When she comes to, she has a raging headache and a lot of questions. She rolls over and groans and then lets out a little yelp.
"I didn't mean to startle you," Luke says, closing and setting down the ancient-looking tome that he was holding.
She blinks once, twice. "Interesting reading?"
"Hmm," he says in answer. "How are you feeling?"
I'm coming for you…
She shivers as the voice echoes through her mind. Snoke. "I…I'm not sure." Her head is pounding and her mouth feels like she's been eating the sands of Jakku. But she's in one piece, at least. "How did I get here?"
"Ben." The look he's giving her is not one she can quite define. "He caught you when you fainted."
"Kylo carried me here?"
"You still call him Kylo?"
She blinks once, twice, and then finally looks away from the piercing look he's giving her. "He'll always be Kylo Ren to me."
"And yet he's here."
"He is," she concedes. "But that doesn't erase everything he's done…does it?"
Luke shakes his head. "Of course not."
Rey takes a deep breath and blows it out. "His father seems to think it does." She doesn't mean to sound so cross and she reaches up to rub at her temples. Luke leans forward and touches a hand to her forehead, and she's surprised to feel a sort of soothing warmth run through her head, down her neck, and across her shoulders.
She lets out another breath. "That was…"
"Force healing," he murmurs.
"You've opened yourself back up."
"It seemed appropriate," he says with a shrug. "Can you sense me?"
She closes her eyes, not even sure what she's supposed to be looking for, what she's supposed to be feeling. "No." And she's sure he feels disappointed at that. She can't feel it, but she can see it written in the lines of his face.
"But you can sense Kylo Ren," he follows up with, and she sucks in a breath.
He's quiet now, but she can feel that simmering rage just a little beyond her grasp. She knows if she falls asleep, he'll be right there and she can't stop him. She hears his thoughts in her head and…
You're broadcasting again.
"Yes," she says on a gasp. "Yes I can."
"He was here," Luke says, reaching out to grasp one of her hands as he looks in her eyes. "Right now? Wasn't he?"
"You could feel him?"
He drops her hand.
"What does this mean?" she whispers. "What is happening to me?"
"To both of you, you mean," Luke responds with. "Ben is just as confused as you are."
She nods.
"I have some idea." He taps the book that's now sitting on his lip. "But the book only hints at what I fear is going on. I need to do more research. Access the texts and holochrons that might pertain to this."
"This, being?" She doesn't like the way he's moving the conversation around whatever this thing is. He's hiding something, and she knows that means it's something terrible.
Luke stands then. "Like I said, I don't know yet." He stops near the door, letting it slide open. She squints as the brighter light of the hallway invades her sanctuary. "Get some more rest, Rey. We'll be there soon and I doubt you'll be allowed to sleep for awhile once we arrive."
Because you came back with Luke, she realizes, watching as the door slides noiselessly shut behind him. She's coming home with the hero of the Rebellion, the hope of their Resistance.
You've cemented yourself into their good graces.
She's not sure if the voice in her head is hers or Kylo's, but she's not sure it matters either way. She curls back onto her bunk, wrapping herself tightly in the thin blanket there. She'll cross that bridge when she comes to it.
The rest of the trip back is uneventful and Rey is thankful for that much at least. No nightmares, no strange thoughts in her head. Kylo avoids her. He avoids his uncle and his father and even Chewbacca. She's almost sure he's hiding, especially as Luke gives him this strange, almost knowing look whenever he briefly appears.
She's seen the color high on his cheeks as he turns and walks away.
Luke has been researching, flipping through the ancient tomes he's brought with him. She hears him mutter sometimes when they're all sitting in the lounge or the cockpit. She can't make out the words.
Sometimes she wishes she had any idea what it was he was finding.
Sometimes she's glad she doesn't know.
They arrive back safely, no sign of the First Order, no sign of Snoke trying to beat down the walls around her mind. There's a large group of the upper echelon of the Resistance there to meet the Falcon when it lands. Leia, of course, is at the head. But Poe, Finn, the Tico sisters, and others. They're all waiting with baited breath as the ramp opens.
A cheer goes up when they see Luke, and Rey watches Leia, who looks both relieved and maybe a little bit annoyed at the same time. Luke approaches her and Leia offers him a hesitant smile as she reaches up to touch his shoulder.
"You changed your hair," he says with a soft smile.
She lets out a small huff of laughter and touches his unkempt beard. "Looks like you need a shave."
"Probably a haircut, too," Luke concedes. There's affection and kindness there, even if she hears a little bit of exasperation behind the words. She watches them with a sad smile as they walk off. She wonders if she'll ever feel like she has family like that, if there's someone who missed her when she was gone, who could point out a change in her hairstyle and she'd just know it was meant with all the love and affection a brother or sister could have.
As she takes a step forward, she feels her knee buckle slightly, and she's surprised to feel a hand grasp her around the upper arm. She stiffens at the contact, turning to look at Kylo. She hadn't even heard him come up behind her, but he's there, reaching out to catch her before she even realized she was falling. She doesn't know how he does it and for a moment their eyes meet and she feels something trace down her spine.
He mumbles something she can't quite catch and releases her a mere second later.
"At least some of what I taught him is still there," she hears Han mutter.
"Rey!"
"Finn," she says and is surprised at just how much relief she feels at seeing him. Poe is hot on his heels, looking as dashing as ever. He still sets her on edge. Torture buddies, indeed. Both men stop and she realizes they're not looking at her, but at Kylo. Finn's eyes are narrowed and Poe is watching with a rather carefully neutral expression.
"Come on," Poe says at last. "Let's get you back to your quarters."
"I'm not an invalid," she shoots back and steps forward. On her own. She doesn't need Poe to help her. She doesn't need Kylo, either, though he shoots her a look that is entirely unreadable at that moment. Rey relies on Rey. That's how it's always been.
But then she looks at Luke and Leia as they walk off arm-in-arm. She sees Finn clap Poe on the back as they good naturedly rib each other. She sees Rose and Paige and their obvious devotion to each other in an uncertain world.
Who does she have?
Herself.
And some weird connection to enemy turned…turned?...she's not even sure. He's no longer an enemy. But he's not quite a friend, either.
You're staring, comes the voice in her head, and she snarls something incoherent at him and walks off. Sometimes it's certainly easier to not think about him. So instead she follows Finn, who turns back toward Kylo for a moment.
She can't hear the words that come from him, but she sees Kylo flinch and his cheeks turn just a little bit red, and then he turns on his heel and stomps back into the Falcon.
And Rey has no time to contemplate just what exactly Finn might have said to cause such a reaction because he and Poe are dragging her off with them, mutterings of parties and the hope of the Resistance and questions of what is he like coming from all sides of her.
She can think more on Kylo later, more on whatever it is Luke is digging for about this strange connection between them. For now, she needs to let it all go and so smiles at her friends as she follows them out of the hangar.
The party is in full swing. She doesn't know where they got alcohol. She's not sure where they got the music, but all she knows is the Resistance needs this moment. They need to feel a bit of hope, like there's a chance that they can defeat the First Order.
Even if she knows it's mostly hopeless.
They have only have a handful of people, a large handful to be sure, but still, there aren't more than 300 or so of them, a rag-tag group of survivors who have banded together for the betterment of them all. They have Luke Skywalker now, despite the desperate attempts of Snoke and the First Order and Kylo Ren to stop it.
But still, hope is alive for the Resistance, even if that hope is all they have.
What they don't have are ships and the support of planets with large militaries who can throw their might behind them.
What they don't have is more than one trained Jedi, two if theycount Kylo Ren, who was at least trained in the way of the Jedi and has a frightening command of the Force.
Three, if they count her, with her complete lack of understanding of what many consider a gift and her ability to bluster her way through just about anything. She's a nothing, and yet in this world of the Resistance, she carries at least a little of their hope on her shoulders.
She's been standing on the fringes of the party, watching Poe dance with Rose. And with Paige. And even with Finn. Once or twice they've come and tried to get her to dance but she throws her hands up in protest and they leave her alone with a laugh as they race back into the fray.
There are too many people
Too much sound.
Just…too much.
She escapes out the side door into the darkness of the base beyond and no one notices, something she is most definitely thankful for. She doesn't need conversations, doesn't need explanations and drunken comments about her having the Force.
Not this night.
She finds herself, at long last, sitting on a boulder some distance from the base. It's maybe not the safest place for her to be. She's keeps hearing about the beasts that roam the forests, though she's yet to see them. But she has the lightsaber. Anakin Skywalker's. Darth Vader's. His lightsaber, that called to her in the dark recesses of Maz's castle.
She shudders at the visions. Being left, Unkar Plutt, all those dark shadowy figures that looked exactly like Kylo Ren. A whole group of Kylo Rens. But then him. She doesn't know how she knows, but she does. The one who approached her was Kylo Ren himself. Taller than the rest, broader, there was something there in that moment. She doesn't know if the visions were past or future or something not quite set in stone, but the fact that he killed one of the others that looked just like him to save her, had to mean something.
Were there others? Or was he killing himself in order to save her?
The image has been at the back of her mind since she first stumbled back from the vision, but it's plagued her thoughts at odd moments
"Technically, that lightsaber is mine." The voice startles her out of her reverie and she comes damned near close to falling off the boulder she's perched on.
All she can see of him in the darkness in his pale face. The black of his hair and the dark clothes he's donned for the evening blend into the forest around him. She glances down at the lightsaber that she's still clutching. It feels heavy in her hands, the weight of its history, its lineage, perhaps even more than just the weight of the metals and wires that make up the hilt.
She thumbs it on for a moment and is torn between feeling chagrined or amused when Kylo takes a step back. She turns it back off and for a moment she can see nothing but the blue of the blade in the darkness around them. "I'm not going to kill you," she mutters. "This time, at least."
And then she turns it over, offering it to him in one fluid motion.
He glances down at it, before looking back up at her and pushing the lightsaber back at her. "Keep it," he says, his voice quiet. "For now."
She takes a deep breath, still remembering the feel of it in her hands, the clash of it against Kylo's, the power and the feeling of that mysterious thing they call the Force flowing through her. "I don't think I want it," she admits. This isn't something she wanted to be a part of. She can't say she was content sitting on Jakku, waiting for her parents to come back, slaving away for the likes of Unkar Plutt. But she also doesn't want to be a Jedi, doesn't want the responsibility that she sees weighing down Luke Skywalker's shoulders. Go back to Jakku, she thinks. Her AT-AT will no doubt still be there. Probably picked clean of anything others could dig out of it. But still there. It was hers. The only thing that was hers in an uncertain world.
But Maz's words keep echoing in her head. The belonging you seek is not beyond you…but ahead. And the lightsaber called to her. Even now, it feels right in her hand.
"You need a teacher," Kylo says, and she's ripped from her thoughts, from her memories.
"Excuse me?" She can't have heard him right.
But then Kylo clenches his jaw and his eyes close for a moment and he almost looks like he's centering himself. A wave of something…embarrassment…rushes over her. Only strong emotions…was it his? Yes, she realizes. Yes, it must be.
"You need someone to show you the ways of the Force." And his voice is stronger, more insistent. He leans forward and one of his hands comes out, for just a moment, hovering there in the air near where her hand holds the lightsaber.
Would he dare touch her? No. She can't imagine Kylo Ren reaching out to her in such a way. And then his hand returns to his side and she starts to wonder if he had ever really considered it, if maybe her mind was playing tricks on her.
"Luke could," she says on a shrug.
Kylo scoffs. "Luke is a tired old man."
She opens her mouth to defend him, but nothing quite comes out. Luke cut himself off from the Force, lived like a hermit for these many years. She can see the exhaustion in his eyes as he talks about the Force, about researching it. She can see the way he watches his nephew with a sad look in his eyes, can see the way the darkness that surrounds Kylo affects him.
He wasn't what she expected. On their trip out to fetch him, she had wondered and imagined far too much. The great Luke Skywalker. She'd seen him on the holos, seen the pictures and the videos, and heard the Resistance speak of him as if he were some sort of deity.
But he's a man.
Just a tired man with a sadness in his eyes that cuts to the bone.
"You know I'm right," Kylo says and his voice is strangely quiet.
"I…" Her voice trails off. What can she say? "And I suppose you could teach me?" she finally gets out.
He says nothing for a moment and she turns to look at him. Not for the first time she's struck by the dark intensity of his gaze. In the near darkness of the woods around them, she can see little more than dark eyes in a pale face, but she feels herself heat slightly under his gaze.
"I could." And he sounds almost smug. It shouldn't surprise her really, and yet her impression of Kylo Ren these last few days is not one of confidence and smugness. No, it's been of a fear so strong she can almost taste it and a deep darkness that clings to him. He may dress in the trappings of the Resistance, but beneath it all still beats a heart full of the Dark Side and steeped in the teachings of Snoke.
She shudders. "Why?" she blurts out. "Why would you want to teach me?"
He shrugs and looks away from her, one of his hands settling on the boulder at her side, tracing patterns in the dirt with one long finger. "You're strong in the Force," he says by way of explanation.
"I can't be the only one who is."
He shrugs, a somewhat inelegant motion of his broad shoulders. "There aren't many who have as much innate strength as you do."
"You," she says in answer.
"Yes," he answers with and there's that bit of arrogance drifting somewhere behind the word again. She watches him continue to make patterns in the dirt. She doesn't know if they mean anything, if they're runes of some sort, something from a Jedi ritual. It's mesmerizing really. His hands are strong with long, wide fingers and watching them makes something in her stomach clench a little.
She stands then, jumping down off the boulder, lightsaber still clutched in her hand. "I'm not interested."
And then he does reach out to touch her, his hand coming in brief contact with her shoulder as she passes. She shivers as there's a spark of something there and for a moment she can almost hear his thoughts.
Almost.
But they drift away before she can focus on them.
"Just think about it, Rey," he says and then she's gone, leaving him to keep making his trails in the dirt while she rushes away from whatever that spark was.
He watches her go and is surprised to realize her Force signature doesn't diminish the further away from him she gets. She shines so bright, so damned bright, in the Force that he finds himself continually drawn to her. He can't stay away. Even if he wanted to.
If he's honest with himself, and Kylo usually isn't, he had felt it the moment he set foot on Jakku. There had been something there and he knows it wasn't just some droid carrying the map to his hermit uncle. He had never been sure, really, if he wanted to find Luke. That was all on Snoke. Get to him before the Resistance, take away their last bit of hope. But he knows that's not true, not now. Because he sees that hope residing in her, the scavenger.
Rey.
Her name still feels strange on his tongue, yet he finds he wants to say it again. Standing out there, watching her sit on that boulder and dismiss his offer without even so much as a by your leave bothers him.
And he doesn't know why.
No, he does. But he doesn't want to delve into that, into the way she looked while wielding his grandfather's lightsaber. Fierce and beautiful and terrible at the same time, as she had clashed with him.
And won.
He still doesn't know if he let her or if he just couldn't stop her. Her anger had been a thing of beauty and he felt whatever it was between them race through him as their lightsabers had clashed.
She does need a teacher.
And he'll wait. She'll come to him eventually. He knows this, because there's something there between them even if she doesn't recognize it and he doesn't want to admit it to even himself, except in the darkest moments of the night. Shared dreams, shared nightmares, shared emotions. He feels his heart rate increase even contemplating it.
With a sigh, he runs his hands through his hair, brushing the locks back for a moment before letting them fall over his ears again. He has no idea what he's going to do with these thoughts, no idea what he's going to do with her.
But he'll wait. Wait and hope that there will be some answer that will come to him in time.
