Swathed in dark robes, Snoke sits high above the amphitheatre. Tall narrow arches surround his throne. Empty chairs set in a semicircle face his words. Age finds him in every part of his body; fingers long and thin. Eyes sunken and hollow. The skin of his lips are dry, his breaths are slow.

Sarhu drops to her knee as she enters. She bows her head.

"Supreme Leader Snoke," she says. General Hux stands beside her. Snoke holds up a hand in greeting.

"To business," he says languidly as she stands, holding her hands behind her back. His forefinger curls to touch his palm.

"I have heard some grievous news. The droid is soon to be delivered to the Resistance." His hollow eyes focus on Hux. "This will lead them to the last Jedi. If Skywalker returns… the new Jedi will rise."

"Supreme Leader," Hux begins, "I take full responsibility for—"

"General!" Snoke's rage fills the antechamber. Hux twitches; Sarhu Ren gives nothing. Snoke settles back into his seat. "Responsibility is not what I seek," he remarks, his rage a thing of a sudden past. "I seek strategy – and ours must change."

"The weapon, it is ready. I believe the time has come to use it." Snoke is silent as Hux speaks. Sarhu turns her head to see Hux, desperate for approval, and confident now that he speaks of war. "We shall destroy the government that supports the Resistance – the Republic. Without their friends to protect them, the Resistance will be vulnerable and we will stop them before they reach Skywalker."

Sarhu focuses her gaze on Snoke. His interest is piqued.

"Go," he says. "Oversee preparations."

Destruction had made the Empire what it was. Destruction, it is clear, will make the First Order what it is too. Hux wears a sneer, malicious, and all at once he is too young for his uniform and rank. A faint, constant pain scratches underneath her skin. She swallows.

Snoke is once again thoughtful. "There is something I must confess to you, Sarhu. You alone. The droid we seek is aboard the Millennium Falcon. In the hands of your son – Ben Solo."

You saved him, Leia. Save him again.

Words to another woman. One long dead.

"That is of no matter."

"You have performed great feats for me." He gives a wry, gruesome smile. "You have raised the Knights of Ren to a position in the galaxy I once only dreamed of. Does the name Ben Solo truly mean nothing to you?"

She is silent for a moment.

"It never did."

The drink is off-planet, brought in by an off-planet human with boots wet with rain, green with grass. His face is lined by age, his clothes too expensive for Jakku. His black hair has flecks of grey, and he has a laugh in his throat. Seeing him in the heat of Jakku's day, bartering with a scavenger, Rey thinks him beautiful. He possesses the kind of beauty she'd once found in a wilting flower.

She finds him again in Jakku's night. He is hunkered underneath a piece of tarpaulin that flaps against Jakku's desert wind. His cape is swathed around him. A distance away, huddling together in the shelter of a campfire, his bottles clink against the teeth of Plutt and his men. They laugh. There is talk of long lost days, when they were leaner, fitter and could go anywhere. (It is hard to believe there was ever a time Plutt could've moved anywhere but Jakku.)

Laughing too hard at one of his boss' jokes, a thug kicks at a full bottle. It falls onto its side and rolls down the shallow dune. It lands with a soft bump against Rey's foot. She bends down and picks it up. The glass is blue, of some ancient time, a stamp she does not recognise carved into its side. Rey glances back to her quadjumper, heavy with her loot for the day. Plutt will be too drunk to value what she has, let alone care what it is.

She sets down her quarterstaff in front of the man and sits beside him. She tugs down her scarf, lifts her goggles. She shoves the off-planet bottle towards him in offer. Thanking her, he weighs the bottle in his hands. Rey's eyes scan his face. His curved jaw is marked with a bruise that's already healing. His bottom lip is split.

"Corellian whisky," he says. The grass on his boots is smothered now by marks of sand from his beating. His beauty still shines through. "Animals don't even know what quality they're drinkin'."

"You shouldn't have brought it here," Rey tells him plainly, looking between him and the bottle. "Not unless you were planning to sell it."

"I wasn't. Just stopping off for a part for my ship. My friend's gonna be real annoyed when he discovers what happened."

"Will your friend hurt you?"

The man bursts a laugh. "You ever have any friends, kid?"

Rey shakes her head, fierce at the thought.

"I'm waiting for my family. I don't have time for friends."

"Pity." The man stands up, clasping the bottle tight. "You'd make someone a good one."

He strolls away from her.

In the cockpit, sparks burst out of an overhead unit. Ben groans.

"Electrical overload. And the coolant's leaking." The scavenger eagerly jumps up out of the co-pilot seat, but he can only glare darkly at the compressor. "I hate you."

Fiddling at wires in the unit, the scavenger whirls on him. An idea on her lips. "Try transferring auxiliary power to the secondary—"

"Secondary tank, yeah I know," Ben mutters, turning in his seat, flicking switches.

An angry roar sounds from the hangar, followed by shouts from Finn, the kid. Ben twists in his seat as BB-8 rolls into the cockpit door, beeping furiously. (Apparently, Bacca insulted him.)

"Hey Bacca, wait until I've fixed this damn thing until you kill him!" The alarm grows in volume around him, lights flashing before him, again warning him of missing coolant. "If I ever meet this Hutt-spawn Plutt, I'll kick him halfway 'round the galaxy—"

The alarm, the lights, all of it stops. Ben turns his head. The scavenger sinks into the co-pilot seat. Her bright smile, her brighter eyes, is reflected blue by the rushing stars. Ben flicks his attention towards the circuit board clutched between her forefinger and thumb. Ripped wires stick out of it haphazardly.

"Compressor?"

She beams wider. (When she smiles like that, she's kind of pretty.)

"I bypassed the compressor."

Ben clears his throat, blinks away all thoughts of pretty smiles. Switching the Falcon into autopilot, he stands.

"Still not helping you." A smile doesn't change anything.

"What?" The scavenger follows him out of the cockpit, jogging alongside him. "You have to – you're the son of Han Solo!"

"Oh, hell." He shakes his head. "I knew that name was going to get me into trouble one day. Look, I am not helping you."

"Why not?" Her offence is matched by an indignant beep from the droid.

"You're fugitives for one thing," he remarks, heading into the hangar. Chewbacca lies stretched out in the compact medic bay, his arm neatly bandaged. Finn sits, slumped over and exhausted, at the half-circle seating. Ben gives a brief smile at the used bandages scattered out on the deck. The kid's done a better job than he can. Usually Bacca doesn't stay still unless there's a pretty woman tending to him. Then he's all charm, shrugging off the pain as nothing at all.

"The First Order wants the map," Rey explains, coming to stand beside Finn. "Finn is with the Resistance. I'm just a scavenger."

Ben glances over at the kid. When the scavenger isn't looking at him, he is stricken with guilt.

"The map's probably a fake." He sets about clearing up the scattered bandages, throwing them into the garbage chute. "People have been looking for Luke—" he swallows that mistake, covers it with a cough, "for Skywalker for years now. Ever since he disappeared. Looking for the last Jedi's a lucrative business."

After all, there's nothing more hard to find than the beginning of a story.

The droid beeps with offence.

Rey smiles again, amused by the precocious droid. "He says his master would never give him a fake map to look after."

He turns on the droid. "Go on then. Show me." Despite the droid's insistence, even Poe Dameron can make mistakes.

The droid rolls to the centre of the room and opens up the map. The hologram's blue light fills the walls of the deck. Planets and stars hover and rotate. A dotted orange line shows a destination, a singular planet hidden among stars he can't place. Ben follows it, turning with the rotation of the map, scanning the planets. The line disappears off the edge of the map.

He sighs. "It's only a piece. Useless without the rest."

"I heard some say he was looking for the first Jedi temple."

"It's not… quite like that." He hasn't spoken this for years, this particular truth, never really acknowledged it, save for the quiet moments. The quiet moments when he's been alone, nothing more than a being drawing the Force in, forgetting himself, playing with it until blue shadows are dancing lazily in front of him, between and around his fingers. Two fugitives and a droid are making him say it now.

That's all it takes.

"Skywalker was training a new generation of Jedi. An enemy found out. Ambushed him. Destroyed it all before he could stop it." He looks to the droid. "We've seen enough."

The map folds away into the droid's data banks. Behind him, the scavenger speaks, rising to her feet.

"The Jedi were real?" The scavenger's voice takes on a tone of curiosity. Worse, it takes on a thought of hope. Both make Ben's heart heavy, sinking down. When he looks at her dark hazel eyes, the hope in them doubles. His heart sinks down further. She looks on him not as if she's looking at him, but looking through him, at the heroes of Skywalker, Solo and Organa. Destructors of the mythical, tyrannical Empire. Ben turns towards a console, fiddling with the dials.

"No doubt about that." He scratches at his left ear. "The Force, the dark side, the light – yeah. It's real."

The console trills an alarm. Ben shakes his head. He must be insane.

"This is your stop, c'mon."

Whatever brightness has been in the scavenger's eyes dims. "You're still taking us to Ponemah?"

He ignores her question and heads towards the cockpit, sitting in the pilot's seat. The scavenger joins him, Finn following on and settling behind her. The droid rolls in and sits happily at Ben's feet. He scuffs it with the toe of his boot. It beeps but refuses to move. Always stubborn, just like its master.

He switches the Falcon out of light speed. A calm blue of water surrounds the grey cantina. A turret on its east side, a chimney billows black smoke on its west side. Its stones are rocks that have come from the sea, built up piece by piece, year by year. From a far enough distance it looks like a fortress with a spirit ready to withstand any fight. Green mountains make up most of the planet; the cantina is the only base for miles around. His stomach flips.

The scavenger's breath fills with wonder. "I never knew there was this much green in the whole galaxy."

Those words catch him. Silently he steers the Falcon towards a nest of trees on the bank of the ocean. The scavenger jumps out of her seat even before they've landed.

Ben shakes his head, standing. Finn's hand shoots out and grabs his forearm. Ben frowns.

"Sorry," Finn says, blinking, letting go of Ben's arm. A kid, so much a kid, but Ben can see it. There's a soldier in there too. Finn jumps to his feet. "Just uh, Solo – I'm not sure what we're walking into here and you should know, I'm a big deal in the Resistance. Which puts a real target on my back. Are there any conspirators here? Like First Order sympathisers?"

Ben's mouth tilts with a smile.

"You've got a bigger problem than the First Order."

Finn goes pale. "Really?"

No doubt his mind's leaping to possible enemies, possible battles. Maybe he is a Stormtrooper after all.

(Ben really, really should've taken them to Ponemah.)

"Yeah." Ben bangs hard with his fist against an overhead compartment. The door topples open, revealing weapons. He looks to Finn. "Tell her the truth, or she'll figure it out. They always do, and believe me – it's better when it comes from you."

"You sure about that?"

Taking out a blaster rifle and pistol, he hands the rifle to Finn. Ben strolls out of the cockpit, ducking underneath the door. "I am."

For Rey, the sun has always been a warning of days gone. A reminder of days yet to come, of marks on her wall yet to be made. Jakku stank of sand and desert winds. The scent of the air is fresh on this planet. Vibrant greens stand beside mellow blue. Light grey shadows dapple the water's edge. A sound she's never heard before is in the air, but somehow she knows it already and it doesn't raise her alarm. She isn't blindly reaching for her quarterstaff, scrambling up to her feet. She breathes. Her pulse slows. Her shoulders slowly sink. This isn't Jakku. This isn't home. This is safety.

"I never thanked you for what you did on the freighter."

She jumps, looking around wildly. Ben Solo stands behind her. His dark hair is out of its bun. That's what she notices first. It makes him look younger, softer. Tendrils are caught in the breeze of the planet's crisp air. He tugs at the edge of his shirt with one hand, ruffles his loose hair with his other. He catches the sun in his eyes.

Rey shrugs. "I only meant to close the blast doors. I didn't mean to—"

"Why would you want to close the blast doors?"

Rey's mouth drops into a small, quizzical 'o' shape. Her brows knit together. "To – trap the gangs."

"Oh. Yeah, I was hoping you'd release the Rathtars," he says casually, strolling towards her.

"You're prepared to kill people to get away from them?" She has got into fights over parts, over items which meant the difference between a quarter portion and a half portion. She's bled, broken and healed. She's never had to fight for her life. As he stands beside her she finds his eyes. In all the rush, in the chase, she's never properly seen them. There's a strange type of darkness in there. A darkness that feels, that is ancient, older than him, than her.

He offers out his hand. "Here, take this."

Rey glances down. A blaster pistol lies in in his palm.

"I think I can handle myself."

"I got that," he says dryly.

She smirks. "You're helping us then?"

"No. We're just here to get you on a ship so you can get to Ponemah,"—he presses the blaster pistol into her hand, brusque and brash again, his face half in dappled shadow as he turns to face her—"without Bacca, me or the Falcon."

Rey peers at him. "How did you find the Falcon anyway?"

"I told you: I was on that rock Jakku, getting parts. Found the Falcon standing past the boundary of that outpost of yours. Someone had left the door open, so I climbed inside. Your flying woke me up." Off Rey's disbelief, he tilts an eyebrow. Another soft breeze picks up from the ocean, ruffling at his hair. "I figured I had some time. You know how to work one of those things, right?"

She aims off into the trees, squinting at a far off rock, hidden among long, tall grass. "You pull the trigger."

Ben laughs, catching her attention. The space around his eyes, between his brow, crinkles. His angular features, so sullen, lighten.

The Wookiee, holding his injured arm to his chest, wanders down the ramp. Finn, following him, finds Rey. There's none of that darkness she sees in Ben's eyes, but there is anxiety, hesitation. It triples in volume when he looks to her, but he hides it with a smile. Instinctively she returns it.

Ben approaches the Wookiee. "Hey, Bacca – check out this ship as best you can, will you? You two, the droid, with me. If we want to get you on a ship to Ponemah, Maz is the best way to go."

Finn glances between her and Ben. "Maz who?"

"Maz Kanata." Ben heads into a thin cover of trees, down a leafy path carved out by generations of footprints. He walks the path with the same familiarity she feels when sand seeps into her boots on Jakku. Ben continues, a warning in his tone. "She's run her cantina for a thousand years, so if anyone's doing the talking – it's me."

As they get closer to the cantina, past its gateway, there's life to be found. Robots wandering. One is tall, metal coloured red and a loping limp in its walk. Rey wrenches her gaze from it. Flags, symbols, hang from the stone walls. Some faded. Some torn. Some made heavy and muddied by rain. Other flags flap in the breeze, their fabrics tangling together, brilliant and crystalline in their colours. High above it all, a statue of a humanoid creature stands with open, welcoming arms. She wears wide round glasses, and her stone cloak billows in a frozen breeze.

A short flight of stairs leads to square arched metal doors. They slide open with a clunk and creak that Rey could fix in less than an hour. Heavy curtains line the doorway. Past the doorway, it is more signs of life. An explosion of it.

Aliens of all kinds fill the aged space. Twi'leks, arguing Abyssins, Rodians and humanoids. It is a vast place, this cantina, and its dry stone walls are built to last. A fire burns in a large circular metal brazier. Metal pots and pans, well used, hang around the edge of the round stone chimney. Customers drink from metal cups. Heavy wood makes up the tables and chairs. Overlapping conversations in overlapping languages both familiar and unfamiliar, music and smoke make it seem as small as her AT-AT. A part of Rey wants to take this place apart, stone by stone, and put it all back together again, just to see how it works.

A shout rings around the metal and stone.

"BEN SOLO!"

Ben jerks to a stop, raising his lowered head. Everything in the bar momentarily stops too and looks around for the source. The vast space seems even smaller now. Ben swallows, sliding one hand into his pocket as he raises another.

"Maz," he calls over the resumed din.

Experience runs in lines over Maz's small frame. She wears no cloak, but the simple clothes of a worker. A jumper, a blue jacket, trousers and hard boots of leather. The only decoration on her is jewellery, engraved bracelets and carved rings covering her arms and hands, a wooden necklace swinging around her neck. She stares at the three of them without open arms, but a withering look.

"Where's my boyfriend?"

Ben winces. "You only say that to irritate me, don't you," he mutters. "Bacca's working on the Falcon."

"Ach! Call him what he is – Chewbacca is his name, in case he forgot to tell you," she adds, glancing to Rey and Finn. She grins, and suddenly the statue above the cantina makes a lot more sense. "I like that Wookiee. Glad you got rid of that stupid bun of yours."

Ben smiles drolly. "Anything for you Maz."

"I assume you need something. Desperately." She beckons them over. "Let's get to it."

She finds him in his chambers. The son is too much like the father. His skin sallow and pale, jaw drawn tight with sharp eyes. He carries the same sneer, the same straight back demeanour. The same ruthless nature.

It allows for better training.

Hux stands in front of a mirror. His hair is combed back. He buttons the collar of his uniform, brushing imagined dirt from the black material. He squares his shoulders and fixes his hat to his head. On it, there is the marking of the First Order. Two shapes, sharp spikes in a circle trapped within a hexagon of hard lines.

Sarhu focuses on Hux's face, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

"Sarhu Ren." The cool tone of Captain Phasma makes her turn. "You are supposed to be aboard the Finalizer."

She gives a single nod and moves past Phasma's tall frame. Her fingers clench tight into her palm as she heads into the hangar. Her ship is waiting for her, guarded by two Stormtroopers. Ren climbs aboard, waiting until the ship door is closed and she is alone before she pulls down her mask from her chin, letting it fall against her chest. She wipes at her mouth. It is easy to change beliefs that have been made. Harder to change ones that have been inherited.

"A map? To Skywalker himself?" Ben cringes at the growing joy in Maz's voice. He cringes further still when she lets out a delighted cry. "You're right back in the mess!"

"I am not," Ben says through gritted teeth. Maz scoffs. "I just need you to get these two and the droid on a ship so they can go wherever the hell they need to, and I can be left in peace."

"Ha! You can get a clean ship anywhere in the galaxy," Maz declares, crowing. "And don't curse."

"Blast it Maz, can't you—" A dark warning look from her makes him swallow back his words. The scavenger eats her way through a plate of fruit, flicking her gaze between him and Maz. He wonders if she knows. If her hazel brown eyes can see his history through how Maz speaks to him. He shifts in his seat, avoiding her eye. His focus turns on a tall female alien. Dressed in silver and black, the humanoid passes by them. She glances at them as she walks by, as if she is nothing but another customer seeking the warmth and welcome of Maz Kanata's cantina, but she's been hovering.

When he speaks again, he makes sure his words are audible only to Maz. "They just need to get to the Resistance. I'm not helping them."

"Even if you were, you know exactly what my answer would be."

"What would it be?" Rey asks.

"No."

Ben's head snaps up. "No?"

Maz shakes her head sadly.

"This is a fight you have been running away from for too long, Ben Solo. You must go back." Her tone is firm. "Nyakee nago wadda. Go home."

It's a struggle to hide the wave of pain that hits him at Maz's words (old words that sink into his bones every time she speaks them). She's wise, she's right, but that doesn't stop it hurting.

"Ben?" The scavenger's question is gentle. It only serves to make him feel worse.

"I'm fine," he replies, drawing patterns into the table with his thumb. She looks to Maz.

"What fight?"

"The only fight," is Maz's answer. Her tone is simple enough, but her wisdom is like steel. A shiver spider-walks down Ben's spine. "Against the Dark side. Through the ages, I've seen evil take many forms. The Sith, the Empire. Today, it is the First Order. Their shadow is spreading across the galaxy. We must face them. Fight them."

Maz turns her head. Her eyes begin to focus on Finn.

"All of us," she says softly.

"There is no fight against the First Order." Finn jumps forward, every word he speaks coming out of him in a rush. "Not one we can win. Look around. There's no chance we haven't been recognised already. I bet you the First Order is on their way right—"

Maz fiddles momentarily with her glasses. Lenses slide into place. Her eyes grow unnaturally wide. Finn leans back, wary, as Maz climbs up onto the table, crawling forward. Cups and food slip down past the table's edge.

"What are you doing?" he asks, watching the thousand-year-old innkeeper. His eyes flick towards Ben, seeking help. "Solo, what is she doing?"

"I don't know." A lie, because he's experienced this before. Those two, too wide eyes staring. He'd been younger than Finn, more scared, cowering in a stone corner, wondering and staring into the eyes of a Toydarian. Ben adjusts his stance with a cool remark: "but I've seen that look before."

Maz leans forward, eyes shining behind her glasses. Curiosity magnified into knowledge. "If you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people." A half-amused look enters her wide eyes, piercing with an unwanted truth. Different words, but the same look. How much he had hated her for that look. (In time, that hatred had turned to gratitude.)

"I'm looking at the eyes of a man who wants to run."

Finn swallows. His jaw tightens. Slowly, his face hardens. He leans forward.

Anger meets Maz's curiosity.

"You don't know a thing about me. Where I'm from, what I've seen. You don't know the First Order like I do. They'll slaughter us. We all need to run."

A silence. Maz retreats back across the table, slides into her seat. She points to a pair of pirates, deep in conversation, sitting across the other side of the cantina, just visible beyond the giant hearth. One of them is tall for his species, his girth proportionate to his height. His skin is yellow, worn like the leather on Maz's boots. A slope from his forehead to nose leads to a permanent downturned grimace. The other is masked, but has the build of a humanoid. Dressed in red and black, he gesticulates with gloved hands as he talks.

"See those two? They'll trade work for transportation to the Outer Rim. There, you can disappear."

"Finn!"

As the scavenger pleads with her friend, Ben turns to Maz. With a sigh he sinks his chin against his palm. "Wish you'd given up on me that easy," he mutters.

Maz tilts her chin up. "You assume too much. Anyway, he is older than you were."

Finn leaves the table. Rey's dark eyes, filled with warmth, are cold.

"Are you not going to do anything?" she demands. She breathes hard, her nostrils flaring with barely hidden anger. (He really does need to stop assuming.) Swallowing a smile, he shakes his head.

"His choice."

She stares at him for a long moment. Her fingers curl around her cup. He blinks back at her, impassive; but his fingers twitch. He wants to put a hand on her shoulder, or just simply slide her small hand into his. He wants to do something to tell her that it'll all be okay—but all he allows himself to do is blink. With a growl, Rey bolts out of her seat, dropping the cup and giving chase across the cantina. Maz leans closer to him. Her triumphant smile tells him she's seen exactly what he didn't want her to see.

"So – who's the girl?"

They taught him how to get truths out of others, taught him how to fight. They never taught him how to give the truth. Stormtroopers weren't made for truth. Aliens he's never seen before surround him in strange languages. For a moment, it makes him feel incredibly small. Then he starts speaking, looking only at Rey, and it all fades away.

"I'm not Resistance. I'm not a hero." He blurts it out, and he watches the faith in her eyes fade. Somehow, that makes it better to tell her. He won't be able to bear it if she looks at him, telling her this truth, and forgives him. "I'm a Stormtrooper. Like all of them, I was taken from a family I'll never know, and raised to do one thing. But my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn't going to kill for them. So I ran, right into you, and you looked at me like no-one ever had. I was ashamed of what I was. But I'm done with the First Order. I'm never going back."

He swallows. She may hate him now, but they, Maz, were talking of battles. They were talking of fighting the First Order, a fight that would lead to blood.

The villagers on Jakku had screamed and begged as they'd been hounded into a circle by his friends. His friends had picked them off one by one, mindlessly, without choice. He had given himself a choice.

She still has that same choice.

"Rey, come with me." Her eyes are wide and searching, examining him for clues.

"Don't go." Her voice is thick with forgiveness. He swallows, staring into her eyes. She is terrified, just as much as he is. But she carries bravery. After all, she's forgiven him in a breath. Him: he's a coward who will never stop running.

"Take care of yourself. Please."

He turns away from her and walks towards the heavy doors. Guilt pulls him to turn his head and look back.

When he does, she is gone.

Rain beats against her shoulders as she lies on her stomach. The water, every frozen drop, wipes away the heat of fire. Mud seeps into her clothes. She pants, her vision blurring. She turns her head. A scream on her lips. A smooth red beam cuts through the man before her—he collapses to the ground with a scream of pain that moulds itself to hers. Her scream disappears.

She scrambles to her feet, slipping and sliding against the ground, searching for an exit. Bodies surround her. Wind whips around her. Icy. Sharp. A twisted history.

They stand, six black figures, among the dead. One sees her. One steps forward, her red lightsaber held high as she storms forward, dark eyes flashing, her mouth and nose masked—

"No! Come back!" Her, as a little girl, fighting against Unkar Plutt's hold—

"Quiet girl!"

A ship, taking off into Jakku's burning blue—

Blue and white of snow. Dark trees around her.

Rey…

She runs, runs from the voice, through the snow, panting, legs aching.

The dark eyes find her again. They launch forward with the lightsaber. Rey stumbles. They, a woman with eyes once kind, continues forward, their footsteps crunching in the snow, blood on their hands—

These are your first steps.

She falls back to the hard stone ground of the basement corridor. The square arches of it feel too large. The stone staircase feels a whole galaxy away. Her breath trembles. Her brain swirls. She has to get out, get away but she's stuck there, stuck in walls that will cave in if she moves—sweat pours off her skin, soaking her clothes.

"Hey, scavenger." She turns her head. Ben is stood at the end of the corridor. Maz stands there too, tiny and orange and wrinkled beside him. The feeling stops. The corridor shrinks, reality finding her. Ben jogs forward. His eyes meet hers as he crouches in front of her. "You alright?"

"What was that?" Rey blurts. She jumps to her feet. Fear grips her tight, her breaths are catching again, and her hands are shaking. Her knees buckle. "I shouldn't have gone in there—"

Ben stands. "In where?"

Rey, tears welling in her eyes, points.

Ben ducks under the doorway into the storage unit, heading towards the box. Rey flinches as he doubles back into the corridor. His whole body seems to tremble. His eyes are wet. Not out of fear like hers. Anger. Barely contained fury. There's that darkness there, the darkness she'd noticed before. Her young face, screaming, weeping, flies into her head. Her young eyes, wet with tears and dark with grief.

"Where..." he asks Maz, with dangerous composure. "Where the hell did you get that?"

Maz demurs by holding up her hand. "A good question, for another time."

"Damn it, look at her Maz! Tell me! Where did you get that saber?!"

"Ben, away!" Maz snaps. "I will tell you soon enough. Let me talk to her."

Ben hesitates, but he storms back down the passageway. His body still trembles and his fists clench tight. Maz looks upon Rey with the same sad eyes that she had looked upon Ben with when she spoke to him in a foreign language and told him to go home.

"That lightsaber was Luke's. And his father's before him, and now…" Her sadness is animated with hope. "It calls to you."

Harsh sand. Harsh words exchanged between scavengers. Home.

"I have to get back to Jakku," she says, shaking her head.

Maz nods. She pushes her glasses to the top of her head. "Ben told me."

The hope remains in her eyes. She holds out a hand.

With a trembling breath, Rey takes it. It is soft. It is warm. It is a comfort that Rey has spent nights aching for, calling out into the night for. The galaxy had only replied with more days, more time. She sinks down to her knees. Maz's hand holds onto hers, her small thumb stroking the palm of her hand.

"Dear child, I see your eyes. You already know the truth." Sympathy threads into her voice. "Whomever you're waiting for on Jakku? They're never coming back."

One scratch on the wall for every day. 6,688 scratches. Every so often, she would count each one. Tears fall against her cheeks.

"But… there is someone who still could."

The Jedi. The last Jedi. "Luke."

"The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead." Maz shrugs. "I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. It moves through and surrounds every living thing. Close your eyes. Feel it. The Light – it's always been there. It will guide you."

Maz's eyes snaps open.

"The saber."

Rey's blood runs cold.

"Take it."

Luke Skywalker is a myth. He is a rumour passed on to others, a rumour that she's overheard as a child in Niima Outpost. She does not belong in a world of stories.

"I'm never touching that thing again. I don't want any part of this." She has to get back to Jakku. Her family is waiting for her. She runs up the steps, out into the din and smoke of the cantina. She has to get back there. To Jakku.

"Hey, hey—" Ben's voice in her ear, his hand on her arm urges her back. Gentle, but her lungs tighten. Everything is too large again. "Where are you going? What about BB-8?"

BB-8 appears at the top of the stairs. He tilts his head and beeps.

She wrestles her arm from Ben's grip.

"I thought you weren't helping me," she says sharply, every word an effort. Her family is never coming back, no-one is waiting for her—she shakes her head. Jakku. They will be waiting for her on Jakku. If she accepts that they won't, she'll break, she'll crack, the pain will be too much and the pieces left of her will be scattered across the stars, stars she has promised herself she'll see when her family come back.

Ben takes a step forward. He seems to raise his arms, but he scans her. His arms drop back to his sides. "I'm not."

"Then let me go."

She whirls round, pushing through the thick crowd. She runs into air that is too thick, too crisp. She runs down the path of earth into grass and overhanging trees. The green floods her vision, branches catching at her clothes, voices in the wind pleading with her to turn back, to stay. To pick up that damn saber.

Pain in her gut forces her to stop. With tears, she looks back. All she sees are two dark eyes, once so kind, now hollow and black, with blood on hands. Turning her back on the cantina, she runs until the fear leaves her.