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A rustling sweeps through the crowd as Ben is led out by his guards after the court's recess. A sea of faces - blue and green and red and pink; scaly and tentacled and furry and smooth - swaying back and forth like so many wind-swept waves as they murmur and point at him. They stare unabashedly with expressions ranging from hateful to disgust. It's like every species of alien has come to view the downfall of Kylo Ren, and for all he knows that is even true. Maybe he is to become a spectacle, before he finally is allowed to fade away. He is suddenly glad for the Force suppressing binders, because this way he doesn't need to feel their fear. He only has to see it in their eyes.

One face is missing, notably. The Last Jedi has not made an appearance, and Ben can't blame her. He’s nothing to her, and he wants to laugh at the irony of that. Worse than nothing, if he’s truthful, because he doesn’t believe for a second that those brief moments on Exegol, when they had stood together, can make up for all the pain he had caused her in the year preceding that.

A tall woman with a pinched face and greying curly hair calls for order as Dameron and the rest of the tribunal enter the room, and then it's suddenly time. Ben can tell from the expression on the cocky pilot's face that the verdict won't be in the former Supreme Leader's favor, but then again Ben hadn't really expected anything else.

He’s a monster. He killed his father. Arguably had a hand in the death of his mother. Spent the better part of a year hunting the woman he loved and her friends to the ends of the galaxy.

Whatever happens now is what he deserves.

Dameron clears his throat pointedly and the murmurs of the crowd ebb, although they do not altogether cease. His judge, juror and - maybe - executioner - seems satisfied though, because he begins to read from a prepared statement.

“In the case of the people against Ben Solo, formerly known as Kylo Ren, who stands accused of murder in the first and third degree, genocide, treason…”

Poe’s voice drones on, but Ben finds it hard to concentrate on the particulars of his sins. He knows what he has done, remembers every deed in every one of his waking moments, as well as in his dreams, and he doesn’t need to hear it all again. As the list continues it fades into the background, together with the susurrating voices of the crowd and the hum of the overtaxed environmental systems in the crowded room.

Ben allows his mind to drift, or maybe it’s just all he can do right now, because the alternative is to give in and cry at how far he has fallen - no, that’s not true. He has not fallen, far from it. If anything he has risen, finally, above the shadows of the past, but that thought does nothing to alleviate the hollowness in his chest, where his Bond with Rey used to reside before the binders cut him off from his other half.

He remembers a sun-speckled lake. A grassy shore, ringed only by a thin stripe of golden sand. Water as green as the trees surrounding it. A terrace, ringed with flowers.

His mother’s voice, raspy and warm, close to his ear.

“Once upon a time, when nerfs had feathers, a young prince lived in a castle by a lake…”

Ben remembers this tale. The last time his mother had told it he had still been little. Sick with the Corellian mumps, and miserable as he’d rarely been - although since he’s learned that a fever and a swollen throat is hardly the worst that can happen - his mother had sat with him through the worst nights, and told him tales of her homeworld. Of the Lost Prince of Alderaan, and his castle (although back then the castle had been on the edge of a mountain range, and suspiciously resembled Hanna City), and his pet manka and his quest to find a five-leafed starflower. Of his path through the dark woods and the perilous caves and the sinking marshes, and of the fair sorceress who had found him, lost in the wilderness, and brought him home to his family.

She tells it again, now, almost six years later, and Ben is too old to believe in fairy tales, but he still takes comfort in the tale, for tomorrow he is to leave this place and join his uncle on Yarvin V. And today, on his last day here on Naboo, he is content to be a little boy again, and listen to his mother’s voice.

“Am I the Lost Prince of Alderaan?” Little Ben had asked Chewie later that day, when his mother had gone to attend a senate meeting, and the old wookiee had ruffled his hair and laughed and said “You may be a Prince of Alderaan, but how can you be lost when I know you are right here, little Starfighter.”

At ten Ben knew that his question had been foolish, for he knew that there is no such thing as a sorceress or a five-leaf starflower. It’s a tale told to children, and he’s not a child anymore. The voice in his head has made sure of that.

And at 29 Ben… doesn’t know what to think. Because Alderaan is long gone, and he knows that there are no magical flowers that can heal all ills and magic is a myth. But the Force is real and he has used it to bring Rey back from the dead, and she has led him out of the darkness and back into the light and while he doesn’t feel like a Prince he still feels so very lost.

The sounds around him swell and surge and he is snapped out of the memory - out of his mother’s warm embrace and back into the humid courtroom with its echoing permacrete walls and the hard fiberplast chair that is too small for his broad frame.

“Does the accused wish to add anything before we declare the verdict?”

Ben can only shake his head numbly. No, he doesn’t want to say anything. The one person he wishes to speak to isn’t here.

“Very well,” Dameron holds his gaze for a second, and Ben thinks there’s almost a hint of pity in the general’s brown-black eyes. “In the case of the people against Ben Solo this tribunal finds the defendant guilty of all charges and sentences him to dea…”

He doesn’t get any further than that, because the doors at the back of the hall burst open dramatically in the moment. The crowd shifts to make way for the interloper, but the bodies are so tightly packed that it takes a few seconds for the newcomer to make it to the front.

It is Rey. Ben blinks, because this is the last thing he has expected. Lando, maybe, because his uncle had sought to speak with him in the days leading up to the trial. Or maybe Chewie, who’s been suspiciously absent from the proceedings, but Ben thinks that maybe the Wookie would like to get a word in before his execution. A word, or maybe a fist, Ben is truthfully not sure how his father’s oldest friend feels about his nephew.

“Stop,” Rey wheezes, like she’s been running. Her clothing is sweat stained and dusty, her boots scuffed and she looks generally disheveled. Flyaway hairs frame her face, and there’s a smudge on her cheek that he thinks might be engine oil or simply mud. She’s ethereal. Beautiful in a way that doesn’t seem real.

“Stop,” she says again, hands braced on her knees as she struggles to draw in a breath. “You can’t kill him.”

Ben would like to disagree. The reason that they’re holding this trial on Tatooine is that the planet still has the death penalty, a holdover from the days when the Hutts ruled supreme, and the lawyers of the prosecution had gotten to great trouble to prove that Ben was technically speaking a citizen of this desert world and could therefore be tired by its outdated code of justice.

Dameron seems to agree, because his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and he opens his mouth to speak, but Rey won’t even let him try.

“I have proof,” she says, straightening her spine and triumphantly pulling a small leather-bound book from the satchel at her hip. “In the Jedi texts. You have no jurisdiction over him.”

That is news to Ben.

“What?” He says, in perfect sync with Dameron, whose face has taken on a peculiar shade of purple.

“What?” Dameron repeats, sputtering. “That… no! Rey! What the kark are you talking about?”

She slowly approaches the bench, not looking at Ben, not really looking at anything as color rises to her tanned cheeks.

“It’s,” she licks her lips. “It’s right here. You can see for yourself. You can’t sentence him to death.”

The crowd’s muted murmurs rise into a roar as Rey’s words settle in. They’ve come from far away to see a trial and an execution, and they are outraged to have their revenge taken from them at the last minute.

“Silence,” Poe calls, but the crows only clamors louder, until Dameron has to call for the guard to clear the room.

When it is just Rey - who looks so uncomfortable that Ben just wants to whisk her away to another place, where nobody can glare at her - and the tribunal and the guards Poe takes the book from Rey with a sigh.

“What am I looking for?” He asks tiredly. The Last Jedi leans forward, into his space until their foreheads almost touch, and flips through the pages.

“Here,” she murmurs, too intimately for Ben’s taste.

Poe reads, his expression darkening with each passing line.

“Where did you get this?”

Rey hesitates briefly.

“From Luke.”

“Skywalker?”

Rey rolls her eyes.

“Yes,” her eyes shift, looking anywhere but Poe. “He had it with him on Ahch-To.”

“And it is authentic?”

“I don’t think Luke Skywalker would stoop to forging sacred texts,” Rey mutters. She rubs at her arm, where the scar from the throne room used to be before Ben healed it, and waits for Poe to finish reading.

“Mhm,” Poe says after a while, lips pursed unhappily. He turns to his co-judges and shows them the book and they in turn read and hem and haw, until their scowls are as dark as Dameron’s.

“So?” Rey asks, voice small and brittle.

“And you insist on this?”

“It’s the ancient Jedi law. I am a Force user and so is… Ben,” she hesitates before saying his name, and Ben can’t help but flinch. She looks tense enough to vibrate out of her skin. Her throat bobs on a heavy swallow. “I claim jurisdiction.”

“You know what this means?”

“Yes.”

Poe sighs.

“Now?”

“Yes,” Rey swallows again. “I think so.” She hesitates. “May I speak with… him. In private?”

The pilot considers this for a minute, before he nods.

“You can use the judge’s office, over there.”

The guards usher Ben into the small room and Rey follows on his heels, close enough that he can faintly smell her sweat.

Rey almost bumps into him when he stops by the desk in the center of the room, and he hears her breath catch as she stumbles back, narrowly avoiding a collision.

He turns and looks at her, unsure of what to say and how. There’s so much that he meant to say, that he needs to say, but she is so flustered and he is so confused by whatever the kriff is happening right now.

“Hi,” Rey finally says, blushing again. “Uh…”

“What the kark is going on?” Ben demands, bluntly. More bluntly than he intended to, and he winces when he hears his own raspy voice.

“I found a precedence in, ah,” Rey blushes more deeply, “in the… old Jedi texts. Poe will-” her eyes grow wide and she breaks off, her mouth gaping open like that of a burra fish stuck on land.

“What?” Harsh, again. Why does he always sound angry when he’s speaking to her?

“Giveyoutome.” It comes out as a rush and Ben almost thinks he’s misheard, but then she meets his eyes and repeats more slowly. “He’ll have to give you to me. As my… charge.”

There’s more, he just knows there is. Also this is bantha-dung. There is no way that the ancient Jedi texts says anything of the like.

“As your charge?” Ben repeats dumbly, trying to figure out how to bring up the fact that she’s lying through her pretty teeth.

Rey’s flush reaches a new high, turning as bright red as a muja fruit, almost obscuring her freckles.

“Yes. Because we’re a Dyad,” she falters and looks everywhere but at him. Her voice drops to the barest of whispers. “I can claim you, and it takes precedence over galactic and local laws, as long as you’re…”

Her voice runs dry, like a broken vaporator on this godforsaken lump of sand.

“As long as I’m what, Rey?”

Her eyes squeeze shut and she shudders.

“My husband.”

Ben nearly chokes on his own spit.

“What?”

“Uhm…” He’s sure that Rey would run from the room if she could, but the guards have locked the door behind them. “That’s what the book says. That a Dyad is sacred before the Force and our Bond and that I have the right to claim you as my husband and that you become my responsibility from there on out.”

She shifts nervously, expecting him to speak.

But Ben’s brain is empty. He’s not sure if he even remembers his own name. But Rey is looking at him and her eyes are red rimmed and moist.

“But,” he swallows to work some moisture into his dry throat. “It’s your choice.”

“What?”

“You said ‘you can claim me as your responsibility’,” he repeats. “You don’t have to do this.”

Rey looks at him, briefly.

“It’s no hardship.”

It’s no hardship. Ben is not so sure. He’s a monster. He can’t even begin to imagine how Rey must feel. Obligated to the monster that saved her life. Bound by ancient laws, whose legitimacy he severely doubts. This is at once the best and the worst moment of his life, because of course he has dreamt of this. Only… not like this. He wanted her to take his hand, out of her own free will, a year ago when he’d first offered her.

Ben can see now, clear as day, what a fool he had been. As empress of the Sith, Rey would have wilted like a starflower plucked from its stem. And it would have been his fault.

And now it seems that she is doomed to wilt, trapped in a marriage that she hasn’t truly chosen.

“How…” Ben rubs his eyes. “You don’t have to do this, Rey. I’m willing to pay for my crimes, it is long overdue.”

Suddenly her hand is on his arm, small and dry and more gentle than he deserves.

“Ben,” she whispers. “It is no hardship.”

Her fingers glide over his bare arm, from the edge of his sleeve to the binders at his wrists. The Bond is silent, suppressed along with his connection to the Force, but still her touch scorches him like a brand.

“I can’t let this happen.” Her fingers trail across the binders, further and further down, until her small hand is enclosing his much larger one. “I chose this.”

There’s a knock on the door, and then Dameron spills into the room, followed by the rest of the tribunal. The room is tiny and Rey, inexplicably, shies away from her friend until she’s pressed against Ben’s chest, their position far more intimate than Ben is ready for.

Poe blinks, taking in the scene in front of him, and Ben can’t really blame him for looking so confused, because not half an hour ago he had been ready to hear his own death sentence and suddenly the woman of his dreams is plastered to his front and asking him to marry her?

Rey looks up at him then, and he’s never wished for the Force as much as he does now. Her gaze is luminous and wide and wet and he can’t tell if it’s pleading or afraid or angry or whichever one of a myriad of imaginable emotions he is seeing in her hazel eyes. If he only had the Force he could reach into her mind - gently, because he will never hurt her again - and see what his answer should be.

Rey’s rosy lips move, and no sound emerges, but he still knows that she’s saying please.

Please. Join me.

“May I see the book?” He croaks, stalling for time.

After a moment of hesitation Dameron hands him the slim volume, and Rey shifts to the side to allow him to take it into his bound hands. If he had the Force he could at least tell if the book is old - there’s an aura that clings to old things, the memories of objects, like a smell but in the Force - but as it is he has to rely on his other senses. The leather feels ancient. The pages are yellow and brittle, the Aurebesh arcane and outdated. He turns it in his hands, difficult with binders but doable, skimming the text.

It seems real enough, he has to grudgingly admit. And yet and yet and yet… he has trouble believing that this can be real.

The Jedi of old forbade attachments, which this indubitably is - Force Dyad or not - and they went out of their way not to interfere in government affairs unless specifically asked to do so.

And lastly: Ben Solo isn’t this lucky.

This is everything he’s ever wished for, everything he has ever dreamed, and it just can’t be real.

A part of him, he realizes, is afraid that it will be snatched away the moment he allows himself to believe it.

But Rey is here and he can feel the heat of her body through their clothes and her hand is gently squeezing his thigh and her eyes are so hopeful. That’s the emotion that he sees. Hope.

Maybe, he thinks, he can hope too, when she’s looking at him like that.

“Yes,” he whispers.

“Yes?” Dameron and Rey speak in unison. Her smile is small, Dameron’s scowl deep.

“I’ll marry you.”

“You can’t be serious!” The pilot turned general turned judge exclaims. “Do you know what he’s done?”

“Yes,” Rey says calmly. “I was there for most of it.”

Ben can’t help but wince, but her hand squeezes him again and he falls silent.

“You’ve gone space-happy!” Poe tires again. “He’s a criminal.”

“He’s my Dyad in the Force,” Rey retorts calmly. “I assure you the alternative is much more unpleasant. Will you marry us?”

“Now?” Now Ben and Poe speak simultaneously, and it’s becoming annoying, the way everyone always says the same thing. Dameron glares at him. Clearly the pilot agrees.

“Yes, now. It needs to be binding,” she shoots Ben a wry glance. “And before Ben changes his mind.”

Ben is speechless for a moment. It’s all too much, too quickly. Absurd. Shocking. Wrong and so very right. His head is spinning and he can’t breathe from want or fear or simply from whiplash. He’s not sure anymore. Then Rey winks at him - winks, at him - and adds:

“Ben thinks poorly under pressure.”

And then it’s like a dam breaks and all he can do is laugh, because it seems this is happening and not only will he not die today, he’ll walk out of here as husband to the woman that he loves, even if he’s not entirely certain if those feelings are reciprocated.

The rest of the proceedings are a blur.

Dameron sends a clerk to get a certificate ready and while they wait he asks, one last time, if Rey is sure.

“It’s no hardship,” is all she murmurs, with a small smile.

Poe doesn’t ask Ben, because - truly - who in their right mind would try to back out of this? Marriage. Love. A second chance.

Ben is tempted to do so regardless, just because there’s a part of him that believes that he can’t have good things.

There is, however, a second voice, tiny but growing stronger by the minute, that insists that maybe he can. That maybe this is real.

They are married before the clock strikes the next hour. Out of the backdoor of the courthouse before the sun is at its zenith. They hurry down a seedy ally, accompanied by a platoon of guards. Ben isn’t sure if they are guarding him, the people of Tatooine, or Rey - that last thought is laughable, because Rey can protect herself - and in any case his head is spinning too much to pay them much heed.

He doesn’t wear a ring, only his binders which no one had bothered to take off yet. His clothing is the same dirty prison garb that he woke up in this morning and he hasn’t washed his hair in days. But he is a married man, the certificate in Rey’s satchel says as much, signed by both of them with shaking hands, and he will apparently live another day.

It is not long after that they board the Falcon. Of course it would be his father’s ship, Ben thinks sourly. Although a part of him is thankful, because if Rey had led him to another ship, or to a clean room in a modest hostel, anything but this ancient, creaking hunk of junk, he might not have been able to convince himself that he’s not actually dreaming.

This one unpleasant thing makes all the other, infinitely more astonishing things, somehow more real.

Ben sits heavily at the dejarik table, his legs suddenly too wobbly to hold him any longer.

“Ben?” Rey, who had been dismissing their guard, is suddenly by his side.

“I just… need to sit for a moment,” he mumbles. His tongue feels heavy and foreign in his mouth.

Is this what shock feels like?

“Yes, of course,” she sways on her feet, indecisively swaying her weight back and forth, before she sinks to the ground before him and clasps his hands in her own. “Are you alright?”

Ben nods, looking at their joined hands. His skin is so pale against hers, smooth, where hers is rough.

“It’s just…”

“Much?”

“Not how I expected this day to go.”

Rey laughs softly and squeezes his hands.

“I’m sorry?”

“Whatever for, Rey? You saved my life. I should be the one who’s apologizing.”

But she just shakes her head.

“It was no hardship.”

“You keep saying that,” he snaps, irrationally angry, because he doesn’t understand anything anymore.

“Because that’s what it is,” Rey snaps right back.

Ben wants to retaliate, to escalate, because for so long that had been his only avenue in life, but how can he, when she’s looking at him like this. He rolls his jaw.

“Can you take these binders off?” He growls, trying to reign in his temper.

Rey frowns, clearly not expecting this question and he adds: “I can’t feel you.”

Her gaze softens and she moves her hands to rest above the metal cuffs. Her brow furrows in concentration and Ben feels her hands twitch as she channels the Force into the restraints and the suddenly he feels everything.

The Force comes rushing in, bringing with it a myriad of impressions. People milling about in the spaceport, oblivious to who is in their midst. A growing cloud of anger and confusion from the direction of the courthouse, as news of his escape blooms amongst the populace. The Falcon, faint as inanimate things then to be, but so old and imbued with his father’s essence that he can feel it clear as day.

Rey, bright and strong and clear, right in front of him, almost drowning out everything else as the Bond surges and roars and blooms back into being.

She doesn’t look at his face, is studiously focusing on his wrists, where the binders have shattered into a dozen disjointed pieces. Rey picks them up, taking greater care than is necessary when she could just allow them to fall to the ground, and he thinks - no, he knows - that she’s just trying to stall for time. She’s nervous and skittish, afraid of… rejection? Ben wants to laugh at the absurdity of that.

“Rey,” he says, gently, but she refuses to look at him still.

“Rey,” Ben tries again, pulling his hand from her grasp to cup her cheek and force her eyes up. “Look at me.”

Her jaw trembles under his palm and she looks like she’s going to bolt, for real this time. His other hand clasps her wrist without a second thought, just as she scrambles to her feet. Rey backs away until the reaches the limit of her outstretched arm, hand still clasped in his and resting on his lap - resting is wrong, he’s holding on to her as strongly as he dares to for fear of hurting her - and Rey just stands there, caught like a dugar dugar in a traktorbeam, hunched over and breathing heavily, but he won’t let her get away. Not now that he finally has her.

Not ever, he thinks, with a faint sense of wonder, because as he gently presses against her mind, probing as softly as a caress, Rey slowly opens up to him.

Now that their minds are linked once again, like they should be, it is suddenly clear as day.

Her thoughts are a tumble of emotions that he doesn’t want to pick at - they’ll have to learn to respect each other’s privacy, because now that Rey has stopped fighting him he slides into her mind like a lightsaber through a sheaf of flimsiplast - and he just gets a wild jumble of want, fear, regret, longing, hope, affection, tenderness, worry, desire, compassion and… love. She loves him.

Rey loves him.

The Last Jedi, the hero of Exegol, the girl of his dreams loves him and Ben has a million questions, but they all become secondary as their eyes finally meet.

“Rey,” he whispers.

“Ben.” Just as softly. He tugs on her wrist, and she comes willingly, closer and closer, until her breath washes over his face.

“Rey, Ben repeats, reveling in the feeling of her name on his lips. Her mouth curves into a shy smile.

“Yes?”

“Come here.”

And she does. Her slight form slides into his lap, hands still trapped between their bodies, and then their lips are touching. Her lips are soft, moist. She smells of sweat and sunshine and Rey and when she opens her mouth to him she tastes of oblivion.

They kiss for an eternity, he thinks, although when his lungs start screaming for air he knows that no more than a few minutes must have passed. When he breaks away Rey chases his mouth with a muted growl, and he can’t help but laugh, because she sounds like nothing more than an annoyed Loth kitten.

“Rey,” he whispers for a third time, imbuing her name with all the emotions that clamor to spill out of his mouth.

“Rey.” A fourth time, because he can say it now. Because she’s his. Ben brings his hand up to stroke at her cheek.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Rey blushes and shrugs.

“I was afraid that if I seemed too eager - if we seemed too eager - that Poe wouldn’t allow it. He was looking for an excuse to put an end to this.”

“Why didn’t you come to see me, before?”

Her eyes dart over his face.

“I was getting the book.”

“From Ahch-To?”

She nods, but he can see the lie in her eyes. Can feel it in the Force, like an discordant note in an otherwise flawless symphony. That’s going to be a problem if he ever wants to keep something from her, even if it’s something as innocent as a life-day gift. But he’s getting ahead of himself.

“Rey,” he says again. More firmly now.

She bites her lip.

“I didn’t get the book from Ahch-To,” she admits sheepishly.

Ben thinks he knows where this is going.

“It’s a forgery, isn’t it?”

Rey nods again, looking quite miserable.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Really?” Rey scoffs. “You were just as eager to put an end to my plan as Poe was. I couldn’t take the risk.”

That is… fair.

“I would have been justified,” Ben insists.

“Kark the law!” Rey hisses, but Ben only shakes his head.

“No, Rey. Not because of that,” his thumb strokes across her cheek, marveling at how soft she is. “Because you shouldn’t have to bind yourself to me, just to save me.”

She scoffs again.

“It is no hardship,” Rey repeats firmly. Then her small hand comes up to cup his cheek in turn. “It is no hardship, Ben. I love you, I know you can feel it. I feel your love, through the Bond, as clearly as if you’d said it out loud.”

Her tongue darts out to wet her lips.

“I won’t say that I don’t care what you’ve done, Ben, because that would be a lie. But I love you. And I forgive you. And I want to be with you.”

He considers this for a moment, before he nods. He leans his head into her palm.

“So you decided to forge ancient scriptures?”

Her blush deepens.

“Chewie helped,” she murmurs. “He knows all sorts of people.”

“Chewie?” Ben can’t hide his surprise. Not because he’s astonished at his uncle’s criminal energy, but because he’s shocked that Chewie would help him out of his own free will.

“Yes,” Rey cracks a small smile. “He was the one who put the part about the marriage in the text, I just wanted it to say that you were under Jedi jurisdiction.”

She bites her lip.

“I didn’t want to force your hand,” she admits. “I’m sorry, but we were in such a hurry and by the time I thought to check the text we were already halfway to Mos Espa. There was no time to turn back and get another copy made.”

Ben shakes his head.

“Why would he…”

Rey shrugs helplessly.

“You have to ask him.” Her smile turns wry. “I’m not mad at him though.”

“Neither am I,” Ben says, pulling her closer to his chest. Her head tucks neatly under his chin, like she was meant to fit there, and he marvels at this closeness. At how effortless it all is, so suddenly and unexpectedly. Like this was always meant to be.

“Why would he help me? I…” Ben’s voice breaks. “My dad - I…” He can’t finish the sentence.

Rey slings her arms around him and squeezes him tightly, like she’s trying to keep him from falling apart with the strength of her arms and her love alone.

“It was strange,” she murmurs, and her voice rumbles pleasantly against his sternum as she speaks. “He said that he wasn’t helping Ben Solo. Oh, that sounds all wrong, because he was, obviously, and he didn’t seem angry about it either. But he was very specific that I should tell you that he didn’t do it to help you.”

“You then?” Ben asks, because that seems to make more sense. Who wouldn’t want to help Rey? She is, after all, all that is good in this world.

But the Last Jedi shakes her head.

“Not that either.” Rey moves her head to press a kiss against his throat. “I don’t think this is going to make much sense, I’m afraid. Maybe Chewie is finally showing his age.”

Ben gets a strange tingle at the base of his spine, like that day in the forest, seconds before he had encountered an angry scavenger, uselessly shooting a blaster at him. Like when he rolls his ship before a laserbeam is even fired. Like he felt when he stopped Dameron’s blaster bolt in Tuanul.

“He said,” Rey continues, but Ben speaks before she does,

“That he was helping the Lost Prince of Alderaan,” he finishes for her. Ben feels her body stiffen against his in surprise.

“Yeah,” Rey says faintly. “But it doesn’t make any sense. I looked it up. Alderaan was destroyed years before either of us was even born. I have no idea what Chewie was talking about.”

But Ben just laughs and presses a kiss to her forehead.

“No,” Ben murmurs against her skin. He feels a tear roll down his cheek, followed by another and another and another, until there’s a damp patch in her hair and Rey is pulling away to look at him in concern. But these aren’t sad tears, not really.

Ben sighs, deeply, and closes his eyes. Feeling, maybe for the first time in his life, truly at peace.

“No,” he repeats, eyes still closed. “Chewie is right. He was helping the lost Prince of Alderaan. And I think the Prince has finally found his home.”