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Chapter Fourteen
Bridger hated Coruscant. Once it was a wellspring of hope and prosperity; now it was a stagnant pool of corruption. The Councilor had found it easier to build from nothing, rather than form this burned out planet into something close to the democratic society the New Republic toted to any who would hear. Capital City was a hollow shell Bridger merely stepped in to fill out. Yet Coruscant was a dead body he would need to pay someone to deal with.
The intelligence network Bridger ran was rooted deeply here out of political necessity, but the senate was not the simplistic political dance Bridger knew from home. Everything here was complicated, and all news was bad news.
Rey the miscreant Jedi was missing.
"So you're telling me, that neither of you are involved… whatsoever." Ezra said flatly, staring across his desk at the two former Resistance members that wondered in for their shifts early. Their names were circulating around his office as potential troublemakers, but he had thought (wrongly) that trouble would take time.
"Nope." Finn answered.
"Nada." Poe confirmed with a straight face.
Ezra appraised them both over knitted fingers, exhaustion evident from the bags under his eyes. A child could tell they were lying, but there was little he could do about it without evidence.
"I don't believe you, so cut the poodoo and tell me where she is."
"Sir, there is a problem with your perception... because there is no poodoo." Poe answered.
It was always the talkative ones that gave Ezra the most grief. Poe could just talk him in circles. It was the other that was the weaker link, the man who was just a bag of emotions. Ezra kept his eyes on Finn and kept pushing. He could be just as annoying as this Poe character if he wanted to be.
"You've been in my office four times over the last week to whine about your friend's situation, and now she's on the loose. You are saying you have nothing to do with that?"
"I think he's having a problem with his ears too…" Poe stage whispered to Finn, who was focusing on nothing else but his poker face.
Ezra huffed angrily, "Where's the Wookie?"
"In the Falcon. Your guys already searched it." Finn piped up, trying not to fidget with his hands. Poe was already starting to babble to divert attention from his friend, he knew as well as Ezra did that Finn was the man to lean on if he wanted one of them to break. Maybe he should separate them? But that would take time, and Ezra didn't have the luxury of time.
Ezra rubbed at his temples. They were going to continue to stone-wall him unless he gave them the consequences of their actions.
"Look. Your friend is in over her head… and that was before she made a break for it. Once we find her, I can overlook this whole problem. Let Vess know I borrowed her for a chat and that I had planned to bring her back. If someone other than me finds her- she's going to get killed."
Finn and Poe stared disdainfully back at him, finally silent.
Ezra could see that his words weren't shaking them, so he tried harder.
"Do you know her reputation here?" Ezra could see from their eyes that they could guess. Rey was not going to win any popularity contests with either side the way things stood. Their hard faces slowly adopted concerned scowls.
"All that anger at the First Order… it didn't just peeter out when Rey was charged with those murders. It got redirected. There are many that would jump at the chance to end that girl." Ezra said pointedly.
"Thanks for the pep talk sir, but you're barking at the wrong tree." Poe said darkly.
"I don't think I am-" He went to turn up the pressure, but was interrupted by a young mechanic that burst into the office out of breath.
"Sir! There's a situation in the hangar!" He puffed, face red and sweaty from his run. Bridger whirled to the window overlooking the hangar bay, his eyes seeking out signs of distress. The mechanics and technicians were all staring at the girl slowly walking among them. It looked like a few had tried to stop her, but they were heaped in her wake - one with a bloody nose and another cradling a wrist.
She looked up at the glass and found Bridger. She stopped and stared at him, as if beckoning him to join her.
Ezra went to his window and took a hard look at the girl. She looked rough around the edges, but harmless. He felt the Force moving through her, clean and bright. It was something he had only felt in hallowed temples were the rawness of the Force bled through. Had Snoke taken this child instead of Leia's... he shuddered to think of the ramifications.
Now he had to worry about Kylo Ren's influence on her. Whether his manipulations were to pervert her powers, or to save himself from the dark. The first felt far more likely, but he knew Rey thought the latter.
Behind him Finn and Poe groaned and mimed their sentiments to Rey through the window. Ezra raised his eyebrow at them before making his way to the hangar, and to the girl waiting for a chat.
Rey knew that she was infamous, but how infamous was beyond her imagination.
When she wandered the streets with her hood up, people did double takes and recoiled as if she were venomous. It wasn't long before she was outrunning security droids and ducking through dark alleys. Word about her escape had spread fast.
Rey dodged the latest band of officials by throwing herself next to a garbage heap. She burrowed through the rusted sheet metal and tendrils of wire until she was camouflaged and quiet. Soon the noise of her pursuers died down and she could hear herself think.
Even though the climate was colder and the streets smellier, this felt more like Jakku than anywhere else Rey had been in the last several months. Rey tried to take comfort in that. Staying out of trouble and out of sight used to be her specialty until BB-8 rolled into her life.
"Everything is going to be all right." she muttered to herself, trying to coax the most rattled parts of her that her situation was under control. But Rey knew what she was risking. If she never made it to Bridger, a planet of people were at risk of annihilation by the First Order - by Kylo Ren.
She couldn't let that happen.
She'd find a way to Bridger.
"I need a plan…" Her voice sounded pathetic, and Rey shook her head to gain some of the courage she knew she had stashed away. She stood up and looked around the alleyway for anything she could use. There was a slightly rotten piece of fruit near her foot. She picked it up, cleaned off the good parts of the flesh and bit into it while she thought. It was still good - only partly fermented. Her luck was improving.
"Maybe all I need is a little luck… Force luck." She thought aloud, as if BB-8 were there to give her some moral support. If there were was ever a time for mystical powers of the universe to kick in and save the situation, it would be now.
Rey closed her eyes and felt the Force waiting there, flowing through her like the tide. How had she never noticed it's churning? Was it always there?
The girl felt tied to the universe a thousand times over, tethered to souls, stars and all in between. How easy it was to get lost in the space of a blink when filled with such power. Did Ben feel this way too?
Rey was tempted to seek out the man and ask. Push through the darkness and find his familiar face. The thought was soothing, despite her anger at him. He had meddled with her head again, bringing back memories of more terrible times. Even so, she also missed his company and confidence.
With her eyes still closed she envisioned him - feeling the Force ready to guide her to him. It was such a familiar path, taunting her to follow. She stopped, not even realizing her feet were halfway there by the time she came to her senses. The Force had mastered her - she needed it the other way around.
Rey focused harder. There were other ways here, if she was careful enough to look for them. A different path to other places unknown. Ezra Bridger was trained in the Force. Could she sense him as she sensed Kylo Ren? Could he be at the end of one of these untrod paths?
The moonlight that was Ben Solo sank back into the coldness where Rey pushed it, and in the lingering darkness Rey could see pinpricks of light. She drew in a breath at the wonder of it. There were so many! Dozens, no hundreds of stars spattered across her vision. Some glowed vibrantly, some flickered with distortion. A bright one was near her, but what was near in this space? A metre? A mile? A planet? A system away?
A beat of sweat trickled down her neck and she tensed, straining to detect any useful information from the light she sensed nearby. Reaching Ben felt like climbing a long staircase; finding Bridger felt like being dropped in the middle of a sandstorm and orienting to his voice over the noise. She wasn't even sure if that voice was Bridger's.
Rey got to her feet, eyes partly closed to 'hear' over the din of the street.
She stuck to the shadows before leaping to the rooftops to close the distance to the Force-light. As she got closer, Rey began to recognize buildings she had once seen from the New Republic buildings Vess Karth had frequented. She could also feel the signature of the light. It was familiar. Rey didn't know how to explain her ability to tell one Force-light from another, yet it was unmistakably Ezra Bridger.
Rey jumped down from the row of shops across the speeder traffic, and weaved through the suspended crosswalks to get to the open hangar bay. The faces of the workers there were recognizable, but their expressions varied from surprise to anger. Two mechanics yelled something as soon as their eyes laid on her. One went to subdue her, but Rey was ready. She tripped him, sending the mechanic head first into the side of a fighter. She then Force-pushed another to land heavily on his back.
"I didn't come here to fight." Rey said loudly. "I came here to speak with Senator Ezra Bridger." Was he a senator? Most referred to him as Councillor in Capital City, and Vess Karth just called him Bridger. Was he a General?
This was part of the reason Rey hated politics. Too many names!
"Murderer! We believed in you… The general believed in you..." said a resistance pilot with anguish in her tone. Rey opened her mouth to defend herself, but a wave of hate and sadness overwhelmed her.
"How dare you come here after what you have done!" said another, sorrow replaced by heat.
"Traitor!" snarled three technicians, fists tightening over their heavy tools.
Rey could also hear the word Sith being tossed around in the background of their hate. It took her a moment to compose herself and shut the feelings out. She swallowed despite her mouth being dry, and tried not to look at the meanness in their faces. Even without their emotions pressing in on her, she knew they were there. The former Jedi shook as she stood surrounded by her former allies.
These people thought her a monster.
She would have preferred them to have no opinion of her at all. That was how it was supposed to be… before the Force intervened. A nobody wouldn't have to deal with this. A nobody wouldn't be expected to save worlds with words.
Rey turned her eyes away from the people, and looked up to Ezra's office. He was by the window, and met her gaze. It felt like a rolling numbness down her back. There was no hate between them - only surprise. Behind the Councillor was Finn and Poe. Rey could barely make out their features, but she was certain they did not like her sudden appearance.
She waited out the loud heckling and occasional throw of a wrench, until the three men made their way through the hanger to where she stood. The workers were now crowding closer, wondering what the hell was going to happen.
Bridger approached Rey casually.
"I didn't expect you to turn up here. Your friends made me assume that they had already smuggled you off world."
Rey's face was angled towards the floor. "I couldn't leave. There are more important things than me at the moment."
Bridger smiled, it had a genuine kindness to it. Rey held onto it like a lifeline.
"I assume you don't want an audience?" The councilman turned in a gesture to offer her the privacy of his office.
Rey hesitated, then looked at the workers leering around her. "I… I think they should hear this too." Her voice still sounded thin, but she raised it all the same.
"The Pantera system will be attacked soon by the First Order." Rey tried not to let the outrage of the crowd derail her words. "If we do not mobilize now… it will be too late to stop them."
The words trap, trick, and lies seemed to blend poorly into the ambient noise of the room.
Finn and Poe looked to each other. Bridger cocked his head. "You have a contact in the First Order and I assume he told you this?"
"Yes."
"He could be lying." He said slowly, watching Rey's reaction.
Rey stood her ground, "Not to me."
"You could be lying." Bridger added.
She shook her head and stared around at the people gathered in earnest. "There is blood on my hands, I can't deny it - accidental or not." Her expression was pained as she remembered the weight of Leia in her arms. "But I can not watch anymore. I can not let a world of innocent people fall to the First Order - to any faction. I am willing to trade my freedom to prevent it from happening again. Please. Help them."
Loud protestations and panicked murmurs broke out among Bridger's people. Rey knew most of them felt as if she were baiting them into a trap, but she didn't need to convince them - only Bridger. She looked to him, pleading him to believe her.
Bridger's eyes narrowed a fraction before he turned to the crowd.
"Prep the fleet."
"You can't be serious!" Cried the closest pilot. A few echoed his sentiment.
Bridger raised his hand. It cut the noise of the hanger in half. He killed the rest of their riot by turning his palm towards Rey and using the Force to take Kylo Ren's lightsaber from her.
No one knew that Ezra Bridger was a former Jedi Acolyte - that was until now.
Silence ripped through the crowd and all that could be heard was Rey's disgruntled "Hey!" as she reached out to try and take it back.
"This is the moment we have been waiting for. General Leia Organa knew the day would come when the First Order would wantonly terrorize the innocent. She felt it, connected as she is to the Force that moved her and her brother to save the Galaxy. Many of you grew up with the tales."
Bridger held the crowd's attention, their eyes on the saber in his hand. Everyone knew the Jedi were a force for good. Defenders of the innocent.
Rey wavered under the scrutiny of her peers, knowing that she did not live up to the reputation - nor did she want to. Yet, there was a change in the people. Their hatred shifted. While Bridger spoke he moved beside Rey like an ally. Rey could feel the discord in the emotions running through the room. She was sure Bridger could feel it to.
"I once dreamed of being a Jedi myself… but the Dark side calls to everyone. Especially the strong. I chose a different path, and became someone my home world needed. A leader who takes advantage of any opportunity that comes his way." From deep in his sleeve, Bridger took out an unfamiliar hilt of what was obviously another lightsaber.
"This was my own blade, I haven't wielded it in many years… but I believe it suits you more than I." He put it in Rey's hand. Her fingers instinctively wrapped around it. She didn't know what to say. Neither did the bystanders.
"I will hold on to this one." He held up Kylo Ren's saber again and started to walk away. "Fighters! Deploy! You will be briefed on the Solarius while on route to the Pantera system. If you have a problem with your orders, turn in your equipment to my secretary." He started to walk over to a pair of women by the door. "Rey, you're with me. You two-" He pointed to Finn and Poe who were exceptionally quiet. "-report to the Millenium Falcon."
"Yes sir." They both said in tandem. Not quite believing what was happening.
A/N: To be edited. But I need to get this out to start on the other chapters. Two left I think? I'm going to be juggling around some of the earlier chapters to improve the flow of this tale. I never seem happy with it! Hope you enjoy. Please read and review.