyad?”

He smiled at her, brighter than the firelight, and nodded. “Let’s say it’s the dyad.”

“You’re back,” she stated plainly. The simple phrase seemed to carry meaning heavily between them. 

He bit his lips. “I am. If I hadn’t been able to feel you...after all my time in there, I’m not sure I’d have believed otherwise. It’s strange…” He hesitated, his eyes scanning her face.

“I knew it was you because I could feel your darkness.”

Rey felt taken aback. She had once tried so hard to deny the darkness within her, the darkness of the Force. “Darkness?”

He turned back to her. “Not that you should be embarrassed by it. You were...afraid for me. Fear always carries a little bit of darkness, but yours...I know your darkness. It’s small but powerful. That fear helped me find you when I knew almost nothing else.”

“You’re saying my fear...helped?”

Ben smiled crookedly at her. “You helped me get out of there by being you, Rey. I don’t know how long I was in there, but I wouldn’t have known which way was up if I hadn’t felt your emotion. Your passion. It was raw and...tangible. I knew it was real.”

Rey found herself smiling without realizing it. “I heard you cry sometimes. At night. I would have these dreams...you were trapped. Hurting. And I didn’t know if I was imagining it. But one time...I don’t know if you remember this at all, but I called to you and you answered...and then I had to get you back. I had no other choice.”

He turned to face her more squarely. She noticed that Vadnie and Emolith hadn’t managed to heal the cuts to his cheek and lip, the wounds dark in the low amber light. There would be more healing for him yet.

“I lived that nightmare thousands of times, over and over,” he said. “Slight variations, new punishments. I probably had millions of visions where you had to die for every one of my mistakes. And every time I made the same choice.”

He smiled at her.

“I would do it again, you know. Even knowing what happened after, even if there was no promise I’d be here, now, back with you…”

“I know,” she said quietly. She felt the warmth in her chest blossoming. 

Ben reached out and took her good hand, bringing it to his lips briefly before letting it fall to his side. They fell into a comfortable silence, hands clasped in the semidarkness.

“Do you feel it?” Ben whispered. “That emptiness...the one that had always been there. It’s gone. I wasn’t sure...I didn’t know if you were another trick of my mind, but I felt it...that wholeness.”

He frowned. “And then you were hurt. You were scared. You were worried about me. That concern...that’s how I knew it was you. I felt that and I felt you.” He tapped his chest. “Here.”

She squeezed his hand. “I promised I was coming back.”

He kissed her hand again. She felt the exhaustion rolling off in waves around him. His Force signature seemed to curl around hers pleasantly, dragging her closer to sleep.

“We’re home,” she whispered, drifting into sweet dreams, Ben’s hand in hers.

Chapter Text

Rey had never known how to finish stories.

When her family left her, she had comforted herself by making up stories to tell herself, little tales to help her fall asleep, to keep away the dread and fear that were often the only companions to a little girl abandoned on a desert planet.

Of course, the story she told herself over and over again was simple; one day her parents would return for her and she would be happy for the rest of her days.

But what did happy look like after that? 

She could always tell herself the beginning of a story. That part she knew how to tell. Even if she couldn't remember her mother's face, she couldn't forget her soft voice whispering in her ear the familiar lines that indicated the beginning of any good story:

“A long, long time ago.”

Even without anyone else to tell her stories, Rey knew how to introduce characters and setting and plot, how to weave tales of heroes and monsters and their adventures, but even if she was still awake when her tale ended, she found herself wondering more and more what the endings really meant. 

What could the ending of a story look like to a girl who couldn't see any future for herself beyond the endless wasteland of sand, whose days blurred together into a haze of rust and heat and hunger, a desperation for nourishment of many kinds that she was always denied?

Stories always ended in the shimmering heat of the horizon, dreams and hopes forged in darkness that vaporizing in the sun.

Rey's ending seemed destined to be foretold; a copy of every day before it, strung together with a faint and lonely hope.

Rey hadn't expected her story to contain so many varied chapters, she thought idly, feeling with the Force throughout the galaxy, her senses gliding through atmospheres and across unfamiliar landscapes, skating over seas and mountain ranges. When she reflected on it, these plot twists were beyond what a girl bartering for food portions could have even conceived.

Fuelled by the Magick of her sisters to find more like them, more lost, lonely souls with a spark of something, she traipsed through the galaxy, drawing on the energy around her to push further and further beyond her reach, when she felt a familiar presence brush against her awareness, and instantly she felt the warmth of longing return to her heart. 

Finally.

As she finished her perusal of a distant mining system, the ritual ended at last. 

The silence returned to the grove as the chanting ended, and Rey returned to her body slowly, opening her eyes to reorient herself. The faces greeting her were warm and familiar now, the grove a new home. Mother Shelish beamed at them.

“Go with power, Sisters,” she said in way of dismissal. “The Night is yours.”

This ritual was certainly different from Rey’s first; the Sisters sought now to grow their order, and Rey was instrumental to finding Force-senstives from across the galaxy, ones with the aptitude for the Magicks. Nightsisters of all species, Sisters who were not sisters. People who the Nightsisters needed just as much as the Nightsisters needed them. 

As her companions rose, complained about their aches and cramps, and shook out sore limbs, Rey felt at least confident that the work meant something. So far she had helped bring two new members to their circle. They weren’t helping as many people as, say, the Resistance had, but the intimate degree to which they were helping others, meant something. 

It had meant a lot to her.

As Y’Kat helped steady Rey as she stretched her legs, she sensed something moving towards them at an alarming pace. 

They were soon greeted by the wizz and screeching of a familiar droid.

"BB-8 is here!" Vadnie called over her shoulder to the sisters. 

“Brother Ben is home!” Emolith shrieked, and before Mother Shelish could say a word, Emolith and Vadnie were bolting off with BB-8 towards the cliff where the Falcon was known to land. Rey felt the odd little light of Ben Solo’s Force signature and smiled to herself.

She felt very much the same as the younger girls, but didn't know how to show it.

Over the past few months since they had helped Rey pull Ben from between worlds, the Sisters had taken well to having a Brother; though Mother Shelish couldn't remember the last time they had one (and was not inclined to communicate with the dead to find out), she was pleased to welcome Ben into the community. The Sisters had eagerly taken to helping him heal, excited to have an outsider. With Ben as their captive audience, they shared stories of their lives, tales from their home worlds, and lies that were enjoyable enough to best any truths. Listening to the tales of the others, Rey began to learn to tell her own stories, the pieces of her life becoming rethreaded and rewoven into a tapestry, something she could control, something made beautiful in the light of hindsight. She watched Ben’s face in the glow of the fires as she wove her tales, and she never knew that love could create such an expression as the one he bore while absorbing her stories.

When he was well enough to move independently, he had moved from his bedroll beside Rey in the homestead to reside with BB-8 in the Falcon, which was docked just outside the village. BB-8 had only ceased hostility towards him when Rey explained that he was not Kylo Ren but Ben Solo, Leia’s son and a very good friend. The droid was skeptical, but quickly grew to accept these changes and took a shine to the man eagerly beeping at his heels.

For a while, Ben helped Y’Kat with chores around the homestead, Nika with wrangling creatures who breached the perimeter, and Rey with teaching the Sisters the Force, stepping in especially for combat exercises. But after a time he grew restless, not out of a desire to leave Dathomir, but to find a greater purpose, to help out the Nightsisters in more profound ways, to earn the second life he had been given. 

With the blessing and benediction of the Sisters (and a special promise to Rey to stay in touch as often as he was able), he took off in the Falcon on a rainy night. Though she had to hide the wetness streaking her cheeks as she watched him depart, another ship carrying her heart away from her, she had reached out, and, as she had on another such rainy night many nights ago, and felt him in the Force reaching back for her.

Leaving for weeks at a time, he was the only one of their new family to reach out to the galaxy beyond as the Sisters planned their next steps. He helped retrieve any additional supplies they needed on Dathomir, studied the news on the Holonet, and helped them plot courses for upcoming offworld ventures. The Sisters liked the view into the outside world, but there was an understanding that Ben's role, superficial for now, would only become more crucial as they sought to bring more into the order.

And while Rey enjoyed the company of the Sisters, she could hardly hide how much she missed Ben whenever he would go. She had gotten perhaps too used to Ben sleeping beside her in the homestead, his body rising and falling in the light of the dying fire, the life inside of him a song that always pulled Rey back into a comfortable slumber.

“I didn't drag you out of the Force’s grasp and bring you back into the world of living for you to run off without me, Solo,” she had said one night when they had reached through the Force and opened up a window between them. She sat just outside the homestead, and despite the darkness around them, his smile was just as vivid as it had been the first time she had seen it. Death, it seemed, couldn't break their unique bond in the Force or sever the affection that had grown between them, and though she had said it as a joke, Ben knew she was struggling to conceal the truth behind her words.

“Well, rest assured I’m never running away from you,” he laughed, his eyes crinkling with joy, a new feature for him. “The moment this bucket of bolts takes off from Dathomir, I’m always rushing back to you, fast as I can.”

And so he did, returning home to shower the Sisters in news and gifts in a time that could only a master pilot could achieve.

And then when he and Rey were alone…

These moments when the Force bridged the distance between them were ebullient and light, but all the other moments when all distance was removed and she was confronted with a living, breathing, handsome oh stars, did his eyes always look like that? man, she’d remember that moment when she kissed him like he was the only other being in the galaxy. 

They had shared a few kisses like that since, especially when he got home from his trips. Rey flushed at the thought as she and her sisters hurried back to the homestead the smell of stew heavy in the air, teasing her pained stomach.

She knew she wanted to see Ben; she wanted that more than anything. However, she was very aware of the importance of their meals together after a ritual and didn't want to appear to be putting Ben over her duty to her Sisters.

However, as she crossed the threshold, several Sisters all turned to stare at her. 

“What are you doing back here?” Enne asked accusingly. 

“Eating?” Rey replied, reaching to grab a bowl in the stack of clay dishes and fumbling awkwardly as she tried to look nonchalant under the heavy scrutiny. “Isn’t that why we're all here?”

“Not all of us,” Nika muttered.

She heard a sigh that could only belong to Mishla. “What she means is why aren’t you with Brother Ben?” 

Rey struggled. “Because...I’m a Nightsister? I live here?” she stammered. “We always come here after the ritual...?”

Her words seemed to vanish into the air like smoke from the fire in the center of the room. She was being foolish and she knew it. 

“You didn’t chop a hand off just to look at him,” Alilu grumbled.

“You know, you’re allowed to spend time with him,” G’litu added helpfully. “Mother Shelish approves.”

“But…” Rey began, but Mishla interrupted her. 

“You don’t have to feel guilty,” she said quietly, leaning in to make sure they weren’t overheard.. “We don’t mind if you skip dinner with us to be with him, Rey, really. You don't have to spare our feelings. We get it.”

Rey tried again to protest, but Y’Kat interrupted her, her hands planted firmly on her hips.

“Look, if you don’t go and claim your man, I’m taking him.”

The chorus of laughter that chased Rey out of the homestead was still ringing in her ears when she arrived at the cliff where the Falcon rested, her arms laden with a small cauldron of stew, two bowls, and, at the insistence of her sisters, her nightclothes. 

When they were together in front of the sisters, Rey tried to be chaste. But when Ben was across the galaxy and her Sisters were all asleep around her, the stories she told herself were heavy with passion, their shared whispers in the Force became sighs of ecstasy…

Rey was glad to be away from the homestead; she knew her Sisters would be howling at the blush creeping up her ears.

Under the cover of the Falcon, the two younger sisters were swinging staves around while Ben looked on from a seat on the gangplank, his bad leg stretched out in front of him, his cane beside him.

“Elbow up, Vadnie,” Ben said. “Back straight. Run the forms one more time. You got this.”

“I didn’t realize class was in session, Master Solo,” Rey called Ben’s attention to her. He looked up at her and cast a small, knowing smile in her direction.

“They were bored,” he said with a shrug. “Apparently you all were; they had you sitting still for several days, the way they tell it. Weeks, even.”

Vadnie turned away. “We said it was—OW!” she yelped as Emolith got in a shot on her side. Her complaints were immediately derailed by her desire for revenge. As the girls ran off shrieking and swatting at each other, Ben apologized to Rey before grabbing his cane and staggering to his feet to break up the argument.

Rey was grateful to her Sisters, new as they were to the Force, for healing Ben as much as they had, setting his leg and hip, but the rest he was eager to undertake on his own.

“No more Magick, no more Force,” he’d said to Rey as Illan and Nika constructed a brace for his leg. “I think I’d like to heal myself. It’s been a long time coming.”

Rey thought perhaps it was him inflicting penance upon himself for the man he'd been, but regardless, every time Ben came back, Rey noticed he walked a little bit stronger, more confident. He was finding himself, she realized. In his time away Ben was finally allowed to peace together who he wanted to be, and she loved the man he was becoming more and more every time she met him.

She carefully deposited the load she was carrying beside the gangplank, and then let out a groan as her mechanical wrist locked up, sending the bowls clattering to the ground. BB-8 let out a howl of concern as it came racing around to her side. 

She reassured the droid that she was fine, even as she hissed as the synthetic neurons in her wrist processed the pain of malfunction. She tried to tug her glove off, but it seemed to be trapped in her locked joints.

Vadnie and Emolith now placated, Ben circled back to Rey. 

He sensed her discomfort before he saw her clutching at her mechanical hand, and a furrow creased his brow.

He wordlessly reached out his hand, large and inviting (a sight she never tired of), and she deposited her small prosthetic hand in his, distantly imagining the sensation of his warmth through the glove and haze of pain. She was unsure if it was the prosthetic or sense memory, but his gentleness, so different from the man he 

had once pretended to be, was soothing nevertheless. As tugged the glove off carefully and looked at the mechanical appendage, Rey felt oddly exposed. It looked so skeletal, rusted bones without flesh, wire nerves that led to a processor at her wrist, the motors clicking rhythmically in protest as her hand remained locked.

Since the Sisters had helped her construct a hand with old specs and salvage, she often forgot her real one was gone. Her replacement could perform most of Rey’s usual tasks without difficulty, though when it came time for personal care and hygiene, she still felt uncomfortable with the prosthetic. It was prone to sticking, which made her loss harder to ignore.

But when she looked up at Ben, coaxing her palm open with gentle pressure, she saw the concentration wrinkling his brow and the creasing around his narrowed eyes, and she was glad that these marks would have a chance to wrinkle his skin. He was here. He was aging. He would grow old now. A hand was more than worth that.

While he flattened her hand by sandwiching it between both of his own and massaging the metal, Emolith and Vadnie came up behind him.

“Are you two holding hands?” Vadnie asked with mock horror. “Are you allowed to do something so indecent?”

“Brother Ben, stop being so mushy with our Sister,” Emolith chided.

“Am I hearing this right, are two Padawans telling me, their master, how to behave?” he asked, looking at them with a crude imitation of sternness. “It sounds like two of my little Sisters are going to be spending a lot of their training time tomorrow doing handstands.”

Emolith rolled her eyes in exasperation, while Vadnie wandered over to explore the cauldron Rey had brought.

“Ooh, what's that?” Vadnie said, leading with her nose.

“My dinner,” Ben said curtly.

“Got enough to share?” asked Emolith. 

“Nope, they only sent enough for two bowls,” he said, strolling back up into the ship. “I’ve got some Jedi business with your Sister.”

“Is that what you’re calling it,” Vadnie muttered. 

“There’s plenty more at the homestead,” Rey offered helpfully, scooping up the bowls with her good hand and trying to bundle her nightdress so it wouldn’t be distracting.

With mild complaining, Emolith skulked in the direction of the homestead.

“Just don’t make too much noise,” Vadnie tutted, throwing her staff over her shoulder. “The two of you will disturb the Vydaks and you won't be able to be gross anymore. And we won't miss it!”

With that, she stormed off after her sister.

Ben turned back, limping slowly towards Rey. “I think that was supposed to be a threat,” he said. 

She tried to shrug casually. “I don’t know what’s with them, but I don’t think they like to share your time,” she said. 

He chuckled, lifting the bowls out of her hand, and, turning back up the gangplank, balanced them on top of the cauldron. “Don’t know why they’re so possessive. I thought you and your Sisters share everything.”

Not you, she thought. Ben was part of the family, this new band of Force users, and while Rey was happy to share her life with her new sisters, Ben would always be hers.

After all, she had brought him back from the precipice of life and death, just as he had done for her.

Rey watched him go, her eyes tracing up his Rancor-leather boots to the holster belt over his loose black pants, an old pattern that the Sisters had made for him. He wore a fairly contemporary vest over a grey button-up shirt that he had bought on a recent trip, a confused combination that nevertheless suited him: Ben the Nightbrother, looking out for the Sisters and selling their wares to purchase supplies.

With their dinner secured on board the Falcon, Ben returned slowly back down the gangplank. 

“Now, where were we?” he asked, his gaze fixed squarely on Rey in a way that made her feel exposed and free at the same time.

She rushed forward, practically leaping to wrap her arms around Ben’s shoulders. The sensation of him embraced her first, his presence wrapping around her with a refreshing familiarity, and she felt as if she was falling into him, even as his arms held her tight against him.

He turned to her, cradling her face in his broad hand and giving her a series of deep, eager kisses. Rey felt the warmth flooding her lips quickly ricochet down to the toes of her boots and the sweetness of his mouth on hers sent a second shock of warmth flooding down to her core.

Ben pulled away finally. “I should have said hello first. Did I miss that part?”

“You did,” Rey said, hiding her breathless giddiness under a layer of bravado. “Did you forget your manners while off-world?”

“I must have; I’m useless without you to keep me straight,” Ben said, wrapping an arm against Rey’s waist. She sighed and leaned into him, feeling the relief of his touch, relieving her of a burden of wanting she hadn't realized she'd been holding onto.

He looked at her curiously.

“I think you got a little…” he gestured a large thumb at his cheek. 

Rey furrowed her brow and then remembered. The markings from the ritual. She hadn’t washed them before she’d left. 

“Oh,” she raised her hand self-consciously. She had remembered when she had gone into the portal to the world where Ben had been trapped. She’d been afraid he wouldn’t have recognized her with the binding markings through all the pain. Now she wore them so often when he was away she didn’t even think of them. “I’ll have to scrub it off...”

“No!” he said quickly. “No, not unless you want to.”

He seemed sheepish, and his grip around her waist tightened posessively.

“Only if you want,” Ben murmured, his lips brushing against her temple. “I kind of like them. They’re...you.” He paused. “You as you were when you brought me back.”

Rey grinned at that. “Then I might keep them on for you.”

“How’s it feeling now?” he asked suddenly, looking down towards her mechanical prosthetic, quickly forgotten. 

“Oh, it’s...yeah, still stiff.”

“Well, I have a surprise for you.” He jerked his head back to the ship. “Okay, well, I’m ruining the surprise, but I found another hand. Bit too big, but I figured we can take it apart to get some new parts for yours. We can work on it together whenever you get a moment.”

“I would like that,” she said, grinning. Ben had done some scavenging for her. And they would be able to rebuild her hand together. 

 She peppered him with a few more kisses, a ritual of her own; she kissed his temples, cheeks, chin, and lips, as if taking inventory of him. Everything accounted for as the eagerness created a misty lightness in her belly.

“It’s also not much of a surprise, but the Sisters sent dinner for you. Us.” She tried to act nonchalant. Since moving out to live in the Falcon, Ben would often join them for meals. They had never eaten alone together, however, and she realized it suddenly.

“Are the Nightsisters setting us up on a date?” Ben asked.

Rey stared at him, realizing she had never been on a date before yet she couldn't deny that this seemed to be the case.

As Ben bent forward to grab the cauldron, he opened the lid to smell the spiced algae and chokeroot stew.

“Oh, this smells wonderful. I’ll go take it into the galley. We can eat in there,” he said, and he gingerly started up the gangplank.

She followed him up, calling his cane to her hand and urging BB-8 to come in with them. The creatures that roamed Dathomir were often no match for a pair of Nightsisters, but you didn't want to get caught alone when the howls drew close, and more importantly, you didn't want to leave anything out that you can't bear to lose. 

“Were you waiting for a while?” Rey asked idly.

“Not too long. How long did they have you looking today?”

“Just a few hours,” Rey said. “The next ritual is in a few nights; we’re going to seek out a few more, make some decisions. Then it’s up to you to pick them up.”

“I won’t be able to keep track of you all, then,” Ben chuckled. “If this family of yours keeps growing, everyone is just going to have to get used to the pet name ‘hey, you.’”

“This family of ours. They’ve taken you in, too,” she said, correcting him. “And hush. You’re great with names.”

Rey genuinely enjoyed watching Ben Solo, her Ben, interact with others. He was his father’s son, the man his mother believed he could be. He was alive, very much alive. And she drank in every moment of life she could when she was around him. The Sisters seemed to draw out the best of him. They’d teach him a little about the Magick and he would teach them about the Force, unburdened by the light and darkness that had used his heart and mind as a battlefield and the past that he had always sought to rewrite. 

He closed the gangplank behind them as they boarded the Falcon. It seemed to close with a finality. 

Ben had wandered the Falcon with a strange look of awe when he had first arrived, his slow steps deliberate and steady, reverent. She had watched his eyes grow large, his hands dragging gently along the wall.

“Looks just like I remember,” he murmured.

Rey knew that look on his face; she had seen death, too. Ben was seeing ghosts here, memories coming to life.

These were happy memories, she knew, but the bitterness of loss still haunted Ben.

“They’re still with you,” Rey had whispered, gently placing her hand on his shoulder. He covered her hand in his.

“I know,” he said. “They always will be.”

Now Ben seemed less haunted, more purposeful. He had, perhaps, been making peace with his ghosts in his time away. Hopefully one day he would let her help.

As they settled down at the small table in the galley and dug into the savory stew, they sat in silence, too occupied with hunger to speak.

But after several moments, Rey paused, trying to catch Ben’s eye.

Reaching out gently into the Force, she let herself brush against him, feeling his Force signature hanging around him like mist.

It was buzzing with nervous energy, excitement and nerves swarming around him. His feelings were twin to hers.

Finally, he looked up at her.

She lowered her spoon and extended her mechanical hand to his flesh one, and tentatively, she took his hand in hers. There was a pulse between them, then, a shared heartbeat. She met his gaze.

She remembered when she had seen him looking at her like that. Exegol, when there had only been darkness, crushing darkness as the last life left her. She had sacrificed herself for an uncaring galaxy and the last thing she was certain of was that she was destined to die alone, as alone as she had lived. Then, in the last second, she had felt him, felt that light, the light of Ben Solo, flickering through the darkness, turning into a beacon that drew her back to life, a moth to flame. 

Returning to his embrace had been like coming home; she had felt such a comfortable familiarity 

 as her body relaxed against his, and she had savored the feeling of belonging, however delicate, however brief. They were two halves of a whole: she had only just learned the word for the sacred connection they shared. But no label could quite describe the feeling of joy and comfort she felt from gazing into Ben’s eyes, his smile the last thing she saw before he disappeared, taking half her heart with him.

But she had been willing to risk everything for that other half of herself; for Ben, for who he was more than merely what he was to her. And now every time she saw him, no matter how long they had been apart, she felt the same, saw that warmth in his eyes, and felt as if she were coming home.

Fuck being proper. She was a Nightsister, a user of wild Magick and the Force and a traveler of worlds.

She wanted this man. She loved him. She would have him.

“Ben?” she whispered, her pulse quickening. 

He ran his thumb over her knuckles. She could barely feel it, but still she stifled a shudder. 

“Yes, Rey?”

She swallowed the last of the apprehension gripping her. “I missed you,” she said, her voice unwavering, her gaze meeting his. “This time, and all the others. I miss you.”

She felt the slight pressure of artificial nerves as his hand tightened on hers.

“It’s not that I want to go,” he said quietly, his voice a tired whisper. “I never want to go. But I don't know what value I can provide if I stay.”

“You don't have to try to be valuable, Ben. You've earned your keep here,” she said, then with a squeeze of her hand, quietly added, “You’ve done more than enough to earn this life. I didn't bring you back because I expected your penitence. I came here to bring you back as you were because I want you.”

He was silent for a moment, then he met her stare.

“Sorry, I’m not sure what to say. I am not used to being wanted for more than what I can do.”

“Say how you feel.”

“Okay.”

“...‘Okay’? That's all?” 

He shrugged. “You know that you hang the stars in every sky in this galaxy to me, right? But I am always going to try to earn you. I have never been loved with so few conditions.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to keep her heart from fluttering free of her ribcage.

“Well, that's not entirely true. I do have one condition,” she said. “Always come back to me. You can't run too far again. I only have one more hand to give and I'm quite attached to it.”

He laughed. “I think I can live with that.”

“Fine,” she said.

“Fine,” he agreed with a definitive nod.

“Fine,” she repeated finally. The same desire that had grabbed her on Exegol took root in her now, and she pulled him to her, pressing her mouth to his. The kiss was bold and sudden and, as they both deepened the contact, exhilarating. When they pulled apart, Rey’s true hand was bunched in Ben’s shirt, her mechanical hand still resting in his.

“We’ve earned this,” she whispered. “You brought me back. I brought you back. We’re even. No more trading lives. No more second-guessing what we deserve. I have you. And I'm not going to let anything change that again.”

Every time she sat outside the homestead at night, gazing at the stars, impossibly looking for him in the vastness beyond the haze of Dathomir’s atmosphere, she had to blink several times. It was like the stars, the distant pinpricks of light so far away, were now streaky, duplicates of themselves.

She and Ben. A dyad. Two that were one, once splintered, now whole. A binary star system, two lonely orbiting pinpricks of light, together at last. 

Rey had wanted Ben back. She had wanted him alive. But more than anything, she had wanted him like this. She had wanted the hunger creeping into his gaze, steady and eager, not fearful as it had been on Exegol and he felt himself passing between life and death.

It was a story she had been afraid to tell herself, feeling her heart race and her blood run got from the power of her thoughts, but stars, he was here, and she could taste him, and she was excited to follow this story to its ending.

His free hand curled around her neck, his broad fingers burning themselves in her loose hair.

“I know,” he said, and returned her kiss as enthusiastically as she had given in, his lips strong and steady and hungry. She returned his kiss, then another and another until she found her dinner forgotten, her hunger had transformed into something more desperate and all-consuming.

She tentatively brought her mechanical hand up to his cheek and let it caress his jaw. Though the sensation was muted, she felt his skin, smooth and unmarred by their first fight. Forgiveness had transformed the wound she had given him. In that, she found courage. She let herself sigh into his lips, feel his moans in return. She got to just be with him, something she had only slim faith could have happened when she landed here, discovered the Nightsisters, sought out a new life. She never thought she could be happy with them. She never let herself believe they could actually bring him back. She was a scavenger on a dirt planet, for crying out loud; she wasn't allowed to have what she wanted. But now the Force was having mercy on her.

She kept waiting for the darkness to creep up and separate them, for the Sisters to come to interrupt them, but nothing of the sort happened. She got to hear Ben panting between kisses and feel the dimple in his cheek and the softness of his nose nuzzling her and the heat building in her limbs, in her core, the rush that threatened to consume her.

Nothing was interrupting them. They wanted to keep going, keep exploring each other.

She wasn't sure how they had stumbled into Ben’s quarters—formerly her quarters, but that felt like a lifetime ago—but he sat beside her in the bed, his cane abandoned as he began tugging his boots off like a gentleman, before she realized what was happening. 

Rey looked at him, and smiles broke out on their faces as they both burst out laughing, all apprehension gone. 

Without another word, she loosened her belt, slipped her tunic and undershirt over her head, and began slipping out of her boots. Just as Ben began to process what what happening, she stepped out of her leggings, standing bare before him.

She took a few shaky steps towards him, feeling her breaths coming out in shallow pants as she entered his orbit. 

Without thinking she swung her leg over his lap until she straddled him. He looked up at her, eyes wide.

“You’re…”

“Yes?” she asked innocently.

“...beautiful,” he gaped, placing his hands on her waist, drawing her closer to him. 

Any self-consciousness she might have felt melted under his hands.

Kisses, exploring curiously but never forcefully, grew deeper and hungrier and more dangerous, their bodies eager for the lessons of the other. Ben soon disposed of his clothes entirely, feeling the blissful contact of their bodies, of ravenous skin meeting skin, but they were still learning slowly. They were careful to be gentle with the broken pieces of the other, asking as mouths journeyed to hidden places and their gasps ricochetted off the walls of the Falcon.

Tonight, however, their hunger was satiated quickly, chased by a genuine weariness, the kind wrought of too many nights of sorrow and worry. Rey traced the topography of Ben’s chest with both hands, and he welcomed her touch, both organic and mechanical, with affection. His body was just as powerful as it had always been; his injuries were barely impediments, and she easily gave over control to him, her breath catching in her throat as she climaxed; he followed her soon after with a howl.

After their panting ceased, he lifted the blanket to make room for Rey on the narrow bed, and she slid in beside him, their bare forms easily fitting together, and he peppered a few sleepy kisses along her neck and shoulder before nuzzling back into the pillow.

The dyad was reunited, providing each lover with safety and contentment. Rey was warm with family and purpose and life, her brokenness patched with care and acceptance, and sealed with pleasant dreams almost as sweet as her days. 

There would be no more nightmares here. Rey murmured into Ben’s hair a powerful incantation; a love spell, a blessing, a manifestation; the story of a lonely scavenger girl who found love with another lonely stranger, a powerful warrior who harnesses Magick to save the life of the man who saved her and who built a community.

Of a dyad who lived happily

forever for the rest of their days.

She couldn't imagine a better ending