Work Text:
Ben surfaced from dark and cold and nothing, blinking open his eyes—
Pain. Light seared between his gritty eyelids, and he groaned. The light went out.
"Sorry, sorry," said a voice nearby, sweet and familiar like a dream. "You're okay. You're safe. You were frozen in carbonite."
He groaned again and tried to move. A wave of dizziness came over him, and he slumped to the ground.
But he didn't hit it. Arms wrapped around him, lithe and strong, and something lifted him up—
The Force. He was being lifted by the Force. He tried to move, even to open his eyes again, and he couldn't.
Just as quickly as he had been lifted, he was set down again on something soft. A bed. "There you go. That should be better," the voice said with a Coruscanti accent, and he realized who his rescuer must be. It was impossible, but yet—
"Rey?" he gasped, his voice hoarse. Pain stabbed through his head at even that exertion.
"Yes," she said. "Now rest. It's not easy being unfrozen."
*
Rey stood in a corner of the darkened room. She knew that temporary blindness could be a symptom of hibernation sickness—she had almost forgotten that light sensitivity could be too.
No matter. She'd keep the room dark as long as Ben needed it that way.
Her own eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness from her years on Exegol. It wasn't much in return for all the harsh training she had endured there, but it was something.
Ben lay in the bed, his eyes closed, his dark hair splayed out on the pillow. He was asleep or unconscious, which wasn't surprising considering he'd just been unfrozen. She held a medscanner near him—there wasn't anything too out of the ordinary in the readout, but he'd need food, water, and rest. Mostly rest, right now.
She sat down in a chair near the bed. She could wait.
Rey was good at waiting.
*
When Ben opened his eyes again, it felt like it had been some time. He could open his eyes. The room around him was dark, except for a few dim amber lights on wall panels. And it was familiar—
There was a stirring in the Force nearby and Rey walked over to him, holding a glass of water. "You need to have some water. Carbonite freezing dehydrates you."
His mouth certainly felt dry. He tried to sit up and managed to lift his head at least, then fell back toward the pillow.
This wasn't good. Sure, he wasn't frozen in carbonite anymore, but he only felt marginally less helpless.
The room spun around him, and he groaned. "Kanjiklub won't be happy. I'm sure they would have wanted the bounty that the Guavian Death Gang put on me."
"Neither of them will be a problem anymore," said Rey. Her tone was cheerful, but darkness swirled underneath her words, speaking to the immense violence that must have led to her assurance.
He groaned again. She sighed.
"Look, Ben, you do need to drink some water. Dehydration is no joke."
When he had dreamt of her, over and over again, everything around her was dry. Dark and cold and dry, crackling with lightning. Sometimes he had dreamt what must have been her memories, a parched sandy landscape roasting in bright sunlight.
He'd never lived anywhere like that, growing up. He'd only ever been on lush green planets, before he'd left it all to head to the Outer Rim and the Corporate Sector.
He managed to hold the glass of water. It felt like the heaviest thing he had ever carried, but it smelled fresh and delicious. He took a sip, then another.
He felt the relief in Rey's Force signature. While she was clearly a darksider, he felt no danger or malice from her directed at him. Quite the opposite.
He was hardly the pure lightsider that his uncle Luke had wanted him to be. There was a reason he had left Jedi training after only a few years. When Luke had left Chandrila to found his new Jedi school and suggested Ben come with him, his parents had put their foot down, knowing Ben didn't want to go.
So he had stayed where he was, raised by a Senator and an (allegedly former) smuggler. He had no taste for politics, but he loved to fly. Han had been happy to teach him to fly the Falcon and tell him all about his own smuggling days - both his favorite stories and many of the less glamorous ones.
So with the Falcon and some help from his uncles Chewie and Lando, he'd begun his smuggling career.
His awareness of the Force had never gone away, of course. Just because he wasn't pursuing it through formal studies in a specific Order didn't mean that it wasn't part of his life. He'd learned a little bit from Luke after all—he took time to meditate each day and listened to the Force as he went on missions.
Sometime in the past five years, a connection had begun. A thread of the Force reaching from him to somewhere else, to someone else. He dreamt of her sometimes and the dreams were very consistent. Her name was Rey, and she lived somewhere dark and terrible that couldn't be found on any maps.
There were always rumors about Sith remnants. Over the years, the New Republic had dealt with plenty of former Imperials who didn't believe their side had lost and who were trying to bring it back.
They had all failed. Wherever Rey was, he didn't have a sense of there being a lot of other people, although she was very strong in the Force. He'd asked his mother if there were rumblings of unrest, and if she had heard anything she certainly didn't tell him.
And then a month ago he had sensed a terrible struggle and a shift in the Force, like something diffuse and dark and very old was finally gone. Rey's presence was stronger than ever, even when he was awake, and he needed to find her.
Which is why he had made the mistake of going to Kanjiklub and the much, much greater mistake of letting his guard down around them, desperate to find Rey. He figured that their rivalry with the Guavian Death Gang, his old enemies, would mean that he would be relatively safe with them.
He had been very wrong, and had now experienced one of the less glamorous aspects of smuggling, just like his dad had.
He managed to finish the glass of water, feeling a little bit more like himself by the end of it. Once more, the sound of the ship's engines and the design of the darkened quarters filtered through to his brain. "Wait, is this the Millenium Falcon?" he asked.
"It sure is," said Rey, sounding pleased.
"You...took it?" Ben asked.
"I couldn't leave it in pawn with Kanjiklub, could I? I mean, I supposed I could have, but I needed a faster ship, and I wanted you to have yours back. And Kanjiklub doesn't exist anymore—there's that too. If anyone was going to scavenge this ship, I wanted it to be me. Don't worry—it's yours. When you feel well enough to fly, I won't stand in your way. Neither will the Knights."
"The Knights?" asked Ben, afraid he already knew the answer.
"The Knights of Ren," said Rey, like he expected. She must have seen or sensed his concern, because she said, "They're loyal to me. You have nothing to worry about."
There were always stories about the Knights of Ren, whispered in cantinas in the Outer Rim. If half the stories told were true, they were terrifying. On the other hand, from what he knew of Rey, he could understand why she would have the Knights' loyalty.
Ben handed the glass back to Rey and lay back down, looking up at the familiar paneling above him. Her Force presence was a gentle humming in the back of his mind, as familiar and comforting as the sound of the Falcon's engines. Feeling safe, as strange as that might be, he let himself fall back asleep.
He drifted in and out of consciousness. Sometimes his dreams were strange. Always, waking or sleeping, Rey was there, and he was glad of it.
After an unknown amount of time, he came fully awake again. He tried to move and groaned. It seemed to be most of what he was doing lately.
Rey was next to the bed almost instantly. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"I'm so, so sore," said Ben. "All my joints are stiff."
"I'm sorry—I've heard that's a really common reaction to carbonite freezing," said Rey. "This may help—Andris spice." She held an open jar toward him, and he could smell the savory contents, surprisingly mouthwatering. "It's pure. Tested it myself this morning." Her Force signature radiated sincerity, her usual swirling darkness present but banked.
"That's—that's expensive," said Ben. It didn't hurt to keep his eyes open anymore, but lifting his head to look at Rey was still hard.
"Took out three crime syndicates, remember?" Rey said.
"Three?" asked Ben, impressed. "I thought you mentioned two."
"I mean, we actually set one against the other, and took over the third. Can't allow a power vacuum, you know. And Trudgen Ren is so excited to run the Perlemian Cartel."
Ben tried to laugh. He really did. The sound came out somewhere between a bark and a cough.
"Are you okay?" said Rey, concern shadowing her presence.
Ben nodding. "I am. Was laughing."
"Oh," Rey said, and smiled herself. "Do you want this?" she held out the jar.
"A little," Ben said..
"That's the recommended dose," Rey agreed, pulling a tiny spoon out of a pouch on her belt. She spooned out a bit of the spice and held it out to Ben. He sat up just enough to eat it, which wasn't easy.
The spice tasted incredible, a complexity of flavors that would have been at home on the finest tables of Chandrila. Warmth spread through his body, thawing the stiffness in his joints left by the carbonite.
"Better?" Rey asked.
Ben nodded.
"Good," she said. "You can have your next dose in a standard cycle." She put the jar away somewhere, and Ben closed his eyes, then opened them.
"You really took on three crime syndicates? For me?" he asked.
"I would have done far more than that," she said, very quiet. Then, louder, "You should get more rest."
"Pretty sure I've done nothing but rest," Ben said..
"Unfortunately, your body doesn't agree," said Rey.
Ben lay back down with a sigh. "Can we at least keep talking?" he asked. That way, he wouldn't be as likely to think about how helpless he felt, or remember what vague impressions he had from hibernation.
"Of course," Rey said, her voice and Force signature soft. "Can you tell me about the planets you've gone to while smuggling?"
Ben blinked. "I mean...sure. They're not all exciting, though. Or I didn't always go to the interesting parts."
"I want to hear about them, though," said Rey. A chair scraped against the floor, and he looked over to see her sitting closer to him, leaning forward.
"Okay, sure," he said, a smile coming to his chapped lips. "So there was this one time I went to Canto Bight with my Uncle Lando..."
*
Rey listened to Ben's stories until he trailed off and fell asleep, trying to imagine all the places he had been. Until the past month or so, her world had been so small. First Jakku, then Exegol, then a few little planets and asteroids nearby that were loyal to the Sith. Her grandfather was always so afraid that his slowly-growing forces would be revealed too soon, so they never went very far afield.
She had never seen an ocean or even a lake in the waking world.. She tried to imagine the glittering city by the waterfall and artificial ocean with dolphins that Ben had talked about. And even the places that he said were boring sounded interesting to her. They were new, after all.
Her favorite part about what she and the Knights had done over the past month was of course having Ben safe and unfrozen. But her second favorite part had been seeing new places. None of them had been the kind of places advertised to tourists on the Holonet, but she'd enjoyed them all.
Ben stayed in bed over the next cycle or so. They'd talk whenever he woke up, but he still tired easily. She needed to rest too, so she finally laid out a mat on the floor with some spare blankets and a pillow and got some sleep herself.
She slept for a while, only waking up when she heard Ben stirring. To her relief, he was sitting upright in bed.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, stretching. Her makeshift bed wasn't as comfortable as her normal one, but it was still far from the worst place she had slept.
Ben stretched too, and the Force shimmered around him in a more vibrant way than it had previously. "I actually feel hungry," he said. "And can you turn up the lights?"
Rey did so. "Good," she said, not bothering to conceal her relief in her voice and in the Force. "Let's go to the kitchen."
She helped Ben walk, although he could mostly support himself. He sat down at the small table, and she noticed his longing look at a board for some sort of game. She hadn't figured it out herself, although she'd certainly been busy with other things.
She heated up some soup she had gotten while she was preparing to unfreeze him. It was tip-yip broth, something that was recommended all over the holonet for recovery from illness. She made them both bowls of it and sat down at the table across from Ben. "Andris for your soup?" she asked.
"Sure," said Ben. "Although I'm not sure how much longer I'll need it."
"Good," said Rey. She measured out the correct amount and sprinkled it into his soup. "There you go."
"What happened a month ago?" Ben asked after a moment. "I sensed something in the Force...I've never felt anything like that." He spooned a bit of soup into his mouth. "Mmm, that's good."
"I'm sorry - I tried to shield you from it," said Rey, absentmindedly eating some of her own soup. Hers wasn't spice-enhanced, but it was still delicious. "I didn't want it to affect you."
"What happened?" Ben asked again."And where were you? Whenever I dreamt of you, I seemed...unpleasant."
"Oh it was," said Rey. "The Sith planet Exegol."
Ben's eyes widened, and he set his spoon down. Rey was afraid this was the moment that he would reject her, although surely he must have sensed her connection to the dark side this whole time.
"Sith...planet?"
"Yes," said Rey. She gave a short, bitter laugh. "It's in the Unknown Regions, very hard to get to. Unpleasant doesn't begin to describe it. But it's okay now. The New Republic has nothing to worry about."
Ben's eyes widened again. After a moment, he took another spoonful of his soup. "What do you mean?"
Rey sighed. There wasn't an easy way to talk through this. "I can start from the beginning. I was raised by my grandfather. He found me on Jakku, where my parents had taken me for safekeeping before they were killed. It only delayed him, and he found me when I was ten. He took me to Exegol to be raised as a princess." She almost spat the word. "He was Emperor, you see. Or he wanted to be, again."
"What?" Ben sputtered. "You can't mean—was it—Palpatine was your grandfather?"
She nodded.
"How?" he asked. "How did he survive?"
"I honestly don't know," she said. "Cloning, the Dark Side...It doesn't matter though. He's gone. Truly, completely gone. The cloning tanks are smashed, and the people who operated them are dead."
Ben shuddered, but he didn't say anything.
"From the moment I came to Exegol, I was in training to rule a resurgent Empire. I was trained in Sith lore, lightsaber combat, fleet tactics and strategy...I heard about my grandfather's vision every day."
"And you say the New Republic has nothing to worry about?" Ben asked.
"Yes," said Rey. "Because I never, ever wanted it, and I don't have to be part of it anymore. Palpatine is dead. Those who were loyal to him specifically are dead. The rest...there are the Sith Troopers, programmed since birth to be loyal to whoever sits the Throne of the Sith. And by Sith law, that's me, even if I don't want it and never will. I would like them to be somewhere where they could be safe, and maybe not be soldiers anymore. That's the best I can do for them." She opened up her end of the bond she shared with Ben, needing him to see her sincerity.
He took several more spoonfuls of soup, and his Force signature was thoughtful. "That's what I sensed then—that something terrible was gone from the Galaxy."
"Sounds about right," said Rey, trying not to get lost in the memory of how hard it had been, how her grandfather and all the Sith spirits had tried to possess her. They were all gone. She was here. That was what mattered.
"How did you find me?" asked Ben. "Don't get me wrong - I'm very grateful."
"Your Force signature just vanished, a few days after I defeated my grandfather. I was terrified about what could have happened to you. So I asked around. I didn't get too much training in diplomacy, but I did learn how to intimidate people, at least. And it wasn't all that hard to find information. I knew your name was Ben Solo through the Force, the way you knew my name was Rey. Also, you have fan forums on the Holonet—do you know that?"
Ben turned red, all the way to the tips of his ears. It was the cutest thing Rey had ever seen.
"I uhhh...did not know," he said.
"It's true! You might want to work on your operational security, but we can talk about that later. Anyway, it turned out that along with intimidation the best currency was...currency, and I had plenty. So I visited a number of planets until a source directed me to Kanjiklub, who were trying to arrange a meetup with the Guavian Death Gang. It wasn't hard to hack their systems, fake some messages from both sides, and set them against each other. Then, like you said, there would be a power vacuum. There are some places in the Outer Rim I'd like to visit without interference, so I set up the Perlemian Cartel to take their place. Trudgen Ren is very loyal, but he also gets bored easily and needed another hobby. Problem solved."
"You make it sound so easy," said Ben.
Rey sighed and took a big spoonful of her own soup, then dipped some bread into it and ate that. Real bread, not portion bread. That fact still delighted her, and it probably always would. "It had some scary moments for sure, but compared to my life before a month ago - this was fun. Other than the part where I was terribly worried about you." She drank some water - it would be no good for her to be dehydrated herself. "How did you get captured, anyway?"
Ben turned red again. "Simple. I got distracted because I was looking for you."
"Oh," she said, looking down. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault at all," he said. "I'm glad you...got away from your grandfather."
"That's one way to put it. But yes, me too."
"And now what?" Ben asked. "What do you want to do next?"
"I want to make sure you're recovered," said Rey.
"I'm getting there," said Ben. "I wish it were faster, but I can tell I'm doing better."
"Take all the time you need," said Rey. "Seriously. We have plenty of supplies on this ship."
"And then? You said you'd give me back my ship."
"I will. The Knights and I can just be on our way." There was a pang in her heart at the thought of leaving Ben, sharp enough that it must have transmitted through the Force.
"Is that what you want, though?" Ben asked, very quietly. The stories about him on the holonet were full of bravado, and maybe, if he wasn't still recovering, he would have shown some of that. Instead, his face was open and his Force signature almost trembled.
"Not at all," said Rey. "If you want to stay, I would really like you to stay. Or I mean, I'd like you to take me with you."
"Smuggling?" asked Ben. He grinned, showing his dimples. It was the first time she had seen him smile. It was charming.
"Sure," said Rey. "Or wherever. I'd like to see those places I've dreamed about. The calm grey sea by the city on the cliffs. The lake with the red stone house."
"Chandrila and Naboo," said Ben. "It's been a long, long time since I've been to either place. But we can go there easily enough."
"Oh good," Rey said, already imagining what it would be like to walk and swim in those places.
"And what will the Knights think of this?" asked Ben.
"They're a good crew," she said. "They'll be fine with this. They helped me rescue you, after all."
She put down her spoon, and slowly reached a hand across the table to Ben. He took it quickly, and his hand was warm. The Force sang around them, full of joy and possibility.
*
The sleek cloaked shuttle set down smoothly on the grass outside the Varykino estate. "Have fun, kids," Lando said as he lowered the ramp.
"We will," Rey said, her grey and black clothing billowing in the wind from outside the ship.
"Thank you, Uncle," Ben said, hugging him.
"Anytime," said Lando, and meant it. "Now go on—I'm due to meet up with Chewie on the Falcon shortly and I don't want to delay trouncing him at dejarik."
Ben and Rey both laughed and waved.
"Now you keep them safe," Lando said as the five Knights of Ren left the ship. He wasn't quite sure what to make of them, but their clothing sure was interesting.
"We will," said Vicrul, always the most talkative of the bunch. And then they too were down the ramp, heading for the red stone house. The shuttle smoothly and quietly leapt back into the air as soon as everyone was far enough away.
The stealthy landing here wasn't necessary at all. Ben would always be welcome here, just as he'd always be welcome in Hanna City, where he and his beloved would be heading next month. But pretending it was a smuggling mission entertained Rey, and Ben always grinned so widely in answer to Rey's smiles. It was no trouble at all.
"Almost there, Chewie!" Lando called over the comlink, and got a warbling bellow in return.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "The kids are going to be alright."