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Last On: Ben has a dream about being stranded in Jakku desert. He almost drowns in sand, then scavenges parts. When he gets home, he's beaten, robbed, and he dies of hunger in the desert. Then he wakes up.

Chapter 26

The next morning, as Leia was fixing up her hair, she heard a knock by her door. The servant who answered it stepped aside to let Ben walk in. He looked nervous.

"Ben, what's wrong?" Leia asked.

Ben looked down, then back up. "I… I need to talk."

Leia nodded, then with a wave of her hand dismissed the servant. She pulled over another chair with her cane, and patted it. "Sit down."

Ben did as she instructed. "I th...I think I had a vision... last night."

Leia raised her eyebrows. "From what I know, visions are not as straightforward a way of predicting the future as you'd think. They often need to be handled with a grain of salt."

"Oh, it wasn't a vision of the future. It was more like a dream that I shouldn't have had. I was living Rey's old life, as a scavenger in Jakku."

"A shared dream. This is interesting."

"No, I don't think it was shared. I mean, Rey was nowhere in the dream, and when I asked her she said she didn't have any dreams. None she remembered anyway. Besides, in the dream I knew who I was, just not how I got there."

"A transferred dream then, or a dream your mind created based off of what was in her head. Your Uncle will want to hear about this. And the girl, you should tell her too."

Ben bowed his head again, studying the floor in front of him. His hands began to fidget in front of him.

Leia sighed. She reached out and held Ben's hands together to still them. "You're nervous...Ashamed?"

Ben nodded. "The dream, it was rough. It felt like I had been there forever, and I saw inside what was her residence there. I was attacked there. I felt hopeless, helpless, and a hunger that was unlike anything else. It feels almost too intimate to say that I shared it. What if she gets angry with me?"

"Ben, this isn't your fault. The bond you share is not something either of you can control."

Ben shook his head, tears were in his eyes. "But what if it wasn't the bond. There was a time when I looked through her memories. It was when I was interrogating her for the map. My own mind could have come up with the dream out of what I saw then."

Leia nodded, "I think you feel a lot of regret over this interrogation. Perhaps you should start with that. Tell her how you feel now and apologize. Then tell her about this dream. I still think there's a possibility it was a part of your bond, and if so it could happen again. Only next time it could reverse, sending her into one of your nightmares. She should be warned."

"Alright." Ben took several deep breaths. "I'm gonna need some time though."


That morning Rey was awaken by Beth, the servant who had been helping her since her arrival here, pulling back her curtains. Beth had already gone into the closet and selected an outfit for the day.

"Good Morning," Rey sat up and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the day.

"Good Morning, Ma'am." Beth smiled at her. "Breakfast, or clothes first, Miss?"

"Breakfast," said Rey, who smelled the rich flavors wafting off the tray, sitting on a table. Beth picked up the tray and placed it on the bed in front of Rey. "This breakfast in bed thing, I can get used to it."

Rey started taking a sip of the caf. Caf was a beverage they drink a lot of with the Resistance. Rose, she drinks a lot of it when she has to work long nights to keep everything up and running. When Rey first tasted it, she nearly spat it back out. It was so bitter, but then Rose taught her how to sweeten it. Also to eat Rey had two eggs, and fried strips of a salty, and smoky meat. The type of meat was unknown to her, but she liked it very much.

For the first time that morning Rey glanced outside. It seemed the flowers in the garden below had all bloomed overnight. In the middle of their red petals, there were yellow streaks, the combination of which looked like a fire, burning on the snow below. "Winter's Blaze!" Rey exclaimed, remembering the name of the flower. It truly was a sight to behold.

When Rey finished her breakfast, Beth took the tray away while Rey put her outfit on. Rey was just dressed, and starting to brush her hair in the mirror when she heard a knock at the door. Thinking it was Beth returning after bringing her tray to the kitchen, Rey yelled, "Come in."

Leia opened the door and stepped through.

Rey looked up at her in surprise. "Oh, Gen...Leia. I wasn't expecting you this early."

Leia smiled and stepped over to the vanity where Rey sat. "May I?" Her hand went over Rey's hairbrush. Rey nodded, and Leia picked up the brush and began to stroke Rey's hair. "I wanted to look through the collection of my mother's belongings this morning, and I was hoping you'd come with me. Conner says he's got several chests and boxes worth of stuff in one of the old bedrooms up here?"

"Um, yeah, of course I'll help you. Wouldn't you want Ben to help you instead, though?"

"Ben needs to clear his head. He'll be off meditating for a while. We can show him what we discover later today. There, how do you like that?" Leia pulled back to let Rey examine her hair in the mirror.

Rey gasped. Leia had weaved her hair into a whole new style, and used one of the newer clips from the kit to tie it back with. She had several braids that went down to make a loop, and back up again to where they were fastened in the back of her head. "I like it." Rey smiled at Leia.


Leia led Rey to a room, and typed in a code to unlock the door. Inside, the room was painted a light shade of pink with a row of blue flowers painted less than halfway up the wall. There was a large bed made with a blue and white comforter, and Satin pillows. On the bed were sitting several boxes and at the foot of the bed was a large trunk.

Rey helped Leia open the trunk first, to reveal several exquisite gowns. She and Leia took some time to hold each dress up and admire it. Leia had Rey hang the dresses on clothes hangers. "Pooja said I could keep anything I like, and I think it'd be a shame not to have these dresses aired out. They should be worn again, don't you think?"

Rey nodded. She had only worn one dress in her entire life, and couldn't imagine leaving such fine dresses to waste away in a trunk.

In the next box they found a device with a whole bunch of holographs stored in its memory. Rey placed the device on a surface in the room and set it to play through it's images. It began with images of a small child, surrounded by a loving family. Then came several images of the girl receiving awards at school. She must have been very accomplished. Then came images of her standing in front of crowds. It looked like she was giving a speech. In another, her face was painted, and she sat on a throne. She was still a girl though. Several images later, the girl became a woman, and she was photographed next to a young man. He had short blond hair with a thin strand of hair long and braided on the side. He wore Jedi robes and a happy smile was on his face. Rey and Leia looked at the image in shock, before Leia paused the images.

"That's Vader… Anakin," Rey corrected herself.

"My father, yes. Not many would recognize that face though."

"Ben and I met his force ghost once. He was arguing with Luke's force ghost. They do that a lot from what I hear. Never really did find out what about, but whatever it is, apparently Han's on Anakin's side."

Leia chuckled and nodded. She turned back to the box. There she pulled out a journal, surprisingly handwritten. Leia opened the book and began to read what was written.

"Dear diary. Today was the ceremony that I can tell no one but you about. Where I vowed my everything to the love of my life. We said it would lead us to live a lie, hiding this from everyone, but some things are worth giving up integrity for. Love included. Of course, right now, this all feels exciting. My husband… can you imagine that! I just called him my husband… My husband will be here for a few more days. He told the Jedi council he had some type of business to deal with. And after that I will have to go to Theed to handle political matters there. But I know that the soonest we can escape the tedium of daily life, we'll find our way together again. For that is when we are truly whole, when we are together. Yours truly, Padmé."

"Awe, that's so sweet," said Rey. "It sounds like they really were in love."

"We were," said the blond man from the holograph. No not the holograph, that still stood paused. "She was my everything."

"Father." Leia sounded shocked to see him here. She stood eyeing him up and down.

"Daughter," Anakin smiled. "You'll want to skip the entries on pages three, four, eleven, and seventeen. Your mother says those weren't intended for the children to read." Anakin gave them a wink, then disappeared.


Later that day, Leia and Rey had their favorite items packed up, including the diary written by Padmé, and were waiting for Ben to come down, so they could show off their findings. Leia had a lunch prepared and she seemed very interested in hearing about Jakku, of all places.

"No, there were no schools. One of the older ladies gave classes out of her tent, but some of us couldn't attend her classes more than once a week. If you don't salvage scrap, you have nothing to eat."

"And did you go hungry a lot?" Leia's eyes were filled with pity and curiosity.

"Early on, yes. After a while I learned to ration what I had so if I didn't have a whole portion to eat, I'd still have half, or even a quarter. Of course, there were dry spells. Where I couldn't get decent deals, or couldn't find anything valuable, and the stash would dry up."

"Was your stash ever robbed? Did anyone ever steal your food?"

"There were thieves who'd try to rob you going to and from Nima Outpost, but I'm good at defending myself. Most of them learned it, too. The hard way…" Rey thought for a moment before she continued. "When I was younger, though. Yeah, I was robbed a number of times. You learn quickly not to carry all of your portions around with you. Mine were buried in a hole under my AT-AT. And that was never robbed, thankfully. Though I did have a lot of nightmares about it happening." Rey's voice trailed off, as she went deeper into thought.

"Miss, are you expecting a Wookie?" Conner, the Butler, peaked his head into the room. They could hear Chewie's growl down the hall.

"Chewie!" Rey and Leia both exclaimed together. They were not expecting him to come to Naboo, though they both jumped up anyway and ran to meet him.

Hi again,

As you can see, there's a reason I had this chapter after Ben and Leia had their talk. I figure, only after then would Ben be willing to go to his mom to confide in her about this. And a conversation with Leia about these dreams was the version that seemed to feel best.

I also want to explain some about 'the talk' Ben and Leia had two chapters ago. I do not, in any way, feel that the mother is always to blame. But I felt watching TFA that Leia has a lot of guilt, and probably the one thing she'd do if she could was to apologize. I also think it would be equally shocking for Ben, who's probably expecting to be yelled at and blamed in this talk, to hear her apologize instead. Mothers do tend to martyr themselves a bit, taking on the responsibilities of the whole world with their kids, even when logically there was nothing they could do differently. And I think Leia would be the same. I also went with an interpretation of Luke's character that I read about, where Luke had PTSD, and that was why he tried to kill his nephew. I assume he'd of confessed sometime after TLJ, in ghost form, because he seemed to want to confess in the end of TLJ, but she wasn't listening.

In the next chapter, I haven't written it yet, but I do expect it will get exciting, as we find out exactly why Chewy is crashing their vacation.