Author's Note: This story elaborates on various scenes from the movie as Rey becomes aware of the Force. I'm writing this with the assumption that Rey is not related to Kylo Ren.

Living Silence

While most people thought the Graveyard of Giants was dangerous, desolate and silent as a tomb, they were mistaken about one thing – the Graveyard wasn't silent at all.

I had been scavenging the wreckage of starfighters and the great warship since I was old enough to carry parts, and had grown accustomed to the odd clanks, hisses and moans of machinery rotting in the heat as they sank into their graves of sand.

But there were other sounds, too. Sounds that didn't make sense; that shouldn't have been there.

At the outpost, I occasionally tried asking fellow scavengers if they ever heard the same things I did, but they always shook their heads and looked away from me. Perhaps I was simply going crazy earlier than predicted.

It only happened on days I worked alone – which, if I was being truthful with myself, was more often than not. While I worked quietly, extracting parts from a ship long dead, it always started with a strange intensity in the air around me. It was the feeling of being watched by something immortal and patient, and while it didn't make any intentional noise, I sensed it all the same – a sort of living silence manifested by the galaxy itself.

Then, if the wind sighed through the metal corpses in just the right places, and I tilted my head at a particular angle, I could hear the sounds that should not have been there at all: the wailing of proton missiles seeking out their targets, warbling groans of metal bending in unintended ways, even the echoing screams of crew who had lost their lives.

I always left the Graveyard early on those days, despite knowing the lack of parts weighing down my speeder bike meant a hungry night ahead of me.

–

I never expected to encounter another area of living silence outside of the Graveyard of Giants, yet the moment I reached the bottom of the cellar steps in Maz's tavern, I knew I had found one. I sensed unearthly voices sliding through the air around me, beckoning me down the hall, guiding me to open the lid of the ancient wooden chest. I couldn't understand their intent, nor why it was so important I reach for the lightsaber lying innocuously on the fabric inside. But the moment I touched it, the voices rose into a piercing scream, creating a shrine of agony inside my head. I could do nothing but silently scream with them, lost to the horrifying images of my vision.

–

The Stormtroopers had been left behind long ago, and I assumed myself alone in the forest. I paused to catch my breath and bearings, furiously thinking through my next move.

A lightsaber sparked to life in the distance, but my ears, unaccustomed to the way sound bounced around the forest, failed to pinpoint the source before the dense undergrowth absorbed the noise. My breath caught as seconds later the saber sizzled again, closer this time, but the location of my pursuer remained masked by the strange acoustics surrounding me.

Adrenaline began to pulse heavily through my veins. Whoever had tracked me this deep into the forest knew I was here, and I knew they were coming for me.

The feeling of being stalked was not new to me, but deeply unsettling here on this alien planet. Backing up carefully, I yearned for the open desert of Jakku where my foe wouldn't be able to hide in the foliage. Even with the blaster gripped tightly between my clammy hands, I felt vulnerable without my familiar staff.

My steps led me to a narrow, rocky trench where I sought cover. The lightsaber's hum echoed down the exposed stone, intertwining with my distressed gasps for air. I held the pistol out in front of me, finger trembling against the trigger.

My skin prickled in warning just before a dark figure emerged ahead of me. The red glow of the lightsaber flashed before my eyes, but it wasn't until I saw the figure's distinctive black and silver helmet that absolute terror gripped my heart. This being had been in my vision at Maz's tavern, and now it was here, and it wanted to kill me.

I fired several bolts, hoping to drive the figure back and give me time to escape. My jaw dropped as the figure effortlessly flicked its lightsaber to deflect every single bolt. How was that even possible? Was it using the Force? Was it truly that powerful?

Instinct compelled my feet to move before I had even made the conscious decision to run. I dashed down the trench, firing more bolts as the figure advanced in my wake, then spun and scrambled up the side to higher ground.

The dark being followed me, none of my bolts having found their mark. I retreated several steps, desperately squeezing the trigger over and over, but then the figure flung out its arm and a black aura bloomed around its entire body. A numbing wave of dark energy soaked deep into my skin, coating me like oil. I involuntarily jerked to a dead stop. Every muscle in my body became rigid as metal. What was happening? I could still feel my muscles flexing and straining – my mind screaming at them to move – but some greater force held me completely motionless. My throat was also unnaturally constricted, and I pulled in shuddering breaths as the figure moved closer.

It was still surrounded by the strange black aura that seemed to coincide with the use of its powers. My mind scrambled to figure out what it was. If the fabled Jedi were real like Han had told me, that must mean their ancient enemy, the Sith, were real as well. Is that what this creature was? A Sith Lord, mired in the dark side of the Force?

It didn't matter, I hissed in my head. It was a coward for freezing me in place, not granting me the dignity of a fair fight. My fingers itched to strangle it with my bare hands.

The dark being stood silent for a moment, then advanced toward me.

"The girl I've heard so much about," the figure said, his voice dispassionate but resonating.

Soft footfalls circled behind me, and had I not been rooted to the ground I would have spun and kicked him with every ounce of strength in my body. Whomever – whatever this creature was, he wanted BB-8's star map so the First Order could find and destroy Luke Skywalker, and that made him my enemy.

"The droid," he hissed from behind me. "Where is it?"

The red lightsaber whipped into my vision and paused, crackling furiously, mere inches away from my cheek. I was surprised to not feel any heat emanating from the blade, but knew a simple flick would take my head clean off.

I swallowed my scream and stayed silent, not trusting my voice, and certainly not trusting this being to spare me should I tell him anything about BB-8.

"Where is it?" he repeated, moving the lightsaber a fraction closer to my face.

I pinched my eyes shut as the unstable hum of the blade drowned out all other sounds. "I... don't know," I choked out past the unnatural tightness in my throat.

Unexpectedly, the lightsaber dropped away and the figure seemed to sigh in disapproval. He re -entered my field of vision and sheathed his weapon at his side.

Then his gloved hand reached for my face, and I experienced a sensation so disturbing that my face twisted into a scream and my limbs shook despite the powerful force holding me still.

There was an immense, vice-like pressure against the sides of my head, while simultaneously my brain fought to expand and double in size. There was no longer enough space inside my own head, and I realized it was his presence, there with me, inside my brain.

Yet just as I made this terrible connection, I found myself suddenly recalling my flight here in the forest, running with Han's blaster in hand. The recent event seemed strangely cloudy, though, as if it had been something I dreamt rather than experienced barely an hour past. I struggled to recount the details, though a tiny part of me didn't understand why I was so fixated on doing so. The Stormtroopers had been chasing me through the forest, but I'd been upset before that. I visualized the echoing cries of a small child at Maz's tavern, venturing into the cellar, and discovering the lightsaber which had sparked that horrible, unwanted vision…

'A vision...' something murmured inside my head.

Wait, this wasn't right. I hadn't said that. Furthermore, it hadn't been said out loud. I grit my teeth to help force the memories away, and the light and sounds of the forest abruptly swept me back into the present, staring at the hand of the creature still stretched out in front of me. It was him, controlling my thoughts, reading my mind, my memories. How was he using the Force for such an atrocious purpose?

The black aura flared as the figure flexed his hand in irritation. The pressure instantly returned and once more my thoughts were no longer my own. The forest faded, replaced by blue lights in a black hallway, which fell apart under my very feet… a hand grasping an old white and blue astromech droid... a barren field littered with corpses while rain poured from above… I remembered thinking that I hadn't known it was possible for so much water to fall from the sky, and I felt amusement at my own naivety about such things – wait wait wait, that was not an emotion that I was feeling, it had come from the creature who had taken over my mind – then the pressure clamped down so tightly on my skull I thought it would surely crumple like rusted metal.

Through the pain, I recounted the final moments of the vision: the corpses in the dark field… a group of black figures illuminated in red by a distinctly shaped lightsaber... For a moment, I was startled by this, but again perceived that the feeling hadn't originated from me. It had come from him, recognizing himself in my own vision, and the realization was enough to draw a small portion of my thoughts back under my control.

I wrenched myself away from the memory and emerged into the shadowy, metaphysical depths of my mind. Above and below me were countless flickers of light – my memories, knowledge, and feelings as they existed inside my head. The images from my vision, still unwillingly being accessed by the dark being, were surrounded by a black aura of corruption, the same one I had seen around the figure as he used his powers. And though I knew the dark figure was still physically standing in front of me, I could sense his mental presence lingering behind me, at the back of my skull in a way that made the hairs rise on my neck.

It dawned on me that my mind was now a battlefield, and I had no chance of winning as long as my attacker remained behind me. However, the physical power and pressure holding my mind and body in place prevented me from turning around. Enraged, I thrashed and kicked and stomped, and though the motion was invisible to physical eyes, it was evidently felt by the being inside my head.

'Stop it, girl. Show me the rest,' he ordered, and again the words echoed around my skull though I knew my ears had not actually heard them being spoken.

I was thrown headfirst back into the part of my vision I hated most. Blistering sand dunes formed in front of me, accompanied by the heartbreaking, high pitched wails of a small child realizing she was being left behind on an isolated, dying planet.

'Abandoned, and then forgotten,' the dark voice sneered.

His scorn infuriated me and I clawed my way out of the vision. Knowing he could read my thoughts, I used it against him the only way I could. 'GET OUT OF MY HEAD!' I screamed, over and over, though my lips merely trembled and I didn't make a sound. I imagined that our bodies standing in the forest must look strangely subdued, however the battle raging inside my head was anything but silent.

The dark being just laughed at me, but his focus shifted away from my vision in the cellar. He breezed through my heated conversation with Finn (and I felt the being's immense displeasure upon seeing Finn in my thoughts) before moving to the heartrending choice when I turned down Han's job offer (again, another wave of fury, perhaps due to his hatred of my allies?).

Control of my own awareness started slipping as he sped around my brain. I focused on simply keeping my head above water, as it were, instead of drowning in the images flashing across my vision at a frightening speed. But suddenly, the images dissolved as he discovered one particularly interesting memory...

"The map. You've seen it." He spoke out loud, though I could still sense waves of surprise and greed emanate from our overlapping consciousnesses inside my head.

And there before us, still dreamlike but rapidly growing more vivid, was the memory where BB-8 had shown us the map to Luke Skywalker.

My stomach flipped as complete horror overcame me. This creature working in league with the First Order now knew I had the map in my memories.

I can't explain how, but I snatched the entire memory and moved away from the black figure's presence in my head. I burrowed into the depths of my brain, imagining all the flickering images I passed as layers shielding me and the map from his grasp. The pressure lessened as I dove deeper, and I pictured a lone rocky island in a vast, endless ocean – one that I had dreamt of many times on Jakku. It crystallized before me and I landed there, hiding at the core of my very existence, a prisoner in my own head.

'I will find you,' the dark being seethed, his rage turning the ocean as black as oil. The pressure started building again as he approached, somehow, from every direction at once.

I felt the familiar sensation of being watched, but was shocked to realize that it wasn't the creature chasing me – it was the living silence, here with me on my island. Voices buffeted against me insistently, but I didn't trust them considering what they'd led me to the last time I'd listened.

'Leave me alone, leave me alone,' I cried. I clutched the memory closer to my chest and thought of oceans made of water, sand and stars.

Abruptly, everything around me fell away and I was back in the forest, alone in my head, albeit still immobile.

A Stormtrooper spoke nearby, and though I couldn't discern the words, I clearly heard the dark being's reply. "Pull the division out. Forget the droid," he ordered in that detached tone I hated so fiercely. "We have what we need."

I trembled and my heart sank, and then there was a sudden, painful pull at the base of my skull and the rest of me sank, too.