"Lando?" she asks.
"A swindler. He can get us a clean ship and passage to where we need to go."
Rey's mind races.
Lando? Isn't that the man who was coming to the aid of the Resistance when she left? The one she overheard was Han's best friend? The one who knows the Resistance is alive and will likely report back to them? Or worse, capture her and Ren?
Ben's right, no one would suspect he'd make contact with anyone related to his family. But it's also a terrible, terrible idea. Rey does her best to shield her thoughts but Ben senses her trepidation.
He narrows his eyes at her. Rey feels his mind reaching for hers but she mentally swats him away. He looks startled.
"You said you wouldn't do that, if I didn't do it to you."
"Why are you nervous?"
"I know that name. He's your family's friend. Won't he betray you?"
Of course, he thinks. He sometimes forgets his family took her in, tried to force her to be the hero that he could never be.
"Yes," Ben answers simply. "But we won't need him long. We take him by surprise, get what we need, dispose of him and go."
Rey's stomach plunges. They stare at each other, her eyes wide. She's starkly reminded of the killer sitting before her, so casually plotting destroying the life of a man he may have once loved. The killer whose arms she longed to be held by just minutes ago. They were the same arms that slew his father and countless others.
Cold fear prickles her skin. How could she forget so easily? How could she be taken by him so completely? And now he's here talking about throwing this family friend away like so much…
"Garbage…" she whispers dangerously.
"Rey..."
"Human beings are not garbage for you to throw away!" She cuts off his question with vehemence.
Ben says nothing. He sits straighter and simply ponders, never taking his eyes off her face.
Hmm, so this is why she's so against killing, even when it's necessary. Her greatest weakness through and through. Still just an abandoned child, unable to let go. Empathetic even with scum.
Her scars run far deeper than he anticipated.
Rey continues fuming. This is all wrong. His calm thoughtful gaze irks her.
"I won't help you kill him."
"You don't have to."
She blinks. Then frowns again. She won't be appeased so easily.
"I won't let you kill him either."
Now Ben's anger is stoked and sensing his irritation gives Rey at least some satisfaction. But starting a blow up, knock down argument is not what she wants to do right now. She sighs.
"Can't you leave him alive?"
"No."
"Damn it Ben!"
She inadvertently sends her seat flying back as she stands gripping the table. It shatters against the wall behind her.
He just looks at her with that infuriating contemplative look of his again and she marches away into the ship, not sure where she's going.
After storming off and taking a few blind turns Rey ends up in a small black kitchen nook and enlists several droids to her aid.
She stews over a stew, stuffing her face with savory meats and breads and cheeses and cursing the First Order for their viciousness and excellent cooking. Ben's casual violence frightens her and she knows for certain she wants no part in it. But she also knows she needs a new light saber if they're going to take on Snoke…
Then something interesting occurs to her. Rey marches back to the room where Ben has resumed reading the ancient texts.
"You could have lied. Why tell me your plan if you knew I wouldn't like it?"
"My offer stands," he says still looking at the books.
"What?"
He turns and meets her eyes again and she finds honesty there.
"I want you to join me. I won't lie to my partner. I also won't let us be followed and killed."
She's stunned.
Inexplicable guilt swirls in her gut. If he knew the Resistance was alive he would surely go with a different plan…
No. She has to protect them at all costs. Obviously, there is still work to do on bringing Ben back to the light. She'll find a way to keep Lando alive. In the meantime…
Ben goes on when she doesn't respond.
"If we want to destroy Snoke the path will not be neat and kind. It will be paved in blood. He will guarantee it."
Think Rey, think.
"How will you know it's a clean ship? He'll try to sabotage it."
"His mind is weak. An open book. And in case you've forgotten, we are adept at reading minds."
Rey throws a book at him which he halts mid-air without lifting a finger.
She lets go a frustrated growl and starts to pace.
He smirks darkly. He enjoys her outbursts.
"Striking first is of the dark-side," he teases.
But she's not listening.
"A ship…" she whispers. Mind whirling.
"All we need is a ship, right?"
"And Intelligence. We need to know where the First Order is… and isn't."
"I know a place," Rey says halting her nervous pacing. His stare bores holes into her but she looks down at her hands. She whispers…
"We can get a ship and gather intel and I don't care if you kill him."
Ben quirks an eyebrow. Him?
"Jakku," she says.
It's risky, yes. The First Order left a presence behind on that back-water junk world after the events with the traitor and the map. Ben had wordlessly risen, walked to the cockpit, reset the coordinates ans returned to his reading. Rey sat down with him, anger abated by his concession.
Risky, But admittedly it's less risky than his plan. Even if the bulk of the Resistance is dead, its allies could be at work creating a new rabble. Lando was a desperate move, but he knew he could get the information he needed there. Not just about the First Order.
He's certain there's no way his mother had survived but… he didn't feel her exit the Force the way he felt his father's presence rip from his soul. There could be a chance…
He shakes his head. The dead child within him was still holding out for something that wasn't real. He banishes the thoughts entirely, not liking where they're leading. He shuts down memories of last night's dream, of all his feelings, locking them away in a compartment in his mind. Sentiment was not going to keep them alive.
He resumes his reading. It's been hours, but they are still a standard day from their destination.
Rey has a small, boxy black droid at her side scanning the pages and helping her translate. Its contents are simultaneously saved into its data banks.
Ben doesn't need a droid to help him read. She had called him a show off.
Jakku.
More than intelligence and a ship interests him there.
It's the world where she was abandoned and suffered. Curious. He's curious and more than eager to meet the acquaintance of anyone who caused her pain…and maybe it was time to help her remember. But what would it do to her shining light he's come to…
He grows irritated as his thoughts wander again. These turgid texts are dull as space dust, but underneath the overly flowery ancient vernacular are tidbits of things he never could have imagined. Histories he was never told, philosophies that would be blasphemous to the Jedi Order that would come.
Interesting. It's interesting, but so unbearably dull!
Ben raps at his temples as they read, earning an annoyed glance from Rey, when with a sudden frustrated grunt he tears away, only to return several minutes later with bundles of something in his arms.
Rolls of thick paper spill onto the table between them. Some are blank, some are filled with writing scribbled in ink. Several long writing implements are strewn about.
Was he… writing? Did anyone do that anymore?
Rey sits across from him at the long black strategy table and fingers one of the rolls of paper.
"Is this…"
"Parchment," he says. "Calligraphy. It helps me think. Organize what I've found interesting."
Calms me down, he thinks, and she hears it.
Rey closes her books and stares at him with eager curiosity.
Ben begins writing but then feels her stare upon him. He looks up, then back down at his work, then back up again. She's still staring.
He fixes her with a look at says, what?
"Can I try," she blurts out a little embarrassed, "I've never written before…"
He gestures to one of the other quills before her and she snatches it up. She watches as he adjusts it in his hands and she tries to emulate it as well as she can, her fingers clumsy. She's never held a writing implement before. He dips his quill in ink and she follows suit.
She leaves dark blots on the paper, moving her hand shakily she attempts to write her name. Ben looks up and has to stop himself from laughing. She looks like a child, with her tongue sticking out in concentration and ink smudges already across her nose.
Rey hears him mask a noise and looks up quickly in time to see him look down and away, as if he wasn't laughing at her. She can feel his amusement.
She scrunches her face and gets to work on something new. Ben is just regaining his focus when he hears a tittering sound. Like crystal, like sunshine. Rey is giggling, then belly laughing.
He looks up at her confused.
She pulls up the paper and shows Ben a roughly drawn face with angry eyebrows and sharp teeth. Rey is losing her composure, barely able to breathe through her laughter.
"It's you… it's, oh force, It's you!"
Has she lost her mind?
She laughs so hard it hurts, her face, her belly, she's in agony, all her tension and nervousness and the ludicrousness of it all, it just comes pouring out of her. Tears fill her eyes. What is this unreality she's living in? If anyone else showed such a thing to Kylo Ren's face and laughed, she imagines they'd be dead before they knew what hit them. But here she is, laughing at his face, which is currently frowning, much like her bad picture…. And she loses it some more!
Finally, gasping for air and clutching her belly and wiping her tears Rey comes back down. She notices his face is stern and a little concerned.
"Lighten up," she says.
Ben quirks his head and after a moment he points to himself.
"Dark side," he says simply.
There's a pause and… she's laughing hysterically again.
He's playing with her!
Oh God wasn't that just the crux of it all! She wanted him to lighten up, in the force, and he wanted to stay stubbornly in the dark, a frown on his face. What bitter comedy this is!
Rey catches her breath. She doesn't think she's laughed so hard in her ENTIRE life, even when surrounded by Finn and her Resistance friends. Even after her laughter dies, a warmth remains behind in her chest against her will.
"You really are funny."
"I know," he says, his eyes on the page and a smirk on his lips. Hux never appreciated his humor. Ben supposes it's because his wit was usually at the General's expense. Oh well. He savors the sound of her laughter, feels it worming its way into his cold dead heart.
Rey beams a radiant smile, then reels herself in. Reality is reinvading her mind. She shouldn't be having this much fun with him. The fate of the galaxy literally rests on their shoulders, her friends' lives… if they could see her now. Guilt invades her mind, grounding her.
She strokes the cover of her text, and notices he's begun to write something down.
"Something interesting? This one is just painstaking detail about some war five thousand years ago."
"Yes," he says deeply, "The Jedi are a lie. Half of a whole, long forgotten."
Ben launches into something akin to a lecture, talking about the Je'daii. A society of Force Users from tens of thousands of years ago, that worshipped the balance between all aspects of the Force. He talks about their planet and the two moons, one light, one dark, and how anyone who strayed too far down one path was exiled to the opposite moon to meditate until they rebalanced themselves. There were millennia of peace.
He talks about the Kyber powered laser sword being introduced via an alien who crash landed there and how it led to a split in society. Friends, families and lovers took sides opposing each other, killed each other. He talks about the Jedi claiming the light and the Sith taking the dark and how the split in the Force has never been healed since then.
Rey has never been formally educated before, but she imagines this is what it's like to have a, what do you call it, professor?
"Here, is the Je'daii code," he says, then reads a beautiful poem.
"There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no fear; there is power.
I am the heart of the Force.
I am the revealing fire of light.
I am the mystery of darkness
In balance with chaos and harmony,
Immortal in the Force."
"Then there is hope for us…" Rey whispers, "It's been wrong this whole time. We can fix it!'
He looks doubtful.
"It's what the ghost said, it's what Luke said."
"I don't care about them."
"Then what do you care about?" She says sharply.
He doesn't answer but the word is on the tip of his tongue. You. It scares him, so he pulls back emotionally.
Instead, he says, "Killing Snoke. Avenging myself. Setting the Galaxy right."
He catches her eye again.
"We could use this to rule smarter, better, more completely."
"We could use this to set the Galaxy free," she counters.
They don't talk again for hours.
Rey can barely keep her eyes open. The pair quietly ate dinner as they continued to study in silence.
They are just a few hours away from their destination.
"Sleep," he says.
She startles, her drooping face falling from her hand.
"You'll need sleep before we arrive."
"You will too."
"I don't sleep."
The previous night would suggest otherwise.
"if you go, I'll go. If you stay, I'll stay."
He slams his hands on the table top. "Have you always been this infuriating?"
"Yes," she growls.
He stands quickly and leaves, mumbling curses under his breath.
Rey sighs and returns to her bed, plopping down for a few hours rest.
Jakku.
When she first left, she desperately felt she needed to return. But now, after acknowledging the truth, could she handle it? Were they truly dead? It felt true. How can she face it? What would she find there? Only a few weeks had passed but it feels like a lifetime. It IS another lifetime, another Rey.
She wishes for quiet and reaches out for his mind.
Again, a weight appears at her back. Again, relief covers them like a warm heavy blanket. Again, neither of them moves, neither willing to admit their weakness and need for the other. They fall quickly into a deep, dreamless sleep until a law alarm wakes them both.
They've arrived at Jakku.