Chapter Text
Form I: Shii-Cho
“Also known as the Way of the Sarlacc or Determination Form. The most basic of the lightsaber Forms, and the first of those taught to any lightsaber-wielding emotions, Shii-Cho is also among the oldest of those created for use with a lightsaber.”
She knows a hunger on Jakku. Credits are tightly controlled by the overseers. Currency comes in the form of bartering with scrap for the basics - condensed rations and water. Old Traz, a veteran scrapper that minds her until she can scavenge on her own, tries her best to get her two quarter-half portions a day instead of one. Gradually Rey stops growing and all the meager body fat from her youth sloughs off, the thinness of her collarbones and the hollow look of her face frightening her when she gets near something reflective.
Another hunger is cast skyward, her eyes tracking the expanse of sky for any sign of incoming freighters or transports, which are few. Her hope is that one day a faceless figure of a parent will disembark and take her to wherever home is. The fantasy keeps the loneliness from eating her whole. So she fashions an old piece of scrap to scratch the days into the durasteel bulkheads in her bolthole, a gutted AT-AT lying on its side like a picked-over carcass eroding in the sand.
The hunger slackens in her gut the less she tries to think about the future and more about surviving the day to day. Wake up, splash a little rationed water on her face, make her way with the rest of the scavengers before the sun is up to pick over what is left in the starship graveyard. She comes back to the outpost, barters for whatever she can get out of her meager finds for the day, then returns to the bolthole to sleep, eat, then do it all over again the next day.
When Finn and BB-8 appear, the hunger edges its way back into her. The chaos of what follows warps time, only catching up when she can feel Jakku’s gravity gripping their stolen freighter as it pulls out of the atmosphere. The haze of sky turns into a star field - already she can feel the strings tying her to Jakku, wanting to return already to the dark of her hovel and keep waiting for nothing to happen.
Her name is Rey, and she knows hunger.
----
The hunger is back. She sees it in his eyes when he finally takes off the mask and reveals a long face that gives every emotion away. From a vulnerable mouth to wide eyes, he can’t hide anything as each emotion flits across his expression like passing clouds - all at once anger, frustration, despair, longing. It wrenches her gut.
Then he reaches out for her, confusion as she feels him in her mind. He catches glimpses of that strange holoshow that has been running through her mind since Jakku.
Ocean, island, green-
Then Rey shoves with something she didn’t know she had. The flood pouring into him from her mind cinches off, then the flow reverses. They’re images laced with words in his voice, flashing by as quickly as if she were on a speeder passing them. Leia and Han, younger, proud expressions turned towards him. A grizzled man, holding out a training blade to him. The dark lump of an old, melted mask leaking power into his hands.
Suddenly it’s whiplash arousal flooding through her, power she never knew surging. As novice as she is, she manages to unsettle him with her words. “You’re afraid.” Rey is so certain of it, but is reeling with the fact that fear has a taste, a tangible sound. And it is intoxicating.
Then she pours every ounce of herself into her next words as the image comes to the forefront of his mind, brought on by his fear. The mask, melted and ruined, and a name. His expression is falling into one of disbelief.
“You’re afraid you’ll never be as strong as Darth Vader.”
----
She can feel whatever is unfurling within her clash with the unseen power that rolls off him in waves, even from this distance. Finn watches with her.
The bridge spans long and narrow over the chasm. Rey feels a horrible sense of having seen this exact same scene before and knows how it ends, long ago. It plays out in a clash of light as the sun’s rays drains off Ben Solo’s face and the red bleeds over. Then only Kylo Ren stands there, igniting the saber.
Rey screams and her mind stops on an image. Han, touching her shoulder, the slant of his smile favoring what she thought her father might’ve looked like, if she could remember him. Then time starts again with Chewie’s roar. Han falls.
----
Later the words, unbidden, come to mind. You need a teacher, from a man barely out of boyhood. They’re locked together, breast and belly, sabers grating off one another. Hers has a calm, true beam that burns straight lines through the air. A flake of snow fizzles off the clash they make as Kylo Ren’s saber gives off that odd, unstable shriek and the beam rages like a flame. "I could show you the ways of the Force," he insists, near-pleading with her.
Their eyes lock and she sinks into him.
Forms come to mind. She sees an older man with disciples, Ren chiefly among them as they are guided through drills with hovering remotes. They are anywhere from children to grown adults, barely learning their way with this strange power emerging in them.
Block, pivot, slash. She knows these movements.
Of course you do, a dry voice in her head supplies. The sound of it brings her off balance, bewildering in clarity as something takes over her. Rey feels like a stranger in her own skin as she sees Ren’s advances and blows before they happen, can smell the tang of his blood as it does a slow drip drip from his robes into the snow.
Mind your flank, the voice warns. She brings her saber up to catch on Ren’s swing.
----
Rey feels something important in the stretch of broken earth between her and Ren. Something savage in her chest, the hunger, as he lies broken and bleeding on the other side. Rey feels the strength in her legs now that this power, bracing her, surges through. Rey is faster, stronger, wiser. She feels incarnate of something, a force that urges her to finish this. The jump over the chasm is merely a step. Rey can finish this - for Han. For everyone.
But the other half wars with that feeling. She understands Ren’s words on the bridge now, this struggle tearing him apart. Rey feels it kindling, the whispers fighting against that bright, burning thing inside her. So she turns her back to his shocked gaze, the cut she gave him already furrowing into an ugly gash across his face, and runs.
They’re children playing with matchsticks, Ren and Rey.