Author's Notes:

Welcome to "Agency", a trilogy about individual choices and the driving forces behind them, personal accountability as well as asserting oneself in the face of overwhelming outer circumstances, a.k.a. "I wanted to write porn without plot and it exploded".

This fic was written largely over the course of late January/February/early March 2016 and at 40 chapters (as of now), it is pretty much done. You can therefore expect regular updates. I made up a lot of stuff to explain away the questions TFA left us with, and I'm worried that when 'Bloodlines' comes out all that will have been for naught, so I guess I have to start posting this monster now before I start tearing it all up.

Get out your Reylo bingo cards because this fic has all the major themes we know and love - force bonds, abductions, lightside/darkside power struggles, dreams, existential angst, UST, eventual redemption etc. It's probably not the most original fic in the world, but I hope you'll have fun anyway.

Enjoy - and let me know if you do! x

~o0o~

Part I: Dreamwalkers
Chapter I: Overture

[In which Luke and Rey share memories, and Kylo Ren lies low.]

~o0o~

Rey watched the Falcon take off and vanish in the grey clouds. As if on cue, it started to rain.

"Ah yes. Welcome to the lovely climate of Ahch-To. We hope you'll enjoy your stay," Luke said, extending his arms in an ironic welcome of the big, wet drops. "Let's get inside. It's getting dark, anyway."

'Inside' on Ahch-To meant a collection of small stone cottages in various states of dilapidation, a short way away from the shore halfway up the cliffside. Luke pointed out one next to his own for her to use, and helped making it a little more cozy by procuring some warm blankets and lighting a fire in the fire pit on the floor.

Outside, the wind and rain howled and waves crashed onto the cliff in the darkness as Luke handed her a cup of hot tea, then sat back and turned over the old lightsaber she had given him in his hands with a faraway look on his face, almost caressing it fondly. Then he looked at Rey with an unreadable expression.

"So, essentially, what is it that you came here for?"

For a moment, Rey was lost for words. There were so many things she had hoped, still hoped to find here.

"I want to learn about the force. And-"

Well, in her mind she had envisioned him to come back to the Resistance with her and Chewie, and help the General in the fight against the First Order. She had realised that this was unlikely to happen after she had watched Luke talk to the wookiee alone for some time, and had then be told that Chewie and R2-D2 were going to return to the Resistance while she stayed with Luke.

"I'm not going back," Luke summed it up, as if he had read her mind.

"But Kylo Ren murdered-"

"I know," Luke stated evenly. An expression of deep sadness flickered across his face. "I suppose it was bound to happen. A parent simply cannot give up on their child, however desperate the case may be - Han had to at least try it. I believe he knew he was going to his death though, and made his peace."

"So you're not going to help?" She asked softly.

"What do you want me to do? Track down my best friend's son and take revenge by killing him? No. This is not my battle. Not anymore," Luke said, suddenly looking even older and more worn-out. "As it is, most days I'm wondering what we all fought for. What it was all good for."

Rey could not believe it - that after everything, she would find Luke Skywalker so opposed to get involved in this conflict in any way, even though it involved his immediate family.

"But - you are the last Jedi. Please, I need your help! I have no one else to turn to to learn about the force."

You need a teacher. I can show you the ways of the force. The memory of Kylo Ren's unexpected offer bubbled up in Rey's mind, but she shoved it aside. Yeah, right.

"Patience." Luke lifted his hand. "You misunderstand - I'm not going to abandon you. You have made too big of a splash around the First Order, they will never stop hunting you now. I have enough skills to evade Ben and Snoke, but if I left you on your own, you'd quickly fall into their hands again."

Rey felt her stomach sink and wrapped her arms around herself absentmindedly. She had not asked for all this attention. Luke shot her a glance.

"Don't worry. My fighting days may be over, but I will do everything to prevent Snoke from sinking his claws into yet another one of my Padawans."

Something about the way he put it made Rey look up. 'Another one of my Padawans'. Somehow she knew that Luke was not referring to her like that because she was going to be his student from now on. And Rey, too, felt a connection to Luke Skywalker that went back longer than the few hours she had stayed here. She had to know. This was the moment to bring it up.

"I really am your student, aren't I? This isn't the first time we have met."

Luke looked at her with an unreadable expression. "What do you remember?"

"Nothing. I remember nothing from before Jakku. It's just a feeling."

"You are looking for your parents, aren't you? You want to know who you are. Perhaps I can help, just a little. However - I will say up front, don't expect too much from what I can tell you."

Rey's head shot up. Her heart beat up to her throat with excitement.

"You are right. We have met before, years ago - you were a tiny slip of a girl then, no older than four or five years old. Your father brought you to my school; your mother I never met. Your father said he had no idea about this magic stuff - as he put it - but that your mother was sure of your force sensitivity. Obviously she was right. Then as now, you were overflowing with potential. I was intrigued to see so much of it outside of my own family line, if that does not sound too conceited."

Rey hardly dared breathe as she listened intently.

"You see, at the time, I was gathering information on as many force-sensitive people and lineages I could find to rebuild the Jedi Order. So I asked your father to bring your mother to my school as well and introduce us. He promised to do so - in the meantime, I was to keep charge of you and start teaching you in the force."

"He left the same day, and did not return for weeks. I never saw him again, and started to think that maybe he had abandoned you - that maybe he was scared of your unusual power, and did not want anything to do with you. For my part, during the time you stayed with me, I was delighted. You showed such promise at such a young age! I think Ben did not take too kindly to you as competition for my attention - he and I used to be very close, you know."

He smiled sadly.

"But then, some weeks later, something odd happened. I was away to visit my sister. Already back then she wanted to share her fears with me about Snoke, who was beginning to have altogether too much influence on Ben for her liking. She implored me several times to keep a close eye on Ben and protect him if need be. My nephew had just turned 15, and that is a difficult age for many young men as it is. Even more difficult it is to follow the Jedi code at that age, and very especially so if you have a predator like Snoke around you."

Rey shook her head slightly. Hearing Luke talk about an unhinged psychopath as Kylo Ren like some poor confused child upset her a little - and anyway, she wanted to hear more about her parents. Luke seemed to pick up on her thoughts.

"Sorry for digressing. Anyway, while I was away for a few days, I left Ben in charge. Troubled he was at the time, he was still my best pupil, my own trusted family. Imagine my surprise when I returned and Ben casually told me that you had been picked up and taken out of my school by your mother. Apparently, she had reconsidered about having you trained as a Jedi. I was immensely disappointed, not only at you having been taken away, but also at missing the chance to meet the woman who you inherited all your potential from. I started looking for you and your family, hoping, if possible, to change your mother's mind. Only then did I realise how little I truly knew about you or your parents. All I had was your father's name. Ben had not even cared enough to remember your mother's name. Apparently you reacted to the woman who came to pick you up like a child would to her mother, and that was good enough for him."

"Could he have lied?" Rey said suddenly. "Perhaps there was never any woman who picked me up. Perhaps-"

"You think he might have been the one to dump you on Jakku? Rey, maybe he was somewhat jealous, but he was only 15 years old and way too absorbed with his own troubles to kidnap a small girl and abandon her on some random planet - and then lie about it to my face. He wasn't always like how you know him today. Besides, the other students supported his story - they had seen a woman coming to pick you up, too."

I've met Luke when I was little. I've even met Kylo Ren. And however briefly, he has met and spoken to my mother. Rey saved all these facts for later consideration

"Anyway, I did some research just going by your father's name, but it all ended in nothing. I could not find any trace of you or your family. The whole thing kept bothering me for quite some time afterwards."

"So what was his name? My father's name?" Rey asked.

"Well, he introduced himself to me as Sorus Ghan." An amazing feeling of familiarity and recognition completely failed to engulf Rey at the sound of that name. Even more, something about the way Luke phrased it made Rey think that the Jedi suspected the name to be false.

"I did pick up on the name a few times during my search, but always just as a shadow of someone. The information was always conflicting, or went nowhere. However - why would that man bring a little girl to me under a false name? And you were genuinely attached to him. At the time I had no reason to believe he was not your father."

"So, my father brought me to you, and my mother took me away again," Rey summed up the extent of what Luke had told her. "And you don't know anything more, other than that my father's name might have been false all along?"

"That is basically it. I warned you I only have very little to tell you," Luke said. "It is too bad your mother arrived just while I was away. I tried to get every piece of information out of Ben, believe me. But it was my own fault, really, having been given charge of such a young child as you were, and then leave you in the care of a teenager for some days."

Rey looked crestfallen. "I've accepted that I'll never see them again. But it would help to know who they were at least. Why they left me behind. Just - why?"

"What has happened to you was cruel, no doubt. But I can't help but count it as a blessing that you did not grow up in my school." Luke said. "You have heard what happened to it, some years later?"

Rey nodded. "Kylo Ren."

"I like to think I owe it more to Snoke. The man you know as Kylo Ren was not always a monster, you know. His descent into darkness came along slowly. I am to blame for it, in part."

"How so?" Rey asked incredulously.

"As I said before. Snoke got to Ben at a young age, sank his claws into him during a vulnerable, impressionable time. A Jedi is ever surrounded by temptations, and it was my job to keep Ben in line, to watch him closely and guide him. But I was so caught up in my dream of reviving the Jedi Order, I took on altogether too many apprentices at once - so I lost sight of Ben. I did not give him guidance and attention when he needed it most."

Rey thought back to the brief flashes she had seen in the basement of Maz Kanata's cantina on Takodana, visions of fire and smoke and violence.

"People don't just kill innocents because they feel neglected. Kylo Ren made a choice. He decided to do all these horrible things. Just like when he murdered Han Solo."

"Those raised in the light can not always understand the struggles of those raised in the shadows," Luke replied evasively.

"I was not raised in the light!" Rey protested, suddenly finding that she was strongly resenting the implication that she was a child of fortune who could never hope to understand the underprivileged victim of circumstances that had been Ben Solo.

"No. But it is in you, still, after all these harsh years. I could see it then and I can see it now, the nature of your power, unexplored, but strong. You are a creature of the light side."

Rey did not know what to say to that. What did that even mean? She remembered the cruel whisper she had heard when she had had the chance to kill Kylo Ren - and how she had refused it. "I am? So I couldn't fall to the dark side? Not ever?"

Luke was suddenly very serious. "Of course you could. Those strongest in the light have sometimes fallen to the darkest depths. Never forget that. You are just starting out in the force. Temptation will inevitably befall you, too."

Rey shook her head. "I'd never do anything so vile as Kylo Ren. He thanked his father as he ran him through. He actually thanked him."

"Preserve that innocence of yours," Luke said, looking very old again. "But don't condemn those who fall so easily. You probably heard the story of how Darth Vader, at the very end, chose the light side over the dark. I saw it happen. That's why I believe anyone can come back from the dark side, if you reach out to them."

Look where reaching out got Han Solo. Rey's unforgiving thoughts must have been written all over her face, because Luke just smiled his sad smile again.

"In any case, I am glad that your way led you to me again after all this time. Now get some rest, and don't tear yourself up over who your parents were. In my very personal experience, that is never a healthy thing to dwell on, especially not for a Jedi. You yourself define who you are." Luke got up, and before leaving for his own cottage, handed her back the Skywalker lightsaber.

"Hold on to this one for me, just for the time being. You'll need it, Padawan."

~o0o~

That man was in his dreams again.

Han Solo slipped off the precarious runway, never taking his eyes off his son as he was falling down the shaft, and Kylo Ren dropped to his knees, feeling weakness overcome him instead of the power surge that he'd expected, felt the wound through his father's body as if it was his own. And there it was again, that blurry figure before him, saying something that Kylo Ren could not hear.

Who are you?

Come home with me, Ben. Your mother misses you. Again his father stood before him, and again he ignited the saber, and again his father fell, his final touch ghosting on Kylo Ren's cheek.

Snoke's using you for your power, manipulating your abilities. When he's gotten everything he wants out of you, he'll crush you.

And now there was the girl before him, blazing with fury, the Skywalker saber raised against him, frozen in the moment, and next to her stood that man, straining to be heard above a roaring, deafening noise.

Who are you?

He was ten years old again, and the whispers had come back again in the dead of the night. Ben Solo curled up on his bed, staring into the darkness.

Who is there?

Now he was running his hands along Darth Vader's helmet.

My grandson. Finish what I started. Continue my legacy. Root out my children's treachery. All my power, and more, will be yours.

With a start, Kylo Ren opened his eyes and sat up. The wound that Chewbacca had torn into his side with that bowcaster ached in protest at the sudden movement. The beeping sound that had woken him was being caused by a medic droid requesting entry to his quarters.

With a wave of his hand, Kylo Ren allowed it through and settled back as the droid set to work on changing his bandages. It hurt no small amount, but Kylo Ren bore it with clenched teeth. The humiliation at the memory of his defeat burned a lot worse than this.

Snoke was displeased with him, but not more so than Kylo Ren was with himself. While General Hux was using the disarray and the confusion that the destruction of the Hosnian system had thrown the New Republic into to push further and further into enemy territory, he, Kylo Ren, had been relegated to nursing his wounds and focussing on his training. But he felt restless. He needed to be out there, destroy the Resistance, hunt down that girl and his uncle - he needed to stay active, anything to keep him from a moment of introspection.

Why was he still having these dreams? Why was there still something tearing at him? Where had been that rush of power he had hoped for as he had watched his father fall? Instead, a part of him had broken down, had sent him to his knees even before the bowcaster shot hit.

"You will always feel the call of the light. It is in your blood, in your essence, as much as the darkside is", the Supreme Leader had said to him once. "That is why your loyalty to me is so much more meaningful."

That was it. Kylo Ren had proven, and would continue to prove to Snoke that his trust was not misplaced. Perhaps he was born with the same weakness that his grandfather had so tragically succumbed to, but he would not let it dictate his life, nor his choices. The look on his father's face that was seared into his mind, his blood on his hands, would remind him of that, every day.

Snoke was right in letting him lie low. He was going to focus, heal properly, prepare and then come after his uncle with a ruthlessness not seen in the galaxy since Darth Vader. A man who has killed his father can do anything. No wavering, no weakness anymore, not ever.

With these thoughts in mind, Kylo Ren dropped off to sleep once more.

~o0o~

[to be continued]