Star Wars: Edge of Hope

Chapter Three: I Found the You in Me...

As Rey raced through the forest feeling the morning dew of the green leaves burst on her arms and blur the bright colored plumage of the flowers hanging in curtains pass by her. This was the world she'd always invisioned as a child. Nothing but sea's of green things, tall trees and the sounds of life all around her. This had been where she'd gone in her mind to escape the cold bitter endlessness of the Jakku deserts at night. When the screaming came and the darkness brought out the worst kind of nightmares, the kind you could only outrun, but never fully be out reach of. She had traveled here to a place where the sounds of life brought her peace. Where the sun was bright and warm, but it didn't burn you as it filtered down through the canopy overhead. Everything was in perfect harmony and...balance...with itself, perhaps that is the reason it felt so familiar to her. She'd walked these trails enough to know every rock, fallen tree, and chasm with their white waters rushing and surging...this place was alive. And for Rey that was enough to keep the nightmares away.
As Rey reached the gorge she threw herself into the jump, having come up short in the past and bore the scars to prove it, she knew she had to put everything into it. After a few tries more she no longer feared not reaching the otherside. She had begun to trust herself and the power of the Force to carry her wherever she wanted to go. But this time as she pin wheeled her way through the air, the sound of the leaf litter changed and the snap of twigs under her boots changed to the loud echo of her hands clamping down on cold, water soaked, rusted metal. She reached out and caught the edge of the ledge pieces which came flaking off on her damp palms. She stood looking back over the edge to see the distance continue into the endless possibilites of nothingness.

"BB-8? What is..? How? BB-8?! BB...Where am I? What now? Leia's going to kill me..."

As she looked back over the edge trying to plot a route back down or onto a less precarious level of whatever wreck she had landed on. Landed in! She'd been flying through the air...But there was no opening here...Nothing that showed where she'd entered the shell of the ghost from a distant past. As she dared to lean over the edge just a bit farther...a voice came from the shadows...taking her so off guard she'd almost fallen over the edge.

"Rey?"

She pivoted back on her right foot falling back into a puddle of blackened foul smelling stagnant rain water.

"Mind the edge...You wouldn't want to fall...it'd be a shameful end for a Jedi."

His mocking tone was difficult to decipher...but underneath it she almost thought she could detect true concern.

"Ben? Are you...Is this real? Or is this just another..."

"No, it's real. It seems there's no way to...stop this....whatever this is...at least not completely."

"Ben, I've been...I've tried to reach you, but..."

He stood there his face nearly blank, no evidence of the man she'd known only a few years previous, nothing of the man she'd fought beside. The mask was back and this time it was thicker than ever before. She could barely stand to look at him it felt like needles stabbing her all over the way he looked at her.

"Oh, I'm aware...I know you've been digging around in my head...looking for something. Some shred of humanity, any soft spots you could turn to your advantage, not that I hold it against you...it's our nature to deny the truth, question the rules, even break them if they offer us no solace. Its the product of the power we have...every Jedi has felt it at one time or another. But unlike you, I know, and I have accepted what I am."

"I don't believe that. And neither do you...you're still afraid of going back to the life you left behind. You're afraid you wouldn't be accepted...that you'll be alone...all over again."