Her first thought was that she couldn't possibly carry him. He was twice her size, limp and awkward, solid as a rock and heavy as a boulder. The journey to the ship seemed an impossible distance to bear even her own weight, but she hadn't spent her entire life scavenging to leave behind the one treasure she'd always wanted most. She'd decided she'd do it whether it was possible or not even before rational thought kicked in and she remembered she had the Force.

"Hang on, Ben," she muttered into his shoulder as she leveraged him up into a sitting position. He'd passed out completely and a sizeable part of her was shriveling in on itself in terrified despair, but there was nothing Rey was better at than compartmentalising despair into a locked container in the deepest corner of her mind. "I've got you. Don't worry, Ben, I've got you."

She couldn't stop talking to him even though he couldn't hear her, and the more she spoke to him, the more she used his name. It was as if all the conversations she'd ever wished she could have in her life were bubbling up and pouring out, all the little longings for a name to call, a person whose private signifier always belonged in her mouth: intimate and knowing. It was as if all the moments she'd wanted to reach out to him were pulsing beneath her tongue, demanding release, like she could make up for the years and years that no one had. Like she could make up for his own name being forbidden to him.

"You're not alone," she told him, and saying it made her throat close with the threat of tears. "You'll never be alone again, Ben. I'm here. I'm here."

It took hours. She'd had to support him physically with her hand around his back- his head lolling against hers as she draped his arm across her shoulders- and drag them forward on her own two feet while using all of her focus in the Force to actually lift his weight. It left her shaking with effort and her brain fried, but they were back at the ship now. It was not built for two, especially when one of the two was as big as he was, but being seated pressed against him, his chest at her back and his legs running alongside hers, was actually wonderful. He was very warm and his warmth seemed to envelop her entire being from every side; she could feel the movement of his every breath, he was alive.

"I'm taking you home, Ben."

Rey didn't know many pet names or which ones might be appropriate for her to use, but she couldn't help thinking that even if she did it would be very difficult to find one as sweet and satisfying to say as his name. She had felt his relief, his recognition and regret when she called him and his true self answered. When his buried, guarded, suffering soul leapt up and knew it had been seen. He was so happy to hear his name spoken without scorn- she knew, could sense- it had been so painful, but so right to finally hear it again.

He fretted behind her, perhaps roused by the focus of her thoughts in his direction, and she reached up without looking to touch the side of his face with the backs of her fingers. His skin was so soft and touching it made her knuckles tingle in a way she'd never felt before, and for a moment her mind went blank under the intensity of the sensation.

She had to concentrate or she was going to pass out too. Rey had never been pushed to such an edge of her endurance, and that was saying something. The gnawing, single-minded slowness of starvation hardly compared to this jittery exhaustion, weariness encroaching on adrenaline like a rolling sandstorm eclipsing a searing afternoon sun. Her nerves burned, her eyes ached, her limbs were heavy.

Still. She patted Ben's hair and greedily considered its silkiness, tucking away the thought of running her fingers through it freely and for as long as she wanted. He had let her, when he was awake and she had finally kissed him, he had allowed her to touch his cheek and his hair and he'd looked at her with such… he was so beautiful. Rey's heart clenched and she wanted to turn around so she could see him, to reassure herself, but there was no droid to help her fly the ship and the moment the rest of her adrenaline ran out she would be in trouble.

"Just a little longer," she whispered to herself. "Just wait a little longer."

She was good at waiting.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

Her landing was less than graceful. The landing gear had been sheared off and they slid to a hard stop against a rocky outcropping and some huge trees. The minor whiplash finally snapped the frayed thread by which Rey's grip on consciousness was hanging and blackness descended.

When she woke, there was a blaster levelled just above her face with the business end aimed at something right over her shoulder and the sunlight was streaking in through the canopy of trees, shaded a twilight orange.

"Hey-!" she mumbled, confused and unable to snap to attention the way she usually would, her body as sluggish to respond as if it were submerged in sand up to her neck. Her head was swimming.

"Rey, I think that's… I think you have…" Poe's voice was steady and taking on that immoveable righteous quality which meant he was about to decide The Only Course of Action any right-thinking person could possibly take and impose it on the situation with reckless abandon.

"Stop right now," she ordered quietly, grabbing his wrist and pointing the gun away from the cockpit. "Stop thinking, stop-"

"Rey, I think that's Kylo R-"

"Rey!" Finn's voice carried from down the ladder, getting closer, "Rey! Let me see-!"

"Everything stops now," Rey said in a warning tone she didn't think left room for argument. She could sense Ben's mind surfacing, feel his pain and confusion building as awareness trickled in and her tense mental state drifted across their bond. He shifted in distress.

Poe's eyes widened hugely at the movement and he leaned into the cockpit to grab at Rey's shoulder and push the blaster under Ben's chin.

Her reaction times were shot or it would never have gotten that far, but things being what they were, she shoved Poe almost off the ladder when she managed to get her hands on him. "Don't touch him! No one touches him. Get me a medical droid right now."

"Rey!" Finn's face appeared over the lip of the broken windscreen, first relieved and then visibly dropping with his dawning horror. "That's-!"

"I know!" Poe snapped, clutching his hand where she'd smashed it against the X-wing's strut.

"Both of you will be quiet and one of you will get me a med droid." It wasn't a mind trick because she didn't have the will, but it had the force of one from her icy stare alone. In spite of these clear instructions, neither man moved and neither man shut up.

"What are you doing with him, Rey?"

"I'm asking you, nicely, to-" Her aggressive jerk forwards jostled Ben's definitely broken ribs and he made a tiny gasp of pain. She turned immediately and cupped his face in both hands, her voice trembling as she spoke to him, "Ben? I'm so sorry, flower, I'm sorry. You're safe now. You're waking up and I'm with you. I'm with you, Ben, and you're not alone."

If she had a spare fragment of energy left to be embarrassed or self-conscious, she would have deeply regretted the spontaneous endearment she'd just made up. Perhaps it was silly, perhaps it was inappropriate, perhaps she definitely didn't want any part of this to be in front of Finn or Poe or anyone else. But in her years of waiting on Jakku, the years of blurred sameness filled with the blinding monotone of shifting dunes, the years without colour or life or softness, the finding of a desert flower had been unspeakably precious to her. She'd kept them, every one, long after they were dry husks and only a fragile reminder of what they once were. And he was precious to her as they had been, a spark of kinship in an enormous, uncaring landscape filled with bleak expectation; it was an order of magnitude more powerful version of the same tender feeling.

He responded to her touch, moaning very softly as his eyelids fluttered. Rey could hear shuffling and whispers from Poe and Finn but they could have ceased to exist for all the attention she was willing to pay them in this moment.

"Rey?" Ben's voice, rusty and pained but unmistakable. Deep and soothing.

"I'm here, I'm here." She was helpless to say anything else.

His eyes opened to look at her, brighter than she'd ever seen them before, the sunlight showing golds and greens where she'd thought they were just dark, and her own eyes filled with tears.

"Are you all right?" he asked instantly, his gaze sweeping over her with concern.

She nodded, sharply, chewing at her cheek to keep from sobbing. She pushed up on her knees at the edge of the seat so she could press her face to his, feel the warm skin of his cheek against hers and the tickling of his breath in her hair. "I'm fine. We're safe."

Ben was probing at their connection, seeking reassurance that everything really was all right, and she embraced his presence in a way which seemed to throw open a floodgate between them and allowed sensations and emotions to flow like a torrent from each mind to the other. His arms came around her in response, holding her tightly.

"We're alive and I love you," she couldn't seem to stop herself from saying, whispering it into his hair, hiccuping on her words as the tears streamed down her face. "I love you."

"I love you, too," he whispered back and feeling the vibration of the words through his sternum made her shiver with delight.

She was crying too hard to speak now, so she wrapped him in her arms and sobbed into his neck. She tried to keep her grip gentle, fighting the urge to clutch him with all her strength. She'd waited what felt like a hundred lifetimes to hear those words, first from anyone and then only from him. She'd tried so hard to be patient, she'd tried so hard to keep faith and live in hope, and in the end she hadn't managed patience but at least the moment had come.

At least she had this and would always have this. No one could take it from her.

By the time she'd gathered her wits and her storming emotions, Ben's hold on her had gone slack as he slipped into a healing sleep. The joy and contentment radiating from her mind had blocked out worry so completely that he felt too safe to stay awake, blissed out on her ultimate happiness. She'd done it. She'd saved him.

The sounds of an ongoing argument drifted up from the pair standing somewhere below her crashed ship.

"Well, he must have done something to her!"

"They can't mind trick each other, that makes no sense! You'd go back and forth forever like mind control hot potato!"

"You don't know how the Force works!"

"Neither do you!"

Finn's offended huff almost made her laugh but she decided she couldn't afford to let her guard down. Ben's safety was at stake and she'd promised him it'd be okay, she'd impressed upon his mind that he didn't need to worry or stay vigilant and no one was going to make her a liar.

She popped her head up out of the ship, slapping her hands down on the edge of the cockpit to make a sound as she pushed herself up to alert them to her presence.

"Rey!" Finn called, surprised and uncertain, looking a little like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't be.

"I'm not under mind control," she said flatly.

"What about torture?" Poe suggested, obviously fielding his personal theory. "He tortured you before."

"He never tortured me."

"You were interrogated, we were torture buddies, you told us-"

"I was interrogated, I wasn't tortured. He can look in your thoughts, he can't rewrite them. Well, he can't rewrite mine, anyway. The books say you can temporarily cloud the thinking of the weak-minded, but it doesn't work on Force-aware people."

The two men looked at each other. Poe said, "That's the Jedi, though. What about the Sith?"

"He's not a Sith."

"What is he, then?"

"He's Ben Solo."

Finn shook his head and Poe's face screwed up in confusion. "But-"

"He's more qualified to call himself a Jedi than I'll ever be if that's what he wants, but for now he's Ben Solo, General Organa's son, and he saved my life."

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

He was half awake as they brought him into camp on a hovering medical gurney and Rey was so caught up in enjoying the companionship of his groggy consciousness at the edge of her mind that she barely caught the distinctive sounds of hydraulics and clattering metal limbs before 3P0 staggered to an abrupt halt beside her. She knew it was impossible, but she felt like she could read the shock on his unmoving hard cast features.

Ben was much the worse for wear and the delicate skin around his eyes was bruised with fatigue, but he was an absolute vision, the most gorgeous thing she'd ever seen when he smiled at the astonished protocol droid. It was only the second time she'd seen him smile and she thought it would be quite a long while before she stopped counting, before she didn't individually notice and mark something so important, hoarding the number in a secret place in her heart. If she ever did.

"Hey, Trois," he said, privately amused. She sensed a memory from him, of being a toddler who couldn't quite master the pronunciation of droid's name and 3P0's constant, unrelenting corrections with his full title. The little boy who kept using his babytalk nickname long after he'd mastered his plosives, just to provoke the familiar exasperated speech. The fondness he felt was touched with pain. There was nothing he held dear untouched by regret. She would change that.

"Master Ben! Your Highness!" 3PO spluttered, completely flabbergasted. Rey's head whipped around to stare at him.

"Oh, 3PO, come on, we used to talk about saying that in front of-"

"Your Highness?" Rey repeated, turning her incredulous gaze on Ben.

Ben's cheeks flushed, even his exposed clavicle becoming rosy with embarrassment. "You know my mother's a princess, right? Human cyborg relations was always a stickler for protocol in spite of her best efforts. Can't imagine why."

She was speechless. Then she grinned so hard her face ached. "Don't worry, I'll make sure everyone in camp is up to date on the correct address. Your Highness."

"You won't."

Rey took his questing hand and kissed his knuckles, leaning over the gurney to rest her forehead against his. "I probably won't have to with 3P0 around, but I am going to tell them who you are. Everyone. Anyone who will listen. I'm going to tell them the truth about you."

"And what's the truth, Rey?" He sounded distant but she could feel the ache of doubt in his heart, like a callous, like a bad habit.

"That Ben Solo was so full of the Light, the most powerful darkness the galaxy has ever seen couldn't snuff it out." She kissed his temple and the heat of his skin sent an electric pulse through her lips and down into her chest. Tightness gathered under her ribs and she wanted to touch him more, to keep him forever.

"Oh my," CP0 announced when her mouth lingered, as if gradually realising he was being scandalised again.

Ben laughed and her heart fluttered at the sound. She'd never imagined him laughing, had no idea what it would be like. It was like water after a week of thirst, it was like rain. She stared at him, starry eyed, and he shook his head before finally returning her gaze.

"As is tradition," he said and laughed again. She didn't know what he was talking about but she had never been so happy in her life and she hoped that could be their new tradition.