Chapter 1: Tatooine
Summary: Rey is haunted by Ben Solo's ghost, and although her friends are afraid he'll never leave her alone, Rey is more afraid that one day he will. To find the answers she seeks, she'll have to track down the long-lost Jedi, Ahsoka Tano, who was once apprentice to both the legendary Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and the infamous Darth Vader.
Notes: Post-TROS. Half of Rey is caught between life and death, lost in the world between worlds with Ben. But Rey is a scavenger from Jakku as well as being a Jedi, and she holds onto what's hers. Ben Solo, who was once Kylo Ren, is hers.
Because the story isn't over yet.
She felt him, everywhere and always.
Nothing felt over, nothing felt finished, nothing felt right now that he was gone.
Sometimes he was there, just out of the corner of her eye as she worked on the Falcon, or talked with Poe, or joked with Finn. Sometimes she turned away in the middle of a conversation or started awake from a deep sleep because she was sure she'd heard his voice calling her.
Sometimes she felt fingers in her hair or gently touching her neck or reassuringly placed at the small of her back when she needed it most.
Sometimes, while meditating, she tried to reach out and take his hand.
After Leia died, and Ben died, and Palpatine was finally defeated, Finn took to watching her with worried eyes and Poe loudly talked about evil that would not leave while he held strategy meetings with the leadership who were re-founding the Republic. Leia had left guidelines and had had long discussions with former Republic and Imperial senators, scholars, historians, and renowned thinkers before she'd died. They had a guide to go on, but there was still so much work to be done and debated over.
This Republic would not fall as easily as the last. The evil that had consumed it and tried to utterly destroy it, had been eradicated.
By the Skywalkers, Rey heard people whispering, as they looked over at her in awe. By the Jedi. By Princess Leia of Alderaan.
By her son, too, Rey always made sure to tell them. Without Ben, none of this would have been possible.
But even if Palpatine and the Sith were gone, there were battles to fight and planets to free and people to help stand against evil and oppression and tyranny.
So they were busy and Rey didn't want to worry them. Besides, she was a Jedi, the last Jedi, and she had her own path to walk.
Of all her friends, only Rose seemed to understand. The other woman had a sensitivity to the Force that had nothing to do with being Force sensitive, like Finn and even Jannah turned out to be, but rather had to do with a heart overflowing with compassion and a mind that tried to reach out to others and really looked at the world around her.
"First Sight," Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi's journal called it. "Seeing what is really there."
After Rey decided to stay on Tatooine, she read the exiled Jedi Master's journal more and more as the days passed. It had been given to Luke Skywalker by Kenobi himself, after Skywalker returned to Tatooine to the old Jedi's hut in order to complete his training in the last days of the old war.
The famed Jedi Master and General who had lived through the fall of the Jedi Order and the Republic, and watched his dearest friend, the man he was Force bonded to, fall into evil, had a dry sense of humor, a wry way of looking at all that happened and finding some sort of peace in it, that Rey adored and wished she had for herself.
There were still too many nights when she would wake up angry and afraid, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, just so as to keep from screaming.
No matter how many people were around her in the Resistance, she still felt so alone.
"Go," Rose told her one day, several weeks into Ajon Kloss' rainy season. "Just go." Rey had heard a small boy crying in the night and gone to look for him, disturbing the entire base before she realized that no one else could hear him except her.
The Force echoed with the child's cries even now; he was alone and desperately afraid.
I'm here, Rey tried to call out to him, but as always there was a wall between her and him, and she could not reach him. I'm here, she called again anyway.
She knew it was Ben, somewhere in time, somewhere from the past.
The Oracle on Mustafar had told Ben that they were a Force dyad, bound by the Force itself in a way the universe hadn't seen in thousands of years. They were connected across space and time.
Rey had seen Ben in a dream, in a nightmare, long before she'd ever met him on Takodana. She'd known him, somewhere deep in her bones. And he'd known her. And when they'd touched, she'd felt - - connected for the first time.
And now there was this hole in her chest, in her soul, screaming in her blood, that she couldn't get rid of no matter how much she fought, or trained, or meditated, or began to teach Finn what the Force really was and how to reach it.
"Just go," Rose said again, her eyes probably seeing more than Rey wanted her to. "You know what you have to do…and you can't do it here," she finished sadly.
And it was so like what Ben always said to her, what the Jedi always said: Trust yourself.
Rey smiled, a small smile, but a smile, nonetheless. She reached out and clasped Rose's hands in gratitude, turning her head away for a moment as she caught a glimpse of Ben out of the corner of her eye, dressed in Alderaanian formal robes of state. He was a child still, a solemn one with wide, dark eyes that looked ancient in his pale face.
His eyes turned and met hers and Rey dropped Rose's hands, breath catching in her throat. She took a step towards him, hand reaching out. "Ben," she breathed. Please, she wanted to beg.
But the child vanished, leaving Rey alone.
Rose touched her shoulder and Rey jumped. The other woman looked from Rey towards where the child had been. "Where will you go?" she asked, not mentioning Rey's vision. "What did you find in the books from Master Skywalker?"
Rey took a deep breath and tried to center herself, but her heart was pounding frantically, and she could still feel the echo of Ben's presence in the Force. He had been so brilliantly bright as a child, like a beacon in the Force.
"I don't know," she admitted. She'd thought about Acho-To again, it was part of the chained vergence sometimes known as the World between Worlds after all. Exogol, where Ben had died, was a part of it as well, and sometimes she thought…
"I don't know," she said again, hands clenching and unclenching. Ever since she left Jakku she'd had a purpose – one she'd run away from at first – but the Force had been leading her somewhere. And now, it felt like the Force had abandoned her.
Rose was still there, a steady presence by her side. "They're having a funeral for the General on New Alderaan in a fortnight," she said, voice soft. "And – and for…Ben," she said, voice hesitant over his name. None of the others called him anything by Kylo Ren. When they spoke of him at all. "Perhaps you'll find peace there."
Rey nodded and Rose left, leaving her with just Artoo for company. The blue and white astromech beeped softly but made no other sound. He understood her more than anyone in this moment, for his family was gone as well.
Rey didn't have the heart to tell the others that she didn't want to find peace and she didn't want Kylo Ren to leave her alone. She wanted Ben to haunt her in any form, always. She wanted to reach back and touch him.
She wanted him here, with her, or she wanted to be there, with him, wherever he was.
New Alderaan was a beautiful jewel of a world, located far out in the outer rim past Tatooine. A planet of swirling white clouds, deep-blue oceans and snow-capped mountains, Leia Organa had chosen the world for its resemblance to the one the Alderaanians had lost. With most of the remaining money left to her by her father and mother, she'd purchased it from a member of the Elder Houses and made it a safe haven for her people.
Alderaan had rebuilt and no matter the atrocities committed by the First Order, they had never turned their attention there besides a minimal orbital blockade. Now the streets of New Aldera teemed with silent, pale-faced people, come to say good-bye to the princess who had never left them and her son, who had been lost so long to darkness.
Rey watched the procession move through the elegantly laid out streets, watch children throw pale white snowflowers before the empty carriages that didn't carry any bodies but had holograms of Princess Leia Organa and Prince Ben Solo Organa.
She watched the tears on the Alderaanians' faces and felt their genuine grief in the Force, a reflection of her own.
The sky was brilliantly blue today, crisp and cold and clear, in the middle of New Aldera's winter. The silver buildings that blended into the environment around them sparkled in the sunlight, and everyone was dressed in whites and pale blues and lavenders.
Rey had been given a place of honor, a Skywalker in all but name, the Jedi apprentice of their princess – the chosen one of their prince.
"They took our children, a whole generation of our youth tortured and tormented into corruption and darkness. And Ben Solo of Houses Antilles and Organa was no different. For his Skywalker blood, the former Emperor targeted our prince, the last of Alderaan's royal family, Queen Breha's grandson."
The woman giving the speech, her blonde hair shading to grey, swallowed tightly and tried to keep her voice even. "But the prince was his mother's son." She swallowed again. "He was his mother's son and he fought the darkness. He fought it every day of his life, even against insurmountable odds."
Her voice wavered and she firmed it. "And in the end, he won."
That night Rey twisted and turned restlessly in the simple, yet richly appointed rooms the Alderaanian royal staff had given her. From outside the palace, a melancholic wind instrument played a slow, sad tune. Muted glowlights turned on in the hallways when someone went quietly passed.
Rey sighed and rolled onto her back again with a sigh. She didn't sleep well anymore, and the funeral had been hard to bear without crying. She'd raised her chin and clenched her fists together and tried to look like a Jedi, like Leia's heir, but the beautiful ceremony really brought it home that her Master and general wasn't coming back.
And Ben's…
She opened her eyes and watched silver moonlight play around the room, highlight the clean, elegant lines of the architecture, the silver and white and pale blues and purples of the curtains and bedspread and furniture and wall hangings. Everything was lovely – a simple, refined sort of beauty that at once showed the status of this place, as well as a nobility that wasn't shown through a senseless display of wealth.
Seeing this place, she understood Leia and Ben better. They were royals who led from the front, who never even mentioned their royal status, but whose noble birth was written in every line of their being.
Princess Leia had never accepted the title of queen, she'd never been coronated from New Aldera's palace. She'd appointed a Viceroy in her stead and served Alderaan's people from the New Republic senate.
Rey was unsure of her reasons for doing this – respect for her mother, the last queen, acknowledgement that Alderaan was no more and that New Alderaan would be different, or even a feeling of guilt, survivor's guilt, and grief.
But she wondered how Ben had felt: a prince without a throne, a Skywalker whose family never told him their dark secret – both the hope of an entire galaxy and the target of every person who wanted revenge of his family.
The pressure would have been enormous, and the loneliness would have been a nearly unendurable burden.
And, well, the Force had never abandoned him and had thwarted Palpatine's plans and joined him with her in the Force – their memories and abilities and training and power all one. And together they had fulfilled their destiny.
The mournful song ended and there were a few seconds of silence before another, sweeter, heartbreakingly sad, began.
Rey sighed quietly and threw back the covers.
Pulling on her outer, silk tabard – Alderaanian white with a hood to honor both her Master and the Jedi and her own heritage – she hesitated a minute before buckling on Leia's lightsaber, an elegant, white-gold instrument, and escaped out into the royal gardens.
It was warmer here, the forest enclosed within the palace's grounds and untouched by snow.
Rey stepped softly between towering trees and over murmuring brooks, the moonlight turning everything violet and silver and deep blue, with the trunks and leaves of trees black as night. She walked and she ran her hands across rough bark, and she felt the life in this place.
The Force was new and untouched here, beautiful and pure, but it held very few echoes of those she loved.
Rey did not know how long she walked among the enchanted forest, but eventually she came to a river, rippling gently downstream. Beams of moonlight illuminated a path between the trees on the other side, the riverbank sloping upwards, its groundcover of elder and ivy and clover waving in a gentle breeze.
And there, at the top of the small slope, back against a tree and lost in a book, was a boy – a young man with midnight colored hair. His shirt was white and the glow from the moonlight turned his skin to ivory. He bit full, plump lips as he turned a page, frowning in concentrating.
"Ben," she whispered, awed and hoping her hair wasn't a mess.
Her whisper had been as light as hair, but he must have heard her for his head jerked up and their eyes met, dark eyes locking and holding.
He was younger than she remembered but not a child. He smiled tremulously, as though she were a dream or a vision.
"Hello," he said, voice echoing strangely, but the Force burned between them, hot and bright like a live wire.
There was darkness eating at him already, a sickness siphoning off the brightness of his Force presence, and it made Rey sick with anger to know what Palpatine and Snoke had done to him. But she swallowed it back, knowing her anger would do no good here and now.
Instead she walked to the edge of the river and just looked at him, taking in everything she could. The Force was singing, more powerful than she'd ever heard it before, a heartbeat in her ears, the life around her echoing a melody she'd known all her life.
Ben closed his book, placing it gently on the ground beside him. He slowly stood, his tall, lanky form unfolding from the ground in a slightly ungainly fashion, as though he hadn't entirely grown into his body yet.
His hair was soft and full about his face, and he was dressed only in a gauzy white shirt, black leggings and tall, knee high black boots. She could feel his slight unease and uncertainty in the Force, but underneath that she could feel the curiosity in him.
That same curiosity he'd had on Acho-To when they'd connected for the first time. She'd been so full of righteous fury, ready to hurt him and close the door, but he – supposedly the Dark Side's creature – had been curious, interested, awed
She had been so sure of what was the right course of action, but he – Ben had always looked around him and really thought about things, wondered…. even hoped. She could hear it in his voice, read it in his memories, glimpse it in his future.
She had never dared to hope. Growing up on Jakku didn't leave much room for sentiment or even dreams. But she had dreamed of him.
And she'd learned to hope after touching his hand on Acho-To, the Force bringing them together from over half a galaxy away.
He walked to the other side of the river, standing across from her with the moonlit water between them, an impossible divide. "Who are you?" he asked. I know you; he didn't have to say.
She wondered how long she'd haunted his dreams and nightmares, like he'd haunted hers.
She closed her eyes, throat tight. "Don't be afraid," she told him, like he'd told her. Bound through space and time, Ben had said about them. "I feel it too."
The Force flowed around her and through her. Yes, it said.
Rey took a step out, foot landing on top of the water, and where once she might have sunk into its cold, icy depths, now the water held her.
She heard Ben's quick intake of breath and her eyes snapped back up to meet his, saw the awe there, and she took another step.
He held out a hand to her and Rey walked across the water to him.
Rey stepped onto dry land again, directly before him. He was breathing as hard as she was, his chest heaving, and his lips parted as he stared at her.
"It's you," he said, his beloved voice echoing from the Force. His hand was raised towards hers, ghostly palm held up and out to her.
Rey smiled. "It's me," she promised, raising her own hand to his, palm to palm and fingers entwining together.
Ben smiled; just as he did on Exegol after they kissed. After he saved her – the sweetest, most beautiful smile she'd ever seen.
Her heart was pounding, and she drank in his features, moonlight casting him half in shadow, half in light. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, and he looked so very young.
His fingers curled around hers and Rey tried to hold on, begging the Force to not take him from her this time, but she couldn't the seconds anyway.
He began to slowly fade from her sight, and Rey tried desperately keep hold of him, feeling useless tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. "Wait for me!" she cried out to him, but she didn't know if he heard.
And then he was gone, the forest echoing with her cry, the universe echoing hollowly where Ben should have been.
Tatooine was different: a rough, dirty, desert planet in the middle of nowhere.
In some ways Rey felt more at home here than in any place since Jakku, and in other ways this place felt completely alien.
It was similar to how she felt about Ben's loss.
At times the pain was relentless, constant, like the ache of a missing limb and the resultant bitter yearning to be like she used to be; to know that he was out there somewhere, waiting for her, hunting her, dreaming of her – even if that knowledge was mixed equal parts dread and relief.
At other times she could almost forget him, become lost in the numbness and malaise which seemed to be her natural state now the Sith were destroyed, her purpose completed.
Then it would hit her like a psychic punch straight to her gut – a pain so deep and searing and raw that all she could do was drop to her knees, wrap her arms around her body, and wait for the wave to pass.
It was cruel, the worst type of punishment she could imagine. For how could she live without half of her soul?
It was Maz Kanata, the Force-sensitive space pirate queen, who gave her the old wooden trunk she'd kept in her palace with its treasure from the Skywalker family, and R2-D2, their faithful companion and friend for three generations, who showed her where Obi-Wan Kenobi had lived during his time on Tatooine.
Rey buried Luke's and Leia's lightsabers in the desert, where they couldn't be used by anyone, either good or bad – where they could rest – forever.
She left Chewie, BB-8, the porgs and the Falcon back at the Lars Homestead as well. From there they could aid Finn, Poe, Rose and the burgeoning Republic as needed, while she and Artoo took their own path and journeyed into the Jundland Wastes towards the long-abandoned hovel of the famed General Kenobi.
Leia and Master Skywalker both adored General Kenobi; Rey new this. For all Luke's bitterness towards him on Ach-To, she'd understood that that was his own personal sense of failure talking, not a true reflection of his first Jedi teacher. And Leia always spoke of him, had a holo of him in her quarters on Ajon Kloss, and named one of the Resistance's Mon Cala cruisers after him. There was even a battle maneuver called the Kenobi Twist – misdirection involving a smaller ship hiding in the ion exhaust of another.
She also knew that Artoo had loved Master Kenobi as well. The little astromech had lost Obi-Wan and Anakin and even Padme Amidala, the Skywalkers' mother. He'd lost the twins. And now he'd lost Ben.
She never really asked him about Ben – about what Ben had been like as a child. She didn't think she had the strength to bear the stories he would tell her. Going through the trunk was difficult enough.
Rey remembered the ancient wooden box from when she'd first found Anakin's lightsaber in there on Takodana. It had been her first experience truly touching the Force, and Obi-Wan Kenobi spoke to her then, told her that she was taking her first steps.
He had reached out to guide her like he had Anakin and Ahsoka Tano and Luke, his presence tied to Anakin's lightsaber. She didn't know much about psychokinesis – Leia had said it was a rare talent but one which Ben had been very strong in – but she knew that Anakin Skywalker must have loved Obi-Wan Kenobi very much, and vice versus, for the echo of his presence to be tied so strong to the Skywalker lightsaber.
Touching it had been scary at first, opening her up to an entirely new world. Touching it had led her to Ben. Or him to her.
After she found Kenobi's house, scaling a cliff face with Artoo hovering in the Force beside her, and checked it for squatters and dangerous animals, she sat in a patch of sunshine in the old Jedi's front room and opened the box.
Artoo stood beside her and twittered mournfully. "Beep beep, beeeeep."
"I know," Rey told him sadly, holding up each priceless memento for the little droid to see.
A string of beads – Jedi apprentice beads – which Artoo told her once belonged to Ahsoka Tano, Anakin's padawan during the Clone Wars.
A grainy hologram picture of two men and a Togrutan girl, all with Jedi robes and big grins on their faces. The one in the center, with the scar and the wavy hair was definitely Ben's grandfather. Two men with identical faces waved from either side of the group of Jedi; one in blue armor with Mandalorian jaig eyes on his helmet and the other in yellow. "Rex and Cody," she whispered.
A clone soldier from the 501st, long held in hibernation, had made his way to General Organa on Baatu last year to offer his services to Anakin Skywalker's daughter. "General," the man had said, saluting smartly and eyes roaming over Leia's face like she was the last light in the darkness. "The name's Jesse. I served under your father during the Clone Wars."
He'd told the best stories about Obi-Wan and Anakin, about the Jedi, that any of them had ever heard. Poe and Finn were enraptured by everything he told them about the last days of the Republic, and Jesse and Artoo would tag team the stories they told the young Force sensitive children the Resistance was rescuing from the First Order.
"The Jedi will come back," Jesse told them all, and eyes would swing to Rey with uncomfortable hope and awe.
Rey had never seen Leia laugh like she had at the story where Hondo Ohnaka, the famed pirate, had captured Dooku, Kenobi and Skywalker and they'd all tried to escape while tied together.
A delicate hair comb all in jades and blues from the former queen, Padme Amidala.
Luke's Jedi robes.
An old earthenware pot that felt warm and steady in the Force, like the sea rising and falling.
An Alderaanian signet ring with the crest of House Organa on it.
And a calligraphy set, parchment filled with row upon row of beautiful handwriting, next to an ancient Jedi compass which she just knew had been Ben's.
The pain of loss hit her again, so strongly that she almost missed the book buried right at the bottom of the chest. A journal. She reached out and brushed a hand over its smooth, synthleather surface –
And felt her stomach drop out from beneath her, a tug on her bellybutton from the Force…
And remember, the Force will be with you always.
I believe he is a vergence in the Force…...A vergence, you say?...He is the chosen one…...
You were the Chosen One. It was said you would bring balance to the Force…...
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope…Then he is our last hope….
You were named for Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. For General Kenobi. He saved your mother's life. And mine. Even your fathers. ….. I'm not good like him. I wish they hadn't named me after him. … He would have loved you Ben. If you listen, maybe one day you'll hear him speaking to you too…
Rey pulled back with a gasp, falling back from the chest as Artoo squeal in alarm.
"I'm alright," she said breathlessly, heart pounding from the influx of overwhelming sensation. Her sudden movement dislodged Ahsoka Tano's beads from their looping around a nail at the top of the box. They fell down onto Rey's hand and Obi-Wan's journal with a wooden clatter, both cool after the dry, arid desert, and warm to the touch, like the hand of a friend.
Rey drew them out and shut the box firmly closed. There were tears on her face, but she impatiently brushed them away. It felt like her life, Ben's life, had been nothing but grief.
Artoo hummed at her and she smiled at him. "Time for rations, I think, then a bit of exploration around this rock, some meditation and then bed I think."
Artoo beeped emphatically, disliking the meditation but informing her that he knew everything about Obi-Wan's house.
Rey laughed a watery laugh. "Good," she told him. "I have no doubt that you do."
She dreamed that night.
A sandstorm struck as the suns set below the horizon.
R2 powered down and Rey tried to sleep on the hard pallet in Obi-Wan's sleeping chamber, but the wind howled and cried and screamed at her, a maelstrom of sand. It was certain death for anyone caught outside unprepared.
And over the wailing of the wind, Rey was certain she heard a small voice crying.
"Please," the little voice called piteously. "Please."
Rey tried to reach out to him; she strained with every fiber of her being, but no matter how much she plead and pleaded and ordered the Force to show her Ben, she couldn't reach him.
He was crying now, scared and alone, and Rey was crying too. Shoving her hands over her ears, she tried to block him out, unable to help him, unable to listen to his crying without wanting to do something, anything.
"Please," she begged the Force, in echo to him. "Please," she begged Kenobi's ghost. Or Luke's. Or Leia's. Or whoever was listening. She reached over and held onto Ahsoka Tano's padawan beads, using a simple Jedi mantra to try and calm herself, hoping against hope that child ghost-Ben could somehow feel her and would calm as well.
Yet when he finally fell silent, it was even worse
Be with me, she chanted, be with me.
But he was gone, and Rey was alone again.
She must have dozed, somewhere in the midst of the storm, because she dreamed of a woman she'd never seen in life.
The headtails and the face markings were the same, and her centered presence in the Force was a fulcrum at the heart of the storm.
Ahsoka Tano, robed in white and clothed in Jedi armor, was meditating in a place without windows, doors or walls. The dark of space and distant stars and circular doorways surrounded her. She opened her eyes and saw Rey.
She smiled. "Come find me," she said.
And Rey woke up.
Up next: Rey and R2 look for the lost Jedi, Ahsoka Tano and are tested by the dangerous wilds of Tatooine. Rey learns more about Luke's and Ben's past and discovers something very interesting in Obi-Wan Kenobi's journal.