'I know a guy.'

Poe always knew a guy. Rey suspected that was partly why Leia had named him her successor, because he knew a guy in the same way that she had contacts across the galaxy.

'He's some hot shot smuggler, big friend of Han Solo's apparently. He was outside a minute ago, I'll see if I can find him.'

When the man arrived, Rey showed him the item they needed and he smiled confidently, although Rey was sure that was how he did everything. 'It's probably a Sith artefact, some kind of storage device like a holocron or a datacube and it'll have a connection to the Empire.'

'The proper Empire or the pretend one?' asked Lando Calrissian.

'The proper one. The Darth Vader one. It might even have a link to him somehow, he might have owned it, or left it somewhere or it might have his name on it, I don't know. Or it might have a connection to the Unknown Regions – maybe there's a Sith base there or something.'

Lando considered this for a minute. 'I think I know a guy.'

Poe beamed.

'There's a dealer on Pasaana who specialises in all that hokey religious junk. I've sold him some stuff – nothing like this mind, nothing to do with Vader. If you give me a few days I can hook you up.'

'We don't have a few days. We've heard a rumour – and it's nothing more than a rumour so don't repeat it to anyone – that Darth Vader is alive.'

The old man's face constricted into a scowl. 'Then give me a few hours,' he said.

Rey sat through the rest of the funeral formalities with an escalating sense of tension. Leia was laid to rest near the location of her mother's grave with all the pomp and ceremony that the Resistance could muster under the oversight of a tyrannical regime and afterwards, the mourners merged with the Festival of Light crowds, leaving the First Order none the wiser. Rey couldn't wait for it to be over.

She hadn't placed much credence in Kylo's bizarre vision, because in her view the likelihood of Darth Vader being alive was on a par with her ever voluntarily bearing his great grandchildren and she hadn't seen fit to debrief the rest of the Resistance leadership about it as a result. But the deaths she had spectated on the swamp world lent a far more credible edge to the whole experience. People were dying because Kylo believed what he had seen was true. And he didn't exactly have a good track record when it came to not falling for the temptations of evil dark side rulers. He'd murdered his father for Snoke and Rey could only imagine what new depths he would sink to in an attempt to impress Darth Vader, should his idol somehow have been magically re-incarnated.

In fact, it was far more likely that the vision she had seen was exactly the wish fulfilment that Kylo had feared it was, far more likely that he was being played for a fool. Questions as to who might want to summon Kylo Ren to the Unknown Regions and for what purpose could only be answered when she obtained a copy of the map. There was no chance of him stashing it inside a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator and sending it off to hide, she was going to have to track it down on her own.

Lando Calrissian did indeed know a guy, as it transpired a few hours later, but that guy was offworld and the earliest he could make it back to Pasaana would leave them with a two standard day delay before they could even pick up the trail. Having set up the meeting, the Resistance had no choice but to return to base.

Home these days was about as far away from the desert as Rey could imagine. Ajan Kloss was as wet as Jakku had been dry, a sticky, humid heat which left skin shiny, hair limp and clothes permanently damp to the touch. For the first few weeks Rey had appreciated the contrast, but now she was as fed up with the biting insects, venomous plants and vicious wildlife as she ever had been with the sand. Making planetfall in the late afternoon she trekked through the jungle, hacking her way along the path with her lightsaber; it had only been two days since she'd left, but already the vines were taking over.

Her hut was a small, prefabricated metal box, a single room with a separate fresher and a rudimentary kitchen stashed in the corner of the combined lounge and bedroom. She hadn't felt the need to scratch marks on the walls, but nor had she bothered to decorate in any other way. This place didn't feel like somewhere she'd ever be staying long term, it was simply a shell which met her basic needs and nothing more. She dumped her pack on the bed, replaced the lightsaber on its rack and steeled herself for the task to come.

It was one she'd been putting off for some time, but no one else had volunteered and it was probably better to get it over with. Stopping only to throw the heavy Jedi robes back into a cupboard and don her usual leggings and tunic she made her way back out through into the forest and followed the well-worn trail to Leia's house.

It was odd to think that there would be no more training sessions. Not yet sad, just odd. The loss of her teacher was so recent that she hadn't yet gotten used to it, she was still half expecting to see the General limping through the trees, that peculiar look of determination on her face as she pushed through another day.

There was the clearing where she had spent days practising the ancient Jedi forms, studying the texts filched from Ahch-To to get the movements exactly right. There was the tree she'd accidentally cut in half when Leia was using a training remote to help her deploy the forms while under fire. There were the logs on which she'd honed her freezing and lifting skills and at the base of the trunk in the corner she'd healed her first wounded animal.

The empty windows of Leia's house appeared through the trees, the vast fleshy leaves of the jungle canopy already attempting to sneak in through a badly shuttered gap. Rey pushed the door and went in, breathing in the faint perfume that still hung in the air, knowing she'd never smell it again. The dwelling was larger than Rey's although almost as sparse, and Leia's few personal belongings were soon collected into a pile in the middle of the bed. There were no pictures here, nothing that could hold painful memories and the loneliness that absence bespoke had Rey knocking a stray tear from her eye. She was halfway through clearing the wardrobe when the world shut up.

It took her a heartbeat to recognise what was happening, because it hadn't happened in a year and she'd thought that connection had been severed for good. The sounds of the jungle outside the hut cut out, her breathing stilled and in a moment of complete quiet she turned and saw him.

Kylo Ren, down on one knee, head bowed, his back to her as he paid homage to something unseen in front of him. She didn't have time to do more than draw breath before a massive weight hit her square in the chest and she was flung back against the wardrobe hard enough to black out.

It was dark when she woke, with a taste in her mouth of dried blood and her ears ringing. She was lying on the floor where she'd fallen, her back stiff from the slumped position in which she'd been thrown, a headache pounding through her skull. Groaning, she pushed herself to her hands and knees woozily, wincing as her left arm took the weight of her torso and buckled under the pressure. She explored her chest with fingertips and then peeled her tunic away from her skin to see the damage. On the left hand side of her chest, just above her heart was a circular bruise, almost black in the centre, with a halo of purple spreading over her ribs. Whoever or whatever had hit her, she'd been hit hard.

She conjured up the healing skills she'd only ever used to fix the medical problems of others, and brought the power of the light side to bear on the bruise. This was a meditation technique that had taken some time to master, a specific resonance with the Force that needed to be established before muscle and bone could be coaxed into obedience, before blood would begin to flow. She sank into the trance easily enough but when her fingertips explored the painful spot on her chest it was as if the Force had become blind. With her eyes open she could see the bruise, prod it and feel the damage but with her eyes shut the Force told her there was nothing wrong at all. For several minutes she worked, channelling the power of the universe, and when she popped open her eyelids it was as if she'd hadn't even started.

Pushing this failure away as a consequence of the migraine rapidly developing she pushed herself to her feet and staggered in the direction of her own hut. The journey was far more difficult than it had any right to be. Lurching from tree to tree she felt permanently off balance, as if carrying a load on one shoulder that she couldn't quite lift. As soon as she reached her hut she crashed into bed, strange patterns spangling her vision with flashes like distant stars.

A loud banging woke her. Someone was kicking at the door and the level of violence they were using suggested they'd been doing it for some time. When she touched her toes to the bare metal floor, Rey felt better than the last time she'd woken. The headache was gone and a quick check revealed that the bruise which had been so visible before had now faded into nothing. Rey frowned at it, wondering how long she'd slept.

The door gave a final shudder and Finn yelled from outside. 'Rey! Get up. You've missed the Pasaana briefing already and we're leaving in six hours. Poe says he needs you in the command centre in thirty minutes.'

She rubbed the back of her neck. Someone, somewhere, somehow, had opened the Force bond for the first time in a year. She hadn't wanted it back. She'd admitted to herself on the moon of Utapau that she'd missed Kylo Ren, but that was in his role as an adversary – she certainly didn't want him wandering back into her heart.

More worrying than the re-establishing of a dead connection was the scene that the connection had revealed. She'd seen him kneeling – but to whom would the Supreme Leader of the known galaxy be kneeling? Who had more power than him?

She was still considering the question when the jungle outside the window stilled, and the rest of the planet held its breath. She surged to her feet, summoned the lightsaber from its cradle. By the time he arrived it was already extended.

He materialised composed, unflustered, and obviously not in the middle of doing something else. He blinked at the lightsaber trained on his neck. 'I didn't come to fight. I only want to talk.'

'And I only want to fight,' she snarled. 'I told you to get your lightsaber ready.'

He shrugged, unmoved. 'I am unarmed. And I'm not going to fight you. I'm not going to fight you ever again.'

'Unfortunate,' she commented, and then ran her blade straight through his chest.

He glanced down, arching an eyebrow at the bright beam impaling the middle of his torso. 'I'm still not going to fight you.'

She retrieved the weapon, having demonstrated that the conditions of the connection were unchanged and he wasn't really standing in her lounge. 'Then why are you here?' She looked at him then, really looked, with her eyes and the expanded senses of her training and what she saw made her uneasy. 'What's happened to you?'

'I found him, Rey. I found my grandfather.' His tone was reverential, and the light in his eyes was different than it had been the last time they'd met. She been concerned for his sanity before, but now he appeared in control, and maybe even a little nervous.

'Where is he?'

'I'll take you to meet him if you like. He already knows about you.'

She sucked in a breath. 'He's alive then? You're sure?'

'I've spoken to him. He was very weak, and he says he's dying, but he's still alive.'

She fingered the lightsaber on her belt. 'How soon can we meet?'

'Soon. I need to talk to you first. There are...' He took a step towards her, thought better of it, drummed his fingers on his thigh.

He was definitely nervous. Rey had never seen him nervous before.

'This isn't easy. You might want to sit down.'

He was also concerned about her welfare. Rey had never seen him like that before either.

He took a deep breath. 'I was wrong. About everything really. About my grandfather, about becoming Kylo Ren, about the dark side. I want to come back, Rey. I want to come home.'

She opened her mouth but no words came out and she plopped backwards onto a chair.

'I know, I know,' he rushed on. 'It sounds like I've lost my mind. But I spoke to my grandfather and he wasn't anything like I was expecting. All this time I've been thinking he was Darth Vader, and he wasn't. It wasn't Vader sending me those visions, it was Anakin Skywalker. And he said it wasn't the darkness that would give me power, and make me into the person he'd been showing me, but the light. If I want to be whole again I have to turn back to the light. He said it wasn't too late. He said you'd help me. You said that too, once. So I've come to ask for help. I need you, Rey. I need you to help me get out.'

'Get out?' she managed.

He gestured downwards but the actions meant more than the midnight robes he was wearing. 'Out of the First Order. I need you to help me destroy it. And then out of the dark side. I've forgotten… what it's like not to be angry all the time. I need you to show me the way, Rey. Please.'

She'd heard that tone from him before, at least. It was the same begging entreaty he'd used in the throne room and she was nearly sure he meant it. But not quite.

She gathered herself together with an effort. 'Liar.'

He scowled at her, attempted to smooth it out and began pacing. 'You don't know what it's like. All my life I've had to manage expectations – people around me telling me what to do, who to become. And now I'm in charge, I'm free and it's terrifying, Rey. Terrifying. I'm completely alone, there's no one to talk to, no one to ask. Everyone follows my orders and I don't know what those orders should be, half the time. I just tried to do what my grandfather would have wanted, to finish what he started. But then I met him and laughed at me. Said I'd got it wrong. He said…' There was a catch in his voice as he finished the sentence. 'He said I'd let my mother down.'

He spun on his heel and in a few strides he was across the room, his insubstantial fingers clutching at her knees as he knelt at her feet. 'Help me, Rey. Please.'

Then the connection faded and he was gone.