Chapter 2 Chapter Text

The med droids released Finn from their care two days after the inactivity was too much to bear. "Come on. I can be up and walking now."

"You will wait," said the impassive face of the droid, and the doctor who oversaw his treat agreed.

"You need rest. We'd prefer not to release you only for you to retear those muscles. The Resistance needs healthy pilots."

But Finn wasn't a pilot. His friend who was a pilot came to visit him several times a day. "I have to make sure you're not messing on the floor," he joked, sliding into his favorite chair at Finn's bedside.

"That was only mildly funny the first time."

"Good jokes, like fine wine, become better with age."

"Didn't you tell me yesterday you only ever drink three week aged plonk?"

Pulling a smile from Poe wasn't a difficult achievement. Nevertheless, Finn enjoyed the sight every time.

The day of his release, he was greeted with a change of clothes, including the jacket he'd permanently borrowed, and an assignment to one of the bunks in the barracks. "If you're staying."

"I'm staying. I don't have anywhere else to go."

"That's not why you're staying." Poe helped him find the building, and recognize the way with landmarks. "There's the mess hall. They haven't poisoned anyone lately. Gold Barracks is for the main operations and control personnel. I've never been inside but I've heard they all sleep in their suits and everyone has a terminal in their bed."

Finn had learned to see through the bantha fodder. "No portal to hell in there?"

"We could explore and find out." Poe indicated a second building, this one slightly smaller. "VIP quarters. The General lives here in one apartment. So does the Admiral. A few others you'll meet. I have been in there. They spend a lot of nights telling stories about the old times."

Finn thought about this. "I know what the history lessons said during my training. I wasn't very good in those classes."

"They can set you straight on the details. If you're curious. Me, I know enough to think we're probably the good guys. I don't care to know what happened on the Senate floor sixty years ago to get us here." He pointed. "And here is good old Blue Barracks. We have four more buildings for the pilots. I asked that you be assigned here so I can keep an eye on you."

A lot of words went unspoken. Finn knew the people around him who knew where he came from thought he was a brainless grunt, conscripted by the First Order from birth and not bright enough to light a candle. Even Poe's gentle jibes had a soft undercurrent of explaining things to a child. He wasn't a child, though. He'd been very smart in all his exams under Captain Phasma's training, and he paid attention to things he wasn't told. Barracks B was for the elite pilots, the best of the best. Not all of them had made it home from the Starkiller mission. As they walked through the rows of beds, the empty spaces had already been cleared of personal belongings, and bare mattresses spoke of dead friends. The junior pilots would be resentful to see a raw recruit lodged in a place of honor. There would be trouble.

Poe showed him the bunk of some dead man or woman. "Here's yours. Mine's right across from you."

"Maybe I should start in the new guy barracks. You know, the one with the stuck latrine and the bad electricity." Safe bet. Every army had one.

"You mean here?" Poe nodded towards a flickering lamp above them, and it wasn't the only one. All right, scratch that. This army had nothing but bad barracks.

"This is for pilots." He took a long look around. "The best ones, right?"

Poe opened a locker at the foot of Finn's new bed. He saw a uniform in what was surely his size, and some sheets. There was even a small frame, a few inches across. Confused, he picked it up and saw Rey's face not looking at the camera. She looked world-weary and injured, but her eyes were set in a determined stare he'd grown used to very fast.

"Security footage. You seemed to miss her. I figured it would make your spot more homey."

Finn set the photo aside and found something weird under it. He pulled up the black fabric. It looked like a pair of glareshades where they'd added extra silk to make up for the lack of see-through.

Poe saw his confusion. "It's an eye mask. You told me they made you sleep in your helmets at night. I thought maybe you'd sleep better with something like this to put on. I figured it was a lot more comfortable than a helmet."

"Thanks. You really didn't have to do all this." An emotion gripped him, and he sat heavily on his bunk. "I didn't think. I didn't know."

Poe sat next to him and patted his shoulder, mindful of the healing injury on his back. "I'm betting not a lot of people have been kind to you during your life."

"Not part of the training."

"It is here."

"You need to focus."

"I am focusing."

Rey's eyes were shut. She tried and failed to maintain her patience as a certain someone kept lobbing rocks at her, expecting her to bat them from the air with her staff. Half of them flew wide. Two had smacked her in the arm and one in the leg.

"You should be able to do this with your bare hands."

"I prefer my staff."

She'd planned to be gone from this planet by now, not playing games with someone she'd thought was a myth a few weeks ago. A rock flew by and she blocked its path, slamming it to the ground. Another followed, and another. She could almost sense their path.

"Feel the Force flowing up my arm. Feel the trajectory of the stone."

She felt the stone strike her leg. "Ow!"

"Keep trying."

Rey dropped her staff and opened her eyes. "Enough. This is silly."

"This is training."

"I didn't come here to train."

Luke's face expressed exactly what he thought of that statement. Rey shot a look to Chewbacca, but he'd buried his face in a datapad and intentionally ignored them. He must have seen a lot of Jedi training in his past. She wondered how many of them considered concussing their teachers with the nearest blunt object.

"Most of us," said Luke, picking out the thought.

"Rude."

"Shield. We've been over this. The thoughts you keep on the surface are fair game to anyone who can hear them. I try not to listen. Others won't be so polite." He sat on a boulder, wiping his neck. Clearly he was also finished for now.

She let out an annoyed sigh. "All right, that's half an hour of training. You owe me information."

This was a terrible deal, worse than getting a low payment from Plutt. Luke had agreed to go back with them as soon as his work was finished. He'd also agreed to tell Rey the information about her which he clearly knew, in exchange for her agreement to work through the initial stages of Jedi training. She didn't want Jedi training. She did want the truth.

"For half an hour? That's only worth two words."

"Make them good ones."

He folded his arms. "Ezra Bridger."

"I don't know those words. Is that a person? A planet? A ship? Am I related to him?"

"A person, not a relative as far as I know." He may or may not continue to play twenty questions. Rey had no patience for that game, either.

"Tell me."

"Go for a run. A short one. The island isn't big and you're not trained yet to leap the gaps. While you run, I want you to think about the things I taught you this morning."

She glared at Chewbacca again. He didn't even look at her. He was here to retrieve Luke, and he wasn't in a hurry. "Can't you do anything with him?"

Chewie indicated he'd spent too many years learning he couldn't, and that Rey was late for her run.

"And meanwhile," said Luke, "I'll be working on my other project."

The implication was clear. The longer she ran and pondered his teaching, the longer he'd spent looking over the Jedi spell he was researching, and the sooner they'd be off. Her destiny had brought her to him, to this place. If it also meant wearing herself out as she scaled the steep inclines of the small island over and over, so be it.

"The Force connects us all," he'd said. "It binds us. My old Master taught me that it flows between the rocks and the trees, between you and me and the ocean, and the ship. But I wasn't ready to know the further truths. It flows between stars, through the cores of planets. It binds each living thing, and once living things, and potentially living things, and systems with a life cycle humans don't understand yet. The Force connects you with your friends back on Jakku. It connects you with your past and into your future. The lives you've touched. The lives you will touch."

She heard the words echo in her head as she ran, sweat collecting in her clothes and running down her body. Connection.

Once living things. Along the shore she saw the shells of dead crabs and the tiny shells of small sea creatures she couldn't imagine. They crunched under her boots, they ground into sand, they pressed together over millions of years into stone. She felt their lives beneath her feet.

She turned the name Ezra Bridger around in her mind. She didn't know this name, couldn't place a face. Whoever he'd been, he was important enough for Luke to give her his name in exchange for her work. She was sure he wasn't alive now. The cadence of Luke's voice, and the vague prickle of energy she felt when he discussed the flow of life beyond life, these spoke to her as clearly as words. There'd been a man, and he'd died, and this was information she must know, information that connected her.

Rey let her body do the work, making another lap of the island's small circumference. The Force bound the galaxy. She reached into the center of her mind, the place where she'd found the strength to combat her most dreadful enemy.

The enemy Luke was working on even now to save.

Her feet tripped. She caught herself from falling, holding to the side of one of the ruined buildings. She was far from the Falcon, far from her teacher and her friend. The next island was deceptively close. She could try the jump.

Not yet.

She ran. The Force connected everyone. That meant no matter how far she was from her friends, she could touch their spirits. Luke said he could commune with those he'd loved even after their deaths. He was still bound to them. He'd known of Han's passing before their arrival. He wanted to heal his killer.

She was connected to all of them. The Force bound her, long before she knew anything about her own destiny. She'd dreamed of this place. She'd trained herself to fly every ship she could find a training sim for. This planet was the image Ren had stolen from her mind, not anything about the Resistance, or his father. The man who'd failed to train him was training her now. The connections grew like a web.

Rey didn't want that connection.

Last night, as she tossed and turned aboard the Falcon, Rey had dreamed of a sword, one forged of sharpened steel. She couldn't see her tormentor, although she'd sensed him very near. She had to reach the sword. She could slay him with the sword. She'd spent the whole night trying and failing to take hold, and she'd woken unrested.

She stood next to the water. Rey couldn't swim, but she could remove her boots and rest her feet in the soothing sea, safe here in the shallows. Something brushed her and darted away. Her heart leapt into her mouth, before she saw silver shining in the muted sunlight under the water. She pulled her feet back up to herself, and bent over, amazed at her first sight of a fish no bigger than her hand. The fish extended a long tongue to lap an unlucky insect from the surface of the water before swimming away. Rey returned her feet to brush against the smooth sand below the surface, but the fish did not return. The cold water invigorated her after the run, and she removed enough of her clothing to splash more over her body, cleansing away the sweat. So much water. She longed to dip herself fully, and perhaps she would tonight after all her lessons.

She told herself she hadn't come to Ahch-To to learn. She would merely avail herself of some education while she was here on her mission.

Rey focused her attention, calmed her thoughts, and reached out, looking for the far away base where Finn was recovering from his injuries. She'd had no good friends on Jakku. Finn was the first person in her memory who'd seen her as anything other than an asset or a competitor. He'd come for her on the Starkiller Base because he wanted her to be safe. She hadn't needed a rescuer, but he was the first person she'd ever considered for the position of best friend.

"Finn? Are you all right? I'm here." If he could hear her. If he could know.

Across space, across stars systems, she felt another mind reach out to hers. "You can hear me. Where have you gone?"

She knew that presence. Shields. Luke had taught her she must learn to close her mind to others. She had natural shields better than anything he'd seen, but they did no good when she had opened her mind up to seek out her friend.

"I see you found your island." The thought overlaid with menace and the promise of destruction.

"I am not afraid of you."

"I can tell when you're lying."

Rey shut down the entrance to her mind, wished herself silent. He'd seen. His mind had crossed the galaxy to hear her. He knew where she was, could picture her in the water, half-dressed and outraged at his intrusion. She'd sensed his amusement.

Three minutes later, she burst into Luke's cottage. "We have to go."

He finished writing a line. "We will."

"I mean now. Ren just contacted me. In my head. He knows where we are." Hot embarrassment flushed through her. She'd been so foolish.

"He's far," Luke said. "We've got time. Space is big. You spent two weeks getting here, and you had a map."

Space wasn't big enough, not to keep her away from that beast. This time, her shields were up and Luke didn't hear her.

"Chewie and I are going to ready the Falcon. We are leaving the planet in an hour. You can walk aboard or we can carry you."

"That would make an interesting exercise. How did Ben contact you?"

"I was thinking about my friend Finn. I wanted to call to him and let him know I was okay."

"And you didn't think to use the transmitters on the Millennium Falcon?" His face was set in amusement rather than disappointment.

"You said everything and everyone were connected!"

"Which you've proven. You said Ben touched your mind before. He has a way in unless you learn to block him. Shields." He went back to his papers. On the stove, another pot of water had been set to boil. "Let Chewie know the water is hot if he wants to make the tea."

"One hour." Rey turned to fume off in a proper stomp. "And you owe me more information."

"Ezra left you on Jakku."

She turned back, the anger in her stomach turning to ice. "How do you know that?"

"I don't, for certain. But I know he escaped the slaughter of the rest of the Jedi school, and Jakku wasn't far from where we were located. Not everyone was accounted for, including a small girl of about your age who shared your name. It could be a coincidence, but I don't think so."

Rey sat, folding her hands in her lap. "I don't remember a Jedi school." She remembered her vision, scraps of terror, nothing more.

"You would have been about three or four years old. You weren't there long. Ezra was one of my best contacts for finding Force-sensitive youngsters and helping me bring them to the school to learn how to use their powers safely."

Horror slid through her. "The two of you kidnapped children to turn them into Jedi?"

"No. For children, we always asked their parents. When the parents said no, we left them information in case they changed their minds when their little ones threw the table across the room again."

Her memories were a blank pool. "I threw a table?"

"You didn't. Or perhaps you did. Ezra found you in an orphanage. Not a good one, I'm afraid. He paid twenty credits for you, and apparently the orphanage manager thought Ezra was adopting you for, um. Bad reasons. Ezra was offended. I'm pretty sure he paid them another visit later and turned in the operation to the New Republic authorities."

She formed a picture in her mind of a man she couldn't remember at all, someone who'd sensed her power and freed her from a life even worse than the one he'd left her to live. "Why did he leave me?"

"He went back. His ship escaped the first assault. He came back to fight. The First Order shot him out of the sky. Until you arrived here, I assumed you'd died on the ship with him."

"No." She'd been left to scrape by on a nearby world, no family, never quite enough to eat. Alive. "He put something in my head to keep me on Jakku, didn't he?"

"He'd have wanted you to stay put until he came back for you. Ezra was only half-trained by his Master, just like me. He didn't have the best control when he implanted suggestions in someone."

The pot began to boil. Rey spread her mind, carefully reaching towards Luke's without probing. "You miss him."

"Yes."

There was something under the word. "Were the two of you together?"

"The old Jedi had strong opinions about not forming attachments, but they knew people often needed someone else to get through hard times. We got through, and we stayed friends after. He was my friend, and he died."

"But your friend didn't know where I came from. Who my parents were."

"No. I'm sorry."

She'd been so close. There was more to uncover, things he hadn't told her, but the important question had been asked and answered, and she was still a blank page. "One hour."

"I need two more days."

"You can't have them."

"Then give me one, and I'll go with you."

She almost shouted, but the truth was he wouldn't go with them unless he chose to. "One day."

"Thank you. While I'm working, you can sit over there and learn to meditate."

She'd come here believing in him. Part of her couldn't help but be in awe of the legend, nor of the not entirely unattractive older man. She'd known this was her destiny since she'd touched the handle of the lightsaber he refused to take back.

None of that changed her annoyance right now. "You should know I hate you a little."

"Now you sound like a Jedi. Go sit."

"I have her location." Lord Snoke ought to be pleased with him. "Skywalker is with her."

"All the more reason to destroy her as soon as you find them. He will be training her in the use of her powers. She will soon be able to defeat you again, even without an injury." Snoke's face was drawn into a sneer. Kylo's pride in his achievement sunk. He was the favored first of his Master, the one hand-picked above all others and leader of his own elite order.

"Because you were young and easily swayed by compliments. Because true Jedi training means a lifetime of hard work for no personal gain, and you chose an easier shortcut into power." The inner voice grew stronger each day. Only the tightest control kept the thoughts from becoming known to Snoke.

"I will find her. I will defeat her for you. I will bring you Luke Skywalker."

"Alive."

"Alive," Kylo agreed, ignoring the shouts inside his mind. He bowed and exited Snoke's chamber, ordering the nearest Stormtrooper to ensure Ren's personal ship be made ready. He returned to his own quarters, fuming and ill at ease. He'd constructed a new lightsaber, red as its sibling but lacking the elegant cracked crystal which had given his first its distinctive form. Like the new mask he wore, the replacement only emphasized the loss. He clipped the lightsaber to his belt and rested a gloved hand on the melted helmet, seeking some shred of peace.

"He went to the Light at the end."

"Then he was a fool."

"Your hero. The worst monster the galaxy ever created. Even he turned back to the side of good because of the man you're intent on bringing to Snoke. Are you stronger than Vader?"

"I will be."

The voice went silent. Kylo had no illusion it would remain still forever. He couldn't choke it, or slice it to ribbons, or stab through its heart. The voice would ebb, and come back, and whisper in his ear all the things he'd always feared were true. He'd had this problem before, but ever since he'd encountered the girl, ever since his defeat at the lost base, the presence had been a constant, unwanted companion.

He stared at the helmet. Hereditary madness was one possibility. But what did that mean for all of Vader's accomplishments? For his own? He must believe he was not merely raving. He must believe his actions were taken in the name of increasing order in the galaxy, and his own greatness.

"You used to be smarter than that."

He hurried from his quarters and went to his shuttle. He let his mind go slack, picking up the direction he'd felt from his brief communication with Rey. She would know he was coming. He hesitated. He was smarter than this. She knew he was coming for her and for Skywalker. She wouldn't stay in her pretty water world. She'd flee with him. They would return to the Resistance together.

Kylo would lurk near D'Qar and wait for the familiar ship to come out of hyperspace. He would capture the ship. He would kill the Wookiee for the attempt on his own life, though he'd make it a clean, quick death. He would imprison his uncle for Lord Snoke's amusement.

He'd kill the girl. He had sworn to kill the girl, and he meant to keep his word. Eventually.

tbc

Reviews welcome