Jakku is hot and icky and gross and there is too much sand for her liking, but Rey has always loved adventures. This adventure is especially fun, 'cause she gets to adventure all by herself. She's in a new place to explore, and there's nobody around to tell her what to do or what not to do, so even if she doesn't like sand - it's itchy and it gets everywhere - she can still have fun. Being on an adventure is kind of like being a part of the stories Mama and Papa tell her.

Right now, because there's nobody around to tell her what to do or what not to do, she's sitting on the little countertop of the tiny little shelter that the stranger and his wife live in and eating sweets out of a jar because she can. Mama lets her do that, sometimes, so she doesn't think that the stranger and his wife will care when they get back. She's on a moisture farm, like the ones where Papa grew up, but she's on a different planet than Papa's. Everything here is painted white to keep the heat out, and there isn't much green like at home. There aren't any windows. There's sand in the corners, and the paint on the walls is starting to peel. There are two bedrooms, one slept in and one that looks more recently set up. There's a kitchen full of food. She kind of wants to find the 'fresher because she feels all sweaty and gross, but she also wants Mama and Papa to recognize her when they come back, so she leaves it be and eats more sweets and watches the door. The stranger and his wife went out yesterday morning to the closest settlement for food - which is strange because there's a whole kitchen, Rey looked - but they aren't back yet.

She swings her legs back and forth, heels knocking against the side of the counter, and she takes another sweet from the jar, reaching down toward the bottom to get it. Mama always says she's not supposed to eat too many sweets, 'cause she needs to eat dinner, too, but Mama isn't here right now, so she can get away with it. It's like when she goes to visit her uncle and her aunt and her aunt isn't there because she's busy working. Her uncle lets her eat lots of sweets.

She doesn't like this planet. It's icky. There's too much sand.

The stranger and his wife will be back soon, because they told her that the settlement wasn't far away, and they wouldn't be long. Then Rey can ask when Mama and Papa are coming back to get her. And what their names are. She knows that they told her, but she's never been much good with names.

No! Come back! Come back!

The stranger and his wife aren't back yet.

Rey remembers that Mama wasn't actually on the ship that brought them here, and Papa probably had to go get her.

Come back!

Rey is six years old. She's been keeping track of how long she's been alone - 'cause she remembers things better when she writes them down, she starts scraping marks on the walls instead, one for each day. She's only been eating the fresh food in the kitchen, but she doesn't know how to cook for herself, so she's just been eating the same things. She doesn't really want to eat the icky rations bars, either. She tried one, once. It tasted like sand.

The stranger and his wife aren't back yet. Rey has eaten all of the sweets out of their sweet jar, which was nice when she was eating them, but she doesn't have any now, which is sad.

She finally goes into the 'fresher and cleans up because she smells really really gross and stinky after a week. The water is lukewarm and runs brown for a while before it runs clear, but she doesn't smell as bad afterward. She doesn't think the water is supposed to be brown, though, which means something is broken. She isn't good at fixing things, though, not like Mama and Papa and her uncle, even if her uncle lets her watch him while he's tinkering in his ship.

She can't figure out how to tie her hair up the same way that Papa had before he left - she's scared, just a little bit, that Mama and Papa won't recognize her because of it, but she tells herself she's being silly. Of course Mama and Papa will recognize her when they come back. Why wouldn't they?

She doesn't have anyone to talk to, so she talks to herself. She unpacks her bag that Papa and Mama had her pack before they took her to the shuttle, running through the darkened halls of the big stone building while klaxons blasted in her ears- takes out the doll that Mama helped her make and props it up in a chair and takes some of the water bulbs out of a cabinet and fills them with brownish water. She can pretend that it's tea. She doesn't like tea, not really, but Mama does, and Papa makes a special tea from his home, and her auntie likes it, too. She doesn't get to see her aunt very much, because her aunt is a Very Busy Person - her uncle said this in a very serious tone, Rey remembers. Her aunt has pretty hair. Her uncle is really goofy, but so are Papa and Mama, sometimes.

"Do you want some tea, Mr. Dollie?" she asks the doll, pushing one of the water bulbs across the table. "We don't have any sweetener for it, but my Mama says that sweetener just makes all your teeth rotten."

The doll seems more cheerful. Rey grins at him and chatters on.

"I know it's really hot in here, Mr. Dollie, but it gets really cold at night. I hope your clothes are warm enough. My Papa was a pilot and he wore orange just like you did, but I don't know how warm it is. We'll ask Papa when he gets back."

The doll doesn't answer, but she imagines that he nods back at her.

There are ten marks on the wall.

She's sitting cross-legged on top of the table and glaring at a cracked power cell when she hears the voice. Mr. Dollie is sitting in the chair opposite her on a big stack of ration bars with a bulb full of brownish water that he never touches.

"That's not something you can fix."

She shrieks and spins around and nearly falls off the table. The man jumps, alarmed.

"Be careful-!"

At least, she thinks he's a man. He might not be a man, 'cause he's all blue and shiny and Rey can see through him, Mr. Dollie and the water bulb and the chair and the stack of ration bars. He could be an alien man, she supposes, but Rey has never seen an alien like him before. Not that she's seen a lot of aliens. He's standing a little bit behind her, looking down over her shoulder; he seems worried, though more relieved now that she isn't going to fall, and his hair is curly, and he has a scar on his face, but it doesn't make him look very scary. He has long robes that look a little bit like what Papa wears, and sometimes Mama, and he's only a little bit older than the both of them, too.

"Oh," she says. It's been days of eating by herself and waiting for Mama or Papa or the stranger and his wife to come back, and her adventure isn't as fun when it's just a lot of waiting. But this is new! And Rey likes adventures. She pouts for a moment at the broken power cell, then back up at the man. "Are you an alien?"

"No, I'm not," the man says, lips quirking up in a smile.

"Oh," Rey says again. "Are you a ghost?"

He seems even more amused. "Of a sort."

"That's so cool!" She beams up at him. "Do you want tea?"

"No, thank you." He looks more sad when she asks that. Maybe it's 'cause he can't eat, 'cause he's a ghost. "I'm here to help you, Rey."

There are twelve marks on one of the walls. Rey frowns at the man instead of at the power cell and wonders how he knows her name. "I don't need help. I'm waiting until the stranger comes back, and then I'm waiting until Papa comes back with Mama."

"Rey..." The ghost has a strange expression. "Rey, the family staying here is dead."

She blinks.

"Oh," she says, suddenly feeling very small.

But if the stranger and his wife aren't coming back- Mama and Papa-?

"I guess I do need help."

The ghost's smile is sad. He sits down on the table next to her. "My name is Anakin, Rey. I'm your grandfather."

Rey is ten years old, and there are one-thousand, seven-hundred, and twenty-five marks covering almost the entirety of one of her walls. She knows, 'cause she's counted.

Grandpa teaches her how to fix the broken water filters so the water is no longer brown and therefore much safer to drink. He also shows her how to make real tea with the supplies that are stocked up in storage, so she and Mr. Dollie can still drink together at the table.

Grandpa can't drink tea. She knows by now that Mr. Dollie can't either, but she likes being able to pretend.

Grandpa shows her how to replace power cells when they break or run down. They've looked at the generators for the moisture farm and determined that the generators are going to break down sometime within the next decade. That feels like a long time to Rey, and Grandpa says she doesn't need to worry about it yet, so she doesn't. He shows her how to cook so that the sandy ration bars taste more like food and less like sand. He teaches her how to survive in the desert.

"There's a sandstorm coming."

Grandpa doesn't show up all of the time. It scares Rey, whenever he leaves, because she's never sure that he'll come back again. Everyone- everyone says that they'll come back, but they don't. Even if she knows Mama and Papa are going to come back if she waits long enough. Mama and Papa need to come back.

Grandpa promises her, over and over again, that he'll always come back. Rey trusts him.

She's still scared, though.

It's been a long time since Grandpa has visited, though, it's been three whole days, and Rey startles at the sound of another voice in the normally-silent house. She turns to look up at him with a gap-toothed smile; she lost a tooth a week ago and she can feel the new tooth poking out of her gums.

"I patched up the cracks in the sealant, just like you told me how to do!" she tells him. "It's okay."

He smiles back at her. "Good job, kid."

He wanders off to inspect the patch job and looks immensely proud when he sees it done almost perfectly. Rey feels happy about that. Grandpa always tells her what she's done right when she does something and then points out what she can fix or do better. The sealant is too thick in some places, so she'll need to go out and scrape it off if the sandstorm doesn't do the job for her, otherwise it'll start to bubble in the heat and make everything worse. She only goes back inside when he does, still not quite entirely convinced he won't vanish when she turns around. He always stays for a day or two, sometimes longer- breaking the rules, technically, he says once, but masters aren't for me, kiddo-- before he needs to go back to the Other Place. He tells her it's a bit like swimming, and while swimming is all fun and good, it's necessary to go back to the shore and take a break, to sit down and rest for a bit.

Rey has to ask what swimming is. She recognizes the word, remembers lots of splashing and laughter, but she doesn't have a concrete memory to put it to.

Grandpa's smile falters, fades.

"Imagine- imagine water, Rey," he says to her. "Lots of water, more than anything here. A lake a thousand times the size of this house. Cool and blue and deep enough you can be fully under the surface and your feet won't touch the bottom."

That sounds like what she remembers, but she doesn't know why she remembers it. The desert is nothing but sand, sand, sand, and she's been here for a long time.

Grandpa also tells her, just once, that Mama and Papa aren't coming back, either. He looks very, very sad when he says it- solemn, serious. Something twists in Rey's stomach, almost painfully, but- she makes a face and him and tells him he's being silly- he is being silly. Mama and Papa are going to come back, of course. Space is really really really big, and it's probably easy to get lost in a place like that, and Jakku isn't particularly notable. She just needs to wait for them to find their way back here, again.

"They're coming back," she tells him brightly. "Can you tell me a bedtime story, Grandpa?"

She adds another mark onto the wall (one-thousand, seven-hundred, and twenty-six) before crawling into bed. Grandpa slowly follows and sits down, though the mattress doesn't dip under his weight. Or lack of weight.

"Which one do you want to hear...?"

"Rey, there's someone I want you to meet."

The woman is a lot shorter than Grandpa, and she looks a bit younger, too- she has a long, long dress and her hair is done up in elaborate braids and knots that remind Rey of something- someone, maybe, but she can't place the feeling and therefore dismisses it. The woman has a pretty smile. Her eyes are kind.

Rey looks between Grandpa and the woman, who is also blue and see-through, and smiles. "Hello!"

The woman smiles back, and Grandpa turns to her. "Doesn't she look like you?" he asks her.

"She looks like her parents," the woman corrects, still smiling, and she kneels down so she's at a more level height with Rey. "Hello. I'm Padme. It's very good to meet you."

"I'm Rey!" Rey tells her proudly. "Do you know Grandpa?"

"Very well." The woman's smile only grows.

Grandpa speaks up from where he's standing by the table, looking at the two of them with a fond expression. "Rey, this is your grandmother."

Grandpa tells her a bedtime story every night that he's with her. He seems confused by the concept at first, like he's never had to tell a bedtime story or never had someone to tell it to him. He's not very good at talking, either, not at first. Sometimes he says bad words that would have made Papa cover her ears. Sometimes he trails off and forgets what they're talking about. It's better on the nights that Grandma is there, but even then, he slips up.

When he comes back one night, the sandstorm is howling outside, has been for the past two days. The power cells have failed again- they're going to collapse completely, soon, but Rey can't fix that- can't fix them now, doesn't dare- can't, anyway, even if she wanted to. Her mind is buzzing, and she feels shaky, and there are hot tears on her cheeks and she can't really quite get in a full breath. Grandpa is a blue smudge in a world of darkness.

"Rey, what is it? What happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

He can't touch her. She found that out when she tried to hug him and fell through.

Come back!

Please...

She really wants a hug. Papa gives- Papa always gave good hugs, after she had bad dreams.

There had been a big building that she remembers maybe growing up in, and Mama holding her hand tightly, and the alarms in the background. Papa, saying he's tried to contact someone whose names are a blank in her mind, but the frequencies are all jammed. And then the face of the stranger, whose name she never knew, taking her by the hand on this strange planet, and Papa ducking back into the ship, pale and drawn.

"Th-they- they- they're-"

Asking where Mama was on the ship, and Papa never responding. A boy whose face was blurred out in her mind, though she still remembers how he looked like he might be sick at any moment, telling her to hide because what's about to happen shouldn't hurt her, it's not supposed to hurt you, just get out, Rey-Rey-

"Slow down, kid. Try and breathe, can you do that for me? Breathe in with my count, then breathe out."

It's still shaking and she starts to cough, choking on her own tears and snot.

"Again, okay? One more, with my count."

Rey sucks in a gasp, chokes again, and scrubs at her face with her hands and clears her vision enough to look up at Grandpa- he makes the cramped confines of the house feel a bit larger, softening the corners with a gentle blue light and making everything seem almost ethereal.

"They're- they're not- not-" She tries another breath under his concerned gaze, mostly succeeds. "They're not- coming. M-Mama and- Papa. They're not c-coming."

Grandpa goes to put a hand on her shoulder and fazes right through. The tenuous control she has over her tears vanishes in another sob.

"They aren't," he says softly. He's told her before, but Rey's refused to believe it- still can't believe it, not really, but she's tired and alone and she just- wants a hug.

"Th-they don't- don't c-ca-are-"

"No!" Grandpa's voice is sharper than he probably intends it to be, and she flinches backwards. He can get scary sometimes, though she knows he doesn't mean to. He never gets mad at her, but- "Shit- no, Rey. They didn't leave because they don't care about you or don't love you."

"E-ever-every-everyo-one l-leaves!"

"Rey..." Grandpa goes silent for a little bit. Rey tries to stop crying just so she can see again- that he's still here, that he hasn't-

Come back!

"You're shaking, Rey," he points out, infinitely gentle, careful, calm. "Come on, let's get up, now, go sit on the bed. Gotta be more comfortable than sitting on the floor, right?"

She manages it, eventually, wraps a blanket tightly around her and curls up into a tiny ball, imagines Grandpa is stroking a ghostly blue hand over her hair to help her sleep.

"Some bad things happened to your mom and dad," he says. "Your mom went missing. Many people died, too. Your dad blamed himself. He thought- that you'd be safer here, than if you were with him. The family he left you with were friends of his."

She doesn't answer. Mama and Papa left her here for a reason. She wants a hug.

"It wasn't because they didn't love you. They loved you very, very much, Rey. You're here- becausethey loved you, as awful as that sounds."

She doesn't know if that makes it better or worse. She wraps the blanket more tightly around her. If Grandpa could touch, she imagines his fingers would have callouses. He's told her that he used to fight and work with droids and machines and ships. That's a lot of work, and it would make his hands all rough. But even if his hands were rough (something flits just out of reach in her mind- rough, calloused hands and a loud voice and a smile- here kid, your uncle's gonna show you how to wire this panel back in- she's two, H-, she can't even hold a spanner-) he would hug her gently, and he'd be warm, and he'd stroke her hair like Mama did when she couldn't sleep.

"Do you- do you want me to tell you a story, Rey?"

Rey manages to nod.

To be unable to touch is one of the most frustrating experiences of his life- afterlife- whichever. Being one with the Force has let him mellow, just a little bit- the pain and rage of the Dark no longer plagues him, has not done so for decades, now- but he has never not been emotional. Frustration at not being able to hold his granddaughter, just once- and hurt, his grandson turned to the Dark, and his children estranged from one another- and loss, because self-sufficiency is something he's known how to do for a long time, and something that he can easily teach her, but she's twelve. Twelve years old, and she has been alone, sans himself, for seven years, and it makes his non-existent blood boil- and he can't touch, can't really interact, and-

He wants to give her a hug. Make some tea for her, with a little bit of sweetener, just how she likes it. Tuck her into bed. Go shake some sense into his grandson, who has evidently gone and dug up Vader's mask from where Luke had burned his body on Endor- the bastard poisoning his mind has convinced him that Vader's ghost is encouraging him from it, and the apparition of his grandfather that he sees - Anakin, trying to shout some sense into him, for lack of another option - is just a trick of the Light, trying to seduce him away from the right path, from what he needs.

He hears the words Snoke whispers and tastes bile in his throat.

Also, on the subject of shaking sense into people: shake sense into his son.

Rey can see him. Rey needs to see him. His grandson refuses to. He's tried to reach his son or daughter and been unable to every time- the Force works in mysterious ways, and he'd really like to have a conversation with whoever came up with that, but that's aside the point- if he could pull his grandson back into the Light, he would=- if he could tell Leia where her niece was, where her brother was, he would- he can't. He can't.

He can tell stories.

Padme comes to his side, laces her fingers through his, warm and kind and he is so undeserving of her, of Rey- He sits, and Padme sits with him, and Rey should be able to peer out from underneath her pile of blankets and look at him if she wants to, confirm that he's still there. He starts talking.

Obscured by the darkness brought on by the sandstorm, there are two-thousand, four-hundred, and thirty-eight marks on the wall.

Rey is fourteen and has come to the conclusion that she is dying.

It's the only thing that makes sense, really. She feels miserable, and someone has either poisoned her or stabbed her in the gut repeatedly, and there's blood all over the sheets of the bed, and Grandpa isn't there.

Mr. Dollie is within arms reach, so she takes him and hugs him close to her and squeezes her eyes shut.

Grandpa just sighs when he sees her, murmurs that she'll be okay and that he'll be right back, he promises. So maybe she isn't dying. He'd probably be more concerned if she was.

"Right back" turns out to be close to an hour, but it's miraculously short in comparison to the amount of time she's waited for other people. Grandpa kneels down at the side of her bed, just in front of her face, and smiles reassuringly.

"Hey, kid." He gestures off to the side. Rey squints through her agony at the other figure- Auntie drifts through her thoughts for a moment before disappearing into vapor- it's Grandma, looking an equal mixture of sympathetic and concerned. "So where I grew up, social taboo was kind of non-existent. You got any questions, you can ask me, but Grandma here has actually lived through it, so I thought she'd be a better option."

Grandma starts to speak, only to turn abruptly and point her finger at Grandpa. She looks very stern. "Did you just leave her lying there without explaining anything?"

Grandpa cringes. "Um."

Grandma sighs. "Rey, your grandfather is an idiot."

Rey croaks noncommittally. Grandpa is an idiot sometimes, but he and Grandma will start to bicker if she says anything, and there are more pressing questions. "M'not dying?"

Grandma settles down on the floor where Rey can see her without moving from her cocoon of blankets, and Grandpa sits down somewhere at the food of the bed, chiming in with comments every now and again that make Rey laugh, except laughing hurts and there's a lot more blood whenever she does. Her legs feel gross.

It's a normal thing, evidently. Grandma talks her through the biology of it, how her body sheds the lining of one of its organs every month unless there's a baby, which seems like a bit of an evolutionary fault to Rey, but she doesn't question it. She might be more emotionally, quicker to cry or lose her temper. It hurts a lot, but it was like that for Grandma, too, and for Grandpa's mother. Rey listens carefully- manages to get to the 'freshers without getting too much blood on the floor. The water is starting to run brown again. Grandpa teaches her how to make tea that makes it hurt less, and Grandma shows her how to make wraps to catch the bleeding and gives her tips on how to get bloodstains out of cloth.

"Supplies-" Rey starts, except her insides still feel like they're being stabbed.

"Food will hold for the next couple weeks," Grandpa assures her. "No need for you to hop on a speederbike and travel to the settlement when you're in this state."

"The first cycle is the worst," Grandma tells her sympathetically. "You get used to it."

And then Grandpa starts another story, about heroes and villains and good versus evil, and Rey tries to listen, really, but she falls asleep before the hero even gets off his own planet, and the story is a different one the next night. She feels like it might have been an important story, but- it's just a story, like all the others.

When Rey is fifteen, the generators on the moisture farm give out in the middle of a sandstorm. Rey goes to poke at them when the weather has blown over and finds that they've really and truly give up. They've been patched and repaired so many times she's pretty sure they're more replacement parts than original.

Grandpa hums when he sees them. "Yeah, those are scrap."

She's been expecting it. The power has been cutting out more and more frequently. Her relatively few belongings have been preemptively packed, and Grandpa has been helping her refurbish an old speeder so she can travel about, and she's already been scouting around between here and the nearby settlement, trading scraps for water rations (one of the pipes burst, and now the water runs black when it runs at all) and looking for new places to stay. There aren't many nearby, but Jakku isn't the most hospitable of planets.

The farm was already run down when she first arrived. Homely, yes, but run down all the same, and she's been living there for years. It's only gotten worse with the passage of time.

Grandpa frowns at the generators while Rey brings supplies out to the speeder.

"I won't be able to get water without power. The rations stored here are the last, and the rest is going to have to come from the settlement."

The trade ratio between scrap and water is grossly unfair, but water is a necessity, and the beings who control the water can do whatever they want. Rey has tried to find a new generator, but the beings she asks have literally fallen over laughing before.

Jakku really isn't the most hospitable of planets.

Food, at least, she has in plenty. There were enough rations to outlast a planetwide siege inside the moisture farm, and she doesn't eat much. But water, water is important, and water had been the most precious commodity she had to trade. Trading scrap had been a way to bring in extra; now that she's leaving the moisture farm, trading scrap is going to be how she survives.

Ironically, the Graveyard is her sole hope for survival. Ships she recognizes from Grandpa's stories- the X-Wings and the Walkers and the AT-ATs and the TIE fighters and the hulking shells of the Star Destroyers rising up out of the sand wastes- are crashed all over the surface, and there's plenty for the taking.

"I know," Grandpa replies grimly before going back to his frowning and his mumbling. Then he pauses and looks at her. "You're strong, Rey. You can figure something out. And I'll be here with you."

She takes everything worth trading inside. She takes the rations, and an old pilot's helmet, and Mr. Dollie, and the tiny potted plant she's somehow managed to keep alive for almost ten years. It used to belong to the stranger and his wife. She takes the generators apart and salvages the scrap. She strips everything away and loads the ancient speeder with everything until it seems like it won't fly, too weighed down, and she leaves.

She winds up living inside an old AT-AT. It's closer to the settlement than the moisture farm is, which is good, and it's closer to the Graveyard, which is also good. It's going to take Grandpa time to get used to it, though- it's small, and dark, and when he fades into the world to see where she's chosen, he gets a look somewhere between panic and pain and immediately fades back out. He reappears when she heads toward the settlement the following day, where she trades in everything she has and comes back with fifteen portions of water, and starts spitting about thrice-damned greedy bastards.

There are three-thousand, nine-hundred, and twenty marks on the walls of the old moisture farm. Rey scrapes one into the metal paneling of her new home before she falls asleep.

Rey is fifteen and lives inside a destroyed AT-AT half buried in the sand and trades nearly everything under the searing Jakku sun for too-little portions of rations and water. Her hands are thin and rough and calloused. Her skin is tan and weathered. She can tie her hair up with her eyes closed, in the exact style that her parents used to do for her, though she can no longer remember their faces- or perhaps it's that she's choosing not to. There are a lot of things she chooses not to remember. She wakes up before the sun is in the sky each morning and the sand is cool enough to walk on barefoot, takes a ration bar, gets on her speeder, and flies out. She flies back to the settlement after the sun has reached its peak and sweats as she scrubs out the sand and grit in the scrap she collects. She flies to her shelter as the sun dips to the horizon and eats her only full meal of the day and drinks exactly half of the water she's been given, saving the other half for the next day. Sometimes, Grandpa comes with her to scavenge, but the sight of the Star Destroyers make him go quiet, and the unfair trades she makes in the settlement make him upset. Most of the time, she travels alone.

Grandma says she's getting too thin. Rey shrugs whenever she mentions it. It's not like it's unusual for her to go to bed hungry these days, and one meal a day and a ration bar is better than no meals a day, right? Also, the bleeding has stopped coming once a month, so it can't be that bad.

Grandpa sits down with her one night as she crawls into her bunk, perches on the edge of her mattress like he's done a thousand times before in years past. Rey regrets the words as soon as she says them- she says them anyway, for a reason she isn't quite sure of. "I'm older now, Grandpa. I don't think I need bedtime stories."

It's not even true. She's pretty sure Grandpa and his stories kept her alive when she was younger.

His smile is crooked, like he knows she's lying. "I know you don't, kid. Want to hear it anyway?"

She flushes and nod, pulling the scratchy blankets up around her and settling in.

"Well. Here goes, I guess. But- Rey, Rey, you remember what I've told you about the Force? The Lught and the Dark? What I've taught you?"

Rey floats Mr. Dollie over from where he's sitting on a shelf into her lap.

Grandpa laughs. "Okay, point proven. So- fifty years ago, maybe, give or take. Galactic Standard. There were- there- a planet. Called Tatooine. It's a lot like this one, actually, too much sand, not enough water, ridiculously kriffing hot." His crooked smile gets a bit more crooked. "On Tatooine there were- are still- slaves. And there were- there were two, a mother named Shmi, and her son, Anakin."

Rey sits up.

It's a very long story. It takes nights and nights to complete. Grandpa doesn't even appear in the mornings after he tells it, drained from all the talking. When he does tell the story, it's like back when she was a little girl and he stumbles over every other word, like it pains him. Grandma joins them, sometimes, adding her own parts to it.

It's a story about love. Shmi Skywalker does everything she can for her son- cares for him, provides for him, protects him with that quiet ferocity all the mothers in all the stories Rey's ever heard seem to have. The son escapes the planet and his chains with the Jedi and becomes a hero, but even with them, he's chained in a different way. He can't save his mother. His love, so bright and strong, becomes his downfall. A terrible, evil man who calls himself Emperor sinks his fingers into that love and poisons it and turns it into something terrible, and the hero does things that he can't undo or fix. The hero falls, and the galaxy falls with him. He hurts his wife, his daughter, his son, his friends. Subordinates. Cities. Planets.

(Grandma is with them for this part of the story, holding Grandpa's hand and continuing for him when he cannot, no matter how many times he tells her that she doesn't need to, that she shouldn't be forced into a retelling over her own death. Grandma tells him that no one has ever made her do anything, and besides, if she leaves, he'll get melancholy and spiral back into self-loathing, and she isn't going to let him do that again.)

The Jedi fall. The hero's closest friend is forced to fight him, but cannot bring himself to kill the man he had once called brother. The fallen hero is injured terribly, and his closest friend walks away, leaving him to his fate. Years and years later, that friend dies by the fallen hero's hand.

The hero's son falls and falls and hurts. His son's hand cut off, his own wife strangled and dead, the padawan youths slain, defenseless, his daughter tortured and her home planet destroyed, Han Solo frozen in carbonite and offered up as a trophy.

But the fallen hero's son is full of light and hope and something inexplicably good. He is his father's son, emotional and love burning bright and perhaps a bit too quick to anger, but he is his mother's son, calm when needed, standing firm by his beliefs. The fallen hero sees the light of his son and reaches for it and falls again to his death, but he isn't in the darkness when he dies. He kills the Emperor. He saves his son.

The son becomes a hero and a Jedi, like his father before him. He and his sister and their closest friends build something good from the ashes of something evil.

And it crumbles.

It's far from a happy story. Rey cries. Grandma cries. Grandpa cries even as he forces himself to keep talking. Some nights he ends early, and some nights he can't start at all, but he keeps telling Rey that she needs to know this, and Rey understands.

It's a story of legends. The names he says are names whispered in awed whispers even on Jakku: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca.

A story of legends, but Rey knows those names.

My name is Anakin, Rey. I'm your grandfather.

"Anakin Skywalker," she says when the story is finally, finally over, wiping the tears from her face. Grandpa his sitting at the end of her bunk, back to the wall. He nods once.

"Luke Skywalker- is- Papa."

Grandpa nods again.

"Do you... Do you hate him? For leaving you?"

Rey pauses. Thinks. She isn't sure what of her thoughts are real, actual memories and what she's imagined, but she thinks she remembers being Rey Skywalker, and- and Jedi and the Force and-

-and Mama, with her long red hair and how Papa's eyes crinkled when he saw her-

-and her cousin, the night that everyone left, telling her to hide, Rey-Rey, just hide, and you'll stay safe, I promise-

-and she finds only sadness. Those names are names of legend, and legend has no meaning on a planet where it is only through the tangible that a living is eked out. Family is a distant memory.

"No."

Grandpa closes his eyes.

"Your cousin is full of hate," he tells her. "He was scared- scared, and much, much younger than I was, when I fell- and whoever took him and twisted him into what he is now started early. Power made it so he wouldn't need to be afraid anymore. He's convinced himself of his hatred so he stays grounded. He- I've tried to talk to him, Rey, we both have, but- he doesn't-"

"You'll meet him someday," Grandma says gently, looking towards Rey even as she goes to sit down next to Grandpa and cover his hand with hers. "But that won't be for a while yet. Even now, the Light still calls to him, pulls at him."

Rey is glad that Grandma can touch Grandpa. He sounds like he needs a hug, and better one of them with hugs than none at all.

"I'm glad you don't hate your father, Rey. I don't- want you to turn out like I did."

Rey is nineteen. There are certain things she knows.

She knows how to tie her clothing so that it keeps most of the sand out. She knows, relatively, when her cycles will start and end and how to preemptively wrap the dressings around herself to keep her sheets from getting bloody; she doesn't ever get enough to eat, which throws them off, but she has a general idea. She's gotten very good at getting blood out of fabric. She knows what is worth scavenging and what isn't. She knows how to fight. She knows that when more than a certain number of ships are parked near the settlement, what she brings back in will be traded for less. She knows that the man who controls the settlement and the rations stole the Millennium Falcon from someone who stole it from someone else who stole it from Han Solo, the infamous smuggler, the war hero, her... her uncle.

She knows that somewhere far, far away, the First Order, being led by her cousin, who is a puppet controlled by someone far more sinister, is wreaking havoc. She knows that General Organa (auntie?) leads the Resistance, because the New Republic is too new and too unstable to provide any support. She knows that Grandpa and Grandma have tried talking to her cousin and her aunt and her uncle and her father time and time again and failed - her cousin dismisses them as tricks of the Light, and they can't get to her aunt and her father because the Force is a load of bantha fodder (a direct quote from Grandpa), and getting someone who isn't Force-sensitive to see Force ghosts is tricky business. She knows languages. She knows her father is still missing. She knows how to reach into the Force, how to use it. She knows how to read its warnings before danger strikes. She knows how to move things with her mind- not well, but she knows.

Her grandparents teach her these things.

There are three-thousand, five-hundred, and forty-two marks on the inside of the AT-AT shelter. She does not have a lightsaber or the materials to build one. She knows more about the Force in theory than in practice. Since Grandpa isn't corporeal, he has a bit of trouble teaching her.

Rey is nineteen. She flies an ancient speeder to another wrecked Star Destroyer and takes everything worth taking and trades it all in for a quarter-portion of water. Her lips are cracked and dry.

She finds a BB-8 droid fallen victim to another scavenger and rescues it. Grandpa has taught her the languages of droid, and he has told her, emphatically and on multiple occasions, that droids are beings, not tools. The BB-8 droid follows her home, much to Grandpa and Grandma's amusement.

She does not know that this is the moment that everything begins changing.