"Be with me… be with me…" Rey chanted, eyes closed, sitting cross-legged in the midst of the small space she had carved out of the forest for herself. She tried to hold her concentration, the strain showing in her face, until she finally concluded that the effort itself was ruining the peace of mind she was supposed to be cultivating. She opened her eyes with an exasperated sigh. "They're not with me."

With another sigh, she leaned over and took a look at the ancient book lying open beside her. The breeze had already ruffled some of the pages, and she had to turn them back. When she turned her gaze straight ahead, she saw a figure climbing up the path to join her. The exasperated look melted into a smile as she recognized her friend.

Rey's little hideaway only held the illusion of serene isolation. A short distance away, the Resistance sheltered within a mountain hideaway that once belonged to the Rebellion. Finn had left the bustle and threaded his way through mazes of ships and repair equipment to exit the cave and find his friend. There she was, sitting next to one of the ancient Jedi books, smiling at him. She had abandoned the curious triple-bun style for a half-ponytail when she had given up on her parents' return. Now that her hair was longer, she wore it in a high braid that looped down to the back of her neck and back up into the top. Though it was a much simpler style than any of Leia's, it evoked an image of Rey's last master and role model. "Hey," Finn greeted her, taking a seat beside her. "That's quite a climb." He had let his hair grow, too, but not quite as long; he let it form into knobs of curls all over his head and he liked it that way. It was very unlike the tight trim that the First Order had required of their stormtroopers. He looked out at the view Rey had chosen for her hideaway, and the thoughts of hair and hairstyles left his mind. "Did I interrupt something?" he asked politely.

Rey shook her head. "Not really. I was trying to master a technique. Actually, I was trying to actually do it just once. I think I've hit a brick wall with it." She let out another sigh, leaning back slightly. "Maybe I should try running the obstacle course again."

"It's that Force communication thing, isn't it?" Finn was familiar with this recurring struggle by now. "Maybe you should just let it go. You've learned most of what's in those books already. You don't need to do everything."

"How am I going to restart the Jedi tradition and train a new generation of Force-users if I can't learn these things?" Rey asked, her exasperation returning. "You don't understand, it's all on me now. And I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't even know where to start!"

"Why this technique?" Finn asked in response, pleased to see her finally starting to open up about her feelings. "What about this one in particular will help you set up your own Jedi school?"

Rey shook her head again. "It lets me communicate with the Jedi that came before…"

"You can already do that, though, right? You told me that General Organa told you about Master Luke talking to his masters gone before him. Unless…" Realization dawned.

Rey nodded somberly. "He's gone, and so is she. I tried. But to be a Force Ghost, you have to decide to be a Force Ghost. You have to leave something behind. They didn't. I don't know why, and I can't even ask them. I can't ask them anything, unless…"

"Unless you master this technique. Or, at least, manage to do it just once." Finn understood now. He paused, troubled. "But… are you sure that's what you want? Are you sure that's what you're supposed to do? Set up the Jedi, just the way they were back then?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" Rey asked, looking back at him, clasping her hands in her lap.

This had been on his mind on and off lately. "The Jedi started with children, the younger the better. They raised children in their temples. They wouldn't even take applicants if they were 'too old'."

Rey had obviously been reading about this in those ancient Jedi texts. "Once you've learned how to think, can you learn how to think a different way? And the emotional bonds they'd form by then…"

"Like the First Order," Finn muttered, immediately regretting it as she shot him a shocked look. "Well, isn't it?" If he was going to let that slip, he figured, he might as well explain it. "Taken away from our families when we were very young, for the 'good of the galaxy'. Trained in groups… I mean, you're obviously not the First Order, you're nothing like them, and I'm sure the Jedi were a lot kinder about it." Somehow, though, the more disclaimers he threw in, the less sure he felt.

From the look on her face, Rey felt a similar struggle. She faced him directly. "If I'd been taken as a child," she pointed out, "I might've had the discipline to perform this technique by now."

Finn took a breath. "You fought Kylo Ren himself," he said thoughtfully. "And you told me that he said that the past needed to die. All of it - the Jedi, the Sith, the First Order…" Upon a return to the utterly shocked look on her face, he quickly backpedaled. "I mean, he was obviously wrong, of course, completely and totally wrong in every way. But what if he had a point?"

Rey turned defensive. "What point?" she asked directly.

"Well, I mean, obviously not to let everything die. But… maybe things shouldn't be the way they have been. Maybe you can teach the Force differently. I mean, I hope you can."

"Why?" She obviously picked up on something in his tone and was not willing to let it go. "This isn't just about the children, is it? It's personal."

"Yeah." Now it was Finn's turn to feel defensive. He glanced away from her, down at his feet, up at the lovely view in the distance. "Yeah, there's something I need to tell you. Something I think… something I feel. I…"

But he was interrupted by new voices raised in exasperation as two more friends approached around the bend in the path. "It's at least fifty years old. It can't just be shut down and switched right back on again. That's why we have to keep it on idle when we patch it up, and that's why there are some repairs we just can't do! I'd need at least two days to shut it down, and another week and a half to start it up again. This is physics and chemistry, General. You can't argue with it or order it around."

"Well, can't you replace the reactor, then? I thought we'd salvaged one-"

General Poe Dameron, now the primary man in charge of the Resistance, came into view. Rose Tico followed him, continuing her 'report' on the state of the Resistance's equipment. "Sure we can. Absolutely, we can. Not a problem at all." He opened his mouth to reply, and she interrupted him. "Give us a guarantee of six months planet-bound and we'll start on it immediately."

"Six months!?"

She put her hands on her hips. Poe was the only one of the four who looked pretty much the same as he had from the moment Finn had met him. Rose had abandoned her pigtails for a braid around her head like a headband - a round hairstyle that matched well with her round face and rounded figure. "At minimum! We never get enough time to repair things properly. We can keep running, we probably have to, but our ships are wearing out while we're doing it."

"Is there a reason this argument has to happen right here and right now?" Finn asked, finding himself just as annoyed as Rose looked. "Couldn't it happen anywhere else on the planet?"

"No, because I need you, I need both of you." Poe got right to the point. "I'm calling a meeting, as of right now, on some new information we just picked up from the First Order. Looks pretty serious."

"It's always serious," Finn grumbled, but he followed the two back to the base while Rey brought up the rear.

Inside the mountain base, in an inner room with no windows, several Resistance members watched the viewscreen as a curiously-styled Super Star Destroyer fired one more time upon its prey and reduced the Mediator to dust. The camera on the log buoy spun as the ship grazed it, gliding into the far distance. Several people glanced away, closing their eyes, though it was hard to tell whether they were reacting to the spinning view or the total destruction. "And that's it," Poe remarked, as the lights came back up. "We've got a new player, folks. Any thoughts?"

One of the older ones spoke up first. "'The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy; nothing more, and nothing less.' I think it would be a mistake to assume that this is an ally."

Another one had a slightly less cynical view. "I agree, but that doesn't mean that this new player can't be an ally. Maybe we should try to make contact and find out."

Rey looked disturbed. Something about the situation was obviously weighing on her mind, but she was not willing to voice her thoughts. Finn, on the other hand, already had his opinion ready to share. "That new ship has 'Imperial Military' and 'First Order' written all over it. I don't know why it went after a First Order ship, but I am not getting friendly vibes from that thing." He took a breath. "I have a bad feeling about this."

The room fell quiet for a moment. Poe turned his attention to Rey. "Speaking of bad feelings, have you got anything useful to add?"

"Like what?" Rey asked, though she could already guess what he was going to ask.

"Well, can't you do a Jedi thing and give us an idea of what we're up against?" There it was.

"I can't just 'do a Jedi thing'," Rey snapped back, irritated. "Force vision isn't like fortune-telling. You see pieces that might not even come to pass, and if you try to fight it, you might accidentally make it happen in the worst way. We're always afraid of the future, and seeing part of it to try to control it is… I've never heard of it turning out well."

One of the gifts Poe had as a military leader was a combination of patience and persistence. "You don't have to use Force vision. And I don't intend to see into the future and try to do something about it. If you've got a feeling about it, though, an intuition, I'd like to know. I promise I won't change my plans for it, but I'll keep it in mind."

That was a fair statement. "Alright, I'll try," she told him.

"Do you need us to leave the room, clear out, give you some peace?" Finn offered gallantly.

It was tempting. "No," Rey answered. "If I'm going to be a proper Jedi, I should be able to carry my own peace with me. It shouldn't matter where I am. So stop talking and give me a moment."

Everyone in the room fell silent. Rey closed her eyes and tried to focus and unfocus at the same time. She pictured that new ship in her mind and tried to reach out for it. She didn't expect to see much. She certainly didn't expect to make a quick, solid connection with… something. More specifically, someone.

Since Snoke's death and Kylo Ren's refusal to change sides, Rey had purposely tried to avoid contacting or connecting with him. She had no desire to see if they still had a link between them, and whether it was in any way active. She had studiously ignored him, and he had apparently done the same, because visions of him had not been troubling her. Now, however, she saw him striding down a dark corridor, his surroundings indistinct. He was upset over something. Someone. Something. Was it about his ship? Was he upset over the First Order ship being destroyed? Yes, but there was something off about it, something wrong… guilt… regret, but why? Wrong target, she thought, and she wondered if the thought had come from him or from her. Suddenly, she felt his attention caught. All the thoughts and feelings that she had been trying to divine shattered and fell away.

He turned and looked straight at her.

Quickly, Rey forced herself away from his gaze and back to her own mind, guarding her own thoughts, calming her feelings, refusing to panic. She opened her eyes, and Kylo Ren's face was replaced by Finn's. "If it was the wrong target," she mused quietly, "what was the right one?" Finn looked downright puzzled, and it occurred to her that he had no idea what she had just done. "It's alright," she said, hoping that stating it would make it true. "It's okay, I'm back."

"Got anything useful?" Poe demanded.

Finn shot him a dirty look. "Give her a moment, will you?"

But Poe, Rey thought, was right to push the issue. "Maybe. There's something strange going on. I'm going to have to try to figure this out later. But for now, I think we can assume that the new player isn't any friendlier to us than to them."

"Alright, that's what I needed to know," Poe told her. He addressed the rest of the room. "We're canceling operations for the time being and moving to a more secure hiding place. Pack up, people. I hope to be out of here in no more than two days."

Rose groaned in dismay.

Back on Exegol, Kylo Ren's escort paused as he stopped and looked to the side, caught by the momentary realization that he had been put back in contact with Rey again. "Is something wrong, Emperor Kylo?" she asked. It was the first time he had heard her voice. The man who had spoken for all of the hooded figures had left them to help settle the other First Order members into their own rooms. This hooded woman had a sweet voice, and she didn't sound any older than Kylo Ren was.

"No, nothing's wrong." He didn't think that this was the time, place, or company in which to discuss a mysterious Force bond with his equal and opposite. He decided to pick a topic, instead, as a distraction. "Uh, what's your name? Come to think of it, what was his name? The man who was speaking with me earlier?"

He couldn't see the woman's face, but he could hear the smile in her voice. "When we join the Sith cult, we choose a new name. We examine ourselves and try to understand which emotion compels us. Then we can use that emotion to fuel our own energy, to motivate ourselves and do what needs to be done. His name is 'Envy'."

"Is he the only one here who is motivated by envy?" Kylo Ren asked, now interested despite himself. "What happens if there are two people with the same emotion? Do you pick different names?"

"No," she answered, leading him further down the corridor and to a particular door, where she paused. "There are often several people who share the same name."

"What do you call each other, when you have the same name?" Kylo Ren wanted to know.

"Sister," she said softly. "Or brother."

He turned and faced her. "What is your name?" he asked directly.

She still refused to raise her head. "Despair," she told him.

As he looked at her and she looked back at him, neither of them saw a movement further back in the hallway where it intersected with another. A quick, lithe, black, helmeted figure with faintly glowing eyes slipped from doorframe to doorframe. Captain Phasma paused in front of one of the doors, listening for a moment, and began to work with the lock. After a moment, it clicked. She opened the door and gestured. One of the other First Order soldiers exited cautiously, and she silently led him back to the little alcove filled with maintenance equipment, where she was hiding the rest of her little squad. "He's gone over," she told them solemnly. "He's left us, and the rest of the First Order has no idea what's about to hit them. We must bring this information back to them, at all costs." She held up one finger as they heard footsteps, and they remained tense and alert in their alcove until a robed member of the Sith cult had passed well out of view. Then, with a sharp nod, she led them out and into the hallway. Another quick gesture, and they set off down the hallway as quietly as they could.