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It’s the child’s power that calls out to her. Though her abilities lie dormant, they still suck Ahsoka out of a deep sleep. It hums in her bloodstream like a stab of electricity, familiar and so strong it’s nearly overpowering.
She can see the child in her mind’s eye almost as clear as a holo, scrawny and undersized, curled up on a blanket and surrounded by nothing but sand as far as the eye can see.
Something about all that sand, though…
The faint, torn threads of her broken Force bond flutter like ribbons on a stiff wind.
The bond can sense its kin in this child, she realizes.
She’s only felt it one other time. That time, she hadn’t gone to find him. Something about him—about the dark energy inside him—scared her off.
And, years later, she learned what had happened to the boy after she made the decision to stay away.
Ahsoka must find her.
***
Ahsoka finds the girl curled up on a thin pallet in the hollowed-out skeleton of a downed AT-AT. The child stirs slightly in her sleep, whimpering, caught in the throes of a bad dream.
With a weary sigh, Ahsoka crouches down next to her and reaches a hand out.
She’s much too old to be doing this, she thinks, kneeling in the sand next to the child’s sleeping form. She smooths her gray robes over her knees and wonders if she should wake the girl so they can start their training.
The girl is dreaming. When Ahsoka reaches out, through her mind, she can sense the child grappling with a dark energy—a very familiar dark energy. She’s half-tempted to leave, to jump on her ship and flee to the darkest corner of wild space where no one will be able to find her.
But something makes her stay.
“Who are you?” The girl’s whispered voice draws Ahsoka’s attention. She sits up on her pallet and gazes at Ahsoka curiously, her tiny fingers grasping in the cool sand.
“I am a friend,” Ahsoka says, reaching up and brushing her cowl away from her face. The child’s eyes widen in surprise. “What is your name?”
“Rey,” the girl says. “You were in my dreams.”
“I was?” Ahsoka puzzles over that, for a moment.
“I dream about my family sometimes,” Rey says, in a hushed whisper. “Unkar Plutt doesn’t like me to talk about my family. He says I haven’t got one. He’s my only family.”
Ahsoka frowns; she’d seen the foul Plutt’s hulking, sleeping form in a nearby tent.
“Where are your parents, girl?” Ahsoka asks.
“They left me here,” she says, ducking her head and sniffling. “Unkar Plutt said they didn’t want me so they junked me like scrap metal.”
“Now,” Ahsoka says, reaching out and tipping little Rey’s chin up. “Don’t you listen to him. He’s nothing more than a bully. Creatures like him seek out your weak spots and poke at them until they get the reaction they want.”
Rey blinks away tears. “I don’t like him,” she says.
“I don’t like him either.” Ahsoka tugs the sleeve of her robe down to wipe at Rey’s damp cheek. “Why don’t you come with me? Maybe I can help you look for your parents.”
“But what if they come back for me and I’m gone?” Rey asks, her voice trembling. Unshed tears glitter in the corners of her dark—familiar—eyes. “Then I might never see them again.”
Ahsoka sighs and pats Rey’s dark hair in what she hopes is a soothing manner. Rey snuggles closer and curls her tiny fingers in the folds of Ahsoka’s robe. A sense of peace falls over young Rey that Ahsoka can feel through her shattered old Force bond. A faint echo of an earlier, older connection.
It isn’t until Rey’s hand slips from Ahsoka’s robe that she realizes the little girl has drifted off. Ahsoka carefully lifts her and settles her on the pallet, then pulls a thin, patched-up blanket over her. Judging from the dropped stitching, Rey herself repaired the blanket and Ahsoka can’t help but smile.
“I’ll come back for you, youngling,” Ahsoka promises her, as she retreats toward the opening of the AT-AT. “We will see each other again.”
***
Rey has dreams that she can’t explain. In them, an elderly Togruta woman clad in gray robes visits her. She doesn’t say anything in these brief glimpses, just sits across from Rey and observes her silently. Rey would find it stranger had she not been having these sorts of dreams all her life.
Sometimes, in her waking moments, she thinks she sees a faint outline of the woman shimmering in pale blue in the periphery of her vision. A watchful Force ghost. Rey’s become accustomed to seeing her in the dark, shadowy corners of her AT-AT, down at the Niima marketplace, even in Unkar Plutt’s tent. Everywhere, really. Rey’s come to think of her as a guardian, a constant companion, ever watchful.
Rey is settling in for bed when the thin curtains over Rey’s viewport start stirring like birds’ wings. There’s no wind, though. The night is still and cool, even in the desert.
Rey sits up bolt-straight, groping for her staff.
Then she sees it: a pale, translucent blue outline that resolves itself into the faded image of the Torgruta woman from her dreams, long gray-blue robes sweeping around her like billowing smoke.
“Who are you?” Rey calls out, clenching her fist around her staff.
The Togruta pushes her hood away from her face and gazes down at Rey with a proud, almost regal look.
“Ahsoka Tano,” she says, her voice surrounding Rey like a rustling canopy of leaves. “I visited you when you were a child.”
Rey squints in the dark; she remembers that night in faint, mud-smudged snatches, she thinks. A gentle hand in her hair, stroking lightly. The drag of gray robes on sand. A faint tugging deep within her, telling her this is a friend. This is family. She could never make sense of it, before, passing it off as another one of her odd dreams when she got older.
Now, it makes sense.
“I think I remember you,” Rey says, opening her hand and dropping her staff. She slides her fingers through cool, smooth sand. “I felt a connection.”
“I was friends with your grandfather,” Ahsoka says.
Rey startles. It’s easy to think of her family in the abstract, considering them as one might consider ghosts. But to hear they’re flesh-and-blood people, that they exist or might once have existed, feels like having a bucket of ice water dumped on your head.
“My grandfather?” she echoes.
“Anakin Skywalker,” Ahsoka says, lifting her head to meet Rey’s eyes. Her electric blue eyes lock onto Rey’s. “His son, Luke, was your father.”
Skywalker. Luke. Luke Skywalker.
“It can’t be true,” Rey gasps, unable to grasp the truth of it. It feels too big to comprehend. “Luke Skywalker is a legend. Everyone knows him.”
“It is true,” Ahsoka assures her. “I think I’ve been guided to you. To train you properly.”
Rey stares at her, blankly, her mind still reeling from the revelation.
Her father is alive. Not only that, he’s the most famous man in the galaxy.
“Can I meet him?” Rey asks.
Ahsoka offers her an apologetic look, her eyebrows drawing together. “I’m sorry,” she says. “No one’s seen him in years. He’s been missing ever since…”
Rey can sense an inner turmoil raging within the woman. They manifest in Rey’s mind as gray waves crashing into a rocky cliffside. Ghost or not, her feelings are bright and clear, ringing as loud as a bell.
“When his nephew—my cousin burned down the Jedi academy,” Rey finishes.
Cousin, she marvels. Whereas minutes ago she hadn’t any family, now she has at least three living relatives: Luke, her cousin Ben, and General Organa, Ben’s mother.
Rey tilts her head up and stares up at the sky through a hole in the AT-AT. The dark splotch of night visible to her is sprinkled with stars. Somewhere, amongst those stars, live people with a connection to her. People who share the same blood in their veins. Rey had always felt so profoundly alone, even a little bit lost, and now she feels like the universe has been slit open and all its secrets are spilling out.
She turns back to Ahsoka.
“What was my mother like?” she asks.
“Your mother was one of his students,” Ahsoka says. “She’d spent most of her life trying to hide her abilities until she met Luke. He encouraged her to stop being afraid of her power. She was soon one of his most talented students.”
“Did he—did my cousin kill her?” Rey asks, voice barely above a whisper.
Ahsoka doesn’t answer; she doesn’t need to. The look in her eyes is enough of an answer for Rey. She ducks her head and rubs at her eyes. Her chest tightens, like a great hand is squeezing all the life out of her and stealing her breath.
She feels Ahsoka’s hand on her hair, petting lightly, like she’s a child again.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her fingers stilling in Rey’s hair. “I wish I could bring you better news. Just know that she loved you. More than anything. She died protecting you.”
Rey lifts her head. “What was her name?”
“Mara,” Ahsoka replies.
“Mara,” Rey echoes. She closes her eyes, tries to picture her father and mother together, but it’s a hard image to grasp on to.
Ahsoka’s hand slips away from her hair.
“I must go,” she says, standing. “I haven’t quite mastered being a ghost. It takes a lot of time and energy, which I have on short supply these days.”
Rey nods, wiping tears out of her eyes. “I understand. Will I see you again?” she asks.
“In due time, youngling,” Ahsoka says, offering Rey a smile.
Rey reaches out to touch Ahsoka’s shoulder, but her hand passes right through her, her image rippling like water.
She fades away, until nothing’s left but the faint afterimage of her outline. Then, even that disappears, and Rey is left alone on her pallet.
***
Rey returns from the marketplace a few weeks later, her conversation with Ahsoka a slowly fading memory, when she finds Ahsoka waiting for her in her AT-AT. Ahsoka blinks in and out of existence, like a bad holo connection.
“Ahsoka,” Rey asks, putting her sack down by the entrance. “What’s the matter?”
“Interference—” Ahsoka’s response is dry and crackly. “Force user.”
“Someone is interfering? Is it deliberate?” Rey asks, stepping closer to Ahsoka’s flickering form.
“—don’t know,” Ahsoka says. “Could be—awakening.”
Rey taps her finger against her lips. The Jedi have lain dormant since Ben Solo turned on Luke Skywalker and destroyed his Jedi academy, scattering the survivors to the four corners of the known universe.
An awakening could mean...
An awakening could mean Rey truly isn’t alone in this world.
“Maybe I can find them,” she muses, more for her own benefit than Ahsoka’s.
“Too—dangerous for—” comes Ahsoka’s voice.
“I’m ready,” Rey insists, striding forward, approaching the pale blue outline of Ahsoka against the wall.
“Dangerous.” Ahsoka blinks out of view.
“Ahsoka?” Rey calls out, but she gets no response.
When Rey closes her eyes and reaches out for Ahsoka through the Force—through their tentative bond—she feels nothing but an empty space where her presence resided.
***
Rey isn’t sure where a Force ghost might go when they’re in danger. She wonders if there might be some separate plane of existence where they all just reside until they’re needed on the mortal plane.
Or do they hide among the living, tucking themselves into dark, dusty corners and hidden spaces?
Sometimes, Rey finds herself looking for Ahsoka in the corners and shadows of her AT-AT. She looks for Ahsoka in the lengthening shadows at the marketplace and in the hollowed-out shells of the wrecked Star Destroyers she scavenges for parts.
The shadows are never Ahsoka.
When she reaches out for her through their connection, thin though it is, she finds nothing.
***
Rey scratches off time on her wall with a mangled, melted nail. She estimates that she’s been here on this oppressively hot dustball for seventeen years. Other marks mean different things: circles and dots for cycles of the moon, straight lines up and down for harvests, wavy lines for the exceedingly rare rainfall, and now a diamond-shape to mark off how long it’s been since she last saw Ahsoka’s ghost.
Their bond is as dormant as the vanquished Jedi.
She misses Ahsoka, whom she’d come to see as kin.
Rey tells herself she’ll see her again.
These things Rey knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt:
Her parents will come back for her.
And she will see Ahsoka again.
Rey refuses to allow herself to believe anything else.