11. Chapter 11

Finn and Poe are no longer in the cockpit when Rey walks in to assume control of the ship. A brief trawl through the currents of the Force indicates that they're in the galley, most likely rustling up a hot meal before heading to bed.

It's just as well. Rey hadn't been too keen on the prospect of facing them right after doing... what she and Ben had just done.

What was that, anyway? She'd been dreaming about him, her body reacting to his touch even while she was asleep. She'd woken up wet between her legs and from there it had been instinct, a simple state of being with him and doing what felt good.

She knows about sex, of course. It could hardly have been avoided, growing up on as crude a place as Jakku, where the cantina rang with ribald jokes throughout the night and people did what they had to do in order to survive— or simply to pass the time. Her old staff had defended her as much from unwanted advances as it had from bullies, looters, and vicious animals. She is definitely not naive about the various ways people get off with each other— she just hadn't realized that that was a thing as well.

It had been very nice. Particularly with a partner as big and as broad and as gentle as Ben.

Actually— there was a certain part of him that was quite big. Rey had felt it against her ass and it had taken her breath away.

But she has to stop thinking about it right this instant, because Rose is waving at her from the co-pilot seat of the Falcon.

Lustful musings aside, the smile that dawns on Rey's face is genuine. She walks over to Rose and sits beside her. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself," Rose chirps. "You changed?"

Rose is only making small talk, but Rey fidgets, desperately willing herself not to blush. "Yeah, I'd been in those other clothes since Ben and I left Tatooine." Not to mention the fact that her white leggings had been soaked through at the crotch. She busies herself with running perfunctory scans on the freighter's hyperdrive and its navicomp, making sure that they're still going the right way and that they're going to get there in one piece. They're gliding through the Corellian Run now; a few more hours and they'll be able to make the junction into the Hydian Way.

"I doubt there's enough rations to keep everyone well-fed for the rest of the trip," she tells Rose. "We should stop at a trading post somewhere, before we hit the Ootmian Pabool."

"Sounds good," Rose agrees. "It'd give us an opportunity to stretch our legs, too. Stop us from getting too stir-crazy." She hesitates, and then carefully inquires, "How are you, Rey?"

"Can't complain."

The flippant tone is a defense mechanism; judging from the manner in which Rose's gaze turns searching, she sees right through it.

Rey sighs. "It's... I still can't believe that he's alive. That he's with me. Every time I look away from him, there's a part of me that's afraid he won't be there when I look back."

"Never mind Ben for a moment," Rose says. "We absolutely need to discuss him, but first I have to know where you're at. Mentally and emotionally. This past year can't have been easy on you. I'm only talking about this now because it's just the two of us and we won't be interrupted anytime soon— but I noticed during the handful of occasions you dropped by Galactic Alliance HQ that you always seemed... worn at the edges. And it got worse and worse with each subsequent visit."

There is a pointedness to Rose's words, like they're leading somewhere specific. Suspicious, Rey skims the surface of the other woman's mind— a light touch, drawn back before it can veer into invasive, but it's enough.

"You know something," Rey says flatly.

"I know what happened right before you exiled yourself to the Outer Rim Territories," Rose explains. "To be clear, we're not keeping tabs on you— Finn and Poe wanted to, but I talked them out of it. I haven't informed them about Atollon; it's your story to tell, should you eventually choose. But I was there several months ago, conducting a survey on what the townships deemed as necessities so we could prioritize those items in the supply chain, and I met a man from the village that was destroyed. He'd made it out and he traveled to the next settlement on foot. There were other survivors, too."

Rey should have been relieved to hear this, but it only makes her feel worse. The survivors would have had to walk for miles upon miles on parched terrain, with no homes to go back to. With the deaths of their loved ones hanging over them.

All because she had failed.

With her talent for compartmentalizing, Rey could convince herself on most days that she'd forgotten all about it. Exegol is not the only thing locked away in her mind; there is Atollon, too. In her dreams and her unguarded moments, she sees the silan, the monstrous shape of it, rising from the earth.

She wishes that Rose hadn't brought it up. Echoes of the beast's song croon to her from the depths of her memories, mingling with the villagers' cries of pain and terror.

"I can't— I don't want to talk about it," Rey says, voice taut with how much she longs to scream.

Rose observes her solemnly. "You haven't even told Ben yet, have you?"

Rey shakes her head.

It's Rose's turn to sigh. "I may not be the sort of person you can discuss this with, and my advice may not even be warranted, but— you have to talk this through with him, Rey. You need someone who can understand what you went through. Someone who can help you make peace with it." She looks sad now. "It's killing you."

☾✩☽

Rey had left Ben all blissed out in their quarters. He'd fallen back asleep immediately after the door to the adjoining 'fresher shut behind her and he hadn't so much as sensed her exit the room itself. When he wakes up again, he has thirty standard minutes to go before his shift, and things down south are decidedly uncomfortable.

Crusty, to not put too fine a point on it.

Grimacing, Ben forces himself out of bed and into the 'fresher. Thank the stars that there's a built-in automated laundry facility inside. He hops into the sonic while waiting for his clothes and underwear to be cleaned and dried, yawning as sweat and grime evaporates off of his skin. He misses hot water.

Ben very nearly falls over when the bond blinks open and Rey's voice seeps into his head. Oh. She seems surprised, but pleasantly so. We can still do this. Brilliant.

I'm naked, is all Ben can think to communicate in response, because he's an idiot.

Her end of their mental link stirs. With embarrassment. With something else. Sorry. I can go?

Don't, he is quick to protest. I'll be done in a second. I'm just cleaning up.

I see.

She's thinking about earlier, about the mess they'd made. He's as red as a beet as he stumbles out of the sonic, grabbing for his freshly laundered clothes.

Are you hungry? she asks as he pulls on his underwear and his trousers.

Before he can mull the question over, his stomach growls. I could eat, he concedes.

Good. Rose is cooking— which is why I was going to see if I could wake you. She says you ought to fill up before manning the controls for ten hours.

I think I shall let the ball do all the work, Ben cheekily retorts as he throws on his shirt, followed by the jacket.

Be nice to BB-8, Rey orders him firmly.

His smirk belies the warm glow of contentment in his soul. Being able to talk to her like this— without blades crossing or a war weighing over them— is wonderful. He is not unfamiliar with the sensation of someone taking up residence in his head, but Rey is vastly different from Snoke. She makes him feel at peace. There are no strings attached save for the thread of fate that binds them together.

Once he's decent, Ben exits the crew's quarters, heading for the cockpit. Tapping into the Force, that brilliant net that connects all living things, he is surrounded by the energy signatures of his shipmates as he makes his way through the winding corridors. Finn and Poe are asleep, back in the section that he had just left, while Rose is puttering around in the Falcon' s galley. Rey is up ahead, her presence shining like a beacon amidst the starry ocean of space, guiding Ben home.

He's already smiling when he walks into the cockpit. Rey turns to him with a smile of her own and it makes his heart skip a beat; he wastes no time in going over to her and bending down to slant his mouth over hers, placing one hand on the dashboard and the other on the back of her chair.

"Hi," he murmurs against her lips. "Where are we?"

"Just made the turn into the Hydian," she replies, absentmindedly fixing the collar of his jacket. "If you're not all rested up yet, I should be good for a few more hours."

"I'm fine." He nuzzles cosily at her temple. "I can actually take over now, if you want to rest—"

"No, Ben," she protests, her fingers drifting up from his collar to curl his jaw, "you still have fifteen minutes—"

"That's precisely why it won't make much of a difference if you take your break early—"

"I hate to interrupt," drawls a wry voice, "but food's here."

Rose Tico is standing at the entrance of the cockpit, carrying a tray laden with bowls of something that smells so heavenly that Ben's mouth immediately starts to water despite the self-consciousness that comes with being interrupted in the middle of trying to get the love of his life to make out with him.

He straightens up, nodding at Rose in greeting. The only reason he doesn't take the heavy-looking tray from her is that she— well, she doesn't scare him, exactly, but he's unsure if such a gesture will cause offense or not.

And, in any case, Rose is already walking over to him and Rey. "I made stew."

"How?" Rey asks in disbelief even as she eagerly makes a grab for one of the bowls.

"There were a couple of bags of protein cubes and a tube of pastebread in the cupboard, along with some synthgreens and a can of dehydrated Pukkha broth that was only twenty years old." Rose passes the tray to Ben and settles back into the co-pilot seat after taking a bowl of her own. "But those were the last of the usable ingredients. Until we stop at a trading post, it's rations from here on out."

"I will savor every drop of this stew," Rey promises fiercely.

Ben eats standing up, the tray where his bowl is placed held steady in the air by the Force. After subsisting on dry, flavorless rations ever since that disastrous dinner at the cantina on Kemal Station, surely he can be forgiven for the way his eyes nearly roll into the back of his head at the first spoonful.

"This is very good," he blurts out.

"Thank you," Rose says primly.

"It's amazing," Rey gushes, her mouth full. She seems happy and relieved that he's just had a polite conversational exchange with one of her friends.

"Rey, you think deep-fried gorgs are amazing," Rose points out. "But I'm glad you like it."

Ben doesn't want to push his luck with this tiny woman who had risen to the rank of commander in the Resistance and had also, he'd heard, nearly chewed off Armitage Hux's hand, so he doesn't say another word as they eat. His attention is, as always, drawn to Rey; she's digging into her bowl with enthusiasm and, kriff, she truly has no semblance of table manners whatsoever. He finds it endearing— and heart-wrenching, because he knows her history. He knows why she tackles every meal as if it were her last.

I'd give you endless feasts, if I could, he thinks as he watches her, careful to seal his thoughts from the bond. You'd eat like a queen at every meal. You'd never want for anything again.

If only I had more time...

The sensation of being scrutinized prickles the back of his neck. Rose is eying him, a contemplative frown on her face. She doesn't so much as pretend to look elsewhere when he catches her in the act— instead, she returns his stare with a level one of her own.

All right, maybe he's a little scared of her, after all.

When all three bowls are empty, Rose stands up. "Ben, would you mind carrying the tray back to the galley for me?"

He's glad to oblige— it's the least he can do— but he regrets it as soon as she starts walking with him. He doesn't send a panicked Save me to Rey via their bond, but it's a damn near thing.

It'll be fine. Rey's tone is reassuring, but her next words are not. Rose doesn't bite.

Yes, she does, Ben retorts.

Rey's spark of mirth dances through the bond like a beam of sunlight. It's a miracle he doesn't trip over his own feet when he feels it. She lovingly shoos him away and he follows Rose out of the cockpit.

☾✩☽

The galley of the Millennium Falcon is really just a kitchenette squeezed in between the storage lockers and the crew's quarters. Han had installed it as a wedding gift to Leia, although Ben doubts his mother had made much use of it. More likely that Han and Chewie had taken turns cooking to provide Leia with hot meals during long-haul voyages.

Ben has... he's not sure if it's a memory, as he would have been to young to remember much of anything, but there's a scene in his head. His mother is standing in the middle of the galley, hands on her hips and a decidedly unimpressed look on her face. His father is wrestling with a pan on the stove; smoke oozes from it and Leia's declaring that Han's going to burn down the ship while he yells at her over the sizzle of oil that everything's fine, this is an old Corellian recipe, it's supposed to smell like that—

It nearly makes Ben smile. Perhaps it is a memory, but not his. The Falcon had been a home; perhaps all that love had been written into the very walls.

"I'll take care of washing the dishes," Rose says as Ben puts the tray in the sink. "It's almost time for your shift. BB-8's currently powered down but he'll meet you at the cockpit on the dot."

"Good. I look forward to our ten-hour stint together," Ben deadpans. "It can't start soon enough."

Rose is unfazed. "Leia and Rey did say you had a mouth on you."

Ben steps away from the sink, his hands falling back to his sides. He can't help but wonder what else his mother might have said about him, and either Rose Tico has Force powers of her own or his expression gives him away, because she adds, "Leia also said that she believed you would come back to the light. She lost faith for a while, but Luke told her that no one was ever really gone. The general clung to that until her last breath."

Ben peers down at Rose. "Do you think she was wrong?" he asks quietly.

It takes her a long time to respond, during which he braces himself. If she confirms it, he has no idea where to go from there. He feels no pressing need to prove his intentions to anyone other than to Rey, but this task is so much bigger than just the two of them.

Hays Minor, he suddenly remembers Rey telling him somewhere amidst the muddle of soft-spoken conversations and calm silences that had filled up the long journey to Coruscant. Rose is from Hays Minor, in the Otomok system.

The First Order had used that world for weapon testing, leaving vast stretches of it scorched and ruined. They'd stolen the children and made them stormtrooopers. And Rose's sister had died during the war.

She has good reason to hate Ben and what his coming back must represent to her. To anyone who had lost something— or everything— because of Snoke and Palpatine's machinations and Kylo Ren's role in them.

"No," Rose says at last. "I don't think Leia was wrong. But I may have put three pinches of seasoning in your food instead of four."

That startles a half-smile out of him. "It was still more than palatable."

Although some kind of tentative truce has been reached, Rose has more to say— as Ben soon finds out when she heads to the crew's quarters but stops at the threshold of the galley and casts an indecipherable look at him over her shoulder.

"When you— were gone," she tells Ben haltingly, "I'd never seen Rey so... so diminished, I guess would be the correct term. She hid it well, but it was obvious to me. The thing about Rey is that she thinks she has to be strong all the time, and that leads to her burying her emotions instead of processing them. But make no mistake—" Rose's tone is abruptly fiercely protective— "she's still one of the best people I know. So just— just be careful with her, all right?"

Ben nods. Rose turns away and vanishes into the corridor, out of sight. Leaving him alone in the galley that had been a wedding gift, that now serves as a reminder that his parents had loved each other. That they had tried.