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Chapter One

Wheat fields stretched for acres on Dantooine, curving over picturesque hills like the pelt of a sleeping animal. Light breezes played with the endless swatches of yellow and an unfathomable blue sky yawned overhead. No memory nor dream could ever do such a landscape justice. Rey was enraptured. She stood at the top of a slope, drinking in the emotions tumbling through her heart. This felt like the first time her eyes caught the green forests of Takodana, or the first time her face caught the rain on Ahch-to. How could someone get used to such diversity of life? Would she always be this sentimental? It took most of her will to rip her eyes away from the colors of the world to check on her companion down below.

Poe was chopping wood outside a weathered farmhouse, his dark hair in stark against the white paint of the barn. Two teenage boys watched him with interest, falling for the trap of his charisma. They laughed as he missed every other strike with the hatchet. Rey couldn't tell if he was purposefully being inept for humor, or if he really did have no aim. Their laughter carried on the wind.

In the distance, the sound of a scythe-bike hummed over the breeze. Rey could barely make out the flash of metal mowing brown lines through the wheat. Poe took a shining to Moya, who piloted the bike. She was a child, who had more confidence and precision than a thirteen year old had right to have driving something that was more blade than vehicle.

Rey's smile faded.

They were on Dantooine to recruit more members for the Resistance, but they were attracting children, not soldiers. Rey didn't understand the glory of a battlefield, or the desire to fight when you didn't have to. Her mind was geared to scavenge, eat, and survive another day. When she shared her mentality with Poe, he said there was more than glory in war. There was camaraderie, the feeling of being alive, the focus of having an objective.

They were very different people.

She didn't know much about Poe Dameron other then what BB-8 had told her back on Jakku. He was definitely made of different stuff than the men Rey was used to. Everyone on Jakku kept to themselves, only interacting to fulfill basic needs. Poe mingled. Rey caught herself listening to the pilot's stories and wayward thoughts whenever he spoke them aloud. He talked constantly and distractions were plentiful enough, so Rey actively looked for other people to pawn him off to in order to get some semblance of peace and quiet.

On their first night they had been taken in by a husband of one of the Resistance fighters that died at D'Qar. The met at a public house, where Rey had wowed a crowd with her rapidly growing Force abilities. Poe scored them some drinks, and with his silver tongue, secured their lodgings. Rey could only follow Poe along, feeling a little bit like BB-8.

The family was pleasant enough, but Rey was finding the hero worship difficult to manage. She didn't feel like someone special. The more she read the Jedi texts, the more she realized how little she knew about her abilities. Kylo Ren was right - she needed a teacher; but the only one available was him, and he was Supreme Leader of the First Order. A coward who could not turn from his path of destruction.

It was up to Rey to teach herself.

She took a deep breath to settle herself. Rey needed a clear mind for meditation - one not filled with the thought of betrayal, regret or need.

She had wandered to the hill at the edge of the farm to practice some techniques she learned only in theory. The texts said that nature provided the best focus point for manipulating the Force. She knew this, for she had felt it on Ahch-To during her brief lessons with Master Skywalker. As soon as they arrived on Dantooine a familiar force inside her began to sing again. The wind between her fingers, the smell of earth underfoot, the burn of the twin yellow suns through the clouds, the sound of splintering wood; all of it made her heart thrum with power. It was a struggle to fine tune the Force around and inside her. There was so much. She easily lost herself in it. Her breath was shallow, full of adrenaline, as she reached out with her mind.

A great coldness washed over her, shocking senses as it rolled over every inch of her being. She pushed through, summoning the heat of her skin like a point to pierce the ice. Her will was strong, though her lack of knowledge made her careful. She searched out the coldness, feeling it as more of an absence. Was this the space between people? The space between rapture and despair? Rey didn't know, but she felt the mirth of the youths on the farm, the charm of Poe's smile, the memory of Finn's arms around her - all of it shielded her. She felt light. With one staggered breath she felt like she had touched all the stars in the quadrant with every cell in her body. It was beautiful. For a moment she felt content with her progress, but like on Ahch-to, her neonate heart lured her to tread elsewhere. To seek the unknown.

With her eyes closed, Rey swallowed a nervous lump in her throat and shifted her stance. She was still in the cold place, but she could feel the suns on her fingertips. She took courage in the solid earth beneath her and stretched herself out further to find something familiar.

Stop.

She met a wall of contempt and darkness. Her breath hitched. On the outskirts of her perception, a bead of sweat trickled down beside her nose. She kept her hands out, reaching - willing her emotions to penetrate as easily as they did the coldness. The will to push boundaries was easily summoned in her excitement of discovery; but her shock of actually achieving her destination made her concentration slip.

A wave of pain ripped through her mind like a sharp toothed comb. Rey cried out, and was distantly aware of her body curling for protection from something not quite visceral. Her knees hit dirt somewhere far away and the discord across her senses rendered her dazed. The warmth she had wielded so easily fell in on itself and sucked the air from her lungs. Her body quaked with the effort of fighting back against a sudden tide of hate. Panic flooded her mind. She couldn't breathe or make a sound.

STOP. You idiot girl.

The wall came down - only for an instant, before reforming around her like a tomb. The shape of Kylo Ren blew in like a storm. He hovered a gloved hand over her face as if shielding himself from her head spontaneously exploding. He let his presence anchor somewhere on the outskirts of her mind, stabilizing the connection. She could finally breathe. Was this a kindness?

She drew ragged gasps as he searched her face, looking for something in her expression. Rey tried not to get lost in the depths of his eyes.

"This is the limit of your ability." His lips quivered, not sure where to settle. He tried to hide the wonder in his features, but the girl had caught him unawares. "You are channeling a tremendous power. Already it is ripping you apart." His fingers twitched as he focused, his gaze sharp as an arrow.

Rey screamed in pain. A dagger had been driven through her brain. Did she overreach, or was Kylo Ren doing this to her?

"You have no idea what you are doing." The Supreme Leader's words were mocking as he twisted the pain so that she felt it throughout her entire system. So it was him torturing her again. Was this for rejecting his proposed alliance back aboard The Supremacy? Her muscles writhed and she tried not to whimper. Rey didn't want to give him the satisfaction he craved. He was only doing this to prove he still had control; but she was stronger than him - more sure of her alignment.

Rey clenched her teeth and hissed. "I know your future, Ben Solo." She caught hold of his arm and leaned in from her crouch to force his hand to touch her forehead. The contact made his eyes widen. "I've seen it."

The motion surprised Kylo Ren and the pain abated. She could feel his hand shaking against the skin of her face.

The feeling of his sleeve undulated with her pulse. One moment she was clutching him, the next he flickered under her grip like a mirage as he struggled to gain some mental distance. She felt his leather-clad fingers graze her jawline and she almost laughed. He couldn't fool her with his mask of evil. It felt like that night in her hut when she caressed his hand. A small kiss of his thoughts, the call to the light ringing clear in his mind. She didn't need to see his face to know the look of uncertainty there. There was goodness within him, buried deep and shielded like a terrible weakness.

Her presence stirred emotions he had thought settled and his touch disappeared.

"What I am becoming... it is not the image you have of me in your mind." The firmness of his voice blossomed across her senses, infecting her with the will to hear the truth within. They both yearned for the other to understand. Their hearts ached in tandem. "Your Ben Solo is not me. I will never be him. It is a fantasy. Like your image of Han Solo, or of Luke Skywalker. You did not know them as I did. Open your eyes Rey, see the truth before you."

She opened her eyes. His face filled her vision, which gave her the determination she needed to get to her feet and stare him down, her hand still clutching his arm.

"You are me Ben. Not them."

His eyes narrowed as the statement echoed between them.

"We are uncertain, afraid, desperate for guidance." Her grip on his arm became a vice and he tried to pull his hand away but couldn't. "We can help each other."

"Do not seek me out with your mind!" He yelled in anger, or was it fear? It stunned her into silence and cut a new wound in her heart. "I will find you and make you see the truth. Teach it to you if I have to." His eyes burned with the same rawness she remembered from their fight in the snow. His scar stood out against his skin as a reminder. It was a terrible image that made Rey second guess her relationship with this man.

Kylo Ren wrinkled his face into a contemptuous sneer before drawing back his hand from Rey's grip. Rey instinctively flinched, the blow struck the side of her head. All sensation fled her body. She rolled through the darkness and back into the sun. The hard ground of the field was against her back, and above her stretched the endless blue of a Dantooine sky. There were tears on her face, but in her disorientation Rey couldn't know when they got there. She let out a single shuttered breath before lapsing into unconsciousness.

Murmured voices pierced the dull ache that throbbed within the girl's skull. She groaned and felt a hand on her sternum, preventing her from sitting up.

"Whoa there." The words sounded condescending, and she made to argue, but her mouth felt glued together. All she could manage was an angry grunt. This made her caretaker laugh, but it was a sound filled with relieved hysteria. It was Poe. No one could mistake that voice.

Rey relaxed and accepted the canteen of water he dangled over her. She took in her surroundings as she drank. It was dark outside and her arms were itching from the hay beneath her. The pilot lit a candle. The flame showed his tired features and the woodwork of the barn they were sleeping in.

"You did a number on yourself the other day. Sit still so I can make sure you're all there." He placed a container around the flame and turned back towards his patient. "Do you know who you are, or where you are? What was the last thing you remember?" His tone was joking, but there was a layer of concern that made Rey uncomfortable.

She put a hand to her face, feeling the sting of a day-old sunburn. "One question at a time" Her voice felt weak to her and she cleared her throat to strengthen it. "And just where were you sticking your hands?" Rey rubbed her chest with a suspicious glare. Poe raised his hands in mock surrender as Rey swung her legs over the side of the bale she was laying on to better view her friend.

"All there all right, but what the hell happened to you? You went out to meditate and next thing I hear is you screaming. By the time I got to you, you were passed out on the ground." Poe ran a hand through his hair. "It scared me... you've been out for near two days. I had to send a message back to the General, I was worried you put yourself out of commission permanently." The new lines under his eyes betrayed his knowledge of how screwed they would have been had his fears been true.

Rey felt ashamed. She pulled her knees into her chest and hugged them for comfort. "I- I made a mistake… I still don't know what I'm doing."

Without Luke there was no way to hone her skills. She had spent several nights reading some of the Jedi texts she had lifted from Ahch-To, but how to manipulate the force was vague. In only the span of a few weeks she had most of the abilities of a trained Jedi, but none of the discipline or understanding that came with having a mentor. And the books were like a score of people explaining in intricate detail how to eat when there was a dozen ways to get food into your stomach - some overly complicated, some with attached philosophies that did nothing to enhance her practical knowledge. She needed to just… do it, yet that had just landed her into a two day coma. The frustration was maddening.

"What were you trying to do?" Poe asked.

The question brought heat to Rey's face. Contacting Kylo Ren was a really stupid idea, but it was something that had been done before, so Rey knew it was a possible. The groundwork was there, like a path she traveled before - albeit forced. She hadn't known how powerful Snoke had been to carve that path himself and usher both her and Kylo through it - but she had more of a guess now. Snoke had more power than any Jedi alive. Which was now just her.

"I was testing my limits." She said quickly, before backpedaling at Poe's uneasy stare. "I won't do it again. Not like that anyway." She pushed Kylo Ren's face from her thoughts and laid back down on the hay. "I am sorry to have worried you… were you able to complete the mission without me?"

Poe nodded, though his smile diminished. "Moya, Kayl and Joua want to join up."

"That's great!" She exclaimed before reading his expression. "Isn't it?"

"They're young." Poe's face hardened in a way Rey had never seen before. "We've lost near 80% of our numbers in the last few weeks. Things are dire out there. I'm not sure if…" He looked at her with a pained expression. He must not have slept in days. "-if it's right you know? When I was their age I wouldn't hesitate to jump on an X-wing and blow stuff up-"

"You still wouldn't hesitate-"

"Yeah." His smile came back, albeit faintly. "But they don't know better."

His mood went back to pensive and they both stewed in their thoughts on the matter. Finally, Poe laid down on the wood floor next to Rey's bale. His head rested in the crook of his arm and blocked some of the light from the candle, casting flickering shadows on the walls. "They just think it's cool. But what are the odds of one of them ending up dead? What happens when it stops being fun? What happens when they are out in space mourning a dead relative, or neighbor and they want to go home?"

Rey rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. There was a collection of small winged rodents glaring down at their light. "They won't have a home to go back to if the First Order isn't contested. This planet is flagged as Resistance-friendly, it's only a matter of time before the Order seizes it and it becomes like Fondor or Kuga II"

The silence stretched between them, filled with thoughts of whips, and food quotas that would leave most the farmers of this region starving once the dry season started.

"Did you get any reports while I was… indisposed?" Rey said, embarrassed for being useless.

"Finn and Rose got four out on Subterrel. So they beat us out. I blame you for that." Poe stretched and moved so he was also on his belly. He took off his jacket and used it as a makeshift pillow. The light went out with the movement and Rey shivered. "Bastatha, Molus IV, Polis Massa, Jax and some other little rim worlds yielded about two dozen or so. The General thinks that more will be swayed after the meeting on Ryloth."

A knot formed in Rey's stomach at the thought of Ryloth. General Leia wanted Rey to go with her and wow the nobility there. As a Princess, such feats of diplomacy would be easy for Leia, but Rey was a scavenger only a month ago. Her brand of diplomacy was the biggest stick she could find and a colorful vocabulary. She was certain to say something to embarrass the General, but if they were to get enough funds to feed and equip the growing rebellion, the money-makers needed to see 'The Last Jedi'. Rey didn't like that she was going to be put on display and judged. It nauseated her.

In the darkness Poe knew Rey was lamenting her next mission. He reached out and patted her arm. "Don't worry so much. I'll be there too."

She groaned and put the arm he touched over her eyes. "You have natural charisma, where as all my friends have been shouted at or hit upside the head with my staff when I met them. I'm sure we could just point you at the nearest female Patron and we'd be fine."

Poe couldn't help but laugh at Rey's pathetic whine. "My charms work on males too you know."

Rey choked on her own saliva and leaned over to see Poe's eyes glittering in the darkness. "What, really?"

He would never forget that expression on her face as long as he lived. Poe played it out to lighten the mood. "You never know with the rich types. Their hedonistic pleasures know no bounds."

Rey fell back into her pile of hay, realizing that he was teasing her. Their conversation ended with some quiet laughter as they settled in for the night. Rey listened to Poe's breathing while urging sleep to come faster and stop her mind from lingering on a certain fallen Jedi. Kylo Ren was so angry at her mental hello. Angry and surprised. That made Rey smile for a moment. It faltered once rey realized she ignited an old loneliness within her. He must feel it too. On Ahch-To, Rey thought she knew him better than she knew herself, but now he was pulling away. He slipped back into being a monster, and Rey didn't know if she could pull Ben Solo out again.