Chapter Text
Once Rey and Luke had successfully escaped the Caretaker's wrath with absolutely no help from Chewbacca, they finally began their journey to the first Jedi Temple. The wind had picked up that evening, dark clouds on the horizon with a rush of colder air pouring in. Waves crashed against the shore with greater intensity, a shrill whistle tearing through the atmosphere.
“What took you so long?” Rey asked once they were outside the Caretakers’ village. She looked at the approaching storm warily, as little by little it stole the light away from their path. Hopefully they made it to the temple before it reached them and smothered them in its shadow. She didn't want to be outside in the rain; not when they were far away from the shelter of the Falcon or Luke’s hut.
She thought, briefly, about the sandstorms on Jakku. She could remember the howl of the wind, the sound of the sand crashing against her home, and the loneliness. The loneliness was the worst part of it, but at least that wouldn’t be an issue here.
“Packing,” Luke answered cryptically, moving his shoulders to shake the bag on his back. He decided not to mention that he’d actually spent most of his time in the Millennium Falcon feeling lost while R2 yelled at him. “It’s going to take awhile to get there.”
R2 whistled angrily behind them, trying to move around a few large rocks in his way. Luke looked back, moving his hand to slide them off to the side. The astromech chirped appreciatively, catching up to them within a few seconds. A few porgs flew up to him, and he screeched indignantly as one decided to perch itself on his head. The porg looked down at him, surprised but undaunted by the noise.
“This isn’t a big island...” Rey observed, rubbing the side of her head. That Caretaker had held nothing back; she’d feel it for weeks, she thought. If she could avoid contact with that Caretaker, she’d be happy.
“On the surface it’s not,” Luke also felt like he’d been trampled, and mentally resolved to commit that Caretaker’s face to memory and never go near her, specifically, ever again. “You’ll see.”
R2 screamed louder as the porg refused to move. He stopped moving forward in favour of vibrating angrily, yelling at Luke and Rey to do something. Luke stopped in his tracks, turning around and gingerly lifting the porg off of R2. “There, happy now?”
R2 chirped in gratitude while the porg buried its face in Luke’s robe. Luke smiled, stroking its side with his thumb.
“Can’t you tell me now?” Rey tried to give Luke what she assumed was a properly pleading look. Being trapped on Jakku, Rey had learned to be patient, but that didn’t stop her from trying.
“Patience,” Luke sighed, trying not to laugh when Rey’s expression quickly morphed into one of pure offense. She meant to look threatening, but looked cute to him instead. It reminded him of when she was a toddler, although he wisely kept that to himself. “That isn’t going to work, either.”
“Fine,” Rey grumbled, ignoring that R2 had started beep-laughing at her. She vaguely remembered finding him amusing as a child, but right now she found him incredibly annoying.
Apparently the Droid could sense her annoyance, because he only ‘laughed’ more.
Rey decided BB-8 was her new and proper Droid friend.
Porgs and other animals roamed around, chirping and shrieking and running for cover from the dark clouds rolling in. The wind grew stronger still, enough that few smaller animals went flying and Rey thought she’d fall over. She paused behind a large stone that blocked the wind, looking back at Luke, R2, and the trail behind them that led to the Caretaker village.
They’d asked Chewbacca if he wanted to come with them, but he had declined. Rey assumed he was presently inside the Falcon, trying to figure out what to do with the porgs that had decided to make several nests inside it. They’d both learned that all the porgs were, for all intents and purposes, Luke’s, and eating them was not advisable. And anyway, it wasn’t Rey’s fault that Luke and Chewbacca took too long to catch fish.
They eventually reached a stairway leading up into the mountain, top of it obscured by fog. Rain began to fall, hitting the ground with force, propelled by the wind. They roared in a way the sandstorms on Jakku didn’t, but Rey already hated it. The rain that splashed against her skin stung. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes.
“We should wait for the storm to pass,” Luke said with a sigh, looking around and finding the small cavern near the stairway that Caretakers used to make camps in whenever they would come to tend to the temple. “There.”
R2 rushed ahead of them with a shriek, making his way into the cavern first and then furiously shaking to get the rainwater off him. He stared at them, beeping for them to get inside already. The porg in Luke’s arms turned its head to look at him, screaming back. Luke rolled his eyes at the scream match between the two, walking through the cavern entrance.
“I’d forgotten what rain was like,” Rey remarked once inside, watching the rain fall. The sight of it reminded her that it had rained often back at Luke’s temple, and that she’d sometimes sit by a window and watch the rainfall. It felt like a different lifetime, like she was an outsider looking in on someone else’s memories.
Luke wanted to say something, felt like he should, but couldn’t find the words. Looking at her was difficult as it was; he saw the weariness on her young face, his heart sinking at the sight of it. He’d failed her so much. He had believed her to be dead, but she’d been suffering on a backwater planet instead. He didn’t think he could forgive himself for it; he certainly didn’t expect her to.
“I used to dream of this place,” Rey mused, stepping away from the cavern entrance and sitting across from Luke, as he tried to start a small fire with the kindling the Caretakers had left behind. “I didn’t understand why, but now...”
Luke hadn’t dreamed of anything except the night that Ben and the newly formed Knights of Ren had burned his temple to ash. Only a handful of his students had survived, but he had believed she wasn’t among them. All he had found of her was her training saber, buried under the rubble of her room.
He had hated Ben in that moment, fleeting though it might have been. Now... now he tasted the bitterness of sorrow, and a forced acceptance instead of denial. His nephew had taken so much from so many, gone so deep into the Dark that he didn’t know if he could even believe any of them might be able to bring him back.
Ben Organa Solo was dead, assuming he had ever existed to begin with. All that remained was Kylo Ren.
“I’m so sorry,” he offered, his voice barely above a whisper. He couldn’t meet her gaze, choosing instead to stare into the small fire. It looked so much like... “I should have tried harder. I should have...”
“I don’t blame you,” Rey murmured, and she didn’t, really, the more she thought about it. Their Force bond had been shattered; what else could he have thought?
As she had said before, Kylo Ren was to blame. She didn’t know why he had done anything that he did, and she found that she didn’t care much. He needed to be stopped, before he could hurt anyone else again.
“I hate him...” Rey said to herself, but it didn’t go unheard by Luke.
“Be careful with it,” Luke said softly. Don’t become like him went unsaid.
R2 whistled sadly.
Morning had arrived by the time the rain subsided, but the promise of another storm hung in the sky, blocking the sun. R2 strode out of the cavern before the others, whistling and chirping from both curiosity and disdain. The planet was... interesting, he supposed. It was also much too cold and damp and he hated it.
The porg waddled out, looking around and then shaking, fluffing up its feathers. With a loud cry, it flew away, and R2 decided he wouldn’t miss it.
Rey walked over to the edge, picking up a loose branch and poking at the water with it. Luke hadn’t woken up yet, and as much as she wanted to get going, she didn’t have the heart or the nerve to nudge him awake.
R2 turned to look at Rey, realizing she hadn’t noticed him yet. He beeped excitedly, but she still didn’t acknowledge him. With a low whistle, he approached her, reaching his zapper towards her and shocking her before she got the chance to notice him coming up behind her. She shrieked and stumbled forward, right into the water.
“R2D2!” Rey screamed, splashing the water as she scrambled out of it, teeth chattering. “Why did you do that?!”
R2 whistled innocently.
“What’s going on?!” Luke almost tripped over a rock as he ran out of the cavern in a panic.
“R2 shocked me and knocked me into the water!” Rey yelled, pointing accusingly at R2 as she shivered.
“R2, did you do this?” Luke glared at the Droid, crossing his arms.
R2 beeped out a confident denial.
“I don’t think I believe you,” Luke huffed.
R2 called Luke a traitor and vibrated angrily, moving over to the stairs and beginning to hoist himself up the time and weather worn steps.
“Are you alright?” Luke asked.
“I’ll be fine,” Rey said, shaking the water off. She walked past Luke, heading up the stairs, leaving R2 behind and not feeling the least bit bad about it. She didn't have it in herself to forgive him at the moment.
Luke shrugged, following them both. He eventually walked past of them, ignoring the aches in his joints. He hadn’t been up here in what felt like ages, and his body protested this trip greatly. If only he were several years younger...
“Is that it?” Rey asked once they had reached the top after what felt like an eternity. She stared at the hollowed out, worn tree. It didn’t look impressive in the slightest; it just looked old.
“Not quite,” Luke said, out of breath and leaning against the rocky wall that towered above the tree. “Here, let me show you.”
R2 whistled behind him, complaining about the amount of stairs as he used his rockets to bypass the remainder of them. Both he and Rey followed Luke into the tree, which wasn’t any bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.
“Stand back,” Luke told them, walking over to the small bookshelf, arranging scattered pieces into a symbol that Rey didn’t recognize. It seemed reminiscent of the Jedi Order’s symbol before the Empire had risen, but radiated an impossibly ancient energy to her that she couldn't quite place.
The symbol began to glow, and Luke turned around as the same blue light emanated from the floor, illuminating the same symbol that had been carved into the stone. “Now, then...”
He stepped onto the glowing symbol, motioning for Rey and R2 to do the same. The pillars of blue light grew taller, obscuring the three within it until the light faded, leaving no one there.
A snake, clad in crystal scales that glittered under the light, slithered into the tree and over the symbol, tasting the air with its tongue. Content, it moved under the shelf, curling up and falling asleep.
The pillars of light rose from the same symbol, the three standing atop as the lights dimmed again.
“Here we are,” Luke announced, stepping off of the symbol. “This is it. The very first Jedi Temple.”
It wasn’t what Rey had been expecting, not at all. The walls and the floor resembled a circuit board, made of a dark stone with glowing, cyan light that threaded through them. Pillars of green light anchored the white void above them to the room, seeming to glitter when she moved her head. She couldn’t make out anything beyond the void. Wherever they were, she had no idea. Underground? Up in the sky? Another dimension?
The question faded from Rey’s mind when she noticed the large tree ahead of them, standing in the center of the expansive room. Veins of turquoise lined the royal purple bark of the tree, disappearing up into the canopy of azure leaves. She had never seen anything like it, not even in her dreams. The tree towered above them, its branches and leaves blocking out much of the light above, the beams that did get through bathing it in an ethereal glow.
“Be welcome, child,” a voice boomed, the cyan of the stone and turquoise of the tree pulsing with each word spoken. It was then Rey noticed the vines that snaked across the floor and walls, the same purple as the tree with the same threads of turquoise. The vines wrapped around around each other, forming a vulpine face that looked at Rey. “All are welcome here...”
“Who... who are you?” Rey asked, staring into the gleaming, turquoise eyes of the vulpine. R2 beeped his own questions behind her at lightning speed, moving to her side to get a better look at the larger than life tree.
“My name is Banyonn,” the vulpine face morphed into the face of a Togruta for the moment, and then into the face of a Human. “I am the keeper of this temple... and the wellspring of the Force in this realm.”
“...Where is this place?” Rey looked back at Luke as she asked, but he merely shrugged in response, apparently deciding to let Banyonn explain it all itself. Probably for the best, she guessed.
“We are still on Ahch-To,” Banyonn answered, its voice still echoing throughout the room, a crescendo of various voices, like several people speaking at once. “Deep within its core, out of reach from those who do not know the way. This is a sacred place, a Nexus of the Force. A source of Light.”
Rey blinked, her brain processing that information. She had no idea what a Force Nexus was. She’d ask Luke later, because at that exact moment she couldn’t find the words to voice the question. Especially not with Banyonn staring at her with its glowing eyes. She couldn't meet its gaze, eyes falling to the brightly lit floor.
“You really do look like her,” Banyonn mused, the vines taking on the shape of a dragon-like creature. Before Rey could ask who Banyonn was talking about, the tree spoke again, “Ah, but where are my manners? Please, come closer, and see the the history carved into the stone...”
Rey looked at the walls more closely, seeing how the cyan lines ascended up them and formed images, each telling a story in Banyonn’s long history, framed and connected by the lines. Luke placed his hand on one such image beside her, and she turned her attention to it. R2 chirped and whistled with interest.
In the beginning, when Banyonn was much smaller, it had sent a beam of light beam into the sky, calling to the rest of the young galaxy. The first Force-sensitive to meet Banyonn had been a Caretaker, helping the tree to grow larger as others arrived, helping to build the temple piece by piece across the years. Rey wondered how much of the events depicted were literal and how much were a quick, more poetic explanation.
Rey’s eyes fell upon a few other images as she walked close to the walls. Crystals grew around Banyonn sometime in the past, Banyonn holding them within its vines out to people across the ages. And then a series of images depicting a dragon falling from the stars, crashing into the ocean of Ahch-To and leaving an island of ice in her wake.
“That thing looks... terrifying,” Rey murmured, walking past the image of the strange being speaking to Banyonn. Something about the dragon, with her sharp, icicle-like antlers and her teeth, made her all the more unnerving. She didn't look like she belonged in this universe, somehow.
“Oh, she was quite nice, actually,” Banyonn replied, vines forming the face of the dragon, grinning at her with those teeth, somehow looking just as sharp in vine form. “She did try to eat me, though.”
Rey blinked. “...What?”
“I’m not mad about it,” Banyonn’s vines took the shape of a wolf, leaning its head to the side and shrugging its shoulders. “She was quite apologetic after I asked her not to.”
“...Okay...” Rey mumbled, deciding she wasn't going to dwell on the subject. Behind her, Luke hurriedly walked past the images while R2 pretended to not see them.
There were other images like that, of people that Banyonn considered significant enough to immortalize on the temple walls. And then, she realized with a frown, millennia began to pass with few visiting Banyonn aside from the Caretakers, who had cared for it and guarded it even as it grew weaker and eventually fell into a deep sleep, forgotten by the rest of the galaxy.
“It has been so long since anyone has lived in this temple,” Banyonn mused aloud, the vines taking the shape of a Twi’lek rubbing their chin in thought. “Caretakers come and visit me, but only a few ever stay now. And it’s been awhile since any of them have...”
Banyonn glanced over at Luke, giving him a smile only a Loth-cat could create. “A pleasure as always to see you again, Skywalker.”
"Likewise," Luke said, feeling more at peace this time than he had the last few times he had visited Banyonn. I was alone those times.
"Oh, I don't believe I've asked for your name, little Skywalker," Banyonn said, the vines having morphed into a Wookiee, one younger than Chewbacca. "Might I hear it, in your voice?"
Does it already know? Rey wondered, the widening grin on the vine-Wookiee's face answering the question. "Rey. My name is Rey, now. You said I looked like someone... Who?"
The vines pulled away from each other, breaking the image of the Wookiee, before coming together again to form a Human -a woman, to be precise, holding her head up high. Rey heard Luke breath in sharply and R2 let out a shocked beep. Looking at Banyonn's vines, she felt like she knew the woman, somehow.
"Your grandmother," Banyonn answered, keeping the form of the woman, speaking with a voice that must have been an imitation of hers, yet intoned with the millennia of Banyonn's existing, each word an ethereal echo. "Padme Amidala."
"...What is that?" Poe asked, staring at the droid that Rose had just forced into a containment box. The droid looked like a crab, and it held what he could have sworn resembled a lightsaber hilt, perfectly fitted to a crab. He heard BB-8 whistle something he decided he wasn't going to translate for anyone else. "Seriously. What is that thing?"
"Paige found a small Kyber Crystal and built a lightsaber for her killer crab droid," Rose answered like that didn't actually just raise more questions.
"Paige, why did you do that?" Poe looked past Rose to see Paige looking through a pile of scrap metal.
"Why wouldn't I do that?" Paige countered, and Poe supposed that was the end of it.
The droid began hacking away at its containment with the lightsaber, slashing through the metal bars and leaping out with a triumphant screech. It scuttled across the floor, dodging Rose's and Finn’s attempts to grab it and Poe trying to block it. BB-8 screamed at it and rolled away, allowing it to leave the room and rush down the hallway, out of sight.
"Oh, well, that's kind of bad," Paige mumbled, staring at the open door. "I should probably mention it has no natural predators."
“I’d like to ask some questions, but I don’t think I’d like the answers,” Finn commented. He clapped his hands, electing to put the entire thing behind him immediately. "So, Poe was telling me that Leia would want me to meet you two, so how about we do that? I'll go first: I'm Finn."
"Oh, you're that Finn!" Rose gasped, her eye glittering with excitement and admiration. "You helped the Resistance destroy Starkiller Base! I'm, uh, I'm Rose Tico! I'm a really big fan..."
"I'm her older sister, Paige Tico," Paige replied, not looking at anyone or anything in the room except the cannon she was taking apart. "I'm the pilot of one of our Star Fortresses. In my free time, I tinker with Droids and weapons and accidentally start fires. I also study the lightsaber."
"You study lightsabers?" Finn now found himself more interested in this conversation, Paige's demon crab Droid forgotten. This must have been why Leia had wanted him to meet with Rose and Paige.
“We both do,” Rose answered, running her thumb over her necklace. Finn noticed that Paige had a similar medallion, one that seemed to fit together with Rose's as one half to a larger whole. From their home planet, perhaps. “It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time,” Finn said, sitting down while Poe walked along the walls, staring at Paige’s projects with increasing alarm.
BB-8 chirped out something, and Poe gasped. “Where did you learn that kind of language?!”
“If you don’t mind telling me, that is,” Finn added, keeping his focus on Rose and Paige, while also glad he didn’t understand a word of binary yet. Whatever BB-8 was saying in response to Poe’s horror, it sounded even worse than what had prompted Poe's outburst.
“We used to be students of Luke’s,” Rose explained, and Finn felt his heart sink. Rose closed her eyes. “The Empire ruined our homeworld and took our parents away. Luke found us after the war and took us to his temple. It was the only real home we had... until Kylo Ren burned it all down.”
“And then Luke vanished from the known galaxy, so Leia took us in,” Paige added, looking behind herself at Rose and Finn. Her voice seemed chipper, but Finn could still make out the sadness she was trying to cover. He saw the way she forced a smile on her face. “We’ve been with the Resistance ever since.”
“Our homeworld is under First Order occupation now,” Rose reached into her jacket, pulling out a lightsaber hilt of her own. The metal shone brightly under the light. “One day... One day I’ll punch the First Order in all of their faces.”
"We all want to,"
Finn nodded, thinking to himself. He still feared the First Order’s might, but the destruction of Starkiller Base proved they could be beaten. There was a chance, and he would not rest until they were a thing of the past, like the Empire should have been.
It didn’t make sense to him that the First Order could have risen at all. Did people forget what the Empire had done? Or did they not care enough? Whatever the reasons, people had suffered. Rose and Paige’s home world wasn’t free, and theirs wasn’t the only one. He had been abducted and indoctrinated as a child, like so many others, to fight for the First Order. He couldn’t forget any of that. He would never.
He wouldn’t forget the miners at Pressy’s Tumble. And he wouldn’t forget the villagers on Jakku. He’d confirmed what the simulations had begun to tell him; that he couldn’t and wouldn’t fight for the First Order.
But he could fight against them, somehow.
Paige stepped away from her current project, spinning around and pulling out the lightsaber hilt that Finn hadn't noticed was attached to her belt. She tossed it into the air and caught it, flipping it on and showing off the golden energy blade. "Take a look at mine! Built it myself. Getting the Kyber Crystal wasn't easy, seeing how the Empire took most of them and then the First Order just had to take what little was left of that, too."
It was beautiful, if Finn could call a weapon such a thing. It glowed like a star, illuminating the room and filling the steel floors and walls. Without the noise of Paige's work, he heard its hum loud and clear. “It fits you.”
“Aw, thanks,” Paige beamed, holding the lightsaber for a bit longer before deactivating it and going back to work.
“This is mine,” Rose said soon after, revealing a pink blade. She held it forward, a soft, rhythmic hum emanating from it. Whereas Paige’s seemed to burn with a kind of adventurous spirit, Rose’s shone with a fierce determination.
He hadn’t thought about it both times he held the lightsaber that belonged to Leia and Luke’s father, because neither was the time, but he realized it sang its own song, like Paige’s and Rose’s. As did Leia’s. And just like he had felt a sense of great purpose during those battles and in speaking with Leia, he felt it in that moment.
His hand twitched, seeking a lightsaber he didn’t yet possess.
“You made it yourself, right?” Finn asked.
"Yep," Rose turned it off and put it away, looking very proud of herself in that moment as she recalled the memories. "It's a rite of passage, you know?"
Finn had heard vague mentions of the Jedi building their own lightsabers with bonded Kyber Crystals, but only in the sense that the Knights of Ren (and the Sith, he presumed) did the same exact thing. He wondered how many types of Force users did the same thing.
Looking at Rose and Paige again, Finn thought that they could be friends. He only wished the circumstances could be better.
He'd make things better, in his own way.
“We have detected no signs of the Resistance on D’Qar,” the officer’s voice shook, as both Kylo Ren and General Hux listened. “They’ve... left. The base was empty, and they left nothing behind that we could use to track them... Sir.”
Without his mask, the rage on Kylo Ren’s face was immediately noticeable, and the officer shrank into himself as the lightsaber ignited. The officer barely had the chance to scream before Kylo Ren swung it towards the nearest terminal, hitting it over and over until it was reduced to a smoldering ruin.
“That... sounded expensive,” another officer said, sitting at her own computer and purposefully not looking in the direction that the reddish orange light shined from.
“I trust you’re aware that we cannot afford to keep replacing those, Kylo Ren?” Hux said, pulling Kylo Ren’s attention from either officer.
Kylo Ren glared at Hux, stepping closer to him, the lightsaber humming and crackling threateningly. “I would advise that you stop talking.”
Ignoring the lightsaber, Hux glared back after glancing at the ruined terminal. “For a large sum of credits, I will stop.”
Kylo Ren’s hand trembled from his anger, but the blade retreated back into its hilt. “Find the Resistance. Do not disappoint me again.”
He stormed out, leaving Hux and the officers behind. Hux crossed his arms behind his back, huffing and stepping away from the still burning terminal. “Clean this up.”
Phasma walked down the red hall, passing by Praetorian Guards and fellow Knights, their footsteps echoing against the steel floors. The Guards’ armour glistened like blood under the dim light, the other Knights moving like shadows ahead of them. Phasma paid them no mind, holding her head up high. It wouldn’t do to show weakness in front of them.
She held the red Kyber Crystal in one hand and a bag of components in the other. The Crystal hummed, its song broken and dark. It pounded in her head like a weak heartbeat, low and erratic. It whispered into her mind, appealing to her worst nature.
Stepping back into her new quarters, she almost slammed the Kyber Crystal down on the desk, the voices quieting down almost immediately. Her head ached from the silence, and suddenly the lights themselves seemed too loud; a dull ringing in her ears.
Even without it in her hand, she still heard faint murmurings from the Kyber Crystal, beckoning her to touch it again. Dropping the bag on the floor, watching its contents spill out across the cold steel. She picked up the Crystal again, almost dropping it when the voice grew loud again.She set it down with the rest of the components, organizing them.
She sat down in front of it all, cross-legged. Closing her eyes, she held her hands out, trying to visualize the lightsaber in her mind. The Crystal’s voice intensified the more she focused on creating her weapon, feeding her a lust for violence, for victory. None of it was remarkable to her, but she hated having thoughts that were not her own inside her head.
The Kyber Crystal was trying to become a part of her -to become her. She needed to maintain control of it, while being at one with it. But she hadn’t been given the time to get used to its presence; the Knights were not the impatient sort, not like the Sith, but with the Resistance having proven to be more of a threat than previously believed, there was no time to waste.
She needed to be stronger. She needed more power, to fight the Jedi Order that would no doubt rise now that Luke Skywalker had been found. The strong consumed the weak; that was how things were on the planet of her birth, and that was how they were in this galactic conflict. She wouldn’t change it even if she could.
The Crystal and the components floated off from the floor, slowly taking the shape of a pole as the metal encased the Crystal. Her hands trembled from the strain of her concentration, as she struggled to keep her focus. The Crystal’s whispers echoed, and still she weaved the weapon together, even as it threatened to fall apart.
She’d already corrupted the Crystal. She would be strong enough.
She would be stronger, more powerful than she had ever believed possible.
She reached a hand out further, taking hold of the finished pike. She ignited it, a thin, crimson blade illuminating the room, singing a song of pain and death, of conquests yet to come.
She would become stronger. Not for the First Order. Not for the Knights of Ren.
She would become stronger for herself.