How do I know this isn't just a trap you're setting up? Rey demands as she attempts to stir a stew Luke made. The broth bubbles over and stings her hands. Ouch!
The storm is over, has been all day, but a heavy mist swathes the island instead, seeping cold into Rey's clothes, under her skin, in her bones.
She can't know.
But she feels his desperation rising, boiling and threatening to explode. Are you going to smash more control panels?
Hux, he responds, bitter and fragile. I hate him.
Was it this Hux's idea?
Yes. And he's—he's resented me ever since Snoke brought me on board. He views me as his competition, instead of an ally, and he's so—
Yes, I'm sure you never antagonize him, Rey snorts.
Are you going to do anything about what I told—showed—let you see or not? he snarls.
Rey jabs a wooden stirrer into the pot. Of course I am! I don't take any joy in people dying!
I don't take any pleasure in it either. It's not the first time he's said it, but it is the first time Rey believes him.
The image of Han, reaching out to his son only to be gutted with a lightsaber and fall into an abyss, shoots through Rey's memories. The only father figure she's ever had, until Luke.
She won't let the First Order destroy Leia. She's not sure she could survive it. Or that Luke could.
But how can she tell Luke? How can she tell any of them how she knows? These past few months are the first time in Rey's life she's started to believe she's not no one, she might mean something to someone or something beyond the people who abandoned her on Jakku. If she tells them she's hearing Kylo Ren's voice in her head, that he could potentially scout her location should she let her guard down, that will all be lost.
The Force, Rey thinks. When in doubt, she can give the force credit. Technically, she reminds herself. It's not a lie either.
"Rey!" Finn fiddles with the transceiver. "Calling again? What's up?"
"Finn, where are you?" she demands.
"On our way to a resistance base in the Anthan system," Finn replies. "We'll be landing later today. Actually, very shortly." He drops his voice even though neither Poe nor Leia would care. "There are more people who have inside information on the First Order."
"Like more former stormtroopers?"
"Nah, I doubt that." Finn wishes it were so, though. Then he would feel less alone. And at the same time he's glad there aren't more former stormtroopers, because it's easier if he just thinks of them as enemies, as something he's left behind, not as something he used to be a part of—a program he maybe still carries with him in ways he doesn't want to acknowledge.
"Listen to me, Finn." Rey's pleading with him, and alarm shimmies down Finn's bones.
"Are you okay?"
"Listen," she snaps. "Leia's in grave danger. The First Order knows where you are all going, and they're going to try and kill her. Probably all of you, but her especially."
"What?" Finn's blood congeals in his veins. The First Order.
"Finn, you have to go back. You can't go to the base—they'll—"
Finn wants to agree, but the memory of Rey's hug, the tender expression in her eyes when she realized he'd come back for her, the way the Resistance talked about each and every member like they were valuable—the complete opposite of how the First Order treated its members from stormtroopers to devoted servants—he can't. "I can't leave those people to die, Rey."
"You can warn them, though. To leave."
Finn nods, a lump growing in his throat. "How do you know about this anyway?" he asks.
"The Force." Rey's voice catches.
Is that how the Force works? Finn wonders. "Listen, Rey," he says. "I'm going to get Leia and Poe, and you can tell them—"
"No, Finn, I've got to get going." Rey sounds almost scared. "Just please, promise me—"
"We'll warn them, and get out," Finn says. See Rey, I'm not the coward I was on Takodana.
The transceiver fizzles out in his hand. "Hello? Rey?"
No response.
Finn fights back a growl as he enters the cockpit. "We've got a problem." He explains what Rey told him.
"She can sense that through the Force?" Poe asks.
"Force visions do exist, Dameron," General Organa says, her hand resting on Poe's shoulder. "Although, they're not always entirely accurate."
"So what do we do?" Finn asks.
"Call Jessika, right away," Poe says, already reaching for his own transceiver. "But I can tell you right now, she'll have a hell of a time convincing them to leave."
"I can help with that," Finn insists. I hope. "But if we don't have enough time—Rey didn't say when they would be there, just that it'd be soon—"
"If the First Order wants a fight," Leia says grimly, reaching for her blaster. "We'll give them one."
Kylo Ren watches as Phasma departs in her ship. It should rankle him that Snoke hasn't entrusted the mission to him, but instead, Kylo is relieved. He can't show it, though. Not to Hux, and especially not to Snoke.
He's getting awfully used to concealing things. In some respects, he's spent his entire life doing that, but not from Snoke. Kylo always trusted Snoke.
I can teach you how to make sure no one hurts you again. The memory seeps into his brain, a toxin that curdles everything around it, everything else he's thinking about.
What's that about? Rey chirps.
Nothing, he snaps. Did you—did you—?
I passed on the warning. Rey holds back.
Kylo storms into his chambers, pacing wildly. The air under his mask feels hot, sticky. She's still going, isn't she.
Rey says nothing, but he feels her fear—her fear for his mother, for her friend, for the Resistance as a whole, her fear of the Dark Side. But her fear is unlike Kylo's: it's tempered with something softer, something golden and glowing and like something Kylo remembers from his childhood, from the moments he spent looking out the Millennium Falcon on Han's knees.
Where are the others?
You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?
Kylo rips off his helmet, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. I am every one of those things.
He falls to his knees before the shrine, begging the helmet again. "Show me the power of the Dark Side…"
He's terrified, too.
For her. The General.
Why wouldn't you listen to Rey, you stubborn woman? he thinks.
Poe glides the ship onto the surface of the planet—a dusty, gravelly place with a few trees spiking up from the ground, odd splotches of green against an otherwise dull landscape. A ridge rises directly behind where they landed, offering some measure of cover. Finn's heart thumps inside his chest, the same beat echoing in his ears as on that night he finally saw what the First Order was, the night his friend died and left his blood marking Finn's helmet.
"No one yet," Poe says optimistically. "Stay here, BB-8."
The droid bloops sadly.
"But they're coming," Leia observes. "I can feel it."
"We can't possibly fight them off!" Finn pants as the three of them run across a field, towards a flickering light. Three moons rise in the sky.
"We can try!" Poe shouts.
A beautiful woman with long, dark hair calls Poe's name, beckoning for them to duck into a small hut where a small group of people have gathered—some green skinned and reptilian, some human, one with black lips and clad in cantina clothes.
"Before we say anything else, I'm sure Jessika's told you that you're in danger here," Leia begins. "The First Order is on its way."
"They know about me," says the girl with the onyx lips. She looks eerily familiar to Finn, but as he parts through his memories, he can't locate the correct one.
"Bazine worked as a mercenary. She's done a lot for the First Order," Jessika informs them.
I must have seen her, Finn tells himself. Somewhere.
"She's the one with the plans… She knows their encryption codes. She can—"
The woman's eyes, blacker than her lips, dart around as if panicked. "I can't leave here. They'll find me."
"They've found you here, though!" Finn shouts.
"This is my home planet!" Bazine snaps. "I can't—I mean—"
Finn's at a loss. He doesn't know his home planet. You fool, thinking you could help.
"We can talk to your people," Leia says. "Try to convince them—I'm sure they have ships."
Bazine bites her lip and nods.
Luke ceases their lessons early, and Rey lies back against the damp grass, watching the cerulean sky and wondering about who flew above them, whether Finn and Poe and Leia would make it, what would become of the Resistance if they didn't. What would become of her.
She's not sure she can take more loss. For so long, she didn't need anyone, or at least told herself that—and now she knows how much she does.
Even if they aren't with her, she needs to feel their presence in the Force, know it still knits her together with them, even if she can't look into their eyes.
You barely know them, Kylo sneers in her mind. How can you care so much about them?
Rey wants to snap back that she knows all she needs to know—Finn came back for her, asked if she was okay, when no one else ever had, Leia bravely stood up to the First Order, Poe was brave enough to destroy the Starkiller…
You realize he ended lives on the Starkiller, don't you?
Rey swallows and decides not to throw those memories any further Kylo's mind. He feels like two people to her—the Kylo she's talking to now is the Kylo who burrowed into her mind on the Starkiller, the Kylo who stabbed his own father. And then there's the Kylo who asked her about Jakku, the Kylo who told his father he was being torn apart. Or is that Ben?
And you? she asks. If your mother dies, what will you become?
After two hours of evacuations and mostly begging people to evacuate, Finn, Jessika, Bazine, Leia, Poe, and other informants regroup in the hut.
"We're not going to convince many more," Leia says.
"No," Bazine insists. "We can't leave yet." Her eyes flit to Finn as if mocking him, as if she knows about his determination to flee the First Order on Takodana…
A familiar hissing sound echoes overhead. "Everyone out!" Finn shouts, pushing Leia, Poe, whoever else is in the way, towards the door. "Now!"
An explosion rocks the planet. Finn barely manages to stay upright as the tension erupts and the hut turns into a writhing, screaming mass of people struggling to get out, to run.
Someone jostles Poe and he tumbles to the ground.
"Poe!" Finn drops to his knees, dragging his friend back up. Blood runs from a gash to his forehead.
"Get to the ships!" screams Jessika. She grabs Bazine's free hand; the other, Finn notices, clutches a transceiver.
Wind whips around them, and Finn bears back to see an all-too-familiar ship landing on the planet, crunching a tree beneath it. Its jaws open, and white-clad stormtroopers pour out.
Leia fires her blaster, taking down five of them within seconds. Poe and Finn struggle to hit one.
With all the gunfire, none of them hear the hissing.
"Come on, Finn!" Poe races back towards the ship they came in, Leia just behind him.
But Finn's been trained as a stormtrooper, and knows to look up the ridge, where he sees a blaster aimed directly at Leia.
Finn shoots, and the stormtrooper starts to fall. Poe and Leia whirl around, and only then does Finn hear the distinct sound of a bomb about to drop.
"Finn!" Poe screams.
Red light, then white. And heat. And then, nothing.
Captain Phasma shoots at the woman who has the nerve to call herself general. Between her and Hux, Phasma wonders whether the title has any meaning anymore.
The woman shoots back at her, face a mask of rage as she drags a screaming pilot on board the ship.
No—Phasma can't let Snoke down, can't let her get away—she can only imagine the snarky comments from Hux, the fury of Ren and the Supreme Leader.
As Phasma nearly trips over a body, she glances down, expecting to see another person whom she won't bother to regard.
Instead, she sees a face oh so familiar to her.
FN-2187.
Even now, she still remembers his number, remembers his betrayal and the shame he'd heaped on her. She remembers his Wookiee companion smashing her mask, them forcing her to open the shields and dumping her in a trash compactor. She knew he was too empathetic and did nothing about it—why?
Surely not empathy. Phasma dismisses the notion.
FN-2187 cost Phasma many nights of sleep. How? Phasma often wonders. How could this stormtrooper, no different than any of his comrades, turn so suddenly? Empathy had always been an issue for FN-2187, but empathy alone couldn't have shifted his loyalties so quickly—could it?
Weakness, compassion—it'd brought failure in many of Phasma's troops, and she felt disappointment in them, but never anything that heckled her when she tried to sleep. But FN-2187 hadn't failed; he'd left, his loyalties shifted, and that befuddles Phasma—that haunts her when she tries to sleep.
She glances back up and sees the ramp to the freighter closing. They're getting away.
FN-2187 stirs on the ground, fingers twitching. Phasma drops to her knees, placing her hand over his chest. Breathing. A blow to his head, most likely, but she checks, and there's no blood in his ears.
She looks up again, the ship shooting off into the indigo sky flecked with stars, stormtroopers firing blasters at it to no avail.
She should shoot him. Erase the stain from her reputation, create a weapon to throw back in Hux's face the next time he taunts her.
Phasma cocks her weapon, aims it at FN-2187's blood stained face.
Or, she could get her answers. Ren would be curious. Besides, FN-2187 might know where the rebel princess was, and that has been Phasma's suggestion to Snoke all along, because it's in the best interests of the First Order. Otherwise she wouldn't hesitate to fire into the boy's face. He might know where Luke Skywalker is, even. Therein is her trump card should Ren or Hux challenge her.
Phasma hoists the traitor over her own shoulder as she barks out orders to return to their ships. She carries his limp form back towards the First Order.
