In the previous chapter: Leia asks Rey to secretly work with Kylo Ren on Potentium and turn him away from Snoke and the First Order. Rey reluctantly accepts. She and Ren complete their first Potentium mission together by clearing the path to the Grylix tribe's temple, the Ramarode.
Chapter 7
"Do you have that list for me, Finn?"
"Yeah. Got it right here. Somewhere." Finn's origins as a Stormtrooper were clear from the messy piles of binders and holopads stacked around his office. He had clearly never owned a desk before being appointed as the Resistance's chief strategy officer.
He slid a thin datapad out of a precarious stack and handed it to me. "These planets have been hit by the Order or sent us distress messages in the past couple days. What did you need it for, again?"
"I need to help people who've been hurt by the war," I replied, glancing through the list. "It's Luke's idea. He says there's more to being a Jedi than swinging a lightsaber. You know where all the recent fights between us the Order have been, so I thought those planets would have people who needed my help."
It didn't feel right at all, having to lie to Finn to cover up my secret meetings with Kylo Ren. But Leia had been strict on this point, and I knew Finn harbored no sympathy for Ren after he had split Finn's spine with his lightsaber.
"It's for your Jedi training? Look, I get that it's for a good cause, but isn't it a little dangerous? The First Order could find you."
I preferred my chances against a squadron of Stormtroopers as opposed to a moody and unpredictable First Order warlord. I slid the thin datapad into my pack and evaded Finn's question. "I'm not used to people worrying about me. It's a nice change."
"Some of us do more than worry," Finn replied, catching my hand in his own.
A strange moment passed, where Finn seemed desperate for me to hear something he hadn't actually said. But my hand sat limply in his grip, because the thought of being something more than a friend to Finn didn't excite me. It wouldn't be fair to force feelings for him when his own were so sincere.
So I smiled with my lips while I frowned with my eyes, and said, "I'll be fine. You don't need to worry." You don't need to fall in love with me.
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"Why should I change?" Ren demanded. "No one will recognize me without the helmet."
"Normal people don't wear all black," I patiently explained. "We need to blend in better."
We were back on Gryl again, a week after our first Potentium mission, standing in the main room of Ren's ship. I had walked up the ramp as soon as he landed and pushed a bundle of worn clothes into his hands.
Ren cast a doubtful look at the pile I had handed him and then dumped them in a heap on the nearby bench. I frowned and was about to argue until he undid the belt around his waist and let it drop to the floor. His gloves followed a moment later, and before I could react he had stripped his bulky, black robe over his head. Underneath he thankfully wore a form-fitting shirt and black pants, but my face had already turned scarlet at the fact that he was undressing in front of me. I practically ran down the short hall into the refresher.
I donned my own disguise, a simple tan robe with a braided rope belt. I stared at my face in the mirror and wondered if I could use the Force to slow my heartbeat. Once I worked up the courage, I re-entered the main room of the ship.
Ren was now wearing loose trousers and a slightly soiled long-sleeved shirt, covered by a shabby leather vest made of Gundark hide. He had torn off a piece of the shirt's hem and tied his hair back from his face. I stared at the phantom of Ben Solo before me, and wondered when he'd last worn something other than Kylo Ren's heavy black garments.
He eyed me defensively, a little grumpy. "If you don't like how it looks, it's your fault."
I assured him that was not the case, but his prickly attitude didn't improve. He frowned when I asked him to hide his lightsaber and take a blaster instead. He sighed when I told him we were headed to a small moon in the Outer Rim. Then he sneered and asked what 'good intentions' I had planned for us.
"I don't have a plan," I admitted with a slight shrug. "We'll land and find someone who needs help."
"I agreed to your terms for working on Potentium. Wasting time was not one of them. And if it was, I'd rather waste it doing other things."
His gaze dropped to my lips for a fraction of a second. I gave him the same cool, imperious stare I'd often used on Unkar Plutt while negotiating portions.
"Fine. I'll go on my own."
The back of my neck prickled as I left the interior of his ship and walked down the boarding ramp. Through the bond, I sensed Ren struggling to clamp down on his rising temper. I was always wary of his anger, but was coming to realize that it was usually directed at no one but himself.
After a few seconds, the metal under my feet vibrated as he stomped down the ramp after me. I hid my grin as he brushed past and walked toward my transport. "The point was to work together on Potentium. You're not getting out of it that easily."
It was like being on a mission with Fariya all over again, Force powers and surly attitude included. I just hoped my patience could outlast Ren's temper.
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My Jedi training didn't go much better.
Luke instructed Fariya and me to practice summoning Force energy from greater distances. I demonstrated my new ability to pull the Force web toward me. At first he was impressed, telling me it was an advanced technique. When I later admitted (out of earshot of Fariya) that I'd learned it from Ren, his mouth snapped shut and the pride drained from his face.
He switched me to a concentration exercise where I had to levitate a collection of rocks in mid-air for as long as possible. It had been easy at first, but my mind started to cramp and burn like I'd been holding my arm up above my head for too long. The largest rock kept sagging and hitting the ground.
Luke glanced up from his holopad. "Don't focus on pushing the rocks upward. Expand the Force between the rocks and the earth," he suggested. I could feel Fariya's eyes on the back of my head, watching us from across the room.
The heaviest stone fell to the ground once again. I growled in frustration and prodded it with a sharp poke of Force power to return it to its spot in the air.
"Careful, Rey. To draw your energy from anger is to mimic the Sith."
"It doesn't feel like the dark side to me," I insisted, for it truly didn't. I'd encountered the rumbling, soul shaking voice of the dark side in the forests of Starkiller. That voice and its violent urges hadn't invaded my thoughts since then, no matter how I used the Force.
"The energy is aligned with the purpose you give it," Luke replied.
"I used the Force to push the stone aloft, and it would rise the exact same way whether I had been irritated or serene. Intent and motive are not the same thing."
"It may seem that simple now, but continuing to use your power through a lens of negative emotions will leave its mark on you. I have seen it before."
"It's human nature to feel negative emotions," I countered. I wasn't trying to argue with him, not exactly, but I didn't fully grasp the need for such adamant adherence to an existence devoid of any feelings at all. "What matters most is channeling those emotions into a positive outcome."
"I will hear no more of this, Rey. The dark side claimed my father and nephew. It slaughtered the entire Jedi Order, including my own students."
He stopped short. I held my breath. Luke never talked about the generation of Jedi apprentices that Kylo Ren had destroyed.
He looked over at Fariya. "Please leave us."
Fariya's shoulders straightened. "You don't have to hide things from me. I'm a Jedi apprentice, just like Rey."
"Continue your exercises in your room," Luke continued, as if Fariya hadn't said a word. But teenagers had that special knack for seeking out sore spots and pressing on them relentlessly.
"Your father is Darth Vader. And your nephew would be Ben Solo, Leia's son." Her accuracy was penetrating to the point of being unnerving. "But he vanished a long time ago. You said he fell to the dark side? Is he still alive?"
Luke had grimaced at the painful mention of his family. I sensed a spark of fury in his aura that would have made even Kylo Ren hesitate. "No, Ben Solo was killed by the First Order. It's time for you to leave." His tone was the sort of thunderous calm that filled the room and left no space for argument.
Fariya sensed she had crossed a line and left the room, tossing me a sulky glare as she shut the door behind her.
Luke closed his eyes and let his emotions dissipate into the Force. I admired how willing he was to part with his own energy – to give it back to the Force so selflessly.
When Luke was calm, he spoke again: "Years ago, Ben and I spent a great deal of time travelling the galaxy together. Ben had arguments similar to yours about the use of the Force. It was difficult for me to understand his reasoning. He struggled with a lot of inner conflicts. More than I realized, at the time. He didn't find out the truth about his grandfather until he was twenty-three. Leia had kept it a secret while she pursued her political career in the Galactic Senate. But a rival politician found out, and told everyone. Once Ben realized he was a descendant of Darth Vader, a few well-placed words from Snoke were all it took to begin his descent into the dark side. Now you're working with him at Leia's request, and I worry…
"The dark side of the force is evil, Rey. I can say it no more plainly than that. I know that you must feel its pull when working with Potentium and Kylo Ren. I will not forbid you from using the Force in that manner because it serves a greater purpose. But you will not, under any circumstances, continue your investigation of its powers right in front of me during your Jedi training. To do so disrespects not only me, but also the Jedi Order and the students I've lost."
I bowed my head in shame. "I understand. You won't hear me speak of it again."
Secretly, though, I looked forward to the next time I could use the Force through Potentium.
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Ren and I settled into a rhythm of going on Potentium missions once or twice a week. We'd meet on Gryl at a prearranged time and then travel together to a planet on Finn's list. We stuck close to common hyperspace lanes because being gone for too long raised odd questions for me. The same restrictions didn't seem to apply to Ren. While I was curious if Snoke knew what he was up to, I didn't ask.
Since the stark black silhouette of Ren's command shuttle was too recognizable, and the transport I'd been using was needed for hauling more than two people, Leia had discreetly scrounged up a Seltaya-class courier ship for my personal use. We traveled all over the galaxy on Potentium missions. The only conditions I'd stipulated were that we helped people, and in a galaxy ravaged by war, they were not difficult requirements to meet.
People would squint at us suspiciously when we approached, despite our – well, my – smile. Some were openly hostile and thought we served the First Order. To my dismay, just as many assumed we were part of the Resistance and treated us with equal contempt.
We heard rants and rumors and tales of grief and horror from every possible viewpoint. "The First Order were demons who'd slaughtered an entire star system" or "The Resistance are ruthless warmongers who should be shot on sight because they'd do the same to us" and "Wasn't their leader, Leia Organa, the daughter of Darth Vader? How could anyone trust her?"
The stories sparked heated arguments between me and Ren. Though my overarching goal was to turn him away from the First Order, he argued in his faction's favor with a zeal that made me see red. He explained away genocide, enslavement and destruction as requirements for progress and stability.
"To spread order, we must eliminate everyone who desires chaos," he'd once said, and I'd snapped back, "Then they should start with you." Ren had stormed off, ignited his lightsaber and taken out his anger on the first piece of native vegetation he could find.
He was like a half-feral cat, prone to showing its fangs to send a clear message. He scowled and sneered and my name was more often 'scavenger' than 'Rey.' Yet despite the aggravation of dealing with Ren's fanaticism for Snoke and the Order, we always worked well when we used the Force together through Potentium.
The insults dropped away, his focus changed, and I was suddenly working with an artist who was deeply passionate about mastering his craft. He commanded the Force with a tenacious willpower that was sometimes breathtaking in its intensity. I was coming to realize that he applied that same intensity to everything in his life. His hands would flex and pull against the power of the Force web, and for a split second I'd imagine skin in the place of air and feel a sudden feverish pulse deep in my belly.
Ren remained interested in the concept of using the dark and light side of the Force at the same time. However, he struggled to disconnect his powers from the fear and anger that had fueled him for so long, while I, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dark side. So we continued exploring the ideas of Potentium on safer ground, by individually summoning our light and dark side energy and then merging or blending it together.
The problems we solved were as varied as they were endless. Flametroopers had torched crops on Yarrum III, and the fields were still burning a day later when we showed up on the war-ravaged planet. Ren and I had pushed the oxygen in the air away from the fields to suffocate the fire.
A First Order transport had been abandoned after a crash landing on Wai-qoo's main moon. The impact had damaged its propulsion tank, which had been leaking poisonous gas into a valley near a rural village for days. While I donned a gas mask and stopped the leak inside the ship, Ren had siphoned the toxins out of the air and funneled them through the ship's still-functioning scrubber system.
A week after that, we were tasked with hunting down a pack of fellraptors that had been attacking the outskirts of a small city on Uth'tup. When the alpha raptor had cut my arm wide open, Ren offered to take care of it. I expected him to ask for first aid supplies, but to my extreme shock he went quiet and knit my skin together entirely with the Force. It was the calmest I'd ever seen him while using his powers. I caught a glimpse of who he could have been as Ben Solo, and mourned the death of someone I'd never even known.
The Potentium missions had slow changes on us both. I noticed that Ren's Force signature – the inky black cords that wound over his body – were less constrained than before. The cords had loosened into wisps of charcoal gray smoke, and sometimes formed dotted patterns in the air around him, like drops of oil mixed with water.
My own Force signature had changed as well: the golden lines and patterns were no longer perfectly symmetrical and straight. A line would have a sudden loop in it, or curl like a strand of wavy hair. Whole patches of lines would sway upwards and merge into each other, as if following the shape of a fingerprint.
The changes were obvious, but we never talked about them. In fact, we didn't talk much at all. Our trips through hyperspace were usually quiet since I had never acquired the art of making small talk, and Ren was the least chatty person I knew.
After the constant noise of the Resistance base, I appreciated the silence, but it forced us to develop an odd familiarity with each other. I could recognize Ren's exact mood by the sharpness of his frown. He knew the difference between when I was silent because I was annoyed, as opposed to when I simply had nothing to say. We sometimes communicated solely through our bond even when we were right next to each other. It was faster to send flashes of thoughts or emotions rather than waste time translating them into words.
My mission from Leia was never far from my thoughts, though for those first few months, I barely made any progress on it. It was like playing a careful and deliberate game of sabacc. Ren couldn't be dragged away from the dark side unwillingly, or perhaps even knowingly. It had to come slowly, like the way I scavenged parts from a ship. I would dismantle it a little more every time I visited, sifting through the junk piece by piece to uncover the parts that were still intact and valuable.
With Ren, I had to take apart something that didn't physically exist: his belief in the superiority of the Order, the poison from years of Snoke's lies. I had to dig through layers of cruelty and spite, the bedrock of fear and hatred, past the darkness of self-loathing and haunting, overwhelming loneliness, and hope that something at the core of Kylo Ren's existence was actually worth saving.
It was hard to not look at him and feel overwhelmed.
Leia was right, though. I was the best person the Resistance had for this mission. I was a scavenger, after all, skilled at finding tiny treasures that had been tucked away and lost for years. If anyone could find the last few remaining pieces of Ben Solo, it would be me.
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