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When they return to the ship, none of them are speaking. They get into place in silence, checking controls, preparing the ship for takeoff. They have to be efficient and quick. The Order has already sent more troops after them. They are working against time. They speak only to make sure the controls are in order. They don’t make eye contact.
They all fall backwards when the ship goes into Light Speed. Still no one speaks.
Three minutes into Light Speed, and finally, they can relax. There is no way that the Order can follow them here. That is, unless there’s a tracking device planted on the ship. Someone offers to check.
Others are being treated for wounds. Someone is treating them. Some people are unconscious. They should be celebrating. They completed the mission. But all is quiet.
At the pilot’s quarters, Rey turns to Luke, impassively. “You knew,” she says, her voice shaking. They took the helm of the ship because they’re still the best pilots, even if she can’t stand the sight of him right now. The General is there too, furiously writing on some data-pad, probably checking notes and contacting several thousand people at once.
Luke doesn’t look at Rey. He keeps his gaze on the ship, even though he doesn’t need to: they had set it on autopilot several minutes ago.
Rey tries to keep her voice even this time. “You knew,” she repeats.
Luke licks his lips. He slowly tears his gaze from the window, blue eyes meeting her own. “I-“
For some reason, looking at him full-on makes her shake with fury. He looks so innocent, so lost, so utterly broken. She’s seized with a desire to break him more. She wants to watch the pieces fall apart. She wants to be the one to make it happen.
She can feel the dark pressing on her, reaching out to her. Seductive, inviting. Sensuously, it courts her, licking its lips, wiping its mouth. But she’s still herself. She still has control. She won’t let herself fall that far, she tells herself. She shrugs off the dark for now, pushing it away from herself. Her vision is less shadowed.
“You knew, and you never said anything. Not just that. You knew and you lied to me. Lied to me a thousand times over. Father,” she says. She likes that he winces. It makes her feel powerful over him.
When Luke looks back at her, there are tears on his face. Her vision blurs again with fury. His tears don’t draw him any sympathy. He doesn’t deserve sympathy.
“I deserve this,” he says finally. “I deserve your anger. You have every right to be angry. More than I ever had.”
Rey’s mouth opens without meaning to. She hisses, “This isn’t about you!”
She wants him to yell, she realizes. She wants to draw out his fury. She wants to push his buttons. But under his misery, he looks infuriatingly calm. “I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know, Rey. I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know?” she finally shrieks. Luke cringes viscerally. “You didn’t know that my- my mother-“
Adrenaline courses in her veins. She can’t sit anymore. She paces.
“What kind of parents do that to their own child? How could you have ever married such a monster? How could you have left me alone with her? Why did you let her do that to me? Why did you do that to me?”
“I didn’t-“
“YOU DIDN’T WHAT?” she finally explodes. The dark is back, and it’s ready to embrace her, and for the first time -
Rey has forgotten about Leia. Leia’s voice is suddenly low but urgent. “Rey, breathe with me-“
“Don't tell me to breathe!” Rey screams. “I was lied to my entire life! I want answers!”
Luke has swiveled around the pilot’s seat so that he’s facing her, and his palms are open. “I don’t have all the answers, Rey. I’ve tried to be honest with you-“
“TRY HARDER!”
Luke pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a moment. He must be centering himself. She wants to shake him, to break his control, she wants him to be upset at her like she is at him. When his eyes open, his expression is calmer. “I’ve tried to be honest with you but there’s still so much I don’t understand myself. I don’t have all the answers, Rey-“
“Obviously!” she growls.
Luke appears to grit his teeth before breathing deeply again. Before he can speak again, Leia says, commandingly, “Listen to your father, Rey.”
This floors her. She spins around to face Leia. “What?” she seethes. Leia is so small, so diminutive, her head doesn’t even reach the headrest. “Are you telling me to show him respect? Because he’s my father ? You, who abandoned your own child because of your work? Who won’t speak to your own father when he appears to you?”
Leia’s eyes narrow, but her voice is even as it is dangerous. “I know what it’s like to lose everything, Rey. I know what it’s like to lose everything over and over and still go on. You still have so much. You have a father and a family and friends who love you, who would die for you. Do not tell me that I don’t know what it is to suffer at the hands of family.”
Rey says desperately, angrily, to both of them, “I’m not - some time bomb, I’m not going to go off, I’m not just suddenly going to turn to the Dark Side you’re so afraid of, but I’m allowed to be angry - “ She’s not even sure who she’s responding to. She knows how close she is to losing it completely, and she knows exactly how aware of it Luke and Leia are.
“Rey, my brother isn’t perfect but he loves you and he’s the closest family you have. Do not push him away.”
There is tragedy in that it is the ones who love the most that can be the cruelest to us. Rey says coldly, “Like you pushed away your own son?”
Leia gets up, threateningly. Luke is suddenly on his feet too. Leia stalks closer to Rey. “Enough,” she hisses. Nothing about her looks diminutive anymore.
Rey takes a step back. She feels as though she’s been diminished.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she says, as if to herself.
“No,” Leia agrees. “I will forgive you, but not now.”
Rey can’t help it. She turns back to her father. “But didn’t you know- Why didn’t you come back for me? Did you think I’d be safe with her? Did you think I was growing up on some Order spaceship with her? What kind of father are you?”
Luke’s lips move but no sound comes out. He looks tortured, like her questions are slowly burning him, more and more.
“I thought-“
“You thought what?!”
“Rey-“ Leia starts to say.
“I thought you were dead!” he finally screams back.
Rey never thought she would see her father yell. It’s a jarring sight. Luke’s face is completely red, his eyes bulging, his body shaking. It’s suddenly very quiet. She can hardly hear their own breathing. The only sound is the occasional beep of the controls.
Luke sits back down again, his hands covering his face. The red starts to slide from his face, his own color returning. Slowly, he pries off his hands. He gives her a horrible look, and says, “I thought that your mother had killed you.”
Rey doesn’t know how to answer that. “You thought-“ But she has another question. “But couldn’t you feel me in the Force? Couldn’t you have known I was alive?”
Luke is already shaking his head. “It was like you disappeared from the Force. I couldn’t feel you at all. That’s why-“ he says hesitatingly. “I think that’s why you can’t remember anything. She must have done something. She was using Dark Side of the Force, and I don’t understand how that works at all. I’m not a Jedi master, Rey, I’m hardly even a Jedi.”
“You’re nothing if not a Jedi,” she says. She meant it as a compliment, but it sounds more cruel than she intended.
“That’s not true,” he says bracingly. “I stopped being a Jedi because my own wife and nephew had been seduced by Snoke, killed all my students, and my own daughter, and had left me with nothing but rubble. There were no bodies. When a Force sensitive being dies, the body returns to the Force. And I couldn’t feel you, Rey. You have to understand. No, you don’t have to understand. But that is what happened. Rey, I wanted you before you even born. More than anything else, I’m your father. I’ve spent almost your entire life thinking my family had betrayed me and killed and destroyed everything I loved and worked for. I-“ He crumples into himself, shaking slightly.
Rey feels dazed, overwhelmed. “But my mother-“
“She’ll always be your mother, Rey,” he says.
Finally she starts to cry. “I never wanted this,” she weeps. “I wanted my family so badly but I never wanted this. I never wanted to be a Skywalker. I never wanted - and Kylo Ren is my cousin, and he killed my own uncle, and my mother, my mother is evil, evil, my mother killed so many people -“
It must be Luke’s arms that are around her then, and she’s sobbing into his robes, until they're warm and wet with her own tears. "I know why the Jedi forbade attachments," she cries. "They make you weak, they make you-"
On Jakku, crying was a sign of weakness. It could get you robbed or cheated or killed. Rey clings to Luke, sobbing with abandon, her fingers curling into his clothes, pulling him closer. This is her father. Her passive, cryptic, stupid father whose mistakes had thrown the entire galaxy into chaos - and her father, nonetheless.
“Rey,” he says. “You’re a Skywalker. It’s attachments that make you free.”
Rey curls her fingers into his robes, gripping like they’re a lifeline. Squeezing her eyes shut, she focuses on the Dark still around her. She can visualize it, a dark creeping waiting to claim her. She concentrates, consciously pushing it away. Finally, she gasps, hiccuping. It’s as though a weight has lifted from her body, as though a dark shadow that had tainted her skin has been erased, replaced by spilled light, and incredible, radical warmth.
She never wanted this, and yet, in a terrible way, she finally has what she’s always been waiting for. In her father’s arms, her aunt near, her most trusted friends riding along the same ship, she realizes that she’s finally found the belonging she’s been looking for.