From a shady cliff off of Ach'to, Rey watched the ship carrying Kylo Ren fly off into the blue distance. An invisible weight that had pressing down on her lessened when the ship disappeared, but it had not quite left her. His eyes and his words still chilled her to the core.
I came on my own because I love you.
She wanted to believe that he was lying, but there was something about the way he said it—the way he looked into her—that made it feel like the most honest thing he had ever said to anyone, let alone her.
The crumbling of gravel took her mind off her musings.
"Well, he's gone," Luke said.
"Good," Rey said, straining to keep her voice calm.
"I see you're still angry with me."
Rey scooped a handful of pebbles and flicked them over the edge one by one. There was more than just anger welling inside her, but she couldn't put to words what else she was feeling, so she remained silent. Luke sat next to her and folded his hands in his lap.
"You were right," Luke said, and he chuckled when she quickly turned to stare at him. "If Ben wasn't my nephew I most likely would have sent him to Leia before even thinking of training him. Even in my old age, I can still be impulsive. I'm sorry."
"Thank you," she said, and meant it.
"I can trust you to keep me honest from now on."
Rey laughed at that, but her laughter tilted into tears. Luke tried to comfort her and understand where the sudden pain come from, but when she couldn't answer—
"Breathe, Rey," he said. "Breathe, and let it go. Let it all go."
Rey only nodded as she folded her legs and rested her hands on her knees. She closed her eyes and focused on smoothing her short, shuddering breaths into long, deep ones. Inwardly she pulled away from everything—the roar of the sea, the salty breeze on her face, the hard stone beneath her legs. She floated in silence, only aware of the clashing emotions that tore at her heart and bashed against her ribs. In her mind she pruned back these emotions to get at the center of her troubles—
She walked down to the stream, two buckets in hand, when a naked man burst from cold water. It took her a moment of looking up and down the black-haired figure to realize she was gawking at Kylo Ren. He was staring out into the distance, not even knowing she was standing right behind him. That was the time to run and save themselves the embarrassment. But her heart danced in her throat and her feet refused to move. She desperately wanted him to turn around so she could see him, all of him. And he did.
Whatever spell she was under instantly broke. He stared at her like she betrayed him, and he stammered an excuse for her about the water buckets. She dropped them and ran like a coward. That night he had not joined her and Luke for supper. That night she had terrifying and exhilarating dreams about him and her that left her body sore in the morning when she woke. She feared at first that he had taken advantage of their bond again, but no. No, she could tell her own figment of her imaginations from him. In her dreams, he was as a star that fell from the heavens and embraced her with his fire until her rough body glittered like a diamond. In the waking world, she caught him turning away from her to avoid crossing her path, leaving behind a cold, heavy energy.
She couldn't risk mixing up who Kylo Ren was and who she wished Kylo Ren to be. It took three straight nights of deep meditation before sleep and pushing away from him in her dreams for the dreams to stop. She soon slept peacefully again, for the most part. The Kylo Ren of her dreams did not like being starved of attention, and would pop up when she least expected it.
With her eyes still closed, Rey wiped the tears from her hot cheek.
Within a couple of days, more ships had arrived to Ach'to: two smaller carrier ships and a fleet of X-wings. To Rey's delight Poe came out to greet, but the crease in his brow made her pause.
"You need to evacuate," Poe said after he'd given Rey a hug.
"Why?"
"Kylo Ren killed the crew on his transport ship and flew it into First Order territory. It's only a matter of days before the enemy arrives. We're here to take you back to the Resistance."
Rey turned to Luke, whose face had lost what little color it had.
"Right. We must bring the books and tomes with us, follow me."
There was no arguing with the last of the Jedi, and a crew of humans and droids was sent with Luke and Rey up into the beehive-shaped temples. Anger pierced Rey's heart and began to spread throughout her chest. She wanted nothing more than to take one of the X-wings, fly out to the First Order, and kill Kylo Ren herself. One glance from Luke's faded blue eyes stopped her runaway plans.
I won't betray you, Master Luke, she told him telepathically, and she caught a smile under his wiry beard. It disappeared as Luke handed a stack of cracking scrolls to a young fighter pilot.
When all had been loaded onto the ships, Rey watched the rocky island shrink to the size of a pebble through a dusty window. She wandered the halls until she found Luke in his bedroom, staring at a dent in the wall.
"Are you meditating?" she asked.
"No," he rumbled.
She sat next to him on the hard cot and joined in his staring at the dent in the wall.
"I expected something to happen," Luke finally said. "But I told him it would be all right, because I would be there to help him."
"This isn't your fault, Master Luke."
He shrugged. And then the tears came. Rey hesitantly put a hand on his shoulder, and he patted her hand with a broken smile.
"It'll be all right, Rey," he sniffed. "Something needs to change, though. This can't happen again."
"I don't think he'll come back."
"No, I mean this can't happen to you."
Rey jerked her hand back as if he had slapped her. "Me? You think I would join the dark side?"
Luke pursed his lips for a moment, then continued. "I have been teaching the ways of the Force in the way that I was taught by Master Obi Wan and Master Yoda. And from what I've been reading in the old tomes…Rey, I don't want you to go through the same thing that I went through. I don't want you to teach new Jedi only to have one betray you and kill your students and try to kill you. There is something fundamentally wrong happening here, and the only way to fix it is to revolutionize. Something needs to change, Rey. The Jedi order needs to end."
Rey stared at him in shock, and wasn't sure if asking the question in her mind would sound like she was whining or ungrateful if this was the decision he needed to make, but—
"What about my training, Master Luke?"
"We will finish what we started, Rey, don't worry. I will teach you what I know, and then…we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
After some meditation, Rey went to catch up with Poe about Finn's recovery and the other going's on at the Rebel base. Thankfully, the escort to the base met with little conflict, and Rey and Luke were greeted warmly and with awe. General Organa was the first to embrace Luke, and the pain of Han Solo's loss was palpable.
News soon followed them of the First Order invading Ach'to and completely destroying the first Jedi temple. There was confirmation of Captain Phasma being with the boots on the ground from the couple of scouts left behind, but no word of Kylo Ren. Rey was relieved that they had saved the texts from destruction, but she found a quiet place to grieve for the island that let her grow so much in ways she couldn't have imagined.
