Chapter Text
Where do we start? On Tatooine
(prologue)
Something crawled across his hand, and he woke with a start. He was laid on cold sand. It was night. He was naked. And alive.
Alive!
Whatever bug had woken him crawled away when he sat up.
Where am I?
Where’s Rey? He could feel her, somewhere, still tethered to him, but far far away. He resisted the temptation to reach for her.
Why am I naked?
He looked around himself. There was nothing for miles. Not even city lights illuminated the starry night, and the sky itself was only sparsely populated, with three moons shining brightly enough to light the desert around him. He was either on the outer-rim, or the planet he was on was facing that way. He turned and finally saw a domed entrance to a desert homestead. It looked familiar, but in his still-dazed state he couldn’t place it. Nausea surged through him, and he retched. Nothing came up. After a moment, he managed to lurch to his feet.
Self-conscious of his nakedness, in the night, in the middle of nowhere, he staggered towards the dome, where the entrance led down some sand-covered steps with some junked containers and a solid door at the end. The control panel was dark. He knocked, banged, waited. The camera in the wall didn’t react to his presence. It looked like it had no power to it. After a moment, he realized the place was abandoned. The interior of the dome still gave off a little warmth, but he went back outside to examine the place some more. He shivered with the bitter chill. He found the edge of the dug-out crater and looked in. Part of the side had caved, but the main area was still mostly clear, so he walked down the steep slope, dick swinging in the crisp air.
Arched entrances invited him to try each door, until finally one opened up, and he was inside. The place looked trashed, dust and sand everywhere he could see in the dim interior. He heard something scuttle in the darkness. Small, some rodent or pest, a good sign: there must be water nearby. Fumbling in the darkness was pointless, and he risked injuring himself on some sharp protrusion or broken debris he might step on. He found a space and lay down, hoping the day would rise soon and help him find his way.
In the morning, he got up to look for the water cistern and found the breaker for the main power control. He flipped the switch but nothing happened. He looked around, found a piece of flat metal and pried the control panel from the wall, trailing the electrical wires; some fiddling around and he discovered one had come loose. He took a deep breath, and rewired the main breaker, then flipped it again: a loud crack and a flash and electric motors rumbled back to life; the cells must still be full of energy, the solar panels still connected.
Lights came on. Water gurgled in the pipes, and he followed one to a sink. There he let the tap run and filled a glass of water. It was stale, but it wasn’t contaminated. Things were looking up. He found some clothes neatly folded in a pile. Dark pants and a long-sleeve shirt that looked just like what he preferred. When he put them on, they fit perfectly.
There was a hole run through the shirt. His pair of boots were there, too.
When Ben Solo walked back out to look into the brightening sky above, he saw two orange suns rising in the golden dawn: Tatoo I and Tatoo II.
“How the fuck did I end up on Tatooine?” he asked the uncaring sky.
“We thought you should start again from the place where I was born.”
The voice spoke out of thin air. He whirled around to see the figure of a man barely older than himself appear, not solid but bathed in ethereal light. It was not Luke. It was Anakin Skywalker.
Anakin.
“Grandfather!”
...
Rey bolted straight up in her bunk on the Falcon, almost knocking her head on the low top. Her heart ached, like a live wire had been driven into it; she could feel it beat painfully in her chest, and for a moment, she thought she was having a heart attack. When the pain subsided, she felt something else. An echo of another heartbeat, one that was not hers.
Impossible.
She got up, went to the cockpit. Chewie was dozing in the pilot chair. He took one look at her and whined a question.
“I don’t know, Chewie. I felt something. Something I haven’t felt in months. Let me take over, go to bed.”
Rey sat to stare at the blue and white blur of Hyperspace, absorbed in her feelings.
‘I will always be with you, Sweetheart.’ She shook her head, blinked away the tears.
She could see her reflection in the viewport: her short white hair, her dark eyes. The trauma of Exegol - and the past year’s missions - had changed her profoundly, from agile scavenger to skilled ship tech to powerful Jedi.
But she had abandoned the project of starting a new Jedi school ‘for the gifted’. There simply were not enough ‘gifted’ to be found. Some Force-sensitives — like Finn — but try as they might, she couldn’t get them to move so much as a rock. She didn’t have the patience.
She was done with waiting, and now preferred action.
There were plenty of First Order Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers hiding in the deepest folds of the galaxy, along with some surviving Sith Eternal Acolytes, and Rey was determined to root them out.
Root them out and bring them to justice. If they survived.
At first, Poe and Finn, and even Rose, accompanied her. Then Rose had decided to go to the Biss University of Engineering. Then Poe had been tapped for leadership in the New New Republic. He still financed her ‘expeditions’.
On this particular mission, Finn had stayed behind. He’d gotten injured on the last one, and now he was recovering. That was his official excuse.
The real reason, he wouldn’t tell her to her face.
Rey had changed into someone he didn’t recognize. Someone he didn’t like.
A killer. A killer of killers.
A killer who used her force abilities to find and neutralize her prey in the dark corners where they hid from her in underground bunkers in the core worlds. Where they tried to integrate with crime syndicates on the outer rim. Some tried to eek out a life as simple peasants on near in-hospitable planets — like Jakku. She let some of them live. After they told her where to find others.
She knew the trick of it now. She could see into their heads, into their hearts. She’d learned that from him. It was true that you could feel what your ‘subject’ felt. But that didn’t stop her. Anyone not repentant enough was brought in. If she judged them worthy of the expense.
If she didn’t…
Her costume had evolved into a white banded groat-leather tunic. Bone white at first, stains appeared after most hunts. Stains that didn’t always wash out. Her boots had a distinct rusty tinge to them now.
Chewie brought her caf and something to chew on before going to sleep. He didn’t question her methods; he knew that the First Order had risen from the ashes of the Empire. This time, not even ashes would be left.
Too big and old to be stealthy anymore, he most often brought her to where a fugitive had been tracked down, dropped her off, and let her do her thing; then they either brought back their quarry — alive or dead — or crossed the name off the list.
It’s not that she enjoyed interrogating her prey, but getting those answers — getting them to confess — was very satisfying. And she knew she was getting the Truth.
And if the Truth revealed crimes beyond the pale — like direct involvement in mass killings, or slavery, or ordering fire on the Resistance — then Rey might break some bones. She might remove a limb. She might do other things. Retribution.
And she might bring some of them in for The New New Republic to make some show of justice.
Of course, survivors told stories. Her crewmates lied for her. She was building a reputation of ruthless efficiency. She was acquiring a bunch of titles and monikers. But it worked. Now when Rey ‘the Enforcer’ stepped on a planet, she often found the local authorities held her quarry all tied up in a cell, ready to go, or already in a slab of carbonite.
Now ex-First Order were becoming rare and more isolated. She had to hunt them down in deep tunnels in underground bunkers. She had to make deals with those crime syndicates, or they fought her.
Oh, how she loved those little skirmishes.
Rey drank her caf, and went over the current mission’s quarry: on Faleen — a squadron captain. He must have seen a few things.
…
“What do you remember?”
Ben closed his eyes. They were seated inside; he was having tea. His companion — his grandfather's ghost — was not drinking anything.
“I remember… feeling cold, and the dark. A pale white light. Lights. Bands of light, like lines traced around me. But also the night sky. There were… holes? Round doors?”
“The World between Worlds. A place in the Vergence Scatter. You were there for a while. While we decided.”
“Decided what? Who decided?”
“The Elder Jedi. Your fate.”
Ben felt a rush of anger — how dare they! — but managed to tamp it down, and waited for more. Anakin saw that and nodded.
“Your mother certainly knows how to argue your case. And after a while, Luke admitted to his mistake. That caused a shift in balance. But then something else happened. Has been happening.”
“What?”
Anakin shook his head. “We’re not sure yet. In any case you have work to do.”
That was a good sign. “What work?”
“You have to live an ordinary life.”
Ben almost laughed — an ordinary life! — but then he frowned: what did it mean?
“You have skills. You will use them. The Galaxy needs good techs.”
Ben sat back, silent. Basically: ‘you broke it, now you fix it’.
He picked at his shirt, how had it come to be here? Rey. He could still see her face, staring down at him, bewildered.
“And Rey?”
“Not yet.”
He turned the cup in his hand. “Fair enough. How long was I… was I—
—You didn’t exactly die, Benjamin. You were… in limbo, for many months. Rey passed by here, on her way to another place. She visited Naboo, too.”
Like a pilgrimage to the Skywalkers. “How is she?”
“Coping. Now, you can choose to fix this place up, or you can leave the planet. There is a toolbag with basic tools in it. You can take them wherever you go.” The ghost started to fade, leaving a somewhat spooked Ben Solo to ponder his situation.
Before he was totally gone, Anakin said, “Oh. I think I should share these few words with you. I understood them too late, but now you have a second chance:
‘The dark is generous and it is patient and it always wins –
But in the heart of its strength lies its weakness:
One lone candle is enough to hold it back.
Love is more than a candle.
Love can ignite the stars.’”
The ghost faded.
“Grandfather. Thank you.”
Ben got up, he had choices to make. He climbed out of the hole to walk the perimeter of his uncle’s home — before his life turned upside down. He saw the markers of the Skywalkers’ last resting place. Shmi Skywalker. Lars Owen. Beru. A marker for Anakin, probably put there by Luke. And something else… he could feel it, buried deep under the sand. Something calling him. A pair of somethings.
Those must be… lightsabers? He could hear the Kybers singing to him. A whine, really. He walked over to where they were, extended a hand over a slight dip in the sand, and concentrated: there. He pulled on them.
Nothing.
He pulled again, but it was like pulling a rope attached to nothing. Then he understood.
‘You will live an ordinary life.’
He was cut off from using the Force.