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His mother comes to stand behind him and smooths down his hair, pressing a kiss right at the top of his head before adjusting his kippah and clipping it into place.  It’s white with embroidered silver stars. Rey had drawn the design.

“I’m thinking stars as a visual motif.”

“Stars?  At a Jewish wedding?  Not allowed.”

“Shut up.”

(He presses a kiss to her forehead.)  “I’m kidding.”

“They don’t have to be Magen Davids.”

“But you want them to be six-pointed, yes?”

“Not all stars are six-pointed.  You’re the one who keeps going on about how stars don’t have any points at all.”

“Are you proposing the stars at our weddings be pentagrams?  Rey, we don’t want the goyim to be onto us. You just joined the tribe.  Didn’t you get the memo?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Or are you a goyische spy?  Hm? That conversion was a diversion.”

“You’re just being silly now.”

“Now you’re just making things up.  I don’t do silly. I do morose and brooding, or have you forgotten?”

“Ready?” she asks quietly.

And he’s thirteen again, his stomach tying in knots because what happens if his voice cracks mid-aliyah? Thirteen is the cruelest age for a rite of passage.  He looks like a puppy that’s growing too fast—all arms and legs and taller now than both of his parents and his voice keeps lurching down no matter how he tries to keep it from doing so.  His voice will crack while he’s chanting Torah and everyone will laugh at him. They’ll pretend not to, but they’ll be laughing inside their heads. Rabbi Skywalker’s nephew, and his voice cracks when he chants Torah.  And what if he messes up? What if Uncle Luke has to correct him midway through and he gets flustered?

But he won’t get flustered.  

Uncle Luke isn’t here today.  

But Rey is.

She’s in the bride’s room of the shul, right now, getting dressed.  

“Is it time?” he asks.  His mother’s hand is on his shoulder.  She’s gotten her nails done—she’d taken Rey for manicures yesterday.  His mother is addicted to manicures and goes every week. Rey only goes when his mom takes her—and Leia had insisted that she needs to have nice nails for her wedding.  His mother’s nails are glossy and smooth, just as they had been at his bar mitzvah. Listen kid, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years—never give your mother grief about her nails or her hair.

He closes his eyes.  

He doesn’t want to think about his dad.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Senator Organa tonight.  Her husband, Han Solo, was killed in a car accident while driving home from a charity event.  Her son, Ben, was driving and is being charged with driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter.  (Ben sees his face. They picked a nice picture of him from a campaign event where he doesn’t look like he is annoyed at having to be there, standing behind his mother and father.  He almost believes the smile on his face. They should have used a different one. They should have used one where his eyes are bloodshot and his face is drooping and he looks like the drunk father-murdering schmuck that he is.)  

It doesn’t matter if you killed him, Ben. (Snoke’s resting a hand on his cheek, his thumb too close to Ben’s neck.) You’ll get back on your feet.  

(As if anything could matter more than this, Ben thinks angrily as he stares unseeing at the Ark.  Nothing? It was nothing to kill his father? Avinu malkeinu, why do you keep writing my name in the book of life when I killed my father?  B’rosh hashannah yikatevun uv’yom tzom kipur ichatemun. You were supposed to seal it, but I guess that’s more proof that you aren’t real and all this is just technicalities.)

“Getting there,” she tells him.  He fiddles with the cufflinks on his jacket.  They’re silver, and had belonged to his grandfather.  Not Skywalker—Bail Organa. The grandfather his mother talks about with only love in her heart.  She’d given them to him as a bar mitzvah present.

He’d be so proud of you, Ben.  He’d love you so much. It still breaks my heart you never knew him.

What about my real grandfather?  (He’d watched her bite her lip on that question.  She wasn’t going to snap at him that Bail Organa was more his grandfather than Anakin Skywalker ever was on the day of his bar mitzvah.)

Her hand tightens on his shoulder.  She’d seen the cufflinks—he can tell from the way her breath catches in her throat.  His mom was a smoker for years—not when she’d been pregnant or when he’d been very little.  She’d picked it up again when he was in high school driving your mom back to old habits aren’t you, kid, just like your old man and her voice is lower now because of it and sometimes her breathing is ragged on hot, humid days.

It’s not hot and humid out today.  It’s cool—blessedly, since the wedding is outdoors.  But then again, it’s been a freakishly cold spring.

“I want flowers as far as I can see.”

“And stars.”

“Shut up—you’re the one who asked about what I wanted.”

“Flowers as far as the eye can see, and stars.”

“I’ll forgo the flowers if it’s too early in the spring.  I want green.”

“Spring is nice.”

“After Passover, maybe?”

“There are definitely weekends after pesach.  Just before it gets too hot.”

“I like that.”

He gets to his feet and maybe it’s because they’re in Uncle Luke’s old study—Rabbi Durron had told them they should use it to prepare, that it was more their space than his, that none of them would be there if it weren’t for Rabbi Skywalker, Rabbi Skywalker this, Rabbi Skywalker that—but he feels small.  Insignificant.

The paintings on the wall are the same as they were when he was thirteen and sitting there, hunched over because he didn’t like how broad his shoulders were. They made him feel too big and like he was taking up too much space as he and his uncle went over tropes for his Torah portion.  So many of the kids in his Hebrew school class had been excited for their bar or bat mitzvahs, about getting to spend time with Rabbi Skywalker who was always so friendly and always so kind. “You’re going to be part of a big tradition, Ben,” Uncle Luke had told him when he’d been over for shabbas dinner right before the lessons had started.  From the kitchen, he hears his father shout-singing “Tradition—tra-di-tion—tra.di.tion! TradiTION—TRA-DI-TION—TRA.DI.TION!”

“Han, be serious,” his mother had called from her office where she’s finishing up work before the weekend.  She’s always busy. Sometimes, Ben think she hears her shouting at his father to be serious more than he actually sees her.

But the big tradition of it all had been a lot—or maybe that was wait you’re Luke Skywalker’s nephew?   the Rabbi Skywalker? his uncle.

“Luke would be proud of you,” his mother says, misinterpreting his silence as he stares at his uncle’s paintings.  She slips her hand in his and squeezes it.

I failed you, Ben. I’m sorry.

I’m sure you are.

(It was always his uncle’s ego.  Ego before Ben. Always.)

(Weren’t you supposed to make me strong?)

“Yeah,” he sighs.  “Yeah, I guess he would.”  It’s the truth. His uncle had been thrilled with all of this, had showered them with mazals, had made cheerful comments about kids in the future that had never quite reached his eyes.  

Since we’ve all been saying it all night, I want to talk to you all for a moment about the phrase Mazal tov.  (Ben takes a sip of wine and sets his jaw and does not look at his uncle.) We say it all the time. New job? Mazal tov!  Weddings? Mazal tov! Ben and Rey getting married? Mazal tov! Rey finalizing her conversion? Mazal tov! Something good?  Mazal tov! You get the picture.

Luck.  Good luck.  Good fortune.

Good stars.

That’s the root in Mishanic Hebrew, by the way.  Stars. Constellations. Which is fitting. I made a joke about Rey early on in her conversion process that she’s got stars in her eyes.  You all know what I mean. Yup. That look right there, that glimmer. She gets it when she looks at Ben, too. (Ben looks at Rey. She’s shining up at him.  He hates admitting when his uncle is right, but it’s a good way to describe her eyes—shining like stars.) And I’m a bit of a sentimentalist sometimes, so I hope you’ll allow me a bit of a story right now.

The first time Rey came to ask about conversion, I asked her why she wanted to.  Now, I’m sure none of you will be surprised to hear that the first word out of her mouth was Ben.  “Rabbi Skywalker,” she said, “Rabbi, I love your nephew and we would like to get married.” And there she was, eyes shining like stars.  (Ben can see it. He hadn’t been in the room with her, but he can imagine it. His stomach had been tied in knots while he’d waited for her text message, but if there was one thing he had never doubted, it was that Rey would look his uncle boldly in the eye and say she loved him, and mean it.) And it broke my heart, but I told her no—no, loving your future husband is not a good enough reason to convert to Judaism.  “Thank you, Rabbi,” says Rey. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

And back she was tomorrow.  I wasn’t surprised. Stubborn thing, Rey.  Backbone of steel, for all she’s bright-eyed.  “Rabbi Skywalker, I have come to know such family through the Jewish community.  And having grown up without a family, I want to cement my commitment to this people.”  (Ben squeezes Rey’s hand under the table and she squeezes his right back.) I’ll be the first to say that some of our traditions are outdated, so I sent her away, though I know just how much truth there is to her words.  I was almost scared to tell Leia I’d sent her away after that one, more scared than saying that loving Ben wasn’t enough. (His hand tightens even more in Rey’s.) But she just said, “Thank you, Rabbi. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

You all know where this is going.  Next day: Rey in my office, eyes like stars again.  “Rabbi Skywalker, I have come to convert. I would like to do this for myself.”  And I look at her and I say, “Rey—you have talked about Ben, you have talked about family and the community, and you talk about yourself.  Converting to Judaism is a way of life, yes, but it is also a religion. You have not brought up God.”

(Ben looks at Rey, and she’s smiling up at his uncle and around her neck twinkles the silver magen david that had belonged to the grandmother his mother had never known, shining like the stars in her eyes.)

“Rabbi,” she tells me, and I have been around the block, I have had conversations like this a few times in my life, but never has anyone pushed back like this, “Rabbi, I don’t know if God exists.  That’s the truth of it. We live in a world where scientific facts contradict what is in the Torah. We have analyzed the Torah as a historical text to learn that it could not have been written by Moses’ own hand.  But I do have faith in my love for Ben, the family I have found working at the JCC, and myself, and all of them point me towards converting. If that’s not enough for God, then maybe God should adjust his asking price a little bit.”

And I sat there and I thought, wow, this girl.  If that’s not the most Jewish answer to that question I’ve ever heard.  She’s already here. Why, God, must I tell her no one more time? Some Rabbis don’t make converts ask three times, but I have each time, couldn’t I bend the rules for Rey?

“That’s a good answer, Rey,” I tell her.  “But not one for today.”

Rey.  (He turns to her, his blue eyes oddly dull, his beard twitching.  Ben’s seen pictures of his teenaged uncle, before he and his mother had discovered each other, blond-haired and blue-eyed, but you’d never know it looking at him now.  He’s the only one in the family with those blue eyes. Ben’s always wondered where they come from. He doesn’t understand why they are so dull now, not when his uncle was famously bright-eyed like Rey.)  It was our good luck, our good fate that brought you to us. But it was your hard work that got you here. You and those undaunted starry eyes.

So with all my heart, Mazal Tov, Rey.  

When he had not been around his uncle, Ben had found that look in his eyes haunting.  His uncle’s eyes had always been expressive and bright—to see them dull even as he smiles—

You killed him.

I did.

(He can tell from his uncle’s tone that he wishes it were Ben who had died in the car accident and not Han.)

(He wonders if his uncle hears the same thing in his response.)

“They’re both with you today.  They’d both be so happy to see you happy.”

His mind turns again to his dad, because he’s had enough of Uncle Luke and he swallows.  

His dad would be happy for him.  His dad had never met Rey, hadn’t spent any time at the JCC before he’d died so he wouldn’t have known her at all.  But if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that his father would have loved her. It makes his gut twist every time he thinks about it.  

My fault.  He’d be here if it weren’t for me.

But would Ben?

Are you coming to Yom Kippur services this year, Ben?  (His uncle’s eyes are emotionless, his tone is dull. Now that you have something big to atone for, he does not say.)

Han and Lando and Chewie would have gotten drunk last night and pulled out baby pictures.  They’d have spent the night reliving old times and Ben would have wondered what it would have been like to have blood brothers like that, friends through thick and thin and a number of years that make you feel old.  (He just has Poe Dameron from Space Camp, who he doesn’t particularly think he’s close to, and Lumpy. But it feels strange to call Lumpy a friend. Lumpy is Lumpy.) Instead, Lando had turned in early—blaming a long flight for his exhaustion (“I’m getting old,” he’d grinned at Leia)—and Chewie had not come at all.

He looks down at his mom.  She’s smiling. He likes seeing her smile, and when she reaches up to cup his face, run her thumb along his cheekbone he’s four again on his first day of school, promising her that he won’t forget her no matter what happens  

i don’t want to go mommy
i know sweetie but you have to it’s school and you have to
but i want to stay with you
mommy has work ben you have to go to school
but i don’t want
be good please ben be good for once

except he is taller than she is now, and by more than a foot now that her bones are starting to lose their density as she creeps her way towards old age.

They leave the study.

Amilyn is waiting outside, her hair freshly purpled and her eyes clear and bright.  When first he had thought about walking down the aisle, arm in arm with his mother, he’d hoped that Chewie...but no.  Chewie still won’t talk to him, won’t look at him, won’t acknowledge his existence. That man who’d once carried him around on his shoulders, whose bedtime stories Ben had clambered for—Ben’s dead to him.

“Give him time,” Lumpy had said when Ben had first called him about the wedding. “He’s a stubborn old man but he does—”

“No, he doesn’t love me.”  Ben’s astounded that Lumpy still talks to him too, much less that Lumpy’s even here today.  Especially because he can’t stop calling him Lumpy even though he goes by Waroo now most of the time.  

“You look dapper,” Amilyn tells him, reaching up and straightening his lapel.  

You look dapper.  (One of the things he likes about Aunt Amilyn is that she always crouches down so that they’re eye to eye.  Chewie picks him up, Uncle Luke bends at the waist, but Aunt Amilyn crouches, her hands on her knees for balance.  Ben shuffles his feet and looks down.)

What does dapper mean?

Handsome—which you are.  (She reaches out a hand to tuck some of his hair behind his too-big ears.)  Did you pick your shirt out yourself?

No, mommy picked it.

Well, your mom has good taste.

“Thanks, Aunt Amilyn,” he says, giving her a kiss on the cheek.  She gives Leia a quick kiss Ben feels nothing when his mother tells him she’s dating one of her oldest friends in the world. Ben hasn’t felt anything since the crash.  Somewhere, off in the corner of his mind he is happy for her—that she is moving forward. somewhere, off in the corner of his mind, he is still screaming his throat raw and the three of them make their way quietly through the shul.  

“Ben,” Lumpy greets him outside of the library where he’s standing with Poe.  His face splits into a hesitant smile. He’s still ridiculously tall—taller even than Ben.  He’s got wrinkles on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes now. “Mazal tov.”

“Thanks,” Ben says, trying to grin.  As he gets older, Lumpy looks more and more like Chewie.  Their faces are the same shape, he has the same hair. His tawny skin’s even getting the same weatherbeaten quality to it.   Are we just going to look like our dads as we go grey? His dad would probably like that.  Chewie wouldn’t.

“You’re supposed to look a lot more joyful on your wedding day,” Poe points out.  

“I am joyful,” Ben says seriously.

“I am joyful,” Lumpy teases, throwing an arm over his shoulder.  He turns back to Poe. “I have known him his whole life and can confirm this is about as joyful as I’ve ever seen him.”

“You didn’t see him the first time we lit bottle rockets at Space Camp,” Poe points out.  “Grinned so big his ears moved.” Ben rolls his eyes, and Poe laughs. “It’s your wedding day.  Of course we’re gonna break out the embarrassing stories. Leia, did you bring the baby pictures?”

“I might have some in my speech for later,” his mom says as they all go into the library, her face wholly unreadable and Ben’s stomach jolts in fear.  Rey’s seen his baby photos, but it’s not something he particularly wants broadcasted for all the wedding guests.

Sounds are always muffled in the library.  As a child, the hush had been calming to him.  Everything was always loud at home, at school, but in the library among the safe books, ancient texts that dated back thousands of years, there was always quiet and calm.

His eyes gloss over Finn, and Rose, and little old Maz Kanata, whose dark skin shows no sign of her age, to find Rey glowing at him as brightly as the moon in her shining white dress.  A constellation of the same silver stitched stars

“How does this look?”

“It looks lovely.”

“You’re not even looking.”

“I have ten tests to grade.”

“This will take five seconds.”

“That’s the star?”

(Six lines, emitting from a circle, neat and geometric.  Elegant, like Rey, though she would never call herself that.)

“Yeah.”

“It looks lovely.”

that match the ones on his kippah glitter at him from her gown.  Stars that had to have been hand-sewn though he doesn’t know by whom because Rey can’t sew a frustrated yell, a crash, a pause, an “i can’t get the damn bobbin threaded” for shit.  Stars that gleam even in the natural light of the library.  

But of course Rey would make stars shine during the day for them.  

Stars always shine around Rey.

Ben’s hardly aware of moving because he’s hardly aware of breathing as he makes his way towards her, leaving his mother, and Aunt Amilyn, and Poe, and Lumpy in his wake.  She beams up at him, her smile oddly shy, and it’s all he can do not to lean forward—

“What did the bread do to you?  Kill your father?”

“No.  I did that.”  (A pause.) “What, get an answer you weren’t expecting?”

“You’re Ben?”  (Because of course she knows.)  

“And who are you, my mom’s new pity project?  Keeping her busy now that she’s not in the Senate anymore?” (She’s just standing there holding a basket of bread.  Doesn’t she have the sense to let people have a moment to themselves during tashlich? Why is he even here? Why is he still here?)  (His mother. He came because of his mother. Like any good Jewish boy would, even if God is dead we have killed him—just like his father.) (He throws another piece of bread and turns back to her but she’s gone.)

Rey, a child of the desert, isn’t used to the easy way that the grass rubs against you, and how sometimes bugs will crawl across you.  Rey points out to him the stars they shared, even though he grew up in the green woods, and she grew up in the sands. She counts them

Ben, this one isn’t scary.  
I don’t want to.  
Why not, sweetheart?  It’s part of our history. (It still scares him.  The cover of the book is plain, a little girl staring sadly out, of a black and white picture at him with a Magen David on a chain floating over the black next to her face, NUMBER THE STARS, LOIS LOWRY stamped across the top.)  Sweetheart, I’ve read this one. It doesn’t go near the camps. It’s a good way to learn—
I don’t want to, mommy.

as she recognizes them—this one’s part of Ursa Minor, there are the three that make up Orion’s belt, and Polaris.  She’s got stars in her eyes and she’s never been more beautiful, not ever, and she’s there with him looking up at all of them with him, his hand inching towards hers because this has to be romantic, right?  You don’t just stargaze with a girl who’s a friend, not when she turns to look at you and her eyes are full of stars.

“How do you not get lost?”

“You get used to it.”

“This place is huge.”

“I only really spend my time near my office and lab.”

“What’s your lab like?  Can I see?”

“I don’t think they gave your guest pass that clearance.”

“So you’re saying that you wouldn’t even sneak me in?  What’s the worst that can happen?”

The worst that can happen is that he recognizes the girl in the first row—the only girl in the room.  She’s the girl from tashlich, the receptionist at the JCC who he’d growled at, and as he talks, she takes notes on what he’s saying, about how recruitment works, about why he chose the career he did, about what he’s gotten out of his job.  (He wonders if she will believe him. He doesn’t know if he believes himself anymore.)

What’s the worst that can happen? A constant question, ever since he was small.  But his father’s dead, his uncle hates him, his mother can’t look at him—what’s the worst that can happen?  (That he would lose her too.)

So he doesn’t lean forward.  He wants to. He wants to lift his hand to her neck, stroke along her spine with his thumb as he nudges his lips to hers.  He wants to kiss her, but the worst that can happen would be that he drives

dad!  dad! (his voice hasn’t broken like this since he was thirteen preparing for his bar mitzvah)  dad—please! please! help! someone help!

her away.

“Like that?”

“Yeah, like that.  Oh fuck. Oh, fuck, Ben.”  (He’s never heard that phrase uttered so sweetly, so lovingly from lips that are parted as she tries to breath, as she tries to pull him in closer, in deeper.)

“I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love—fuck—Ben—Deeper, please, please.”

Are you going to kiss me? (Her voice is quiet, and he can’t tell if it’s an invitation or if—as with everyone—there’s a tinge of disappointment there.  They were supposed to be friends, just platonic.)

Do you want me to? (Because he can’t tell, he can’t tell, he can’t tell, there are so many stars shining overhead and none of them are as bright as her eyes).

—and kiss her.

Dimly, he is aware of Rabbi Durron saying something, and then there is Rey’s hand in his always her reaching for his hand the way she just offers it to him doesn’t she know that no one does that that he’s a third rail and his mother is at his elbow and a moment later a thin piece of white lace is in his fingers, light and delicate, stitched with stars and pearls.  

Hands shaking—hell, his whole body is trembling—as he lowers the veil rachel rey rey rachel not leah leia leah leia leah it was a mistake on my birth certificate it was supposed to be spelled leah but the nurse got it wrong and my mother was dying over Rey’s face.

“I love your hair.  But sometimes it hides your face too much.”

“Are you saying you want me to wear it in a manbun?”

“I’m divorcing you.”

“We’re not even married yet.”

“I want a get and I want it now.  Can we build it into our ketubah? A pre-nup clause in there?”

“I don’t know if there’s an Aramaic word for manbun.”

“They were wise, those Aramaic speakers.  If there’s no word for it, it means that it didn’t exist.”

“Sure you don’t want to hide my face now?  If the alternative is a manbun.”

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it.  A moment later, Rey is moving to stand behind him and he feels her hands on his shoulders briefly before she slips the white robe over him.

“Don’t laugh.”

“I’m just imagining you wearing white for our wedding.”

“It was your idea.”

A kittel and an egalitarian ketubah.  You’re going to give Rabbi Durron a headache with all this back and forth about different streams. I like the idea of us both wearing white is all. I like us both looking like we’re on the same side.  The same side of what? I don’t know—the same team, maybe. (Are you going to take my name, he does not ask. He needs to know, but he does not ask. Not while she’s still searching. Not while she’s still hoping.)

“Mr. I only wear mopey dark colors. ”

“Look, I look dumb in light neutrals.”

“Did you wear a black lab coat for the First Order to maintain your aesthetic?”

“Rabbi, my fiancée is picking on me.  She’s making me wear white to my wedding and has the gall to pick on me for it.”

They’ve fitted Luke in a white robe as they say their goodbyes.

His uncle wraps himself in a white tallis as he prepares for Yom Kippur services, murmuring a prayer under his breath.  The tallis seems to ripple like water—parts of it white silk white wool white linen.

Death, atonement, marriages—all times of kedushah, all times of transition.  

Ben doesn’t like wearing white.  He thinks it makes his skin look weird and yellowy, and it’s not like he doesn’t already feel weird about his too-red lips and his too-big nose and his too-big ears.  (Why, God, does he have to look like every Jewish caricature he’s ever seen? Neither of his parents do.)

Her eyes speak volumes when she smiles up at him, both of them in white.  Family. All she’d ever wanted was family, all she’d ever looked for in community.  

Rey moves easily through the JCC, nodding and smiling at the people she passes.  She moves more easily than Ben does, even though she’s not Jewish.

He feels eyes following him, quantifying him, Rabbi Skywalker’s nephew, Leia’s son, the one who murdered his father, you know?  Is he married? An engineer.

But it’s one thing to say you’ve found your family when you’ve been longing for one your whole life and to actually be part of one.

He wears white on Yom Kippur, though, because you’re supposed to.  White clothes and shoes that aren’t made of leather. He is supposed to, he is supposed to, he’s part of a Tradition—tra-di-tion—tra.di.tion!    TradiTION—TRA-DI-TION—TRA.DI.TION! He has already done more than enough of what he’s not supposed to do.  Why is he here? Why is he here? He killed his father, and snarled at that girl during tashlich last week, why does any of this matter anymore?  V’al kulam elohai s’lichot, s’lach lanu, m’chal lanu, kaper lanu.

Look at us, he thinks.   I am light for you.

“All right, everyone,” Rabbi Durron says, “Ben and Rey are now properly decked—”

“Bedeckened!” interrupts little old Maz Kanata.  Leia chuckles and Maz shrugs. She’s not Jewish, but she’d known Ben’s dad for ages and is like Chewie: she knows that interrupting for a pun is an almost sacred act.

“Ben and Rey are now properly bedeckened out, we’ll head out to the chuppah in a moment.”  He lowers his voice, “Ben, Rey. Ready?”

Rey nods, and Ben swallows and says, “Yes.”  Seeing her there in her white gown, standing there in this ridiculous silky white bathrobe—it’s real now.  Real in a way that it hadn’t been even the night before when signing their ketubah and listening to toasts from—mostly Rey’s—

“You sure you don’t want to invite any of your colleagues?”

“I have only known them a few months.  That feels...I don’t know. Too much.”

“All the same, it could be nice.”

(He doesn’t know how to tell her that he’s afraid of dragging people in his life to this wedding because they feel that they have to be there, rather than that they want to be.  That’s how it’s always been for him, after all. His wedding should be different. He wants it to be different. If not now, then when?)

I guess that if Rey had to choose someone with whom to uphold the patriarchy, it might as well be Ben.  He makes her happy, and that’s the best we can hope for if we’re not breaking down historical and systemic bondage.  (Thanks Rose, Rey laughs because Rose’s tone is self-mocking more than when she’d gotten drunk and tried to convince Rey

Look are you sure you want to marry him?

Why wouldn’t I?

Because—I don’t know.  Marriage?

I’ve never had a family.  It’s all I’ve wanted, ever.  And if I don’t get to have my parents create a family for me, then I’ll be damned if I don’t get to do it myself.

Marriage though?  It’s so…

It’s what I want.  I’m allowed to want what I want.  Sometimes I get to be happy, even if it means that I have to fight it all the time at work, can’t I come home and not have to keep fighting?

Are you at least keeping your last name?

not to marry him.)

—friends.

Rose and Finn appear at Rey’s shoulder and with a wink, Finn says, “Excuse us, we must whisk away our bride from all the single men in the room.  I’m lead to believe you’re not supposed to be alone with her until after the ceremony.”

Ben rolls his eyes and is only mildly comforted to see that Rose is doing the same.  Rey releases his hand and he watches her make her way through the library, leaving him with Rabbi Durron, Amilyn, and his mother.  Lumpy and Poe have vanished, but they won’t be processing, so it only makes sense for them to have gone out to the chuppah with the rest of the guests.

Slowly the sound of people making their way through the shul fades and Ben looks down at the white robe again.  He resists the urge to fidget with it, but his mother does not. She straightens the lapels of the robe, and makes a face as she tries to adjust the shoulders.

“I don’t understand where these shoulders came from,” she grumbles.  “Neither your father nor your uncle were this broad. How did you manage?”

“Well, we all know the height came from Aunt Amilyn,” Ben says dryly, feeling heat in his ears.

“Needed to make my mark on you somehow, I suppose,” Amilyn responds easily.  

Rabbi Durron has gone to the window and is looking out.  “Do we want to give it a few more minutes? It took some people a little bit of time to find their way out back.  Didn’t know there was a back door and went walking around from the front instead of going through the shul.”

Ben resists the urge to snort.  

Not everyone will know this temple like the back of their hands the way he does.  He could run through it blindfolded, probably, and only get into trouble when he hits the renovated chapel that the Hebrew school uses for the younger kids during t’filah.  

He moves towards the window as well and sees the modest crowd gathered there in the chairs they’d set up in front of the chuppah, near the river.

It’s a small wedding.  Ben doesn’t have friends and Rey doesn’t have family, so they’d each had a short list of people they’d wanted—much less needed—to invite.  And with the various polite declines of RSVPs (or in Chewie’s case, complete lack of acknowledgement), the crowd had shrunk even smaller. He likes it better that way.  Fewer people he’ll need to pay attention to than just Rey.

He turns back to look at his mother.  “The dress is amazing,” he mumbles.

“Your mother is already paying for far too much of this wedding as is.  She doesn’t have to buy my dress.”

“She wants to.  Are you really going to deny her that?”

“It’s too much.”

“She’s always wanted a daughter to spend money on.  Let her have this. I’ve always been a tremendous letdown of a son.”  (Rey’s hand finds his as it always does, even when he’s mostly joking.)

“I just…”  (How small her voice is.  He knows he is winning when her voice gets small like that.)  (He hates that he has to win sometimes.)

“You’re not used to people caring enough about you to wanting to do nice things for you because your piece of shit parents were pieces of shit and because Unkar Plutt was not a good guardian.  Let my mother love you. You deserve that.”

Leia smiles up at him.  “It is, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Maz put us onto the designer.  She’s great. Took some of my mom’s old wedding photos and some of Rey’s drawings and made that.  We’d hoped to get Rey into my mother’s wedding dress, but Padmé was short and Rey’s so tall and their torsos are just shaped differently—it just didn’t end up working out.”

“She’s still got Padmé with her,” Ben says quietly, and his mother takes his arm and squeezes it.

She was raised Catholic?

No, she was raised Jewish.  Her adoptive father brought her to Hebrew School twice a week and made sure she had the upbringing her mother would have wanted.  (He sees the way that Rey’s eyes swirl with confusion—to be so loved by a guardian and a parent, to be so taken care of.)

Christmas is a time that Ben spends with his dad.  They do the Jewish thing and get Chinese food and take themselves to a movie.  Dad even lets him get a really big tub of popcorn since mom isn’t there to tell them it’s too much they’ll waste it they’ll never finish it because mom never comes along.  

Mom goes to St. John the Divine and lights candles for Bail and Breha Organa.  

(Does she say kaddish for them?)  
(I don’t know, you’ll have to ask her, kid.)

(He never asks her.)

Ben glances down at his mother.  Her eyes are a little watery and he says, trying to sound loving, “You’re going to ruin your makeup if you start crying now.”  She’d been crying last night when they’d signed the ketubah,

The ketubah is decorated with stars, because of course it is.  Stars that look oddly floral, because he is sure that when Rey spoke to the calligrapher, she had been overly zealous in emphasizing both.  His mother reads the document over—no need for Rabbi Durron to help her with the text

Maybe this year, we can convince Leia to actually go to yeshiva for a little while.  (His uncle’s eyes are teasing. He is proud of his whipsmart sister who somehow knows everything.)

I pick it up just fine, stop talking about me like I’m not here.

and she’d been so curious to see what language they’d actually settled on for the document.  When she’s done, she turns to the witnesses, and waves them forward.

Finn signs first, the brother that Rey had never had.  Rabbi Durron translates the words for him and he signs his name in English, his signature extra curly for the occasion.  Maz steps forward next, her eyes magnified behind thick reading glasses. She signs as well. Then she turns and hands the pen to Rey.

We want to sign our ketubah. (Rabbi Durron raises his eyebrows slightly and looks at Ben.  Ben says nothing. He almost never does. Rey’s the one who cares what traditions —tra-di-tion—tra.di.tion— make it into their wedding.)  If it’s a legal contract, we both should sign it, not just the witnesses.

Rey does not read the ketubah.  Rey had chosen the text for it, knows what it says better than Ben does, and she signs readily

you can sign in english you know
i know i want to sign in hebrew though and i want you to as well

before turning to Ben and out of the corner of his eyes he catches his mother dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

and he’s quite sure she’ll cry today too.  His mother doesn’t cry when she’s upset, or heartbroken, or crestfallen—she cries when she’s unbelievably happy.

“You think I came unprepared?” she says and her voice is already a bit thick.  “They make waterproof mascara for a reason.”

“Science hard at work,” he says and he wraps his arm around her.  Better waterproof mascara than the Starkiller project that had been the breaking point for him at First Order.  Something harmless, something helpful, rather than something that served no other purpose than to destroy.

And why do you want the shift?  Why turn to teaching? (The interviewer is half his height and twice his age but Ben hasn’t been this scared of anyone in a long time.)

“Shall we?” Amilyn asks, and Ben turns to look out the window.  People are mostly seated and Rabbi Durron has disappeared.

Ben nods, and the three of them make their way through the shul together until they’ve reached the door that takes them out towards the back, towards the river where first he’d met Rey.  Rabbi Durron is out among the guests now, and when he sees them, he nods.

Music begins to play.  Ben straightens and his mother and Amilyn take his arms and a moment later they’re walking together towards the chuppah, as the crowd hushes and turns to stare at him.

Ben hates being stared at.

“Stand taller, don’t hunch your shoulders.”

“I’m going to forget to do that.” (How many times had his mother tried to correct his posture growing up?  He hates being this tall. Hunching doesn’t make him smaller, but it feels like it could.)

“High schoolers smell fear, Ben.  Stand taller, don’t hunch your shoulders.”

“This.  This is why I shouldn’t have become a teacher.”

“Too late.  I believe in you.”

He focuses on the chuppah, blocks out every face of every person he passes, refuses to do anything other than stare at the white canopy that’s fluttering slightly in the breeze.  He can see silvery embroidery on it. Stars? Or flowers? Knowing Rey and their ketubah’s calligraphy, probably both. The ketubah itself is sitting on an easel to the side of the chuppah for anyone to peruse if they feel so inclined.

At the front of the crowd, Ben kisses his mother’s cheek, then Amilyn’s, and they both leave him to go and sit in the seats in the front row. Ben stares at the chuppah.

Yes, he can make out both stars and flowers twinkling happily in silvery thread.  Had Rey found it, or had she worked with someone on it?

“I can help, you know.”

“You can do the catering.  You get all funny over Jewish things, so I can take care of that.”

“I don’t get funny over Jewish things.”

“You really do.  You get all mopey and grumpy and sometimes a little hostile.”

“So you’d rather have me bully the caterers?”

“God knows I don’t cook.  You’d be better at that than me.  They could serve us food that tasted like engine oil and I’d think it was delicious.”  (She is right. She is a terrible cook, though her taste is changing, growing more refined with every meal he cooks for her.)

Cooking is one of the few things he’s always done well.  Part instinct, part skill, and always something he can focus on enough that everything else fades away.  He cooks for Rey every night. She’d never had anyone cook for her before and Ben’s not about to let that continue.

The music changes, and Ben hears everyone shifting behind him, turning around to see her.  He takes a deep breath. And he turns.

His heart stops for two reasons.

The first is that sitting in the third row, too tall to be missable though Ben had done just that when he and his mother and Amilyn had walked through the gathered crowd, he sees Chewie, sitting there in a suit, and a lump Lumpy’s always been there for him because Chewie’s always been there for Dad rises in his throat.  Chewie’s eyes aren’t on him, though.   Like everyone else’s, they are on the bride.

The second is Rey—Rey and reality, that he is here and now because of her, and he always will be because of her and so what if he’d just seen her, so what if his hands had shaken while he was lowering the veil over her face—walking towards him, her arms tucked into Finn’s and Rose’s.

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.  I know it’s hard.”

“I’m sorry all the same.  Let me buy you lunch.”

“I’m a student.  That’s not a fair apology.  I’ll always go where there’s free food.”

Every day, I get to build technologies that will take us to the stars.  (Every day, Snoke tries to drag me more and more into the military sector.)  (Why can’t he be like he was at Space Camp?)

Space Camp is the first time that Ben feels like he’s stepping into his own skin.  No one here asks if he’s the Rabbi Skywalker’s nephew. No one even knows who Rabbi Skywalker is at Space Camp.  He’s there, and Poe Dameron, who is a few years ahead of him in school, is there and he knows it’s because his mom asked but Poe’s always nice to him.  Ben doesn’t need people to be nice to him, though. He’s learning about the stars and Snoke only ever has words of encouragement, telling him how clever he is, how quick he is.

He’s so understanding when Ben confesses that he’s not sure his parents get it.  (How can they understand you? Your galaxies smarter than they are. They drag you down, trying to make you be what they want, rather than letting you be what you are.)  (And what did you do, Snoke?)

Every day, I get to look up at the stars and know that one day the things I’m working on will make the galaxy a better place.  (Every day, Snoke looks at me as though I was better at my job before my dad died.)

“Everyone wants me to go into teaching.”

“Yeah?  Do you want to?”  (She pauses, chewing, bright eyes thoughtful.)

“No.”  (Quietly.  She looks guilty.)

“So then don’t go into teaching.” (Simple as that.  Where is the guilt coming from? Her frown only deepens.)  “Or do they expect it of you?” (Women in STEM: pushed towards teaching, pushed out of technical fields though never overtly, constantly combatting sexism no matter how skilled they are.  Women generally: more likely to become teachers than men—the field is feminized in the United States; men shouldn’t want to be teachers.)

( It’s a waste of your skills, Ben.  If you change your mind in a few years, it’ll still be there for you.  And what you’d learn working for me would help rather than harm you in a classroom.  Come on—let’s work together. It’ll be just like Space Camp. )

“No, they don’t expect me to.  It’s more…” (The hostility has faded—the food probably helped, but also, he suspects, that she doesn’t know how to talk about this with anyone.  She has that look about her. He knows it too well.) “There are all these programs for putting teachers in high need classrooms. And I want to give back—I came from one, I know how hard they can be, how hard it can be to make it through when your teachers don’t care.”

“But.”

“But I got out.  I got out and I want to keep going.  But that feels selfish.”

She’s one of the most selfless people I know.  (BB offers this information wholly unasked while Rey is in the bathroom, their eyes on Ben.)  And she doesn’t have anyone

They left me.  They just left me.  (Her eyes are bright, her jaw is set and she is refusing to cry, refusing to accept pity.  In her bright eyes, he sees that pity is worse than anything. Pity undermines how far she’s come without them.)

but me and Finn so if you hurt her I swear to god I’ll kill you.  (BB is small, and when Ben arrived Rey petted their tuft of orange-red hair as though they were a cat, but Ben does not doubt, looking into BB’s black eyes that Rey’s friend could and would fuck him up.) (BB’s wrong, though.  She doesn’t not have anyone. Rey’s magic has always been that she draws people to her, that she gives herself to them, and they build community together.) (That’s what happened with Ben, after all.)

Rey’s always asking him if he wants to come to events at the JCC.  There’s a seder for Tu B’shvat. They’re decorating the sukkah. They’re having a grown up party with real booze for Purim.  Ben goes because Rey wants him to. Rey has more fun than he does. She’s always been the type of person to draw people to her, and to make conversations come alive, and she’s maybe the only goy in the room but she feels more involved than Ben ever has for all the religious knowledge the Great Rabbi Skywalker’s Nephew would be expected to have.  

He wishes that he knew how to love it as much as Rey seems to innately.

(He knows that this is what plagues the modern Jewish community, that the young don’t feel involved or connected.)

(Maybe if his learning had been more about him and less about the tra.DI.TION, less about Rabbi Skywalker and more about Ben, he’d feel at ease here too.)

(Odd that Rey can feel so at ease, letting herself swim in new knowledge since no one is going to seriously try to get her to convert, even if some of the elderly members of the community have been joking about it with her now for years.)

“Everything can always be construed as selfish.  So fuck it, do what you want.” (This, he can see, catches her off-guard.) (How expressive her eyes are—the way they shift between thoughtfulness, confusion, hope, fear, pain, determination.  He wonders what is fueling those emotions. He wishes she’d tell him.)

They stop a few feet away from Ben, and Rose helps her pull the veil back and kisses her cheek.  So does Finn. Then whatever it is that they do fades away because he can’t look anywhere else but at Rey.

Nothing in the world matters beyond Rey in this moment.  Rey, and her shining hazel eyes, and her smile, and the way her dark hair has been curled and braided in an intricate style he knows he’ll never see her wear again because she’s too lazy to ever do more than throw her hair in a messy ponytail.

Rey takes three steps towards him and they walk under the chuppah together.

Her eyes are so bright as she begins to circle him.  It’s like he can hear everything again—the music, the whispering wind, the distant river where he’d first met her, first kissed her, first made love to her—but mostly he hears the way his own heart is thudding in his chest as she revolves around him, like the earth around the sun—except that’s wrong.  

If one of them is the blazing, lifegiving star

The project is called Starkiller, Ben.  I want you on it. (Ballistics?) Yes. Refined drone ballistics.  (I don’t want to change departments.) The stars are a waste of your talents.  This is a good move. I can make you a project director on it, you and Armitage together.  What do you think of that?

it’s Rey, not him.  

Once—She’s blinking a lot.  Rey tends to cry when she’s emotional—be it anger or pain or stress.  She’s cried a lot in the last few days

She’s been crying.  He can tell because she is hiding her face from him so he won’t see the puffy pink-eyed disappointment there.  He lets her hide it. He knows what pain is well enough to know when someone wants to be left to it.

“Still nothing?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”  (He hovers in the door, her face is pressed into the pillow and he can tell from the way she’s breathing that she’s done crying, that she’s spent the way she’s spent after she comes, as though her limbs cannot move anymore.)

They aren’t naked—it’s too cold for naked, the wrong time of year for this, but the right time of year for them.  They’ve shucked off her pants, and tugged him out of his and he’s holding onto her legs as she slides onto him, her lips parted as her head falls back and he knows they’re watching the same stars.

(He hates that this is true for her in this way too.)

(He crosses to the bed, sitting down next to her, presses a kiss to the back of her neck, his hand runs along her spine.)

She’s so beautiful like this, so beautiful as her lips gasp his name, riding him

midrash says that lilith was cast from the garden of eden because she rode adam and this was not her place midrash was fucking wrong how can this be wrong lilith was made of the same dirt as adam and he and rey they are the same dirt and she can ride him whenever she pleases

loving him being here with him even though it’s cold.  

They’re talking in hushed voices about sex so their counselors can’t hear them.  It’s a mitzvah to have sex on shabbas, that’s what my older brother Yoni says, if you’re trying for a baby is the only drawback but still it is a mitzvah.  

Is it still a mitzvah if you’re fucking your shiksa girlfriend and you don’t believe in god or know if you want kids?

She’d be beautiful even if she didn’t love him.  He sometimes can’t believe that she does. He doesn’t understand how that happened.

“I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t try.”

“I think this is a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Because the only outcome is heartbreak.  Either you find them and learn a painful truth you don’t need because it happened when you were six, or you don’t find them and have to live wondering whether you ever will for the rest of your days.”

“So I shouldn’t even try?  And it happened when I was six, but I wouldn’t be me without what they did.  It’s not something that just got left behind as I aged.”

“Maybe not, but—”

“And if I’m not going to look for them for my wedding, then when?  When we have a kid? When I get my PhD? When?”

“I don’t think you ever should.  I don’t want them in my life.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you control me in every capacity.”

“Rey, that’s not what I—”

“What did you mean then?”

“No one’s allowed to hurt you the way they did.  I don’t care if they’re your parents. They don’t get to just waltz back into your life.”

“Just because you have shit with your parents doesn’t mean that—”

“This isn’t about that.”

“Isn’t it?  You once told me you wanted to run away and never look back.  That you wanted to be free of them. That’s what I have, Ben, and I hate it.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”  (He is shaking, but he takes a deep breath.  If she’ll just hold his hand, he’ll calm down.  But he also is trying—trying—to learn how to do that for himself.   It’s easier when she’s there to support him. It’s harder when she’s at his throat like this.)

He loves nothing better than her lips at his throat, nibbling the skin there, sucking on the pulse points.  

“I’m saying you’re hanging on to a dream that can’t ever be real.  You’re doing that thing where you want to believe that something will be better, can be better, than it possibly can be.  Even if you find them. Even if it was a mistake, it won’t magically change—”

(She turns on her heel and storms out of the kitchen.  She has had enough of him. He knows it. All he can do is pray that tonight when he climbs into bed she’ll cuddle up next to him the way she always does, and that her anger won’t last too long.)

They don’t talk about it.  They don’t talk about the money that comes in through their wedding registry to help pay for it, or how sometimes Rey checks emails that make her usually bright eyes go dark and sad.  They don’t talk about how Ben is right—and they don’t talk about how that doesn’t make Rey wrong to look. They don’t talk about her parents.

Ben knows when updates come through because Rey curls up on the couch in his sweatpants and sweatshirt and watches brainless television for several hours without saying a word.  He knows that no news is bad news because when she comes to bed and nuzzles into his side, catlike, and her hand comes to his to squeeze it and he hopes that the touch of him takes away the pain the way her touch takes away his.

because nothing had changed and so, in its own way, everything had changed.  But if she’s blinking back tears now, they are blazing ones, ones that aren’t her fucking shitbag parents managing to crush her soul now, twenty years after the first wound, without even trying.  If she’s blinking back tears now, they are the kinds of tears that come from

“Are you crying?”  (There is gentle laughter in his voice because she is.  He brushes a tear from her cheek and pulls her to his chest.)

“Look, it was just really good, ok?  They’re good tears.”

“You’re sure?”

“Ben, you just made me come three times.  I can’t be counted on for a lot right now, but I feel confident in saying that yes—they’re good tears.”

loving him, being here with him, revolving around him in front of her friends and his family in a dress that shines like the heavens at midnight.

Twice—He has to remind himself to breathe.  

He wants to reach for her hand, but he can’t just yet.  Not just yet.

He’s wearing his grandfather’s cufflinks and she’s wearing his grandmother’s Magen David, simple and silver around her throat.  

Why do you hate him?
Because he choked my mother to death, Ben.  Why wouldn’t I hate him?

The grandparents that his mother would want represented—loyal friends, caring ones.  He’s never had friends like that—not like his father had, or his grandmother (or even the grandfather his mother so loathes.  Anakin Skywalker had loyal friends too) but Rey does. He wants Rey to have everything, everything in the universe. Friends, family, love, boundless endless joy, all the flowers and stars that she could possibly want.   I love you, he thinks as he stares at her, I love you more than your piece of shit parents.  I love you more than anyone. I love you, I love you, I love you.

He thinks he sees her staring the exact same thing back at him.

Thrice—He starts to be able to breathe again.  He’s getting the hang of this, turning to follow her circling.  Behind her, the small crowd, and behind them, in the distance, the old shul.  

He watches her walk back to the shul, the basket of bread in her hands.  She’s talking with his mother and he sees his mother glance over her shoulder back at him.  Shame lumps in his throat.

“He gave a damn about you and you can’t even bring yourself to—”

“I didn’t hate him.” (A confession.  It should feel thunderous. Instead he is empty.)

(It catches her off-guard.)  “You—”

“Murdered him.” (That makes her uncomfortable.)

“It was an accident.”

“I was too drunk to drive and I knew it.  He was drunker, though. Maybe he should have driven and then everyone would have been happier for it.  No one’s ever liked me as much as him.”

“That doesn’t mean they’d want you dead.”

“Tell that to my uncle.”

It is a janitor who finds Luke’s body in his study.  Ben hugs his mother and Rey, both of whom are distraught.  

Ben feels free.

I’m glad your mother sent you to Space Camp.  You were wasted in that Jewish camp — what was it called?  It doesn’t matter. What was the point of sending you there?  That you’d turn into another Luke Skywalker? No, no. That’s a waste of that mind of yours.  There are plenty of other ways to put that to use. (Snoke has a habit of touching him. He always did.  At camp, it was patting him on the shoulder. At work, it’s similar. Sometimes, his thumb brushes Ben’s neck.  Once, he stroked Ben’s cheek.)

(The trouble with Snoke’s touch has always been that there’s a warm sheen to the coldness that it fills Ben with.  One moment, he is leaning into it, longing for some kind of connection because his mother has no time for him and his father is his father, and the next he feels cold because he doesn’t think it should go like that .)

“Kindly take your hand off him.”  (He loves her he loves her he loves her he loves her he loves that Snoke recoils at the fury in her gaze.  He’d only mentioned it in passing, she hadn’t pressed it but she remembered.)

You’re wasted at that company, Ben.  (As if Luke Skywalker has ever cared about him.  As if Luke Skywalker ever loved him.) They’re soulless—is it really worth the research if you’re part of an organization like that?  (His father’s already ashamed of him for it. Look, kid, I didn’t get out of ‘Nam for you to go and work for a place that makes Agent Orange and the like look like cotton candy .)  (His mother is as well, she spends so much time in Congress trying to prevent the First Order from getting any contracts at all.)  (So why not Luke too?)

“If you want to teach, why don’t you?”  (From her, it is a different question than when it is from his parents.)

(Ben can only swallow.  He doesn’t know. And yet he does.  Rabbi means teacher, after all, and even if he’s teaching physics and not Torah Talmud midrash—)

Rey stops after the third circle, and now it’s Ben’s turn, and this is better—him orbiting her.  This is how it has always felt. This is as natural as breathing.

Once—he notices Finn and Rose and Poe and Lumpy, all standing there, hands resting on the smooth wooden poles of the chuppah, watching his orbit.  Rose’s eyes are bright with tears, and he makes a mental note to keep her away from Chewie since Chewie’s actually here and if they talk at all they run the risk of

Your dad’s a war criminal.  (Rose’s eyes are glassy from drink, her face is flushed and he’s seen Rey’s friend passionate, he’s seen her stubborn, he’s never seen her both of those things plus angry in the mix.)

He didn’t want to go to ‘Nam.  

Doesn’t matter, he’s a war criminal.  Just following orders, was he? (Ben will wonder for weeks whether she meant it like that in her fury, or if she meant it in another way.  Once, he might have demanded she answer for it. But behind her, he can see Rey—anxious, not wanting her friend and her boyfriend to fight so he swallows it.)

He was discharged for not following orders, actually.  Dishonorably. (This catches Rose off guard. It catches Ben off guard too.  He’s not used to defending his father, especially about something his father had bragged about.  Couldn’t quite make it as a draft dodger, so the next best thing was saving his Chewie’s life and getting kicked out.)  (Will wonders never cease, dad, look at what you drove acrid oddly dusty and crunching and his ears aren’t working properly he can’t breathe properly it’s like he got punched hard in the chest and throat and when he looks over at the passenger side me to.)

a fight.  Because he trusts each of them just enough to maybe hold it back at a wedding, but he also knows both of them are fiercely loyal and determined and if it’s Chewie defending Han or Rose defending that place her parents had fled to bring their daughters safely into the world, he’s not sure war won’t be waged in the middle of the dance floor.

He’ll have to remember to warn Lumpy about that, since Chewie

Look at you getting tall.  You’re gonna be taller than me one day.  Certainly taller than your old man. He’s too short for his own good.  (Dad will complain he’s fighting an uphill battle against genetics, that Jews are short.  Which only makes Ben feel even stranger about being so damn tall.)

probably won’t want to talk to him, even if he came.  

It takes him a year before he realizes that Chewie has never said anything to him—a full year since the crash.  Chewie takes him off replies he sends to Leia’s group emails, blocks him on Facebook, and Ben’s fairly certain he’s been blocked in Chewie’s phone too.  

He deserves it, he supposes.

Dad saved Chewie’s life there are two kinds of family, kid—there’s blood, what you’ve got, and what your mom and your uncle luke have—and then there’s the family you choose and that’s me and chewie ok? so don’t you ever let anyone tell you that lumpy isn’t your cousin because he is he’s your family because chewie’s your family and there’s nothing in the world that will ever change that in ‘Nam, and Ben killed dad.

Still.  Chewie came.   What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?  

Twice—He feels warm now.  The sun is low and it’s not exactly a warm day, but he’s wearing a suit and a dumb white silk bathrobe over it and the longer he stares at Rey the more his heart lurches forward.  Chewie’s here, Rey’s here, his mother is here and Ben—

“Sometimes when I was little, I’d go out and climb up the largest pile in the dump—the one with all the big shit that had to get broken down.  I’d climb up as high as I could and just look out over the world. It was so lonely at night, but alone at night was better than lonely during the day.”

“You weren’t lonely at night?”

“Isn’t everyone lonely at night?  I think that made it feel less lonely.”

She collapses forward onto him, her chest heaving, her sex trembling on his.  She breathes in his neck, and he can feel her heart racing in her chest against his, in her lips against his throat, and this is what it means to be alive, isn’t it?  Him and Rey and the stars overhead?

“Night was when it was worst for me.  During the day I could distract myself.”

“Distract yourself from what?” (What not to distract himself from?)

It’s not until she takes his hand that he realizes how loud his head has always been because how silent it goes when she touches him.  His heart stops, his lungs stop, his head stops. It’s like he’s died and when they lurch back to themselves, he has been reborn in her hands.  

People talk about love at first sight, but he didn’t fall in love with her when he first saw her.  Love came when she first touched him and he never wants to let her go.

Ben’s where he wants to be.  Maybe. At last.

Thrice—Rey’s face scrunches.  Seven circles is a lot longer than either of them had expected, especially when he’s walking in time to the music and not at his usual clipped pace.  

“You always walk so quickly.”

“I walk perfectly normally.”

“And you have legs longer than a giraffe’s, which means you walk quickly when you walk normally.  I have to take two steps for every one of yours.”

“Well, blame my dad for that.  He was the one whose sperm decided freakishly long legs would look good with my big ears and my big nose.”

Ben grins, which only makes her own smile widen and her nose scrunch the way that makes him want to kiss it.

“I love your big dopey smile.”

“Dopey?”

“Not because of the ears.  Because of your face.”

“And obviously because I can’t speak.”

“And that.  You’re definitely not Doc, that’s for sure.  Grumpy maybe.”

“You?  Calling me grumpy?  Have you seen yourself in the morning before coffee?”

And it’s only when his face finally cracks into that smile that joy starts to radiate out of him.  

“I can be happy with you.” (He murmurs it into her hair.  He thinks she is asleep.)

(She’s not.) “I should hope so.”

You make me happy.  (She tells him this under the stars.  It’s summer now, and they’re lying on the roof of his house, looking up at the pinpricks of light in the darkness.)  (Ben’s breath catches in his throat. No one’s ever told him this before. He would not have thought it possible—except that with Rey, he truly believes that anything is possible.)  (She tilts her head up from under his chin to look at him. Her eyes are the brightest thing around. He wouldn’t be the way he is without Rey. He couldn’t be who he wants to be without Rey constantly challenging him, kicking him to the dirt and helping him back up.)  

“I’m just saying it’s bullshit is all.”

“What is?”

“If you want to teach, you should teach.”

“Look, you’re not Jewish, you don’t understand the—”

“Being a Rabbi and being a schoolteacher aren’t the same thing.  You haven’t convinced me that they are and no, I’m not Jewish, but I know enough about Judaism based on what you’ve told me that you’d better be able to back up that claim or else I’m fully in my rights to—”

“Rabbi means teacher.”

“Yes.  Cool. And being a religious leader is not the same as going and teaching physics if you want to teach physics.  I think you’re trying to make yourself miserable because you think you deserve it, Ben.”

“What?”  (This shouldn’t catch him off guard, but it does.)

“You’ve walled off part of who you are because you can’t handle your uncle, can’t handle your father dying, can’t handle that you felt like a disappointment growing up, can’t handle your own loneliness, can’t handle the fool’s gold that Snoke has to offer you.  You don’t think you deserve the things that you want. And yes, I include myself in that category.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, certainly not with that attitude.”  (A pause, and he knows she’s gathering her thoughts, that she’s going to look up at him, determined, and a wave of Rey is going to knock him under.)  “You told me to be what I want to be. So you should follow your own advice. Masochism isn’t penance, and it doesn’t make you a better person because you’re not doing something you will like.  You don’t want to live in your uncle’s shadow? You want to quit Snoke? Do it. Be your own person. You’re the only person making the connection between teacher and rabbi.”

(He makes her happy.)

Rey shakes everything.  He sees everything differently because of Rey.  The vast emptiness that has filled him since he was a child, the way he feels as though it is drowning him ever since he killed his father—it starts to be navigable.

The way he has existed and the way he wants to exist have never lined up until Rey.  The Ben Solo he wants to be, the Ben Solo he is, and the Ben Solo his parents and uncle wanted from him—they are all different people.  

And it’s not that Rey makes him follow the path from the Ben Solo he is and the Ben Solo he wants to be—but rather talking to her somehow illuminates a route he had never thought could exist and displayed before him and it’s all he wants, burning down inside him.

How strange to want something that exists closer than the stars, something might be attainable?

He pauses and takes a deep breath, because the seventh—the seventh they will circle together.

Seven—Seven takes longer than the other six combined, or maybe that’s just how it feels.  Time breaks in a way that is not scientifically possible but that’s the only explanation he can think of as he notices every detail of her now, his mind going still as his gaze takes in the reddish color of her lips—different from what he’s used to—and what’s definitely powder on her face.  He can hear the rustle of her skirts so different from the rustling of the wind, notices the beaded stars across her bodice and the silver and off-white and pearlescent embroidery of constellations he’s spent too much time staring at through telescopes. The lace of her veil flutters in the wind, and her hair is looped into an updo that somehow looks like a blooming rose.

(It slips out of him.)  “Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” (She doesn’t miss a beat.  She doesn’t stop to consider. She doesn’t even look up from her computer.)

“For real?”

“Wait, was that a serious proposal?”

“I don’t have a ring.”  (But she still said yes.  Without hesitation.)

He wants her ring to be perfect.  He wants the cut of the diamond to be delicate, wants the band to be simple and strong like Rey, wants everything he loves in her to be wrapped up in that little ring.  But none of the designs he sees seem right. They’re all too big, or too...girly feels like the wrong word but it’s the only thing he can think of and they don’t fit Rey.

Padmé didn’t have an engagement ring, did she?

It was buried with her.

Oh.  (He tries not to let disappointment pool in his stomach.  It would have been the right thing to give her, a ring that had belonged to his grandmother, a family heirloom for a woman who had never had a family.)

For Rey? (He looks up and his mother’s eyes are so soft, so full of an eager excitement that she’s trying—and failing to hide from him.  Marriage. For him. Settling down. Falling in love. Being happy. When had she given up on that for him?)

Yeah.  I haven’t found anything good for her.  (A pause. A thought.) Maybe next time I go out you could come with me?

I’d like that.  (She gets up and leaves the room and a moment later comes back with a small rectangular velvet box.  She opens it. A silver star twinkles up at him, six points and simple.) This was Padmé’s, though. Maybe something for when she finishes her conversion?

Her ears are studded with silver that matches that necklace he’d given her with a kiss and the engagement ring on her finger twinkles—the brightest star of all of them.  

And then, she’s moving forward, taking his hand and he squeezes it as they step under the chuppah together.

“Baruch haba hashem Adonai,” Rabbi Durron says, smiling to both of them, before looking past them to the gathered crowd.  “I speak for both Ben, and Rey, in welcoming you here today. I’d like to welcome Ben’s family, Leia Organa, Amilyn Holdo, as well as those family members who could not be here with us today.

“We can’t not have him address Han and Luke.  That would be wrong.”

“And what about your parents?  They aren’t welcome in spirit at my wedding.”

“They might still come.”

“You’re still holding on.  Let go.”

“Fuck you, Ben.  They might still come.”  (They might still care, she wants to believe.  They never cared, she knows.)

From the stories last night, I know that Ben’s dad Han would be kvelling

He hasn’t said anything to you, has he?  (His dad’s voice is quiet, and Ben knows he’s not supposed to be able to hear from the study.)

You’re worse than me about wanting grandkids, Han.

I just want to know if there’s someone who can make him happy.  He’s never dated anyone. That doesn’t worry you?

with all of us to be here, and I know that Rabbi Skywalker’s heart was so full of joy

Should I have said something?  Ben wonders as he stares at the coffin, his arm around his mother.  His eyes looked dead long before he died. Should I have...

(Is this one more person whose death he’s responsible for?)

that Ben and Rey would be getting married.  I know both of them are here in spirit. I’d like to thank Finn, Rose, Poe, and Lumpawaroo for standing guard over the chuppah today.  And lastly, I’d like to invite you all to welcome Ben and Rey into this new stage of their lives together.

“I’ll get to a longer shpiel in a little while, I know you’re all probably anxious to get cracking—I know these two are,”

“We can delay it, if you want.”

“Delay what?”

“The wedding.  To give us time to mourn.  He was your uncle.” (So? Rey always liked him more than Ben, listened to him more than Ben.)

“Do you want that?”

“I want what you want.”

“I don’t want to wait.”

he gives Rey and Ben a teasing smile that elicits a laugh from the guests.  “So without further ado—” he picks up the bottle of wine on the little table and pours it into the silver kiddush cup.  He speaks quickly, though clearly, and Ben follows the familiar first baruch atah Adonai .

Rabbi Durron hands the cup first to Rey, who drinks from it and passes it to Ben.   He got the good stuff, Ben thinks bemusedly.  Never once has he had good wine in this shul, but this doesn’t taste like shit.  His mom had to have chosen it. Or maybe Uncle Luke had a good stash for weddings it is just grape juice in the cup that he drinks after saying kiddush and ben’s relieved his dad has given him wine before on shabbas but he doesn’t like the way it leaves his mouth feeling.

“One of the things I’ve liked about preparing this wedding with Ben and Rey is how they pick and choose what parts of the tradition they are keeping and what they’re tweaking.  Last night,” Rabbi Durron says, “Ben and Rey signed their ketubah. For those of you who don’t know enough about Jewish weddings, for thousands of years, the bride and groom didn’t sign their marriage contract, leaving the task, instead, to witnesses.  But Ben and Rey aren’t the first—and I doubt they’ll be the last—who want to actually partake in this legal document

Ben can’t understand the words of his parents’ ketubah, hanging on the wall of his mom’s study, right next to her diplomas.  (It’s in Aramaic, not Hebrew, sweetheart. Maybe one day you’ll learn some Aramaic. Focus on the Hebrew — that’s the place to start.)  But he sees his mother’s name, and his father’s, and he knows what it is.

binding them together.  Finn Jackson will take a moment to read through a translation of this contract.”

Rabbi Durron glances at Finn, who steps into the chuppah and reads from the translation that Rey had given him.

“On the first day of the week, the thirteenth day of the month Sivan, in the year 5778, as we are brought here, to Highland Park, Illinois, in the United States of America, to hereby testify that the groom Ben Solo said to the bride Rey Johnson, ‘You are consecrated to me as my wife, with this ring, according to the laws of Moses and Israel,’ and that the bride Rey said to the groom Ben, ‘You are consecrated to me as my husband with this ring, according to the laws of Moses and Israel.’ The groom Ben and the bride Rey accepted all the conditions of betrothal and marriage as set forth by biblical law and the Sages of blessed memory. The groom and bride further agreed willingly to work for one another, to nurture and honor, to respect and support one another, and to build together a household of integrity as befits members of the Jewish people. The bride and groom accepted rings from each other for the purposes of creating this marriage and to symbolize their love. The groom and bride also accepted full legal responsibility for the obligations herein, as well as for the various property entering the marriage from their respective homes and families, and agreed that the obligations in this Ketubah may be satisfied even from movable property. We have had both the groom and the bride formally acquire these obligations to the other, with an instrument fit for such purposes. Thus all is in order and in force.”

He gives Rey a grin, and her face spreads into such a bright smile that Ben’s breath catches.  

Finn steps back to the edge of the chuppah.

On the little table, next to the emptied kiddush cup, sits a bowl with two platinum rings.  Rabbi Durron picks one up and hands it to Ben. His hand shakes as he takes it, and turns to Rey.  

“Am I your pity project now?”

“I’m trying to be nice.”

“Why?”

“Because you walk around like someone who’s never had anyone be nice to them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Do you honestly expect even strangers to hate you?” (Ben expects everyone to hate him.  If Luke Skywalker—kind, gracious, good, mensch that he is—doesn’t even like him, what stranger stands a chance?)

“Yes.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

“Why do you care?”

“I just do.  Is that so alien?”

“Yes.”  (But God, it feels good.)

I just wanted a family.  (It’s a week before the civil ceremony which will take place the Friday afternoon before the wedding at Etz Chaim It is a tree of life for those who hold fast to it and all of its supporters are clap clap clap happy , and Rey has given up.  She sags and Ben is holding her.  Holding her as tightly as he can, as though his arms can make up for the years of feeling unlovable.)  You were right, they aren’t coming back.

I didn’t want to be right.  I didn’t want you to hurt more.  (She knows this, and doesn’t say anything.)

(Are you taking my name? The question burns in his mind but he knows now is not the time to ask.  Not when she’s hurting. Not when she’s lost. Not when she’d said she’s thinking about it, and he knows he’ll find out one way or another on Friday.  But why would she want to keep Johnson? Johnson had left her behind, had abandoned her, had thrown her out like garbage and Solo has only ever wanted her.)

He doesn’t know how his voice doesn’t crack like it did midway through his second aliyah when he speaks.  “Harei at m’kudeshet li batabat zo k’dat Moshe v’yisrael.”

She is holding out her hand to him and when he takes it and slides the band on, a single tear drops from her eyes.  Ben swallows. It doesn’t do much for the lump in his throat, it doesn’t do much for the way his own eyes are stinging.

The band sits neatly on her finger, clear and bright next to the ring his mother had helped him choose.  

She keeps her hand in his

The first time that Rey takes his hand it’s because he’s about to walk out into oncoming traffic and she’d spotted a car he’d not been paying attention to.  His arm jerks him back and he can’t tell if it’s the adrenaline from the near miss of

His dad looks so small when he’s lifeless.  He’d had such a big personality, always. Had filled a room.  But now he just looks small, and old. Soon he’ll erode and there’ll be nothing left of him but the scar on Ben’s face.

the SUV honking at him, the driver giving him the finger, or if it’s that Rey’s hand is still warm and firm in his.

as she accepts the second ring from Rabbi Durron and says, her own voice trembling with tears, “Harei atah m'kudesh li batabat zo k’dat Moshe v’yisrael.”  

He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until he releases it, the platinum sliding onto his finger.  

And there it is again, that shy smile.  Or maybe it’s a reflection of his own shy smile.  He can’t quite tell. He doesn’t think it feels different, doesn’t think anything has really changed.  He’d sanctified himself to her long ago. But she’s his wife, now. He has a wife. He’d never thought he’d find anyone who would love him, much less want to marry him.

But here’s Rey, and it’s been years since he’s felt holiness in any way that’s good, in any way that feels like there’s more to life and spirit than humanity can understand, but there’s a prickle up and down his neck as he stares at her and knows that if there is a god—and he’s not convinced that there is and doubts he ever will—that he and Rey have sanctified themselves to each other.

Ben is dimly aware of Rabbi Durron glancing between the two of them before he begins to speak and Ben forces himself to listen.  He could stare at Rey forever right now, memorize the lines of her face, the brightness in her eyes when she took him, as he did when she’d pulled him out of traffic that time, as he did the first time they rolled together under the stars.

There are stars twinkling down at them from the canopy overhead, stitched in silver.  Had she done that on purpose? Probably. She did everything on purpose, with purpose.  

“I want to marry you.”  (He phrases it differently this time, now that he has a ring.)  

(She doesn’t respond this time, she just kisses him and he can feel the future in her kiss.)

“I spent a long time thinking of the words I wanted to say today,” Rabbi Durron says.  “My first thought was wondering what Rabbi Skywalker—zichrono livracha—would have said had he not passed away earlier this year.  He was the one who was initially supposed to be officiating today—for his only nephew’s wedding, leading them through this mitzvah.”  Ben’s throat tightens and he closes his eyes. Rey’s hand is in his, she’d never let it go after she’d put the ring there. Rey’s here, and Luke’s not, and Rabbi Durron studied under him, worked with him for years.  

“And then I had a moment of shame.”  Ben opens his eyes and glances at Rabbi Durron. “Rabbi Skywalker’s spirit might be with us today—but today isn’t about him.  It’s about Ben and Rey.” Yes, it is.   “What they mean to one another.  What they commit to one another. What they love in, and about one another.

“I haven’t known Ben for very long.  For all his uncle was the foundation of Congregation Etz Chaim, Ben’s forged his path elsewhere.  His mother, his uncle—I’ve known them for years, and getting to know Ben and his way of seeing the world in the past few months has been a journey.

“Rey, of course, has been a staple of the community for years, and has held the JCC together—

“It feels weird not going back.”  (They are driving past the JCC, on the way to his mother’s.)

“I doubt they’d call security on you if you wanted to go back.”

“I’ve been thinking about converting.” (Ben’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.) “Yeah?”

“Yeah.  I don’t know.  I miss it. But it doesn’t feel like it’s mine to miss.  I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. I might talk to your mom about it.”

“Only talk to my mom if you mean it.  She’ll start a countdown clock to grandkids if you mention you’re thinking about converting.”

“You’re trying to tell me she doesn’t already have one?”

“She’ll take two years off her nagging moratorium.”

“Would you want me to?  To convert?” (They’re at a red light, and he glances her way.)

(He breaks the night before they go to the courthouse.)  What are your thoughts about your last name? About taking mine, I mean?  (That Ellis Island name he’d gotten from his dad. He wonders if his dad knows what their name had been before Solo, back when they were in Poland, or if that knowledge had died before the car.)

“It’s up to you.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“What are you asking?”

“Would it matter to you?  If I were Jewish?”

Maybe it’s because Uncle Luke is dead and he isn’t hanging over Ben — everything that Ben’s not, and everything that he should have been.  But Ben thinks that it’s Rey that makes him start caring about Judaism again.

“It doesn’t matter to me that you’re not.  I don’t know if that’d change if you were. I want you to do what you think is right.  You’re good at that.”

—with her own two hands and some well positioned duct tape until she went off and became an engineer.  And for some reason, we can’t convince her to let go of her dreams and come back to us.” Rey laughs, her nose scrunching up.  He loves her laughter, her smile, her nose scrunching. He loves the brightness of her face as they’re standing there together, loves that they’ll always be together, that he’s hers and she’s his, just as they’d sanctified.

“I asked both of them why it was they wanted to get married.  We live in a society that doesn’t require marriage for commitment, or children.

Hospital visitation rights.  (Ben’s joke falls flat. It was more for himself than for Rabbi Durron and for Rey, who both look at him blankly.  The last time he was in a hospital, his dad had just died.)

“I didn’t demand an answer from them immediately.  I wanted them to think on it, to come back to me and let me know privately—because you’ll all note that they neither of them have said anything under the chuppah apart from their holy vows.

“Don’t be an ass.”

“They’re dumb.”

“They’re not dumb, they’re meaningful.”

“I promise to cherish you for the rest of my days.  To love you until I’m old and flaccid. To—”

“Oh stop it.  If you weren’t being a sarcastic asshole, they could be meaningful.”

“It’s formulaic.  If it’s formulaic, I’d rather stick to the old formula.”

“The one where you acquire me as a woman like a piece of property?”

“Oh come on, we’ve had this discussion already.  We’re not doing a traditional kiddushin.”

“You said that the words that you said when you married me mattered to you.  So why can’t they be your own? Why can’t I say my own?”

“Do you honestly trust me to come up with those words?”

“Could you at least try?”

“Is that what this is about?  That you don’t think I can try?  That I can’t string two words together about how much I love you?”  

“You’re the one who doesn’t trust yourself to actually be able to.  Not me.”

To her, he can show the underbelly and know she won’t gut him.  But to show that same vulnerability to anyone else?

“So I wanted to share with them what they each shared with me several weeks ago as we were getting close to the big day.”

Rabbi Durron reaches into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, his tallis white and blue and bright in the sunshine, pulls a piece of paper, and begins to read ben’s hands are shaking as he types “My life has been forever changed from meeting Rey.  I’ve been the happy victim of her harsh compassion,” Rey’s lips split into a grin, “and am constantly blown away by her stubbornness—even when it’s used against me, or perhaps especially then—and her fierce determination that things not just be all right, but that they be right.  Without her I think I’d still be adrift. Because I have been adrift for a long time. Ok, time for a shitty metaphor please edit this out later,” the crowd laughs and Ben’s face heats, “I think I’ve spent most of my life drowning, and Rey’s like this lighthouse that’s telling me where shore is and how to get there.  And I still had to get there myself, but she was there when I made it to shore to help me dry off and get my land legs again. She gave me strength to keep swimming,

“I’ve got you.”

“This feels weird.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“I feel like I should be falling but the water’s holding me up.”

“You really haven’t gone swimming before?”  (Swimming had been what made midsummer at camp almost bearable.)

“I was always too embarrassed to sign up for swimming lessons as an adult.”

“I’ll teach you.  It’s not hard.”

“Let me get used to floating first, will you?”

reminded me that I could swim if I wanted.  I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m not putting details in this on purpose.”  More laughter and Rey’s hand tightens in his. He hates being stared at, being laughed at, but he doesn’t think they’re laughing at him right now.  There’s understanding in that laughter, there’s an unexpected fondness in that laughter. He wouldn’t have heard that if it weren’t for Rey. “So I guess it boils down to why wouldn’t I want to marry someone who reminded me that I could be someone I had long ago thought I could never be?  She made me remember myself, and I could talk for endless days about how much I love everything that makes her her, but it’s through her eyes that I began to care about myself in a way that I never had before. You say that we could just live together, or she could just be my girlfriend. She can’t be.  She’s been more than that for so long.”

There’s quiet after Rabbi Durron finishes reading.  Rey’s eyes are bright with tears again and she mouths at him, harsh compassion, and his lips quirk towards a smile.

“All of my life I’ve wanted family.  Real family, parents, siblings, all of that.  And after a certain point, it was more important to me than myself.  I kept looking back for family that had left me behind, or looking around for people who could be my family now, and I forgot that in order to be part of a family, I needed to let myself thrive.  When I first met Ben, he was an unpleasant cold shower.” Ben laughs, and he thinks the guests do too, “But effective, all the same. Ben reminded me that my life is mine, not anyone else’s, and that I was so obsessed with this dream of a family that I’d never had that I was forgetting to live.  The world opened to me and with it, I opened to myself. Life should be more than just surviving, and with Ben, I started to feel as though I weren’t just surviving, but starting to thrive. And it was terrifying, but less so because Ben was there with me, being scared of everything that was changing in his life too.  I want to marry him because I think our souls have been family already for a long time, a family that is both deeper and truer than anything I had thought I wanted for so many years. I want to marry him because I love him. I want to marry him because I love what he’s made me love in myself.”

The birds are chirping behind him and it’s very hot in the sunlight and in all the layers he’s wearing right now.  He brings his gaze from Rabbi Durron to Rey, and she’s watching him, and the weight of how much he loves her is crushing him.  

“Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish said: the Torah given to Moses was written with black fire upon white fire, sealed with fire, and swathed with bands of fire.  What he meant by that was that it was not just the word of God—the black fire given to Moses—that was important: the white fire of the parchment that the Torah is written on is just as important.   

You two always wear black and white.  Is that on purpose? Inverse coordination? (BB’s question is innocent enough, and when Ben looks down, his shirt is indeed black and Rey’s is indeed white.  A lot of her shirts are white. A lot of his are blacks. Complementary.)

It is the subtext of God’s laws, the meaning that holds the words together.  So you see, I got these two little emails,” Rabbi Durron continues, and Ben’s still looking at Rey and she’s still looking at him, and he’s listening he knows he’s listening but he wants to look at Rey and not Kyp Durron, “And you’ll notice this little theme there in both of them, the subtext holding the words together.  And I’m a Rabbi, I love themes and motifs and common points in different texts that can be used to illuminate a situation.

“They both also spoke of feeling as though they were already family, already more to one another than words can describe.  They also both speak of love for the self as much as love for the other. And speak of the other—in watery motif—of being brought to that point by the other.

She’s lying on his chest after she comes, her breathing shaky, her heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings through the layers of their clothes to reach his.  And in the distance, the gentle burbling of the river, that had, months before, carried breadcrumbs and Ben’s sins out to Lake Michigan.

“I don’t know about all of you, but that’s not just love, that’s a mitzvah .  Helping someone in their heart and mind and soul, and loving them as you do it.  So if what Ben and Rey have is a mitzvah, then why wouldn’t another mitzvah—marriage—be natural, be a fitting consummation

She consumes him consumes all of him his heart is going to explode out of his chest and there are tears leaking out of his eyes but he’s lost he’s lost he’s lost

of all of what they mean to one another?

“Ben, Rey—I say from the bottom of my heart that I wish you joy in the mitzvah we are here today performing, but I also am kvelling over the mitzvahs you have done for one another daily for years.  I wish you every drop of happiness in your new family with one another—though new might be the wrong word—and may you always help guide the other in the journey towards internal love and peace.”

Rabbi Durron refolds the pieces of paper and returns them to his pocket.  He smiles at both Ben and Rey and then his eyes return out to the guests. “We’ve talked a bit about how today’s a mitzvah, but it’s time to bless it.”  He nods and behind him, Ben knows, his mother is getting to her feet.

“Leia Organa, Ben’s mother, is going to recite the sheva brachot for us and we’ll be having several friends come up to read through the translation as we go.”  

Rabbi Durron pours more wine into the kiddush cup and a moment later, his mom is standing there.  Sure enough, she’s definitely been crying, but her mascara is impeccable and she beams up at Ben and Rey as she gets herself settled and Finn steps, once again, into the chuppah as she begins to read.  

“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam, bo'rei p'ri hagafen.”

“Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the vine,” Finn says seriously before stepping back out to the edge of the chuppah.  

Amilyn steps forward next, squeezing taking his mother’s hand as she reads.  

“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam shehakol bara lichvodo.”

“Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has created all for Your glory.”  Amilyn gives each of them a kiss on the cheek as she makes her way back down to the seats.

Rose is next, stepping into the chuppah while Leia reads.  

“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam, yotzer ha’adam.”

“Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, Creator of humanity.”

They have to wait a moment for Maz to make it up to the Ketubah.  The old woman can sometimes be very nimble but she has to extract herself from her row of seats as Leia reads,

“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam, asher yatzar et ha’adam b’tzalmo, b’tzelem d’mut tavnito, v’hitkin lo mimenu binyan adei ad. Baruch atah Adonai, yotzeir ha’adam.”

Maz looks like she’s been tearing up too, because her wide eyes are brighter than usual behind her glasses. “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who fashioned human beings in Your image, the image of the likeness of Your structure, and out of Your very self formed an everlasting structure. Blessed are You, Adonai, Creator of humanity.”

BB appears next, in a bright orange suit that clashes horribly with their hair but their eyes twinkle in delight at Ben’s reaction to the sight of them.  

“Sos tasis v’tageil ha’akara b’kibutz baneha l’tocha b’simcha. Baruch atah Adonai, m’sameach Tzion b’vaneha.”

“Bring great happiness and joy to one who was barren Zion, as her children return to her in joy. Blessed are You, Adonai, who gladdens Zion through her children.”

BB reaches up and, in a way that only BB could get away with, pinches Ben’s cheek in delight and gives Rey’s cheek a big wet kiss before they head back down to the seats.

Poe steps into the chuppah next to stand next to Leia as she reads,

“Sameiach tesamach reiim ha’ahuvim k’sameichacha y’tzircha b’gan eden mikedem. Baruch atah Adonai, m’sameiach chatan v’chalah.”

His voice is low, and a little bit thick, which catches Ben extremely off-guard as he says, slowly and clearly, “Bring great joy to these loving friends, as You once gave joy to Your creations in the Garden of Eden. Blessed are You, Adonai, who gives joy to the groom and bride.”

And Ben turns to his mother, who was supposed to say and translate the last bracha in one go, but she’s paused, waiting for another reader.  Ben frowns until he sees Chewie coming into the chuppah, so tall that his head brushes against the starry fabric overhead and Ben swallows because Chewie’s eyes are deep and serious his gaze is unfaltering as he watches Ben while Leia reads,

“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam, asher bara sason v’simcha chatan v’kallah, gilah rinah ditzah v’chedvah, ahavah v’achavah v’shalom v’reut. M’hera Adonai Eloheinu yishammah b’arei Yhudah uv-chutzot Y’rushalayim kol sason v’kol simcha, kol chatan v’kol kalah, kol mitzhalot chatanim meichupatam u-n'arim mimishte n’ginatam. Baruch ata Adonai, m’sameiach chatan im hakalah.”

When he speaks, it’s like Ben’s a kid again, and Chewie’s reading to him before bed because Chewie always was the best story reader.  “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who created joy and gladness, groom and bride, happiness and jubilation, cheer and delight, love, fellowship, peace, and friendship. Soon, Adonai our God, may there be heard in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, the sounds of joy and the sounds of gladness, the sounds of the groom and the sounds of the bride, the joyous sounds of newlyweds from their wedding canopies and of young people at their songful feasts. Blessed are You, Adonai, who brings joy to the groom with the bride.”

Ben stares at Chewie, and his throat is thick again.  Chewie does not smile. His eyes don’t crack into that warm loving look that Ben had once taken such comfort in.  But he does nod to Ben before giving Rey a smile and leaving the chuppah.

Leia steps forward and gives Rey a hug and a kiss on the cheek.  Then she wraps one arm around Ben and reaches one hand up to touch his face, running her thumb over the scar that he’d gotten when he’d killed his dad.  Her eyes are bright again and Ben presses a kiss to her forehead before she lets go, her hand lingering in his for a moment before she makes her way over to the seats again.

Ben turns to Rabbi Durron.   It’s all over, now, isn’t it? he thinks.  He can’t remember if there was more that Rabbi Durron was planning on saying, he hadn’t been expecting Chewie at all and he’d said the last bracha.  “Almost there,” Rabbi Durron says to him, and he turns his attention outward.

“We’re nearly done,” he says a little more loudly.  “Thank you all, once again, for coming. There will be cocktails in the Skywalker

They’re renaming the community room after him.  He gave so much—it only felt right.

And how much money did they scrounge together for that to happen?

Not everything’s about money, Ben.  Rabbi Durron—

Eighty percent of the Associate Rabbi’s job is to make sure there’s funding for the shul.  So he must have scraped it together somehow.

Do you always have to be so unpleasant?  He’s dead now. You don’t have to prove anything anymore.  

(All the more to prove, and no closure.  Had he intended it that way? To haunt Ben more in death than he had managed to in life, a feat that Ben had not thought possible.)

Room inside the shul before you are all invited back to Leia Organa’s house for dinner and dancing.  In a moment, Ben will step on the glass the windshield crunches and shatters with the impact of the crash and the airbags fly out , you’ll all give our bride and groom a hearty mazal, and then they’ll disappear for a period of secluded togetherness or yichud.  You’ll see them again at dinner.”

Rabbi Durron hands him a small linen bag that contains the glass and Ben bends down and places it on the ground.  

He stares at it, and then his foot comes down on the glass and it crunches loudly under his foot.   Where there is rejoicing, there should be trembling.

It’s his mother’s voice he hears first, shouting “Mazal tov!” as he turns to Rey and finally, finally he can kiss her.  His hand comes to rest behind her neck as he pulls her lips to his and he feels her hands light on his chest as she smiles into his mouth and the crowd behind him starts singing Siman Tov u’Mazal Tov in the same melody that gets stuck in his head at the drop of a hat.  They’re clapping and singing, and Rey breaks the kiss and rests her nose against his, her forehead against his.

He takes her hand and together they make their way through the aisle of singing guests and through the back door into the shul.  It’s quiet and cool inside and they don’t say a word as they pass through the hallway to the bride’s room that Rey had gotten ready in before everything had begun.  It’s strewn with bags and boxes, the clothes she’d worn to the shul, makeup, empty garment bags, jewelry boxes.

The door clicks shut behind them and Ben looks at Rey and Rey looks at Ben.  Her face breaks into the widest smile he’s seen yet today and a moment later she’s stepping into his arms again.

“So am I allowed to call you Mrs. Solo now?” he asks her, teasing as he brushes his lips over the top of her hair.

“Stop being a brat,” she retorts, pinching him.  

“I’m asking honest questions because according to the state of Illinois we’ve been married for—”

She cuts him off with another kiss, one with tongue and heat that they hadn’t been able to bring under the chuppah.  Or, well, they could have. But they hadn’t.

It’s long, and slow, and lazy, and Ben doesn’t dare touch her hair or fist his fingers in her skirts even though historically this time was absolutely about consummation.  Instead he rests his hands on her hips and holds her, holds onto her as though his life depends on it. It does, he thinks as she hums contentedly a little into his lips.  

When she pulls away, Ben can see every star he’s ever loved in her eyes.

Chapter Text

Star Wars:

• Lumpy
• Kyp Durron

Judaism:

• Kippah
• Magen David
• Goy (singular) / Goyim (plural) / Goyische (adjectival - Yiddish)
• Aliyah
• Torah
• Rabbi
• Bar (or Bat) Mitzvah
• Shul - Yiddish for Synagogue
• Ark
• Avinu Malkeinu
• The Book of Life
• Passover / Pesach
• Torah Tropes
• Shabbat / Shabbas - the Sabbath
• “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof
• Mishnah
• JCC - Jewish Community Center
• Yom Kippur
• Tashlich
• Rachel and Leah
• Get
• Ketubah - The text of Rey’s & Ben’s Ketubah was inspired by this Egalitarian Ketubah by Rabbi Gordon Tucker.
• Kittel
• Tallit / Tallis (Ashkenazi pronunciation)
• Kedushah - Holiness (roughly; also a section of the Amidah, but that’s not necessarily what it is in the context I used it in this fic)
• Unetanneh Tokef
• Bedecken
• Chuppah
• T’filah - Services
• Kaddish
• Yeshiva
• Tu b’shvat / Tu b’shvat seder
• Sukkah (for Sukkot)
• Purim
• Midrash
• Lilith
• Mitzvah
• Shiksa
• Talmud
• Kiddush (cup)
• Mensch
• Etz Chaim
• Zichrono livracha
• Black fire on white
• Kvelling
• Sheva brachot
• Siman tov u’mazal tov