Confronting Fear

Balance

Light, like the flutter of wings
Feel your hollow voice rushing
Into me as you're longing to sing
So I, I will paint you in silver
I will wrap you in cold
I will lift up your voice as I sink

Silver and Cold- AFI

Rey sat with her knees to her chin on the floor of her room. She stared out the huge view port, watching the stars blink in and out amongst the moving asteroids. The entire time she had been with the First Order, the Steadfast had been docked in the same location, a desolate stretch of asteroids between Hutt Space and the Outer Rim. She wasn't sure why this particular ship hadn't moved in the weeks she'd been aboard. Probably because it was the current capital of the First Order, though not for much longer it seemed.

No matter how desperately she tried to shut it out her brain kept forcing her to relive the events of the past few hours. She wasn't even sure what had come over her, why she went to confront Ben in the first place, why she'd attacked him. What was even scarier though, was how good it felt to let the Darkness loose. Her time with Myim had taught her to touch it, to carefully harness the power of the Dark, but it had broken away from her, consumed her in exactly the way she'd spent months learning to avoid. And she'd done it to Ben.

She tried to tell herself that he had started it, started it by lying to her. It was partially true, but it wasn't the whole story. Ben had goaded her, taunted her until the Darkness flooded her like a broken dam in the midst of heavy rain.

But she had gone to him with ill intent.

She rolled herself onto her side, still in the fetal position but with her cheek pressed against the cold marble floor. She'd been taught keeping the Balance meant all things in moderation, but it had become painfully clear there was too much of everything right now.

Too much at stake.

She could feel Ben down the hall, his dark aura a thunderstorm of emotion. His end of the bond was open, but she couldn't reach out to him without opening her own and she did not want him in her mind right now. In fact that was the last thing she wanted.

Myim's parting words flashed in her mind. This place will be here when you need it and so will I.

Should she go back to the Temple? Would she find the peace and Balance there she so craved at the moment? She barked out a laugh. She'd only left the Temple a few days ago, though in truth it felt like eternity. How had she lost it so soon?

She stared cross-eyed at the patterns in the marble, white and black swirling together reminding her of the reflecting pool in the Temple proper.

Rey pulled herself up into a sitting position, her legs crossed in front of her. Vatleria was an eight hour flight one way, a trip she didn't have time to make. Luckily for Rey, there might be another way to go about getting the answers she needed.

Rey reached out through the Force getting lost in the white light that surrounded her as she moved deeper into the endless flow of the Force.

"Be with me. Be with me. Be with me."

Ben reclined on his sofa, long legs dangling over the side. He took a long draw from the bottle in his hand, the strong Chandrilan whiskey burning his mouth. Ben rarely drank, it impeded his powers making him feel sluggish and weak. But he needed it tonight, needed the numbness it could offer him.

What had he done?

It had always been in his nature to push past the boundaries of whatever was in front of him. He'd done it to his parents, to Luke, even to Snoke, and now Rey. Rey had been the most pliant, her boundaries often bending instead of breaking against his will; but even she had a breaking point and he'd finally found it.