Star Wars: Edge of Hope

Chapter Six: The Price We All Pay...

The winds off the water whipped through the broken window carrying fragments and shards of its glass on its back. Each one flew in on them slicing at Rey's exposed skin cutting her arms, her face, and her hands. Kylo Ren could feel the pain of the wounds beneath his clothes, and on his faces. Then the Force pulled them away from each other again.When Rey fell back into the soft carpet of the jungle floor she tried to stand and felt the world go off kilter. She fell back to the ground the saber burning into the vegation next to her. She hugged her chest and buried her face in her knees as she brought them to her chest. There was an emptiness pulling on her, the farther the distance between them, all the more her heart reminded her of it's irregular tempo.
She opened her burning eyes which were red and bloodshot, as she did she saw the twisted metal scattered around her in a circle. The broken items all beyond recognition of what they had been lay as a demarcation of her epicenter. As if they were being used to plot out the fall of a angel from the skies and as she'd rocketed back to that place. The earth had tried to catch her and so it reached up to cradle her in it's soft embrace. Rey lay there letting the ground, the trees and the sound of all the living things around her bleed into the perfect silence she needed. As she heard the world fall away from her, she reached out for the saber and began to push herself upright.

Rey: Where are you?! Where are you?!

Kylo Ren stood alone on the wreck looking out the massive oculus view port. He looked around cautiously as green leaves floated down around him. And then out of nowhere a cloud of blue starlings darted out over the restless water into the free air.

Kylo Ren: Rey?

Rey: This isn't over...I will find you again. And when I do...

Kylo Ren: You'll kill me? That won't fix what's broken in you, Rey. You'll hate yourself. You'll hate what you will become. You won't be able to escape the ghosts or purge your sins...like I can't...

Rey: You don't know me. You never did...

Kylo Ren: I know you...I've always known you...

Rey threw the saber out across the expanse at the ghostly Force projection of Kylo Ren. The image faded away and the blade swung round in the air, like to were a falcon being summoned to its handler, and returned to her open hand. But as she wrapped her hand around the hilt three small drops of blood fell down across the hilt hitting the broad leaves of a wild jasmine plant at her feet. Rey took the saber and looked around her. There were several trees toppled and the vegetation sizzling and burning itself out under them only made her shake her head.

Rey: Perfect...Had one job, not to burn down the jungle. And what do you do Rey? Burn down half the bloody jungle...She's going to kill me...Thanks alot, Ben.

She turned to walk out of the jungle back towards the main branch of the path that led to base camp. She found her way back to the tree where she'd impaled the training remote. She tried to dislodge the stick...but it was buried too deep into the broad tree trunk to come out freely. She tried to slide the broken robot off the end and a first it worked well enough. But the second she pulled it free of the wooden stake, it disintegrated in her hands.

Rey: Yep, I'm dead...Ugh, this is so not how I saw this day going...

She continued on retrieving the helmet and replacing it where she could find it, if she ever go to do any more training runs, and headed into camp. Overhead she could hear the siren's alerting command of a returning squadron or a new visitor arriving. As she broke the boundary of wild into civilization she turned to look over her shoulder. She could feel the ripples, she could feel her heart beginning to pull her back to the ground, the same burning pain she'd felt at his abscense was now due to his return. As her eyes became glassy and stung, she wiped them and the salty tears stung the thin cuts on her hand. She shook away the pain glancing down at them only in time to watch them fade away. She looked at her hands free of nothing but the smallest smudges of blood. She reached up to the cut on her forehead from their second trip back to the ship. But it was gone...Rey tried to reason it away, tried to put the possiblities too far out of reach that they couldn't cause her any more pain. Walking into the camp out of the shadows into the sunlight again, her only thought was if it could heal her physically...perhaps one day it would see fit to make her whole in another way. For now, she would wear her saddness on the inside, and continue as she always had...hoping beyond where hope became a lie you carried for another person. She couldn't help but think back to the forest run. The way it felt almost perfect and nostalgic to have him there beside her. The way they worked in tandem and how they looked at each other, like there was nothing else in the world as perfect as they were in each others eyes. How could loving him feel so much like a sin that stained her soul? How could believing be a crime against the person you loved? How could he not see in her what she saw in him?
She remembered the feeling of him looking up through the mountain of red crystal to where she stood her hand poised to close the door. She remembered the pleading she felt, but then she felt someone else calling to her.
Leia.
She had needed her more that Ben at that moment. Being strong was something Leia was teaching her to master. Sadly, she wasn't a very good student on that front. Rey always felt like a live wire, full of electricity just waiting for the spark that would burn her world down. There were parts of her that she kept for herself. Parts she didn't want to share with anyone, even Leia or Luke. Parts that she reserved just for her, they were the short moments of happiness she'd experienced in a time that had began unexpectedly and ended so abruptly. There never was enough time for her to say what she felt she'd been robbed of.
The world had its way of deciding things for itself. The right from the wrong, the good from the bad, but what does that matter to a heart? What can one person offer as fair trade for the chance at a happy life? Rey had some times found herself debating if she'd made the right choice. She dreamed of taking his hand that day...of being held in his arms and holding him in hers. She dreamed of selfish wants and desires, and quietly wondered what she would have done if she were offered them? Would she have the strength to fly away from him again? No matter how bitter the taste of it all, it couldn't stop the images racing through her mind throughout the days, it had been the only thing getting her from one day to the next. She knew she wasn't alone in her aim to bring Ben Solo home. But the selfish desire tied to that goal made her look closer at herself.
A Jedi doesn't crave adventure or excitement.
A Jedi doesn't seek out conflict.
A Jedi isn't supposed to love...
So what did that make her? Was it truly a sin in the eyes of the Force to love Ben Solo the way she did? And if so...how could it be trusted if it sought to torment to innocent hearts? The Will of the Force speaks to those what follow its path, not their own...it's aim is to guide us through the times of confusion and help us to choose the right path.
But was it a path that she would be doomed to walk alone?
If the answer was yes, Rey had looked deep into herself and asked the question Ben had asked her once before.

"Rey, I want you to join me. We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy!"

"Ben? Don't do this, Ben...Please, Don't go this way..."

"You have no place in their story...You come from Nothing...You're nothing...But not to me."

She didn't care about names. Titles or power, she didn't care about legacies and legends...She care about Ben because of simpler things. The gentleness in his soul that still held on...by the thinest of threads...it still existed there, buried deep down below the darkness. And this gave her hope...
Because even in a shadow....Light still exists...and so did Ben Solo.