Transformation: Becoming Ben Solo (A Reylo Fanfic)

Chapter 1 - Life Goes On

Rey made her way across the Resistance base, her mind lost in thought.  She had been trying to fix an old broken speeder for the last two days, and was still missing a few parts.  Replacement parts were a rarity on the base, and so she often had to make due with poor substitutes, or sometimes repurpose the part from something else, if possible.  Feeling frustrated, she was on a scavenging mission to find what she needed to get the job done.  To keep herself, and her mind occupied.  To keep from thinking about.....him.

Since Crait, she'd kept herself busy, almost to the point of exhaustion.  Training daily with her staff, reading the Jedi texts to improve her understanding of the Force, organizing the base, fixing things, and hanging out with her friends Finn, Poe, and the girl Rose, whom Finn seemed to dote on.  Rose was just recently released from a long stay in the MedBay after being badly injured during the battle of Crait, and Finn seemed thoroughly smitten.  Rey was initially a bit sad to have been replaced as the object of Finn's affection, but she didn't feel that way about him, and so was happy that he seemed to have found someone.  She didn't know what she would do without all of them.  They were always there for her, and were now her family – one given to her by the Force.

The problem was, even though she loved them all, she didn't really fit in.  She knew that, felt that every single day.  She was different than the rest of them.  They treated her as one of their own, but there was a certain wariness to how they behaved around her.   It was almost as if they were afraid of her sometimes.  Afraid of her power, which they didn't understand.  Which meant that they really didn't understand her.  And because of that she couldn't help but feel apart from them on some level.

There was only one person whom she had ever felt truly understood her.  And he was gone.  Even after such a brief connection between them, his absence had left an aching void in her soul. She could still feel his presence in the Force, and in some ways that comforted her; but for the most part it tortured her.  The silence.  She wasn't enough to bring him back.  And no matter how hard she tried to hide it, her friends could sense that something wasn't quite right, that something was eating away at her.   No matter how close they were, she couldn't tell them. Couldn't let them know that she was practically pining for their enemy.  She didn't fully understand it herself.   It felt so disloyal, in so many ways, but she just couldn't help it. Sometimes, she thought she might have lost her mind to be feeling this way.

These feelings were visceral, and no matter how hard she tried to push them down inside her, she just couldn't keep them buried for very long.  If she kept her focus and emotions tightly reigned, she could sometimes go two, maybe three days without thinking of him.  But it was exhausting to do that, and eventually her guard would weaken and it would all come crashing back in.

At night, she desperately tried not to think of him while she lay in bed.  Not to remember the way their hands felt as they touched for that brief instant on Ahch To, or his face and the way his eyes had always seemed to speak to her, saying things he couldn't – or wouldn't - put into words.  And how her breath seemed to speed up every time their eyes had locked on one another.  To do so only left her feeling unexplainably restless and edgy.

Even Leia had sensed that something wasn't quite right with her.   Either that, or her friends had gone to her with their concerns.  Without warning, she was summarily hauled into Leia's office one afternoon.  Rey sat in the chair opposite Leia's desk and squirmed for a few minutes while they exchanged pleasantries, unsure of what she could have done wrong.  She was surprised however, when Leia began speaking.

"Rey, are you happy here?"

Rey looked back at her in confusion. "General..... of course!  I'm not sure why you would even ask me that?"