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They stood facing each other.
She held the lightsaber out, an offering.
It was a long time before he spoke.
Thank you— so much folded into those two small words. Thank you for finding my map. Thank you for finding me. Thank you for saving the whole galaxy, and thank you, too, for saving yourself. Thank you for surviving, for enduring, for escaping. Thank you, perhaps, for forgiving. Thank you for doing what I should have done.
“Thank you,” he said. “But it’s not mine anymore.”
After a moment of hesitation, Rey tucked the lightsaber neatly back into her bag. Luke watched her with a steady eye. She took a breath.
“You’re Luke Skywalker,” she said.
“I am,” he said, and said nothing else.
In the face of his stoicism, Rey was tense, determined, exhausted. Her responsibility weighed on her, the knowledge that Leia was waiting for their return (the sight of Finn lying unconscious in the med center weighed on her, too, and the memory of Han falling, and the heat of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber still ghosting on her skin.)
“Help me, Luke Skywalker,” she said.
And something almost like a smile showed in the creases of his face.
The first time she woke on the island, it was raining. Rey could see it through a crack in the wall of Luke’s room, a bare sliver of the outside world. The water sheeted down blue and wonderful and she watched it carefully through the thin gap between stones. She was only just awake, her head resting against Chewbacca’s shoulder, his deep sleeping breaths moving her gently up and down. The two of them, exhausted, were sitting propped against each other on Luke’s narrow and ascetic bed. Blearily, Rey realized it was afternoon. She must have slept for at least two hours.
Rey hadn’t had a full night’s sleep for three days, by her calculation. Not since she had left Jakku— not since Unkar Plutt had grumbled “sixty portions” in his sonorous voice and she, an impulsive fool, had decided that the worries of a droid were more important than her safety, her livelihood, her whole little existence on that sandy world.
She had slept briefly in the Falcon on the way to Takodana, and fitfully on Starkiller before her torture at the hands Kylo Ren. On D’Qar she had not slept at all, despite being given her own bunk for the night. Was it possible she would never sleep soundly again? She thought of those plastic packages on Unkar Plutt’s trading counter. Today she would have eaten her fifth quarter-portion. She would have had two hundred and thirty-five of them left. Would she have been sleeping soundly now, surrounded by her bounty in her little makeshift home?
But there were more important things now than sleep. Outside, the rain was overwhelming and impossible. Water from the sky, she thought. Water in the air! Even this slender glimpse was almost more than Rey could stand. She leaned against Chewbacca, stock-still and quiet. Her breath hovered around her in the afternoon chill. Water rolling down the craggy hills, water splashing and breaking open against the cliffside rocks, water soaking into the dirt and dewing on blades of grass—all she could see was the incomprehensible blue mist of it through the gap in the stone-stacked wall, and that was enough. Water in Rey’s eyes, she realized, spilling down her cheeks and into Chewbacca’s fur.
She slept briefly again.
It was Luke’s footfalls that woke her the second time, soundless as he seemed to be. He’d come in from the outside, and his cloak was beaded with rain, water trembling off onto the floor as he moved. Rey realized, stirring, that Chewbacca was gone. R2-D2 stood in the corner, dark and silent. He, too, was spangled with rain.
“Good morning, Rey,” Luke said, at her waking, though was almost night.
Rey rubbed her eyes perfunctorily, and sat up. There were lines on her cheek from the folds of the blanket she had slept upon.
“Will you come with me?” he said, and she was pleased that it was an offer, and not a command.
They stepped out into the evening air. Luke looked out to the purpling horizon. Rey, quiet, watched him.
Earlier, Luke had led her back down the stone path, the collection of stacked huts, the precipitous staircase. Rey had watched him then, too, watched him walking, the movement of him. She thought about the crinkle of his eyes, his peppery beard, about a memory. When they’d reached the base of the cliff, Chewbacca had yowled out a greeting and enveloped him, wrapping him in his shaggy arms, and Rey had thought about Leia’s arms around her, and watched them, watched them.
Luke had seemed almost to collapse into the embrace, face buried in Chewie’s chest. Dwarfed and trembling, he seemed for a moment like a small child. When he pulled away he’d looked both less tired and much more tired than before. Chewie had growled something, and Rey thought it might have been about Han. She’d watched intently, but Luke had just patted Chewie on the arm (shoulder too high to reach) and turned to R2-D2. He’d kneeled on the dirty ground, and had rested his metal hand on the droid’s domed head.
“Well done, Artoo,” he’d said, so softly Rey could barely hear him.
[She’s here, she’s here,] R2-D2 had whirred, rocking back and forth.
Luke smiled. “I know,” he had said.
R2 had chirped and whistled low, [I brought her back to you.]
“Thank you, old friend,” Luke had said.
Rey had stood at the bottom of the stone steps, and stayed quiet, and watched.
They walked among the worn round buildings of the temple. The rain was just stopping, though the sky was still heavy with clouds. Rey’s thoughts had clarified with her few hours of sleep.
Eventually, they came to a cliff’s edge. Luke sat on a stone, but Rey remained standing. She had left her staff and her bag, but carried the lightsaber with her, the cold metal of it heavy in her hand.
Again, Luke didn’t speak for a long time. Rey wondered if he realized the length of his silences. How long had he been alone? When was the last time he had conversed with any living person? Or perhaps he was waiting for her to speak first. But she still had too many questions to even think of choosing one with which to begin. And of all of them, there was no answer she wasn’t afraid of. Instead, she just looked out over the vast gray sea. In the corner of her eye, she could tell that Luke was looking out at the water too.
Was this a test?
Finally, after what could have been half an hour, he spoke.
“This is where I was,” he said. “When I felt it.”
“Han,” she said. It was not a question.
“Yes.”
The waves beat against the rocky roots of the cliffs far below. Rey sat down.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and Luke looked over, startled.
“No—” he said.
“I was there! I could have, I just, he was so close, I should’ve—”
Luke reached out his hand to touch her shoulder, and Rey fell silent with the welcome shock and warmth of it. She was struck with a certain surety.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It wasn’t an accusation.”
She lapsed into silence. He dropped his hand. They watched the waves together, for a while.
She listened to the shush of water breaking against the base of the cliff. She thought about Luke’s hand on her shoulder. She was sure. She was sure, she was sure.
“I know—” she said, and she was sure. Luke kept looking out at the ocean, and she was sure. She said, “I know that you’re my father.”
And there it was, stretched out between them. And she was so unsure.
Luke opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again. He folded both hands in his lap, flesh and metal together. He looked almost like a young boy again, sheepish at being caught out, but his expression was serious and warm. Rey looked away. She could feel his eyes on her, on the way that her forehead was pinched, on the tense set of her shoulders.
She suddenly noticed a nest of sea-birds in the cliffs beside them. A handful of speckled eggs.
“There must be things,” Luke said carefully, “that you want to ask.”
Rey wasn’t sure how to feel. She wasn’t sure how to act, how to hold herself, how to look at him. But by this time, she had decided upon the question with which she would begin.
“Where do you get your food from?” she said.
Luke’s face cracked open with a smile, and he surprised her with his hearty laugh.
“Quite right,” he said. “Dinner first.”
Luke’s food, it became clear, was whatever he was able to catch or grow. He built up a fire and the two of them sat and ate stew made from fish that he had left gutted and drying on a wire from the day before, and a handful of tubers they pulled up from his makeshift garden on the edge of the stone village. Rey was ravenous, and Luke, too, ate hungrily.
“It’s a strange thing,” he said, after a long silence marked only with the sounds of their eating. He said this with no prompting, following the unspoken path of his own thoughts. Rey, scraping the last of her still-warm stew out of her bowl, regarded him. Luke smiled to himself. “Family,” he said. His voice was still careful, like before. He didn’t know quite what Rey wanted from him.
Rey thought of Leia, her face pinched with worry at the fate of her brother. She thought of Han, lit up in red ghastly light. She thought of the kick of sand and the whirl of it in the engine’s wake as a half-forgotten spacecraft disappeared into the pale Jakku sky. She thought of Finn, his earnest face, his outstretched hand, his voice: I came back for you. She thought of Luke, turning towards her at the edge of the cliff.
“Yes,” she said. Luke set down his empty bowl.
“I met my father for the first time when I was nineteen years old. He had never seen my face before. Not ever. Isn’t that an odd thing to imagine? He could only guess at what his child had looked like from seeing my face as a man. Or, almost a man.” Another smile. Luke smiled more than Rey had thought he would. His face was so kind, smiling.
“But, your father was…” and then Rey stopped, because she was just realizing what that meant for her.
“Darth Vader, yes. But Anakin Skywalker, too. He carried that name with him as well, to the very end.” His smile was softened now, tired. “Names, another strange thing.” He leaned forward to tend the fire. His voice was casual. “Would you like to know yours?”
The air was starting to get very cool, and the wind was stirring the grass and making the fire shake and flicker. Rey swallowed, her throat tight, and said nothing.
Luke shifted the ashes at the fire’s edge. “When I trained with Yoda and Ben Kenobi,” he said, “they kept secrets from me. About my father. About my sister. They thought they were doing this to help me, to protect me. But they were wrong.”
He curled his metal hand in his lap.
“And now,” he said, “I find myself in their shoes. When I look at you, all I want is to save you from all the pain and suffering of the galaxy. Even now, I’m reluctant. I feel like the worst thing would be to tell you everything, to expose you to our story and all our heartbreak. But Rey,” and here he turned to look right into her face, “Rey, there’s nothing worse than not knowing.”
Rey slid down to rest her back against the stone upon which she had been sitting.
“Tell me what happened at the school,” she said. The fire was burning steadily. The sun was now fully set. “At your Academy. Tell me about Ben.”
Is it unexpected that she called him Ben, already? Not really. Families and names, both strange things, as Luke had said.
He looked more tired than ever. After a long pause, he sighed, and spoke.
It was at night, he began. Everything was quiet. Or, most everything.
I slept in my room above the teaching hall, but all of the students lived together, in the old barracks. The Academy was on Dantooine, you know— there used to be a rebel base there, abandoned since before the Battle of Yavin. When I started recruiting students, Leia suggested it for the Academy. The base had been falling apart for a decade, and the first years of the Academy we did more weeding and renovating than training. By this time it was barely recognizable. But we still had the barracks. And the students’ beds were there, at the edge of the campus, the younglings and the padawans together.
The oldest of them had lived there a long time. The first generation of students were almost old enough to be Jedi in their own right. I’ve often wondered if perhaps they already were. Maybe if I had been sure enough to believe that, they would be alive today.
It was very late. It had been lights-out for hours, but students often stayed up, reading secretly, or whispering to each other. It was a young Mirialan girl who came to me and woke me up that night. She said that she was having nightmares about people in dark robes passing her bed, people wearing shiny black masks. I told her they were just a bad dream, and walked her back to the dormitory. That was when I noticed that Ben’s bed was empty. And then, across the Academy yard, I saw the first building beginning to burn.
It was the mess hall— I thought there must have been some accident. I woke Par Prala, and asked her to watch over the students. Back at my room, Wedge was awake, and I sent him to you. I found my two oldest padawans, Xamie and Auspa, and told them to go look for Ben. I thought he had run off again, as he so often did, back then.
By the time I got to the burning mess hall, the hangar next to it had gone up in flames as well, and the fire was spreading from building to building. I still remember exactly how it looked. The smoke. The dark sky.
I was foolish back then, and strong with the Force— stronger and more foolish than I had ever been before. In my foolishness, I thought I could extinguish it myself. I was pulling water out of the pipes, out of the pump, out of the fountain pond in the yard, I was pulling water out of the air. I should have known it was no natural fire.
Xamie joined me in the flaming yard and said that she and Auspa couldn’t find Ben, and that I had to go, that it was no use. There was fire and water all around us. The hangar was collapsing, metal struts and timbers crashing together. The mess hall was almost ash. Xamie was always the kindest and most perceptive of all my students. We ran.
We were passing by the teaching hall when we saw the first body, in the shadow of a hedge. Face blackened, it had wounds that were charred, but not from fire. We ran on, past the old ruins of the rebel base armory, past the temple and its tree. By the time we got back to the barracks, Par Prala had led the students away from the burning buildings and out into the open plain north of the Academy. Some children were wrapped in their blankets, some in their brown robes. I remember seeing them, their shapes against the grass as they walked and shivered in the cold air. That’s when it started.
You see, I was wrong.
Ben had not run away that night.
The body under the hedge had been Auspa, who must have found him after all.
The nightmare figures in dark robes were the Knights of Ren.
They were armed with blasters, staffs, riot weapons, and one unpredictable lightsaber. We were armed with nothing. Most of the young children were killed immediately, with barely a chance to cry out, or know what was happening. Par Prala, who had never been force-sensitive, was killed shielding a boy from a blaster bolt. Xamie ran past me right into the fray, and almost managed to seize the rifle blaster from one of the Knights before she was struck on the back of the head and killed. A Wookiee padawan brought one of them down, but was hit by another bolt. Children lay scattered on the ground, bleeding into the wet grass.
I killed… I killed three of the Knights. I killed three of them, but before that I found you and Wedge, and I told you to run. The hangar had burnt down, and most of the ships with it. But I knew one of the students had been doing repairs that day, and had left the old junker she was working on out on the runway.
By the time I saw its lights above the fires, saw it rise up towards the edge of space, knew that you and Wedge were safe, almost everybody in the field was dead. It was just the Knights of Ren, my young nephew, and me.
Here Luke paused for a long moment. Rey looked up from the glowing embers of the fire. He seemed uncertain of what to say next. Finally, he spoke again.
The halls and barracks and all the buildings were burned to nothing. The temple was burned. The tree was burned. The teachers and students had been killed. The Academy was destroyed.
But you survived, he said. You lived on, half a galaxy away.
The night wind was picking up. It was cold.
“Wedge was my father, too?” Rey asked. She was not foolish enough to use present tense.
“Yes,” said Luke, “he was. He loved you so much, Rey.”
She had no memory of him, of his face or voice or hands.
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said, clipped. Rey nodded. She was used to not knowing. There was a pause, and then she asked a third question.
“Did you look for me?”
And this, perhaps, was the most important question of all. This was the one she had been burning to ask.
She had burned for it all those years, on Jakku, sleeping in the cavernous stomach of the AT-AT, working under Unkar Plutt’s far-from-fatherly gaze. Living by herself, living off the charity and carelessness of strangers, living off her own wits and the strength in her own limbs. It was hope that had sustained her, more than green meat or instant bread ever could. Hope had fed her and tucked her into bed at night in the place of a parent. Hope had placed its hand between her shoulder blades, guided her and kept her from stumbling as she traversed the vast and lifeless worlds of the fallen Star Destroyers, half-buried, all steel and sand. It was hope she had loved and cared for and cultivated gently. The hope that there was someone out there, someone who had lost her, someone who would search if they only knew where she could be found.
“No,” said Luke, and it was as if the world had fallen away.
His answer was both briefer and crueler than she had expected, his brow knit with the pain of it. Rey’s breath was all caught up in her lungs. He hadn’t looked for her? All this time? She had been tired and starving and alone, and he had loved her, and known, and done nothing? The cold air had been biting at her hands and her face as they talked, but suddenly it was piercing right through her.
You monster, she wanted to say. How could she have thought that his face looked kind? She realized for the first time how alone they were, here in the space between sharp hills. All around her, the crags of the island seemed to grow vicious and strange.
“Rey—“ he said, reaching out to her, and she pushed him away, stumbling back from the warm circle of the firelight.
“How could you?” she gasped, breathless. “How can you say that like it’s nothing?”
“Rey, I promise you,” he said. “Whatever happened to you, whatever hardships you endured, they were nothing, nothing, to what would have happened had I been with you.”
“I don’t believe you!” she said.
She turned away, and doubled over on the ground, her knees and hands in the wind-ruffled grass. She threw up.
Since she’d pushed him, Luke had made no move to approach her, but watched her silently as she panted and spit. After a moment, she wiped her mouth and stood. Luke watched as she walked back to the path at edge of their grassy ravine, and descended shakily out of sight.
When the morning broke, Rey had not yet slept. Restless and unsure of herself, she had sat on a temple roof and looked out over the sea all night. Sunrises were very different on Ahch-To than on Jakku, and Rey was overwhelmed by the water’s expansive and shimmering reflection of the pinkness of the sky.
Last night, she had not wanted to return to Luke’s room. Standing on the main path, however, eyes still teary and mouth bitter, she had realized that, of course, she had nowhere else to go. She didn’t want to go back to the Millennium Falcon, where Chewbacca and R2D2 would look at her and ask questions.
Instead, she climbed up to the cold rooftop of one of the taller buildings set into the side of the cliff and crouched there, waiting.
She saw Luke wind his way down the steep steps and towards the small stone structure he had made his home. His shoulders were heavy and his eyes low. She had no doubt that he knew where she sat in the darkness, but he did not turn to meet her gaze. She watched the candlelight in his dwelling flicker warmly to life, watched the light spill through the gaps in the stone and cast dancing shadows all along the pebbly ground.
A few minutes later, the light was extinguished. Rey slowly exhaled, relaxing enough to uncross her arms and settle more comfortably against the cliff face abutting the roof.
She didn’t sleep.
Later — and she had lost track of time now, three hours, four? — some bat-like creatures winged their way out of an unseen cavern in the cliff, below the temple buildings. They circled through the air together, in the dim light of Ahch-To’s three yellowish moons. Rey tracked their movement, the dizzying spin of them in the currents of the cold wind.
She didn’t sleep.
She thought about the school. Luke had said she’d lived there. She thought about the life she would have had, and the life she did have.
She didn’t sleep.
She watched the sunrise, and she watched the bats return to their cave in the early morning light.
She followed them.
Luke did not pretend to be surprised to find her there, in the rocky cave recessed into the cliff face. She did not pretend to be surprised that he had climbed down to it so easily.
She was sitting on the wet stone. She still had her lightsaber in her hand. She didn’t let him talk first this time.
“Where will you build the school again?” Rey asked him. “Here on the island?”
“No,” Luke said.
“How will you restart the Jedi Order?”
“I won’t,” he said.
She didn’t ask him what he meant. But he spoke on.
“This was not the first time the Jedi had been massacred. I am the last Jedi now… but I have been the last Jedi before.” Again, the curl of his metal hand. “Now who will I consign to the fate of being the next last Jedi? You? Some poor soul years from now? I have no doubt we will, one day, be massacred again.”
Rey looked down at her lightsaber.
“I’ll still train you,” he said, “if you’d like me to. I want you with me. I want your help. But things will be different. We must be different from how we’ve been. There are reasons that the Jedi do not endure. I’m not sure what, I’m not sure why. I only know one truth.”
He turned away from her, silhouetted in the cave entrance.
“It’s time for the Jedi to end.”
The sound of the sea, outside. The sound of their breathing.
“Please,” he said, and he couldn’t bear to look at her, “Breha, will you help me?”
She was still angry. But she wanted her father. And she was still tired. But she couldn’t sleep yet.
“Yes,” she said.