I need a teacher
By TheOneAndOnlySlayer
Chapter 25 complete
Surrender to the fight. Lose yourself to your enemy.
Blood runs in rivulets down Rey's arm. It drips onto the sand. Rey is focusing on the sand shark. She knows it's down there.
There is a shuffling sound. The sand parts and the mottled brown sand shark, this time scarred with a torn nostril, hisses at the human. Its mouth is so big that Rey will pretty much be swallowed whole. It will digest her whole, too. She'll only die inside the creature by suffocation, drowning on its acidic stomach fluids.
Rey has lashed a leather strap to one half her lightsaber, which is tight around her wrist. She's sure she can outrun it, for some time. This forty-foot thing just ate its first large meal a few days ago and the digestion will slow it down today. She counts on this as she turns around and runs.
The sand shark lets out a roar that sounds like metal scraping together. The ground shakes as it dives back down. Rey can feel the thing gain speed. Her joints almost lock when the tremors move right underneath her.
It's trying to upend her. Rey braces herself as the animal crests upward. She bends her knees and tries to reach for anything on the scaly, horned back.
It bucks underneath her. Rey gathers her strength and hops off the animal through the Force. She lands a good distance away and bolts.
The rocks are nearby. They're slippery at this speed, but she keeps going.
She barely saw the sand shark last time to really understand its anatomy, let alone its limitations aboveground. It's following her.
But can you swim in the water, shark? Rey wonders as he races down the quarter-kilometer path jutting out from the coast.
Up in the tower, Ben is meditating. If everyone would just leave him the fuck alone, that would be great. It's reaching midday and he still hasn't been to see Rey. He doesn't care that she's afraid of probing Snoke's head. He'll have her practice on him. It's a sacrifice he hopes she realizes is one of the last things he holds dear to himself. She will fight to control his mind, subdue him like a tightly-lashed wild animal and bend him under her will. Paralyze him. He knows she can do it; doesn't matter if the act is a little dark.
A brush of tightly controlled panic swats him from his concentration. He furrows his brows. Where is it coming from?
Rey.
He searches for her. Ben must temper the strength of his approach. If he seeks her immediately, she will not appreciate it. He must act patient.
I've got it! She assures with hurried confidence. Look outside! I've got - !
The connection severs with a crash. Ben shoots to his feet. The calm he had wrapped himself in is gone.
In two long strides he is at the window. The air leaves his entire body at what he sees.
Rey is on the rocks. The sand shark – Ben's eyes widen – is slithering hungrily toward her with its hundred tentacles.
Stupid girl! Ben races to the other side of his cell, draws up the Force like a battering ram, and charges.
He shatters what is surely a meter-thick wall of stone. Skidding down a steep ledge, he stops as soon as he can see the coast.
There is nothing. Both predator and prey are under the water.
"Hey! Solo!"
His guards have followed him, peering from the wall he punched through with their weapons drawn.
Distantly Ben can sense that his mother has been alerted.
"Stop what you're doing and - !"
"Be quiet!" Ben's concentration is shaky. He would have ignored the Resistance idiots but he cannot feel Rey…she is drowning…
He shoots out his left arm at the beach and holds his right arm to ward off the guards. He must get her out.
He finds her, levitating the wrestling sea-beast-out from the water, but no Rey. The sand shark….
It's swallowed her. It's swallowed her whole.
Ben is still as death for a moment. He cannot lose her. She cannot die. He would plunge himself headfirst into the sea below because he cannot endure…
At his break in concentration, the monster wriggles out of his grasp. Ben is unbelievably murderous and he holds fast. He clenches his fingers like he's clawing the ugly giant fish out himself.
The dark-haired Jedi is sweating, intensely fraught with worry. He knows now what this is about. How stupid he has been to underestimate her willpower.
It takes every ounce of strength and every sinew of muscle to levitate the creature out of the water. He fears that as soon as he drops it on the sand it will bury itself deep, and the girl will be lost forever.
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
When Rey prepares to jump in the water she has no idea if the sand shark could swim. Though she supposes it could somehow, if it could eat fish as big as the one Ben found for it. She would have practiced swimming more here if the sea wasn't infested with so many hungry creatures.
She hasn't been still enough to look at the damned predator fully. Now that it's completely exposed, she can see the dozens of wriggling tentacles crawling madly in her direction.
She knows Ben can see her, feel her. She can imagine he is pulling out his hair, eyes blazing like his old cross-guard lightsaber.
Gripping her lightsaber, she makes a running head start and arches her body for an ideal dive. As soon as she submerges, she kicks farther out, then turns and waits.
There was a shadow above, then it descended. Thousands of air bubbles exploded around the beast. It shrieked at her.
Rey has nowhere to go now.
In the fierce few seconds Rey lets herself imagine she is back facing Snoke: his eyes burning with furious triumph. The fear of drowning. The calm before the storm. The dip of surrendering before the killing blow.
Rey is alight with peace at this moment. She is not afraid.
Come and get me, she thought. Come and get me, you ugly beastie, come on -!
She braces herself, closing her eyes just as the sand shark opened its fearsome mouth. And surrenders.
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
"Rey! Holy dammit, what's going on!"
Finn and Kivi rush ahead of Leia, who's cursing at them in a grizzly, I-was-married-to-Han-Solo manner.
Chewie reaches the beach before any of them. Finn shields his eyes and sees some ugly blob –
"Is that – is that the - !"
But then Ben Solo has made some swooping, graceful, batlike jump out of nowhere. He runs toward them from the other side of the beach.
There are shouts from the guards who were stationed at his cell. Finn's not even bothered. He won't say it to his face, ever, but he knows this guy's (relatively) harmless.
"Where's Rey!"
Ben doesn't respond, but his eyes are burning at the beached sand shark, which lies utterly still.
Leia skids down to the beach. "What's going on?" she shouts.
Finn jumps at the sharpness of her tone. He looks back at the creepy, massive dead animal. It's lying on its side, belly up. Something is poking, first small and almost unnoticeable. Then –
Pure light pierces out of the stomach. Guts and bile spit out, pouring and bubbling from the gaping wound. The familiar thrum makes Finn gape.
Is that a lightsaber?
More unnerving than a lightsaber emerging from the sand shark is Rey's slight, incredibly slimy figure. He at first thought it was an animal. But she is swiping the lightsaber in all directions, fighting her way out like she was buried in a grave.
He drops his blaster and hurries over to her. The smell briefly makes him falter.
"Oh – hell, Rey!"
She falls out. Finn drags her from under her arms first. He is barely of sound mind to reach for her lightsaber and shut it off.
"The hell? The hell is this?" He can't help shouting in disbelief. There's smelly fluid covering her face, so he wipes it off her mouth, her nostrils.
"Breathe, girl, come on," he says.
Rey is twisting around. Finn panics – he hasn't heard her breathe – and turns her on her back a little to try a blocked-airway maneuver.
But then there's a gasp and a cough. She tries to retch.
"Okay, that's it, that's it." Kivi and Chewie stand over them, unsure where to help.
"Can she stand?" Chewie asks.
Rey looks as helpless as a newborn youngling but she tries to kick her legs back into shape. "Yes," she says, nodding.
Finn holds his questions until he can hold her up to her feet. She's less shaky, but the sight of her is just ridiculous.
Behind them, Ben stands quietly. He has this intense look aimed at Rey, but Finn leaves it alone. Then the older man moves as if someone had spoken to him and removes his cape.
Finn turns Rey so her back faces Ben where he can wrap it around her. His movements are gentle, rubbing her back and tucking the cloth around her shoulders.
"I did it," Rey says suddenly. Flecks of goo stick to her eyelashes, but her eyes shine with awareness. She faces Ben as she says this. "I surrendered."
No one says a word. It takes them all, save for Ben and Rey, a minute to comprehend how the girl ended up in the stomach of a sand shark.
Ben's mouth hangs open. It's…almost funny to Finn how he's reduced to this. It's almost not right, too, how this guy could be so unstable, so out of control in his reactions. Like when he cut down an old man that first night on Jakku and when he tore apart walls and controls aboard the Finalizer.
Because right now he looks like he is holding a million words and thoughts back at Rey's triumphant grin.
Leia is flabbergasted. "Fucking Jedi," she mutters.