2 MONTHS AFTER THE BATTLE OF EXEGOL...
Finn shifted his feet a little bit and shook his arms, preparing himself. Once he felt comfortable enough in his position, he closed his eyes and raised one of his arms. Finn outstretched his hand and reached out to the Force. He focused solely on his current task, lifting a rock, blocking out all other noises. The distant cries of the Porgs and the waves crashing on the island of Ahch-To became nothing but white noise to him. Finn could feel a sensation inside him, a power coursing through him that he recognized as the Force, but he couldn't feel the rock being lifted.
"It's the energy between all living things. Don't try to control it, guide it," Rey's words echoed in his mind. He once more tried to lift the rock and started to strain his muscles in his attempt. Finn knew he could do it, he just needed to try harder, so he kept straining and waited for the signal that the rock had left the ground. But it never came.
"Alright, that's enough. Stop," Rey ordered him. Finn broke his position and sat down on the ground, catching his breath. He looked over at the rock, but it was in the same place as it had begun. "You're straining yourself, that's not supposed to happen."
"It's not?" Finn asked her and Rey shook her head.
"Not for rocks," Rey told him. "You're trying too hard. It's about moving the rock, not trying to move the rock."
"What does that mean?" Finn asked exasperated. His training had only began a month ago and he was already struggling to understand the Force.
"Remember when I pulled Luke's lightsaber from the snow?" Rey questioned. Finn nodded, he could never forget that night on Starkiller Base. "I wasn't thinking 'I have to try and take it from Ben', I thought 'I have to take it from Ben'. It's an important difference, Finn."
"But you're still trying to do it regardless, how is it any different?" He asked her. Rey tried to explain it one more time, but Finn still couldn't understand it. The two decided that this was enough training for today and decided to turn in for the night.
While Finn headed into his hut to prepare for bed, Rey hesitated and decided to go back to the peak of Ahch-To where they were training. Rey found the very same rock that she had her first lesson with Luke on and sat down. She crossed her legs and reached out to the force herself.
"Be with me..." Rey whispered. Ahch-To was a very spiritually significant place to the Jedi, she had hoped to contact one of the Force ghosts from the past to assist her in her training of Finn. Rey considered herself very competent with the Force, but she still wasn't a Jedi Master. Maybe a real Jedi Master could get through to Finn and help her make some progress.
Rey sat there for an hour, calling out into the Force, yet no one else called back. They had all helped her on Exegol, Rey didn't know why they weren't speaking to her now. Not Luke, Leia or any of the other Jedi she had heard that day. The last time she saw Luke and Leia was on Tatooine, but they didn't even speak to her back then.
Then again, she had also not been feeling the Force in the same way since Exegol. Before it was an effortless flow throughout her body, the energy within and surrounding her. But now, it was different. Slower and not as strong. At first, Rey had attributed it to her being tired after defeating Palpatine, but it had been too long for that to be the only answer.
"Please, speak to me...Luke...Leia..." Rey called out once more, desperate for an answer. "...Ben..." Just saying his name sent a shiver down her spine. Rey had watched him die that day, yet it still felt unreal to say that he was gone. She could still feel him as a part of herself, the two were connected after all, but it's like that part of her was now empty. Rey yearned to see him, even just one more time, but he never showed up, not even at Tatooine with his mother and uncle.
After a few more minutes of waiting, Rey accepted she wasn't going to get an answer and returned to her hut. She could see the light in Finn's was out, he had already gone to sleep. Rey idly wondered what time it was as she got into her bed.
"Ben...please answer..." Rey called out one more time just as she succumbed to sleep.
"Rey..." Ben's voice whispered. Rey woke up with a start and looked around. She was sure she had only been asleep for a few moments, but she could see the morning light breaking through her hut.
"Ben!" Rey yelled, desperate to find the source of the voice. She left her hut and searched the immediate surrounding area frantically. Ben had said something, he was here, she was certain. Rey heard a loud cry from behind her and, in a single move, swung around and began to run towards it. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw it was just one of the island natives. It made some loud cry at her and threw a small rock at the young Jedi, before retreating back into its hut. Rey didn't need to speak the language to know the natives didn't like her very much, but they did allow her and Finn to stay on the island, granted they take care of their huts themselves.
"Rey? Did you say something?" Finn called out from behind her, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"Not now," Rey said quickly as she rushed past Finn and tried to keep searching.
"Is something going on?" Finn asked, speeding after her.
"You wouldn't get it," Rey told him. No matter how much Jedi training Finn got, he could never understand the connection she had with Ben. No one could, except the two of them.
"You promised to stop doing things alone," Finn reminded her of how he and Poe had scolded Rey about going to fight Palpatine alone the day after the party. "If there's something wrong, let me help you."
"Nothing's wrong, it's just...I-I thought" Rey trailed off as she thought about how to explain it to him. Thinking about how to tell Finn that Ben might be alive and on this island, Rey started to realize how foolish that was. She saw Ben's body disappear that day on Exegol, he was gone. "It's nothing, just a dream."
"Like a...'force dream'?" Finn said, slightly excited by the idea of the force giving her a vision.
"Just a normal dream," Rey told him. Finn's enthusiasm faded, but he quickly got it back when his transceiver started beeping. The transceiver had been a parting gift that Poe and Rose gave to Finn and Rey before they left for Ahch-To, in order to stay in touch. Though, up until now, neither of them had needed to use it.
"It's a message from Poe," Finn told Rey excitedly. Rey walked over to Finn's side to read the message with him.
"I hate to interrupt your Jedi training, but we have an emergency. Please come to Coruscant immediately. I'll explain when you get there," The message read. Finn and Rey exchanged a look with each other, and both knew immediately to start packing to leave.
"Guess today's training will have to wait," Rey joked as the two split up and head into their huts. Neither had brought much with them to the island, considering neither had much in the first place. It took only a few minutes for them both to pack everything up, and they met up back on the trail to their ship. The island natives watched as the two left and waved excitedly after them.
"We'll be back!" Rey called out, the natives all collectively lowered their hands and scowled. Finn chuckled as the two boarded the small ship that Poe had lent them. Some old Correllian model that Finn didn't recognize, but Rey knew had been around since at least the Clone Wars.
"I'll tell Poe that we're on our way," Finn said pulling out his transceiver and Rey settled into the cockpit of the ship.
"I hope this is quick..." Rey sighed as she started up the ship and they flew out of the atmosphere of Ahch-To.
Finn whistled as he and Rey were led into Poe's office by his assistant, a young Twi'lek girl. The walls were lined with red silk curtains and windows that overlooked the Coruscant horizon. They could see every single ship going through the skies of the bustling New Republic from here.
"Senator Dameron will be with you two shortly," The Twi'lek assured the two of them. "Please, take a seat and relax while you are waiting." The assistant gestured to a group of couches in the center of the room, before bowing and leaving to return to her desk outside the room.
"Quite the place that Poe has got here," Finn said chuckling and laying down on one of the couches. "Why don't we have couches like these on Ahch-To?"
"I think the natives would hate you even more than they do me if you brought one of those into your hut," Rey told him smiling as she relaxed on a couch of her own.
"Don't care, I could die on one of these," Finn responded sinking deeper into the couch. The two's conversation was interrupted by the door to the room opening once more to reveal Poe Dameron. He had grown a beard in the time since they had last seen him and was wearing a dark blue cloak around his clothes.
"Well, if it isn't Senator Dameron?" Finn said bowing and mocking his friend's new title. Poe let out a small chuckle and hugged Finn, then Rey.
"It's good to see you guys, thanks for coming to fast," Poe said.
"Man, we would've come a lot sooner if you had told us you had this amazing office," Finn said gesturing to everything in the room. "I mean, you got this insane view, you're wearing cloaks now, and a freaking assistant."
"Oh, Hirani? Yeah, she's nice, though I don't need her help. I just hired her because Senator Praug said all good Senators have an assistant," Poe told them.
"Making a lot of Senator friends?" Rey asked.
"It's kinda part of the job," Poe chuckled. "Rose is a lot better at it though."
"Is...uh...is Rose going to be joining us?" Finn asked awkwardly.
"No, she and all of us Senators are being swamped by reporters and media outlets today. I was barely able to get away to talk to you guys," Poe said.
"Why? Did something happen?" Rey asked concerned.
"Yes, which is why I called you guys here." Poe said pulling a hologram recording out of his pocket. He placed it on the table and played it for the Jedi to see. If Rey was holding something, she would've dropped it when she saw Kylo Ren appear on the hologram. It was unmistakably him, he had the same clothes and cracked helmet that he had worn as Supreme Leader.
"The First Order lives!" The Kylo Ren hologram yelled with the same voice modulator that Kylo Ren had. "The Resistance so arrogantly thinks that winning one battle means you've won the war and begins building their so-called 'New Republic'. They claim I am dead, that all generals of the First Order are dead or captured. But as you can see, I am not dead. This is no mirage or imitation, I am real and I am alive. As is the First Order. Let this be a warning to all planets that join the Resistance," Kylo Ren said pulling the hilt of a lightsaber out from his cloak and igniting it. The main blade and cross guards emerged from the saber in the same crackling red. "You will feel the full might of the First Order!" The hologram ended by showing the symbol of the First Order with the message 'The First Order lives' scrawled under it.
The three of them sat in silence for a few moments after the recording ended. Rey's mind was going a mile a minute. There's no way that's Ben, he gave up that life and died for her. However, she did hear him this morning. Maybe it wasn't a dream, but really him, reaching out to her again.
"Someone hacked the HoloNet this morning and put that video on every screen in the Core Worlds," Poe explained to them. "The public is losing their minds, freaking out about a First Order revival."
"Well, the 'someone' seems pretty obvious. Kylo Ren." Finn told him.
"There's no way that's Ben." Rey protested. "He died, I saw it."
"Then we're left with two possibilities," Poe began. "Either this is someone posing as him to incite fear, or Kylo Ren somehow came to life."
"Wouldn't be the first time a Sith cheated death," Finn said. The name 'Palpatine' hung over the three like a dark shadow, but all of them refused to acknowledge it.
"Ben didn't know about the Sith secrets or anything like that," Rey told them. "It's someone posing as him, it makes the most sense." That's what Rey said but even she didn't seem to believe it fully.
"Then how'd he get Ren's saber, clothes or helmet? You said he got rid of those," Finn asked her.
"I don't know," Rey admitted.
"The Senators have been arguing back and forth about whether this is the real Kylo Ren all day," Poe told the two of them. "They still haven't got an answer, which is why I called you guys."
"You thought we had the answers?" Rey asked him. "I hate to tell you, Poe, but we don't know any more than you do."
"Well, I was partly hoping you guys could gleam something we missed, but mostly, I needed people who could find him," Poe explained. "Rey, I still don't fully get it but you had some connection with Kylo, if anyone can track him down, it's you."
"You want us to find this guy?" Finn questioned.
"Essentially, I can't exactly go fight him myself," Poe said as he removed his cloak and pulled out his blaster.
"I thought you were a big shot Senator now. How are you gonna sneak away to go on an adventure with us?" Finn asked him.
"Rose has got me covered...probably," Poe told them, muttering the last part.
"Alright, let's go catch Kylo," Finn said excitedly.
"Wait, no, you can't just leave, you have responsibilities now, Poe. Isn't this exactly what Leia was telling you about, being a leader not a hotshot?" Rey said accusingly.
"You say that like Leia never pulled out a blaster and decided to take matters into her own hands," Poe responded. "We're not going to get anything done by sitting in a Senate and debating whether or not it's the real Kylo. We need to take action, real action, and bring this guy in. Are you guys in?" Poe offered his hand to the two of them. Without hesitating, Finn shook his friend's hand.
Rey hesitated for a few moments. She had just lost Ben, she wasn't sure she was ready to get her hopes up that he was back only to be crushed again. On the other hand, she wouldn't be able to sleep on Ahch-To if she never found out if it was really him or not. And if it wasn't him, than whoever the man behind the mask truly is was tarnishing Ben's legacy. Rey weighed her options heavily before making her decision.
"I'm with you," Rey told Poe as she shook his hand.
The three of them smiled. Even if it wasn't under ideal circumstances, they were back together again and off to another adventure.