—Chapter 2—Autoscopy—
Rey had been left alone in her room. With a promise to come check on her later, Poe headed to the briefing room to give his input on the next steps for the Resistance, and Finn was needed in the hangar. Chewbacca, in an attempt to free Rey from 3PO's incessant prattling, had taken both droids with him and headed for the Falcon. Rey was still reeling from the loss of General Organa, but she couldn't stand being alone in her room any longer with just her thoughts to keep her company. She left her room to wander the grounds of the Resistance base, letting her thoughts drift in and out of her head as she tried to make sense of everything that had occurred.
She stepped into the hangar to find Finn and Rose distracting themselves with repairs to a transport—Rose was attempting to replace the casing of an engine compartment that had taken damage when one of the new recruits accidentally backed a supply truck into it. Finn was helping her with the heavy lifting.
Faced with the prospect of having to converse with people again, Rey suddenly felt anxious. She slipped surreptitiously outside through the hangar doors and wandered into the brush. Dendrokaan, nestled inconspicuously in the Expansion Region galactic-south of the Core, was a beautiful planet, full of lush undergrowth, blue skies, and ample water. The abundant life around her hummed with the Force, and she felt it envelop her. Slipping into the forest canopy, out of sight of the hangar doors, she settled herself in a cool grassy area and closed her eyes.
Her mind wandered to Ben Solo. If Leia's death was hitting her so hard, what must it be doing to her son? Were his emotions as tumultuous as her own? Or was he responsible for Leia's death, as Poe had suggested? Rey wished she had answers. In her mind's eye, images of Ben Solo, of Kylo Ren, morphed in and out of focus.
An unsettling feeling descended upon Rey, and she suddenly felt as though she was being summoned. She felt the Force pulling on her soul, willing her into action, and she was desperate to comply with its demands. She tried to comply, but she lacked any certainty about what she was doing, or how to go about doing it. She just knew she needed to succeed. Trying to think logically about how to make headway wasn't getting her anywhere, so she gave her mind over to unconscious thought, squeezing her eyelids tighter.
And then, something felt different. Was the air thicker? Popping her eyes open, Rey looked around anxiously. The forest was all she saw, but it was like it… hummed. It resonated differently than it had before. The harder she tried to focus on any one thing specifically, the blurrier it all became. Relaxing her gaze, she pushed out with her feelings instead. She felt a pull to her left, and she let it guide her.
Stepping over fallen tree trunks and around various bushes, she could tell she was getting closer to something. Finally, she approached a large tree. Placing her hand on it, she took a step to peer around it. As she did so, her heart caught in her throat and she couldn't move. She could only stare in horror, until at last she found her breath, and screamed.
—
Kylo Ren stirred back into consciousness. It took him a brief moment to recall where he was and what was going on. He was sitting in the pilot's seat of an old Imperial shuttle, orbiting the forest moon where he had abandoned Hux to die. Bleeding profusely and feeling that his sensibilities might slip away from him at any moment, he mentally retraced the steps that had brought him here. He recalled staggering onto the shuttle and heading straight for the pilot's seat, where he managed to initiate takeoff before summarily, and gratefully only temporarily, losing consciousness. Awake once again, his eyelids fluttered, and he tried to focus on the control panel in front of him. He heard a lingering echo—a scream?
As he lay there, trying to decide if his mind was playing tricks on him, suddenly, uninvited, an image of a woman entered his mind. He closed his eyes again. When he reopened them, he felt whole in his mind and his body, and stood to take in his surroundings, discovering that movement came easily. Looking around, he saw there was nothing. No shuttle. No moon. He wasn't bleeding. It appeared he simply stood on an invisible surface, floating, but not floating, in the vast emptiness of space. Had he died? He took a step forward, feet inexplicably finding purchase, and looked around. Again, he heard the vague reverberations of a scream.
BEN ! !
His eyes narrowed. He recognized the voice.
Ben, don't die! Wake up!
He reached out, and could sense himself moving away from his body. He followed the pull of his mind to wherever it was taking him, and he could feel, rather than see, a lush planet before him. He continued to push out, and in his mind's eye was an image of a woman, frantically running away from him through the forest, heaving with breath and stumbling through the brush as she ran. He knew who it was.
Retreating back into himself, back into his damaged body, he opened his eyes. Slowly, and with terrific pain, he eased himself up and forward, toward the control panel of his shuttle, and began to punch coordinates into the navicomputer. His conscious mind could not tell what coordinates he was entering, but he let his hands obey whatever messages they were receiving. Eventually, the stars around his shuttle began to smear, and he found himself in hyperspace. He closed his eyes, and once again returned to unconsciousness.
