gestalt

Laughter filtered through the open doorway of the base’s single library. It wasn’t, at least, so far removed from the main thoroughfares, the twisting, twining corridors that led to and from Leia’s command center, the heart and soul of every base they’d settled and left behind, that Rey felt entirely isolated from her friends and—and family.

Family. Still a wonder after all this time.

Sometimes, depending on the layout, it was as far from the rest of the Resistance as it could be.

But always, it seemed, they found ruins, underground or otherwise hidden. This one tucked itself into the mouth of a cavern system on a planet so remote it didn’t even have a name, but it might as well have been D’Qar or Crait or any of the other bases they’d settled for how similar it looked to each of them.

The library never housed much, less a library and more a quiet space to study instead. Who had the time or space to haul datasticks, computers, and rare physical books across the galaxy when the First Order could still find a way to hound their steps? Sure, they’d managed to secure this location for nine standard months now, a lifetime practically, long enough that this space had begun to feel like home, too, rather than just the people around her, who’d stood with her, who, most importantly, remained by her side.

But they all still knew the First Order could find them. They always did in the end.

“Hey!” The source of the laughter poked its head into the room. A smile bloomed across Rose’s face and mischief danced in her eyes as she raked her fingers through her bangs to push them aside. “Thought I’d find you here.”

“Yes,” Rey answered, smiling in turn. Her hand hovered protectively over the pages of the Jedi text sitting open before her. Even after all these years, she’d never quite shaken the habit of protecting that which was precious to her from all comers. In so many ways, she was still a scavenger. One day, she hoped to shed this fear, this paranoia, but not yet. It wasn’t guilt that churned in her gut as a result, but it was a distant enough relation to it that she couldn’t quite meet Rose’s gaze head-on. A self-deprecating smile tugged at her mouth. This had become a running joke, Rey’s penchant for hiding in the library. “Here I am.”

Rose’s chin jerked toward the book. She didn’t seem to notice Rey’s gesture or care what it meant. “Finding anything today?”

“I’m always finding something,” she answered, and that was true enough.

Rose frowned sympathetically. “But never what you’re looking for?”

Rey’s smile turned into a grimace and Rose rolled her eyes with good-natured understanding and sympathy. They’d all been there, Rey just longer than most. And usually Rose or Finn or Poe or whomever knew what they were searching for, at least well enough that they eventually found it. Rey… Rey just had a feeling, not even a hunch, and could only hunt blindly in the dark for whatever it was she sought.

The smallest, wisest part of her whispered in her ear, in her mind. Salvation. You won’t find it in books.

The rest of her, honed by Jakku and experience, nodded along and proceeded to ignore it. Even that small, wise part of her knew better than to try and turn her from her goal. Besides, it wasn’t salvation she wanted. That much, at least, she knew.

An answer. A reason. A way to defeat the First Order.

Maybe those things. They were certainly things she wanted to find. But not salvation.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for.” It was hard for Rey to get the words out around the reticence that normally locked her thoughts away from others. Little good came from sharing her deepest worries and concerns, she’d found. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her friends, she just didn’t want to burden them when there was nothing they could do to help. “But I’m sure I’ll know it when I see it.”

“I’m sure you will,” Rose replied, steady and certain. Then she shifted a little, fidgeting, her fingers tapping against the door frame. “So Finn and I were heading down to the cantina for a bit. We were wondering if you wanted to take a break and join us? We’ve been flying so many missions, it seems like we hardly get to see you anymore.”

“Thank you, I’d—” Love that. “I still have a lot of work left to do today. I’m sorry.” This time, the churning in her gut was guilt. She and Finn were flying missions, it was true, but nobody flew more of those than Poe and Rey well knew he made plenty of time for both of them and everyone else, too. He’d even managed to catch her in the mess a time or two or ten since she’d started this project of hers. Rey had no excuse to avoid Rose and Finn so much. “Next time.”

Rose’s features shifted from pleased to melancholy, a minute change that Rey might have missed if she hadn’t become so intimately familiar with it. A ripple of directionless disappointment worked its way through the Force and lapped at the edges of Rey’s awareness. Rose believed what Rey was doing was important and she didn’t begrudge Rey that. “One of these days,” she said, a forced laugh on her lips, her finger wagging theatrically. “I’ll pry you out of here with a crowbar. Just you wait.”

A lump formed in Rey’s throat. “I look forward to it.”

They shared a slightly less-forced laugh and then Rose was gone, off to enjoy her evening.

When Rey turned her attention back to the book, she felt cold and empty, regret pouring into the vacuum left in Rose’s wake. But it seemed no matter how much remorse flooded that vacuum, it never filled.

Luckily, it also never quite managed to quell the bastions of light that flickered in those dark spaces. Few though they were, they remained bright and true. She clung to those blazing, disparate beacons and believed these small sacrifices would be worth it.

She could do nothing less.

Not when she couldn’t force herself to stop what she was doing.

Ben swung his lightsaber in a lazy curl around his legs, its hum twisting just as wildly as the motion. So much movement from the flick and turn of his wrist. The weapon’s tip skimmed the rock around his feet. The rocks hissed in protest, pieces crumbling away and melting under the strain. This wasn’t the ideal place for practice—no place was, really, not where variety could not be had—but Rey was well-acquainted with fighting under the open sky with nowhere to hide.

Close, confined spaces not so much.

“You’re distracted,” he said, half-admonishing, half-questioning. He kept his tone even as ever, like letting anything else through would send him careening down a path from which Rey could not save him. This wasn’t the Ben she’d known before, calm until he wasn’t, curious and caring until he wasn’t, but it was a Ben she wanted to know because despite everything, she still…

She still.

She just—didn’t know how.

“There’s a lot going on,” she answered, mirroring his stance, the motion of his arm. It felt natural, like her body already knew what to do and how to do it. Blue light sparked and pooled in the uneven outcroppings around them, cast unusual shadows overhead and underfoot.

He nodded, but instead of answering, he swung wide, purposefully clipping the wall to send a spray of gravel into the air. It came as more of a surprise than it should have—at one time, they’d been so tuned to one another, they might as well have been the same person—but less of one than any normal human had any right to recognize.

Parrying the blow, she returned the favor with a few of her own. Lacking Ben’s reach, she improvised, slashing in ways she suspected no great Jedi master would have approved of. She’d read the texts and had scavenged a few datacubes, precious enough that she feared to keep using them lest they break or worse. Battle was an artform, multiple artforms according to her research, formal and staid and beautiful, inflexible.

For Rey, battle had never been such a pretty thing as that. Battle was for survival at all costs. It was mean and ugly and brutal. The most perfect form would not save you. Better to improvise and win than get mired in tradition.

Still, it didn’t hurt to know, did it?

“Ack,” she said, annoyed with herself and with Ben, coming back to center, forcing herself to remember the basics she’d already studied. “You did that on purpose.”

Ben’s mouth twitched. “Maybe. But you’re the one who wanted to learn ‘stodgy Jedi techniques.’”

“You called them that,” Rey replied, “not me.” In fact, they’d argued about it more than once. “You’re already a good fighter,” he’d said time and again, passing one of the holocrons between his hands. “You don’t need these.”

“You didn’t disagree.”

You’re not wrong, Rey thought. It might have felt natural, but it wasn’t useful. The Jedi trained in order to bring themselves closer to the Force. Rey trained so that she wouldn’t die when a First Order stormtrooper shot bolt after bolt of blaster fire at her, when one of Ben’s errant knights tried to strike at her with skills that almost, if not quite, matched Ben’s. She trained because to not train meant death and defeat and worse. “It’s still useful, Ben. Everything I’ve done—” It’s all for something.

Ben sighed and bowed his head slightly. “I know,” he answered, weary, lifting one hand in apology. “I’m well aware.”

“Good.” She nodded, prim, sharp as a knife. Given how often they’d had this argument, she’d have been angry if he tried to pretend like he wasn’t aware. She extinguished her ‘saber and Ben followed suit. With a flick of her fingers, she raised the emergency lights they’d strung up out here to make this part of the cave usable for their purposes. It was the most peaceful place in the whole complex and not a single other person seemed to care about it.

Rey couldn’t imagine why; lights glinting off the dark, gleaming walls, it was beautiful. Not picturesque, maybe, but lovely in its own way, full of glittering life, like stars in the night sky.

But for all its allure, she felt so alone here.

Even with Ben.

Maybe especially with him.

She might have touched him and not felt anything at all for how carefully he held himself, how isolated. It was the very worst part of their sparring sessions, these endings. Some days were better than others. Today, a lump lodged itself in her throat and left her clamoring for things she didn’t understand and couldn’t articulate. When she touched him on the shoulder as she passed him, she felt it all the more keenly.

He was cold to her touch.

She remembered a time when he flared hot inside of her, the barest caress of his fingertips licked like fire across her palm. No matter how much hurt it had caused her in the end, she missed that nearness, that understanding.

His eyes dropped to the ground and he shrugged out of her touch, shaking it off as though he didn’t want the reminder either. That, at least, made her feel a little bit better. She wasn’t the only one suffering. “Are you going back to the library?”

“Yes,” she replied, furrowing her brows. “Where else would I go?”

His attention drifted for a moment the way it always did when he sensed something through the Force. “Dinner, maybe,” he said, dry. “Like everyone else on the base.”

Shaking her head, she backed toward the base’s entrance, barely an entrance at all, more like a hole that had been cut into the thin, sturdy metal of its walls and covered back over with the circular piece, held in place by a hinge and a prayer. “There’s too much to do.”

“You won’t find what you’re looking for,” he warned her, somber. He spoke with the authority of experience and, in turn, she didn’t doubt him.

That didn’t—wouldn’t—stop her. “Perhaps not,” she answered, “but I have nothing more pressing to do with my time.”

“Most people need to eat.”

She shrugged, pulling at the ‘door.’ It squealed in protest, but did as she required. “That’s rich coming from you. I haven’t seen you rushing to the cantina at scheduled mealtimes.” Rey regularly missed out on them, but she poked her head into the mess at whatever hour she pleased and always found something to graze on. It still bewildered her to know she could do that. No matter what time of the day or night, she would find something to sustain her. It didn’t require a fight or hard, back-breaking work to get it either.

It was a revelation.

It was home.

But she’d never caught Ben at it.

Ben tipped his head in acknowledgment, more than she’d expected and less than what she wanted: a response, a retort, a snap of annoyance. Anything. But cool composure settled across his shoulders like it was the mantle upon which all his honor hung.

It made her want to push, demand, beg for something else, even a screaming match to remind her that Ben was still Ben in there somewhere and that he gave enough of a damn about things to feel anything at all.

“Have dinner with me, then,” he said, a plaintive note in his voice, but something akin to an amused quirk of a smile on his lips, self-deprecating. “We can both rectify this oversight.”

Rey held the door for him, watching him fold himself up as he crouched to step inside. “I meant what I said.” Frustration soaked into her words, saturated them. “I have work to do.”

“It’s a fool’s errand.”

She stepped inside with a measure more dignity than Ben had shown, only having to duck a little bit. “Can you even hear yourself?” Her knuckles connected lightly with his bicep, a warning. “You don’t want to help, fine, but don’t tell me I’m a fool for hop—for trying.” Blinking, she looked away and set her jaw, molars clenched. She found, suddenly, that she very much didn’t want to see him anymore tonight. “Good night, Ben.”

Slipping nimbly past him, she just barely managed to avoid his touch, his fingers skimming over and failing to grasp her elbow. Good, she thought, a little mean. If he wanted to reject her work at every turn, she could do the same in this small way.

“Rey,” he called after her.

She, mind already transported back to the research that awaited her, didn’t hear him and she certainly didn’t answer. Let him ruminate on that. And if he was so determined to see her unhappy, let him be so, too.

Maybe she was a fool, but she was determined; she’d find out on her own if she was a fool or not. She didn’t need Ben’s help on that score.

A noise in the doorway startled her from her reveries, her arm nearly knocking an open book from the table. Its spine cracked just so as it teetered on the edge, pages flipping, the weight pulling it further off-balance. Before Rey could grab it, it pushed itself back. Or rather, Ben pushed it back with a gentle nudge from the Force.

“Ben,” she called, surprised and pleased before suspicion set in. “What are you doing here?” Her chin jerked toward the tray he carried. It held a variety of fruits and cheeses, a pair of steaming mugs that probably held caf because that was the only thing Ben drank, Jedi training be damned. “What’s that?”

Ben’s brow arched. “Dinner,” he replied. “I thought it would be obvious.”

“Okay, dinner. Why?” She glanced at the chrono on the far wall. She’d been at it for another two hours and she hadn’t even noticed it. Her hunger only made itself known as he placed the tray near her stack of books. From this angle, she could see there was also a few cuts of meat and a couple of pieces of flatbread. Nothing extravagant, but still overwhelming after all this time.

Rolling his shoulder, he looked away and drew up the nearest chair, slid it near enough to her that the pale gray seats almost touched. “You were right,” was all he said, as simple as the meal before them. “I could help.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. Rarely at a total loss for words, she fumbled for a response, no longer as annoyed by Ben’s indifference as she’d been earlier. In fact, if she allowed herself to really think about it, she had no real idea what he would do even if he could assist her. “I…”

He waited, as patient as he could be, which meant he sat very still and kept his eyes on her, watching her while she formulated a response. It didn’t help in the slightest and she had to look away to regain her bearings.

She missed the scant days when it had been simple to talk to him. Though they’d been lightyears from one another at the time, she’d never had any difficulties conveying her needs, wants, insults, complaints. She could have told him anything and it would have been as easy as breathing.

“I don’t know how,” she admitted finally, swallowing around her sense of defeat, the admission awkward and pained. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.” Heat lapped at the edges of her words, spoken too quickly and too sharply. Her failures weren’t Ben’s fault; she had no reason to take them out on him.

It was just so exhausting to not know her own mind. For at time, she’d been so certain of her place, the world around her sandblasted and familiar, her goal resolved and crystal clear. Wait for her parents. Survive. Scavenge this ship, then this one, then this one. It was easy. Now all she knew was complexity, everything so much more difficult than she remembered it being. She never wanted to go back to Jakku now, had no reason to want it, but there were some upsides to living each day as it came, her only worries of the most basic variety—worries that she shared with everyone around her, except perhaps for Unkar Plutt and his cronies, who’d gone well beyond eking out existences to profiting from those people who scrapped and scavenged for their lives.

“Has anything jumped out at you?” Ben asked, curious as he leaned in. Opening the cover of one of the books with the delicate touch of his fingertip, he tilted his head as he read, nodding along as though he easily understood the dense verbiage inside. And maybe he did. He was the closest living thing to a Jedi they had. One day, Rey was determined to exceed him, but even at this point, even though he’d rejected his training, Ben was still the only authority Rey had. “I never got to see these when I was training.”

Rey turned in her seat a little, her knee brushing the outside of Ben’s. That contact sent a fizzling spark through her, like one of those tiny, sparkling fireworks some of the crew occasionally broke out when they decided it was time for a celebration. Instead of flaring, bright and beautiful, it hissed a little and faded quickly. She didn’t, however, pull away. “You didn’t?”

“Mmm. No. Luke wasn’t much interested in them.” The corner of Ben’s mouth quirked. “He thought for the Jedi to survive, they would have to transcend the shackles of ancient wisdom. Shows what he knew.”

“I don’t think ancient Jedi wisdom would have stopped Snoke,” Rey replied, “or what happened to you.” He’d taken responsibility for his actions, did what good he could to make up for it, muddled his way through the mire of guilt that he didn’t have to voice for Rey to know was there. But Rey was certain, so certain, that whatever culpability belonged to Ben would never have reached this point without Snoke.

“Maybe.” His eyes found hers and she wanted so desperately to know what he was truly thinking. “Maybe not.”

“I didn’t mean to—” Stir all this up, she thought, unable to say it. Hopefully, he knew what she meant anyway. Though she always meant the best and didn’t have a problem saying as much, sometimes she just didn’t know how to.

“It’s okay.” Careful fingers flipped the first thick, crackling page. “These are interesting.”

“You could’ve seen them before,” she said. “They don’t belong to me. I just—” Grimacing, she looked away. “—kind of stole them.”

Surprised laughter greeted her admission, but when she looked at him, his expression was already sobering. Had she ever seen him smile? Or show happiness? She didn’t think she’d even heard him laugh and regretted that she hadn’t been ready to better preserve the moment in her memory. “I know you think the Jedi should be rebuilt.”

“And I know you disagree.” Her jaw tightened with unhappiness. This wasn’t the first time this had been a point of contention between them. It likely wouldn’t be the last.

He tipped his head in acknowledgment, apparently as uninterested in starting a fight as she was. “I still believe you recovered them for a reason. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that.”

Briefly, she closed her eyes, her thoughts dwelling in the past, a past that looked so much brighter and full than the present, dark and empty. The First Order was still out there. They still controlled everything. With Ben’s defection, there was more in-fighting, which helped, but other than that…

She still felt as far away from him as they’d been back on Crait, on Takodana and Starkiller. They were no longer enemies, but were they truly the friends they could have been? She remembered how it had felt to touch him—across light years, a miracle, an impossibility—and speak with him on the Supremacy, fight alongside him. For a short time, they’d been two halves of something Rey had never experienced before and could have chased to the ends of the galaxy now and not found again.

He was sitting right here and even still she missed him, a phantom ache tugging at her sternum. If she closed her eyes, he might not have been there at all. If he sat still enough, quiet enough, he might disappear completely.

She had Finn and Rose and Poe, the Resistance and Leia and everyone here; she loved them desperately, to a frightening degree sometimes. She would do anything for any one of them, sacrifice whatever she had to in order to be there for them. But the Force, tainted though it might have been by Snoke’s influence and desires, had unlocked something inside her for which she still clamored, that only Ben had been able to reach.

“I think I knew,” she said, ponderous, “what was going to happen.” She’d sensed Luke’s grief before they parted, the driving need to destroy everything he’d once sworn to uphold, and Rey had been unable to let go. It had been pure instinct driving her and little else, taking those books.

But that was what being a Jedi was supposed to be about, right? Letting go? Even Ben had tried, in a way, to impart that lesson to her. Not that he’d been any good at it, but the words had come out of his mouth. A good Jedi might well have let the books be destroyed.

She would always, she thought, fail in this regard. Whatever part inside themselves other people could find in order to do that, she couldn’t. Or maybe she didn’t have it at all and there was nothing to find except a hole maybe where that ability lay dormant.

She hadn’t even found anything in the texts that she couldn’t already have figured out from the handful of lessons Luke had imparted to her. There was wisdom, sure, but it was the same wisdom she could have found on Jakku if she’d thought to speak with the women who’d toiled their lives away for scant rations, the same wisdom anyone with an open heart and mind might have derived for themselves.

Instead, the earliest Jedi confined it to hidebound texts, spoke of “the virtues of the path of the Force” without offering any true guidance on how to wield it, what it could do.

Perhaps she would have to wait until the war was done and they were victorious. She had no idea what she would do after. Finding understanding, seeking out others who already understood, it was as worthy a goal as any. Maybe there was wisdom hidden out there in the galaxy that wasn’t held in the most ancient of Jedi texts. It wasn’t like she’d seen so much of galaxy to know.

Ben looked as though he wanted to say something. Whatever it was remained a mystery, however, because he cleared his throat and returned his attention to the book in front of him. “Huh,” he said, biting his lip as he flipped to the back of the book. The rest of that particular volume had been typeset, printed in bold, legible High Galactic. This, though, had been inked in something that looked closely related to Aurebesh, if not exactly a form Rey recognized. It was so very stylized—or perhaps merely scribbled in a mad dash to get the words down—no, not words… “What do you think that is?”

Squinting resolved the letters. “A book title, maybe?” Her fingertip skimmed the dry, ancient page and tapped at one particular word. “This looks like author to me.” She tapped at another. Excitement tried to build inside of her, but she snuffed it out. A protective measure she knew well from Jakku. “And this could be a name?”

“Just because it looks like it…”

“Doesn’t mean it is.” She sighed and brushed her hand across her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. “But I haven’t seen any references to anything outside of these volumes anywhere in these other texts. It could mean something.”

“It could mean nothing.”

Rey stood and scooped the book into her arms, holding it tight against her chest. “Perhaps, but I have to try.”

“Rey, this isn’t going to—it won’t fix anything,” Ben said, bleak. “You’ll only end up disappointed.”

Anger licked its way up her spine. Perhaps it was easy for him to say that, to be so resigned to what his life had become. Or maybe he didn’t feel anything like what Rey did and so couldn’t understand. “Then I’ll be disappointed knowing I did everything I could to—”

“I don’t think Luke would have wanted this for you.” His arms opened wide to indicate the small stack of precious books before her. “This isn’t…”

“What do you know about what Luke wanted?” she asked, vehement, that anger spreading, a flash fire igniting inside of her. Who was he to tell her any of this? He could ignore how wrong everything felt if he wanted to, but he had no right to dictate to her what would upset her and what wouldn’t. He had no right.

Still, a matching anger flashed in his eyes, one that was quickly extinguished, replaced with something so much harder to identify, a miasma of conflicting emotions, each flickering too quickly to register.

“You don’t even know what I want,” she finished, stalking toward the door. This conversation no longer interested her and the heat building inside of her would need an outlet. The easiest and most convenient would be her mouth in the form of words she did not truly mean—except for how the smallest, basest parts of her maybe did mean them.

“Does it matter,” he said, low, but still loud enough that she could hear him from the doorway, “when it’ll only cause you pain in the end?”

“It matters.” The words fell from her lips in a snarling tangle, dangerous, nearly as low-toned as Ben’s words had been. And even though she was sure that was what she said, it felt a whole lot like what she’d really meant was, I matter.

Though computers and various projectors littered the base, they were mostly confined to use by officers while everyone else made due with making queries of the various intelligence-gathering droids on base or used their personal pads. She’d already more than scoured the base’s intranet for anything that might have helped her. For such a resource-strapped organization, they did house a great deal of information about so many topics it had, at one time, made Rey’s head spin. Now she was used to navigating it.

It just didn’t contain what she needed. Not even the records Ben had taken from deep within the First Order’s own datacores—what bits and pieces of it she had instant, unfettered access to anyway—had anything of use. She could poke all day at what records still existed of the Jedi in the late Republic era. And she had. It was one of the first things she’d done.

But all references to any specific texts, locations, anything concrete that Rey might have used, it had all been scrubbed, probably as soon as the Empire had taken hold.

She wasn’t sure what she needed now, but she was certain it would require HoloNet access at least.

The thought made her wince as she trudged toward the small room that housed a few computers that were free for use by just about anybody.

Despite that fact, it was rarely used.

Well. Mostly. Just as Rey had anticipated and hoped for.

Rey smiled as she stepped inside through the open doorway, knocking on the wall to alert the blue-skinned Squamatan named Suralinda of her presence. She was one of Poe’s friends, often accompanying Black Squadron on missions, and though she’d always been friendly to Rey, Rey remained a bit intimidated by her. Perhaps because she was Poe’s friend. He kept strange company, their tales tall and unbelievable. If not for the official records that backed them up, Rey would have thought them lies.

“Rey,” she said, smiling, the points of her teeth glinting mischievously in the light. “So good to see you.”

“You, too, Suralinda,” she replied. She took another handful of steps in. Her book remained clutched in her arms even though she felt like a small child holding it so. But it was too precious; she couldn’t help treating it delicately.

Suralinda’s dark brow climbed her forehead and her curious brown eyes fell to the book before swiftly returning to Rey’s face. “Is there something perhaps I can help you with? You don’t normally make use of these facilities.”

And Suralinda would know. This was, in all the ways that mattered, Suralinda’s territory. A journalist’s finest tool, she’d one informed Rey, very seriously before dissolving into laughter, except perhaps for a well-placed camdroid.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, self-conscious now. Rey knew so much, but it seemed like people like Suralinda knew so much more. “I was hoping to find…”

Suralinda nodded, patient as she waited for Rey to continue.

“I don’t even know where to look. I’ve got—this is a Jedi text. There’s a name in it. I was hoping to see what I could find on the HoloNet. There’s nothing in the internal files that I could find.”

“You won’t find anything on the HoloNet, I’m afraid. And if there is something, it’ll flag you with the First Order faster than you can snap your fingers.” She did just that in demonstration. “Those bastards have gotten tricky. Put the pressure on a whole lot of good slicers and techies.” She must have seen something of Rey’s disappointment, because she smiled, consoling, and gestured Rey forward. “Luckily, the HoloNet is not your only option.”

“It’s not?”

Suralinda’s grin widened, eyes lighting with genuine pleasure. “Oh, no. Some things cannot be tamed. The Undervine is one of them.” She sighed with contentment. “Haven’t had a good excuse to dig deep in a while. Mostly I just file my reports, you know. Keep up with what other freelance journos are doing. Get paid extravagantly for juicy exclusives. And donate the proceeds to the cause, of course.”

“Of course.” Rey didn’t have half a clue what her idea of juicy exclusives were and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Suralinda’s knuckles cracked as she stretched her fingers wide. “What kind of name is it we’re looking at?”

“Book title,” Rey said, wincing, “I think.”

“Author, by any chance?”

“Possibly, but I can’t read it. I’m not even sure my reading of the title is correct.”

“I know someone who might be able to help,” Suralinda said. “Let’s take a holo and I’ll get it to her and it’ll at least give us a place to start.”

“On the Undervine?” Rey didn’t mean to be skeptical, but she’d never heard of such a thing.

“Think of it as an underground HoloNet. Got its start under the Empire and it’s flourished ever since.”

“Even when the Rebellion defeated them?” She couldn’t imagine the need for something like that when the New Republic was in charge, but she was relieved to know it existed now anyway.

“Oh, definitely. There’s always news the government doesn’t want the people to know. Even grand New Republics such as the one that followed the Empire’s defeat. And, well, there are always going to be criminals, aren’t there? If it wasn’t the Undervine, it would be something else. In fact, I’m sure it was something else before that.”

“Right. Of course. That makes sense.”

“May I?” Suralinda asked, pointing toward the book. It felt strange to Rey to give it up. She was the only one besides Ben who’d ever even looked at it. It didn’t seem wrong to let Suralinda touch it, but there was still a pang of guilt as she gave it over, like she should have been able to do this by herself.

Or, her traitorous mind said, with Ben’s help. Ben, who didn’t care. Ben, who didn’t want to know or have anything to do with it.

Even though it was important to Rey.

Suralinda held the tome between gentle hands, waited as Rey flipped to the page in question and pointed out the artifact in question. It was so small in the grand scheme of things, the barest flicker of light in the dark, a star so distant that to reach it would have required years. She could barely feel the warmth of hope from it and yet she knew she had to take this chance and knew, too, that she would continue to take it until she could do so no longer.

This would be her life’s work if it had to be, this search for truth in a galaxy that had tried for so long to suppress and slaughter it. Whether that was a good thing, as she believed, or bad, as Ben did, she couldn’t yet say, but someone had to do it. And she was the one to whom this task had fallen. No one else could or would take it.

Her sadness at the realization would gnaw a hole inside of her if she let it, one that could stretch across the vast spans of empty space between stars if it grew unchecked. This work was the only thing she’d so far found that could hold it at bay.

Maybe it was the Force that guided her.

And maybe the Force was wrong.

But if it was, she was willing to suffer the consequences. She was, in fact, willing to do more than that.

“If anyone will know something,” Suralinda said, encouraging as she clasped her hand around Rey’s shoulder, “it’s Doctor Aphra.”

Rey hadn’t been sure what she was expecting when Suralinda had told her the news and asked her to come quick, but meeting a middle-woman with hair only starting to go gray from what she could see, pieces falling out from beneath a ratty old hat and goggles, from halfway across the galaxy was not it. She brushed the stray tendrils of her own hair self-consciously behind her ears and lifted her chin. There was nothing this woman could say that would hurt her. She’d only remain at the center square, nowhere to go but outward.

“My,” Aphra said, a bright, brilliant grin on her mouth, “you aren’t at all what I expected when Suralinda sent this fragment to me. Tell me, where did a young thing like you find such a dusty old scrap of ephemera as this?”

“I’m twenty-five,” Rey answered, immediately feeling foolish for answering at all. It was the kind of response a child might make to distinguish just how old they truly are, how worldly and wise. I’m eight and a half. She thought about how she might have stomped her feet to get her point across. I’m not a baby.

“The best age,” Aphra agreed, grave, only to immediately undermine it with a wink. “Something tells me you came across something that you shouldn’t and you took it. Am I correct?”

Gasping in anger, Rey shook her head. “No, that’s not—”

Aphra’s fingers flicked through the air, ending up splayed before her so she might inspect her nails. “Pity. It’s what I would have done. Jedi artifacts are so valuable these days. Lots of people want to know the Jedi’s secrets. That’s what information suppression does to people.”

“I—what?” Rey’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

“Didn’t Suralinda mention?” Aphra leaned forward and seemed to stare right into the heart of Rey, seeing everything she’d done. It should have made Rey feel more guilty than she did. Instead, she was less abashed than she’d been with Ben. Something about Aphra put her at ease despite herself. Or perhaps merely put her on edge in different, easier ways. “I’m Doctor Aphra, rogue—”

Rey’s teeth clenched. This was not at all how she thought this would go. All she could hope was Suralinda had bounced their signal so far around the galaxy that Aphra would never, ever be able to find the base. Anyone who styled themselves a rogue anything had to be trouble. “I already know your name, but—”

Aphra laughed. “You’re very cute when you’re frustrated, Rey of Jakku. Don’t worry, I won’t paint you a criminal just yet even if I can’t say I don’t disapprove. Rescuing moldy old books is a hobby of mine.”

“Stealing them, you mean.”

“Well, yes. And how did you get those things off Ahch-To, I wonder? Not by liberating them with Luke Skywalker’s permission, I don’t think.” The veneer of Aphra’s bravado faltered as she said his name and it was like a slap in the face to hear it out of her mouth. So few talked about Luke anymore, only Leia really, and then only with a select few; everyone else felt it was too morbid. It was the same way so few of them talked about Han, dancing around the subject.

They’d all lost so much; Rey would like to avoid losing those memories, too. There was little enough she had of either of them and she hadn’t exactly parted on good terms with Luke, had she?

“Maybe not,” Rey finally admitted, “but what of it?”

Aphra shrugged. “Far be it from me to lecture you on thievery. Suralinda said you were wanting to know what that referred to. She mentioned you thought it was a book?” Now, Rey could truly see the scholar in her come out, bright-eyed and eager, chomping at the bit to explain, to explore, to teach. “What makes you think so?”

Why would I tell you, Rey thought, uncharitable, when I’m so clearly wrong. “It’s not a book?”

Shaking her head, Aphra leaned back and sucked obnoxiously on her teeth. “Close. Well, I can see how you got there. You’ve studied ancient texts for a while, huh?”

“Not really,” Rey answered, rolling her shoulder. “Not enough to know what I’m looking for, I guess.”

“That’s okay. I’ll sort you out. It’s a constellation. An old constellation named for Tiesae, Creator of Pathways. Creator. Author. Same difference way, way back. At least to the people who named it.”

A constellation.

Great.

And though Rey had told herself not to be disappointed, something small and painful and brittle collapsed inside of her, crumpling itself up and lodging in her heart. It should have locked it all away, that disappointment, instead it shoved it out and onto the surface where anyone, she worried, could see.

“Whoa, hey. What’s with the sparkle in your eyes, sweetheart? This is a map. A bad, not terribly detailed one, but a map nonetheless. Better than a book in a lot of ways. This gives you someplace to go. Way cooler, right?” She grimaced a little, like she wasn’t sure what to do with someone she’d clearly upset in some way. “I can even point you in the right direction.” She tried to smile, but she was still obviously feeling out of her depth, searching Rey’s face for something. “If you’d like. I get the feeling you’ll know what to do once you get there. The Force works that way, you know?”

“You don’t know…” Anything about me, Rey thought. Her brows furrowed.

“Your face’ll freeze that way if you’re not careful,” Aphra said, cheerful. “And it’s not hard to tell when there’s a Force user around, doll. All of you are so—” She pulled a look that most likely did match Rey’s, consternatnation writ across it in the slash of her mouth, the inward curve of her eyebrows. It looked a lot like Ben’s usual expression, too. “—delightfully serious all the time.”

That only made Rey frown harder. And the knowledge of that made her even more annoyed. Damn this woman.

“I’ll forward the sector coordinates you’ll need to Suralinda. All heavily encrypted and untraceable, of course. Don’t want anyone sneaking along who oughtn’t.”

“And what will this cost me?” Because generosity always cost something.

“Bring back a holo and a story from Empty Space.”

Grimacing, Rey wrinkled her nose. “Is that what it’s really called?”

“No, I call it that. And you’ll see why when you get there.” She paused, biting at the corner of her mouth. “Besides, if someone gets to name Wild Space, Wild Space, why can’t I give something a ridiculous name, too?”

“If that’s what you want your legacy to be,” Rey said, unable to help herself.

Aphra grinned and snapped off a sharp salute. “Good luck, young lady. I wish you all the trouble in the world. Oh! And tell Chewbacca I swear on my love for Sana Starros that I’m not screwing you over here. He’ll want to know that.”

Aphra nodded, decisive, proud. Rey had no idea who Sana was, but she hoped that oath meant something.

“Thanks, I think.”

Aphra winked again and the holoprojection of her faded from view. In her absence, room now so much darker than before, Rey breathed out.

Shit. She had something to go on. Suralinda and Aphra had given her that chance.

She owed them; hopefully she’d be able to pay them back for their kindness.

If Aphra could be described as kind anyway.

Rey’s pack stood in the corner of the Falcon’s open exit hatch, half-collapsed on itself. She carried little at the best of times and she rarely had any reason to pull it out of the drawer she kept it in under normal circumstances. Her eyes caught it as she finished prepping the ship, Chewie supervising the fueling efforts.

He rumbled at her, paternal, as he groused about how foolish it was for her to go alone. The ship needs two pilots, he insisted. It’s my ship. Technically.

“I’ll be fine,” Rey insisted as she smoothed the last handful of ready meals into a crate. “It won’t be long.”

I’m too old to believe this shit, he said. How recently do you think I was born?

Rey bit back a grin. “It’ll be a day or two at the most. Aphra said it was safe. Unoccupied. I’ve just got to check if her intel is correct.” And take a look around.

Chewbacca growled, low and dangerous. The day I trust Aphra is the day I shave my pelt.

Despite herself, Rey laughed, affection for her very tall friend overflowing inside of her. Not so long ago, she never could have imagined someone like him caring about her. Now she had so many who cared, who wanted to see her safe and protect her from harm. It was nice. So very nice. Even when it was annoying. “I think I would know if she was trying to trick me. She was cagey, but I think that’s just her.”

Harrumphing, he shook his head and got back to ensuring everything was going to plan. His clodding steps rang out as he did a circle around the ship. Will you comm at least?

“Yes,” she replied. “Every two hours. Just like we agreed.” Her heart, still full, gladdened more when he nodded and finally conceded. She sometimes thought he still missed Han—who didn’t, there was a hole in Rey’s own heart where he’d taken up residence and had never left despite how short a time they’d known one another—who always needed him to go on adventures, too. Where Han went, so went Chewbacca. Now he had other duties, different duties.

If this were any other mission, she would have asked him along. But this one, she needed to see through herself.

Another set of steps clicked across the smooth tarmac on which the Falcon was currently perched. These ones were also familiar and Rey stiffened to hear them. “Ben,” she called when he was close enough, not quite within reach, but nearer than she expected today of all days. “What are you doing here?”

A thud sounded at his feet, a clack as things resettled on the ground. She turned.

It was his own pack, straps pooling together in a pile before it. That detail seemed important. She didn’t know why. It was something to focus on besides his face; she didn’t think she could bear to look at him right now.

And she didn’t dare hope.

“I—” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have… there’s a lot of things I shouldn’t have done. But this is important to you. I want it to be important to me, too.”

She finally looked up and there was so much earnestness in his gaze that she couldn’t help but feel relief, cool and bubbling and perfect, well inside of her. He might not agree with her; he might never agree with her about this. But he wanted to be with her through it despite that.

It meant something to Rey; it meant everything.

Chewbacca stopped and peered at the both of them. Well, he said, that’s something at least.

Ben got an inscrutable little look on his face, something longing and needful and pleased, too. Rey couldn’t quite parse what it signified, only that he often got that way when Chewbacca addressed him. “You don’t think I’m at least as likely to get into trouble as she is, Chewie?”

I don’t think anyone is quite as good as Rey at getting into trouble, he rumbled. But you’re a close second.

“A close second,” Ben repeated, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he ducked his head. He did that on purpose, Rey thought, so that nobody could see his eyes and how fragile they sometimes still got. After everything, he still felt so much. “I guess I can live with that.”

The grin that spread across Rey’s mouth couldn’t have been stopped even if she’d wanted to. It carried with it the tide’s strength, inexorable and inescapable. “Ben,” she said, the moments counting down in the back of her mind, clicking over one by one. She was that much closer now to having answers and Ben—Ben was here.

Ben’s gaze found hers, locked itself into place like it was always meant to be there. With him here now, it felt inevitable, impossible to be any other way. She hoped somehow he felt it, too, that he wasn’t regretting his decision to come today.

“Thank you,” Rey said. There was so much else to say, but she couldn’t find the words. Even if they existed somewhere, the right phrasing, the perfect cadence, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to get them out. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to Ben, who deserved to know, but he didn’t seem to mind, nodding in something approaching pleasure.

She would have to trust that, trust him.

It was easier to do than perhaps it should have been.

“Aphra called it Empty Space?” Ben asked, dubious, and Rey wasn’t entirely sure why.

She was used to space being crowded with stars, sometimes bright enough with them that she didn’t even need internal lights to see by. Occasionally, people called space cold and dark and she’d never understood it. Space sparkled; it gleamed; it seemed to breathe around her in twinkling inhalations and exhalations.

Now she could maybe see the point of Aphra’s chosen name for the place, obvious though it was. It was desolate here, but they’d followed her navpoints exactly. These were the coordinates she’d sent. There was no doubt about it, even if Rey’s eyes doubted everything.

It was so dark out there, black and blank, so dark that it seemed to pulsate.

“She’s not wrong,” Rey pointed out, ignoring the crawling nothingness outside as best she could. What was there even to find out here. “I’m going to try a scan,” she added, snapping a couple of levers into place, flicking switches, pressing buttons. Even to her own ears, she didn’t seem particularly hopeful.

What would a scan show that the Force couldn’t? Though her eyes might have deceived her, the Force didn’t. There was nothing out there.

“You always take me to the nicest places,” Ben said, quiet, a little shy. A minuscule crack formed in the ice that surrounded Rey, letting what small amount of warmth in it could. She clung to that warmth, huddled around it.

“You never take me anywhere,” Rey replied, like this was an old joke they shared, well-worn and comfortable. “Besides, you decided to come.” She cleared her throat and stared down at her hands. “Thank you for that.”

“You said that already.”

“It’s no less true now.” It was difficult for her, sometimes, to say what she meant. Flinging insults, joking around, those were easy enough—she’d learned how to relax around people, how to be easy. Now, the hard part was being as earnest as she remembered herself to be before. She couldn’t recall how to be the sort of woman who’d spent fifteen years waiting for a family that would never come. That woman, though, could have gotten the words she’d wanted out. That woman might even have known how to continue on, happy, just having Ben by her side.

That woman who lived in her past, she was lucky in one way that Rey now was not.

She would have known how to say what she wanted to say.

But she’d also never had Ben inside her head; she’d never known what that kind of connection could feel like. Even with all the pain, a jagged fjord worth of it, between them, it was worth it.

Perhaps that was what she really meant, but her tongue stopped the words from forming. She could not give this one thing to him.

“That’s…” Ben paused, daring to scan the terrifying emptiness around them. He hardly seemed affected by it, though it darkened his eyes almost to black. She had to look away from him as he continued speaking. “I appreciate that.”

“Right,” Rey said as the scanner beeped its completion of the task she’d set it. The computer spat its analysis at her. Nothing. Nothing. Maybe some—no, nothing. Nothing. It wasn’t like she’d suspected otherwise.

Though she could feel disappointment welling inside of her, she didn’t allow it to take hold. Her work had brought her to this place, her determination. It didn’t matter how much it terrified her to look at that much inky darkness, she would see this through. By the time she was done, she’d know for certain what was here.

In her heart, she knew there was something to be discovered; she just had to find the key.

“Do you have any ideas?” Rey asked, refusing to sound annoyed or upset even though her fingers were tapping out a rhythm against her thighs. Think, think, she told herself. There has to be some way.

“Not really.” But Ben closed his eyes anyway, brows furrowing in concentration. She thought maybe she could feel his presence in the Force, subdued and shaded though it was, like there was more than air between them, maybe the thick gel of bacta, a soft-glasslike structure that allowed her to see without being about to touch or wade through it, an all-encompassing shield against everything she might have wanted.

“How far does it go, do you think?” Rey asked, still staring out, unable to look away.

He answered noncommittally, a half-attentive hum of acknowledgment.

It wasn’t like she had a good answer either. They would have had to map the shape of it themselves if they wanted to know. Even Aphra hadn’t been able to tell them the dimensions, the scope of her Empty Space.

Oh, how Rey still hated that name, wished there was something more suitably terrifying and grandiose to truly speak to its nature.

Then she closed her eyes, too, amazed that the darkness outside was still greater than the experience of darkness with her eyes closed. In the silence, she could feel the hum of the ship’s engines, smooth and even as they whirred quietly, primed and ready to go.

Nothing made itself known to her despite the care with which she searched. Her senses stretched as far as she knew to send them and then some. Out and out and out, deeper and deeper and deeper into the vast expanse of space around them.

It was so empty, so devoid of anything Rey could grasp. Her attention, her focus, tried to snap back, return home instead of reaching further into the dark. After a time, she and the edges of her senses seemed almost to dissolve, lose their shape. She no longer knew where her awareness ended and the rest of the universe began.

As each moment stretched around her, time became irrelevant. A second could have passed or an hour or a year and she might never have known the difference. And through it all, as aware as she was of the darkness, she still could not sense Ben. He remained ever out of her grasp, a phantasm. If not for the solidness of his form, she might have believed him a figment of her imagination, the cautionary tale she’d heeded.

But he was real. He was his own cautionary tale. And when she stretched herself toward him—her own physical self, her hand, the hand that belonged to her and somehow could touch the darkness and still touch him, too—she felt that solidness beneath her fingertips, her palm. She might have counted every weft and warp of thread in his pants if she wanted to.

This was real. As much as anything was real.

Maybe it didn’t matter if…

His hand covered hers, a millisecond, a millennium, later. The heat of it blazed, licked flames up her arm and settled deep in her heart, stoked by the soft arc of his thumb across the back of her hand, back and forth.

She fell.

She felt herself falling.

Through the empty hollows of this place, she crumbled.

Gasping, she bent forward, snatched her hand away, cradled it to her chest. “I know where it is.” Tensing and relaxing her hand, she drew in a deep, steadying breath.

“Where is it?”

“Trust me,” was all Rey said in response.

To that, Ben kept quiet. Rey wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, but she didn’t let it interfere with her taking the ship’s controls and steering them deeper into this place’s mess.

Something caught on the Falcon’s lone floodlight Rey employed in her search, its beam cutting through the darkness until finally it couldn’t any longer. Though gladness bubbled inside of her, she tamped down on it. They’d found something in this grand, vast stretch of nothing. It didn’t mean it would help them; it didn’t mean it was what Rey was looking for.

Rey still didn’t know what she was looking for. She just wanted to find something.

It wasn’t so different from her time on Jakku. There, she never knew what would be important or necessary until she got into the sand and dug around for a while. This might be the same. She would know what to do once the time came. She could believe in that even though it had sounded so silly when Aphra said it..

And now, proof that she hadn’t entirely committed herself to a foolish cause. Because that glinting thing the light of the Falcon had found grew larger and larger, finally outgrowing the beam, finally overtaking it entirely, finally close enough to prove itself a—

“Is this a temple?” And she wasn’t entirely sure who had said it, she or him. From his wide eyes, perhaps even he wasn’t certain. Maybe it was she who’d spoken first.

It looked like it maybe once could have been something, possibly even a temple. A temple carved out of a single, slow-moving asteroid, lonely and cold out here, so far away from wherever it had originally come from.

“How do you think it holds steady?” Rey asked, definitely, because now she was concerned about landing on the thing and whether they’d be able to even enter it.

They’d brought suits, right? The Millennium Falcon had to be equipped with evosuits.

“There’s nothing to orbit,” Ben said, tentative. He was no better with bad answers than she was. “But we’re here now. Might as well give it a shot.”

Rey nodded, her determination reasserting itself. Even if they didn’t have evosuits, there was plenty else they could do. This trip wouldn’t be wasted.

“Let’s run an environmental scan once I set down.”

Ben nodded, keying up the required tests. Atmosphere, composition of asteroid, potential toxins. “I wonder why the Falcon couldn’t pick it up before.”

Out of the corner of her eye, each scan turned up green, flashing acceptable parameters and beeping soothingly. “Maybe it didn’t want to be found before.” It sounded as plausible as anything else about this strange, lonely place. “Maybe it’s not used to people coming around.”

Ben snorted in disdain and laughed lightly, though not at her, not really. “If that’s the case, I hope it doesn’t have any strong feelings about keeping people out. I’m not seeing anything dangerous on scans.”

“Do we want to go down?”

“We’re here. It’d be a waste if we didn’t, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” Nodding, Rey sucked in a breath. They were here. They were here. She had no reason to be afraid; she’d already vindicated herself by finding this thing. “Yeah, let’s do it.” Tugging at the crash webbing that held her in place, she pushed herself to her feet. “A little look around couldn’t hurt anything.” She wasn’t sure who she was telling: him or her.

“I’m sure it could,” Ben answered, “but let’s do it anyway. You’ll never forgive me if we don’t.”

Ducking her head to hide the slight smile that threatened to form, Rey headed toward the exit hatch and told herself she wasn’t nervous, that whatever she found here, it was more than she’d started with.

She grabbed a rebreather from the wall beside the door. She was willing to trust that the scans were right about the atmosphere’s stability —though how in the hell could it have one, it wasn’t big enough, there was nothing to hold it to—she definitely didn’t want to choke to death on air that maybe, maybe wasn’t quite as hospitable as the scans suggested.

Maybe that was silly, but she didn’t care.

And anyway, Ben did the same thing.

Gravel and dirt stirred beneath Rey’s feet as she stepped out of the ship and onto the hard, solid surface of the structure . Dust motes floated and reflected in her lightsaber’s harsh blue light as it hummed to life in her hand. That light cast strange shadows, picking up every rock and pebble on the path that led to the cave-temple-whatever entrance. Intricate carvings—so it had been made by someone at the very least, it wasn’t an entirely natural structure—curved and curled in a tall arch around the opening.

As they approached, the carvings resolved themselves. She’d seen images like this before. “It’s a Jedi temple.” Frowning, she brushed her fingers over one of the carvings, still so pristine it might have cut her if she’d stroked the sharpest edge of it. “I wonder how old it truly is.” It had to be at least as old as that inscription in Luke’s text, presumably, which didn’t narrow it down much, not unless she decided to run some analyses on that, too.

There was so much she didn’t know—and so many things she would have to do to learn more. It would be a fight every step of the way.

Was Luke this despondent when he set out to rebuild the Order from nothing? Did the immensity of the task set in and overwhelm him with its weight? From everything she’d heard, he’d at least had guidance for a short time; he’d met Jedi who remembered the Order as it was.

Who could Rey turn to except the half-trained, disinterested man beside her? He was the only link she had to such information and though he’d proven himself helpful to her, she knew he preferred to stay as far out of it as he could.

The memory of his words to her on Starkiller Base struck her. How different he’d been then, how eager. You need a teacher, he’d told her, wishing for nothing more than for her to say yes. And again on the Supremacy, though perhaps in not so many words and nothing so formal as that. Now, he would barely speak with her about such things, always reluctant except when they fought, perhaps because fighting wasn’t only the purview of the Jedi. Everyone had to fight at one point or another.

She would have to be her own teacher. And this, unfortunately or not, would have to be how she learned.

“Well,” she said, feigning cheer for whatever was to come, “what are we waiting for?”

Lifting her lightsaber, she stepped inside, carefully scanning the floor for divots or roots or anything other than the disconcertingly smooth stone that covered it. It contrasted deeply with the walls, which were jagged still, a reminder of the cave that it might have been before. Though it couldn’t possibly go on forever, Rey still felt as though it were possible, that she could keep walking and walking through the infinite dark to find—

Her mind snapped, quick and vicious, so fast that her sight whited out for a moment. Metal clattered to the ground, loud as thunder, blocking out all other sound, including her own shout and, even more frightening, Ben’s. Her blood pounded in her ears, a bounding drum beat she could not hear, but felt deep in her mind.

It was like she’d stepped over an invisible line across which she crumbled into pieces, barely even her anymore, as she grasped and clamored for her lightsaber, her hold on her sanity, anything to remind her that she was Rey of the Resistance, Rey, a Jedi, Rey.

Rey.

What she found, rocks tearing into the flesh of her palms, was the solid bulk of of Ben’s body, equally prostrate nearby. He was grasping, too, and found Rey’s lightsaber before she did.

It blazed to life in his hand, washing the world in light cold enough to burn. She didn’t cry out, but her eyes watered and throbbed and she still couldn’t hear through that syncopated drumming in her head, the rhythm off, uncapturable and incomprehensible.

His gaze found hers, bright streaks of blue reflected in the sheen that filled his eyes.

This was wrong. This was all wrong. But they had to—she had to keep going. Reaching for him, she wrapped her hand around his wrist. His pulse stuttered against her fingers and he drew in a gasping breath.

The sound of her blood rushing finally abated and in its stead was…

Nothing.

There was nothing.

She felt nothing.

She might not have known she was touching Ben at all if she didn’t see it with her own eyes. Still there. And yet, she could have been grasping at air for all the good it did her.

“Ben?” She heard her own voice as though through a tunnel, from very far away. Releasing her grip, she tapped at his arm, still felt nothing, sensed nothing through contact or—or through the Force. Mentally, she searched, but she could only find the confines of her own body and thoughts. The walls of the cave stood maybe a few meters away on either side, small and cramped, but they might as well have been right next to her or a thousand kilometers off for how well she could sense them with her mind. “Ben!”

“Yeah,” he said, gruff, a shade of tension in it. “I know. I know. I—” He handed her the lightsaber. Its weight felt like nothing, its surface neither cool nor warm. “Kriff. This is—” His palm scraped across his face, pressed briefly over his mouth. “Is this what it’s like?”

“What what’s like?”

“You can’t tell?” Sniffing, his gaze slipped toward the ceiling. “This place is shielded from the Force. It’s—I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything quite so… I don’t think we should be here.” He turned back toward the entrance, from which Rey could see the barest glint of the Falcon through the opening.

Rey frowned and brushed at the stray strands of hair that fell around her face. It was only sheer habit that suggested to her they were there at all and when she pushed them behind her ears, she could only imagine that was actually what she was doing. “Okay,” she said. Ben was right. It shouldn’t be like this. Even without the Force, she should have been able to feel things. Physical touch and sensation and… She remembered what life was like before she’d known she possessed the Force. It was nothing at all like this. “Okay, let’s go.”

She took a few halting steps, uncertain, and nearly lost her balance as the sound of something distant rumbled and roiled deep within the temple or—whatever. Nothing like this could have been meant for Jedi, could it? Why would a Jedi come here?

Pebbles and dust and a few larger chunks of rock tinked and clattered to the ground.

“Wait,” Ben said, fierce, grabbing her around the bicep to pull her back. “Wait, just—”

She didn’t know how he knew what was about to happen—he was as cut off from his senses as she was hers—but after a moment, the rumbling altered tenor, grew closer and closer and finally grew past them and suddenly the entrance that was maybe twenty meters ahead of them was—

It was gone.

Smooth stone stood in its place, a door, flat and impenetrable. Rey ran for it, ripping herself free of Ben’s grip and slammed her fists against it. There was no pain despite the blood that ran in rivulets down her arm where she’d first cut herself on the few rocks that were scattered across the floor. Only a thin, sad little thunking sound accompanied the act.

She shouted until she was hoarse, for all the good it did her. It barely echoed off the walls and did nothing to shift the door even a millimeter. Nothing her hands did could touch it and even though she tried to get past the artificial barrier that kept her from using the Force, she couldn’t.

She couldn’t and couldn’t and couldn’t. Even after Ben wrapped his arm around her waist, she couldn’t. Fear ratcheting itself up in her heart, she kicked out. The ball of her foot connected solidly with the door, but it was no more successful than her hands. “Kriff!” she yelled and all Ben did was hold her closer.

He held her closer until he didn’t, stepping away and looking elsewhere.

This place didn’t want to be found. Well done, Rey. Good thinking there.

This place was a trap. It was the only thing that made sense. An ancient trap that they’d just have to find their way out of.

“Okay,” she said, finally starting to get used to her surroundings and what exactly was happening to her. Her heart raged in her chest, fear and anger dueling with the level head she was trying to keep. It was, she worried, a losing battle. “I guess we’ll just have to find another exit.”

“If there’s an exit.”

“Yes, thank you, Ben. If there’s an exit.” But now that she’d grown accustomed to the place, she could focus on other things, like the gleam of concern in Ben’s eyes, the way he tracked her face with every step she took. Whatever she was feeling, he was feeling it more and he was looking to her to straighten it out.

Given it was her fault they were here, he wasn’t wrong to do that.

Had he ever known a time when the Force wasn’t truly with him in one form or another? At least Rey’d spent years thinking of herself as no one with no special abilities beyond sniffing out the best salvage on a giant, sand-ridden dust heap.

She opened her mouth to apologize and found that the words wouldn’t come. It didn’t matter if she was sorry; they were stuck here now. The best way to say it was to get them out of it. “At least this place makes it easy on us,” she said, trying for a positive mood. “There’s only one other direction to go.”

When she stepped toward him, he flinched aside, stepping closer to the opposite wall and putting his hand out to steady himself. He wouldn’t meet her eyes any longer.

She probably deserved that, too. If she were him, she’d be mad, too.

Instead of trying to pester him further, she nodded and walked past him, holding her lightsaber aloft to light the way. If they met something along the way, at least she was equipped to handle it. Even without all of her senses and full awareness of the place, her reflexes were pretty good.

She thought so anyway.

She definitely hoped so.

When they got back to the base, she was definitely going to figure out a way to train under conditions as similar to these as she could possibly simulate. It was the only way to be sure. If this could happen here and now, who was to say someone wouldn’t figure out how to weaponize it? What if the First Order somehow discovered this technology? The Resistance would be—

Another time, she thought. You had a hard enough time finding this place yourself. It’d be almost impossible for them. It’d—

“Why are we doing this?” Ben asked, voice edged in peevish annoyance, cut with worry. “What’s so important here that you had to come?” He said something else, lower, more to himself and only the word alone carried to her. “Why do you care so much? If this is some misguided sense of loyalty to Luke—” His laugh was a bitter one and struck her, punch heavy, in the heart. “He taught us nothing that was worth everything that’s come after.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” Rey replied, glad now that this place had dulled her senses as much as it did. She gripped her lightsaber tighter and told herself she wouldn’t have turned around and thrown the thing at him, wouldn’t have gotten into a fight with him until he saw fit to concede that not everything was about how much he hated what the Force had done to him.

The Force, Ben’s actions, Luke even, had hurt him deeply, but Rey couldn’t allow herself to stand by and see these things lost because the galaxy had placed such a heavy burden on Ben’s shoulders. Many people, not just Ben, were burdened every day. And Rey knew what happened to things that were buried or lost or ignored.

One day, someone would find it, pull it up from the sands and dust it off. They might want to use what they found for good or ill or anything in between.

And even so, Rey didn’t have to explain. She was well within her rights to want this. “You didn’t have to come,” she said when he didn’t reply to her. Why do we always have to circle this conversation? Every single time?

She’d thought it was different this time, and it was in a way. She knew that this time his words came from a deeper place, a haunted place. How supportive he’d been before, she still believed that he wanted to be, but it was hard to keep one’s convictions when faced with this gnawing, hungry need pulling you apart from the inside out. It was wrong to be so disconnected and that was the place from which he spoke.

But still.

He wasn’t alone in feeling it.

And she didn’t think she would have pushed if the reverse was the case; in fact, she thought she would have continued forward for him. She couldn’t know for sure, of course, but as frightening as this was, there was no other way. No point in arguing further about it.

“So?” she asked, turning to face him. He was still a couple of meters behind her. “Are you coming or not?”

He pushed his fingers through his bangs.

And he nodded.

“Do you even know why you’re doing this?” Ben asked, once they were further down the path. Though there was a gentle curve to the corridor, it felt like they’d continued on straight for minutes, hours, days. What did the concept of time matter in a place with no light, no joy, no anything? She knew that it couldn’t have been more than an hour at most, but even so.

This place seemed designed to disorient and Rey refused to let it defeat her.

She wondered what it was like when it was originally built. Had it always been exactly this way? What was its purpose? There had to be a reason for it.

Ben was speaking again. She wanted him to stop. If he was going to keep asking her the same questions over and over again. “What?”

He scoffed, his disgust tangling in the back of his throat. “Do you know why you’re doing this?”

“Now I want to get out of here,” she snapped, so very tired of this argument. “That’s all I want.” Possibly also for you to shut up about this for good.

“No, that’s not—” He sighed and though she didn’t look, she could imagine the way he was probably scrubbing his hand across his face, like he always did when he was frustrated. He gestured a lot in those circumstances, broad, wide strokes of his hand. “Isn’t this enough?”

“Isn’t what enough?” Now she was the one who scoffed. “Our fights in the forest outside the base? What good does that serve? Everything I know about the Jedi fits between the pages of five books, comes from you, or can be inferred to be important because Snoke wanted it destroyed. That doesn’t sound like enough to make me want answers?”

“I just mean you won’t find what you’re looking for. You’ll never find what you’re looking for. It doesn’t exist. What Snoke wanted was a lie. Those books are a lie. Everything Luke thought was important was a lie.”

Rey stopped and finally, finally turned. “You don’t know that.”

“What I know is the Force is too great a thing for us to control. It’s not a tool to be used and turned to our gain.”

“If the choice is using it and accomplishing good in the galaxy or leaving these gifts to rot, I’ll choose the former. I can’t stop you from doing the opposite. I’m asking you to leave it now. You’ve made your point. I get it. You think this is pointless. I’ve had enough.” Her teeth ached in her jaw from how hard she clenched them. It would have been easy to rail at him; he’d had so many opportunities to learn laid at his feet and he continued to kick dirt onto them. It would have been so convenient to throw it all back in his face.

It definitely would have shut him up.

“I’ve had enough, okay?” she repeated. “You can berate me when we’re back in the Falcon, but I need you to stop this.” Before we both say things we regret. She didn’t doubt in the slightest that they would.

“I just want to understand.”

For the first time since they stepped inside this hellish cave, she thought she felt something, heat flaring inside of her, a supernova for how sharply it contrasted to everything else. It outshone everything and it sent warmth rushing through her, overwhelming. It wasn’t anger that guided her exactly, but she could say what it was instead.

Her hand collided with Ben’s shoulder and she shoved. It must have taken him by surprise, because he stumbled back a few steps and, still unsteady, nearly tripped backward. He caught himself at the very last possible second, but his eyes remained wide and his chest rose and fell with each quick, deep breath.

“I can’t fix this if I don’t know how, Ben!” Her tone wavered, caught at a higher, almost desperate pitch than she was used to. She had no idea where that answer came from, why it’d come out of her mouth at all. Fix? What was there to fix? But though her mind searched for an answer, she had none. She could rifle through her thoughts for an eternity and she didn’t think she’d know or understand why her heart pounded so hard, why sweat prickled at the back of her neck, just why she was so, so afraid all of a sudden.

Ben, regaining himself, brushed at his tunic. Chewing on the inside of his lip, he said nothing for a long, terrible moment. His lack of reaction did nothing to assuage the guilt and fear that swirled around inside of her. He seemed, at least, to master his own fears in the face of hers and smiled with something approaching kindness. It’s okay, he seemed to say. “You once rebuilt a starship out of almost nothing,” he said, serious, grabbing her by the shoulders. If not for the bond they’d lost, he’d never have known that and she wouldn’t have known how to articulate it if she’d thought to tell him. She was glad, all the same, to know. “You can fix anything you put your mind to. What is it you have to fix?”

Tears, frustrated and petulant, rose in her eyes and she brushed her hand as quickly as she could across her face to dash them away. She hated this place. Hated it. This had to be why she felt this way. She never would have said it otherwise. “I don’t—I don’t know.” But that was only mostly the truth. More words built themselves up in her head and her heart. She didn’t know what she was going to say until she said it. “Doesn’t it feel wrong to you? How things have been between us?”

Between us?

She didn’t even know what that meant. Even though they were her own words, she didn’t know what they meant.

Everything was the same, wasn’t it? They fought more, but that was because she wanted things that he didn’t and they both felt strongly about it. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. It was just normal disagreement, the same sort of situation she ran into with Rose or Finn or Poe over any damned, stupid thing in the world. The best flavor of Kalosian soda or how to build a working comm unit out of scrap if you’re stranded after a crash or anything. He’d never been anything other than honest and kind about it.

He’d made his point; she’d made hers.

“I miss you,” Rey said, nearly yelling with her rage for what they’d found and lost. She hated him for a moment, the briefest flash of it, in a way she hadn’t ever hated him. They’d been a part of something. And now it was nothing. And all he could do was stare at her like she’d grown a second head, unmoved.

It shouldn’t have made her feel like there was something clawing at her insides, hurt and frightened and so very ravenous. But without anything else, not the Force, not her own sense of touch, of sensation, everything tamped down, she felt it for what it was.

A creature in the dark, clamoring for more.

She wanted to pummel him with her fists, make him feel it. But she couldn’t do that. Instead, she turned away, tried to stomp away.

He grabbed hold of her and she nearly wrenched herself out of his grasp.

“I don’t—this is what we have now,” Ben answered, but only after hesitating for a few moments, confused, perhaps sad, too, mournful. It helped, perhaps, that she could hear that now in his voice. Even if she was alone, she wasn’t entirely so. “I can live with that so long as you’re here.”

That creature in the dark keened and it took every ounce of her self-control to keep from letting it lash out and draw blood. Whether it would have come from herself or from Ben, she couldn’t rightly say.

“How? How can you when—” She blinked and drew in a breath. She could be like Ben, cold and stoic. But now that she’d said it, she refused to take it back. Now that she knew, she would not be ashamed of it. “I guess you’re right,” Rey admitted, defeated and exposed. “But that’s why. If an answer is what you need, that’s as close as I can give you.” Saying so did nothing to make her feel better and she very much doubted it made him feel any better, but it was all she had to give him. “Snoke took so much. I hate that he was able to take that, too.”

Ben’s lips compressed and he looked away, abashed.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to get it back. I didn’t even know he could do what he did. I didn’t even know it was possible to do something like that.”

The bond. The damned bond. Of course it was that. It had always been that, hadn’t it? Now that she knew what to look for, now that she had no other distractions, she could feel the bleeding, ragged edges of the wound. It unraveled in her heart and her mind, a burst vessel that leaked precious, life-giving fluids into cavities where it didn’t belong, exerting pressure that it should not have been able to exert.

She still believed in what she was doing; someone had to protect this knowledge. But she was not without selfish motives, too.

If only she knew enough, she would be able to fill this void, a void that should never have existed in the first place.

Funny that she should realize that fact here of all places, in the midst of a true void in every sense of the word.

“I know,” Rey answered, finding herself again. It wasn’t Ben’s fault. Just like it wasn’t hers. “But that’s why I’m doing this. All of it, I think. I need to know. And I’ll keep at it. I know that, too. We don’t have to—even if I did get an answer, but I need to know. Or I need to know I tried my hardest.”

Ben drew in a shaky breath and reached for Rey’s hands, clasping them in his palms. Before, when they’d touched, it had been cold, clammy. Now, she couldn’t tell. “Okay,” he said, quick and breathless, as though distracted. “So let’s do it.”

“You’re done arguing with me?”

His gaze softened a little bit and he nodded. “I’m done. I just thought—well. I don’t know what I thought. Let’s just get out of here, okay? We can talk about it when we get home.”

Home.

She liked the sound of that.

Nodding, she turned back in the direction they’d been heading and resumed walking. Ben, she knew, was right behind her, so much closer than he’d been before.

When she looked down, she could see that his hand was clasped around hers.

And she might have smiled at that. But there was nobody looking at her closely enough to see it.

“I think…” Rey narrowed her eyes and stared ahead of her. Was she imagining it? “I think there might be light up ahead.”

She extinguished the lightsaber and, instead of facing pure darkness as she might have expected, she did see light. It was weak, a sickly pale unlike the robust blue of her lightsaber, but it filled her with hope all the same, hope she knew she shouldn’t have harbored. Light didn’t mean they’d find an exit—in fact, it probably meant the opposite given how dark it was outside—but it was something different than what they already had.

“Come on,” she said, tugging on Ben’s hand. It took all of her self-restraint to avoid running for it, brazen and unheeding of the consequences.

As they approached, the light remained weak, but Rey could see that the space was widening, opening out into a larger room, rounded. She couldn’t see what was in it yet, perhaps there was a dip up ahead, perhaps Rey was just imagining it.

She hoped she wasn’t imagining it.

Regardless, her heart pounded hard and fast against her chest. This was what she’d come here for. Whatever she might find, it would be in that space. She knew it.

“Rey,” Ben said, pulling her to a stop and holding his hand out to steady her by the elbow. “What if there’s nothing here?” His eyes searched hers, studied her, sought out answers to questions she didn’t think she’d ever know.

“Then there’s nothing here. And I’m no worse off than I was before.” But though that was true, saying it still felt like a lie. It still felt like she would lose a part of herself if this had been for nothing. It was a foolish, self-indulgent thought, but a true one nonetheless. “I’ll be okay, Ben.”

Now she was the one who tugged Ben forward, pulling him toward the room while she walked backward. It was probably her imagination that she felt warmth against her back, shocking compared to the utter lack of anything approaching a change in temperature since she’d entered this place.

She was right about the dip, though, able to tell the difference in the incline immediately. And when she turned and looked, she could see the change in the quality of the light, brighter now as it spilled up the path’s gentle slope.

Speeding up—she couldn’t help speeding up, her heart now bounding inside of her, practically choking her—she finally, finally saw the source of the light.

“Kriffing hell,” Ben said behind her. And then again, as he pushed past her and into the room, stepping toward the—

“What is it?”

It looked to her like a block, gently glowing, its edges lined in durasteel or some other dark metallic substance. Nothing special, a glorified lamp. If not for Ben’s reaction to it, she might have dismissed it as such. “Ben, what is it?”

“A holocron, I think,” he answered, slow and thoughtful as he approached the pedestal on which it stood. “Though I’ve never seen one myself. Not a Jedi holocron anyway.”

“What are they for?” Now she, too, approached, eager and curious. If it was just a lamp, he wouldn’t have been so intrigued, would he? If she trusted nothing else she could trust that.

“They impart knowledge. Could be anything, though usually holocrons only kept the most important information the creator wished to impart.”

“Like the Jedi texts?” And though she heard the note of excitement in her own voice and knew she should have reigned it in, she couldn’t.

“Possibly.” Ben circled the pedestal, bending to get a closer look. “It could be anything that the Jedi who created it deemed important enough to commit to a permanent record.”

“Can we—” Rey followed Ben’s lead, peering at the thing as though that would unlock its secrets. “Do we take it with us?”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any point in leaving it here, do you? Who else is going to find it or know what to do with it?”

“Do you even know what to do with it?”

Frowning, Ben said, “Yeah, I have a pretty good idea. Do you?”

Rey frowned at him in return and took another turn around the room. “This does require that we figure out a way out of here.” She sketched an arc with her fingertips. “There’s only one path in or out of here.”

“Perhaps this is the goal then,” Ben said. “Luke used to test us from time to time. He’d want us to bring something back, a kyber crystal for our lightsabers or a rock he’d marked out with the Force, stuff like that. There’d always be some kind of trick to it. We’d have to do it at night with no source of illumination or we’d climb tall cliffs without gear.” He stopped for a moment, not quite reminiscing. “If we couldn’t bring whatever it was back, we failed. Perhaps bringing this thing back will open the door.”

“And what if taking this thing off its pedestal will trigger a trap?”

“Then we’re in a lot more trouble than we thought.” Ben bit his lip and looked at her. “It’s your call.”

Sighing, she stared at the thing. She didn’t really think it was a trap, did she? It certainly seemed like one, but Ben wasn’t wrong. If it wasn’t the goal, wasn’t some kind of key, then what was it?

“Can we open it without moving it?”

Ben shook his head. “Every holocron I’ve ever heard of needed the Force to open it.”

So they still had to get it out of the temple, maze, trap, whatever this place was. Nodding, grim, she said, “The next time I have an idea like this, talk me out of it, okay?”

That got a smile out of Ben, little more than a twitch of his mouth, but he nodded and said, “Noted.”

“Well,” she said, approaching the pedestal, hand raised, “here goes.” Swiping it up, quick and careful, she cradled it in her arms and waited for something to happen. Bad, good, or otherwise.

Nothing. Not a single shift in so much as a single pebble that littered the floor. Rey let out a sigh of relief. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, “for real now.”

The walk back was easier. The holocron let out enough light that she didn’t need to keep her lightsaber on and she already knew what to expect. Even so, trepidation flooded her body, each step closer to that door making her wonder if they were wrong, what they would do if they were wrong, how she’d get them out with just her lightsaber and no other options, no side paths, no weaknesses, no anything.

She said none of this to Ben; there were only so many times a person could hash out the same details, but that didn’t stop her from turning them over in her mind until the edges dulled and the whole took on a polished sheen, useless in a fight.

As soon as the door came into view, she swallowed and nearly lost her nerve. But even before she could approach it properly, the cave rumbled, just like before, and the door lifted. For a moment, Rey was unable to move, too surprised by the fact that… “It worked. That—it worked.” A laugh caught itself in her throat, pleased and shocked. “I wonder how?”

Ben pressed his hand against her shoulder and pushed her forward, his touch gentle. Already the spell or shielding or whatever it was that had dampened her senses was wearing off. She wanted to lean into him, pull him close, feel the weight of him against her, her own warmth mingling with his. She wanted so many things.

“Wonder on the ship,” he said. “You’ll have plenty of time on the jump back.”

“Right,” she said, holding the holocron tighter rather than grabbing hold of him the way she wanted to.

She turned back once to look into the cave now shading back into darkness.

She didn’t know if she would ever learn its purpose, whether what they’d experienced in there was the point, but she was grateful for it all the same for letting them go, for showing her something she hadn’t known she needed to see.

Even if she never had what they shared while under Snoke’s influence again, she could survive it.

As much as she wanted it, and she did, she wanted it so much, she could survive. It raged inside of her, that want. But she didn’t need it, not as much as she thought she did. She could look at him and mourn what it was they’d had and she could move on.

Her eyes found Ben’s and all she saw there was blessed relief.

She knew the feeling.

“Hey, Beebee-Ate,” Rey said, squinting at the holocron. Ben had left her to it, begging off to report for them both to Leia. She’d appreciated that, but she also got the feeling he needed some space or—she wasn’t sure. Out there, what was going on between them seemed more certain.

Well, the chips would fall where they would, wouldn’t they? And in the meantime, she had work to do.

BB-8 whistled and rolled toward her as she placed the holocron on the ground for him. He sometimes helped her out in situations like this and she was grateful for it every time.

“Would you scan this for me?” she asked, certain she was just being paranoid, but figuring it didn’t hurt to make sure it wasn’t some sort of explosive. “Whatever information you can find.”

Beeping, he got to work, blue light flashing over the small device. Biting back a yawn, she stood and stretched and turned in time to see—

“Ben,” she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

BB-8 studiously avoided Ben as he continued to work, chattering away to himself. Rey spared him a sympathetic thought and wished Ben had decided to come at another time. They still didn’t get along, and they’d both stopped trying a long time ago. As long as neither of them went after the other, it was fine. And Ben did his part, jerking his head toward the door. “How’s it going here?” Sparing a brief glance for the holocron, he gave BB-8 a wide berth. “Gotten anywhere with it?”

“After Beebee-Ate has a look at it,” Rey said, “I’m planning on opening it.”

“Good,” Ben answered as the pair of them crowded themselves into the doorway. BB-8 didn’t seem to notice, but possibly he didn’t care either so long as Ben remained focused on Rey. “That’s good. I’m glad you did. I hope you find what you’re looking for in it.”

He seemed so painfully earnest that something in Rey’s heart lurched and shifted. It left her breathless and a little sad. Now that she knew what it felt like to not be able to touch and feel him, she didn’t hesitate to take his hand. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, though it did, but not in the way he thought and not in the way she’d thought before. “I care about you, Ben. You know that, right?”

Guilt throbbed in time with her heart. She’d never told him that, had she? Not in all the time since he’d come back and proved her right.

There was a brief stretch of time when she hadn’t had to.

His throat bobbed and he gripped her hand just as tightly as she did his. His lips compressed, but he nodded. The light seemed to gleam in his eyes, sparkling and dancing in ways that Rey wished she could properly articulate. If it was possible, she would have stared into their depths forever and sought out the truth in them.

She thought it might take an entire lifetime to find all of it.

“I know,” he said after what felt like hours. “I think I always knew. It was hard without the…” He winced. It was no easier for him to think of it as it was for her. “…bond. But I knew. I’m sorry that you might not have.”

When BB-8 bleated into the silence, it startled Rey from her reverie, and when he rolled toward them and then wound between their legs, she was merely confused. “I guess it’s okay,” she said, glancing at the holocron. And then BB-8 trilled from down the hall that yes, it was fine as far as he could tell, and Rey laughed into her hand, couldn’t hold back that tiny font of happiness that welled inside her at his disgruntlement.

If she hadn’t known what complete emptiness felt like, she might have taken that happiness for granted.

Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she pulled him down. “Maybe we don’t need the bond,” she said, quiet, just for them. His breath ghosted over her lips just before she pulled him into a kiss, moved her hands to bracket his cheeks. It wasn’t quite the same, not at all, but she found it didn’t have to be.

She could be content with this, with Ben’s lips against hers, his skin warm beneath her touch.

It was enough. All of it. Just as it was.

“So,” Ben said, his cheeks staining pink as she watched as she pulled away. “Are you going to open it?”

Rey shook her head. “Why don’t we go get dinner instead?”

Ben ducked his head, pleased.

Later, she couldn’t say she regretted the break.

She brought the holocron back to her quarters, stared at it for a long while, pondering what it might contain, what it would tell her about the Jedi.

So many possibilities opened themselves to her.

“There’s only one way to find out,” she said to herself, closing her eyes. The surface of it was cool to her touch, but as she reached out with the Force, she knew what to do instinctively, the locks within opening with her thoughts and intentions.

The sound of audio playback filled the room, scratchy and a little distorted, a voice out of time issuing from within.

When she opened her eyes, she was confronted with a ghost, a woman from who knew how long ago and long dead standing before a holoprojector at her end, calm and composed. “A Jedi’s connection to one another is their strongest source of strength,” she said to an unknown audience. Could she have realized she would be speaking to someone like Rey, so far into the future as to be inconceivable? “The bonds between them cannot be broken, for the Force ties us tighter to one another and the universe than we can possibly know.” She smiled. “Even when we believe otherwise.”

Bonds? Rey straightened up, her heart thudding against her chest.

“The Boiete Expanse is a unique structure in the galaxy, a vast stretch of empty space that should not exist according to the known physical laws of the universe. It’s both bigger than it should be and far more sparsely populated by stellar matter than it should.” The woman smiled again. “If you’re seeing this now, you will have experienced some discomfort as a Force user. Without the structure you’ve entered, you will not have noticed, but there are natural properties at work here that suppress Force sensitivity, among other things. All will be well.”

Muttering, Rey said, “I guess that answers that.”

“The point of this exercise,” the Jedi continued, unaware of Rey’s existence and disdain, “is to teach that all severed connections can be rebuilt. The Force is a fluid, forgiving thing, but it does not forget. What is broken, in a way, is not really broken. Surely you will have learned from your mentor the necessary process for forging bonds with one another in the Force, temporary bonds, permanent bonds, bonds of training and necessity. Here, I intend to show you how to strengthen them, mold them into something more, restore them if and when necessary. I’ve been told I have a knack for it. I suppose that must be why the Council has asked me to create this holocron, to share the information widely and well beyond my own personal capabilities.”

Rey nearly tumbled forward in her excitement and disbelief. Her heart climbed her throat and she felt almost sick to her stomach with fear and hope. This was exactly, exactly what she’d been looking for all this long while.

She could have wept with how strongly relief coursed through her. Everything was not lost. She and Ben could have everything they’d missed. They would understand one another as fully as they had before.

“Now,” the Jedi said, “let us begin.”