The bodies have long ago been picked clean by scavengers, and dust has covered most of the rest. Rey has never been to Tuanul before this. She didn't know any of these people. She certainly doesn't owe them anything now. But it's not hard work, what's left. The wind and the sand have done most of it for her, and her back and a makeshift shovel do the rest.
"You did this," she says out loud.
The voice in her head says, "Yes."
"Why?"
He doesn't answer.
Rey doesn't know where he's gone. Since the First Order fell, there's been no sighting of their would-be Supreme Leader. He abandoned them before the end, turning first his back and then his powers on them as he'd done with everything and everyone else he'd ever held important.
But he talks to Rey in her thoughts, and he joins her in her dreams. She'd believe he's dead, a Force ghost destined to haunt her, but she's met Force ghosts and this is far different.
She doesn't owe him the work she's performing, any more than she owed the poor souls at Tuanul, and she does owe them and him, which is why she's doing it.
She takes her ship to the next location, the next massacre.
"You did this," she tells him, and he agrees, watching her silently as she buries the dead or leaves a token where they fell before their loved ones bore them away. She has many choices of destinations. She knows which one she's avoiding.
It takes her two years of meandering, wandering back to spend time with Finn and Poe and Rose, and setting off again, before she forces herself to travel to the place where it began.
Luke's ghost haunts her footsteps here. He's the one who gave her the coordinates. He dealt with the dead here long ago, all with his own hands, but that has never been Rey's only purpose. The ruins of the school have crumbled into decay, and will soon rejoin the rich loam. The ground is thick with the feel of the Force, light and dark, and sounds only she can hear.
"There were so few," she says, in a kind of shock. "I thought there were dozens. Hundreds."
"There are always few like us," Luke says, and he says nothing else to her.
Rey turns to the presence in her mind. "You did this."
"I know."
And she knows where he is. She looks at the blue figure, gazing on the destruction of all his plans, and she leaves him, striking out for the tree line. The voice in her mind is like a beacon, a bright point directing her to her ultimate destination.
The lightsaber is comforting at her hip.
"You won't need it," he says, and the words are spoken out loud.
"You came back here?" Rey asks him.
Ben shrugs. "I did this," he replies. "I did all of this. And I can't make it right."
She shakes her head. "No."
He's built himself a small place to live, tree trunks hacked with a bright blade and stacked together roughly to keep off the rain. There wouldn't even be room inside for him to stand.
Rey is caught in a half-pained laugh. "That's the worst house I've ever seen."
He gives her an angry glare, which unexpectedly softens. "It's my first one. The next will be better."
"Do you plan to stay here then?"
"Unless you intend to strike me down or drag me back for a trial." He sits down on a hewn log. He's gaunt, she notices at last, seeing the man in front of her instead of the amalgamation of images from her memories and dreams. She sits next to him, hands on her knees.
"Ben..."
"Don't."
"I can speak in your defense," she says. "I know what you did for us at the end."
He looks at her, then looks past her, past the trees, back to the ruins. "You know everything I've done. There is no defense."
She wants to argue with him, and she knows there's no point. If he returns with her, he'll be tried and executed for his crimes, the crimes she herself has spent the last few years cataloguing and mourning. The only clemency he would be granted is the sharpshooting accuracy of the firing squad.
"I won't kill you," she said. "And I won't tell anyone where you are."
Ben shrugs again, in a prickly, unpleasant fashion. He may be regretful of what he's done, but he's the same man who did every single act. He is difficult to love, and Rey doesn't understand why she does love him.
"I heard that," he says. "You should know better."
"So should you." She's heard his thoughts over the last few years, too, even in his dreams.
Love isn't the right word, not really, not for either of them. It's two parts obsession, and one part loneliness, and partly because the sex was amazing when they'd both finally given in to long desire. Ben hears that too, his head tilting her way with a raise of eyebrows in genuine surprise.
"I didn't come here for sex," Rey says shortly, and stands. "And you can read that in my head right now."
But now she's thought about it, remembering the feel of his hands on her, worshiping her skin, and his mind twining around hers as they fell into that strange, glorious bliss. He'd never touched anyone that way before, and she had only a few quick fumbles before experiencing the full pleasure of mind-to-mind sex.
"It's actually a nice little house," he starts. "Lots of room."
"Shut up, Ben." She shakes her head. "You've destroyed everything. I know what you are."
"You've known what I am since the day we met. So kill me, or go."
She closes her eyes. This is a terrible idea. She forces herself to make it quick, and on the edge of brutal, to remind herself why it can't happen again. They don't even spend the time to crawl inside the crude house, don't spend the care to remove all their clothes. She bites into his mouth hard enough to draw blood from his tongue. He ruts up into her like a mindless beast, but she can hear him, can feel him.
They took time, before, spending a stolen pocketful of hours learning one another, tasting and feeling. Unless several new Jedi sprung full-grown from this rich ground, she will never feel the same way with anyone else ever again. It isn't fair that she found the perfect frenzied bliss with the one person she can't share it with, not out in the galaxy where he's marked for death, not here in hiding where she'll wither away in lonely exile. He's left destruction in his wake, and that includes the destruction of all Rey's hopes for a life with him. They have the memories, and they have this moment, and she wants this to hurt, to sear him from her soul and cauterize the wound. Rey grinds down onto him.
It's not love, but it's like love, and she comes with Ben deep inside her head, and she shouts her rage at him, shouts for all the lives he's taken and everything he's thrown away, shouts at what he's cost her and what he's lost her. And he comes wishing he could change it all, wishing he could have stopped everything all the way back here, and found Rey another way in another life, and could have loved her forever.
"I hate you so much," she says as she pulls away from him, sticky and sad.
He's out of breath, and she can hear the thought: "That makes two of us."
"I'm not coming back. You can stay here and rot, and I won't tell a soul where you've fallen."
"I know," he says, and they both know she'll come back when he does, a year from now or five decades, and she'll cover his bones. That is her task, now that things are finished.
Ben doesn't watch her leave, but she feels him ride along inside her mind. He will always be there.
end