Chapter Text
Luke looks across at the lightsaber that the kid, no older than he had been that sweltering, scorching, burning dusk on Tatooine when he had met Obi-Wan Kenobi and watched his aunt and uncle’s bodies turn to ash, holds out to him.
He looks and he feels such a wave, a torrent, of emotions, unstoppable, and most of all, he knows that she doesn’t deserve this burden.
When he sees the lightsaber, he is first thrown back to the prism-like, fluorescent black corridors of Cloud City’s power plant, to the moment Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber sliced his hand clean off and sent the lightsaber and the hand that wielded it spiraling into the bottomless expanse below.
His mechanical hand, the artificial skin long-since worn away over three decades, twitches involuntarily towards the hilt that the girl holds out to him.
So he reaches out and takes the lightsaber from her, and there are the tears of an old man who has spent half of his life searching for peace for those who he’d loved in his eyes.
And as his hands, metal and weathered, warm and human, grip the worn metallic bodice, he thinks of the memory, of his first time, of activating the lightsaber in a ship travelling through hyperspace to a planet that no longer existed, a blast shield over his eyes, and being doubted by one of the only people he’d been able to trust.
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
Luke knows the answer to the question even before he can bring himself to ask it—he knows how the girl got onto the island, he knows the ship she took. He has seen that ship. He could try so hard, but in a thousand lifetimes, he could never forget it. He knows because he can feel the gaping emptiness, not in the Force, but in his heart. At the very center of his being.
“Where’s Han?”
The girl, eyes already red-rimmed with absolute exhaustion, is unable to stop the tears that ooze out and down her cheeks.
She is standing with her hands at her sides, empty now that he’s taken the lightsaber, her staff slung over her back, and she looks small, desperate, and terrified, but she stands straight and with purpose, absolutely proud, full of dignity and respect.
And Luke can’t look at her anymore, because he knows who he sees in her body language and who he sees in her hope and he can’t stand it, can’t stand the reminder.
He holds in his hands the lightsaber that Obi-Wan Kenobi had removed from an ancient trunk and handed to him, with allusions to tales and deeds of great glory.
It was the lightsaber that Yoda had examined when he’d first trained Luke, the lightsaber he’d carried around clipped to his belt more as a wishful thought than a weapon, that he’d summoned for the first time using the Force in the cave of the Yeti, after which he’d stumbled out, bruised and battered and—
He can’t go on.
The tears in his eyes are there, as he looks at the lightsaber, filled with memories and surrounded by the Force essence of those who had wielded it.
He cannot bear to part with it, yet he cannot bear to hold it.
“Han Solo is...is...he’s dead.” A ragged breath. “He was killed by his own son, Kylo Ren.”
The girl’s voice trembles with emotion, with pain and disbelief and unbridled fury, the memory and the feelings and the pain all still too fresh to be numbed and forgotten.
The tears slip past his eyes, too, and they roll down his face and gather in his beard like mourners.
He sets the lightsaber down gently onto the ground before his feet because he cannot bear the pain and deal with it all, at once and sudden and searing, and he has no more hubris left in himself to try.
The lightsaber glints in the sunlight as the Force in the blades of grass whispers around it, and, carefully, Luke steps around the lightsaber so that it no longer lies as a physical barrier, a crease in the Force filled with voices and stories and memories and experiences they do not share. He steps around its divide so that he can address her and ask her why, because maybe, maybe, he wanted to be found.
He knows how she found him. The only way she’d gotten the map and that ship. Coincidence cannot be found within the Force.
He wants desperately to say no, to say leave, but he can’t. He cannot be a coward and turn down a child asking for help, placing all her faith in him alone. Not again.
His voice still hoarse with disuse and broken with emotion, he asks, “Who are you?”
“I’m Rey,” she says. “General Leia Organa of the Resistance, currently stationed with its base on D’Qar, sent me to come find you. You left a part of a map inside an astromech droid, R2-D2, with a piece missing, and a Resistance pilot and a First Order defector–” she swallows, says their names, “Poe and Finn, they brought the rest of the map to the Resistance. And along the way, they found me. Or—” she stops, lost for a moment in a memory. “I found the droid.”
“Yes,” Luke takes another step forward, examines, analyzes the face he knows and remembers, the way to which he could have traced his path to along the stars, and asks, even if he knows the answer to this, too.
“But why are you here?”
Poe sits, ragged and on edge, by the Medbay bed that holds Finn’s body.
Finn’s body is encapsulated in a bodysuit circulating bacta and pumping plasma into Finn’s bloodstream.
D’Qar’s energetic atmosphere is coming down from a high, the successful destruction of Starkiller Base a major victory for the Resistance, but it is washed out with grief over the fallen pilots and the murder of Han Solo.
And the critical condition of Finn.
Poe sews.
Kylo Ren’s crackling, unstable lightsaber had seared through and burned the leather jacket as it had drawn its blade of pure heat down Finn’s back, and because Poe knows there is nothing in the galaxy that he could possibly do at the moment to help Finn—because Maker, if there were, he’d already be doing it—he works on the jacket.
He does the stitches in thick leather cord, blue, for the lightsaber that Finn wielded in the battle against Kylo Ren, and blue for Blue Squadron, who he'd led to wipe out Starkiller Base in its entirety. They could not have done that without Finn.
Finn, who was the only reason Poe was still alive, who had risked his life to free Poe, who had broken through years and years of programming to do it, and who had risked his life again for Rey. Who had stood up to the man he feared and despised with a passion.
Poe’s hands shake when he thinks of Kylo Ren.
The industrial needle refuses to go through the leather, and Poe tries again, blinking the blurriness away.
He’d face Kylo Ren again for Finn, who’d had that courage.
He watches Finn’s vitals and works on the jacket.
“The First Order, led by Kylo Ren,” Rey starts, uncertain, “operated from a base known as Starkiller, which claimed outright responsibility for the destruction of the entire Hosnian System, including Hos Prime and its moon—” The words spill out, faster and faster in a torrent of information and memories as Rey’s words grow in urgency. “The destruction of the Republic’s capital has undoubtedly forced the Republic’s hand in joining the war, but General Organa doubts their interest in aiding the Resistance. So I came here—I was sent here to look for you—to convince you to help us again. We need you, Master Skywalker. You’re our only hope.”
Luke is silent, and his eyes slide away from Rey’s piercing, questioning stare. Rey pauses.
But why are you here?
Rey looks at the ground where Luke set the lightsaber. “That lightsaber—I pulled it toward me, as I reached out and begged for it when I dueled Kylo Ren.”
She tilts her head back up to look Luke in the eyes.
“That lightsaber, it pulled me towards it, where I found it in Maz Kanata’s castle on Takodana. It showed me—it showed me memories. Your memories, I think. When I was captured by Kylo Ren, he tried to force his way inside my mind, but instead, I looked inside his. I asked a Stormtrooper to undo my restraints and leave his weapon beside me, and he did. When I fought Kylo Ren—he could not beat me.”
She pauses, for a breath. For any reaction. “That is the Force, isn’t it?”
“As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were silenced.” Luke looks sadly past Rey’s head—at the blurred shape of the Millennium Falcon, Rey realizes—then turns to again meet Rey’s eyes.
“Yes, that is the Force. But I cannot be your last hope.”
Rey continues to look at him, unmoving, eyes desperate.
“I will train you in the ways of the Force, but not in those of the Jedi.” The weight of each of Luke’s words is palpable. “There are no Jedi on this island.”
Hux collapses onto his knees and slides forward before keeling over to lie prostrate before the looming hologram of Supreme Leader Snoke.
“Can you explain,” Snoke says quietly, coldly, his voice grating and dangerously detached, as Hux feels his pharynx contract, “what catalyzed the circumstances of Starkiller Base?”
Hux wheezes pathetically, unable to speak an answer, but Snoke doesn’t need that either—unsympathetically, he rips his way into Hux’s mind, and Hux’s wheezing breaths turn into gurgling screams.
“I see,” Snoke says after a while, voice laced with anger and contempt, and leans contemplatively against the back of his holographic throne.
Hux’s weak whistle-breaths turn into full-fledged coughs as Snoke releases him and he is allowed to collapse onto his side.
“The responsibility for sending Ren out of commission with his face carved in half is attributed to that girl.”
At his feet, Hux retches air.
“FOOLISH,” booms Snoke suddenly, his voice rolling across the dark chamber. “All this time you’ve been focusing on that girl—you have overlooked, in your tunnel-vision hatred, blindness, and stupidity, the existence of another. He has been under your upturned noses for the past fourteen years, because you’ve been too proud to look down.”
Hux wheezes, managing to breath out “Who?”
Snoke ignores him, steepling his twisted fingers, with their blackened, claw-like nails, underneath his deformed skull as he sits, lost in thought.
“I cannot feel him now—I cannot find him. He is too far away, shrouded in the Force by those around him. But no matter. I will find him soon enough. And he will be our path to the pitiful remains of that rebel scum that calls itself the Resistance. And this time—”
Hux rises silently above the ground, his feet dangling several inches above the polished black floor.
“—you will not fail me.”
Hux drops back onto the ground at the hologram’s feet.
“Now, go evaluate Ren. Determine how long before he’s in the condition to see me.”
Hux barely manages to gasp out, “Yes, Supreme Leader,” before the hologram blinks out.
Far below, the choppy waves on the endless sea of Ahch-to splash against the dark of the cliff face.
Luke looks at the lightsaber, resting on the slab of rock in front of Rey’s crossed legs, the hood falling back over his face, pushed by the wind that flows across the cliff face and through the hollow cavern. “The last Jedi ceased to be thirty years ago. Now, there is only hope.”
Luke searches Rey’s eyes for understanding.
“The Jedi came to an end after the death of Darth Vader and the Emperor, the last living Sith. There is a principle that must be understood: without the strength of the light, there cannot be darkness. With the balance, the First Order only played at the fear that lies coiled in our hearts and in the shadows. I did not teach Jedi. I taught balance.”
He pauses and keeps searching. He sees the beginning of understanding in her clear eyes and steadfast gaze.
“There exists a bridge. There always has. An allegiance to neither the Jedi nor the Sith. The Gray. The Jensaarai. The Imperial Knights. They have existed for millenia, only to be erased from our history.
“For years after the collapse of the Empire, I tried to embody the balance. Yield neither to the dark nor the light. And to teach those principles to the generations of Force-users who studied under me. The balance—it is like a coin, set to spin but that ceases spinning on its edge without falling to show either face and hide its opposite.”
“But how can the universe be in balance when there exists someone as horrid and vile—and powerful—as Kylo Ren?” Rey asks quietly. “How can you keep the balance when a side is trying to to topple the coin onto one face and hide the other?”
“It is my own pride that led to what became Kylo Ren,” he says simply, as if that explains everything in the galaxy. “I was not enough to keep the balance.”
The wind scrapes across the bare rock.
“We must find the light to counterbalance the darkness. But,” he turns to Rey, who sits cross-legged on the slab of rock, listening intently, “once—once this is over, you must relinquish the light and find the balance. Without you—"
Without the wind, there would be silence.
"The strength of the darkness is counterbalanced by the strength of the light, but the same can be said for when the opposite happens. The existence of the Jedi facilitates the existence of the Sith.”
He turns away from the water and looks past Rey, towards the reflecting pool within which there is a tiled tribute to the two sides of the Force, the dark and the light.
“It is time for the Jedi to end.”
He heaves a long sigh, then makes his way back along the jutting rock orifice to stand at eye-level with Rey as she sits.
“Alright. Open your hand.”
She complies, splaying her right hand open in front of her.
He reaches forward and presses a druggat into her palm.
“Spin it,” he says simply, and Rey complies, sending it turning round and round on the rock slab in front of her, between herself and the lightsaber.
“Now focus,” he says. “Focus, and make it so that it stops spinning on its edge.”
Rey eyes him, almost as if about to protest about the difficulty of the exercise.
The glimmer of a smile cracks Luke’s façade. “You have the Force, do you not?”
She tilts her head to watch as the druggat spins, concentrating. As it slows, her gaze intensifies, and the druggat remains upright, still turning round. Its rotations become slower and Rey instinctively leans forward to amplify her focus.
Luke stops her gently with a hand on her shoulder. “Close your eyes.”
“But then I won’t be able to see the coin!” Rey protests, and the druggat wobbles dangerously. Luke gives her a pointed look.
With the utmost care, she straightens, and slowly shuts her eyes.
The coin keeps turning. Slower. And slower.
And slower.
And it stills.
Balanced perfectly on its edge.
Rey opens her eyes warily, joy flashing across her face as she sees the coin, recognizing that it is still upright, and stationary, on the rock before her.
“See?” Luke says, almost poignantly, raising an eyebrow. Gently, he picks up the coin by its two faces and returns it to the confines of his robe.
“Now close your eyes.”
Rey complies, and holds out her hand expectantly for the coin.
Luke sighs. “No.” He curls her hand back closed, and she frowns.
“Now, reach out. With the Force. And find that same balance.”
Rey sucks in a sharp breath through her nose, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
“Breathe,” Luke says softly. “Just breathe.”
Little by little, Rey’s face relaxes.
“What do you see?” Luke’s voice grounds her.
“I see the island, shrouded in the Force.” Her eyes flit behind her eyelids. The grass and the flowers flash across her vision, dancing in the wind that flows around the island.
“At the center of the island, there is a tree.” She stands before it, traces the grooves in the ancient trunk with her fingers. At her feet, the grass continues to rustle, rippling out in all directions from where she stands. “The light.”
“The last-standing Jedi Temple, with the original Jedi texts,” says Luke.
“And below that tree, directly underneath, there is a—a cavern. A hole in the rock by the water. There’s darkness…” A gaping maw of a fracture in the rock, overgrown all across by inky seaweed that seems to ooze out of the opening like sludge. Rey kneels and feels the texture of the seaweed, and it’s rough and scratchy, enough to make her palms raw and red.
“And between them?” Luke asks, unyielding, as Rey looks over the precipice.
“This rock ledge—this hollow. You.” Luke is blinding, as if he is the solid weight around which the light and the darkness revolve. Whose energy rolls off of him in waves and shines like sand in one of Jakku’s sandstorms under the two full moons, pulled by an unseen magnetism. Looking at him in the Force is almost nauseating, and she fights to stand her ground against the rushing currents that swirl around him.
“There is—there is balance.”
“Can you see yourself?” Luke asks.
Rey blinks several times, her eyes still closed, and reaches out with her heart. She sees Luke again, the steadfast backbone of the tipping scales. As she mentally steps back, feels across the island, she is almost overwhelmed by the processes that the island encompasses. Life. Death and decay, which in turn, feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence.
And between it all, balance.
She sees herself, sitting at the heart of the balance. At the divide of dark and light.
That same Force, inside herself.
“Yes,” she whispers.
“Can you see beyond yourself? Can you feel beyond the island?”
Rey makes herself reach again, reach out, beyond the familiarity of the Force of the island, beyond the endless sea, beyond the planet.
The voices, the minds, wash into her consciousness, whispering in thousands of languages around the stars like rushing water directly behind the back of her head, just out of reach.
“The Force surrounds us.” She hears Luke’s voice as if through a busted comm, resonating at the base of her skull. “And the Jedi and Sith trained to manipulate it with their will. But the Force is not a power unique to those who have learned to wield it.
“The Force is in all matter, living or not, and it is those who understand it that can shape it, and subsequently, the world around them. Millenia before the Jedi and the Sith came into existence, the Force had been there, and it will remain long after we are gone. It is not restricted to the use of Jedi or Sith.”
Rey feels the light breeze that gently buffets the cavern orifice on her skin. In the same way, she feels the trillions of souls as they buffet her in the currents of space and time. It’s dizzying. It’s fascinating.
She no longer feels alone.
“Surely,” she says, and her own voice is distorted in her head, “there must be others in the galaxy that possess this p—that can sense the Force and—and understand it.”
“Yes,” Luke answers softly, his voice flowing across star systems and resounding back on Ahch-to, and turns to the water, watching the two setting suns.
“I know of another.”
The lightsaber rattles on the rock in front of her, jittering from the energy. Around her, small pebbles tremble as they rise from their resting place on the rock slab and float.
Suddenly, she is standing in her memory, beside a cot. She can feel him, can feel his calm, cathartic presence.
She breathes out.
“Finn!”
Finn opens his eyes.