What about you?" he asked her.

Me what? she started to ask, but then she realized what he meant. "They're all gone. Everyone but him," she said, nodding toward Lump, who slept on. Alik was silent for a little while, thinking about that. She thought to herself that being an orphan kind of made a lot of sense for her. So much darkness within her – who else could be with her? Without a family, who could understand her? Ben did …

"Do you still want to see those books?" she asked suddenly, forcing herself to speak more brightly than she felt.

Alik blinked, surprised. Either he'd forgotten about them, which she very much doubted, or he had given up on getting to examine them. "I do." She went over to her bag and drew out two of them, the Jedi guide she carried with her most and its mate, both bound in a green-dyed, worn leather she could not identify.

Alik received the books with reverence, which pleased her. He was a bit too clever for his own good, yes, but he knew how to accept a change of subject and how to treat a treasure. Very gently, he opened the cover and looked down at the first page. It was brown from age, the gilt edge worn away almost to nothing. The lettering was hand-written in beautiful scrollwork, but Rey had never really been able to make sense of it. Leia had told her there would be time enough someday to read this one, but then time ran out and Rey was never really sure what to do with it.

He turned the page delicately, then the next; she watched him, and it was clear that he did indeed know what he was doing. He barely touched the pages, sparing them the oil of his fingertips, appreciating each word and margin note.

"I collect and sell fine artwork from around the galaxy," he said, not lifting his eyes from the book as he spoke to her. "The demand is highest for that. But I also find particularly fine garments for the Queen's household and, when I can, rare books. This one is exquisite."

While she knew little about rare books, she could only agree with his appraisal. He turned another page, and a thin sheet of paper popped up from the binding: a page of notes tucked here to spare some reader from writing on the pages themselves. There were several of them, tucked throughout the books. Some she read, others she saved for another day. This was one she had not examined before.

"Interesting," he said, turning the slip of paper over in his hands. She could see that it was a page entirely full of notes, written in a neat and clean hand; the margins held further markings and revisions. Most of the writing was strictly functional, full of abbreviations that only made sense to the writer, but a few sentences were written out in full, written by the same hand but in thoughtful, flowing script.

"I think it's my-" She wanted to say "master" but she managed to catch herself. "My friend, Luke's. These were his books."

"Hmm," Alik said, and he tucked it back in between the pages where it had come from. "This Luke had a keen mind to make sense of all of this."

"He was very wise," she said, reverently, a pang of guilt and grief clawing up her throat.

Alik pointed at the diagram on the page below him, at the three figures in elegant and ancient-looking robes, as he read. "In the World that lies between Worlds, all beings know the way of life." She looked at the page, at the enigmatic letters, and began to see, as he spoke them out loud, how they had morphed into their common aurebesh. He flipped through the pages like a fan blowing cooling air, and then closed it.

Alik held the book, weighed it in his hands. "Yeah," he said, appraisingly. "I don't know what it means, but that's what it says."

"The Jedi texts can be hard to understand without a master to guide you," Rey said, wishing for only the thousandth time that she had Luke or Leia still. "They say," she added.

"Maybe so, but this is not a Jedi text." Alik spoke lightly, as if what he said mattered very little.

She stared at him. "Of course it's a Jedi text," she sputtered. "Look at the cover. It's exactly the same as the guidebook on the Force and Jedi living."

He picked up the book in question and examined the binding. He held one book in one hand, the other in the other, and scrutinized them together. "Nope. Look here," he said. "This one's been rebound. Much older than the other. Probably from before the Old Republic."

Rey gaped. It had never occurred to her that there had been anything before the Old Republic, much less that she'd be in possession of a relic from that time.

"Worth a pretty penny if you wanted to-" He stopped, seeing the look in her eyes that said, very clearly, that these things were not for sale. "Well, you'd be a wealthy woman, anyway."

She could hardly believe it. It certainly explained why the text was so hard to read, if it contained language more than 10,000 years old. The Jedi must have held it sacred because it came from before even their time; it was truly ancient wisdom. She looked back and forth at the two texts in Alik's hands, trying to make sense of it. The Jedi way was, compared to this text, a modern innovation. Rules for living in a specific community, not eternal or universal knowledge. Rey felt like everything she had known, the solid foundation she'd built for herself, was a bit of a lie.

"Wake me in three hours," she said, and she took the Jedi guidebook and laid down on top of the bed. There was nothing else for Alik to do but pick up the blaster again and wait for his turn to sleep.

With her back to him, facing the wall, she took the Jedi guidebook from him and opened it to a familiar page. It was the chapter on attachment. "The Jedi should have no attachments." As stark and clear as day - yet the source of so much pain. If she was not to love, not to love Chewie and Malla and Lump and Ben, then she would never have come to where she now was. She could never not love them. If this was what it meant to be a Jedi, how she could choose that path?