Chapter 9: Correspondence—

Rey woke up a lot earlier than she had intended to. The communicator Poe had given her was beeping in her pocket as she lay in bed—she had forgotten it was even there. Her arms were tangled up in her blankets, so she fumbled around for a while before managing to extract the obnoxious device. Looking at the dial, she saw a blinking yellow light over the number one: Poe. Of course.

She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms and sighed deeply. After a moment, she pressed the large central button she assumed would answer the call, turning the yellow light green, and greeted him as politely as she could manage. "Good morning, Poe."

"Morning, Rey. What's your status?" He sounded very businesslike.

"Sleeping," she replied, yawning.

"Sorry, I wanted to make sure I talked to you before we both got wrapped up in other stuff."

"Okay, so what is it?" She wanted to either go back to sleep or get started with her day. She wasn't interested in pointless chitchat.

"Where are you right now? Where's he?"

"I'm in my bed in a small stone cottage that was abandoned here, about ten kilometers north of the base. He's at another place over by a small lake, a short walk from here."

"Cottage?" The surprise was evident in his tone. "There are houses out there?"

"Yeah, two of 'em, at least."

"So he's not being monitored? Rey, I don't like not knowing where he is," he said, his concern palpable.

Rey gave a sigh of frustration. "Poe, if he were here in the same place as me, you wouldn't like that either."

Poe grumbled, "Yeah, okay, you're probably right. I don't really like any of this. So he's in a house northwest of your current position?"

"Yes. What, did you see that from the GPS or something? So what's your plan then? To call me every twenty minutes to check up on me? If you pull that, I'll just put this damn thing on 'do not disturb' mode, or leave it here or something. If you want me to actually carry this thing around, I need to know it's not going to start beeping at me in the middle of my training."

There was a pause in which neither spoke, but then Rey added, "Look, he actually taught me a valuable skill yesterday. I can sort of see you right now. You're in your room, right?"

"It's morning, that could've been a lucky guess."

"Okay, so step outside, and I'll narrate your movements."

He complied, opening his door and stepping into the hall. He stood for a moment, thinking about where he might want to go.

"It's left or right, Poe, this shouldn't be a tough decision," she said impatiently.

"Just hold on, I'm thinking." He took a step to his left, then his right, and then left again.

"What's this little dance you're doing?" she asked.

Poe threw up his hands in frustration. "Okay, so he taught you how to spy on people, I'm really impressed," he said defensively. "Of course that means he can spy on me or you or anyone else, too."

"Spying appears to be what you've been up to for the better part of the last day," she countered.

"I was just trying to look out for you," he sighed. "You're my friend. I—" he halted. "You're a valuable Resistance asset."

"Well, thank you for your concern, now please rest assured that this handy new skill lets me keep tabs on him as well, so you don't need to bolt a monitoring tag to his leg. As I keep trying to tell you, I'll be fine."

He struggled not to say what he wanted to say, electing instead to soft pedal. "Okay, Rey. I'm sorry. I promise to try and leave you alone from now on. Can I at least request that you call us from time to time?"

"I will do what I can, but understand that 'from time to time' could mean every few days or even every few weeks."

"You couldn't make it a little more often just until I get used to this?" He was having a difficult time keeping the pleading tone out of his voice.

"I will do what I can," she repeated. She knew Poe was doing his best not to be too overbearing, and she felt a little sorry that she couldn't be more accommodating. She wanted to give him something for his trouble. She added, "I do at least have some decent intel for you about the First Order."

"That's something of a relief. What is it?"

"As Supreme Leader, he halted the conditioning program of kidnapped children, and began working to reestablish cloning as a means of producing soldiers."

"Crap, really? How come we haven't heard of that before?"

"It sounded like it took all this time just to get the facilities up and running again. He didn't say he'd actually gotten any soldiers out of it yet."

"Did he say where it was?"

"No. I didn't ask. I… I didn't want to make it obvious that I was pressing him for information." In truth, it had never even occurred to Rey to ask the location of the facility, so this follow up question from Poe took her somewhat by surprise. If she was totally honest, at the time, she hadn't felt like grilling Ben was really what she'd been doing—they had just been talking. It didn't help her any for Poe to know that, though, so she improvised this little excuse for why she didn't ask.

"I see," he sighed. "Well, this is something at least, thanks. Keep at it."

She wasn't confident her little white lie was believed, and that made her feel worse. It wasn't her intention to hide things from Poe, she just didn't want to look like she wasn't trying to make good on the one thing she agreed to do that had made Poe willing to go along with her training. It was time to wrap up this conversation before she dug herself further into this hole.

"And now I think it's time I started my day. Most of my cabin is still a disaster, and Ben will be here at some point soon to continue my training. I need to get ready."

"Okay, good luck," he said. Then, "May the Force be with you."

She smiled at the conciliatory gesture. "Thank you, Poe. We'll talk again soon. Goodbye."

"Bye, Rey."

She clicked off the communicator, stuck it back in her pocket with a sigh, and climbed out of bed.

Ben had made reasonable progress getting his cottage in order. He had removed all the furniture that was too broken to bother with, cleaned out most of the loose dirt and cobwebs, and gotten things placed where he wanted. In order to fix his counters, though, he would need some means of actually chopping wood—the repairs were too precise to be done with just snapping branches by hand.

It was time to contact Rey. He took a seat in one of his chairs and decided to try something: He would engage Rey in a vision. Using Force mapping would suffice to see where she was, and projecting his thoughts into her head was certainly easy enough—but he wasn't satisfied with that. He believed seeing her face to face was still possible, and was intent on unlocking the ability to do it intentionally.

Until now, he had never even attempted it. He hadn't been entirely honest with her when he said he'd never thought of trying to find her using the Force—he'd thought about it constantly. The trouble was, what if he'd succeeded? At the time, he hadn't wanted to consider what he would've had to do had he actually known where she was.

The same problem he'd had with his mother. And just like with his mother, he had spent all his time as Supreme Leader avoiding directly addressing this conflict within himself.

He was done holding himself back.

But what does it take to connect with someone through time and space? Perhaps if he just thought about her enough, she would appear before him. His memories of her swirled around in his head. He thought of the time he had interrogated her over the map, and guilt washed over him. Something else… Fighting off the Praetorian guards with her at his side… He let that thought play out in his mind for a bit, following it to its conclusion, when she sent him her own lightsaber so he could free himself of the final guard. He felt like he was getting closer. Then he remembered how he'd held his hand out to her, asking her to join him, and how she'd then rejected him.

He closed his eyes. This wasn't working. Memories like that just exacerbated the divide between them. He tried again, recalling some of his more recent memories of her. How she influenced those guards to watch over him even against their own material needs. That she had taken the time to hand stitch his clothing back into something he could wear. When she reached out and let him touch her hand on Ahch-To.

His eyes popped open at this sudden, unbidden, older memory. Things felt different. He looked around the confines of his small living space, but there was nothing to see. He stood up suddenly and ran to the door, and there, not ten paces from him, was Rey. Her presence there was so concrete that he began to doubt if this was merely a vision or in fact the real Rey, having decided to come to his house rather than wait for him as they'd agreed.

Viewing her from the back, he could barely make out the left side of her face and saw she was crouching, holding a bundle of logs. She wasn't moving—she was aware of him.

"Is—is that you?" she queried.

He wasn't sure his voice would work, but he forced it into submission. "Yes, it's me. I was able to do this on purpose."

She dropped the armful of logs, stood, and turned to face him. "How are you doing this?"

"I'm not really sure yet. I'll probably have to try it a few more times before I'm certain."

Her eyes were locked onto his, standing there taking him in. He could feel that she wanted something, something more than a mere explanation, but wouldn't say what it was. "What is it?" he said. It came out in an almost whisper, and his words were followed by a tense moment during which neither spoke.

"Then what can you tell me?" she asked, sidestepping his question.

He felt both honesty and deception from her simultaneously, like her question was some kind of half-truth or had a double meaning he couldn't decipher. Ben considered her question, what had he done? He narrowed his eyes at her. "I can't tell you how yet. You'll just have to wait. Were you chopping wood?" he asked.

"Yes, I've got a hatchet," she replied.

"Couldn't have put one of those in my bag, huh?"

"I only saw the one."

"So you kept it for yourself, got it. That's very light-side of you," he teased her wryly.

"I didn't know we would be staying in separate places, smart-ass," she countered, with a droll smile. "So is it time to begin?" she asked.

"It could be, but interestingly, what I actually was hoping to ask you was if you had anything I could chop wood with. All of last night's firewood was stuff I could only collect by hand, and I have some repairs to do inside that will require more precise cutting."

She took a half step back and bent over to reach down. As she did so, a hatchet materialized in her hand, allowing him to finally see it. "This what you want?"

"Yes, that would do nicely." He paused to consider. "I wonder if you handed that to me right now, if I would be able to keep it even after this connection ends?"

Rey's eyebrows popped up. "You think that might work? Let's try it." She stepped up to him and held out the hatchet for him to take. He glanced down at it, then back to her, and reached out to grab the small axe. His fingers curled around it, finding purchase, and he was able to lift it out of her grasp.

She smiled at him. "Well, this certainly shortens the walk from my place to yours."

"Provided all we need to do is talk or pass objects back and forth, yes," he said.

"And assuming you can consistently do this at will. You will definitely need to teach me what you did."

"Once I know what I did, I will try. It wasn't in a vision that you saw me injured? Before you screamed and I was able to find you? Was that random, or had you initiated it?" Ben inquired. He had only heard her voice at that time, but assumed she must have seen him in order to be imploring him not to die.

Rey pinked a little at the memory. "Yes, I had, but I have no idea how I triggered it—I mean, I just sort of felt… compelled. The Force was guiding me, and before I really even knew what I was doing, there you were."

"You weren't thinking about anything in particular?"

"Why, were you thinking about something in particular?"

"I'm asking you, don't change the subject."

Rey frowned. "I just sort of… I just followed a pull that I was feeling, and like I said, before I knew it there you were. I had to walk around for a bit to find you, but I knew you'd be there because the air felt thick. Just like how I remember from before. Just like right now."

"Huh." He paused to consider the timing of the contact. "This would have been right after my mother died. Were you looking for me? Had you thought I'd killed her?"

She turned her head and exhaled quickly. "No, and it's probably a stretch to say I was even looking for you. I wanted answers, though. I wasn't assuming you'd been directly involved in her death, but I wanted to know… I don't know what I wanted to know. I just needed answers, and I thought seeing you would give me some."

"I see. Well, something to think about." He decided to change the subject. Holding up the hatchet, he said, "So I'm going to use this to fix a couple things in my kitchen, and when I'm done I'll bring it back."

"You can keep it for a while," she said. "I have a ton of firewood. Poe called me early this morning, and I've been up ever since working on my living situation here. I started chopping wood when I ran out of other stuff to do."

"Poe, huh?" Ben snorted, giving her a look that she took to mean something akin to "I told you so".

"Look, he was just curious how things had gone, and wanted to know more about where you were in relation to me," she explained.

"No need to explain. I'm sure he keeps track of where everyone is in relation to everyone else, all the time, forever," he added, completely straight-faced.

"Stop it. Go chop your wood."

A smile curled at the corner of his mouth, and he nodded. He turned away from her, and the atmosphere around him returned to normal. He was alone again, though her hatchet was still in his hands.