Chapter 4: Spinning Arrow

They needed new supplies; the foodstuffs and other goods that had happened to be onboard the Falcon when they fled were already starting to dwindle. Ever conscientious of her husband's safety, Rey resolved that he should stay here on the island while she and Chewie made a quick hop into a nearby system to hurriedly stock up. They would not be leaving the Unknown Regions, so as to mitigate the risk of someone recognizing the most famous ship in the galaxy. As deep in wild space as they were, Rey was confident she and the Wookie could reach a habitable, civilized system, get what they needed and get out.

As Chewie fired up the ignition systems, Rey and Ben stood at the base of the Falcon's gangplank, wrapped in a close embrace. They kissed and kissed and kissed until they finally had to draw apart. Rey sent her husband a beaming smile.

"I'll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise." And she kept a grip on his hand until the last possible moment that she had to let go...

The Falcon touched back down on Ahch-To in the dead of night, three days later.

Rey and Chewie had needed to go farther afield than they originally thought, all the way to Zaddia, which was on the edge of the Unknown Regions. They had stocked up carefully, but without incident, Rey concealing herself in a large cloak the entire time. On a small pit stop to refuel on Battuu during their return trip, again on the edges of wild space, Rey had seen WANTED posters with Ben's face on them. She had also seen posters with her own image, but underneath the titles MISSING and HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? Upon discovering that the Force users were gone after the First Order attack, Poe and Finn must have assumed that Ben had broken out, then taken Rey against her will. They would never have imagined that Rey not only went with him willingly, but that she was the one to free him - even though both the pilot and former Stormtrooper had witnessed her openly kissing the man...

Striding down the gangplank, Rey beamed as she breathed in the fresh air of the island. "Ben? Honey? I'm home!"

No answer. Figuring that maybe he was at the top of the mountain, at the temple, Rey reached out through their Bond, to let him know she was here and all right.

She couldn't feel his presence. He wasn't on the island. He wasn't anywhere on-world.

A knot slowly forming in the pit of her stomach, Rey started to take the stone steps, two or three at a time. When she felt she wasn't moving fast enough, she would Force leap from landing to landing, thus scaling the mountain to the ring of huts in less than half the time.

What she found even further upset her.

Several of the huts - not just the one blasted apart that horrible night by Luke - were slashed, disheveled, and in a few cases, even violently overturned. Had there been a struggle? - clearly, yes. But who would have found Ben? And how? Ahch-To had not been a well-known, plotted planet on any map of the galaxy before Luke had been discovered there, and even after, not every map had accurately plotted the world to keep precise records.

Even if someone had come across Ben and captured him, it would have been a Herculean effort to subdue him. Her Force-senstive husband fought like a dog, especially when he felt threatened. And how would they have gotten off-world? There hadn't appeared to be any indentations besides the Falcon's back on the landing platform.

That was when Rey noticed another clue. And one most critical of all - the downed, half-burned TIE that she had crashed here to maroon herself after Kef Bir was missing. She hadn't thought it could fly again with the damage that had been done to it. Apparently, it had in fact been salvageable enough to fly.

Tears filled her eyes and Rey sank to her knees. Agony ripped at her insides, and she hadn't felt such grief since she had been almost in this very spot, thinking Ben was lost to her forever, trapped in the dark side, and her own lineage had damned her to infamy. "Oh, Ben..." she moaned, clapping a hand to her mouth to stifle the sob.

"Don't despair, my young apprentice."

Rey turned around, blinking back tears, to find the translucent form of Luke Skywalker peering down at her with sympathy. The ghostly apparition cast itself in sharp relief against the darkness of the deep, but waning night.

"Search your feelings. You can find out where he is. There is yet another clue. Look."

He didn't point to anything; the Force guided Rey to another piece of evidence. On the stone in the circular clearing amidst the huts, Rey spotted an object glinting in the sinking moonlight. Frowning, she picked it up and turned it over in her palm.

The object was a compass - one that Rey recalled Ben showing her that night after they made love and had consummated their marriage. Apparently, it had been owned by Han, and passed down to him; it was the one momento of his father's that he had not had the will to destroy during his time on the dark side. Aside from a set of golden dice which hung in the Falcon's cockpit, this bauble was Ben's most prized possession.

"The compass?" Rey frowned. As she glanced down at it, the arrow started to spin. It started off slow, at first, then moved faster and faster, as a soft gale wind picked up around the island. Rey's eyes widened as she stared, clueing in to what the Force was trying to tell her. "The spinning arrow..."

Luke smiled. "It is guiding you just as you were guided in your Force vision with the lightsaber."

Rey beamed with new understanding. "I was right! It was pointing me to him!" She stood, and then felt the bright light of day at her back. She turned towards the horizon. "Sunrise!"

"It's not too late, Rey," Luke encouraged. "Let the Force guide you..." All at once, the needle of the compass stopped, pointing out south-by-southeast back towards known space. At that moment, still more clarity descended on Rey, on where to find Ben and who he was with. Finn...

"You know your path, my niece - now follow it!" Luke commanded.