A/N: Thanks for reviewing! We're not out the woods yet, but we're close, I promise!
Reassembled when I'm done, depression on the run as I come beating on these drums
Unlike on Ahch-To, Rey did not find herself in water after she dove into the pool – or through it, really. That was the good news. The bad news was that she stood in utter darkness, aware that there was stone beneath her feet, but she could perceive nothing of her surroundings. As a child, she had once gotten stuck in a compartment of the ship she was scavenging, sliding down a wall after she lost her footing. It had taken a few hours for Unkar Plutt to realize her absence and send one of the other children to find her. Since then, getting trapped somewhere small had been a great fear of hers.
Her breathing was harsh and labored, so she focused on relaxing that impulse and pulled out her lightsaber. Igniting it would at least help her see where she was, she thought. But she was wrong. It illuminated the area immediately around her but could not penetrate beyond that. That dampened her spirits but she rallied. Obviously Ben was not in her immediate vicinity so the only thing to do was to start walking. She tested the rope on her waist, glancing at where it disappeared into the darkness, and hoped it would stretch as long as she needed it to.
She had only gone a few steps when a vision came to her, more immersive than the ones her gift for psychometry had caused. She was a child again, on Jakku, watching her parents leave, horror and anguish rising like bile in her throat. Her hand stretched out toward them and, in her desperation, lightning shot out of her fingers, destroying the ship. Unkar Plutt recoiled, dropping her arm, and she stared at her hand in horror. He growled about her being more trouble than she was worth.
The vision faded and she stared into the darkness, confused. That wasn't a memory – was it? – because she had seen how her parents died. That bounty hunter had killed them. And the lightning had happened on Pasana, when she and Ben had fought over the shuttle Chewie had supposedly been in. But this vision had felt very real.
Unkar Plutt had owned many children, probably still did. They lived in a shelter near his home. But Rey couldn't remember ever living there. She had always been on her own, as far back as she could recall. It had never occurred to her why he had treated her differently, but her latent Force abilities would make for a good reason. In the stories she told herself, it was because her parents were returning, making her different from the others. Because she had been left for her protection not merely sold.
She scoffed at the memory. Were her childish fantasies true, then? Had she been left to be kept safe until her parents could return for her? Logic had threatened that fantasy as she had grown up – why couldn't at least one parent stay with her? Why couldn't they have left her someplace less horrible? – and she had learned to avoid thinking about it. But if it was the truth, if that's what her parents had really done… Her teeth clenched in anger. Was there really nowhere else in the galaxy to leave her to keep her safe? The last battle of the empire had been fought above Jakku – it was hardly a place the Emperor would avoid if he was seeking his granddaughter.
Her childhood had been spent crawling through the broken-down ships of the empire and of the rebels. They were the same – just wreckage – both sides needed considerable work to be of any use to her. Why had her parents not brought her to the Resistance? Or, since that movement had likely not been formed yet, to the Skywalkers? Luke had yet to disappear, Ben had yet to turn, and they were at Luke's Jedi school. Surely that was a better option for her than years of isolation and desperation on a dead planet?
Her hand tightened on her lightsaber and she stopped walking to catch her breath, having been nearly jogging in her anger. Perhaps they reasoned that Luke Skywalker would be a target of the Emperor's already and would only increase the likelihood of her being found. But she thought it would have significantly increased the chances of her being protected – it wasn't as though Plutt would have lifted a finger to protect her. He may have driven a harder bargain for her, but otherwise would offer no resistance to her being taken away by her grandfather's agents.
Perhaps they had not intended to leave her on Jakku, then. Perhaps they meant to leave her only briefly while they did something else. A shiver ran down her spine as she considered one thing she could not deny – they had sold her. Whatever their intentions, money had changed hands. She knew that for certain – Plutt had often referred to what he'd paid for her when she was not meeting his expectations for turning him a profit. And she didn't think she'd ever understand how they could have done that: actually sold their child into slavery. Was it a way to cover up her own importance?
She looked around as though this place could give her any answers. The pool on Ahch-To hadn't – well, none that she wanted to hear. But it was worth a try. Closing her eyes, she focused on her memory of them leaving, of their ship disappearing, and tried to recall what had happened before. Opening her eyes, she was pleased to see the darkness solidifying, hazy at first, but then forming the recognizable shapes of Niima Outpost. Her hand was held by her mother and they walked through the market with her father until they reached Plutt. She was pushed in the direction of some kids playing nearby, and she asked to join their game. It was a complicated one – to her child self, anyway – and she was engrossed in learning it for several minutes.
Then she won! She was excited to tell her mother and turned to look for her. But she was leaving, disappearing into the crowd with her father. Rey ran after her, desperate then to catch up and desperate now to see her parents' faces again. They boarded a ship from the yard behind Plutt's home and Plutt was suddenly behind her, grabbing her arm. She may not have understood being sold, but she understood how dire the situation was for her. Screaming, she reached for the ship and it shuddered but took off anyway. Her attempts to drag it back were unsuccessful, though she was able to halt its progress. Then the lightning came, and Plutt dropped her arm. The other children looked at her with fear and revulsion, so she was denied friends as well as family.
Trembling, Rey dropped to her knees and was relieved when the vision faded. That was real – her previous vision of her parents notwithstanding – there was no doubt in her mind of what had really happened the day her parents left on her Jakku. It was why she had never used her Force powers again, not intentionally. And why she had been unwilling to tell Finn about them on Starkiller Base. She had been hesitant to even tell Leia after the battle. Ben sensing her potential had been so strange, how he had been impressed instead of afraid of what she could do. Everyone else was always afraid of her.
Even during training, Rey could sense that Leia was wary if not fearful of her abilities. And, upon meeting Luke, he had been afraid of her raw power, so like Ben's. She had friends at the Resistance – Finn, Rose, Chewie, Poe – but there was always a gulf between her and anyone else because of her powers. Even with her close friends, there was a distance – though perhaps lessening now because she was working with Finn. Still, the old self-preservation instinct to hide her abilities had never really gone away and she was always waiting, deep down, for the fear she knew was coming.
But Ben was never afraid of her. He had never seen her as only a figurehead for the Resistance, or as a powerful ally to win to his side. He had seen her fears and loneliness the first time they met and understood her in a way no one else had. Or could, given their connection. His loss was like a hole in herself, an emptiness that she had tried to ignore but it was like half of herself was gone.
Standing back up, Rey held out one hand. If she could control these visions, she knew what she wanted to see. And the truth of her past didn't matter if she could get the future she truly wanted.
"Be with me," she whispered. Then repeated it, louder, until the darkness turned hazy again. But her fresh wounds regarding her past must have influenced it somehow, because she wasn't shown Ben. Not exactly. Instead, she was back in front of the Throne of the Sith, with the Emperor attached to that apparatus before it, and Ben pointing his saber at him. Not Ben – Kylo Ren.
"She's not who you think she is," the Emperor told him.
"Who is she?" Ben asked warily.
The Emperor waved his hand and Rey could feel what he was doing. Ben had a memory of his vision where he saw her parents, where they sold her. The Emperor somehow altered it, only very slightly, to change their expressions. Now they were scared and desperate, trying to hide their child from him. But Rey felt despair at what she saw, at what Ben saw before the Emperor changed it. They weren't afraid – well not of the Emperor. Rey reached out and focused on the memory before it could change further.
"And why would I take her? She's too young to be of use to me," Plutt told her parents.
They looked each other in distress. "She's been doing things, unnatural things. Could be she can help you more than the others. Could be worth more money to you down the line," her father said.
Plutt glanced over at her playing nearby and nodded. "Fine." He handed them compensation and they were relieved to be rid of her.
Drawing away before she had to relive that terrible moment again, Rey felt tears streaming down her face and looked at Ben, at Kylo Ren, understanding his certainty in Snoke's Throne room. His certainty that she would join him.
He turned away from the Emperor to look at her, his cold expression fading and eyes widening. "Rey?"
A sob of relief tore through her and she moved toward him. But then laughter from behind her gave her pause. Turning, she found not the Emperor on the Throne of the Sith, but herself. The Dark Side version of her smiled, revealing sharp teeth.