Chapter Text
The first time she brushes her fingertips against the two crystals nestled against each other in the crate, she knows they are hers . It jolts through her gut, ripples in the Force, and she sees the briefest flash color, almost blindingly bright in its intensity. A grin comes over her face, and she gingerly scoops the twin shards from the container she and Ben and brought back from Barseg.
They’re small, colorless, and just the tiniest bit irregular in their oblong, multi-faced shape. Both fit comfortably in the palm of one hand, and when she closes her fingers over them, she swears she can already feel the quiet thrum of energy under their glassy-smooth surface.
Already, schematics and diagrams are popping into her head. She’s been dreaming about this day for years now, when she’d finally be able to start building her own lightsaber. Excitement and anticipation buzz through her, and she has to stop and take a deep breath to keep her hands from shaking as she pulls out a scrap of cloth she’d brought with her and lovingly wraps up the two kyber crystals before pocketing them.
She’s nearly vibrating with excess energy as she walks out of the hangar’s cargo storage bay and towards Master Luke’s hut. Her fingers twitch as she thinks about running them over the collection of parts Luke had shown her, the ones he told her she’d have her pick of once the Force had guided her to her crystals.
It’s only a handful of minutes later and she’s knocking on the door to Luke’s quarters, breathing hard from the breakneck pace she’d set in her hurry to get there. Master Skywalker answers quickly, giving her a knowing grin when she makes a beeline to the rough hewn workbench in the corner where the parts and materials are all spread out. It shows either how well Luke has come to know her or how easy she is to read that he doesn’t try to engage her in any conversation.
Luke, as well as the more advanced knights in the Order, had been welding and forging various parts in preparation for the handful of padawans that would be making their weapons in the next few months, the table nearly overflowing with boxes and bins of saber components. Rey was understandably quite interested in the process, given her scavenging background, and had helped out a few times herself. The parts were a mix of reverse engineering from the few sabers Luke had available and modifications of the blueprints and schematics Luke had found in some old holocrons.
Her fingers rifle over and through the parts, looking for pieces that echo the design in her head, modeled heavily after her beloved quarterstaff. Twin emitters, switches, hilts, and a long durasteel rod are quickly and efficiently chosen, Rey following the pull in her gut when a particular part catches her eye or when her mechanic’s intuition leads her to pick one component over another. Once she has all the pieces that will make up the body of her weapon, Luke points her towards another box that houses the fragile inner components, a slew of intricate and expensive pieces of technology. The ex-scavenger in her is practically drooling at the sight. You can take the girl out of the deserts of Jakku, but you can’t take the deserts of Jakku out of her, or so it would seem.
She collects the rest of the materials she needs and packs it all carefully in her bag, wrapping up the delicate parts in some fabric scraps she had brought along and carrying the long piece of metal as she thanks Luke and moves to go.
“You know what you need to do first, padawan?” he asks as he’s opening the door for her.
Rey nods; it isn’t as though she hasn’t been preparing for this moment since her first day at the academy. “Meditate with the crystals, find any imperfections, and calculate their ideal alignment.”
“An answer straight from the holocron, Rey,” Luke chuckles. “You’ll do spectacularly. Just don’t rush it, or get impatient. Don’t be disappointed when you don’t get it on the first try. We have quite the store of extra parts here, so just come back when you need new ones. May the Force be with you.”
Rey inclines her head respectfully to the master and heads back out into the village. She’s more than ready to start working on her weapon right away, planning to head down the river a bit to meditate over the crystals for the rest of the morning and afternoon if needed.
What Luke had said confused her a bit, though - would she really not be able to complete the weapon on her first try? She’s a mechanic, a tinkerer, and she knows her way around the Force almost as well as she does around the circuits of a hyperdrive.
Really, he’d probably just said it so that she didn’t get overconfident. She knew it wouldn’t be instantaneous, and that it more than likely wouldn’t be completed all in one day, but surely replacement parts wouldn’t be necessary. Rey could be patient, and she certainly could be persistent (Ben would probably call it stubborn ), so really there shouldn’t be a problem with her being successful on her first try - right?
Well, really Rey supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. Master Skywalker had warned her this might happen, and she’d done exactly the opposite of what he’d told her to do, so it was probably only natural that she was left with one shorted-out, half melted saber.
This is what she got for being overeager and rushing through things - she should have known better than to take shortcuts with the modulation circuits. It was basic stuff, really, so basic that she had to restrain herself from an open-palmed slap to her forehead. When had she gotten so sloppy?
She could trace it back, though. The picture of her weapon had been so clear in her mind, so tangible, that it has distracted her from what was actually physically in front of her. A foolish and rookie mistake, but she knew it wasn’t the end of the galaxy. She could, and would, be back at it tomorrow with a better idea of what she was doing.
She hadn’t even started on the second saber - she’d need to get replacement parts from Luke tomorrow anyway. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to that conversation with the master. He would never go so far as to actually say something like I told you so , but he got this little twinkle in his eye and the tiniest grin at one corner of his mouth that said it all and then some. Probably she deserved it, but that didn’t make the sting of embarrassment any less. She wondered if Ben would be more or less easy on her than Luke - he’d either go full sympathy or full (good-natured) mockery. He generally didn’t do things by halves.
It had all started out fine - she’d slipped into meditation quickly and seamlessly, one crystal nestled into each of her upturned palms. As she’d focused on them, channeled the Force into the colorless shards, they’d started to float just above her skin and pulse with the faintest glow. Her pulse had picked up the tiniest bit, but she quickly dampened it down with her meditation techniques. Focus. She had to be a conduit between the Force and the crystals, and conduits didn’t get butterflies in their stomachs like an overeager youngling balancing their first stone in the air.
She’d waited, feeling the Force flow into the crystals and keeping the image of her completed saber in her mind. Time was always fuzzy when she was in that kind of state, but it seemed she’d been at it for hours when she started feeling the faintest tendril of impatience at the edge of her consciousness.
What she could assume were hours (but really, could have been minutes or seconds) slipped by, and she could feel the crystals growing warmer and pulsing louder, something she could sense but not quite hear or see. Her confidence grew, perhaps too quickly now that she looked back on it - and looked down at the mess of slag in front of her.
Rey had reached with the Force for the parts laid out in front of her, things coming together as she’d planned until suddenly - they weren’t. A few parts weren’t fitting together right, and she’d done all she could to keep the furrow of frustration off her brow as she tried a few different options for connecting the circuits to the length adjustment pieces. After what had seemed like every possible connection she could think of didn’t work, something finally clicked, and then started emitting a sickly black smoke, and then erupted in a small burst of white-hot flame that made her glad she’d thrown up a protective bubble around her work as Ben had suggested.
There was no recovering the delicate circuitry or tiny parts that had been melted in the fire, although the crystals would be fine. Her pride was bruised, but it would heal a lot better than melted durasteel ever would. She felt a brief flash of frustration almost as bright as the inadvertent flames from a few moments past, but it was gone quickly as she did a breathing exercise reflexively.
Still crestfallen, she dug through the remnants to salvage what little she could of the parts and cradling the crystals gently as she rubs off the soot and returns them to the bag. A silly gesture, as they’d just survived a flame hot enough to melt metal, but they just felt like they needed to be respected. Rey shoved the mess back into her bag and headed back to her quarters, head held high, if maybe a few centimeters less than usual. She’d be back at it, as soon as she’d done some recalculations. No sweat.
That had been days ago. Almost four days to the hour, in fact, and she had a strange sense of deja vu as she grimaced at the latest kriff-up before her on the grass. It was time to face facts. Rey needed more help with this, engineer and capable Force-user or not. If there was one thing she was still extremely stubborn with, it was letting go of her independence when it came to solving a problem. Conversely, if there was one thing she’d be willing to do that for, it’d be finally having her own lightsaber.
She goes to Luke again with the broken saber in hand, shame coursing through her veins at yet another failure. Determinedly, she tells herself that she is not going to walk into his quarters with her proverbial tail between her legs in defeat - once she’s actually knocking at his door though, she realizes that that’s going to be yet another failure on her part.
Master Skywalker opens the door, taking in the crushed expression on her face and the broken hilt in her hands, and wordlessly ushers her inside and into one of the armchairs in his sitting room. Luke bustles in the kitchenette for a few minutes, not saying anything to Rey who sits stock-still trying not to mope in a cloud of self-depreciation and absentmindedly picking at a singed piece of leather on the destroyed saber.
The bearded man returns with two steaming mugs of tea, handing one to Rey for which she utters a quiet thank you, master , before he settles down in the chair opposite her. He gives her a knowingly sympathetic smile and nods towards the broken hilt. “So, what was the issue this time?”
“What wasn’t the issue this time, more like,” she starts with a humourless laugh. “The ignition was sputtery, one side wasn’t fitting in the coupler properly, and when I tired to fix it... well, I guess my emotions got the better of me and in my frustration I just, uh, broke it the rest of the way,” Rey mumbles, eyes trained to the ground. “I’m sorry, Master Luke. I know I need to focus harder and it was wrong of me to let my anger get the better of me. I’ll try harder next time.”
Rey looks up at Luke then, unsurprised to see his eyes devoid of any kind of disappointment or anger with her mistakes. She always wonders how he manages to stay so calm , or perhaps if he’s just highly skilled at not showing anything outwardly. Either way, sometimes his placidity made her irrationally frustrated, like it was threatening to do right now. She thinks in some ways it would almost make her feel better if he just let her have it, admonish her for her carelessness and mistakes. Maybe it’s what she deserves, but it isn’t what he’s going to give her and they both know it.
“Rey, I’m not sure why you’re apologizing to me when we’ve discussed how building a lightsaber is a deeply personal task, unique to each Jedi who undertakes it,” Luke begins, voice tranquil and steady.
The padawan considers that for a moment, thinking about whether it was now necessary to apologize for apologizing , or if that would just make things worse. The whole situation was making her head hurt, and she just wanted to go back to her quarters, flop down into her bed, and hide under her blankets. She didn’t even care how cowardly it sounded anymore. This whole thing was starting to get the best of her in a way few things ever had before.
“I guess I just feel like I’m failing you and the rest of the order when I can’t do what I need to do in order to become a Knight,” she admits, eyes flitting to the floor when she’s no longer able to hold his almost too-understanding gaze.
Luke holds out his flesh-and-blood hand for the hilt then, and Rey gives the misshapen, partially melted thing over to him without any hesitation. Good riddance. He turns it around in his hands, unscrewing a panel to access the innards and examine how the different components are slotted together. The ex-scavenger tries not to squirm as he evaluates her work - her failure - and she nervously gulps down some of her tea, nearly burning her throat her in haste to ground herself.
“You picked up on the fact that it was an issue with the crystals’ alignments, I’m assuming?” Luke asks, and Rey gives him quick nod of agreement. She had picked up on that, pretty quickly. It didn’t mean she had known how to fix it though, as was clearly evidenced by the twisted piece of technology the master was currently holding. “You’re so close, padawan. Other than the damage that appears to have been inflicted when you tried to... shall we say, fix it, everything appears to be put together with startling accuracy and precision. You’re a brilliant young woman, Rey, very capable and strong in mind, body, and the Force,” he says earnestly, and Rey feels her cheeks heating a bit at the praise. “I wouldn’t have chosen you as a candidate for knighthood if I didn’t think it was within your grasp. Surely you know that. You’re not letting me or anyone else down by struggling with this. It’s an immensely difficult task. If it wasn’t, don’t you think anyone who could get their hands on some parts would be running around with a lightsaber?” the older man finishes with a wry smile. He had a very valid point, as always.
“Yes, Master Skywalker. I just... I didn’t think it would be this hard ,” Rey sighs, shaking her head and taking another sip of her tea. Luke sets the ruined lightsaber on the side table and leans forward to rest a reassuring hand on her shoulder briefly.
“Take as long as you need to do this, Rey. Building your saber is more about the process than the product, and believe me that you certainly aren’t the first to have a few... mishaps along the way to creating your perfect weapon. A little failure goes a long way towards character building,” he says with a chuckle. “Once it’s done, you’ll know it was all worth it, and you’ll come out of the experience a stronger, more self-aware, and more centered Jedi. I have a feeling it won’t be much longer for you, and your saberstaff will be quite the sight to behold,” Luke finishes, a grin coming over his face with the last few words.
Rey offers her own small smile, surprised at how much better she’s feeling after speaking with Luke. In some ways, she had expected this meeting to make her feel even worse, to intensify the sting of failure, but the the familiar steady burn of determination is already flaring up inside of her again. She should have never let it go out, really. It’s good for her to hear that she isn’t the only one to have a hard time with this. Even though she had always known it must be the case, the idea hadn’t been an easy thing to absorb until now when she’s hearing it first-hand from her master.
Sensing the meeting is finished, she stands and gives a small nod of respect to the bearded Jedi. “Thank you for your time and your encouraging words, Master,” she says as she moves to leave.
“It’s always a pleasure, Rey. I wish you the best of luck with the saber, and may the Force be with you,” he says with a air of finality, standing up himself to show her out of his quarters. Rey casts one last longing glance at the failed saber attempt, still lying on the table looking broken and forlorn, as she says goodbye to Luke and thanks him again.
Tomorrow , she thinks as she strides back to her quarters , tomorrow will be the day .