The third ghost comes unexpectedly.
Rey doesn't hear what Yoda says after she comes to her realization. She's on her feet in a second, her hand already on her lightsaber. S4-M1 has settled on a nervous chirping below and Rey can hear them already start back toward the X-wing, either expecting to leave or attempting to hide. She fights through her momentary panic to try to figure out his proximity, but it feels like there's a wall in her way, too thick to pierce but just enough to understand that he's nearby.
She takes off in a sprint, slides down the outcropping, scraping her elbow in the process. It doesn't deter her, and she runs as fast as she can towards the camp. Rey can't tell if she's afraid of him or afraid of the connotation of his arrival. She settles on a mixture between the two, despite the fact she's defeated him once. The distinct crackle in the air tells her that he hasn't gotten over it yet.
S4-M1 isn't too far ahead, and Rey catches up to them easily. The astromech whirs and chirps so quickly that it's hard to understand, but Rey gets the gist. Not good not good not good is the closest thing she can get to a proper translation. Rey's inclined to agree.
It only occurs to her once she's within sight of the camp that using the Force to cloak her presence would be an excellent idea. It also occurs to her that going straight back to her camp wasn't as much of a good idea. If Kylo Ren is here, then there's an enormous chance that escaping with the X-wing will end in a fiery explosion if the First Order is at his back. That leaves her to cloak herself and disappear into the swamps of Dagobah, possibly outnumbered and on a planet that does not care if she's a Jedi-in-training or not. If Kylo Ren doesn't kill her, the monsters in the swamp might. That's also not considering how long he'll pursue her. Even if she does make herself disappear, she certainly can't count on him giving up easily.
She ducks under the roots of the gnarltree to catch her breath, trying desperately to hone in on that last bit of the Force she had captured with her meditation. It's difficult, especially with S4-M1 panicking and trying to urge Rey to get into the X-wing, but somehow, she manages.
Rey envisions herself where she stands, and then imagines her entire being disappearing like sand in the wind, filtering away grain by grain from her toes to her head. When she opens her eyes, she's still standing there, but something's different. S4-M1 twists their head back and forth, chirping a query.
"Invisible, you are not," Yoda's voice says, echoing from everywhere at once. Rey blinks and looks for him, but he's just a tiny pinprick of light to her. She retreats further under the roots of the gnarltree and takes slow, steady breaths, trying to maintain what ever it is she's done. "Concealed, you are. Those weak in the Force, see you not."
That's great, Rey thinks sardonically. Kylo isn't weak in the Force.
"But hide from him, you do."
She may not be invisible to him, but it will be harder for him to find her.
Rey debates on where she should go. She could hide in the X-wing's cockpit, but there's an enormous chance that he'll look there, just as with the shelter of the gnarltree's roots. It would be a death sentence in itself to run into the wilderness, as she figured before, but there could very well be a fate worse than death if she doesn't.
Her feet move on their own accord and she darts out from under the gnarltree and banks right, following a narrow path through the thick undergrowth and pools of stagnant water. Behind her, S4-M1 chirps shrilly and Rey resists every urge to hush the droid. Instead, she keeps running.
"Use the Force to guide you," she hears, and the voice isn't Yoda's or Qui-Gon's. It's one she hasn't heard before. Another older man, wise and quiet. If Rey wasn't fleeing for her life, she would try to hone in on it more.
Her breath comes in heaves and the sweat is cold on her skin. In front of her is an endless foggy stretch of green and gray. Fear pulses hot, rattles her heart with waves of adrenaline. Rey feels the concealment of the Force slip away little by little.
The old man's voice returns, louder this time, as if he's right behind her. "Rey, focus," he says, and it's an order rather than a suggestion.
It isn't by her power alone that causes her to stop. There's something else with her, this third ghost if she suspects correctly. She can't see him, but she can hardly see anything at all with the fog as thick as it is. With every second, it gets more dense, and the world around her gets darker. She pants, turning every direction, trying to find what stopped her. There's nothing but dark fog and jungle, but she isn't alone.
"Rey," the old man says, and it feels as if he's standing directly in front of her. His presence his hard to grasp in her current state, but she feels it all the same. "Do not let fear be your guide. You are strong, stronger than you think. Focus, and the Force will do as you ask."
She wants to hide. She wants to be safe, and she wants Kylo Ren to leave Dagobah and never come back. Something tells her that only two of those things are options.
Hide me, she says in her mind, and she feels the Force move against her, lapping like waves over her feet. Once more, she's sand in the wind, footprints on the beach at the mercy of the ocean, and little by little, she disappears.
"Good." The old man hasn't left her, and she finds herself unexplainably grateful. "What else?"
Keep me safe, she commands, and the Force changes its consistency. It is no longer wind or water. It's raw earth, pushing against her as a tremor in the soil, leading her feet without her eyes to guide her. She moves effortlessly through the fog, stepping over branches, twigs, puddles, and rocks without seeing a single one. The Force moves in her and around her, and guides her downward. Her knees protest the slope she cannot see, until she feels...
Cold?
She opens her eyes, not realizing she had closed them at all, and finds herself in a hollow dug deep into the earth. Tree roots arch as a roof over her head, packed with dirt, and somewhere nearby, she can hear water rushing. As she asked, she feels safe, and the Force washes over her as if trying to assure her of the same.
Now, she waits.
In her concealment, she decides to assess the situation better. Rey doesn't have to worry about being lost, as she has full faith that the Force will lead her back when the time is right. If it doesn't, one of the three ghosts she's met will probably be willing to help, or at least offer her some cryptic advice by way of a map. However, as before, she firmly doubts Kylo Ren will leave her be if he doesn't find her within a day. She knows that he expects not to find her at her camp. It's been a long time since they last met, so she can't gauge how impulsive or temperamental he might be. He could very well have the potential to tear Dagobah apart if he so chooses. Honestly, she doesn't know how much he's put into finding her, but she assumes it's no small effort.
Her fists clench tight at her sides as she leans against the damp rocky wall of the cave, her breath evened out, but her chest straining.
"I wouldn't lose hope, Rey." The old man's voice returns, and Rey at least has the luxury now of reaching out to him. When she focuses, his presence is not as bright as Yoda's, but it's clear. Where some other presences are raw starlight, his is like a prism. She can almost see individual facets of it, turning and refracting the light of the Force in ways that astound her. He's a powerful entity, and one entirely deserving of respect.
"Who are you?" she asks, casting a glance around the narrow space of the cave. It's dark, but in a way that makes her feel secure. This is not an unfriendly darkness. The Dark side has no power here.
There's a flicker before her, like the sprites of colorful flame above the swamps when evening comes, and it spreads to form a shape of a man. Like Yoda before, he's cast in blue light, and it illuminates a tiny second of the cave. He's a wizened old man, like she figured, but with an expression that's almost parental. His beard is just past his chin and is the same silver-white of his hair, pushed away from his face. His eyes are bright, hardly betraying the fount of wisdom within him. He wears the robes of an old Jedi, a dark cloak around his shoulders. The smile he gives her is knowing and peaceful.
"I am Obi-Wan Kenobi," he tells her, and Rey feels as if the entire galaxy just got completely tilted on its side. At least, that's how she personally feels. Her knees hit the compacted dirt beneath her and she stares.
Then, to take a page from some of the Resistance members she's met and befriended, Rey says, "Holy shit."
What's more, Obi-Wan smiles at her, clears his throat like he's fighting a laugh. "I've been watching your progress for some time, Rey. The Force is strong with you."
"You know me?" she asks, and she can't help but feel beyond excited at the prospect.
He nods, crossing his arms in front of him so the folds of his cloak hide his hands. "I felt your strength in the Force not long ago, and watched as Luke took you under his wing. It's been so long since he took on a new apprentice. Far too long." The way he says it is wistful and sad. He knows what happened, so she doesn't have to say a word.
Slowly, Rey gets back to her feet, flushed but eager to see him eye to eye. This is Master Luke's teacher, Anakin Skywalker's before him. She still knows so little about the history of their galaxy, but she's learned enough to know that Obi-Wan has seen and done so many things, and the stories he could tell her could keep her occupied for literal days. She wants to hear them, after she heard Master Luke's tales about what he remembered. Stories of this great Jedi concealed in the desert as a hermit, under a different name-
Ben.
The name makes ice crawl frigid in her veins and she frowns, mimicking his gesture and crossing her arms over her chest.
"Then you know about..." She trails off, as if saying his name will somehow summon him.
Again, he nods, and as solemn and sad as he seems, the kindness in his face doesn't fade. "Ben Solo," he says, and Rey spares a quick glance around just in case. There's nothing but the darkness and the blue glow of Obi-Wan's ghost. He does take not of her gesture with a sigh, and it's so similar to how Qui-Gon Jinn spoke of Anakin. "I saw it for myself, although it was long after my life was extinguished. I wanted to see how Luke and Leia fared, and so I saw the child. I tried to tell Luke of the darkness growing in him, but Luke... Well, Luke did try to see the best in most, in his nephew especially."
Like imagining Master Luke as young and brash, it's hard for Rey to picture Kylo Ren as a child. The image of Ben Solo is unfocused, and she wonders if it's an effect of him being in her mind before, dashing out that part of his identity from himself and from her.
"What was he like?" she asks.
"Oh, he had promise, of course. No grandson of Anakin would have anything less. He was enthusiastic and capable, and he absorbed things so quickly. His curiosity was strong, and I still wonder if that was, to a degree, part of his undoing."
She understands, as she remembers reaching into that part of his mind when he attempted to interrogate her. There, she saw the heat-melted mask of Darth Vader, like the charred remains of some grotesque monster. The emotions Kylo Ren associated with the mask were nothing short of reverent. It isn't hard to imagine it started with him asking questions about his grandfather, and wanting to know more.
Why did he go to the Dark side? How powerful was he? Were people afraid of him?
Obi-Wan's expression suggests he hears what she hears, this lingering memory shared between them, Obi-Wan's from personal experience, Rey's just picked up in passing.
"And now, we have the result," the spirit says, glancing upward as if Kylo Ren stands above them.
"If he finds me-" Rey starts, but Obi-Wan raises a hand to silence her.
"Even if he does, I cannot say for certain that he will get what he wants." He says it with such sureness that it almost sounds like a challenge. In turn, Rey wonders what a Force ghost could do to stop a person with so much of the Dark side roaring through him like the ferocity of a wildfire.
Her doubts speak for themselves, and she almost misses the barest grin on Obi-Wan's face. It's conspiratorial, if she had to pick a word.
"You've witnessed for yourself the power of the Force, and its strength flows powerfully though you, Rey," he says. "There may be many things I am unable to do as I am, but I can at least assure you that there are also plenty of things I can do. The Force does not end with death."
This, she knows, at least inasmuch as three ghosts could prove to her. To their credit, they've done plenty in the short amount of time she's seen them. Qui-Gon Jinn projected things to her telepathically, even though he didn't appear himself. Yoda somehow allowed her to effortlessly hook onto the Force and eased her into the most perfect meditation she had ever been in. Obi-Wan Kenobi stopped her mid-run to teach her how to quell her fear, hide herself, and follow the Force to safety. These Jedi were certainly powerful in life, and it's no stretch to assume this power continues into death.
"What now?" she asks, not out of desperation, but instead as a legitimate question, asking for his counsel. "I mean, what can I do other than hide out in here? It's not like he's just going to give up."
"No," Obi-Wan concedes. "He won't. But there is a reason that Luke chose Dagobah for your training. Others have been here before you, and each found that there are many unexpected things here."
For once, Rey would very much so enjoy if people would stop being cryptic to her. She sighs through her nose and resumes leaning up against the cave wall. "You're not expecting me to go out there and say hello, are you?"
Silence.
She turns towards the spirit, frowning. He looks completely passive, perhaps thoughtful.
"Are you?" she repeats.
"You did leave your droid alone," he reminds her.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master Jedi and teacher to at least two of the most powerful Jedi she knows of, is literally telling her to go face Kylo Ren, right after he helped her hide from him.
As his specter fades, Rey thinks that living the rest of her life out in the cave suddenly seems far more appealing.
It's past nightfall by the time she finally musters the will to leave the cave. She hasn't felt anything distinct in the Force that would suggest Kylo Ren is hellbent on his mission, but he could also be concealing as well, or something similar. Rey hardly expected this to be easy.
The fog is still mercilessly thick when she leaves, but there's a sense of relief that nothing is on fire and Dagobah isn't any closer to being annihilated than when she woke up that morning. Still focusing on cloaking herself, she allows the Force to lead her back towards her camp. Foreboding and worry already begin to gnaw at her gut, but she refuses to allow fear to latch on. If she does have to meet him, she doesn't want him to see her afraid. Still, cautiousness and fear aren't completely connected, so she does unclip her lightsaber from her belt and clutches it tightly. She can be merciful, she knows, but she also will not hesitate to either skewer him if he tries anything, or give him another scar to match the one she gave him on Starkiller.
Tentatively, as she walks, she reaches out through the atmosphere of the planet, feeling uncannily like a predator stalking through the brush. She senses lifeforms both big and small. There are familiar ones, like the little reptiles that scurry across the rocks, and the larger ones that meander, the great life signatures of the strange large beasts that live in the waters, and stranger still are the creatures that literally are the gnarltrees. Many are unperturbed, and no lives fizzle out unexpectedly. There is a silent status quo set in the darkness, and nothing has tipped it yet.
Right when she thinks he's either completely concealed himself or, unrealistically, left Dagobah, she feels an anomaly. It's nothing like anything else on the planet. Neither swamp creature nor water beast, and certainly not one of the spirits that trail after her. He doesn't appear as a beam of light, or even a flurry of starlight. She has to focus, but she sees him as a shapeless something, undulating, alternating red-white-red-white in pattern with no rhythm. It's so hard to concentrate, and his presence fades in and out. For a moment, she thinks he might be fighting for his life, but there's something that breaks through to her.
Rage.
In an instant, she realizes that he has cloaked himself, but the cloak fades because he's furious. She couldn't have expected much else, she supposes, but it jars her all the same. It takes a good deal of courage to keep her from turning back to the safety of the cave.
She can't figure out how far away he is, so she walks slowly, sweeping out carefully to make sure he can't jump out from behind her. Rey doesn't push too far, in case he's closer than she thinks. She refuses to let her cloak down, and concentrates on the short amount of teaching Obi-Wan gave her. Honestly, she wished her training was more honed, more specific, rather than some blocky commands, but she does the best she can given the situation.
Rey continues to walk, slow step by slow step, the Force helping her retrace her path back to the camp. Nothing is out of the ordinary just yet, but the atmosphere grows more tense, and the fog refuses to abate.
Then, she hears S4-M1, chirping and whirring in something like a whine. It's not distress, Rey understands with relief. S4-M1 just sounds agitated at being left alone. In moments, she can make out their lights, and then the black silhouettes of the gnarltree shelter and the X-wing. The relief spreads once her camp is completely visible, and she wastes no time going to the droid, placing her hands on the cool chrome of their head.
"Did anyone come here?" she asks, keeping her voice down.
S4-M1 lets out one chirp that sounds like affirmation, twisting their head to get a better look at her, and then jerks to a stop. The next sound is one Rey certainly didn't want to hear. A low, droning beep, one that Rey knows very well from the droids on Jakku. We've got trouble, S4-M1 says.
And to Rey's horror, she realizes the connotation of S4-M1 being able to see her. Her cloak was dropped, more than likely out of relief.
She feels him before anything else, the shapeless flashing thing that he comes across as falls away little by little, like it's simply being seared off. She feels heat, unbearably hot like molten metal, like a merciless sun on the desert. His anger is all flames, and they immediately reach out to her like she's nothing more than dried kindling.
"You dropped your guard," is all he says, his voice altered by his mask. But the mask does absolutely nothing to conceal how he feels.
Rey turns slowly, with S4-M1 letting out a worried chatter of beeps behind her. Nothing has changed about him since she last saw him with the mask on. He's dressed like a shadow, and only the light of S4-M1 illuminates the ridges of his mask. She notices his lightsaber is in his hand, but not ignited. His stance certainly suggests that he's more than prepared to fight her.
She takes one step back, but knows that other than S4-M1, there's only a pond of water there. For all she wanted to escape, and as well as she did, it hasn't exactly worked out.
Neither of them speak for the longest, tensest moment. She can feel him already pushing at her mind, slowly at first, and then progressively harder. She merely pushes back, sending the message that they've already done this before, and nothing's changed on that front.
"Oh, things have changed," he says, his voice schooled so it comes across as casual. "You have, haven't you? Training to be a Jedi, right?" It doesn't escape her that he sounds so mocking. With a jolt, she wonders if he sounded like this before he massacred Luke's trainees.
"You don't seem so different," she replies, trying desperately to keep the tremor out of her words.
She's met with a short, sharp laugh, completely humorless. He takes one long step towards her, and she's unable to take a step back. Without a second thought, she ignites her lightsaber, bathing both of them in eerie blue light. It makes her think of the three Jedi ghosts she met, and she wonders if they're nearby, if they can help her at all.
"I don't seem so different," he echoes, and she can hear his sneer without having to see it. His lightsaber comes to life beside him, just as she remembers it. The blade crackles with unstable energy, and she thinks that there may very well come a day where it malfunctions completely. Very suitable to its owner, she muses.
He seems to catch that thought and takes another step, until he's looming too close. She angles herself into a defensive posture, immediately recalling all the forms she was coached through. Her mind must be wide open, more than she thought, because he laughs again. "Of course you've been training with him," he says. Then, angrily, "Let's see if you learned anything."
He's on her in less than a second, static red filling her vision and she's just barely able to block it. She takes a wide side-step to her left, giving her some space to back up, and he concedes. As soon as their positions change, he goes in for an all-out assault. Their blades clash over and over, the buzzing sound is all Rey hears, and then the crackle of his erratic blade. She continues to block every swipe and strike. He's completely on the offensive, so much so that his attacks aren't as precise as they could be, less focused on his form and more focused on some deeper more primal need to win. Rey doesn't need to wonder why he feels this way.
In contrast, she's almost purely defensive. Master Luke noted that it's worked out well for her, that she could wear her opponent out if need be, and then switch over to something more on the offense. While mastering a particular form hasn't been in her immediate future, she's favored the Soresu form, figuring she would be meeting more blasters in combat than lightsabers. It's the form that allows her to best get a feel for what she's fighting, and in this case, it lets her see Kylo Ren's intentions better, and his style of fighting.
Another benefit of the Soresu form is that it allows her to speak.
"What are you after?" she demands, blocking another wide-arcing strike aimed for her side. When he does that, she notices that he guards his, where he was hit back on Starkiller. He turns tightly toward it, keeping his hip angled away from her.
He strikes again, this time above her head, and then quickly tries to follow it up with an attempted clip to her shoulder. She blocks both fairly easily.
"You," he snarls, following it up with quick, successive strikes toward her torso. One comes close enough that she feels the heat of his blade close to her side. She parries it, twists his blade away and sends him careening back a few steps.
He readjusts his stance and she glares at him, both hands tight on the hilt. "Are you trying to kill me or are you trying to kidnap me again?"
Half of his answer is the wild, frenzied attacks he rains on her. She's forced to retreat several steps, her breath already coming in shorter and shorter with each block.
Form VII, her mind supplies in the voice of Master Luke. Juyo. There's no emotion to it. Just butchering. Not many Jedi ever tried it.
That seems to be the case, as each strike is erratic, fast, and brutal. She blocks one strike at just the right angle to cause his lightsaber to score the earth near her feet, leaving a smoking black mark.
The other half of his answer is actually spoken, or more accurately, shouted. "I don't care what happens here!" he yells, and it's distorted into static by his mask. "If you die, if I get you alive, it doesn't matter!"
Apparently, he's more fond of the former option of her being killed. What ever happened to him between Starkiller and now has turned him into something far worse than she expected.
Worse still, he doesn't seem to be tiring, and she is. Her arms are beginning to ache with the strain of blocking each powerful strike. She knows she has to switch to the offensive soon, like she did on Starkiller, but then it's a matter of finding an opening in the deluge of his attacks.
"Make one," she hears Obi-Wan say. "You know you can. You've done it before."
The Force guided her before, and it gave her an opening when she needed it the most. Same enemy as before, and his tactics have changed, but her options are thin. All she needs is a little time, and a lot more faith than she thinks she has. She draws in a deep breath during a short pause between his attacks, and then charges forward, using the difference in their heights to duck underneath a wide swing of red and elbow him hard somewhere near his diaphragm. As soon as she makes contact, she leaps back and watches him stumble backwards. It buys her almost no time, but almost is good enough.
The Force meets her halfway, runs though every particle of her until she feels like a livewire, hot and dangerous. In an instant, she's one with it, and it's more than adrenaline. It's more than any shot of chemicals or any meditation can give her. There's nothing in the galaxy like it, and for this small window of time, she can literally do anything. She feels like she's glowing with it, as bright and brilliant as the hottest star.
She charges at him again, yelling as she does so, and blocks him effortlessly. This time, instead of drawing back, she spins away from him, to his right and her left, and rather than strike him, she tackles him. He's sent reeling, quickly trying to regain his balance, but she's there before he can move again. Her knee rams into his side, her lightsaber now a breath away from his neck, and her other arm twisting to get his right hand into a lock. Before she knows what she's doing, her arm moves seemingly of its own accord and she hears a terrible crack. Kylo Ren makes a strangled noise behind his mask and she hears his lightsaber hit the ground.
Now it's just the two of them, her lightsaber poised to swiftly decapitate if need be. He's disarmed, and if she's heard right, his wrist is broken.
"Yield!" she yells.
He doesn't make a sound, and part of it may very well be from the pain.
However, there was no way it was going to be that easy.
His left hand shoots straight for her neck before she can think on it, black leather digging in tight against her skin. The ridge between his thumb and index finger is right on her trachea, fully intent on crushing it. Rey, on the other hand, is not fully intent on dying. She beseeches the Force to give her one last push, and it does so, in the form of her foot making sound contact with his lower abdomen, right below his diaphragm. It's a harder kick than she thought, as he hits the ground with such force that she hears his helmet thump against the dirt.
Rey isn't one to rest on her laurels, so she quickly moves over, one boot square on his chest, the other angled so her heel hovers just above his broken wrist for sake of leverage. The tip of her lightsaber is just under his chin, poised above his throat.
"Yield or you're dead!" she shouts.
He's soundless again, but he stays that way. No noise, no movement. She doesn't budge in case he's trying to bait her, yet nothing happens. She presses down on his chest with her boot, and it doesn't elicit a reaction, so she reaches out with her mind, slipping into his too easily.
"Oh, shit," she says, and Poe would be proud of her.
She's knocked Kylo Ren unconscious, and now she has no idea what to do with him.