chapter one
She dreams about him, sometimes.
It’s not always bad at first. Sometimes she’s sitting in a field she’s never seen before, wearing a dress she’d never wear in a million years. And he’s there too, looking happier than she’s ever seen him, wearing clothes she doesn’t recognise. He offers her a flower. Then the dream folds in on itself and she wakes up screaming.
Ben Solo, Kylo Ren, and her, something dark and twisted binding them all together, until Palpatine cut it clean and left her alone, with a dead man in her arms, before that faded away too.
(Here is the thing- when Rey looks back to when air rushed back in her lungs, when her fingers regained their feeling, when she came back to life - she doesn’t remember where she ended and Ben began. She’d kissed him, she remembered that much, but was it her or was it him?)
She wishes she’d never left Jakku.
No, that’s a lie. She’s grateful for everything she’s learnt, all the people she’s met. But the dark, disgusting place in her that remembers Ben Solo is still there, and she doesn’t know if it’ll ever go away.
She’s grateful for her life. Grateful for him bringing her back.
But she remembers the red lines in the sky above Takodana. She remembers watching Leia’s face crumple, as she was told the news. Not just a planet, this time, but a whole system of souls, wiped from the galaxy in one strike.
She remembers the sound Chewie made as Kylo Ren’s lightsaber tore through Han. She remembers the shock, the horror, of seeing this legend , this hero she’d heard so many stories about, who’d offered her a job and a chance, fall. Crumple, and vanish into the abyss.
Because of his dark, burning son.
She, better than anyone else alive, knew the pull of the dark side. It had wrapped a hand around her throat and whispered, I will make you strong. No one will ever hurt you again. For a real moment, her resolve had faltered. It would have been so easy to fall.
But she hadn’t, and that was the difference between her and Ben. Even though he’d clawed his way back to the Light, he’d still fallen first, and dragged millions of souls screaming into the dark with him. It was justice, really, that he’d died.
Did she forgive him? Could she forget him?
She doesn’t know. She wished she did.
She’s tired of the unknown.
-
She walks, after training with Finn, walks circles in the grass or sand or snow on whatever planet they find themselves on. It’s a new form of meditating. Sitting still doesn’t help her anymore, her mind churning, the stillness pressing down on her from all sides. It feels like being on the Finaliser.
So, she walks.
Sometimes Finn watches her, concern in his face. He wants to ask, and she can’t tell him. What right does she have to complain to Finn? He’d had his entire life stripped away from him, his family, any semblance of a normal childhood, because of the man who now dwelled in Rey’s mind. He’s the most forgiving person she knows, but she can see the fury in his eyes when they visit the shattered villages, listens to the stories of children ripped away, visits graves of people who will never be remembered when history is recorded for the future. Cut down by cruelty and a dark line of fire in the night.
He would try to understand, but he wouldn’t, and she doesn’t want to burden him with the questions piling up inside her brain.
Kylo Ren was a monster.
Ben Solo saved her life.
Rey is getting tired of the discordance of her mind.
-
She first notices the pilot on Bespin.
Jessika Pava, a friend of Poe’s, one of the few former Black Squadron members escorting them around the galaxy. They talk, occasionally, with the careful politeness of people not well acquainted, about rations and plans and the next destination. Jess is sharper than Poe with a quicker, drier sense of humour. She does not smile easily and flies with no astromech, and she watches Rey while she walks in her well-worn circles.
It’s easy to ignore until the third time it happens, on a different planet light years away.
“Why do you walk?”
Rey looks up from the sand. Jess is strewn over a pile of crates, lazy as a cat in the sun. She’s still wearing her pilot orange and her black hair is tied in a messy bun. There is grease on her clever fingers and rumpled clothes and she doesn’t seem to care. The skin on Rey’s arms prickles in awareness.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, why do you walk? You’re going nowhere.”
Rey carefully sinks to the ground, crossing her legs underneath her. “It’s a calming technique. Like meditation.”
“I’ve seen Finn meditate. He just sits and closes his eyes.”
“I’m not Finn.”
“Obviously. You’re a Jedi and he’s not.” The pilot seems a little bit unsure of what to say now, chewing on her bottom lip. Rey can sense the shape of her thoughts, and they’re a wild mix of embarrassment, reverence, hesitation. None of it shows on Pava’s face. It’s like a mask. Rey pushes her mind away. She has no right to look underneath.
“It’s just my way of doing it.”
A pause. Neither of them had really expected this conversation to happen. The air crackles like it did on Ahch-To, before the violent storms that would soak Rey to the bone.
“D’you wanna play sabacc?”
-
Sabacc is surprisingly hard to learn, and she’s still sitting with Jess under the shadow of her X-wing when Finn comes back from the village they’d come to visit, where he’d been asking about children taken many years ago. He watches them play, or rather, watches Jess very patiently explaining for the 5th time what the dice are for, then sits to join them. Jess deals him a pile. They play.
It’s quiet, here in this desert plain, the sand as fine as hair and as white as bones. The wind didn’t whisper like this on Jakku, it howled, and Rey idly wonders what would have become of her if her parents had dropped her off here in this place instead, where the people rely on waterfarms and friendly trade and do not scavenge and cheat and steal. She might even have been taken to be a Stormtrooper, had she been left here. The thought snaps Rey out of her reverie.
“Your turn, Jedi,” Pava motions, and there’s a settling, deep in Rey’s heart.
There isn’t a point to contemplating what ifs. She’s here, now.
-
Rey starts playing sabacc with Jess instead of just pacing pointlessly around. It’s more calming than her walking, anyway. Some nights they play in Jess’s tent, sometimes in the lounge of the Millenium, and some nights they sit under the endless, ever changing stars. They play in companionable silence for a week or so until Rey builds up the courage to ask the older woman about her life. What’s the world like, outside of the Resistance, out of the war? What is beyond the sands of Jakku, for ordinary people?
Somehow, she’d assumed Jessika might have just had a normal childhood, loving parents, a stable home, something like Poe, but that isn’t the case. She sits, knees to her chest, and listens as Jess very steadily recounts her journey. Her vague, fuzzy memories of her home planet, Dandoran, before her family was captured by pirates. Before they were sold into slavery. Then the luck of the ship she’d been imprisoned on being apprehended and boarded by the New Republic. How her family had gone back to their homeworld while she’d stayed and made a home on Hosnian Prime, training to be a pilot just like the people who had saved her.
(Rey privately wonders how many people Jess had known on the doomed planet. Her family was spared, sure, but friends? Lovers? Jess doesn’t tell and Rey doesn’t ask.)
Jess’s voice is clear and calm, distant almost, as she recounts her past, and when she’s done, she fixes Rey with a level stare, almost like she’s daring the younger woman to pity her. A trap, well worn and familiar, something Jess has done before, has been laid, but Rey knows how to pass this particular test.
“Thank you. For telling me about your past.” Jess responds with a vague, noncommittal noise and Rey leans forward, hands on her knees.
“You didn’t have to tell me, if you didn’t want to. It must have been hard, recounting all of it.”
“I know. It was. I just thought you deserved to know.” Something flickers in Jess’s impassive brown eyes, and Rey knows not to push.
-
They talk more, after that, about meaningless things, the weather, the local foods, the next mission and the next and the next. They still play cards, and Jess starts teaching Rey other forms of sabacc, less cards, more cards, more dice, less dice. Sometimes Rey even wins, and the small, fleeting smile on Jess’s face after each of Rey’s successes feels like more of a victory then the game.
Jess never smiles when she wins.
Rey still has nightmares, but they’re changing quicker than she can remember them. She still wakes up with a jolt, her blankets strewn across the room in the Falcon, a dim recollection of a red glow, a scream. Sometimes Finn is there, woken by her screams, and she clings onto him, crying silently for something she can’t remember, until she falls asleep again. He asks, again, again, but she shakes her head and buries her head into the blankets until he gives up. He means well, but he’s too close to this. Too close to her, and to the dark figure who stalks her mind.
She’s glad she can’t remember her dreams. She doesn’t want to deal with false memories and whatever insane concoction of trauma her mind can regurgitate for her.
Of course, it doesn’t last.
-
The floor clacks sharply under her boots as she strides down the polished hallway, white-armoured soldiers flanking her. She’s tracking sand from her shoes, from the village, residual blood making the grains stick for far longer than they should. She reaches her destination, and the door opens with a purring, gentle hiss. The guards remain by the door as she steps inside, pulling their blasters up to attention.
The man inside the chamber is in so much pain, it radiates off him in waves. He’s bleeding, externally and internally, but it’s nothing compared to the utter chaos that rages from his mind.
I failed. I failed. I failed. But-
There’s a bit of hope in there too.
She will snuff it out .
“I had no idea we had the best pilot in the Resistance on board.” The voice rumbles up her throat and comes out sounding strange, deep, hollow. As empty as the Sith cave on Ahch-To.
The man lifts his head from the torture device and stares right at her, and oh stars no, it’s Poe, and he looks at her, right in the face. Hatred like she’s never seen from him before in his eyes, turned black by the dim lights.
She knows what this is. She knows who she is. She cannot move her body. She screams, even as Kylo Ren’s voice purrs out instead of her own.
“Comfortable?”
“Not really.” And stars, she could cry, at the look on Poe’s face. The fight is still in him.
“I’m impressed. No one has been able to get out of you-” Kylo Ren steps closer, closer, until Rey can see his mask reflected in Poe’s glassy, agonised eyes. “-What you did. With the map.”
“You might wanna rethink your technique,” Poe rasps, defiant to the last. Kylo pauses for a moment, and Rey pleads, even though she knows it won’t do anything. This has already happened, and there is nothing she can do.
Kylo raises a hand, and for a moment Rey can’t feel anything at all.
Then-
Then-
She has claws and teeth made of fire. She is obliterating. She is the emptiness of the coldest night, the blind destruction of a supernova. And she is in Poe’s mind.
She tears into her friend, and he fights, with everything he has.
She burns into her friend, and he screams like she’s never heard anyone scream before.
-
She wakes with a start and a cry that dies in her throat before she can release it, warm hands helping her up, rubbing circles in her back. She cannot feel her tongue, or her fingers. She is so, so cold.
“Finn?” she whispers into the dark, but she blinks and her eyes adjust and it’s Jessika kneeling by her bunk, that carefully blank mask back on.
“No, just me. He’s on scout duties. You were convulsing . I thought you were choking on something.” Rey regains feeling in her extremities and leans forwards, her hands closing into fists. Jess sits back, and for a moment they just stay there, the engine of the Falcon creating a low, crackling hum uncomfortably like a lightsaber.
“How long has this been happening to you?” There’s no judgement in her voice, just steady, impartial patience, like there’s always been.
“Ever since we left Ajan Kloss. It’s not every night. Usually I don’t remember the nightmares.”
“But you remember this one?”
“Yes.” The word is barely a breath out her mouth, and Jess is leaning forwards. Rey can feel the warmth of her hand on her back, seeping hot life back into her brittle bones.
She tells Jess everything.
The other woman is frowning when she’s done. “Poe told us he was tortured on the Finalizer . General Organa sent him to the medbay and they declared him fit for duty for Takodana, but you know Poe, he can talk his way out of anything… I didn’t… I didn’t know.”
Rey had started crying at some point, and she wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I don’t think I knew either. Not really. Not like… Not like that.” Finn asking her to keep his Force-sensitivity from Poe and the others made sense now. He would’ve been the only one to really see the aftermath of Kylo’s torture.
“I don’t understand why I was in Kylo’s head, for that. I don’t know how I saw it.” She’s got a horrible suspicion, but she doesn’t want to think about it right now. She wants to think about the comforting presence of Jess in the dark and the slim hand rubbing in slow circles on her back.
“I don’t really get it either. But you have to understand.” Jess sits down in front of her and takes her hands, squeezing the warmth back into them. Rey can barely see her face in the dim lights. “Look. I know it was awful, but it’s over now. It happened years ago, and it wasn’t even you. You hear me? That was Kylo Ren. Not you.”
Rey shakes her head. “It might be more.”
“What do you mean?” A gentle question in the dark. Rey can tuck her face away now, refuse to answer, and the thing is, Jess would let her, wouldn’t see? She’d understand, her feelings shuttered behind a mask. Jess would get it.
“I died. On Exegol.”
It’s the first time she’s said it out loud.
“I killed Palpatine. I remember feeling so tired. I could feel my body shutting down. I died .”
She’s shaking now, her eyes blurring over with more tears, and Jess is there, holding her hands, keeping them warm. There’s a part of her that wishes she could match Jess’s calm stoicism, but she can’t, and she’d rather cling onto the comfort offered.
“But I woke up again, and Kylo- Ben was holding me. I could feel everything he was feeling, and he was so, so glad to see me, and I didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t tell if I was him or if he was me. I kissed him, or maybe he kissed me. I don’t remember. I don’t know.” Tears are rolling down her cheeks freely, and Jess says nothing at all.
“Then he collapsed. He died, because he gave his life force to me. He vanished into the Force, nothing left at all. That’s why there wasn’t a body to burn, or anything.”
Jess lets Rey cry, rubbing her thumbs over the back of Rey’s hands. When she’s calmed down a little, Jess gently says, “You think there’s a little bit left of him in you. Because he gave you his life.”
“It explains the dreams, doesn’t it?”
Jess nods slowly, then bites her lip. “Actually, no it doesn’t. You’re nothing at all like Kylo Ren.”
“We’re closer than you might imagine. Kylo was bad, Ben was better, and I’ve felt the touch of the dark side-”
“Rey, they were the same person . And you are nothing like him. You’re so kind, you’re so fundamentally good . You could never be like him, not even in your worst nightmares.” They’re close enough that Rey can feel Jess’s breath on her face.
“The dreams," Rey whispers. "They're memories, Jess, and they're not mine. What other possibilities are there?"
The other woman is silent, her eyes shining in the dark. Then she shakily breathes out, and leans forwards. Rey closes her eyes, and they lean on each other like that, forehead to forehead, sharing warmth and breath and strength.
"I don't know what any of this means for you," Rey hears Jess murmur. "But I swear to you, we'll get to the bottom of this. You are your own person. And I know her, and she is good ."
Rey chooses to believe her, crushing the kernel of despair and guilt down, down, down.