"Your grandfather—Darth Vader?" Rey turns the rock over in her palm with her free hand.
Ben chuckles. "Unless my other grandfather was a Sith lord, yes."
"Why a rock?"
Red veins race through the small stone. Ben pushes it with his colossal finger. "It was a gift from his master."
Rey's breath catches. "My grandfather?"
"Obi Wan Kenobi."
"He was Master Luke's master, too."
"Yes. Obi Wan was given the stone by his master, Qui-Gon Jinn."
"How did you know it was your grandfather's?" Rey looks up, her head tilting backwards to see Ben's face. Still blue and translucent but every bit the man who still makes her cheeks flush with heat.
He brushes her jawbone with his thumb, and she leans into his touch, allowing her eyes to drift close. "He told me."
Rey's eyes snap open. "You see your grandfather? Darth Vader?"
"Not Darth Vader." Ben sighs and his hand drops. Rey regrets her questions until he draws a deep breath. "Anakin Skywalker."
Her smile spreads wide. "Like Ben Solo?"
His grin comes easily. "Exactly."
"Your mother had this in her possessions. Any idea what it does?"
"None at all. It wanted to find you, though. I could practically hear it calling out to you through the Force."
Rey lowers herself to the cot and crosses her legs on top of the blanket. "What is it like? On that side?" She places the rock near her ankles then both hands on either knee. It's hard to control the way her heart is ramming into her chest and she's certain he can hear it.
The bed doesn't react at all when Ben sits. "It's confusing." His glowing brows drop and he pushes the rock back and forth between his fingers. "It's bits and pieces of conversations. Parts of a feeling. I thought there'd be peace through the Force. Especially the Light." As he looks up the base noises return to Rey's ears.
"No!" She leans forward to kiss him, but Ben is gone. All that is left is the black rock halfway across the blanket.
Three sharp knocks startle Rey. She swipes the rock and tucks it under her pillow before calling out, "Come in." Using the Force, she unlocks the door and pulls it toward her, sensing a familiar friend on the other side.
Finn glances both ways before entering. He closes the door, crosses the small space in two strides, and plops onto the bed near her knees. "Hey."
"Hello there," she laughs, using the Force to keep herself from toppling sideways. "You smell nice." It's flowery and utterly opposite of the command room.
Finn sniffs his bare arm. "It's, uh, a soap Rose has."
Ah, she missed this part—embarrassing him and watching the painful squirm. "Oh, Rose's soap. Don't you have your own?"
"We, uh, try to make sure to conserve whenever possible."
"So then, she takes turns smelling all manly?"
"I smell manly?"
"Not tonight, you don't!"
Finn grabs her left hand with both of his. "Thank you for teaching me today, Rey." He nods and sincerity ripples off of him in Force waves. "I mean it. I can feel some things but it's better to have a teacher."
Rey leans forward and lays her head onto his shoulder. Her first and longest friend. "I hope I can teach you everything I learned from Master Luke and Master Leia."
Master Leia?
Ben's whispered demand in her mind pushes all sound until Rey stands and pretends to straighten the few pieces of clothing she owns. "When Leia trained me on the moon of Ajan Kloss, she told me that she and Luke had trained together until she had a vision about her future. She never trained again until she became my teacher."
"I remember." Finn scoots backwards until his shoulders lean onto the wall. "I remember you running that course out there with a blaster helmet on and that training droid shooting at you." He nods toward her arms.
Rey rubs her right bicep, remembering the sting. "I only took a couple of hits, and that was enough to make me focus."
He laughs and it fills the tiny room. "Anything shooting makes me focus." He sits upright suddenly. "Oh, that reminds me! D-O kept asking for you earlier. I'll go get him."
"Thank you, Finn."
Finn is up and at the door. "Yeah, of course." He pauses. "Can I … when will I … aw, forget it."
"Make a lightsaber?" Rey furnishes, pulling from the logical line of their talk. She'd had Luke's old saber to train with. Her own sits on the small table within reach.
"Yeah," Finn breathes, looking at the silver handle. "How'd you do it?"
"If I say the Force, would you believe me?"
"Kinda." He narrows his eyes just before grinning. "Of course I do."
Rey steps forward and hugs him. She backs up before saying, "There's also some instructions I found in a textbook I took to Tatooine."
Finn points his finger to her and back to himself. "You and me, we're gonna talk. A lot."
"I hope so!" He makes her heart happy. There is no pretending with Finn. She loves him more than everyone else—everyone else who is alive. "Go find my droid."
He salutes and dashes down the hallway. Rey pops her head into the corridor to watch him jog away. A young green-skinned Twi'lek stops walking when she sees Rey, eyes and nostrils wide. Rey smiles and nods. The Twi'lek remains frozen in place. Feeling unwelcome and upset for frightening the young girl, Rey retreats to her room and leans hard against the door to close it.
As quickly as tears prick the corners of her eyes and her heart plummets into despair, an urgent metallic bang crashes into the opposite side of the door. "Hello, hello," D-O calls through the steel. Rey allows the droid in and quickly closes the door in case any other base occupants try to get a glimpse of the Emperor's granddaughter. Not that she would blame them. A couple of years before now, she'd be the one positioning herself conveniently around a corner or across the mess hall.
"Sad," D-O stutters.
"A little."
Even the droid can see that.
Rey squats in front of the constantly moving droid. "You can go anywhere on the base, D-O. Just make sure you stay with BB8 or with me, okay? That way we can make sure you're safe."
"S-safe. Safe with you."
"That's right." She refrains from reaching out to dust a bit of dirt from his left port. He doesn't like to be touched. Even by her. "I won't let anyone do anything bad to you."
"Not bad." He zips in a full circle around Rey, rubber wheel squeaking against the concrete floor. "Safe." After another lap, he stops and lifts his digital eyes to look up at her. "S-sad?"
She nods. "I'll be just fine. I've got my friends nearby. And you've got BB8. He'll introduce you to some more friends."
"Go now?" Like an impatient child at the market waiting for his treat, D-O rolls back and forth in front of the door. As soon as the door opens, D-O speeds away down the hallway, the Twi'lek girl nowhere to be seen.
Rey returns to her bed, retrieving her treasure from under the pillow. When the Force stills, Rey can't help but smile. It has been such a long time since she was happy—three hundred and sixty nine days ago. No, she had moments of happiness. But with Ben back, even in this small way, joy surges off her in Force waves, making the room lights flicker.
Yet, Ben doesn't appear. Rey watches the small red lines on the rock mimic her heartbeat, a steady one-two beat and pause. She raises the stone into the air above her hand and her eyes slide closed. The din of the base bleeds through the quiet Force, a life force of its own. All of the lives on the base flit through Rey's mind, the Chiss poring over flight manuals and the fuzzy Talz lumbering around the mess hall, trying to get into a card game. A beautiful tapestry weaving a new beginning for most, figuring out where they belong.
"She is Palpatine's kin," a Gran seethes to his mate.
"Why is she back?"
"I hope the Generals are taking precautions."
"She looks nice."
"It'll take just one time, and she'll kill us all."
The stone clatters to the floor, skidding underneath the cot as she is ejected from the Force. They don't even know her. Tears jump to her eyes as she hears someone laughing as they walk past her door.
Be with me.
"I don't know if I can," she whispers to the empty room. If she could just turn and hold onto Ben. Feel less alone.
Be with me, Rey.
This was torture, one foot in the present and the other begging for moments with an impossibility. Like wanting to be accepted just as another person on a base, knowing her grandfather created clones to drain them of their life force just to stay alive. For a blip, the Tatooine desert calls to her, a silent balm to the sharp opinions she eavesdropped on.
Be with me.
Rey twists her torso down to retrieve the rock, calling it into her palm. Weariness seeps into her muscles like a warm jacket. "No fair," she mumbles, scooting underneath the scratchy blanket. Ben chuckles somewhere nearby but her eyelids feel heavier than a Bantha pelt. Sleep pulls her under before she can ask about Anakin's rock that is pressed near the base of her throat.
In her dreams, Rey runs the training course over and over, crashing through underbrush chasing Ben's voice. Every time she removes her helmet, she's thrust into Palpatine's throne room, the theater of worshippers chanting her name. She wakes with a jerk, ripped from the black floor of the palace.
"You dreamed." Ben is sitting, wedged in a tight spot near her head.
Rey smiles at the irony of a ghost forced to fit into a small space. Even a Force ghost has limits. "I was in the throne room." She glances to her bag with her saber hanging near the sink. "His followers wanted me to take the throne."
"I remember." The electricity thrills her when he touches her forehead.
"You weren't there with me. You were in the forest."
"Which forest?"
"You can't see my dreams?"
"No." Ben tips his head down. "I don't know. I didn't see that one. I can't remember if I've seen them."
"Good," Rey blurts. It would be embarrassing to know that he'd seen some of those thoughts.
"I don't know much about the rock. I asked but didn't get answers."
Rey rolls over to her stomach and props herself up onto her elbows. "You talked to your grandfather again?" Anakin, she reminds herself.
"I asked and didn't get any answers."
"Who did you ask?"
"That's not how it works here."
Rey furrows her brows down. "That doesn't make sense."
"Neither does talking to a Force ghost that no one else can see." The slow smile warms Rey from the inside out and her toes do funny little rolling motions at the opposite end of the cot.
"I suppose there are no books about that," she says, passing the rock to his outstretched hand. "I'd trade a million of these rocks for you, Ben. Even if we spent the rest of our lives on a planet with the Hutts."
"I don't think the Hutts would even allow that." The rock changes its rhythm to a steady glowing red. He has no heartbeat.
"I saw your mom and uncle on Tatooine. I used their last name to live at his family home there."
"Makes sense." He passes the rock back to Rey's palm, and the veins resume their staccato. "Still makes me wonder by Owen didn't use his last name for Luke."
"Ben," Rey says, the rest of her words fading when he looks back at her.
"Rey."
She giggles a silly little sound that sounds like something Rose would make. It's ridiculous. Rey flops off the bed and onto the floor to face him. If she can only see him in tiny increments, she wants to see all of him. And though he's a ghost, intangible and see-through, his presence fills the small room pressing her on all sides. The only thing that feels right is to place the rock back into his hand, which she does. The Force guides her to leave her palm on top of his, sandwiching the rock between them.
A shockwave of Force shoves the bed into the wall and the black stone vibrates. Though they should be thrown apart by the amount of energy, Ren watches the rock grow from black to brilliant red. Layer on layer on layer of the Force wash over her, lives of those before her, balance and energy, light and darkness, death and … life. The hum of life bathes the entire room in a soft red glow.
What if the Force was telling her something? The flint of hope sparks in her soul. Magic. No, the Force. It wants her to know something, and as she reaches out into it, the stone cools and fades to black once more, sandwiched between their palms.
"What was that?" she murmurs. If she moves, he will disappear.
"I don't know." He looks as confused as she feels.
"What if," Rey begins, then bites her bottom lip. No. He won't agree and will get upset. There's nothing in the universe she will do to break their connection. Not after finally having him back.
"Tell me." He squeezes her hand.
Rey looks up. "I think the Force is telling us something."
"I agree." Ben nods once.
"What if this stone has a type of lifeforce that will—"
"No. Only the Sith took the path believed in bringing back the dead. Darth Plaugueis—" Ben's face muscles relax. "You won't turn to the Dark Side."
Rey shakes her head back and forth. "Turning to the Dark Side and using it are two different things!"
"They aren't. I know." His words fall flat and heavy.
"Please! At least we could try!" Rey scrambles to her knees, ignoring the pain as her skin scrapes against the rough floor. "Please, Ben." They could go to the Outer Rim where no one knew Ben Solo.
He sighs. It deflates all of her dreams. "I-I'm sorry." Her chin drops. "I was hoping that this dyad thing would help because I'm very much alone in a universe filled with life." A hot tear splashes onto her thigh and she can't help but remembering the way it felt to fight beside him with Snoke and then Palpatine. It was breathing. It was life.
"The Dark Side will promise you everything and take even more."
Rey understands. Every piece of her grasps the price. The Force stills its silent protests. "I always think about the shape of our future, what it could have been if you had not sacrificed yourself for me."
"I'd do it all over again." Each word is weighed in sadness, passion, and longing. But more than that, pure honesty.
"I know," she whispers. "You took a path I couldn't follow."
"I know. And it was worth it." He flips their hands so that the stone rests in her palms. "You need to sleep."
Rey snorts. "The odds of me sleeping right now are slim to none."
"Never tell me the odds."
Ben's slanted grin warms Rey from the tip of her toes to her ears and helps combat the frigid room as she obediently crawls underneath the thin blankets. She curls the stone into her fist pressed against her heart. It beats along in the Force in time with her heartbeat and something else she just can't figure out.
Just as she loses herself to sleep, lulled by the ebb and flow of the Force, hope of meeting Ben again crowds Rey's mind. Not tomorrow, but somehow in the future. After all, a single thread of hope is a very powerful thing.
And that's a tardy wrap on this little ditty! All thanks again to Wookiepedia for the bits about the River Stone.-JS