Here is the ending. For context, Ben runs away from Rey after healing her because he doesn’t believe he deserves her love. He decides he needs to learn how to forgive himself first.
The Millennium Falcon flew over a Jawa sandcrawler. The twin suns of Tatooine had yet to show their faces, but early-morning light washed the land below in pink and white. Rey was glad to be doing something besides her grueling New Republic duties. Something special.
It had been months since the battle of Exegol. Ben had declined all of Rey’s attempts at establishing a Force connection. When she told Lando that he was still alive, he told her that he had made the right call by hiding away. He claimed there was no way the galaxy would accept Ben, as much as he himself wished they would. That he would have been tried for his crimes and locked in a prison for the rest of his life.
Rey believed there had to be another way. But Ben was not why she had traveled to Tatooine. It was for his family.
The Falcon touched down on an empty desert plain. Rey and BB-8 descended the ramp and squinted against the reflected light on the sand. The place was so stark, the ground so bleached, it was almost like the salt flats of Hiila Basin back on Jakku.
Rey stepped forward, toward a domed adobe building jutting from the sand. Only BB-8 accompanied her. All her friends had offered to come with her, but Finn insisted they stay behind. He understood that she needed to do this alone.
She carried three lightsabers with her. Her own, which she had recently fully constructed, was hooked to her belt. She carried the other two in her haversack.
The adobe building had an arched doorway, but years of wind and sand had half buried it. There’d be no accessing the Lars homestead that way.
Moisture vaporators rose in the distance at irregular intervals, tall spindly towers much like the wind-grain traps on Pasaana. It felt like so long ago already. The intervals were irregular, she realized, because some had fallen over.
She stepped past the building and discovered what appeared to be a large sinkhole, half filled with sand. A closer look revealed an arched window and a half-covered door at the base of the sinkhole, built into adobe walls.
At her feet lay a tower panel from one of the fallen vaporators, slightly curved, large enough for one person to sit. She yanked it aside, turned it around, and aimed. A few hours from now, the metal would be too hot to touch. Until then, it would make a perfect sand sled.
She climbed in, drew up her knees, and pushed off. The sled whipped down a sand drift into the heart of the sinkhole, where it gently collided with the base of a broken condenser tower. Rey stepped out and looked around.
So many memories here. She could feel them - yearning, loss, worry, desperation, love - and not just Luke’s. Multiple generations of Skywalkers had been to this place.
A cave-like entrance in the wall drew her forward. As she passed into shadow and her eyes adjusted, she noted a long dining table, covered with dust. She ran a finger through the dust, tracing a line of soft blue. Luke had dined here. And also - she reached out, sensing - Anakin?
An adjoining alcove contained some kind of beverage dispenser, but most of the levers and paneling had been scavenged, probably by local Jawas. A single tall beverage cup made of plastex lay on its side, oddly pristine.
She wandered around for a few more minutes and discovered what used to be a speeder garage, Luke’s sleeping loft, and the remains of an electrostatic repeller that had probably kept sand and dust away for years.
Other rooms remained inaccessible to her, their entrances buried in drifts.
Rey stood in the center for a while, taking it all in. Would she have turned out differently? If she’d been raised in a real home like this, by her parents if they hadn’t been forced to live in hiding?
Perhaps not. The family she’d been seeking had been ahead of her the whole time. And it still had room to grow. She wouldn’t change a thing about her origins.
The cracked adobe walls and jutting pipes made for an easy climb back up. She reached the top and pulled Luke’s and Leia’s lightsabers from her haversack. Holding them side by side in her hand, she gazed down at them for a long moment. They’d belonged to her teachers. Her family.
She placed them on the ground, and wrapped them gently into a small package using some fabric and a leather strip. Calling on the power of the Force, she pushed, and the lightsabers sank, lower and lower until the ground had fully welcomed them, shrouding them in cool, quiet rest.
Rey stood, pulling out her own lightsaber. She ignited it. Her lightsaber glowed white-gold, and she gazed at it for a long moment. According to the Jedi texts, its color meant she was a protector, a sentinel. She could see why that role fit her now.
The lightsaber was single-bladed, with an outer casing and emitter salvaged from her quarterstaff. The final result felt like the exact inverse of the lightsaber held by the dark Rey of her vision, and she loved it. It was beautiful, it fit so perfectly in her hand, and she would carry it for the rest of her life.
“Hello!” came a strange voice, and she turned. An old human woman approached, skin wrinkled from decades of sunlight, her hood pulled up against the elements. She held the reins of a tall, lanky etobi, probably on her way to a nearby trading post.
“There’s been no one for so long,” she said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Rey,” she said.
“Rey who?” the old woman asked.
Just Rey, she thought to herself. That’s all she’d ever be. And maybe that was enough.
Rey was suddenly made aware of another presence. She turned her head.
A strange hermit was approaching. He was already close to them, his tall form swiftly wading through the sand. He wore long desert robes, and his head was wrapped in a turban, disguising his features.
“Now who’s this?” the old woman said.
As he got closer, Rey noticed a trinket hanging around his neck - one she recognized from… the Steadfast. She instantly knew who this unusual, Tatooinian hermit was. She could sense it now. She ran to him.
“Ben!” she called out, arms wide.
Ben Solo removed the turban from his face, revealing a wide, suntanned smile. He laughed as Rey wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. He wrapped his arms around her in return.
But Rey remembered that he had left her. That he had ignored her attempts to reach out to him. She backed away from his embrace.
“Why did you leave me?” she asked, her voice tinged with frustration.
“I’ll never leave you again,” Ben replied as he removed his necklace. “I kept this for you. So you’d remember me.”
Rey allowed Ben to gently place the japor snippet around her neck. It felt strange for him to be placing a necklace on her instead of ripping one off. But Kylo Ren was a different person, and she needed to start remembering that. Kylo Ren was dead, and Ben Solo was alive.
She took Ben’s hand earnestly.
The old woman approached them. “Who are you people?”
“I’m Rey Solo,” Rey replied without hesitation. “This is Ben Solo.”
“Young lovers,” the old woman scoffed, shaking her head. “See you two around?” And she hobbled off without even bothering to share her own name.
BB-8 rolled toward them apprehensively, wary of the perceived stranger standing next to Rey. Ben grinned at the little droid, reaching out his tan hand to pet him. He flinched, warbling a question at Rey.
“It’s okay, Beebee-Ate,” Rey answered. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Tatooine’s twin suns had risen above the horizon. The two halves of the dyad embraced each other under the light of dawn. At the homestead of one of the greatest Jedi, a new order was rising. The order of Skywalker.
A new home.
