AN: No I don't own anything - does anyone on this site?
First adventure into the Star Wars category so be warned, some parts I'm not too happy about so please be kind.
All mistakes are my own, enjoy.
Ever since she was a child, as far back as she can remember, she has felt the animalistic pull of the darkness. Its raw power and strength it could provide her with also dragging her to a deep and desolate place that she never wanted to see. It showed her how it could help her escape her fate of a scavenger on the sand covered wasteland of the planet called Jakku. It tempted her with deeds of death and destruction, sowing seeds of self consciousness leading to self doubt, worry and failure. Constantly it offered her the grinding whisper of "You could be so much more than a forgotten, orphaned scavenger!" as some sort of comfort, which instead clawed and nagged at her mind all hours of the day, invading her deepest thoughts and ringing in her ears so loudly that she begged and cried for the voice to just stop.
But never did she give into that darkness though (not permanently at least, and not for very long).
Somehow she always managed to stay safely in the light, basking in its warm, calming glow, never taking that final small step crossing into the vast blackness before her. Yes, she had walked the delicate line between light and dark, good and evil, right and wrong more often than not; standing in the shadows with tendrils of light and dark wrapping around her. Almost giving in more than once (too many times for her liking, too many times than she cares to even admit to herself) for reasons which had always seemed so justified at the time but turned out to not be reasons at all. Just excuses. Never did she cross that grey line though, and many times over the years she vowed that she would rather die, and she had no intention of dying – no matter how bad her life got.
Try as he might, the darkness never claimed her as his own:
Not after she was abandoned on the junkyard that was Jakku by her own family - at least she thinks it was them, it was too long ago to remember properly and in recent years she has started to question everything she has ever known and will learn; an unfortunate habit that she picked up growing up by herself in a place where you couldn't even trust your own mind.
Not even when she was too weak to move from being so ill due to hunger and thirst that she could have died. And she almost did, multiple times in her short life, more times than she rightly deserved. Even now she wondered whether it was an angel of the light or the devil in the dark, who dragged her back to life every time. Somewhere deep down she thought that maybe it was even a combination of the two; two opposite sides uniting in balance to save her.
Finally, not even the nightmares she suffered from every night pushed her off the edge and into the waiting blackness before her which seemed to invade every long forgotten corner of her consciousness.
The first time she had a nightmare it was the night of her abandonment on the sand covered planet she would later learn to call her home for the next fourteen years. Even though the dry heat was suffocating, making it almost impossible to breathe, and the fact that she had been left by the people she loved most weighing down on her, she somehow managed to fall into a deep sleep; exhaustion seeping into her bones and drawing her into the dream world which she frequently visited in childhood. Not long after her eyes had closed had the dream turned into twisted red and black images which had come to permanently burn themselves into her mind. Staining and tainting everything that they happened to touch; blurring happy memories and replacing them with unforgettable, hellish, nightmares. She awoke, covered in sweat, head pounding in pain, gasping violently in the silence of the night. Despite the heat from the fire, she shivered violently in the freezing temperatures of the night-time desert and the dry air made her choking gasps much harder than they should have been. Inhaled sand from a silent scream scratched and burned her throat raw, absorbing what little water it found there.
That night she didn't go back to sleep. Nor did she go to sleep the next night.
Over the years the nightmares still came, clawing and ripping away at her emotions. Some nights they were better and she slept peacefully, safely in her AT-AT (well as safely as she could get), other nights they were worse; some nights they were so terrifying that they kept her awake for days on end. On those following days, the adrenalin coursing through her veins was the only thing keeping her going, but it made her jump at every imaginary noise and whisper and there was always the problem of the inevitable crash when that adrenalin finally left her. The latter always leaving her weak, vulnerable and ashamed to be craving for more.
Eventually, from exhaustion, starvation, dehydration and the adrenalin crash, her body would just give up and she would end up passed out, alone, in a dark and damaged corridor of a crashed Star Destroyer. Even then, the horrifying images which had haunted her since childhood wouldn't leave her alone. Only this time there was no escape; her body was just so sleep deprived that it wouldn't let her wake up and escape from the crashing terror that she had known all of her life and was currently experiencing. Instead she had to suffer through it all and pray that no one had found her passed out and defenceless – they wouldn't take pity on her, they would take advantage...
After years of the same routine the nightmares began to lose the effect they had on her, eventually they became just a regular thing which only ever bothered her on a few rare moments of weakness. The darkness knew this and so came up with a new plan on how to get her to forever join him:
A nearly perfect and effective plan.
Instead of creating imaginary scenarios in her mind which would vanish when she woke, he created very real situations which where thrust upon her and ones which she couldn't escape from no matter what she did. All in the hope that they would make her act in anger and completely surrender herself to the dark and to him.
Of the many times where she had experienced these tests and almost given herself over to evil, one memory will always haunt her, and if she was given the opportunity to change it she wouldn't even know what to do.
That one memory was from a few years ago on what started out as a regular, boring, hot day scavenging in some long lost Empire ship half buried in the sand. Crawling through the vents made traversing the ship for sellable parts much easier and meant that Rey could avoid any other scavengers which may pose a threat to her and her survival. Dropping down from the vent she went about her way searching for something that would let her have her next meal; that's when, out of nowhere the very thing she had been trying to avoid sneaked up behind her, tried to knock her out and moved to take what should rightfully be hers.
Anger took over; all the careful avoidances of people and the calming techniques which she rehearsed every night disappeared in that one momentary second. Rey was blinded by the rush of darkness which enveloped her, the hunger from days without food being the only thing now driving her fatigued mind and body. She was enraged, and nothing would stop her now, and so she violently pushed the fellow scavenger, who was just trying to survive (like her), with everything she had. Rey had only expected her to fall to the ground but the floor behind her was brittle and unstable that when she hit it she didn't just stop there. Creaking and groaning of the deck plating was the only warning that the two scavengers had before the whole section in front of her collapsed in on its self under the weight– taking Rey's attacker with it before it all landed in a heap of rusted metal which was twisted into a sharp and excruciating death bed.
The following screaming and shouting burned into her, the anger rapidly draining from her, blood and bile rising in her mouth, the taste making her want to vomit; but she pushed it down and forced her shocked limbs into movement causing her to take precise, even steps away from the horrific and bloody scene which she had the unfortunate opportunity to witness "...and cause..." added the phantom voice which she hadn't heard in years. It was wrong to walk away, to not offer help (not that she could even do anything, not now) she didn't even offer her pity to the one who was dying in one of the most painful ways in existence. She knew that she was crossing dangerously into the dark by ignoring the whole scene which was played out before her, but she couldn't help it. Most frightening of all though: the darkness felt good. Her pace quickened as she realized that she had to stop this, stop these thoughts, and pull herself back into the light, even if it meant kicking and screaming.
As the screaming behind her began to fade with the distance, she somehow managed to just that – pull herself back towards that ever present grey line and just slightly over it so that she was seated in the light once again. But the damage was already done; she had already acted unkindly and with anger, destroying someone else's young, promising life in a selfish. Rey knew that she would never forget this very moment as she picked up her speed even more and left no evidence of her ever being there.
However the nightmares constantly reminded her of what she did and they would torture her with what she had done every night.
Only one good thing ever came from the nightmares, and that was the daily reminder of the long and draining battle with the two differing sides of her. In her mind, Rey kept as far away as possible, while still keeping a delicate eye, on the flickering line which separated the two unfair paths set before her. One day, she will walk that line and not fear its power nor be pulled either side of it in a one way direction. One day she will be Grey.
AN2: Please fav and review :)