How it Should Have Ended

Time is running out

*SPOILERS FOR RISE OF SKYWALKER*

(Author's note: sorry this chapter is so short! I've been having some writer's block and I wanted to post something before winter break ends)

Love is a tricky thing. It's a word that people throw around effortlessly, and yet it holds more power than some people realize. Love is affection. It's knowing someone down to their darkest moments. It's letting someone into your mind, your heart. It's casting aside the trauma, betrayal and heartbreak, it's praying every night that they won't leave your side. It's trusting that they never will. Love is sacrificing your life to save them. Love is flowing through Rey's mind, chant repeating over and over. She has no time, no energy to wonder if what she feels is love, if Ben saved her because he loved her. There are bigger problems. All she knows is the air is thick and scented with something beyond Love, with something so intense it surpasses the feelings so many reach for but never find.

Distant suns appear and fade away as Rey flies as fast as she can in the ship that has seen so much. She wondered for a moment if Luke knew how important this ship would be that it would carry his unconscious nephew's life in its hands. Did he know that their bond was strong enough to save each other? Is he watching now? Tears well in Rey's eyes but she doesn't let herself lose focus as her fingers fly across the keys and buttons of the control panels, as she steers the ship through the debris of the first order's destroyed ships. She hopes with everything in her that her friends are okay, that Finn and Poe are flying their way back to base. Rey closes her eyes for a moment, breathing in the stuffy air and breathing out the stress and worry building up in her chest. She isn't strong enough to use the Force after putting her life into Ben...

She looks back, and he's slumped against the back of the ship. She has never seen his face so peaceful, but she knows there is a battle being waged inside of him, kylo ren and ben solo are facing off head to head as his body fights to stay alive with his borrowed time. Rey flew faster now, reminded of the boy she is fighting to save. She prepares the ship for hyperdrive, and enters hyperspace. In a few long moments she is above the deep green planet where her friends are hopefully cheering and hollering. A few ships are still flying down into the atmosphere.

She stears to follow them, her breathing quickens and the thump of her heartbeat is faster and faster every second. Fear swallowed her heart whole but she won't let her effort be for nothing. Ben will live. He will. She hopes.