AN: Hi kids, happy new year! If you're following me as an author, you probably know I have a large multichap that I am in the middle of right now and honestly I'm trying rly hard to get a new chapter written but I'm having writers block for that story, sadly. Instead, this story won't leave me tf alone; I started it a couple years ago after TFA but after watching TLJ I trashed it all and rewrote it in a fit of gloriously misplaced inspiration.
So listen I'm fully converted Reylo trash after TLJ, and that will hopefully make an appearance in here, I really want it to make an appearance in here, but I also like coming up with characters in general, so if you dislike Mary Sues (yes, I am mature enough to recognize my own Mary Sue characters) then I recommend you turn back now...I try pretty hard to keep my OCs away from Mary Sue territory but this is kinda shameless OFC fun.
***TLJ SPOILERS AHEAD***
"Ben."
He was dreaming of a battle gone wrong, himself in the center of a crowd of enemies, all angry and armed. Her voice was a startling calm in comparison to the seething people around him, and it carried over the roar of battlecries in the way voices sometimes do in dreams.
"Ben, it's me."
All the world around them was pale, pale white. Cold, barren, and unforgiving. Her figure was a warm red-orange beacon against the icy vastness, beyond the sea of colorless, faceless, merciless attackers. He looked up, scars cracking.
"You remember me."
"Of course," he choked. Crimson blood spattered the white ice under his crouched, hunched body, blown from his lips by the words. "How could I forget?"
She stood in bright contrast to the white expanse around them, a steady flare of life amidst certain death. Beatific, her eyes were nothing but the same golden warmth they always had been, her skin not creased by any expression beyond peace. She was just as he last saw her: young, vibrant, and so tangible it gripped his heart with sudden grief and regret.
"Look at yourself, Ben. You're so old now."
The gentle teasing tone brought back sunny memories of his adolescence, even in the midst of his current crisis. "And you're still so young," he answered, swallowing the blood filling his mouth. The metallic tang stuck to his teeth and the insides of his cheeks.
"But you remember me, Ben. You can't remember me older than this. You wouldn't recognize me. And I can barely recognize you."
Around him, the faceless, blank crowds were closing in, their anger deafening, blinding, burning, but he still heard her voice like a bell. They would crush him. He gasped for breath. "What do you mean?"
"You're so filled with hatred. Everything is anger and fear. You weren't all hate when I knew you, Ben. Don't you remember?"
For a moment, the primal, savage terror that had slowly been building in his chest receded. Like a tide, the enemies fell back. Warmth bloomed near his sternum, and he remembered. "Yes, I remember," he murmured. His tense limbs began to relax.
"Then why, Ben? Why are you doing this?"
He looked up again when her tone shifted to pained and desperate. The calm was gone, and her arms were tucked around her middle as if she were about to be sick. In her eyes raged a churning sea of yellow flame. Her brow had pinched up, and her gray lips were pulled wide in a grimace.
"Why, Ben?"
The hordes smothered him again, swallowing him in their wrath, and tore into him. He screamed as they ripped his body to shreds.
—
Aketaa came back to herself as if she'd been ejected out of a starfighter. Her consciousness slammed into her body, knocking her sideways into the wall of her little room. Her right lek got caught between the wood paneling and her shoulder, sending a pang all the way to the tip of her montral. She hadn't expected to startle him so much, but she hadn't expected his dreams to be so violent either. For a moment, she simply sat on the mattress and caught her breath. Had he woken up? she wondered. It was too dangerous to probe across the galaxy just then; he could be searching for her presence after the stunt she pulled.
This whole thing was risky. She did it because she cared, certainly, but at the same time, would she sacrifice her own safety for the chance that Kylo Ren might stumble away from the abyss of the Dark side? Her head told her she shouldn't. Her gut couldn't resist.
In the following weeks, Aketaa could sleep only an hour or two at a time, so anxious was she that her walls weren't good enough to protect her location. If Kylo could sense her at all, there was a risk, too high for comfort, that he and the First Order would descend upon this little village on this little planet, blasters blazing, and destroy her and everyone she had come to care about in the last years. She went about her daily work with the Raydonian village children, teaching them their lessons with a little less focus than usual, and the younglings picked up on it easily.
"Miss Anii, is somethin' botherin' you? D'you have enough food? My ma an' pa gets kinda worried when we have to eat less food, sometimes."
"Are you sick, Miss Anii? Mama stares into space like that sometimes when she gets sick-feelin'."
"If a grown-up's makin' you sad, you should tell 'im so's you don' gotta be sad, Miss Anii."
Aketaa smiled, corrected their grammar, and thanked them for their advice. It was a sweet gesture on their part, but it wasn't as helpful as they had intended. There was nothing she could do but wait until enough time passed for Kylo Ren to dismiss her contact as a simple dream. She told them she was feeling fine and had plenty to eat thanks to their parents, but a grown-up was making her very sad indeed, though it was impossible to tell him anything.
"I need to be patient," she told the children. "So long as I'm patient with him, things might turn out okay."
Two months and a few days went by before Aketaa even considered reaching out again. When she did, it took another couple of days to decide how she wanted to approach the next dream. She was fully capable of showing him a memory of their shared childhood, but she felt that would be too risky this soon. Another chance appearance would be all she could get away with. So one morning, she reached out a careful tendril of her consciousness to feel for him, gently poking around the galaxy until she found the First Order fleet, and then carefully brushing against every mind she found until she found his. He was awake. It seemed, though, that he would not be awake for long. Aketaa had no lessons with the children that day, so she decided to sit in her little room and wait until Kylo Ren fell asleep.
—
"Ben."
He was standing in a sun-bleached desert at the top of a sharp, steep cliff. She stepped up to the precipice next to him. In silence, they stood together. He barely even noticed she was there until she spoke.
"Ben, what's at the bottom of the cliff?"
"I don't know." The wind caught his voice and carried it away to the flat, washed-out horizon. He swallowed; in the dry air, it felt like a thin layer of dust had coated his throat. Maybe it had.
"How would we find out?"
He swallowed again. "Jump," he answered. "We could jump."
Silence fell around them again, oppressive and heavy like wool. The atmosphere was thick, and he licked his lips. They were dry and flaking. His mouth felt sandy. Somewhere in the distance, a wind rattled through some brush or branches, though nothing of the sort was anywhere in sight.
"If you stay behind, I'll jump, Ben. Then I'll climb back up and tell you what I find."
Before he even thought about it, his hand shot out to seize her arm. One of her bare feet was already over the edge, and she looked back up at him, questioning him with her golden eyes. Such innocent confusion was written across her young face that he almost smiled. "Don't," he breathed. Her back headtail smacked against his hand when she swung her head back forward. To his unexpected relief, she brought her foot back onto firm ground.
"Ben, do you remember when we met?"
His hand was still holding her arm. He looked down at his black leather glove against her colorful skin. His thumb pressed into her flesh just next to the end of one of the thick white lines that striped her shoulders. "Of course I remember," he whispered, tongue heavy. A little girl with orange skin and tiny headtails that only brushed the tops of her shoulders, shown into Luke's hut with her mother, a tall but hunched woman; her montrals would have poked through the roof if she hadn't bent over. He remembered. How could he forget?
"And do you remember when we parted?"
She turned her face up to his again, her warm eyes wide. His nose was clogged with dust. He had to part his parched lips to breathe, but it only brought in more of the pale desert dirt. Didn't she feel how this place would suffocate them both? Her front headtail fell against his wrist. He knew without feeling it that the skin would be warm and smooth against his.
"We hurt each other, Ben."
His lungs were burning, and he felt short of breath. He could hear how he was wheezing to take in air. Little puffs of dust blew past his lips with every exhalation.
"Ben, am I your prisoner? Your grip is tight."
He let go of her arm to drop to his knees, staring down off the edge of the cliff into a giant white dust cloud. He coughed, hacked, choked, and couldn't breathe. He felt her hand in his hair, gently and comforting, and he leaned into her touch between coughs without fully realizing it. Soon enough, his lungs stopped burning, and his mouth and throat and nose began to clear up. He sat back on his heels and dropped his head to her side, letting her form support the weight of his upper body.
"What happened, Ben?"
She stepped away. The ground suddenly felt very unstable.
"What happened?"
He plummeted off the edge of the cliff. The dust cloud met him long before he stopped falling, and he couldn't breathe long before he hit the ground again.
—
It pained Aketaa to watch Kylo Ren suffer in his dreams. She could do something, change their outcomes, ease his soul at least in his sleep. But she knew she shouldn't, and in this case Aketaa decided she should listen to her head.
That afternoon she ate a lunch of flatbread and the fleshy pink Raydonian fruit the people here began domesticating only a couple decades ago, and she thought over her meal. The words of Master Skywalker's Force ghost echoed in her mind: "You've done well to hide yourself, even from me, but it's time to stretch those feelers out again like I know you can. Find Ben. Try to sway his mind away from the Dark side as my student Rey must focus her energies on my sister's war. I don't mean for you to bring him to the Light—that may not be possible—but maybe it's time to let the old ways die. Find a balance, Aketaa. Begin again, stronger. The Force will be with you...trust it always."
He had placed a large, twofold burden on her shoulders. Bring Kylo Ren back from the Dark, and find a balance. A balance, he'd said. A balance. A balance of what? Old and new ways? Had Master Skywalker left it to her to decide which practices to keep and discard? It seemed like too much responsibility, especially when she hadn't fully completed her training.
No, he told her to start over anew. Throw out the old Jedi teachings and return to the beginning. On primitive planets, whole tribes of Force-sensitive peoples lived isolated from both the Jedi and the Sith; what did they believe? How did they relate themselves to the Force?
The Togruta naturally have a certain affinity with the Force; traditionally her people walked barefoot to feel their connection with the land. With or without the Jedi, the Force is there, always, a constant energy between every living and nonliving thing in the universe. The Jedi used it to keep the peace and the Sith used it to gain power, and both kept to the extremes of the Light and the Dark. Maybe Master Skywalker intended for her to find a balance between Light and Dark, accepting both and abhorring neither. Life isn't black and white, so why should relation to the Force be black and white? Everything is a shade of gray, is it not?
Aketaa stood to wash her dishes. As she shuffled over the stone-paved floor of her room in the moccasins everyone in the village wore, one detail from Kylo Ren's dream came to mind. She appeared as he remembered her from years, almost a decade, ago; when she stepped off the cliff, he hadn't pictured her in shoes. Did she go barefoot habitually as a child? Aketaa couldn't remember. Standing at the water pump in her room's kitchenette, she kicked off her shoes. The damp stone was cool under her feet.
—
"Ben."
This was an inopportune time for her to make an appearance. The woman beneath him didn't seem to notice.
"Ben, this is just indecent."
He knew that. Of course he knew that. It would be very much appreciated if she just went away.
"You can't just wave me away like any other figment of your imagination."
He sighed. This could've been a pleasant dream, but it just had to turn sour, didn't it? He didn't mind seeing her usually, but if he started associating her image with this corner of his psyche he might have to track her down and murder her. Unless, of course, she had died sometime in the past years of his life. In that case, she must be haunting him.
"We have to talk, Ben."
Bet. The woman writhed and gave a little helpless moan. "Kylo," she whimpered. He grit his teeth.
"I'm not enjoying this either, but we have to talk."
"What about?" he hissed.
"You. Me. The universe." Her young form made this all the worse, and the effect of her vague statements spoken in a child's voice sent an extremely unwelcome shiver down his spine.
No. She was in his head, just an old memory. "Enough," he growled, and forced her out of his dream.
—
A bad headache lingered behind her brow through the next day, and Aketaa vowed to pay more careful attention to his mood before entering his mind the next time. It wasn't that what she saw left her with the taste of bile in her mouth, even though it did; being personally thrown out apparently had side effects. Before when she'd been booted out of Kylo's head, it was because his dream was over and she was ejected like a guest whose allotted time was up. This time, he had mentally manhandled her out himself.
The harvest season had arrived in this sector of Raydonia, so all of Aketaa's students were working with their parents until winter. She excused them after she made them promise to practice their reading on their own, so long as their other chores were done first. As much as Aketaa believed education was important, she wouldn't come between her students and their families; she had no right to tell them to put off their work for her. Without lessons with the children to occupy her and not much else to do, she had a ridiculous amount of time to sit and think.
Every way she looked at it, no matter how she tried to reason around it, Aketaa could not come to any conclusion besides the fact that the Force is a truly neutral entity. How else could truly neutral organisms be connected to it? Living grass is neither Light nor Dark, Aketaa reasoned, it just exists. It is in the Force, and one can manipulate it as such, but it has no polarized aura to it. Therefore, the Force must be neutral, and the Light and Dark sides that practically the whole galaxy attribute to the Force itself must come from outward factors.
How, then, can one clearly sense a difference between what are called the Light and the Dark sides of the Force? How, then, are some fully drenched in the Light and some fully drowned in the Dark? This was something Aketaa could make neither head nor tail of. At the moment, her working theory was that people themselves polarized the Force.
A firm knock on her door shook Aketaa out of her musings. Her bare feet made a soft slapping noise over the stone floor as she crossed her room to answer it. She sensed no danger; she had not sensed danger from any of these colonists since she first arrived and they were still suspicious of her. She did, however, sense a signature flutter of nerves that she knew well.
When Aketaa first arrived on Raydonia almost six years ago, she offered her services as a teacher of reading, writing, and mathematics in return for food and a place to stay. They let her have a one-room suite, part of a unit designed as an inn for travelers, and the village families took turns hosting her for lunches and dinners until she had learned how to cook a few common local meals. Her class at first ranged wildly in age from six to twenty-seven, and Aketaa found it intimidating to instruct people years older than she was on how to read and write Basic. Eventually, though, once her older students had learned all they had time to learn or all they had need of learning, her class dwindled down to just children. One older boy, a then-seventeen-year-old named Dom, stuck with the youngsters for a long time after everyone else his age had left. His family had hosted Aketaa often, and still extended her an invitation from time to time, so she was familiar enough with him to notice a shift in his demeanor. It was all too clear to her that the boy had developed a bad crush, and even six years later Aketaa still sensed his feelings for her as strong as ever, if not stronger.
"Dom, good afternoon," she greeted. She could see his pulse pounding in his throat, poor boy. "What brings you here?"
"My mother's makin' a stew to celebrate our first field harvested," he answered. "If you'd like to come for dinner, we'd be happy to have you this evenin'." His anxiety spiked suddenly as he appeared to take a deep breath in preparation to say something else. "And I was wonderin', if you haven't had lunch yet, if you'd like to eat with me? I finished another book, and I thought we could talk about it."
Dom was nothing if not sweet. He was always polite and got along well with the children in the village, and Aketaa wished he would spend less time pursuing her and more time with the young women his age who would be lucky to have him. In any case, she did enjoy the company of his family and she liked their book discussions. "I already ate, but you're welcome to come in. We can talk about the book over tea." Aketaa opened the door wider to let him in before leaving him to cross the threshold himself so she could put a kettle of water on the electric burner in the kitchenette. "I'll come for stew, too. Anything your mother makes is always delicious."
She heard him pull out one of her two chairs and have a seat, setting something on her table, probably his datapad. "What happened to your shoes?" he asked.
"Hm?"
"You're in bare feet, I mean. Did something happen to your shoes?"
For a moment, Aketaa had forgotten her lack of shoes. Going barefoot at least in her own room had become quite natural to her. "I don't wear shoes at home," she answered. She paused, sensing his confusion but unsure of how to explain herself without mentioning the Force. No one here knew of her past or her gifts; that was a secret she had guarded close to her chest since Tatooine. "Growing up, I never wore shoes. My kind believes going barefoot keeps us more connected to the planet." Vagueness never fails, especially when mixed with half-truths. Dom accepted this, and turned the conversation to his book.
Aketaa brought tea to the table with a quiet smile. As usual, his nerves calmed the longer he spent in her presence, even without a gentle soothing Force suggestion on her part. They discussed the themes and allegories of his book for a good amount of time before she interrupted to ask what time she should arrive at his family's house for dinner, and then he said he should get back home to help his father. Dom thanked her for the tea and conversation before he left Aketaa alone with her thoughts once more.
She truly felt bad for the boy. Well, she mused, he wasn't really a boy anymore, was he? Dom had just celebrated his twenty-second birthday recently; Aketaa supposed he qualified as a young man and had for a couple years now. Soon enough people would start wondering why he wasn't interested in courting the very available young women his age. Aketaa herself often wondered why he didn't just give up. Surely he realized she couldn't give him what he wanted? His intentions were pure, but Aketaa almost preferred that they weren't. Attachments were forbidden—…
Why, though? Forbiddance of personal attachment was one of the main conditions of the Jedi. They made one weak and susceptible to bribery and blackmail and selfishness. How could a Jedi be expected to choose duty over family or a lover if asked? Strong love corrupts and controls, just like hatred and pride and greed. This is why the Jedi left their families, had no husbands or wives or children, and kept friendships as impersonal as possible. Just like staunch adherence to the Light, this was another old Jedi custom, and hadn't Master Skywalker told her to start anew?
Was there an advantage to attachment that the Jedi overlooked? That was a question Aketaa had dealt with before when she was still a student of Master Skywalker's academy. Perhaps if one aimed to uphold galactic peace, attachment might get in the way of prioritizing the greater good, and it could distract from peacekeeping and studying the Force and whatever else the Jedi used to do. But couldn't attachment supply motivation? It could be a distraction and a weakness, maybe, but it could give one something to fight for, something to protect, something more tangible than abstract galactic peace. And anyway, maintaining galactic peace would be contradictory to balance, but that was a question for another time.
Regardless of whether or not attachment could be good, Aketaa still felt she couldn't give what Dom wanted. He hoped to love her, provide for her, start a family with her, and grow old with her. He wanted a long, happy life with her, and Aketaa couldn't commit to that. First of all, she simply didn't see him in that way after being his teacher for the majority of her time here. Second, she felt wary of planning anything longterm on this planet; any day she might be discovered, especially with her new forays into Kylo Ren's dreams. Third, children were extremely questionable at best biologically, considering she and Dom were two quite different species, and she had never heard of Togruta-human hybrids. Aketaa truly hoped that she wasn't giving Dom false hope with their friendly interactions, but it would never work.
That evening, just before the sun set, she walked across the village to join her kind hosts for stew. Dinner with Dom's family was delicious, of course, but Aketaa didn't stay for too long. The nervous flutters only increased, never decreased like usual, and because of that she felt uneasy the entire time she was there.
—
"Ben, wait for me!"
He stood in a brilliant emerald forest illuminated by sunshine. Birds twittered high above, and leaves rustled with a summer breeze he couldn't feel. Patches of blue sky peeked through the canopy of green overhead. It felt as if he'd been there before. He watched a white butterfly bob a path across the undergrowth, trying to place that feeling of familiarity, but then he caught sight of a blur of red-orange and white and navy barreling towards him. Alarmed, he tried to sidestep the runner but wasn't fast enough—only for her to pass right through him as if he were made of mist.
"Wait up!"
This time, he realized as he turned, she was much younger than she had appeared in previous dreams, only about ten years old. Her front headtails were barely long enough to bounce against her collarbones as she sprinted after who he assumed to be a younger version of himself. From behind, he recognized the tan robes of the Jedi students.
She stopped quickly, skidding on the dirt. "Where'd you go?" she asked, young voice sounding so innocent and confused that he felt his heart clench.
Movement caught his eye, and his attention was drawn towards a tall boy with a dark mop of hair creeping out from behind a tree as the young Togruta turned slowly in a circle, eyes squeezed shut in concentration. He recognized himself as a child, somewhere during his eleventh year judging by the length of his hair; just before his twelfth birthday his uncle had made him cut it. That made her nine. As he watched his younger self creep up on his friend, it dawned on him that they must've been playing a game to practice using Force shields. Often in their spare time they would play games such as this one to strengthen their abilities, he remembered.
"Gotcha!" young Ben shouted, grabbing her around her body, trapping both of her arms to her sides. He leaned back, lifting her feet off the ground and she yelped, startled, and kicked her legs in the air.
This was a memory. He remembered this.
Her wild legs and squirming body were too much for his eleven-year-old frame, and he overcorrected. He watched the two children, able to pinpoint exactly when they both realized death was nigh by their synchronized looks of sudden dread. They fell backwards. They both screamed. Standing there as a fully mature adult, he winced at the high pitch of his childhood scream, and considering the fact that he clearly screamed higher than she did, he thought his wince was justified. Young Ben's head smacked against the tree behind them, and it was off-center of the trunk enough to change their trajectory, falling sideways now on one side of the tree. She rolled away and onto her knees as soon as they hit the ground, while he rolled onto his front and groaned.
"Stars, are you okay?" she cried, walking on her knees towards his head. She sat back on her heels and looked through his hair at the back of his head. Young Ben went very still as her fingers combed through his hair, parting it in different spots. "It doesn't look like you're bleeding," she mused. "I guess your stupid hair saved you."
This couldn't be his own memory, could it? There was no way he could've remembered all the faces she made, both while they were still playing and now as she moved his hair to look at the back of his neck. And surely if it were his own memory he would be watching it from his point of view, or at least with himself as the focus; instead she seemed to be the main character as the events unfolded. If it were his own memory, surely his emotions at the time would've been more apparent than simply laying still. Could this be not his memory, but her memory of the same event? Could she be reaching out to him?
She hesitated and bit her gray lower lip for a brief moment, betraying nervousness he never sensed, before ducking her head quickly to plant a kiss on the back of young Ben's head. "I think you're okay," she announced.
He smiled, even as the memory began to dissolve around him. Later, he would vomit on her as they made their way back to his—back to Skywalker. He got a concussion and a crush that day, and even after all these years he realized he couldn't regret either.
His last thought before everything faded to the darkness of deeper sleep was that if he truly just witnessed her memory, it must have been projected from somewhere.
—
Far across the galaxy from Kylo Ren, Aketaa returned to herself in a panic. Showing him her memory was a mistake. She had thought it would be innocuous enough: a small, shared event that was so long ago that he likely wouldn't notice any odd details that might identify the scene as one from her mind and not his. It was far too overconfident a move. Now because of her slip, Kylo Ren was suspicious. Aketaa doubted that he would wave the whole thing away as just another dream of his own.
In her head, she began to formulate a list of everything she would need to pack, which wasn't much, and everyone she would need to tell of her departure. What explanation could she give? "I know I've been teaching your sons and daughters for the past six years, but I'm actually a fugitive Force-sensitive in hiding from Commander Kylo Ren of the First Order, only recently my old Jedi Master died and left it to me to find a new way of relating to the Force and to turn Kylo Ren away from the Dark side if necessary and possible. I've been visiting his dreams for months now and because of that I have endangered this entire planet with my presence, so I plan to leave as soon as possible." No, that would be ridiculous. No one would believe her, and if they did, she refused to give them any cause to worry or rally for her sake.
She had just begun to stack her clothes on the table when she felt Dom's presence outside her door. He knocked a moment later. Aketaa sighed but called for him to come in anyway.
"Good mornin'. W-what are you doin'?" His usual nerves became true worry as he surveyed the datapads and folded clothes and shoes and even her lightsaber on the table—her lightsaber, kriff, her lightsaber. "Are you goin' somewhere?" he asked slowly, watching her dig under the bed for the collapsible crate she had originally brought her things in all those years ago.
She chose not to answer, instead crouching on the floor to pop the crate into its full shape. Most of her concentration was dedicated to reigning in the boiling terror in her mind and locking her entire being under the strongest, thickest shields she could muster. Only a small corner of her attention monitored Dom and his emotions as he stepped up to her table, his hurt confusion and blooming awe. Surely he recognized what the robes she never wore but saved meant, what the metal hilt she never used but kept meant...but it didn't matter now, not when she had to leave before the First Order tracked her down and came searching for her.
"Is that—are these yours?" he asked, voice hushed. Metal scraped against the wooden table. "Is this a—a lightsaber?"
Dom's whispered reverence might've embarrassed and humbled Aketaa in any other situation, but her life was about to crumble around her and he was realizing that someone he had known half a decade had lied to his entire village the whole time. She stood to transfer what few things she truly owned into the crate, gaze resolutely focused on her hands. A touch on her shoulder, brushing her damaged front lek, froze her. Aketaa bit her lip, hands shaking, and looked up.
"You're cryin'," was all he said.
She hadn't even realized. When she lifted a hand to her cheek, it was wet with tears; she wiped them away with a rough brush of her fingers.
Dom hesitated before setting the lightsaber hilt back down on the table and gently guiding her to sit in a chair. For a moment, he seemed caught between kneeling before her and pulling the other chair over. He settled in the middle and did neither, standing over her rather unhelpfully. He offered her a handkerchief to wipe her tears with, and he waited until she had taken a few calming breaths to collect herself before launching into all of his questions.
"Are you a Jedi? I thought the Jedi were extinct? Why did you hide it? Why did you come here in the first place? Why do you have to go? Did we do somethin' to upset you? Is it the Resistance?"
He would've continued forever if Aketaa hadn't flicked her eyes up to him, piercing him with a glare more fierce than she had given in a long time. With an audible click of his teeth, Dom shut his mouth, but he still looked at her expectantly. Aketaa took another round of deep breaths, willing some of the calm she could always find in meditation to wash over her now.
"The saber is mine, yes," she began, voice rough, "but I'm not a Jedi. I was almost a Jedi, once, long ago, but there was—there was an incident, and now the Jedi are truly gone. I barely escaped, and I was only a student. I fled, and I hid first on Tatooine, then on Akiva, trying to bury my presence as deep as I could, but I didn't feel safe enough until I came here. I thought this was remote enough that I would never be found, especially if I kept every part of my Force sensitivity a secret. It worked, I think. That is, it did until my old master found me and contacted me and told me to reach out again, and so I did," she continued, feeling the panic mounting in her stomach and rising to her chest again, "and it was okay until I tried too much too soon and now he knows I'm the one reaching out and he'll find me and I have to leave before he can find me and follow me here and destroy the entire planet trying to destroy me."
She was crying again, and shaking, and now Dom did kneel before her chair to rub his hands over her arms. "It's okay, don't worry," he said, trying to soothe, but his growing fear washed over Aketaa like a rising flood. "We can tell the mayor, and he can contact the other villages to put them on alert—"
"No!" she yelped, catching his elbow. "The fewer people who know, the better. I shouldn't have even told you; you're in danger now too."
"Don't worry about me, I'm sure everyone would want to help you too."
"No one else can know," she said, tone firm, and stood to resume packing her things.
"Aketaa, please—"
"No, Dom! Your knowing puts the planet in enough danger as it is."
"Then if you're escapin', let me come with you! We'll—we'll hide together."
Aketaa froze in the middle of insulating a data pad between the folds of her packed clothes. There was no way she could leave him here, knowing as much of her story as he did, and there was no way she could take him. He was a liability in both cases. Another option, a third option, came to Aketaa like a lightning bolt. She didn't like it, but she knew it was the only way to protect the village and protect herself.
Trust the Force, Master Skywalker had said. Trust the Force.
Swallowing a lump in her throat, Aketaa turned to Dom. The hope and trust in his eyes and radiating from him made her falter, but she had to do this. There was no way around it. She lifted her hand.
"You will forget all you have heard and seen today in this room," she commanded.
He blinked once, twice, before his face smoothed into a peaceful daze. "I will forget all I have heard and seen today in this room," he repeated.
She took another deep breath. "You will sleep now," she added.
"I will—"
His eyes were shut and his body was falling before he even finished the sentence. Aketaa rushed the catch his limp form, hefting him in her arms with some difficulty. She deposited him on the bed and hurried to finish her preparations to leave. Her last action before sealing the crate was to fill the extra space with her stockpiled credits; they would have to support her until she could get somewhere safe—or at least safer—and find some means to an income. Just before she left, she brushed Dom's mind with the Force, rousing him gently.
"W-what happened?" he groaned, sitting up.
"You passed out all of a sudden in the middle of our conversation," she answered, careful to hide any outward signs of turmoil.
Dom raised a hand to his head. "What conversation?"
"I was telling you about my aunt on Shili, don't you remember?"
He eyed her packed crate and traveling coat. "Is that where you're goin'?"
"I told you it was. Are you alright?"
He was quiet a moment, his brow creased in confusion. "I'm...yeah, I'm okay, I think."
"Okay. I need to wrap things up with the innkeeper about my ship, or otherwise I'd stay. You should head home and rest. It must be the harvest work tiring you out," she said, using just a little Force suggestion so that he'd comply and go straight home.
It pained her to leave the way she needed to. The innkeeper had always been kind to her, letting her occupy her room and stowing her ship on the condition that she teach his young daughters, no monetary payment necessary. Now she approached with credits in hand, prepared to ask that he fill her ship's fuel reserves completely, but he only smiled and told her to keep her money. At his question, Aketaa gave him the same story she had just given Dom: she needed to visit her aunt on Shili, her homeworld, and it was an emergency. The innkeeper promised to let the village know her reasons for taking off so quickly and wished her and her fictitious aunt well as Aketaa boarded her ship, crate in her arms.
"I don't know how long I'll be gone or if I can return," she said, thankful that this was the only goodbye she would need to make. Her throat felt thick with emotion.
The innkeeper smiled his gentle smile. "I'll have a room open for you if you do," he said with a wink.
She watched him wave her off as she rose through the air until she couldn't see him anymore. With a deep, stabilizing breath, she reminded herself that she was leaving to protect them, and pushed her ship faster to break atmo. The sooner she entered hyperspace, the better—but where could she go?
Before, when she was scared and alone and had nowhere to go, Aketaa had gone to Tatooine. Mos Eisley, she had heard long, long ago, was a slimy pit of scum from all over the galaxy, bounty hunters and gangsters and fugitives alike. It was both a fantastic and terrible place to hide. If a warrant was out for your head, a city full of bounty hunters was the absolute last place you should go. If all you wanted was to maintain your anonymity, it was such a big and diverse city that nothing was out of place and very few things were suspicious. It had been as good a place as any for Aketaa to get her bearings on her own and look into long-term hiding solutions. She had managed it once; she could manage it again.
With her mind made up, Aketaa powered up the hyperdrive as she punched in the coordinates for Tatooine. At a safe distance from Raydonia, she made the jump into hyperspace and then collapsed back into the pilot's seat, exhausted. Now she could rest—above all, she could relax.
Hours later, after a long meditation, where instead of grounding herself to the universe around her, she turned inward to unravel the knot of fear and worry in her gut, the ship came out of hyperspace with Tatooine in sight. There didn't appear to be any sort of blockade around the planet, and Aketaa sensed no obvious dangerous presence. She piloted the ship into the planet's orbit, content to float for a moment while she steadied herself and locked down her mental shield even tighter. It was another few minutes before she would be close enough to Mos Eisley for her to feel comfortable entering atmo.
When she finally approached the city, heading for the passenger ship docks, Aketaa probed around the city, feeling people of all sorts, dangerous, nasty, untrustworthy, and wary people, but none who posed any danger specifically to her. She labeled herself as a traveler just passing through and paid to store her ship for this day and the next. Early mornings in Mos Eisley were quiet; the drunks already staggered home and the vendors were just preparing to open their stalls for the day, and Aketaa could move relatively safely through the dirty streets. Before the day was out, she hoped to have some idea of where to go next.
—
Rasping breath echoed in his ears, too loud, interrupting his meditation. There was a phantom pain on the right side of his head, near his ear, and his right shoulder burned as if he had been shot. Over the breathing, the sound of an entrance ramp lowering—all he could see was the red glow of light behind closed eyelids. People chattering, large animals and speeders and carts moving, all of it was loud, louder than he was used to, and too echoey, as if he were listening through pipes. Someone with a gruff voice asked if he was alright, and his eyes were still closed, but he felt his head give a sharp nod, and then finally he could see.
Everything was a shade of orange-tan, as if the whole structure he stood in was build out of sand. He handed credits to someone in his peripheral vision before staggering down the ramp. There was an odd extra weight around his head, and it moved as he did, swinging to follow his head—the weight on his right side felt unbalanced, and that phantom pain was enough to make him want to crumple to the ground, but his body walked on. He became aware that his center of gravity was wrong and his point of view looked too short to be correct. This was someone else's body, and he was merely looking through its eyes.
The world seemed to blur, and then he was in a bar, still that awful sand color. The teal-skinned Twi'lek barmaid mentioned bacta and rest before he felt an odd touch to that phantom weight around his head that sent a shiver down his spine before the body went very still.
"What's a pretty little exotic thing like you doing here?" came the slimy voice of some sleazy figure behind him.
Before he even comprehended what the man had said, the body he was stuck in jumped up and whirled around to grab the sleemo and pin him against the bar with his arm twisted behind his back. He thought he actually heard himself hiss as he pressed the man into the edge of the bar. This body's arms were red-orange.
"Kriff, alright, get off, I'm sorry!" the man coughed. After he was released, he limped away with a mean but defeated look, and the body sat back on what he assumed was a bar stool. The Twi'lek only had one tattooed eyebrow raised to indicate any reaction, as if she was annoyed their conversation had been interrupted, nothing more.
Everything went blurry and cleared again when he was somehow in a darkened—but still sandy—room with the Twi'lek. The pain of before had become just the dull, aching itch of a bacta-treated wound on both his head and his shoulder, but that was less interesting than the fact that he was staring right into the Twi'lek's sultry violet eyes, wishing he could tell who it was reflected back to him. His only warning was the Twi'lek's parting lips before she pounced, kissing the body he was still trapped in. He was glad the eyes slid shut again; this felt like a distinctly private moment that he perhaps should not see, even if he wanted to. Shut eyes did nothing to lessen the sensations the body was experiencing, however, and he felt almost disappointed when the backs of the eyelids blurred and all feeling faded away.
From the rest of the snippets of what he was certain were memories projected by accident, he gathered that whoever owned the eyes he looked through lived in that sandy horror city for an extended amount of time, living with that teal Twi'lek and maintaining a sexual relationship with her. The body worked behind the bar and worked between the sheets, selling itself to bar patrons who were only too willing to pay. Some encounters were good, and some encounters were not, but the resulting credits were carefully counted and saved, though he couldn't figure out what for.
The body stiffened when a squadron of off-duty Stormtroopers walked into the bar. He only saw flashes here and there—the body was too nervous or afraid to remember everything that happened—but somehow the encounter ended with a blaster in his face and a jade lightsaber held in a defensive block in a red-orange grip.
All senses cut out completely, leaving him in a black void. What he had just seen was unmistakable. He remembered that lightsaber, knew its owner, was all too familiar with the owner's red-orange skin. And he was all too familiar with her injury.
"Why did you show me this?" he called out. He could feel mortification blossoming around him, but she was nowhere to be seen, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't sense any indication that she was actually there. And then there was a whisper, just a faint brush against his being.
"You weren't supposed to see it," the whisper told him, and then it was gone.
—
She had dozed off in the cockpit. It would be another three and a half hours yet before her ship would come out of hyperspace, so no real damage was done, but she hadn't intended to let her memories of her first stay on Tatooine reach Kylo Ren. It wouldn't change anything, she hoped—he would understand the memory was years old, and in case he decided to investigate the desert planet anyway, she was already lightyears away. Regardless of the fact that it was nothing serious, and he hadn't gotten past any of her shields, Aketaa was still upset. Ryla herself would always be a fond memory and a trusted friend; in fact, Aketaa had sought her out for advice and comfort as soon as she was able, and was relieved to find the Twi'lek still alive and well, running the same bar she had seven years ago. That didn't mean she wanted anyone to be that well-acquainted with her activities in Mos Eisley, especially not Kylo Ren.
How had it even happened? Was her mind so used to reaching for Kylo's that she did it in her sleep? That was certainly a frightening thought. Hopefully he wouldn't find a way to exploit the connection she could so easily make.
A thought occurred to her, and it made her lips twitch into a smile. At least he had felt the pain of what he'd done to her. Aketaa reached up to finger the rough, puckered end of her severed lek at her waist, sighing at the old injury, the permanent reminder of the night she thought she had lost Ben Solo forever. It was bitter and maybe a little cruel of her to gain satisfaction from knowing he suffered as she had, but it was only in passing. So long as she forgave him—and she had—a little anger was alright. She was grateful he only took the tip of her lek and not her life.
Aketaa tried to pass the time by meditating, but her concentration was still shaken. Not only did her memories of Mos Eisley cling to the forefront of her mind, her plan going forward worried her. With Ryla there providing her practical, no-nonsense opinion, Aketaa worked out a new Outer Rim planet, even more remote than Raydonia and even less populated by civilized peoples, to hide on until she was ready to let her mental shields down. Hopefully by then Aketaa would've been able to neutralize Kylo Ren's anger and hatred or at least open his mind to a less dangerous path. If she could face him in person, maybe she could talk him down from his hunger for power. In any case, she needed to be sure he would come alone before she let him find her.
The distance between Tatooine and this new planet was greater than what a single jump in hyperspace could span in her small ship. Aketaa would need to make three jumps, the first two as long as her ship could handle and the last a little less than half that. This was the second jump, and as it neared completion, so too Aketaa neared her new home for Force knew how long. The planet's name was lost to most modern maps, though apparently most ancient sources named it Echara, and Aketaa still wasn't sure how Ryla found it; she hadn't questioned her methods before, and she wasn't about to this time. All she knew was that it was supposed to be lush and beautiful, orbiting close around a weak star.
But what if Aketaa failed? What if Kylo Ren was too far gone to ever return to Ben Solo? What if he was irredeemable, too entrenched in the Dark side to ever leave it?
There lied the deeper problem: was there a Dark side to save him from? Was there a Light side and a Dark side, truly? Aketaa wasn't sure her earlier conclusion that the Force itself was neutral was correct. She had sensed herself many times a difference between Dark and Light. Perhaps the only mistake made by Jedi and Sith alike is seeing the two sides as black and white, two extremes, and one must choose an extreme to strive towards. She had heard of Gray Jedi before, and neutral Force-users; they were part of why she had thought the Force might be neutral in the first place. But wasn't it possible that some areas of the Force were Light, some Dark, and some firmly neither? Like life and death, both must exist in balance. Without death, there can be no room for new life, and without life, there can be no death. Just like shadows, the Dark needs the Light to exist, and without the Dark, the Light has no meaning. Aketaa only needed to show Kylo this truth, this balance, and hope that he would see the sense in it. If she could just show him that the question of Light or Dark is a false dilemma, maybe she could convince him to leave the path of the Dark side. Master Skywalker had said himself that bringing Kylo to the Light may be impossible.
An alert sounded, shaking Aketaa from her musings: this jump was nearly over. She checked the fuel reserves, and it looked like the ship would have just enough fuel to make it to her destination with a little extra. Hopefully the extra would be enough to get to a planet she could properly refuel at whenever she decided to leave. Aketaa came out of hyperspace and let the ship float for just a moment as she punched in her final coordinates and powered the hyperdrive up one last time.
—
"These visits of yours are happening more often. This is the third one in a week after three spaced out over more than half a year."
She had given up on appearing to him the way he remembered her. The woman that stood before him was her, there was no doubt about it: her facial markings hadn't changed, her skin was the same bright hue, and her eyes still held kind warmth in their golden depths. The difference was in the way she carried herself, the length and thickness of her headtails, the curve of her horns, and the seriousness with which she looked at him.
"After the last few, I assumed my game was up. I'll stop masquerading as a figment of your own subconsciousness if you agree to discuss something with me maturely."
"You want to talk about the Force? About how you sense Light in me? Do you think you can redeem me too?" he mocked.
"No," she said, with a small shake of her head.
"What, then? Are you here to join me? Rey rejected my offer of galactic power, but I know you're strong too."
"I won't join you, either. Haven't you paid attention?" she sighed.
"You showed me salvation and nostalgia. You can't turn back time, and the heroism of the Light side is all a farce, Aketaa. With my strength and your insight—"
"I'm not trying to lure you to the Light, you nerf herder. And I certainly won't join you, for the last time."
"Then why are you here?" he hissed. "I'm not even sure where 'here' is. We're just in the middle of nothingness," he said, indicating the void around them. "Why can't you pick an actual location to corner me in?"
"It takes a lot of energy to generate a setting," she snapped. "It's easy when you already dream of yourself in a place; you can't expect me to do everything."
"I at least expect you to reveal your intentions."
She sighed again and sat down, crossing her legs. There wasn't even anything to sit on, but he supposed if she were going to sit down, he might as well take advantage of standing much taller. He crossed the space between them as if he walking on solid ground that didn't exist to tower over her. She rolled her eyes at him. He crossed his arms and glowered.
"Why don't you tell me about this Rey person? You said she rejected you?"
"I don't have to tell you anything."
"Ah, so you're in love with her."
"I—no, I'm not. We just…we understood each other."
She nodded. "And so you thought she would want power like you."
He only scowled.
"Is she a Jedi?"
"Yes."
Out of all the reactions she could have displayed, chuckling was not one he had expected. "What a story of star-crossed lovers, indeed," she laughed. "You connected and felt each other's pain, and fell in love, but you each pledged yourselves to opposite, warring causes, is that it?"
"You're mocking me," he growled, anger bubbling in his chest.
She sobered quickly, composing herself again in her seated position. "I'm sorry," she said, "forgive me. Tell me, what circumstances let you grow to know her well enough to sympathize with her?"
How could he ever explain? Why should he explain? She had no right to know. "My master bridged a unique Force bond between us, and at random moments we could see each other as if the other was physically there," he said. So much for maintaining his privacy.
She frowned. "Interesting. When you offered her power, was this through one of those moments?"
"No, she had come to me in person, thinking she could seduce me to the Light. I brought her to my master, who revealed his whole plot. When he asked me to kill her, I killed him instead."
"And you fought together so well you thought she would want to fight by your side for the rest of your days."
"At the time, it seemed like a good idea." He found himself sitting on nothing at all, mimicking her position. "I see now it was folly. She never wanted me, only who she thought I could become if I joined her in the Light."
She hummed. "Love was so much simpler as a child," she whispered, not quite looking at him, but rather looking through him. "No expectations."
"You speak from experience." It was a statement, not an assumption. Her memories of that sandy hellscape were seared on the backs of his eyelids. He tried not to consider it; acknowledging the jealousy he felt would mean acknowledging his past, and he refused to do so.
She nodded. "I never told her I fell in love with her. I got over it after I left, and she'll still never know." She shrugged. "It's better that way. I couldn't stay there living the way I was, like she would've expected, and you can't be who you used to be, like Rey expected."
"Yes."
They sat in quiet commiseration; he didn't know how long. He studied his hands in his lap, considering his feelings for Rey. Did he love her? He loved her power, he was drawn to her strength of spirit, he could relate to her unfortunate past, and he wanted her body, but did he love Rey, the person, or did he love Rey, the idea?
It was some time before he looked up and realized he was alone, and she was no longer sitting quietly across from him.