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Chewie
Chewbacca has been a part of many half-brained plans throughout his two hundred and thirty-four years—most of them hastily thrown together by Han—but never did he expect something like this from her.
He was hiding out from the storm when she barged into the Falcon and announced that they were leaving. It wasn’t even until they hit atmo and coordinates were plugged into the navigator that she told him why.
Truth be told, he didn’t believe it at first. Didn’t believe that Luke could possibly harm a Felucian firefly, nonetheless, his own nephew. But Rey said he confessed to everything. Confessed and declined the chance at redemption. So now it was up to them to bring the boy back.
Stupid pup.
A welling rage floods the pit of his stomach when he thinks of him, but also a wave of sadness. It killed him inside to raise that bowcaster and pull the trigger, but in the moment, he was blinded by grief. Grief, the damned pup was the creator of. And now they’re supposedly on their way to the First Order because of some Force connection Rey has with the kid.
The girl says the pup still has good in him, that she felt it. And for everyone’s sake, he really hopes she’s right.
He makes his way through the Falcon’s corridor towards the captain’s quarters, where Rey’s been for the last little while, presumably changing out of her rain-soaked clothes. He gives the door a few taps, garbling out, “We’re getting close.”
Luckily, the little Jedi appears to be quite fluent in Shyriiwook, or their partnership would be a lot more difficult.
“I’ll be right out!”
Satisfied with the answer, he heads back to the cockpit, preparing the Falcon to exit hyperspace. While he’s not confident in their plan, he’s decided to trust that Rey knows what she’s doing, for she’s the one who saw the vision. He’s known many Jedi during his lifetime—they tend to have good instincts—but bringing back Kylo Ren from the dark side seems a little far-fetched in his opinion. Even if a part of him still cares for the boy.
“Sorry about that. I’m not used to a water fresher and got a little sidetracked.”
His heart breaks for the girl, having grown up all alone on Jakku, fighting every day just to survive. It couldn't have been easy. But once he turns around to tell her it’s alright, his heart breaks for another reason.
He knows it’s her, that they’re the only two on the ship besides the droid, but for a tiny moment, he sees someone else standing in the doorway. Someone else in the same dark tunic and brown boots. Someone with bigger ears and a goofier grin.
“Hey, Uncle Chewie.”
The phantom fades as quickly as it came, and he’s left staring at her, the boy’s ghost haunting only his memories. The boy who, only four days ago, took away his best friend.
The boy he’s mere hours away from potentially facing again.
Shaking off the rather painful thought, he just looks Rey up and down and warbles a teasing, “You clean up well… for a desert rat.”
It works like a charm, and she softly laughs, a small flush flooding her cheeks.
“I needed a change,” she replies. “I hope you don’t mind me rifling through the cabinets. I figured they might’ve been some of Leia’s more practical clothes from the Rebellion days.”
Yeah… Leia’s…
“You’re fine, Sunshine,” he reassures while shoving down old feelings. “Someone might as well use them.” Rey smiles, and together they head through the Falcon to the escape pod hatch. “Are you sure about this?”
She pauses, looks down at her feet, and mumbles, “It will work… It has to…”
Though Chewie suspects that last bit is her trying to convince herself more than him.
Shaking off the moment of doubt, Rey heaves the hatch open and climbs in. “As soon as I launch, you jump back out of range. Stay there until you get my signal for where to rendezvous.”
He nods and hands her Luke’s old saber.
“If you see Finn before I do, tell him…”
“You’ll see him soon.”
“Yeah, perfect,” she says with a ghost of a smile. “Tell him that.”
“Good luck, Sunshine,” he mumbles. She gives him one last look, her gaze nervously dropping to the saber for a second, before dipping out of view.
He smashes the button to lock the hatch after her and quickly heads back to the cockpit. As soon as they hit the correct coordinates, he pulls them out of hyperspace. The Falcon trembles slightly as the escape pod launches into open space and out of the safety of the ship.
The concerned part of him wants to stay, to even follow after her, but he promised to get far away from the dreadnought, so that’s what he’ll do. He’ll put his faith in the girl to bring Han’s son home.
Then again, a fierce, pretty brunette? If the boy’s anything like his father, he’s doomed.
And maybe that’s for the best.
Ben
Everything Kylo had prepared to say upon her arrival immediately flies out of the airlock the moment he sees her, and it has nothing to do with the naive eagerness that she has on her face—though that does make his heart stutter slightly. It’s what he sees as his gaze sweeps down the length of her.
Is that my…? Are those…?
No. Can’t be. Surely they threw them away by now, the sentimental fools. Yet, there they are, adorning her body. And all he can do is stare in silence.
Stare at her, lying there inside his father’s rusty, old escape pod, wearing his childhood clothes.
As much as he tries to banish them from his mind, the sight stirs up old feelings.
The scavenger had looked so small before—felt so small before. She was practically the weight of an Ewok when he swept her into his arms and carried her onto his ship. Probably due to years of malnutrition on the hellscape of a planet.
Had he really been that small once?
Small enough to fit the boots currently on her feet. Short enough to wear the tunic that lies against her thighs and dwarfs her torso. Though he doesn’t remember it coming down that low on himself. Then again, he had always been oddly disproportional during his adolescence. Always been somehow wrong.
But that was all a lifetime ago. Back when he was Ben Solo. Back before he traded in civilian clothes for Jedi robes, and then burned those robes in turn.
Involuntary memories from that weakling flash before his eyes, blending with the scavenger’s face. Her hazel eyes—ones that he couldn’t help but notice were quite pretty in the firelight of her hut—morph into a different pair. A lighter hazel, and full of life. A pair he extinguished that very liveliness from.
“Hey, kid.”
Quickly, he clamps down on the vision, shoving his past to the farthest recesses of his mind.
Ben Solo is dead, and so is Han. He made sure of that. So why do they both keep haunting him? It should be easy to bury them, filling the empty void with darkness, but somehow they keep finding the cracks. It’s infuriating.
The girl must notice the change in his demeanor because her hopeful gaze falls, and her brows furrow. It reminds him of the reason for her arrival, of the task he must now do, but secretly, a part of him grieves the previous expression. The way she looked at him like she actually wanted to see him. Like she was teetering on happy. It’s been a long time since anyone has chosen to be in his company of their own free will.
Been a long time since anyone has dared to touch him in a way that wasn’t meant to harm, maim, or punish.
The mere graze of her fingertips gave him something he hasn’t had in years… Hope. She reached out and offered herself to him, and what he saw in return was monumental. What he saw will not only change the course of their lives, but the entire trajectory for the galaxy at large.
In that moment, he knew what had to be done.
So now he has a plan to execute, but in order to do that, appearances must remain as they are. No one can know his true intentions with the scavenger. Especially not Snoke.
With a barely perceptible nod, he signals to the stormtroopers, who all but manhandle her from the escape pod. They rip the lightsaber out of her grasp and clamp binders around her wrists. Kylo stands there, posture stiff, as he waits for them to finish. He doesn’t dare look over, even when one of the troopers hands him his grandfather’s saber. He doesn’t want to witness the look of betrayal in her eyes as she’s forced to follow him through the corridor without a single word.
It’s imperative that everyone continues to believe she’s just a prisoner. If he wants to succeed, he must remain distant—dismissive even. The perfect apprentice following his master’s orders.
Though that’s much harder to do when she’s standing two feet away, and they’re stuck in a turbolift together.
Even harder still when his name gently falls from her lips.
One long-buried word has his head whipping over to her before he can even think, and he finds himself frozen as she slowly closes the distance between them. Truth be told, he couldn’t step back even if he tried, as if there was a string that ran from her chest to his. Wherever he goes, he knows she would just follow.
With her so close, he quickly realizes she’s a terrifying little thing, standing there so resolutely in his old clothes. Terrifying in a way he hasn’t experienced before. It’s not in fear that she’ll attack—though she has proven to be a worthy adversary. No, it’s something else. Something that shakes the foundation of his very being more than a mere enemy would.
Between the fiery look in her eyes, the sweet softness of her voice as she whispers promises, and his unrelenting desire for companionship, he knows he’s done for. He lost the fight before realizing he was even being ambushed.
From now on, everything in his life will forever be marked as before Rey and after Rey.
And that is what makes her terrifying.
Leia
It’s not the miraculous rescue by the girl and Chewie. It’s not the vibrations of her son’s turbulent emotions blasting across the atmosphere in his defeat. It’s not even feeling her brother fade from this plane of existence into the Cosmic Force.
No.
What has stopped her in her tracks is what their young savior is currently wearing, because it’s certainly not the outfit Leia had gifted to her before her journey.
The mere fact that Han still had them on board is almost as heartwarming as it is gut-wrenching. Perhaps it was his inability to let go of the last remaining piece they had of the son. The last thing that connected Ben to them, when all he’s done for the past six years is try to sever whatever ties he has.
No matter the reason why Han kept them, it doesn’t change the fact that Leia hasn’t seen those fabrics in almost twenty years. Two decades of moon moth damage and dust later, and they fit Rey nearly as well as they used to fit her awkwardly lanky ten-year-old.
Part of her illogically wants to go over there and see if her son’s smell still resides in the fibers. But that wouldn’t be fitting for a general. Especially a general for an army that just nearly got wiped out by said son. Besides… his scent is probably long gone by now anyway, covered up by the stale air of durasteel and space. Not to mention the blood and sweat of the girl currently occupying them.
She’s never seen the young woman look so defeated—not even after her ordeal on Starkiller. The Falcon is packed to the brim with people, and yet she sits there all alone, almost as if waiting for someone who isn’t coming. Maybe Rey is feeling the impact of Luke's loss just as much as she is. That his death felt like a bright light going out, leaving the galaxy in a shroud of darkness. A Force signature like that is certainly hard to ignore.
It reminds her of someone else’s. Someone’s signature she knows better than her own. One, she feels just as strongly as if he were standing in this very room. Or perhaps she’s just becoming senile in her old age, and seeing Ben’s clothes again is overwhelming her senses with memories.
She doesn’t know if it’s her son’s phantom presence, a strong maternal urge to comfort the girl, the fact that she feels just as alone, or a mixture of the three, but she feels compelled to join her. Maybe the two of them can find support in each other. After all, no one else in this creaky, old ship knows how overwhelming it is to be so connected to the Force like they do.
Leia calmly walks over and sits down, earning a polite, halfhearted smile from Rey.
“Luke is gone… I felt it,” the younger woman supplies, though there’s really no need. Not when she’s painfully aware of her brother’s sacrifice. “But it wasn’t sadness or pain. It was… peace and purpose.”
“I felt it too,” she replies.
Rey looks around the Falcon, her head subconsciously shaking when she thinks about how the remaining members of the Resistance now fit in a single freighter. “How do we rebuild the Rebellion from this?”
A smile spawns on her face despite the adversity they now face. Reaching out, she places her hand on Rey’s, briefly taking in the broken lightsaber in her lap. There is certainly a story there. One she’ll obtain from Rey in time. But right now is for being grateful that they’ve lived to see another day. To continue the fight.
“We have everything we need.”
Not being able to help herself, she reaches out and briefly strokes the shoulder cuff of her son’s tunic. The threads may be barer than she once knew, but the fabric is just as soft.
“Please don’t make me go. I wanna stay with you and dad.”
“I’ll be good, I promise. I’ll control it. The nightmares aren’t even that bad anymore.”
“Don’t leave me.”
Before the memories drag her underneath, she quickly disguises the movement as tenderly prodding at the strange wound across Rey’s upper arm. “You should get this taken care of,” she suggests, masking the emotion in her voice with concern.
Though looking closer at it, it doesn’t look like an ordinary cut. The edges appear to be cauterized, and the shape isn’t a clean slice.
What happened with this girl and her brother?
Surely Luke had no part in Rey’s current state. No. There has to be another explanation for why she’s returning to them injured and with her father’s old lightsaber broken in two.
“It will probably scar if you don’t get bacta on it soon,” she adds before pointing to the small cut along the girl’s eyebrow. “That one as well.”
Rey’s hand comes up and gently traces the wound with her finger, a distant look on her face. “Oh…” she murmurs. “I forgot it was even there.”
There’s something off about the girl—something that’s different than before—but Leia can’t seem to place a finger on it. The woman before her looks more troubled, like the weight of the galaxy rests solely on her shoulders. And maybe in a way it does. Without Luke, she is the only one with the Force who can fight.
Fight her son.
How did she let everything devolve into such a mess?
One minute her son is sitting in this very ship, wearing those very clothes, and laughing with Han… and the next he’s leading an assault to destroy the remainder of their little band of rebels.
So many lives lost, friends lost, and somehow none of them hurt anywhere as much as fighting a war against her son. Of knowing she messed up so badly that he chose that monster over them. If only she had been better, maybe she could’ve prevented all of this. Maybe she could’ve saved her son.
Luke’s last words softly come back to her. No one’s ever really gone. And stars, does she wish they’re true. All she can do is hold onto them. Hold on as tightly as she can, and hope that one day Ben will see the light again and come home.
Bonus:
Rey
It’s not until Rey’s finally alone that she tears the clothes from her body. They feel dirty—she feels dirty—and it’s not even from the layer of sweat, blood, and dust that’s caked onto her. It’s from merely being in that monster’s presence. Everything feels tainted. And so she strips down to nothing and hastily jumps into the fresher, scrubbing her skin until it’s red and raw.
Somehow, the tears remain patiently behind her eyes in her urgency to get clean.
The water eventually runs cold, forcing her shower to an end. Then, almost as if in a trance, she slowly gets out and heads to the captain’s quarters, not even bothering to dry off. Once the door is shut and locked, she plops onto the bunk and sits there staring at the wall.
The last handful of hours come back to her in flashes like one of those horror holos Rose likes. His red saber sticking out of his chest, her hand wrapped around the hilt. Leia’s presence fading from existence. Palpatine painfully sucking the life force from the both of them. A dark void. Warm brown eyes, cracked lips, and a toothy smile. Black fabric clutched tightly in her hands. Echoes of screams and sobs ringing out in an empty, broken cathedral.
Forced smiles as everyone around her celebrates his demise.
The hole carved out of her heart where his presence used to reside, even when she didn’t want it.
How could she ever have not wanted it?
What she would give to have it back now.
The dam of pent-up emotion finally breaks, and tears involuntarily pour down her cheeks. For him. For her. For the both of them.
For the feeling of relief she felt seeing him in that horrible place. The rightness. Like everything was going to be okay because they now had each other. They were a team, and together they were unstoppable.
But Palp—that creature was too strong. He weakened them by feeding off the one thing that belonged only to them. He sullied their bond, using it to restore his own life force, and leaving them in a pile on the stone floor.
From that point on, their connection felt frayed, like Sidious had nearly severed it in two.
It wasn’t until she woke in his arms that his presence fully returned to her mind. And then she had just a few moments of pure happiness before it was ripped from her once again, this time leaving an even bigger hole in her chest.
A painful, gaping wound.
She gasps through her sobs, her hand pressing against her sternum as if it could somehow quell the ache inside. But it’s not physical, at least in a scientific sense. She barely believed it at the time—them being a dyad—but now it’s very clear that he was telling the truth.
Two that are one.
She understands that’s what she’s feeling. The loss of the other half of her. The knowledge that she will walk through the rest of this life being incomplete.
He made her whole, and now he’s gone.
At some point, her body must run out of tears, and she just sits there curled up in a ball. There are faint sounds of celebrations outside. Ones she has no desire to partake in.
Besides… How can she tell them she mourns for their enemy? They would think she’s a traitor. Her friends would think she’s gone mad.
So no. For now, she’ll hide here in the Falcon where it’s safe.
The same Falcon she’s rudely aware he spent his childhood in.
A chill runs through her, reminding her that she’s still bare from her shower. Despite locking the door behind her, it’s probably safer to put something on, just in case someone barges in. Her mind briefly goes to her previous clothes, but she immediately dismisses the thought. Not only are they filthy, but she doesn’t know if she can emotionally put them on again after everything that happened. At least not right now.
Then another idea gently wafts into her mind.
She slowly climbs off the bunk and steps up to the cabinet that’s been untouched all year. Then, with a deep breath, she pulls it open and stares at the contents inside. The gray pants, the long brown boots, the black tunic that was slightly too long for her.
His clothes stare right back at her, accompanied by memories of that disastrous day.
If only she had listened to Luke. If only she hadn’t been so naive.
If only she had taken his hand.
Maybe things would be different. Maybe so many people wouldn’t have died.
Maybe he wouldn’t have died.
But that didn’t happen. And she went crawling back to the Resistance with her tail between her legs.
She found out later from Threepio that the clothes didn’t belong to Leia at all, and instead they had been Ben’s from when he was young. So, being too heartbroken from what happened on the Supremacy and Crait, she ripped them off and chucked them in the cabinet where no one else could find them. It felt wrong, wearing the belongings of a man who had killed his father and betrayed his mother.
Betrayed her.
After the events of today, though…? She feels differently. She desperately wants to be close to him, and the clothes he left behind on Exegol are currently hidden away in Luke’s X-wing. Eventually, she’ll retrieve them, but with the crowd being so big all evening, she knew sneaking them to the Falcon without any questions would’ve been rather difficult.
So for now, these are good enough.
She slips them on, taking time to really notice the feeling of the fabrics against her skin. If she closes her eyes, maybe she can even pretend it’s his hands giving gentle caresses. Caresses that will only ever exist in her imagination because the life she saw for them a year ago in her little hut has been stolen from them.
His smile was just as wonderful as the one from her vision.
The memory sends her stumbling back with a gasp. Looking around the room, she desperately tries to blink the image away, but it’s burned into her mind.
Within seconds, the room becomes suffocating once more, and she quickly darts to the door but freezes when she catches her reflection in the old, cracked mirror on the wall. Rationally, she knows it's her, but she barely recognizes herself. Instead, bloodshot eyes stare back. It certainly doesn’t look like the woman she saw a day ago. The one who was determined in finding and destroying Sidious. No. This one is much more haunted. A mere shell of that previous woman.
It all becomes too much, and she runs from the room, needing to get far away from herself.
Though what she really needs is a distraction. Something to get her mind off of… well, everything.
There has to be something on this ship that needs repairing—there always is. As she makes her way through the corridor, her mind runs through the usual checklist, no doubt having grown even longer after surviving the battle.
She enters the main hold and jumps, startling at the sight of the man lounging on the bench. “Oh, General! I—I didn’t expect to see you there.”
“Not at the celebrations, my dear?” Lando drawls in an almost concerned way.
Her gaze falls to the ground. “Tired.”
“Well, I would expect so, after taking on a Sith Lord and all.”
A large part of her never wants to hear that phrase again. She quickly changes the subject, replying, “You didn’t feel like celebrating?” She also forces her feet to move forward, really hoping that he doesn’t notice the grief barely being held inside.
He chuckles lightly. “The bonfires are a young man’s game. The Wookiee and I decided to have our own little celebration.”
As if summoned by the words, Chewie enters with a bottle of Corellian whiskey and some cups. “We’re lucky. That old nerfherder had a bottle stashed in the cargo hol—” he starts to say, but freezes when he notices Rey standing there. Those piercing blue eyes scan her up and down, taking in her appearance, and it hits him.
Hard.
A low whine leaves his lips, and he shakes his head. “Stupid, stupid, brave pup.”
“What?” Lando asks, confused about his old friend’s reaction.
He stares at the pained expression on Rey’s face before turning to Lando. “He came back.”
“Who came back?”
“Ben,” Rey very quietly interjects, her eyes not leaving Chewie’s. It’s oddly comforting to see the same grief she feels reflected in them. A tear crests over and runs down her cheek, and the next thing she knows is a face full of fur and long arms wrapped around her. She squeezes tightly in turn, remembering the last set of arms that held her.
“Well, I’ll be damned… Leia was right. There was still light in the kid.”
Thank the stars that any other questions they have are answered by her silence, because she doesn’t know if she could say the words aloud. It might even kill her to do so.
“Then I think a toast is in order,” Lando muses, interrupting their embrace. He hands both of them a cup of whiskey and keeps the bottle for himself. Raising his glass in the air, he adds, “To the little Starfighter… for being a true Solo when it came down to it.”
Chewie lifts his drink as well. “To the pup. Han and Leia would be proud.”
Rey stares at the golden liquid in her cup, almost reminiscent of Ben’s eyes in the firelight of her hut. Force, she’s going to miss those eyes. The ones that looked at her like she was the entire galaxy.
There’s so much she wants to say. She wants to tell them how he came to her just as she was about to give in to Palpatine. She wants to tell them that he stood by her side. She wants to tell them that he died saving the galaxy and her. She wants to tell them that he was the brightest light she’s ever seen, and now the galaxy feels darker without him in it.
But she can’t seem to force the words from her lips. All that comes out is a simple, whispered, “To Ben.”
And for right now, standing with the two men who have known him from the moment he was born, it’s enough.