RISE OF SKYWALKER | FIXED

part viii | binary sunset

Both Ben and Rey had taken a blow from reality. They both were quite shaken from the news of the children. Not a child. Children.

"On the first go," Rey scoffed. "You got me on the first go."

"Woah now," Ben said, smugly throwing his hands in the air. "It probably wasn't the first time."

"It was. You know it was. Two? Ben, we have an entire Order to rebuild!"

"And two padawan learners," Ben assured. It sounded like he was assuring Rey, but it was himself that he was trying to convince. "Everything will be fine."

Rey took a deep breath. "You're right. We're overreacting."

"We?"

"Yes 'we'. I can feel your anxiety from her. It is worse than mine. And you don't even have to be pregnant for the better half of a year."

"This feels really fast," Ben admitted. "I know it's not though. The First Order had been dying since you came into the picture. The Force has connected us for nearly a year... I've loved you since you showed me hope. But the collapse of the First Order, the death of Palpatine, our deaths. It still seems like only yesterday. It may as well been yesterday for us. It only then did we really come to terms with each other, and now we're married. Children? Rebuilding the Jedi Order? Rey, my head is a mess."

He rubbed the tension from his head and propped his head on his knees. Rey crosses the main hangar and leaned against him, running her finger through his thick hair. "I feel the same way. But we have our whole lives to know each other. To see the Order grow and our children with it. Let the past die. Live now."

Ben looked up at her with hopeful eyes. "Thank you," he said. Rey leaned over and kissed him, pulling him to his feet.

"To Tatooine." 

And so they went. The journey was long. They spent their time ignoring their responsibilities. They talked about themselves. They daydreamed about their unborn children. They compared lightsabers. They played catch with a spare part and played a couple of games of Dejarik.

When they arrived on Tatooine, it was t hard to find the Skywalker ancestral home. A moisture farm in the Great Chott Salt Flat. It had been abandoned. Sand-filled the home and the energy was cut off. But Ben still felt a sense of familiarity.

He recognized many of the energies flowing through the home. Anakin. Padmé. Luke. R2. 3PO. All of them had been here.

After looking around, Ben met back up with Rey who had been doing the same and smiled. Hand in hand, they exited the house and into the open, sand meshing beneath their feet.

The suns were setting. The heat of the desert was no longer so bad. Rey held out a cloth and sat Anakin's lightsaber on it. Ben laid Leia's next to his. She wrapped the hilts up and placed them o the ground. Together, Rey and Ben held out their hands and pushed the lightsaber so far beneath the ground that no one would ever find them. They looked out to the suns and before them, their family stood. Anakin, Luke, and Leia smiled upon them. Proud.

"Who are you?" a voice rang out from behind them.

Rey and Ben turned around to see an elderly woman on the back of a Bantha.

"Rey."

"Ben," they said.

"Rey and Ben who?"

They gave each other a look. "Skywalker."

The lady seemed to accept that and she went on her way.

When she was out of sight, and the first sun touched the horizon, Rey unhooked her lightsaber and held it out in front of her. She ignited it and yellow-gold beams of energy sprouted from either side of the cylindrical hilt. Rey smiled at turned to her husband as she stared at the violet blade of his own, sprouting out of the top and the sides making his sleek, signature crossguard. Their hands they were holding stayed intertwined but moved to rest over the unborn children.

The next generation of Skywalkers