Rey simply nods at that, knowing better than to argue. It’s a lonely feeling, being the last of something. The last Jedi, the last Skywalker. The last Palpatine.

She listens to Ben as he speaks, keeping her hand on his jaw and stroking her thumb soothingly across his cheek as his anxiety rises. It’s easy to remember how terrified she was of him. Sometimes it’s hard to fathom that the man who fought her in Starkiller Base and the man looking at her now are one in the same, but they are. And she loves him still.

“I would have talked you out of it,” she assures him, choosing to believe it because there is no way to find out if she’s wrong. “You felt it too, remember?”

He smiles at her and she returns it, shrugging her shoulders a little before tracing the pad of her finger along his dark eyebrow. “Maybe it’s a little of both. I— I need you, Ben. I just do. I don’t know if that makes me forgiving, or selfish. I don’t really care to decide. I don’t care about the code. I just need you.”

She surges forward to kiss him, sweeping her tongue into his mouth before pulling away to rest her forehead against his. “I am the last Jedi, and I’m changing the rules.”