"Now the door is open,
The world I knew is broken.
There's no return,"
When the Darkness Comes by Colbie Caillat
Rey sighed to herself as she hiked up the grassy hill. Her legs were beginning to ache; she was used to exercise with her life on Jakku but now she'd travelled most of the island. It had taken hours and hours. He was probably deliberately avoiding her. Luke Skywalker was a powerful Jedi, he almost certainly would be able to sense her, if he was the only other person here. Especially if she was force sensitive.
She looked at the grass landscape and wondered. Why? Why here of all places? Had he really been here alone all of these years? What could have driven him to such an extreme?
She'd seen this place before. The island and the ocean that she dreamed of each night, when she had laid awake for hours each night, shivering from the cold desert night and felt so, so lonely. Had the Force been sending her visions?
Then she stopped mid-step. Idiot. Force sensitive!
She reached out with her mind and felt blinded. He was a blinding expanse of light in the lonely, empty world. She could feel the distant pin-prick of General Organa, another pillar of light but so far away and so unused and so sad that it was muted. Something felt off… Not in a bad way but she just couldn't place it.
Rey knew where Luke Skywalker was. He knew that she knew that he knew… Hopefully he would stay there. She forced her legs up the stony pathway. At the top, she almost stopped breathing.
There, at the cliff's end, was a figure in a dirty, ratty cloak… Luke Skywalker.
Her knees felt like they were about to give way. She could feel it, the Force that radiated from him. It was so strong.
She forced herself to approach the lonely figure. Then she felt something almost brush her mind… It felt akin to Kylo Ren's attempt to get inside her head but this was infinitely lighter, a gentle curious touch. Like a soft breeze. The presence of the mind felt familiar; she'd felt the Force presence of Kylo and General Organa. They were family, they were all bound to have a similar manifestation.
The figure turned around. Her breath froze in her throat. She didn't know what she'd expected to see.
From everything she'd heard, all of the stories, she expected a tall muscular figure. Someone you could point to and say that he was definitely a hero. Luke Skywalker was not that.
Rey had known that his face would be aged and lined with pain or regret or something. He'd exiled himself out here after all. But his face was that of a broken man, eyes burning with regret and sadness. His dark hair almost completely grey. He didn't look much like General Organa at all.
She was close to him now. So with shaking hands she unhooked the lightsabre from her belt and held it out to him.
Her eyes were pleading. His eyes were burning with unshed tears.
Please… Please… Luke Skywalker, please help us… Your sister needs you.
He stared at her for a few moments. Almost in disbelief. Rey suddenly felt out of the loop… As though she should know something… The more she looked at his face, the more she felt like she had seen him before. She couldn't place it. She'd known her family were not from Jakku, she had no idea where they from, why they had left her there in the first place but maybe her family had known Luke Skywalker. Maybe he had visited her family at some point.
She felt him skim her mind again… Then remembered something. Her only memory of her family had been her mother on the hot sands of Jakku. Dark, masked figures in the distance. Her mother's dark brown eyes pleading with her to be patient. I'll come back for you… She had screamed and pleaded but no one had helped her. Her mother had left her with someone whose fat, greasy hands tightened on her wrist as she screamed for her mother. Come back! Come back!
Me and your father will come back for you. Promise. Promisepromisepromise...
You didn't, though? Did you, mother? You promised. As childish as that sounded, her mother had promised!
But now, like someone had flipped a switch, she had a memory of a father. The two of them having conversations, silently, through the Force as he told her about the Jedi and the legends about their strange powers. The three of them having conversations through the Force as she got older. Her mother saying that she was a daddy's girl. She couldn't really remember her parent's faces or their names. She'd been six when she had been abandoned.
Luke Skywalker didn't move. He simply looked at her, his burning eyes almost daring to be filled with hope. But then shame crossed his face as he seemed to realise something. She felt the familiar presence in her mind once more and –
"The Force is strong in my family." He told her. "My father has it. I have it. My sister has it. My nephew has it. You have that power, too."
Family? She was his family? She wasn't directly related to Kylo. He would have recognised her on sight - she had kept her hair in the same style for that reason. So that her family would recognise her... That only meant one thing.
"Father?" She whispered, barely daring to breath. The word tasted strange on her tongue. She'd never used the words 'father' or 'mother', only family; she'd never known what family she had left. But now, she could actually pin that word to a person, to face. To somebody that loved her. Yet she couldn't bring herself to call him her father.
She dropped the lightsabre, suddenly not caring about how precious it was. This was more precious. This was family. Some part of her was terrified by the prospect. She did have family. She did! After she had spent so long yearning and even now, when she was in her young adulthood, she had found herself falling to sleep at night and hoping for her family. Reaching out into the empty black abyss of space and pleaded for a family until she had fallen asleep. Each night, every night for over a decade.
He stepped forward; taking her into his arms and hugged her. She hugged him back. She was hugging her father!
"I'm sorry." He replied. "I'm so sorry. The Force is strong in my family but so is the Light and the Dark. We've always been torn between them. I've given you a terrible fate..."
But she was a Skywalker? The very prospect of that was terrifying.
Rey didn't care right now. She had a father! She hugged him back tightly, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart to remind herself over and over again. He was alive.
After a few moments, they separated and Luke picked up the lightsabre from the ground.
What do they say now? How are you? Sorry I've been gone for most of your life?
"Who's my mother?" She blurted out the first thing that came into her head.
Luke – no, her father - blinked and was silent for a moment. "I thought you knew her. You and your mother were sent to Jakku for your safety. I blocked a significant amount of your memories; to keep you safe." He clarified.
"I-I've been alone for most of my life. I didn't even know if I had any family."
He seemed to realise something. "Those men in the masks… Do you know who they were?"
She shook her head. She'd always assumed they were some kind of slavers of some kind.
He sighed, sounding weary and tired as he motioned for her to follow him. "They were killers trained by Snoke. They were under orders to turn me to the Dark Side or kill me, if they couldn't. To keep you and your mother safe, I sent you to Jakku. I thought it would be the last place that anyone would look. Evidently, I was wrong."
They reached the temple entrance and she felt her father reached out with the Force, to give a gentle push on the stone doors and they opened almost silently.
"They must have killed your mother, hoping that I would find her but your mother was smart, she left you with someone else so you wouldn't get caught up in all of this. That staff of yours? It was one of theirs." He cracked a small smile as they headed inside.
He closed the door behind them with the Force. For the first Jedi temple, the interior was simple, almost nothing aside from the basics. Stone chairs and tables, a hole in the ceiling where light shone down in a single ray. There was a few holographs littered around. The casing on them looked old fashioned, worn down but polished. A slight young woman with brown hair and brown eyes hugging a tall man with brown hair, they were smiling at the holograph. There was another one of them, looking slightly older and tired but happy. They were beaming with happiness and in the woman's hands was a small baby, asleep and wrapped in a bundle of blankets. Their faces looked familiar but she couldn't place them. Another was the woman from her memory. Mother. They shared the same dark hair, the same chin and freckles across the nose… But she had her father's face. She didn't get her hazel eyes from either of her parents apparently.
She glanced at her father, who was taking off his robe and folding it up, placing it on one of the tables. As he did, two faintly glowing people shimmered into existence, their backs to her.
"Force!" She gasped, her eyes widening until they were probably bulging from their sockets. Her father looked and saw the people as they turned around to face her. She pressed her hand to her mouth to stop herself from screaming. She pressed harder until she was able to swallow the shriek. The youngest looking one... If someone had asked her to describe who she thought Luke Skywalker would be before she had met him, she would have described this man. He was tall and muscular with a sharp, handsome face only marred by a small scar near one eye and shoulder length wavy blonde hair. His blue eye glinted... But the other half of his face... Force... His eye shone a twisted gold that made her stomach drop. That side of his face was burnt, as though he was suffering from severe third degree burns. It was thick, black burns that made her face hurt in phantom pain and radiated something Dark. That dark half was flickering like a flame. Then he smiled when he saw her; the the burns and glowing gold eye vanished - replaced by smooth, tanned skin and another blue eye that matched his other side.
"Hello Rey." He greeted her.
She didn't respond. Old habits from Jakku - they died hard. And, she reasoned to herself, they had just appeared from thin air!
The man next to him was strawberry blonde, had a beard and an older face. He didn't seem to know what to say, seemingly from exasperation.
"Rey," her father spoke, "I would like you to meet Anakin Skywalker and Ben Kenobi."
"Obi-Wan." Ben corrected good-naturedly as though this was something happened a lot.
"A-anakin Skywalker?" She stammered. "As in Darth Vader?"
But that wasn't what she was thinking. As in my grandfather?
"I turned back to the light before I died." The man said, grimacing as that dark, burnt half flickered back in for a moment, making her heart rate spike and her stomach drop once more. Then it hit her. She had gained a father that she had craved for but a grandfather, a legacy, which was so hateful and foul that she didn't know what to think, it was also one that Kylo Ren was determined to follow. But another legacy from her father that was so powerful and hard to live up to, she thought that just thinking about it would crush her.
She didn't voice any of that. Instead she swallowed it, knowing that her father would have picked up on it through the Force anyway and that there would be time to talk about it later.
"How are you here?" She whispered.
Ben studied her. "We are one with the Force. It is what happened to us after death."
Slowly she nodded as she tried to wrap her brain around the concept. "Is this how you've stayed sane for so long?" She questioned her father, not caring how abrupt it was.
He nodded.
"W-we have to go." She told him, feeling dread settle over her. They were wasting time! "General Organa needs you."
He closed his eyes, as though pained. "This was all my fault. I should have helped Ben, I could have saved him."
"Son, there was nothing you could have done. It wasn't your fault." Anakin spoke up. "Snoke got into his head. You did the best that you could."
"Leia must hate me." He retorted.
"Luke, your sister doesn't hate you." Ben tried.
"There is only one person in our family that Leia hates and that's me, not you. She loves you. Look at how long she's been searching for you. She misses you. You need each other right now." Anakin said.
Her father sighed and stood up. "Okay, you're right… We should go."
Rey nodded.
"You didn't ask for this,
Nobody ever would.
Caught in the middle of this dysfunction,
It's your sad reality.
It's your messed up family tree,
And now you're left with all these questions.
Are you gonna be like your father and his father was?
Do you have to carry what they've handed down?
No, this is not your legacy,
This is not your destiny.
Yesterday does not define you.
...
And just like the season's change,
Winter into Spring,
You're bringing new life to your family tree now."
Family Tree by Matthew West
A/N: Just a quick one shot of some of my head-cannon. Sorry for the abrupt ending, I couldn't think of how to end it. Sabre is the British spelling.
Before anyone asks about my other stories, I'm currently finishing off an essay. Then I'm going to upload my next chapter to Dark Hearts, I have tiny bit left to do on that and then I'm beginning work on my next chapter for Vision (making it up to you guys by aiming for a 15,000 word chapter but no promises).
Anakin's Force Ghost is influenced by the concept art of him in episode 7 that's going round. Fingers crossed for episode 8. Although I haven't read the EU books, we could imagine that the Rey's mother is Mara Jade? Her description in canon doesn't have to match the EU appearance, right?
I recommend the song Family Tree by Matthew West - especially when thinking about the Skywalker family!
