The silence in his head was overwhelming.

No Snoke.

No Rey.

Just him.

He hadn't had time to notice the silence in the aftermath of waking up without Rey to a murderous Hux, and the events on Crait.

But now he was alone, the stormtroopers having cleared out, Rey having shut him out. Gifted/cursed as he was with mindreading through the Force there was a normal background hum that came with thousands of people in close proximity on a destroyer class ship, but that was gone.

He'd faced Luke Skywalker, who had stolen for years what little sleep would come to him after Snoke's torments ended each day. He'd felt his former master die, hoping the deeply planted fear of him would vanish with his life force.

And no Rey. Bereft but not surprised, he knew how unworthy he was of sharing consciousness with her. She'd shut him out for a reason.

Autonomy was a new beast roving through his head, and his ambitions were now to be his own. He had just seen what he would do if given power, and clearly he was not to be trusted with it. His mother had been correct to divert him away from official roles.

That left him, just him the person. What did he want?

He wanted to be whole.

He'd provisioned his shuttle and taken it out in the confusion of reloading AT-AT and heavy equipment onto the star destroyer.

He chose a direction that felt right, setting no coordinates, and letting the hyperdrive engines run full steam for hours.

Tatooine came up on his control panel, and he accepted it. If that was what needed to happen, he'd go back to the beginning of the Skywalker story.

Letting the Force guide him, he landed his ship in the Western Dune Sea in the early morning light, far from the nearest settlement. Hood up over his head to protect from the elements, he disembarked with no other concern for his safety. It was novel.

The Force drew him to a building, a synstone hut that showed signs of being long abandoned. He swept sand from the door, and put his hand to the lock. He could feel that the most delicate use of the Force would allow him entrance, meant to prevent scavengers from picking the place clean.

A quick scan once he'd entered told him that he would have everything he needed while he was in his self-imposed exile, thanks to its previous inhabitant. Some equipment was in need of repair, but he had a mental repository of mechanical knowledge that didn't belong to him to draw upon.

He half-expected the legendary Force ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi himself to appear here in the last living space of the last fully trained Jedi to haunt the monstrous supreme leader of the First Order. In this hut both men became simply Ben.

But there was nothing, no ghosts, and that was the moment he could truly feel the enormity of the silence in his head.

Like the thinnest blade had been dragged across his throat, he couldn't breathe, he knew he was dying. Darkness was swallowing him, his lifeblood was pouring straight out of his fractured soul. He fell to the floor, unconscious.

When he awoke the twin suns were high, and his body ached with loss.

Mother.

The last stone had fallen, the last tether to his old life. He had felt her passing. There was only Rey now, the other half of his being, the light to his dark, and his unworthiness of her.

He allowed himself to feel his pain, letting it drown him in wave after wave of rage and tears, alone in the desert.

Days turned into weeks, and he grew to appreciate his new home. Obi-Wan Kenobi had spent nineteen years learning to live with his grief and failure, and Ben Solo would wear that mantle for as long as it took him as well.

XXXXXX

The screaming had ended.

It had been an especially painful phase, but beneficial in the end. Cathartic, though harder on the body than the long weeks of being catatonic, of tears and bargaining, of rationalizing and making wild plans that would never come to be, of setting fire to the very sand until it melted into glass, shattering the glass into razor sharp winds that would sweep away the scrubby plants that dared grow.

For the past few days whenever the pain overwhelmed him he'd let it loose and raw, gut wrenching screams that tore apart his voice and helped release the pain.

There, while he was lying flat on his back in the nothingness of the desert, blinded by the brilliant sunset he shared with no one, voicing his regrets to the void, he felt the first peep of Rey's presence. It was like she'd opened the door that she'd slammed shut by just enough to peek at what he was up to, and then swiftly close it back up.

Left alone to do nothing else, he'd become familiar with the dark recesses of his mind, places he'd once labelled there be dragons and avoided.

He found the door Rey had shut, found it closed and secured like she'd shifted all her mental furniture against it. If he concentrated, he was sure that now that he'd located it, he could blast right through it into her mind. But he wouldn't.

Routine followed routine. Evening mealtime came and he prepared the same meagre rations as every night.

He broke his bread, thinking not for the first time of the food Rey ate as a slave, of what his grandfather's meals had been like as a slave on this very planet.

One time he had admired, worshipped Darth Vader's ambition, but older and potentially wiser, he wondered how many times older Anakin would have prayed to change his exalted place in the Empire with any slave who broke bread with his beloved every night.

After a lifetime of Snoke grooming him into monstrosity, there were few things he could do to make amends for his actions. There was still time with Rey, and only Rey.

If he could sit by her side and share his simple meal with her, her companionship would be valued higher than anything he'd had, real or perceived.

The second phase of his life on Tattoine began that night, as he moved from the howl to the preparation. He must make himself ready to rejoin Rey in any capacity she would have him. They had been separated for nearly a year.

She would demand answers from him that he must be ready to provide. He must be honest, humble, and without expectation of forgiveness or understanding. He must not rely on her compassion, but her patience and reason. He knew enough of Rey to know that while she could be a loving person, her heart alone did not rule her.

That night also marked the first of the dreams.

After his arrival on Tattoine his nightmares had faded as his subconscious accepted his isolation as protection. He no longer fought drifting into helpless sleep, fearing his murderous uncle would take the opportunity to snuff out an evil he had not embraced. He no longer woke himself from dreams, afraid Snoke would view his deepest desires.

Sleep was his own now, and for months he'd laid himself down at night and woken refreshed in the morning. He hoped Rey had been able to do the same, remembering her exhaustion and anxiety.

Tonight, however, there was a dream, but it wasn't his own.

There was a rocking sensation that took him time to remember. He'd felt it as a child when he'd spent the day in a small boat, and then lay down for bed, only to find his mind still thought he was gently tipping back and forth.

Rey dreamed of a chain of dozens of tiny islands connected by small clear lakes. Enormous trees circles the mirror bright water. She was alternating paddling across the lakes, portaging across the island, over and over as the sun rose and fell. In her dream she sought the night, like it would come after just the next step, just the next shoreline. When darkness finally came she wrapped herself in a heavy black cloak and leaned against the trunk of an ancient pine and slept. She'd rouse, look around, and drop out of the dream as if she had woke herself.

Ben knew those dreams, dreams where you dreamed of sleep and then upon discovering you had achieved it, feared it. It's how his every dream had been until this year.

Why is Rey afraid to sleep? Is she worried about me intruding?

Her defenses against him did appear to be weakening. Out of respect he made no effort to communicate with her first, but the dreams began to crack through to moments during the day when she'd slip, and he'd see the her paddling or moving foot over foot across the mossy undergrowth of the forest, canoe on her back.

This kept up for a week. He felt her absolute exhaustion, her hunger. Her distress pained him. Something inside her was worse than the unmet needs of her body. Finally, one morning she didn't move from her modest camp.

Ben lay in the bath up to his ears, soaking off a furious set of exercises that had left him sore.

"Kylo? Ben?" he heard softly in the air around him. Rey's voice was hesitant, polite, distant. She'd only lowered her barrier a small amount, but it allowed him to feel how much energy it cost her to keep it up. It was only strength of will that she'd managed it so long.

A surge of emotion rose in him at the sound of her voice, and it took all his newfound control to voice the words he knew he needed to say.

"I'm not ready yet, Rey. I need more time."

He felt her presence weaken, felt her hurt, but he didn't want to push her away. She was there on the edge of his consciousness, reachable but not invasive.

He wiped his face with wet hands, feeling skin on skin, hoping he'd made them right decision, hoping she'd wait just this bit longer.

During the days of the next week he walked in the hot sun, cloaked in the pale brown robes he'd begun wearing from Kenobi's closet when his own black garments had become insufferable.

His mind worked out these final problems.

Answers. Training. Identity. Move forward. Expectations.

Sometimes he saw her before him in the desert, like a primitive hologram made of brutal orange light. She danced through forms with her staff, her brain too occupied to be controlled. Sometimes he thought she saw him, but those were the moments when she disappeared.

At sunset on the last night of his mental exile he sat cross legged on his bed. He quieted the emotions within him with the practice it had taken a year to achieve, and opened his heart.

Rey was crying.

Using an agility he had not forgotten he silently assessed her physical condition, her environment, and determined her distress to be emotional.

The weight of her exhaustion, the burden she'd been carrying of the Resistance, of Luke's death, of his mother's death, of trying to keep him out when every fibre of her being longed for him. It was breaking her. He saw her loneliness reach the point where she'd needed to communicate with him even if it cost her everything.

She wouldn't demand everyone pay that price, though, not knowing what she'd find when she reached back out to him. Her present physical isolation was for the protection of her friends. She could not reach her ship without trekking for days back through the wilderness of this untamed unnamed planet, and there was nowhere for a ship to safely land unless it could land on water. In the time since she'd left the other fighters they'd have moved on, and even if he'd wanted to extract information from her it would be obsolete.

She knew he was there, but neither spoke.

Rey sat on the forest floor, pine needles and dried leaves cushioning her, filling the air with a damp tangy scent that was strong after dry sand and sun. Her arms were crossed on her knees, her face sunk into her elbows, sobs making her gasp.

Heartbroken with her, Ben sunk down, wrapping his arms around her cloaked shoulders. It felt like electricity shot through him, not painful but enough to interrupt his pulse a beat. She allowed him to gather her in, resting her head against his sternum where she could hear the throb of his life force, steady, human, fragile like hers. It was more touch than he had known since childhood. He put a hand to the side of her face, her skin clammy from tears, her hair soft with small bits of bracken.

She cried herself out, cried herself to sleep in his arms, and in her dreams he stayed with her through the night. He owed it to her to be stronger, to support her the way she had seen him through defeating his demon. She'd been right to leave him to work out his own path after, but now it was time to be by her side.