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Be with me.
Rey whispered the words during her darkest moments, her deepest dreams, her merriest memories. They were a mantra, an anthem, a declaration of faith in something besides the Force, in someone beyond herself.
Ben Solo was not gone for good. She would have felt it in her bones, in her blood, if he was. So long as she lived on, the Dyad would not die. His soul persisted, lingered; tethered to the physical realm because she still dwelt here.
She heard his voice sometimes, whispering in the wind, murmuring in the meadows, speaking in the silence. Her name was a prayer on his lips, his love a constant confession, his encouragement an antidote to her depression.
The question was how to bring him fully back, to give his flesh form, his spirit shape. In her research, she discovered legends and stories of Force Ghosts so strong they took physical form. But no apparition had haunted or visited her, only a voice with an audience of one.
She continued her search, wandering the worlds like the Jedi Masters of old. A pilgrim on a journey seeking a destination she did not know. A visit to Lothal of the Outer Rim Territories, a planet plundered and oppressed, a world robbed of its resources yet still in rebellion, gave her a clue.
The mountains and prairies and marshes, the arid savannah and towering stones, the ancient Jedi Temple shaped like a cone, had all once been beautiful, but they were now in ruins. She grieved their echoes rippling through time, the last haunting notes of a song gone long before she arrived. The Empire’s oppression, the Dark Side’s obsession, reached its monstrous tentacles even here.
And yet. Nothing was ever really gone. Not the giant Loth-wolves long rumored to be extinct, not the remnants of the buried temple, not the soul of the man she loved. The Loth-wolves guided her, the Force responded and resurrected and reconstructed the ruined temple under her command, and Ben awaited her in a realm she could not yet reach.
The temple was both map and key. A beautiful gilded painting of the gods of Mortis served as a doorway, a portal. The Father, Daughter, and Son stared down at her, encircled with gold and flanked by Loth-wolves, the portal’s guardians of old. A key stone claimed in a chamber fraught with danger and placed in the Daughter’s hand set it alight and alive. The Daughter spoke. The painting moved. The portal rotated open, and the Loth-wolves vetted her and led her to the true entrance, moving faster and faster till they loped in a circle, guarding the dark doorway to eternity.
Rey heard voices, so many voices, of friends and foes. The messages were a swarm of confusing echoes, of pinpoints of time colliding together like asteroids striking suns. But there was one voice that was the loudest, one person who called to her and compelled her with all his being.
Be with me, Ben pleaded, and she stepped through the portal into a place she’d never seen.
Rey was a tiny speck on the tapestry of eternity. She traversed its narrow threads, feeling like a foreigner far from home. The golden glow of her lightsaber illuminated her way in this dark place that branched into thousands of possible paths.
“Be with me,” she murmured, her voice joining the innumerable disembodied ones.
Gradually, she noticed other portals, other exits. Staring into their depths, she saw moments past, present, and future suspended in time. She sensed she must not interfere. The Force was allowing her to come for one person and one person alone. Only his fate could be changed, undone, for he was never meant to die when he did. His death was simply to save her and atone.
Still, it was difficult to pass the moment her parents left her behind, the seconds when Han and Luke and Leia ceased to be. The failures of the New Republic, the human strife, the loss of life. All the things she wished she could change now floating past like tantalizing temptations. She reached towards the memories, the opportunities, but a stray thought stayed her hand.
Were her losses and mistakes worth more to her than Ben?
“Be with me,” was her final answer, a plea, a prayer, beseeching him for the strength she needed to resist at length. Her loved ones were at peace and deserved their sleep.
The temptation at last passed, and she was beset by vivid visions. She saw a mirror image of herself cloaked in black and red, her smile arrogant and cold, her eyes a feral gold. Rey Palpatine, the most powerful Sith Lord to ever exist. The World Between Worlds was her tool, her plaything, and she was master of time itself, of the Force. She only had to say the word, and the universe heard and bent to her will. An empress, no, a goddess, far more powerful than the Daughter, and far less modest.
At the Sith’s side was Kylo Ren. Not Ben but Ren, and the fantasy fractured and fell apart. An illusion, a false reality that was over before it started.
Rey Skywalker readied her lightsaber, and she heard her grandfather's cruel cackle. Palpatine blood ran through her veins, but her family was who she chose, not this dark man she disdained.
Taking on an alternate version of herself and Ben would prove difficult, but she chanted her usual mantra, hoping Ben, the real him, would step in and help her.
But it was not Ben who appeared by her side. It was his grandfather, Anakin. His lightsaber flashed a brilliant blue, and together they vanquished their two foes, banishing them back where they belonged.
“You seek my grandson,” Anakin said, his eyes alight with warmth and mystery. A strong, embodied Presence in a sea of ethereal spirits.
“Where is he?” Rey asked. He felt closer and yet farther than ever, like a word teetering on the tip of her tongue.
“You’ll have to face another trial, your most difficult yet. But you will succeed, Rey, if you trust him.”
She nodded. She trusted Ben with her soul, her life. He had saved her, healed her, brought her back from the brink. She was his link to the land of the living, and she would return the favor, be his savior, and bring him home.
Satisfied with her thoughts, Anakin led her to another circular portal and simply gestured towards it. “Go knowing we’re always with you.”
More of the Loth-wolves guarded this portal in their endless chase. Rey recognized this moment, and her heart raced. Ben’s death and disappearance after her kiss, and oh how she had replayed this scene in her mind, desperate to find any clues she had missed.
What should she do? Heal him? Grab him before he disappeared and bring him here? How would she prove she was true?
“Be with me,” she simply said, soliciting his support, and slipped through.
Reliving this moment was anything but pleasant. Rey feared she’d foment some great disaster if she made the wrong choice.
“Ben,” she said, but he couldn’t hear her voice. She was incorporeal. He was focused solely on healing her past self, cradling her limp body in his embrace, tenderly touching her wounded places and gazing at her face.
This was what had killed him, spirited his body and soul from her side, leaving her with an overwhelming tide of grief. And yet she was moved deeply, witnessing once more the steep price he’d paid to save her.
The old Rey awoke, revived by his life, and they kissed. Her past self hardly knew what was amiss, but she couldn’t stop the tears and tried everything her fears prompted her to. Force Healing, Lightsaber usage, scavenger tricks and trades. Everything in the arsenal of this desperate Jedi mage and warrior.
Nothing worked, nothing at all, and she despaired in this dark lair, cursing the Force for what had befallen him.
“Be with me!” she cried as he died once more, but it was no use. This situation felt like some sick ruse. He disappeared from her past self’s grasp, and she had to face the truth, the loneliness, the emptiness, now that she was unmasked.
For five years she’d run from her grief. Poured herself into her training. Sought recruits to restart Luke’s Jedi Academy. Convinced herself Ben was here, that he wasn’t really gone, that no shot was too long to save him.
And maybe that was the problem. The harder she clung to people, places, things, the quicker they slipped through her frantic fingers. She was still the same scared girl left behind on Jakku, terrified of being abandoned, alone.
But she wasn’t alone. She was never alone.
“Be with me,” she whispered through her tears and did one of the hardest things she’d ever done: she let Ben go. He was not hers to have and to hold. She had to trust that in losing him she would find him. That only by setting him free could he truly be with her. Such was the paradoxical nature of the Force.
Still, it was hard not to feel remorse for what she’d done.
“Be with me,” she echoed one last time, a sad refrain, but the words were more like, “Trust me, please, I think I know what I’m doing.”
Rey returned through the portal, feeling heavier and lighter all at once. She was at peace. Deep in her heart, she knew she’d made the right decision, even if the pain still smarted.
The World Between Worlds was silent, shrouded, and its plumbless depths clouded her vision as she trekked back to the present. At first she didn’t see the figure cloaked in black along her path. When she did, she tensed, her lightsaber igniting as soon as she sensed him.
“Rey,” he said softly, removing his hood to reveal dark hair, dark eyes, and a bright smile. Ben’s smile. “I’m with you.”
Her screams of joy reverberated through this abyss, and she flung herself into his outstretched arms and clung to him and kissed him, proving without words just how much she’d missed him.
The Dyad was once again united. His soul and body were here with her. She took his hand, Ben’s hand, and led him like a seer across the branching paths, trusting the Force to guide her and refusing to look back. Together they ascended from the Underworld into life and light, setting things right as they passed through the portal of eternity back into the relentless march of time.
Only then did she truly allow herself to relax. The portal closed. The gods of Mortis smiled down on them, and the Loth-wolves howled in celebration as she and Ben embraced. Luminous beings they were, but in this moment, their crude matter was just as crucial, and they delighted in the physical reality of each other. The lovers were all smiles and laughter and tears of relief, overjoyed their belief in one another had so sweetly paid off.
“Be with me,” Rey repeated, one last time, her hand resting over Ben’s beating heart.
He smiled as bright as the twin suns on Tatooine as he cupped her face. “Always.”
They kissed once more, and Rey absently wondered what the ghosts of the Jedi haunting this temple would think of their two protégés kissing on sacred ground, then decided with a happy sound she didn’t care. Change wasn’t always a bad thing, though she wouldn’t kill the past as Kylo Ren had so much as put parts of it to rest and bring the best along for the ride.
And she would do it with Ben Solo by her side. Her partner, her soulmate, the other half of the Dyad. They were together again, and a new day dawned for the galaxy, the New Republic, the Jedi.
Rey Skywalker faced the future with a smile.