Rey gets up early the next day before dawn has broken. Having packed the previous night, the only thing she has to do is write up a quick note to leave on her bed. It may be the coward's way out to explain where she's going, but she knows how her friends feel about Ben. If she'd told them in person, they would have either delayed her or tried to stop her from going altogether.

This is something that she's going to have to do by herself, for she's the only one to truly care what happens to Ben Solo.

The morning air is chilled, the sun still being down, and regardless of whatever else this Force planet is, Rey hopes it's at least warm. She's had enough caves and sterile starships to last a lifetime.

As she walks through the base, she passes a few Resistance members walking around on patrol, because even though the war is over, there are still bad people in the galaxy. They don't do more than nod in her direction, though, so she makes it to the hangar without any issue.

When she enters the hangar, she heads straight for the X-wing but stops short when she sees three figures are standing beside it already.

As she gets closer, she sees it's Finn, Poe, and Rose. All look sleep-deprived; however, it's Finn's appearance that confuses her the most. He seems thoroughly rattled, as if he's just witnessed something singularly horrible.

"What are you guys doing here?" Rey asks in shock, not wanting to give herself away if they're here for a completely unrelated reason. However, when she shifts her bag more behind her body, and Poe raises an eyebrow as if to say, "Seriously?" she knows it's a lost cause.

She's barely opened her mouth to defend herself when Finn explodes. "Kylo Ren? Of all people, did it have to be Kylo Ren?!"

Rey flinches at the intensity of Finn's voice. She's been at the receiving end of his anger before, but it's never been quite this strong. Her eyes grow hot, and she has to look down at the ground to compose herself. "How did you find out?"

"He came to my room a few hours ago," Finn says. Thankfully his voice has returned to a normal volume. "I thought I was just having a nightmare at first, reliving being a stormtrooper, you know? But then I realized I was awake, and he wasn't just in my imagination."

Rey's head snaps up. "You could see him?" The idea sends her mind reeling with the implications. "You're Force-sensitive?!"

Finn nods. "Now I know why yesterday I could feel another presence whenever you were around. It was him."

This must have been what Finn had wanted to tell her before in the desert of Pasaana. It's not that Rey never suspected Finn could feel more by way of the Force than the average person. There had been little things here and there to make her wonder, but with so much else going on, she'd never been able to pursue it further.

"Yeah, you're lucky that Rey's secret tops yours today buddy, or you'd be getting an earful from me," Poe says, jabbing Finn in the chest with his index finger. "This is something you share with your friends." He turns to point at Rey. "Both of you."

Finn throws up his arms. "Oh, like you shared everything with us about your past? A spice runner! I can't believe you used to smuggle drugs."

Although she's glad to have the heat off herself for a moment, Rey knows it's not fair for Poe to receive the brunt of what's meant for her. "Look, I'm sorry that you had to find out this way."

Finn shakes his head once at Poe then redirects his attention to Rey. "Kylo Ren, really?" The hurt and betrayal in his voice is like a sharp pain to her gut. "Just tell us why."

Sadly, Rey shakes her head. Her friends' reactions just confirm what she'd already thought - that they still don't believe her about Ben. "You won't understand."

"You can at least try to help us understand," Rose says gently, ever the voice of reason.

"I already have!" Rey shouts, and in the quietness of the morning, her voice reverberates throughout the hangar, sounding that much louder.

"When? When did you try to explain?" Finn demands. "Was it yesterday in your room? Maybe it was at lunch on the Falcon? Or how about when I asked you to eat supper with us? Tell me when, because I must not have been paying attention when you told us that Kylo Ren was back and walking around our base."

"Ben," Rey corrects quietly. That more than anything else he's said up until this point is the one thing she won't let go. "His name is Ben, not Kylo Ren."

Finn's expression softens into what Rey can only interpret as... sympathy. "Rey, you can't really believe someone who's murdered so many people can change, just like that."

But he did change! Rey wants to scream. You weren't there but I saw it! I felt it!

She knows further yelling won't get them anywhere, though, so she takes a deep breath and tries a different approach. "I never explained before, how it felt to be tempted by the dark side."

None of her friends speak, but all of their eyes are on her, and she knows, at last, she has their attention.

"Not only were my dreams haunted by visions of the Sith throne, but every waking moment I was questioning my sanity. When that light burst from my hands and I thought I'd killed Chewie, I had never felt so scared in my entire life. And that wasn't even the worst of it." Rey feels her hands begin to shake, and she has to clench them at her sides to get them to stop. Images of fighting herself on the Death Star flash through her mind, and then her trip to Exegol. While she had explained to her friends the basics of what happened on the Sith planet, she had never planned to say her next words aloud, but she knows this is the only way they'll understand. "I almost accepted Palpatine's offer."

Finn visibly jerks back, eyes wide in disbelief. "You would never have gone through with it," he insists.

While Finn's unwavering faith should buoy her, it feels undeserved now. Instead, it further cuts into the still frightening knowledge that she had almost done the unimaginable. "You weren't there. The sky was on fire, and at the time, it seemed like the only way out."

"Was Ben there when Palpatine offered you the throne?" Rose asks.

"Not at first. When Ben arrived on Exegol, he's the one that stopped it. He stopped me."

Rey can see the confusion on everyone's faces, but no one interrupts.

"The dark side is like a poison seeping into every fiber of your being. It happens so quickly that you don't even realize it." A shiver runs through her body as she thinks of that cave, the temptation of Palpatine's outstretched hand...

"Are you saying the same thing happened to Kylo- Ow!" Finn stops with a not-so-subtle elbow in the ribs from Rose. "That the same thing happened to Ben?" he amends.

Rey nods. "Yes, Palpatine was behind it from the very beginning, preying on Ben's mind when he was just a kid. I'm not excusing what Ben did when he was under the dark side's influence. I'm just saying that could have been my future, too, if it wasn't for him. I wasn't strong enough to defy the darkness on my own, but when I sensed Ben there, I could see that there was another way out."

"But Ben didn't have someone there to pull him out of the darkness," Rose says with a frown, catching what Rey is trying to get across. "He was alone."

"It's not fair," Rey replies, repeating what she'd told Rose the previous day almost precisely where they're standing now.

No one speaks for some time, and Rey hopes that it's because they're finally coming around. She doesn't think she imagines the change in their expressions or the shift in the air.

Out of everyone, Finn has the most reason to push back, to not accept it. His understanding is also the one Rey cares about the most, so when he goes to speak, Rey steels herself for disappointment.

"Ben..." Finn starts, and the name sounds awkward coming from his mouth, but Rey's heart lifts to realize he's trying. " He really was an entirely different person as Kylo Ren, wasn't he? The person who appeared in my room..."

"... was different than what you remembered?" Rey guesses.

Finn considers that with a furrowed brow. "I don't think I'd ever truly met Ben Solo until then. He seemed genuinely concerned about your safety when he appeared in my room." To Rey's surprise, Finn laughs. "It was strange, actually. He was just rambling at first, and it took a bit before I could understand what he was trying to tell me."

Before now, Rey had been focused solely on making her friends believe her. Now though, with their acceptance, however tenuous, Rey for the first time can think about what Ben had told Finn. "What exactly did he say to you?"

"Well, he claimed that you were going off to some dangerous, unknown Force planet and that you were trying to bring him back to life." He looks to Poe and Rose, raising his eyebrows. "Does that about sum it up?"

"You forgot to include the part where she was going by herself," Poe says.

Finn turns back to Rey with a stern expression. "Oh, right. And you were planning on going without any backup."

"I knew how you all felt about Ben and that if I told you what I was doing, you'd try to stop me."

No one disagrees.

"Just tell me one thing," Finn says, walking closer until he's only a foot away, and Rey can't look anywhere else except his intense gaze. "Does he really mean that much to you?"

Yes seems too simple of an answer for such a heavy question. At the same time, what Rey feels for Ben is hard to explain. He's a part of her, and the thought of this not working, of her failing to bring him back, is unthinkable. Suddenly, her eyes start to fill with tears as all the stress from the past few days bubbles up to the surface, not letting her tamp it down any longer. She hastily wipes at her eyes and struggles to reply, but words still fail her.

Thankfully, she doesn't have to say a thing.

All doubt is gone from Finn's face, and before she realizes what's happening, he's swinging an arm over her shoulder. Turning her around, he leads her away from the X-wing and out of the hangar to the Millenium Falcon. "Then let's bring him back."

When Rey steps aboard the Falcon, it's to find a buzz of activity inside. Rey sees C-3PO a few paces away instructing D-O, and the little droid is rolling back and forth on its single wheel, listening intently. Going through the bulkhead doors, BB-8 is off immediately to her right, plugged into the flight computer. As his round head swivels her way, he emits several happy beeps upon seeing her.

"Is the hyperdrive fixed now?" Rey asks. The last she knew, it was still in rough shape from Poe's lightspeed skipping. Lando had even commented on it after the battle, saying that their patch job wouldn't hold up another trip, and the thing would need a full overhaul.

Poe, in the middle of a systems check, pauses to answer. "We fixed it two days ago." The glare he sends her way seems entirely unnecessary until he adds, "Which you would have known if you'd been paying attention during lunch."

"Sorry?" Rey tries with a shrug of her shoulders.

Poe just rolls his eyes in response. "You're forgiven." Flipping a final switch, he claps once and rubs his hands together, walking over to the nav computer and having her join him. "Now, this... 'planet' we're going to."

"The Wellspring of Life," Rey clarifies.

"Right. It's in the Deep Core, isn't it? Do you have the coordinates?"

After Rey enters them into the computer, Poe leans over to scan the data. He clicks a few buttons, then frowns. enter them into the computer. "The star chart doesn't seem to recognize them. Are you sure those are right?"

"They're rough," Rey admits. "But Luke said once you're in the immediate area, the planet is supposed to be impossible to miss." She doesn't voice her concerns aloud that Luke had misremembered, or Yodi had forgotten an important detail.

Despite keeping her doubts internal, Poe seems to have his own hesitations and looks over their flight plan with some reluctance. "Well, it looks like it's less than a day away." He yawns. "Do you mind taking us off? I haven't had breakfast yet, and I'm going to need to put something in this stomach of mine if I'm going to last another hour."

"Of course," she says, and begins to make her way to the front when something snags her attention from the corner of her vision.

It's a pile of bags stored off to the side, completely packed and ready to go. Rey instantly recognizes them as belonging to her friends, and the realization hits her all of a sudden that they'd always been planning to come.

Sure, she'd had to make her argument. It's not like their hesitation about Ben was faked. However, it seems that even before that, they'd already decided they were going with her regardless of what happened in the hangar. Their packed bags are proof of that.

"Everything okay?" Finn asks, turning from the seat he's taken in the cockpit to see what's causing her delay.

Rey swings her bag off her shoulder and adds it to the three others secured in the cargo hold with a small smile. "Yeah," she tells Finn, walking into the cockpit and finally taking the pilot's seat. "Everything's perfect."

Author's Note:

No Ben in this chapter, but he'll be back in the next one. And the fact that he's the subject of the conversation should help make up for that. Please let me know what you think like always.