AN: Yay! An update! Enjoy:

Rey saw his sharp accusation, and her heart wilted. She realized of course what was happening, that he was accusing her just as she had accused him. It didn't make it any easier to see his eyes, see the mistrust and wonderment at her supposed command.

The flagger lay stretched out in the rubble in a pool of blood as red as the wilted flag still trembling in his hand.

Ben had shook the alliance member with the blaster, shouting and asking him why he had done it.

Rey had watched, and for a moment had done nothing. It was a moment of terrible weakness as she fought for footing in the crowds. She could have pushed forward. But she chose not to.

She was looking at the body. She was paralyzed with shock, just for a moment.

Moments were long enough. It took only that moment for Ben to turn and face her.

Rey knew he could feel her guilt; it was simmering like boiled water through the bond. She also knew he was misplacing it, misunderstanding its cause.

She hadn't given the orders.

She was being devoured by guilt for a thousand other reasons. There was the war, there was the deaths, and there was, of course, Ben.

People screamed and ran from the alliance man with the blaster.

When Ben's eyes pierced her, the moment of stillness broke and her limbs started to work again. She moved her marble legs, elbowed people aside with her statue arms. She escaped the crowd and went to the man whose thin arms had just been gripped.

Rey didn't look at Ben, wouldn't meet his wondering eyes as they followed her movements.

"Explain yourself, soldier," Rey demanded, and ignored it when the skeleton soldier failed to salute.

"Orders to my terminal, ma'am," the soldier said, and stood taller, stiffer than bone.

"You report to me, do you not?" Rey asked.

Ben was watching the interaction. His wonderment crept violently through the bond. It tiptoed through her heart. It pounded in her toes.

"I do, ma'am," said the chapped lips fearfully.

"Did these orders have my signature?"

"Yes, Commander," the soldier replied, but Rey could sense his hesitation, his curiosity at why she was angry.

"From now on, consider any orders coming through your terminal as coming from the traitor," Rey said.

She felt it when Ben realized. Then she felt his guilt, and recognized it because she had been carrying the same guilt around for days.

"The only orders you are to listen to are ones I tell you from my own mouth. Is that clear, soldier?"

"Yes, Commander," the skeleton man said.

"Good. Now help me move this body."

* * *

When the townspeople had been eased, and the soldiers were told to stop listening to orders that came through the computers, Ben continued to look for Rey. She had disappeared after moving the body with the skeleton soldier.

He had been guiding the townspeople back to the streets. Meanwhile someone had been cleaning the stain the flagger had left in the street, was covering it with rubble and bricks.

He eased the people, and he had managed to speak, but his mind had been elsewhere.

His mind and his heart had been with Rey.

She would drown in the guilt. She had never learned to swim.

And now that Ben understood why she had failed to trust him those two days ago, he couldn't find her. The crowds were slowly thinning as people decided it was safe enough to return to their crumbling homes.

He was stuck in the middle of a dusty, blood-stained, war-printed street, and the bond was pulling him another direction.

Finally his work was done, and Ben went back to the camp of ships. He looked first in the Falcon, in his father's ship, and went immediately to the cockpit.

His father's dice and his uncle's charm sat untouched near the window, and the chairs were empty. The room felt like it was holding its breath without Rey, as though it was waiting for her to return.

Perhaps that was just him.

Ben looked quickly in the other rooms of the Falcon, passing only Chewie, who shook his head and said he hadn't seen Rey either.

"Did you check the Falcon?" Poe asked him when Ben told him who he was looking for.

Ben moved on, and the longer it took him to find her, the more worried he became. He was too hung up on the concept of betrayal. It was his greatest weakness. And now that he realized he had betrayed her trust by believing her false orders, he understood.

He needed to see her. He couldn't have ended things for good, because that wasn't what either of them really wanted.

The bright sun mocked him as he walked through the camp of ships, passing soldier and engineer in the grass.

He made his way to the tents, a grouping of makeshift buildings for meetings. There was a long tent for use as a medbay, and a smaller tent full of simple medical supplies the alliance members were welcome to use by themselves.

As Ben passed the small tent, the sound of water made him stop in his tracks.

The bond splashed him. He thought he might have felt water on his palms.

The tent shifted in the breeze as he stepped closer, as though it was trying to keep him out, or keep Rey, who was surely on the other side, in.

With careful hands, Ben pushed aside the tent flap and stepped through. Sunlight scattered on the grass at his feet and left a trail where he stepped. Then the tent closed, and the sunlight disappeared.

Rey was facing away from him, shoulders pulled high on her neck, head tilted far forward.

He could see the muscles in her arms and back moving tensely and purposefully. He could hear her breath coming furious and soft at the same time.

He felt her realize his presence. He felt her do nothing.

"Rey," he said, and stepped closer.

"What?" she murmured, and continued to scrub at her hands.

Pink water splashed from the basin and landed on the grass floor. Then Ben understood.

He came and stood next to her, facing the profile of her face as she still refused to meet his gaze. He watched her scrub her blood-stained hands raw.

He watched a flicker of lightning shoot from her fingers, and before thinking of the consequences reached out to take her burning hands in his own.

"Stop this," he said, and he begged not for him, but for her.

Lightning in water. Her hands had to be burning. He turned them over in his palms and saw nothing but thin rivers of blood still staining the calluses there.

The Force was a strange thing. She hadn't been hurt.

Ben understood that this was the blood of that flagger, who had been killed because of orders from Rey's computer.

"Don't blame yourself," he said.

When she said nothing, he raised a damp hand to her cheek and brushed a piece of hair away, tucking it behind her ear.

"Rey. Look at me."

Under his fingertips she looked at him.

Her hand turned in his palm, until she was holding him as well as he held her.

"I owe you an apology," he said.

Her brows twitched together softly. "I do too."

Ben looked at her hands and saw the bloodstains that lingered there, and just as he had after battle, he took it upon himself to heal her wounds. These wounds were different.

They were the invisible sort.

She let him clean her hands, and for a time, there was nothing but the sound of the pink water sloshing in the basin. Ben half-expected a soldier to burst into the tent, but no one came.

The moment was theirs.

He dried the water away. "I am discovering," he said, towel in hand, "I need to stop accusing people. I said you betrayed me."

He stopped and looked at her. Rey opened her mouth as if to speak, but he shook his head.

"I need to say this," Ben said, and she understood. "Rey, today I thought you had given orders that really came from the traitor. You did the same two days ago, and I shut you out for it. I said things had to end."

"You're doing a fine job of letting things end," Rey said quietly.

"I know," Ben said, and hung the towel up.

Rey's thumb danced across his knuckles when he spoke. "I can't sleep."

Rey exhaled. "Neither can I."

"I don't want things to end," he said. "And not just because of . . . the dreams."

Rey nodded, kinder than she should have been. "I can't keep watch all the time," she said. "Maybe it's unfair to you, but I'm afraid without . . ."

She stopped and shook her head. "These nights have been hell," was what she settled with, and Ben understood her completely.

"I'll come by," Ben said, "if you'll have me."

Rey's lip twitched. "I'll only take one watch, then."

"Good. One of these days you're going to fall over."

She raised a brow. "I'm a good guard."

"Not when you're afraid of sleeping."

"Well," she conceded.

"Well," he repeated.

They looked at each other. "We feel too much, you and I," Ben murmured. "That's our problem."

Rey hummed and met his eyes. "I'm done fighting with you."

For a time they watched each other, and between them the bond danced as vividly and brightly as starlight.

"Things might be different now," she said.

Betrayal. Forgiveness.

"I know. But I want to trust you."

Rey breathed. "I'm here," she said softly.

One moment his eyes were meeting hers, and the next his lips were coming down, farther and farther, and she was meeting him higher and higher, and she couldn't tell where she ended and he began.

Blockaded feelings tumbled through the bond as they kissed, and as always Rey's heart trembled with their weight. His hands found her cheeks, and her back, and fisted there in her commander's jacket.

Things were different now, now that they had decided to believe the other. Even his hands were different.

Then his lips slowed against hers. She pulled back. "Ben?"

He leaned his forehead against hers. Breath passed softly between them. She closed her eyes and his palms cradled her face, fingers brushing quietly through the edges of her hair.

"I'll try," he said, "to be better."

She covered his hands with hers, and they were locked to one another.

"I'll be trying too," she said.

This time she stood up and kissed him, soft as the ocean and warm as the sun.

* * *

Rey shook her fear off like sand from her skin, and stepped into the sunlight with Ben at her side. It was like emerging into a different world, a world where they were no longer alone but surrounded by their troops, and ringed by alliance members rushing around the ships.

Without speaking, they went their separate ways-Ben to a meeting and Rey to the computer room in one of the ships. She sat in a chair and switched on the terminal. She spent three hours in front of the direct command interface, never standing to find food or moving to stretch her muscles.

She couldn't find the traitor, couldn't find the trail of breadcrumbs she knew he had left.

The group of hackers with her typed onward in silence. None of them found the computer responsible for the false orders. It was as though it didn't even exist.

For a moment, Rey looked up from the screen and saw the faces of the rest of the hackers. Her shoulders dropped as she saw their tired eyes, the way they could barely stay awake.

"That's it for today," she said. "Find some food. We'll meet again tomorrow, and let the other group pick this up."

The relief in the room was tangible as they left the room and made way for the other group of programmers to enter. Rey gave the leader of the next group a quick summary of what they had found, which was essentially nothing, and shook his hand before going on her way.

As she walked, the bond felt warmer than it had in days. No longer was it as icy as that planet she had fought on, as cold as the deepest sea, or frozen as the largest glacier.

It was warm, but not like electricity. Not a burn, or a warmth so hot it felt cool. She knew what lightning felt like, and this was different.

A fire rekindled.

A candle lighting another.

Even through the exhaustion, Rey smiled faintly, and the bond smiled back.

* * *

His fingers tiptoed across her knuckles, and she turned her palm over to lace their hands together. They had always had a special affinity for this, for the touch of hands. They understood how precious it could be.

There were no words.

Just softness, just silence, just breath.

Quietly Ben slipped under, and for a blessed two hours he slept in peace. It was easier to fall asleep now that she was beside him, now that they were trying to forget they had ever fought, had ever believed the other capable of demonic things.

So he slept under her touch, until sleep became bloodstained and charcoal as war itself.

Until his mind turned over and darkness crept in, until gruesome images that his memory manipulated flashed through his eyes.

Until remembering the feeling of the bond breaking pierced his heart.

Until his mother's face faded into the Force and she died with no goodbye.

Until the Knights came marching forward, forward, toward him with thousands of flaggers.

Until he could scarcely breathe.

Ben sat up, brow damp with terror, heart pounding with adrenaline. Then he felt something strange in his hand, and realized that in his fear he had reached and called his saber.

"You're fine," Rey murmured, and her moonlit fingers crept to his shaking shoulders. "There's no fight."

The saber fell from shaking fingers to the ground. A clatter like Ira's shivering teeth. A sound like an unmarked grave.

He put his head in his hands and breathed, just for a moment. Weak just for a moment.

Then he shook the feelings off and turned around. "I'm fine," he said softly. "Go back to sleep."

Rey swept the damp hair from his forehead and sleepily kissed his brow. It was soft and slow through her exhaustion, and cool as summer rain.

Under her fingertips he looked at her.

"One day," she said, "we'll get our peace."

They lay back down and cradled into one another, and in the softness tried to dream of something as beautiful as the night.

AN: Hello my dudes! Feedback?