In their next life, they’re neighbors, though they don’t interact much other than occasionally passing each other in the lobby or yelling to hold the elevator! But one day, Rey passes by Ben as he talks on his phone. She hears him say, “Bye, Mom,” and sees him smile — small and almost reluctant, but full of affection nonetheless.
Rey suddenly feels a bit like she’s walked headfirst into a wall.
I know that smile, she thinks dazedly, later when she’s alone in her apartment. She can’t explain it, it sounds absolutely bonkers, but somehow she knows that her quiet, polite neighbor has dimples and slightly crooked teeth and that his eyes crinkle at the corners when he’s really, really happy. And then she realizes: I know him.
After going so long without a gentle touch, and then spending a couple of years yearning for the one person they couldn’t touch, Ben and Rey positively revel in being able to touch each other now that there’s no war, no politics, nothing between them.
Ben kisses Rey a lot, now that he can do it without his impending death hanging over his head. He kisses her in the mornings (on the few occasions he wakes up before her), smiling against her forehead when she hums sleepily and snuggles closer. He drops quick pecks on her hair or on her lips when they brush past each other in the kitchen. He brushes his lips across her knuckles when they’re curled up together in bed at the end of the day. He kisses her on the mouth any and every chance he gets, treasuring the warmth of her in his arms and the sweetness of her on his tongue.
(And of course, he kisses her in more intimate spots too, loving it just as much as he loves the more mundane affection of their daily routine.)
.
.
.
Rey, for her part, is a big fan of hand-holding and hugs. Maybe it’s the scavenger in her, the part that may never really go away after twenty years of taking what she could get and fighting tooth and nail for it. Or maybe it’s the memory of Exegol — of watching Ben fade, leaving nothing but a tattered sweater for her to clutch at. Either way, it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that she can’t keep her hands off him.
She automatically laces their fingers together when they walk, whether they’re exploring the fields and woods behind their little cottage or stocking up on supplies at the market a quick speeder ride away. She creeps up behind Ben as he stands at the stove or sink and wraps her arms around his waist, nuzzling into his broad back and sending warmth and contentment to him through the bond. She runs her fingers through his hair when he lays his head on her breast as they lie together, sated and sleepy after their lovemaking. She still wakes with the sun, from force of habit; but she always starts the day by lingering in their bed for long minutes, just savoring the warm, solid weight of Ben in her arms (at last, at last).
Not alone, never alone, never again, they promise each other, every time they kiss, every time they touch.
In another of those kinder universes, Ben honors the legacy of the Skywalker family’s women and enters politics. He becomes the Senator of Chandrila, and his mighty principles and sometimes ungentle tongue win him both admirers and enemies in equal number. He thinks his mother and grandmother would be proud.
Nevertheless, the existence of said enemies prompts Luke to assign a Jedi to guard Ben — one of his most promising students, so he says. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else with the safety of my favorite nephew,” Luke says, his gravity belied by a wry twinkle in his eye.
“I’m your only nephew,” Ben retorts.
The slender girl at his uncle’s side muffles a snort of laughter with her fist. Ben is charmed, oddly gratified, and perplexed at himself, all at once.
For her part, Rey—
Well, okay, in some ways, Senator Ben Organa Solo is pretty much what she’d expected, and yet also very much not what she’d expected in others. He can be a bit of a pompous ass at times; but at least he doesn’t doubt her abilities just because she happens to be both young and female. It’s more the general presence of a bodyguard that he objects to, rather than her specifically. But once she’s made it clear that no amount of cool, patrician disdain or childish surliness is going to scare her off, their dynamic slowly progresses towards something like friendship.
Rey finds she likes being around Ben. Watching him address the Senate makes pride swell in her chest. She smiles, widely and toothily, whenever she sees him receive congratulations or thanks from his constituents. But perhaps her favorite part of the job is the moments when he’s not in meetings or entertaining guests, when it’s just the two of them in the companionable quiet of his office. She either meditates or watches Coruscant bustle around them; he reads and drafts and signs lots of very important paperwork, occasionally talking through ideas with her even though she’s told him lots of times she has no head for politics.
Then someone slips poison into Ben’s whiskey, and they nearly lose him. Rey weeps beside Ben’s bed in the medcenter, too distraught to pay attention to the medical droids’ clucking and fussing. “I should have seen it, Ben, I’m so s-sorry— I failed, I failed you, I-I’ll ask Master Luke for a replacement right now—”
A light, shaky touch to her hand stops her. Ben’s eyes are heavy-lidded and glassy from the drugs. “Rey,” he slurs, clearly fighting to stay awake. “Stay with me. Please.”
It’s then that Rey realizes that what she feels for Ben isn’t just friendship or respect anymore — it’s love.
She’s a Jedi, and she’s in love with Ben Solo.
(She doesn’t want to have to choose. Can’t she be both?)
After everything, when the galaxy has forgotten about them — well, as much as it can forget about the last Jedi and the former Supreme Leader of the First Order — Rey and Ben find themselves with rather a lot of free time on their hands.
They’re… adrift, in a way, at first. There was always something that needed to be done in their old lives — scavenging starships and hauling scrap; training under Luke and then following Snoke’s orders. It’s both exhilarating and a little frightening to realize that now they’re free to do things for no other reason than that they want to.
Rey quickly takes to gardening. She’s always loved growing things, even before she ever laid eyes on the vast green expanse of Takodana. She spends hours on her knees in the soil behind their little cottage on Naboo, planting and weeding and watering.
If it had been at all possible on Jakku, she thinks she would have kept a small plot of edible plants there. But her garden on Naboo, though small (at first), has flowers and fruits and herbs alike — it’s for pleasure first and utility second.
She tries to teach Ben, sometimes. He’s not as good at it as she is; and he often feels like his hands are too big and clumsy to handle things as fragile as plants. But he gamely joins her in the dirt anyway — because he loves her, loves watching her face light up as she talks about her plants; and maybe it’s a work in progress, but it still feels good to help something grow, rather than tear it down, for once.
Ben, for his part, takes up calligraphy again. His old pen and ink set is still on Ahch-To, and the market near their cottage doesn’t exactly have a wide selection; but he makes do. It always soothed him, back then: forming letters one precise stroke at a time, and then putting them together to make words — having control over one small thing, when it seemed nothing else was. It was, perhaps, the closest he got to meditation.
Now Ben does it just because he can — because he finds he actually enjoys making something, full stop, without using it as a distraction from everything else he can’t face. Naturally, he practices by writing Rey love notes and copying out verses of poetry for her, courting her the way he would have liked to, had they met like more ordinary couples did.
Rey loves to watch him write — his obvious concentration soothes her just as much as it does him. Of course, she already knows how to write; but one day, she asks him to teach her anyway. He wraps his hand around hers on the pen as he shows her one stroke after another.
Her letters don’t come out half as pretty as his; but when the ink dries, he traces the unevenly formed Rey Solo on the page as if it were the finest piece of art in the galaxy.
In their next life, they’re neighbors, though they don’t interact much other than occasionally passing each other in the lobby or yelling to hold the elevator! But one day, Ben sees Rey look up from her phone, a bright, triumphant grin on her face — and he feels a bit like he’s been hit with a two-by-four.
I know that smile, he thinks dazedly, later when he’s alone in his apartment. And then: I know her.
There are many, many kinder universes out there where Ben Solo and Rey of Jakku get their happy ending. In one of them, Ben chooses to follow in his (in)famous father’s footsteps. One day, he has to meet a contact for a drop on Jakku, and he hates it already — seriously, of all places in the galaxy, why that Force-forsaken dustball?
Then he meets a plucky scavenger named Rey.
Now, Ben’s never been one to lose his head over a girl. But Rey tips him off to a double-cross and stands by him when the deal goes south, and that’s that — he’s dead gone on her now. He knows there’s no one else (sorry, Dad, Uncle Chewie, Lando) he’d rather have on his ship and at his side.
“Come with me,” he asks her, when the fighting’s done and they’re the only ones left standing in the wreckage of Niima Outpost. She burns too bright, has too much life in her to waste it on this backwater.
She wavers for an instant, glancing over her shoulder at the endless, shifting sands. Then she shakes her head, smiles up at him, and says, “Okay.”
Ben and Rey Solo become — if such a thing is possible — even more notorious throughout the galaxy than even Han Solo and Chewbacca. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re married; maybe it’s their 99.9% success rate. More likely it’s a combination of both. They’re truly partners — in crime, in bed, in love.
“Then the spell of silence fell from Beren, and he called to her, crying Tinúviel; and the woods echoed the name. Then she halted in wonder, and fled no more, and Beren came to her. But as she looked on him, doom fell upon her, and she loved him.”
— “Of Beren and Lúthien,” Chapter XIX of The Silmarillion
Top middle panel: “By Moonlight in Neldoreth Forest” by Ted Nasmith
This is a sequel, of sorts, to my moodboard from Reylo Week 2018.
Shout-out to @magpie-trove, who I made read The Silmarillion just for this (well, mostly for this), as well as fellow Reylo & Tolkien friends @happilyeveraftereveryday @apawcalypsemeow @politicalmamaduck!
