thatwaslucky: (resolve face)
Rey Skywalker ([personal profile] thatwaslucky) wrote2019-08-02 03:33 pm

Ahch-To- later Friday

Rey had stopped stalking Luke, as long as he stayed true to his promise to teach her. He got some time to himself, and she got hers. That was more than fine. She was used to quiet, and it was easier by herself rather than with someone who clearly minded her company. At the moment, she was on an outcropping of rock above the water, running through drills with her staff. She'd neglected this over the last few days, and she shouldn't. This was the only real fight "training" she had, and really, it was making her feel better.

She only stopped when she got tired, and paused, leaning on her staff. She caught sight of the pommel of Luke's lightsaber peeking out of her bag.

Should she?

Of course she should.

Starkiller Base had been the only time she'd ever handled a lightsaber, and thinking back on it now, days later, felt a little like a dream. She'd been in survival mode then. Before that she'd run through forms a few times with her staff, but it wasn't like she had training with it, and the lightsaber handled very differently. Like all things, she was self-taught. Her technique was no technique at all. She moved the way she felt she should and hoped she hit the right thing. Usually she did.

This felt right, though. She took a few swings just as she had with the staff, and found it felt a lot more comfortable than she'd expected. She twirled it in her hand and swung the blade to get more of a feel of what it could do; it felt alive in her hands, and she was aware of her movements even if she didn't feel entirely in control of them. She wasn't exactly sure where she ended and the weapon began. Maybe it should have been a scary thought. It was the opposite.

Once she caught sight of Luke watching her from a higher vantage point, her concentration vanished. She faltered, the blade slicing through rock and sending the top portion tumbling down the cliff and into a cart that the Caretakers has been wheeling below.

Rey quickly switched off the lightsaber when she saw them glaring up at her. They really didn't like her.

She looked back and saw Luke disappearing back the way he'd come, and she hurried up to follow him.

By the time they got up to the Temple, the suns were setting, casting everything in a golden light as they sat across from each other at the font in the center of the ancient space.

"Lesson two," Luke began. "Now that they're extinct, the Jedi are romanticized- deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris."

"That's not true," Rey protested.

"At the height of their powers they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader."

"And a Jedi who saved him," she insisted. She'd heard the stories, she knew. "Yes, the most hated man in the galaxy, but you saw there was conflict inside him. You believed that he wasn't gone, that he could be turned."

"And I became a legend," Luke said, that word carrying the weight of so many years. "For many years there was balance. Then I saw Ben. My nephew, with that mighty Skywalker blood. I thought I could train him, pass on my strengths. Han was… Han about it."

Rey felt a smile cross her lips. She hadn't known him long- enough that his death had profoundly affected her, but not long. But she knew exactly what he meant.

"But Leia trusted me with her son. I took him and a dozen students and began a training temple. And by the time I realized I was no match for the darkness rising in him, it was too late."

"What happened?" she asked.

"I went to confront him. He turned on me. He must have thought I was dead," Luke said. "When I came to, the temple was burning. He had vanished with a handful of my students and slaughtered the rest. Leia blamed Snoke, but it was me. I failed. Because I was Luke Skywalker. A Jedi Master. A legend."

She felt sympathy for him. But she didn't feel that was anything that he couldn't come back from, and the fact of the matter was, this was bigger than any one person's mistakes. "The galaxy may need a legend. I need someone to show me my place in all this," she said, and stood, determined. "You didn't fail Kylo. Kylo failed you. I won't."

For a moment, he looked like he might actually believe her.

Then Rey felt it: something was coming. Curious, she stepped out onto the meditation ledge and peered out at the horizon. Six crude ships were on their way to the island.

"It's a tribe from a neighboring island," Luke said from behind her. "They come once a month to raid and plunder the Caretakers' village."

Rey hurried to the edge, confirming the trajectory of the ships, which were heading towards the huts in the bay. "Well, come on!" she said. "We've got to stop them!"

Luke just calmly watched the ships from his spot on the ledge.

"Come on!" she insisted.

"Do you know what a true Jedi would do right now?" Luke asked. "Nothing."

"What? This is not a lesson, they're going to get hurt! We've got to help!"

"If you meet the raiding party with force, they'll be back next month, with greater numbers and violence," he reasoned. "Will you be here next month?"

Frustrated, she turned back to watch the ships. Her senses were aflame, bombarding her with images: shattered eggs, crashing waves, fire in the night.

"That burn inside you, that anger thinking what the raiders are going to do? The books in the Jedi library say ignore that," Luke said. "Only act when you can maintain balance. Even if people get hurt."

Well, then the hell with what a bunch of old books said.

She shoved past Luke, made her way back into the temple, and then took off at a run down the stairs. She heard him calling after her to wait, but it was too late for that. She found that even the stairs were taking too long, so she skidded down the slope leading down from the temple, then raced across the top of the island, digging into her bag for Luke's lightsaber, past the uteni tree, down the winding track that led to the Caretaker village.

Fear lent Rey an additional burst of speed- fear and anger. Luke had said the raiders came every month. This meant this had happened many times during his exile. How many nights had he stood brooding, doing nothing, while those who served him were left to suffer?

She didn't understand how anyone could do that- and so this would be the last time it happened. The Hosnian system burned as a testament to the power of Starkiller Base; with the First Order on the march, other worlds were in danger of meeting the same fate. But this one village would be spared. At least in this one tiny corner of the galaxy, there would be some justice. She found the lightsaber's activation switch, and everything around her was bathed in blue light.

As she neared the village, she heard screams and cries ahead. She slashed through a gate made of driftwood, lightsaber raised over her head-

-and came to a shocked stop.

The raiders were the same species as the Caretakers, wearing woolen caps and colorful clothes. They were all dancing together. There were food and drinks, one Caretaker friend was sloshing something from his mug… but the music stopped abruptly as everyone turned to look at Rey, interrupting with her lightsaber raised above her head.

At a loss for what else to do, she halfheartedly waved the lightsaber, and they cheered.

Adrenaline gone, Rey was left tired and embarrassed, and at the edge of the party she saw Chewbacca sitting with a mug of something, one fist resting on Artoo's dome. They greeted her with a roar and a beep, respectively.

"Seriously?" she said.

It felt weird to leave right away after an entrance like that, so she stayed. She did find a spot where she could look out at the water and fume about this, which was where Luke found her when he finally made his way down to the village. He stood next to her, but she refused to look at him.

He didn't say anything.

She was too angry to stand in silence for very long. "Raid and plunder?"

"In a way."

"Was this a joke?"

At least he had the good grace to sound sheepish. "I'm sorry, I didn't think you'd- you just ran so fast."

The musicians moved into a different song, and Luke held his hand out to her- an apology.

Rey found she didn't actually know how to respond to that particular invitation. "I've never danced before," she said, more embarrassed than she would like to admit.

Luke smiled. "You've never single-handedly fought a Bonthian raiding party, either."

"Yeah, but this is scary."

After a moment, she did take his hand, looking down to copy his foot position and stance, and followed his lead. He was a good dancer, she decided, though she had nothing to compare him to.

"I thought they were in danger," Rey told him. "I was just trying to do something."

"And that's what the Resistance needs," Luke said, "not an old failed husk of a religion. Do you understand now?"

She stopped, and let go of his hand.

"I understand that across the galaxy our real friends are really dying. That legend of Luke Skywalker that you hate so much? I believed in it. I was wrong."

And then she left him alone on the edge of the party, backlit by the moonlight sea.

She'd leave tonight, she thought as she made her way back up from the village, up the ridiculous amount of stairs to her hut. It wasn't that she'd made a conscious decision as much as she passed the things she saw every day now, she thought that it would be the last time she saw the old Jedi temple, for instance, or the last time she'd get that view of this cliff. It made her a little sad, but she realized what made her sad was the memory of what she'd hoped to find on this island, but hadn't.

Such as a teacher- or a reason to hope. Both had eluded her, and now she would have to explain that to General Organa.

Leia had lost so much, and Rey would add to her burdens. By telling her… what, exactly? That her brother had lost himself in bitterness and self-reproach? That after helping the Force find the balance it had sought, that he had closed himself off to it? That he was willing to die alone on a speck of land in a nameless ocean on a forgotten planet while the galaxy burned around him?

Well, she wasn't willing to do that. She would do the only thing she could do: tell Leia the truth. And then she would fight. Even if she could only offer the galaxy another day of hope- or a minute or a second- she would fight.

When she saw the Falcon parked below her, she dug into her bag for her comlink. "Chewie, get her ready for launch," she said, sounding upset even to her own ears. "We're leaving."

If Chewie replied, she didn't hear it. Distracted by that sudden buzzing again, Rey stopped in her tracks. "I'd rather not do this now."

"Yeah, me too," said Kylo.

She wasn't going to let him into her head. There was a question that had been bothering her for days, moreso since this morning. She'd seen the look on his face earlier when she'd called him a monster, and she needed an answer.

"Why did you hate your father-" She didn't finish the word. She'd turned towards him and looked up to see him stripped to the waist, which was not how anyone wanted to have these kinds of conversations. She was also realizing she'd done more damage to him than she'd thought; the angry scar on his face ran all the way to his collarbone, and she could see a circular scar on his shoulder from where she'd stabbed him with the lightsaber. It occurred to her that she should probably feel lucky he was as injured as he was in their previous fight.

"Do you have something," she said, averting her gaze for the moment, "a cowl or something you could put on?"

Either he didn't hear her, or he didn't care if he made her uncomfortable, so Rey plunged ahead. "Why did you hate your father? Give me an honest answer."

He didn't answer. It didn't look as if it was difficult for him, which just enraged her more.

"You had a father who loved you," she went on, voice trembling, "he gave a damn about you."

"I didn't hate him."

"Then why?"

"Why what?" Kylo asked evenly. "Why what? Say it."

The tears that had filled her eyes finally spilled over, and it was so much more difficult than she'd have ever thought to ask the question she so badly wanted an answer to. "Why did you kill him? I don't understand."

"No? Your parents threw you away like garbage."

She was more defensive than shocked at hearing that. Whatever the reason for the contact between them, it had opened her up to him in ways she hadn't wanted, which meant he'd had access to the sorts of things that would hurt her like this. "They didn't!"

"They did. And you can't stop needing them. It's your greatest weakness. You look for them everywhere. In Kanan, Han Solo, now in Skywalker…" He eyed her. "Did he tell you what happened?"

"Yes," she hissed.

"No," he said. Almost amused. "I woke to my uncle standing above me with a lightsaber lit. He was going to murder me in my sleep. I had no choice but to defend myself. He had sensed my power, as he senses yours. And he feared it."

"Liar," Rey said, but there was no strength behind it. Somehow, she knew it was true. It was like she could view the scene from inside her own head, like a memory.

"Let the past die," said Kylo. "Kill it if you have to. It's the only way to become what you were meant to be."

And then he was gone, and so was the buzzing in her head.

There had been a lot of upsetting things in that conversation, in this whole day, but she was left with the resolve to do one thing before she left forever. Jaw set, Rey strode off across the hillside, to the exact spot where she knew that dark part of the island would be.

It was a long, flat outcropping of stone ending in a low cliff above the sea, just like she'd seen. In the center of the stone was a gaping hole in the rock, surrounded by moss that had long been bleached gray. She was careful as she made her way to the edge. Luke had warned that accepting this offer was yielding to the dark side, but she wasn't sure anymore that he didn't simply fear what it would reveal to her.

She was also careful as she knelt at the edge, placing her hands on the ground to brace herself as she peered inside. She could see nothing but intense darkness below. The hole burbled and hissed, as if it were speaking to her.

She slipped. Or maybe it dragged her in, she couldn't be sure. One moment she was looking in, the next she was plunging into icy water, struggling to break the surface. When she did, she gasped for air, eyes stinging from the salt, and swam the short distance to the stone at the edge of the water.

Rey was in a cave, beneath the island. She could see part of the hole from where she was, but she wasn't worried about that right now. The sea had ground and polished the walls of the cave until the stone was like a dark mirror, cracked but glossy. She could see her reflection in it, repeated a thousand times in the labyrinthine facets, creating a line of Reys forever.

She looked into the mirror, and realized it was looking back at her. The Force was quavering in approach of something.

No, she realized, she was inside the mirror world, with several Reys between her and the soaked, shivering girl standing on the ledge in the cave.

She turned her head, and all the other Reys did the same, each one's turn coming a moment after the one before it, until all were staring along with her.

Rey knew she had to go deeper, that the world inside the stone only seemed to go on forever. It was leading somewhere, and if she had the courage to follow, that secret place would show her what she had come to see. What she was most afraid to know.

She told herself to follow the other Reys, to become them, willing the surreal succession to end, until finally it did. Until at last there was one final Rey, staring at a large, round, clouded mirror of polished stone like the one that had called to the Rey in the cave.

"Let me see my parents," she begged. "Please."

She stretched out her hand and the clouded surface of the mirror seemed to ripple, its darkness melting away. She saw two dark figures beneath its surface, coming towards her, morphing into one. Heart pounding, she touched her fingers to the stone and met the fingertips of another.

It was the girl from the sea cave, staring back at her. It was herself.

She dropped to her knees, and began to cry.

She'd been left fourteen years ago, toiling away for basic survival needs every day, teaching herself everything she'd ever learned, spent weeks at a time without talking to another person aside from maybe the one who used her for his own profit. She scratched away every day at the metal of her stolen home to mark the time, even though the sheer number of them meant the marks had ceased to be useful in any way. She'd always feared that she would wait forever, that she'd wind up like everything else abandoned on Jakku- a shell, empty and purposeless. She'd even escaped it, and willingly returned based on that hope that she'd been right all these years.

She had felt so alone all those nights on Jakku, but never as alone as she did staring at her own reflection, beneath the island in the cold and the dark.

She didn't have anyone to go to about this, either. They hadn't been able to get an update on Finn thus far, her phone was gone, Luke would only focus on her coming to the very place he'd warned her away from. As always, she was on her own to deal with all of it.

No- there was someone. Someone who already knew all this, who would understand how solitude and loss could eat away at you until there was nothing left.

The moment Rey reached her hut she felt him near her in the Force. It wasn't so much a buzzing now as the vague feeling of having touched a live wire. She had blinked and opened her eyes to see Kylo Ren sitting right next to her on the stone bench, and somehow, she'd felt relieved. She didn't know if she'd somehow brought this particular visit on herself, or if he felt something from her, or if it had nothing to do with either of them, but at any rate, she was glad.

So she told him.

Kylo listened intently as she told him about the cave while soaked and shivering under a blanket, and how the journey had led to nothing, no answers, no revelation except how alone she was.

"You're not alone," he told her, and she believed him.

He knew pain, he knew isolation. He'd listened to her cry over her feelings because on some level, she knew he understood them from his own perspective as well as hers. And so, she made a choice.

"Neither are you," she returned. "It isn't too late."

She tentatively raised her hand toward his.

He seemed to know her intent without dropping his gaze from her eyes, though she saw him take his glove off before reaching towards her, too. She expected to see their hands go through each other and wondered if she would feel it in the Force somehow.

Instead their fingers actually touched, as if he really was sitting beside her. Her breath hitched, and all of a sudden she felt and saw everything in a rush.

That was how Luke found them when he ran into Rey's hut, and he yelled, "Stop!" and thrust out his hand, shattering the hut around the bench. It was raining again, but she didn't notice immediately.

Rey glanced next to her and saw that Kylo was gone.

She got to her feet and stared at him, rain pelting her from above. "Is it true?" she demanded. "Did you try to murder him?"

"Leave this island," Luke said through gritted teeth. "Now!"

He turned and walked away, like he kept doing to her, and Rey decided if she was leaving anyway, he didn't get to do it again.

"No. Stop," she said, walking after him. "Stop!"

He kept walking, so Rey snatched up her staff, took three long strides, and cracked him against the back of the head to knock him to the ground.

He stared up at her in surprise.

"Did you do it?" she pressed. "Did you create Kylo Ren?"

Luke got to his feet and Rey realized nothing had changed, he was still going to walk away from her. Furious, she swung again, but Luke reached out, the motion a blur, and a length of lightning rod flew off the roof of one of the huts. Before Rey could blink he'd intercepted the strike of her staff, knocking her backward.

She pressed the attack. The staff had never felt more comfortable in her hands, so much like a part of her. But he parried her thrust and continued the motion, flipping the staff out of her hands to leave her defenseless.

Except that she reached out with the Force and felt the weight of the lightsaber in her hands. She ignited it and Luke gave ground, looking up at her as she held the blade high. She didn't want to do anything more with it. She just needed answers.

"Tell me the truth," she said, disengaging the lightsaber.

Luke paused for a long moment, and looked… not defeated, but determined in his own self-criticism, like he had in the temple, when Rey insisted this was not his fault.

"I saw darkness," he began, and his tone wasn't sad or regretful, but almost angry. Whether it was at himself, Kylo, or her, Rey couldn't know. "I'd sensed it building in him, I'd seen it building in moments during his training, but then I looked inside, and it was beyond what I ever imagined. Snoke had already turned his heart. He would wreak destruction and pain and death and the end of everything I loved because of what he would become, and for the briefest moment of pure instinct I thought I could stop it. But it was a fleeting shadow, and I was left with shame, and with consequence, and the last thing I saw were the eyes of a frightened boy whose Master had failed him."

"You failed him by thinking his choice was made," Rey said, her voice equal parts gentle and insistent. "It wasn't. There's still conflict in him. If he were turned from the dark side, that could shift the tide. This could be how we win."

For the first time, Luke really looked old to her. "This is not going to go the way you think."

"It is," Rey insisted, kneeling on the ground so she could see him eye to eye. "Just now, when we touched hands, I saw his future. I saw it- as solid as I'm seeing you. If I go to him, Ben Solo will turn."

Luke looked exasperated and disappointed, and he shook his head. "Rey, don't do this."

Rey stood, and straightened, and held the unlit lightsaber out to him once again, knowing even as she did so that he would not accept it.

He didn't. He looked away. Just as she knew he would.

"Then he's our last hope," she said, and spun on her heel to start down the stairs in the rain, to the Falcon, and away from here.


[Etc. Etc. So much taken from The Last Jedi novelization by Jason Fry, including the deleted scene they should have kept.]

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting