5. Chapter 5

He'd learned how to fly on this ship; Han Solo'd had precious few compunctions teaching a child the basic controls of a YT-1300 light freighter. It all comes rushing back to Ben as he and Rey run through the preflight checks— his father explaining the purpose of each lever and each button, Chewie grunting encouragement and issuing the occasional soft howl of dismay when Han launched into one of his many variations on a theme of, "Well, we're not really sure what this is supposed to do, but I guess it can't hurt to check."

Even that kind of memory brings such a wealth of pain with it that Ben's heart nearly seizes in grief as the Falcon takes off.

He was ill-prepared to face this. He'd been Ben Solo again only so briefly before he died, and most of his stay in the Netherworld of the Force had been hazy, to say the least. He'd felt no emotions, no passage of time. It had all been one great big nothing until the Daughter manifested to him in the mists.

And now he's human again, alive again, and fresh off four standard months trapped in the Deep's grim mines, where there'd been plenty of opportunity to remember and to regret. The weight of all his mistakes drags behind him like a cloak, and it's growing heavier and heavier with every passing moment that he spends inside the Falcon.

The wastelands fall away, the endless panorama of sandy dunes and rocky cliffs melting into open sky as they gain altitude. There's an abrupt lurch once they hit atmo— Ben's utterly certain that if he and Rey hadn't buckled up the viewport would be sporting two head-shaped dents— and then the cabin starts to shake.

"It's still doing this?" He has to raise his voice to be heard over the cacophony of screeching sensors and vibrating metal.

"It's the ion flux stabilizer." His pretty little co-pilot somehow manages to inject a note of resignation into her own half-shout. "She usually calms down once she's in the black—"

"— and the acceleration compensator kicks in," Ben says the rest of the sentence with her, a chorus that echoes through the bridge of years and comes out the other side in the sound of his father's voice. "Yeah, I know."

With an almighty groan, the Falcon heaves itself past Tatooine's exosphere— miraculously without falling to pieces— and the rattling stops. Ben releases the breath he'd been holding, then settles back into the pilot seat as they embark on the sublight crawl to the nearest hyperlane.

"We'll take the Triellus Trade Route into the Arkanis system," Rey says, fiddling with the navicomp. "From there, it's a straight shot to Coruscant via the Corellian Run."

She's waiting for his approval, out of deference to him being the captain. Ben nods as he does the calculations in his head. "That's approximately eighty hours on a Class .05 hyperdrive," he muses. "Do we have enough rations?"

"I'll have to check, but I doubt it. Pretty sure I blew through most of the remaining supplies the last time I went Corewards. I haven't made it a habit to top up."

Because I rarely go off-world, is what she doesn't say, but the unspoken words render the air fraught.

"It's all right," Ben forces himself to say pleasantly. There are three days to talk, to coax out all the reasons for the dullness in those beautiful hazel eyes. "We'll resupply at the next trading post."

Rey studies the map. He studies her. She has such an arresting sort of profile, her high forehead and square jaw offset by the thin bridge of a delicate nose and the round apple of a freckled cheek. He always loves her face but he especially loves it like this, glossed silver in the light of Chenini, the most erratic of Tatooine's three moons that they're currently drifting by. He watches, entranced, as her expression turns sour.

"Kemal Station marks up all its goods by a hundred and fifty percent," she complains. "New Ator has fairer prices, although the market's planetside and it'll take us a bit out of the way—"

"It's not as if we're strapped for credit," Ben gently argues. "I have access to the Organa vaults, too. Got my chip at the bank in Celanon City and everything."

Rey's grumpiness intensifies. "You could've bought a shuttle instead of bringing the Black Sun down over your head, then."

He understands that this is coming from a place of having been worried about him, and— Maker help him— he starts to enjoy it a little. He can't decide what he wants to kiss away first— her slight frown or the wrinkle between her brows. He likes the feeling of being lovingly admonished.

"The only secondhand ship dealer within miles of where we docked was passed out in a spice den," Ben explains. "I couldn't wait for him to sober up and I wasn't particularly thinking straight. I was in a hurry to get to you."

"Oh." Rey's gaze doesn't flicker from the map but it's obvious that she's not really seeing it, her features gradually losing the battle to continue looking miffed. "Well, then."

Ben fights back a grin. "So— Kemal Station?"

"Yes," she concedes with a huff that's not as prickly as it ought to have been. "Okay."

He flicks on the autopilot. There's around forty-five minutes to go before they can make the jump into the Triellus Trade Route, giving them plenty of time to— well, he doesn't know what, exactly, but he looks forward to finding out.

Ben leans over, unbuckling Rey's seatbelt for her. They get to their feet at the same time and his mind is already a whirl of happy fantasies that mostly involve curling up together in the lounge, but then she announces in a brisk, no-nonsense kind of tone, "I'll take inventory, see what we ought to stock up on—"

This is "The fleet!" all over again, he grumbles to himself even as he quickly says, "I'll go with you."

"No need, it's a one-person job," she's as quick to insist. "You should sit back in the lounge. We have a long way to go. Do you want something to eat, or to drink—"

"Rey." He grabs her wrist, his fingers slipping down the fine bones of it until they lace into the gaps between hers. "Are you moonlighting as a waitress or something?"

She blinks, looking stricken, and never in Ben Solo's first or second life has he wanted to beat himself up more.

It's even worse when she drops her gaze from his. "I just like doing things for you," she admits with uncharacteristic meekness, and he can't stand it any longer. "I never got the chance—"

He drags her to him, effortlessly scooping her up with his right hand tucked under her knees while his left arm supports her back. He'd done this before, with his armor and his mask, with no thought of romance. This time is different— this time, she isn't the girl carrying the map to Skywalker in her head and he isn't some twisted construct of the dark side. This time, she's the woman who had kissed him in a land of barren rock and lightning storms and he's the man who had given her his first true smile in years. They are a dyad in the Force, each other's missing piece.

This time, she buries her face in his chest, looping her arms around his neck. She clings so tightly that it's almost a stranglehold, but he can't bring himself to mind as he presses a kiss to the top of her head and carries her into the Millennium Falcon' s lounge. It's here that he sits down on the battered old couch, keeping her balanced on his lap, silently rubbing between her shoulder blades while her fingers tangle in his hair.

"Thank you for taking care of me." His words are a soft, low rasp against her temple, nigh inaudible over the hum of the sublight drive. "It feels very good. But you need to take care of yourself, too."

"I have been," she mumbles into his shirtfront. She doesn't need to add all my life for him to hear it in her tone. To sense it in the Force through the frayed thread of their bond.

"That includes not running yourself ragged," he counters. That includes not being afraid to lose me, he thinks.

"You deserve to take it easy, this time around." She noses at his collarbone, inhaling his scent like she's trying to draw it into her body where she can keep it forever. "That was what I wanted for us after the war. To rest, and to learn each other. That was what I thought would happen when you came to help me defeat Palpatine. I believed that there would be one last battlefield, and then a future. With you. After Exegol."

Ben swallows the lump in his throat. What a simple dream, what a good dream. "I doubt the Resistance would have let me off just like that."

Rey pulls back slightly so that she can look him in the eye. The breath is knocked out of his lungs in wonder at the sudden glint of fire-tempered steel in her gaze. "I would have run away with you," she says fiercely. "I would have, Ben."

He kisses her. There is nothing else he could have done in response to this devotion that is so foreign to him, and sacred all the more for that. He kisses her even though it's a bad idea in the long run, one hand gliding down her spine to press her even closer to him while the other cups the back of her neck. His lips are clumsy against hers, searching for something that it doesn't take long for her to readily give, a sigh rolling off of her tongue as she kisses him back, her fingers laying flat along the sides of his face. The bond stirs weakly between them, like some small, wounded creature emerging from a fractured sleep. It's an echo of what it used to be, but it is valiant, singing its hymn of all that has been lost but can never be forgotten, both the bitter and the sweet.

Kissing Rey is as much a burst of light as it had been in the sunless lair of the Sith Eternal, but, here and now, on a ship cruising through the starry wastes that surround Chenini, the moment isn't gilded in fleetingness as it had been for Ben back then. There is no shadow hanging over his head, no oblivion waiting to take him— at least, not for a while yet. He is free to savor every bit of it. He is free to want more.

"Rey," he murmurs into their kiss, a little huskily, a little urgently. "Rey, open your mouth. Please, cyar'ika."

Her lips part for him even as the endearment causes the smooth skin of her neck to flush hot against his palm. His tongue darts forward eagerly and, Maker, it's everything. She is everything, all silk and warmth and giving as good as she gets, enthusiastic in the way she mirrors his earnest explorations until they're both panting into each other's mouths, their hearts racing amidst the vasts of space. It's not perfect— it's sloppy and wet and starving, and sometimes her teeth catch on his bottom lip, and his damnable nose gets in the way more often than not, but he never wants to stop. He could do this forever.

Unfortunately, he does need to breathe sometime, and so does Rey.

They break apart, gulping for air. She's crying a little and his own eyesight is strangely blurry. "I'm so scared that this is a dream," she forces out in a rush, through sniffles and through hiccups.

"It's not." He rests his forehead against hers. "I'm here. This is real."

"I'm always kissing you. At night." She wraps herself around him, her thighs straddling his hips. He's absurdly reminded of the blue monkeys of Kashyyyk holding fast to their wroshyr trees, but there can be no room for absurdity in what she says next. "And I'm always waking up alone."

Desperate to take away her pain in the only manner available to him, he buries his fingers in the buns of her hair as he shifts his head slightly so that their lips meet again. This time, it's her who takes the lead, licking at the seam of his mouth until he grants her entrance in embarrassingly short order. One of the many things Ben loves about Rey is that she never does anything by halves— in battle, and in this. She devours him, leaving his senses reeling with the taste and smell and feel of her. The soft, warm, fabric-clad spot between her legs rubs against the growing hardness in his trousers with an instinctive wriggle of her hips.

"Oh." A startled, ragged gasp is wrenched out of her throat at the friction. "Is this okay— I—"

You're going to be the death of me, Ben thinks, too far gone to even appreciate the irony of that statement. "Don't stop," he mutters against her lips, his hands dropping to her waist to press her further down onto him.

When the blare of a shrill alarm goes off, alerting them to the fact that they're nearing the hyperlane, Ben entertains the notion of taking his lightsaber to the freighter's controls.

Rey scrambles off of him with reluctance, but not before stealing one last kiss to the tip of his nose, a gesture that's enough to alleviate his frustration with its shy sweetness. She's halfway out of the lounge when she realizes that he's not following her. "Ben?"

"Give me a minute," he says tersely.

"What..." Rey trails off when he shoots a pointed glance at his crotch area. She turns as red as a tomato.

Judging from the heat that suffuses his cheeks and spreads all the way up his ears, so has he.

☾✩☽

He'd called her cyar'ika, which is Mando'a for beloved.

Rey's still thinking about it hours later, when they dock at Kemal Station.

Located in the eponymous system orbiting the gaseous world of Kemal, the Station is a moon that has been converted to a trading post. Its damp air is replete with swirls of thick fog that wreathe the assortment of industrial gray buildings circling the docks in a constant state of silvery gloom, punctuated by neon signs and beacons of yellow light that blur in the mists. There's tons of people milling about— travelers passing through for supplies, shifty-looking smugglers for whom the moon is a base of operations, and workers on shore leave from the Tibanna mines on the nearby gas giant, seeking to blow off some steam at the lone cantina. The crowd is a mixture of various species; features obscured by the haze, their silhouettes drift around Ben and Rey like shadows— some human, others too gigantic or long-limbed to be such, several sporting either head-tails or horns or flippers or masses of shaggy fur.

It's also wretchedly cold.

The ice-like temperature had started digging into the exposed parts of Rey's skin the moment she and Ben exited the Falcon. By the time they're halfway to the nearest sign advertising dry goods and sundries, it has sunk into her bones.

She's no longer able to suppress the shiver that wracks her frame, her teeth chattering as she rubs her bare arms in a vain attempt to smoothen out the goosebumps that prickle them.

Ben immediately shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders. She doesn't wish for him to catch the chill on her account, but he fixes her with a glare that could almost be called stern when she tries to protest.

"This is the least I can do for you," he says crisply. "Let me, all right?"

And she'd have given him a harder time about it, but there's a certain look on his pale face. It's a look that tells her he needs this— needs to take care of her as much as she needs to take care of him. So she nods, and dons the jacket as they continue walking through the fog. Made of black Sullust leather, it's huge on her— she's practically swimming in it, the cuffs hanging well past her wrists— but it's warm and it smells like him.

She really can't ask for anything more.

Ben opens the door for her when they reach the shop. He pauses for a split second just before doing so, as if he's taking in the sight of her with an enigmatic gleam in his dark eyes. For some reason, that gleam makes her remember the kisses that they'd recently shared on the Falcon, and her mouth goes a little dry. She kind of wants nothing more than to drag him back to the ship.

But, first, they have to buy supplies.

The store proprietor is a small, blue-skinned Toydarian, with a long, rubbery snout, a potbelly, and fly-like wings attached to his back. He is also extremely uninterested in bargaining.

"Ees hoppada nopa!" Rey snarls when he names a price for ration packs that's exorbitant even by Kemal Station standards. She assumes that her usage of Huttese will cow him— or, at the very least, signify that she's from around these parts and won't be fooled.

But it doesn't work. The Toydarian unapologetically reiterates his price in Basic, his beady black eyes narrowed at Ben with all the shrewdness of a merchant who recognizes an affluent Coreworlder when he sees one. And Ben really does scream Coreworlder, even when he's standing there in a simple black shirt and plain trousers and nondescript boots. He looks like Han, but Leia's elegance shines through, tinged with a more subtle haughtiness that Rey can't quite place.

Maybe it's Padme Amidala's, although she hadn't been from the Core. She'd shared a homeworld in the Mid Rim with Sheev Palpatine.

Rey shivers; this time, it has nothing to do with the cold.

She forces her thoughts to return to the current situation. It can't be helped— the proprietor won't budge. After a few more bouts of failed negotiation, he leans back behind the counter with an air of finality, his stubby arms crossed in front of his scrawny chest as Ben quietly soothes a fuming Rey.

"It's still within our budget— to be honest, we don't really have one, the vaults are more than—"

"It's the principle of the thing," Rey insists through gritted teeth.

But, in the end, she can't do anything except let him pay the Toydarian for a week's worth of ration packs, as well as some additional toiletries. She storms out of the shop, Ben trailing after her with the supplies in a cloth bag dangling from his left hand. The right one, he uses to take hers.

She peers up at him in the muddled amber glow of the fog lamps. Unlike her, he seems to be in a strangely good mood. There's a lightness to him.

He seems— dare she even think it— cheerful.

Ben grins down at her. "I like how you look wearing my jacket," he says. "I like how you look when you're grumpy and wearing my jacket."

Rey has no witty comebacks to give. Ben's eyes are crinkling at the corners, his features rendered boyish by a smile that's all dimples and slightly crooked teeth. It's the smile that made her heart skip a beat on Exegol, the smile that she has dreamed of and been haunted by all these months. She'd thought she would never see it again.

She definitely wants nothing more than to drag him back to the ship now.

Before she can do just that, he starts gently tugging her in the direction of the cantina. "I'll buy you dinner. This is our last chance to have a freshly-cooked meal for a while."

"I'm starting to think this is a date," Rey scoffs.

Ben cocks his head at her. Smiles once more, slow and lazy and contemplative. "Would you have any objections if it were?"

Maker. He's— charming. And so smug. She should be annoyed, and she is, but...

But she's smiling right back. She couldn't have stopped it even if she'd tried.

"None at all," Rey says.