It was rarely easy.
Living on that little island was rarely easy. Living with someone who was a total stranger was even harder. Someone so much older and-
Oh, nevermind that. Living with anyone at all was the hard part. Learning how to adapt and change a lifetime of rude self-preservation instincts into something approaching civilized behavior. It just wasn't something that Rey was ever sure she could get used to.
Not that the company was in any way unwanted. Not now, when she finally knew what it was like to just...to be more than just herself. It was nice. It gave her a sense of purpose. That's all that anyone was supposed to really want, wasn't it?
And now, the lucky girl that she is, she had two constant companions. Her kindly, old, and frequently somber mentor and...well, and his 'nephew'.
There just aren't words for him. Rey can't even begin to describe the man. Describe what it was to be connected to someone like him or what it was like for her, for both of them, when they'd first found out. But she doesn't have to try to describe it, does she? The answer should be ghastly and obvious for anyone who's been paying attention to her story thus far.
And, of course, he'd taught her how to block it. No, not him. The other "he" in her life. The very, very first thing her mentor had done for her was ensure that she knew how to block his blood relative out.
It was the only demand he'd ever made from her. Made it clear that if she couldn't do that, and do it immediately, then she'd have to go. Go back or away and be alone all over again.
So, even if she didn't have the faintest of ideas how all this hoodoo 'Force' business really worked, she learned how to make it work. Figured out how to block him and shut him out or down. To close herself off from him so completely that she could almost pretend that she was just as she'd always been again. Back when she wasn't a 'we' and there wasn't some ridiculously unfunny joke about being solo that threatened to leave her traumatized every time she thought it.
And when she learned how to do it, he hadn't taken it well. At all. The second he, she means. The first he in her life had simply nodded. Remained stoic and encouraged her in the most unreadable of ways to her rapid and necessity-driven mastery of her unknowns.
Then he'd told her they could start tomorrow. If she still wanted to.
And why not, right? Of course she still did. It's not like Rey had anywhere else to go or anyone else to go to.
The 'holidays'.
Why?
Just why?
Even the word made her dislike it. Take 'holy' and 'day' and smush them together to make something that Rey had always secretly dreaded.
There wasn't much to celebrate on Jakku. Even the people who'd had things – money, food, each other- had seemed to be overcome with indifference to this time of year. Why celebrate something that had happened so many solar cycles ago and no doubt on someplace so far, far away?
Things worth celebrating just didn't happen on her old planet. She'd known that for as long as she'd known anything. The only real option was to be happy and live in the now. If there was anything to be happy about, that is. And if there wasn't.. well, then just try to ignore the holidays. They too will pass and all they were was just another scratch mark left on her walls.
When she'd told that to Lu- to her mentor- he'd laughed. Said she sounded like a morbidly bad life guru. The kind that, on the right planet, could have made a killing with selling her pragmatism to the rich and dabbling.
She hadn't understood. 'Live in the now' was the only way to keep going, wasn't it?
But maybe this time around they weren't going to be so bad. Maybe. He hadn't wanted her to do anything for him. That's what he'd told her and she knew what he really meant without him saying it. Having her there was enough. The old man was as terribly lonely as she was, she was sure of it.
And, since he'd done so much for her and she felt absolutely the same way, she wanted to do something. She wanted to celebrate. For the first time in her life, Rey wanted to remember this occasion. Remember that she finally finally didn't have to pretend not to care about everything that she had missed out on or been left out from.
So they decorated. Or rather, she'd brought in basketfulls of pretty stones and shells and strung them up with twine everywhere inside their main hut. And when her mentor -her master, really, though he didn't want her to use that term- had come in from his evening meditation he'd smiled.
This was a momentous occasion from a man who almost never smiled. And then he'd finally relented to her endless exuberance and sat down and told her stories over that evening's dinner.
She'd known about some of them already. Her master's younger years were literally the stuff of legends. Tales told throughout the galaxy about a man so famous that even someone as trivial as Young Herself had overheard them.
It was the later pieces that were new to her. The things that concerned or pertained to the other him. Those were what drew her attention the most. Kept her asking questions even when she knew her master didn't have his own words to describe... everything that had happened.
But he tried. He tried to explain and console her.
Yes, fine, she was shackled to a monster. Bound forever to someone who had hurt so many people so very badly. But he hadn't always been that way, right? She had to believe that. It was the only choice for her. She had to believe that the Universe, Fate, or the Force (because which one of them was really in charge here, anyhow?) wouldn't have been so cruel as to do this to her with someone who had nothing left.
Her master had understood. He'd always understood everything. Even though spying on each others minds was strictly and absolutely a faux pas, he always just knew. Maybe because he'd been there, too.
And no, Ben hadn't always been this way. He'd been a quiet and sad child, just like her. He'd been lonely and isolated and didn't understand why, just like her. And then... then he'd made choices. Choices that she, even in her absolutely darkest of moments, would never have even begun to contemplate.
"Was that why you took me in?" she'd asked. Desperate for her master to keep going just as much as she was starting to be desperate for his approval.
No. That wasn't why. He told her he'd taken her in because she'd needed him to. Not because she was raw and powerful or because she was so light he thought she'd never turn dark. But because she'd needed to not be alone anymore and maybe he'd needed the company as well.
That's when she realized what he really meant. She was his last chance, also. His last opportunity to leave a legacy of something other than the failures that he'd let define him.
It had all been so obvious. She hadn't the heart to tell him, nor did she need to, but in hindsight what Ben would become was painfully obvious. A lonely child with too much power and no one who cared enough about to actually, really care.
It could have been stopped. That was the most unbearable part of this whole, awful story. He could have been stopped and everything could have been different now.
But... but if it could have been stopped before, then couldn't it...
She doesn't finish her question. As always, she doesn't have to. Her master's emotions are rolling off him in waves and that never happens. He's always so careful and infallible. Never fully dropping the wall between their two minds. But she knows why he's letting it drop now.
Hope.
That most important of all words. The word you turn to when you have no others left. The one her master can't quite bring himself to speak out loud.
He's hopeful that what's done can still be undone. That somehow Ben still exists and there's enough good in the creature he is now to bring him back. And her master should know, shouldn't he? He's seen it himself with his own father.
Never give up. That's what he wants to tell her. That she can't ever give up, because when she does there's nothing left.
She lets the conversation drift, then. Lets her master take it to happier memories. Funny and slightly inappropriate tales of how incredibly gorgeous he thought his sister was when he first met her. How many times he'd almost died due to his own incompetence, or as a near byproduct of the wild adventures of his brother in law. Bittersweet salutes in honor of the man who had as much of a share in the blame of this as any of them did.
Then they both toast with a well-dusty and hidden bottle of wine that her master had kept hidden for a special occasion. He hadn't had a reason to celebrate until now, either.
That statement, casual and off the cuff, effects Rey more than she can possibly express.
That night she reached out to him.
It was the first time for her. He'd tried to find her by himself, of course. She could sometimes feel him dragging and pulling and tearing at their connection.
As she'd gotten stronger, she'd been able to ignore him better. Block him out until that she could almost convince herself that he didn't matter. That she almost couldn't feel him. Almost.
But he was always there. Angry and demanding like a petulant and deadly child. Sometimes so forceful that she'd be left gasping and only her master's hand on her shoulder and sadly understanding frown would be able to pull her out of his psychotic nephew's grasp.
And she decided then and there that she'd been afraid of him for too long. There were questions that she needed answers to and lines needed to be drawn.
So she waited until late that night, long after her master had gone to bed, before she finally reached out to him.
A gentle pluck at their shared threads and seams. She doesn't know how to do this, but as everything else was between them, it comes naturally to her.
And she's very, very lucky. He's meditating when she finds him. So deeply within his own head that he doesn't immediately notice the new company inside it.
She scans him with just the barest, most careful of little pulses. Not wanting to intrude on his thoughts or do anything too intimately invasive that would surely trigger his alarms. No, all she's searching for is his current emotions. His current state that she knows can tell her so much about what a person really is.
Anger. She'd expected that. He was always angry. Every second that she'd ever felt him had been tainted with a caustic tinge of bitterness and anger.
But beyond that is something new. Something that she hadn't felt from him before but she knew within herself so very strongly. Melancholy. Sadness with a sense of futility all blended up together into a wall of misery.
Is it wrong that she's intrigued? Surely it is. Certainly not the Jedi way to be drawn to someone else's suffering so acutely. But she is and she's glad for it. It's what she was looking for. The proof that he's still himself enough to care. Maybe it's his conscience finally reaching to him thorough his current introspective state, or maybe it's just the time of year coupled with the fact that he's even more alone than she is.
And she thought her holidays sucked. To be so alone even when surrounded by so many other people...
But she can't get sidetracked. It would be far too easy to and, regardless, there's something there. Something she can hope for.
And there's something beyond the melancholy, too. Something that immediately draws her in.
Regret.
Confusing regret. Shameful, embarrassing, repressed regret. But regret nonetheless. Something so intertwined with human nature that no one who feels it can ever be truly and fully beyond redemption.
She wants to know more. Wants to know what exactly he regrets the most. There are only two answers that would be acceptable to her.
But she can feel him start to stir. Begin to pull out of his meditative state and become aware of her. And she has to retreat as fast as she possibly can. No time to be gentle about it. Otherwise he'll catch her and pull her into him like quicksand.
He tries to. And he almost does. But she escapes him once again.
Just to be petty, she sends a quick triumphant smirk through to him. Oops. That wasn't very Jedi-like of her, was it?
And he's hurt and confused and thoroughly alarmed. Wondering just how much did she see when she spied on him?
Maybe she could have deceived him. Have him sweat by letting him think he'd accidentally revealed some major First Order secret. Or, even worse, that she'd seen all the vulnerabilities in him that he tries so hard to deny.
But, hey. It's the holidays. She can be a little generous, just this once.
So she silently closes their connection again. Content with leaving him be and just letting him wonder what the hell all that had been about...