It starts with reliving Han Solo's death.

It's not an entirely unexpected nightmare. That was a horrible day, all told; Han murdered by his own son, the fight in the frigid forest of a planet-turned-weapon, the scramble to Finn's motionless body in the snow. That sudden expansion of relief rolling out through her nerve endings when Finn's chest inflated with breath.

So yeah. Even though Finn's awake now, and Rey gets holos from him almost daily complaining about being confined to bedrest and asking her a dozen questions about training with Luke Skywalker, it isn't that surprising that she has nightmares.

What is strange is that when she dreams of that chaotic bolt of heat piercing Han's chest, when she sees his eyes go wide and disbelieving and hurt, she's right in front of him. Standing where Kylo Ren stood. Feeling his hand cup her cheek before the strength drains from it, before his body pulls free of the furious buzz of the lightsaber and falls away into the black below. She can hear her own screaming in the distance, echoing through the cold, metal chamber of the oscillator.

She feels that moment of expectance, of triumph, and she knows relief will come rolling in any moment. It's finally done. The last of the Light is rooted out.

Right?

Rey wakes and sits up, leaning over her knees, her chest heaving against her thighs and her hands clutching her ankles. Just a nightmare.

She's been in Kylo Ren's head once before. She has no desire to return. Why do her nightmares plant her in his head, feeling the hot boil of emotions barely contained in his body?

Luke is pleased with her progress. It's been only a few weeks, but she can stack stones with nothing more than her mind. Not as high or for as long as she'd like to, though. The things she did on the Starkiller Base (not that she's thrilled to think back to that day) seemed much more natural. Following the fierce, piercing thread of Kylo Ren's power back into his thoughts. Slipping the thought into her guard's head that he'd like to unlock her restraints, leave the door open, and drop his weapon.

Compared to that, stacking stones is tedious and — and verges on agonizing, honestly, when the stack only reaches five or six high before wobbling as her control slips. It's always a stray thought. Has Finn been allowed off bedrest yet? Does General Organa still wear that bone-weary, aching expression when she thinks no one is looking? Sometimes — she hates it but — sometimes it's, does Kylo Ren feel the same ache over his father's death that the general or even Rey does?

In the dreams she feels the edge of the ache rushing in, but they're just nightmares. Kylo Ren feels nothing, and she needs to be focusing on training, because who else is going to be able to face him but her?

"It's okay," Luke says as she grimaces and grumbles over another toppled stack of stones. "You're doing great." Sometimes (like now), when he looks at her there's a softness to his expression that breaks through the age and grief that normally weighs him down. He runs the fingers of one hand down along his beard and offers her a small smile.

Rey exhales hot breath and picks up one of the stones, throwing it sharply against the wall of the old temple they've been using for training. It's more ruins than anything, but some of the rooms offer shelter from the elements. Rey doesn't mind it; it's better than the old AT-AT she slept in back on Jakku. There's always a green smell in the air. "How long am I going to spend stacking rocks?" she asks, the petulance in her tone bleeding away to weariness.

"Until it's comfortable," Luke says. "Until you can do it blindfolded and upside down."

Rey's exhale scrapes through her throat, coming out less respectful than she intended. Luke and his blindfolds. She also practices dodging and deflecting blaster fire while blindfolded. She should have patience, she knows that, but it's hard with the First Order out there regrouping and growing strong while the Resistance scrambles to pull together what threadbare support it has left.

Luke looks almost… amused. Rey frowns and returns to stacking rocks. Maybe this time she can get to seven. She just needs to… clear her mind. Find that place again where it all comes into focus.

Like teetering on the edge of a precipice, a murderous psychopath offering to train her in the ways of the Force. That moment of calm clarity when she realized his recklessness would be his downfall.

When they finally move past the basics of physical control with the Force — when there's no training left to be done on this empty planet because now she needs people (minds) to practice with — that's when the nightmares get worse.

Not right away. First there's the homecoming. General Organa's eyes glimmering with tears that can't escape the gravity of her sadness as she embraces her brother after so many years. Finn picking her up and spinning the breath from her as she laughs, her fingers tight on his shoulders. "I missed you too," she says as he sets her down and then pulls her in for a tighter embrace, his neck and cheek hot against hers.

"Doc would probably kill me for picking you up like that," Finn admits. Rey can hear the smile in his voice. He releases her, shifting back to study her at arm's length.

"Still working on physical therapy?" Rey asks through a smile that threatens to split her cheeks.

He nods and turns so they can walk side-by-side toward the Resistance base. It's a new one, but Rey didn't know the old one well, so it doesn't much matter. "So, what Force tricks have you got now? You can show off. I don't mind."

Rey chuckles — almost refuses — but then she gives in. She can sense the comlink in his pocket, so she reaches a tendril of the Force around it, sliding it free of his pocket to hover in front of him.

"We're here rebuilding the Resistance and you're off learning to use the Force to be a master thief?" Finn asks, sweeping a hand across to pluck the hovering comlink from the air. He turns a grin on her that makes her heart swell against her ribs.

Force, she's missed Finn.

Well, she's here to train the interpersonal part of the Force, right? She reaches out tentatively for Finn's mind. Not a hold, just brushing across the surface of his thoughts and feelings. He's bright, so bright — just joy and relief, and utterly focused on her.

"Rey," Luke calls, and she stops, turns to find him. He has an arm — well, not around the general, but with his palm held against her back. "Get the lay of the base today. We'll start work tomorrow."

She nods, gratitude seeping into her smile. He probably needs time with his sister anyway, but it's still nice to have a day just to reunite with Finn and get her bearings.

"Awesome," Finn says. "Come on, you have to meet Poe Dameron. Did you meet Poe already?" He's not waiting for an answer. Rey picks up her pace to match his as he almost-jogs toward the wide, squat building off the side of the duracrete that makes up the base's airfield.

Poe Dameron was the first to rush to the Millennium Falcon when they landed after Starkiller Base, concern etched on his face to see Finn draped from Chewie's arms. She'd hardly exchanged two words with him — there was too much rush to follow the map to Luke Skywalker — but any friend of Finn's is a friend of Rey's. And she's heard plenty about him through Finn's holos over the last few months.

Finn bursts into the hangar at that near-jog, but Rey can't help slowing. So many ships, and the space swarming with mechanics. She's looking around at the fighters, starstruck. All different kinds. Some she even flew on her flight simulator back on Jakku. She itches to take one up, to compare her flight simulator to the real thing.

A hand on her shoulder draws her attention to Poe. Without realizing it she drifted halfway across the hangar after Finn, and now Poe's grinning at her, all messy black curls and warm, brown eyes that crinkle at the corners. "Finn's been driving me crazy," he teases with a fond glance toward Finn. "I'm glad you're here to help shoulder the burden of his attention now. He's told me a lot about you. Everything there is to know, I think."

Finn rolls his eyes. "Don't let him fool you, he's thrilled by my company."

Rey brushes against Poe's mind like she did Finn's on the airfield. Finn's not wrong. Poe is confidence and bravado and an underlying softness, and his focus for Finn is intense and warm. There's a bittersweet thread to his thoughts that confuses Rey, brings heat to her cheeks.

A hard thump against the side of her leg brings Rey's glance down just as BB-8 chirps a half-affronted accusation: she's been gone too long, and was she not going to say hi? Rey chuckles. "Hey. I missed you too."

BB-8 gives a satisfied, whirring sort of beep and rocks back from against her leg, but he stays close.

"I hear you're quite a pilot," Poe says, returning his attention to Rey.

She nearly jumps, the warmth flushing through her face again. He doesn't know she was just filtering through the edges of his thoughts, she reminds herself. "And you're the best pilot in the Resistance," she says.

He grins, his tongue edging at the corner of his mouth for an instant. Doesn't deny it. But he does say, "After years of practice. The way Finn tells it, your first flight you were dodging TIE fighters through the skeletons of dead Star Destroyers."

Well, it was her second flight. She finds herself grinning. "Did Finn happen to mention his first-class shooting?"

Poe laughs as he nods. "Many times."

Finn's hands go to his hips. If he's embarrassed, he shouldn't be. His shooting really was stellar, and his enthusiasm is one of his best qualities. Rey nudges him with her elbow and shoots him a grin.

Poe thumbs over his shoulder to a black-painted X Wing. "Want to take one up?"

Rey's lips part as she stares at him. "Can I?"

He chuckles. "Absolutely."

And that's how, though she should really be getting to know the Resistance base, Rey spends the rest of her day flying. She wouldn't trade it for anything.

That night she dreams through Kylo Ren's eyes again. It's the same nightmare but… more. She's somehow Ren for other memories. Memories she has no means to know. Her brief stroll through Ren's head was enough to tell her he was fixated absolutely on living up to Darth Vader's legacy, but nothing more than that.

She's Kylo Ren — she's Ben Solo — at four years old on Han Solo's lap the first time he remembers jumping to hyperspace. The stars elongate to streaks of bright white and blue light and her — his — stomach lurches, and Uncle Chewie's watching her and laughing in that warbling way he has. Mom's hand tightens on her shoulder. "I want to be a pilot like Dad," she says, but it's not her voice, it's his. Smaller. A child's voice. Ben-before-he-was-Kylo.

She's seven years old, tears streaking down her cheeks while Mom and Dad fight in the other room. "He can't just do that Leia!" and "I know Han, you think I'm telling him to stop bullies with the Force?" and "He nearly killed that boy, that's not normal. Tell me you or Luke pulled stunts like that as kids —"

"We didn't know we were Force users," Leia says.

"Maybe he shouldn't either. We saw how well that worked out for his grandfather."

And then, the lurking voice again. Dark. It made me powerful. The most powerful Sith there ever was.

It's disorienting because it's not her voice. It's not even Ben's voice. It's something else. Some dim part of Rey whispers Snoke, but it's far away. She's trapped in this memory, in a young boy's hurt and confusion.

They will never understand you. You are a child of the Dark Side, like me. They will try to steal your power from you.

"Who are you?" Rey-Ben whispers, grinding her fingertips into her hairline and screwing her eyes shut against the tears.

The voice plays at surprise. Why, your grandfather, it says. I have to look after you. You're going to finish what I started.

And then flashes of — of death and — chaos and power. Destruction. A man's throat crushed for his incompetence, a power that stretches across space to weak men in ships who think the distance keeps them safe. The deadly song of a lightsaber arcing through flesh and bone, the slight tug of resistance where his hand grips the hilt as it slices through his enemies. Standing among a field of burned and broken bodies that — that —

Oh, Maker, they're children —

Rey snaps awake with a strangled cry and presses herself back, back against the wall, her sheets tangling around her legs. Her harsh breathing fills the room, quick and panicked. She's alone.

Being alone never bothered her, but now the emptiness around her threatens to suffocate. She doesn't want to fall asleep. She doesn't want to go back to that place.

She shudders against the wall until her breath grows calm, and then she eases to the center of her bed, crossing her legs. Anxiety hums through her bones. There will be no sleeping. She will practice. There's not much to stack in this room, but she finds enough to occupy her. A toothbrush, soap, a couple ready meals from her pack. The lightsaber. Her shoes. Anything will do.

Eventually daylight creeps in.

I also post on AO3 under the same penname ...! Some things that I can't post here, lol. Or check out my tumblr (sheikahtrainee). Thanks for reading!