Notes: Apologies for the delay in posting this chapter, but it's a long one. Buckle up, because things are starting to happen.

She ran as fast as her legs would carry her, weaving through the crowds of Coruscant like they weren't even there. The Force guided her, showing her obstacles before she reached them and aiding her feet in flight until she was a blur. She didn't know where she was going, only that she needed to get away from Coruscant. Somewhere far, far away from Finn and Poe and everything that they represented.

Now that she had seen him – bathed in light, a beacon in the Force – she knew that she couldn't stay here. Now that she had seen what a Jedi could be – what a Jedi should be – she knew that she couldn't compare. As soon as the others saw that, she would be exposed for the fraud that she was. An impostor posing as a Jedi. She was an aberration. An anomaly. A product of unnatural meddling in the dark.

Nobody could know the truth.

Rey had once told Finn that she was afraid no one knew her, but, at the time, it hadn't been strictly true. Throughout everything, he had been there. He had understood her like no one else ever could, because he, too, knew what it was to feel the creep of the dark. To feel the weight of a doomed bloodline on your shoulders. To feel that destiny was branded into your very bones.

She once thought she had known loneliness, crouched in the darkness of a hollowed-out Star Destroyer, nursing a broken arm and an empty stomach, and waiting for the flesh-flaying winds of the X'us'R'iia to pass. For three days, she had blinked away tears in that sightless gloom, clutching her injured humerus and whispering words of comfort to herself, trying desperately to believe in them. At one point, she was sure that the groaning heap of corroding metalwork would collapse on top of her, and for a fleeting moment, she had wished that it would.

In the end, the storms passed – as they always did – and she survived. No matter how bad things got, Rey had always survived, propelled ever forwards by some unfathomable instinct to live. Some supernatural sense that better things were waiting for her somewhere beyond the storm clouds. She supposed now that it had been him all along – the other half of her soul singing to her from the unknown.

But now, he was gone. Now, she knew loneliness.

There was too much at stake. She had taken her eye off the ball, and she would suffer the consequences. She thought she could hide her secrets, perhaps indefinitely, but circumstances had changed. Finn was strong with the Force – that much was obvious. What would happen when he detected the darkness in her? What would happen when he saw the evil that was burned into her very DNA?

Once upon a time, she would have given anything to know her family. Now, the truth of her heritage was a curse she wished she could forget. Her bloodline had already cost her everything – robbed her of her happy ending when it was finally in reach. She had already lost him; she didn't think she could bear to lose Finn as well. To be cast out by the only real family she ever had would destroy her. She couldn't risk it. She couldn't lose him like that.

She couldn't lose him like that, so she would lose him on her own terms. He could take it; she knew he could. Finn was a pillar of strength – perhaps the strongest person she knew. He'd been taken from his family, indoctrinated and abused, raised to fight for a cause he didn't believe in, but he had still found the courage to get out. He had been presented with so many opportunities to run in the opposite direction, but ultimately, he had chosen to stay and fight for the right thing every time. Anybody in his shoes could have given in to resentment and hatred, and nobody would have blamed them. But Finn was good. Even as she had said unspeakable things, wanting to wound him with her words, the dark couldn't touch him. He actively repelled it – and that was why she had to leave.

Maybe he wouldn't understand at first. Maybe it would hurt him for a while, but in time, he would accept it. In time, he would forget her.

o-o-o

She tugged on the sheet which had been covering the Falcon, letting it billow to the ground in one swift movement. She had been storing it in the disused hangar that the Alliance had put aside for her use – perhaps they expected it might one day be home to a new Jedi fleet, or perhaps they just wanted the piece of junk tucked away somewhere it wouldn't be seen – but she had kept the ship in good repair. In fact, the Falcon was probably in the best condition it had ever been in the years Rey had been flying it.

Fixing up the ancient freighter had been another project of hers – something to work on when the Engineering Corps had nothing to offer her – but she hadn't expected to fly it again. Although Rey had inherited the vessel (mostly because nobody else wanted it), she never really felt like it was hers. It reminded her too much of a grizzly old man with creases around his eyes: symbols of a life marked by joy and pain. It conjured up too many imaginings of a toddler with a mess of black hair tearing around the place, a beautiful future still stretched out before him. She had offered it to Chewbacca before he had returned to Kashyyyk, but he had refused, enveloping her in a rare embrace. He didn't offer an explanation, but she imagined that whatever feelings she had about the Falcon, Chewie's were more painful still.

Thus, it was with a heavy heart that Rey boarded the Corellian YT model freighter now. She stowed the meagre belongings she owned – a cloak, her blaster, his sweater – snatched up from her military bedroom without so much as a backward glance, then made her way to the cockpit. The ship was not designed to be flown by a single pilot, but Rey had piloted the Falcon alone more often than not. She had managed before, and she would manage now.

She ran her pre-flight checks, initiated the launch sequence, then fired up the engines, pleased to hear them purr into life without a stutter. She switched on the comms to request clearance for take-off, then leaned back in the pilot chair. The skies over Coruscant were the busiest in the galaxy, and the volume of traffic to clear was astronomic on the best of days. She would be awaiting permission for some time, and that gave her plenty of time to think about her next steps.

Rey didn't have anywhere to fly home to. The closest thing she had to a home was an AT-AT in the Jakku desert, but if she never returned to that junkyard again, it would be too soon. Her parents were born and raised on Exegol, but even Jakku seemed like a pleasant, wholesome place next to Exegol. She had spent a year on Ajan Kloss, and she had liked it there at first. The planet was verdant and peaceful – the polar opposite to Jakku – but even that lush jungle had eventually become yet another place associated with violence and despair. After the war, she had returned to Ajan Kloss a changed person and it had never seemed the same again. Of course, Leia had died there, too.

So where could she go? She supposed that she could try one of the planets that Finn had mentioned. Naboo sounded wonderful, but then again, she had no credits save for the modest allowance afforded her by the Alliance. She doubted her paltry fortune would go far in a place like Naboo, and considering the circumstances under which she was leaving, she could hardly invoke her status as a war hero. No, she needed a contact. A free agent.

Maz, her brain supplied. She chewed her lip as she considered it.

Did she really want to go back to Takodana? She cast her mind back to that fateful day: the day she had met Finn, and Han, and him. Before she had understood the Force, she had thought it was destiny that led her to Takodana that day. When she touched the Skywalker saber, it had set an unstoppable chain of events into action. At the time, Rey simply couldn't believe that she had some part to play in the story. She had denied it, turned away from the part of her that roared to life when her fingers made contact with the lightsaber. Now, of course, she knew better. Now, she understood that it was her first step on the preordained path laid out for her by the universe. It was the Force. It was always the Force.

These days, it had been a long time since she'd felt the inexorable pull of the Force, willing events into action. Master Skywalker had been wrong about a lot of things on Ahch-To, but on one thing, he had been absolutely right: the Force was not a weapon that Rey wielded. Rather, it was the other way around. The Jedi were merely vessels for the Force to enact its will, and it was only in the dark depths of Exegol that she had truly come to understand Master Skywalker's first lesson. She had given herself freely to the Force – channelling it through her crude being, trusting its will implicitly – and it had rewarded her by ripping out half of her soul.

Needless to say, she didn't place much faith in the Force these days. I'll always be with you, he had told her, but she hadn't heard a whisper out of him. Out of any of them for that matter. To Rey, it felt like the Force had used her to complete its grand design, then disappeared entirely. Perhaps she was listening too hard, or perhaps it had given up on her completely – decided Finn was a better candidate these days.

Whatever the answer, it seemed like the Force had withdrawn from Rey in the moment she needed it the most. And yet–

–as though it had sensed her distress, the atoms around Rey began to vibrate. The comms crackled to life. A disembodied voice gave her permission for take-off, and her thirty second departure window began its countdown.

'It's now or never,' she deliberated out loud. She didn't have to leave. She could turn off the engine and go back. She could apologise to Finn. She could tell him the truth. Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi…

But perhaps the Force wasn't done with her yet. She eased the throttle forward and pulled back on the control yoke. Takodana it was.

o-o-o

Takodana Castle was still a work in progress. After it had been destroyed by the First Order in 0 ASI, Maz had been in no rush to rebuild. It wasn't good business to start the process of reconstruction in the middle of a galactic war, so she had joined the fight instead, taking up the role of advisor to General Leia Organa. Some time after the Battle of Exegol, Maz had returned to Takodana in the hopes of restoring her once renowned establishment. Long ago, the grounds around the castle had been the site of great battles between the Jedi and the Sith, and, as such, the New Alliance had an historical interest in the location. With their financial backing, work on carefully rebuilding the ancient fortress on the shores of Nymeve Lake could begin.

Rey found out all of this information from a dedicatory plaque at the front of the castle. Apparently, it had been assigned status as a 'Site of Historical Significance', citing not only the Jedi catacombs that lay beneath the fortress, but also its decisive role in the story of Rey Skywalker, the last of the Jedi.

She had turned away at that, pulling the hood of her cloak closer around her face. It seemed like Takodana might not be the escape she had been looking for. Her eyes wandered across the lake to the clearing where she had left the Falcon – the same place Han had landed it all those years ago – and, for a moment, she considered trying elsewhere. Then, she imagined the arduous procedure of clambering back aboard the ship, finding somewhere to refuel, and setting course for another planet. It would be another few days of sleepless hyperspace travel, and her body screamed at the prospect. It was already dusk on Takodana, and the fading light had a sedative effect after the white-blue blur of hyperspace.

Rey eyed the imposing towers dubiously. Silhouetted against the evening sky, the castle loomed over her ominously. It wasn't exactly a welcoming sight, but what awaited within was tempting. Traditionally, Maz had offered one free night of food, water, and shelter to travellers in need – provided they didn't bring trouble her way. Rey certainly wasn't looking for trouble, and her heavy limbs and groaning stomach couldn't resist the possibility of a warm bed and a proper meal. Besides, she had to admit that what was left of her heart had sang at the sight of the sprawling forests. She sighed, and reluctantly made her way inside.

It was quieter than the first time she had visited. She imagined that the shiny New Alliance plaque outside put off some of the less savoury characters, but it was still busy enough that Rey felt the need to keep her head down as she made her way to the bar. It looked much the same as it used to, owing, she supposed, to the restoration order that the Alliance had slapped on the place. A band played a downbeat tune in the corner, a hunk of meat was roasting over a roaring hearth, and rowdy patrons sat in gaggles around the tables, swapping stories and credits. Thankfully, most of them were too drunk to pay her any mind.

She knew that Maz had probably sensed her approaching, but perhaps it was obvious that Rey didn't want to be noticed, because the pirate queen did not draw attention to her arrival. She merely peered at the younger woman through those huge round lenses, handing her tray to a passing waiter as Rey came to an awkward stop in front of her. Maz appraised her shrewdly.

'You look more like a Sith than a Jedi in that get up,' she stated, gesturing to Rey's all black attire.

Rey cringed. Maz knew the Force too well to say something like that completely in jest. Then again, perhaps she was reading into things, because suddenly Maz laughed and slapped her on the thigh. She motioned for Rey to follow her to a quiet table in the corner, ordering a plate of everything they had from the Devaronian pottering around the open kitchen on the way there.

For a long while, they sat in silence as Rey ate. She must have worked up an appetite during the excitement of the last few days, because after two years of surviving almost entirely on ration bars, she suddenly wanted to inhale everything in sight. Maybe it was the change in scenery, maybe it was the company, or maybe it was the food itself, but to her surprise, Rey found herself shovelling Takodana fare into her mouth with the voracity of a krayt dragon. She ate buttered bantha, flash-fried zuchii, grilled sisofish, and Ithorian garden loaf, all washed down with a cold cup of daro root beer. She would have preferred something stronger but didn't have the guts to ask. After all, Jedi probably weren't supposed to drink alcohol.

When Rey had finally eaten her fill, the wizened old woman leaned forward expectantly, cutting right to the chase with her line of questioning. 'Well? Why are you here?'

Rey avoided her gaze. Nothing good could come of looking Maz in the eye. 'Just a visit.'

Maz narrowed her eyes. 'When you've lived for a thousand years, it's easy to spot a liar.'

Suitably chastised, Rey turned her face down, cheeks burning in embarrassment. She didn't know why she had thought she could avoid having this conversation with Maz. If she was being honest with herself, it was the entire reason she'd come here. She desperately needed to talk to someone older and wiser. She needed someone who understood all of this to tell her what to do.

Rey looked – really looked – at the little woman. Her orange skin was wrinkled and fragile, and sparse white hair sprouted in wisps from the top of her head. She was the only one of her kind that Rey had ever met, and she knew nothing about Maz's species, but she thought that after a thousand years in this galaxy, the pirate queen was probably approaching her twilight years. However, nothing about her suggested weakness or frailty. Her expression was warm and open, but her eyes were bright and sharp. They were a dead giveaway for the fiery spirit that resided within her diminutive form, and they were searching Rey's face now.

'Many years ago, you came to this castle with your friend, Finn,' she began carefully. 'Back then, I told him that he had the eyes of someone who wanted to run.'

She tentatively reached out to touch Rey's hand.

'You have those same eyes now.'

Rey didn't react. She was not shocked or offended by Maz's observation – it was true, after all. She was on the run. She bit her lip and stared down at the place where Maz's fingers were resting on her own.

'I have a secret,' she divulged. 'Lots of secrets, actually. Things I can't tell anyone.'

She swallowed, fighting back the tears that were already springing to her bloodshot eyes. 'But the weight of them is something I don't know how to carry,' she continued. 'Before… there was someone. Someone who understood, but now they're gone, and I'm alone.'

She looked up at Maz to gauge her reaction, but her expression was calm and unchanged. They could have been discussing the weather, for all anyone knew. She nodded encouragingly, and Rey pressed on.

'I have all this knowledge and experience, I'm supposed to know what to do,' she mumbled. 'Everyone expects me to start a new Jedi Order, but I can't do it. I feel like I'm barely holding on.'

Her voice dropped to a whisper. 'And I don't trust myself.'

She couldn't work up the nerve to say what she really meant. That her breathing was becoming more and more painful with every waking minute. That her connection to the light felt tenuous and shaky, like it might snap at any moment. That she was a fraud – a Palpatine masquerading as a Skywalker.

Still, Maz did not react to her confession with fear or disgust. During the millennium she had been alive, the pirate queen had seen generations of Jedi rise and fall. She had lived through the Clone Wars – had seen the Jedi overlook what was right under their noses. She was not trained in the Force, but she understood it instinctively. For Maz, the Force was not muddied by tradition and protocol the way it sometimes had been for the Jedi. In fact, she had been the first person to show Rey the Force. It had been a rudimentary lesson, but perhaps the most important one that Rey had learned – more important than anything in those dusty old books. The Force was an instinct, and instinct was something that Rey was sorely lacking these days.

'You've lost your faith in the Force,' Maz said simply, and Rey did not deny it.

'Luke, Leia, Han…' She trailed off before she added his name to the list. 'They're all gone because the Force required it. How am I supposed to make peace with so much death and suffering?'

'The will of the Force does not always make sense to our mortal minds,' Maz admitted. 'But, my child, no one is ever really gone. You must take courage from that.'

Rey resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She hadn't come here to listen to meaningless platitudes. 'Then where are they? Why don't they answer me?'

'The light will always guide those who are listening.'

Rey pulled her hand away, bristling at the older woman's implication. 'I do nothing but listen. For years, I've waited for a sign… a signal… anything to guide me.' She faltered. 'But now that the Sith are gone, it's like the Force has abandoned me. I can feel it – the Force is always around me – but it doesn't flow through me anymore. Not unless I bend it to my will.'

Maz's brows drew together imperceptibly. She chose her next words carefully. 'You feel alone and afraid.' She hesitated before she continued. 'But, my dear child, a Jedi who is shrouded in fear and anger cannot follow the light. Fear is the path to the da–'

'The dark side. I know.'

Maz regarded her thoughtfully, and her brown eyes were penetrating. Rey recoiled from the pity that shone there.

'Child, let the dead rest. Let them go,' Maz said softly. 'The light will guide you if you let it.'

Rey said nothing. She merely stared at the bottom of her cup, utterly shattered by the pirate queen's closing statement. She felt numb. If Maz didn't understand what she was going through, no one would. If Maz couldn't help her, no one could.

o-o-o

Her accommodation was austere, fitted only with the bare necessities: a small but comfortable bed, basic refresher facilities, and a sizeable trunk for the temporary storage of personal items. Starlight fell in pale streaks through the tall, narrow windows which stretched the length of the outer wall, and the remnants of a fire were dying in a stone fireplace. Its embers cast long shadows against the cold flagstones. Normally, Rey wouldn't have minded, but she was feeling more afraid of the dark than usual. Thus, she wasted no time in lighting the simple oil lamp that was perched atop the ancient trunk. She threw another log on the fire for good measure, too.

Satisfied, she stripped out of her cloak and her jumpsuit, and changed into her night clothes. It was not summer on Takodana, and her pajamas were thin, so she pulled the sheets from the bed, too. She wrapped them around her to ward away the night's chill as she settled down by the window. It had been so long since she had looked upon nature, and she had missed it, even when it was shrouded in darkness as was the case now.

She leaned her head against the glass and sighed. Now that she was alone with her thoughts, far from the hustle and bustle of Coruscant, she felt the weight of everything that had happened. She cast her mind back over the events of the last few days, and found herself replaying her conversation with Finn over and over. In particular, she thought about that fateful night on Ajan Kloss. It had never seemed important before, but now, it was all she could think about.

After the war, she had been hurting, cleaved in two by the events that had transpired. Yet, she still had hope. She had to trust that everything – all of the unique losses she had suffered – was part of some greater design that would one day make sense to her. If a Force dyad was as rare and as powerful as her grandfather had said, she couldn't believe that he was truly gone. So, she put her faith in the Force, and she waited. After all, she had spent so many years waiting. What were a few more?

Very quickly, however, Rey's plan went awry. After Exegol, she had listened for him, keeping her end of their bond open at all times. I'll always be with you, he had said, and she had believed him. After all, he had never lied to her before. Yet, as time went on, Rey's old doubts started to creep in. She waited, but still, the other end of the bond remained cold and quiet.

It had only been a few weeks since Exegol when the panic began to set in, but it had felt like a lifetime to Rey. Thus, she decided to change tactics. Waiting for her parents on Jakku had not worked out, she concluded, so why would anything be different now? She decided that the Force was waiting for her to take a more proactive approach, so she gathered up the Jedi texts and she locked herself away. She studied the books until the words became meaningless symbols. She meditated until she could barely remember her own name. She reached out in the Force, further than she had ever achieved before, and then further still. She spent days in a trance-like state, navigating the planes of the Force in search of anything that would lead her to him.

It was when she awoke, tears streaming down her face, that she heard that small voice at the back of her mind whisper the unthinkable.

He's never coming back.

Even the memory of that dark night made her heart squeeze when she thought of it now. It was the evening that her faith in the Force had begun to waver. She had wrecked the place and left the Jedi texts to whatever fate befell them. Now, of course, she knew that Finn had rescued the books, but for two years, she believed that they had been compressed into a palm sized square and transported to some backwater planet for processing, never to be seen again. She hadn't even cared.

She gazed out at the black forest that swelled over the hills beyond the lake, and thought about what Maz had said. She knew that she had darkness in her, but she had always tried to resist it once she knew what it was. When lightning shot from her fingertips, she had been afraid of the raw power that she had felt coursing through her limbs. When she had plunged a lightsaber into the torso of a broken man, she had felt neither satisfaction nor pleasure. She had simply felt shame and regret.

Yet, it seemed like time and time again, the dark came for Rey, and it was getting harder and harder to resist its call. She could feel it ebbing and flowing at the edges of her consciousness, inching ever closer like a rising tide. It whispered to her – made promises that the light couldn't – but the thing that scared her the most wasn't the dark itself.

It was that now it felt good.

In the moments she let the dark settle into the cracks in her soul, the pain eased just a little. Enough that she could breathe again. Enough that she could think clearly for a moment. She told herself that it was just a coping mechanism – a way to keep her grief at bay so that she could survive – but now, amongst the shadows of Takodana Castle, she wasn't so sure. If the Force could just give her a sign, then she would hold out. It didn't have to be him, but if someone would just point her in the right direction, then she would find the strength to resist.

She just didn't know how much longer she could wait.

A quiet knock on the door snapped her out of her spiralling misery. She hastily wiped her tears away, and padded over to the repurposed blast door, hitting a button on the keypad to open it. It hissed open to reveal Maz, looking up at her with hesitant eyes. In her small orange hands was a hefty wooden chest that Rey had seen before. It had been battered and damaged since the last time she laid eyes on it, but it gave her the same sinking sensation that it had back then.

'May I come in?'

Rey wordlessly stepped aside to let the pirate queen by, then shut the door behind her. Maz made her way to foot of the bed, and carefully placed the box atop the large trunk there. She turned to Rey, but when she spoke, her voice lacked some of its usual resolve.

'Humans have such short lives, even when they make it to a ripe and full age for their species,' she began, looking at Rey meaningfully. 'I knew Han Solo for most of his adult life. The time I knew him was like the blink of an eye for one of my kind, and yet, his memory shines brighter than those of some I knew far longer.'

She sighed, and for a moment, her tiny frame seemed even smaller.

'He was not always a good man. He made many mistakes, and he was not always there for those who needed him.' She paused. 'Though I never met Ben Solo–'

Rey gasped, the air stolen from her lungs at the mention of his name. She had not said it herself in two years. Her knees grew weak, and she threw an arm against the wall to steady herself.

Maz waited for her to recover before she continued. 'Though I did not know Han's son, I do not believe that people are born good or evil.'

'As Kylo Ren, he did terrible things. Terrible things...' She paused to appraise Rey. Satisfied with whatever she saw in Rey's face, she continued, 'But nobody is beyond redemption.'

She opened the box, and Rey's world came crashing down on her. Now, she really did sink to her knees, for there in Maz's curio box was the helmet that had haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember. It was perfectly preserved, exactly as she remembered it from the last time she had ever seen him wear it. Red fissures trickled like blood across the surface, and the silver mask glinted in the firelight. She couldn't look at it.

'I have collected objects that speak to me through the Force for as long as I can remember. Once, you retrieved the Skywalker saber from this very box. Now, the Force tells me that you must have this, too.'

She stepped forward and grasped Rey's hands in her own. 'I sense that you are connected to him in some way. I will never understand the Force the way a Jedi does, but I hope that this will make things right once and for all.' She gently lifted Rey's chin so that their eyes met. 'I believe that the Force will be with you now and always.'

She cupped Rey's face in her hands, and brushed a falling tear away with her thumb. Rey closed her eyes, savouring the rare physical contact which was over all too soon. Maz stepped away and made for the door. Before she left, she turned back towards the younger woman.

'Have faith, my child. The Force will guide you.'

The door slid closed behind her, and it felt like whatever fate awaited Rey had been sealed. It was quiet, save for the fire crackling away in the hearth. She felt like she should do something, but she was overwhelmed by the sinking sensation that everything was about to change. Rey turned and looked at the helmet that had once been so familiar to her. She supposed something would happen if she touched it, but found that she wasn't ready to see whatever the mask held in store. Not yet, at least.

Whatever the Force wanted to show her could wait, she decided. She extinguished the lamp, then gathered the bedsheets from the floor and clambered onto the soft mattress. She hadn't slept in a warm bed with a full stomach for far too long. She was going to savour it, and nothing could stop her. Not even the Force.

o-o-o

Rey.

Her eyes snapped open. She shot up in bed, bewildered for a moment by her surroundings. The room was in almost total darkness now, lit only by the weak light of far-off stars that flooded through the long windows. It had been so long since she'd slept anywhere other than her military bedroom on Coruscant that her brain struggled to make sense of the odd shapes and shadows in the unfamiliar room. She fixed her eyes on an indeterminate point in the blackness and waited for her vision to adjust, mentally willing her childish fear of the dark away as she gazed into the gloom.

She should have known better than to believe that she would sleep soundly. It had been years since she'd slept through the night, plagued as she was by nightmares and insomnia. She had been foolish to hope that a change of scenery would make any difference. Still, she wasn't used to being woken by ghostly whispers in the dark.

Rey roved her eyes across the room now, looking for the source of the voice. As she expected, she was alone, but the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. Things were eerily quiet. The air around her was heavy with the Force, practically crackling with foreboding, and she had the acute sense that events she could not control were in motion. The stage was set, and it was time for Rey to move.

Any traces of lingering drowsiness disappeared, and she was alert now. Reluctantly, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, gasping a little when her feet touched the cold flagstones. Now that the fire had died, the room was chilly. She shivered and gathered the sheets around her shoulders, pulling them close as she padded over to the trunk. It loomed into view as she approached, and she stopped dead, stifling a gasp.

The chest – which Rey knew she had shut – was open.

Of course, she should have expected this. Hesitantly, she stepped closer, resisting the urge to avert her eyes from the silver mask that stared back at her. Her heart was thudding in her chest, and her ears were filled with static.

She knew that something would happen if she touched it, but found that she was terrified of the idea. She had spent so long imagining his face behind the mask that now she couldn't comprehend the idea of the mask without his face behind it. She had horrific ideas of lifting the helmet, only for his lifeless head to fall out the bottom of it. She imagined it rolling across the floor before coming to a stop at her feet, his cold, dead eyes staring blindly up at her.

She had been waiting for this moment for so long, but now that it had arrived, she was afraid of what the future held. In her experience, Force visions were tricky affairs – ambiguous and difficult to interpret. The weight of her next move felt crushing, but the Force was everywhere now, willing her forwards.

She blew out a long breath in an attempt to calm her nerves, then reached out.

Her fingers made contact with the cold metal–

–but nothing happened.

She was puzzled for a moment before the stomach-turning realisation set in. She was supposed to put it on.

She shook her head and barked out a dry laugh. She should have learned to expect such sick practical jokes from the Force by now. She gathered her courage, swallowing down the bile that was rising in her throat, and lifted the helmet with both hands.

She let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding when her worst nightmare didn't materialise. With renewed determination, she engaged the servomotor mechanism, and the mouth plate opened with a rasp that sent shivers – good and bad – down Rey's spine. She stared down at the mask, and it stared back at her. This was it.

She raised the helmet above her head and brought it down over her eyes.

Her stomach lurched sideways as she was transported to a stormy ocean moon that she had seen before. The rain was coming down in droves, and enormous waves were battering the wreckage of the second Death Star. She was standing in the exact spot that she had left him all those years ago, but she was alone now. She cast her eyes this way and that, searching the ruins wildly, but there was no sign of anyone else.

A cacophony of whispers from the depths of the ocean drew her gaze downwards, and she peered into the frothing grey water.

There was a light at the bottom of the ocean. A familiar red glow was emanating from the deep, calling for her. Without thinking, she threw her hand out–

–and the vision shifted. She was on a desert planet – Jakku? Tatooine? Pasaana? – where the sunset had stained the sky blood red. Before her, a hulking mobile fortress rose out of the sand, the dunes around it littered with debris, but it was not moving. She ran towards it, faltering slightly as the debris came into clearer view. She carried on moving forwards, squinting at the approaching mess. It wasn't scrap metal or rock, like she had assumed. It was – just a little closer – bits of cloth or spare rags or–

She clapped her hand over her mouth. They were bodies.

There were tens of tiny bodies swaddled in brown cloaks strewn across the sand. She raced forwards, praying to the Force that they weren't children. Her eyes were streaming as she approached one of the tiny lifeless forms and threw herself to her knees beside it. She reached down to turn it over–

–and she was kneeling over his dead body, sobbing as he faded into the Force before her very eyes. She screamed out–

–and she was nowhere. Her surroundings were shapeless and shadowy, but she could hear something. Somewhere in the gloom, a girl was crying.

She tried to run towards the sound, but found that she was injured. She hobbled forwards as best she could, desperate to reach the familiar presence that she felt. It seemed she was making no progress, when suddenly, out of the shadows, the girl was there.

But it was her. She was looking at herself, and it seemed like the other Rey was looking back at her. There were tears running down her other self's face, but her eyes were wide and hopeful. Her fingertips were pressed against an invisible barrier, reaching out. Rey raised her hand, too, rushing forward with a strange desperation now. Their hands were almost touching, she just needed to reach a bit further–

–but the girl was gone. Rey was standing at the side of a burning lake. The air around her was thick with smoke, and the sky above was red and hazy, but there were saplings growing here. Young trees sprouted out of the charred landscape. This planet had once been dead, but now, there was new life here.

She looked down into the still waters at her feet, and her heart stopped. It was him. He was there below the surface, looking back at her now. He was wearing his helmet and his cloak – strange – but that didn't matter. She had finally found him, and now she would bring him back.

She reached down, and he stretched his hand out towards hers. Down, down, until her fingers grasped the water – but he did not take her hand. Perplexed, she swiped at the water, reaching for him again and again until she realised with horror – it was not him. It was her reflection.

She was Kylo Ren.

Rey ripped the helmet off, gasping for air as she blinked sweat and tears from her eyes. Her fingernails clawed at the flagstones for purchase, keen to find solid ground. She felt shaky and nauseous. The Force vision had been every bit as disturbing as she expected, but as she caught her breath, Rey felt a sense of renewed purpose rising within her.

She gathered the helmet in her arms, and rose to unsteady feet.

She couldn't spend another night in this castle.

Not now she knew where she was going.

Notes: I hope the next update will come a little bit sooner, but I am working on another fic which I'm posting on the 14th. However, stay tuned, because next time we're catching up with a certain someone!