In the previous chapter: Rey tells Leia and Luke about the Victive and her plan to convince Kylo Ren to leave the Order for good. She meets Ren on Gryl, but discovers that Snoke has used the Victive to slaughter the Grylix tribe. She and Ren fly to Jakku to talk.

Chapter 17

Every part of Jakku assaulted my senses the instant I left my cruiser. Searing heat blasted my skin. Piercing light from the midday sun made my eyes throb. Sand prickled against my face and strangled my throat when I inhaled. Ahead of me, my ruined AT-AT rose from the desert like the corpse of an enormous beast. Shadows slanted off its blocky form at sharp angles into the rounded sand dunes. Besides our ships and the distant speck of Niima Outpost behind me, there was nothing else manmade in sight.

It was hard to believe I'd survived fifteen inhospitable years here. This desolate wasteland had made me brave, but more importantly, it had made me stubborn. I'd need every scrap of persistence I possessed to convince Ren to leave Snoke and the Order behind. The cracks in his loyalty were there, and just like dismantling a rusted engine, I only had to apply pressure in the right spots to pry his beliefs apart.

"What's the point of coming to this garbage heap?" Ren grumbled, pointlessly kicking sand off his boots.

I ran my hand over the sun-baked metal of the walker's circular foot. "It was my home."

Ren took in the AT-AT with a sort of baffled disbelief and didn't reply.

I followed the leg toward the belly of the downed walker, where an auxiliary hatch served as my front door. The hatch was ajar, a sure sign that others had taken up residence here in my year-long absence. I banged on the metal leg several times and yelled warnings in a half-dozen languages. Sure enough, scuttling footsteps echoed from inside and a couple of Teedo's scampered into the sunlight. They ran off once they recognized me as the dwelling's original owner.

I told Ren to watch his head as I ducked through the hatch entrance and stood inside my old home for the first time in a year.

The interior had been ransacked. In the dim light I saw dishes scattered on the floor near my makeshift kitchen. My workbench was picked clean of tools. The food cache hidden under a loose metal plate was long gone, along with the ship computer I'd pried out of a Y-wing years ago. That loss stung a little. I'd spent countless hours with only that computer for entertainment and had hoped to recover it.

I was so busy inspecting all the corners and niches where I'd stashed my belongings that I didn't notice Ren's fixation on the wall behind me. I followed his gaze to a spot near the entrance hatch, where rows of scratches marched across the metal. The sheer number of them hit me like a fist to the stomach.

"I thought about leaving," I said, the memory escaping into words before I could stop it. "But I'd look at those marks and tell myself I couldn't give up. I'd been here so long. I could wait a few more weeks." It made me bitter that the excuse chaining me to Jakku had been resolutely etched into existence by my own hand.

"How long would you have waited?" Ren asked.

I didn't reply, ashamed of the answer.

Ren carefully sat on my hammock strung up in the corner. The leather straps creaked but bore his weight. He picked up a scavenged gyroscope from a nearby shelf and spun it between his fingers.

I collected the dishes strewn about the floor, mostly to give my hands something to do while I casually asked Ren, "Has Snoke ever talked about something called the Victive? A Sith relic?"

"Not to me, no," he replied after a beat. "I know what it is, though."

He didn't elaborate, and I wondered if he'd learned about it from Luke. I stacked the dishes in a makeshift cupboard and then leaned against it. "Are you aware Snoke has the Victive?"

Ren twisted the gyroscope in his hands and refused to look at me. "So what if he does? He has rooms full of Sith and Jedi relics."

"This is more than a relic. It's dangerous. Snoke can use it to drain Force power from other Force users. He's already done it to Daamith. He's going to do the same to you."

"And I'll only be safe if I leave him and join the Resistance?" he mocked.

"I doubt they'd take you," I snapped, "but you're better off there than dead. You need to know the danger you're in. Snoke will use the Victive to suck out all of your Force power until it kills you."

Ren scoffed. "Snoke has invested years into my training. I'm more valuable to the Order alive than dead."

"No, you aren't. Not once Snoke has used you to get what he wants."

Ren slammed the gyroscope to the floor, eyes flashing in irritation. "Cut it out, Rey. You're smarter than this. You want me to I leave the Order because you're too afraid to sleep with me while I'm on the opposite side."

I gaped at him. His accusation sounded so legitimate despite being untrue. "It's not that at all! I know that if you stay with the Order, you will die."

"Why should I believe you?"

I pulled the disk from my vest pocket and held it up in my palm. "I have proof," I said, chin tilted up in calm defiance. "This is Snoke's memory. Roony gave it to me before he died. Snoke drains Daamith's power while he uses the Victive. He kills people the exact same way he slaughtered the Gryls. He plans to use you and the Victive to conquer the galaxy. Even Hux knows."

Ren's focus jerked to the slim disk, and there it was – the first flicker of doubt piling up behind his dark eyes. My words were widening the cracks in his devotion, fracturing it inch by inch. However, he didn't move to take the disk. The core of his loyalty to the Order was lodged deep. Even the truth about Snoke's deception wasn't enough to sway him from his backstabbing master.

I lowered my hand and slid the disk into my pocket. It was time to apply pressure from a different angle. "Even if you don't care about yourself, I do. I can't bear to watch you let Snoke destroy you."

"Do you think I want you to save me?" he sneered. "Death doesn't scare me, Rey. Not when it serves the principles of the First Order."

"It wouldn't serve the Order. It would serve Snoke. You know there's a difference."

Ren didn't reply, only clenched his fists and stared at me with hard, unflinching eyes.

I took a slow step closer. "Darth Vader would not have willingly died for the Emperor."

Ren's shoulders visibly tensed under his black tunic and his breathing became uneven. "You are walking a dangerous line, Rey," he warned in a low, threatening tone.

My heartbeat rocketed forward, but I dug deep for the words I had to say – the truth he had to grasp. "Snoke wants to kill you, and you'd let him do it. Both Vader and Anakin would be ashamed of you."

Ren surged to his feet. Fury poured from his livid scowl and down his arm, into his clenched fist as he fought to contain the wrath that begged for violent release. The entire room rumbled as Force power sinuously leaked into every crack and crevice of the wrecked AT-AT.

"I've lived with shame my entire life!" he bellowed. "My parents couldn't look at me without seeing the dark side staring back. They knew I struggled with my powers but they were too scared to help. They sent me away to Luke to fix me because they didn't care enough to do it themselves."

My temper flared against his insolent tone. Unbridled, ferocious anger intertwined with the empty ache of abandonment welling up in my chest. "At least they loved you enough to try! Mine dumped me in a junkyard and left."

Our mutual anguish seethed across the bond and boiled in the air around us. Sweat trickled down my neck and made my clothes stick to my skin in all the wrong places. I drew in a ragged breath, struggling to put distance between my heart and my head.

"I had to raise myself," I said while my tone rode the bleeding edge of hysterics. "You saw my memories. The nights I couldn't sleep, when I begged the stars to bring back my family. No one ever came for me. No one loved me enough to come back."

Ren didn't say anything. I wasn't even sure he was breathing.

"You were lucky enough to have people who loved you," I continued. "Perhaps it wasn't what you wanted, and goodness knows you needed more, but your family's love will always be there."

"They abandoned me," he said stubbornly, though he stared at a spot on the floor and refused to meet my eyes.

"Don't you dare say that. They were good people who made bad parents. They never gave up on you. Your father forgave you for killing him even as he died. Your mother wants nothing more in this world than to see you again. To see you happy. Snoke will destroy both you and her with the Victive. He's using you."

"Everyone uses me," he spat. "Even you."

My mouth fell open. "What?"

"You're using me and Potentium as an escape from being a Jedi. It gives you an excuse to use the Force however you want."

Alarm coursed through my veins, stunned at the way he'd turned my words back on me. For the first time, my courage cracked under the weight of his stare.

"I'm not…" I choked out the words and stopped, suddenly unsure.

"I'm not fucking stupid, Rey. We both know you'll never be a Jedi. It's easier to lie to yourself and meet with me in secret than tell Luke you're just as much of a failure as I was. We've been going on Potentium missions for months. Doesn't he see the changes in your Force signature? Why don't he and Leia ever wonder where you are?"

I felt like the ground had vanished under my feet and sent me plummeting to the center of the planet. I gaped at him, stupidly opening and closing my mouth as lies leaked up my throat and crowded onto my tongue.

Scavengers don't survive by telling their secrets. This knowledge had been beaten into me for years and kept me alive on Jakku. But when I was with Ren, I wasn't a scavenger. I wasn't a member of the Resistance, a Jedi apprentice, or even an orphan who still longed for a family. I was just a girl, one who needed more practice being honest with both herself and everyone around her.

I swallowed hard, and the thick knot of deception and lies slid down my throat to be replaced by something dangerously frail: the truth.

"They know," I whispered.

Ren's face went white.

I held his gaze, begging him to understand. "Luke and Leia know I'm here with you. They've known the whole time."

His entire body tensed, rigid and unmoving except for the desperate rise and fall of his chest.

I pressed on, my explanation gushing out of my chest like an unplugged spout. "I told them about Potentium after we were stranded on Gryl. Leia asked me to turn you away from Snoke and the Order. Help you realize it's not too late to leave. Luke has let me practice Potentium with you this whole time. That's how much they care about you. You know that you could go home to Leia today and she would bend over backwards to make things right."

"If she's so desperate to have me back, she shouldn't have sent me away in the first place."

"You were the one that left, Ben Solo! And now you're too scared, and too proud, and too embarrassed to admit you were wrong. It's easier to stay with the Order and swallow Snoke's lies than face the truth."

"Supreme Leader's wisdom is the only truth I'll ever need."

I paused to draw in a shaking breath, but dark energy shivered through the air and turned my words harsh and brutal. "You're so blind. My life here on Jakku was awful, but it was better than being found by Snoke and turned into a mindless slave."

I only stopped talking because Ren's fist suddenly deformed the metal wall of the AT-AT. He drew his bloodied hand back and punched the same spot several more times. I remembered how he'd bashed his wound on Starkiller, seeking strength from the blurring shroud of pain. Fear crawled up my spine and I had the uneasy feeling that I'd gone too far.

"You are wrong, scavenger," he snarled, rage smoldering in his eyes. "Snoke didn't find you because he didn't want you any more than your family did."

I flinched and he immediately knew he had crossed a line. Despair at hurting me echoed through the bond, but rolling waves of anger carried him away into a downward spiral of hatred. He stalked toward me as tears openly poured down my cheeks. How had this gone so, so wrong?

"Snoke honored me with his attention because my destiny is to rule the galaxy. It's my birthright as the descendent of both Sith and Jedi. After I finish Lord Vader's mission to exterminate the Jedi, I'll help the Order cleanse the galaxy and purge the Resistance from history. And after the Resistance falls, I'll take you for myself," he murmured as he moved closer. "I'll drag you into the darkness with me and rip you apart, until you can't remember how to hate me because I'll give you a place where you belong for the first time in your life."

He took one more menacing step forward and his gloved hand reached for my throat. Fear and fury spiked through my heart. Without hesitation – without even a split-second of rational thought – I threw my hand out, curled my fingers inward like a dying spider, and squeezed.

Black shadows flared around Ren's entire body, outlining him in a halo of darkness. His hands instantly snapped to his throat while his mouth spread in silent agony. He fell to his knees and fought to draw in air with every wrenching gasp.

"You will never have me, Kylo Ren," I hissed, my voice twisted with venom that welled up in my throat like bile. "Snoke will kill you long before the Resistance is gone."

A tiny voice frantically shrieked in my head, mortified at my own actions, but it was overwhelmed by a barbaric and bitter satisfaction at seeing Kylo Ren suffer. He deserved to be punished for refusing to leave his manipulative master, and for murdering Han, injuring Finn, torturing Poe and the rest of the countless atrocities he'd committed. Other dark emotions intertwined with the river of rage pouring unabated from my heart: disgust with Leia for assigning me this mission, despair that I had lost Ren forever, and a crippling doubt that I'd ever amount to anything more than a starved, worthless scavenger.

My eyes snapped away from Ren's tortured face as my Force signature shivered into mid-air around us. The sight instantly doused my roaring anger. Its golden, orderly lines had turned pitch black. They met at sharp, disjointed angles like a piece of broken glass. It looked like madness. It looked wrong.

Stop this, Rey. STOP!

I gasped and flung the summoned dark power away from me, shattering my Force-signature into a million tiny, glittering shards. Ren slumped to his hands and knees and drew in a terrible, bone-shaking gust of air that rattled down his throat.

My skin went numb as shock overtook my mind. I was no stranger to dark energy after spending time with Ren and merging our powers through Potentium. But this time I'd sailed straight over that intangible line between light and dark without a second glance. The energy's slimy residue stuck to my hands and polluted my thoughts like sludge. I'd trusted myself to never succumb to the dark side's terrible power, but now that trust had been carved from my chest and left it aching and hollow.

Ren looked up at me from where he knelt on the floor, and the awe and amazement on his face crushed my heart into my throat. He wasn't mad that my destructive display of power had Force-choked him half to death. He was enthralled by it.

"If you want to save me, then help me destroy Snoke," he rasped, eyes ablaze. "Join me at the head of the Order. We'll reign over the galaxy together. We can use Potentium to have everything we've ever wanted."

I considered the future he offered. The two of us would wield incredible amounts of power at each other's sides. Could I use that position to kill Snoke and spare the Resistance, or even dismantle the First Order from the inside?

Was this the only way I could save both Kylo and myself from destinies that promised nothing but loneliness and pain?

Ren summoned a thread of power that languidly wrapped around the dregs of dark energy I'd summoned. It pulsed in time with my heartbeat. The intensity of his stare sent me straight back to our desperate battle in the snow on Starkiller. I stood at the edge of the very same cliff, on the precipice of the dark side, with the possibilities of Potentium brushing my fingertips… but it wasn't the right path, and I closed my heart off from that future forever.

"Leave the Order," I implored him, my voice barely louder than a whisper. "It won't make you happy. It never has."

Anguish softened the hard edges of his face, and a desperate sadness haunted his eyes. "You know I can't do that."

"You're wrong, Kylo. You're so wrong."

"Do you refuse to join me?" he asked. My breath hitched as I held in a ragged sob and let silence deliver my answer. His anger finally burned out and left only ash in his stare. "Then we have nothing more to say to each other."

He climbed to his feet and spun to leave, but before he could go I snatched the memory disk from my pocket and held it out toward him, lips mute but eyes screaming. He stared at it for a fathomless moment before reaching out and plucking the disk from my fingertips.

I thought he might drop it to the ground and crush it under his boot, but he tucked it into a concealed pocket in his robes, gave me a hard, calculating stare, and left without another word.

His ship's ion engines roared into the distance, and the bond that always sparked between us turned into a bruise that ached deep inside my chest. I curled up on my old hammock and bawled the way I'd used to when I missed my family – deep, hysterical sobs that poured my sorrow into every wretched corner of my lifeless home.

I laid in miserable silence after the sobs died down to occasional shudders. I'd failed to do every single thing I'd come here to do – I hadn't convinced Ren to leave the Order, couldn't save him from meeting the fate Snoke had planned for him, let down Luke and Leia, and, worst of all, I'd failed myself. I'd given into the dark side in a moment of panic and fury. My relationship with the Force would forever be tainted by that memory.

My eyelids dragged shut, exhausted after the disastrous encounter. The First Order could be on its way here to capture me and I simply didn't care. Perhaps tomorrow my heart would feel less swollen and malformed. Tomorrow I could tell Leia that her son was a lost cause and be rid of this mission forever.

Tomorrow, Kylo Ren might be dead.

I fell asleep sobbing.

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