Rey remained unconscious aboard the X-Wing throughout the entire battle. Artoo was a good fighter, and even better flyer, with the right modifications.

Not that Rey knew or cared about any of that. She was unconscious, should really be dead. She knew that too, though she could not guess how, beyond what little guiding Force junkers subsisted with.

The Force was not just the system created by living things - it was the living thing, the whole system, the thing that allowed itself to keep living. It keeps its own balance by listening to the living, making connections.

The Force cannot do some things on its own. Thankfully it doesn't just listen.

It talks.

Some hear it. Not many, but a few. And these few draw their strength, forming a two-way relationship with the thing that gives them life.

Some choose to merely twist it to their will; the answer to Darkness is to balance it with the Light.

On places like Jakku, the relationship is more discreet.

Rey did not dream of the Force, but of something with a different name. At least, that's where it started.


She had seen insects before, but never ones that glow with a soft athul. They covered her, she plucked them up and ate them like candies, and they made her glow too, from the inside out.

She's a child. Not clad in the desert rags of a place whose every waking moment presses upon her whole body. She wears a brightly colored jacket, old and worn but not unusable in its old age. She hugs it around herself tightly, not knowing where she got it from but accepting it like a best friend. The idea of best friends is alien to her, as if people hold little meaning at her age. Not true at all in the majority of cases.

It's all relatively new to her, this place. It's rocky, with sharper edges and deeper cuts than even the razor fields on Jakku. The sky is flat, almost blending with the craggy horizon.

"It's not all like this," a boy calls to her from behind. She turns, wrapping the jacket tighter around herself as armor.

She wants to smile, but smiling doesn't come naturally, and never will. And she has only the faintest of ideas who this is: some brill named Bill-or-something. Heh, Brill Bill! That evens her grin out just a little, and the boy reciprocates.

"Just Saolt-true of us, there's a forest. Softer mountains far off, drawing shapes on the horizon like clouds." Two steps toward her, an outstretched hand.

Everything's covered in a mist - scratch that, everything is the mist. None of it is completely solid.

As she walks after him, the ground dissolves into the sky, and she falls upward into the hard floor. She cranes her neck to look down, seeing as it's up now.

An old man gazes down at her. He's not even a man, though. He's a walking corpse in brown robes, shriveled to bone under several concealed layers of garments. With half a mouth he scowls, exposing throbbing muscle at the intact side of his jaw.

With a voice like a gasp for air he speaks:

"Again, girl." She gets up, and he reminds her. "We continue this until you grasp it. No sooner."

She struggles to get to her feet. Given time, that weight pulling her down will feel like nothing. She misses her jacket.

The girl faces the corpse.

Reaches out her hand, fingers contracting around nothing. He goes flying against the back wall, arms flying out of their sleeves, wailing the best he can over the sound of stone walls cracking.

But he doesn't.

Nothing.

With a flick of his fingers she's lifted against a stronger gravity than she's ever known: pushed down and now pushed up from below. She wonders if these magic powers can crush a person.

He lets her hover there. The dream changes again as he releases his grip and the ceiling disappears. Almost like stepping off a moving vehicle, her feet catch the new floor. The walls were the same as the floor and ceiling, they could have been sideways and the room would be no different. Light washed in from nowhere, rollen and athul and vordin, throwing colorless flares in the shape of stars.

This time there's no mistaking it for some other groné's memories, it's a message.

A boy - a different one from that first brill - stares straight ahead, almost like a robot. He doesn't breathe, he rasps - almost exaggerated, like he's trying to imitate a man in a mask. All black robes, long brown hair.

Without his oyos once turning to meet her own, he raises a gloved dedder over his right oyo, digs it into his skull. Blood trickles out of the wound as he traces it into the shape of the symbol þ. The scar will leave its outline around that oyo, and she will know him by it.

He pulls his dedder free and it is dry. He curls it a time or two, she hears the rustling of fabric weave and metal.

He speaks to her with the voice of an old man. It makes her hug herself against the cold, and the light.

"Come home to your Family."

"I'm trying to find you."

A new voice.

Nar.

The first voice she had ever heard. It bounced from one ear to the other with every syllable, but the pressing pain it caused was like a tight hug wrapping itself around her.

A women's voice.

Mother!

"Be patient, my Daughter." And with the Phantom voice came a phantom woman. She was beautiful: pale and thin, white-haired, dark eyes, a wide and loving smile. This image is overlaid with the omnidirectional room where her Father delivers his message of love as well. She is a Force of another world to her child-self, floating above reality, infinite in her presence and motherly reach.

"I'm trying," she repeats. "I'm really trying."

"Worry not. We will meet again, we will be a normal family. You'll be safe."

That's it. She wants to be safe.

She wants to be...


"...safe."

The voice that woke Rey and deleted memory of what she'd dreamt was grainy, transmitted over the X-Wing's comm system.

Hearing came first. Then feeling. She was in pain, and a lot of it. But she was not dead, as far as she could tell, and that was good.

Then came sight. She'd never seen space before sitting in this starship, and that's when she realized just how little she understood of the universe outside her punishing "home." It was dark, and infinite, and probably very cold. Some of that cold seeped in, though the silence seemed to be kept away by the machine noise of the ship.

And the voice she'd just heard.

"Who was that?"

The droid answered.

"Flight control. We've arrived."

"Where?"

"Coruscant. Core world, center of free democracy in the universe, nasty place for agoraphobics and those afraid of basements."

She didn't understand much of what that meant, simply waited for the droid to add whatever else he would say.

"Republic territory, by the way. Luke should be meeting us soon, but for now we're about to enter its security sphere. Hold on te yer jorongos, groné, we'll be going down!"

Luke? Was that the brill who'd found her? Likely. Or had she already asked that of this droid? Had she asked his name?

R2-D2. Artoo-di'itoo. The brill - Luke - had called him Artoo, that was it.

She did the best she could, searching for something to hold onto. But that's when her hand brushed the straps holding her, and realized it was like a ship's embrace. It would hold her firmly in place, protect her from turbulence. That being said, her next priority was rubbing her head.

And wait for this damned ship to touch down. Hopefully this Artoo was good with landings. And Luke with answers.


...


A/N:

Couple things. First off: shout out to Samaritan Prime for being the mad lad who's left a review for every chapter on this story and its predecessor, She Awakens. And yes, that's every single chapter. I counted.

Second, this is the end of the "Jakku" segment. Current plan is for four or five more segments like it, all more or less the same length. Hope you've enjoyed, because that means a short break and possibly working on other "stuff".

Third, what do any o y'all bri know about the band Swans? Because that's the biggest chunk of music I've come to associate with this fic, and is all around good... I don't even know what genre/style you'd call Swans. Loud, maybe?

On that topic - would any of you be interested in a song rec or two to go with each chapter? Because music is a big impact on reading, and vice versa.

If so, great. If not, great.

Anyway, enjoy your day, enjoy your fanfictions, stay sane.