by Rae Carson
He’d give anything to be sitting beside her now, sharing grief. Not necessarily saying anything, just…being.
If he knew where Rey was, nothing in the galaxy would prevent him from going to her. He and Rey had been saving each other since the moment they met. That’s what friends did.
No one quite understood his single-minded devotion to Rey, except maybe Leia. Even Rose—though she accepted it—thought it was a bit strange. But it wasn’t strange at all. Rey was Finn’s friend, yes, but she was also important. He sensed it. It was that same undeniable feeling he’d told Jannah about. If anything happened to Rey, the Resistance didn’t stand a chance.
The droid whirred again, a lonely sound. Finn realized he’d been so caught up in everything that was going on, he’d never bothered to get to know the little fellow. Rey mattered, but so did everyone else. The only way they were going to make it through this was together.
“So,” he said. “What’s your name?”
* * *
—
C-3PO wandered the base, disoriented. The place was a disaster, with cables strewn everywhere, jungle vines invading everything. Mud was starting to clog his joints. An oil bath would be just the thing, but he had no idea who to ask. This ragtag group of beings included humans, Mon Calamari, a Wookiee, and a dozen other species—not to mention several droids. No one culture or language seemed to dominate, which meant C-3PO had no idea what the protocol was.
An R2-series astromech spotted him and rolled in his direction. He was white with blue markings, and he bore the scars of battle. An uncouth little thing, but it paid to be polite in these circumstances.
“Hello,” C-3PO said. “I am See-Threepio, human–cyborg relations. And you are?”
The astromech rolled back as if struck. Then beeped insistently.
“My memory backup? Why would a stubby astromech droid have my memory stored?”
The little droid beeped again, irritated.
“Well, I’m quite certain I’d remember if I had a best friend.” C-3PO turned away. There was nothing worse than an astromech with delusions of grandeur.
The astromech warbled insistently.
“You want to put what in my head? Under no circumstances—”
The blue droid extended his transfer arm and began to chase after him.
“You stay away from me with that!”
More warbling, almost too fast to keep up with.
“Whatever are you referring to? What history together?”
The astromech whistled, more gently now. His words stopped C-3PO in his tracks. The golden droid looked up at the ship looming over them.
“On a ship like that?” C-3PO said. “With a princess? You’re malfunctioning!”
But he let the little droid approach.
* * *
—
Poe sat in the dark, beside Leia’s covered body.
“I gotta tell you,” he told her. “I don’t know how to do this. What you did…I’m not ready.”
“Neither were we,” came a voice from the shadows, and Poe turned. It was Lando Calrissian.
The former Rebellion general had flown to Ajan Kloss on his ship, the Lady Luck, almost as soon as they’d left Pasaana. Something Rey had said convinced him, and Poe was so glad he was here.
“Luke. Han. Leia. Me,” Lando said. “Who’s ever ready?”
Poe stepped toward him. According to Connix, Lando had been overcome with grief when he arrived just a little too late. He’d missed his chance to say goodbye.
Lando looked as sad as Poe felt, his brow knitted, his shoulders slumped. He kept eyeing Leia’s shroud. He’d probably regret not coming sooner for the rest of his life. Poe understood what it was to regret.
“How did you do it?” Poe asked. “How did you defeat an Empire with almost nothing?”
Lando was silent for a long moment. Then: “We had each other. That’s how we won. We were friends.”
A light dawned in Poe’s mind. For the first time since his return to Ajan Kloss, he smiled.
* * *
—
Poe went searching for Finn. Finn found him first. His friend rushed toward him, the tiny conical droid lapping at his heels.
“I gotta tell you something,” Finn said, his voice urgent.
“I gotta tell you something,” Poe returned. “I can’t do this alone. I need you in command with me. Tell me yours.”
“This droid!—uh, that’s really nice, I appreciate that…”
“General,” Poe said, saluting.
“Uh, General, this droid has a trove of data on Exegol.”
“Wait, what?” Poe said. “Cone face?”
“I am Dee-Oh!” the droid said.
“Sorry. Dee-Oh,” Poe said.
“He was going to Exegol with Ochi of Bestoon,” Finn said.
Poe looked at the droid, back at Finn. “Why was Ochi going there?”
Finn took a deep breath. “To bring a little girl he was supposed to take from Jakku. To the Emperor. He wanted her alive.”
Poe gaped. Finn just stared at him, waiting for him to put the pieces together.
* * *
—
The coral sun set over the ocean of Ahch-To as flames engulfed Kylo Ren’s TIE fighter. Rey watched the ship burn, tears in her eyes. She chucked bits of driftwood at it. Not that they could do any damage, but it felt good to throw things.
She finally understood why Luke had come here, why he’d given up everything and taken up the life of a hermit. Rey was never going back. She would never put her friends in danger again. She would never face Kylo again. She would live out whatever years she had right here.
For she was the granddaughter of the most evil despot ever known, and his darkness was rising within her. Without Leia, she had no chance of pushing back the tide. The galaxy was better off without her.
Belonging had been a fleeting fancy. She was meant to be alone.
She pulled out Luke’s lightsaber and stared down at it. The weapon of a Jedi. But she was no Jedi.
Rey threw it with a vengeance into the fire.
A hand reached out and caught it. A robed figure emerged from the flames, limned in ghostly light, almost transparent.
“A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect,” he said.
“Master Skywalker!” she breathed.
His eyes narrowed in consternation. “What are you doing?”
They stared at each other. Rey wasn’t sure what to tell him. Maybe he already knew.
Beside her, a ragged porg shook its feathers, cawing at her in irritation.
* * *
—
She sat by the firepit—she had to sit; she was so exhausted from battling Kylo and healing him.
Luke stood over her, unbothered by the proximity of his robes to the flames. “I did everything I was trained not to,” she told him. “I drew my saber first, attacked Ren, blind with anger.”
“But then you healed him.”
Rey said, “I gave him some of my life. In that moment I would have given him all of it…died if I had to.”
“Your compassion saved him,” said Luke.
Rey didn’t feel like fielding anything resembling a compliment. She didn’t deserve it. “I saw myself on the dark throne,” Rey told the Jedi Master. “I won’t let it happen. I’m never leaving this place.” She looked at him in challenge. “I’m doing what you did.”
The fire popped. A spark landed on Luke’s robe, but he didn’t react, and the spark winked out as though it had landed on nothing.
“I was wrong,” Luke said. “It was fear that kept me here. What are you most afraid of?”
The answer was easy. But saying it was hard. “Myself.”
“Because you’re a Palpatine.”
She gasped. He’
d said it so casually, as though not impressed in the least.
“Leia knew it too,” he added.
Rey had guessed as much, but it was still startling to hear him say it. “She never told me,” she whispered.
Luke moved to sit beside her.
“She still trained me,” Rey said.
“Because she saw your spirit,” Luke said. “Your heart.”
Rey had always assumed that Leia agreed to train her because she saw her as a weapon. An asset in the fight against the First Order. Could it be true that she’d also seen something else in her? Something good?
Rey looked down at her hands, feeling foolish. “I wanted Leia to think I was as strong as she was. I’m not.”
“Leia was stronger than all of us,” Luke said.
Which made Rey wonder: Had Leia ever been tempted by the dark side? In all the stories she’d heard, in reading Luke’s journals, studying with Leia, she had never once heard of anyone even trying to turn her, the way Vader and the Emperor had tried to turn Luke. The way Kylo had tried to turn her. Maybe, of all of them, Leia had been unturnable.
Finn would be like that, she realized with a jolt, if he could touch the Force. He was special that way.
She was shaking her head, and tears threatened once again. “I don’t think I can do it without Leia. I’m descended from such dark—”
“Rey,” Luke said. “Some things are stronger than blood.”
The rightness of his words sparked inside her. The Force was stronger than blood. And friendship. And love.
“But I’m afraid,” she confessed.
“Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi,” Luke went on. “Your destiny. If you don’t face Palpatine, it will mean the end to the Jedi. And the war will be lost.”
“Like you had to confront Vader,” she said, remembering the notes in his journals.
“It’s okay to be afraid. I was.”
She gave him an arch look.
“You think it’s an accident we found each other?” Luke continued. “Two orphans from the desert…The Force brought you to me and Leia for a reason.
He rose. Though island wind whipped at the strands of Rey’s hair, Luke’s seemed unaffected. “There’s something my sister would want you to have” he said. “Follow me.”
Luke led her inside his old hut. It was still in good condition, maintained by the Lanai caretakers in his absence. He pointed toward a loose brick in the wall.
“In there,” he said.
Rey removed the brick and reached inside. Her fingertips encountered a hard object wrapped in soft leather. She pulled it out. Unwrapped it.
It was a lightsaber, shining with relative newness. As soon as her hands gripped it, she sensed its owner, and she smiled.
“Leia’s lightsaber,” she said.
“It was the last night of her training,” Luke said.
Rey caught glimpses of his memory—lightsabers clashing, their blades lighting the jungle around them in soft blue and green. Their fight was fierce, but Rey felt a sense of fun. Of joy. Luke had loved training his sister.
Luke found himself toppled to the ground, his fall cushioned by a bed of ferns. He looked up at his twin—a much younger version of the woman Rey had come to know—who grinned, but her face held sadness too. Resignation.
“Leia told me that she had sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path,” Luke said.
“Oh,” Rey breathed. That was it. The thing Leia had been holding back.
“She surrendered her saber to me and said that one day, it would be picked up again by someone who would finish her journey.”
Rey stared at it. Was she meant to have this?
“A thousand generations live in you now,” Luke said. “But this is your fight.” He glanced down at the lightsaber in her hand. “You’ll take both lightsabers to Exegol.”
Her heart sunk. By trying to do the right thing, she had ruined everything. “I can’t get there,” she said. “I don’t have the wayfinder. I destroyed Ren’s ship.”
The Jedi Master’s smile held so much fondness it made her heart ache. “You have everything you need,” he said gently.
* * *
—
On Luke’s orders, Rey had laid down in the hut and closed her eyes. She’d given away too much of her life force during the healing, and she needed a brief rest, or she would get nowhere fast. Luke hadn’t pushed her, or told her how he expected her to get to Exegol, just given her space to think. It was exactly what Leia would have done.
What Leia would have done.
Rey flipped onto her back, sighing. She’d been asking herself for months: What would Leia do? This time, the answer was easy: Leia would leave Ahch-To and get back in the fight. In fact, she wouldn’t have come here in the first place. Even though, like Rey, Leia was descended from unspeakable evil.
Luke, too, when given the choice, had left to face his fears. How could she do any less?
Rey gave up resting and exited the hut, entering a damp, foggy morning. Clouds shrouded the island, and a low tide revealed wet, kelpy shoals.
One of the Lanai caretakers immediately stood up from a stone bench, giving Rey a disapproving glare over her beaklike nose. Rey glared right back, as the caretaker went inside the hut she’d just vacated, no doubt to clean and straighten. Had she been outside the doorway all night? The caretakers probably couldn’t wait for Rey to be gone, just like last time.
The TIE was now a smoldering wreck. A few porgs huddled nearby, as close to the warmth of the dying fire as they dared.
Something twinged inside her, called to her, and she stepped forward. A night drizzle had cooled the wreckage. Following her instincts, she reached down and shoved the detritus aside.
A wayfinder sat there, smokeless and pristine. Vader’s wayfinder.
Rey whispered, “Two were made…”
The noise of the sea was ever-present here on Ahch-To, but compared with what she’d just experienced on Kef Bir, it was a gentle, peaceful rhythm of waves against cliffs, diving porgs, crying gulls. So when something happened, it was noticeable.
Behind her, the sea churned violently, and wet spray hit her back. She turned. Peered over the cliffside.
Water was boiling up in the cove below. Luke’s submerged X-wing began to rise—first came the laser cannons on the wingtips, shedding water and seaweed. Then the fusial thrust engines, the cockpit canopy, the nose cone. Soon even the landing gear was clear, and Rey watched, awestruck, as the fighter drifted with perfect precision and control to an area of flat ground, where it landed with a tiny thump.
Her gaze was drawn to a figure nearby. Luke, eyes closed, shining blue against the cliffside, reaching out his hand.
He opened his eyes, saw her, and smiled.
She smiled back. Luke was right. She had everything she needed.
CHAPTER 15
D-O was hooked into a console, and Finn stood with Poe and Rose, staring at it, waiting for the information he knew would come. D-O twittered a question, and BB-8 beeped encouragement, assuring the little droid that all was well, that this was his mission.
Finn found himself fidgeting with impatience. A few strides away, C-3PO was similarly hooked up to R2-D2.
“Artoo, have you heard?” C-3PO said suddenly. “I’m going with Mistress Rey on her mission!”
R2-D2 chirruped in clear frustration.
“What do you mean, I already have?”
“There!” Poe pointed. Information flashed across the console screen: diagrams, maps, navigational codes, atmospheric data, asset distribution, tower logistics…
Finn exchanged an excited glance with his friend. “Everything you ever wanted to know for an air strike on Exegol.”
“Except how to get there,” Poe said, frustrated. “You see these atmo readings?”
Finn nodded. “A mess. Look at those magnetic cross fields.”
Rose leaned closer. “Gravity wells? Solar winds?” she said in a disbelieving voice. Which worried Finn. If their top engineer thought Exegol’s atmosphere presented an insurmountable obstacle, their mission was doomed before it had begun.
“How can their fleet even take off in that?” Poe said.
Which begged the question: How could they land in that? Fight in that? There had to be a way…
“I’m terribly sorry,” came C-3PO’s voice. “But he insists!” The golden droid waddled toward them, gesticulating with his arms, the little astromech following behind. “I’m afraid Artoo’s memory bank must be crossed with his logic receptors.”
Finn was glad the real C-3PO was back, but this was not the time—
“He says he’s getting a transmission from Master Luke!”
R2 was practically singing as he plugged into one of the console’s dataports. A subspace radar map appeared on the display. A blip showed as IN FLIGHT, bearing an X-wing signature.
Poe called up the identification. “That’s an old craft ID. AA-589.” He stepped back, blinking. Turned to Finn. “It is Luke Skywalker’s X-wing.”
Finn gaped.
“It’s transmitting course-marker signals,” C-3PO said. “On its way to the Unknown Regions!”
Finn was nearly overcome—with relief, with joy, with hope. “It’s Rey,” he said, with absolute certainty. “She’s going to Exegol.” He gripped Poe’s shoulder. “She’s showing us how to get there!”
Poe considered. Finn watched as his friend came to a steady conclusion. “Then we go together.”
* * *
—
Pilots and ground crew, mechanics and officers, all rushed toward the Tantive IV. Poe had called a briefing, and Rose had quickly rigged a holodisplay under the blockade runner’s giant belly. It sat atop cargo cases, and the image flickered in and out, but it would do. Finn had the floor, and Poe was happy to give it to him. Leadership was much easier when shared.
