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“Be with me.”
Rey floated several feet off the jungle floor. Her eyes squeezed shut, feeling the energy between all things and pulling it around herself.
Breathe in.
“Be with me.”
Breathe out.
She sent the feeling out, reaching across space and time for the strength of those that came before her and those that would follow after.
Breathe in. Clear the mind.
“Be with me.”
You’re not alone.
Breathe out.
She shook her head to clear her mind of a devastated pair of brown eyes. No matter how many times she tried to center herself. No matter how many breaths she took or how long she mediated, the Force never led her to the power she sought. It only ever led to him.
“They’re not with me.”
She flipped forwards with an exasperated sigh and floated to the ground. The moment her feet touched down she broke into a sprint. She’d been trying to out run the memories of the throne room for over a month now. Drowning herself in physical exertion and not allowing her mind to rest except during mediation. Still, he found her.
A frustrated grunt escaped her throat as she pulled her borrowed lightsaber to her hand and started her training course for the second time that day.
She’d long since mastered the physical elements of the course with only a little boost from the Force here and there. She easily scaled a rock face, lept over a ravine slicing a dangling ribbon with her ignited saber on the way across. She took a calming breath, entering the clearing and waiting for her presence to instigate the awaiting droid’s training protocol.
This final phase, a small droid zipping around her firing low voltage bolts, had been posing a particular challenge. It required finesse, balance, concentration. Soon it was zooming around her. She closed her eyes again, reaching out with the Force to steady herself and feel the droid’s movements.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She quickly deflected the first few shots with her saber.
You’re not alone.
A blaster bolt grazed her left shoulder as a swing went wide. She hissed as the bolt stung her skin.
“Get out of my head,” she spat at no one.
Her balance was shifting, slipping out of her control. And now the droid was zipping around her, too quick to deflect without the Force. She floundered for it, but just like each training session before, the Force slid unyieldingly through her mind. She danced and ducked, swinging the saber about her, but she was only able to block every other blast. Her new burns joining the marred skin she kept covered with her arm bands. With her free hand she tried to immobilize the droid. It shuddered, frozen for a moment within her grip, only to shake her off and continue its bombardment.
You’re not alone.
“Shut up,” she growled.
She stabbed wildly with her saber, missing the bolts altogether. In a last ditch effort, she flung the laser sword at the droid. It easily dipped out of the way.
His voice was just an echo of a memory. A constant mockery that bounced around her head any time she tried to harness her power. It reminded her of the Jedi she couldn’t reach, the friends she was avoiding, the fingertips stretching across a galaxy to burn against her own-
You’re not alone.
“Liar!” She spat, rolling to the ground under another round of blasts. She snatched a fallen branch in her hand and came up to spear the training droid against a tree. It sparked and fizzled in front of her.
“Kriffing liar,” she whispered bitterly.
She called the lightsaber back to her off hand. It landed hard against her outstretched palm, blade quickly retreating into the hilt, but she barely registered the pain over her own ragged breathing. Her eyes closed on the sight of the poor droid shutting down still pinned to the tree by her makeshift weapon. She already regretted taking out her anger on it. True, the little bot wasn’t sentient like BB-8 or R2, but the destruction felt wrong, dark.
You need a teacher.
She sighed, wondering when she’d stop hearing their conversations on loop in her head.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she replied absently.
“I would have made you fucking unstoppable,” a gruff voice answered from over her shoulder. She swung around letting the stick fall from her grip. And there he was, leaning against a tree with his arms folded across his broad chest. He scowled down at the skewered droid from across the clearing, radiating judgment.
“You passed up on ruling the galaxy with me,” he pushed off the tree and stalked closer, “to hide out on some backwater planet and fight training droids with sticks.” He said it in that annoying way he had of stating a question rather than asking.
“You are supposed to be so much more than this.” He spat, kicking at the skewered droid, which went flying, surprising them both. She bared her teeth at him, her anger bubbling to the surface.
“But I have no place in this story...”
“Stop it.”
“I come from nothing…”
“Rey-”
“I. Am. Nothing,” she shouted but she was close to tears, her anger and bitterness tangling together. “And-“
A soft sob cut off her sentence as she sank to her knees under the weight of her realization.
I am alone.
“No,” he whispered, his voice closer than she anticipated.
When she looked up through wet lashes he was there, kneeling in front of her. His jaw was still set in a tight lipped scowl but something about his eyes, maybe his brow, had softened ever so slightly.
She knew why he denied it. If she was alone, then he was too.
His hand lifted from the ground to cross the distance between them.
“You’re not-“
Before he can finish, before his fingers can brush against her tear-stained cheek, he's gone. And despite his insistence that she’s not, she was, in fact, alone again.
Still kneeling in the dirt, she focused on the place he just disappeared from letting her mind lull itself back into a meditative state.
You’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not alone.
“Neither are you,” she whispered back, realizing for the first time that maybe it wasn’t a memory floating around her head after all.
The force settled around her like a hand on her shoulder. For the first time in months, she felt like she could breathe.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand and rose to her feet.
The broken pieces of the training droid winked at her from across the clearing. She gathered them in her arms and headed back to her quarters, intent on fixing the little thing before dinner.