Archive of Our Own ^beta

Rey feels him before she sees him—the wry amusement. The mess of curls so much like Ben’s that it pierces at something in her chest, sets it alight. 

She holds still, not touching. She lets the disassembled room meet him halfway. 

Rey has heard the stories—terrifying stories—of the malefactor that Anakin Skywalker had become. But all that remains of him now is the young man he once was—fearless, and bright, and challenging.

I’m sorry, he says down this infernal line that now connects them. 

Rey doesn’t know what for—it could be any number of things. The mess. The heat. The legacy. Ben. 

The apology is more likely not even for her, but for someone else. Someone long gone, and not yet forgotten. 

And, well. Rey has a few of those. She can empathize. 

Either way, she merely shrugs and sets about righting one wrong in this world at a time. Starting with the overturned table. 

The Lars homestead as a whole is a mess, and the kitchen is even worse. It’s obviously been ravaged; picked apart by souls far more desperate than the ghosts that may have once inhabited it. 

Rey feels no animosity as she moves through the main room. She’d been one of those souls, once: stripping a broken reality for parts. In many ways, she still is. She’s still scrappy. Always ready for a fight. Scarfing down each meal like it may be her last. Living as if the world spins on a very delicate axis and may, in fact, at any moment, simply cease to exist.

And Rey is aware, in an abstract sense, that the world—her world—ended on Exegol. But her world has ended so many times, in this one life. It ended when she’d been left on Jakku, by parents who saw no better option. It had ended when she’d met BB-8, and when she’d watched Han fall from the bridge, and when Finn had been struck down in the snow. Her world had ended with Ben’s betrayal, and his companionship, and his life. 

Sometimes, it felt like the world never stopped ending. 

But for every time that Rey’s sun had set, by morning it had risen again. The world had begun again, springing up around her like the fresh buds of spring on a green planet, an alive planet, a planet thrumming with life. 

She buries the sabers. Buries the unfinished business she has with Luke and Leia, and lays their souls to rest alongside them. 

She can still feel Anakin’s presence at her shoulder, and it’s warm somehow. Steadfast. It defies all laws of physics, but this is Rey’s life, now: she sees ghosts. 

Thank you, he whispers. 

Rey looks back at him, then, and she doesn’t need to say it—no thanks necessary. 

A sense of peace carries her out over the dunes. This planet may not be Jakku, but between the endless horizon and dust, it still feels familiar to her, somehow. Like home. 

She doesn’t know what comes next. 

But if Rey has learned anything over the last few months—and gods, what a short time it has been—it was this: that life is made up of light and dark, life and death, yin and yang. It was made up of everything, like some great orchestra, or a dance, really. No one knew the moves, but they stumbled along anyway, following the music as best they could. 

Rey had found that if you were lucky, if you were brave, if you surrendered, the music wasn’t so hard to follow at all. 

And Rey was ready. Whatever came next, it would be as it would be. She knew now more than ever that she had no control over any of it—not really. The universe at large moved in mysterious ways, At the end of the day, all she really had control over was herself. How she chose to respond to the world around her, to interact with it, to be. 

Rey watches the twin suns set over Tatooine, and she sends up a prayer—a wish, a hope, a dream. For restful souls, and kind force ghosts. For friends old and new. For the galaxy of people they’d saved, and for those they couldn’t. 

She watches the sand dance across the horizon, and hears BB-8 trill a little hello from where he’s rolled his way out to join her on the dunes. 

And for all of the times that Rey had felt that aching chasm of loneliness splitting her chest, she is never alone now. She can feel them—beyond BB-8, beyond herself. The endless lineage of those who had come before her. 

They visited regularly—to help her train, to chat, to encourage. Sometimes they simply sat in companionable silence, watching as Rey changed the world one steady breath at a time.

The truth was, Rey wasn’t afraid. Whatever came next, she would meet it head on, because she could. Because in so many ways, she already had. Because whatever became of it, of her life, she was not alone anymore. And as strange as it was, she was beginning to realize she never had been. 

She was ready now, more ready than she’d ever been, to try something new. To live, and to breathe, and to experience life. She wanted to feel the universe at her fingertips. To know it, and to let it know her.

At her shoulder, Anakin grins, the mess of his hair falling over one eye. Perhaps he feels it too, then—the thrill of life within her. The hunger for adventure, for danger, for harebrained missions on unexplored planets. 

Rey glances back at the house, bare as it is. Houses had consciousnesses the same way they had bones—it was a simple fact of life. And though many empty years may have passed, this place was still alive. She could feel the potential thrumming through its bones. 

A place to come back to, she thinks, because she could never stay still for so long again. A pace to call home.

On the horizon, she can practically see it—shooting stars and comets. Adventures to be had. Life to be lived.

She looks to Anakin then, and she sees her own soul mirrored within his.

Shall we? 

There is no hesitation in Anakin’s features, his gaze shifting toward the darkening skyline. After you.