Chapter Text
This was a beautiful planet, decades ago.
For thousands of years, the Jedi brought their younglings to this planet to claim their kyber crystals in a ritual called The Gathering. These crystals, when nestled in a carefully constructed hilt, would produce their lightsaber blades. Blue, green, yellow, even amethyst, the crystals sang to the ones who were meant to wield them.
Then, long before the death of Luke Skywalker or the birth of the Jedi girl who they say can move the earth, this planet was looted for its crystals. A dark Empire arose, overturned the Jedi Order, and used the kyber crystals to create weapons of enormous scale. As those weapons claimed millions of lives, the crystals shrieked at being so misused.
But only in the ears of those who knew how to listen.
Ilum was a planet. Now, it hardly qualifies as one. Strip-mining tore away whole parts of the surface and significantly reduced planetary mass. Where lava had bubbled up like blood filling deep and jagged gashes, there are now only shiny obsidian scars. New rock formations have risen to replace the old, and the ice creeps slowly over new peaks and valleys, reclaiming its old domain, but the ruined planet remains badly misshapen, awkward and small and easy to mistake for an asteroid or a moon. It no longer shines from a distance as it once did, its icy surface reflecting the light of the stars.
In the intervening time, Ilum has rotated around its sun, Asar, alone but for infrequent visitors. The researchers who had set up semi-permanent bases there before the Empire’s conquest never returned, and neither did the Jedi pilgrims. A solitary man had come to study what remained of the planet, but he did not find the answers he sought, and quickly moved along. Yet the few remaining crystals—buried under volcanic ash or ensconced in glaciers—still sing their mournful song out to the universe, hoping to find the ones who might harvest them.
One ship now perches on the defaced surface of Ilum, and has for two-thirds of a rotation. And above the cry and whimper of the healing planet, a lone crystal rises up in song. A young student sleeps in the crew quarters of the Millennium Falcon, and hears this song in her dreams.
Nearby, the student’s erstwhile teacher, Rey—the Jedi, Rey—watches the stars. Only a handful of years older than her charge, Rey is already shrouded in legend. After all, this is the girl they say can move the earth. This is the girl who stokes the flames of hope that keep a rebellion alive.
This is the girl who stole a tyrant’s heart.
These days, Rey feels like anything other than just a girl. She feels as though she’s sped through early adulthood and skipped straight to the stage where she finds people more and more trying as a rule, where she tires easily, where she can’t awaken one day without something aching, whether old wounds, or new wounds, or the space between her lungs. She feels old. But the universe won’t stop in its tracks just because she feels some way or another. She has responsibilities, and her students are chief among them.
Rey has the best view of the skies from the Falcon’s cockpit. She sits forward to scan the stars, bright in the inky blackness, unobstructed by clouds. All clear. With a sigh, she sinks back into the captain’s chair and reclines with her feet on the dash, trusting that the Force will ripple with warning of any potential threat.
She glances at the co-captain’s seat as if hoping to see her old friend Chewbacca sitting there, but he isn’t with her this time. With Shyriiwook grumbles that he was getting too old to keep up with Rey, he had agreed to lend her the Falcon for this trip. He now stays temporarily on the Conquest II to chaperone the rest of her students, who adore him even if they can’t always understand him.
Rey smiles, thinking of what a time he must be having, and pulls her datapad back into her lap. For the past few days, she’s been working her way through an account of the Clone Wars, the galaxy-rending conflict that had predated and caused the rise of the Galactic Empire. This study is a bit less dry than that of the sacred Jedi texts she had liberated from Luke Skywalker’s care on Ahch-To, but certainly just as important. Rey finds where she left off and picks up the narrative thread. Only a few short years ago she would barely have been able to imagine the great battles and even greater devastation, but now…
“Captain’s quarters are all yours, Captain,” says a voice from behind her.
Rey jumps in her seat, and mentally chides herself for being so wound up. Just Rikaj, the Knight of Ren assigned to their protection detail. She hadn’t sensed him coming, though. That troubles her. He’s not a malevolent presence in the Force, but he’s present— a notable charcoal smear at the edge of her senses, even if he doesn’t possess the fire and fury of his leader, Kylo Ren. She should have felt his approach long before he reached the cockpit.
She cranes her head around to find him holding up his hands in surrender. The youngest of the Knights of Ren, he was only seventeen when Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Temple fell. He shares the same light brown skin, shiny black hair, dark sparkling eyes, and ease of manner with his older sister Aylu, whom Rey knows better. He’s taller than Aylu, though, and doesn’t have as prominent a nose, or the crescent-shaped facial scar that she bears at her temple. Although he could be called handsome, in a rakish way, his general manner undercuts that somewhat.
“Woah,” he says. “Easy there, Jedi. You’re among friends here.”
Rey is not certain how true that is, but she lets it drop for now. “I didn’t hear you,” she says, fumbling for an excuse. “I was reading.”
“Reading?” He peers over her shoulder. “Anything good? Racy?”
“Historical texts.”
“So, no.” Rikaj groans. “Is having fun against the Jedi Code?”
“I have fun,” Rey mutters. “But this is important. I’m trying to learn more about the old Jedi. Who they were, what they did.”
“Huh.” Rikaj thinks for a moment. Rey can sense him weighing whether or not to say something. At last, he decides to go for it. “You should talk to Lord Ren. He has a lot of opinions about the old Jedi.”
Rey feels her shoulders tense. “I know he does,” she says. “He’s already given me recommendations.” She quickly adds upon seeing Rikaj’s raised eyebrow, “I asked for them. He saw I was interested.”
“Uh-huh,” says Rikaj, squinting at her screen. “Clone Wars, huh? Dry stuff.”
“You know about this?”
“Of course. We all learned about it back in the Skywalker days, before everything went to hell.”
“Oh,” says Rey, dully. She’s familiar with that story, though maybe not as familiar as she should be.
He scratches the side of his head. “Can barely remember a damn thing, though.”
“I wasn’t going to quiz you.”
“Eh, just as well. I would’ve failed.”
Thankfully, this is when Jessika Pava calls in her hourly report. Her voice is clear and strong over the Falcon’s comm unit. “Rey, you there?”
“I’m here,” Rey says, leaning forward. “Anything?”
“Nothing. All clear.”
Rey lets out an exhale of relief and feels her whole body sag with exhaustion. “Good,” she says. “That’s good. All right. Come down and rest for a bit. We’ll need you up there again in the morning.”
Rikaj leans into the comm and tossing his braid back over his shoulder. “You’re looking good there, Pava.”
Jessika’s reply crackles over the comm. “You can’t see me.”
“Yeah, but I know anyway.”
She sighs. “I’ll be right down, Rey.”
“Thanks, Jess,” Rey says. “I’ll speak to you soon.”
There’s a click as Jessika disconnects. Rey turns to Rikaj and asks, “Why do you do that?”
Rikaj whistles obliviously and looks up at the various blinking lights in the Falcon’s cockpit. “Do what?”
“You realize you make yourself less good-looking when you try that hard.”
“That’s still plenty of good-looking,” he points out.
“If you say so.” Rey powers down her datapad. Looks are only half the battle, she’s realizing. People mistake Poe for flirtatious when he’s just been endowed with an abundance of natural charm. Rikaj is overly flirtatious, although he hasn’t yet tried anything with Rey. Presumably, he values his life enough to know better.
Rikaj claps her on the shoulder. “C’mon,” he says. “It’s my watch, and you’re grumpy. Go get some rest.”
Rey crinkles her nose at him, but he’s right. She stands, stretches, and, after one last look up at the sparkling, empty sky, retires to the captain’s quarters for four hours of rest.
She falls asleep with the datapad in her hand, reading about how the Republic forces were led to victory on Ryloth by the Jedi General Anakin Skywalker.
Parry. Riposte.
The saber’s hilt flies into Rey’s outstretched hand in the forest on Starkiller Base. Snow crystals cling to the tendrils of her hair, blown about by the wind. She is terrified. She is enraged. Her face contorts with both fear and anger, into a snarl unlike any Kylo Ren has ever seen. She stands, and she faces him.
Retreat. Parry again. Thrust.
Rey sits across from him, miserable and soaked to the bone. Tendrils of firelight lick up her neck in a way that he himself cannot. Ever since they last met, she hasn’t just been on his mind, she’s taken up residence within it. The only woman to truly challenge him must be the only person to truly understand him, mustn’t she? With that first brush of her fingertips against his, he is a changed man.
Pivot left. Block a blow to the shoulder. Press on.
Now Rey fights at his back. She fights in his defense, with righteous fury, dancing across the throne room. He tracks her screams, her growls, the little yelp she makes when injured. She is an angel, the light within her a purifying fire. He thought she burned the same as him, that together their twin flames would cleanse the galaxy and reshape it into something not uncaring and cruel, but made for them. They would carve their own places in the universe.
But she denies him.
Advance. Attack. Attack again.
He has her against the wall of his bedchamber. He had fantasized about having her there for three long and lonely years. But now that she’s here, now that she’s looking up at him with her wide hazel eyes and he can feel the way her fear quickens her heartbeat and anticipation shortens her breath, he can’t do it. He can’t force his way into her body, pry her apart, undo her with pain and violence. If she were combative, if she kicked and screamed and tore at his clothes, he might have been able to lose himself to the struggle. But she is none of those things. She is quiet, she is still.
So he dares her, and says, “Kiss me.”
Back. Forward. The endless dance.
Rey has her hands in his hair. Her fingers are slim, and strong, and callused from years of hard labor, of working them to the bone. And her body, beneath his, is somehow firm and soft at once. The yielding flesh of her thigh where he grips her, the peaks of her breasts— soft. Her belly, the muscles in her arms, her teeth scraping up against his jaw as she lips at him— hard. He is engulfed by her, by her body under and around him, by her warmth, and by the near-transcendent experience of feeling how he feels to her, how she is filled and completed by him, the weight and warmth of his own body.
He turns his head to seek her mouth with his own. He drinks her in as though he’s the one who spent a decade and a half wandering a desert planet, and she’s the only water he has ever known.
A feint. A counter-parry. Strike.
Rey stands before him in a ruined gown, trying to tell him about opportunity. He cannot hear her, not because of the explosion that half-deafened him, but because his head, his entire being, is filled by static. The only thought he has is that the entire time they were together, the whole blissful week they spent talking and exploring and knowing, is now tainted. She was sent. This was a mission. He was her mission. But all she can do is stand there and tell him about what a chance they have now to bring their two sides into alignment, as if it didn’t matter that she had kept a part of herself from him under lock and key.
This time, he is the one who refuses her, and he is the one to leave.
Keep moving keep moving keep moving.
Rey sits in on joint Imperium-Resistance council meetings sometimes, but he sees her mostly in dreams now, terrible dreams that roil his spirit day in, day out. True dreams that only the Force can bring. In them, Rey cries his name. Ben. Her face is streaked with tears, her forehead beaded with sweat. She reaches for him but he can’t reach back. She suffers, but he cannot ease her suffering. And she only continues calling his name, the one that his parents bestowed upon him.
Ben, Ben, BEN.
“Ren!”
The cry brings Kylo back from his ruminations. He is standing in the training room, drenched with in his own sweat, his chest heaving with exertion. Aylu, in her mask, is on the mat before him with his practice saber at her throat. She is propped up on one elbow, one hand outstretched as if she had thought to throw him back. Behind him, he hears two of his other Knights picking themselves up, groaning from bumps and bruises.
“I,” says Kylo. Rey was adamant about apologies, but the Knights are more lax. He owes them no apology, yet he feels as though he must say something. That’s her, lingering with him. “I was distracted.”
Aylu removes her mask and sets it on the mat next to her so she can draw a full, deep breath. Sweat glistens on her temple, and the dark hair bordering her forehead is damp. “I got that, milord.”
Kylo says nothing more. He clips the practice saber to his belt, then leaves the mat to pick up a towel. He leans against the wall, pressing a hand to his side. The deep stab wound from one of his own guardsmen had been healed by Rey; he forwent bacta treatments so he could keep the scar. It is remarkably close to the scar left by the bolt from Chewbacca’s bowcaster, the one he’d earned through killing his own father. Two wounds. Both cut deep. The scar Rey healed throbs when he overexerts himself.
At his periphery, he sees Aylu push up to a crouch, then come to stand. “Milord,” she says, with a short, huffy exhale. “What are you training for?”
Kylo, mopping the sweat from his brow, barely hears her. “What?”
“You’ve doubled your time in the training room these past few weeks.” She cocks her head at him. “It feels… intentional.”
He puts the towel down and looks at her, then past her, as if there he can see those visions of Rey in peril, Rey in pain. Every morning when he wakes he tries to grasp at every fleeting detail, and yet he cannot make out her surroundings, or what ails her. It’s torture, he’s certain, although he does not know what kind, and that leaves him unmoored, adrift.
He has not told Rey of his visions. They are not where they once were— not lovers, not even friends. But he has taken every precaution to protect her. Right now, she is beyond his reach, with their students on a mission he had only begrudgingly approved. The war is escalating, and their students need a means of defending themselves. He could not argue against that. And because he could not tell her the root of his objections, he had been forced to fold. But he extracted a concession from her: that she would travel with one of his Knights. Ostensibly, this is to keep the children safe. Kylo suspects that Rey might know better.
But he isn’t going to explain any of that to Aylu. It’s a personal matter if ever there was one. He is not having visions of a new Starkiller Base, of Hux’s First Order fleet descending upon them to destroy them all, only Rey. Just Rey.
So he replies, “That doesn’t concern you.”
“If something’s coming, it concerns all of us.” She nods behind her at her fellow Knights, who are now following the conversation. Aylu has always respected him, but never feared him, and as such she is the one others will turn to when truth needs speaking to power, as it sometimes does. It doesn’t now.
“Not this.” His tone leaves no room for argument. He walks back onto the mat to stand before his three training partners, who are now all back on their feet. Then he unclips the saber hilt from his belt, and ignites it, assuming a wide combat stance.
And he says, “Again.”
Four hours pass in a blink; Rey has scarcely set her head down on the pillow when she feels Rikaj shaking her awake. She nearly elbows him in the jaw before she remembers where she is, and instead gets up with a groan and wanders off to wash her face in the ‘fresher.
She then goes to the dimly-lit crew quarters to rouse the students. The four adolescents sleep on bunks that have played host to thieves and smugglers, rebels and vagabonds, pilots and princesses. Two of the girls—Tamar, an orange-skinned Togruta, and Kaela, a redheaded human—Rey has taught for more than two years. The others are newer to her: Qwyn, a spitfire who stands at no more than a meter and a half but compensates through the sheer force of her personality, and Simon, lanky and quiet, her near-exact opposite. They are pupils of Kylo Ren whom Rey has taken on as her own, for now, with his consent.
When Rey arrives, she finds them already awake. Simon reads by the light of his datapad, one of his feet dangling over the side of his bunk, Qwyn scowls at Simon’s dangling foot, and Tamar and Kaela talk amongst themselves. Upon seeing Rey, they all scramble to get ready for the day ahead, pulling on their fur-lined parkas. She can tell they’re getting sick of Ilum, sick of the perpetual night, sick of seeing the puffs of their breath materialize in the air before them. The change has been particularly jarring for Tamar and Kaela, who until recently had called the jungle planet of Akiva home.
Rey lowers the Falcon ’s ramp, and looks out at Ilum. She can’t quite blame them. Nights on Jakku were cold, but nothing compares to this chill. Privately, she dreads leaving the light and warmth of the Falcon. But she can’t let them know that. She has to set a positive example. She wraps her nose and mouth in a scarf, touches the saberstaff hilt at her belt for reassurance, and heads outside.
Tamar and Kaela follow behind her, and when they’re a little ways from the Falcon, they sit down on the dusty ground and begin cycling through their morning meditations. Simon and Qwyn trail after, and go off on their own. They exchange words— well, Qwyn lets a torrent of words loose in Simon’s direction while Simon mostly shrugs and reads from his datapad. Finally, having lost her argument with herself, Qwyn exaggeratedly rolls her eyes and sits cross-legged on the ground.
Once she’s settled, Rey wanders over to her. “Good morning,” she says.
Qwyn just grunts in response, but Simon looks up from his datapad and says in his surprisingly soft voice, “‘Morning, Miss Rey.”
“It’s just Rey,” she assures him. Then she looks at Qwyn. “Any more dreams?”
“Yeah,” Qwyn grumbles. “I can see it in my dreams. Out here I can’t feel a thing. I’m never going to find it.”
“You will if you trust your instincts,” Rey urges her, for what feels like the thousandth time. “Acknowledge those fears of failure, acknowledge what they’re trying to tell you, then let them go. You have to clear your mind like you’re asleep.”
“I am trying,” Qwyn snaps. “Maybe the fact that there’s a liar spy here is interfering with my whole process.”
Rey sighs. “Qwyn.”
“You’re the liar spy, by the way.”
“Yeah, I got that. But right now I’m your teacher, and I’m trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help,” Qwyn mutters. “I bet if you weren’t here I would have found the stupid crystal by now.”
One of them has to be the adult here. Rey tamps down on the urge to sigh again. “I know you’d rather Kylo were with us,” she says. “But he’s tasked me with guiding you. I don’t mean you any harm.”
“Like you didn’t mean any harm when you tried to steal us?”
Rey gives her a stern look but doesn’t dignify that remark with a response.
“Never mind,” Qwyn grumbles. “We’re not even going to find any crystals, at this rate.”
“Maybe we could synthesize them,” says Simon. “People used to synthesize kyber crystals, but the Empire outlawed it. They were too unstable—”
“You stuff it,” Qwyn snaps. “What do you need to synthesize crystals for? You already have yours.”
Simon’s hand wanders to his waist to touch the newly-constructed lightsaber hilt clipped to his belt. This quartet had all started dreaming of kyber crystals two weeks ago, but Simon’s had been the first crystal they actually found. Granted, they’ve only been trekking across the galaxy for a few days; it had taken longer to haggle authorization for this trip out of Kylo Ren than Rey had expected. But maybe she should have known better.
“I meant your crystal,” Simon says. He’s a tall, curly-haired boy of sixteen, slow to speak but always thinking, and he looks slightly nervous.
“We’re not going to synthesize my crystal,” Qwyn huffs. “I’m gonna find it. You watch.”
She closes her eyes again and shimmies her shoulders, draws a comically loud breath, and rests her hands on her knees in a comically exaggerated meditative pose. The Force ripples around her.
Rey takes that as her cue to leave. She heads back to the Falconand sits down on the ramp. When Rikaj walks out, wearing his mask and a black parka over his Knight of Ren garb, carrying his weapon—just in case—she gives him a little nod. He responds by stretching his empty hand up and back to stretch his shoulder and cracking his neck, which comically undercuts the menace of the outfit.
But Rey doesn’t smile. She simply gazes out across the great obsidian plane, one of the scabbed-over wounds left behind by the Empire’s strip-mining.
Through her galactic travels, Rey has seen firsthand the scars of the Empire that still remain on the galaxy. The quest for Simon’s crystal had taken them to Jedha, a cool desert moon that looked as though something had seized it like a Jogan fruit and taken a big bite out of the side. It had been a testing site, Simon informed her, for the first Death Star. In place of the deforming crater, a city had once stood, one holy to the Jedi. As with Ilum, they would make pilgrimages there to gather kyber crystals for their lightsabers. As with Ilum, the Empire had come along to take those crystals use them in their superweapons.
Rey recalls how she had thought of the starship graveyard on Jakku. Some days, it had been a playground; she would imagine the debris as a fleet, whole and proud, and re-envision herself as a galactic adventurer instead of an unwanted child. Other days, it had been a reminder that the galaxy was vast and unknown to her, and she would feel small and insignificant next to the massive starship carcasses. But she had never questioned, or even thought to question, the Galactic Civil War, its purpose, its point. She knew the stories, as everyone did, but marveled at them as tales from another age, ones that had no bearing on her. The war was behind them all.
Except it had never been behind them. The remnants of that war had shaped Rey’s life, her livelihood. It had shaped the lives of all her friends. No one had escaped its touch, whether they came from planets blighted, like Jedha, or whole, like Chandrila. What would be the legacy of the First Order? Of the Imperium? Of the Resistance? Only the empty pockets of sky where the Hosnian System once sparkled? Only blighted planets like Hays Major and Hays Minor, and others she knows nothing about?
Rey shivers in her parka and turns her attention back to her students. Simon sits by Qwyn, datapad in his lap and newly-minted lightsaber at his waist, trying to lead her into meditation by example. A little ways off, Rikaj leads Tamar and Kaela through some basic Shii-Cho drills. Somewhere far above them, Jess Pava circles in her X-Wing, patrolling the dark and cloudless sky.
It’s in these moments, these quiet moments when there is nothing to do, when Rey would normally meditate, that her thoughts drift toward Kylo Ren, who is thousands of light years away. Even at this great distance, he should be a stirring at the back of her consciousness, but he has locked her out of the bond they share. She cannot feel him. Even so, she can imagine the shape of his day: waking early, training, showering, shaving, dressing, then the war council. Rinse, repeat. She knows. She’s seen it.
There is so much Rey longs to ask him. Does he feel the same way she does about awakening alone in a cold bed? Although her betrayal still stings, does he miss her fingers combing through his soft hair? Does he seek her warmth, as she seeks his? Does he feel as old as she does when he finally stands up, back sore, joints stiff? She knows he does. She’s experienced his body. He is the only person in the galaxy who might know her bone-deep ache, one that comes from unimaginable burden, and from loss.
Suddenly, she hears Qwyn shout, and turns to see the girl spring to her feet and bolt away. Simon unfolds his legs and scrambles to follow. Rey doesn’t bother calling for them to wait. She finds Rikaj’s eyes through the mask, and jerks her head after the two adolescents. “Come on!”
Rikaj doesn’t need telling twice. He picks up a nearby satchel, says something to the girls, and they all take off running after Simon and Qwyn, who sprint toward the glacier. The insulated parkas and trousers they all wear hinder their speed, and every so often one of them skids on the ice-slick ground, grasps at the Force to stay upright, and keeps going.
Up ahead, Rey sees Simon and Qwyn slide to a halt in front of the glacier. Qwyn turns her head and says something to Simon, then squeezes into a small crack and vanishes from view. Simon shifts his weight from foot to foot, obviously uneasy.
Rey jogs to Simon’s side and asks, “What’d she say?”
“She told me to wait here,” he says, his voice cracking nervously. “She said her crystal was in there.”
“She’s mental!” Kaela exclaims, coming up beside them with Tamar.
“We have to trust that she knows what she’s doing,” Rey tells her. “The Force will be her guide.”
Kaela rubs the side of her nose.
Rikaj says, “Your teacher’s right, you know. And Qwyn’s a strong one. She’ll be fine.” But Rey hears him muttering under his breath as he eyes the crack.
“What do we do?” Tamar asks Rey.
Rey looks at the glacier towering above them, at the narrow ice tunnel down which Qwyn has disappeared, and then at the group assembled before her. Her charges.
She says, “We wait.”