Chapter Text
She could have sworn his smile could make her heart stop all over again, but she’d never felt so alive. Her lips stung where he had kissed him. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it would burst free from her chest.
Ben.
He was here. He was hers. She’d been imagining - hoping for this day ever since they touched hands through their bond all that time ago. But that was nothing compared to this. Rey knew, with every burning particle of her body, alive and new with the life he’d breathed into her, that she would never be alone again.
And then something changed. It happened so quickly she hardly had time to comprehend. His beautiful smile had slipped away and he followed swiftly behind. His hand that had been on the back of her neck hit the ground next to her. She fell over him, still holding his hand against his chest.
She heard a sound, an awful, tortured, tearing sound that she realized, belatedly, had some from her own throat. Only a second had passed in the time he had fallen away from her.
Rey moved without even thinking.
“No,” she told him. His light was already flickering at the edges, but she wouldn’t let him go. She pressed herself to him, her left hand holding firmly over his still heart, her right slipped under his neck, cradling his head close. She rested her ear against his chest. Feeling. Hoping. Waiting.
There was no alternative. She let out a breath, making herself be calm. And she reached out.
“Be with me. Be with me. Be with me.”
It had been only minutes that they were there, all of them, the ones she knew and the ones she never would. She knew they were still there with her, in her, listening, feeling.
Rey searched for his heart, still warm, but cooling with each passing second. She held onto it. She wouldn’t let go.
And through the minutes passed in silence, she didn’t stop.
“Be with me.”
She could feel every hurt in his body. It was a slow process, but the stiller, the calmer she became, the more precisely she was able to feel it it all. The fibers of his bones, knitting together, one by one. He was so broken, a wrist, she didn’t know how many ribs, but it was his leg that gave her such pause. It was so, completely shattered in countless places. She didn’t know how long it would take to heal, but she knew she had to focus elsewhere before she lost the rest of the strength he had given to her.
The cut on the side of her head reopened with a searing pain. Its going to work.
“Be with me.”
Her breaths were becoming more shallow, harder to hold on to. It must work.
“Be with me.”
Please. Please don’t take him from me.
And then she felt it.
She felt the whole of their being. They were there with her. She didn’t have to open her eyes, to turn and look up, to know. They stood on either side of her and Ben, and it wasn’t long before she felt a hand on each shoulder.
Luke.
Leia.
Their strength in the Force, their power, their love, pulsed into her, through her, and into Ben. She could feel it.
It was working. She knew it. But she couldn’t think on it. Not until she felt his heart. Not until she heard it. She focused on it with everything she had left.
When it came, so quietly, she thought she would break in two. The first unsteady pump. The slow, unsure pulsing of his heart. And finally, the movement of his blood reworking its way through his veins on its old, memorized routes.
A sob of relief came unbidden from her mouth. It was such a beautiful sound. She could listen to it every day, for the rest of forever. And that was exactly what she planned to do.
She was listening so closely that she hadn’t even noticed the other noise that blew everything else away.
“Rey?”
Her eyes snapped open and she was hovering over him in the same second, her arms bracing herself up to look into his face. His eyes were closed. He was motionless, still. But she heard it. She would know his voice anywhere. Her own voice was just above a whisper, wavering over a sob that wracked through her throat.
“Ben?” She couldn’t have just imagined it. It couldn’t have just been a dream.
When his eyes flickered behind their lids, she collapsed on top of him once more, letting relief and exhaustion finally flood through her.
Ben let out an oof when she fell on top of him, but she couldn’t bear to move. She didn’t dare.
“What did you do?” His voice was soft, weak, but it was his. He was alive. Fully alive.
She knew Luke and Leia were gone, but she knew they could still hear her.
Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.
For what?
She gasped at the sound of Ben’s voice in her head. Clearly, weak as they were, their bond was still intact.
She pushed herself off of him once more and looked into his eyes, just opening then with a heaviness she’d never seen.
“You brought me back?”
Rey couldn’t do anything but nod in return.
But the shaking of his head was incongruous to the sheer triumph that radiated through her.
“Why did you do it?”
Her voice snapped like the strike of a sand snake, “What?”
He squinted at her, the darkest of circles under his eyes. If she hadn’t felt his heart, if he hadn’t been speaking to her, she would have thought he was still dead. “I felt you. I was with you,” he took a deep breath, “Didn’t you feel it?”
Rey shook her head, “No.”
Ben blinked slowly, so tired it almost hurt to watch, “I felt it,” he said almost to reassure himself.
Rey could still feel Luke and Leia as long as she reached out for them. But she would never see them again. Not truly. If Ben had been reduced to the same, she wouldn’t be able to live with it.
She shook her head at him again. “Not good enough. It would never be enough.” She moved his hair out of his face, relishing in the warmth that was coming back to his skin, the way he leaned into her touch.
Rey swallowed back another sob and took a deep breath. “Come on,” she put her hand behind his head and moved off of him, sitting back on her heels beside him. “Lets get you up.”
It took longer than she would have thought possible. They were both impossibly weak. But soon they were both sitting up. Ben’s head rested heavy on her shoulder as he leaned most of his weight on her. She realized, gradually, that they were essentially sharing one life. It would take time and more than the Force to heal them both.
They stayed there leaning against one another, heavy arms holding each other close for several moments before she had breath enough to speak. “Can you walk?”
He let out a heavy breath that sent a shiver down her spine. “My leg. Its broken.”
“Right. I know. I’m sorry. I don’t have enough strength to- I’m sorry.”
Ben shook his head into her neck and stroked her back feebly. She could feel his answer through their bond, too weak to say the words aloud. Don’t apologize. You’ve done too much already.
Rey sighed heavily and responded in kind. We may have to heal you in the ordinary way.
She could feel his smile against her neck. How are we going to do that?
“I don’t know. But I can’t do it on my own. We’re going to need help.”
When he spoke again, his voice was a little more alive, with mere speculation or trepidation, she wasn’t sure, “Where could we go?”