Chapter 1

Rey stood looking over the edge. Darkness crowded the bottom of the pit, obscuring her vision. She wouldn't be able to find what they'd come for from this vantage. She'd have to go down herself.

Ben stood behind her, scanning their surroundings. The air was dry and warm, cooling with the twin suns beginning to set behind distant hills. He did not believe they were followed after leaving the long-empty Lars homestead. This was good. The population of this planet bent towards opportunism, at best, and he was not in the mood for an encounter with foul Tusken Raiders. Tatooine had long held a place in Ben's mind that he tried to avoid. The planet had been significant to his family's history. A complicated history. But complexity, like Tatooine itself, was unavoidable for Ben these days. He lived in grey.

Ben's attention shifted as Rey looked over her shoulder to say. "I'm going to go down further, I can't see the bottom from here. "

Ben nodded, then added "It will be dark soon."

"True. I'll be fast," Rey replied. Then she disappeared over the edge, stepping into the air. She twisted around and bent her knees to soften her impact as she landed on a small ledge. Steadying herself with her hands against the wall of the pit, she found another ledge below her that was large enough to land on and jumped down again. She was soon at the bottom. "Made it!" she called up to Ben as she stood up.

The bottom of the pit was littered with junk, discarded items haphazardly filling the floor. The old woman with the eopie had been right, this was definitely a refuse pit. The question was if it was the right one. Rey studied the objects within sight. Most were metal and rusted, nothing appeared to have been newly added. This was a good sign. The object they looked for would have been discarded long ago. It would be better if this refuse pit had been abandoned, otherwise the object would be buried under layers of trash.

It was also helpful, Rey noted, that most of the items in the pit were made of metal or plastic. The object she searched for was wooden.

Ben's powerful figure loomed up from the precipice. Rey couldn't see his features against the darkening sky but could hear him clearly. "See anything? His deep voice reverberated through the air.

"There's a lot down here, but I might be able to find it. Do you think we have time to search?"

No, let's go back to the ship, Ben thought to himself. He understood the reason for this mission, but he felt unsettled about the possibility of success. Ben swallowed back his immediate response and closed his eyes. He made himself clear his thoughts and emotions. He drew in a breath while sensing only the moment he occupied. This was a practice he'd returned to not long ago, and he was getting better at grounding himself. Rey and Ben had agreed on this course of action. He'd committed, so he must see it through.

"Let's stay until the first sun is behind the hills. We'll use the light from the second to make it back to the ship." Ben called down.

"How long is that?" Rey's eyes were already back searching through the debris.

Ben cocked his head to one side, thinking. "Twenty minutes, maybe. We can come back tomorrow morning if we need to."

Rey, forgetting that Ben could barely see her, nodded and moved forward. She didn't want to come back tomorrow. They had already spent several days searching other refuse pits along the way to bury Luke and Leia's lightsabers at Lars' old moisture farm. Most people would have given up by now. But most people weren't Rey, who had spent years honing her patience as a scavenger on Jakku. She knew well that items of value did not give themselves up easily. Rey felt strongly that the object they sought was important. Important enough to persist.

Sorting through the top layer of junk, Rey was sure this pit really was abandoned. The exterior of everything she picked up had been worn and faded by the sun. Nothing new was to be found. Anything made of plant material crumpled away in her hands. It would make sense that the object would be in an abandoned pit. The Tusken Raiders who would have used this pit now stayed away from the area entirely, claiming it was cursed. Perhaps it was superstitious to believe so, but there was a reason for it. Something that had brought darkness into the galaxy had happened not far from here not so very long ago.

Ben could hear Rey working alone below. He'd planned to keep watch, but the vastness encircling them was empty. Perhaps he should go down to help Rey in the search. He reached out into the Force, searching for anything hidden that could sneak up on them. Instead, something else found him. A darkness, the same feeling Ben had upon picking up his grandfather's mask for the first time. It was there, the object they searched for was in this pit.

"Rey, I feel something. It could be here. Do you sense it?"

Rey paused, she had been stacking large objects on top of each other to reveal the next layer of abandoned belongings. She closed her eyes and reached out. She could feel Ben, as she always could, like a bonfire in the distance. Ben said that she felt like the wind from mountains, whatever that meant.

Then, a small darkness came to her. Master Luke had taught her how to open her mind to the Force around her. Following what she found, that was instinct.

Rey opened her eyes and shifted her gaze towards the opposite side of the pit. Swiftly navigating through the debris, she came upon a pile of items that rather looked as if they'd been burned before being thrown into this pit to be forgotten. The edges of the metal items were blackened and warped. Using the Force, Rey raised the objects in the pile so she could see what was underneath. Old cups, racer components, and other artifacts of everyday life passed behind her. She was getting close. Stepping forward, she brushed away a pile of junk with a sweep of her hand. Then she saw a wooden rod poking up out of the debris. The end was charred, the remaining bark peeling away from the old, dried wood. Rey felt her pulse quicken. Carefully, she used the Force to pull away the garbage until the object she'd come for was free. With great care, she pulled it up from the ground and leaned it against the pit wall.

Ben had been watching her. "You picked it up? Don't touch that, it's a dark object!"

Rey called over her shoulder, "I'm wearing gloves. And I thought you'd be more concerned about the blood!"

Ben shook his head. "Just be careful."

Rey smiled to herself. It was almost funny when Ben warned her about her own safety, considering their past. But she understood, she felt the same way about him when Ben was acting reckless. Though many things had changed about Ben, he was still prone to bouts of rashness.

"Are you coming up?" Ben asked.

"No, I think I'll live here now. I think this garbage pit could be rather homey, don't you?"

Ben rolled his eyes, but he couldn't resist a smirk. "Let me know if you need help picking out curtains."

Rey looked up to the ledge where Ben stood. She could see the sky darkening, they needed to go. She mentally plotted her course up to the top. Then she leapt up, using the Force to propel her. Jumping from side to side, she moved upwards until she reached the top and exited the pit.

"No curtains. I like the al fresco view."

"Didn't you forget something?" Ben asked Rey, who was now standing in front of him.

Rey crossed her arms against her chest and raised her eyebrows. "If I can lift a pile of boulders to free the escaping resistance, I'm sure I can handle this." Ben inclined his head, conceding her point. Rey studied him for a moment, searching for any sign that her joke had pushed too far. She didn't see any tension in his eyes or mouth, so she turned back to the pit. Rey reached out her hand and called up the wooden rack that they'd finally found after days of searching. It rose evenly through the air, landing at their feet. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they studied it quietly for a few moments.

The wooden rack was rudimentary. Bound together with leather strips, two roughly cut branches had been lashed together at an angle to form a triangle. A branch had been secured horizontally at both the top and bottom. It was slightly burnt, along with everything else that had been in the pile where Rey found it. But those were not the only marks that marred it. Dark stains where blood had soaked and then dried into the wood could still be seen. But the blood stains were superficial. Pain and fear from the woman who had been tied and tortured there had imbued into the very wood itself. This was the darkness that had reached out to them when Ben and Rey had opened their minds to the Force.

"It's longer than I thought it would be. Shmi would have been as tall as I am," murmured Rey.

Ben nodded. It had been a long shot to believe that the rack the sand people had bound Shmi to still existed. The Tusken Raider's camp had been burned after Anakin had slaughtered all its inhabitants, a bloodbath in retribution for taking Anakin's mother from him. While Ben was Luke's apprentice, he'd asked Luke about Anakin's mother. Shmi was Luke's grandmother and Ben's great-grandmother. It had been a way to get Luke to talk about Anakin without drawing suspicion.

Luke, who normally had an emotionless affect when speaking of the Skywalker's history, had sad eyes as he told Shmi's tale. After Anakin left Tatooine, Shmi had remained a slave. Eventually, she was sold to Cliegg Lars who lived out in the desert. He had freed her and later they married. She could have been happy in those days, living a simple life on the remote moisture farm. Then, her freedom was stolen from her, just as it had been when she was a young girl. Tusken Raiders captured her and tortured her, to test the strength of their human enemies. For weeks, for more than a month, they found new ways to use pain to drag her to the doors of death… and yet, she would not die.

Shmi had not been ready to exit this world without seeing her only child one last time. In the darkness, she had called out to him and clung to memories of his happiness. It was this that gave her hope, and hope gave her strength. When their whips stripped away the flesh from her back, she would remember the love in her veins that was for her son. And she would hold his name in her mind, the only thing in the world that mattered to her as she pleaded with the universe to let her live through the wretched, unending pain so she could see her son one last time. Anakin.

The universe heard Shmi. Anakin began having dreams that haunted him long after the morning broke. He dreamed of his mother, who was somewhere dark and foul. She was hurting. He knew that these were not just dreams, that the Force brought these nightmares to him for a reason. He returned to Tatooine and found his mother bound and bleeding. She died in his arms using the last of her strength to make sure that Anakin knew he was loved. In that instant, Anakin's deepest fears crashed over him. He had failed her. Anakin had promised to come back and free her, but instead he'd abandoned her and couldn't save her from the people who had taken her. It was their fault, these monsters. He could have easily left the camp with his mother's body undetected. That would have been the way of the Jedi. Fight only in defense. Instead, volcanic hate erupted in his chest and drove his body to massacre. No one was there to stop him, not Obi-Wan, not Qui Gon Jinn, as his lightsaber passed through the bodies of adults and children alike. Finally, no one could insufferably tell him that he shouldn't use his frightening power to do what he knew should be done.

Ben had recognized himself in Anakin, as Luke told him what had unfolded there in the Tusken camp. The visceral feeling of anger lighting like a match inside of his heart, the berserk rage that would fuel each blow against his enemies. Ben had promised himself that if anything, if anyone, came for the ones he loved, he wouldn't hesitate. He would strike them down. Hearing this story, it wasn't the first time he had understood Anakin. But it was the first time Ben had promised to himself that he would be like Anakin.

Wind swept across Ben's face, bringing him back to the present moment. All of that was a long time ago. Now he was here with Rey. When he saw the instrument of torture in front of him, he felt very small as he thought of his great-grandmother who had loved her son enough to call him across the galaxy. The way his own mother, Leia, had called to him as she lay dying.

Ben turned to Rey, who steadily gazed back into his eyes. He knew something about a connection that surpassed time and space.