A/N: Hey everyone! Hope you all are doing well and staying healthy in these crazy days!

I know this chapter's a titch early, but I have to work Sunday and usually post on Saturday night (when I need to be sleeping) so here it is a day early! I hope you all enjoy it even though this is a heavier story. I keep tossing around an idea I have for a more lighthearted Modern AU, but I kind of feel like I need to finish this one first, but we'll see... *sighs* brain, why can't you give me these ideas one at a time?

Anyway, thank you to everyone who continues to read and review. I so appreciate your continued support and encouragement. Thanks as well to FenrisInside for being an absolutely fantastic sounding board and ideas man, and to Leona2016 for your friendship and encouragement (as well as your rad beta-ing skills). You all rock! :D

Take care of yourselves until next time and WASH YOUR FILTHY HANDS;)

Hartmannclan: (In regards to chapters 26 and 27) I'm sorry...


Rey could not rest. She spent the afternoon pacing the length of the AT-AT and refusing Ben's urgings to go inside and rest in the shade. She knew he was worried about her, but she couldn't bear another moment in the ruins of her childhood. There were too many memories here. She had run to the AT-AT on instinct when they'd come across it, half buried in the sands. She'd wanted to go inside then. She'd thought that maybe it would close a door and that she could move on if she just saw what she'd left behind. It wasn't until she saw the marks on the wall that she realized it was a mistake. The memories of all the lonely moments of her life on Jakku piled up and swept over her like a wave, threatening to drown her in sorrow.

This place was a child's graveyard. She had grown up here, and it had shaped her to become someone that could kill in cold blood and order the deaths of innocents. No matter how hard she tried to forget, her traitorous thoughts kept drifting backwards to the moment when she'd allowed her anger to flood her with power.

She'd thought she was in control until Plutt shouted insults at her back. She'd thought that she could keep the darkness down deep inside her, chained and muzzled, well under her dominion. But it had come roaring out into the open with no warning, until she had surrendered to its strength and lost herself for minutes that she could not remember. Now she had killed and ordered the deaths of over a dozen more. There could be no returning from that. She could never see the world as she had once seen it: a child with a child's wide-eyed wonder. Hope had deserted her. Peace was not even a distant memory. There was only darkness now.

The weight of her guilt pressed down on her shoulders, heavy and suffocating, yet it kept her moving through her exhaustion. She forced down the memories of the terror-twisted faces and the still bodies, but the image of the old woman clung fast in her mind no matter what she did. Rey had known her-known her almost as long as she'd been on Jakku.

A hand on her shoulder interrupted her thoughts. She spun to find Ben holding out a ration cube and a bottle of water.

"Eat," he said. "Then we're going to talk."

"I don't need to talk. And I'm not hungry."

Ben ignored her, pressing the brown cube and the bottle into her hand before folding his long legs under himself and settling into the sand. Rey paced for another minute, absently taking a gulp of water from the bottle. Ben's presence started to tug at her, drawing her closer until she ceased pacing and stood still next to him without realizing she had done so. Ben's fingers found hers and he gently pulled her down so she was sitting beside him, head leaning against his shoulder. He glanced around for a moment to make sure no one was watching before he pressed a kiss into her hair.

They sat in silence while Rey wrestled with herself, willing herself not to tell him. Not to be a burden. But the words burst out of her anyway and, with them, her guilt.

"Her name was Hausis," she whispered.

"Who?"

"The old woman," Rey said, miserably. "The one I ordered killed along with the others. I knew her."

"I thought you might."

"She was a scavenger once, a long time ago, when I first came here. She showed me how to survive- all the best salvage spots, what you could find in the desert to eat when you didn't have enough food, the people you should avoid- that kind of thing."

Rey found that she couldn't look at Ben when she spoke. His eyes reminded her too much of Leia's and her insides squirmed with her guilt when she remembered the promise she'd made and failed to keep. She took a deep breath in a vain attempt to steady herself and plunged ahead.

"She watched out for me until I could look after myself. Kept some of Plutt's goons off, you know?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ben nod. She swallowed back the threatening tears.

"I didn't see her today," she said. "Not until it was too late, anyway. Maybe if I had seen her it would have been different. Maybe I would be different. I don't know."

She slipped back into silence to stare out across the desert to the sun dipping low over the horizon. Beside her, Ben let out a long sigh, a deep remorse sending low notes rumbling through his song.

"I'm sorry, Rey," he said. "I'm the one you should be blaming for this, not yourself. I was the one who brought you to this."

Rey couldn't suppress a derisive snort.

"How did you come to that conclusion?" she asked.

"I'm the one that pushed you towards the Dark side. You sensed it through me. You fell because of me. It's my fault that you're suffering like you are, and I'm sorry."

His face showed his anguish, even if she hadn't felt it through the bond. She let out a laugh that didn't sound like a laugh. It was bitter and sharp, even to her own ears.

"You're giving yourself too much credit, Ben," she said. "I made myself who I am. You warned me away from the holocron. You told me to be careful, but I didn't listen. This is just one of many consequences. Don't blame yourself for my decisions."

"But if I had-"

"I wouldn't have listened to you," Rey cut him off with a sad smile. "You told me once that I don't know when to quit. Well, you're right. I don't. And this time I went too far. Luke was right about me. I run straight to the darkness."

"But he told me he was wrong," Ben said urgently.

"What?" Rey asked, incredulous. "What do you mean he told you?"

"Luke came to me when you were meditating. He thinks you can still go back. The light side won't let you go so easily as this."

Something in Rey leapt up at the possibility. Just as quickly, her guilt clutched at her and the emotion died. She shook her head, the fleeting sense of hope all but forgotten.

"The light side has abandoned me," she said. "And this time I won't wait like a little fool for it to come back and save me."

"Rey-" Ben started.

"Supreme Leader," came Captain Tal's voice as he strode out of the AT-AT into the last light of day. "We just received word from the Finalizer. The General is getting impatient. Perhaps it's time we continue on, sir?"

Ben got to his feet and reached down to help her up.

"Alright, Captain. Let's get a move on. Can't keep Armitage waiting, can we?"

Rey thought she saw the captain's lips quirk upward in the smallest of grins, but the expression vanished before she could be sure. He disappeared around the back of the AT-AT and she heard him bellowing for his troops to get on their feet and collect their gear. At her side, Ben's fingers found hers and gave a gentle squeeze before releasing her hand again to dangle empty at her side.

...

They were back on the march as the last sliver of sun disappeared over the edge of the world. Rey stepped away from the AT-AT and did not look back as they began their journey toward the blinding red of a sunset fading rapidly to the blue of evening. The world went cold around them as they trudged onward toward the west. Rey shivered, reflecting bitterly that she'd forgotten just how miserable it could be on Jakku's exposed sands after the sun went down. She hadn't thought forgetting was possible, but after several months in a climate-controlled starship, the temperature extremes were coming as a nasty surprise.

Of course, the cold might also be coming from inside her. She never could tell exactly where the chill came from now that the darkness had infiltrated her heart and mind. The silver metal of her saber hilt glittered in the light of the stars stretching into eternity above her. Those same familiar stars that she knew as well as the lines of her own palms that now seemed so distant and cold.

She kept her saberstaff gripped in her right hand as she walked into the night, keeping a sharp eye out for the glowing red lenses of the nightwatcher worms and her ears open for the howls of a gnaw-jaw swarm. On the very edge of her hearing the crystals inside her saberstaff hummed quietly to her, a noise that both calmed and disquieted her in the hushed air of the midnight desert. She hadn't been able to shake the uneasiness that had dogged her steps since she'd ordered seventeen people killed. She'd counted. She knew exactly how many there were. She could see her hands running with their blood.

The farther they went, the harder she had to fight to keep her bitter memories at bay. This was familiar territory for her, in which every step she took was over ground she had traveled hundreds of times before. Even the dunes, in their endlessly shifting patterns, were known to her.

"How many clicks?" Ben asked quietly.

His voice startled Rey out of her whirling thoughts, bringing her sharply back to the present.

"What?"

"How many clicks before we're in the Graveyard of Giants?"

"About another ten until we hit the beginnings, but it stretches on for kilometers. I have an idea where they might be hiding, but I'm not certain. It could take us a day or more to search the place if they're not where I suspect they are."

"Where do you think they are?"

Rey sighed and rubbed her forehead, sorting through what she remembered of the debris ridden badlands that comprised the Graveyard. After years of picking through it for valuable tech and parts, she knew the place nearly as well as the AT-AT in which she'd lived. Before she could open her mouth to speak, Captain Tal sidled up next to them.

"Pardon the interruption, Supreme Leader, but do you have any idea where this group has positioned itself?" he asked. "We'll need to relay the information back to the Finalizer for air support before we go in."

Ben nodded to Rey, giving her the go-ahead. She kept walking as she began to speak and did not turn back to look at them.

"There are ships scattered all over this desert," she said. "There was a battle here decades ago, several years before I was born, right at the end of the war between the Empire and the Rebels. A massive ship crashed on the surface and caught fire, turning the sand to glass for a kilometer in every direction. We call it the Crackle. Beyond that is the remains of the ship and beyond that is a great cluster of starships that fell and crashed, including a huge one called the Ravager. I think they're in that group of ships. There was still a lot of salvage there when I left, and I can't imagine it's changed much in the few months I've been away. It has cover, so it would be a good place to hole up, and they may find materials to fix their ships, or even cobble together some new ones."

Tal looked pensive.

"And would we be able to get close without being picked off?"

"I wouldn't do it without the TIEs," Rey said, shaking her head. "I can get you close enough for a good look at what's going on, but anything else is out until we have support."

"Then that's what we'll do," Ben said. "I didn't think we were going to get away with an attack without backup from Hux, but a man can hope."

From the corner of her eye, Rey caught Tal shooting Ben a furtive glance before quickly looking away again to watch the ground before his feet. She wondered if he, like Lita, had his own reservations about Hux, or if he had been sent to be the general's eyes and ears. She resolved to keep a closer eye on the man during their mission.

"And you estimate we'll be there by sunrise?" Tal asked.

"Yes."

"Then I'll alert the general."

"Do you know how many we'll be facing?" Rey asked, holding up a hand to stop him before he could slip away. "We were never told."

"The contact said several dozen x-wings and at least one large transport. We anticipate a maximum of a hundred and fifty."

"So we'll be about evenly matched?"

"We might be if we were under cover, but I'm afraid they have the advantage there."

The captain strode off to find the trooper he'd delegated to handle communications and Rey continued on again, boots shuffling in the sand, Ben at her side.

...

The twin moons of Jakku had risen and come to rest below the horizon, and the sky was just beginning to turn its dismal, early morning shade of gray, when Rey caught her first glimpse of the Crackle before them.

"There it is," she said, pointing to a great keel of a starship that jutted from the landscape in a spike nearly a kilometer high. "It's not far now."

"Better request those TIEs," Ben muttered to Tal, looking ahead. "I can't see anything we'd be able to use for cover."

"There's not," Rey said grimly, "But if we came the other way they could have easily surrounded us without being seen and picked us off one by one. This way we can at least know when we're about to be shot at and the TIEs will have room to maneuver."

"How are we going to get close?" Tal asked. "They'll be able to see us coming for a click or more."

Rey turned and squinted into the sun rising over the eastern horizon, watching it illuminate the sand before their feet.

"We'll be alright for a bit," she said. "Your white armor will blend in with the glare off the Crackle until the sun rises further. Ben and I will blend in until we hit sand again."

Tal didn't look convinced, but turned to his communications officer and gave him a nod.

"Send the signal."

Rey didn't wait for the response. She started forward down the sand dune, sliding for a few meters every couple of steps, until she was on the flat plain of black glass. It made a crackling sound beneath her boots as it broke into tiny shards. She heard Ben behind her and after him, the many feet of the stormtroopers.

They were halfway across the Crackle when Rey realized she'd miscalculated. It started with a shout from Ben and a shower of red plasma bolts. She startled out of her thoughts to see six x-wing fighters screaming toward her, dust rising in their wake.

"Rey! Cover!" Ben yelled over the sudden chaos, shoving Captain Tal aside and deflecting a plasma bolt away from a cluster of stormtroopers.

Rey immediately hauled on the Force, hand raised in front of her as a streak of red light blazed toward her. With a flick of her fingers, she sent it swerving off to her left where it hit an empty sand dune. Several troopers behind her had dropped to the ground, assembling weaponry with a speed she didn't know was possible as the others stayed upright, following the x-wings with their blasters, pulling shots whenever they got one in their sights. Rey saw a fighter wobble, smoke streaming from an engine, before it plunged to the surface and rolled, tearing apart, fire erupting from the wreckage.

One after another, the stormtroopers behind her got to their feet and strode forward, weapons that looked like great tubes perched on their shoulders. One lined up his sights on an attacking ship and squeezed a trigger. There was a roar and a rush of hot air and something sped past her at such close range that her hair lifted from her neck. The next moment, the x-wing burst apart in mid-air. Rey leapt backward as a piece of shrapnel hit the sand at her boots.

In the second of distraction, two stormtroopers fell at her side with holes burnt through their armor. Rey immediately turned her attention back to the x-wings as they banked and swept back toward them for another strafing run. Rey leapt into action, hands outstretched, and fingers splayed to meet them. Bursts of red light shot over the sand toward her, but the dark music that surrounded her told her where they would fall seconds before they struck. She stepped forward and, thrusting out her arms, sent the bolts into the ground at her left and right. The x-wing screamed low over her head, going into a steep climb to avoid the sand dunes behind her. In the momentary reprieve, Rey saw that the troopers had managed to bring down three of the remaining five starships.

Flames danced around her and thick black smoke rolled from the downed craft into the clear morning air. Rey coughed and looked up. Through the haze, she saw Ben running forward with his lightsaber drawn, heading farther into the Crackle. It took her a moment to tune to his thoughts and understand his intention in running straight for danger. The laser bolts had come too close to them to be an accident. The pilots were gunning for them.

She came to the same conclusion Ben had, only about five seconds after he did. They had to get away from the troopers until support from the TIEs arrived or risk the lives of their comrades.

"Stay low," she shouted to the troopers behind her. "We'll draw them off."

With that, Rey took off after Ben, splitting away after a few steps to run in the opposite direction. Sure enough, she heard the whine of the x-wing's engines rise to a shriek as the pilot throttled up and gave chase. The back of her neck prickled and she turned just in time to raise her arm and send several bolts of red fire spinning harmlessly away.

She ducked and fell to the sand as the starfighter roared over her head, skimming so close that she had to flatten herself to the ground. The moment it passed she was on her feet again to track it. She narrowed her eyes against the flying sand and watched as it turned and began to careen toward her once again, glittering like a jewel in the sun. She could hear the engines pitching upward to a scream that echoed the shrieking music running through her mind. The darkness woke again in her, rage and fear rushing back into place as if they'd never gone. Her senses jerked into a new stratum and a strange exhilaration sent a shudder through her.

As the x-wing shot toward her, dust cloud rising in its wake, Rey took off across the desert. Sand and shards of black glass sprayed around her feet, getting into her boots and biting into her skin. She let the pain raise a sense of irritation inside her, drawing on the emotion to feed her power. The starfighter roared over the plain, bearing down on her even as she ran. The prickling at the back of her neck grew stronger and she picked up her pace until she was sprinting faster than she'd ever run before. The darkness was singing to her, lending strength to muscles that should have faltered long before. But even with her speed, the x-wing was still gaining.

Rey sucked in a deep breath, focusing her mind on what she heard even as she ran. There was the rush of wind sweeping past her and over the sands so that they eddied around her feet every time she took a step. There was a sound of distant battle, and of Ben's shouts of warning. Above it all, she heard the scream of the starship as it skimmed low over the desert, headed straight for her. The world seemed to slow around her as the sounds wove themselves into the music of the Dark side.

Her muscles tensed as the starship drew closer at an ever-increasing pace. Every part of her tuned to the Force, drawing it closer and letting the cold darkness roll over her. Her thumb edged over the activation switch of the saberstaff and pressed it down. It ignited again in her hands, twin blades adding their eerie music to the cacophony that rang around her. She ran a few paces more and turned to face the ship that was almost upon her, heartbeat pounding in her ears. In that last impossible second, her mind snapped taut and she gathered herself and leapt.

It was like flying. Her back arched in a graceful curve as she threw herself backward over the wing of the oncoming ship, kicking her leg up so that she turned in mid-air. She could see the x-wing shoot past beneath her, the pilot craning his neck to follow her path with his mouth open in astonishment. To Rey, it seemed that she hung in the air for an impossibly long moment before tumbling back to the sand, feet striking the ground with a sharp pain as she landed in a crouch. An idea was already forming in her mind, even as the fighter banked and made straight for her for the second time in as many minutes.

She did not move. The x-wing barreled toward her, but she stayed frozen in place. In the second before it was on top of her, she fell backward to the ground, ignoring the stinging gashes the shards of glass left in her back, and extinguished a single blade of her saber. She clenched the hilt tight in her fists and braced it in the crook of her arm, point upward. The blade went home, its blood red light slicing effortlessly through the hull from nose to tail as the craft flew forward. For a moment all was heat and sparks and the sharp smell of molten metal mixed with the familiar scent of grease. And then it was over. Rey sat up, spinning to track the starfighter. The pilot seemed to be trying to push his ship into a climb, but the flames Rey saw licking around the wound in the metal shell told her she'd hit something vital. As she watched, the ship pitched, dipped, and plowed headlong into the sand, a small explosion throwing her back to her hands and knees as the reactor blew.

She didn't dwell on her victory for long. Ben's emotions were running high and they pulled her eyes away from the smoldering wreckage to seek him out through the air that was thick with dust and smoke. She was already running for him by the time she caught sight of him battling his x-wing. His hands were stretched before him and lightning leaped from them to the x-wing again and again, forming a shimmering web of blue light over the hull. It illuminated the roiling smoke around them so that it seemed they were surrounded by one of the violent storms of Ahch-To.

As she reached him, fire sparked in the engines of the x-wing and they died with the shriek of seizing gears. The starfighter nosed toward the ground, listing over on its side with Ben's lightning still arching over its metal skin. Rey turned to follow the craft as it careened over their heads and into a sand dune, the explosion rocking the ground under her feet. Beside her, Ben collapsed to his knees, eyes glazed and blood running freely from his nose with the last flickering sparks dying around his hands. He was breathing hard and, face drained of all color, he leaned over and retched violently into the sand.

In the distance, Rey heard the engines of several more aircraft. Panic gripped her when she realized Ben wasn't responding. She dropped to her knees in front of him, looking him dead in the eyes.

"Ben!" she called, seizing him by the shoulders. "Ben, there's more fighters on the way. Get up."

Ben blinked, but the distant look in his eyes remained. Fear constricted her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She gave him a little shake.

"Ben, I need your help. Come on."

Blood was running down his chin and dripping into the sand. Rey's anxiety started to climb as the sound of the engines grew louder. In desperation, she pressed her fingers against Ben's forehead and wrenched the Force around them.

BEN!

His eyes flew open, clear and rid of the empty stare that had made him seem thousands of clicks away.

"What-" he started, brow knit in confusion as he reached a hand up to swipe at the blood still streaming from his nose.

"Not now," she said, "There's more x-wings on their way. We're going to have another fight on our hands."

Ben glanced down at the burned skin of his palms then closed his eyes. Rey heard the rumble of the dark side around them and a chill went through her. Ben's wounds knit together, pink scar tissue growing between the open edges of his blisters. The blood running from his nose slowed to a trickle, then stopped entirely. It was over in a matter of seconds, but the time was still lost.

The high whine of the Resistance engines was closer than ever and rapidly growing louder. Rey couldn't keep her eyes away from the sky above them, fingers gripped around her saberstaff and muscles tensing for the next fight. It was then that she caught another noise on the edge of her hearing. It was the same kind of sound, but several pitches higher than the x-wings. She gasped and turned just in time to see two dozen TIE fighters shoot over the sand dunes behind her.

"Ben, the TIEs!"

"It took them long enough," he grumbled.

He tried to stand, but his legs crumpled under him, sending him sprawling back to the ground. He pushed himself back to his hands and knees, but Rey saw the way his arms shook with the effort. She helped him kneel, then get slowly to his feet, letting him lean against her for support. Far away, the sound of starfighter fire began and she caught flashes of red and green light from across the plain.

"Come on," she said. "We've got to move."

Together, with Ben's arm slung over her shoulders, they began to long trek across the Crackle. Ben stumbled every few steps and she found her arms tensing automatically to give him support. The stormtroopers had gathered, forming a knot around them as they staggered on toward the battle. Rey's fear grew with every step. Ben was all but spent. She was still growing in her newfound abilities. How was she supposed to fight the Resistance alone?

Ben stumbled again on the uneven ground, and Rey's arms locked around his waist. He turned to her and tried to smile, but it didn't go much further than his blood covered mouth.

"Sorry," he muttered.

"It's alright," she said. "Let's just keep going."

As they walked, she sensed Ben drawing on his emotions. Dark memories drifted through the bond and stoked his anger. His legs grew steady under him and he ceased to lean against her. Before many minutes had passed, he was striding beside her without any sign of weakness. She didn't say anything, but she kept a close watch on him as they made their way after the TIE fighters, heading straight for the Resistance base and deeper into danger.