Equilibrium

Author's Note: I don't own the rights to Star Wars, the characters, or anything related so please don't sue me. The party mentioned in this story is in the book and the deleted scenes of the movie. Thank you elgupo867 and thefutureunseen for beta-ing this fic! Thank you to all the review taggers on ff.n who gave concrit- especially Zyellowz. It's become so much better thanks to you all. Thank you mai-draws for giving me permission to use your art as my cover image! ALL HAIL REYLO!

Chapter 1

Deep Space, Millennium Falcon

Kylo Ren.

Mortal Enemy.

The Supreme Leader of the First Order.

Ben Solo.

Personal Confidant.

Temporary Ally.

Each title aptly described the man clad in black stalking behind the scavenger-turned-Jedi, but now Rey could add a new title to the list: Privacy Invader. This recent addition was currently the most prominent one in her mind after her failed attempt to sever their daily connection back on Crait. Thank the Force he only seemed to appear when she was mostly alone. And clothed. Though apparently whatever entity it was that timed these things wasn't as concerned with that as she was.

She could feel him glaring a hole into the back of her skull, but she refused to turn around. Of course, they couldn't dance around one another forever. Unspoken words were strangling them both, and eventually one of them would have to gasp for air. It seemed like Ben - she would never again call him Kylo Ren - would be the one to breathe first.

She continued through her motions with her quarterstaff in the common room of the Millennium Falcon, Ben's glower making her movements tenser than usual. She gripped her staff tighter, tempted to turn around and swing it at him, just to see if it would make contact. They had tried various things on one another so far: she had shot him; he had commanded her with the Force. Neither had had an effect.

It suddenly occurred to her a more physical blow might be more effective. They had managed to touch hands before Luke had intruded on them. She had thought about that moment often, wondering what other ways they might have touched one another had her childhood hero not interrupted them. That vision of them both together, rebuilding the Jedi temple, never alone again had given her such a longing to lean forward and press her lips to his.

She had felt the same way in the elevator to the throne room, and again after defeating Snoke's guards, but it had shriveled up when she remembered her friends dying. Everything inside her had done the same when Ben chose the darkness rather than join her in the light.

Her blood froze as she now considered deadly alternative scenarios involving his hands. There were many methods a person could use to maim or even murder without weapons: strangling, beating, gouging out eyes…

"I offered you everything," her tormentor said right behind her, his voice like acid.

She whirled around and swung at his head with all her strength. He blocked the blow with the hilt of his lightsaber and activated it. The unstable blade crackled to life, bathing their faces in its angry red glow.

His eyes glittered dangerously. "And now, just like then, you want to kill me." He glanced at the lightsaber. "Shall we see if this can transmute across the bond?"

She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached and shoved away from him. "If I wanted to kill you I would have done so when I woke before you."

His eyes never left hers as he resumed his pacing, swinging the lightsaber around in slow, lazy circles. She resisted the urge to back away and instead held her quarterstaff defensively in front of herself. A dark laugh escaped his curled lips, "More like your conscience couldn't condone murdering an unconscious person."

She glared at him but remained silent. She had wanted to kill him, many times. Now was tempting, too. But when she had woken first and found him there… There had been a lot of things she had wanted to do to him, but none of them had been violent. Nor had they been productive in saving her friends.

He sneered at her, "Don't worry, Luke can train you on how to get over that."

Rey stepped back as if he had struck her. Before she could respond, Ben cut the connection, leaving her to ponder over their interactions from his perspective.

Unknown Regions, Ahch-To.

As soon as Rey stepped onto the sacred island she took a deep breath, and with its release she let go of her regret, grief, and anger. The scent of the surrounding ocean, the gentle breeze caressing her face, and the cries of the soaring Porgs, and the lounging Thala-sirens soothed the jagged edges in her. She closed her eyes and reached out with the Force, sensing the balance here that eased her nerves and brought on a sense of peace and calm. She understood more now than when she first arrived, why Luke had decided to stay for so long. Though, how he drank that mucosal green milk, she would never know.

An ever-present sense of familiarity settled over her, as well. This island and its ocean had featured in her dreams so many times throughout her childhood that it felt like another home. She was certain she had somehow learned to swim from those nightly adventures. That was the only explanation she could think of for why she hadn't drowned when the Dark Side pulled her into its cavern. It was oddly comforting that this place had somehow prepared her for her eventual arrival.

She felt the Force drawing her toward one specific path and relief washed over her. She wasn't used to trusting these instincts, but she was slowly learning to do so. Rey opened her eyes and called back to Chewie and R2-D2 that she wouldn't be long. As she traversed down the jagged path she recognized where it was leading her, and guilt coiled in her belly at her actions the last time she had travelled this way.

Until she found herself at the sacred uneti tree.

Or what was left of it.

The blackened, hulking remains only vaguely resembled what had once been an already ugly, shell of a tree, but the interior had completely collapsed. She felt any remorse over absconding with the sacred texts, evaporate swiftly. The feeling was replaced by confusion. Luke had been adamant that the time of the Jedi was over, but this was extreme even for him. Questions about Luke's and the Force's intentions overwhelmed her.

A gentle tug had her continuing forward. Trust in the Force, she reminded herself as she found a small opening near a particularly charred section of the trunk. She pushed on it and it crumbled into an opening large enough for her to crawl through. She eyed it warily, imagining the tree collapsing on her and squishing her, or behind her and trapping her. She set her quarterstaff and bag down at the entrance and took a few deep breaths, a constant mantra that she could have faith in the Force running on an endless loop in her head.

With a final deep breath, she got down on her hands and knees to crawl into the opening. After a few heart-thumping turns, it opened into what was left of the main part of the tree. Light filtered in through the cracks, reflecting off some object to her left. She looked and found the collapsed remains of where Luke had stored the sacred texts.

A large gash ran through the wood, exposing a secret compartment beneath the shelf that she had not noticed before. She stood up into a crouch, patting the soot and debris off her hands, and began to make her way through the rubble to the winking light. As she neared it, the object in question came into focus. A lightsaber, slightly mangled, lay on top of a blue book with the same insignia on it as the one on the sacred tomes emblazoned upon the leather cover. She withdrew both, examining the saber's mangled hilt intently in the poor lighting.

One instinct suggested she turn it on, while another screamed at her not to. Something seemed unbalanced about it. She would need to take it apart and see if the damage extended beyond the hilt. Rey crawled her way out of the tree to examine the other item in her hands, the blue book titled The Jedi Path. When she opened it she found a variety of names inscribed upon the inside cover, the last of which read Luke Skywalker. Her eyebrows shot up as she read another name, Anakin Skywalker. Was that Luke's father, Ben's grandfather, or just some distant relative?

She instinctively clipped the lightsaber to her belt, feeling a momentary pang of loss for the old one. She placed the book into her pouch and retrieved her belongings she had left outside. She wanted to go immediately back to the ship and pore over the new text she had found and dismantle the lightsaber to see if she could repair it. Yet, something felt unfinished here. She found herself moving along the path once more, heading to the Jedi Temple. A few minutes later she found herself standing inside of it.

The smooth glass mosaic on the floor had been recently cleaned until it shone, and her reflection, as she approached, was both clear and blurred within the image. Rey stopped to examine it a moment and felt a strange sense of vertigo, as if she were moments away from falling into the picture. She stepped back, puzzled at the odd sensation.

Upon the stone border near the head of the mural lay a dark brown bundle which caught her eye. She eyed the image of the Jedi warily as she made her way around its edges until she was at the top. She fingered the rough fabric of Luke's ceremonial Jedi robes. They were freshly cleaned and neatly folded, most likely thanks to the Caretakers, Lanais, living on the island. She shook them out and slid her hands through the wide sleeves. They would have to be taken in, and pockets were a must, but for the most part, they fit.

The finality of Luke's death hit Rey as she gazed down at herself. Tears pricked the edges of her eyes at the sudden pounding behind her eyes, and the tightness of her face. Growing up, she had heard of the courageous Luke Skywalker who had saved the galaxy from the evil Emperor and his apprentice, Darth Vader. So many of her childhood fantasies had involved flying alongside him against the Empire.

Luke had been nothing like her childhood stories had made him out to be. By the time she had found him, he had been a bitter old man, content to rot in solitude until he winked out of existence. He had done everything to get rid of her: ignored her, sent her on wild chases, insulted her. He had even feared her power to the point he refused to teach her beyond an initial lesson or two.

He had told her true Jedi Knights maintained the balance by doing nothing when people suffered.

Rey ripped the robes off herself. She wouldn't be a Jedi Knight, then. Luke himself had said the Jedi Order needed to end. He had even gone as far as to destroy its first temple. Also, according to Leia, Luke had made an appearance on Crait right before they had both felt him disappear. Maybe he had ended life as a non-Jedi, as well.

She flung the robes over an arm and glanced at the lightsaber instead.

"Surely, they don't smell that bad for you to have to get out of them so quickly," a voice said. "It took a lot of convincing to get one of the Caretakers to take them out of storage and put them here. I figured they had cleaned them already."

On instinct, Rey whirled around and wielded the staff before her defensively. She took a step back when she found Luke but also not the Luke she had known. He wore black robes instead of the brown ones she had just claimed, and his hair and beard were trimmed, without a single trace of the gray that had overtaken most of it when he trained her.

"I felt you die," she said slowly, eyeing the figure before her distrustfully. She briefly wondered if the temple or the island itself was showing this to her.

Luke, or his lookalike, held his hands out to the side as if weighing invisible objects. "Die... Become one with the Force..." He shrugged and folded his hands into his robe, the same robe Rey now had draped over her arm. "Different interpretations of the same thing."

"Become one with the Force? I thought you already were one with the Force because you were a Jedi?"

Luke sighed in exasperation and pinched his nose. "Of course you wouldn't know what that means," he muttered. He rolled his eyes and clarified in a sardonic tone. "It means I'm special."

That certainly sounded like him. Rey cocked her head. "Prove you're him and not some trick."

Luke gave her a challenging grin, "You once told me dancing was scarier than fighting."

Rey scowled, her face burning as she recalled the moment. Luke had told her some approaching ships were raiders who frequently came and plundered the sacred island. Luke had also told her it was better not to act in order to avoid incurring their wrath and an even larger raiding party the next time. In her haste to save them, she had destroyed a gate, and interrupted what had turned out to be a celebration. Luke had taken advantage of her bewilderment to invite her to a dance, which she did, until she was able to think straight again. She had told him how she had believed in his legend, but not anymore.

"It wasn't like the Caretakers needed another reason to dislike me," Rey scowled. She had damaged a hut with her blaster and knocked a boulder into one of their carts even before that incident.

Luke shrugged but looked beyond her at the mosaic. "I needed you to understand being a Jedi isn't what the universe needs right now. Or at least, not the Jedi of the Jedi Order."

"Why couldn't you just tell me those things? Why make me go through all that?"

"Because you keep thinking of the Jedi as the heroes, and the Sith as the villains. Yet Darth Vader arose from the Jedi Order. He was a Jedi Knight who became corrupted. He was considered weak for his familial attachments, and that is why he fell."

The usual memory of a woman, telling Rey she'd come back for her, flashed in her mind. But right after was a vision of a hallway with closed doors along either side, from which erupted terrified moans and screams. Ever since Snoke had torn through her mind in order to pilfer information about Luke, strange memories had unlocked and begun to play before her at random moments. She was having trouble distinguishing them from her childhood nightmares. She prayed confronting these phantoms on Jakku would help.

"Yet, it was his familial attachments which also redeemed him." Luke's voice brought Rey back to the present moment. She was momentarily lost for words as the last tortured sounds faded away.

Shaken by the vision or whatever it had been, she blurted out what had been burning inside of her for a while now, "Why didn't you use your connection to Ben to save him as you saved Darth Vader?"

Luke released a breath, appearing older as he considered his words. "We both know that I am the root of his hatred. If I had gone with you in person, Ben would have slain me without hesitation. Killing his father cut him to the bone. Killing me…" Luke looked away. "I'm sure he would have felt relief at the demise of his own personal tormentor."

Before recent events, Rey would have insisted Luke, hero of the galaxy, could never be viewed as the villain of anyone's story. But after Ben had told her his side of that one fateful night, and after Luke had admitted to it, she understood. Luke, the Legend, was a man after all, and he was capable of making horrible mistakes, just like anyone else.

Luke looked at her again, "I can't say it would have hurt him as much as killing Han did, but resolving our conflict violently would have surely pushed him further from the Light. I failed him once already; I couldn't fail him again."

Rey felt her spirits lift. She couldn't hold herself back from expressing her greatest hope, "He hasn't already been pushed all the way to the Dark side? He can be saved?"

"I wouldn't have gone to Crait if I didn't believe so. There is no depth to which anyone can fall from which they cannot rise. Even my father redeemed himself, albeit the cost was his life." Seeing the look on her face, Luke held up a cautionary hand. "Ben has to want to change. Han tried to reach him and failed. Leia cannot forgive herself in her part in pushing him away. I have the feeling you, of all the people in the galaxy, will be the one to reach him." He raised a brow at Rey meaningfully.

Ben's outstretched hand reaching out to hers popped into her mind. Rey's heart thumped in her chest as she schooled her face into what she hoped was a neutral expression. "I already tried. He chose to stay and rule the First Order."

Luke scoffed. "Don't tell me he asked you to rule the galaxy with him."

Rey looked up, surprised.

Luke wiped his face with his hand. "Of course he did. An emulation of my father, through and through." Luke rolled his eyes. "My father offered the same thing to me and I also rejected him." Rey thought she heard him mutter something about his family being 'so damn dramatic' but she couldn't be sure.

"I rejected him as well."

"Of course you did." Luke stroked his goatee thoughtfully. "Though that may explain why he said he would destroy you along with the Jedi Order when he and I fought on Crait."

Rey's stomach dropped. She had been correct to assume Ben wished her harm. The pain died as she realized she had validation for reacting so defensively earlier. Bewilderment rushed in with the affirmation. If he wanted to kill her, as he had said and she had suspected, why had he gotten upset about her reacting as such?

Luke's voice softened. "His rage often rules him too strongly, but it may be through his sentiment you will be able to reach him."

Rey's eyes locked on Luke's. Luke's mouth twitched into a smirk. "That little hand holding I interrupted seemed awfully intimate." Rey blushed. Luke laughed. "I'm not so old as to have forgotten the ardor of youth. I can't illuminate everything for you or tell you exactly how to bring balance to the Force. Maybe Ben is a part of that. Maybe not. You have to make your own decisions. I will say this: There is no good without bad or light without darkness."

Rey stepped forward as Luke started to fade away. "Wait, I still need your guidance."

"I'll be back," he smiled kindly. "We've got some training to do, but you have to confront your own conflict, first. Whatever it is that troubles you, let it go."

Surprised once more flickered across her face. She had not realized Luke had been able to sense her own confusion. As he twinkled out of sight, her mind raced. She had so many paths before her, but the one behind called to her the strongest. The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. Let it go.

Everyone was encouraging her to overcome her past, but she couldn't just disregard it. She had to make sense of these strange visions and all the questions plaguing her about her abandonment. Something in her memory kept calling out to her, and it was time for her to call back.