Who doesn't enjoy cliffhangers? Heh…
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Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. This is just for my own amusement and not for profit.
Rey was burning.
Her mind was burning. She could not breathe. The Force seemed closed in on her like a dark and oppressive wave, smothering her. She tried to fight it off, running through every possible technique Luke had taught her.
Letting her emotions flow through her, not letting them control her.
It was not working. Nothing was working. This darkness was coming from within, tearing into her.
She knew the source. She knew, she knew, she knew.
She had decided that her connection through the Force with Ben was going to be her weapon and method of turning him back to the Light, with Luke's tentative blessing. Their connection strengthened over time, almost a direct link between their two minds.
That particular day, as she meditated, his presence had seemed louder, louder than the cool buzz in her periphery that she became used to. Not malicious, but full of something that she remembered feeling in him when she entered his mind months earlier: fear, laced with something darker. And it grew until it was a painful buzzing, a worrying sensation.
She was naïve and foolish to believe that he could be trusted.
Curiosity and concern got the best of her, hoping to find out the cause of his apparent distress, and she prodded at the connection.
Luke had told her what it was like to be hit with Force lightning. About how it felt like the Dark was shredding him from the inside out, destroying his very essence. Rey imagined that what she was feeling was similar. But she did not have a repentant father to save her.
Fear and pain that was not her own instantly ricocheted and burned through her body, as real as if was her own. And she could not close the link no matter how hard she tried. The floodgates were opened.
"Master Luke! Master Luke!" she screamed after managing to open her mouth from its painful rictus.
Her body tipped forward from its meditative position, curling into itself, shaking and sweating.
"Ben! Ben! What are you doing? Stop!" she cried out in the direction of the link.
He did not respond, did not give her any indication that he cared, that he gave a damn about her. He left her writhing, suffering, not letting up on the outpouring of pain flowing through their Force connection.
"Please! Ben! Stop!"
Rey thought they were in a good place. They had good conversations, daily conversations sometimes spending time just being and sharing in their connection. They were cultivating a relationship.
The first time they connected had been a disaster. Calling him Ben only served to enrage him but she knew that the only way she could drag him from the Dark was pry him off the influence the Knights of Ren and the Sith had over him. The name Kylo Ren was part of the Dark that kept him enslaved.
Rey thought she had blown it, failed in her mission before it could even get started. She had been so thankful that he sought her out. And he allowed her to call him Ben. It was clear that he wanted them to keep communication, no matter the cost to him. And he apologized to her for yelling at her.
The dislike and mistrust she inherently had for him had slowly softened. She was still wary, never revealing where she was with Master Luke. She would be lying if she said that she did not harbor any ill feelings against him, for the atrocities he committed and allowed the happen.
But she thought her idea to coax him into the Light was working. Sometimes it felt like the cold darkness that was his Force signature was becoming lighter and warmer.
It was all for nothing. All of the hope, the naïve, girlish hope she allowed herself to hold in her heart was for nothing. The affection for him that she allowed him to see was for nothing. That much was clear. He betrayed her. He was going to torture her, destroy her.
"You kriffing bastard, I thought we were friends!"
That feeling of utter betrayal laced the pain, sharpening, amplifying it.
She wanted to beg for the pain to stop. She wanted to scream into their connection that she would do anything for the pain to stop. And she knew that he would tell her that if she joined, the pain would stop. Such was the way of the Sith: finding weakness and exploiting it.
On the edge of her consciousness, she could sense Luke sprinting towards her, the beacon of Light painful against the darkness suffocating her.
Luke was there, kneeling beside her. He rolled her on her back, shouting her name. Panic came off of him in waves, but the closeness of his presence was like an anchor, pinning her to the present.
"Focus on me," he yelled, loud enough that even through the ringing in her ears she could hear him.
She tried, but the image kept on flickering to something else.
A wrinkled, pale face, not human, something old and sinister.
Rey strained, sweat beading on her skin, trying to focus on the Jedi before her, trying to push out and shield herself from the onslaught of Darkness that sought to shred her mind from the inside out.
She would not give in, even though the pain threatened to either make her heart stop or explode. The temptation would stay at bay. It had to.
Distantly, Luke was swearing colorfully and creatively in Huttese as he carried her through the woods to their little hut. Rey would have teased him about his language if she did not feel like madness was a hairsbreadth away.
She was not sure how long this mental attack went on. Minutes. Hours. Days. Endless time spent trying to be a rock anchored in the ocean and allowing the pain the wash over her.
But suddenly, the pain began to ebb away, leaving a raw void in her body. Rey grit her teeth as she pushed back against the pain, filling the empty space with herself, building a wall around her mind only few could pass through.
More time passed, immeasurable.
Night had fallen when she felt sane and safe enough to open her eyes. Her head throbbed and her entire body felt like she was trampled by a herd of banthas.
Luke pressed his hand, his real hand, on top of her head, making a slight rubbing motion.
The touch was comforting, affectionate and her face twisted as she began to cry. Huge wracking sobs shook her small frame.
Tears were the worst kind of sin on Jakku, where every drop of water was to be conserved. To waste it on something as weak as crying could merit a beating if caught.
Years and years of grievances and suffering bubbled up and spilled over compounded with the extreme mental strain. Death and abandonment and betrayal. It was inevitable. But it did not make it any less painful. So she cried. She cried until she did not have any tears left and she was left feeling thoroughly exhausted.
Luke sat in a meditative position by her cot.
"Sleep, Rey. I will watch over you."
Rey highly doubted that she would be able to sleep in the next month, much less that moment, but she closed her eyes at his request.
Sleep took her swiftly.
…
Rey expected to see a vision of Ben. He came to her dreams sometimes, not having to do with their Force connection. Sometimes they were good dreams. Sometimes they were bad dreams. Sometimes they were dreams that left her hot and wet when she awoke from them.
She expected the nightmare of a lifetime.
But she found herself in a large, hollow cave. There was a blue, transparent figure before her. He had a trimmed beard and Jedi robes and a kindly expression, looking so familiar to Rey. But she did not know who he was.
He stared at her with a small, sad smile.
"Who are you?" she asked. Her voice sounded like when she was a child, small and sad, the same age she was abandoned on Jakku.
"Who are you?" he returned, calm and serene.
She knew that voice. When she touched Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber on Takodana, she heard that voice in the ensuing visions. She knew who he was, but she did not know who he was.
It was frustrating, maddening.
"Who are you?" she shouted, sounding more like her present self.
He smiled enigmatically and said nothing.
…
Her eyes fluttered open.
Luke was moving around in the hut, but each step sounded like a thermal detonator going off.
The room was too bright, fire radiating off of the Jedi Master.
A man was sitting on her bed, near her feet. He was hunched over, elbows on his knees, gloved hands covering his face. His body was shaking, as if he was crying.
She knew who he was, but thoughts passed through her hands like morning mist.
And darkness overtook her.
…
The ghost was there again, stroking his beard and staring at her with a thoughtful expression.
Sadness and exhaustion reared their ugly heads and Rey wanted to scream at him. She wanted him to say something, anything that was not a simple parroting of what she said.
"Who are you?" she asked. Her voice sounded uncomfortably loud and echoic.
She just wanted to know who he was. She wanted to know why he would come to her now of all times.
Rey blinked and the Force ghost was less than a foot away from her. His hands moved, resting on her shoulders. The touch was warm and cold, tangible and intangible, familiar and impersonal.
"My dear child."
The mixture of emotions on his face almost had her doubling over. So much sorrow and love.
"Take care, Rey. Take care."
…
Rey felt gutted when she awoke, the words of the ghost-spirit-man echoing in her mind.
Take care. My dear child. Take care.
She was not sure if it was a warning.
She was on her cot, tucked snuggly with blankets. Even Luke's cloak joined the pile, the sight sending a pang of something akin to love radiating from her breastbone.
There was a wet rag on her forehead and rations and water at her bedside.
She could hear Luke outside, tending to the fire.
Every curse word she knew fluttering through her head as she sat up. Her head felt like it was full of sand, formless.
She half-expected Kylo Ren to break her mind in her sleep, when she was most vulnerable. Maybe he did not want to. Maybe he did not have the courage to do it. Maybe he was the twisted piece of bantha fodder that everyone in the Resistance says that he was and wanted her to live with the aftermath of what he did.
A fresh wave of betrayal crushed her chest, closing her throat.
Forcibly pushing those emotions away, she turned to the rations and water Luke left for her. She got halfway through the food and almost all of the water before her mind caught up with her stomach and told her to slow down.
She started when Luke entered the hut, his eyes immediately going to her. He looked haggard, more than usual.
"How long was I asleep?" she asked, avoiding the question she wanted to ask.
"Three days."
There was a heavy pause, words lying heavy and unsaid on her tongue.
She forced the words out. "How long did…did the torture last?"
Luke paused, not really able to look her in the eye. "Six hours."
Rey lay back on her cot with a small oh and covered her eyes with an arm, forcing herself to take slow, even breaths.
She was not going to cry, she was not going to cry, she was not going to cry.
Six hours in excruciating pain. Three days asleep.
Talk about something else. Anything else.
"There was a man in my dreams. A Force ghost," she choked out, moving her arm to look at Luke.
The Jedi looked startled by that.
"He had a beard and he had a kind expression. Who is he?" Rey continued.
She could not give a detailed description, but apparently it was enough as she watched as several emotions flickered across Luke's face: sorrow, nostalgia, regret, acceptance. She expected him to wave off her concern, promising to speak on it another day.
"The person you saw was Obi-Wan Kenobi."
Rey opened her mouth and shut it.
Oh.
"Why? Why would he come to me?" she asked, confusion plain on her features.
She knew it often took conscious effort on the part of the living to contact a Force ghost. But Master Kenobi came to her without her bidding, as if by his own free will. She had no connection to Obi-Wan Kenobi. If he would come to anyone, it would be the Luke, someone he knew while he was alive.
Luke sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his metal hand.
"You have been weakened from your ordeal. When you have regained your strength…I will tell you everything."
…
It had been a few hours after Luke left the hut to go do…whatever it was he did when Rey was not around.
She stared at the ceiling, not sure who should have been occupying her thoughts: Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ben.
Ben was winning, the quiet of her mind and the lack of his familiar presence were painfully obvious.
Despite the smarter voices in her head that told her that it was a horrible, terrible, really bad idea, she went inward, searching for the connection she had with Ben. A part of her hoped that it was gone, but part of her hoped it wasn't. It took some effort, combing through the writhing column of Light that was her Force signature.
It was barely there, a whisper of the strength it used to have. Relief and disgust warred within her. He was with her still. Kylo Ren. Ben Solo. She was not sure at that point if Ben Solo was even still alive inside the Knight of Ren or if, by torturing her, this was his way of killing the Light inside himself for good.
Regardless, she did not dare touch it or get anywhere near their link. She shuffled it back to the far, far corner of her consciousness, burying it under the Light that sustained itself during the onslaught of Dark.
Rey learned her lesson.
…whoops.
But hey, the course of true love never ran smoothly. Somebody important said that, right?
Please drop a review if you have time! They are the best kind of motivation :)
~Tiara of Sapphires
