She slept fitfully, whipped from memories of the life she'd left to visions of the war she'd joined. Between images of solitude, sand, and the stars, his face loomed, fire-lit and ever-changing. In the dim, mobile glow of the flames his features were sharp, but his emotions shaded into one another in ways she couldn't read. Every expression she'd ever seen on his face flickered there, dissolving one into the other. She saw the pain and anger and loneliness she had described to Leia – and others, more complex, that she didn't want to recognize.
When she woke at last, she could tell by the quality of light in the hut that the sun had long since risen. Her mind snapped to Leia. How strange to play both servant and protector to this woman. Rey felt a flash of guilt for leaving her unattended for so long. Not that she needed supervision or care. Rey imagined that the solitude of the island might be refreshing to a woman who'd spent her life surrounded by warriors and diplomats, by causes, by urgency. On the other hand, she thought, the dancing grasses and warm rains might not be as comforting to Leia, for whom this was merely a stop on the way to a potentially disastrous confrontation. Best not keep her waiting. Rey smoothed her hair into place, ran a hand across her rumpled clothes, and heaved open the iron door of her hut.
To her amusement, she found that Leia had little need of her. The island's caretakers (fish nuns, Rey giggled inwardly) had devoted themselves to her comfort and entertainment. Leia sat with her back to the sun on one stone wall of the little settlement as two or three small figures attended to her. She held a steaming stone bowl in her hands and, as she raised it to her lips, winked mischievously at Rey. Something incongruous about these circumstances – Leia's elegance and humor in this humble place, as their fates hung in the balance – both warmed Rey's heart and filled it with sadness. She approached, squinting in the morning light, and the tiny women dispersed.
"Well?" Leia queried simply.
Rey nodded, nervous. "I've made contact."
Leia breathed a sigh of relief and lowered her eyes, smiling slightly. "How is he?"
"Hopeful," Rey thought aloud, remembering the beginnings of the smile that had smoothed his troubled face just before he vanished. "There's a change in him. A release. Some kind of… opening."
Leia nodded, pleased. "Did you discuss terms?"
Rey shook her head, "Not yet. He doesn't even know you're here with me. We only spoke for a moment before the bond closed. I will try again today." Tonight, she realized. The bond seemed to connect them only in darkness. Ugh, she rolled her eyes inwardly. Real subtle.
"Well then," Leia sighed, "we have some time. What's there to do around here, Rey?"
Rey blushed slightly, realizing uneasily, again, that she was the authority here, Leia her charge. "Not much," Rey admitted. "But there's something I need to take care of. When I left this place, I sort of… sort-of stole something. The sacred Jedi texts." Leia's eyes widened merrily at the girl's audacity. Rey rushed to explain. "It was an impulse. Stupid, I know. Luke said it was time for the Jedi to die, and I couldn't let him be right. About the Jedi, about me, about Ben." Leia's expression shifted at the sound of her son's name, but Rey pressed on. "They were the only piece of the Jedi that I could take with me, so I did. Now I need to return them. They belong here; they're safer here than anywhere in the galaxy. Safer than with me. They should remain here for… for someone else."
Leia nodded gravely.
"There's a temple in a valley on the other side of the island. A tree, really. I'll take them back today." Rey looked Leia over, considering an invitation. "The terrain is… rugged," she said, doubting that it was wise for Leia to make this trek. She seemed solid and lively enough sitting here in the sun, but Rey had noticed that she also seemed older, smaller.
Leia waved the suggestion away gently. "Go," she smiled. "I have no wish to follow you. I will be here when you return, and not alone." She grinned subtly, her eyes indicating the caretakers hovering nearby, who feigned interest in tasks that Rey was sure they had completed, undone, and completed again several times over during this conversation. Rey grinned and reached forward to touch the older woman's hand. "I won't be long," she murmured, turning brightly to gather her cloak and satchel.
With a mixture of joy and sadness, she set out across the island. The wind whipped her hair and her cloak, and she pulled it against her: feeling not cold, exactly, but… tender toward herself. She felt glad to be returning the texts to their ancient home, but vaguely ashamed of the traitorous act whereby she'd acquired them. Shaking her head ruefully, she imagined Luke's reaction to the realization of what she'd done. If he'd had time to find out. Things had happened so quickly after she'd departed. She wondered what his last hours had been like, how it must have felt to stand before his nephew again, what they must have said to one another on the battlefield. And then, she wondered, whether Ben had killed Luke or whether his passing had been a form of surrender. In this way, she thought, he was making amends. Giving Ben what he wanted – to let the past die. The gesture, she realized, had prefigured Leia's, possibly shaped it. Rey marveled at the symmetry of these two gestures and at what they might accomplish. She'd seen it in his eyes.
The memory of him was too vulnerable; she didn't want to think about it. Not yet. She cleared her mind and turned down the hill into the valley in which the temple sat, stretching its arms up to the –
"What the—" she gasped, breaking into a run. The grassy hillside was wet, and she slipped awkwardly toward the shocking sight before her: the ancient tree, charred and broken, its sweeping branches burned back to jagged stubs. The trunk had split in two, yawning upward and outward to the sky. The hollow within, the narrow chamber in which the books had rested, was a muddy, smoldering black hole in the earth. Rey gaped in disbelief. She stumbled toward it, her steps halting, her hand on the satchel, suddenly protective of its cargo. She walked through what had been the door and turned a slow circle in the pit at the core of the tree's remains, her face lifting to the sky above. Was this Luke's doing, she thought, suddenly terrified. Had he seen her theft and turned in anger on this sacred place? The shame she'd felt faintly before intensified tenfold, sending icy electric shocks through her chest. She felt as though she had been knocked to the ground. There was no safe place to leave them now. The texts belonged with her, to her, for better or worse. The realization had an unexpected effect: it soothed her, a gentle weight stilling the cold buzz around her heart. They were hers, and she would keep them. She held the bag a little closer. The books had been a treasure, so precious that she was almost afraid of them. Of bearing them, of losing them. Now they were hers and they were just… there. Something released inside her and she stepped slowly away from the tree, climbing the slick hillside again, pausing every so often to look back.
The day had grown warmer, and the wind had stilled. She closed her eyes when she reached the crest of the hill. The sensation of sun on her skin was like a memory. If she focused on it, it was almost like being back on Jakku. Never again, she smiled softly to herself. She felt… free. Opening her eyes, she considered her next destination. Looking down at her pants and boots, wet and blackened by soot and ash, she resolved to give them a rinse and headed down toward the water.
As she walked, she let him back in. Remembered the way he'd looked at her, up into her… the way his face had relaxed, the way his hand had pressed against hers tentatively, firmly. In her mind's eye, his face shifted, taking on the flickering quality she'd seen in her dream. Familiar and unfamiliar sensations ghosted through her as she remembered the discreet moments when she had seen each of those expressions. The smug certainty in the set of his jaw when she had called him a monster. Yes, I am. Frustrated impatience with her and her questions and her rage. Defiance of her stubborn insistence that he was not Kylo Ren but Ben Solo. She remembered another expression, harder to read. Something lifting in his face, an alertness, quick and alive as he had stepped toward her. What was it? Longing? Desire? It wasn't beyond her experience – she, the scavenger girl, who'd spent her short life learning to read and avoid that kind of attention from the transients that drifted through Niima Outpost. She'd been looked at like that before – at, but never into the way he had. She felt an echo of the sensation she had felt in the moment pass through her own shoulders and limbs. A tension, an energy, coiled and waiting, anticipating something. It itched. It frightened her. She was nearing the edge. But of what?
She became aware that she had stopped walking. Her feet had carried her to a fork in the path. Either route would take her to the water, she knew. But at the end of the left-hand path, she realized, lay the hole – and the cave. The memory rose, instantaneously: an image of it, what she had seen in her first lesson with Luke. Dark, gaping up at her, calling to her. Beneath it, reaching for her, the cave in which she had called out for the identities of her parents – and seen only her own reflection. It had made her feel alone. A second memory rose behind this one: Ben's voice explaining what he had seen. Her parents were nobody. She was nobody. She listened, reaching out into the force. The cave was silent now. What would she find there, if she returned? The question gripped her. She felt her satchel, heavy at her side. She could not take its contents with her. She looked around her – across the grass and rocks, beyond the sea to the horizon. The most un-find-able place in the galaxy, he'd called it. They'd be safe here, her books. She stripped off her cloak and satchel, folding the bag carefully into the thick folds of fabric. She placed the bundle at the spot where the path diverged, and set off toward the Dark.