Chapter X.
Reaching out through the darkness.
Synopsis: Finn talks to the ghost of Kanan Jarrus. Rey tries to reach out to Ben Solo. Rose wakes up. The Sullustan base is being compromised.
"How did you get all of these?" Finn whispered, touching the unusual hilt closest to him.
Hera punched him on his fingers and he flinched in pain.
"Ouch", he screamed, "Why did you that for?"
"That one stays with me, kid. And the one next to it – let's say they have a special sentimental value", Hera said. "These three you can test. They're no less powerful. They all belonged to peculiar kinds: Rogue Jedi, outcasts in a way".
"Belonged?" Finn asked, "So all of these Jedi are dead?"
Hera seemed to be saddened by this for a brief moment, but then waved with her hand.
"What does death mean to a Jedi?" she said. "I am an old woman and even I, as the end of my natural life approaches, feel there is nothing particular to be afraid of. A step out of this reality into another, that's all there is. And since I spent 30 years on Lothal, believe me, there are definitely worse fates than dying".
"So these sabers haven't been used in how long exactly?", Finn asked.
"They're all in perfect functioning order", Hera's ego was tad hurt. "Try it for yourself".
Rey frowned and stopped at the door for a moment.
But her reluctance was almost completely cast aside as she realized there was something true and sincere in his state, and that wasn't just the vulnerable situation he was in. It was indeed hard to remember that this young man was a culprit of so much misery. He was breathing rhythmically and peacefully. The bruises and scars were fading on him. He had an unruly beard and his thick hair was in disarray. As she approached, she began to recognize the facial features of Leia and Han merging on him. Rey never had a chance to actually observe that face – and she was under strong impression now she truly saw him for the first time. As she came even nearer, she noticed he had faint freckles. Freckles – discreetly dispersed on his cheek-bones, barely visible under old and new bruises and scars.
That simple trait of humanity moved her even more.
What a waste.
What a tragic, terrible waste of life.
But instead of rage or disdain, she now felt only compassion and sadness. Had she been in his position, who knows how she'd reacted to the temptation? You can't run from it forever. One day, you have to face it and defeat it or be defeated.
Do it or don't – but don't try.
Remembering her Master's words, she placed her hand on Kylo Ren's hand, Leia's ring still on her finger. The two stones glistened peacefully. Poe couldn't tell her what they symbolized, but she felt there was an inherent peace emanating from the ring and that the two stones had the same ancient source. They breathed new hope in her.
There was no response, however – no change in cardiac rhythm, no sudden awakening. Rey focused now like a Jedi would to a Jedi in the best years of order's history – sharing wisdom and insights with one another. It was a risky business. But somehow, Rey was gaining faith. She could feel it sipping into her like a thin, but persistent ray of light.
"Ben", she whispered, "If you can hear me, wake up. The Balance needs you".
Rey found this sounded not like she intended. It was somewhat flat and unconvincing. Balance – she barely understood herself what it entailed, except for the end of war and bloodshed. However, she still thought his hand became warmer and his appearance, first clouded, now clearer in her mind's eye. But he was reluctant. It felt like he was constantly disappearing before her in a dark-walled labyrinth.
"Ben, I wish you no harm", she said and closed her eyes to focus, "I want to help you. That hasn't changed. But first you have to help me".
She frowned as she heard the beating of his heart accelerated.
"Please", she whispered.
The cell was silent, save for the sounds of machines he was attached to. Rey opened her eyes, slightly disappointed. The cardiac rhythm returned to its monotonous, basal tone.
"This is to be expected with patients in subject's condition", the medical droid informed her.
But as she begun to pull her hand to herself, Rey felt a faint grip just at the tip of her fingers. She flinched and reached for the hilt instinctively with her other hand.
He was awake, gazing at her directly with his eyes sprinkled with broken blood vessels.
"Rey", he made a low growl.
But she remembered that sound. That's how he tried to call her name in the Throne Room while she was desperate to fight off the Praetorian. Rey let loose of the hilt.
Above them, Rose Tico awoke from her coma. As she struggled to speak, she could clearly feel there was a breeze of change in the air: something almost tangible and as fresh and new as hope.
Finn and Hera spent some time conversing. For someone so old and apparently so isolated from the rest of the galaxy, she was very well informed. Finn was clueless about who she was, and that amused her to no end. She knew Han Solo personally and his fate saddened her deeply. "Too many losses", she said. Finn decided it would be unwise to confess they helped his killer son stay alive at that moment. He was somewhat afraid of Hera. She thought she was very troubled in her own way, constricted in this space that resembled both junkyard and a mausoleum.
Hera considered herself some kind of a guardian on Lothal, admitting there was a wave of Resistance sympathy across the impoverished planet. But as for herself, she didn't officially belong to any movement.
"Joining an army was never my thing", Hera said. "Kanan was right. You can fight the bigger battle by not joining any fraction".
"Who was Kanan?" Finn asked rather bluntly.
"You really are a bucket-head, aren't you?" Hera asked him and frowned.
"Leave the kid alone, Hera", a voice behind them said. Hera seemed not to mind at all the fact that her single-entrance and exit room was occupied by a disembodied voice, so Finn tried to stay unalarmed. "I saw stranger things", he thought.
A figure came from behind Hera. He looked very usual – his plain clothes maybe slightly out of fashion, but then again, he was not a young man – if Finn had to guess, he was in his early 50s.
"Meet Finn of the Resistance, my love", Hera said smiling. "I supposed you'd come and greet him. Sorry for all the commotion".
"Commotion never stops", Kanan laughed. "Those who are alive are those who are under the illusion it does".
He leaned forward and kissed Hera on the forehead. For a moment, they behaved like they were the only people in the room, so Finn felt slightly awkwardly. And lonely – he thought of Rose in an instant, but had to snap out of it fast.
Kanan sat down near Hera, legs crossed. He looked at Finn, greeting him in a very pleasant and easy-going manner and looked at him with his bright piercing eyes.
"A Stormtrooper who joined the Resistance", he said and smiled. "Now, that happens once in a million".
Slowly, Finn began to notice something was unusual with this man. He was pleasant and relaxed, and tangible and present but somehow – too present to be real. And his eyes were far more brilliant and lucid than he ever saw on any human before.
"You are…" Finn shuddered, "You are not alive".
Hera smirked and turned to Kanan.
"I told you he's not the sharpest tool in the shed".
"Give the boy a break", Kanan laughed. "He had to travel through 10 different planetary systems and use a Lothalian shuttle. And he still has a long way to go".
"I have only one way now, and that's to go back to the base", Finn replied, slightly offended. "I tried to get one man's message – I failed. I met Hera by accident: lucky accident, because I wouldn't get away from the First Order alone".
"You were always so lenient on the youngsters", Hera grunted and looked at the apparition with outmost gentleness. "I had to help him. Besides, you kept telling me about that new powerful Jedi rising. Force knows we had a fair share of those in our lifetime".
Kanan squeezed her hand – the touch seemed real enough to Finn.
"Excuse Hera's bluntness", Kanan said. "We are stuck in here like two old relics that we are. We've seen dark days – but hardly have we ever seen days as bleak as these. I am sorry your generation had to witness this and to struggle through the failures of my generation".
Kanan paused for a moment and sighed.
"You have to take the sabers back to this new Jedi I sensed in the Force", Kanan said. "I am sorry this task fell on your shoulders. When you're alive (and Finn shuddered to this), you have the illusion of having all the time you need. I never foresaw that there will be no one left to pass on the sabers myself. We were so optimistic back then, when the Empire has fallen. It probably made us reckless. Young people can't understand the frenzy and the hope with which Luke Skywalker was greeted throughout the galaxy".
His eyes darkened for a second. "I'm afraid that young people today don't even know how that pure hope feels like".
But then his expression became radiant and pleasant again.
"Your friend is truly immensely powerful and full of Light. But – she needs your help. She will have to fight a great battle and she'll need you to help her".
Kanan's brilliant eyes examined Finn. Finn remembered the moment he almost surrendered onboard the "Conquistador" and the guilt overwhelmed him again. He had a distinct feeling the Jedi ghost knew this.
"I will help her no matter what", Finn said honestly, deeply moved. "I will take sabers with me. Rey will be thrilled. She'd be thrilled to meet you".
Hera shook her head.
"I can't leave Lothal", she said gently, looking sideways to Kanan.
Kanan interfered:
"I am bound to this planet. Only very powerful Jedi masters can surpass the constrictions of space and time. My training was almost cut short by the Clone Wars. I was a kind of a rogue Jedi all my life. That doesn't qualify me for a new Obi Van Kenobi exactly".
Kanan smiled.
"But Hera will gladly take you with her ship back to your base. Won't you, Hera?"
"Wait a second, kiddo", Hera waved her index finger at Finn.
Finn was absolutely perplexed as he witnessed these two strange figures arguing in what felt like a marital disagreement. However, their argument didn't last long. Hera went back to Finn, apparently exasperated.
"Alright, kid", she sighed, "I know you need help. I haven't used the ship for some time now, but I'm sure it will jump right up like it always had".
He struggled to get up and sit. His broken bones weren't completely healed and he bit on his lip to stop a painful yell.
"Snoke", he said shortly, with hoarse voice, "I killed only his physical body. I slowed him down, that's all. I was foolish to believe it was enough. I didn't see the whole scope of his power at once. But now I've seen it. He…", and by the dark shadow that permeated his face, Rey could clearly tell he was thinking his uncle, "… has showed me this".
"We killed him", she said firmly, "And now he's after both of us".
He glanced at her from the side.
"So it seems", he uttered, examining her face.
"What else did you see?" she asked him sternly.
"What else did you see?" he asked back with a low roar.
Rey shook her head.
"This won't do", she said directly, "Sullust might be over-run by First Order any time now. You have to start trusting me, Ben".
He sat back. He was still very weak. Rey could see he was struggling both physically and mentally.
"My visions are unchanged", he said in a hoarse voice and glanced at her from underneath his unruly mane, "You'll change. It is imminent".
"Do not taunt me", she exclaimed back, "We can spin the wheel over and over again. Who is more powerful in the Force, more wise, more trained, more intuitive… I am sick and tired of it. I just want our common enemy to be stopped. We did it once. We will do it again".
He sighed shortly and straightened up.
"If you want to destroy him, you need to strike him fast. Snoke must occupy a physical body", he said, "But it's not just any host. He needs someone strong, preferentially someone powerful in Force. He needs someone as strong as you", he said tauntingly.
"Or you", she interrupted.
He again analyzed her intently.
"Or me", he said, "He tried to bypass that… predicament by experimenting first with the Force. But no one could ever hold his power for long enough. Immortality is an unnatural state. The very fabric of the universe fights against it".
He stood up to his feet, swayed and quickly gestured at her not to come near him.
"That's why he preserved that disfigured body of his", he uttered, "The body of the Prime Jedi. The First One is also the Fallen One. And he needs the last Jedi to finish his work".
"I knew who he was since the beginning", he added, looking at Rey with some of that old hateful blaze, "I knew it all too well. And it only made my disdain for the Jedi even stronger. See how corruptible they are? The first among their first, the very Prime Jedi, fell prey to the Dark Side. There is hypocrisy in them, imprinted like a genetic code – lie, deceit, treason and hunger for power".
He paused again and added:
"I told you, I won't ever lie to you. There is nothing in the Jedi ways but deception and self-deception. How do you plan to defeat Snoke? He is the original Jedi. He knows all their ways – he created it. No, you have to turn to something else. You have to turn".
Rey had to laugh with a brazen laughter that apparently startled him.
"But you seem to forget", she said, "I am no Jedi at all. Therefore, I am immune to whatever went wrong with the Jedi in the first place".
"That is exactly something… he would say", he barked back at her, "And with the same degree of self-assurance".
"I am not Luke Skywalker", she responded, "The same you're not Kylo Ren. Let's meet in the middle ground. Call it what you will. But this evil will be stopped".
The alarms for evacuation went off.
This time, she reached with his hand to him.
He looked at her hand with distrust and pain on his face. She wore Leia's ring, and his gaze fixed on the dark blue ornament, mixing pain and disdain. He accepted her hand, albeit reluctantly. He had no choice, she thought. It was either this or suicide, and the cooperation with her seemed to appeal to him more than being absorbed by the Dark Side.
They shook hands like warriors of the old, pressing each other's forearms.
The Force is good and strong, she thought to herself with delight, but said nothing. She knew how repulsed he was with all that had to do with Jedi traditions. But it didn't matter in the end – Rey knew he could feel it too.
Finn followed Hera to a small vessel she referred to as "Ghost".
"Irony, don't you think?" she said.
It was an outdated VCX-100 light freighter who was kept unusually clean and well maintained, in a stark comparison with Hera's tower.
"Unbeknownst to many", Hera said, sitting in the pilot's chair and activating the ship, "This is the best ship in the galaxy. It could outrun "Falcon" any time. And it still can. Even Solo had to admit this is the best vessel there is".
"When did it fly last time?" Finn asked anxiously, but got no answer.
"Let's set the coordinates, scramble our signal and we're off to Sullust", Hera said.
The "Ghost" shuddered and swayed left, then right. Then it tilted backwards and Finn nervously grabbed the holds of his co-pilot's seat.
In the next moment, they jumped into hyper-space.
He has changed from his tattered black robes into tan clothes resembling the Resistance uniform, only without any insignia. These small changes changed his overall appearance dramatically. He could easily pass as the new addition to the Resistance forces.
She didn't plan to board the "Falcon" with him, knowing Chewbacca would be vehemently opposed.
They went out from the catacombs last and waited in the shadows of a piled up cargo in the launch bay to get onboard the stolen craft. Rey held him in close range, with her blaster on and acutely aware of her saber at her side. Left and right, the Resistance fighters were rushing to their ships, almost completely unaware of their presence.
"You won't restrain me?" he asked mockingly as he was standing in front of her with his arms crossed on his back.
"You have no weapon, so why should I?" Rey answered, "Besides, would it stop you?"
"It probably wouldn't", he replied.
Rey frowned and tightened the grip around the blaster.
"As soon as others evacuate", she said, "We'll go to Snoke's craft".
"You'll have to do this for quite some time, Rey", he said, with a hint of dark humor in his voice, "Hiding the double traitor in shadows, monitoring my every move so I won't hurt your friends, explaining complicated Jedi dogma to them. It almost makes you eager to get to Mustafar as soon as possible".
"You sound like you want to stay on Mustafar", she uttered, "And I don't really think you do, Ben".
He shook his head.
"I detest that name".
There was a part of her that wanted to punch him right at the back of his head. This thought didn't go unnoticed.
"Try it, then" he said in low voice.
"Don't mention it again", she said, "Let's go, we have clearance".
As they entered the Sullustan system, Finn asked Hera timidly:
"What happened to Kanan?"
"You mean, when did he become one with the Force?" Hera said matter-of-factly. "It was not long after the Empire has fallen. He survived the Inquisitor and Darth Vader himself, but he was eventually killed in a sectarian conflict with the remaining Imperial troops who went rogue. Irony, isn't it? I actually considered re-naming my ship: Irony".
"His own apprentice, Ezra, joined the Jedi academy of Luke Skywalker afterwards. He was first his student, then one of the masters. They all believed that a better, new world was coming. And we all know how it all went from there", Hera added bitterly.
"About that, Hera", Finn flinched in his seat and cleared his throat, "It would be good for you to know that…"
"Uh – oh", Hera uttered with a worried expression on her face. "Your Resistance is evacuating. We have to move quickly".
Poe felt there is no appropriate word in any known language to describe the feelings he had when he let Rey with that thing onboard the ship. On the other hand, he didn't want anyone else to navigate the ship.
"For goodness' sake", he murmured to himself, as he observed their movements with his peripheral gaze. Rey escorted Kylo Ren to the cabin on the left and reminded the rest of the crew not to interfere no matter what. She still feared he might try to mentally subvert the crew and she didn't want to make it happen. Poe shuddered. There were still invisible wounds in him after that interrogation.
"2 minutes to total evacuation and counting", Kay snapped him involuntarily from his disgruntled thoughts.
"Alright", he said, "Let's crank this junk up and dance".
The alliance decided to split into 5 sectors chosen randomly from their list of safe-havens. But as they were ready to hyper-jump, they needed no Force to know that the darkness was re-grouping and closing in on them.
Rey hoped she might get one flight ready vessel to head to Ahch-to immediately: but the available fleet was by that time so minute that every single ship was intended for evacuation. When they reach their destination, unknown even to her, she hoped she'd get that ship she wanted.
But the look on his face made her feel uneasy. It was as if he saw something she didn't know. But he didn't seem to think about the impending victory. He was in a dire situation. He was still struggling, and the only thing that prevented him from taking over this whole ship was the fact that this time he really had no place to go to. He was injured. He was declared a traitor across the galaxy. His saber was lost in the open space, probably broken.
Rey thought: "He has all the reasons to hate us. He's locked in here with these pathetic shreds of the Resistance that he abhorred. I can tell that we are an insult to him. But he doesn't hate me. He even doesn't hate this crew".
She observed him keenly from across the cabin with the blaster gun pointed at him. He seemed to be distant, lost in his thoughts. He looked sideways since they were onboard as he avoided any eye-contact with her. That left Rey with some space to examine him. With his fierce gaze lost and his eyes almost languid and filled with melancholy, with the unruly hair and unkempt beard, he looked oddly gentle and human. The same sort of compassion she felt for him time and time again came back, this time with the new intensity. He seemed to be unaware of her new-found sympathy. Perhaps he was indeed too far gone; perhaps he developed this rough shell that let only the aggression, the ambition, the greed, the pain and suffering in. But she found it hard to believe.
There was something more unsettling now seeing him in this present state, than when she had the glimpse of him half-naked. She looked down and blushed.
"I can't be doing this right now", she thought to herself, feeling the rush of the blood to her face, "This is just insane".
The ship stopped and shuddered. They were out of hyper-space and Rey was, to her relief, out of her troubling thoughts. They looked at each other from across the room.
He smiled at her and it left her confounded for a second. She never saw Ben Solo smile.
"Endor 2", he said bitterly, "Your Resistance has a bad taste".