"I don't even really know where to start," Rey admitted, looking at her lightsaber, then glanced up at Finn. "And I know that sounds terrible, because I've at least had some lessons, but… I don't even know where to start."

"You're expecting me to be able to help?" Finn asked. "You know that what I know about using the Force is nothing, right? I'm not entirely convinced I have the Force."

"I am," Rey answered. "You said yourself – you knew something about how I was doing."

Finn looked down.

"I guess," he replied. "But it's still… basically nothing. You know that, right?"

"I'm just hoping that something makes sense somehow," Rey admitted. "That if I try to explain things, somehow an answer will… fall out."

"All right, so… what went wrong?" Finn asked. "You're the expert on this, I'm still coming to terms with how much of the galactic history I learned was basically from a cult."

Rey snorted.

"It's not like I had much that was better," she said.

"Yeah, but at least you weren't getting it from people who were being deliberately wrong," Finn countered. "So what went wrong with the Jedi Order? The old one, I mean."

Rey frowned, thinking about it.

"I don't really know all the details," she said. "But from what I do know, it basically amounts to… they trusted my grandfather? Palpatine, that is. And he put them in charge of an army, then had the army assassinate them."

Finn muttered under his breath.

"Wasn't, uh, Darth Vader involved?" he asked.

"Yeah, but Anakin Skywalker was turned to the Dark Side by Palpatine," Rey explained. "If the Jedi Order hadn't taken in Anakin Skywalker they'd still have been killed off by Palpatine's army, but if they hadn't trusted Palpatine then… well, I don't actually know."

She shrugged. "Maybe they'd have been suspicious of the army, though."

"Right, right," Finn said. "So what about… Luke's one, then?"

Rey looked down.

"Master Luke's order went wrong because of Ben being turned to the Dark Side by Snoke," she said. "Who… was essentially a clone of Palpatine, I think? He might not have known it, though."

"In that case, you'll probably be fine, right?" Finn asked. "He's dead. At least, I think he's dead. I hope he's dead."

"Yeah, he's dead," Rey agreed. "His spirit got torn to shreds by literally every Jedi that has ever existed… honestly if he can come back from that then maybe we just need to accept it and watch out for him. But either way we do need to watch out for skeevy people, I guess."

"Sheevy people, right?" Finn asked. "Poe told me the guy's first name."

Rey snorted.

"Okay, that was a good one," she conceded. "But… the problem is, if even one person turns to the Dark Side it could destroy the whole of the new Jedi Order. That's what happened last time."

Finn looked troubled, then frowned in a whole different way and started counting under his breath.

"...so, how long do you think it should take to rebuild the Jedi Order?" he asked.

"Huh?" Rey replied.

"Or, how long did it take to get big?" Finn went on. "Because, uh… if I've got this right… Luke started his academy about ten years after he started training? Something like that? But he was still training everyone personally right up until it was wiped out, which was another… seventeen years later?"

He folded his arms. "Because I might just be a janitor, but I do know how to do some basic maths. If it takes twenty years before someone's able to move on from being a student, and another, what, five years for someone to take on a student, then… I guess it depends on assumptions and stuff but it seems like it'd take hundreds of years to reach the point there's a lot of Jedi."

Rey frowned.

"I swear there's something here I'm not quite getting," she admitted.

"What's the hard bit?" Finn said. "Not falling to the Dark Side. Understanding when to use the Force and when not to use the Force. Resisting temptation. Right? Because – because you, and Luke, you both did amazing things after not training for a very long time at all."

The liberated ex-stormtrooper waved a hand, vaguely. "Or… something, anyway."

"That… makes a lot of sense," Rey admitted. "It's – I don't need to be perfect to start teaching. I just need to be confident that I can teach… and to make sure that I train people to, do the right things with the Force."

She shook her head. "And I don't need to wait until I've finished learning. Because you never finish learning about the Force. It's too… deep. There's too much of it. There's always more to learn."

Rey picked up her staff lightsaber, and pointed the end that didn't have the projector in it at Finn. "So! I'm going to start out by teaching you, and then we can go from there."

"I… guess I was asking for it," Finn admitted. "But won't you need a lightsaber for me to learn with? I think lightsabers are part of it, at least."

Rey frowned.

"...in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have buried two of the only three lightsabers I know about," she admitted. "Back to Tatooine, I suppose…"

AN:

Those things don't grow on trees, though if this were Legends there'd be a lot of them under a tree.