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“Skywalker, you say?” The old woman squints at Rey against the glare of the setting twin suns. “Why would a Skywalker want to come back to this cursed place?”
Rey’s smile fades as BB8 whistles and looks up at her. She glances down at the round robot, thinking the same thing. Cursed?
The shawled woman tugs on the reins of her eopie and shakes her head. “Nothing but death has ever been found on this homestead, girl. Only the ghosts live here now. You need be careful, especially with night coming on,” she gestures with her hand towards the horizon. “Things with teeth and claws slither and bite around here, especially in the dark. You might want to find another place to pay respects to your,” the old woman pauses and looks at Rey with narrowed eyes, “family.”
A chill works its way down Rey’s spine having nothing to do with the oncoming dark, pebbling her skin despite the heat. She glances over to where she buried the Skywalker sabers, the slight indent in the ground marking the spot. Was she foolishly optimistic about this being the right place to bring them, this was the best place to pay her respects to the Skywalker legacy?
She thinks about Chewie’s surprise and the brief flash of wariness when asked to borrow the Falcon for the trip to Tatooine. He had stared at her for a long time, growling intelligibly under his breath before finally nodding his assent. But unlike other trips they’ve been on, he didn’t offer to be her co-pilot on this one. What did he know about this place he didn’t feel comfortable sharing?
Lifting her chin, she closes her eyes and reaches out with the Force, the tendrils immediately swept up in a storm filled with fractured feelings, revolving vibrant colors and ever-changing emotions.
Regret, longing, deep unconditional love - she smiles at the emotion, comfortable and maternal until it morphs into something twisted and ugly – intense grief and rage, blackening and splintering the Force.
Rey flinches as the Force constricts and swells around her, building in intensity until it blossoms like an explosion driving terror and mind numbing pain through her soul. Her eyes snap open and she turns to ask the old woman - something, anything to explain what she’s feeling, but the eopie and the woman are already moving away, the sand swallowing up the sounds of their departure.
Rey looks back at the domed building, tracking the suns behind it, now hovering very close to the horizon. Those dark streaks across the sandstone, is it just weather scarring from years of abandonment or could it be stains of something more sinister? The wind whistles through the empty corridors underground, whispering and crying out to her in the language of regret and loneliness.
Shivering, she looks down as BB8 chirps and whistles below her. “I know, I feel it too,” Rey gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile. “A few more minutes and we’ll go. We’re definitely not staying the night, I promise.”
A sand devil materializes out of nowhere, swirling around her ankles and up her legs, stinging her bare calves. Rey wraps her arms around herself and turns to stare out at the barren desert, feeling very alone. Maker, she hates the desert. How stupid of her to think this planet would be any different from all the others with invasive sand getting into all of her crevices and the never ending searing heat?
How could Tatooine ever feel like home, when it was so very much like Jakku? At least Jakku held large dunes and wind shaped sand crags that broke up the horizon. Nothing on Tatooine but a desolate and unforgiving landscape as far as the eyes could see, and one that held no place for her. She thought this place would make her feel closer to Luke, Leia and the Force.
It could be a place to heal, a place to figure out her future, her path —
And it hits her suddenly, she knows almost nothing about the early life of the Skywalker siblings or the legacy of their father Anakin or how he became -
Darth Vader.
“ You...you’re afraid. That you’ll never be as strong as Darth Vader.”
Without thinking, her fingers travel to her upper arm, pressing on her skin and searching for the scars that used to be there before Ben took them away. Before he saved her life and she lost him on Exegol.
Her breath hitches and she gasps, heartbreak piercing her chest so deep her knees go weak with intense pain. There's emptiness in her now, a hole gouged through blood and bone and nothing in the Force can or will fill it again. Her grief sits right below her heart, ever growing and breathing, the loss of him still so devastatingly raw. It closes her throat and chokes her words until she stumbles forward, another sand devil whirling and shifting beneath her boots, unbalancing her. Blinded by grief, she puts her hands up to catch herself from falling and one of them slams against the stone of the dome.
Her eyes fly open to the piercing sound of a lightsaber igniting, darkness clouding her vision. Suddenly unbalanced, she’s someone else, limbs heavy with bones and muscles not her own. The blue lightsaber in her hand flies in swift arcs, causing inhuman screams of distinct humanoid shadows. Horrified, she’s helpless to stop herself from cutting down everything in the lightsaber’s path, crying out as even the smallest forms - children - fall under the blinding blue blade.
Screams of pain and terror envelope her and rip her inside out. Her brain is on fire; battling against the rage threatening to take over, the overwhelming urge to make them hurt, to maim, and to kill. Resisting, she clenches her eyes shut and cries out, guttural and raw.
The desert suddenly tilts and she turns; the twilight sky on fire with the setting suns. She stops short, almost plowing straight through Luke. He’s so, so young and strong silhouetted against the flat horizon and setting suns. But the feelings coming off him break her heart, such loneliness and hopelessness -
Suddenly, blaster fire surrounds her, Stormtroopers everywhere and she staggers back, covering her head in an attempt to block the bolts from striking her. Two people are dragged from the homestead and forced to their knees. The woman is sobbing, clutching at the man’s hand, until they’re fired upon by Stormtroopers wielding flamethrowers, Rey’s horrified screams blending with theirs as they erupt into flames.
Screaming, screaming, screaming -
Oh, Maker, the smell - she’s gasping, unable to breathe and it will never stop, the pain, the horror, and black smoke billows over her and she’s drowning, falling -
“Rey.”
She comes back with a gasp, on her hands and knees, her fingers clutching, feverishly trying to grip the shifting sand. Her stomach revolts, the smell still in her nose and permeating everything like a slick oil sheen on her skin. Rey retches and bends forward, resting her forehead on the back of her fists. BB8 whistles loudly beside her, and she puts up a hand, warding him off. “I’m okay. Just,” she gasps air into her lungs, coughing out the smoke from the vision, “give me a moment.”
She looks looks up at the setting suns with tearing eyes and summons the buried lightsabers into her outstretched hand. They land, heavy and solid, the leather soft under her fingers. She clutches them to her chest and stands up, tears rolling down her face.
No wonder they never came back to this place, all the horror, pain and blood still saturating the ground, corrupting the very Force surrounding this farm.
And she knows what she has to do.
“Go back to the Falcon ,” she orders BB8. He whistles and chirps, but Rey shakes her head. “No, I have to do this alone. It won’t take long, but I need you safe.”
Watching until the small robot is on back on the ship, Rey squares her shoulders and looks out over the moisture farm one last time before she raises her hand and lets the Force flow through her. She reaches deep far below, for the motion of water moving between the layers of silt and rock until she feels the heat of magma at the core of the planet. She pushes against it, feeling the light flow through her until the darkness gives.
The ground rumbles, the sand rippling out from beneath her feet, wind kicking into a violent storm until the dome starts to wobble. The earth between her feet shakes, growing more savage as the echoes of the past skitter and grab for purchase, not wanting to let go of the contaminated ground so easily.
Her hair moves across her closed eyelids and her lips part as she pushes a little harder, wiping the horror of the past from horizon, burying the scarred dome as deep it will go. The swirling sand cascades down into the underground courtyard like an overflowing waterfall and she pulls and pulls the sand from the horizon until it settles into all the nooks and crannies. Until everything is flat and fresh and the darkness is gone.
Rey sighs, and tilts her head back, a cool breeze caressing her face. She opens her eyes to the darkening sky, millions of stars slowly blinking into being as the suns take their final dip beneath the horizon. She drops the hand holding the sabers to her side, the leather warm against her thigh. Maybe now this place is somewhere she could bury the sabers, finally cleansed of the tragic past, but she clutches them tighter in her fist, realizing there are others out there who can use them more than the sands of Tatooine.
She thinks of Finn, and his newly discovered Force sensitivity and his experience with the lightsaber. Maybe he and others can start to right the wrongs of the old Jedi Order who became soldiers and warmongers, the ones who raised their lightsabers to attack and not protect. They could start anew, with no determination between Jedi and Sith. No masters and apprentices, no padawans, no Orders with archaic rules to follow.
They could all be the gray connecting the light and dark with the Force flowing in-between.
“Let the past die, Rey. Kill it if you have to.”
Rey gasps and turns, expecting to find Ben right behind her. She ignites one half of her quarterstaff saber, the yellow light illuminating the empty darkness where he should be standing. Could it have been more than her imagination using his voice to bring her out of the hellish Force vision?
Rey’s vision blurs and wipes her face with the back of her hand, surprised to find her fingers trembling. She heard him only momentarily; his heat and weight flush against her back. She breathes out slowly, a small smile tilting her lips. Rey can still smell him, sweat and salt, his voice a deep growl echoing in her ear.
“Ben,” she whispers, a spark of an ember igniting the dark of her soul, a twinge on the thread that binds their bones.
She knows what she has to do.