She woke to find Alik's soft blue cloak spread over her like a blanket. Lump cooed softly at her and she picked her head up to see the two of them standing over her, daylight pouring in through the barred window. "It's morning," she said, looking at Alik. "I told you three hours."
He shrugged, a smile on his face. "You looked so peaceful," he said. "I got the Wookiee instead."
Lump gave a growl; she wasn't sure what that meant.
The book was still in her hand, she realized, as she sat up.
Let's go get some food, Lump said. She shook her head as her thoughts from the night before came back to her.
"You boys go ahead. Bring me back something." She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and saw the concerned looks on both their faces. "I'm fine! Just give me a chance to wake up."
Reluctantly, Alik and Lump left the room, and Rey settled herself on the floor, her legs crossed beneath her. "Be with me," she whispered, her old mantra. How she longed for guidance – for someone with authority to tell her how ridiculous she was being. She leaned into the Force, and felt it creeping up within her. The old calling, the shadow within her, the light that pierced the darkness. If any of the old masters heard her, those nameless, faceless voices that had given her so much hope and strength before, none appeared to her now. The only image that appeared before her mind's eye was that of Ben Solo, his sweet, handsome smile when she pulled him close to her and his heart was as full as hers. Was it a memory or something else? She could not say, but it was clear and solid as any vision she had ever seen, if ever the Force had given her one.
"Oh." She heard the sound escape her, though she was not certain she had made it. The old masters would have told her to let it go, to stop her mourning and let go of her attachments. She'd fallen in love – there was nothing to be done about that after the fact, but now it had been weeks and weeks and she still felt the hole in her. Now she needed to let go of him.
If you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure.
Luke's voice. She had pleaded for it, and it came to her. Or was this a memory too? Did it matter?
The greatest teacher, failure is. Another voice, one she did not know; a nameless master from a time long past. Not a memory, then.
What would master Skywalker have said to her now?
Learn from your mistakes, she told herself, even as she continued the chant. Learn from theirs.
But what still stood before her was only him, her other half, as she had seen him last: desperately disheveled, bruised and bloody, his eyes intensely searching. And, as if she were going mad, he whispered back to her, "Be with me."
Rey broke her meditation. Ben's face vanished and she was left on the floor of a worn-out hotel room, her legs crossed beneath, her tears streaming down her cheeks. Somehow she felt no wiser than she had before she'd let the Force take her, and much colder. She was still empty.
Before she could rise, the door swung open and Lump stood there, filling up the doorframe and blocking the light around himself.
He's gone!
Lump's voice was harsh and thick with anxiety. She leapt to her feet and looked up at him, total confusion and dawning understanding bleeding at once through her entire body. "Who's gone?" she stammered, even though she knew quite well.
He was right there and then he wasn't, Lump wailed, shutting the door behind himself.
"Slow down," she said, as much to herself as to him. "Tell me exactly what happened."
I was just paying the vendor and Alik was right behind me, and when I turned around, he wasn't, he said again.
Rey knew that her words were nonsense but she spoke them anyway: "Maybe he just went to eat somewhere else." But as she looked around the room, she could see plainly that his cloak lay on the bed, his droid stood inert in the corner, and his purse lay with her things. It was still distended with credits. She lifted her hand to her forehead and tried to breathe.
She saw too that the second bed, the one where Lump had fallen asleep, had not been rumpled; no one had slept beneath the covers.
"Did he keep watch all night?" Lump nodded, coming to the same conclusions that she was but a moment behind. "He's exhausted and he stopped paying attention."
He's going to die, Lump said, with calm certainty.
"Yeah," Rey replied, in the same tone. There was no doubt at all in her that Artess' men had gotten him, and Alik was sufficiently cocksure that, given enough time in their presence, he would certainly say something to get himself killed. "We have to find him."
She knelt down and began stuffing her things into her canvas bag: books, clothes, and Alik's items as well, while Lump roused the droid. She unwrapped the lightsabers and tucked them in around her clothes, and pulled on the poncho, concealing her own two weapons beneath. There was no time even to make a plan; Artess' goons were several steps ahead of them, and she didn't even know where to begin the search.
"Where is Master Alik?" Zed intoned as she powered back up. Lump growled at her. "Gone? He couldn't have left me behind." Zed was a weird little droid, Rey thought incongruent to the current situation. She was as annoying as any protocol droid in the galaxy but her loyalty to her master was, evidently, absolute.
Rey checked the room once more to be sure that they weren't leaving any traces of themselves behind and ushered her companions out the door ahead of herself. She shut the door and used the Force to break the lock; she felt a tinge of guilt as she did so, but, honestly, the longer she could hold off anyone from following them, the safer they would all be.