Redemption
Chapter 2
Chestnut locks tickled her scrawny cheeks, as her eyes scrutinized the green vastness of that planet. A dull sense of melancholy hit her chest and she could not identify
that feeling, but for the lack of her beloved blue ocean. She would have liked to see the waves breaking on the island's rocky cliffs, the sea foam swallowed by the wet sand.
At any rate, in that island, sorrow and rage were more endurable. Her glance fell over the steel pavement of the Resistance base, when she sensed a familiar signature in the Force. Turning her back to the landscape, she directed her attention to the person in front of her.
"Did I interrupt something?"
"Not at all, Master." she responded, with a tepid and affable smile. Luke Skywalker came near his padawan with an unhurried slow pace and the impenetrable expression on his face aroused the girl's suspicions.
"Is there any news?" she asked, apprehensively.
"They got back a couple of minutes ago." he hesitated, sitting on one of the stools nearby. "They left in hundreds, but only twenty-one of them returned."
One team was off on to a mission at daybreak. The tragic news made their faces look grimmer than before and they stood there, keeping silent for a little while.
"You reprised your training today." Luke said, getting up from the stool to go outside on the little balcony, while she stood still exactly where she was.
She looked like ice, the expression imprinted on her face not betraying any kind of emotion.
It's something she has in common with her brother, Luke pondered, looking at her through a slit-eyed glance.
"But I screwed up, Master!" she started, giving a detailed account of her training and of how she miserably failed every and each attempt to have control over the Force. "I think... I haven't fully recovered yet." she concluded, joining him on the balcony.
"You had to face a grievous loss-"
"That's right where my rage and my distress originate, Master. I don't think I knew him so well that we can say it's a grievous loss."
"Your started your training when you were barely able to talk. You cannot blame yourself for that." Luke's voice reached a soothingly and reassuringly sweet tone, so pleasant that something in the fourteen year old's chest thawed, maybe a knot, or a grip. And she let herself go.
"Strange feelings have been torturing me, lately. They're asphyxiating, they're things I've never felt so far..things that seem to burn, as if there was a fire inside me". Tears threatened to emerge, but she was somehow able to push them back, stifling the incipient whimper in her throat.
"You are young and these negative emotions are new to you, but be careful, control them, or they will lead you to the dark side."
Dark side.
Those two words could make her shiver in terror, and lately, repulsion too.
"The more time passes by, the more this..this hatred – it was difficult for her to talk about that feeling in first person – grows inside me. I can feel the Force oppressing me, not reassuring me."
Her eyes were glistening and Luke could see that, even under the tenous light of the two moons . "I'm…" But she could not finish that sentence, the sob she had restrained before painfully resurfaced.
"You are afraid."
"I don't want to become like him, I don't." Shaking her head, she wiped those two fleeting tears away. Luke got close to her niece, put his hands on her shoulders and looked in her eyes, half serious and half affectionate.
"You're not like your brother."
Brother.
At those words, she moved one step back.
Her face turned back into the usual icy mask, but there was something different in those eyes, black like nothingness, something Luke could not immediately understand.
"I don't have a brother, not anymore." And she truly meant it.
No matter how many times she wielded her lightsaber, her desire to skewer Kylo Ren would only grow more intense, just like the sand flowing through an hourglass, slow but steady. Something was about to break in the air, but just before that could happen, she hurriedly said: "Sorry", barely a whisper. "I shouldn't have talked like that, I know you want to help."
"It is my utmost aspiration."
She looked back in his eyes and slightly grinned. She then looked away and stared back at a random point in the huge forest; only after the umpteenth moment of silence her mouth articulated a question without her even being aware of it.
"Did I look anything like him?" At the beginning Luke watched her without understanding, but a couple of seconds later he figured out whom she was talking about.
"You took his stubbornness." a little giggle was just swallowed by the night air.
"I did not mean my father." she admitted, with a bitter smile. Luke then realized he misunderstood. "I meant Ben Solo."
"Padme.."
"Please, tell me. I can't see his real face in my visions."
Luke sighed, even though that sound came out more like a snort.
Luke didn't like talking about Ben Solo.
"You are quite alike, from the physical point of view, but your face resembles more your mother's." Padme closed her eyes, hoping she would be able to visualize something. "He was full of doubts, he was afraid since the very beginning of his training."
"Then why training him?" she retorted, keeping her eyes shut. That was a tough question to answer, so he paused to mull over, searching for the right words.
"The Force was strong with your brother, but what he did not get when he turned himself to the Dark Side, was the difference between mastering it and being subjugated by it." Padme suddenly opened her eyes wide and looked at his master with a wavering gaze, as she bore in mind the words she had just told him only a little earlier.
I can feel the Force oppressing me, not reassuring me.
"A Jedi uses the Force for the greater good. A Sith is a slave of the dark side of the Force, not its master."
"But... how is?..."
"How is that possible? Well, only who's been deeply lured by the dark side and has been able to stay in the light side can truly understand this." Thirty-years-old memories re-emerged in his mind in a quick but well-defined flow.
"You once told me that Darth Vader eventually found a way to his redemption. So, can a Sith return back to the light side?" That question woke him up from the shadows of his memory. A grin widened on his lips half hidden by his thick and bristly beard. He looked at his padawan and he said:
"Yes, they can."
"How?"
"Now…go, my son. Leave me."
"No. You're coming with me. I can't leave you here. I've got to save
you."
"You already have...Luke. You were right... you were right about me. Tell your sister…you were right."
"...Love." he replied. "As long as someone filled with hatred is loved by even only one person, then they can find redemption."
"I don't care how long it will take you, bring him back to me. Bring back my son."
She woke up all of a sudden.
She looked at her wrists and at her ankles, blocked by metal binders, and she found herself laying on a cot angled so much, that it would have taken very little to straighten it up vertically.
It seemed to her she was living a familiar scene once again.
A scene that she often lived in her worst nightmares.
Rey forced herself to watch ahead of her, even though she knew who was there for her.