Snoke boiled over in rage, mind jamming against hers like a sandstorm, caustic and obliterating as he tore at her, slashing viciously with green light at her head, at her legs.
"You are nothing," he intoned, driving the words into her. "You are a speck. Your powers are miniscule compared to mine."
Invisible fingers scrabbled for Rey's throat. Snoke had been toying with her earlier, playing with his food before the claws came out to trap her tail and rip and rend. Rey fell back, keeping her guard up.
"Stolen," she managed to croak. "Not your power."
"It's mine now. I'll add yours, and Kylo Ren's, and the good General who's been so kind to deliver herself to me. All the Force you control will be mine to dominate." He tossed her hard against the wall, knocking her breath out of her and smacking her head hard on the metal.
Finn's blaster fired. Snoke's hand pushed the shot to land by the doorway, where it narrowly avoided killing Poe. Finn kept firing at him, advancing on him. The blasts flew to either side under Snoke's waved arm.
"Stop this, you impudent, disloyal speck! I am your Supreme Leader."
"No," said Finn, a cold anger on his face as he shot. "You're nothing. You're the monster under the bed. You're the imp who sneaks through the window to steal children from their cradles, the demon who plays the enchanted flute to lead them away into the dark forest."
"You will obey me!" A wave of mental energy burst through the room as Snoke said, "Bow."
Finn swayed. Even Rey felt her knees try to buckle.
"No!" He braced his legs and stood, raising his blaster again. "We aren't children any more."
Snoke sizzled a blast of pure purple energy at him. Finn barely dropped to the floor in time.
Rey touched the well of Force power inside her, reaching around Finn. This time, her powers held. Rey snatched him away from the bolts, tugging him next to her.
"Purple is bad. Don't get hit."
"Luke?" Of course. He'd told her the spirits in the Force watched over them. "Do you have any better advice than 'don't get hit'?"
"Don't turn your back on those other Stormtroopers."
Other? Poe and the General had come into the room, followed by guards. The guards turned their blasters onto Lord Snoke, who rolled his eyes and slammed a palm onto a communicator at his chair. "Captain, turn the transmitter to full power. The rabble are rousing again."
Rey felt the psychic energy suddenly spike. The troopers all touched their own helmets. Snoke said, "Seize them."
Instantly, they were under fire from the white-masked soldiers. She had enough power to place a force shield around Poe and General Organa, but not enough to cover herself or Finn. They ran for cover, but Snoke was fast, stolen lightsaber swinging at Finn. Rey blocked the blow, singeing them both.
Finn ducked under her arm, running towards the controlled Stormtroopers. He'd be killed. But he knew the firing patterns, and managed to plow into the first trooper, while Poe and the General took on the rest.
"Don't kill them!" Finn shouted.
"Tell them that!" Poe shouted back.
Snoke ignored the others, turning the brunt of his mental and physical onslaught against Rey. He was laser-quick as he leapt, and she'd barely learned how to fight this way. Her skills were useless in the wake of his fury. He would win his attack, maim her body, and drink her darkened soul. She was nothing in the face of him. Rey drew back and back, pressed closer to a wall she'd die against. She was...
"Don't tell me you're listening to him." She could feel Kylo's irritation.
Rey blocked another blow, buying herself one step forward. "I'm going to die because you turned me to the Dark Side."
"You're not on the Dark Side. If you were on the Dark Side, you wouldn't care. You're on the knife's edge. Use your rage and kill the bastard."
Snoke swung and Rey knew.
She caught the laser blade easily on the edge of her own lightsaber, sending crackling sparks everywhere. Anger and fear were the enemies, according to one teacher. They were gifts to be used according to the other. Love had led one into chaos, and had pulled the other free.
Rey let herself feel. Anger at how this little man, this vindictive alien, had destroyed her life and the lives of the people she cared about. Fear that her friends would die because she wasn't strong enough to protect them. Love like a scorching sun for them all.
Rey was the sword, the edge of the knife, the sharp blade honed between two imperfect sides.
Power twisted and coiled inside her, pulled from the heart of the moon they stood upon, blended from the perfect logic of the Light and the deep emotion of the Dark. She let the Force move her, guiding each graceful step, anticipating his moves before he could make them. Her friends fought the poor, mesmerized puppets. Rey sought only the puppet master.
Her feet moved effortlessly from stance to stance in her battle. Sabers clashed as she blocked him easily. This was as simple as sparring, locked in a lethal dance.
Rey's hand shot through with pain.
His mask absorbed the first blast from Phasma's gun, and he blocked the second with his lightsaber, deflecting it into the wall. Instantly she began firing at him, dodging his lightsaber blade.
"Fire on him now!" she ordered her two troopers. He could fight multiple attackers easily enough, although at the moment his concentration was distracted by the very clear image of Lord Snoke bearing down on Rey with a snarl.
Kylo parried the blaster fire. Phasma raised her own weapon again and fired. His hand stung and burned as the lightsaber was destroyed.
"No more toys," she said, while he yanked the injured hand against himself. "Surrender immediately or perish."
He gathered his power and reflected the blasts the other two sent to him, not even watching as they fell dead. "I don't need a lightsaber to fight you." He willed her arms up to aim her blaster at herself. "All I have to do is make you fire." Another mental tug removed her mask. He'd never seen her face before. She was lovely, and hardly older than he was, and she burned with just as much rage.
They'd all started this as children.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Dozens of my troops are headed this way now. You'll be killed, and we can watch each other roasting in hell."
She fired. It was unpleasant. He'd never liked her, and she'd loathed him, but he'd caused enough deaths to decide he'd finally seen his fill.
His damaged mask obscured his sight. He removed it and dropped it to the ground before turning to the transmitter, aware of the minds of the Stormtroopers headed to his position. He spent a single moment to admire the simple elegance of the transmitter. Hux's otherwise useless father had come up with the notion of training the Stormtroopers from infancy. Snoke had designed this beautiful device to maintain their loyalty.
Mustn't let the children understand what had happened to them. Mustn't let them think. Mustn't let them wonder who they really were. Must never, ever allow them to discover what they'd lost.
His anger had served him at need over his life, and had cost him so much. He drew upon his own fury now, tapping into every stolen day, every denied road he'd stepped away from while believing himself better than that path. He stoked the fire of his wrath against Snoke, and against his own quest for glory that never came to anything.
He'd had a home and people who'd loved him, and a school with other children who'd been gifted with the same talents as he, and he'd had a future and a destiny. He could have chosen any life, could have become a great Jedi or a powerful diplomat or the most skilled pilot in the galaxy, whatever he wanted to be. Instead he'd thrown away every chance, and he'd killed the ones who loved him. Worse, they still cared and still wanted to believe he was better than the awful creature he knew he'd become. Even ghosts gazed on him with utter disappointment.
The one true peer he'd ever met despised him. Forced to view himself from inside her eyes these past weeks, he could no longer look away from the desecration of his own life. From what he'd chosen to become.
Kylo Ren touched the white hot core of his own rage, directed against the sole guilty party of all his failures: the eyes he'd stopped meeting in mirrors long ago. The power of the Dark surged through him like a supernova.
He broke the transmitter with his fury.
It exploded in his face.
"Stop this now!" Finn told trooper he struggled with. "Take off your helmet! He's controlling you!"
Behind him, he felt Rey as she jumped and danced, lightsaber blazing to block every move Snoke made. With one hand, she lifted the ruins of his console and threw it at him, to shatter on his lightsaber. Snoke collapsed onto his knees, panting and bested.
Fear lit Snoke's eyes as Rey stood over him. "I know who you are, child. The orphanage where Bridger found you still had the records a week ago when I went searching for you. I've destroyed the files and I ordered them all killed. Only I can tell you who your parents were, the family name you've longed to hear." He tuned his voice into a pleading, echoing command. "Free me, and you can discover the true gifts you are heir to."
Rey wet her lips, holding her lightsaber steady. She doused the blade. "That doesn't matter. None of that ever mattered. I'm not who I am because of who my family was. I am a Jedi because I choose to be."
There was a low rumble that shook the entire room, powerful enough to jar them to their teeth. The explosion had been big, and close. The trooper he was fighting went limp. Finn kicked him off.
Rey fell to her knees. Finn instantly stopped giving a damn about the other troopers. Before he could reach her, she clutched herself and let out a scream of pure rage and pain and sorrow. For as long as he lived, and Finn lived a very long time, he never again heard anyone make that horrifying sound.
Around him, the other troopers lost their focus. The brighter ones aimed at Snoke as Finn reached Rey and held her while she convulsed in agony. More troopers came into the room, also quickly aiming their weapons at their former boss.
A small, petty part of Finn's mind congratulated himself. The rest of him was ashamed. Someone he loved was in horrific pain, and he could only imagine how much. He stroked her face and said meaningless repetitions of, "It's okay. You're going to be okay."
Poe swore. "Ma'am, I am sorry for your loss. But Rey's dying, and as usual, it's his fault."
The General's voice was hollow. "She's not dying. It just feels that way."
She limped to Rey's side and touched her shoulder. Rey held her lightsaber in a slack hand, and the General took hold. "This was my father's. Thank you for returning it."
Rey let go. "When does the pain stop?"
"I'll let you know."
"This isn't over," said Snoke. "I can rebuild. There will always be..."
General Organa lit her lightsaber and beheaded him.
The strike happened so quickly Finn almost missed it. Snoke's body crumpled. His head fell to the floor and rolled.
The General looked at the lightsaber in her hand, extinguishing the blade with a click. She flung her arm against the wall. The rod shattered into shards of useless metal. A small crystal fell to the floor, which the General trapped with her foot. Finn wouldn't have touched that gem for a million credits.
Rey used Finn's shoulder to get to her feet. "I have to see," she said in a dull, dead voice. She staggered away, towards the door. Finn went to follow her, but there were other troopers here all staring at him in confusion. She ran and was gone.
The trooper in the lead said, "What do we do now?"
"Take off your helmet. Then do whatever you want."
Poe said, "Do you have a commlink?" The troopers nodded. "Good. Put out the word. The head of the Resistance just killed your Supreme Leader, she's having a real bad day, and she's still in the building. Anyone who wants to surrender needs to do so immediately because I can only hold her back so long. Tell them now."
There was another explosion, this one from above.
The General closed her eyes. "Reinforcements. Chewie always had great timing. Tell your friends what Commander Dameron just said, and maybe I'll think about calling off the attack that just started."
"Sir," said one of the troopers, pulling away her helmet. Finn realized she meant him. "Permission to arrest General Hux."
"Sure."
She gestured to three other troopers. They were going to arrest the General. Or get killed. Finn wasn't sure which. He had other concerns.
It took him a few minutes to find where Rey had gone. The trail of destruction helped, and the scrambling rush of workers and Stormtroopers, all desperate to be somewhere else and pushing past him as they ran. As he neared the room, part of his mind expected to hear a song that he'd never known he'd been listening to. A transmitter. Not their only means of controlling the army, but a good one.
A Stormtrooper limped past him, pausing when the trooper saw Finn's face. Finn wasn't in the mood for yet another pep talk. "The war's over. Go be whoever you want to be."
Rey stood inside the room, her hand at her mouth. He took in the broken mask, and the scorched black armor and robes still settling on the floor. Nothing left but the clothes, just like when Luke had died. Finn didn't want to imagine a bunch of naked Force ghosts running around watching people. When he rejoined the Force, he wanted a lot more rest and a lot less nude supernatural voyeurism.
"Hey," he said, and she didn't object as he wrapped his arms around her. There were other bodies on the floor, one of them wearing Phasma's shiny armor, but Rey's eyes were fixed on the mangled black helmet.
"I had to see."
She didn't cry. He'd expected her to cry, and he could sense deep grief which Rey herself would never admit to. When she'd composed herself, she gathered the mask, the robes, and the broken, gnarled remains of Ren's lightsaber. Together, they walked back to Snoke's quarters, where there was already a queue forming for those more than willing to surrender to the fearsome Resistance General.
Rey went to General Organa with her bundle and her pain. "This was all that was left." The General placed her hands on the clothes for a moment.
"The powerful ones fade. But only those who die in the Light." She breathed hard for a moment. "Take these if you want, or dispose of them." Her face was unreadable, and she locked into a cool expression as she looked up at another Stormtrooper waiting to join up with the Resistance.
"Ma'am," said the Stormtrooper, saluting.
"Take your helmet off, soldier." The General's voice was getting reedy. Finn was sure she had injuries which needed attention. But she remained standing and speaking to each trooper, welcoming each individual to the cause, over and over.
Finn gave them quick instructions, gathering teams to secure more areas of the base. They listened to him, but they also listened to the General, and he understood she was right. Had this woman ever chosen to become a Jedi, she'd be ruling the galaxy now.
Finn didn't see what Rey did with Ren's items until much, much later, when she airlocked the lot before their ship entered hyperspace on their way home.
There were thousands of Stormtroopers on the base. Several hundred remained loyal to the First Order. Being the last sane person on this dark moon, Poe did his best to put them under arrest. Skirmishes took place in corridors and messes and control centers. The many troopers who wanted to defect came to where the General graciously and quickly took their oaths of non-violence against the Republic, and those who seemed unsure only needed one look at Snoke's cooling body to come to the same conclusion.
Poe left the General's side when the fleet began to land, and a very tall, very armed, very angry Wookiee reached their location.
Finn and Rey had already taken teams out into the base. Poe joined them. Rey had taken Luke's green lightsaber from Snoke's corpse, and led the way down corridor after corridor, shouting challenges and swiftly-expiring offers of mercy. Just the sight of her face lit up by the eerie glow was enough for many of those they encountered to surrender to Finn's more friendly face. The legions of ex-Stormtroopers they gathered as they went, as well as the invading Resistance ground troops, soon took care of the rest.
Not everyone stayed to fight or agreed to surrender. Dozens of stolen First Order ships fled without engaging the Resistance fleet. Poe ordered the fleet to let them go. Even several of the landed Resistance ships were purloined by retreating soldiers who no longer gave their loyalty to anyone. Chewbacca was going to be furious when he found out, therefore Poe didn't intend to be the one who told him his beloved stolen ship had been stolen again.
General Hux was executed by his own former soldiers before he could be detained, but they did round up half a dozen of the big fish. There would be trials. Someone would be brought to justice.
They won the base. He supposed that was better than blowing it up.
"There are more bases," said Finn. They'd met up in the docking bay, resting for a moment against the little blue ship they'd arrived here in. "They'll have other transmitters. There are thousands of people still under the First Order's control."
"At least we know what we're doing tomorrow."
Poe was tired, and he had what looked like a resourcing nightmare in front of him. It was one thing to swear in all these guys. It was another to remember they had been shooting at each other yesterday, and some of them would still be loyal to the Order despite pretending to defect, and every one of them would need fed and watered and cleaned up after. Thousands and thousands of damn fluffkens pecking at his toes.
He asked Finn, "You seen Rey lately?"
"She's in the Command Suite breaking the weapons systems. It's making her feel better." The General was occupied right now by breaking the First Order's rank and file. Poe would sooner be suspended from the ceiling by his scrotum than point out the obvious to either one.
"You okay?" he asked Finn. "It's been a weird day." Six hours ago, the four of them had been in the middle of ship-propulsion Force sex, and Poe had been convinced any deeper commitment than that had to wait until after the war.
"Finding out the rest of the Stormtroopers think I'm some kind of messiah has been weird. Kylo Ren told me my helmet was busted and couldn't receive the subfrequency. That was all. I'm nothing special. That was almost the last thing he ever said to me." His face went through a few motions. He wasn't going to grieve for Ren any more than Poe would, but Finn was kind with other people's griefs. Other people were mourning even if they were both experts at covering up.
"Almost?"
"Then he called me a hero and yelled at me for being a lousy kisser."
Poe grabbed his face and tested that theory. "He was half-right."
"You know," Finn said, catching his breath and resting his hand comfortably against Poe's arms, "the war's basically over."
"Yeah, I know."
The old platitude about time healing all wounds was wrong. Old wounds just scarred over. The Resistance, with their swelled ranks, took on the First Order at stronghold after stronghold. Finn and each batch of new recruits knew locations and troop strengths. Rey knew high-level command codes and maps from carelessly-shared memories she never spoke of directly and never, ever forgot.
New enemies hatched from the warm ashes of the old. The General warned them this always happened, would always happen.
Rey gathered scars and learned to cover them over with bravado. Sometimes she twitched her right hand, feeling phantom pain from a burn she'd never experienced. Those around her assumed she'd been wounded in some past battle. She never told them differently, only led another charge, and another, wielding the yellow lightsaber she'd constructed. Only apprentices used borrowed weapons. A Jedi built her own.
Three years after the battle of Starkiller Base, after the fall of Lord Snoke, Rey found herself as the leader they didn't have of the new Republic's small but growing community of Force-sensitives. The old families, the ones who'd survived, began emerging from their hiding places through the galaxy. Just as the many lost souls who'd worn white armor came to Finn for guidance, so too did talented Force users and families with gifted children come to Rey as her name spread.
"You want to found a school?"
Leia, who held no official position in the new Republic but nonetheless ran most of it, had dismissed her staff. Rey had remained behind with a proposal. Out of long habit, she glanced at the table, but there hadn't been an ashtray sitting there in over two years.
"Not exactly." Rey had been thinking about this. "I'm not cut out for teaching. We've made contact with scores of potential Jedi who need to learn from each other. Instead of one school, gathering everyone in one place, picture dozens or even hundreds of small schools, with a single teacher and no more than a half dozen students. Some could focus on rediscovering the histories. Others would focus on fighting styles, or spellcasting. They could trade, students learning from a teacher steeped in mysticism spend a year with one dedicated to diplomacy and negotiation."
"You think that's there things went wrong? Too many in one place and one teacher spread too thin?" Her voice didn't catch when she spoke of the last school.
She shook her head. "I think one person shouldn't try to be everything to everyone. The teachers will learn from the students, and the more we share, the stronger we'll all be. And we can all watch one another." She'd spent a great deal of meditation time on the knot of this problem.
"You said you didn't want to teach."
"I don't. I'd like to learn. I want to visit each of the new schools as they start, and learn what I can, and share with the next. I also want to seek out more Force-sensitives, and show them where they can learn about themselves, and step in if I see them going dark."
"The headmistress?"
"I'm not much for titles." Rey thought the position more suited to her skills as scavenger, seeking out the best, and making good things from what she found. "I want to help people become better at who they can be."
"You do have that gift." Leia closed her eyes and tilted her head very slightly, as if she was listening to someone else in the room. A wry smile touched her mouth. "Orphans."
"Hm?"
She opened her eyes and fixed Rey with a stare that reached right into her soul. "Orphans, rather than fancy fluffkens."
"What?"
"It's strange. Ben never liked children, even when he was one."
And Rey knew she'd been caught out.
Three years ago, on a moon far, far away
Rey ran towards the transmitter room, passing confused people scurrying away. None approached her, either too caught up in their own issues, or else they saw her face. The door was ripped away by the force of the blast. The debris-strewn room choked her with dust. Two Stormtroopers and another in metallic armor lay dead on the ground. Further away, she found the crumpled figure in black, now coated with soot and scorched in too many places.
"Get up," she said, voice breaking. From the smoke, she told herself. "Get up now." She wouldn't touch him. If she touched him, she'd fracture.
The dark figured groaned. Slowly, he rolled onto his back. "Hurts."
"You've been burned. It's bad. If you'd been anyone else, you'd be dead. You'll live." His burns scorched through her, like her own skin crackling on her face. Her hand throbbed. "Get up now. I'm shielding your mind but they'll be here any second."
He coughed. "Who will?"
"Everyone. As far as the galaxy knows, you died a few minutes ago. You have to be dead now. So get up!" She'd tried to stay away, and she knew she couldn't. Rey grabbed him under his arm, helping him to his feet, mindful of the injuries. "Take your armor off."
"What's going on?" he asked, still confused and mildly concussed. His fingers were slow, too slow, and his right hand would never be the same. Rey swore, fumbling off his black armor, revealing the remains of the clothes they'd stolen days before.
She wouldn't look in his eyes. "Snoke's dead. The First Order is done for. If you walk out alive from this room, it's going to go exactly like you said. You're going to be arrested, and you're going to be tried, and you will be found guilty, because you are guilty. Your trial will last for months. Every enemy you or your mother ever had will have their say, and between the two of you, that's most of the galaxy. Everything about who you are, and were, and your whole family, all of it will come out. The truth will destroy her though she won't say a word in your defense or her own. She'll make herself attend your execution, and every night for the rest of her life, she'll hear the blasts of the firing squad, or the crack of your neck as you're hanged. You're horrible, but she doesn't deserve that."
"Which 'she' are you talking about?"
Rey tossed his ruined clothes to the ground. "The only way to end this is for Kylo Ren to die today."
"So kill me." His breathing was labored, and his burns were bad. He had no weapon left, and not enough strength to fight her. She could rid the galaxy of him with one squeeze of her good hand in retribution for all he'd done.
And she'd fall to the Dark Side.
"Run away. You're good at that. Leave here and become someone else. I don't care who. Go raise fancy fluffkens for the eggs, or take care of orphans. You've helped make enough of them. You will never attempt to rejoin the Order, or contact your mother, or me, or any of us ever again. If you do, I will find you and kill you myself. You know I can."
He'd recovered somewhat, and that was good, because he showed the annoyed, haughty face that she hated, angry that she dared order him. The arrogance evaporated. His uninjured hand touched where hers ached, threading their fingers with a strangely innocent longing. "Come with me. We're stronger together. You know that."
She knew. They could flee this base, run away past the farthest stars, hide forever within shadows as all his many enemies searched for him without pause. They'd spend days or years or a lifetime never more than a breath away from each other. They would complete the unnatural merging of their minds, melted forever into a single powerful entity split within two bodies, no longer able to tell where they ended and where they began. Rey would annihilate the last of her own consciousness to extinguish the last of the horror that was his.
She pulled her hand away.
"I'm strong enough on my own. Go now. I'm going to stay and I'm going to lie to the kindest, best person I know, because he'll believe me and everyone else will believe him." She wouldn't cry. "Don't think for a moment this is about us. I hate you so much."
He lifted a helmet off the head of one of the dead troopers. The face underneath was young, his eyes staring into nothing. To her surprise, Kylo placed a hand over the face, closing the poor wretch's gaze. Then he donned the mask and took pieces of the man's white armor while Rey carefully arranged the broken black to appear like a spirit fading into the Force.
"You know I can tell when you're lying."
He was gone only a few moments before Finn ran into the room.
"You made a call," said Leia. "Sometimes it's good to find out you made the right one."
Orphans. Rey could picture him, glaring at small humans and Wookiees and Rodians, informing them their noodle-based art was subpar, and moaning as they climbed all over him asking to learn more Force tricks.
"How did you find him?"
"Oh, silly old Force ghosts love to gossip." Leia's face was caught in an expression Rey had learned to read over the years. She would never be happy, but she was at peace.
"You knew."
"Not that day, but I've known for a while. He's being watched. If there's a chance, any chance, that he'll go back to his old ways, I'll be the first to hear about it, and you'll be the next." She patted Rey's arm. "Until then, go start your schools."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"Rey?"
"Yes?"
"This isn't advice. This is experience. You don't stop loving someone just because you know it's a bad idea and you think you should. Beating yourself up over how you feel is a sucker's game."
The gentle rebuke startled her. "A Jedi isn't supposed to form attachments, ma'am."
"That's what the old Jedi thought, and they were wrong, and their mistake destroyed them. Forming attachments is what makes us people, even when it hurts. Maybe especially when it hurts. You won't find solace in cutting yourself off from your feelings, but you'll find plenty in letting yourself feel more. Live your life, kid. You can love as many people as you can stand, but you only get one lifetime to do it in." Leia turned away and Rey knew she'd been politely dismissed.
Finn waited for Rey outside with a worried face and a quick kiss. "What did she say?"
"She said yes. I wasn't sure, since the last school went so wrong, but she likes the idea of all the different schools."
"You're going to be busy."
"When are we not?" She sighed. "When's Poe due back?"
"Tonight. He sent a transmission they'd be late with the shipment but he'll be home later."
"Then I won't see you tonight, but if you've not got plans, you and I could see each other tomorrow night before I ship out." She'd already decided on the route she wanted to take to scour for new potential students. She'd located the records Captain Bridger left behind him. It would be an honor to continue his work.
"Tomorrow's good." He took her hand as they walked. "You know, this would be easier to organize if you'd just move in with us." There were other complaints underneath, but they'd already had those conversations. Rey didn't intend to get married, and between them, they already had thousands of children to worry about. If Finn wanted more, he had a perfectly nice boyfriend who was much easier to persuade than his stubborn girlfriend. "Besides, BB-8 misses you when you're not around. There's nothing sadder than a little mopey ball."
"Well, if BB-8 misses me..."
"Rey."
She hadn't needed for the General to point out she was holding back. Rey knew the shapes of her own fears and the shadows of her own past. Feel too deeply, care too much, love too hard, and she'd be left alone again. Better to keep her own end of this affectionate yet casual. Better not to allow herself to be hurt.
Fear helped her in battle, used with careful moderation, but it was no way to live the rest of her life.
"How about this? I'll look into moving in next door as soon as that apartment comes open. I'm going to be traveling off-world more. It'd be nice to have somewhere to come home to." She squeezed his hand. "You can tell BB-8."
"I'll do that."
The schools popped up over the following months and years, like doorflowers creeping their green shoots out of the sand after an unexpected rain, unsure if they'd live long enough to flourish. Even on the edge of the Outer Rim, out near Wild Space, more Jedi schools emerged. Rey visited each in turn, bringing new students, following leads to find yet more talented minds, young children and aging magicians. "We can learn together," she told each one, and she stayed for a time to pick up new skills and pass along old knowledge.
Some schools chose formal studies, while others were no more than a Master tutoring a single Padawan. Rey took her ship and she found them, and she learned what she could, and she moved on. She kept her list of names and places, only known to her, and to her closest friends, and to Leia who regardless would have found a way to read it.
Finn sent her transmissions every day when she was gone, describing his latest struggles with his newest recruits, and anticipating which ship he was qualifying to fly next, and saying that he missed her. Rey sent back much the same, and she promised not to be gone long. She loved it out here, able to open her mind and feel the presence of trillions, more, out in the wide galaxy. When they were together, he often asked if she was lonely. She could never make him understand that no, when she was in space, she was in the center of everyone and everything. Rey would listen to the great wordless surge of lifeforms surrounding her in every direction, and she felt she almost understood everything.
The new Republic had spies, because everyone had spies. Leia sent her more leads, and the names of other schools growing independently of the loose network.
One transmission came while she was out between star systems. "What's to stop a school from embracing the Dark Side?"
Rey sent back, "Me."
After the question, on a list of dozens of schools discovered and quietly monitored by Republic spies, Rey read the name "Owen Antilles." According to the report, the scarred veteran of a teacher was more well-versed in Jedi lore and training than anyone else the spy had ever heard of, but his past was a locked room. The school's focus was on the importance, not of Light or Dark, but of perfect balance on the edge of the blade.
Always, Rey felt the thread of thought in the back of her mind: sometimes amusement, often annoyance, occasionally pain from an old wound or a new scrape. Many, many times, she heard a snatch of music, or saw an image of some small child with fur or scales attempting a new trick.
She closed her eyes now, and she listened.
"It is a blue sphere. Not red. Not green. Not ORANGE, Jorjanna. Blue. Show me a blue sphere."
She didn't say anything, not to chide him on his terrible teaching techniques, nor to tease him about starting a school. Non-interference went both ways. She could tap into his pattern of thought, dialing in like a frequency on an old transmitter, to listen at his exasperation changing to deep pride as a little green girl created a perfect blue sphere in front of herself.
"Good work. Do it again."
Sometimes, in the midst of a meditation at a new school, or during a meeting with Leia's staff, or half-asleep in her bed alone or with Finn sprawled next to her, she felt the brush of a familiar mind. He peeked into her life, not commenting, not altering what he found, not inveigling her to run away to Wild Space. He was just listening, leaving behind him only a faint trace of satisfaction at finding her alive and well and happy. She sensed he was not displeased to find the same held true for those whom she cared about and whom he'd never admit he did as well.
Rey marked down the rest of the names and details onto her list of schools. Then she scrubbed all mention of Antilles from the records, including the world he was on, the number of students, everything. She hit Delete on the final record, removing the last official trace of him from the galaxy.
But she memorized the coordinates first. She might need to steal that ship again someday.
end
I'm considering further stories in this series, though I'm not sure if I'll have the time to work on them.