Chapter Text
If the nightmares were what woke Rey up in the middle of the night, it was the strange noises that kept her awake.
She heard all sorts of sounds in the captain’s quarters of the Millennium Falcon, docked in the wastes just beyond the Lars homestead: the wind whistling through the dunes, a sandstorm in the making; the groan of a Jawa caravan scoping out the ship before she suggested they explore elsewhere; various creatures prowling the wastes. Some were typical desert sounds she had to reacquaint herself with when she decided to seclude herself on Tatooine for a while. These she adjusted to easily.
It was the crying that really got to her.
It always came in the deepest part of the night, where she was too far from morning to give up on sleep completely, but too alert to drift back into her horrid dreams; dreams where she watched Ben die and vanish, die and vanish, over and over, but his pain grew in each iteration, as if a knife plunged into her heart was twisting deeper and deeper every time.
She told herself she was just imagining it.
She was imagining the sound of Ben weeping. She was inventing the sensations of Darkness that crept into her mind late at night, cloying and harsh, prying at her skull, telling her that no one understood her, no one would love her, her parents resented her, you had nothing to go back to... you’re nothing, Ben Solo, nothing, and your death was too kind...
She had fled the Resistance, had come to the only place where she might be able to escape her ghosts, but they had followed anyway. Luke had appeared to her as a spirit. Leia, too, in time.
Ben was just...gone. He had not appeared to her as a ghost like his mother and uncle. He was gone . She hated telling herself that, but after years lying to herself, lies etched by the hundreds, no, thousands on the wall of her AT-AT home, she couldn’t do it now. She had watched him disappear. He had given his life force for her so that she might live.
So she told herself that it was all in her head. It was exhaustion causing this, exhaustion and grief. The anguish she felt was loss, nothing more.
This was her mourning. For so many nights, she couldn’t shed any tears, so she imagined them.
But the crying grew louder, louder, until finally, after weeks of loneliness and of sorrows she couldn’t voice, after weeks of being unable to cry, she wept. Each sob of his in her mind drew out one of her own until she was huddled in the ship’s galley with no way of explaining it to a worriedly- beeping BB-8 why she was bawling so ferociously.
When she had finally cried herself empty after weeks spent in mournful silence, she lifted her tear-streaked face from her knees and spoke to the night.
“Ben?” she whispered into the dark, lonely ship.
And for the first moment in many nights, there was silence. The weeping stopped.
A pain in her chest lifted. She sat up and tried again.
“Ben,” she called, her voice stronger now.
She was met with silence. A moment passed. Another.
“Rey?”
It was unreal. That couldn’t be his voice. He was gone. She was imagining things.
But...he had never said her name like that before.
“Ben, sweetheart,” she murmured. “Where are you?”
There was silence again. “Where are you, Ben?” she called, her hands balled into fists.
Another moment passed. Finally, she heard his voice, deep and sorrowful.
“I don’t know, Rey. I’m lost.”
“Ben, I’m going to find you.”
His voice was quieter when he spoke again.
“I’m scared, Rey. Please…”
His voice faded until she could barely hear it.
“Ben?”
Fruitlessly, she began to dart around the ship, bare feet pounding against the durasteel floor panels. She felt him. He was near, somehow. But where was he? Where?
“Ben?” she called.
She slapped the release for the gangplank and stormed out into the blackness of the desert.
All was silent again, eerie, and there was no phantom light of Ben. Her opposite. Her other half.
Gone again.
“I’ll find you, Ben,” Rey whispered into the night, tears running freely down her cheeks now. “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”
Her words seemed to disappear into the heavy air, but a voice called back, low and soft, before disappearing again.
“Rey…”
Rey was left alone again, shaken but determined.
She wondered for a minute if maybe she had imagined him. Maybe that wasn’t Ben at all, but another spirit, another ghost, another memory.
But she knew better. She had felt him, felt her Ben.
More than that: she had spoken to him. She had made a promise.
No more waiting in this wasteland of sand and ghosts.
She knew what she had to do.
She let herself back onto the ship, closing the gangplank behind her. Pulling a blanket around herself, she grabbed one of the ancient Jedi texts from the shelf in the galley.
Her masters were dead. Her guardians were all spirits. But she wasn’t the only Force user in the galaxy.
There might still be others.
Dathomir was a haunted place, a planet of ruins and beasts and nightmares, but she felt the Force snaking through it, jagged and erratic, but powerful.
It was Dark, but she was unafraid. The Darkness felt familiar to her now.
So many days in the bright light of the desert suns made the hazy, darkened atmosphere even more ominous. The foliage seemed to reach for her, as if trying to taste her, the shadows seemed to stretch for her. This place was trying to grab her, to latch on and drag her deeper.
She wandered through an empty village, seeking any sign of life. She had researched this place; though reports from the Empire said the Nightsisters were no more, she felt the intoxicating, vital Force energy of the place and knew that wasn't the case.
Her heart felt heavy with dread as she trudged on, deeper into the eerie silence. She felt herself disappearing from the light as she followed the tug of the Force, venturing deeper into the heart of the world. It was like descending into Exegol. It was as if she was in that tomb once more…
She felt the chill of death creep over her skin at the memory. She had to stop, finally, to collect herself. She would never have to go back there again. She was safe. Ben made sure of that.
She caught her breath, and continued.
After wandering for hours, feeling eyes on her she couldn't see, she caught a gust of movement in the corner of her eye.
"I know you're there," she said, speaking through the nervous anticipation coiling in her every muscle. "I mean you no harm."
She raised her hands to shoulder-height. "I seek the wisdom of the Nightsisters of Dathomir."
The air felt like static, and within a moment, a green mist appeared around Rey, and two cloaked women emerged.
"We have no desire for visitors," one hissed in accented Basic. "You are not welcome here."
"What do you want?" the other demanded. "You surely do not wish for your death, but it is what you are likely to receive."
" I know ," Rey said quickly. "I know. I bring no weapons with me. I only bring my knowledge of the Force, and seek to learn yours."
The Nightsisters knew the path of death. They knew how to reverse it. They could help, Rey thought.
"You are a Jedi?" one of the Sisters growled. "Your kind exterminated ours. It is through our strength alone that we have returned."
"The Jedi are gone," Rey corrected them. "I learned the ways of the last Jedi. I defeated the last Sith. The old ways are no more. I am all that is left."
Finally, she turned to stare at one of the Sisters.
"You use your knowledge of Force Magick to traverse the barrier between life and death," she said calmly. “I died. I returned. I have crossed that barrier. And the person who aided me...he didn’t come back.”
She felt a crackling in the air. More cloaked figures appeared. She turned to face all of them. “I don’t know how it happened. What he did...it was impossible. I shouldn’t be alive today.”
“So what do you want from us?” called an authoritative voice. Rey faced down the tallest cloaked figure. The texts had mentioned these fearsome women, the leaders of the Nightsisters. She had no doubt this was the Mother.
“I want to understand,” Rey said. “I want to learn. But I don’t expect you to take me because I ask, and I don’t want you to. I want to teach. I have experience with the Force no one left in the galaxy has. I want to share that with the Nightsisters.”
There was a heavy silence. A smaller voice called out to her.
“And what is your purpose?”
Rey drew in a sharp breath. From what she knew of the Nightsisters, this would be the hardest part yet.
“Just as I crossed the barrier between life and death...I believe he did, too, to bring me back. But he is trapped between.”
A beat. “Why do you say this?” the Mother asked.
“I’ve spoken to him. Heard him crying out at night. I thought I was imagining it, going mad. But he answered me. He’s alive, I know it. But he’s lost.”
Rey stepped forward and knelt, her face turned up to the Mother.
“I will undergo whatever trials you demand. I will follow your rules. I need to find him.”
There was silence for a moment.
“All this for the life of a man. Why would you go to such lengths for him? ”
Rey’s stomach churned. This had to work.
“I know you trust men as little as you trust the Jedi, and that I also understand. But he is...connected to me. The Force has bound us. His soul is half of mine, and I cannot live the life he has given to me until I repay the debt I owe him for it.”
Another moment of heavy silence. Rey lowered herself deeper into her bow.
“Please, Nightsisters. I know you have no reason to spare me, much less accept me, but I can’t live knowing that he is out there suffering for me,” she said. “I will give all my knowledge to you for even a chance to repay him. Please. Let me have this chance.”
Eternities passed as she knelt. Green lights flickered from above her, but she didn’t dare look.
She heard crunching on the dirt before her. A pair of boots and a red cloak. She looked up and met the gaze of the Mother.
“There is darkness in you, Jedi girl,” she said at last. “What you seek…the Magick you wish to use...it will ask more of you. You desire to grow this darkness?”
Rey had stared down her darkness before. It terrified her then. But now…now she was bold. Unafraid.
“Yes.”
“And what will you give it?” There was a glint in the Mother’s eye. “Your sisters will train you, help you get the answers you seek. We will ask for sisterhood. But there is a price for the knowledge you seek.”
“I will pay it,” she whispered. “Anything.”
“It is not us you will owe,” the Mother replied. “The Magick itself will lay its claim to you. It will demand a cost. You must be prepared. What will you give the darkness?”
She remembered Ben’s cries and swallowed the fear.
“Me,” she said. “All of me.”
There was another moment of silence and flashes of green light as the sisters surrounded Rey on all sides.
“Then you are ready.”
The Nightsisters needed to see what Rey was capable of, so the next evening they issued a test in lieu of an introduction.
“Defeat the creature,” Mother Shelish commanded. “By any means.”
Rey affected confidence as they lead her from the Falcon to the lair of the chirodactyl, the large, flying beast that had tormented too many of the Nightbrothers. She strolled out into the center of the cavern, head held high.
This one was a juvenile, but it was still powerful, energetic. Unpredictable. The Sisters whispered fretfully to one another. They did not know how to take this newcomer, but they did not relish the idea of her entrails being dragged across the surface of Dathomir.
But if she was telling the truth, if she had really trained as a Jedi...
The creature descended with several powerful gusts of its immense wings and a screech that echoed through the entire canyon. The young chirodactyl hovered angrily around Rey, thrashing its wings at her.
The Nightsisters watched in awe as she walked towards it slowly and, instead of reaching for the blade at her belt, raised a hand to it. It froze in midair, its body restrained but its eyes seeking frantically.
“Shhh,” Rey crooned. “It’s alright, little beastie. I didn’t come here to hurt you, okay?”
She strode toward it, her hand extended. It dropped to its feet gently with an enormous thud and the scattering of dust. Its wings remained stiff and unmoving, but the tension seemed to ease from its body.
Rey hummed as she approached its face, eyes level with hers. She extended her hand to its dark fur, stroking it in a small circle.
“See?” she murmured. “Not going to hurt you.”
A moment later the beast seemed to relax entirely, tamed beneath her touch.
“Well?” Rey called back to her audience. “Would you say this creature is defeated?”
Mother Shelish appeared beside her in a flash of green light a moment later.
“Impressive, Jedi,” she said. Rey didn’t dare fool herself into thinking there might have been genuine approval in her tone. “You subdued the beast without slaughtering it. Not many could have accomplished such a feat.”
Rey continued to scratch at the bat’s face as it twittered with delight, not acknowledging the woman beside her. Her thoughts had traveled to a time gone by on an island far away.
“This is not the first monster I’ve calmed with just a touch.”