Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Part I

Rey leaned against the doorframe, watching Finn’s back. He sat at Rose’s bedside, exactly where he had been for every second of the last two days. Rose had stirred and mumbled something, once, and now he was convinced she would wake up at any moment. When she did, Finn said, he didn’t want her to be alone and confused.

That was the thing about Finn. He would never abandon the people he cared about. Rey loved that about him, but she was also beginning to worry. He hadn’t eaten or slept at all. Rey couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think he had used the refresher either.

“I know you’re there,” Finn said without turning to look at her.

“Damn,” Rey said. “What gave me away?”

There were no chairs in the room other than the one Finn occupied, so she perched on the end of Rose’s bed.

“You breathe too loud,” Finn said. “But also, I’m just really good. Nothing gets past me.”

He looked at her, finally, and smiled a weary smile.

“How is she?” Rey asked.

Finn sighed. “The same.”

Rey looked at her feet. She knew Finn didn’t want to hear what she was about to say. Poe had already tried talking to him, and if he didn’t listen to Poe, he wouldn’t listen to anyone.

“Torturing yourself isn’t going to help her,” she said quietly.

Finn slammed a fist against his knee.

“Would everyone stop telling me that?”

“We’ll stop when you stop,” Rey said.

Finn rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Look,” he said. “I’m just being a good friend. I would do the same for you or Poe or anyone else on this damn ship.”

They had been stuck aboard the Millennium Falcon with the meager remains of the Resistance for two weeks now, searching for a new home. Even those who had never met before this voyage were beginning to feel like family.

Throughout those long weeks, Rose had been unconscious in this bed.

“Finn,” Rey said, and she planted a hand firmly on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

Finn shook his head.

“Poe already gave me that line, too. The thing is, it’s actually one hundred percent my fault. If I hadn’t pulled that stupid stunt, she wouldn’t have had to save me.”

Rey didn’t bother telling him that his attempt to save every life in the Resistance hadn’t been a stupid stunt or that he was incredibly brave or that she was proud to call him her friend. They had been through this a hundred times at least. And he had been through it with Poe, and with Leia, and he would probably go through it with Rose when she finally woke up. He couldn’t forgive himself yet, and that was something he needed to work through, but it wasn’t what mattered to Rey right now.

“Can you just try to get some sleep?” she said. “Or eat something? Please.”

“I am not leaving her,” Finn said.

Rey focused on his bloodshot eyes beneath their drooping lids, on the way his cheeks were already less full than they had been two days ago.

“Just for a second. It won’t hurt anything,” Rey said.

“She’s a hero!” Finn shouted, suddenly bursting out of his chair and pacing across the room. “A goddamn hero! And everyone’s already forgotten about her! Well, not me. I’m not gonna let her feel like no one cares.”

Rey watched him raging around the cabin and wished she could make him see that he had already done enough. For all of them. But she couldn’t make him see something he didn’t want to. All she could do was make sure he took care of himself, at least a little bit.

“I’ll stay with her,” Rey said. Finn stopped pacing and looked at her, his brow furrowed. “You go get some rest and some food, and I’ll be right here. For as long as you need.”

Finn considered the offer.

“She doesn’t know you,” he said finally.

“Sure she does,” Rey said, smirking. “I’m told you talk about me all the time, to everyone?”

Finn rolled his eyes, and Rey practically felt the warmth in his cheeks from across the room.

“Did Poe say that?” he asked.

“He did. And I told him you never shut up about him, either.”

“Great,” Finn said. “That’s great.”

Rey stood and looked him in the eye.

“Finn. Go. If she wakes up, I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

He wandered over to stand beside the bed, looking down at the person who had risked her life to save him. After he had risked his life to save everyone. He didn’t speak.

“She would want you to take care of yourself,” Rey said.

Finn nodded. “Yeah. Ok. You’re sure you’re ok staying with her?”

“Of course. Like you said, she’s a hero. It’s the least I could do.”

Finn nodded again. He clapped a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you, Rey.” He smiled, and so did she.

“Now,” Rey said. “Poe’s in the cockpit. Go tell him you’ve agreed to take a break before he bursts a blood vessel.”

With Finn gone, Rey settled into the room’s singular chair. She looked down at the sleeping figure before her.

She hadn’t even met Rose yet, not really. But she had heard Finn’s stories about her so many times, she felt as if she might as well have been there with them on Canto Bight and Snoke’s ship and Crait.

Rey wasn’t quite sure how to feel about her, she thought, as she watched Rose’s chest rise and fall beneath the blankets. Rose was brave and kind and resolute, obviously. Rey admired all those things. But there was something else that nagged at the back of Rey’s mind every time Finn told one of his stories. Maybe it was just the fact that she had electrocuted Finn on their first meeting. Maybe it was something else. Rey couldn’t put her finger on it, and she couldn’t talk about it, either, or Finn would explode on her. He had been Rose’s greatest defender since Crait.

And that was another thing. He was a little…too defensive sometimes. Finn was oblivious, but Rey saw the tension in Poe’s jaw, the empty stare, when Finn waxed poetic about Rose’s valor. Of course, it wasn’t Rose’s fault if Finn liked to talk about her, but there was more to it than just talk. There was the kiss that everyone knew about but was too afraid to mention. When Rey, Finn, and Poe were together, they tip-toed around it like a land mine.

Rey understood why Rose had done it. Finn was the most caring person in the galaxy, based on her own experience. Romance had never really appealed to her, but if it had, she would’ve wanted to be with someone like Finn, too. And Poe definitely understood. He understood too well. That was the problem.

So, things were complicated with Rose. Even though they hadn’t met.

Rey shoved all of that out of her mind. It was silly, really, focusing on personal drama when they were homeless and desperate, floating through the galaxy on a ship with only enough rations and fuel for another few weeks, if they were lucky. Besides, they had all almost died so many times just in the past few days. Why were they wasting time worrying about who kissed whom?

Rose stirred, startling Rey out of her thoughts. She had taken Finn’s place by the bedside three hours ago, and Rose hadn’t so much as twitched her mouth. Was this a good sign or a bad one?

“I wonder…” Rey mumbled. A thought had come to her for the first time.

The Force. Maybe she could use it to wake Rose. She hadn’t seen it done before, but she had also never seen someone perform a Jedi mind trick or wield a lightsaber before she did those things. Did them well. She usually discovered what was possible by following her hunches and seeing where they took her. Rose was coming closer to consciousness all on her own, anyway. All she needed was a push.

Rey closed her eyes, took several deep breaths. She felt her body melt away as her mind leaned in to the ever-present hum and glow of the galaxy enveloping her. So much flooded into her, collided with her: the chaotic heat of the Falcon’s engines, the void of space pressing in on her, even the incomprehensible voices of the stars that glided past in an instant as she flew through hyperspace.  Rey felt the strain as plainly as if her mind had been a muscle as she shut it all out and narrowed her focus. The Falcon. The makeshift med-bay.

As soon as she focused on what was right in front of her, her whole being was filled with an energy so strange and warm and bright that she almost couldn’t stand it. She felt she would burn into nothing if she didn’t get away from it, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t open her eyes or even think about anything else but that energy. It pulled her to itself, forced her to topple headfirst into its arms. She felt even more full, even more overwhelmed, than when everything in the galaxy had been calling for her attention.

Surrounded by that horrifying, glorious energy, Rey lost all sense of herself. She faded into the light and heat, became one and the same with them, slowly at first, reluctantly, and then hungrily, eagerly, as if she had been waiting only for this her whole life.

Just as she was saying goodbye to her old life and embracing her new existence as part of this huge and wonderful and terrible thing, Rey remembered her purpose for coming here in the first place. As soon as she remembered, a soft voice she had never heard before whispered in her ear.

Rey.

Her eyes slammed open, and she was back on the Falcon, in the med-bay, in her own body. After a moment of disorientation, she realized that she was panting, gasping down lungfuls of air as if she hadn’t breathed in days.

She wasn’t the only one.

Rose was sitting up in bed across from her, panting just as desperately. Rey felt something in her hands then, something soft and warm that she grasped so tight it must have been on the verge of combusting. She looked down to find Rose’s hands in her own, both of their knuckles bleached pale white from the strain of holding on to each other.

As Rey came back to reality and remembered her life, bit by bit, she remembered a few important things. She and Rose had not actually met yet. And holding hands with strangers was not a normal thing to do.

She pulled her hands away from Rose, but she was still too amazed and confused to be embarrassed. Or more accurately, she was more focused on being amazed and confused than being embarrassed, for the moment at least.

“Did you feel that?” she asked breathlessly.

She looked up at Rose and saw her eyes open for the first time. They were deep and soft and brown, but they were also brighter than Rey could’ve ever imagined. Not that she had imagined them at all. That fact seemed strange. After looking at those eyes for one second, Rey felt like she had been thinking about them for ages.

“Feel what?” Rose croaked in a voice that had gone unused for two weeks.

It was much scratchier than it had been a moment ago, but Rey would recognize that voice anywhere. It was the same voice of the all-encompassing energy. But what did that mean?

She shook her head, trying to clear away the haze that still lingered after her unexpectedly life-altering journey through the Force. Rose hadn’t felt anything. She had been in a coma, and Rey had woken her up, just like she had planned. And the rest of it…Rey had no idea what that was about, but she would have to figure it out later. Right now, she needed to take care of Rose.

“Nothing. Never mind,” Rey said. She took a deep breath and put on a smile. Normal, she thought. She’s probably freaked out enough already, she doesn’t need you making it worse.

“I’m Rey,” she said.

Rose’s eyes lit with recognition.

“Rey? The Rey?” Rose said. “I’ve heard so much about you, you have no idea. You’re basically my hero.”

That was the last reaction Rey had expected. In her mind, from all the stories Finn had told, Rose was stoic and serious and noble. And now she was calling Rey her hero?

“Listen, Rose, a lot has happened, and—”

“Hang on,” Rose interrupted. “You know my name? Rey knows my name?”

“Of course. Finn’s told me all about you.”

At that, Rose’s face dropped.

“Finn,” she said. “Is he all right?”

“Yes, thanks to you,” Rey said.

“Is he here?” Rose paused, looked around herself at the stark metal walls. “Also, where is here?”

Rey felt the need to explain on Finn’s behalf, to defend him.

“He’s here. In fact, I practically had to pry him out of this room just so he would go get some sleep. He didn’t want you to wake up alone.”

Rose smiled quietly to herself and dipped her chin as if to hide her face, but Rey saw it all. Something twisted in Rey’s gut, a reminder that even if Rose was different from what Rey had expected, things were still complicated with her.

Rey cleared her throat, brushed past the moment.

“Would you like me to explain everything, or would you rather I went and got Finn? It might be a lot coming from someone you don’t know.”

“Oh, come on,” Rose said. “I pretty much know you. Finn talks about you a lot.”

Rey cracked a genuine smile at that. However complicated his circumstances, Finn was consistent.

“So I’m told,” she said.

And she launched into the story of everything that had happened on Crait after Rose had passed out.

…………………………………………………

After a few days of knowing her (in real life, not only in Finn’s stories), Rey was just as unsure about Rose as she had been before. And she still couldn’t figure out why. Rose was nice, and it wasn’t like Rey had anything against her.

Maybe she was just being protective of Finn, she decided. He was the most important person in her life, and she didn’t want him to get hurt. Yes. That must have been it.

The thing was, Rose seemed like the last person in the galaxy who would hurt Finn. Or one of the last. The real last person who would ever hurt Finn was someone else, and that someone was having an even harder time getting used to Rose than Rey was, although at least he knew the reason for it.

Poe eyed Rey across the table one day as they ate. Finn and Rose sat between them. Finn told a joke, Rose laughed, and Poe stood abruptly. Finn’s smile dropped immediately, and he stared down at his plate.

“I need to talk to you about the supply run,” Poe said, still looking at Rey.

“Um,” she said. “Ok?”

She followed Poe to the engineering bay, which now doubled as a strategy room.

“Has the plan changed?” Rey asked.

“What?” Poe said. “Oh. No.”

“Then why are we…?” She gestured around the room, which was a jumble of wires and levers and, as of recently, tables and models and star maps and everything else Leia needed to envision their next steps.

“Seemed like something was bothering you,” Poe said. “Thought you might want to talk about it.”

He was right. Something was bothering her. The strange vision or—she didn’t know what to call it—she had experienced when she ventured into the Force to wake Rose had not left Rey’s mind. She dreamed of the strange energy, being, whatever it was, every night. She found herself disappointed that the one in her dreams was a watered down version, and that confused her even more. The thing had terrified her. She didn’t want to see the real one again.

Except that the more time passed, the more she missed it.

No matter how hard she tried to search her feelings, she still had no clue what any of it meant. She missed Master Skywalker, too, then. Missed all the things he could have taught her, all the things they could have learned together if…

But that couldn’t be what Poe was talking about. Rey thought she had hidden her distress well. She certainly wasn’t going to talk about it now, or ever, until she figured out what was going on. She didn’t want to alarm anyone.

“Just tell me,” Poe said when she didn’t answer him. “Is it Rose?”

Rey breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Rose was much easier to talk about. Well. Not much easier. But easier.

“I don’t know if I would say she’s bothering me,” Rey said. “She’s very nice and everything.”

“Yeah, I know that, everybody knows that. But you’re acting weird around her. Why?”

Rey noted how Poe ran a hand through his hair every few seconds, tapped his fingers on the wall, chewed his bottom lip. She couldn’t imagine the chaos going on inside his head right now.

“I don’t know,” Rey said. “I can’t explain it.”

“Do you have a bad feeling about her?” Poe leaned in, spoke lower. “You know, like a Force feeling or something?”

Rey laughed in spite of how tense he was.

“A Force feeling? Poe, I don’t think that exists.”

“You know what I mean!” he said. “I’m just saying, I trust your intuition more than the average person’s, and if you think she’s not as great as she seems, I would believe it.”

“It’s nothing like that, don’t worry. She’s fine. She saved Finn’s life!”

“Yeah. She did.” Poe stared at the wall over Rey’s shoulder, and she thought she could guess exactly what he was seeing in his mind’s eye.

“Since you trust my intuition so much, do you want to know what I actually think?” Rey said. “I think you’re jealous of her.”

Panic flashed in Poe’s face for just a second before he covered it with fake confusion.

“Why would I be jealous of her?”

Rey was sick of tip-toeing, sick of everyone pretending they didn’t know things that were obvious. If the situation was really so fragile that they couldn’t even acknowledge it, maybe it needed to be smashed.

“Because she kissed Finn,” she said.

They stood in silence, the implication filling the air in the room like a heavy fog.

“Doesn’t have anything to do with me,” Poe said finally.

“Of course not.”

“Well, I’ve got some work to do. Uh. Gotta prep for that supply run. See you later.”

He stormed out of the engineering bay.

Later, when she lay in her bunk, Rey couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation with Poe. A Force feeling, he had said. Could that really be what twisted in her gut when she talked to Rose? Was it some kind of warning?

Did that explain the vision?

Or, and she thought this might be even worse, was she just jealous, like Poe? What did she have to be jealous of? Finn was still her best friend. Rose hadn’t changed that.

She fell asleep thinking about Rose, and again she dreamed of the vision, of the absolute light and heat that had stripped her down and absorbed her into itself. Tonight, though, she dreamed mostly of the voice. Rose’s voice.

Rey, it whispered, again and again, so close that Rey could almost, almost feel the lips brushing against her ear.

…………………………………………………

The theory that her strange feelings toward Rose were some kind of warning set in quickly, and she could not shake it off. Now every time she saw Rose, all Rey thought about was what she might be hiding behind her generous smile and shining eyes. Rey could see her suspicion putting a strain on the familiarity that had been growing between them. They hardly ever spoke to each other, and when they did, Rose didn’t look her in the eye. Which only made Rey wonder if Rose was guilty of something and sensed that Rey was onto her.

Most of the space in Rey’s brain, though, was occupied by Resistance business. Finally, after weeks of drifting through hyperspace, doing absolutely nothing as it seemed to Rey, there was a plan for some action. A supply run on the Outer Rim planet Lothal. It was a small action, and it would do nothing to permanently fix their problems, but it was something. If nothing else, it was a chance to get off the Falcon, to breathe some unfiltered air.

Lothal had been chosen because it was remote, forgotten by the First Order, but had a history of rebel sympathies dating back to the Alliance’s fight against the Empire. They would still have to be discreet, of course, because that had been many years ago, but Leia hoped that, if they were lucky, they might sniff out some allies while restocking on food and fuel.

There were so few of them left in the Resistance now that everyone, even Rose, had a role to play in the mission. (Rey loved calling it a “mission.” It made her feel official, like she was finally in the Resistance instead of on the outskirts.) They would land the Falcon—possibly the most notorious ship in the galaxy—in the middle of the planet’s desert, far from any onlookers. Leia would remain on board, both to serve as mission control and to ensure her safety, with a security detail. The rest of them would split up into two undercover teams and travel in opposite directions. One team would buy food from a small farming village, while the other bought fuel in the planet’s metropolis, Capital City.

“It’s a simple plan,” Leia said in their final strategy meeting the night before they would arrive on Lothal. “I know it seems like nothing could go wrong, but we would be fools to believe that nothing will. Be prepared for anything.”

As everyone filed out of the room to eat dinner and go to bed, Leia approached Rey.

“Stay,” she said. “I need to ask you something.”

Rey’s stomach fluttered. She was comfortable with Leia now, especially after living in such close proximity with her for two weeks, but still, the woman exuded such power. Everything about her demanded the utmost respect.

“Of course,” Rey said. “Anything.”

Leia smiled.

“I like your spirit, but you shouldn’t say ‘anything’ until you’ve heard the question.”

Rey waited as Leia watched her, assessed her.

“I’ll just come out and say it,” Leia said. “I want you to lead one of the teams tomorrow.”

Rey choked on air. She wanted to be part of the Resistance, but wasn’t this a bit fast? Sure, she had envisioned herself leading a squadron of X-wings like Poe or Master Skywalker, but those dreams had always been years down the line. She couldn’t believe Leia was giving her this chance now.

“Me?” Rey said after a moment of stunned silence. “But Poe and Lieutenant Connix—”

“Poe is still leading his team, don’t worry. I couldn’t convince him to stay out of the field if I wanted to. But I’ve talked to Lieutenant Connix, and we both think the best place for her is here on the Falcon as part of the security detail.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Rey said.

“I’m hoping you’ll say yes.”

Rey thought about it, the idea of taking other people’s lives in her hands. It wasn’t supposed to be a dangerous mission, but like Leia said, it would be foolish to assume they were totally safe. The thought was intimidating…and exhilarating. And the more she thought about it, the more Rey could see why she was the best person for the job. She had lots of experience in high-pressure situations where something went wrong and she had to think her way out. She had already faced the absolute worst of the First Order. And she had the Force, which could help them keep their cover as well as defend them, if it came to that.

She took a deep breath.

“Ok,” Rey said. “I’ll do it.”

Leia nodded, and Rey could see the satisfaction shining in her eyes.

“I’m glad.”

So, Rey would be leading her own team on a covert Resistance mission. She was definitely not on the outskirts anymore.

Leia explained that Rey’s team would be responsible for collecting food supplies in the farming village. The Capital City team’s mission would be a bit more complicated, with a much greater chance of being recognized, so Poe would lead them. He was great at complicated, as Leia put it. That team would also need more people, so Rey’s consisted only of herself and two others—one of which was Rose. When Leia told her this, Rey’s stomach dropped. The only person in the whole Resistance she would’ve preferred to avoid, and now they would be working together.  

It was probably for the best. Rey couldn’t imagine Poe in close contact with Rose for more than a few minutes. In fact, Rey thought, Poe himself had probably arranged it so that Finn would be with him and Rose would not.

Rey would just have to find a way to sideline her feelings about Rose and focus on their purpose. They needed food to keep the Resistance alive, and she was in charge of getting it. That had to be the most important thing.

Rey buzzed with anticipation, good and bad, all through dinner. When she told Finn her news, he sprayed a mouthful of Bantha milk all over the table.

“Rey!” he said, his whole face lighting up. “You’ll be so great!”

Poe, sitting beside him, just smiled.

“I’m the one who suggested you, you know,” he said. 

Rose sat with them, too, but she was quiet. She stared down at her meal tray and said nothing until the subject changed. Rey wondered if they both had similar concerns.

Right after dinner, everyone retired to their bunks. They all had a big day ahead of them when they woke, and they needed as much rest as they could get. Rey knew she should go to bed, too, but she was too anxious. Her whole body felt wired and hot. She knew she wouldn’t be able to lie still, not even for a moment.

Instead, she lingered in the main hold until everyone was gone. When she was alone, she reached into a storage compartment and pulled out the old training droid that Leia told her Master Skywalker himself had used when he was first learning to wield a lightsaber. Rey didn’t have a lightsaber anymore, but she still had her staff.

She switched on the training droid, and it slowly hummed to life. Years of disuse had clearly degraded it, but still, it eventually rose from her hand to levitate a few feet in front of her. It hung in the air and did nothing. Rey was beginning to think it wouldn’t work after all, when a bolt of energy shot out and sent a shock through her shoulder.

“Ow!” she declared at the small droid, but it was unfazed. It sent another bolt flying at her. This time, she dodged it. She grabbed her staff from where it leaned against the wall.

For hours, she sparred with the droid, blocking and dodging its bolts. The whole time, she imagined a young Master Skywalker doing the exact same thing, in the exact same place, so many years before her.

…………………………………………………

Rey, the voice in her dream said. Rey!

Wake up!

With effort, she pulled her heavy eyes open to find Finn standing over her, shaking her shoulder. She was slumped over on the curved booth in the main hold. Apparently she hadn’t made it to bed after her training session.

“We’re about to enter Lothal’s atmosphere,” Finn said. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to sleep through the mission, since you’re in charge of half of it.”

“Mission,” Rey said, nodding. “Right.” She yawned.

“You ready?” Poe asked as he came around the corner with two knapsacks slung over his shoulder.

Rey sat up straighter.

“Of course,” she said. “What are those for?”

“Well, this one,” he said, handing a knapsack to her, “is for you. Just some supplies. A few rations, a canteen. Couple of blasters. You know, the necessities.”

“You think blasters will be necessary?”

Poe shrugged.

“In my experience…yes.”

Poe clapped Finn on the back.

“How ‘bout you, buddy? You ready to go?”

Finn went a second too long without answering, a second too long staring at Poe’s hand on his shoulder. Rey rolled her eyes.

“Yep,” Finn said finally. “Always ready to go. That’s me.”

Poe laughed, shaking his head. He bit his lip, as if that was a normal thing that people just did.

“So, where’s my team?” Rey said, reminding them both that she not only existed but was currently in the room. “I want to talk to them before we head out.”

Which meant talking to Rose. Rey would have to get used to it. Rose wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“Oh yeah, I meant to tell you,” Poe said. “It’s going to be less of a team and more of a duo. Pamich caught something, and she’s been hurling for hours.”

“So, it’s just going to be me and—”

“There you are!” Rose said, turning the corner into the main hold. “I was hoping we could talk strategy, now that we’re one man down. I mean—if you think we should talk strategy. You’re the one in charge.”

Something tightened in Rey’s chest. What was it about Rose that made her feel this way? What even was this way?

“That’s fine,” Rey said.

Rose settled into the booth beside her as Finn and Poe bustled off to some other part of the ship to get ready for their own roles in the operation.

“So,” Rose said. “Our village is fifteen miles south of the landing site. That’s fifteen miles of desert, in the middle of the day, so we’re going to need—”

“I’m familiar with desert,” Rey said.

“Right. Of course. I was just thinking, we’ll need coverage for our faces and plenty of water.”

“I’ve got both of those under control.”

“Oh. Ok. Good. That covers our travel. Once we get there, we’re looking for—”

“Yes, I was at all the same briefings as you,” Rey said. “On second thought, I don’t think we have anything to talk about. We’re ready. I’m going to go see if anyone needs help.”

Rose started to say something, but Rey scooted off the other end of the booth and left the hold. She knew she was being rude and this was no way to start the mission, but she couldn’t sit there any longer. She was running on almost no sleep, and her brain didn’t work properly around Rose anyway. It was all too much.

She went straight to the refresher and locked the door behind her. This was the only place on board the Falcon where there was any real privacy. Rey ran cold water in the sink and splashed her face several times.

She felt dizzy and overheated and wrong. Everything about this felt wrong. She was leading her first Resistance mission, on special request from General Leia Organa herself. She should be ecstatic. But instead, she was panicking because she didn’t want to spend time alone with Rose, who had never even done anything wrong to her.

All because some stupid vision and a random feeling in her gut made her paranoid that there was more to Rose than met the eye. Thinking about it now, it seemed completely ridiculous, but Rey knew that that wouldn’t matter. As soon as she saw Rose again, she would go back to being impractical and defensive. She splashed her face again and lifted her eyes to meet the ones reflected back at her in the mirror.

“You can do this,” she said. “Don’t be stupid. People are counting on you.”

She took a deep breath and opened the door, ready—hopefully—to face the day ahead of her.

The Falcon landed smoothly, right where it was supposed to. Now that they were actually here, now that the time had actually come, that buzz of nervous excitement that had kept Rey awake all night returned to the pit of her stomach.

The boarding ramp lowered, and Leia addressed the field teams one last time.

“Be in and out as quick as you can, and don’t draw attention to yourself,” she said. “But at the same time, be on the lookout for signs of people who might be, shall we say, interested in our cause.”

As they took their first steps down the ramp, toward the surface of Lothal, Leia added:

“Most importantly, remember. Be prepared for anything.”

The words sent a tingle up Rey’s spine. A premonition, perhaps? A ‘Force feeling,’ as Poe called it? Or just another vague gut reaction that would be useless to her because she had no idea what it meant?

As soon as Rey stepped foot on the desert of Lothal, her excitement deflated.

Sand. It was everywhere, in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Rey had only been away from her own desert for a few weeks, but she had already grown accustomed to the feeling of not having sand lodged in every nook of her clothes and hair and skin.

“Does it remind you of Jakku?” Finn asked, standing beside her.

“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t miss it.”

“Finally, you see sense!”

Rey laughed. She only now realized that she had been so upset about having to be with Rose, she had forgotten to be upset about not being with Finn.

“Be careful out there,” she said. “Come back in one piece.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You too.”

They hugged each other, both squeezing tight.

“And hey,” Finn said quietly. “You should listen to Rose. She’s really smart.”

Rey instantly felt guilty, both because Finn felt the need to tell her that and because she didn’t want to believe him.

“All right,” she said. “Thanks.”

Finn said goodbye to Rose as well and gave her one of his everything-will-be-ok hugs before they turned away from each other and went their separate ways.

Rey looked at Rose trudging through the sand beside her. They both wore goggles and scarves wrapped around their faces, just like Rey had always worn on Jakku. She found that her uneasiness was more bearable now that Rose’s face was covered. Now that she couldn’t see those bright eyes.

“Wait,” Rey said. She noticed a loop of Rose’s scarf hanging loose around the back of her head. If the wind picked up, sand would find its way into that crevice in a second. Rey knew because she always used to make the same mistake.

“What’s wrong?” Rose said, her voice muffled.

“It’s your scarf. You have to—here, just let me fix it.”

Rey unraveled the scarf, revealing Rose’s face strip by strip. Her chin, then her lips, then her cheeks and her little button nose. Rey’s chest tightened and expanded at the same time for a reason she didn’t understand when Rose pushed her goggles to her forehead, uncovering her eyes. Rey tried to cover over the hitch in her breath, but she was sure Rose heard it. They were standing so close now, Rose’s face only a few inches away and a few inches below Rey’s own.

Rey pulled the scarf tight as she re-wrapped Rose’s head. Soon she could see nothing but her eyes, and that was even worse than before. Now Rey had nothing to focus on but the intensity of their light.

Rey felt helpless and exposed all of a sudden, and she hated it. She stepped back and cleared her throat so her voice wouldn’t be shaky when she spoke.

“There. All good.”

“Thanks,” Rose said. “That’s harder than it looks.”

She pulled her goggles back down to cover her eyes, and Rey released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Try living on a planet that’s nothing but desert and you’ll get the hang of it,” Rey said.

They kept walking. Before long, they crested a dune. Both of them looked back at the Falcon. From here on out, they wouldn’t be able to see it anymore. They would really be on their own. Rey tightened her grip on her staff. Be prepared for anything.

For the most part, Rey and Rose walked in silence. Really, aside from the overwhelming moment when Rey had woken her from her coma, silence had made up most of their relationship so far.

Rey’s mind kept wandering back to that moment, when she had heard Rose speak her name for the first time. Actually, heard was the wrong word, because Rose hadn’t said anything. Rey had felt it. And then she had opened her eyes to find Rose’s hands in hers. She thought about asking Rose if she had felt any of that energy, that light and heat, but she stopped herself. Until she knew what it meant, she didn’t want anyone else to know about the vision. Especially Rose, who she wasn’t even sure she could trust. Or at least, wasn’t sure she wanted to trust. 

Eventually, Rey could see the massive shimmer in the air of heat rising off of metal buildings. Their village.

“We’re almost there,” she said.

Rose only nodded. Rey wished she could leave it at that, but she was still the leader, and Rose was still her responsibility, however complicated her personal feelings.

“Are you ready to deal with the locals?” Rey asked. “Any concerns?”

“I’m ready,” Rose said, and her voice was sure. “We’ve got this.”

Rey couldn’t stop herself from smiling at that, and now she was glad her face was covered so Rose didn’t see. Rey took one more step toward the farming village and stopped dead in her tracks. She felt something—something cold and invisible as a winter wind—move over and through her. It tugged at her, begged her to follow it in a whole new direction, away from the Falcon and the farming village and everything she had come here to do. She whipped her head to her right, where the something was coming from.

“What’s going on?” Rose asked, herself looking all around for the source of Rey’s disturbance. “Rey! Do I need a blaster? What’s happening?”

“I don’t—” Rey squinted into the distance, but she saw nothing. Still, chilly tendrils caressed her skin, beckoned her forward. “It’s—it’s nothing.”

“So…what are we waiting for?” Rose asked.

Rey looked back at the village, far off on the horizon in front of them. They had a mission to complete. The Resistance was counting on her to bring them food. But she knew this feeling. It wasn’t complicated or confusing like the ones Rose gave her or the ones in her dreams. This was the Force, and it was calling her somewhere else. She made a decision.

“You go on,” Rey said. “I think there’s something else I need to do.”

“What? But the mission—”

“Yes.” Rey used her sternest voice. “You go and finish the mission. I’ll be right back.”

She began her trek away from Rose, toward whatever this new thing was, but she heard footsteps in the sand behind her.

“This is ridiculous,” Rose said. “What are you even talking about?”

Rey had never heard her speak so bluntly.

“I’m going to look for something. There’s no reason for you to come with me, and someone has to get the food, so just go. That’s an order.”

“I’m not going to let you wander off into the desert by yourself.”

“You’re not going to let me?” Rey bristled at Rose’s presumption.

“No. I’m not,” Rose said, catching up to Rey and meeting her stride.

“I’m in charge, remember? You said so yourself.”

“Well, when the person in charge starts making bad decisions, I ignore them.”

Rey shook her head. She didn’t want to deal with this right now. She needed to focus, to concentrate on the pull of the Force and figure out where it was leading her.

“Fine! Come with me. Whatever. I don’t care.”

“What about the food?” Rose said.

Rey gritted her teeth.

“Stop. Talking. I’m trying to concentrate.”

She stopped, closed her eyes, evened her breath (as much as she could through her frustration). Her body melted away, her mind free and open to the universe.

The coldness slammed into her like a wall, and images flashed through her mind—a huge cone of rock spearing a starry sky, a door, a dark room. She felt her feet begin to move, though she did not move them, and she knew that they would lead her in the right direction. When she opened her eyes, it felt like emerging from a tub of ice, the cold immediately replaced with the desert sun beating down on her.

“It’s this way,” Rey said. “If you’re coming.”

“Was that—did you just use the Force?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. So this is a Jedi thing.”

“No,” Rey said immediately. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”

The same defensiveness she felt about her vision rose in her now. She wished Rose would just go to the farming village and do what they were supposed to do. Rey didn’t want to share this with her.

They trudged on for hours, the sun shining right in their eyes as it fell toward the horizon in front of them. The knapsack with their rations and water and maybe necessary blasters weighed down on Rey, the straps cutting into her shoulders. When she couldn’t take it any longer, she took it off her back and used the Force to float it along beside her.

“Whoa,” Rose said. “Cool.”

“This is nothing compared to those boulders on Crait.” But then Rey remembered. Rose hadn’t seen any of that. She had been unconscious. Because she had risked her own life to save Finn’s. Right.

Guilt twisted in Rey’s gut.

“I never thanked you,” Rey said, her voice softer than it had been all day. An olive branch of sorts. “Finn wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. And I don’t know what I would do without him.”

“Oh,” Rose said, clearly taken aback by the change of subject. “No need to thank me. I didn’t do it for—I mean—it was the only thing to do.”

Rey looked at her.

“Not everyone would think so. You were very brave.”

Rose watched her own feet dredging through the sand and said nothing. Rey felt emboldened. There was something she had to ask about now that the chance presented itself.

“Just out of curiosity, why did you kiss him?” she asked. As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could swallow them, clear the air of them. What did it matter anyway? Her cheeks burned.

“I don’t know, really,” Rose said. “I just wanted him to know…I don’t know.”

Rey remembered something Finn had told her.

“Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love,” Rey said.

“Yes. Exactly.”

Before Rey could ask the next question, something in the distance caught her eye. Silhouetted against the pink and purple of the sunset was something tall and pointy—it was far away still, but Rey knew that when they got close, they would find a cone of rock. The cold feeling jolted through her, sharp and urgent.

“That’s it,” Rey said. “That’s what we’re looking for.”

Seized by an urge to be there right then, Rey grabbed Rose’s hand so they wouldn’t be separated and took off at a sprint. Rose’s legs were shorter, and she could hardly keep up, but Rey tugged her right along. She couldn’t slow down. Something huge was waiting for her. Waiting for both of them, perhaps.

The air grew cold now that the sun was gone, and soon the breaths that Rey gulped down stung her throat. But it was worth it. The cone grew closer with every stride. Even now, they were close enough that she could see the striations in its grey surface.

Her lungs burning and heaving, her legs sore, Rey finally reached the cone. As soon as they came to a stop, Rose ripped the goggles and scarf off her face, panting.

“Why,” Rose said between breaths. “Did we just. Do that?”

Rey barely heard her. She was too busy staring up at the huge rock, surrounded on all sides by stars, just as it had been when she had seen it in her mind. What was it? A mountain? An outpost? No—it was deeper and older than either. Rey felt a power rising from the ground beneath it, emanating from it, rocking through her. She hadn’t felt such a sensation since she had stood with Master Skywalker in the Jedi temple on Ahch-To.

Rey gasped.

“I think this is a Jedi temple,” she said.

Rose’s mouth dropped open. She looked the rock slowly up and down.

“Wow,” she whispered. The wonder on her face was as pure and sweet as a child’s.

Warmth bubbled up in Rey’s chest, and she smiled. Then she realized. They were still holding hands.

Rey pulled her hand away too harshly and immediately regretted it. She removed her goggles and unraveled her headscarf, to make it seem like she just needed the free hand, nothing more.

“How do we get in?” Rose asked.

Rey’s stomach fluttered with nerves. If this was really a Jedi temple, she had no idea what to expect. Her experience in the last temple had been…unsettling, to say the least.

“I don’t know if we should,” she said.

“Oh no. You made me run all this way. We’re going in.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Why? You think I can’t handle it?”

“No, I—” Rey didn’t know how to explain. And she shouldn’t have to, anyway. Rose was supposed to listen to her. “I need to think about this. I need to…search my feelings or something.”

“The Force wouldn’t bring you here just to leave you out on the doorstep,” Rose said.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rey snapped. “The Force isn’t all good feelings and happy endings, Rose. It’s complicated.”

“All right. Fine.” Rose sat down on a boulder and crossed her arms. Her mouth pressed into a hard line.

“Finally. Thank you.”

“You know what, actually, it’s not fine,” Rose said. She stood up again and planted herself right in front of Rey. Even though Rose was several inches shorter than her, Rey was intimidated by the glint in her eyes.

“What is your problem with me?” Rose asked.

Oh, no. Not this. Not now.

“I don’t have a problem with you,” Rey said.

“Yeah, you do, and honestly, I have no idea what happened. I thought we were going to be friends. Then you started acting weird around me—and don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You never talk to me, you never even look at me. You would avoid me altogether if it weren’t for Finn. So, tell me. What’s your problem with me?”

Rey didn’t know what to say. Obviously, Rose was right. Rey did have a problem with her. But even Rey didn’t know what it was. How was she supposed to explain something she herself didn’t understand?

“It’s because I kissed Finn, isn’t it?” Rose continued. “You don’t like me because I kissed Finn, and you’re jealous. Poe, too. Is everybody around here in love with him?”

“No!” Rey said. “I mean, I’m not. Poe, well, I don’t want to speak for Poe, and anyway, that’s not even the point! I don’t care that you kissed Finn. Well, actually, I might care, but not because I’m in love with him.”

“Ok, then what is it? Why don’t you like me?”

Rey took a deep breath. She would just tell the truth. Tell the truth, get it over with, move on.

“I don’t know. I just have this feeling about you. I’ve had it since before you even woke up. I have no idea what it is or where it comes from, but it makes me nervous. It’s like some kind of premonition. A warning.”

Rose’s brow furrowed as she searched Rey’s face.

“That’s a bad reason not to like someone,” she said finally.

“I never said it was a good reason.”

They stood there in the night air, with only the scant light of the stars illuminating the space between them. Rey couldn’t make out the expression on Rose’s face.

A breeze blew over them, and Rey shivered. She hadn’t realized until then how cold she was. Of course. She knew all about freezing desert nights. She had let the temple make her stupid and careless. It was already getting in her head, and she was still outside.

“We’ll freeze to death if we don’t build a fire,” Rey said. “Hopefully there’s some flint and tinder in this knapsack.”

“Wait—where is the knapsack?”

Rey’s stomach dropped. She looked all around her on the ground, but the knapsack—the one containing all their food and water—was nowhere. She must have dropped it when she saw the temple and started sprinting.

“No,” Rey said. She checked behind every boulder, even though she knew she wouldn’t find it. “No no no no no no.”

“What do we do now?” Rose asked.

Rey squeezed her eyes shut. There was only one option. But they couldn’t. It was too dangerous. She was nowhere near ready for something like this. She opened her eyes and looked up at the temple once again. It was the only option.

“I guess we’re going in after all,” Rey said.

…………………………………………………

They circled the temple and circled it again. The rock’s curving surface was completely smooth, without a crack or crevice, much less an entrance. The door Rey had seen for a split second when the temple first called to her had been huge and made of metal—there was nothing like that here.

“What—” Rose started to ask.

“Don’t ask me what we do now,” Rey said. “Not again. I don’t know.”

The cold bit at her skin. When the wind blew, her bones ached. They needed shelter, now. But there simply was not a door. Was this a test? What was she supposed to do, create her own door? She didn’t have time for Jedi riddles and metaphors.

“Rey,” Rose said, and it sent a jolt through Rey’s body. The sound of Rose’s voice around her name was something from her dreams, something she was always thinking about in the back of her mind. Actually hearing it out loud caught Rey off guard, but it also gave her an idea.

The last time she tried to use to Force to do something she wasn’t sure was possible, she had been enveloped and consumed and infected by the energy. She had also been successful. Maybe the two were related.

“There’s one thing I can try,” Rey said. “But I’m not even sure how…”

Then she remembered something else about the last time.

“Give me your hands,” she said to Rose suddenly.

“Why?”

Good question, Rey thought. Now was not the time to think about the answer.

“It might help,” she said. “Just trust me.”

Rose pursed her lips and scrunched her brow, but she reached out her hands all the same. Rey took them in her own, and already she felt transported back to that moment. Rose’s hands were warm and soft and solid, just as they had been then.

“Thank you,” Rey said. “Now. Let me concentrate.”

She closed her eyes, slowed her breath until she almost fell asleep. Again she felt her mind turn to fluid, floating out into the universe. The first thing she felt was the temple itself. Its hum was so loud, its vibrations so powerful, that it overshadowed the familiar frequencies of the stars and the wind and nearly everything else.

Nearly.

Right in front of Rey, even closer than the temple, the same overwhelming light and heat tugged at her. She had grown used to the pale reproduction in her dreams and forgotten how painful the real thing was. It seared her skin, blinded her. She resisted its urging to come inside and lose herself again, but there was no point. She knew, and it knew, too, with absolute certainty, that she would give in before long. That deep down, she wanted to give in. So she did. She sacrificed herself to its tide and let it pull her all the way in. As she felt herself beginning to disintegrate, she anticipated the voice. Any moment now, it would crawl up beside her and whisper in her ear.

It did come, but its message was new.

Trust me, the energy said with Rose’s voice. Just trust me.

The light burned so brightly that Rey cried out in pain. Had it been so terrible before? How could she ever have forgotten this?

Just when she thought her very soul would explode with the sheer pressure of the energy surging around her, she opened her eyes to find herself lying on her back in cold sand. She gasped for breath. The world around her was so dark, she could see nothing. Or maybe the light had actually blinded her.

She felt something, though, in her clenched hands. Something soft and warm and solid. Rose. Their hands were still wrapped tightly together. Rey used that feeling to pull herself up from the depths. She began to remember where she was, what she was doing. By the silvery light of the stars and Lothal’s rising moon, she saw Rose kneeling in the sand beside her and the huge bulk of the temple rising above her.

“Are you all right?” Rose asked breathlessly, her eyes wide. She untwined their hands, and Rey’s went immediately limp and cold. Then she felt Rose’s hands on her face, checking the temperature of her forehead and wiping sand from her cheeks. Something boiled in Rey’s stomach, threatened to erupt and burst from her mouth if she wasn’t careful.

“I’m fine,” Rey said. She sat up slowly, and Rose’s hands fell away.

“That was terrifying.”

Rey’s breath caught in her throat. “You saw it, too?”

“I saw you,” Rose said. “You collapsed and started convulsing. You were holding my hands so tight that I couldn’t even help you. I thought—I thought you were dying.”

Rey opened her mouth to say something, to reassure Rose and wipe the fear from her eyes, but something caught her eye.

A huge, metal doorway set into the side of the temple, spread open like the maw of a beast. Where there had been nothing before.

A smile spread slowly across her face. She looked Rose right in her shining brown eyes.

“It worked,” Rey whispered. Rose’s head whipped around to look at the temple, and a smile burst on her face, too.

“Rey! You did it! I don’t believe it!”

Before Rey knew what was happening, Rose wrapped her in a hug. After a moment of hesitation, Rey laid aside all the baggage between them, all the complicated feelings that made no sense, and just let this moment be simple. Rose was so warm and so close, and she smelled like grease, which should have been a bad thing but was wonderful somehow. Rey wound her arms around Rose’s back.

“We did it,” Rey said. She breathed into Rose’s shoulder once, and then it was over. Their one simple moment was gone.

Rose hopped up and walked toward the door they had created together. Rey watched her and thought about the voice in her vision.

Just trust me.

Rey thought she was beginning to do just that.

…………………………………………………

“I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Rose said, standing before the giant pitch-black hole in the wall of the temple. She was smiling, her eyes sparkling as they roved over the so-called door.

“I don’t,” Rey said. With the powerful Force energy flowing from within the temple thrumming through her, her staff felt weak and limp in her hands. It wouldn’t be enough to fight off whatever they met in here. Or maybe even worse, whoever. Either way, she sensed that something awaited them in the depths of the temple, and she would feel much better about meeting it if she had a lightsaber.

She still didn’t think going inside was a good idea, especially for Rose. Rey had seen the kind of tricks a place like this could play on the mind, but Rose had no idea what they were in for or how to defend herself against it.

A wind blew past so forcefully that is almost knocked Rey over. Sand and cold alike pricked at her skin. Things were getting less hospitable out here by the minute. Rey would just have to defend the both of them.

“Let’s go,” Rey said, leading the way into the cavernous space beyond the door. “And don’t touch anything.”

“Obviously. I’m not a child,” Rose said.

Rey hadn’t meant it like that, but now that she thought about it, maybe she had been thinking about Rose as if she were a child.

“I’m sorry,” Rey said. “You’re—”

As soon as Rose crossed the threshold into the temple, the whole wall shifted with a deafening, gravelly groan, stopping Rey midsentence. The door sealed shut behind them, leaving them in total darkness.

“Rose? Are you all right?” Rey called, flailing her hands in the darkness, searching for Rose or the wall or anything else to orient herself. Again she wished for the lightsaber. Losing it was like losing a limb, even though she had only used it for a short time.

“I’m fine,” Rose said just as Rey’s hand collided with her shoulder. Instinctually, Rey gripped her. “You?”

Rey was taken aback and could do nothing but blink into the darkness for a few seconds. No one but Finn ever thought to check in on her. It was not an easy thing to get used to, someone else having her back.

“Yeah. Fine,” she said finally.

“I know you told me not to ask this anymore, but what do we do now? This is your area of expertise.”

Rey actually felt more like a stumbling child than a Jedi expert. She could have searched her feelings again for the answer, she supposed, but she was just so tired. She didn’t have the energy for another encounter with that bright energy, and something told her that she would meet it again if she let herself drift off into the Force right now.

Thinking of the energy reminded her what it had said earlier that night.

Just trust me.

Rey realized that maybe she didn’t have to come up with all the answers on her own. Rose wasn’t a child, after all. And she had done so much for the Resistance, on Crait and Canto Bight and long before that. If both Finn and the Force wanted Rey to listen to Rose, maybe she should give it a try.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Rey said. “What do you think we should do?”

“Oh,” Rose said, sounding surprised. “Um. Well. Unless I’m just completely losing my mind, I think I can hear wind moving through the rock somewhere. Maybe that means when the sun comes up, some light will stream through a crack or something and we’ll be able to see.”

Rey listened carefully, and she heard it, too—a soft howling, whistling sound echoing down from high over their heads.

“You’re not losing your mind,” Rey said. “But how does that help us? The sun won’t be up for hours.”

“It doesn’t help us right now, sure, but here’s what I’m thinking. I’m exhausted. And I know you must be, too. Why don’t we find the wall, so we have some idea of where we are, and go to sleep? By the time we wake up, it’ll be daytime, and we can figure out where to go from there.”

Of course Rey was exhausted. Every second they stood here, she had to consciously hold her eyelids up. But sleeping in the dark in an ancient Jedi temple they knew nothing about? The risks were even greater than she knew to guess.

“We can’t sleep here,” Rey said.

“I understand why you say that, but we can sleep in shifts. Look out for each other. We’ll be fine.”

Rey thought about it, and the more she imagined lying down on the cool ground and letting her body rest, the more Rose’s plan made sense. They wouldn’t be able to do anything in the dark, anyway. They would have to wait for the sun to come up no matter what, so they might as well make the most of the time.

“All right,” Rey said. “But I’m taking first watch.” She was still the leader of this mission, no matter how far afield it had gone. And she had to keep Rose safe.

“Whatever you say.”

Rey’s hand still gripped Rose’s shoulder. Rose reached up and grabbed it in her own hand.

“So we don’t lose each other,” Rose said, and Rey thought she noticed a strange edge to her voice.

For the third time that day, Rey held Rose’s hand. She was beginning to get used to the warm pressure of their palms squeezed together. It steadied her. Every other time someone had taken her hand, even when it was Finn, she felt uncomfortable, too vulnerable, wrong. With Rose, it was so different, though Rey couldn’t explain why. She added it to the list of confusing things about Rose. 

They moved slowly in the dark, until their outstretched hands met the cold stone of the wall.

“You sure you’re good to take first watch?” Rose asked.

“Of course,” Rey said.

“If you say so.”

Rey sat down with her back against the wall, and Rose curled up beside her. Hesitantly, Rey rested her hand on Rose’s leg. For safety purposes, of course. Rey could see nothing in the dark, after all. She wouldn’t know that Rose was safe unless she was touching her. The warm, tingly feeling that shot through her veins like electricity had nothing to do with it.

She waited to see if Rose would brush her hand away or tell her to stop, but Rose did nothing of the sort. She just breathed into the darkness until Rey was sure she slept.

After a while of listening to the wind howling through the cracks and Rose’s deep, even breaths, Rey’s body finally relaxed. She had been carrying all the stress of the day in her shoulders, but now they drooped. Her chest opened up, let her breathe easy for the first time in hours. Before Rey noticed what was happening, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, she thought perhaps she was still dreaming. The sound that woke her was one her sleeping mind had been obsessing over lately.

“Rey?” Rose said. When her eyelids fluttered open, Rey could see nothing but Rose’s face. They were so close she forgot how to breathe for a moment. Rey was lying down now, her body squished between Rose and the wall. As she came to her senses, she found that her arm had shifted so that it draped over Rose’s waist.

But no. That wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was that Rey had fallen asleep when she was supposed to be on watch. She had left them both completely vulnerable to the temple and its wiles. She bolted upright, her cheeks burning.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what happened, I should have been more careful, I should have—”

“Hey. Are you hurt?” Rose said, sitting up beside her.

Rey looked at her and found that her face was calm. She was almost smiling.

“No?” Rey said.

“Good. Me neither. So everything’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“But we could’ve—”

Rose planted a hand on Rey’s shoulder.

“But we didn’t.”

Rey nodded.

“Right. Ok.”

They watched each other’s faces, and Rey felt her breath hitch. Rose did not move her hand. Rey could not look away from the bright, warm depths of Rose’s eyes—was it her imagination, or were they moving closer? And then she realized a second important thing, maybe even more important than the first. She could see.

“The sun!” she said suddenly, and the moment ended. Rey regretted it immediately, though why she should regret it, she did not know. They were just looking at each other.

Rose’s face lit up.

“I was right!”

They both hopped to their feet to get a good look at their surroundings. The room they stood in now was a circle, and the ceiling towered high above their heads. Great metal pillars lined the perimeter. The wall, too, was made of metal, though in the night, Rey had been sure it was stone. It was all old, dull, and weathered as the rock itself. There was no telling how long the temple had been sitting here idle, waiting for someone like Rey to hear its call and come running.

“No way out,” Rose said. She was right, Rey realized. There were no doors.

“There was no way in, either, remember?” Rey said, smirking at her.

Rose smiled back.

The hot, electric feeling pumped through Rey again. She had no idea what it meant, but she liked it. Could it be the Force, too?

The Force. She needed to focus. The Force had called her here, and now she was inside, right where it wanted her. But why? It was definitely a Jedi temple. Any doubts she had had were cleared when she saw the markings on the wall, similar to ones she had seen on Ahch-To. Even so, that didn’t tell her what she was supposed to do.

She would have to search her feelings again, but that might prove difficult with Rose standing so near. Rey had made the connection at some point in the night when she hovered between sleeping and waking—whatever the powerful energy from her visions was, and whatever her strange feelings towards Rose were, they went together, hand-in-hand. She only ever encountered the energy when she was with Rose. What that correlation could mean was a mystery to sort out later. For now, it was enough to know that if she wanted to hear what the Force was telling her about the temple, she would have to find some way to block out Rose.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Rey said, “but I need you to get away from me.”

Rose’s face fell.

“What?”

“No, not like that, it’s not—” Rey searched for a way to explain herself without actually having to explain herself. “I just need to focus. I need to figure out why we’re here.”

“Oh. I thought maybe it was because—but never mind.” Red bloomed on Rose’s cheeks. Rey wanted to ask what she had been about to say, but then Rose turned on her heel and strode to the other side of the cavernous room. That was probably for the best. Rey really did need to focus.

She sat on the ground, cross-legged, with her palms resting on the cool stone of the floor. She closed her eyes and shut out everything—every feeling, every sensation, every thought—that wasn’t the temple beneath her. Before long, she felt its power vibrating through her, as if she were an extension of the rock. A voice that was both familiar and strange, young and ancient, warm and bitter cold, filled the air around her.

The time has come to complete your training, it said.

How? Rey thought.

Like all the others before you, said the voice.

When Rey opened her eyes again, the path ahead was clear in her mind, placed there by the temple itself.

“I know what to do now. Follow me,” she called to Rose, who stood on the other side of the room, facing the wall.

“So what are we here for?” Rose asked as she walked back to Rey.

“They didn’t tell me that much. But they did tell me where to find a door.”

Rey approached one of the metal columns and found a small marking in the shape of a spiral. She punched it, and a split appeared in the wall ahead of her. The split grinded open more and more until it formed a door just wide enough for one person to enter and only a few feet taller than Rey.

“Wow,” Rose said again, staring in awe at the dimly lit hallway that stretched out behind the door. The way she said it, it was as if she couldn’t help herself. It was genuine wonder, the same as when Rey lifted the knapsack with the Force and when they first found the temple. Rey thought that she could watch Rose’s face light up like that forever and never get tired of it.

Rose caught her staring, and Rey’s cheeks burned.

“So, um,” Rey mumbled, “they said if we go down there, we’ll find another door, and behind that one is the thing we’re supposed to find.”

“Wait a second—who’s ‘they’?”

“I don’t know. Just a voice in my head. It told me I have to finish my training, whatever that means.”

“You mean I’m about to see some secret Jedi stuff?” Rose asked, her face shining even brighter somehow. Rey laughed.

“I guess so.”

She took a deep breath and took a few steps into the hallway. She turned to say something to Rose, but before she could even take a breath, the door slammed shut, much faster than it had opened. And Rey was alone. Which meant Rose was alone.

Rey pounded the wall with her fists, as if that would make a difference.

“Rose? Rose, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

Only silence answered her, which meant that either no, Rose could not hear her, or no, Rose was not all right. She had no way of knowing which it was.

Rey pried at the wall where she thought the crack had formed, but it did not budge. She beat the wall some more, kicked it, whacked it with her staff, but nothing happened. If the temple wanted her to be alone for this part of the journey, she was going to be alone. Maybe, if she cooperated, the temple would keep Rose safe and reunite them once her training was complete. So she kept walking down the hallway.

The passage was lit from beneath by lights set into the ground, but it was still so dark that she could see her own footsteps on the dirt floor and little more than that. She walked and walked and walked and walked until she couldn’t keep track of the time anymore. How long had she been separated from Rose? Minutes? Hours? The longer Rey was alone in the dark, the greater her fear that something terrible was happening to Rose at that very moment. Just imagining it made her blood boil. She wanted to punch the wall some more, punish the temple for putting them through this. At the very moment she felt hot, angry tears swell in her eyes, the voice reverberated through her again.

Rey, it said. If you want to find what the temple has to offer, you must let go of your feelings. Fear is the path to the dark side.

“How am I supposed to let go when you made me leave Rose all on her own?” Rey shouted into the darkness. There was no reply.

Rey broke into a sprint. She couldn’t stand this anymore. She had known that the temple would do something like this, mess with her mind like it was some kind of game. She hardly cared about the mysteries of the temple anymore. She just wanted to find Rose and get out of here. Go back to the Falcon, where everything could be normal again.

Normal. The thought stopped Rey in her tracks. Normal on the Falcon meant being so wary of Rose that Rey didn’t even want to look at her. It meant avoiding her in the halls and second-guessing everything she said. That was easier, really, than talking to her and touching her and obsessing over whether she was all right at any given moment. It was easier…but Rey didn’t think she wanted to make that trade. They had been on Lothal for—what, a day? But somehow, everything had changed. Rey couldn’t pinpoint when it had happened, but now that she thought about it, she was sure. She liked Rose. A lot. Force feelings and premonitions be damned.

As soon as Rey realized it, a shiver ran down her spine. A warm, tingly, electric shiver. She smiled to herself in the dark.

Relief washed through her now that that was settled. But it did nothing to change her current predicament. She was still trapped in the passage. She still couldn’t find the second door that would lead her to the thing that would help her complete her training.

Let go, the voice said again in a faint whisper.

“Right. Let go.” Rey took a deep breath. “Rose is fine. She can take care of herself. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

When her mind was clear, a second light source appeared, hovering above her. It glowed white and harsh like a star. Slowly, it descended until it floated just at her eye level. Then it grew and morphed until it formed the outline of a doorway. On the other side, Rey could see only more darkness.

“This is what I’m supposed to do?” she said. The voice didn’t answer, but Rey felt an affirmation deep down that came from somewhere outside herself. She took a step through the door. On the other side, she tripped on a rock that hadn’t been there a second before and fell flat on her face in the dirt.

She raised her head and looked around. She was in an entirely new room now, much smaller and less grandiose than the chamber she and Rose had first encountered. This room really did have stone walls. Rocks and boulders littered the floor. It seemed less like a room, in fact, than a cave. Everything here was natural. Even the light looked and felt like it came from the sun, though the room was too deep in the temple for that to be true.

In the center of the room, a stone pillar grew directly out of the ground. As soon as she laid eyes on it, Rey knew. This. This was the source of that cold chill, that magnetic pull that had drawn her here in the first place. She rose from the ground and dusted off.

She gripped her staff in both hands as she approached the pillar. It enticed her, but its call carried with it a foreboding undercurrent.

The pillar rose only to her waist, but it was twice as wide around as she was. As she came closer, she realized that it held something. In the very center, a small cluster of crystals grew from the rock. They glowed with an iridescent light, ethereal against the backdrop of the simple room. Rey’s eyes locked onto the crystals, and she could not look away. They held her there, practically hypnotized.

“Kyber crystals,” said a voice from behind her. It was the same voice that had helped her through the temple, she could sense it, but this time, it sounded different. This was a voice she knew. When she turned, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Master Skywalker,” she breathed, and forgetting all about the crystals, she ran to him, ready to embrace him, tears already slipping down her cheeks. But her arms fell right through him, as if through a cold mist. The image of his form wavered.

“In a way, yes,” he said, smirking.

“I don’t understand,” Rey said. “You’re gone. I felt it. So did Leia.”

“I no longer live in your plane of existence, but my spirit lives on in the Force. Just like everyone and everything else. As I told Leia, no one is ever really gone.”

“But what…” A thousand questions raced to the front of Rey’s mind. “What are you doing here? How did you know I would be here?”

“I already told you what I’m doing here,” Luke said. “It’s time to complete your training.”

Rey’s head swam.

“I don’t understand.”

“No one will ever truly understand the Force, Rey. That’s what I learned in my lifetime. But here we are, all the same.” He nodded toward the stone pillar. “Kyber crystals.”

Rey gazed again at their otherworldly glow. A glow that seemed familiar.

“They almost look like—”

“Lightsabers?” Luke interrupted. “Where exactly did you think lightsabers came from?”

“That means—am I—I’m going to make my own lightsaber? That’s why I’m here?”

Luke only grinned.

Despite her lingering confusion, her shock at seeing Master Skywalker again, her anxiety over still being separated from Rose—a smile lit Rey’s face. Her own lightsaber. One that she built with her own hands. It was like a dream.

“How do I—”

“Stop asking questions,” Luke said. “Just do it. Let the Force guide you.”

Rey reached out and let her hand hover over the cluster of crystals. One of them, rough and dirty and smaller than several of the others, pulled her toward it. She gripped the crystal in her hand and tugged at it, expecting resistance, but there was none. It slipped smoothly from its setting in the rock. The raw power of it beat against her palm. She felt it in her blood, in her bones. Its pulse matched the beating of her heart.

“I don’t have any parts,” she said, looking to Master Skywalker again.

“That staff in your hand should do just fine,” he said.

Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? This staff had been a part of her for years. She wielded it as easily as her own fists.

Rey sat down cross-legged in the dirt and got to work. The composition of her staff was very different from that of a lightsaber, but as she began to assemble her weapon, she found that she had every part she needed. The Force nudged her intuition, showed her which pieces went where. Only once, sparks jumped out and singed her hands when she made a misstep.

After at least hours of meticulous fiddling and shaping, the handle was complete. One long rod, with an opening for a blade on each end. All that remained was to place the crystal in its casing.

It snapped perfectly into place, and then Rey felt that familiar thrum of a lightsaber in her hand. She stood, facing Master Skywalker, who had watched over her in silence the whole time.

“What do you think?” she said.

“I don’t know yet,” said Master Skywalker. “Let’s see how it works.”

Rey activated the saber and a blade of pure energy, as bright and yellow as the Jakku sun, shot from each end of the handle. Instantly, she felt as though her arm had doubled in size. If she had thought her staff was a part of her, she had been wrong. This was a part of her, in a way that Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber had never been. She swung and twirled it in front of her, testing it out.

Luke smiled.

“Not bad,” he said.

Rey deactivated the blades.

“So,” she said. “What now?”

“Long term?” he shrugged. “Even I don’t know that. I suppose it is up to you. But for right now, I believe you have some friends who are looking for you.”

Friends. Including Rose. Which reminded Rey of another question.

“Master,” she said. “Before you go, there’s something I need to ask you about. The Force…can it warn you about people? Give you premonitions about people who can’t be trusted?”

Luke narrowed his eyes.

“Sometimes the Force can enhance your natural intuition, yes,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just…” Finally, the time had come to explain herself. Finally, she could talk about her feelings toward Rose, her visions, the energy, all of it. But she found that, if the result would be Master Skywalker telling her she had been right all along, that it really had been a warning about Rose, she didn’t want to know. “I’ve been having strange visions. Feelings I can’t explain. There’s this light and heat and…I don’t know what else, but it’s all surrounding this person—this woman—someone in the Resistance. Her name is Rose.”

Master Skywalker laughed out loud.

“Are you serious?” he said. “Rey. You haven’t figured that out yet?”

Rey’s cheeks burned.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “It’s confusing. And terrifying sometimes. Is that what it is? Fear?”

Luke shook his head.

“You’re completely missing the point,” he said. “What you are feeling, what the Force is trying to show you, isn’t fear. It’s the opposite of fear.”

Rey thought hard for a moment. The opposite of fear. Was that supposed to mean something to her? Eventually, she just shrugged at him.

“Love!” he said, gesturing wildly. “It’s love!”

Rey’s heart stopped. Her eyes went wide. It couldn’t be. Rey loved her friends, and she loved flying, and she loved the smell of trees. None of it felt the way she felt about Rose. None of it was so gut-wrenching, so frustrating, so overwhelming. This had to be something else.

“You’re wrong,” Rey said. “Love can’t be this complicated.”

“It isn’t.” Luke smiled at her one last time. “It’s the simplest thing in the world.”

With that, he faded into the light. Rey could mourn his absence for only a moment. Her brain was so overloaded with what he had said.

It was impossible, ridiculous—it didn’t make any sense. Rey wasn’t in love with Rose. Rey had never been in love with anyone. Besides, these feelings began before she even spoke to Rose at all.

Maybe it had been a Force feeling, though. A warning. A premonition. Not of something terrible to come, but of something else entirely…

Finally, it all clicked. Rey understood now. She understood many things.

Bursting with a new sense of purpose that had nothing to do with the temple or the mission, Rey took off running out the door through which she had come.

…………………………………………………

She was too excited, too chaotic. Again, she stumbled as she crossed through the mystical door that was not always a door and landed on her face.

“There you are!” a voice said from somewhere to her left. Then, more urgently: “Are you all right? What happened?”

Rose.

Rey lifted herself off the ground and found that she was back in the massive room with the pillars and the markings. The room where she and Rose had spent the night together. Rey’s eyes searched madly until they found what they were looking for.

When she saw Rose, rushing toward her from the other end of the cavern, Rey saw her clearly for the very first time. There were no more tangled feelings clogging up her chest, getting in the way. There were feelings—a lot of them, and strong—and maybe they were even the same ones as before, but now that Rey knew what they meant, everything was different. No longer did she dread the sight of Rose’s shining eyes.

In that moment, Rey forgot about her new lightsaber. She forgot about the ghost of Master Skywalker. She forgot about Finn and Poe and General Leia and the whole of the Resistance. In that moment, there was only Rose, lit by the soft sunlight showering down on them, her brow furrowed, her black hair a bushy mess escaping from its ponytail, and her eyes, shining somehow brighter than ever in the dim room.

Something molten hot lodged in Rey’s gut, rose through her body like a wave, carried her to Rose. With no control over what she was doing, Rey closed the distance between them. Every inch of it.

Rey crashed into Rose, grabbed her face in both hands, and pulled her so close. Their lips met, pushing and pulling against each other. Rey had never done anything like this before, and she had no idea how it was supposed to go, but she knew she must be doing something right when she felt Rose’s hands weaving through her hair. The thing in Rey’s gut exploded, flung its raging fire out to consume the whole world.

Then Rose pulled away. It was over. The second their lips parted, the realization of what Rey had just done came crashing down on her head. Her face burned bright red.

“I don’t understand,” Rose said.

“I’m sorry—I don’t know what—I didn’t mean—” Rey scrambled for something to say that would erase it, while at the same time she wanted nothing more in the universe than to do it again.

“No,” Rose said softly. She rested her hand on Rey’s cheek. “Don’t be sorry. I just mean, I thought you hated me. You said yourself you had a bad feeling about me.”

“Well,” Rey said. “Turns out I was wrong.”

Rose smiled. And Rey smiled. And they kissed again, softer this time. Rose’s thumb stroked Rey’s cheek.

“But wait,” Rey said. “What about Finn?”

Rose shook her head.

“He’s my friend. My really great friend.”

“Yeah. Ok. Mine, too.”

They both burst out laughing. Here they were, standing in the middle of an ancient Jedi temple, holding each other and talking about Finn. Everything about this was ridiculous. And perfect.

“Rose. I think I might be in love with you,” Rey said.

“Oh.” That look of pure wonder fell over Rose’s face again.

“I mean, I’ve never been in love before, so I could be wrong. I don’t really know what it feels like—”

Rose kissed her before she could finish her thought.

“I’m pretty sure this is it,” Rose said.

They stood there, inches apart, just looking at each other. Rey could drink in Rose’s face for hours and never be satisfied. If they never moved past this moment, she thought, she would be happy.

But then the ground, the walls, the ceiling, everything around them began to vibrate. Rey feared the temple was caving in on itself and burying them inside, but then she realized. The walls were rotating slowly upward, out of the ground, to reveal the same metal door through which they had entered. Bright desert sunlight poured into the room, blinding her. Funny, she didn’t remember the ground shaking or the temple moving the last time the door had opened. This was as strange and spontaneous a place as she could have imagined.

“Hey, we did it again!” Rose said. “We’re getting good at that.”

She grabbed Rey’s hand—Rey’s heart skipped a beat at that familiar warm pressure—and led her out into the light.

They stood side by side, hand in hand, looking out over the sea of dunes.

“Well that mission got a bit off-track, didn’t it?” Rey said.

“Actually, I think we wound up exactly where we were meant to be.”

Rose smiled up at Rey, both of them squinting against the sun, and Rey thought:

Exactly where I was meant to be.

…………………………………………………

Where they were actually meant to be, though, was back on the Falcon. Their mission was supposed to take a day and a half, tops. Rey had no idea how long they had been in the temple, but it was at least that. For the first time, Rey thought about everyone else. Had Finn and Poe completed their part of the mission? Were they worried about her and Rose?

Now that Rey’s task at the temple was complete, she couldn’t decide if they should go to the farming village and finish the job or check back in at the Falcon first. Leia had entrusted Rey with such a simple yet vital task, and she had mucked it up beyond belief.

“It’s not over yet,” Rose said when Rey voiced her disappointment in herself. “We can still complete the mission. Leia said to be prepared for anything, remember? She’s not expecting us to come back exactly when and how as planned. She is expecting us to come back with the food, though.”

“Right,” Rey said. Now she wished she had listened to Rose all along. She almost couldn’t even remember what had stood in the way. She squeezed Rose’s hand. “Let’s do it, then.”

“Yeah!” Rose stood on her tip-toes to give Rey a peck on the cheek. Warmth spread from the spot where her lips touched Rey’s skin all the way down to the pit of Rey’s belly. It felt all at once like the first time they had ever touched and something they had done a thousand times. New and exciting but already so familiar.

“Wait a second,” Rose said the second she pulled away. Her eyes popped open wide. “What is that?” She pointed at the brand new lightsaber hanging from a clip on Rey’s belt.

“This old thing?” Rey smiled. She unhooked it from her belt and took a few steps back, giving herself space to demonstrate. She held the handle out in front of her and ignited the dual blades. Their yellow burned so bright that even in the all-consuming sunlight of the Lothal desert, they shone clear.

Rey felt the saber’s tug on her, begging her to really wield it. She spun it around, over her head, across her back, just as she would have done with her staff. The movements came naturally. She had been practicing her whole life.

Rose just watched her. She seemed to have a difficult time breathing.

“That’s—” Rose stammered. “I mean—um—that’s—”

She swallowed.

“It’s nice, right?” Rey said.

“Yup. Yeah. Nice. That’s one word you could use.” She kept staring at Rey, who stood in her resting stance, saber at her side, panting only slightly with exertion. Rey met Rose’s eyes, and the air around them turned thick and slow.

“I think I would use a stronger word,” a voice said, from so close it seemed ridiculous that they hadn’t noticed someone approaching them. Whatever had been about to happen between Rey and Rose was interrupted, and Rey would have been annoyed if it had been any other voice. But this was one that she would know anywhere, one that would make her heart light whenever and wherever she heard it.

“Finn!” she called, deactivating her saber and running to him. He was approaching them from the direction of the temple. She crashed into his open arms and wrapped herself around him.

“I’m really glad to see you,” he said while his head rested on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry we didn’t follow the plan, it’s just that—hang on.” Rey pulled back. “How did you find us?”

Finn shook his head, a smile spreading across his face.

“That’s a long story.”

Rose reached them then, and it was her turn for a full-body embrace from Finn. Relief washed over Rey when she didn’t feel an ounce of jealousy. Rose loved Finn the way she herself did, she was sure of that now.

“So, uh…new lightsaber?” Finn asked when all the hugs were done.

“That’s…a long story.”

Finn laughed, which made Rose laugh, and all of it together made Rey feel as though she would burst, so she laughed, too.

Finn led the way back to the Falcon, parked just on the other side of the temple. Rey and Rose followed close behind, hand-in-hand. Rey had a feeling they would be like that all the time from now on. Call it a Force feeling, she thought, smiling to herself.

When they reached the Falcon, they found Poe waiting on the boarding ramp. First thing, his eyes focused on Rey and Rose’s hands clasped together. His face lit up.

“You had an eventful time, I see,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“You could say that,” Rey said. She smirked at him. He seemed much more at ease now, which made her happy. Maybe he had had an eventful time, too.

“I always knew, you know,” he said as they entered the Falcon’s main corridor.

“Knew what?” Rey asked, because he couldn’t be talking about her and Rose. He wouldn’t have been so jealous and suspicious if he had predicted what would happen between the two of them.

“That you like women.”

Rey stopped in her tracks.

Her mind churned over what he said, ran it through again and again and again. She couldn’t think past it for a solid minute.

Because of course he was right. Of course the only reason romance had never appealed to her was that she had been imagining it with the wrong people. She had felt the difference the first time she held Rose’s hand. Now that the fact was right there, standing in front of her, she couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to realize. She liked women. Just thinking it felt like finding a part of her she hadn’t known was missing.

When Rey’s head finally stopped spinning, she look up to find that they were still standing in the middle of the corridor, Finn, Poe, and Rose all staring at her.

“Well, you could’ve told me,” she said.

“What!” From Finn. “You didn’t know?”

“No! Did you?”

“Of course! I think everyone did. I mean, Rey, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s pretty obvious.”

Rey looked at each of them in turn, slack-jawed. Rose burst into a fit of giggles.

“You’re so cute,” she said.

Rey wanted to be embarrassed, to feel stupid for being the last person to know about her own self, but the look in Rose’s eyes wouldn’t let her. What did it matter if she didn’t know until now? She had found out in the best way possible.

When Finn and Rose finally composed themselves, Poe led them all to the engineering bay/strategy room, where General Leia waited for them.

Rey’s spirits dropped. Here it came. The reprimand. The disappointment that she had failed her mission and let them all down. She would hear how Leia regretted ever trusting her and how she would never see another chance to lead in the Resistance again.

“You’re all right,” Leia said, rushing to Rey and embracing her.

“I—” Rey stood stiff as a board, completely caught off guard. “I’m so sorry, General. I failed to complete the mission.”

“Failed to even start it, I think,” Leia said. “But by the looks of it, you found your own mission.” She stroked the handle of Rey’s lightsaber where it hung from her belt. Leia’s quick eye missed nothing.

“Yes. I suppose I did,” Rey said. Leia didn’t even know the half of how right she was. Or maybe she did. She seemed to know most things.

Leia dismissed all of them but Poe after a short debriefing. Rey, Rose, and Finn sat at the curved booth in the main hold for a long time, swapping stories of all they had been through since they had separated. According to Finn, Poe’s team had been much more successful than Rey’s. Because of certain developments, they would be staying on Lothal a while longer than anticipated.

Eventually, Poe joined them. The four of them talked and laughed until Rey began to doze off on Rose’s shoulder. Then they all decided it was time for bed.

Again, Rey lay awake in her bunk thinking, regardless of how exhausted she was. At least this time, she wasn’t alone. Rose lay beside her, crammed onto the tiny mattress. She rested her head on Rey’s chest, and Rey spent more time than not with her face buried in Rose’s black hair, breathing in that smell of grease she had come to love.

“What happens now that we’re back in the real world?” Rey asked. The question had been weighing on her since the temple, since before she even knew why the answer mattered.

“Now…” Rose thought for a long time before continuing. “Now we keep fighting.”

Rey smiled.

“Yes. Fighting,” she said. “To save what we love.”

She kissed the top of Rose’s head. They spoke no more.

In her dreams that night, Rey saw no visions and heard no voices. No powerful and mysterious energy haunted the inside of her mind. Everything the Force wanted to show her—everything she needed to see—was already right there in her arms.