Chapter Text
Lying in the cool grass, far from the party, Rey couldn't stop kissing Ben and hugging him close. As if to keep him from disappearing again. He repeated her name like a prayer. She wrapped her arms around his neck, wrapped her legs around his waist. They could touch at last. Their fiery bodies could touch at last. And now they could give free rein to their love, their passion.
After fooling around in the bushes, without going any further than kisses, since Ben was still struggling to come to terms with the new impulses triggered in him by his beloved. They made their way to the Yavin estate, at the edge of the party. Rey held her companion's hand tightly as she guided him to her room. Then she asked him to wait for her there and not to move. Outside, the grooms and some of the guests were still dancing. The young woman slipped into Finn and Poe's room to pick up a little something. Just in case.
An irrational fear seized her the whole way there and back. She was so afraid that her Ben would disappear again as soon as she reopened her door. But he was still there, sitting on her bed, a bit disoriented, when she returned. Rey's heart leapt in her chest. He was still there. It wasn't a dream. She needed to repeat those sweet words to herself to calm her anguish, after living through so many long months of suffering.
"You're here," she breathed.
Ben looked down at her hand and noticed the three shiny little pouches she was holding. Intrigued, he raised an eyebrow.
"What are those?"
At these words, Rey blushed. She took a deep breath and crossed the distance between them.
"Nothing. We don't have to use them tonight. It was just... Never mind..."
Their embrace and caresses had become so intense in the bushes. She had felt a bump harden against her thigh. Intoxicated by her perfume and kisses, Ben didn't seem to understand what it was. And he had, shamefully enough, ruined his pants. It was hard to control this new body and its physiological reactions. She'd assured him it was nothing serious and told him he could put his dirty clothes in the tub to wash later.
Now Ben was on the bed, slightly uncomfortable. All he wore now was a towel, wrapped around his waist. A suggestion from his beloved. Unfortunately, she had nothing else to offer him. Rey took a long look at him, leering at his broad chest, his square shoulders, his handsome formerly demon face. She bit her lip and approached.
"Can you help me?"
Once the question was asked, she turned her back to him and it took him a few seconds to realize that she needed him to unzip her pretty purple dress. The young man hesitated little, held out his hands and delicately complied, revealing his companion's beautiful satin-skinned back. Rey thanked him and sat down beside him on the mattress. With a smile on her lips, she leaned towards him, placed her hand on his neck and kissed him gently. He relaxed, then kissed her back. Once again, Ben felt a curious sensation in his belly. Like a crackling fire, whose flames breathed, grew, expanded, ready to consume his whole body. And he knew his beloved felt the same.
The first kisses were very sweet. Like there was a constant need to reconnect after so long apart, separated in two different worlds. A need to be sure, again and again, that this was real. That they wouldn't wake up alone the next day. No. They'd never be alone again.
Suddenly, Rey slowly detached herself from Ben. The latter's eyes widened in amazement from his beautiful, shy gaze, as she lowered the bodice of her dress, exposing her small breasts. Her two wonderful little breasts with their rosy pearls. The young man swallowed. His throat went dry. Oh. He'd seen them before. He'd always seen them. But never before had they had such an effect on him! He looked away. His cheeks began to burn. His heart hammered violently in his ribcage.
Aware of his discomfort, Rey took a thousand precautions not to rush him. This desire had been burning in her for a long time. Ever since she'd realized she loved him too. And even before. But if Ben wasn't ready, she'd wait. Give him plenty of time to acclimatize to these previously unknown sexual sensations. She gently clasped his large hand between hers, caressed his skin with her fingertips. He shuddered at her touch. Then he flinched as she guided his palm to her right breast. This time, Ben tensed completely. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. He looked like a young teenager in a panic over the changes in his body and the new urges that were overtaking him. He was... adorable. He was adorable. She loved him so much.
"Are you okay?" she worried.
"Y... Yes," the poor man stammered. "Yes, sorry."
"It's alright..."
Little by little, he overcame his fear. She needed him to touch her. And so did he. He inhaled deeply. His hand perfectly cupped the curve of Rey's breast. With his fingers, he began to caress it. It was so soft. So warm. His companion let out a sigh, closing her eyelids. She was enjoying it. Which filled Ben's heart with joy. He might be able to do her some good, after all. Even without his powers. Then the young woman opened her eyes. Piercing, shining, imploring eyes.
"I want you to put your hands on me," she confessed in a breath, a faint distress in her voice. "I want you to come inside me so we can be one again. That way, I'll know you'll never leave me again."
Then she sniffed, swallowed hard and lowered her head.
"But... But if you don't feel ready right away, I'll understand. Please, don't force yourself to..."
Ben didn't give her time to finish her sentence. He'd just responded to an impulse and fallen on her mouth. Her pretty mouth, the very embodiment of temptation. Rey stifled a moan against his lips. Their kisses immediately became more passionate, fiery, almost savage. Although their bond seemed to have been broken up to now, they could feel its strength, deep in their guts. The buzzing. The familiar rumble. As powerful as the storm and the raging sea. As incandescent as all the stars in the sky.
The morning found them embracing intimately in bed, naked, happy in their perfect little love nest. A world that had always belonged to them alone. They'd made love all night, exhausting their meager supply of protection. Of course Ben wanted to try. He wasn't going to wait any longer. He'd dreamed of it for so many long years, throughout his journey to be reunited with his beloved. He wanted more than anything to finally be able to feel all these things. With her. He contemplated her, emotional, as she stirred in his arms, her brown hair tickling his skin. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. She, Rey, his Rey, the one he'd always been in love with. When she awoke, they smiled tenderly at each other.
"Thank you for not disappearing during the night," the young woman breathed.
Tears of joy beaded in her eyes. She had never been so happy.
"I've got nowhere else to go," Ben argued. "I belong here. Beside you. As always."
He stroked her back, her hair. She hugged him a little tighter against her. Then her beautiful hazel eyes, studded with emerald flakes, probed him. Finally, she managed to ask him the question that had been burning on her lips:
"Well? Was it... what you expected?"
Inwardly, she cursed herself for not having found a better wording. Of course, from a certain point of view, it wasn't their first time. But it was the first time Ben had had a body. The first time he could experience sexual pleasure, too, and not just a spiritual one. The former immaterial demon seemed to think for a second.
"It was... different."
"In a good way?"
Ben rolled his eyes and stifled an amused laugh.
"Of course, in a good way. Actually, it was a billion times better than anything I'd imagined for so long. It was... magical. You were magic."
Rey's cheeks flushed with pleasure. Her beloved was looking at her so intensely, with such sincerity, that she felt like she was melting. She straightened up and stretched out her lips to place a kiss on his.
Never alone again, she reminded herself endlessly.
***
At first, unsurprisingly, Finn and Maz found it hard to believe that this out-of-nowhere stranger, with whom Rey seemed so smitten, was Ben. Her demon. The one she thought she'd lost. She'd suffered for so long since the Black Sun had taken him away from her. She'd never lived without him before. And those long, long months wasting away, locked away in an Alaskan cabin with her loneliness, had proved that she could never live without him. Despite those who were still there for her, all those she loved. Just as Ben could never live without her. No more than a plant could live without water and light. No more than a human could live without air. They were each other's oxygen, their water and light. Since the mother and son still seemed to have some doubts, the former demon turned to the latter.
"I've been inside your head," he said. "Years ago. Don't you remember? I know what you were thinking back then. How you felt."
Bewildered, Finn raised an eyebrow. He watched intently the one who claimed to be Ben, the "imaginary friend" of the one who was a sister to him. The ill-tempered demon who was deeply attached to her and had always protected her. The one who had helped them rescue her when she was Snoke's prisoner in the First Order's laboratories, on the day of the Black Sun. And the scientist realized that he believed him. Without being able to really explain it to himself.
"It's you," he murmured simply, flabbergasted. "Boy, I can't believe it..."
"I suppose you still haven't forgiven me for possessing you, and I wouldn't blame you," the young man continued. "But I'd like to tell you that you're the one who gave birth to my desperate desire to become human one day."
"And now he is," Rey added.
"But how is that possible?" Maz inquired.
Ben pursed his lips, then shrugged. He clasped his companion's hand tightly in his own.
"Honestly, I can't explain it. The ways of the Force are beyond comprehension..."
He was, however, able to briefly explain what the Force was. The energy ruling all worlds. A difficult concept for mere humans to understand. Something far more spiritual than logical and scientific.
"All I know is that it was our destiny. Rey and I were meant to be together. Perhaps our dyad is no more. After all, I've lost all my powers. But this, us, that never disappeared."
The former demon went to live with Rey in her Alaskan chalet and kept his promise to never leave her again. Maz had helped him to create identity papers. To do this, she had called on an acquaintance who worked for the government, who had also helped Rey change her name. She was now called Rey Kenobi, having adopted her late mother's family name. And perhaps, she hoped, she would one day call herself "Rey Solo", in a few years' time. She could hardly breathe, she was laughing so hard when Ben told her he'd chosen the name based on a brand of coffee lids.
The young woman's cottage, lost in the middle of nowhere, seemed to be coming back to life. After being a place of suffering, grief and loss for so long. Her companion felt his heart sink every time he looked at all the lines she had drawn on a wall, one for each day after his disappearance. He was glad the count had finally come to an end. She also let him read all the letters she'd written to him to put her pain on paper. He cried so much as he read them, imagining how lonely she must have felt. But he was happy to know that she had managed to get back on her feet, just before he reappeared in her life. That's all he could have wished for her.
Anyway, this chalet then became their home. Ben loved to go outside and inhale the fragrance of the forest, the smell of the logs, then listen to the birds singing, the river lapping, the leaves rustling, feel the wind in his hair, the sun's rays on his skin. He loved being human. He loved having a body of his own. And he never stopped enjoying discovering it. Exploring, among other things, human concupiscence. Indeed, he and Rey could never get enough of each other. And they made love very, very often. Like a young couple carried away by their senses. They were fused, as they had always been. And they needed to feel. To touch each other. To feel alive. To become one. They'd missed each other so much, it would never be enough.
Once, Ben snuck up behind Rey, early in the morning, while they were still in their pajamas and she was making breakfast. She laughed as he wrapped his arms around her waist and began to snuffle his big nose through her tangled hair, nibbling the nape of her neck greedily. She felt his warm breath on her skin. The young woman told him she needed to focus, but didn't stop giggling, and didn't do much to push him away. So he continued. One of his hands ventured under her wide T-shirt to her breast, which he gently caressed, and kneaded with his fingers. The other hand, bolder, went down to her crotch, under her panties, and teased the sensitive pearl at the top of her slit.
Rey abandoned all her kitchen utensils and arched her back against him. She bent her head, eyes half-closed, to give him better access to her throat, and stifled a long, contented sigh. A delicious fire sprang up in her womb, much hotter than the one on the gas stove, which she managed to extinguish so she could devote herself better to her beloved's caresses. Soon, he was rubbing lightly against her, and she could easily feel the extent of his erection against her buttocks. Oh, God. She gasped. She realized how hungry she was. But not for food.
Things moved quickly. She turned to capture Ben's mouth and kissed him languorously. Then they ripped off each other's T-shirts, collided, devoured each other, inflamed by their love and passion. It ended on the kitchen counter, its coolness against Rey's burning body, it electrified her. She screamed louder and louder as her beloved demon-turned-human, pressed to her back, increased the power of his pelvic thrusts. She could feel him moving briskly inside her, much to her delight. In moments like these, especially when they reached climax and soared to the stars, that she was convinced that their bond had never been broken. On the contrary, it had grown stronger.
Together, when they were ready, they left the chalet to visit all those who had accompanied them on their journey, since they had been entrusted to the PRAD organization. To Maz. To Finn. Those who were living happily ever after. Ben really appreciated that they now saw him as a human being. Not as a test subject. A lab rat. They surely had countless questions about the Force, and about demons and the Infraworld. Questions they could finally ask him. But they avoided doing so, out of respect for him. They tried to be interested in him for the man he had become, not for the demon he had once been. Ben was most grateful.
The couple also visited Rose in Detroit. Rose, her sister Paige, her niece Wednesday and the rest of the little family of former homeless people that they now constituted. Rey thanked her friend from the bottom of her heart for helping Ben find her. Of course, she never told them who he was, or rather, had been. She only introduced him as her "boyfriend". Although soulmate was still a much more accurate term for their relationship. None of her friends needed to know that Ben was the invisible demon who had once followed her around, helping her to save Paige and her baby.
In truth, only Wednesday seemed to guess at it. The young man felt it when he noticed the way this tiny two-year-old girl would look at him. The way she smiled at him. As if... she knew. Children, especially so young, were much more sensitive to this kind of thing than the rest of us. Ben was moved. The first time he went to Rose and Paige's with Rey, he crouched in front of Wednesday while the others chatted, fascinated. She recognized him. He could feel it. She didn't know many words yet, but her big black eyes were much more communicative. Ben smiled. The little girl reminded him of Rey when she was her age.
"You're welcome," he whispered to her. "It's been our pleasure, you know. To save you and your mother."
An intuition told him this child possessed a gift. She was different. Like Rey before her. The three of them would get along just fine. Wednesday had adopted the couple as if they'd known each other all their lives. Which surprised her mother. Paige said the little girl was usually afraid of strangers. What she didn't know was that Ben wasn't one.
They also visited the Lintra ranch in Canada from time to time. But there, too, Rey never told Tallie, Kallie or Jessika that her companion was the demon who had helped them with the exorcism. It would take too long to explain it all. Only Maz, Finn and Poe, to a lesser extent, knew. When the latter two spoke of the steps they were beginning to take to adopt a child, Rey and Ben went to visit them as support.
It was there that they found themselves, all five of them counting Maz, sitting at a good meal. They laughed and exchanged stories. The young woman was pleased to see that her beloved was beginning to integrate perfectly with the others. As if he were part of the family. Which made her very happy. It was then that Finn dared to evoke "the good old days", without fear of offending the former demon.
"Whenever you threw a tantrum, you'd send things flying across the room... And who had to clean up after you?"
Clasping Rey's hand in his, Ben stifled a laugh.
"To be honest, sometimes I miss doing that. But it doesn't matter, because being human has so many more advantages. I just..."
His sentence hung in the air. He froze, dumbfounded. And so did the rest of the table. As he had spoken, he'd made a wrong move, almost spilled his glass... and the glass had righted itself. A few drops of water had even spilled from it. He hadn't even touched it. It was... telekinesis. Confused, Ben raised an eyebrow, focused as before. A current flowed through him. His fingers tingled. His stomach buzzed. The glass moved again, by itself, a few inches. It couldn't be! He'd lost his powers!
"Did... did you just do that?" Finn stammered.
"I... I don't understand..."
The former demon let go of Rey's hand, leaned in a little more and tried again. But nothing. Just nothing. This baffled him even more. Then he turned to his companion, who seemed just as lost as he was, and then understood. It was her. Ben took her hand again, and the glass stirred as soon as he laid eyes on it. It was Rey. Rey was giving him power. She guessed what he was thinking and an emotional smile crossed her lips. Their hands, sealed together, it felt like they were touching a live cable. As the others looked on in amazement, they exchanged a kiss, overjoyed.
Their dyad was still present, more powerful than ever. They were capable of anything, just as before. All they had to do was hold hands.
***
The nightmares had started one night, just after they'd watched their favorite Korean series in bed. Rey had fallen asleep, curled up against her companion, and had seen all sorts of things in her dream. Terrifying things, glimpses of distant and painful memories. Nothing but nightmares, right? No. Deep down, she knew it wasn't true. Evil would never die. And so they'd have to face it again and again. Her dreams had only revealed a more than likely future. One they'd have to prepare for, to protect their happiness, their family and the rest of the world.
Albert Einstein had once said: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result". Based on this principle, humanity should probably have been committed to an asylum a long time ago.
Because once you've opened Pandora's box, you can't close it again, Rey mused as she and Ben climbed the ledge overlooking what was left of Chicago.
Thunder rumbled. Lightning ripped through the night, intermittently illuminating the dark sky. Their boots crushed the debris that littered the rocky ground. An icy wind whistled in their ears and swept the hair from their faces. Their portable containment fields, generated by their belts, sizzled around them. An invisible shield that would prove invaluable as they braved what lay ahead. Rey had reached the edge of the cliff first. Clutching the strap of her blowgun to her shoulder, she gazed down at the post-apocalyptic scenery, a lump in her throat. It was impressive. Her companion came up behind her, which gave her courage.
She wasn't alone. She never had been.
Ten years after the destruction of the Black Sun, Ben and Rey were confronting its evil little sister. The Black Moon. The dark mass, haloed by a bright white light, reigned supreme on the horizon, rising above the ruins of Chicago. A city completely invaded by the Infraworld. Demons, beings of black smoke with bright scarlet eyes, and ferocious jaws with rows of large translucent teeth, abounded in the air. Their shrill cries echoed in the distance. The two thirty-year-olds shivered and swallowed. Rey ran a hand through her brown hair, held back by a half ponytail, as a few strands fluttered before her eyes.
"Are you ready?"
Ben sighed.
"Oh, you know me... With you, I'm always ready to save the world," he replied with a nervous chuckle. "Besides, it's only the fourth time."
With that, he surveyed what lay below, rubbing his beard in the process, a sign that he was considering their options. First he thought of a way down, then the route to the Black Moon. At their feet, a few hungry entities were already swarming.
"Okay, let's start with these. I'll take the ones on the left, alright?"
His beloved merely nodded. Honestly, Rey listened with a distracted ear. A heavy weight had fallen on their shoulders. They had to succeed where the army had failed. She looked at a few nearby buildings consumed by flames and wondered how many families had not been evacuated in time. How many deaths this fourth out-of-control condenser had caused. Maz blamed herself, but there was nothing she could have done. She'd been fired from the PRAD and this was the result. Lord... Was this the last time? Or would they spend the rest of their lives fixing the government's screw-ups? Guessing her thought, Ben looked sadly at Rey.
"Don't be afraid."
Then she turned her head toward him and smiled. He'd said it himself. It wasn't the first time they'd had to face demons and destroy a condenser. They were used to it. And knew the Infraworld all too well.
"I've already died twice," Rey retorted. "I'm not afraid of death anymore."
Their hands met, joined, clasped. Their fingers intertwined, tightened. Their shared power flowed through both their bodies, pulsed in their veins, rumbled in their guts. They focused, took a deep breath, closed their eyes, then opened them again, gazing out at the ghost town with determination. Their pupils dilated. Their irises became almost entirely black.
Separated, they may not have looked like much. But together, nothing could stop them. They had a bond stronger than anyone could ever comprehend. They were one. They could do anything just by holding hands.
And they were ready for the final battle.
THE END