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Only a handful of minutes after Rey disembarks, she realises she is being followed. This part of Batuu is more dusty than the rest, rusted, with drifting clouds of orange that skitter and swirl around people’s ankles, colouring the poles and ropes of the market’s stalls. The stalls are mostly tents, some more ragged than others. The junk traders with spare parts bother to make crooked bins in L-shapes from wood cut in irregular lengths. Rey wanders among them, lightly skimming her fingers over the bent metal and fraying wires. She finds two big handfuls of fuses that aren’t shaped properly for anything that has come out of Corellia in the past fifteen years, but suit the Resistance just fine. Their second-biggest cruiser needs most of them, and the rest are for the Falcon. The merchant, a monosyllabic Weequay in orange-dusted robes like her awning, takes the credit chip with a furtive snatch, leaving Rey to pile the fuses in her satchel. Standing with her back to the crowds among the stalls makes her apprehensive, as if fear is tickling her with its long velvet tail.
She feels the presence of another, moving with her, watching, maybe? It’s coming from the Force, and it’s intangible, smokey and fluid.
The weight of her satchel strap cutting into her shoulder is grounding, and Rey walks with quickness and ease to exit the square, through the scrap-metal arch draped with colourful fabric, heading to the shipyard where the Falcon is docked.
The street forks, then narrows, a slender passageway between tall buildings with metal doors and windows, signage advertising two inns, a cantina, one combat training ring and a coin exchange. Four figures unfold one by one, from the exchange doorway, to block the path. Turning, Rey sees another five behind her. No side alley. No escape. They’re all taller than her, only two are human. Violence-hungry, looming in armour. Blasters drawn.
“Resistance Jedi.” The Trandoshan in the middle of the formation says. “You going to make us work harder than we should for the bounty on you, or come like a good little girl?”
Her saber ignites, and everyone growls.
Deflected blaster bolts arc to both sides, orange streaks radiating from blue.
Rey shields her torso and head, but one grazes her foot as she angles the wasted bolts downward, ploughing a wound that burns at the edge and seeps blood.
She doesn't know what will happen once they’re close enough to encircle her, even though they’re only six - oh, five now.
Her foot burns with a relentless roar. The pain makes her leg feel blurred, weak, and Rey stumbles. The knock on her knee is a clash that interrupted the rumbling burn.
Rey tries to lean into it and gather the pain to hone focus. But she isn't good at that, yet. It’s distracting her and sapping her strength. She’s failing.
Shadows flicker in Rey's peripheral vision and she remembers black birds and ribbons of smoke and every other omen of death, childhood superstitions taught to her from the people of the desert. Not all of them are dark. Some are comets and star-winks, formations of light. Signs.
Her mind splits into halves and quarters and eighths to go in every possible direction before she ends her time in this world - she can fend them off for a few steps more, and will certainly die with ferocity and honour - then silence replaces sound.
No bolts. No clatter. Quiet boots.
Two are in the alley, where they’d followed her, and one is on the roof, with a rifle for sniping. He’d been picking off mercenaries while Rey shielded herself with her saber. The ones with burnt holes in their ragged backs were surprised by vibro-blades.
The late afternoon light bounces off of the makeshift armour and weapons that are piled and limp all around, but it gets swallowed up in the stygian robes of the three Knights Of Ren. They all carry a smell of sweat overlaid with bacta, aromatic in the light wind that brushes through the alley. The rooftop sniper hovers at the edge, then disappears like trailing smoke.
The one with the skull-face is reaching to touch her and Rey feels scared for a moment, but his other hand is weaponless, holding something the size of a holopad. Before she can stop him he presses a generous bacta patch to her wound, and the relief is like sunlight streaming over Rey’s body. The pain flees from her, and her muscles relax.
"Stop walking into traps," The other one says with what could be humour. He kicks the bottom of her uninjured foot very gently in an attempt at playfulness. When did she sit down, again? She remembers dropping to one knee during the fight.
"Why are you saving me?" She asks them all, squinting. Skull-face ignores the question, wavering in front of her for a moment. He reaches for another bacta pad from the pouch he wears, letting it hover between them.
He continues to look at her, holding up the patch like a sabacc card, silent. Waiting.
“I don’t think I’ll need that,” Rey says carefully, slowly. Placing her fingertips on the side of skull-face’s gloved hand to push the patch back at him. “I’m all right.” The knight withdraws, stands up, and swirls into hiding, around the corner from the coin exchange. Now, it’s just Rey and the knight who admonished her. He’s rifling through the clothing of the dead men.
“Why did you help me? Doesn’t the First Order’s bounty interest you?” Rey challenges again. She’s certain that would bring them more wealth than scavenging slain bounty hunters.
And yet, he doesn’t seem to be looking for credit chips in particular. He pulls things from pockets and pouches, and only particularly examines small round discs that do not look like any money Rey’s ever seen. He presses the pad of his thumb to the centre of one, and it projects an image of her in spinning blue. Rey examines her own profile along with him, watching it rotate for a moment. Then the knight throws each one against the opposite wall so hard that it smashes and leaves iridescent shards up and down the stones of the alley. The rest of the treasures are haphazardly enclosed in his fist, and shoved into a hidden crevice among his layered black clothes. He comes up close to her again and a few credit chips fall into her lap, as if they'd been shaken from a tree.
"We're not loyal to the First Order," he explains.
He grabs her hand, bends her knee, and gets her to put pressure on the patch. The scent of him fills her head, it has a smoky sweetness that makes Rey think of curtain-draped corners in carpeted rooms. His weapon is a vibro-blade, and she saw how every sweep of it burned his enemies with violet fire. He takes a few steps backwards and speaks, before turning to mosey away.
"We're loyal to the Code of Ren. The Ren is bound to take what it wants. And if you die, well..." he shrugs.
“Don’t try to board your ship yet, the Trandoshan placed two stalkers in there as insurance. We’ll clear ‘em. Maybe you should rest here.” His gloved hand points up at the highest right-hand window of the inn. Rey makes eye contact with his mask and he nods. They understand each other.
With one last nudge at her good foot, urging her to move, he walks towards the landing pads down the hill.
She can’t see anything under his mask, and his back is to her anyways, but he’s smiling. She just knows it.
~*~
Dusty afternoon light smears gold across the innkeeper’s desk. He looks human, but has a strange accent and pointed teeth.
“Jidai,” he stretches out the word into a cloudy sigh, and Rey realises she put her saber on her belt and not in her satchel. Careless, but at least it seems like it doesn’t matter to this one, this time. “Upstairs. Room eight.”
Rey doesn’t even touch the scavenged credits in her pouch.
Upstairs, the space is narrow and crooked, and her foot is burning but… Ben’s presence is here. The longing for him that lives inside her wakes, unfurls, paces. Before she even comes before it, the door opens and Ben looks like he had the night she’d touched his hand; youngest of the Knights of Ren. He’s tall and strong, with a softness to his expressions that means the only way to truly frighten anyone is by putting on a mask. He is dressed for solitude and quiet, with no armour, in a soft black shirt and loose trousers.
“Vicrul commed, said you were hurt,” he says. “Come inside. Sit.” She does, sets down her bag and watches warily as Ben folds himself to crouch low, zeroing in on her foot.
His hand slips Rey’s burnt boot off in one motion, revealing the streak of the blaster burn across the top. The bacta has greatly soothed the burn and kept the edges from being too raw, but the skin’s not had time to knit. Ben, kneeling before her, cradles Rey’s arch in both hands. The gentleness and care in his touch are like a deep secret.
Almost the whole galaxy thinks that Ben Solo is dead, but Rey knows otherwise. Ben Solo is here and now, and he focuses, breathes, and shares his Life force with her, making her body whole again. Rey remembers the feeling of repairing a broken gear, soldering a frayed connection, and knows it when it passes across his face.
“Your men sent me here,” she says. “What do they know about us?”
He lets go of her foot at that. It’s mostly-healed now. A ragged red line over the top, too familiar. Now they’re both scarred.
“They know that I think about you too much.”
His hand tugs at his hair, and she can see the way he surges for a moment with frustration and loathing that drags him through life, like a beast on a leash. “One of them will use a staff in the sparring room, try to fight like you. They think they’re doing me a favour.”
Rey sees it, as if she’s there on the mats with them. Ben can deny himself anything, but he’ll still want it. His longing burns like a flare on the floor of a cave. All of them can see it, because they have the Force, and they know him in more everyday ways, too. She could feel a piece of him with them, in the alley, because they carry each other, in the way brothers do.
“Oh, Ben. I think about you all the time.” She takes off her other boot and pretends it is so that she can rub the top of her hurt foot with the bottom of her perfect one. It feels simple, suddenly, to just be honest. She doesn’t have to quote him a text, or try to be a Jedi, just as he doesn’t have to pretend he rules over her. Here, in this sun-dusted room, they can just be Ben and Rey. Their weapons and titles are dropped and set aside.
“You don’t.” He brushes his fingertips along the outer edge of her arches. It tickles a little, and her toes curl in.
“I do, I think about -” She’ll show him. She leans down and puts her lips on his, parted enough to feel his breath. Rey’s tongue darts out to touch the front of his teeth, and then retreats, a teasing promise . “The Ren takes what it wants,” she whispers. Whether she is talking to Ben or to Kylo, it doesn’t matter. She isn’t afraid of either of them.
He captures her lips, sucks on the bottom one, his hands clutching her face as if he’s afraid she’ll pull back, but Rey isn’t going to. Her mouth opens to him and their tongues meet, the wet slide of the muscle so intimate and urgent, it makes her ache. She wants his big hands all over her, she wants to end this long yearning burn that has been hurting them both. They save each other, they put each other in peril, they choose opposite sides, they betray themselves.
“Leave that outside,” Ben whispers to Rey. “For now. Please.”
Wide-eyed and awed is the way he’s looking at her. He’s been jabbed with poison, and she has the last life-saving vial.
Rey’s breath pulls in, fills her chest. All things flow from the same source, she thinks. All things are one. “Come to bed with me,” she says, rising from the chair where he’d bid her sit, undoing her belt. It falls into a figure-eight on the floor.
With the next steps, Rey unravels the sand-coloured wraps on her body. She pulls the drawstring on her leggings. She sheds the stretchy band of fabric that holds her breasts. The bed is big enough for two adults, the sheets cool from being in the shade, and clean. Rey sits at the edge, watching Ben come to her, his chest bare, like hers. He drapes his trousers on a bench, big and hard in his basics. When he’s standing before her, Rey takes his hand, choosing his first two fingers and guiding them to brush her nipple. They both watch it harden and flush, then she kisses his wrist, and does the same to her other breast.
“We’re one in the Force,” she says softly.
“That means I’m tainting you, aren’t I,” Ben murmurs. She doesn’t like the angle of his mouth like this, she wants him to soften it, and use it on her body.
“Nothing about you is strange to me,” Rey tells him. She grasps his fingers again, and puts them in her mouth, sucking and looking right at him while she draws them out. “I know you,” a kiss on his palm. “I trust you,” she kisses him again, right next to his navel, and he flinches. “I want you near.”
When she looks up at him again, there are tears. “How could I deserve this?” Ben is asking, and she can’t tell if it is with his voice or just in his mind, so loud that she can’t shut it out.
“Does it matter?” Rey says. “I’ve made my choice. I choose you. Do you trust me?”
For a moment, it is as if she’s watching herself through his gaze, the waning sunlight making motes dance around her hair, her eyes the colour of an ocean that sustains uncountable life.
“I believe you more than I have ever believed anyone,” he says.
She rolls over, crawls up the bed so that he can join her, and hears him exhale, long and low, at the sight of her ass.
“Can I have you like that?” Ben asks, she can hear his smile and it makes her head feel like it’s full of tibanna.
“Yes,” Rey says simply. Yanking and scrambling at two pillows, she settles on them, pulls her knees up underneath her body, feels herself spread open and stick to her basics. She’s so wet, she wants Ben to mount her right now, to penetrate and push in and rub every inch of her until she can’t remember being empty. She lets out a little moan at the thought, and then another one when Ben grabs the fabric covering her sex and pulls it down her thighs. Rey helps until they’re on one ankle, and then forgets about them because Ben’s hot seeking mouth is on her, his nose between her cheeks and his tongue lapping her pussy with hungry strokes. She’s melting, she’s frozen meiloorun cream on a sunburnt landspeeder, she’s resisting the urge to squirm because the way Ben grips her thighs is perfect pressure. He nudges down and under and flicks at her clit, two, three times, and then Rey screams because the climax takes her by surprise. Her stomach flutters with warmth and a ghost of contentment, but it also makes the ache inside her worse.
“Inside me, I want you inside,” she pleads. He sits up, and she thinks she can hear him touching himself. “I have an implant, I want you bare.”
“Tell me if I hurt you,” Ben says while he settles behind her. She feels the hair of his body lightly brushing her ass, the tender backs of her thighs, and it’s comforting. The head of his cock is hot and velvety when it swipes over her inner lips, adding his wetness to hers. Ben nuzzles it to her opening, working it in with one hand, making her stretch for him. She clenches around it, trying to pull it in, and when he finally rests his hand on her ass and pushes until he’s root-deep, she moans louder than she ever has, right into the pillows that smell like laundry soap and rainwater. This is what Rey has dreamt of in secret; giving everything to Ben and taking everything he has. He leans over, covers Rey’s back, making them both move their legs. His mouth settles and works at the nape of her neck, and he grinds on her hard, heavy and big on top of Rey. His throbbing cock inside feels like the answer to her ache, and she moans a soft Yes, revelling in the feeling of his balls dragging against her nakedness. Ben’s hands ruche the sheets near her ear, he says “Oh, gods,” and begins to pump his hips in a rhythm that somehow matches their panting breaths. The ridge of his cockhead teases her perfectly, and through her own breathless rapture Rey can feel his heart pounding, like this. It beats against her back, it’s like a drum that is playing just for her, and only she can know what it means. Ben’s teeth graze her skin and he grunts his pleasure in her ear, laughs breathlessly when she squeezes at him again.
“You’re going to make me come,” Ben growls, and it makes Rey press her hips down and grind a bit so that her clit brushes on the pillow beneath her. She mischievously clenches while he’s pulling back and relaxes when he thrusts, so that it’s like she’s sucking him. Ben grips her hip bones, pulling them like reins, and arches his back, pressing their bodies together tightly, so tight that it feels like they’re one animal now. One breath, one drop of sweat, one skin. He fills her, hot spurts that go on and on while he shudders. The sounds he’s making are like desperation, like gratitude, there are no words, but Rey doesn’t need any. She already knows how he feels. For a moment she’s worried that this oneness will fade after he’s come, but he kisses her shoulder blade, says, “I love how strong you are,” and stays nestled inside, not as rampant and hard, but still erect. Ben’s strong forearms slide under Rey, exploring her belly, her softest skin, and his fingers pet and part the sweaty curls between her legs. He rubs her clit in circles and swirls, fast or slow as she asks him, and only slips out when she comes.
After, when he’s pouring them both some water from the carafe, and Rey’s ass is recovering from the coldness of the seat in the fresher when she peed, she sees the mirror on one side of the room. Everything they did, Ben was watching it from another angle.
“Did you see my face, when I came on your hand?” She asks him over the rim of the drinking glass.
“Yes,” He sighs, almost smug. “It was beautiful.”
She’s waiting for him when he lies down; she pounces and pins his hips and licks his cock through his basics, which makes it pulse and twitch. Rey blows on the wet spot from her saliva, and Ben goes so hard so fast, he feels dizzy.
“I need to see your face now,” Rey tells him. “I’m going to be on top.”
Ben looks beautiful when he comes, too. She tells him that, still perched on his body, her muscles tired from riding, and his mind when she touches it is swirling with she wants to know everything, so curious, so ready to try. Around those thoughts is a halo of light in the Force that she knows is called love.
Rey places a hand on Ben’s heartbeat, the heartbeat that also belongs to someone named Kylo Ren, because all things come from the same source, and all things are one. “I know,” is what she says.
~*~
Ben is a long stroke of ink against the purple morning sky of the planet as Rey watches him from the window at the inn. He’s dressed in his tabard again, and his cloak. Seeing him so formally dressed feels odd. Rey wants to see him in flying clothes. Ben’s position standing at the top of the hill creates an illusion that makes it look like the Knights of Ren rise from nowhere to surround him. She can’t hear them, obviously, but their stances say everything. They focus on him, listening and attentive behind their masks. After a moment, he gives Rey the hand signal, two fingers straight up and then one to the right, and she grabs her satchel. The lightsaber is inside it; no need to draw attention. The stairs to the street level are easy on her foot now, the skin only a bit tight from the scar. As they walk to the Night Buzzard at the docks, the Knights encircle Rey and Ben like an honour guard.
“I should probably comm ahead and tell the Resistance that we’re coming,” Rey says, hooking an arm around Ben’s wrist. Ahead of them, the sunrise breaks, casting every ship below in glinting light. She looks back over her shoulder and makes eye contact with the one who had spoken the day before. “Hey, “ she asks, smiling at his frozen expression. “How good are you guys at making new friends?”