Chapter Five – Dreams and Nightmares

She felt the wind pass over her and under her in the darkness. It felt cool, but strong. She thought for a moment that she must be caught in a storm at night, for when had she ever felt wind so strong? But then a voice in her head said, 'It must be strong for us to ride it.' She opened her eyes and looked down to see a world covered in snow. Small white figures, barely distinguishable from the snow through which they trudged, worked beneath her, surrounding a ship that had seemingly crashed on whichever world this was. She swooped down enough to get a better look but the wind kept her aloft. In frustration she called out, but the voice she heard was not hers. Or it was, but not the one she was used to. As she circled again she saw, standing near the ship a figure robed all in black. The figure inspired in her a strange combination of emotions. There was fear, certainly, but also sadness. A desire to reach out to the dark figure, to comfort him, came over her. How did she know it was a him, she asked herself. Before she could answer her own question the figure looked up at her, and she became certain that while comfort and caring was necessary, it was also not possible. 'He must learn,' the voice in her head said. So she turned away from him, and let the wind take her far, far away.

Rey woke up with a start. She felt disoriented for several seconds as she looked around the cockpit of her X-Wing. The last thought from her dream leaked into her waking mind, 'we must find another wind.' She tried to remember the images from her dream, knowing as she did that sometimes the dreams of a Jedi foretold major events, but every time she tried to focus on some detail it grew fuzzy in her mind. It felt less like trying to remember a dream than trying to recall some long ago memory. When, after several minutes of concentrating and trying to say out loud what she had seen, she finally gave up she decided to check her instruments. The X-Wing was still in hyperspace, but would be jumping out over Tatooine soon. The peculiar lights of hyperspace always had a way of lulling her to sleep, and without an astromech droid to engage with, and with nothing to do in the small cockpit of the X-Wing for hours, she had nodded off.

She closed her eyes again, but only for a moment, so as to clear her head. As she did so the holocron floated up and out of the area behind her seat and then landed gently in her lap. She opened her eyes and looked at it for a while, thinking about how old this object must be. It appeared in all the ancient texts, and seemed to have existed from the beginning of the order. But that would suggest it actually predated it, since it already served its role as repository of information from even the earliest days. Had the founder or founders of the Order created this object? Or had they found it? The holocron itself resembled a ball, except that instead of being rounded it had ten faces, each face having 5 sides. She picked it up and turned it in her hand, watching as the various sources of light from inside the cockpit reflected on the holocron's surface. As she looked at it she got the distinct and forceful impression that it too was looking at her. She wondered whether it was in some sense alive. She rolled that thought around in her head and decided it felt only half right. This thing wasn't alive, but it was aware. Did it have a will? A goal? Could the information within be trusted if it did?

Those were questions for Anakin, she thought to herself. She turned and put the holocron back in her bag. Shortly after turning back to face the console the X-Wing dropped out of hyperspace above Tatooine. She piloted the ship into the atmosphere and decided that there was nothing to be gained from secrecy anymore, so after a brief flight she put the ship down on the flats outside of the Lars homestead. The suns were already setting when she landed, so she turned the security system on and then made her way into the house with her gear. She had thought to find Anakin waiting for her, ready to discuss the next phase of the plan, but he was absent. Rey set about making a light meal and preparing the house for the following day. The better part of two days had been spent on their trip, and there were plenty of chores to be done. She wanted to get them done as quickly as she could so that when Anakin did arrive, they could examine the holocron together.

Hours passed, and Rey finally had to accept that all the work that needed doing had been done, and she laid down with a book to wait for Anakin. She drifted off while reading some text about the mysterious builders of Centerpoint Station, and once again, she dreamed. There was no wind this time. All was still as she rested upon a block of stone which had once been part of something greater. A bleak and desolate dawn greeted her eyes as she looked up. But the harsh light of this cloudless morning was preferable to the darkness that had come before. She looked down and saw a cloaked figure in the distance, limping away. He had not seen her, not this time, and thinking himself alone, he had no guards up, nothing to stop her from feeling what he felt, from hearing the echoes of his thoughts.

'I am free at last,' came the loudest thought, like a shout in his mind, hateful and insistent. Insistent because of the smaller, quieter voice it knew was present as well, and hateful because of all the memories and feelings that small voice refused to let him bury once and for all.

'I have failed them all, there is no one left,' the small voice said, full of despair and regret. Silly man, she thought. She isn't gone, and your chains are stronger now. It was a wonder to her how the man could carry on with so much pain. He was shot through with agony, in both his body and spirit. But that is what he did, it is what he always did. His true power would always be to endure what others could not, even when what he had to endure was himself. She took off, and turned towards the smoke of the ruin he had made, knowing that the one she looked for wasn't there, that she wasn't anywhere, but nevertheless she was.

Rey woke startled again to see Anakin's ghost standing in her room, looking out the doorway into the central, open air courtyard of the farm. It was still night, though she knew a much warmer dawn was on the way. Warmer than what, she asked herself before remembering the dream. Once again however, the details of the dream began to swiftly fade. She tried to hold on to them, to recapture them but the more she tried the more they slipped away. As she sat up her head swam, and she realized how tired she still was. She could not have gotten more than four hours of sleep. As she rubbed her head she said, "I was looking forward to having you back, but you could have waited until morning."

"I wanted to make sure I was here when you woke up," he said quietly.

"Well you made sure of that," Rey said in an attempt at humor.

"Huh? Oh. No, I don't think my being here woke you up. I have been here for hours," Anakin said.

"I guess it was my dream that woke me up then," she said.

"It seemed pretty intense," Anakin said.

"Was I talking in my sleep?" Rey asked while stretching.

"You just seemed restless," Anakin said.

Rey turned to put her feet on the floor and rubbed her eyes as she asked, "So what kept you?"

Anakin did not answer as Rey put on the pair of slippers she kept by the bed, but when she stood up he turned to face her and said, "I felt something, a tremor in the Force, and I went to it, to see what it was."

"And what was it?" Rey said, only half paying attention to the conversation while she thought about how to approach the problem of accessing the holocron.

"You're going to hear about it over the holonet, and I assume people are going to get in touch with you about it, so I wanted to be here, when you woke up, to tell you. So you would be prepared when that happened," Anakin said slowly and sadly.

Now worried Rey asked, "What is it?"

"Poe Dameron and Finn were captured by the Corellian fleet. The Corellians are saying they only did it to use them as leverage in the negotiations about their borders after they leave the Republic. But they took them captive, along with one of your old apprentices that they had picked up somewhere. A young man named Temiri Blagg," Anakin explained.

Rey sat back down on her bed, her worry turning to dread as she considered the tone of voice Anakin was using. "What happened Anakin?" she asked.

"The Corellians didn't seem to know that Blagg was a Jedi. The three of them broke out almost immediately. They stole a ship and fled. The Corellians fired on it. I'm sorry Rey, but they…destroyed the ship. They're dead," Anakin said.

Rey opened her mouth as if to say something, but like the details of her dream the words she meant to say slipped away. She shook her head slightly and finally got out, "No, no that can't be right. Poe's a great pilot. They couldn't have…They wouldn't have. That's mad. How could they…,"

"They are claiming it was an accident. That no one ordered their fighters to fire on the ship. But the New Republic Senate is in session, probably right now, discussing war measures. Everyone on Coruscant seems sure war will be declared," Anakin said.

Rey ignored the political information and just said, "Finn can't be dead. He can't. We always…we always save each other." She looked down for a moment as she felt the tears sliding down her face and said, "I wasn't there to save him."

"This isn't your fault Rey," Anakin said.

"Yes it is. I didn't go with them. I should have gone with them. They went looking for Blagg, because I didn't agree to go with them. I was off on Mustafar, hunting for relics! I should have been there!" She had stood back up and was marching around the room as she yelled this. Anakin's ghost stood up as she did this and gave her a sad, sympathetic look. Seeing this Rey's anger grew, and she ran outside and down the stairs into the courtyard.

"This is all because of you! All of this! It's all your fault! They were trying to fix things, and they were killed for it! Trying to fix what you broke!" she screamed at him. Anakin said nothing as he looked down from the top of the stairs. Rey fell to the ground and beat the sand with her fists, screaming inarticulately as she did so. Without meaning to she had, through the Force, kicked up something of a miniature sandstorm in the courtyard, a weak but noticeable cyclone that pulled all the various objects on the landings and shelves along the walls towards the center. A few crates and planters fell, leaving only some broken pottery and loose soil as evidence of Rey's grief and anger when, eventually, she got herself back under control. She rose unsteadily and looked around at the mess she had made. Without a word she began to put the crates back up where they belonged, and then moved on to picking up the loose pottery. If pressed she could not have given a reason why she should clean the place up. The only two people likely to visit her had just died.

When she had finished she turned to Anakin's ghost and simply said, "I'm sorry."

Anakin replied, "For what? You were right."

Rey went back to her room and laid down again. The news had come in the middle of the night, and she couldn't think of anything to do then but sleep, nor could she think of anything she was less likely to be able to do. She stared at the ceiling of her room, thinking of those years with Finn and Poe on Ajan Kloos, fighting the seemingly impossible fight. She thought of all the times Finn had soothed her nerves, of all the times Poe had laughed with her. She thought too of all the times they had argued, before and after the defeat of the Emperor. She remembered the last argument, years after their victory, when Rey informed them that there would be no New Jedi Order. She was trying to remember the details of that fight when she drifted off to sleep.

She did not dream this time of flight. She dreamed of herself stretched out on some rock, enjoying the sunlight. The grass would protect her from the chill wind she knew, but when the sun was out like this, lounging on a rock was delicious. She lay like that for a long time, thinking of nothing but how pleasant it felt to be warm. The sun baked her and the rock on which she lay, which meant that eventually the rock began to warm her as well. What called her forth from this idyllic rest was the howl of the wolves. She jumped up, not because the wolves were a danger to her, but because that is what one did when a noise came unexpectedly. She could see them in the distance, running through the grass, chasing nothing that could be seen or heard or smelt. Her ears perked up and she made out howling voices she had not heard before. 'They have joined the pack,' she thought to herself, and was filled with happiness at the thought. She laid back down knowing that the pack was now stronger, and all was safer because of it.

Rey woke once again, the thought 'they have joined the pack' on her waking mind, and staying there even after the other details of the dream slipped away. Finn and Poe had become one with the Force, as had her padawan, young Blagg. They had joined the pack, and now they could run forever, free from worry and fear. She smiled a little, alone there in the dark of her room. She looked out through the door to see that the light of morning was peaking over the horizon and finding its way into the courtyard.

Rey walked past Anakin, who said nothing as she did so, as she went back to her room to retrieve the holocron. There was nothing to be done but carry on, to endure the pain. The task was not complete, and there was no one else who could do it. So she pulled the holocron from her bag and when she did so she once again could not shake the feeling that it was aware of her. This thing had thoughts of its own. How old was it? Who made it? It was time to ask. She turned around to look at his back.

"What is it?" she asked.

"You know as much as I do," he answered.

"I know what the books say, that's all," she responded. "You were an actual Jedi. You lived in the Temple; you went to the archives. You have to know something, something that isn't in the books."

"I am sorry Rey, but I don't," Anakin said as he turned to face her. "I was never a scholar, or a philosopher. I was a warrior. That is all I ever learned how to do."

"Well…," Rey said before finding that her frustration was overwhelming her ability to say anything. Eventually she just blurted out, "Well I need more from you! My friends are dead! Millions more, billions more are going to die in the war that is coming! And we can do something about it! I know we can!"

"You know nothing of the kind," Anakin said, raising his voice to match Rey's. "No one has ever done what you are so sure you can do. All you have is some scribbles from some dead, probably half-mad, old Jedi. Some theory that you are clinging to so that you can deny what has happened."

"I have to do something," Rey said firmly. "And if I have to I will do it alone."

Rey sat down cross-legged on the floor and lifted the holocron with the Force. It began to spin slowly in the air, without Rey having made it do so. She concentrated on it, spreading her awareness over it. Her thought was that the first thing to do was to try to understand it as a physical object, then move on to whatever deeper mysteries it might hold. As she felt her way around it she became aware of certain features of the object. The first and most obvious thing was the energy contained within. It was not electrical or any other kind of energy she was familiar with being used in machinery. It took some time for her to realize she was sensing the pure energy of the Force, contained within this object. Second, she came to realize the object was not so much constructed as grown. Its angular surface hid an internal microstructure that resembled a plant more than a machine. The core of the device was something she could not quite get a firm view of, but from it a million delicate tendrils coiled outward, twisting around each other in exquisite shapes and patterns. Branches sprung from each of them like roots, and so the mass of tendrils grew thicker and thicker until, closer to the outer surface of the holocron, they appeared to make a solid mass of metal. But along each tendril she could feel the energy of the Force, of life itself, moving. It resembled, in a way, the brain of a sentient being, but in a form that would not perish.

Having familiarized herself with the physical structure of the holocron, other than the inscrutable core of the device, Rey still had no idea how to access the information that was supposed to be contained within it. The ancient Jedi texts spoke of Jedi Masters accessing it to gain knowledge only available within it. But there was, in every mention of the Great Holocron, an element of threat and fear. It was not malicious, but it was not entirely safe. The very existence of the ancient Jedi texts spoke to that fact. Why record on paper what could have been stored far more easily, and with far less risk of destruction and decay, in the Holocron itself? One got the sense that there were truths contained within this device that would overwhelm the unwary seeker. And in the very oldest texts there was the hint that the Holocron itself had a will that potentially ran counter to those of the earliest Jedi; that it was kept away from most of the early Order not just because they could not hope to understand what it contained, but because they could not be trusted to withstand its influence. Those implicit warnings receded over time, but even in the last days of the Order, before the fall of the Republic, it was kept in a secure facility in the center of the archives. That much, at least, Anakin had been able to tell her.

But whatever the risks, she felt she had no choice but to continue. Thinking of the Holocron as a physical object had certainly left her impressed with it, but it seemed to her now the wrong way to go about dealing with it. It was meant to hold information. It was, she knew from the ancient texts, meant to engage with the Jedi accessing it as though that Jedi was talking to it, something not all holocrons were designed to do. But how did one talk to something that was not, for all its organic design, alive? Having no better thought Rey simply said, "Hello?" out loud.

For several seconds she heard nothing until she heard Anakin's voice say, "Try speaking without talking."

Rey opened her eyes to look at the Force Ghost and said, more as an expression of frustration than as a way to ask a quesiton, "What does that mean?"

"I mean speak in your mind, but to the holocron," Anakin said by way of explanation.

"Was that supposed to make things more clear?" Rey asked rhetorically, but decided to try it anyway.

As she closed her eyes again she heard Anakin say, "Open your mind to it."

Her eyes shot open again in annoyance and she said, "I thought you said you didn't know anything!"

"These are just ideas," he explained.

Rey shook her head and once again closed her eyes. She practiced the calming techniques that Leia had taught her. She cleared her mind and focused on nothing in particular, just letting the Force tell her what was around her. She felt her bed, her nightstand, the bookshelf, and all the books upon it. It was an exercise she had done many times, and as always, when Anakin was present, she sensed him as a wholly unique thing. Living beings presented themselves to her in one way, non-living objects in another, but Anakin was something else entirely. Living things stood out against the background non-living matter of the universe, appropriately, given that life was where the Force came from. But Anakin was different. The closest Rey had gotten to expressing the difference to herself was that living things were like a sun in the sky, and Anakin was like the reflection of a sun. The suns gave off light and heat, whereas the reflection gave off only light. It was enough for you to see it, to know it was there, but it was in a way not real. A copy, an image, a reflection of what had been. But while that reflection gave off no heat, the light it gave off was blinding. She often wondered what it would have been like to know Anakin when he was alive. How could the old Jedi stand being near him, when he gave off not just light, but also heat? she imagined it was like standing in the presence of a star. And how crushing would it have been to watch that brilliant soul become what it did? What must Darth Vader have been like, for those who could feel the Force? Leia had told her once that Luke, on their approach to Endor, had been able to feel Vader's presence from miles away, through ship's hull and empty space. She had gotten a glimpse of what it must have been like when, as her abilities developed, she beheld Leia herself. But according to Leia, Luke's presence in the Force was far greater, despite them starting out with the same inheritance, due to his long years of study, practice and meditation. But Luke had not studied with the great Jedi masters as Anakin had. He had wasted so much, she thought to herself.

But lingering on old tragedies was not her goal, the holocron was. And it was perhaps the strangest thing of all in the room. If she had thought about it along the same lines as the previous analogy she would have said it gave off neither light nor heat. Instead it was like a prism. It was not alive, and so gave off no light of its own, but it was an object of the Force, made possible only through its use, and somehow continuing to exist only by the Force itself. When, with her mind's eye she gazed upon the Great Holocron, she saw what seemed to be a point towards which all the light from the living things around her was being focused. The point appeared as a rainbow of incredibly brightness coiling around itself. She focused on it, trying to get a better look, a deeper understanding, but when she did so the world around her disappeared.