Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The storm came suddenly, as it often did in the deep desert. It howled against the viewport of the tipped Imperial freighter, never to lift into flight again.

There was an art to it all really. Turning an abandoned ship into a home. Making a living scrapping. There, a blanket roll tucked where seats once lay. There, a small lap table crafted by lopping the top off the copilot seat with a lightsaber. There, the marks on the wall from solo training in a tight space when the sandstorm lasted days, not hours. It passed the time.

Finn hadn't understood. Would never understand. After the war, after the wedding and riding space horses or what-have-you, he needed the bustle of city life, the sounds of Coruscant alive and flourishing. Mainly though, he just needed a job and a way to corral those orphans they had adopted together after the war.

It was rather sweet really. His wife working as an engineer while he worked a daytime care service for others’ children in their home and taught their children himself. After the life Rose lived, she didn't have much trust in any public forum of education until their later adult years when children were then better equipped to know their own minds. She'd seen countless bright eyes dim under organized schooling's mental reconditioning. And Finn was more than happy to make her dream a reality while Rose continued doing the work she loved. But sometime in the last five years, he’d also stopped. The visiting. But then, so had Rey.

Rey sighed, ending her meditation and rising.

Her hair, once divided into a signature style that had overtaken the young landscape of a new republic, now hung short, clipped to her shoulder on one side and buzzed to the quick on its mirror. She had never wanted a signature look, but like the Leia hair styles of her youth, it had caught on regardless of wishes and fishes.

Fifteen years had passed.

Fifteen. Years.

And Rey was alone. By choice.

But alone.

When her journey began, she was so full of hope. So naive. And when it ended, she hoped she could bury the truth of who she was. What she was.

But the truth followed her like a weight, pressing from all sides.

Palpatine. Palpatine. Palpatine.

Her heartbeat dinging to the sound of her guilt and her shame.

She should have never claimed the name of Skywalker, but claimed it she had regardless. The line was lost, and she thought herself worthy of its mantle.

It was laughable really. Despicable.

And when the truth revealed itself, as oft it did once the ashes settled, she fled. She fled to the planet she never called home, burdened with the poison of truths she could never unexpose. And she sank her past into the sands that held every tear of her childhood sorrows.

She returned to Jakku.

She returned, and let the galaxy sort itself without her.

Time moved strangely in the desert, and as the years wore on, she came to find a sense of solace in the knowable routine of it all. The pit where the hum of Ben's consciousness once stretched across parsecs and his emotions caught fire and played with her own hung limply. Empty. Like the once lush planet she found herself on, her soul stretched dry, choked with its own lack, as she struggled with its scraps.

She rose and sat crossed legged at her makeshift floor table. A few ionas of water and the polystarch ration expanded into her afternoon's meal. For all the limited moisture wealth she had farmed and brought with her from Tatooine, without the freight's water recycle and filtration system, she would have run dry years ago.

At one point, she had tried creating her own in-house miniature vaporator, but that pursuit had been a dead end without a usable droid and access to necessary parts. Having a standard moisture farm sized vaporator had proven ill-advised on a planet whose life sustaining necessities were controlled almost entirely by a singular entity. Unkar Plutt didn't take too kindly to competition.

Nor Jedis as luck would have it, which led Rey to create her own trade routes with some old friends in the more remote parts of the planet where she could live out her solitude without judgement. Wookies made for loyal and understanding friends. Chewie had his own small trade fleet, finally settling into a less hands-on role in the business. Though he still ran one trade route, a highly guarded single stop route with an old friend on Jakku.

With food done and meditation ended, Rey dropped into the routine of training as the winds continued to howl across the sands.

.........

Tucked in the tipped world of a firmly buried destroyer, Rey was at one with the rope she dangled from. Finding the ship had taken a mixture of skill and luck, but mostly it took Rey getting stuck in a patch of sinking sands and forcing herself into a nearly comatose Force induced state until her body arrived at the source of the surface breech--a single pane of busted transparisteel.

She now used the trap that had firmly tried to kill her as her main source of food, supplies, and trading material.

This particular destroyer was different from other ships she had scavenged. Before she removed them in the early years of finding the ship, bodies had littered the main thoroughfares in such a happenstance way that made Rey believe the arrogant ship admiral hadn't come to terms with the vessel's fallibility before its descent. The vessel had fallen quickly and unforgivably with all escape pods, save one, intact and undisturbed.

Wrapped in a moisture retaining outfit that had taken a full year of scrapping the largest untouched parts she could find and Force pull to the surface without collapsing the structure’s state of equilibrium, Rey climbed her way to the temporarily covered now widened viewport that had become the entrance of her explorations. The outfit creaked as she pulled herself to standing in the chamber she had crafted herself with scrapped metal so the events of that first dive through sand into the destroyer's abyss would never be repeated.

Today's haul was small but substantial. It had taken her nearly half the long daylight hours just determining how to remove the part in the first place, and the rest had been spent in a strange dance of the physical and the Force to make removal possible.

Sometimes it concerned her how long it took for her to not just believe the Force existed but to recognize that she had in fact been using it all along in her determination to out-scrap every scavenger on the planet as a teen and young adult. Not that she ever had much to show for her efforts.

She returned to the hovel upon which she laid her head as the dueling moons rose to prominence with the sun's setting. An outdated X-wing Starfighter stood like a sentinel perched at the structure's side.

It was Commander Poe’s.

Rey resigned herself to the feigned concern and overt manipulative attempts to make her return to the Core and end her self imposed exile. It wasn't all feigned she knew, but it was hard sometimes to separate the Poe she knew from the one that existed today.

“Commander,” Rey said by way of greeting as she set her haul down and entered the cockpit.

Poe sat comfortably in the pilot seat, head back, eyes closed, arms crossed. He looked firmly at ease, while BB-8 nervously twitched at her entrance, unsure where to go.

Rey crouched down from where she stood. “Oh hello, BB-8. I've missed you. Where's D-O? Aren't they usually with you?” BB-8 whirled, wheeling forward and back in the process. “Oh, not this time? No, I understand. I'm still so glad you came.” Poe cleared his throat.

“Well. I see it’s ‘Commander’ now.” Poe’s eyes were open, searching as he stood and leaned against the backrest, taking in the less than neat state of her dress and jaggedly cut hair now exposed from the helmet she held at her side. Rey stood, a more passive expression overtaking the small smile she had given for the droid’s benefit. She shifted minutely under the scrutiny, waiting. “Quite the friend you are, Rey. I thought I’d earned at least a hello as well. Couldn’t have even bothered with sending a message through subspace transceiver or anything like it. Haven’t so much as talked to me in nearly seven years now. I kept sending messages through Chewie for years, with no reply and nothin’ outta him. Like I hadn’t fought for you. Tried to make them see. Explained when no one would listen nor defend, not even you!” Rey flinched, fingernails digging tightly into her balled fists at her side and looked away, hair hanging like drapes, closing off her expression.

Poe sighed, fingers brushing through his unruly locks. He looked exhausted. Like the work to rebuild had taken more than just his years. Quieter, calmer, he began again, “Look, I’m not here to have that conversation again. I know your thoughts, and while I disagree strongly, I’m not here to fight. I apologize. See, I can apologize. Still got it. Crikk, I’m going about this all wrong.”

Rey just stared, breathing calming breaths before walking slowly around the living space as she gathered supplies. “Why don’t you sit down? I can make us a little jeru tea, and we can start over. It’s been a long day. I’m tired, if I were being honest.”

Poe agreed and sat crossed legged at the table as she efficiently made just enough tea to fill two glasses. Slowly sipping from the small cup, he began again. “The Kaminoans, do you remember them?”

Unsure how to respond, she shook her head, working to recall the species.

“Yeah, not many do. A bit of a reclusive species, especially after what went down with all those clones they made.”

“Wait, Kaminoans, like from Kamino? During the Clone Wars? I thought they had gone extinct decades ago.”

“Well that Sith cult learned to clone Palpatine from someone. Apparently, there were some Kaminoans involved. Turns out they are still around. Found this out a couple months ago. There’s a few of them apparently that aren’t quite dead as a dicario. Well not yet that is. Their reproductive system is a bit wack with that planet of theirs essentially worthless now. That’s a whole ‘nother matter though. Anyway, they sent two messengers to the Galactic Alliance. Caused quite a stir.”

Rey had set to clearing the table while he spoke, cleaning the cups and nodding like a functioning adult human. She put them away as she spoke, “Did they now? And what has that got to do with me?”

Poe’s toe tapped lightly against his boot sole as BB-8 shifted slightly back and forth at his side. Now we come to the root of it all. Poe wouldn’t be here for just any reason. The Alliance, for all the good it had accomplished, for all the rot it had expunged, was still relatively new. Untested. Untrusted too really. Poe hadn’t left the seat of power in ten years, but he came for a simple chat with a hermit who was better suited for dunes and avoiding gnaw-jaws than putting the galaxy back together. She could hardly keep herself together as it was.

The stench of the makeshift cabin’s recycled air centered Rey’s swirling thoughts. In, out. In, out. And under it all, a feeling. A whispering Force. A voice beckoning her to embrace the change that was to come.

Chapter Text

The guards talked, words only slightly muffled by the energy barrier. Their eyes never really left him, catching every minute movement like he would break the barrier at any moment and do.... He really wasn’t sure what they expected. They were young, the guards, perhaps they just feared the idea of his existence.

They wouldn’t be the first.

Clones were not very well liked after the wars. After what followed too closely behind.

RN-1217 didn’t blame them for their fear. He was what he was. It had confused him as a child though. Why the children in the stories his caretakers told would play together and fight great evils and come home to a family who still loved them and accepted them. He had wondered what it would have been like, to have someone who accepted him.

It wasn’t that his caretakers hadn’t cared for him, hadn’t taught him everything he knew, hadn’t trained him to defend himself and how to think for himself. In fact, they very much encouraged his questions, as if the idea of him thinking independently fascinated them. That’s what he was to them, a puzzle to be solved. Not a person to be loved. But then, he wasn’t sure how capable they were of a love that stretched across pragmatism and rationality.

His childhood “episodes,” as they called them, were full of emotions, bottled to explosive levels. Their level voices and perceived apathy quieted the parts of him that wanted to rage. They taught him to ground himself in facts over feelings, to observe, to find one thing to focus on wholly until the emotions had passed. The exercises helped, but didn’t solve what they could not really understand nor comprehend. The concept of emotions was something they understood in theories, not realities.

But overall, they were happy years really. His childhood. He had a home. He had adults that raised him, who spent time with him. He had a full belly and warm bed.

It wasn’t until he was older, when he began to work with them directly in their research ventures, in their genetic computations and the memory phantoms they were working to prove, that he really began to question. His existence and their continued interest in him made little sense. They kept him isolated to protect him from facing some of the difficulties his predecessors had experienced. He understood this just as he understood the history of what he was.

And yet. The people who came to make note of the research progress would sometimes look at him as if they were waiting for something. They weren’t unkind, always spoke in soft direct words, always came in trios. And they never spoke to him directly, but still he wondered.

The facts were beyond him though. Try as he might, there were pieces of their research he was unauthorized to access. There were histories he knew they hid even from him. In all his learning and questioning, they had told him very little about the man whose face he shared.

If he were being honest with himself, perhaps he would be wondering if the guards’ trepidations towards him were based on a life he had never lived.

But today, he chose to lie. To himself. Facts wouldn’t save him from what was to come. Wouldn’t save him from the woman’s steady neutral stare.

Her hazel eyes held multitudes, appearing almost haunted by a pain that he supposed had never really healed. She watched him, contemplating. The guards all but ignored her slight form sitting cross legged on the floor. No, their whispers and stares were directed at him . But under it all, he could tell she held power here. Though why, he couldn’t say. She certainly didn’t look like much.

She wore a simple crossed garment, once a light color of some kind before the stains and obvious wear set in. RN-1217 wondered if she wore such clothing because she didn’t care or because she had to. He wanted to ask her why she didn’t just request that they find her new garments, but he didn’t dare. He was the stranger here after all. But then, nobody quite looked her in the eye either. Maybe they weren’t all too different.

“And how long has the clone been like this?” she was saying, continuing to watch RN-1217.

The man to her side spoke like her, as if he weren't right there. As if he were merely an animal in a cage and they were at a menagerie. The man's name he knew. The commander. The man had made sure of it on their first meeting, when they threw him in here, almost literally.

Commander Poe spoke with the voice of one used to being heard. “He’s been contained since not long after his arrival.”

She turned her head, searching the commander’s face, before resuming her scrutiny of the man in containment. “Get him out.”

“She can’t--!” a guard began, stepping forward.

“Sir--,” began another.

“No.” The commander spoke over them both, firmly, eyeing them in turn before rounding back on the woman. She looked up. “No. Listen, I trust you. I trust your judgement. But this isn’t some guy off the street we picked up for drunken flying maneuvers. This is....” His arms waved in the direction of the holding cell. “Well. You see him.”

The woman stood, dusting herself off while she did so, now facing the commander fully. “I do see him. I see a man who is scared. Almost as scared as these soldiers you have watching him, day in and day out I’m sure. Where did you even--you know what? Nevermind.”

“No. I want to hear what you were gonna say. Where did we what exactly?”

“Where did you find these guards? They look barely even trained.”

He looked around and motioned to them. “Listen, these men are what we have. We have good people keeping the peace throughout the galaxy and working to keep this Alliance afloat. Frankly, we don’t have the resources to keep the veterans here at the moment. These are good men who have earned their positions.” He looks her over and tips his head slightly to the side. “But that’s not what you really wanted to ask, is it?”

The woman sighed heavily, fingers of one hand tapping against her thigh. “No, you’re right.” She shook her head and steeled herself. “I need to speak with him--”

“Well that really shouldn’t be a pr--”

“Alone.”

“Oh.”

She shuffled her feet. “Look, I think it would be good for me to.... I just. I need to do this. I need to talk to him and not feel like I have a whole audience. Please. Please let me do this. I won’t touch the containment field. I just....” She shrugged and shook her head slightly as she looked up at the ceiling.

The commander breathed, swallowing whatever disapproving words he had been about to say before she began her pleading. He looked around. “Well. You heard her. Let’s leave them some privacy. Who knows? Might do some good. Maybe she’ll get through to him. I know none of you have gotten much out of him.”

Nobody moved.

He sighed, then started waving his hands in a shooing motion towards the door.

“All of you. Now.” The guards looked around, then saluted quickly as they made their way towards the exit. Commander Poe went with them, pausing at the door without turning around.

“He’s not him you know. I hope you know that. I’m sorry that I had to ask this of you.”

She nodded once. “I know.”

And the mechanical door clicked tightly shut, leaving the two of them alone, save for the hum of the barrier.

The woman started pacing, a few turns this way and that way, before finally sitting down and resuming her crossed legged position, but closer this time than before.

RN-1217 was already sitting down, on the side of his cot. He hadn't moved outside of some fidgeting when the pair had initially walked in and he was unsure what to expect. He was still unsure, but the woman had a... something about her that felt grounding to his mind that wanted to expect the worst. Wanted to expect more than the whispered but pointed taunts and occasional dropped food of some of the guards, more than the hours of interrogation at odd times that broke up his sleeping and awake cycle, more than apathy and distrust. He expected cruelty.

And so he was surprised when she finally began to speak, after several more long moments of silent contemplation.

“What do they call you?”

He said nothing.

“I know you can hear me. These fields may hum, but they are not deafening. Could you tell me your name? ...Please.”

“It’s--,” he coughed. “That is, my name is RN-1217.”

“Hello, RN-1217. I am called Rey.”

A pause while they simply stared at each other, each trying to unravel the other.

“Do you share any memories of your predecessor? Is there anything of him that remains?”

“No. No, nothing remains but the genetic code they used to create me.”

“I see.” She breathed and broke from his gaze, looking to his left while lost to her thoughts. He wanted to know them, her thoughts. He wondered what she thought of him.

“Can I ask--”

Her searching gaze returned. “Yes?”

“Did you... did you know him? The man whose body I wear?” He swallowed.

“Yes,” she spoke quietly, each word more hushed than the last. “Yes, I knew him.”

She rose then, and so did he. And following her lead, they both approached the barrier. Rey looked up at him. “Are you a danger?”

He could suppose some of what she meant by that, so he began the same explanation he had repeated countlessly since coming to this place. “I have a built in kill phrase. Those who kept me, who made and raised me, said they put it in place for the day I was ready to leave them, so that what others feared of my kind would never have the opportunity to come to pass again. My keeper, who came with me to this place, gave the phrase to the commander after I was taken away and put here. I do not know it.”

“That is not what I meant. Are you dangerous? Do you consider yourself to be dangerous?”

“I... I do not know.”

She tilted her head and raised a hand, before dropping it. Clearing her head with a shake, she said, “Would you like to be free of this cage?”

He laughed. “I carry the cage with me. What does it matter if there is an added layer? I will never be free.”

“But would you though? Like to be free?”

RN-1217 reached for the wall at his side and slid down to sitting, knees bent in the small space. “Yes,” he breathed, his voice choking with its own sincerity, the emotions the Kaminoans had tried so thoroughly to repress now brought fully into the light. His head pressed against the wall, and he turned his gaze back to her. “More than anything.”

She nodded and looked down, lost to thoughts as she turned and headed towards the door. Looking into his eyes one last time before her departure, a... something... past through her gaze before she spoke for the final time.

“I will do what I can.”

And Rey left him.

Now, left once more with his thoughts, the guards, and the companionable hum of the barrier, he felt what he had never truly felt and had only understood in theories himself. He felt... hope.

Chapter Text

The sound of her breathing and the beating of her own heart overran the chaos of being at council with the leaders of the Galactic Alliance. There were words being shouted, looks that lasted longer than glancing and held an undercurrent of revenge to come. Or maybe the glances were just glances and words were just words. Rey couldn’t tell.

The press of bodies in the overlarge chamber, though she stood apart from it all, was enough rattle, and the calm neutral facade she was striving for must have had cracks. They had to see it. How she stood so stiff, how her answers, on those rare times she was brought into the conversation, were short, to the point, how she had to concentrate on their faces before answering, searching her mind to recall the question they asked in the first place.

The voices had stopped again.

Commander Poe was mouthing something, or was he speaking? The question. Someone had asked... “Yes, I... I do not believe him to be a danger.” Her fingers grip the fabric at her sides. “I did not sense malice in his heart while we spoke.”

A being rose, speaking with haughty finality, as if this was not a person they were discussing, but rather an animal, less than an animal, a vermin, a thing. “Forgive me, but a lack of malice is not enough evidence to keep him from being kept in stasis, let alone alive. Clones are barely human. I move to seal him away until his ultimate death. That is more than that thing deserves.”

There were nods, too many nodding heads for her liking, as she took in the room and the faces its walls contained.

“Now, wait a moment...” Poe had risen to his full height. Her eyes slid over him, taking in the council with each slowed breath.

Some of the faces were familiar, but worn with age and the passage of time. Many were new to her, unfamiliar and unknown. One being seemed to take especial interest in catching her movements. Their companion was whispering something, but they waved them off, not losing focus for a moment. They wore a gaudy outfit that spoke of wealth from a resource rich planet. Rey couldn’t make out their name plaque, the distance too great to make out the words proclaiming their home planet or people they represented.

The sounds reached a crescendo and Rey began tapping on her leg, a habit from when she still had a lightsaber to wear. No, that was not quite true. She had a lightsaber, which she had hidden in the sands while she traveled. But the risk of the public ire that comes from being the Jedi who did nothing in the time that so many were suffering, the Jedi who lost, who had only ever taken one apprentice for a short time at Poe’s behest, an apprentice she had once traveled with and considered a friend, an apprentice who would never be the same again—the weight of it all was crushing and the walls, the walls, would never be far enough away to keep those memories from swirling, there, just beneath her skin. A skin that was covered. Coated. Swimming in the blood that dripped, dripped, dripped....

Rey jerked slightly, shifting her feet, too slight for everyone to see, but they saw. They saw it all.

“And what does our Jedi think of it all? What does she think we should do? After all, we did not just bring her here to ask little questions like, ‘is he safe,’ did we not?” They had risen while her mind swirled, drowning in memories that even the desert sands of Jakku would never dry up. Their arms were raised and expressive as they spoke the Galactic Basic tongue with some difficulty, overlaid by an accent she could not place. “What do you think of this clone who comes to us wearing our greatest enemy’s face? Your enemy’s face, who died in the halls with the rest of his kind. What would you have us do?”

It felt like a trap. And yet. When they spoke, the multitude of voices died quickly, extinguished faster in those few words than the speech and opinions of any other. Who are you? But that did not matter in this moment when all eyes were upon her as the council waited patiently, some greedily, to hear her response.

When she spoke, it was with purpose, her hands stopped their tapping as she began, and by the end, she felt almost like she could do it, like she could do this one thing right, that maybe she could save him, even if it wasn’t really him at all.

“I think the best we could do is to take him to a remote location, where he would be monitored and unable to leave, until we know what all this means.” The being nodded in agreement, then turned to their companion as the final words spilled from Rey's lips, while something like a smile ghosted across their own. “And I believe we could find that, a remote place to observe and study his behaviors, on Jakku... with me.”

And then the chaos erupted, from every cubit of the chamber, and its sound was deafening. And as the leaders and representatives spoke, Rey closed her eyes and remembered.

She had a place here once. Once, they would listen to her words and consider thoroughly. Once, her opinions and insights mattered much more than the show of lights and a tool to utilize and exploit the assembly had turned her into, no more than a pretty toy on a shelf for them to dust off and use, but only when she was truly needed. Even before her past had been laid out and made bare, they had all been relentless in using her to forward their own personal agendas.

The past swirled, and her grip on the present and on her sense of self slipped. Bitterness clanged within where peace had lain as the discourse and infighting continued. And Rey caught hold of a vision, one that had plagued her and tempted her for so long, of sands blown through a Tatooine water farm, and of a hand, firm and unshakably alive, grasped within her own. She clung to that dream of what could never be, reaching, gasping for the surface, for the calm she needed to endure this moment, this moment before she could return to the quiet, to the silence and imagined solace, of the world she hated almost as much as she hated herself. The dunes of Jakku were calling her away.

A booming voice broke through the chaos, slicing it into the silence of a bated breath. Her eyes flew open and caught sight of Commander Poe, “Unfortunately, I think we have very little options here. We do not know what this clone's master intended. What is left of the Kaminoan who brought him, after the mind poison hidden on her person took effect, well, there really wasn't much left of her now was there? We cannot allow the threat this clone represents to crack into the equilibrium we have only just managed to reach.”

Poe slammed a fist down onto the stand in front of him, continuing emphatically, “I hate to say it, but... this may be our best option. We have got to figure out his purpose and the plans set in place for him, and, like it or not, the only being in this entire blasted city who has gotten more than a few one worders out of him is the one person I know can handle him, by herself or otherwise. We need to figure this out, and quick, before any of their other schemes start coming into play and before the public really catches wind of what's going on and we incite a panic through our inaction. I for one am ready to put this whole business behind us.”

This time when the words began, Rey picked out their meanings. “A vote, a vote!” “Put it to a vote!” “Let's be done with this all!” “Let us vote!”

And through it all, through the votes and final remarks, mirth played subtly across their eyes, and Rey wondered who this could be, this being who stood apart.

As she left the hall, the vote now accounted with a daunting finality, Rey's mind wandered as she planned for the days and weeks to come, still not quite ready to meet what was coming, but glad to have more moments to unravel the conundrum of his existence, of the clone who wore the face of Kylo Ren, of Ben Solo, of the man Rey had loved so many years ago.

.........

A tracker had been implanted beneath the clone’s skin. The implantation site was still a little raw, as the council had ordered the med droid to insert the device just above the main life giving arteries of his wrist.

It was barbaric. Rey despised the prominent display of the council's fears made physical. But if this act and regular reports were enough to appease those who would rather see a tattered corpse burned after torture, then it was a sacrifice they would have to navigate without complaint.

RN-1217 did not comment on her living quarters as they entered the freighter, choosing instead to slowly walk around, as if her hovel were an exhibit and not her life. To be frank, he had not spoken much since his release and subsequent transportation with armed guards to Jakku, the same armed guards who stood awkwardly just inside.

Rey waited a long moment before releasing a long-suffering breath. “You may leave now.”

“Jedi Rey, we were told to remain with him for the first 24 hours of his arrival. We cannot leave yet.”

“Then you may observe from space, but it is time to go.”

And then they were alone, two souls apart in not so much space, as the howls of wind tossing the sands were not just heard, but felt in Rey’s cracking facade. She sagged into the pilot's seat, pointing to a bundle tucked in a corner. “That bedding is for you. Get some sleep. We can speak tomorrow.”

And they both settled in to sleep, both fitfully aware of the other's quiet presence, both listening and waiting for the sounds of the other's deep breathing to release the anxieties of the unknown. Both woefully and wholly alone in their minds and in their skins.