20. Chapter 20

            Rey takes a few agitated steps toward the holo of the Dreadnoughts, pulling Ben’s cloak more tightly around her shoulders. The ships are large and bulky, and subject to the gravity of the planet on which they were being assembled; it takes the first warship an interminable breath-holding moment to rise up off the ground and begin drifting out of frame, kicking up dirt and dust. The engines of its twin flicker to life.

            “No,” she says, under her breath. She doesn’t know which would be worse: the Resistance showing up now to find two fully operational Dreadnoughts awaiting them, or the Resistance arriving too late, to find the ships gone, to find that all their time and effort have gone to waste.

            Even though her voice is quiet, Ben senses her rising panic, if not the reason for it. He moves toward her, but hesitates to draw even with her again. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “There are only so many places they can hide. We’ll intercept them, and when we do— even Dreadnoughts are no match for this ship.”

            Rey’s eyes remain fixed on the warships. She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it. Her heart thuds behind her ribcage again, and she wonders whether the repeated hammering could ever break bone. It’s nerve wracking, exhilarating, exhausting to fight in a battle where she can affect the outcome, but to be so far away, to be unable to stop what’s happening or warn her friends of what might come is far, far worse.

            “Do you think they’re fully crewed?” she asks.

            The young officer is the one who pipes up in response. If he finds her question strange, he doesn’t let that show. “Those warships are meant to have a crew of over two hundred thousand men, ma’am,” he says. “No way to move that many personnel without attracting someone’s attention.”

            “A skeleton crew,” Ben muses. “Until they rendezvous with the rest of the mutiny.”

            Rey notes the barely-contained rage that darkens the word “mutiny,” and glances back at him over her shoulder. He glowers up at the Dreadnoughts beneath heavy, knitted brows, as if he considers their activation a grievous personal affront. In a sense, Rey supposes it is one. She opens her mouth to call his attention away from the ships and back to her when she glimpses a flicker of birdlike shadow in her peripheral vision.

            She turns bodily back to watch the warships rise, and— no, she wasn’t imagining that shadow. It passes by again, diving and darting away from the higher Dreadnought like an irritating, blood-sucking insect. The dorsal point-defense turrets activate automatically, firing at the shadow, which is quick enough to dodge away every time. Not only does Rey recognize that shadow as an X-wing, but she nigh-instantaneously realizes who must be in the cockpit.

            The Resistance made it in time. Rey doesn’t know yet whether this is a blessing or a curse.

            But she’s spared further thoughts on the subject because, from behind her, Ben says, “I know those maneuvers. That’s Dameron.”

            “Yes,” Rey breathes, watching Poe’s new X-wing swoop to narrowly avoid a barrage of green turret fire. “Come on, Poe.”

            She doesn’t need to worry. Again and again, the black X-wing finds its mark, blasting the turrets into oblivion. As it does, three others swoop in on the second Dreadnought, the one that hasn’t left the ground just yet, and begin clearing out its surface cannons. One of those X-wings takes a hit, and Rey visibly winces when it blows up, becoming a tiny red and orange nebula against the backdrop of the burning room. She doesn’t know who that pilot was, but she must have met them, and she hopes that it wasn’t someone she knew well, not Jess Pava or Snap Wexley or… She clenches her fists so hard that her filed and varnished nails dig into her palms as Poe’s new Black One and the two other X-wings complete their tasks.

            The first Dreadnought begins to accelerate away from the skirmish to give the second room to get off the ground. There’s not much of an attempt at retaliation; the Dreadnoughts not being fully crewed limits their ability to improvise, and the X-wings are managing to stay on their dorsal sides, making for difficult targets for those giant ventral autocannons. A few TIEs flit in and out of view, but there can’t be more than a dozen protecting this outpost since the gala procession demanded most of the fleet, and X-wing reinforcements make short work of them. One crashes into the surface of a Dreadnought, leaving a smoldering patch behind; others simply explode in midair.

            Poe — Rey would know it was Poe even if he hadn’t insisted on the black X-wing — somehow manages to get behind the Dreadnought and sabotage one of its engines, preventing it from leaving as quickly as the crew would no doubt like. Even so, the Dreadnought continues to rise, vanishing from the frame of the holo as half a dozen gnat-like X-wings continue to harry it. Rey watches breathlessly as the other Dreadnought begins to do the same, wondering if this is the last they’ll see or hear of this battle for some time.

            But again, she should know better than to doubt her friends. The holos are soundless, but she doesn’t need to hear to recognize the reddish tinge of an explosion just out of the holo’s scope, and then the first Dreadnought plummets back down to crash into the second. It drives them both into the unknown planet’s surface. The light show is spectacular. Fire ripples and tears through both Dreadnoughts, rending them to shreds, and they rupture into pieces. The Resistance ships, out of sight now but not out of Rey’s mind, are no doubt retreating to their cruisers to make a quick getaway. Now the only thing visible in the holo are two burning scrap heaps, of use to no one. The fleetkillers would never rise.

            Rey lets out a delighted little yelp that she doesn’t think to suppress. She feels as though she could sink to her knees with relief. This was it. The culmination of everything. Despite the complications on her end, despite the state of the Dreadnoughts, they had done it. At the very least, this one thing went right.

            “By the Force,” she whispers, bringing a hand to her mouth. “They did it.”

            Ben says nothing. Of course he’d known nothing of the plan, but the way it had worked out was entirely in his favor. Hux had planned to use those Dreadnoughts against him, and the Resistance had taken them out. A feeling of near-unbearable lightness swells in Rey’s chest cavity. Surely, surely, it had to be the Force’s will that everything resolved itself so neatly. The First Order’s fracturing, the Dreadnought plan, her presence here, it all fits together like the pieces of a massive galactic puzzle.

            To Rey, the way forward is nothing if not clear. As she looks up at the smoldering wrecks, she breaks into a wild grin. Death is never something to revel in — it’s not very Jedi-like — but she can find the beauty in victory. The reds and oranges and whites and occasional flickers of blue reflect in a kaleidoscope across the floor of the hangar.

            “Rey,” Ben says, from behind her, and she turns, expecting to see him similarly enraptured.

            But Ben isn’t looking up at the holos anymore. He looks, instead, at her, as if she’s a stranger to him.

            Rey’s grin vanishes immediately. When his name falls from her lips, it’s the softest question. “Ben?”

            “You knew about this,” he says. It’s less an accusation than a statement of fact. His tone is inscrutable, but there’s an ache to it. Their bond, a vivacious hum since their coupling on the steps, shifts, feels weightier and darker.

            Rey exhales. Right, of course— of course. Naturally he would be suspicious of this turn of events. But this is fixable. She can fix it. She can allay his fears. Because although this had started as something else, although they had both come into it from very different places, they stand together now. Her people had scored him a victory. There’s room here for growth and unity. There’s room for them to come together.

            And for that to happen, she owes him the truth. So she nods, just once.

            “How long?” he asks. “Did an informant contact you, or—” His face shifts with the unspoken realization that she must have known the entire time she was aboard, that this was, perhaps, why she was aboard in the first place. His eyebrows draw back in surprise, but there is a new resoluteness to the set of his jaw.

            She reaches for his bare hands. “I can show you everything.”

            “No.” He takes two steps back from her. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

            “Ben,” she says. She manages a hasty half-step toward him, planting one foot down, and he flinches, not in his whole body, but in the slightest contraction of his fingers, in his face, in the twitch below his left eye. Rey pauses, shows him her own open palms. “I’ve nothing to hide.”

            “Anymore,” he corrects. “You have nothing to hide anymore.”

            Rey’s nostrils flare out slightly as she exhales. “You knew I was a diversion,” she says. “From the very beginning, you knew. You just thought I was a diversion for something else.”

            “I thought your role had been played out by the end of your first night,” he rebuts. He doesn’t raise his voice to her. “I knew you surrendered as part of a pretense. I kept you closely confined at first, but there were opportunities for you to escape after you nearly died. And yet you stayed. I had thought…”

            He trails off. It dawns on Rey all at once. “You thought I stayed because I lo—”

            “Because you wanted to,” he interrupts, as if what he actually thought is now too painful to hear spoken aloud. “But I was a fool.”

            Something in him is cracking. She feels it within her, too, this fragile thing, not unlike the kyber crystal in his lightsaber. Cracked, on the verge of shattering. “I do want to,” she insists. “Ben, these last few days, I’ve only thought about the possible ways for us to stay together. There didn’t seem to be any, but now—”

            “But you deceived me, all this time. Through everything else we shared.” A brief image flashes in Rey’s mind, of her own face, her own naked body, from above, her eyelashes fluttering and her lips parted as he moves inside her. Ben quickly pushes it aside, and one of his hands tightens into a fist. He casts his gaze down to it, as if in disapproval, and straightens out those fingers one by one.

            Without looking back up at her, he asks, “Would you have ever told me? Or would you have just disappeared when it was done?”

            Rey shakes her head, unable to give him an answer that he’ll like. She’s not certain she knows herself. She has gone back and forth on it so many times, and then everything went so sideways this last day. “That doesn’t matter.”

            “It’s all that matters.”

            “Not now. Don’t you see that?” Rey has to raise her voice a little, not to be heard, but to be listened to. She throws her arm out, indicating the holo of the wrecked Dreadnoughts. “The First Order is broken. The Resistance just scored your side a massive victory. If we join together we can do what you spoke of. We can create something new, something different. This— it has to be the will of the Force!”

            “Does it?” he asks. He sounds utterly miserable. “It’s the Force’s will that you should use me?”

            Rey drops her arm to her side. “No, Ben. Of course not. I wouldn’t—”

            “You did,” he says. “Like everyone else.”

            She doesn’t respond. There’s nothing she can say. But she remains open to him through their bond, allows him to feel her hurt and that sad, sickening twinge of guilt. If she has any chance of guiding him through this it will only be through honesty and sincerity. Despite what he said, she knows this is entirely unlike any of the other betrayals, true and perceived, that he’s experienced over the course of his life.

            Then Ben asks, “Was any of it real?”

            No hesitation. “It was all real,” she replies, and she’s surprised to find her voice wavering with anger. A small part of her is angry, she realizes, that he could doubt that about her. “You must know that.”

            He just says, “Not anymore.” Then he turns his shoulders away from her, as if steeling himself to go. Rey takes a couple of small, quick steps toward him, barely closing any of the distance between them. He holds up his hand to bring her to a halt.

            It is meant, Rey knows, to be a simple gesture. He doesn’t even call upon the Force to keep her back from him. But pain is a well from which his power drinks, and he is full to the brim with it. All his unconscious mind knows is that he can’t bear to have her near. All the Force does is his bidding.

            A crackling tendril of blue-white lightning sparks from his fingertips, arcs harmlessly over his palm, and vanishes.

            They both see it. The moment stretches out between them like a chasm.

            Rey stops. She knows from her texts that that Force lightning is a dark side ability. She knows through their bond that he’s never conjured it before. As much darkness as there is within him, he’s never surrendered to it in that way. Not until now, on accident, in pain. He pulls his hand back and looks down at it, eyes shining with moisture, then closes that hand into a fist as if to prevent any other unanticipated displays of power.

            Rey stays where she is, but she says his name, imploringly, trying to bring him back to her. “Ben—”

            “Don’t,” he says. “You don’t get to call me that anymore.”

            The words lance through her like a lightsaber’s blade. She shuts her mouth.

            He looks back up at her, one last time. His dark eyes bore into her face, hardened to her now. When he speaks, his voice is barely louder than a whisper. It devastates her more than a shout would. “Run home, Rey.”

            “Don’t be like this,” she says, pleading with him now. How familiar, and how shattering, it feels to plead with him. “Don’t. You know I—”

            “We’ll see each other again,” is his reply. It’s a promise. It’s a threat. “But I can’t—” He stops, presses his lips together in that thin straight line. “My place now is on the bridge. I don’t have time to fight you.”

            “Please.”

            He’s a maelstrom within, and her plea is carried away from him as if whipped by the wind. Most potently, she feels his despair, not just that she deceived him, not just that she remained with him out of a duty to her people and not by choice, but that if she never really wanted him then he is truly unloved, and unlovable. Shame and fury thread through it, at his having been deceived, at having let her so close, but they pale in comparison with how visceral his pain is. What hurts Rey the most, though, is that there is a part of him that wants so badly to believe her when she says she wants to be with him, and that that part is already being walled away behind a protective shell of anger. He won’t be hurt, not again.

            And then, all at once, he cuts her off, and it’s gone. Rey is left with the cold of the ship prickling her skin and the crushing burden of her own feelings.

            “Go,” he says. “Before we jump to hyperspace.”

            He turns on his heel and sweeps out, and the young officer, present but mute the entire time, follows quickly behind, leaving her in the giant hangar bay among only the ruined decorations and the dead.

            Rey leaves the hangar through the same side exit Hux had used, although of course Hux is long gone now. She collects the hair ornament that had once belonged to Padmé Amidala from the floor; it’s far too valuable to be left lying there, although Rey may be the only person who knows that. She tucks her saberstaff hilt up under her arm, holds the ornament in one hand and her dress in the other, and jogs through the halls, letting the Force guide her path through the Conquest II.

            She only has a few minutes to spare, if that. There’s no time to cross the ship to find Ordula. Rey isn’t even certain the spy is still onboard. Hux may have left her in the hangar, or he may have taken her as his prisoner when he fled, or she may have already escaped. She’s canny, and Rey has confidence in her ability to use the confusion to her advantage.

            And while Rey doesn’t know where Ordula is, she knows exactly where Ben’s students are.

            She’s never been to that room from this hangar, but she can picture its doors clearly, and she keeps that image locked in her mind as she allows her instincts to take over. Her sandals provide very little traction against the durasteel flooring, and she nearly slips several times as she quickens her jog to a run. Stormtroopers and officers alike are also running to and fro, trying to assume posts, to find some semblance of normalcy among all the chaos. None of them stop the disheveled woman with knotted hair who wears a ruined gown and the Supreme Leader’s cloak. Then again, it’s very likely she’s not the first unkempt gala attendee to come this way.

            Rey darts into an open elevator that, by luck or chance or the Force’s intervention, is the right one. She slams the button to close the door and leans against the wall, shuddering with exertion, as the elevator catapults her up to the floor she knows the best, the one that houses Kylo Ren’s chambers, and the training room, and the biodome, and the doors behind which must be his pupils’ dwellings.

            While in the elevator, she puts down the hair ornament to fumble for the bypass key hidden in the cup that covers her right breast. Rey had thought this a very clever way to smuggle the key in, but that hiding place is much less convenient for getting the key out in a hurry. She has to shift her dress aside and peel the cup away from her skin for a moment to wiggle the key free, and is suddenly conscious of just how much she’d sweated under her clothing, due to the fighting, due to what came after—

            No. Rey can’ afford to think of any of that. She fixes her clothing and picks up the hair ornament just before the elevator doors open. Now she knows exactly where to go.

            And this time, when she arrives at the two heavy double doors, sealed shut, she knows just how to unseal them. She waves her hand to pop open the bottom half of the control panel, inserts the bypass key, and lets it do its work.

            The doors hiss open almost immediately. Eight heads turn toward the sound. Eight pairs of eyes blink at Rey standing in the doorway.

            The students’ living quarters are spacious, although they leave much to be desired where privacy is concerned. There are eight bunks embedded in the right wall, each of which can be sectioned off from the main room by a sliding panel. There’s an area for socializing and relaxation to the left of the door which boasts furniture that looks slightly more comfortable than the usual First Order upholstery and even a red rug on the floor. Toward the back, a long table for dining, and a couple of machines against the wall that dispense drinks and snacks. A door with a water droplet on it marks the way to the ‘freshers.

            Despite the situation on the rest of the ship, the students don’t seem to be in any state of distress. Two sit on a top bunk, conversing; another hangs upside down over the edge of the adjacent bunk, holding a datapad close to her face. One dozes lightly in a lower bunk, but sits up with a start when the doors open, three more sit on the couches, and one snacks at the back table. All of the seated adolescents stand on instinct, save for the ones in the bunks, who climb out nimbly as Rey collects herself in the doorway.

            “Come on!” she says, breathless. “Come with me, I’m getting you out of here.”

            The students come to gather a few meters in front of the dining table, at the room’s midpoint. One of them, a short, pale girl, her dark hair buzzed close to her scalp, steps to the front of the group, as if to act as their spokesperson. “You’re the Jedi,” she says.

            A young female Mirialan stands on her toes to whisper in the ear of a lanky human boy, who snickers. Rey ignores this, and says, “Please, we don’t have much time.”

            The girl folds her arms, looking Rey over from head to toe. “Are we in danger? We heard explosions.”

            Theoretically, Rey could lie to get them to go with her, or she could attempt to use the Force to persuade them to come. She does neither, and says truthfully, “Well, not imminently, no.”

            “Okay, so…” says the girl, with the extremely unimpressed adolescent vocal inflection that Rey knows from her own students, although it’s rarely directed at her.

            Rey sighs. She hadn’t anticipated having to explain herself to a group of teenagers, but maybe she should have, considering what she now knows of teenagers. “If you come with me to the Resistance, I can teach you the ways of the Force.”

            The girl rolls her eyes. “We’re already learning the ways of the Force. You mean the ways of the Jedi.”

            “The Jedi sucked,” a younger boy chimes in.

            “Well, no. I mean, yes, the old Jedi did fail in many ways.” Rey’s head spins. There’s no time for this, and she doesn’t have the wherewithal for a philosophical debate. “These are new ways.”

            The girl in the front mimes stifling a yawn, and asks, “What can you offer us that Lord Ren can’t?”

            “What—” Rey frowns, deeply. The group seems perfectly well cared for. Rey had been concerned that they were learning through exposure to discomfort, or anger, or fear, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. They certainly don’t seem to fear her.

            She says, “I can offer you balance. I can show you the ways of the Light in addition to the ways of the Dark, so the Dark won’t consume you.”

            “But Ren’s teaching us the Light,” the lanky boy insists. “He says everything about it that he knows is ours to learn.”

            Rey doesn’t know how much mastery of the Light Kylo Ren truly has to offer to others, but before she can formulate a rebuttal, the girl says, “And if we go with you, we’ll answer to your side. The Resistance. If we stay with him, we’ll know no masters. He’s promised us that.”

            “He’s your master, though, isn’t he?” Rey asks, confused. Somehow that does seem like a very Ben thing to offer, but it’s also at odds with most of what she’d assumed about this training.

            “Only for now,” says the girl. “Only until we’re done with our training. And then he says we’re free to leave or stay as we choose, as long as we don’t abuse our gifts.”

            It takes Rey longer than it should to process this, and the girl continues, “Look, Jedi, you don’t have a better offer. And we’re not going to leave Ren to go with you. We owe him. Before we met him, we were powerless. Now nobody tells us what to do.” She jerks up her chin. “Not even you.”

            “Wait,” says the tall boy in the back. “If you want to teach us so bad, why don’t you stay here?”

            The query tugs at Rey’s heartstrings, makes her gut clench. Her tongue flickers out between dry lips, to wet them. “I can’t.”

            “Why not?”

            “I just— can’t.”

            The girl snickers. “So you’d rather go back to an underfunded terrorist organization instead of staying here, where you’d have actual security and resources? I guess it’s your funeral.” She shakes her head. “We’re not going.”

            Rey exhales. She doesn’t know what she was expecting to find. It certainly wasn’t this. It certainly wasn’t loyalty.

            And she doesn’t have time to talk them out of it, if it’s even possible. After all, these students aren’t loyal to the First Order, the galactic dictatorship. The way they speak, they’re loyal to Kylo Ren alone. She says, “I really can’t stay any longer. But if any of you ever change your minds, the offer stands.”

            The girl looks skeptical, but says nothing.

            As Rey turns to go, one of the boys calls after her, “Hey, did you and Ren break up?”

            And although she doesn’t look back, she hears the ringleader girl grouse, “Shut up, Simon.”

            Once out of their view, Rey wipes at her eyes. There is no time to dwell on any of this. She has to keep moving. She must, to ignore what feels like a massive knot forming in her stomach. If she stops, she’ll think; if she thinks, she’ll never get going again, and she’ll wind up trapped on the ship.

            She makes her legs carry her to the elevator, all too conscious of how much effort it takes to walk, to run, all too aware that she can’t afford not to stay in motion.

            No one gives Rey any trouble as she makes her way to one of the hangar bays. A few officers glance at her, but promptly avert their eyes. She begins to suspect that they have been ordered not to impede her, but to be fair there are other matters that demand their attention.

            The TIEs and other hyperdrive-lacking craft that had participated in the procession now zip back into the belly of the Conquest II, so as not to be left behind when the flagship jumps to hyperspace. It’s all too easy to slip in the back of an unattended shuttle and sit herself down at the controls.

            In the end, she cuts it close. Her commandeered shuttle speeds out of the hangar moments before the ship and the other remnants of the divided First Order fleet make the jump to hyperspace, becoming streaks of light that culminate in glimmering pinpricks as they accelerate into the unseen dimension. Then it’s only Rey, and the infinite blackness that stretches out before her, dotted with stars.

            When she was a girl, laying on her back on the Jakku sands, looking up the stars, knowing that each one was a system or another galaxy and enraptured by how it all went on forever, the vacuum of space had always seems full of possibility. Now, with the procession gone and the Conquest II vanished, it seems cold and vacant, even though she knows Coruscant would come into view were she to nudge the shuttle into a shallow dive. Where she floats now, she may as well be the only person left in the galaxy.

            Rey draws her legs into her chest and takes a moment to breathe. It’s difficult to ground herself when nothing feels solid, or certain, but she always has her breath, and through it she has the Force. Even that doesn’t seem much of a comfort right now. She folds her forearms atop her knees and looks out at the point where the First Order’s ships vanished, the glowing afterimage of the trail that had briefly stretched behind them still imprinted on her vision.

            The shuttle’s interior is cold. Rey fiddles with the temperature controls, then unclasps Ben’s cloak, which she still wears. She pulls it out from under her so she can use it to cover herself, as if it were a blanket, and as she does she nearly holds it to her nose to smell it, to smell him. But she shakes herself out of that trance, whatever it is, and pulls the cloak up over her body, all the way to her neck.

            She feels the connection at first as the prickling of the hair at the back of her neck, then that slight tug just at the edge of her perception. She thinks it must be Ben, but the voice that resounds through her mind is female, gentle yet firm, and slightly raspy with age. It’s a voice she knows well.

            Rey, it says.

            Rey sighs, although she can’t tell whether from relief or disappointment. “Leia,” she replies.

            Thank the Maker, Leia says from the Resistance base on Akiva. I thought you might not hear me.

            The connection is tenuous; she and Leia aren’t connected by blood, or by whatever cosmic destiny binds her to Kylo Ren. Rey grasps at it firmly, and when she does she can feel the effort Leia had expended in seeking her out at such a distance. Now that Rey is aware, she can ease that burden to a degree. Even so, she says, “You shouldn’t strain yourself—”

            Leia brushes Rey’s concerns aside with a little brusqueness. I can have a conversation. You seem to be all in one piece. A pause. Although you feel…

            “I’m fine,” Rey snaps, and her tone leaves no room for argument. Then she adds, with a little sheepishness, “Sorry.”

            The momentary silence that follows makes Rey fear that she’s lost the connection, but then Leia says, Poe and the others succeeded. The Dreadnoughts were destroyed before they got off the planet.

            “I know.” Rey leans back in the pilot’s seat, letting her head fall against the headrest. “I saw it.”

            And we saw you. The way Leia says it is neutral, nonjudgmental. Those of us in the command center were able to watch you at the gala until the holos cut out.

            Rey’s stomach tightens at the thought of any of the Resistance having seen her at the gala. She doesn’t want to press for more detail, but she must. “When did they cut out?”

            After you jumped that table.

            So Leia, at least, had witnessed much of what played out. Poe would have been busy with the bombing run; maybe Rose, too. What about Finn? Rey shifts in her seat. Finn may not have understood what he saw beyond her playing a role for the greater good. Leia is keener. She seems to know everything. If she had watched Rey dance…

            Rey might as well begin her report now, at least. She says, “The First Order is fractured, split down the middle. Armitage Hux ran off with half the fleet. And Kylo Ren—” Something sticks in her throat, and she is unable to continue. She tries to swallow it down.

            It can wait.

            A phantom hand comes to rest on Rey’s shoulder. It’s a feather-light touch, a comforting touch. Rey turns her head, and she sees nothing.

            Leia says, You’ve borne so much, Rey. Come home.

            Then the connection winks out, and both touch and voice are gone.

            Rey closes her eyes. Come home. Those words had no meaning, once. Her planet had been Jakku, her dwelling the hollowed-out carcass of a downed AT-AT, but her home had been nowhere. But now she thinks of home, and she thinks of the cool jewel-like raindrops, clear and glistening, falling from the dark and swollen storm clouds that lumber across the sky, far above Akiva’s jungle canopy. She thinks of turning her palms to face skyward, as though she could collect them in her hands as they strike her cheeks, her bare forearms, her laugh melding with the rustle of the undergrowth. She thinks of Rose passing her a laser welder, of Poe clasping her shoulder while he laughs at something she said, of her late night conversations with Finn, where they discussed fate and future and destiny. She thinks of Ben stroking the backs of his fingers down the length of her spine—

            No. Moments of peace, like grinning up at a bursting supernova with her fellow rebels as they watched it peak through their monoculars. Routines, like meditating through every sunrise along with her students, feeling connected to all things, living and dead, as the Force gathers and swells around them; like morning sparring sessions in the training room with Ben, grinning as their staves clack together—

            No. Lying on her back on a sofa with her feet on Finn’s thigh as he reads from a datapad and she tries to decipher one of the ancient, yellowed Jedi texts. The smell of weak mess hall coffee. Basking in the warm glow of Leia Organa’s approval. The old, firm mattress pad on her bunk. Ben’s sigh tickling her ear as he holds her close to his chest, flushed and breathless, and murmurs her name.

            Home.

            Rey hunches forward, sets her head down on her folded arms, and weeps.