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Ties

Chapter 5: Ring

Author's note: Sorry for the delay! I had a hectic summer, but don't worry, the final chapter is here now for your reading pleasure. Yes, final - originally I intended for there to be two but I sort of merged them together here and I think it works better overall.

This is the ending I desperately want for these two, and in my mind the best way to fairly resolve all their shared pains and pleasures. So let me know what you think! Do you like where I've left them? How do you think their story should end? Please share your thoughts, and perhaps I'll return to write more once Episode IX is finally with us.

Space was too vast, too dark, too cold. Rey stared out of the ship window with her hands clasped below her chin. She couldn't see the stars; the artificial light around her overpowered them. The expanse beyond the ship stretched on beyond all reckoning, and it contained within it everyone and everything she had ever known, or would ever know.

There was a knock at the door behind her. "Come in," she called.

Finn entered, jumpy and excitable. "We'll be landing in a few hours," was all he said before rushing on to inform the rest of the crew.

Rey pushed herself away from the window, eyes still fixed on what was beyond. Her stomach wouldn't stop doing flips. Was she ready? Would she ever be ready?

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.

Kylo Ren was looking out of the ship window. He could not see the stars but he knew they were there anyway, evading his vision. He turned.

His room was sparse: a bed, a desk, a chair he never sat in. He was not here often, and when he was he spent his time mainly training or deep in thought. Today his thoughts did not flow like a smooth river, like they were supposed to. Today they were a torrent. She was on his mind, strong and delicate, a contradiction he wanted to throw himself into.

When time crystallised and she appeared he was ready. She was sat on his bed, looking like temptation or redemption or maybe both.

"Hello," she said.

There was silence between them, spread thick like a blanket. He stood with arms folded tight across his chest. She watched and waited. She liked seeing him like this, natural, not trying to impress or terrify anyone, with an emotion written across his face that she suspected she alone could read.

Rey allowed herself to relax. She wanted the instinct to overcome her, she did not want to think, she wanted to be free of inhibition. She wanted to say the words that needed to be said. Either there was meaning to her madness or she was driven by pure emotion, but the line had become blurred in her mind.

She waited for him to move, to speak, to do anything, so she would not be first to act.

Eventually the impasse broke. He walked towards the bed and looked down at her on the edge of it. Brown eyes latched onto hers. Her mind rushed with a hundred absurd scenarios. The yearning couldn't grow any stronger she thought, and yet there it was, blossoming like a flower in the desert. Each day she was learning something new about her body, her head, her heart. She felt a shiver run across the surface of her skin.

He sighed deep and low, a sigh he seemed to have been holding within him for who knows how long. Years, maybe. Then he eased himself onto his bed so he was sat beside her.

Rey focused on breathing, on the heat of her body. Ben was here beside her, she could feel him. Kylo Ren had retreated somewhere for now, but she could not say if it was for good. Despite that, she wasn't afraid. Something was happening. The future no longer terrified her. It was like staring down the barrel of her life and being ready for the impact. Whatever happened would be what was meant to happen.

She took his hand.

They sat, for a while, in the silence of their uncommon company. Ben knew that battleships, troops and power awaited him outside of this link between them. It still called to him like a drumbeat, like a low yearning. But maybe he was starting to feel the power in other things too, in the hand grasping his own and the strange, addictive comfort she brought him.

It was too much for him that she was here. It was too much that the universe was allowing this, encouraging it, nurturing it. How else was he supposed to feel? Rey had snuck into his life and taken root there. And now he didn't want things any other way.

He remembered so many eyes full of fear, fear until it was overflowing, terror until it was a river. Was that true power? Or was true power the tenderness he saw now in the eyes of the one sitting beside him? It felt like a riddle no amount of training would help him solve. The answer was a whirlpool burrowing its way into his heart.

There was so much to say but he couldn't find the way to say it, couldn't sense for the meaning hidden behind the raw emotion. It was good just to be here, to leave the words behind and let their skin do the talking. Words had failed him so many times. Here with Rey, he felt free from their thrall. She squeezed his hand tighter and in a rush of certainty he felt as if he could withstand any amount of pain, of doubt, of anxiety, for a moment like this.

"I'm still hoping all of this will... work out," Rey said quietly, turning to face him. She let out the smallest of laughs, a brief, uncertain thing. "I must be mad."

Kylo shook his head. She was hope made real, a wish turned into flesh and bone. She believed things that were impossible to anyone else, and in doing so she made him believe them too. Everything had been too stark before. He saw the world now in a swathe of colours, light and dark, deep and subtle. Rey had given him that. It was like he had been seeing only in monochrome before, and could never return to those desolate days.

Now was the time. This felt right, unlike the many wrong things Ben had done in his life. In her eyes there was a universe brimming with possibility, flecked with the past and the future. It was sitting on the cusp of reality. It could go either way, it could be made or unmade in the next few seconds. "Come with me," he said. "I want to show you something."

He pulled her to her feet so they were both standing, hands still clasped.

Ben met her gaze and felt his heart give way in his chest. They were light years apart, on different ships in different sectors of the galaxy, but when they looked into each other's eyes like this all the distance fell away. Ben was sure of what he needed to do. He allowed himself to give Rey a crooked smile, which she returned with curiosity. Then he closed his eyes.

For a few moments nothing happened: they were still standing there, hand in hand, Rey feeling like she could drown in the suspense. Then Ben's brows began to furrow deep in concentration. She could hear his breathing, slow and measured. She felt something changing around her, or perhaps it was just her perception. The inside of the Falcon shook and melted away. In its place was green in every direction, a forest of trees thick and yet also full of light. She thought she could smell headiness on the breeze: soil and water, dry and damp.

They were utterly alone.

Ben opened his eyes.

"What have you done?" Rey asked, in shock.

"I'm making things easy for both of us," he said, and let go of her hands. She was scared the illusion would vanish, but it didn't. He fixed her with eyes as calm as the forest and dark as the shadows between the trees. "It's time for us to decide, Rey."

She couldn't look at him yet, so she turned and peered over her shoulder, taking in the fullness of this place that they weren't.

"Is it real?" she said as she turned back. He knew what she meant.

"A dream of a hundred places I once knew. It's as real as both of us here, together and yet apart."

She was afraid of the energy he must be exerting to conjure it all up, but he didn't seem tired. Not yet. He was still looking at her like he would never need to look at anything else ever again.

"You have to pick a side," he said, almost tenderly.

Rey felt the flare of anger and knew how easy it would be to embrace it. But this time she breathed, deeply, and let it pass. This wasn't about picking sides. It never had been.

"No," she said.

Then she stepped closer and looked him straight in the face, like she was seeing him for the first time. Ben Solo. He did look tired now, worn around the eyes, as if from too many restless nights and too much unconfronted pain. He had a nice nose, she realised, and kind eyes. She wondered if this person had always been growing underneath the hate and lies, just waiting for the moment to be free.

Light and dark. The Jedi and the First Order. Life and death, hope and despair, creation and ruin.

The distinctions were built tall in their heads, but they swept away as easily as sand.

To live was to be dying; to hope was to understand despair. Rey saw it now. She was nobody, she was nothing, and she was everything. And so was he.

The forest around them was slipping from sight like a cloud of smoke. In its place came nothingness, a void of every shade and every colour all at once, that felt like every memory they had ever had and every place they had ever been. It was connected to everything, moving through everything, unseen and unheard but recognised in the soul of every living thing without hesitation. They were floating, and their hands were clasped again.

"There is one path," said Rey. "There has only ever been one path. And we have to walk it together. Do you see?"

They turned their heads and both saw the same thing: a shining ring of light slipping away into the future, a disc beckoning them forward.

Attraction like a magnetic field tugged at them from within. A feeling of sinking and floating simultaneously, of two mighty forces equaled by the strength of the other, of perfect balance. He had always been tired of the past; she had always been drawn to it. Now for the first time, for both of them, it felt unreal, unimportant, a fleeting dream in comparison to the future they could see stretching out before them.

If this is how it's to end, I want us to choose it together. There are things I no longer want, paths I no longer wish to tread, realities I no longer wish to see. Maybe this is how it feels when the future opens up to you and you see clearly the way through the fog of your life.

If she chooses me like I choose her...

If he chooses me like I choose him...

Then we'll know. It's too much to ask, and not enough. It's everything and nothing. Together we'll change it all and return it to what it always was. We'll remake the universe.

They allowed themselves one final look at each other, a look shot through with longing and heavy with desire. It would be so easy to succumb right here, right now, to the immediacy of each other. But what they wanted was more than the pleasure of immediacy. It was the bliss of eternity.

It was not that there was no decision to be made. Rather, it had already been made - how long ago? - maybe decades, maybe centuries. They were here now to play their parts, to fulfil an inevitable truth no less exquisite for its inevitability. It was a law of the universe. It was a rule of their hearts. It was time.

They walked. The light engulfed them, and their shadows were as large as their bodies.

Rey felt herself on another plane, stepping off the Falcon to become who she was meant to be. Ben felt himself leaving his room, entering his new life, shedding the old like snakeskin. The road ahead was not an easy one, but easy interested neither of them. They wanted what nobody else dared imagine: a future without suffering, without sides, without a force to be split one way or another but utterly all-encompassing. They wanted harmony, and now, they saw the smallest spark of a chance. A chance that would grow into an inferno big enough to consume all of existence.

The next time they would meet - no matter how many years might pass or how many battles it might take - it would be for real, in their own skins and on their own terms. He would take her in his arms and she would melt into his body, two lips entwined into one, and the universe would implode along with them. Nothing would ever be the same. Because they were together. Because they were tied.