This time, the cave had not called to her. She did not crouch before its yawning entrance, and she wasn't pulled in. She jumped. The water was cold, she noted, but in a familiar sort of way that didn't chill her this time. She clambered up and out quickly, stepping with determination through the dim light toward the smooth face of the wall before her. She planted her feet and reached forward, laying damp fingers against the rock. Please, she murmured inwardly. She didn't know what she was asking for.
The air about her took on an electric charge, and her skin prickled. She inhaled sharply, waiting for some shift in the texture of the stone beneath her fingers, frowning when nothing seemed to happen.
"You don't believe me," he said behind her. She spun on her heels, backed suddenly against the wall. That shift in the air she'd felt: it wasn't the cave, the Darkness. It had been the bond, connecting them. "About your parents."
The comfort she'd felt in his presence last night was gone. She didn't feel danger, but with her back against the wall she didn't feel safe, either. His voice wasn't harsh, but it had an edge to it. How could she tell him? How could she show him that she didn't doubt him? She took a risk: gently, she reached out to him with her mind, opening to him, offering him her memory. She had believed him, when he'd told her in the throne room. Her parents, filthy junk traders who'd abandoned her. He had been right: she had known it all along. Under his gaze, she'd felt her resistance to the truth melt, her body soften, softening toward him. There, now, in the cave, she felt him lean bravely toward her with his own mind, his memory tentatively spilling into hers. She could see herself as he saw her, feel herself as he had felt her. He could still feel her fierceness, from the fight, even as she dissolved – so strong, so soft, so beautiful, he'd thought – her face wet with tears, her eyes pleading. Awe, tenderness and sorrow bloomed in his chest and, without thinking, he'd offered her his hand again, and his own plea. She felt the crack across his heart when her outstretched hand had called the saber. He withdrew, breaking away from her suddenly, but without severing the bond. She could feel him retreating into himself, but his expression did not show anger. His face was transparent, a mirror of hers: wary, exhilarated, waiting. Both of them exposed.
"I needed to see what this place would show me… now." She breathed unsteadily. "Now that I have something to offer you." His head cocked slightly to the side, and she felt something inside him quake. It quivered in her, too. "I came here with your mother. She is ready to surrender."
His face did not change, but what was behind it did. A dozen reactions gripped and wrenched at his gut. Icy triumph. The hot shame of defeat. The acrid burn of disgust, the thick emptiness of horror. His thoughts gagged and retched their way across his consciousness, spitting questions. His mother, surrendering? What did it mean? The destruction of the Resistance? The end of a war that had defined his life, even before he had taken a side? The end of an estrangement that had won him the galaxy and cost him everything else? Why would she do it?
"Because she wants her son," Rey answered gently, "and his forgiveness." He stared at her, his internal storm retreating for a moment, his external stillness permission for her continue. "The First Order can't… can't defeat the Resistance, but for now its fighting forces are no more. You've won, at least for the time being. And your mother has nothing left to lose but you. You're not hers to save, and you're not coming home. So she will come to you. We will come to you."
He shifted from foot to foot. Her admission of defeat had gratified him, but to find compassion beneath it was unbearable. Snoke had trained him to find compassion disgusting. For him, compassion had been pity, a weakness in the giver and the receiver that degraded both. He felt disgust. "You pity me," he spat.
"No." Rey shook her head, stepping carefully toward him. One step. Two steps. Three. In a whisper: "I understand you." He dropped his gaze, her words singeing him like a slap. "I showed her, and she sees you too. This war will not end without that recognition, or that healing. That's what she offers you. That's what I offer you."
He was dumbstruck. For a moment, everything in him seemed to expand, thicken. Then a weight landed in his chest with a thud, he contracted, and burst in a wave of fury. He wanted to break something. He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to kill her. He wanted… he wanted exactly what she was giving him, and he hated her for it. It was his turn to take a step toward her: a stride that closed the distance between them in an instant. He thought he would strike her, but the blow didn't come: just heat and hatred, burning into her. He knew he couldn't hurt her (never again, he thought), but he wanted her to cower. Instead – ten times worse, at least, because he knew how it felt to her, now, after of the memory she had shared – he felt her soften. She leaned in to meet him, to accept his anger. Calmly, lovingly. He felt himself teetering, tipping forward into her – and his anger faded as suddenly as it had risen. He was wholly disarmed. How did she do that, he wondered desperately. His eyes, his whole awareness still plunging into her, he made a choking sound. His lips trembled and he pressed them together, struggling to suppress whatever this was, his response to the bewildering challenge she had mounted simply by receiving him. He didn't understand it. She lifted her hand to place it on his chest. He watched her fingers rise in the air before him, stepped back out of her reach, and disappeared.
Rey had rinsed out her pants and boots, scrubbing her skin gently in the cold pool at the foot of the cave. It didn't feel like The Dark Cave anymore. Indeed, its mystique had evaporated in the moment of his departure. An hour ago, she mused, she'd called out to whatever forces gathered there, asking for answers – and they had delivered him. The only dark thing about this cave, she thought bitterly, was the sense of humor she seemed to feel emanating from its walls now, as though the Force was laughing at her. Gazing at the spot at which he'd vanished, she sighed deeply. After bathing and re-dressing, she climbed out of the cave (for the last time, she knew) and trudged, dripping and now thoroughly chilled, back toward her pack and cloak. When she reached the fork in the path, she gathered them up without putting them on. No sense in having it all wet, she thought wryly.
Half an hour before her fire and a steaming bowl of the caretakers' cloudy mystery soup (Rey prayed that it had no unholy sea-dairy in it), and she felt restored. It was dusk, and she skipped up the steps toward Leia's hut. As her hands landed on its heavy door, she was vaguely aware of the sound of voices inside, and wondered momentarily how Leia had managed to pick up the fish nuns' language so quickly. But one of those voices, deep and familiar, sharpened her attention as she pushed the door open and she peered into the darkness within. Her breath caught. "Master Luke!" she blurted.
They sat together on a bench at the opposite side of the hut: brother and sister, holding hands and smiling at one another as they turned toward her. Luke's form was translucent, the color of his skin and robes faded. How could it be?
"Rey!" Luke called mirthfully. "You saved my books!"
Rey's eyes darted from Luke to Leia, and back again. "Saved them? I stole them. And you – you destroyed the temple?"
Luke shook his head with a rueful smile. "I wanted to. I tried, after you left. To burn the last of the Jedi texts. To destroy what I couldn't save, as I had done with Ben. Foolish. But I couldn't. An old friend appeared to me – as I'm appearing to you now – and did it for me." Rey frowned, inquisitive; Luke shrugged, waving away her unspoken question. "He has a weird sense of humor. He also told me that you wouldn't be needing them – that there was nothing in them you didn't already have. And now I find that his joke had a double meaning: they were with you all along." He paused, his voice lower, smile tinged now with sadness. "Like my nephew, I'm told."
Rey looked at her hands, not understanding the affection and understanding in his voice. But she could not refuse it; her uncertainty transformed as she realized that what she was feeling, he had also felt. She'd stood over his prone form just as he'd stood over Ben's – meaning no harm, but threatening all the same. And he'd faced his nephew through the Force – and died – to make sure that she had another chance to fix what he could not. Her heart swelled with gratitude toward him – and toward Leia, who had watched this exchange in silence with deep love in her eyes. This was what was needed: not shame and humiliation, but for the Jedi to learn to have little levity when it came to their mistakes.
"Yes," she acknowledged, still struggling to meet his eyes. "I have spoken with him again." She paused, but they simply waited for her to continue. Her eyes flitted to Leia. "He knows of your desire to surrender."
"…And?" Leia asked sarcastically after a pause.
Rey shrugged. "…And he was gone," she lied. How could she explain? She sighed and tried again. "I don't think he was pleased. Relieved, maybe. But also angry. Sometimes it's harder to get what you want than to live without it."
Luke and Leia exchanged significant glances. She had no idea how right she was. Speaking of which… "Rey," Leia began inquiringly, "We haven't discussed what will happen to you if my son accepts."
Rey sank onto a stool in front of the fire, confusion in her eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I'm coming with you, aren't I?"
Leia looked at Luke, then back to the girl. "Is that what you want?" Rey was silent. "I don't need a protector, Rey. Like Luke, I've made my peace. I can go alone. Unless there's something else."
Rey thought back to the cave, her own words ringing in her ears. I understand you. That's what I offer you. "I think," she began. Leia and Luke exhaled simultaneously. They knew her answer already. "I think I surrender, too."