Legalities: Star Wars and all characters contained within this wonderful galaxy belong to the creative genius of George Lucas. And, subsequently, upon their sale to Disney and further expansion and creation by JJ Abrams. No disrespect is intended by writing a story within their well-developed worlds. The opposite, in fact, is intended. All the respect in the world is due to these creative people and their expansion of a universe that has captured the imagination since 1977. I am making no money from this and no infringement is intended, just the opportunity to play in their respective 'sandboxes' (Jakku and Tattoine).
Rating: PG-13 equivalent (though may change as the story develops)
Notes: This story is going to jump forward to the present at the end of this chapter, so don't be surprised when you find yourself embarking on a new adventure and an alternate interpretation of the events of Rise of Skywalker. Hope you enjoy the ride.
Chapter Two:
The Forest – six years ago
Releasing the tarnished clasp, Rey stepped back as BB-8 dropped into the sand at her feet. He beeped several times and she smiled at his comment.
"Don't give up. He still might show up. Whoever it is you're waiting for." The smile drifted from her lips. She listened to his fast-paced beeps, beeps that told her he wasn't going into any further detail about whoever 'he' was. "Classified." She said, shaking her head, Rey started to walk away. "I know all about waiting." She finished, speaking to no one in particular.
A series of beeps was a clear question, she stopped, staring up at the bright yellow sky. "For my family. They'll come back. One day. Come on." BB-8 obviously understood that she was waiting, but not what she was waiting for.
They moved toward the bartering tent, Rey's scavenged items following behind her on the small sled. The smell was terrible, like the garbage pits past the Hallen dunes. That was a place she didn't go to unless she had no other options.
Plutt picked through her items, his eyes narrowing. "These five pieces are worth…one half portion."
She stared at him, the objection slipping past her lips before she could stop it. "Last week they were a half portion each." The unfairness of her situation settled in the pit of her stomach. Rey hated Platt, always had, always would.
"What about the droid?" he asked, his eyes sliding downward.
Her eyes drifted to the trusting little droid rocking at her feet. He looked up at her and she could swear that she felt his faith in her expand. "What about him?" She asked.
"I'll pay for him."
The nervous beeps informed Rey that BB-8 was following this exchange and he didn't seem to like the way it was going; at least not for him…
Rey stared at Unkar Plutt and the sixty portions he'd just offered for the BB unit she'd rescued in the desert. Her mouth watered in anticipation of a full stomach. It was a feeling she couldn't even remember, a full stomach. Her entire life had been one long search for her next meal, her next safe place to sleep; it had been the driving force behind her daily existence for so long she didn't know how to want anything else.
Deep in the recesses of her mind she knew that she'd never sell another sentient being into service. And it didn't matter whether it was a droid, alien or another humanoid, she couldn't do that. Her face twitched before she pushed the portion packets back.
With a slow breath, she admitted, "Actually, the droid's not for sale."
Rey grabbed her one-half portion and turned to leave the bargaining tent. She felt more than heard the anger from the bulbous alien at her rejection of his offer. Ignoring the uneasy feeling she continued outside into the mid-day sun, the heat was oppressive. Two of Unkar's thugs were suddenly heading in her direction; she took a deep breath before unslinging her staff and shifting into a defensive position. This wouldn't be the last time she'd fight to keep something she'd scavenged.
"Stay behind me." She ordered. BB-8 sent out a series of beeps indicating he agreed that that was a very good idea.
One of the thugs struck out with meaty fist and she quickly found herself dodging and twisting to avoid being hit by a pain stick. She could hear the frantic beeping of the little droid, turning she clenched her teeth as one of the thugs began slipping a sack over him. Not today!
Her pulse quickened and the world seemed to narrow down to a single point. Rey was so focused on the fight that she failed to notice when another human came to her aid. He stopped and watched as she managed to take down the two attackers and then yanked the sack from over the droid's head freeing him. He beeped gratefully.
Finn stared in shock when the sack cleared his round body. That was the droid that Poe had been talking about. The one with the map to Skywalker. But his shock quickly gave way to surprise as the girl was suddenly pounding across the sand toward him. He turned and ran through the tent marketplace. And the thump of her staff across his shoulders sent his sprawling on his stomach. He rolls over, his chest heaving.
"What's your hurry, thief?"
"What?! Thief?" He scrambles to his feet again. But the fast-moving droid still manages to shock Finn with a welding arm that telescopes out from his lower body.
"Ow! What?!"
The girl steps right up to his chest, staff raised threateningly. "The jacket! This droid says you stole it."
"I've had a pretty messed up day, alright?! So, I'd appreciate if you stop accusing me – OW!" Another zap from the welding torch. "Stop it!"
She wasn't a fool. Rey had been lied to throughout her life, she watched for those tell-tell signs in the young man staring at her. "Where'd you get it? It belongs to his master."
Rey watched Finn's face fall. His brown eyes shift to the agitated little BB unit.
"It belonged to Poe Dameron. That was name right?" he asked BB-8. An affirmative beep and a nod from Rey spur him forward. "He was captured…but the First Order. I helped him escape, but our ship crashed." His eyes unfocused as he remembered their headlong flight from the star destroyer. "Poe didn't make it."
The little droid's head fell forward, his beeping taking on a sad lost tone of the depressed.
"Look, I tried to help him. I'm sorry…"
But Rey was surprised by his admission; she needed to know more. "So, you're with the Resistance?"
His eyes snapped to meet hers and he made a rash decision in that moment, lie to her. "Obviously. Yes. I'm with the Resistance, yeah." His voice dropped to a whisper, like a conspirator. "I'm with the Resistance."
Rey's staff drifted down and she looked at this newcomer with a building respect. "I've never met a resistance fighter before."
He shrugged. "Well, this is what we look like. Some of us. "Others look different."
"BB-8 says he's on a secret mission, he has to get back to your base."
"Apparently he's carrying a map that leads to Luke Skywalker, and everyone's after it."
That was a name that Rey never thought she'd hear outside her own head. The Jedi Master wasn't real, was he? "Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth."
Mad beeps from BB-8 pulled their attention around and Rey stared at the two white-clad troopers. Niima Outpost didn't warrant visits from First Order Stormtroopers, at least not that she'd ever heard of. "What is it?"
He didn't say anything at first, just grabbed her hand and started pulling her after him as he sprinted toward the distant multitude of tents.
"What are you doing?" she tried to pull her hand away, but he kept a tight grip on her fingers, hauling her after him.
"Come on!" he cried again. Desperation and fear drove his feet to a frantic pace.
The sudden laser blasts that ripped past them and she stopped fighting and started running for her life. The whir of the droid's gyros told her that BB-8 was keeping up with them too.
"Come on, BB-8!"
Regaining some sense of herself, "Let go of me!" She cried.
He ignored her loud protests. "No, we gotta move!"
Yanking her hand away, "I know how to run without you holding my hand! BB-8 stay close!"
They ducked into a large purple tent at the end of the marketplace street and then slow to a stop. Both humans gulped in air as they tried to see where the stormtroopers had gone.
Rey couldn't believe what had just happened, it wasn't just him they were after. "They're shooting at both of us!"
He made a 'duh' look at her, "Yeah, they saw you with me! You're marked!"
Great, that's just great. "Well, thanks for that!" she shot back, her voice rife with irritation.
"I'm not the one who chased you down with a stick! Does anyone have blasters around here?!"
Kneeling next to the little droid she asked. "Are you okay?"
He beeped an 'affirmative'. Before she knew what was happening, the boy suddenly grabbed her hand once more and they were off and running.
"STOP taking my hand!" She wasn't even sure why she said it. It was obvious that he wasn't listening to a damn thing she said.
The overhead whine of Tie Fighters pulled his attention around and he knew they were in trouble. He put on a burst of speed. But it wasn't enough; twin blasts from ion cannons sent him, Rey and the little droid careening through the air in three separate directions.
She landed with a jarring thud on the sand, the air momentarily knocked from her. Rolling over, Rey looks for him…and he wasn't moving.
Scrambling to her feet she hurried to his side and started shaking him, violently. "Hey!"
The first words that came out of his mouth shocked her to her very core.
"—Are you okay?"
During her entire life, no one had ever cared enough to ask that question and Rey felt something tight and lonely loosen inside her heart.
"Yeah." She reached down to help him up, feeling for the first time like they were supposed to meet. That there is something else at work here. "Follow me."
The Tie Fighters banked around the edge of the small outpost and both she and her companion knew things were going to get worse really bad if they didn't get off the open sand.
"We can't outrun them!" he cried as the ground seemed to suck up all his stamina and speed.
She pointed ahead of them. "We might in that quad-jumper!"
A quad-engine ship in the distance appeared to be their destination. It didn't look very sturdy, but it was certainly preferable to running like hell through the desert.
"We need a pilot!" he shot back.
Well, that was a bit offensive as far as she was concerned. "We've got one!" She responded.
His eyes widened in shock, "You?!"
She didn't answer, just kept running toward the old jumper. She knew that they didn't have much time before those Tie-fighters, the ones that her would-be rescuer had warned her about, came back and finished the job. Rey had no idea how he'd known that the fighter was coming, but she was grateful he'd recognized a danger that she hadn't.
Sand exploded all around them as they ran, the little droid rolling frantically along side the humans. With an unerring accuracy, Rey managed to stay one step ahead of the canon blasts.
"What about that one?" he pointed at the old freighter hidden under some tattered tarps. It was a rust bucket, but it was closer.
She glanced over; the thing hadn't flown for as long as Rey could remember. In fact, she was pretty sure the only reason Plutt still held onto it was because it would cost more to dispose of the thing than just letting the sand and time break it down to elemental metal.
"That one? It's garbage!" She yelled back and redoubled her efforts to reach the other vessel.
It had never occurred to her to wonder why she seemed to have such good luck when evading an attacker, but at the moment she could only hope that her luck was enough to save all of them. Gritty sand slipped past her parted lips and she coughed while trying to wipe it from her mouth. For all that she'd spent her life on Jakku, Rey really hated the sand. It got into everything and settled into every crack and crevice in the most uncomfortable way.
Heat seared her arm as the jumper they'd been running toward blew apart in a spectacular spray of sparks and heated metal slag. Staggering to a stop, she blinked in surprise and then immediately turned toward the old rust bucket. The resistance fighter stumbled and then blinked in disbelief at the smoldering pile junk.
"The garbage will do." She called as she passed a stunned droid and the guy helping her.
Their flight off the planet was less than stealthy and it was lucky that they both had skills the other one knew nothing about. Rey could pilot anything with an engine and apparently her new-found friend could use any type of blaster canon with a great deal of accuracy. Which was lucky since a particularly lucky hit jammed the cannon turret in the up position.
The sound of the spherical droid rolling and bouncing around the central corridor sent a pang of regret through Rey. She didn't like causing pain to anything, mechanical or organic and BB- didn't sound like he was enjoying their escape any more than she was. Once they were safely out of Jakku's system, she set the auto pilot and went back to speak with him. Finn, he'd said his name was Finn. Like her Finn hadn't stated a family name, just a single name that identified who they were. It made her want to trust him.
Leaning around him she saw the little BB unit watching them intently. He'd said that he needed to get to the resistance fighters. She had been surprised to hear that. Whatever he was carrying was important, important enough for the First Order to issue a kill strike against anyone seen aiding the little droid. Which meant that she was now on their strike list too. Fantastic, I rescue a droid and now I'm being hunted by the entire First Order. This is not how I thought this day would go.
Several days later, Takodana Planet - Maz's Palace - Rey
The imminent departure of Finn wasn't sitting well with Rey. She needed him and he needed her, at least that was what she'd thought until he walked out on her. The sense of abandonment was every bit as keen as it had been when she'd been a child. It had felt like the betrayal her own family had put her through.
Worse even, because neither she nor Finn had anything to gain by walking away…and everything to lose. Her heart ached at the thought of losing Finn. She'd grown to care for him in the short time they'd been together.
Although, they had almost died on multiple occasions during that time, so that might have had something to do with her growing feelings of attachment. An anguished cry from somewhere behind her pulled her attention away from Finn's retreating back. It was the voice of a little girl, a very scared little girl.
Rey moved through the maze of people like she knew where she was going, which she definitely did not. A long wide set up stone steps loomed before her, the gray stone hiding hints of moss. They headed into a basement corridor, and Rey had to follow these steps. She didn't understand why, but she needed to know where they went and what was at the bottom of them. In the distance she could hear the echoing sounds of the young girl, and she was crying. The 'clunk' 'clunk' 'clunk' of BB-8 was somewhat comforting as she descended into the lowly lit basement.
A door at the end seemed to call her forward, Rey's eyes dropped to the lock and suddenly the door swung open. The room was dark, small, but with storage containers strewn throughout. Some of the items could have been worth a lot of money, but none of them call to Rey like the single chest sitting under a decade's layer of dust.
The complete absence of fear should have been a warning, but Rey was too intent on the wooden box to realize it. Hesitant, she reached out and slowly opened the lid. Inside, a silver-hilted item sat resting in the blue velvet cloth. Her desire to touch it was like looking into the flames of Ragna, she knew she should look away, but she couldn't. Rey's trembling fingers unfolded before they closed about the silver hilt. The sudden mechanical breathing caught her off guard.
The Forest – Kylo Ren
He felt it the moment she tapped into the Force, the moment her mind connected with the ancient cosmic power. The fluctuation between light and dark was unlike anything he'd experienced. Sinking back against the seat in his ship, Ren focused on feeling her through the rippling layers of the Force. His dreams had been blissfully free of her presence for some time, but he was still aware of her. He was always aware of her.
But this time it was more. This wasn't a dream or a Force-driven vision, at least not for him. This time something was happening that was specifically focused on the girl. Her emotions were familiar to him, not so dissimilar from his own. The clear memory of his clash with the power behind this Force reminded Ren that he'd been through this before. This was the actual manifestation of the dream that had confused and frustrated him for the past several months.
The girl was finally catching up to where he had already been…and now they were racing down twin paths that led to an unknown future. He heart skipped a beat in excitement, he was enthralled by this unforeseen set of events in his life.
He needed to find her, to see the conflict inside her mind. Would it mimic his?...
Endor Moon – Present Day
The turbulent violence of the water crashing around them was a visceral reminder of their lives. He brought his lightsaber down against her over and over and yet he couldn't quite bring himself to deal the final strike. Ren couldn't kill her. Something kept holding him back, at least it had been until that final moment when she'd stumbled under the weight of her family's past and her fear of the future.
He could save her from all of this. He could give her the sense of balance she sought without the fear. His feelings for Rey were complicated in a way that had only made sense when he'd found the source of their connection. A dyad in the Force. He and Rey shared something that was only every whispered about in the Jedi's ancient texts. Even they'd never actually witnessed one, only heard about it from others.
But standing over her, with her life in his hands Ren knew they were destined for something great. His gaze dropped to her tortured face and he realized that he didn't want to put her through that. The parts of her that would be destroyed if she gave in to her darker urges were the parts that he found so fascinating. So in a moment of grace, Kylo Ren decided to release her from that burden.
Lifting his saber, he prepared to do the most unselfish thing he'd ever done; he prepared to kill the girl he'd fallen in love with. Was it because of the Force? Maybe. But he preferred to think that it was more to do with her soul. After all, they were "two that were one".
TBC…
Author's Note: Time jump forward…I just wanted to set the scene from the first meeting and then kick Rey and Ben into their futures. Life is going to get difficult for them both as they continue down this path of discovery. I'm fairly certain neither Finn nor Poe would be as forgiving as Rey was about Ben Solo's past as Kylo Ren.
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