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The Rey that came home from Exegol is not the same as the one who left. She’s quiet and withdrawn. She takes her meals alone, she trains alone, she finds no joy among the remaining Rebels. She doesn’t belong here, not with half of her missing.
She can’t celebrate the victory. It feels too hollow. Her hero died so what cause does she have to celebrate.
They think she’s talking about Leia, talking about Luke, or Han or Holdo or anyone else that the resistance lost. When she walks away from every conversation shaking her head they don’t understand.
She made the mistake of mentioning Leia and Luke’s force ghosts in front of Finn and Poe. The ensuing argument was a reminder of how she’d never fit in to the newest version of the New Republic that the Resistance was trying to build.
Poe can’t understand why she doesn’t want to talk to them. He thought that Leia would be able to guide from beyond. He thought she would be able to keep being the General and a force in the recreation of their government. Poe’s role would certainly be easier if he could still go to the general for advice.
But Poe doesn’t need to look into Leia’s eyes. Even through the blue spectral haze they are too much like another set of eyes. A set of eyes that had reflected an entire lifetime of joy back to Rey on Exegol. Eyes that held an entire kingdom of possibility that had come undone in a moment.
Rey had stuttered out something about how she couldn’t stand seeing his eyes in Leia’s face.
A garbled explanation spilled out of her mouth. About dyads and destiny. About dark whispers creeping through minds and turning everything good into ash. A story about redemption and a lost boy who found his way home too late.
A story that had no place in the new world.
Poe’s face hardened and turned white once Rey had finished telling the story about the fall and rise of Kylo Ren and Ben Solo. He told her that some things were better kept quiet, best left untold. The tale of the Last Jedi and the Jedi Killer wasn’t one that would rally the galaxy and unite the system.
But his story and her story were inextricably linked. She can’t keep quiet and can’t forget. A part of her was left on Exegol. So she couldn’t stay on Ajan Kloss.
At first she thought that the gaping loneliness she felt was a symptom of being in deep space. It was purely from being one speeding speck among all the stars. It was because her coms were coming fewer and farther between as she left the Resistance behind.
But after a few days with the blue of deep hyperspace against her eyes Rey realized that gaping hole was inside of her. Picking and prodding at the edges of it, she found that where it should have connected to some other being-- Ben, of course --it was frayed and tattered. There was something there always reaching but just outside of her grasp.
She returned to Ahch-To with the Jedi texts beneath her arm. She hadn’t had the opportunity to delve in to them. Her access to the force felt like it had been split in half but maybe being at the birthplace of the Jedi order would bring her strength. Rey didn’t know how much she could rely on the strength of those who came before her in the Force, but Ahch-To was also the birthplace of something else. It was the place where she first reached out and touched Ben’s hand.
Something about the place where she first saw him as Ben, not as Kylo Ren, gave her strength to believe in something for the first time since setting his broken body down on Exegol. She felt closer to Ben, like he wasn’t gone from the galaxy.
The texts were dry and esoteric. The language always seemed just out of her reach and understanding. But she tried, and she tried and she tried knowing that with each page turned maybe she would find an answer.
Answers came to her slowly, like a stream running over rock. Deep in meditation she felt the empty pieces inside of herself being tugged. Being hemmed in and smoothed by an invisible hand. A hand that felt almost...almost like his .
Visions started coming to her. Visions of long hallways with doors upon doors upon doors. The hallway always tinted in blue light leading off to somewhere just beyond her reach. When the vision ends it is always abrupt and Rey is left gasping. Feeling like if she could go just a little farther, dig a little deeper.
A feeling like whoever is trying to grasp at her fingers could grab on.
Day after day the pull gets stronger. Visions of blue halls overlap the green hills of Ahch-To. Rey doesn’t want to give the pull a name even if it’s touch-- his touch --feels achingly familiar.
Her visions end with her standing on the cliffs of the island. Each day closer and closer to the edge. Standing at the edge of the cliff as if to tug her over, as if her reason for being there lies beneath the waves.
She’s scared of what would happen if she jumped.
But that night one of the voices from Exegol comes back and whispers in her ear. They spin tales about a world between worlds. A place with endless possibilities and endless doors. That voice, a voice Rey had never heard before Exegol, says she had been there once before. That voice had saved her, and maybe it could save Rey.
Rey woke up the next morning resolute. She took the path up to the cliff, one foot after another, until there was nothing beneath her feet.
Where there should have been water, there was an all encompassing emptiness. Rey closed her eyes, reached out and hoped that something would answer.
Warmth surrounded her. blue light streamed through her eyelids. The sweetest sound she had ever heard came to her ears.
“Cyar'ika,” he breathed. “Sweetheart, you made it.”