I Need A Teacher
By TheOneAndOnlySlayer
Chapter 4 - complete
Finn stubbornly wraps himself in a blanket next to the young Jedi. "Do you have any idea what you're doing tomorrow?"
Rey purses her lips like she's in trouble. "No."
Finn exhales through his nose. "You're not worried…?"
"Course I am."
He pauses. "D'you really believe…?"
Rey adjusts her head so she faces her friend. She only told Finn about her dream (the main part, anyways), but that had taken a long time. Kylo Ren had left Finn crippled. A metal spine is fused to his skin like a morbid experiment. She remembered feeling like she was trading in her friendship, more precious than her lightsaber or Jedi Mind Tricks, for the monster that maimed him.
"I…I'm not sure. I feel the change. I sat in a room with him and he didn't attack me. Not even verbally. I felt nothing from him."
Finn's eyes meet hers. "Do you have any idea how weird it was to see him do his meditate thing over you? To get Snoke's curse out of your head?"
Rey looks away.
"And I didn't even, I don't know, I never thought he was hurting you. Or maybe I thought he was gonna hurt me or something." Finn looks lost.
Rey shivers. She's asked Finn before what he knew of Kylo Ren while he was still fighting for the First Order. Despite his equal hatred for the dark warrior, Finn had been reluctant to discuss it with Rey at all. She carefully phrases her question. "Do you believe that he's really…not Kylo Ren anymore?"
Finn considers this carefully. "He's not Kylo Ren anymore," he muses. "But we have no idea what he is now."
Rey doesn't look encouraged at this at all. It's what everyone in the castle's thinking, anyways.
"Still," Finn offers. "I want to believe."
Meditation hadn't helped. At all.
Rey dreams of her suffering from Snoke. She tried to reason that her nights would be sleepless. They had to be. She can't possibly go back to that nightmare again.
But she does.
She screams. She sees a quick shadow in the sand and a Twi'lek girl she used to talk to in a dark room. She sees a burning planet-sized city with silver towers burning from the inside. She sees blood, lightsaber burns and millions of stars surrendering to the night, dying.
Snoke is violating her a hundred times harder than Kylo Ren's attempt, back when he used to hide behind a mask. Rey doesn't even have the energy to scream, and that evokes more pain and sadness than she can imagine.
She seizes in her sleep, shaking. The planet they're on isn't far enough from the First Order. They'll - he will - come for them. And Rey will be terribly powerless...
...Rey. Don't be afraid...
...as Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi Master, was.
She unconsciously pushes Finn until he wakes. Since his last deadly encounter with Kylo Ren, Finn has had a remarkable ability to evade any injuries. He's been the first to help others, to offer comfort in any way and to even make a fool of himself. Bless him, he's the face of inherent goodness.
Like he did with Leia, he carefully holds Rey as she calms herself back to sleep.
It's not Finn's voice in her head, but she pretends that it is.
In the morning, Rey does not wake up on her own. He calls for her.
Rey, come to me. Let's go.
Rey rubs the sleep from her eyes, groaning at the stone surface. Living near the sea must make everything damp and cold. It was always a cold, grey-skied planet. She had been hoping the Resistance might accidentally use some tropical planet as a base these last few months.
She does not rise for a minute. There is a gaping window (or maybe it's just a hole in the wall) that bathes the stone chamber in misty white light. She misses Jakku's gold skies in the morning.
Rey. Now. There's no time.
Rey grimaces in distaste. She should have known he would be on top of this. Put a man with a superiority complex in charge and suddenly he's giving marching orders.
She also has to ward off this reluctance that she's not yet strong enough. Finn told her Ben had brought her back from Snoke's enchantment of hell. He had loomed over her and sucked out the lull holding her down.
But yesterday she was drained after just trying to pull a single two-pound fish out of the water.
Hang on, I'm coming. She shrugs off the cargo hold blanket. Then she thinks, to ward off his mental shadow for a bit, I've got to piss, alright?
He is already outside. The wind is acting up and his robes flicker around him like waves
Rey has no idea why she came to the beach and not gone to fetch him in his cell. How did he remove those chains?
Whatever. He obviously used the Force to get down here. Guess he finally gave up the prisoner charade, for now.
Rey feels she will regret this. Through the Force, Rey does not suspect any ill will from him; he's calm as…well, he's calm.
No, what she regrets is the way he'll handle their first lesson. If he gets bossy with her, or begins to lecture with so much as a flourish about the Dark Side, she'll –
"You're late," he says.
Rey stops in her tracks. So they won't be talking about her Snoke-fused nightmare last night. "I had to get breakfast."
There's confidence brewing inside him. He smiles somehow, without actually smiling. "I was hoping you could catch your own this morning." He steps back so she can see what lies behind him and his ridiculous cloak.
Rey's eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. "Did you just get that – from there?" She points to the ocean.
How did Rey not see it? It's a fish, or a whale. Whatever it is, it has fins, a white belly and is about twelve feet long.
Yesterday he was definitely responsible for the small rain of fish that had been yanked out of the sea while Rey, Leia, Finn and Kivi searched for food. He was up in the tower and guarded by two of their own. It was a generous display of the Force. Rey ignores the inclination that he is showing off.
"I hope you're planning on sharing that with the rest of us," she demanded.
His attention is diverted to the sand beneath him. "This isn't for us."
"What do you mean? It's for the lesson?" she asks quizzically.
"I killed this animal myself with no intention to eat it. It's a different instinct, Rey." His dark eyes bore into her.
Rey feels her stomach shake. Before their truce, in the height of their rivalry he used to peer into her mind from light-years away. She wouldn't even know about it until there was a spark of emotion like jealousy (or, occasionally, awe) and he gave himself away. He's sworn now he will stop doing that, but Rey still bristles at his comment. "I know enough about killing."
"Not like this," he asserts. He moves to the side like he's expecting something.
"So what do you want me to do, kill a big beastie like this from the water?"
"Not quite," he says vaguely, enjoying her confusion. "You know starvation, Rey. It's a powerful instinct, but it's also very basic, short-range. There's no control. Those under basic instincts slip up."
Rey shuts down the need to tell him he doesn't know a thing about her, just because he learned she survived on preserved foodstuffs t half the ration her whole life.
"Killing is a primal act," he continues, "But you have to be just a step above that, plan their trap before the killing blow."
Rey doesn't understand. "But it's already dead," she argues, pointing to the dead fish blob. "What are you – "
WHOOSH! This time, whatever swarms Rey's view is loads bigger than a bird. It's a massive flash of mottled brown and grey. Her ears are ringing, there's sand flying everywhere –
What is that!? Her mind manages to holler through the Force. She's frozen with shock.
"It's a sand shark," he shouts to her. "Kill it before it can take the fish underground." Or you, he adds.
She reaches for the lightsaber she's made herself, but hesitates at Ben's barbed "Leave it!"
A rusty knife the length of her arm, if not smaller, darts into the air. Rey misses catching it. She fumbles to snatch it in a mad fit of clumsiness.
Where in the blue fuck is that thing?
"You..." She stares at the little pinprick of a weapon. "You've got to be kidding me!"
"Focus," Ben chides her, his eyes flashing. "Sand sharks only eat once a year. Their digestive system is slow enough, but my guess is this one's a little overdue by a few months."
The bite in his tone is more distracting than the violent slash of sand to Rey's right. It circles her, to her horror.
She tries to focus on the shape of the creature, its life-force.
"Don't use the Force," he commands.
Rey won't look at him but her eyes flash. Why not?
"Billions of other beings who aren't force-sensitive are able to kill without the gift that we have. Don't get all spiritual about this exercise. Match the beast's basic need to destroy with your own. Learn from it."
Rey already feels this attempt is out of control. She's sweating and her legs are quivering just a bit. He's already enticing (trying to entice) her into the violence of the Dark Side.
Before Ben can correct her thoughts, the sand shark undulates the ground from her. Rey is knocked to her feet – the creature, a thirty-foot nasty thing, is right under Rey's skin. She can't see where its mouth is.
The creature dives and Rey has an unexpected sense to hang on. She crashes into deep sand and loses grip on the creature.
Ben is pacing. "Don't let him get the bait!"
Rey grinds her teeth. She'll show him. She grew up on Jakku, for blummin' sake. He's the son of a princess. She'll have the sand shark gutted like last night's dinner.
She runs to the dead fish and crouches like a predator, her knife strong in her grip.
The wide, serrated head of the sand shark rises from the dark surface. It hisses at Rey, who bares her teeth in the same challenge.
"Get it, Rey! Get it!"
Ben whips his head. He is not happy to see Finn and another soldier watching them from the rocks, cheering her on like it's a spectator sport.
He glares at them and turns back to see the sand shark already dragging the fish corpse down.
Ben spits out, "Finish it!"
Rey was wildly slashing the knife in the air, but something made her hesitate. It's like watching the light in a nightsparkler fizzle out.
Ben sighs in frustration. "This is Snoke in front of you, Rey! Don't let him win!"
The young Jedi finally lands a blow to the beast, tearing one of its nostrils. Her heart isn't in this exercise, though.
Ben's ire is like a wave. The beast had reared back in pain and desperately latches onto the fish. It begins to hurriedly bury itself under the sand, but Ben extends an arm and urges the Force to drag the beast back onto the surface.
Sand ripples around the sand shark in waves as it fruitlessly struggles. Ben approaches her. With his black garb it's like he's gliding over the ground. Rey remembers the first time he found her on Takodana, each step closer to her a death sentence.
"The skin on its belly is the weakest," he tells her. "Finish it."
Rey cannot move.
"Finish it."
A Twi'lek girl smiles at a piece of food offered to her. In another minute she is wielding a sharp object. A short distance ahead of them is a speeder that caught fire. There is a scream from a lecherous alien.
She blinks, erases the vision that crept up to her. The beast lows, sensing its doom. Its eyes are large and begging –
Ben has had enough. He scowls and lets the animal free. The poor thing is scared enough that it meekly takes the fresh kill and whisks down in a timid dive.
Rey is unfocused. Her hands hang dejectedly at her sides. Ben takes a deep, cleansing breath, but Rey can sense through the Force that he is unhappy with himself, with her lack of dedication.
The rusty knife feels heavy in her hand. She extends it to him.
He accepts it with a slight nod, like she's passed him a fork, and then in a flash he throws it expertly to the rocks. It actually sticks halfway through the rock up the hilt. Rey fights down the urge to wince.
He's pissed, and it feels like it's her fault but she has no idea why.
He's quiet for some time.
"You've defeated…four Knights of Ren." Ben's tone is tight with control. "You faced two of them at once, and killed them all. They were all strong, fast fighters. I know this because I trained each of them myself."
He faces her now with one hand at his waist and one gesturing to the furrowed sand. The semi-faint scar she gave him seems to color. "Why could you not do this?"
Rey is affronted. "It hasn't done anything to me personally. It's just an animal."
"And those Knights? Did they hurt Finn, my mother?"
"They've sworn to!"
"Like you and the Resistance have sworn to murder thousands of First Order Officers? There were almost a million lives on Starkiller Base. I felt their lives snuff out all at once."
"But not all those people on the Hosnian system? What's the point of all this?" Rey snaps.
"The point of this lesson was to understand the depth of a real killing blow. Not filtered by self-defense; just a clean elimination."
"That's the Dark Side talking," Rey points out.
"Exactly," Ben confirms eerily, "Which you need to understand. You can't go in there and try to overwhelm him with the purity of the Light. He'll expect that. He'll drown you with the Dark. You have to know how to go with the current, not spend all your energy fighting it."
Rey can't believe how rational it all sounds. Give in to the Dark, just for a little bit, just until you've killed the most powerful force of evil in the Universe. It's just as Luke told her about his father, Anakin Skywalker. He had blinded himself with logic that surrendering into the dark would save the Republic…his wife.
"Well, why can't you do it, then? You know so much about Snoke. Why aren't you able to go back in there and finish him off, huh? If my power's so clean and pure?"
She shouldn't have used such a mocking tone, but he's pushed her over the edge.
Ben goes horribly still. It's like when he first locked Rey in that chair in the interrogation room. Rey had shoved him out of her head and tumbled into his, unnerving him. She had sensed his unpredictable nature, teetering between killing or torturing her.
She's more scared of him now. There was a safety in knowing they would always fight each other. Nothing changed. Now there is no direction.
"Don't you think, after spending fifteen years under him," he says in a clear but burning cadence, "that I would have tried?"
Rey wants to try again, but is afraid he will dismiss her. Instead she walks away, feeling less hopeful than ever.