The 'Rise' of Skywalker

The first Jedi Temple,
Ahch-To,
35 ABY

The sun was still rising over Ahch-To's ocean and shadows still clung to the peaks of the most unfindable island in the galaxy.

But the cries could be heard over the calm sea, and a plume of dark smoke was visible rising from the base of the stairs that led to the first Jedi Temple. Rey was throwing the remaining pieces of driftwood she had collected onto her ship, no longer caring whether they found their mark, no longer certain they were even necessary to feed the fire which was consuming the wreck of the TIE. Two porgs stood nearby, occasionally cawing out to her, their large black eyes looking in confusion as she unleashed her frustration against the fighter.

It was cathartic for her. More than frustration, she was venting her sadness. She did not want to return to this island. She did not want to be nobody again.

But she had to be.

It was the only way. Luke had been right; the Jedi had to end. If she did not, she was afraid of what would happen; afraid of what she would become. Whenever there was a lull in her throwing, her unhappy mind conjured the one image that she had come to associate with utter despair: the endless stream of scratches inside the hull of her home on Jakku. She remembered even more vividly the long line of her doubles in the mirror cave beneath the island, the echoes of that long wait. As she thought of her future, she saw that stream again and misery washed over her.

She threw one more piece of driftwood on the flames and, as she reached down for more, realized they was none left. She would have to find something else to do and fast, perhaps set up a regular chores as Luke had, join the Caretakers, or even the Visitors. She could build a boat and sail the entire span of Ahch-To's ocean. Nothing would stop her. And she would find a way, just as he had, to cut herself off from this Force which had brought her nothing but misery.

But before she could do that, there was one more thing she needed to do.

She reached for her lightsaber; Luke's lightsaber, the lightsaber of the Skywalker clan.

She had worked so hard to earn it from Leia as part of her training. And all of it had been for nothing. She could not keep it, she knew that. But part of her was trying to think of excuses to keep it. One thought she kept having was the idea that she could use it to scratch the first mark of her new life, the first sign of her exile. It would be fitting. But, more than anything else, she was afraid of what would happen when she did throw it away. Rey looked deep into the heart of the blaze, where the outline of the TIE could still be seen. She didn't know what she hoped to see there. Maybe some form of wisdom and help making what was the biggest decision of her life. And knowing also that, if she threw the blade into the flames, it would not come out again.

Rey steeled herself against her doubts and threw the lightsaber into the fire…

…where it was caught by an ethereal blue hand.

The young woman gasped as she watched a shape walk out of the flames, dressed in the same robes he had been wearing when she had met him. Only then, he had been alive. But there was no mistaking the rough lines of his face, his long greying hair and beard, or the twinkle of mischievousness in his eye as he held his father's sword. "A Jedi's weapon deserves more respect," Luke Skywalker told her, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Master Skywalker!?"

"What are you doing?" he asked with the same frustration she remembered from their first lesson. At any other time, she would have been delighted to see her grumpy teacher again.

She told him everything.

She probably didn't need to; Leia had told her that beings who had learnt to manifest their consciousness after death were aware of so much more than those limited by physical forms, and that they were particularly attuned to other Force-sensitive beings. So Luke probably knew everything already.

But she still told him; she needed to.

And he still listened.

A great weariness came over Rey as the story came out of her, and she sat down onto a rock next to the blazing ship as her Master looked down at her with kindness and sympathy for her plight in his eyes. She told him how she had sensed the darkness growing in her, an anger she couldn't restrain. Of the instances of dark side power she had shown when Kylo had confronted her. She spoke to him at last, as she should have when she had first been with him on this island, of the bond that bound them; how it fed both their powers despite her best attempts to stay hidden from him. And, most of all, she told him her deepest fear: that she had liked the sense of power and dreamed of letting restraint go and embracing the dark. That revelation left her feeling vulnerable and weak in a way that she hadn't in a very long time.

"I will never allow that to happen!" She said with conviction that she hoped would grow stronger in time. "I'm never leaving this place. I'm doing what you did."

There was something else in his eyes as he looked down at her, sadness because he understood what she felt… since he had already felt it before. "I was wrong," he said. "It was fear that kept me here. Nothing more. What are you most afraid of?"

She barely whispered it, a truth that she had come to recognize after hiding it from herself for so long: "Myself."

"Why?"

The question surprised her. It shouldn't have, but it did.

"When you first came here," Luke continued, "you said that there was something inside you that you didn't understand and couldn't control, something that had awoken. Something that you didn't know what to do with. But that wasn't the whole story, was it?"

"No."

"So what is?"

She knew the answer.

The vision came to her again, as it had in the castle on Takodana. The small girl she had been; Unkar Plutt's meaty hand around her thin arm.
The cry on her lips: "COME BACK!"
And the ship flying away in the distant sky.

"He was right," she said in a whisper, as she remembered how clearly Kylo had seen in her, how he had witnessed the darkest part of her. "I have always known the truth."

"Quiet, girl!" Unkar said, no trace of sympathy in his voice, just annoyance at having to deal with his latest indenture's whims.
She felt the moment when her despair reached its peak, when the realization hit her that no words she would ever say would bring them back.
"NOOO!"

"What made you so afraid, for so long?" Luke's voice asked from very far away.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"
She still felt, even so many years later, the moment when she had reached out. The moment when utter certainty that she would not be abandoned hit her. And her single desire, her only need, came true.
The ship which had been flying away from her, her parents onboard, stopped in its flight…

"I didn't want to be alone." Rey said, as much to herself as to Luke.

…The ship's propulsors fought against the invisible hand gripping it, its two passengers eager to be free of the hated desert world and the child they had never wanted.
But she would not let them leave.
Unkar pulled on her arm, but a strength she had never had before was coursing through the child, her hand extended into a grasping claw as her entire focus kept the ship from escaping.

"I wanted them to come back."

The girl pulled. The ship followed her command.

"And they did."

The ship plummeted through the air and crashed into the sands, the explosion loud in the desert wind. And the silence that followed it louder still in the girl's mind.

It was why Unkar had been so hard on her, never failing to find a moment to belittle her or make her beg. He had never been able to understand what had happened that day. He had been afraid of her but refused to show it; and every jibe or denied ration, every humiliating assignment, had given him confidence that he was stronger than she was. And she had taken it all, refusing to retaliate against him out of a deep seeded fear of what she could do.

And it had been that fear which had kept her on Jakku, where she could do no harm. Rey wasn't sure at what point she had started telling herself that she was waiting for a family which would return for her.

Worse than that, she wasn't sure when she had started to believe it.

Luke came to sit next to her, sighing heavily as old men did when they got off their feet. In a quieter corner of her mind, Rey wondered why he did that. He was dead and immaterial; surely, he didn't feel pain and aches anymore.

The Jedi Master looked at her with sympathy and far too much understanding. She wanted him to get mad, to rage at her for her deceit. She was guilty of murder; of patricide. How could anyone ever understand that?

"I almost killed my own father," he said.

"What?!" Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't that.

Luke looked far out to the rocks of the mountain. "I once told you that I had tried to save Vader. So I went to him, walked straight into the trap the Emperor had set for me. He wanted me to come to him, to try and convert me to the dark side. He wanted an apprentice who could master its power. I'm not sure why Vader went along with the plan; he must have known it was designed as a way to eliminate him. That was the way of the Sith: there could only be two. Even after all these years, I still don't know what Vader was hoping for. The only thing I can imagine is that he was playing a longer game, one where he allowed Sidious to take me as his apprentice and learn everything he couldn't. And then, we could rule. As he had predicted we would."

He paused for a while. "My master had warned me not to underestimate the Emperor, but I was foolish and I believed I could take anything. But Sidious was… far more powerful than I imagined. Not his power in the Force, although he had far greater abilities than I did. It was his presence, his influence over others. He didn't use the Force to compel obedience; he didn't need to. He had a way of seeing weakness and fear in people and using it to manipulate. To control. It was the ultimate expression of his power: he didn't need to use it to bend others to his will. All he needed were words."

Rey had heard stories about the Emperor, but most of them had come from beings who had never met him. Luke had been in his presence, felt the power of the Dark Lord of the Sith… and beaten him. But the way he spoke about him sent a shiver down her spin. She had felt it when Kylo had reached within her to see her deepest darkest fears. But Kylo had exposed himself, revealing his own doubts. Rey dreaded to think what would have happened if he hadn't. What he could have made her do.

Luke continued: "I underestimated them both. They got into my head. And, as when Vader threatened to find Leia and turn her to the dark, I lost control of my anger. I lashed out at him, taking everything out I had on him. And I beat him." She heard it in his voice, buried deep but still there, even after all these years. He had been thrilled by his victory, by his ability to finally defeat Vader. He had felt the same rush of power she had when she had defeated Kylo on Tatooine. "I cut off his hand and he fell. And the Emperor laughed because he had finally gotten what he wanted: an apprentice more powerful than his previous one, a new being he could exert power over; twist to fit his own ends."

"But he had overestimated himself and his abilities. My masters had done well with me. But not in the way either Vader or Sidious believed. I saw it in the hand I had taken from him. It was mechanical." As he said this, Luke clenched and unclenched his right fist. Which, Rey could now see, was flesh and blood. But she knew that his previous one, the one he had hidden beneath a frayed leather glove, had been artificial. "And I saw, very clearly, the path my father had taken. The path I was about to step on. And I refused to go there."

He stopped talking, his story complete. But Rey was sure that she heard the words he didn't speak, the confession that even after all these years would still cost him and which he still couldn't quite bring himself to speak aloud.

But I wanted to.

They sat there, without speaking for a while, with only the sound of the waves below, the crackle of the still burning fire, and the occasional caw of the porgs around the island.

After a moment (she would have been incapable to say how long it was), Rey finally spoke. "This is it, isn't it?"

Luke turned to look at her. "What?"

"My last lesson. The one you promised me the first time I came here."

He smiled. "Yes, though I didn't know it at the time. This is the lesson I should have taught you then; the only lesson that really matters. Confronting fear is the destiny of the Jedi. My destiny. Your destiny. And once we find balance in ourselves…" he spread his hand to the sky, where all the worlds of the galaxy hid, with their own complexities and conflicts. "…we can help them."

"That's why she wouldn't let me out on assignments, isn't it?" Rey asked even though she fully understood already. "Leia. She knew I wasn't ready yet, that I needed to face my own fears before I could help others face theirs."

Luke smiled at her, pride in his eyes. He didn't move, but she felt the tug in the Force as he pulled up her saber, his saber, before her. It arced in his invisible grip, waiting to be claimed at long last. The legacy of the Skywalkers. Finally, hers. Rey barely hesitated. She took the lightsaber and before turning back to look at the glowing face of her Master. She smiled at him and he at her.

And, probably for the first time, they truly, completely, understood.

In the depths of the swirling mists of the Force, in the currents generated by every living being in the galaxy, two consciousnesses became aware, awakening from their passive contemplations of the universe as they sensed what had occurred.

They found their way to the island where the Order they once both belonged to had been born. Answering the call of the Force, they pulled themselves back to the forms they had once been, the bodies the living remembered them as. A tall, white-haired bearded man, and a short, green-skinned, pointed-eared goblin.

And they both watched as the shape of the man who had once been their apprentice, their final student, rose the ravaged shape of an X-Wing from the depths of Ahch-To. Water fell from crevasses and seaweeds hung to its hull as it rose, commanded by the invisible hand of the Living Force. They watched the small figure of his own apprentice, as she watched with delight as her Master brought the ship up, giving her all she needed to return to the stars. And rekindle the light of the Jedi once more.

As the ship was lowered onto the rocks of the island, Luke's face turned and he caught sight of his Masters.

He smiled.

Yoda and Obi-Wan smiled back at him.

And, as the X-Wing settled before Rey, the three figures faded, shedding their former selves and returning to their quiet, everlasting contemplation at the heart of the Force.