In All the Numbness (A Raylo Fanfic)

2. From Behind

In four weeks since the battle at Exegol, and the two since Ben had woken up, he had not once felt the force.

When he first woke up, he was so surprised that he was alive that he didn't even notice its absence until he realized that Rey was tucked in the corner of the hospital room asleep. Instead of her presence, all he felt was stillness.

He had pushed it off as his body's absolute exhaustion after healing Rey. He had hoped that simple flow of the force would return after a day or two. In that hope, and in the Resistance moving to Shoa to set up the capital, he had managed to keep himself from reaching out into the force. Until that morning, that is.

Now, it was time. He walked down the hallway, looking over the city that the Resistance now called home. He tried to see where the natural climate of this place still showed through, but nothing caught his attention.

When Rey had left in a hurry, mumbling something about being late, he took this as an opportunity to figure this out once and for all. He needed to find a quiet place, one where he could meditate and reach out.

If the force didn't reach out to him as vividly as it did when he was a kid, then surely it was waiting for him to reach out to it.

He made his way out into the marketplace, dizzy with the sound of people. Tents lined the crowded streets, backed up to buildings that wound around the contours of the mountain side like a maze down to the bay.

It felt like chaos to Ben. All that filled the place was voices, people going back and forth without reason, and their intentions he knew he couldn't feel. It felt vulnerable, like there could be someone coming up behind him any second and he would never know it.

He pushed on, hoping that maybe the cold wind coming off the bay would keep people up in the city. The people on this planet seemed to prefer going at night, judging by the lights he'd seen every night when he'd given up on sleeping.

As he walked, he studied the long roads to see where he might get to the beach. He should have studied the layout of the city before trying to make his trek through it.

One of the shops in the distance caught his attention. Stormtrooper helmets hung from the sides of the tent, all for sale. It had to have been at least two dozen of them. Some were splotched with old blood and dirt from battle, and some were a shiny, new white.

But he felt nothing still. He knew the horrible things that those helmets had been apart of, things that he had caused. Yet there was nothing from the force. There were no flashes of what the people who wore them had seen. No rising feelings of doom still left clinging to them. Nothing.

He made his way through the crowd, legs growing tired from the activity, pushing past people to get to the tent. Maybe if he were closer. If he touched one, held it in his hands, he could feel the horrors.

Someone was in the midst of the helmets. Two people. They looked from far away to be in the middle of an intense conversation.

He slowed, ducking into a small tent a couple shops up from the helmets. He didn't want to walk in on something he couldn't get out of without a fight.

Rey.

He recognized her from the the band wrapped around her arm to cover a lightsaber scar. One that he had given her.

She wore her hair half down, the way she had worn in when he had asked her rule with him from the dark side of the force. Her outfit was new. It was probably something that a counsel member had someone give her. But even though it was new and clean, it was practical. It was something she could run into a fight with in an instant.