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The Emperor was laughing at him, Luke knew. Somewhere.
Luke had never seen the Sith’s face after Vader threw him to his doom, or heard his voice anywhere outside his own mind. And yet…He seemed to have an awful lot to say.
Strike him down with all of your hatred…
Luke shouldered his pack and marched off into the mist, ignoring the thin girl leaning against the doorframe of his hut. He wasn’t sure he was remembering that one correctly.
With each passing moment he makes himself more my servant…
Luke’s jaw clenched. The mist collected in his beard in cold, sullen droplets.
“You’re gravely mistaken,” he muttered under his breath. Two chattering Caretakers went quiet as he passed. As always. He eyed them balefully, considering, yet again, confronting them. Asking why they’d let his hut fall into disrepair. But there’d be no purpose to it, other than to see them squirm.
He already knew why.
The girl stood and followed him on shaky legs, stiff, unaccustomed to the cold and damp. Her discomfort rolled into the Force like thunder. Luke paused for a moment on the edge of town, intrigued. And annoyed. Despite his best efforts, cutting himself off from the Force had proven to be quite impossible. It was in all things, after all. He might as well try to cut his heart out of his chest. But he’d tried his best, and had managed to grasp a small sliver of…quiet, if not exactly peace.
So after years -- Five? Six? -- of being surrounded by slobbering Force-nulls, the girl’s presence rankled him. And called to him…soothed him…Such… hope, despite the shock of their first meeting.
The Emperor’s voice dragged through his mind like oil over rock, silken, lazy with triumph.
Young fool…Only now, at the end…
Luke kept walking. She didn’t understand.
***
He kept his routine. Once around the island, once a day, six hours gone. Then three more sterilizing the Siren’s milk, and two preparing the crisp, hot flesh of his catch of the day. He grinned. If he could step back in time, and tell his younger self that he’d be eating fish every day for six years of his life, he wouldn’t have believed him. Maybe asked him how the hell he could afford it, and what an ocean looks like, really.
He ignored the girl almost entirely, and shut the door in her face when he headed in to eat. He smiled at the wall as her confusion blossomed into disgust.
No matter.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Luke said. Shadows danced on the wall.
She will call you Master.
He fell asleep sitting up, picturing her face pressed to cold stone outside his hut, straining to hear something, anything, her spirit reaching desperately for something to hold her to the earth.
***
The girl thought the Force was a weapon…an admittedly reasonable assumption to one who knew nothing of it. The more Luke observed her, the more he realized just what it was that she wanted.
Power.
All she knew was stories. She wanted him to give her the power to wipe the galaxy clean of her enemies. And…when he turned away, she sought it herself. She lifted the saber that had cut off his right hand, and… danced with it on the side of the mountain. The blade hummed in her hand, hungry, spitting light, dragging her along for the ride. It wanted to cut, to burn. It remembered the ones it had killed, and its owner’s defeat.
Luke waited on the path back to the village until her control slipped, and the blade grew eager. He shook his head as rock tumbled to the ground, and exultation turned to embarrassment.
She is a child, he thought idly. A child fumbling in the dark, finding one sword fixed to the wall, not knowing of the dozens more next to it.
A child who pictured his nephew’s twisted, bleeding face with every swing she took.
Her hatred has made her powerful, he thought, with a flicker of interest. And she doesn’t even know it.
***
He finally asked her name when she followed the whispers of dead fools into the First Tree.
“No one,” she replied.
“Where did you come from?”
“Nowhere.”
Palpatine’s laugh echoed in his mind.
“Everyone’s from somewhere.”
“Jakku.”
“Yeah, that's pretty much nowhere,” he heard himself say. He ignored the low rumble of outrage. Luke supposed His Majesty wouldn’t consider the grave of the Old Empire nowhere.
His own words blurred together. The original Jedi texts. Supposedly the root of the Order, slowly rotting away in the wet dark.
And hidden inside a dead tree. Fitting, he thought. But she wanted it anyway.
A low, rumbling laugh filled his being.
She looked at him with huge, frightened eyes.
“There is something...inside me. It’s always been there. And now it is awake…and I…I need help…”
Luke stared at her. The girl -- ’Rey’…Old Galactic for ‘thing’… -- stood before the books, scraps of her awareness yearning for the stability they offered with faint, sad voices. He looked at her, eyes piercing and close, for the first time trying to see. And…there is was. A core of bright, hard power shining inside her, covered by years of fear. Fear that had cracked when his nephew violated her mind. Instinct, the drive to survive, live had sharpened it into a brittle blade of blinding fury. And she’d used it. And after the fact… He gazed dispassionately at the shaking gratitude for his sister’s core of peace and hope. The powerful connection she’d forged with a brave man lying helpless in a Resistance hospital bed, and the almost-parent she’d seen in Han. The hope in them, the strange love mending the cracks in her control. Control…always control…
He saw it slip, like a bone that had never healed right, when she remembered how they’d been hurt. His nephew’s face. Flickering, dark thoughts about ripping it open again, with a metal blade this time, just like the beings who prowled the desert at night…Red staining snow instead of sand…
The thoughts scared her, almost more than the power, her mind filling with a beautiful, horrible truth.
You’ll never be helpless again…
“What do you think the Force is?” he asked suddenly. Her brow wrinkled in confusion.
“It’s ah…It gives you power to control people. And to…make things float?”
Luke snorted.
“Amazing. Every word in that sentence is wrong.”
Is it, though? he thought.
He turned away from her, his jaw clenched, anger rising. She wanted power…but not the price.
“I cannot teach you.” He waved off her protestations. Such a child…
“Why not? I’ve seen your daily routine, and you are not busy!”
You know nothing, girl.
“I know only one truth,” he said aloud. “It is time for the Jedi to end.”
Yessss… The rotten tree filled with a low hiss. She did not hear, did not react, just stared at him with lost, lonely eyes.
A dead smile curved in his mind.
He left her there, ignoring her protests for several minutes, turning to face her when he couldn’t bear the cloying, naïve hope pressing on his mind.
“Three lessons,” he snapped. “Then you will see why the Jedi have to end.”
He stared at the shadows on the wall of his hut until dawn.
***
Luke led her into the ruins of the Temple when the night mists burned away. Her wonder at their waterlogged, green-and-gray surroundings stopped them short three times before he just gave up and kept walking. He’d seen it all before. They reached the highest surviving level when the sun was well over the horizon. He tramped across the broken, stained mosaic without a second glance, and stepped out onto a rough shelf of rock, overlooking the sea.
“Come on. Sit…”
She obeyed without question, sitting cross-legged. Luke stood next to her, his eyes boring into her back, every atom of him focused on her, her power, her link to the Force.
“Now. Close your eyes. Reach out…”
She took him literally. She truly did know nothing.
His mouth curved up. The sheer ignorance… He shook his head, and lifted a long stick. Her mind was empty, nearly a blank slate. And…what did she really have? Stories. Childish myths, easily brushed away.
Cold, hissing voices welled up all around him.
Show her. Take her blank thoughts…remake her right…
Teach her.
The true nature of the Force...With her at your side…you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi…
He smacked her hand.
“I mean with your feelings,” he snapped. She glared at him, but did as he asked, sliding with ease into the space between pure logic and raw emotion.
Luke started as he caught one sharp, almost vicious thought.
…Good at this…Had a lot of time…Alone with myself…Me and my head…Silence…Plenty of room to think…
He smiled.
“Breathe…Yes…that’s it…Now. Reach out…” He stepped up behind her, watching, keeping his distance in the Force.
“What do you see?”
“Light, she whispered, her presence stretching out like a moth leaving its cocoon. “Darkness…a balance…”
Obi-Wan’s words came back to him instantly.
The Force is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together…
He shook them off.
“It’s so much bigger,” he murmured. So much greater than the Jedi ever dreamed... “Look closer…”
Her presence drifted towards the tiny specks of life that called the island home. He murmured words about connection, life, death…and how it all washed away in the end, slipping away faster the harder you tried to hold on…Like the Jedi had…
If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study…all its aspects…not the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi…
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I see…”
Embrace it. A…larger view of the Force… The words were louder this time, nearly inside the shell of his ear.
Luke could only agree.
“And…” Rey’s brow wrinkled. “…Something else…”
Her senses dropped abruptly, spiraling in towards the true center of the island. It thrummed with empty music inside his mind. Luke nodded, his own instincts drawing him down with her.
“Powerful Light, powerful Darkness,” he whispered, moving closer to her.
She accepted it without thinking.
Luke had to smile at that.
He’d nearly spelled it out for her, and yet, she still refused to see.
“It’s…It’s calling me…” she whispered, distress spiking high.
Luke’s mouth twisted as she tried to pull away.
“Resist it Rey!” he yelled, because that was what Jedi did. He stepped next to her ear, barely keeping his own strength in check, to haul her back in or push her down.
If she wants it so badly…Let her…
The stone cracked beneath his feet. The Dark reached for her, twining in with her blood and heart. His own ravaged, starving center curved towards it.
Hello, old friend…
The Force was, indeed, so much… greater than the Jedi could ever accept.
Fools.
You want this…don’t you…
“REY!” he shouted, backing his voice with power.
That snapped her out of it. She tumbled free of the net, and collapsed panting onto the rock.
“What…” she gasped. “What was…”
“It offered you something you thought you needed,” he snapped. It wasn’t a question. “…You didn’t even try to resist, did you?” he growled. She stared at him, shock turning to shame.
“But I…”
“I’ve seen this raw strength only once before,” Luke said, his voice cracking. “It didn’t scare me enough then…It does now.”
Young fool…You could be more powerful than any Jedi…Just as he is…the only way to save your –
He left her on her knees, clinging to the rock.
***
The next hour was easy. Condemnation slid off his tongue like sweetwater, truth that had been building up inside him for so, so long.
Blasphemy on this island, yes. But nothing reached out to silence him. No flickering spirits accosted him. Even the broken, lying whispers vanished, faded into the dull tile and the delusional murals.
The warmth of the rising sun and his layers of rough clothing meant nothing. The cold inside him breathed deep, savoring her confusion, her ignorance.
It truly was almost funny.
And then…Ben… He filled his voice carefully with righteous regret.
“I confronted him…”
Luke’s memory filled with the smell of burning cloth; Ben’s blanket catching fire from a loosely-held saber. The raw terror surging in response to the burning blade at his throat. His student lashing out
blindly, staggering to his feet, and realizing what he’d done.
He remembered the rocks and rubble pressing his body into the dirt, doing their best to crush him. He almost let them. Perhaps the laughter would die with him.
The screams certainly hadn’t.
***
He saw what was left of his nephew walking alongside his almost-Apprentice, and allowed it, dreams of his own parents twisting in his head. His mother’s beauty, his father’s single-minded desire, refined into obsession over years of war. The kind voice and gentle hand from his childhood becoming a needy whimper and hot skin. His, and his alone. The quiet loneliness of an idealistic, ambitious woman who needed to be needed, and saw what she wanted to see. Her beautiful wounded warrior.
“It’s not funny,” he whispered, when the dreams came and the darkness hung over his rough pallet, cold laughter seeping under the thick, warm blankets. “They loved each other…”
For how long?
Luke wrapped his blankets tightly around himself.
At what cost?
“Ben is dead,” Luke muttered, shutting his eyes.
But what of her? She wants to belong. The Resistance. The Jedi…She loathes herself, just below the surface…And you didn’t exactly open your arms…And she has such power… He’ll take it if you don’t. Consume her utterly…
I need someone to show me my place in all this… Her plaintive words floated through his mind, tugging at his memory. He wondered what he might have said to Yoda if he hadn’t had three years with the Rebel Alliance. He’d had a place, a mission. He was a damn good pilot, and that had been enough. Rogue Squadron had had its hands full. X-wings were easier to come by than pilots.
Easier to replace, too.
Sixty-two…
Their faces flickered through his mind, features smearing into battered helmets and orange visors. Their last words, blown out static on his comm, were easier to remember.
Sixty-two lives, ended in comm-crackle…
He wondered, briefly, why she hadn’t stayed with them, but immediately corrected himself.
No, of course she hadn’t. She’d grown up on Jakku, clawing from portion to portion, hungry and desperate. She was used to it being her, just her. Any larger galactic conflict had been so far away from her priorities that it might as well have been vapor. And…she’d only really been attached to Han and that former stormtrooper. She’d latched onto them, Han’s rough, kind words and Finn’s admiration and incomprehensible respect – and, perhaps, something more -- had won her loyalty almost instantly.
And now…Han was dead. And the Resistance had Finn; the only being in the galaxy that she truly cared for.
Realization sliced through his mind.
“It’s the only way she can save her friend,” he whispered. She wanted power. Needed power, but…
She didn’t need to be a Jedi to get it.
Luke rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. He’d shut the windows against prying eyes, and to keep out the too-bright moon. Slowly, the orange flicker of the fire faded into black. The shapes of the stones melted away, hidden by shadow, returned to their natural state.
He couldn’t tell when his eyes closed.
***
Luke set out early the next day. He decided to leave Rey to her own devices. Her unshielded mind was radiating emotion, not something that Luke especially needed at the moment. But he kept a loose eye on her in the Force. She was vulnerable. Lost. Afraid for her friend, and adrift in a cruel universe that wanted to either use her or kill her.
She started for the cave when he stepped up to the Siren. He didn’t need milk today…so he’d decided to just say hello, and half-apologize for milking her long after her pups had washed away, keeping her in that state just so that he could take. She never seemed to mind, though. Her faint intellect treasured the moments when he came to her. It reminded her of them, how she’d given them life, fed them, only to lose them to the Caretakers. And to him, though she didn’t need to know that. They’d kept him alive and healthy until he caught his first fish.
He suspected that she thought of him, on some level, as her new child.
But, speaking of children…
The cave swallowed her the second she tried to look inside. His focus narrowed in on the rush of roots and wet rock, of cloying Darkness. He took a moment to be grateful that it was low tide, and would be for awhile. She wouldn’t know about that. She’d stay too long, and the cave wouldn’t show her until it was too late. She’d grown up on a desert world…instinct wouldn’t save her.
The Darkness stirred, curious, licking along the edge of her presence. Deciding what to do with her.
Luke patted the Siren on her narrow head and retreated to a drier part of the beach. He let his feet carry him forward, long practice finding firm rock, and avoiding crumbling earth and flaking stone.
He watched, felt her scrabble to her feet and step unknowingly into the shadows. She didn’t see what had her until her voice bounced back, an unnatural echo.
He smiled as her image split. An infinite trail of Reys. All lined up, waiting their turn. Some of them might have further to walk. But each and every one of them would end up here; staring at the clouded mirror, waiting on shadows.
He watched as this Rey snapped to the front of the line and stared into nothing. He saw two shades twist and bend together in the fog, only to form her reflection. Another Rey, waiting her turn.
Her confusion, her distress was palpable. He almost felt sorry for her. But…
It is her destiny…
“Unavoidable,” he whispered. The wind tore at his cloak, sending salt stinging into his eyes.
The earth rumbled beneath him, pressing back against the grey roil of the waves. Cold wind howled low and mournful over it all, pulling fog over the water, eroding proud stone to dust and memory.
And for a moment, he could have sworn he heard a soft brush of rich cloth on the stone behind him, felt a thin hand press lightly on his shoulder.
He jumped up whirled, looked behind him. But he was alone.
***
Luke lay awake that night, his heart pounding, all of his insides in a tight snarl. Rey had been silent that evening, hadn’t even asked for another lesson. She’d avoided his eyes, even, and tried to hide herself in the black cloud that had followed her out of the cave. She’d retreated to her hut with a mumbled, tired word, and then tried – and failed – to quiet her thoughts. The infinite loop of her danced in her mind, relentless, inevitable, binding her to her fate.
He gave up on sleep when he felt her reach out to the roiling edges of his nephew’s presence. A thin, helpless cry for comfort.
Luke almost went to her, then. He knew what he should say.
Always in motion, the future is.
The laugh choked him, burned in his chest.
Lies.
He stood and stared at the fire.
It is the will of the Force.
The shadows stirred, slid cold breath over his throat.
Perhaps. But what does the Force will? Luke squeezed his eyes shut. Old platitudes slid from his lips, and then out of his grasp. It wills death. It took your mother with blood and pain. It burned your Aunt and Uncle alive. It destroyed Alderaan, killed Kenobi…
Luke groaned, dropped to his knees.
“No,” he whispered. His voice fell flat in the dead air. And the Force whispered pitiless truth.
It turned sixty-two voices to static. It took your Father, made him its instrument… The Force needs Balance, you see…
More laughter jolted through him before he could stop it, thin and pained, gasping and desperate, halfway to tears.
And then, your nephew…And you did nothing. Your weakness killed trillions. Oh, if your Republic knew that your mercy killed them all…
“It was wrong,” Luke whispered. “It would have been murder. It was evil…”
It was defiance! Good is a point of view, boy…And…perhaps you were evil to let him live…
Luke’s eyes widened.
“No…”
Was I?
Sometimes he wondered…
Selfish…Playing by your own pathetic rules, your own conscience. As if it matters to the Balance…
“Balance,” Luke murmured. “That’s not true…That’s not what it means…”
Search your feelings, boy. You know it to be true…
“…The Force cares not.”
Luke opened his eyes. He stared down at his hands, rough and weathered with years and hardship. He held them up to his face, compared the chapped, pale fingers of his left hand with the sharp, clicking metal of his right. Tools, both, slowly wearing away.
We are…Luminous beings. Not this crude matter… Yoda’s words echoed though his memory.
Luke stared at his flesh hand, turned it over and over, flexing his fingers. He felt the chill of the air, too thick for the weak fire in the stove to penetrate. But the heat, the energy was there just the same. The Force. It thrummed in his blood and murmured in his head. It danced along his skin, teasing and alive.
Feel…don’t think.
Luke swallowed.
No…
Reach out…
Reach out and take.
Luke curled his hand into a fist. The Force crashed around him, filling in the bleeding cracks in his mind.
His mouth curled up as rasping words filled his head, and the sharp reek of ozone swamped the cold room.
Only now at the end do you understand…
Luke picked up his walking stick and stepped out into the rain. Thunder crashed inside his head. Black rain battered the smooth stones of the galaxy’s last Jedi village. The crack of waves breaking on the crags called to him, sent their voice into the howl of the wind. Wood and metal shattered under its power. The strongest of towers bowed before it, in the end. Wind and time devoured first their faces, and then their bones. The Force took it all.
Beautiful, he thought.
A soft, trembling whisper flowed into the night.
Please…
His mouth twisted as he felt Rey slowly welcome Kylo Ren into her mind. The Force rose inside him as she shivered with relief and clung desperately to the thin, bleeding connection. Contempt pooled inside him, dark and poisonous. She truly would take anything that was offered, even false, even forced on her, if the words were kind and the face was lovely.
Luke had had enough.
Understand…now I understand…
***
He gathered the Force to him as his nephew fed his would-be Padawan facets of memory, warped by time and confusion, crystalized into brittle hate. The Darkness laughed as Kylo offered Rey a glimpse of the shivering remnants of his humanity like a child bringing his mother a pretty stone to make up for the mess he’d made on the kitchen floor.
See, Kylo whispered, his thoughts caressing her spirit. See what he tried to do…See how sorry I am…
Sorry…
The world shivered around Luke. Rain hissed on his skin, evaporating instantly. His vision blurred with remembered pain. But…this time…He curled his screams inward, twisted them up into a mass of white-hot power.
And…yes…
“I understand.”
He flicked his fingers. The hut burst like a dried-out eggshell. Rey and Ren sprang apart, the connection snapping before his rage. Rey whirled on him as Ben’s presence melted into the rain. She stepped forward, seeing only a shriveled, filthy, bitter old man. Waste left over from the old world. Not even kindling for the new.
The roar of the storm swallowed his laugh. She saw the needle spark in his eyes, and brushed it aside, because she didn’t know. She felt the Force crackle and pulse around her, and blamed it on the thunder, and the reek of ozone on the lightning high in the sky. The rage leeching into her mind…she thought it was her own. She actually thought that the spoiled child quivering in Kylo Ren’s mind was his true self.
The wind caught hold of his cloak as he stood before her, feeling the words rattling behind her lips. Half Kylo’s, half her own.
She should be thanking me…
“Leave this island! NOW!” he shouted, turning away from her. A final warning.
Thunder and lighting cracked overhead in a cascade of violence, cutting dark crags out of her face.
An illusion, Luke reminded himself, as she stepped closer and her face became whole again. One slide of time. It doesn’t need to happen.
“Did you do it?” she shouted, advancing on him. “Did you try to murder him?” She struck at him with her staff when he remained silent, the blow backed with blunt, desperate rage fresh from his nephew’s mind. He edged back, letting her land a light touch, curious to see what she’d do if she thought she could get the upper hand.
“Did you create Kylo Ren?”
Create?! Luke snatched up his walking stick and slashed out at her, destabilizing her grip on her staff and knocking her back.
Stay down, girl, he thought. Blood sang in his ears as he shifted into a dueling stance. It had been awhile, but his body remembered. The Force did the rest.
She didn’t stay down, of course. Kylo’s touch still filled her mind. Her senses echoed with pain, loneliness, flailing rage. His nephew’s weakness…his utter failure to understand what he was dealing with.
Luke felt the memories close in. All the things he’d said…and everything he hadn’t, but should have…
The Force is not a toy, Ben…
You think you know Darkness…
Young…fool…
The words, the years, the memory of a time when hope held his hand. All leading up to this moment. Unavoidable. Inescapable. He smiled as panic mingled with her rage, and the hum of his father’s lightsaber cut the air. He let himself fall to the cold stone, inches from the sharp drop. The wind howled overhead, blasting his face with sheets of rain.
“Tell me the truth!” Rey shouted. Her hand shook as she held the lightsaber in his face. He almost felt sorry for her.
Luke turned his face from her cast his gaze over the side of the wall. He smiled. The Force was all around him. In his thoughts. In the rock. In the muted screams of the dead fools flowing up from cold stone. In the wind and wild water, angry and eager. He felt Rey shiver in confusion, her resolve wavering as she lost sight of his eyes.
The island groaned as the final piece fell into place.
His eyes found hers.
Rey staggered back, the lightsaber falling from nerveless fingers.
“Of course,” he chuckled, and released his power.
Rey went down screaming as lightning split the air and clung to her like a spiderweb, pinning her to the stones. Luke took his time getting up, and held the pain in place on her skin, making it ripple across her form like water. His smile broadened as she writhed, powerless and shocked, under the onslaught of Dark energy.
Luke held her there until she screamed her throat raw, and steam rose from her skin and blackened rags. Her mouth worked soundlessly as he approached, raw power crackling in his left hand. He knelt beside her and gripped the back of her head with cold metal fingers. Her dark, terrified eyes fixed on the lightning held in check inches from her face.
“The truth?” he said, conversationally. “The truth is that I was a fool.” His eyes gleamed with sickly, eldritch fire as the words poured out of him, decades of bitterness cut up into short, matter-of-fact sounds. “If I’d killed him, that…creature Snoke would still be hiding in whatever hole spawned him…” He tightened his grip. “The Republic would still stand. And Han would live….Failure is the greatest teacher, after all… “ He smiled. “Let’s just say I learned my lesson.”
“No…No…” Rey gasped. “Mur…Murder…My…” Luke sighed and laid his left hand over her heart. She screamed as a direct blast of lightning stopped it dead. Luke waited a few moments, and then shocked her back to life.
“Now…as I was saying,” he said, when she stopped shaking and started crying. “I confronted him. He was asleep at the time…but…like the fool I was…I hesitated.” Luke shook his head. “If you learn anything from this, Rey, it’s that you should never hesitate.”
She tried to respond, but all that was left was the scrabbling need to survive. Luke tilted his head and considered.
She is strong in the Force…But linked to Kylo Ren. Her instincts are good…and when she throws away those scruples… His eyes flickered. That aggression…
That decided him. His words and hands were almost gentle as he helped her sit up.
“It took me a long time to grow up, Rey,” he murmured. He sat cross-legged next to her, heedless of the storm raging around them. “But the truth is that good is a point of view…What you call murder…” he shook his head. “I call an execution.” He looked at her closely. “I know you’ve seen death, Rey. Jakku is…Not a nice place.”
He’d visited once. It was a world where the dregs of the galaxy came to die, or live off of the rotting husks of the warships covering the planet. The mere fact that Rey had survived as long as she had was a testament to her determination. And, most likely, her pragmatism.
She could only nod as years and years of loneliness and pain welled up inside her. The things she done to survive. Hope fading a little more with every scratch on the wall of her hideaway. Luke caught the thread of exhausted despair and teased it out, showed it to her.
“The Force is just the Force, Rey,” he murmured. “Light…Dark…Just words. The lies of the Jedi…”
But…at last…I see through them...
Rey stared at him, her face twisted up with emotion and tears.
“Then…why…lies…why pretend,” she whispered, her voice nearly lost to the wind. Luke shrugged.
“Maybe it was you who was pretending. You saw what you wanted to see…”
Rey let out a soft, despairing cry.
“Then…then the Jedi are gone…” Luke nodded.
“Yes.”
What do I do now? her eyes asked. They…they need… I need…
“We’ll save your friend,” said Luke, his voice a dark growl. “We’ll save my sister. We’ll even save my pathetic nephew. And then…” His eyes narrowed. Rey shrank back against the stones as raw power rose up around them, shaking the very earth.
“We’ll kill Snoke. And then…the First Order will fall…”
And we shall have peace…
Rey stared at him for a long moment.
“Or…you could die here,” he murmured, leaning in close. “I’d make it quick, Rey from Nowhere.”
There was a long silence. Then Rey nodded.
“Now what?” she whispered. Her spirit trembled in his palm. Luke smiled.
“First, you will call me Master…”