"Who am I?" She asked with bated breath.

He dropped his eyes back to his hands and remained silent for a time. When he finally spoke his words confused her. "Do you know who my grandfather was?"

"Your grandfather?" She asked, bewildered. "What does he have to do with me?"

"Do you know of him?" He asked again.

"Of course I know of him, who doesn't know of Darth Vader?" She gaped at him.

"Do you know who his parents were?" He asked leadingly.

"His parents?" She tried to remember if she had ever heard anything about them. "No."

"After I joined Snoke I became obsessed with my grandfather. It took me several years, but eventually I was able to track down nearly every detail of his life." He blew out a puff of air and braced himself. "His mother was a slave from Tatooine but his father…" He hessitated a moment, then plunged ahead. "He didn't have a father."

She frowned. "Everybody has a father."

He shook his head. "The Force was his father."

"That's ridiculous." She argued.

"It's true. I found a file in the old empirial network… a copy of some old Jedi council archives… Every member of the Jedi council believed it to be true." He flashed the memory of reading the file into her mind.

She shivered. "Let's say I believe that Darth Vader was half man and half Force… what does that have to do with me?"

"About a year after we found you, Luke was teaching me to read minds. When I finally managed to get into his I saw something unbelievable in there." He hessitated then explained. "Luke went back to talk to the junkers on Jakku about a month after we found you. I thought he was out looking for more students, but he wasn't, he was looking for more information about you."

"He read the memory from the old woman's mind, and I read it from his. Both of us dismissed it as a drunken delusion at the time, but what happened yesterday… I have to believe it now."

Her skin prickled at the sound of his voice, he was looking at her like she was some sort of god. Suddenly, she didn't want to know what he had seen in Luke's mind. Before she could protest the memory swirled into her head.

Rey could taste the stale whiskey on the old woman's tongue, feel it's effects on her mind and body.

Ebby followed her husband through the wreckage of a crashed rebel cruiser. They had found a bottle of whiskey here the day before and came back today to look for more. The ship was tilted to one side by several degrees, making it difficult for Ebby to manage the cracked and broken floors, but she was a game old bird and kept up well enough with Guffy.

"Here it is, Ebby. The Captain's quarters, this is where I found that pricey bottle."

Like most salvage trips Ebby and Guffy had split up yesterday to cover more ground in their search for valuable bits and bobs. "If you hadn't opened that bottle we coulda sold it off and bought ten bottles with it!" She grumbled for the umpteenth time since they'd finished drinking the whiskey in the wee hours of the night before. Guffy ignored her for the umpteeth time.

"Here. See? The cabinet's empty." Guffy said, holding open the doors of a utilitarian locker cabinet. "I told ya, aint no more of that sweet stuff in here."

"Did ya check unner the bed?" Ebby asked cantankerously. "Or in here?" She lifted the lid of an old footlocker and waved her glowrod around the inside.

"Woman, aint nobody never put no bottle of fine whiskey unner the bed." Guffy rolled his eyes at her.

Ebby rifled through the jumble of possessions inside the footlocker. Disappointed at finding nothing of value she slammed the lid closed and glared at Guffy. "Aint nobody never wasted such a fine bit o'drink on the likes a you afore neither. Check unner the bed!" She demanded and turned to rifle the desk.

They tossed the room with practiced proficiency but found nothing else of value.

After deciding that the room was cleaned out they moved on down the corridor to the next room, then the next. In the fifth room Guffy found a few credits tucked inside a pillowcase and whooped with joy. "Huzzah! Ebby old girl, what say we go get ourselfs a drink?"

Ebby was the closest to the door so she strolled out into the dark corridor, glowrod in hand. Terror ripped a scream from her throat when there came a flash of blue-white light on the floor in front of her. She screamed again as the naked baby girl that had materialized from the flash started crying.

"What you squallin' fer?" Guffy grumbled, coming through the open doorway. He stopped to gape at the baby. "Wher'd that come from?"

"Jus' appeared outta nowhere!" Ebby cried, clasping her trembling hands to her boney chest.

"Well, aint that sumptun." Guffy said, not believing a bit of it. "It's mama gotsta be 'round here sumwhur. Just leave it."

"I'mma tellin' you that baby just appeared outta thin air right afore my eyes, Guff! Thur was a flash o'light and then a baby!" Adrenaline coursed through the old woman's veins.

"A flash o'light and a baby? You drink too much Eb, cummon, lets go so I can drink too much, too." He smiled and flashed the credits at her.

"I ainta leavin' no brannew baby out here! Ya'ole sot. Git me a sheet er sumptun to wrap er up in." Ebby ordered and scooped the baby up in her arms.

"Oh, now why ya gotta do that Eb? Aint we got it hard nuff widdouwt a babe to take care of?" Guffy grumbled.

"If'n you don't git movin' I'mma gonna whoop yer tail old man." Ebby threatened. "Git me sumptun to wrap this ere baby up in. Mebbe we can trade er off er sumptun." She coaxed when he did nothing but scowl at her.

"Aight, but you the one takin' care of that thang til we do." He gave in ungracefully.

Rey wiped the tears from her face as the memory faded away. "That thing?" She was devastated. "That's all I was to them? That thing?"

Ben gathered her into his arms. "They were nothing to you." He said soothingly, stroking her hair.

"I've never been anything to anybody, not even my own parents." She wept.

He pulled her away from him far enough to be able to look into her tear stained face and ducked his head to to look into her eyes, "That's not true. You've always been everything to me."

She threw her arms around him and wept until she had no more tears. He shed quite a few tears with her, holding her tightly and feeling her pain as acutely as she did.

When her sobs finally subsided she pulled away and looked at him miserably. "I don't understand this part." She replayed the part of the memory with the flash of light into his mind.

"I didn't, either… I thought it was just an old woman's drunken imagination until I saw what you did to me." He touched the spot on his chest where not even a scar remained of the hole that had been there. "When you came back to me, I knew it was true." He took a ragged breath and braced for the impact he knew his next words would have on her. "You never had parents, you were created by the Force." His emotion roughened voice was filled with reverence when he added, "Rey, you *are* the Force."