Another Dead End, Rey thought dejectedly as she flipped through the blank pages of a brittle old flesh bound tome with a Sith symbol on it's cover. Who in their right mind, besides Maz Kanata, would keep a blank Sith journal inside a locked chest, buried under a ton of other chests in a store room below an ancient cantina? With a growl of frustration she lobbed the blank book across the room. Slamming into the stone wall, it came apart, sending pages flying.

Halfway to the door she spied an errant page stuck against the thin light bar that ran at just above eye level around the entire room, she froze in her tracks as bewilderment crossed her sweaty, dusty features. A thin line of text, nearly identical in size to the light bar, had become visible across the surface of the blank page. Gently, she unstuck the page and looked at it closely even as the text faded away before her eyes. A sense of giddiness almost too strong to contain passed through her and she set about gathering the loose pages. Stuffing the creamy pages haphazardly into the broken binding of the book she had thrown, she nearly ran back to the Falcon in her excitement and eagerness to see what secrets the not-so-blank pages contained.

"Chewie!" she bellowed toward the cockpit as she rushed up the ramp. "I think I might have found something!"

Popping his head up from the engineering maintenance compartment in the main cabin, Chewbacca let out a soft purrowl that in his language meant approximately, "Please say you found a new compressor."

Rey rolled her eyes and held up the messily reassembled book she had found. "It's a secret Sith journal of some kind!" she exclaimed. "The pages all appear blank, but they aren't!"

Doubtfully, Chewbacca growled something that approximated the basic equivalent of "Calm down."

"No! Really! look!" Rey said, pulling a random page from the binding and rushing over to show it to the giant russet Wookkiee. "See? It looks blank!"

Glancing between the page and Rey, Chewbacca let out a very soft purr-like sound.

Encouraged, Rey squatted down and picked up Chewbacca's work light, holding it behind the page. "Now watch this." She said as nothing happened. "Any moment now..." she insisted as the seconds ticked by and nothing happened.

Reaching out with a gentle hand Chewbacca rubbed Rey's shoulder as he purrowled an apologetic phrase in his own language.

"I don't understand." Rey said after a moment. "It worked in the cellar. A page got stuck against the light strip and everywhere the light touched it, it showed writing."

Chewbacca made a low, mournful sound then pulled himself up out of the compartment, leaving his long legs dangling inside he pulled his little friend into a bone popping hug.

"Chewie," Rey wheezed, "I can't breathe!"

Releasing her the big furry fellow also let loose with a series of purrs, growls, barks and grunts that roughly translated to, "He's gone. You've done your best. Nobody could ask for more than you've already done. Maybe it's time to give up."

For a moment Rey's shoulders sagged and her eyes went dull and lifeless but then she pulled herself together.

"No!" she said firmly. "I haven't come this far to quit now. I didn't make the trip to Exogul five times, wade through thousands of dead bodies, traipse back and forth across the galaxy for five years to give up just because I'm having trouble with some old book that guards it's secrets well!"

With a shrug and a quiet sound of acquiescence Chewbacca slipped back down into the sub-floor compartment to continue his never ending mission to keep the Falcon operational.

Night was falling on Takadona before Chewbacca managed to get the old ship flight-worthy. Rey sat sullenly in the co-pilot's seat as Chewie guided the old freighter through the atmosphere and into open space. As the elongated star-lines of hyperspace appeared outside the cockpit's viewing glass Rey fiddled with the old book, nonsensically trying to put the pages in order despite the complete lack of markings on any of them. Her distant expression sharpened as an idea struck her and she held up a page to the bright blue and white swirl of hyperspace outside the view-port.

Almost as if by magic symbols started to strobe in and out of the visible spectrum. It took her only seconds to realize the key to making the writing appear. "Chewie!" She suddenly shouted, causing the big being to jump nearly out of his fur. "Look!"

Chewbacca leaned over to look as the symbols flashed on and off the page, upon seeing them he let out a bark of surprise.

"I think it's the white light..." she said excitedly. "See how it keeps flashing with the different hues of light from the hyperspace tunnel?"

Chewbacca growled a response, sounding as excited as a quarter millennia old Wookkiee could manage.

"Right, your work-light was blue! That has to be it! I need a strong white light!" She said, jumping out of her seat to go in search of one.

Returning to her seat with a bright white glow rod in hand, Rey started illuminating the pages one by one, hoping for drawings or notes in the margins that she could decipher amongst the jagged, inelegant markings of the Sith language.

She diligently illuminated every page, holding out hope til the bitter end, but was unable to find one discernible marking to give her a clue about the contents of the journal. Just as she closed the book with a disgruntled sigh Chewbacca reached out and pulled the lever to drop them out of hyperspace.

Rey made a bee-line straight to C3PO as soon as the Falcon touched down on the landing pad at Forward Base Alpha, the new home of the Resistance's military arm, where Finn, Poe and Rose all spent most of their time in the continued fight against the remnants of the First Order and the many unaffiliated warlords that still battled for dominance over the governance of the Galaxy. "Threepio, I need you!" she said as she drew near the golden droid. "I need you to read every page of this journal, translate them and compile them into a file in the correct order in your memory bank."

"Certainly!" the droid said cheerfully. "I'm always happy to help with translations - in fact, it's my primary function!"

"Good." Rey said, pulling out a blank page and handing it to C3PO. "Can you see what's written here?"

C3PO looked at the page for a long moment before answering with much confusion in his voice, "This page appears to be blank."

"Alright then, come with me." she said as she brushed past him and made her way into the heavily camouflaged command center.

Inside, Rey commandeered a datapad from a passing Rebel fighter with a muttered promise to return it quickly. Tapping the screen several times as she walked toward the officer's mess hall buried deep inside the compound. After a few minutes she let out a whoop as the screen turned into a bright white rectangle in her hands. Sitting down at an empty table in the otherwise empty room, Rey laid a page atop the glowing datapad. "What do you see now?" she asked as she slid the datapad toward C3PO./p

The golden droid looked at the page, did a double take then looked at Rey. "You can't be serious!"

"I'm sorry, but I am." Rey said firmly. "I need you to organize and translate the whole book and save it to a file that Babu Frik can extract intact."

"But...But..." The droid stammered impotently. "You promised to never make me translate Sith again!"

"I know I did, Threepio, but this is very important!" she said apologetically.

"Is it about Master Ben?" C3PO asked with a tinge of sadness in his mechanical voice.

"I believe it is." Rey said coaxingly. "I can feel that this book holds the key to bringing him back. I know it does. I just need to be able to read it."

C3PO stared at her for a long moment then said in his haughtiest tone, "Very well then, I suppose one more memory wipe wont cause me any lasting damage."

Rey was so happy with his capitulation that she almost hugged him but stopped herself short just in time as C3PO stepped back to avoid the embrace. "I must find R2 and have him update his back ups of my memory."

Muttering to himself about being too kind, C3PO shuffled out of the mess as Rey smiled after him.

The smile dissolved from her features as a throbbing hum in the Force that surrounded her. It wasn't the first time, nor she suspected would it be the last time, she'd felt his presence since he had faded away that long ago day on Exogul. She wasn't precisely sure how she even knew it was him. But she knew it was. A feeling like peace washed over her. She could almost feel his hand brush against the nape of her neck, the warmth of his breath upon her face, the light touch of his lips against hers. More than the physical sensations she could feel his loneliness, his need to be near her.

The way his Force presence felt like an almost overly warm blanket of comfort brought tears to her eyes. In spite of his death, Ben Solo had never left her side for long. He had never given up on her, even when she'd begged him to. Often, at night, she would lie awake, haunted by both his memory and his presence, and beg him to let go of the living world - to surrender to the Force and truly become one with it. But in all of the years between his death and now, he hadn't. He had chosen to remain in some strange limbo, not exactly a part of the Force, but somehow also metaphysically manifested by it.

She sometimes wondered where he went when he wasn't haunting her... but she never dared to ask, she was too afraid he would take it as her not wanting him around, or possibly as her not wanting him to go wherever he went. Wherever it was she hoped it was somewhere he wanted to be. Somewhere nice. Somewhere where he didn't feel so desperately lonely.

She wasn't sure how she knew it, but she knew that he intended to hang around for as long as she lived... that he refused to move on without her. The thought both tortured and delighted her. She hated that he wasn't at peace, but at the same time she loved that he cared so much about her that he wouldn't ever leave her behind, not even in death.

It hadn't taken her long after the Battle of Exogul to decide that, no matter the cost, she was going to find out how Palpatine had come back to life, and even if it cost her the rest of her soul and her very life, she was going to use that knowledge to bring Ben back from the dead.

"Something's different now," she said quietly, for him alone to hear. "I can feel it. That book is the key to bringing you back to me, I know it is."

A feeling like a smile washed over her and she could almost hear his voice in her mind, telling her that it didn't matter, because he was already with her. "It matters to me. You're not the only one who's lonely, Ben." She whispered into the empty room. "You're not the only one who's dead but still hanging around, either... I just haven't faded away, yet."

The smiley feeling changed to one of intense sadness and gooseflesh prickled Rey's skin as an unnatural cool breeze brushed up her arm to caress the scar on her bicep. "If this book doesn't have the information I need I'll find another way to bring you back, if there isn't a way, I'll invent one." she vowed. "I refuse to spend the rest of my life without you by my side. You've no idea how many times I've wanted to just turn my saber around and ignite it. Anything to be with you. Through all my years on Jakku, being hungry and lonely and desperate - I didn't even know an emptiness this profound could exist. I never knew what loneliness was until you died."

"Rey?" Rose's voice called out as the smaller woman stepped tentatively into the room. "Are you - Oh! there you are." Rose smiled and walked over in her bouncy gate. "How did it go? Did you find anything on this trip?"

Rey looked at Rose through still misty eyes then blinked away the moisture there. "I don't know, yet, but I think so." She answered, standing up and showing the book of empty pages to Rose. "This book has a Sith symbol on the cover, and all of the pages appear blank until you view them with a strong white light behind them. See here?" she picked up the datapad and demonstrated her findings.

"Oh! Luma-ink!" Rose said with a delighted tilt to her lips. "I've heard of it, but never seen it before! My dad used to tell Paige and me stories about how the old Republic spies used to use it to send secret messages back and forth!"

"Spies?" Rey asked, thoroughly intrigued.

"Oh! Yes! My dad was one of those guys who spent all his free time watching old infotainment holos about spies and pirates and smugglers... anything that was full of adventure!" Rose stroked the illuminated page gently then her joy seemed to deflate. "I miss them. My family. Paige, dad, mom..."

Moved by Rose's sadness, Rey embraced her friend saying, "I know exactly how you feel."

Rose nodded into Rey's shoulder then sniffed and pulled away. "Poe sent me to find you. Bressacca's gang moved into the Omnisa system last night and they're threatening to lay waste to all forty planets unless we supply them with a hundred capitol ships and the men to crew them."

Rey rolled her eyes and sighed. Another overly ambitious warlord, another distraction from her quest. "Let me guess... Poe wants me to persuade Bressacca to leave peacefully and rethink her life?"

Rose smiled, "Of course."