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Rey stood in the Tatooine desert, watching the two suns rise.
The winds murmured through the sand, sweeping it into deep piles, sighing a deep mother’s sigh. The world was quiet here, Rey thought, and felt a sense of peace swell within her. The Skywalker homestead at which she stood had been abandoned a long time ago; sand was gathered in heaps all around it, trailing its grains in the wind, carrying them far, far away into another place, another time, perhaps. Far away and long ago. She’d heard that in some folk song once on Jakku. The melody had made her shiver.
Rey tore her gaze away from the landscape and walked alongside the house, trailing her fingers against the rough stone of its walls. She closed her eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. Her consciousness reached out into the Force, letting the the world around her bloom into stunning clarity. She could feel the twin sparks of energy emanating from the two lightsabers she had tucked away carefully in her pack, wrapped in a bit of lykskin. Beyond that, she could feel the faint Force signatures of the consciousnesses that had once moved through the house, visible to her like ghosts floating in midair. There was a thrumming pulse of Master Luke in the walls, and as she touched them she could see flashes of the past -- warm hands baking bread, a father shaking out the moisture tarps in the fields. Luke’s parents, she supposed, smiling. She could feel the love in those glimpses, and felt suddenly like she could cry. She’d never been able to feel anything like that, during all of her days in the desert as a child, searching through the bent and broken wreckage of the fallen Empire.
Looking at the former Lars household gave her a similar feeling. There had been an kingdom here once, a family with structure and love and power who had dug themselves into the desert sands and squeezed bits of precious moisture from it, living and eating and breathing in the hot suns, stinking of sweat and cursing and loving and knowing all there was to know about each other. Now, all she could feel were their ghosts.
She opened her eyes, blinking back tears.
That wasn’t what she was here for. She was here to pay homage to the two Masters whose lightsabers she had tucked away safely in her pack, whose energies still crackled and shone with life. She plunged herself into the Force again, ignoring the ghosts. Show me where to bury them, she pleaded. Show me where they belong.
She’d known that Tatooine would be the right place from the start; she didn’t know how, she’d just known. There was something in the hot sand and the sun and the arid breeze that spoke to her of Leia’s sharp tongue and wit, of Luke’s hands cracked dry and warm by years of work. But there had to be a spot, she knew, some perfect spot where their lightsabers could rest. Where the life signatures still emanating from their lightsabers could rest.
The Force showed her a place: here, it said without words. Rey was surprised; the place she saw (without seeing it, really) was quite a ways from where she stood. She wondered if the Skywalkers even owned the land all the way out there. Still, she took off with a sigh, slinging her pack and her shovel onto her back.
The walk was even longer than she’d thought. It took her twenty minutes to reach the blank stretch of sand that the Force had shown her, and when she finally reached it, she looked about, confused. This patch of sand looked just the same as the others; it was a nothing spot in the middle of nothing country. The Lars household was barely a dot on the horizon from where Rey stood. She sighed, throwing up her hands. “Alright,” she said to no one. “Fine. Have it your way.”
She hefted the shovel and began to dig.
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The twin suns were high in the sky by the time Rey hit bone.
Breathing hard and sweating, she’d barely registered this revelation at first. Finally, blinking the sun-blindness from her eyes, she looked down at that bit of whiteness peeking out of the dirt. She wiped the sweat out of her eyes, amazed. Quickly, she bent down and swept the dirt aside, exposing the grinning skull and the ribs and the arms and legs that were oddly bent, as if they’d been broken when they were buried. “Who are you?” Rey asked the skeleton. “Why did the Force want me to meet you?”
(Of course, the skeleton said nothing. The dry wind laughed, swelling with its own remains.)
Rey reached down and touched the bones gently, repeating the who are you in Force-touch. When she touched things, she could see flashes sometimes of what they used to be. This time, the flashes came quickly. She saw a mother, old and worn and strong. She saw the scar across that neck where a slave tag had been embedded, once. She saw that woman holding a baby in her arms, then a boy that shone in the Force like a star, nuclear fission, atoms colliding, anger and power and hate that swallowed planets and galaxies whole--
Rey stumbled out of the hole (the grave), resisting the urge to scream. What the kriff was that?
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Many years ago--
A long, long time ago--
Today--
Anakin plunged his spade into the sand, crying, sweating, cursing. They killed her. All of them. His shovel was a knife striking again, again, tossing up sand like gasps for air. His hands were blistered and red and raw. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. It was better to think this way, it was good, it propelled him to dig deeper and deeper into this pit that he was digging himself into. They’re animals. It was an excuse that he was desperate to believe; why else had he lost himself in that village of Sand People, where he’d found his mother, broken and dying and crying Ani, Ani, is that really you? Yes, it hadn’t been his fault that things had ended the way they had; they had started it, they were animals . It was alright. It was fine.
No, nothing was fine.
(Anakin’s arms burned as he plunged still deeper into the pit, shaking, crying.)
Nothing was fine. Why, why--
Why was he like this?
A Jedi wouldn’t have done what he did.
The little slave boy who’d grown up in Watto’s scrap shop would have. He’d heard a story once, about a Tusken Raider that had stolen a speeder from a farm out West. The farmers had banded together with moisture spikes and blasters and hot blood, and they’d wiped out a small band of Raiders. He’d heard the story told in a tavern, over a couple of tankards of brown. The farmers had called it a victory, as if the slaughter had been a battle.
If Master Obi-Wan had heard them talking, Anakin knew, he would’ve marched them into a cell by orders of the Galactic Republic.
Is that who I am? Anakin wondered. Am I a criminal now? His eyes blurred with tears, and he struck the spade into the sand still harder, ignoring the sand as it flew from his frantic shovelfuls into his face. Mom, I know this isn’t who you wanted me to be. This isn’t who I wanted me to be.
No, that hadn’t been him out there in the desert, that had been… someone else.
Anakin stopped and took a long, shuddering breath. The idea had come to him suddenly, but already it was starting to make sense. Yes. He never would’ve done anything like that. He couldn’t recognize the person who had been wrapped in all of that darkness that comes with hate, who’d fought with the fury of a sandstorm. That wasn’t him. That had never been him. Even the boy who’d grown up dodging Watto’s fists wasn’t that person, didn’t feel that much.
Anakin stared up at the sky stretching above him. It was a blue void sucked of all other colors. The two suns stared down at him like eyes from above.
He paused, and, collecting himself (the person he knew he was, not the person who he’d been before), he climbed out of the grave and took his mother in his arms.
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Rey stared down into the grave, trying to process what she’d just dug out of it.
Somewhere, between the flashes, she’d caught a name: Skywalker. The name had rung with undertones of Luke and Leia. A relative, maybe, Rey supposed. Somehow, this woman had been involved with the family that had toppled the galaxy and rebuilt it, toppled and rebuilt it in a cycle that repeated, horribly, until Rey and Ben had broken it. This woman was a part of history.
Rey’s mind lingered over the hatred that she had felt sweeping over the body -- and then, much more powerful, the love. Rey had never felt anything like it. Somehow, that love had been stronger than that hate that could swallow planets. Somehow, that love was uniquely Skywalker.
Rey now knew why the Force had shown her this place.
Rey reached into her pack and took out the two lightsabers, delicately wrapped in lykskin. She descended into the grave once again and unrolled the cloth, letting the cool metal of the lightsabers wink and shine in the light of the day. Together, Rey could sense their Force-spirits entangled; brother and sister, love beyond love. The kind of love that conquered swallowed galaxies.
Rey lifted herself out of the grave and stared down at it for the last time. Then, she used the Force to sweep sand into the hole until it wasn’t a hole anymore, just a nothing spot in the middle of nothing country.
She turned and began to walk towards home.