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His father's face flickered as it appeared on the dash of the cockpit. He looked tired, fresh from another draining meeting. Ben flicked switches, keeping an eye on the radar to his left. It flashed regularly, making out a familiar shape among the sand below. Among the stars, Jakku looked like a rock in the middle of nowhere.
Entering its atmosphere, Ben found it to be, somehow, even less impressive.
"Hey, kid." His father sighed as he rubbed his temple. "How's it going?"
"Found a signal on Jakku. Tracking it now."
"Jakku?" His father grumbled. "I knew we should've double-checked the Western Reaches."
"It's nothing but sand here. Sand and scavengers," Ben added, drawing up information on the planet below from the ship's archives. It was an ancient one-person crew cargo ship that he was flying today, older than the Falcon perhaps, but the Resistance was low on resources these days and unofficial missions like these did not call for the higher-tech stuff.
Ben looked out over the sand dunes, looking for an ideal place to land.
"Scavengers, huh? Anyone in charge of them?"
"Doesn't seem so." Ben scanned the ship's archive information, fragments of anecdotal evidence put together by numerous pilots. "There's one official outpost, Niima Outpost. Seems the biggest presence here is some Crolute called Unkar."
He pulled a lever, readying the ship's landing gear. "Doesn't look Resistance-friendly."
"Hm. Be careful out there. Your mother's already annoyed that I sent you. Called me a pile of bantha dung this morning when she realised where you'd gone."
Ben smirked. The ship rattled and groaned as he brought it down towards the sands.
"I'll bring the Falcon back in one piece," he promised. Steam poured from the ship's landing jets, the whole vessel giving a hard judder as it adjusted to the soft surface.
"Alright kid. Stay safe."
Ben nodded and switched off the holo. Standing, he ducked as he walked out of the cockpit towards the small space the previous owners had tried to make into living quarters. Shrugging off his jacket, tugging his shirt over his head, he picked a thin knit, dark coloured sweater out from his backpack. He couldn't take risks, not even in the back of beyond. The First Order was clever, spreading their shadow slowly, bedding in before anyone could think to resist.
That was why his mother had set up the Resistance as soon as she knew of The First Order's existence. It was why he knew, even on an unofficial mission such as this, it wasn't wise to stick out like a sore thumb.
Throwing a sleeveless jacket over his sweater, Ben wrapped a scarf around the lower portion of his face, pulling up the jacket's hood over it. Throwing his pack on his left shoulder, he gave himself a glance in the mirror before he left. He looked like a nondescript traveller, without loyalty.
It'll have to do, he thought, heading towards the ship's exit and slamming the button to drop the ramp. It landed in the sand with a soft thump.
Stepping out, Ben looked over the distant yellow horizon of Jakku. The tracker in his jacket's pocket beeped insistently. He glanced at it, studying the path it indicated.
Looking up, he saw the only outpost for miles.
The outpost was bigger than it looked. That was his first thought as he stood high above it at the lip of a dune that sloped towards the sprawling city of tarpaulin tents and ancient speeders, scavengers dragging their hauls behind them towards the core of the outpost.
And, right on the outskirts of the outpost, was his mission. The Falcon. Partially protected from Jakku's sun by more tarpaulin, the old girl clearly hadn't had a chance to spread her wings in a while. That thing is alive, kid, his father once told him, and at first, the statement hadn't made much sense. He'd brushed it off as Han being Han, sentimental over old adventures. Then he'd tried to repair the hyperdrive and three hours later, found himself arguing with it when it refused to cooperate.
After that, he'd been more inclined to believe his father.
Switching off his tracker, Ben carefully descended the dune, finding a path forged by the footprints of other travellers.
The ground was firmer here, his footprints hard against the craggy desert rock, every crack leading to the centre of the outpost. It furthered the idea that the outpost had just, somehow, landed among the chaos of nothing, and became people's only shelter from the harsh environment around them.
It reminded him of destiny and set him on edge. He gripped his pack tighter to his shoulder and tugged the hem of his sweater over the saber sitting snugly at his hip. There was something else too, here. It was the lingering presence of something darker. Something, or someone, that had ripped a wound deep into the very planet.
The sombre mood reflected his instinct. Stopping at a stall selling cups of water, Ben offered ten credits to the vendor. The water was lukewarm, but refreshing to anyone who'd walked just five minutes under Jakku's sun.
"What happened here?" he asked. The vendor shook their head, the tentacles at their jaw twitching anxiously.
"It's no use asking him," said a voice behind him. Ben turned to see a small woman, elderly, waiting in line. Stepping aside, he watched as she offered a well-polished bolt to the vendor in exchange for a cup. She had a string bag on her shoulder, filled with rusted parts with sand still clinging to them.
"He's a coward and won't speak of it," she continued, sighing. She shuffled past Ben towards a workstation. Sitting down among yet more ancient discarded parts, she picked out a brush from her bag and an air brake, caked in grains. She set to work, wetting the brush and quickly scrubbing the sand from the metal.
Ben dropped to a crouch, watching her for a moment.
"Will you?"
"It was two weeks back. The morning after she and the Stormtroopers came, the outpost was filled with silence. Plutt's body was already food for the buzzards."
Ben frowned. "Unkar Plutt? I was told…"
The woman eyed his tracker. "The sands here move faster than your tech. Plutt's dead. Beheaded by a laser sword wielded by a woman draped in black, while Stormtroopers razed Tuanul, a village not too far from here."
Ben's hand twitched, itching to reach for his lightsaber. Instinct only. Swallowing, he let the impulse fade.
"A woman?" he asked finally. "What happened exactly?"
"I don't know." The woman wet her brush again. Beyond the weathered skin, the sallow cheeks, Ben saw a new sort of fear in her eyes. Fresh and raw. The woman sighed, but the sound was fragile. "All I know, boy, is that they call her the Master of the Knights of Ren."
* * * * *
He woke up, strapped to a rig. It was not his first time being rudely awakened to find himself captured; it was an occupational hazard of being a Solo with Skywalker blood and the Jedi-smuggler hybrid he'd ended up being. To be brutally honest, it was more uncomfortable for him to wake calmly, among silks and kinds of cotton, to the sounds of a planet's life.
He was too used to ship bunks and waking up to something else going wrong.
Quickly, Ben recounted the day, the hours, he'd left behind.
He'd tried to negotiate with the merchant who'd taken Plutt's place, a humanoid with a scar and film over his left eye, who snarled when Ben approached.
Waiting until the dead of night, he'd sneaked aboard the Falcon and found a lost boy hiding among its wires.
I'm Resistance, the kid had claimed.
Ben had snorted. Kid, I'm Resistance, he'd replied, and you need to get off this ship.
The kid had then explained his predicament; he was a Stormtrooper, knowing what he was running from but not knowing where the hell he was going to run to.
Ben promised to get the kid back to Resistance headquarters, where they'd find shelter for him and even, perhaps, transport him to a safe, non-First Order planet in the Outer Rim. Finn, former designation FN-2187, was safe on D'Qar now, quickly taken under Poe Dameron's wing.
Now, he was strapped to a rig and trapped in the bowels of what Ben assumed was Starkiller Base.
A woman, draped in black, was crouched before him. Her face was hidden by a hard silver and black mask, but she tilted her head and Ben knew she wasn't just watching him. He was her chosen subject of study.
The sudden way in which he'd woken made sense now. Usually, his sight was blurry, his mind struggling for a few moments to catch up to the blow on the head. This time, everything was bright and sharp and he could feel the vibrations of the planet below him.
She'd been keeping him unconscious, and had chosen this moment to stop toying with him. To let him see her.
"Do you watch all of your prisoners sleep?"
"No."
It came to him, in a sudden feeling of nausea, that she'd beheaded Plutt. She hadn't just killed him. She'd made sure he would never be able to wake up.
"You're special," she said to his silence.
For some reason, only stars knew why, but Ben let his father possess his mouth for a second.
"Glad you think so." And immediately regretted it.
She stood up straight, carefully approaching him.
"False flattery. I would expect nothing less from a member of the Resistance. From the son of General Organa."
That was how he felt it. A spike, tugging at his very core. Like a thread pulling on cotton. He blinked, glancing down at the mask before him. Though she was smaller than him, she exuded power. Through it, rippled her anger. At him, at the stars themselves. It was endless, screaming out in all directions.
"You still want to kill me."
She crowded him then, a growl ripping through her Force signature, a flick of her wrist slamming his head against the top of the rig. Ben winced.
"... Ow."
"You're a monster," she snarled.
"I'm flattered."
She snarled, reaching towards her mask. With a soft hiss, she lifted it from her face.
It was not the face he'd learned to expect from killers like her. Most killers were like that merchant on Jakku, with the film over their eye and the scar running down his cheek.
The Master of the Knights of Ren dropped her helmet to the floor as if it meant nothing at all to her. Disposable. Her weapon was the normality of her features. She was angry, burning like fire from within, but her features were, in actual fact, quite pretty. Her eyes were a deep ochre, her lips perfectly formed with a soft Cupid's bow.
Her brows furrowed, pulling her features into a dark scowl.
"Tell me about the droid."
"What droid? Oh, that droid."
BB-8, safely back on D'Qar now, after finding Finn on Jakku. He'd squealed with irritating delight when Ben had opened the hatch to find BB-8 and the kid hiding there.
"He's a BB-unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator-"
"You want the section of the navigational chart he's carrying." Reading her face, he scoffed. "Of course you know already. You wouldn't be asking about it otherwise. I'm going to guess you've got the rest, the Empire had mountains of archives. But you still need that last piece. Isn't that always the way?"
She squared her shoulders, eyes glittering with her fury.
"I can take whatever I want. I will ." She stretched out her hand, and her Force signature was buzzing energy, purring with a barely constrained roar, yearning…
Yearning for something…
"You…" she growled, flicking through his memories like they were items on a datapad, "you're afraid. That you'll never be as strong as your father…"
Ben pulled at his restraints, trying to nudge past her barrier. That was, after all, his way. Fight fire with fire. His fury poked at hers, pushing and prodding until finally, a way in. He slipped inside.
"You're so lonely." His words had her eyes locking on his. Brown, wide and, for the first time, lost. "So afraid… to leave."
Ben felt the corner of his mouth uptick in a smile, even as he felt tears fall down his cheek.
"At night, desperate to sleep… you imagine an ocean. I see it," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as the image surrounded him in his head until he could smell the salt of the ocean, feel the rock underneath his palms. "I see the island."
"Enough! "
She wrenched her hand away. Her entire body trembled, her chest rising and falling with every hard breath.
A tear fell down her cheek.
The energy between them, so similar, crackled and sparked with life.
Ben swallowed.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
She looked up, and her eyes blazed.
"Guards!" she said quickly, hurrying out of the chamber, barely giving him a second look. Her orders faded as she stormed down the corridor.
Ben finally let out a heavy breath.
He didn't know how, he would probably never know how, but they were the same. They were equals.
* * * * *
The world underneath him was crumbling. She'd found out his escape, and now she was hunting. In her mind, he was the prey, his uncle's saber vibrating in his palm while she pulled down trees and cut down rocks, leaving her blood in the snow. A blow from Chewie's bowcaster, an attempt from the Wookiee to slow her down. She'd simply clambered up from her knees among the heavy flakes of snow, slamming her fist against the wound. She'd twirled her saber, limbering up for the fight.
Go, find Dad, Ben had demanded of Chewie, I'll buy you time.
Ben whirled on his feet to see her saber, sparking with its broken blade, arching over his head to deliver a blow. Ben slammed it away, stumbling back from her.
Distantly, another piece of the planet crumbled away.
Still, she kept coming. Relentless, every movement she made swirling, lost in the Dark side.
Dangerously close to a cliff edge, Ben met her attack with a block, their sabers smashing together.
"I can help you!" he yelled over the sound of the whirling wind around them and the hot magma of the planet's core below. She stared at him in disbelief, her face glowing in the combined colour of their sabers. The world around him, them both, seemed to slow. The blizzard twisted around them. Ben dropped his voice to a murmur, only audible to her. "I can help you."
"I don't need you," she replied, her voice shaking with the weight of her words. Like they were a struggle to say. She recoiled from her own words, her face twisting with hatred. "I don't need anyone!"
She pushed him back, smashing her saber against his, pushing him further and further back into the thick forest. Trees around them crumbled, a great rumble vibrating underneath their feet.
Ben flung out his hand, pushing out with what little energy he had left, all his might going into his use of the Force -
Her saber stopped as she had him pinned, the tip of her saber right at her throat.
She struggled against him, trying to jam the saber down. Ben held firm, the sparks from her saber flying off and dying in the snow.
"I'll cut out that lying tongue of yours!" she spat. Her eyes were growing wet with tears.
Lying in the snow, Ben panted slowly.
"You're…"
She was glaring down at him. Tendrils of her hair fell around her face. Flakes of snow and the wind swirled around them.
The world slowed down again. As if everything in his life, everything he had done, was a flashpoint towards zero. The point where everything made sense.
"You're… so… beautiful."
The anger faded from her eyes. Ben waited, slowly uncurling his fist.
Her saber dipped towards his throat -
And she extinguished it.
Ben blinked. She held her saber in her hand, confusion rampant in her eyes, her entire body.
Above them, the Falcon came into view.
With the last of his strength, Ben waved his hand across her temple. Her eyes closed, her body slumping against his.
As he walked up the ramp with her bundled in his arms, Han said nothing. He simply gave a nod.
"Chewie," he ordered. "Let's go."
* * * * *
She dreamed in patchwork. Pieces of another life, before this life, before Snoke had drawn her into his web with promises of eventually being able to see her family. Her family, who called her "little Rey", or perhaps they didn't. In other dreams, they hated her and didn't give her a name at all.
Rey woke groggily, her clothing damp and hot against her skin, underneath a blanket she didn't recognise, in a ship that she knew too well from the Empire's archives. She'd returned to its page too many times for Snoke's liking, and received a week of restricted rations as her reward for her curiosity.
She knew the blueprints of the ship so well that she knew she was currently in the captain's quarters, on the captain's bunk. Swinging her feet out of the bed, she sat up. A black woman's shirt and trousers were next to the pillow, neatly folded and waiting for their next wearer.
She knew there was a shower, and it was into that she climbed. The hot water splashed and ran over her aching bones, soothing her far more than Jakku ever had. Even her return to Jakku, facing down that blobfish one final time, had not soothed her as much as this hot water did.
It made her laugh, and it was a bitter one, without mirth.
Sighing, she pressed her forehead to the tile, gently brushing her fingers over her skin.
No-one had called her beautiful. Not ever. They called her harsh, hard and brutish. Starved her when she behaved out of turn, demeaned her when she lost control of her tongue. There was no room for beauty in the First Order, under Snoke's thumb.
But that wasn't why she'd saved the damn Jedi. Smuggler. Whatever he was.
It had been right, even if it was numbing to do, to kill Unkar, kill the past.
That Jedi-smuggler, the son of General Organa, hadn't been the past like Unkar Plutt was. He'd been, well, he'd been something else. Promise. Temptation, whispered a voice in her head.
Rey stomped out of the shower and began drying herself. Rubbing the towel over her arms, she eyed the clothes on the bed, thick black cargo pants and a full-length sleeve sweater. Apart from the colour, they were the furthest thing possible from what she'd woken up in.
She stepped closer to her robes. She ran her fingers over the underside of her thick waist belt. She jerked at the absence of her tracker.
The son of General Organa was cleverer than she thought. A weakness, the voice insisted.
Rey shoved the towel on top of her head, vigorously rubbing her wet hair. The voice quietened, shrinking away for a little while.
Behind her, the door to the quarters opened.
Rey yelped as the Jedi-smuggler shouted an apology.
"I'm sorry," he said quickly, a blush flushing his cheeks. "You've been quiet for a while and I, uh… felt you. In the Force."
He scuffed his boot against the ship floor.
Rey wrapped her towel around her torso, tucking it in at her sides with her upper arms.
"What do you want?" she asked, not hiding the bitterness in her tone.
"To check if you were okay."
"Is that what the Resistance usually does with their prisoners?"
He didn't answer. He just reached into his jacket pocket. Between his finger and thumb, he held her tracker. It still flashed red, beaming its signal across the galaxy.
"You're a fool. The First Order will be tracking for me."
"Maybe I am." He rolled the tracker between his fingers, and let it fall to the floor. His eyes, raven black under the fluorescents, swept up to meet hers. He smirked. Rey stood where she was, flexing her toes into the floor. She tried to swallow back the heat she felt rush through her body.
Temptation. She wasn't unaware of the other branch of Ben Solo's family. The First Order's spies always said he was too much like his father. It was probably why he'd never made it as a proper Jedi.
It was a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity, looking into his eyes.
Ben Solo shrugged. "Whoops."
Licking her lips, Rey darted forward, diving for the tracker.
His large boot slammed down on it, crushing it underfoot. Rey yelped.
"You son of a -"
"Ah, ah, ah. You're on the Falcon. It's legendary."
Rey leapt for him, scratching and kicking at him.
"Hey, hey!" Solo grasped her wrists, pinning her to the wall. Rey panted hard, sticking her chin up, glaring at him.
"What next, flyboy?"
His eyes never strayed from hers, and she felt it again. The spark, the heat of the Light nudging into her darkness, stoked for so many years.
"That's up to you."
The Light, now, didn't seem so far away.
It felt like hope.