The Land Which Bears Your Footprints

Chapter 1 - I'm Sending the Raven

Author's Note: This fic is a request by StefanyAntonietaEspa here on Wattpad. :D Also, this is for the Obikin 2023 bingo. Yes, I know it's with Rey and Ben, but it's a reincarnation AU, so I think it counts. ^-^

~ Amina Gila

"Who chooses the Chosen One and why would they not choose another?"

"You are but a tool... which can be discarded when it no longer functions."

"Forget Padme. Forget the boy. Forget everything, but your Emperor."

The rivers of lava run far too close, and the black sand is scorching, even through the armor, or maybe it's the memory of another time – a time when it was someone else who walked away, instead of... Sidious.

Rey jolts awake, heart pounding, breathing in gasps. She's in her room on Exegol where she's awoken every time for the last seven years that she's been here. Not – not there, wherever there is. She doesn't know why she keeps dreaming about it, but tears are stinging her eyes at the assaulting memory.

That was her grandfather. He hurt her, and he – he –

That wasn't real. It was just a dream, like so many of the others she's had. She doesn't have anything to worry about, but she can't help it, either.

"You are but a tool... which can be discarded when it no longer functions."

Her grandfather has never said anything like that to her before, since he rescued her from Jakku and brought her here before she ended up a slave, but sometimes... He's always so demanding, he always wants her to be... exactly what he wants. He's 'teaching her strength' he always tells her, but that doesn't mean she doesn't wonder sometimes, what'll happen if she's not powerful enough like he wants.

And she can't shake from mind the sheer helplessness she was feeling in that moment in her nightmare, that desperation and crushing realization that no one wants her. Even if it makes no sense for her to feel like that, but the dreams are so real. She sees that place most of all, but usually it's... someone else who's walking away.

She's seen him many times before, in brief flashes, but they're not always negative. In some ways, that's most confusing. Often, seeing anything of him – whoever he is – floods her with an unbearable longing that she can never shake. It feels like something or someone is missing, and she just... It's always felt like that, though. She never remembers a time she hasn't felt this strange emptiness.

Rey inhales shakily, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, but trying to calm down is nearly impossible right now. It's not like she has anything else to do, though, so she rolls over, pulling her blanket tighter around her and trying to force herself back to sleep. Tomorrow is the day she's been training for, and she needs to be at her best. (Isn't that a joke? Does she even have a best?)

***

Usually when she wakes up from a nightmare in the night, it's at least somewhat faded by morning if she didn't have another one – that happens frequently enough – but everything is haunting Rey just as overwhelmingly when she wakes up the next morning.

It's never bright on Exegol, the sky always dark and stormy, even if in varying shades. There's no sunlight streaming in the small window in her room the way there might have been on Jakku, or on... whatever planet she lived on before, with her parents. She barely remembers anything of that time anymore. But it's light enough to know it's time to be up.

And today is that day. She has to be ready. She can't afford to make any mistakes on this first mission, or it's going to ruin everything her grandfather's been working for, for decades.