7/3/1
"Rey…"
Rey blinks, it's late, she was asleep, and when she hears her name in the night, she expects it to come from Kylo's voice, but that's not Kylo. That's Poe's voice coming from her comm.
"Poe, what?" She stumbles out of her room, not wanting to wake Kylo, wrapping up in her robe, and then grabbing the black blanket from the top of her bed to wrap around the robe. "What's happened?"
"Nothing bad. This is the first chance I've gotten to give you a heads up. I've got a family coming."
He must be able to feel her puzzled look. They've got a few families here. And he's never felt the need to give her a warning about it.
"Not that kind. You know, with parents."
That gets a blink out of Rey. "Parents?" Right. In the real world, children usually have parents. That's a thing that happens for most people. Just… not most of the people she sees.
"Yeah. Chewie and I were talking to the guy who sells the microfarms. He wants to know what we're doing, so I explain the school and the Maji and… Let me back up, Grandma and Grandpa were both raised in the Church of the Force. Not Jedi, but members. It fell apart. When they were adults, Palpatine began the pogroms. Mom and Dad were babies, but like a lot of little not-quite-Jedi, they were raised in an underground Church of the Force. That's how they met, part of the same community.
"So, they're really interested in what we're up to, and then it comes out they've got a kid. A Force sensitive kid they've been trying to raise as a Jedi based on what they remember, but… it's only bits and pieces and a half dozen holy books they can't really read and…" Poe's voice goes even lower. "So, I'm all on top of meeting the kid, but… He's dark. Even I can feel it. It's like a cloud around him. Kid's sharp and sarcastic and angry and… He's dark. I don't think he's evil, not yet, but… I can really feel it. He's projecting it all over and… Anyway. Mom and Dad want him to turn into some Jedi, and they're coming, all three of them, to talk to you.
"If you can convince them, they'll stay. We'll get the microfarms, and the people who know how to use them, set them up right, build more of them, and the kid."
Rey sighs low and deep. That's… heady. And… a lot to deal with.
"When are you due?"
"We're still a day and a half out, so…"
"Okay. Good. Thanks for the heads up."
She feels the smile in his voice. "I'm not gonna let you go into this blind."
She snuggles back in, next to Kylo. He's in deep sleep, a large, warm log right now. His sleep rubs off on her, or maybe she's just tired.
She dreams of a small, thin boy, with wild black hair, and wilder, darker eyes, cringing away from the fear he feels aimed at him by his classmates and teacher.
She wonders who that boy could have become if someone could have embraced his dark, embraced him for his dark, and guided him towards ways to use it constructively.
"Welcome to Lirium," Poe says to Millie, Rafe, and Critt Kenna. They're in low orbit, coming down toward what Poe's been thinking of as Majirium. (Though, because he thinks Majirium, Lirium sounds stupid, he hasn't said that to anyone.)
Critt's watching the settlement with wide green eyes, his dark-skinned face lit up with interest. For a moment, but he's fourteen and determined to make sure he never looks impressed by anything. "Small." The look of interest shuts down, fast, and he forces a bored expression on his fine-boned face.
His mum, Millie, from whom he got the fine bones and green eyes, but not the dark skin, she's much paler than both her husband and son, glares at him. "Be nice. We're guests."
Poe half inclines his head, and Chewie adds Kid's right. It's small.
Rafe, Critt's father, a large, dark-skinned man with black eyes and many braids of black hair, stares at the ground below them, rapidly getting closer and closer. "Good grassland."
"Pretty much," Poe says, though he honestly doesn't know what exactly good grassland is. He's mostly just agreeing with the fact that that's land, with grass on it.
"Is that snow?" Critt asks, again, making himself not be excited. He's read about snow, but hasn't ever seen it.
Poe's looking at the much lighter than normal ground. "I think it's just frost."
"Winter's not exactly the best time to be building microfarms," Rafe says. "Frozen ground is great to build on, until it thaws, the plates shift, and you lose the seal keeping your microclimate intact."
Poe shrugs. When he left the ground wasn't frozen… much. "It might still be late autumn. We're on the equator because we figured that'd mean the weather would stay pretty much the same year round. None of us realized that two suns means we get further away from one of them as we orbit, so the temperature drops," At least, given how Lirium's been moving and the weather's been shifting, that's their best guess of what's going on.
"So, day and night of one of the suns stays the same, and the other gets longer and shorter?" Millie asks.
"Exactly. The blue one's only in the sky a few hours a day now, because we're rounding the green one. We're guessing in about five months it'll be gone from the sky completely. That's likely when we're in winter. Then spring, summer when we're between the two of them, and autumn and winter again as we move away from the green one and round the blue."
"Eight season year," Millie says.
"Probably. And from the feel of it, it'll probably take about nine or ten standard years to get all the way around," Poe adds.
"So, if you don't build now…" Rafe says.
Chewie howls and Poe translates, "We're eating imported food for a long time."
Millie glances at the lake; that's getting closer by the moment. "That your water supply?"
"The main one. It rains, a lot. And we've been building some collection cisterns. Easier to treat water in them than from the lake."
"What's that?" Critt asks.
"The dome?" Poe asks back.
"Yeah."
"That's the chapel of the Maji."
Home. Chewie says, and Poe grins at him.
"How about you and Mr. Poe wander around? We'd like to talk to Ms. Rey," Millie says to her son.
Critt rolls his eyes. "And what will we do once that thirty second adventure is over?"
"Critt," Rafe's voice is tight. "We are guests here."
Critt snorts. "You're the guest. I'm home." He looks at Poe. "Okay, show me around. Do I get to build my own cottage, or do I have to live with them?"
Poe looks over his shoulder to Rey with a huge I told you so look on his face.
You did. She thinks back to him.
He startles a little, but then looks amused at her doing that.
Once Poe and Critt are out of earshot, Rey begins to lead the Kennas to her chapel, saying, "Poe tells me you were both raised as members of the Church of the Force."
"Yes, and we've been trying to get it restarted since the fall of the Empire. Luke Skywalker even visited us twice. He had a padawan who wanted to join us when she finished her training, get us up and running the way we knew we could. Two years later, we had close to fifty members when Snoke got control of Aubrend, and outlawed it again."
Rey wonders if M'Gll was the padawan in question.
"Are you still under the control of the Order?" that seems like a safe way to get to what she wants to know.
"As much as it attempts to control anything these days. We pay our taxes and there are Stormtroopers acting as police, but that's it. We barely ever see them, these days," Rafe says.
"So, you know it's legal to start up the Church again? Did you try to find a Jedi?"
"We do, and did, but…" Millie's shaking her head.
"Back in the day, they called Ren the Jedi Killer," Rafe says, and Rey can feel the fear that there's a monster going to hunt down their son. "None of us trusts he's not waiting for the Church to come back just to make it easier for him to find them. And if there are any Jedi out there, they're so far in hiding we couldn't find them."
Rey feels the anger and hate at Kylo, and the deep, unsettled distrust. She also feels shame, and two people trying to beat that flash of hate into the dirt. Because members of the Church of the Force don't do things like hate.
But the Kennas do.
Critt likely comes by his dark naturally.
Rey open the panel that lets them into her chapel, and shows it off for a moment before saying, "Well, we're not Jedi, and we've got no reason to think Kylo Ren is going to be showing up to kill us."
"But you're Force sensitive. I can feel that. A lot of the children here are, too," Millie says.
"Yes. I am, and many of them are, but we offer our training to anyone who is here." Rey nods to the symbol at her feet. The swirl of light and dark gray. "Most of the Jedi followed the path of the Living Force. The idea of the Force as something that's in and of all living beings. They focused on the idea of light and dark and how to dedicate themselves to the light and eradicate not just the dark within themselves but in the world around them.
"We, here, are Maji, and we dedicate ourselves to the idea of the Unifying Force. The Force is in and of all things, living, not living, everything. It's of time and space and the universe as a whole. It's not just bound to living creatures. We don't reject the idea of light and dark, but recognize them as concepts to describe aspects of the person wielding the Force. The Force itself is neither light nor dark, it just is. And we embrace all aspects of the people who come here to learn not just the Force, but the balance necessarily to live in this universe, and thrive in it." Rey'd been thinking of this for the last two days, and that's her best, come join the Maji speech.
The Kenna's don't look impressed. "So, that's it, just let the dark be? Evil is a fact of life, it can't be overcome, so don't bother to fight?"
Rey looks at the floor beneath her feet, and then back to the mother and father in front of her. She wants their son. She can feel his power, and she's sure that she's meant to have him, to help shape him, but she can't do that if she can't convince them.
"The dark is a fact of life. It not only can't, but shouldn't, be overcome. But dark isn't evil. They aren't synonyms, and that's part of what we're here to work on, making sure we can find the line between the two. Find ways to embrace and use our dark for the betterment of ourselves and the galaxy."
Millie says, "What do you mean dark isn't evil? My parents grew up in the Church of the Force, and none of us were Jedi, but… They were very clear on this. The dark side wasn't to be trifled with. Giving in to those dark feelings and emotions were the first step to being eternally dominated by evil."
Rey nods. "They were very clear on that, and they were wrong."
"Tell that to everyone killed by Vader and Palpatine. That's the dark side," Rafe doesn't look swayed by anything Rey's said or about to say.
And Rey can feel it, so she concentrates, gets into that man's head, gently looking for the edge she needs to get this idea across. "That's the dark side used for evil. Your parents grew up in the Church of the Force, okay, what was the dark?"
Millie replies, "Pain, evil, hurting people and things."
"That's part of the problem," Rey says, voice gentle, though she's not feeling very gentle right now. "That's the dark side explained by someone who had a few years of lessons as a child, lessons whittled down for young minds, stripped of nuance, and then remembered by someone who wasn't paying much attention, who then added layers of history with people who were labeled 'dark' on top of it. I've got the books if you want to read them. The Maji is open for everyone, you, both of you, and your son, all of you can study here. And I have where you can start if you want, the works written by actual Jedi Masters about what it meant to be light or dark. Passion, attachment, fear, envy, anger… That's the dark side. The dark, the real dark, it's not about hurting people or evil, it's about your emotions. It's about those strong emotions that lead to strong action. The light side is about peace, contentment, knowledge, wisdom. But neither of them are the Force, not by themselves. The Force is through those things, transcends them, allows its disciples to use them but it isn't them.
"All of the old temples, and holy places, they were built on spots of intense light and dark feelings. By the time the Jedi were the Jedi a lot of them thought that was an accident, or some sort of warning. But it's not. It's a reminder. The one doesn't exist without the other. And in a vacuum of just light or just dark, nothing good happens. Nothing happens, period."
She can feel that Millie's at least familiar with the Jedi temples being in places of strong light and dark, and the idea that that was an accident doesn't make sense to her.
"Dark is a tool, just like light. Dark allows for change, for bettering yourself, for moving forward. Light allows for healing, for knowledge, and contemplation. Dark gives you the power to change the world. Light gives you a plan to build the change you want to see. Dark allows you to hate injustice. Light gives you the compassion to forgive the injustices dealt you." She looks out at her settlement. "I couldn't have built this without light and dark. Dark lets you see what doesn't work about the present. It lets you tear it down. It's the desire for more and better. Light lets you feel where the end is. It's that sense of how to put things together to build something new. They complement each other, and if you've got a handle on both of them, you can create anything.
"Vader and Palpatine only had the dark side of the game to play with, so they couldn't build. Palpatine was probably the greatest political tactician of the last hundred years, and he wasted it on monster weapons to destroy systems. If he'd been even slightly more balanced with the light, he'd have gone down as one of the greatest rulers the galaxy had ever seen, but he didn't have enough light to build off of what he'd conquered and destroyed. He could tear down, but not raise up, not enough.
"And Luke Skywalker, hero of the galaxy, one of the few truly light people I've ever met, had enough light to create a new Jedi, enough light to dream big, and see a galaxy at peace and set putting that into motion, but he didn't have enough dark to see what was wrong with the past and tear it down until it was too late, and someone with too much dark tore it down for him."
"You sound like the Jedi were the enemy," Millie says, back up, annoyed, feeling defensive. Nothing Luke Skywalker ever did or could do was wrong in Millie's book. Just the idea of it makes her angry.
Rey makes herself focus on soft, gentle, soothing thoughts and feelings. She tries to project a sense of encouraging longing. Tries to make them feel like they want to be here. "I hope that's not what you're hearing. The Jedi were wrong. They were too static to change when change needed to happen. The Sith were wrong. They were too deeply entwined in their passions to see the larger picture or embrace peace. But it's not about the enemy or our team or their team any of that. The Force is in and through all of us. Some of us have an easier time using it for fancy things, but none of us are without it."
She watches Rafe and Millie turn around her chapel, sees them eyeing the floor and the tiny settlement. They can see their son talking with several other children, and Rey knows that half of them are also Force sensitive, and for the first time, ever, Critt doesn't feel like a freak.
And his parents know him well enough to read his body language, even from this far away, and see that he wants to stay.
"If you weren't the last Jedi…" Rafe says, and Rey knows they're staying, for a while, at least.
"Luke was the last Jedi. I'm the first Maji. I can teach your son to use and channel his power. I can teach him how I understand it, and where I think we need to go if we're going to build a universe at peace. I can't teach him to be a Jedi, because I have no interest in being one. I have some of the sacred books, and a lot of the commentaries on the sacred books, and even more commentaries on the commentaries, so I can let him read and learn on his own, and decide for himself what he wants to keep of the Jedi. Maybe he's supposed to be the start of a new Jedi. Maybe he leans light enough to restart it. I don't know."
Actually, she does know, she can feel it in her bones, feel it in Critt's bones, this child is utterly unsuited for the Jedi. But right now she's telling his parents what they want to hear.
They both seem relieved at that idea.
And she hopes, dearly, that if Critt gets a few years here, and enough time to learn how to channel his power and his dark, he'll begin to balance, and… with any luck, his parents will come around to the idea that he doesn't need to be a Jedi.
"Maybe your son will decide to become a Jedi, and if he does, I'll offer him the same promise I give all of my students, I won't stop him or stand in his way, but I'll train him to understand and appreciate his dark, because we've all got at least some of it, and I'll help him see his life, and figure out how to use it, and I'll encourage him to learn what came before, and study it well enough to see where the problems were, so he can change enough to avoid them." Rey looks at the lighter stones swirling through her floors. "We live and thrive because there are suns to keep us warm and light our days, but we need dark, too. We need rest and night, and as long as we can live in a universe that understands that, I think we'll get on fine." She looks up at Millie and Rafe, "And if you can understand that, at least enough to give me a chance, I can offer your son a wider world than he can find on his own."
She takes a breath and offers them her hands. "Please. Let me train him."
They glance at each other, and Rafe nods, curtly, and squeezes her hands, which surprises her.
"Poe said you need farmers?" Rafe asks.
She gets the feel that this is part of it, too. They aren't happy where they were before. Feeling stagnant, constantly arguing, reminded of bad bits of history. The chance to start over fresh matters to them.
She gets a flash of a baby and… And she doesn't know what happened to it, neither of them are thinking about it, but it was their child, and there's no baby now, so…
A new start.
"We need everyone and thing here. But, yes. We bought the microfarms to get some fresh food in and we're hoping to eventually have fields open to the sky."
Millie nods. "The microfarms aren't really good for cereal crops. They're more for salad greens, some root vegetables, vine veggies, berries."
"Strawberries?" Rey's starting to get come concrete plans in mind for what she wants in her bit of the farms.
"Yeah, we can do strawberries. They do fine in a microfarm." Millie looks around. "We can see grass, so it looks like your ground will support grains. Let's see what you've got. We'll take soil samples, and get to work. At the very least, grass grows here, so the soil isn't sterile, but it might need a lot of help to grow anything with enough nutrition to be useful for humans."
"Though…" Rafe's looking around. From the chapel, he's got a view of the lake, the settlement, and the plains stretching on into the sky beyond. "Is it very dry or windy here?"
Rey shakes her head. "It rains all the time, probably sleet any day now, and no, not very windy, but I've only been here for about ten months…"
They glance at each other, and again at the great plain around them. "Are there any trees?"
She shakes her head. "Not that I've seen."
"Anywhere, on the planet?"
"No?" Rey's not sure why they're asking. "At least not the parts I've seen."
"Bushes, thickets, vines?" Millie asks.
"Grass. Bushes. Scrub." She gestures to one of the rough patches visible from the dome. "We've seen grass and mosses and some thick vines, brush in some of hollows, but mostly grass."
Rafe and Millie are looking worried, and Rey doesn't like the feel of that. "Animals?"
"Fish, turtles, insects, a few lizards, and we've seen small tunnels under the ground," Rey holds her hands together in a circle, giving the Kennas the idea of the tunnel size, "but haven't found what makes them."
They look at each other again. "No mammals?"
"Not that I've seen… Oh, by the ocean there were birds."
The Kennas nod at each other, and Rafe asks, "It was warm when you got here?"
"Yes, hot even. Then it got rainy, and it's been getting cooler ever since. We got freezing rain last night. Threepio says he thinks we should have sleet soon, and snow in a few months."
"And there's not another settlement on this planet?" Millie asks.
"No."
Both of them glance at the two suns. "Did you check the ice caps at the poles when you were deciding to stay here?" Rafe's voice sounds tentative as he asks that.
"No." But Rey remembers what she saw. "They covered about a quarter of the planet, though."
Millie whimpers.
Rafe swallows hard, and then says, "Do you like cold, probably followed by hot?"
"Uh…"
"There's only one way you get a planet like this. It's so cold in the winter that anything above ground dies and/or it's so hot in the summer that anything above ground dies."
"There'd be trees somewhere, unless the soil is almost nutrient free or it gets so cold they can't survive through the winter. If there are no large, above ground animals, then it's got to get cold or hot long enough they can't make it."
"We've seen tracks and eggs, so we think there's some sort of big turtle." But Rey's got the sense that huge turtles aren't what the Kennas are thinking about when they're mentioning large animals.
That's useful for Rafe to know. "Turtles can go underwater when it gets cold or hot, and they can hibernate so deeply they basically die. They can stay under for months at a time at a degree or two above freezing or a degree or two below hyperthermia. However deep your lake is, at least some of it has to stay water year round. That's where the turtles go when it gets cold or too hot. What do they eat?"
Rey doesn't know. "Whatever it is that makes the tunnels? We've found spots where they dug up the ground with their beaks to get at them."
"But you haven't seen the turtles?" Millie asks.
Rey shakes her head. "Just a few of the eggs that didn't make it, and some dead babies. One empty shell, big enough you could camp in it. Wherever the adults sleep, they don't go out when we can see them."
"How deep is the lake?" Rafe asks.
Rey shrugs. "More than 2 meters." She knows Kylo's gone out far enough in it to submerge himself, but cold and wet really isn't her thing, so she's never done more than wade.
"How deep is the permafrost?" he adds.
It's clear Rey doesn't know what that is, so Millie adds, "A layer of ground that's always frozen."
"We've never dug deeper than forty centimeters, and down there it's just dirt."
It's clear that they're getting a lot less worried about what Rey might be teaching, and more worried about the weather.
Rafe looks to the sky, seeing the green sun, steady and bright, and the blue one, small and already setting. "There'll be a time when only the green sun is in the sky, and it's going to be cold. Really cold. Well below zero cold. Are you set for that?"
"I can be."
Millie's also watching the sky. "And in a year or so, by the imperial calendar, we'll likely be moving into spring, and then a summer when at least one sun will always be in the sky, no night at all, or if there is, it'll be an hour or so, and it'll be hot."
Rey grits her teeth. She knows all about hot planets, and if this one gets so hot people can't live on it… She really doesn't want to see it. "So, you're saying there might be a reason why there's never been a permanent human settlement here?" Rey says, thinking that a completely empty planet just waiting around for her likely was too good to be true.
"Yes." They look to each other. Millie says, "If we're lucky, this planet goes around both suns, and it'll get cold, and hot, but it'll be in the survivable band. If we're not, it goes between the suns, and come summer, everything that can't live underground or water dies.
"Humans have carved settlements out of almost anything and everything, but if we get a few years into this, it might prove to be true that we should move," Rafe says.
Millie looks at her chapel. "It's clear this matters to you, and it's clear you want a view of the sky. And it's possible that this is a planet where that's only going to be true during a few sweet months where it gets just enough heat from both suns to keep it nice, and not so much to turn it into an oven, or so little as to turn it into a freezer."
"How are you set for getting out of here if we've got to move?" Rafe asks.
Rey sighs. "I'd prefer not to have to, but… better than you'd likely expect." That gets some raised eyebrows. "We've got pilots, and are getting ships, and if need be, we'll move. I've got a friend who could house all of us, and barely notice it, while we looked for somewhere else."
Rafe looks around, and then says, "I know this is indelicate, but… how are you paying for this?"
"Goodwill and cheating at gambling."
"You're…" Millie isn't exactly horrified, but she's not comfortable with this, either.
"I have friends donating money and goods. That's the goodwill half. As for gambling… We don't have anything to trade. I don't want to charge students, and it's not like most of them could pay. Critt's the first one who isn't an orphan, so… I'm Maji, I can tell what cards the people at the table around me have, so when I play, I win. Or I can make the die come up with the roll I need. And I can, if need be, make the roulette table come up the way I want it to."
"You're stealing," Millie's voice is flat as she says it, and Rey can feel her starting to regret getting involved with this. Cheating at dice games goes against all of her light side instincts.
"Do you have a better suggestion?"
Rafe and Millie look at each other, and shake their heads.
As Rey's walking Millie and Rafe around, showing them the settlement, and the plains around it, Rafe says, "Are four of those children in Order uniforms?"
"Yes." Rey says, fairly sure this is going to be a sticking point for the Kennas.
"Why?" Millie asks.
"It's the warmest clothing they have," Rey's not exactly evading the question, but she wants a better feel for how they understand the Order.
"Why are Order uniforms the warmest clothing they have?" Millie knows she's being played, and isn't exactly enjoying it.
As she's asking, Poe joins them, bringing Finn and Rose and Paige over to be introduced. "Critt looks like he's feeling pretty good about this. He's got three of the other boys helping him lay out where he wants his cottage. I've never seen anyone so thrilled to dig a water pipe trench.
"Also, Rafe and Millie, this is Finn and Rose, and little girl over here is Paige."
Everyone says hello. And for a moment Rafe and Millie watch Critt already starting to set up his cottage. Apparently, he's got no interest in waiting to find out if he's got 'permission' to say.
Millie and Rafe offer small smiles at that. Critt's not going to like hearing that he is not getting his own cottage. If they're staying here, he's staying with them. It's also clear they're still waiting for Rey to answer their question. "Order uniforms…" Rafe prods.
Rey responds, "Because when my man takes them from the Order, he doesn't have them strip off and change into civvies first."
Finn adds, "Padme's our spy in the Order. He finds Force sensitives there, and then brings them here."
"Oh. He rescues them?" Millie likes that, and Rey can feel Rafe approving of that, too.
Rey replies with, "If you'd like to look at it that way, you can. Poe and Finn and Rose all see it that way, too."
Poe adds, "But you might not want to say that out loud, all of them joined the Order intentionally, because the Order got them out of slavery or begging on the streets. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but it's difficult to convince an eleven-year-old that the group that saved her life, offered her citizenship, and a path to mattering are the 'bad guys.' At least two of them are planning on going back once they're done here, becoming officers, and I know one hopes to stand for election to the Senate when that begins. You don't trust Ren is out of the Jedi-killing business, but they do."
Rey almost cocks an eyebrow when she feels the Kennas respond to that. They hate Kylo more for doing things like freeing slaves. They want him to be loathsome and evil, and everything he does to try to break that image makes them hate him more.
"Does… Padme?" Rafe's voice asks, and Rey nods, "think he's 'rescuing' them?"
"He thinks he's doing what's best for them," Rey answers.
"When do we meet Padme?" Millie asks.
"You don't."
"Uh…" Rafe says. That's a very definite blow off.
"He takes children and things away from The Order. He's high enough ranked that if anyone ever knew who he was it'd be an issue," Rey says. "You may see him around, but don't get too close. Don't try to chat him up. The kids get to see him, when he grabs them, because they're not going anywhere anytime soon. Those of us who leave the planet, who might run into the Order, don't get to see him. If you can identify him, you can get all of us hurt."
"That said, we're trying to get him here. We're going to run out of teachers of the Force stuff, soon, and Padme's the only other Force sensitive adult we know, so…" Finn's staring at Rey.
"Finn…"
"Yeah, we know. Big hot shot in The Order. If we don't know his face we can't accidently turn him in. I know. But really, he doesn't need to be there."
"If it's not clear, this is a very pro-Resistance sort of place," Rose adds. "We don't trot that out in front of the kids all that much, beyond, of course the basic teachings of the Maji being deeply at odds with the ideals of the First Order, but…"
"But you're not Resisting anymore," Millie says
"Not much point to it," Rey adds. "And especially since they started recruiting slaves and treating people like people, not everyone, especially among these younger ones, hate them."
Rose clasps Millie's hands. "Everyone here, over the age of twenty, has lost… more than we can count, to the First Order, but rather than spend our lives fighting a lost battle, we're building something new, better."
Finn looks around at the endless tracts of semi-frozen grassland around them. "And you're welcome to as much of it as you want to work on building your own new and better."
Rey offers a silent thank you to both of them for putting it that well. Those were the magic words necessary to start getting the Kennas to relax and start seriously thinking about staying here.
"So…" Rey says to Critt when she gets a few moments with him in the chapel. "You staying?"
He nods. "I am. Are they?"
"I think so."
He slumps, looking down-trodden. "I suppose it couldn't all be good."
"Do you think your parents being here will be a problem?"
He shrugs. "I think it'd be easier if it were just me."
Rey has a difficult time even starting to grasp that, but she nods anyway. "I'm sure it feels that way."
He's looking around the chapel, sky spreading around them, swirl below their feet. "Magiit says you aren't going to make me learn to be a Jedi."
"I'll give you access to everything I have about being a Jedi, and if you want it, you can try, but—"
He cuts in, voice defensive, posture hunched. "You think I'm unsuited for it."
"You read that off my body language or feel it in my mind?"
"Both."
She grabs two of the pillows at the edge of the dome, and tosses one to him. "Come on, sit down."
"Are we meditating?"
"No, talking." She puts her pillow down and gets settled. "We do meditate, but we talk a lot, too. Learn from each other's ideas of what's happening around us." She shifts her weight on the pillow a bit, and Critt sits, too. "Might as well be comfortable as we do it.
"You're aware enough to know you're not quite like the other students, right?"
"Yeah. I know. It's nice they aren't freaked out by it. That's new. Back home… You'd think I have a tail and horns."
Rey doesn't get that reference, but she figures it's bad. "Okay. No tail." She gently rubs the top of his head and he looks at her like she's insane. "I don't feel any horns. You look awfully human to me."
He rolls his eyes, annoyance flaming off of him. "You don't have to coddle me."
"Of course, I don't! Maybe, I'm doing it because I want to. Maybe, I think it's important that someone, at least once, and likely more often than that, takes the time to tell you, it's okay." She uses all of her light to flood him with a feeling of acceptance. "You are allowed to be dark. You're allowed to be angry or tense or worried or attached or passionate. You do not have to be a passive vessel of calm and serenity. You are allowed to feel whatever it is you feel, and you are encouraged to take the time and figure out what those feelings actually are and why you are feeling them. You don't have to deny them or stuff them into the back of your mind, or pretend they aren't there."
Critt blinks, stunned. Not only has no one ever said this to him, no one's ever even hinted that anyone might feel this way about him.
"The Force doesn't make mistakes, Critt. You are who you are for a reason. I don't know what that is, yet, but one day you likely will. And until then, we're going to learn how to use your feelings, how to master them, and marry them to a vision of a future you want.
"We don't have a lot of rules here, but the ones we do have matter. There's a line between evil and dark, and you've got to stay on the dark side of the line. So, evil, for our purposes, that's hurting others or yourself. Don't do it. If you've got to run around on the plain and break rocks and kick bushes to keep from doing it, that's fine. This is a place where you can do whatever it is you need to do to keep yourself from crossing that line.
"Kindness may not be something that comes easily to you, but we'll work on it. I'll encourage you to be kind to your fellows, and with yourself. And hopefully, if people aren't constantly telling you to not be you, you'll find it easier to just be."
Critt doesn't look like he knows what to do with this. There's an almost all over shudder at the idea that Rey might not be lying to him, and an all over hardening, protecting himself from wanting this, because as much as he might want this it can't be real.
She gently touches his hand. "It's real, Critt. You don't have to believe it right now, but it's real."
"My parents want me to be a Jedi."
"I got that sense."
"They'll make me leave when they see—"
"Critt, you're here. You'll stay as long as you want to."
"They—"
"Love you very much. And they're very hurt. And you know them better than I do, so I'm not going to say that your understanding of them is wrong. I am going to say give them time. This is a place where people grow and change. This is a place where people balance. You're not here just for you. You're here for them, too. So, time. Time for you. Time for them. Time to learn and live."
"They'll disappoint you."
Rey shrugs a bit. "Wouldn't be the first time." She stands up and levitates the pillow back to the pile of them. "Might as well get as much out of this as we can, though. Can you do that?"
He shakes his head. "No. I can… burst, and send things flying, but not… controlled, the way you just did."
"Tomorrow, we'll work on balancing. Trust me, everything is easier once you find your balance point."
Critt's looking skeptical, but willing to give her a try.
"That's good enough."
As they're walking out he says, "Do I have to live with them? They say if we stay, I have to live with them."
Rey nods. "For now. What was the age of adulthood where you're from?"
"Seventeen."
"Then as long as things are more or less stable, seventeen is when you can move out."
She can feel him thinking that three years is forever. "Everyone else gets to live on their own."
"Everyone else would give their right or left hand to have parents who care enough about them to do things like completely upend their entire life, abandon their business, move to a new planet with a bunch of strangers, just to give their son the best chance he has at a good life. I know you're young, and this has always been your life, but don't take it for granted."
That gets a long suffering sigh.
Rey nods at that, too. "Uh huh. Get to know your new classmates. It'll give you perspective, and that'll help you balance, too."
She can feel he's sure that she's wrong. And… well… maybe she is. But it doesn't feel that way, and that's the best she can do for right now.