It was her.
He slammed the panel to the ship ramp shut, the hydraulics hissing steam as they raised slowly. Storming to the cockpit, he flung the metal toolbox from where he had been tinkering with the controls, the tools clattering to the floor noisily. His fist clenched, itching for the light saber at his side. Ready to ignite the red blade and destroy-
He needed the ship.
He breathed out heavily, he needed the ship to get off this backwater . Had even been adjusting the thrusters before he left so that the ship didn't drag ever so slightly to starboard when in atmospheric maneuvers.
She didn't even notice him.
The old toolbox groaned as it collapsed, rivets flying out as the shape condensed smaller and smaller, the metal flexing and flowing. He raised the ball to the palm of his gloved hand, scowled and dropped it back to the floor where it rolled away.
Her eyes, green and sharp, had glanced over the crowd like she had heard someone shout out her name. Her brow had furrowed and she looked right at him- then past him. Then her attention had been drawn elsewhere.
Bridger had finished his propaganda and all three went into the capitol- no doubt meeting up with Organa who rarely made public appearances and was in mourning besides…
Kylo summoned the ball back to him and then flung it out of the cockpit, it crashed into the ship hallway tearing gouges in the walls and floor.
How could she not feel it? The pull between them, the Force a tether, burning through him.
It was all he could feel sometimes.
The only thing that could eclipse his task and make him-
No, he held himself in control. The frustration rushing through him was nothing. The tense of his body nothing. The ache nothing.
Nothing.
Long silent moments passed, he put his mask back on with a click as it sealed shut and cut him off from the entirely crude world around him. His plan, the plan would commence soon and then he would destroy Skywalker.
Lothal wasn't the lush of Takodana, but compared to the barren Jakku it was still green and Rey breathed in the life here eagerly. Citizens milled down below in the city, a single mass from the balcony she leaned on, nothing like the windswept remote wildness of the island.
The Force here was different too. Instead of the pure and clean and warm glow it shifted constantly, light breaking through the cloud only to be obscured again. A sandstorm that she could only feel and not see. Years ago the planet had been different, but the Empire had stirred the Force here and it was still settling.
But there had been that unmistakable path opening, a single clear gap that had drawn her…
The breeze flicked her fly-aways into her eyes, her hand- nails short and fingers calloused- brushed them back behind her ears. They came back undone immediately.
"It won't be too much longer," Master Skywalker said from behind her, good humor on his face, he must of heard her sigh, "Just a few more handshakes and then we can travel to the temple."
Rey turned, "That's not-" she started, "I like the party."
A chuckle, "That makes one of us." He came to stand next to her, "This is much more Leia's domain, and Ezra loves this kind of thing."
She could just see the two far into the room behind them, talking to a brown eyed togruta and a greeny-peach twi'lek, "Will he be coming with us?"
"No, it is a trial only for master and apprentice," he clapped a hand on her shoulder, "We go together, we will both tested and we will both be judged."
Rey nodded, the warmth of belonging settling heavy but right in her gut. It never got old.
They left soon after, the twin moons of the planet rising over the grasslands. The temple rose out of the hills, made of the same rock formations scattered across the horizon, hidden in plain sight to those who did not know what to look for.
Luke had been to many temples, a devotee on pilgrimage, but she had only begun- having not been allowed into the first temple where she had found him, 'One thing at a time, Rey. You have to learn to walk before you can run.'
'Then why this temple first?'
'Hold out the light saber, Rey.'
She did, the heavy cylinder warmed by her hand.
'This saber was my father's- a man at least a whole head taller than you with a mechanical hand- the saber is too big for your frame or for your hand,' he had explained, 'The blade too long, the handle too heavy… unless you want to dismantle it for components, you need your own.'
And with so many temples destroyed or just not suitable, here they were. The shuttle landed with a sigh and they stepped towards the rock face.
"Together, Rey."
She nodded and reached out with her master. The Force welled up in her, powerful and still strangely new and deep- but hers, as much a part of her as her other senses now.
Beside her, Master Luke was the ocean around the island- vast and tenacious and unstoppable. As a fellow desert native he would probably laugh at the comparison.
The temple raised, opening to their call.
Rey stepped inside, not knowing exactly what she expected a temple to be like. This one was large, a plain and dark vault supported by pillars. At the far end of the entranceway was a door beckoning, as they got closer the outside world faded further and further.
She stopped, turning her head to see forms hidden behind the pillars. Bodies, dead long enough to mummify, long robes clinging to them. Her eyes studied them with curiosity but no revulsion or true surprise. Jakku was a harsh world after all.
"Ancient Jedi masters," Luke said, "Waiting for padawans who will never return."
A wrinkled face flew across her mind, sun tanned skin and wind blown hair under a desert tent. She had looked into another's face and seen her own future waiting.
"They will not interfere," he continued, staring at her but perhaps seeing another in her place. The other apprentice he took here. The one he spoke so little about and only in half truths, but with pain swirling through him, "I will wait with them."
He knelt down on the hard floor, "Go on, Rey."
She went through the door.
There was darkness, not Dark but not Light either, just nothing. She walked forward, looking and reaching and wishing she had her scavenger gear to light up the way in front of her. Her hand absently reached up in a familiar gesture and found the switch for the flashlight connected to her goggles.
A pause, then she turned it on- the blue beam lighting up what looked to be the inside of a ship. It couldn't- she spun around, expecting the door to appear behind her but it was just the decrepit hallways she had known most of her life. Silent and still and filled with sand.
She had all her gear- climbing ropes and goggles, her pack filled with tools to remove the choicest ship components. She knew that her sled was outside, and her speeder and Riima outpost beyond that. Her residence, filled with the best comforts she could manage, tally marks marching down the wall.
And no thrum of the Force.
No…
She searched through the ship, increasingly frantic as each hallway spilled into another, each door opening to empty rooms. Where was it? That part of her she had just found, just discovered, just completed her?
It wasn't… it was gone.
She knelt down, tears threatening in the hot stuffy heart of the ship. It was gone. Master Luke would leave her and General Organa would look at her with pity before disappearing into her important work. Her friends would still welcome her, right? But a part of her had changed. A part of her had gone missing. Could she still be?
Yes…
She pulled herself up, legs shaky and chest heaving. She would survive, she always had. She had existed before, she would exist after. She would piece together the life she wanted, filling the hole in her with whatever she could find. Whatever she could tear away from what was left of the ruin of her life.
She was the harsh desert sun, burning those who did not take umbrage.
And the Force exploded in her.
Bright and hot and luminous, it shone through the room, through her, and she felt like herself again. Above her was a crystal, tiny and sparkling and her fingers itched to pick it up but she pulled back at the last moment. It wasn't just the pure and clean blues and greens, but hidden inside flared red, a gem with fire.
She stared at it for a long moment, then picked it up.
The door opened beyond her, and she saw Master Luke kneeling. And beyond him, a dark figure backlit by the moonlight.
A hiss and his light saber ignited, an unstable crimson blade that she could still see when she shut her eyes even now. Could still feel the heat of when he had held it to her. Could still see the glow reflected off of his face that had been so close.
"I found you."
A/N: And so they meet again at last!