The ship put Resistance ships into context. The Resistance showily eschewed strict military ranks and polished decor. They wanted to be, and be seen as, creative and free, in contrast to the buttoned-down and harshly regulated First Order. Rey had already more or less known that, but seeing it illustrated from the First Order's point of view made it more real.

She wasn't restrained in any way. The acolytes made a show of not doing so. She didn't even have to buckle herself in; the ship, one of the acolytes explained, had top-of-the-line gravity stabilizers, and a two-shell construction. When they spun in space, they'd stay oriented with the floor beneath them inside.

She felt the twinge then, a pull of want. Of course part of it appealed to her. Here was a promise of danger, which she'd grown up with her entire life, and which didn't particularly disturb her. But here also was a promise of safety. Not the Resistance's safety, which lived in struggle and long, painstakingly democratic talks. This was the safety of power, of rule. This was the safety of staying within your role, or being killed.

The power whispered to her that her role would be great, indeed. Safety and bounty, control and domain. Her palms fairly itched with it. And, gallingly, she couldn't push the whisper away, even as the acolytes' knowing smirks indicated that her response was predictable.

But she was still not weak. She said, "Are we going, or not?"

"Where do you think we're going?" the one who'd brought her on board said.

"Some enormous station." Rey shrugged. "Why should I know?"

"You know nothing of us? After months in the Resistance's pocket? I doubt that."

"I spent months training." Maybe they didn't need to know that. Rey bit the inside of her cheek. "I'm from Jakku. What do I know of the First Order?"

"Enough to oppose us, apparently."

"That's just common sense," Rey shot back.

"Hmm," the acolyte said. "Common sense for a Jakku nobody, around whom the Force settles like planets rotate the sun."

The analogy struck Rey as more than slightly blasphemous, but she held her tongue. If she had one job in all this, it was to stay alive long enough to figure out a way to escape.

Stay alive, and stay herself. The latter might prove more challenging.

The journey to the First Order's base was short. The Core Planets crowded together, compared to the Western Reaches. As they docked, Rey watched ships drift past. This kind of space wasn't what she'd seen or heard about. This kind of space was populated and wealthy. Did the people in those ships love the First Order, or merely tolerate them?

Well. It hardly mattered. The First Order had destroyed an entire system. Everyone they permitted in their airspace now had to swear obedience.

She half expected to encounter Ren as the acolytes led her onto the base ship, but no other Force users were anywhere to be found. One of the acolytes led her to her room - or holding cell, more properly. They shut her in it, and she found that she couldn't open the door on her own.

She sat down on the bed. It was nicely appointed. There was a chest of drawers to store belongings she didn't own, and a datapad, and two holoscreens, and a 'fresher. Her own 'fresher. What luxury.

The lights shone down, bright and unabating. Alone and isolated, she let herself feel a fraction of the panic she'd frantically kept at bay.

Her heart pounded in her ribs, and she took the deepest breaths she dared. Poe and Finn would have escaped by now, and found the Resistance. They'd be explaining the situation to them. Maybe, Rey thought, Poe would fly with a squadron to destroy this very base. She'd die - that wasn't great - but the acolytes would die, too. Snoke's hold on the Senate would weaken.

And the fighting would continue, for years and years. The weight of it pressed into her, turning the solitude into agony. After awhile, she curled up in a ball on the bed, screwing her eyes shut and trying to think of anything other than how utterly hopeless she felt.

She was left alone entirely until the next day, when a droid led her to a small room occupied only by a single acolyte.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" the acolyte said.

This one was human, and held out a hand after speaking. "Liren."

Rey wanted to spit at her. Instead she shook the proffered hand, a strange motion that sent prickles along her skin. "I don't know what you mean," she said, aware it was a transparent lie.

Liren's lips, blood-red and sharp-edged, curled. "Of course not. But it hurts all of us. When you are so close to the Force, the discord tears at you."

"I thought that's what the dark side lived for." Stupidly spoken. She schooled her expression as Liren laughed.

"We want order just as much as you," she said. "Why else would we do this? But we can't control everyone." Spoken with sadness. "We can nudge here and there, and perhaps hold a few people for a time...but humanity breaks free in the end. That's why there needs to be more of us. Why we have you." She patted Rey's hand.

"I'll help you control more people?" The idea felt repellent. But of course, it might have to this woman as well, in the early days.

"You'll help us bring order and peace to the galaxy."

Order. Peace. Right, Rey thought. Violence and slavery - people like Finn, brainwashed and hidden under masks. The darkness stirred in her, reminding her that she could kill these people and escape, exert her will on what she thought was right.

She smiled politely and ignored it. "I'd like some peace."

Liren didn't believe her, but she didn't strike Rey, either. She leaned away and watched Rey with half-closed eyes.

Rey, for lack of anything better to do, surveyed the room. It had the same oddly shaped panels as the other parts of the base. The panels could be hiding anything; no other furniture or implements existed to indicate what the purpose of the room was.

It occurred to her, somewhat belatedly, that they might have plans to torture her. She shivered.

"Cold?" Liren said.

"No." Yes. Rey cleared her throat. "Does the base grow things?"

"Crops?"

"Or...things." Rey knew plenty about how to grow or create food for a long journey, but she didn't know if her knowledge was out of date, or what it might reveal about her. She didn't, she thought with a surge of frustration, know enough - even when she'd learned so much while waiting on Jakku.

"Oh, of course," Liren said, with so much understanding that for a moment Rey was afraid her mind had been read again. "You grew up on Jakku. I imagine a ship of this size would fascinate you."

She said it like she thought Rey was a child. "I've been places since then."

"With the Resistance. Hardly the cutting edge." The smile, this time, was markedly cruel. "I've lived longer than you - much longer, child, and seen much more. But some things can still surprise me." A finger pointed in Rey's direction, with a long, dark nail at the tip. "Like you."

"Nothing about me is surprising."

"No? Lord Vader thought he'd found all the Force sensitives of his time - and we've continued the search after his death. Hiding on a backwater planet isn't as effective as you might think. But no one sensed you. Not so much as a blip."

"The Western Reaches are remote."

"Not so remote. Not for a descendant of the Skywalkers - and we had one, you know."

She spoke without thinking. "Had?"

Liren's composure didn't change, but she pressed her lips together, just slightly. "The Supreme Leader feels he's best used elsewhere."

That could mean a thousand things. Rey did her best not to think about what Leia must be feeling. "Is this an interrogation, then?"

"Do you think we'd do that to you?"

"Ren did."

"Ren is young." Older than Rey. She looked in Liren's eyes, then, impulsively seeking truth, trying to discover where this woman had come from, and why she now believed in Snoke. But of course, she found nothing. "Come with me," Liren said, and stood.

Rey felt the compulsion. It was so subtle that even as she considered it, her mind tried to skitter away from the truth. A nudge here, a push there. She couldn't possibly catch all of them. She followed Liren out, knowing that her decision to do so wasn't completely hers.

She had to escape. She had to. She'd lose herself here, she knew, and become one of them, murderers and thieves even as they claimed to be part of a supreme and just law.

Liren brought her to a vast network of terraced gardens. They stood at one edge of the enormous ship; to get to the gardens, they'd had to take two separate intra-ship transport pods. The terraces, made of some sort of translucent polymer, held up twining vines, explosive flowers, heavy fruits, and a dozen plants Rey had no reference or name for. They walked through the gardens and came to an enormous observation deck, three times as big as the entire Millennium Falcon. At the end of it was a perfectly clear, curving view of space.

"Doesn't it look tiny?" Liren waved at Chandrila. "And yet, it's infinitely complex - as everything to do with the Force is."

"But it's not just to do with the Force. It's people."

"And the Force runs through them, and in us," Liren said. "Turn around."

Rey obeyed. Together, they gazed at the plants. Rey allowed herself to relax just enough to see the Force in them.

"We've tamed them," Liren said. "These plants represent the ecosystems of dozens of planets. Half of them would kill the other half, if given the chance. Some of them are poisonous, some of them refuse to produce even the smallest edible fruit or leaf. But here they are, next to one another. The First Order has groomed thousands of them to work together - and to provide this base with oxygen, and with food."

It didn't mean anything, Rey told herself. But of course she couldn't believe that. This grotesque beauty was of the same sort that had led the First Order to destroy five planets in one terrible blow.

"I'd like to -" Rey's throat closed up. What could she ask for here that wouldn't get her killed? "I'd like to be trained," she forced herself to say.

"What do you imagine our training will be like?"

Liren spoke absently, but the image flashed in Rey's mind anyway: Finn, shaking and terrified after being captured by Ren.

Liren laughed. "It won't be like that," she said. "Don't be silly, child."

"I'm not -"

"He's valuable to you. Oh, don't lie to me. We know who your associates are. But to us, he's nothing. One of millions. You'll come to understand that."

She couldn't act on her horror. And that wasn't even itself inhumane; hadn't Luke told her she needed to learn restraint, even in the face of terrible things? But Luke was down on Chandrila and she was stuck up here, fighting against the ebbing current of darkness that she felt even here, among life.

"Teach me," she said again. "I didn't come up here for horticulture."

"Impatience can kill, you know," Liren said.

But she said it like a teacher might praise a young pupil. She smiled, and looked at Rey with new consideration. Rey gritted her teeth. "Almost anything can kill," she managed to say. "So teach me."

Liren gestured a hand. It was a lazy movement, her fingers just barely curled, and Rey didn't expect the result: her own body flying across the room and landing, hard, against the observation wall, falling face-first to the floor. She was used to pain, but it still took her a long moment to get her arms under her and push herself upright.

Liren stood over her, looking unimpressed. "Where's your anger?"

"What?"

Liren sighed. "This is the problem with a tragic childhood. All that anger, all that pain - but you're used to it, too." She kicked Rey with a sharp-toed boot. Rey cried out in spite of herself.

"Feel it," Liren said. "Stop me. Or it will surely become worse."

For a too-long and bleak moment, she welcomed it. Let it get worse, she thought. Let her die. There was no one who could help her.

No. She lashed out with everything in her, instinctively - and Liren reeled back.

It wasn't a throw. It wasn't even really a proper blow. But it was a beginning. Rey leaped to her feet and backed away from Liren, circling around so that she had space. Her hands itched for her old staff, but of course she had nothing. Only her hands, her feet, and...

The Force. It roused within her. She felt the palms of her hand grow hot, and rushed Liren with all the fury inside her.

Liren laughed, parried, and said, "Can you feel it? That's not the light side, child. That's not the Force that those weak would-be Jedi want you to feel."

Rey didn't care. She rushed Liren again, and again, until it was Liren who had her back to the observation wall, Liren who couldn't move against Rey's power.

She stood in front of her, gasping for breath. She had Liren's arms pinned to the wall, her legs held immobile with ankles pressed together. Rey burned with the desire to kill her, to crack the base ship like a nut and let everything in it burn.

Liren said, "Good. Hold onto the feeling. Control it. This is your first lesson."

But Rey found that she was tired of lessons. She reached out with her hand - only her hand, open-palmed and stiff-fingered - and slapped Liren. Her head flew back, cracking on the wall. Rey pulled her power back from Liren's limbs, and Liren fell, unconscious, to the floor.

Rey had learned when to make an exit. She left, booted feet silent on the floor, heart pounding in horrified panic.

She made it to her room without being waylaid, and so concluded that Liren had gotten what she'd wanted out of her. At least, then, she wouldn't be imprisoned for -

Using the Force to hurt. For using the dark side. For very nearly murdering someone, and being stopped only by qualms she wasn't sure she'd have again.

She was a monster. She sat down on her bed and put her head in her hands.

Eventually, she'd undoubtedly have thrown the pain off. She'd never had the luxury to wallow in sadness before, and habit would have reasserted itself. Before that could happen, though, a soldier of the First Order - not a stormtrooper, but an officer she didn't recognize - opened her door.

"You'll come with me now," he said.

Anger crept into her again. "And what if I don't?"

"You'll come with me now," he said again, and despite the fact that he was no more Force sensitive than a normal person - despite the fact that she could have killed him, the same way she nearly killed Liren - she felt compulsion wash over her.

"I'll come with you now," she said, and stood.

He led her down a hallway, down stairs, then down another hallway, farther than she'd gone with Liren yet all on foot. He didn't offer her any explanation, or in fact any conversation at all. Panic welled in the corners of her mind, but her heartbeat stayed steady, and her mind skittered away from any possibility that it might be wise to try to run.

The base was spherical, like their planet-killing planet, like the Death Stars had been. They went to the center, trading wide steps full of people for narrow steps, still meticulously clean, but clearly rarely traveled. He led her to a large, pitch black room, and she stood completely still as he left.

Darkness. No stars, no distant pinprick of ship's light. Only Rey, and her breathing, and that artificial calm that squeezed her heart into beating slowly.

Then a voice came, barely more than a hiss on nonexistent wind. "Are you afraid?"

The Force, Luke had told her, had its limits. But it felt limitless right now. Rey found herself compelled to admit, "Yes. I am afraid."

"What do you wish?"

"Freedom," Rey said.

"Democracy?"

She couldn't answer. What did she know of democracy? The General was passionate about it; Finn spoke about it as a loose agreement, practiced only when alone and when the collective decisions didn't really matter, among his former platoon members. But she herself was ignorant. Democracy required more than one person, and she'd been alone nearly all her life.

"Power," the voice said.

She didn't want to admit it. She'd felt the fear of the Force's power, not just in Luke but in everyone around her. It was a fact of life, but many of the people she'd met would have preferred if it wasn't.

Not her, though. "Yes," she said, feeling it dragged out of her throat.

Wind whistled then - real wind, impossible, yet carrying with it the rank stink of carrion. "I can give you power."

Her mind was still caught by the compulsion, softened and stifled as though it had been packed in cotton. But even so, she remembered the dream. Rather than answering directly, she said, "Snoke."

"Power beyond what you can imagine. The power to die. The power to live. Power to never be alone again."

She ought to say no. That awareness was all she had left, really; she didn't know why, not just then. But she knew she should say no. She tried to, and of course and her throat closed up.

"Maybe," she managed to say, "later. Maybe later. I have things to do right now." Open space, she thought - or tried to think. Her thoughts fled from it.

The wind roared. It was unhappy, Rey distantly noted. But a blaster or lightsaber wouldn't have helped just then. You couldn't shoot at the wind. "Begone," the voice said.

It wasn't pleased, and it expressed its displeasure by releasing her from the compulsion as suddenly as it had overcome her. Fear, held unnaturally at bay, came rushing back to her. And so she ran.

Up stairs, down hallways - this base was a labyrinth, and all she really knew was that she needed to get out. By the time she located her room again, through the help of a droid and her own panic, she understood that she'd only escaped because Snoke had allowed her to.

Maybe that was the point of it all, she thought. She stood in the center of her room, the unnaturally bright lights shining on her, her sweat seeping into her clothes. Snoke meant to terrorize her, after all. What could be scarier than knowing she only survived on his goodwill? Liren was bad enough; she wanted Snoke's attention even less.

And then there was the loneliness. She could feel her spirit weakening. Even after she managed to fall asleep, moving restlessly under the still-shining lights, she felt the despair in her dreams.

Until, swimming in darkness and half-aware, she sensed a strange warmth.

She'd spent so much time around Finn that it was easy to identify him. He exuded determined comfort and strength in the Force, not like Rey's shaky-but-too-powerful grasp. He'd found her, she realized with some surprise. In this kind of sleep she had no sight or hearing, but she still felt him reach out to her, warming her and pulling her in.

Safety. Only for a moment, and only in a dream. But she felt it and let it envelop her, even as it faded away.

Eventually the dream faded, only to be replaced by a fancy, the kind of dream a person had when they were desperate. In the dream, Luke appeared, looking like he had on the island: somewhat poorly groomed and deeply sad. She couldn't speak - she was, in fact, not entirely sure her dream-self even had a face. But she knew he felt her pain and her fright as he said, "Rey. Hold on."

She couldn't. Of that she was quite sure. If Snoke wanted to test her until she broke, then she would break. In the dream she thought about it for a moment: the same screaming pain she'd felt before, even more despair, and a total inability to push back.

"No," Luke said. Shadows passed over his face. "You can't give in to the darkness."

It wasn't exactly like she was doing it for fun. For a moment, Rey felt a very distinct kind of pique: he didn't know what she could and couldn't do!

"Better," Luke said. "We're coming for you. Try to stay safe."

Now she knew it was just a dream. No one had ever come for her. She let go, falling deeper into sleep, Luke's face fading into darkness.

-

Waking brought both pain and sympathy.

She still felt bruised from her interactions with Snoke. She had no idea where the First Order kept their cafeteria, and had no real desire to find out, so she ordered food with her datapad and ate the somewhat tasteless glop the ship produced. Absent stimulation, the room struck her as deliberately terrifying. How long, she wondered, could she be left alone, before she lost her mind entirely? Even Jakku hadn't prepared her for this.

She'd begun some pathetic attempts at exercise, push-ups and jumping jacks, when Liren entered the room. She evinced no surprise to see Rey sweaty-faced and upset, saying only, "It seems the insurrectionists have spoiled you."

"Spoiled me?"

"A lack of discipline creates impatience. A rebellious spirit, nurtured, becomes a poisonous one." She angled a brow at Rey. "Do you not agree?"

Rey couldn't make herself cooperate. "I'm your prisoner, not your student. You know I don't agree."

"So he hasn't finished with you. Naturally." Liren looked her up and down with an air of lazy disdain. "Well, I can keep training you. Come with me."

Rey, all too aware of her lack of real choices, followed.

She regretted her not-really-a-choice as soon as Liren brought her into the training room, because waiting in the training room were the other acolytes, radiating malice so strongly that she recoiled into Liren's waiting hands. Liren's nails sank into her arms and she said, "It will hurt more if you try to run."

They called it training. In reality, it was torture.

The Force had already tempted her and repudiated her. Luke had worked to shape her training so that both were guaranteed to happen. Even with Luke's guidance, though, she'd never come anything close to this.

Five acolytes surrounded her. They used her own will against her, perverting her mind until she saw beasts from her nightmares, violence, death, and starvation. She couldn't move even to run, but she could scream, and she did so until her throat was ragged. They drove what little joy she'd kept out of her mind with ease, and replaced it with pure despair. And then they left her alone in absolute darkness, sobbing.

Before she became aware of her body again, before she registered her bleeding lip and aching hands, she felt the whisper of temptation.

This, then, was their trap.

It reeked of Snoke. She'd been sought out by her destiny, the Force, whatever it was, more than once: it might be evil, parts of it, but it never had this much personality. And it made sense. Beat her, hurt her, and the Dark side would become more tempting. It was tempting even now, as she fought to breathe on her hands and knees, blood dripping down from where she'd clawed at her own arms.

It was more than tempting. She couldn't die here. Even as she thought it, she felt the futility of it all. She'd either die, or Snoke would get her, and then she might as well be dead. She thought of Ren's face, his empty eyes and childish expression. Better to die resisting than become like that.

She might have died right there, if they hadn't come for her. Four stormtroopers, standing outside the pitch black room. Four sparks of life, glowing in four human bodies. Human, despite what the First Order had done to them.

Tools, for now. She reached out with the power she could still only barely control, and she pulled them to her.

The acolytes returned too late. Rey had the power of the stormtroopers feeding her, and two of their blasters. The blasters removed arms from two of them; her will kept them frozen in place as she advanced on them.

Liren led the acolytes, and so it was Liren she made eye contact with. "You will tell Snoke what I've done here," she said.

"He'll see it as a declaration of war."

"Yes," Rey said. And then, on terrifying impulse, she said, "Give me this ship's schematics."

Liren transferred them to her proffered datapad instantly.

"Touch your toes."

Liren bent down to do so. Her hands shook.

A horrible feeling, like oil in the pit of her stomach, curled in Rey. "Leave me," she said.

The other acolytes marched out, stiff-limbed. Liren didn't move.

"I said leave!" Rey shouted.

Liren smiled, a small, horrible grimace. "Skywalkers," she said. "I wonder, could we leave one of you at the end of the galaxy and have you come out just like this?" She looked Rey up and down, very deliberately. "Oh, I forgot. That's what they did with you."

Numbness stole through her. "No. That's impossible."

"Is it? Hm."

Rey thought of Leia. Strong Leia, who'd embraced Rey like she already knew her.

No. "No."

"You're right about that," Liren said. Her voice was still quiet, but steely, wending its way through Rey's mind with unerring accuracy. "It's not the General who failed you."

Luke. Rey shook her head, like just doing that could dislodge the image - but of course, it wasn't that simple. Liren's power whispered in her that she should listen, because Liren knew the truth. "You're lying." And then she realized why she might be lying: because here Rey was, losing her grip on the force, as Liren struggled against her restraints. "Leave me!" she screamed again, and lashed out at Liren with all she had.

Liren stumbled back, and for a moment her facade slipped. She stared at Rey with horror - and then, as they locked eyes, Liren ran.

Rey waited for just long enough to ensure she was alone. Then she released the stormtroopers and fled, clutching the datapad.

Of course, she had nowhere to go, really. The ship might be unimaginably huge, but it was still only a ship. No matter how well she hid, they'd find her eventually. Still, she ran, slipping into an unoccupied maintenance duct and then climbing down until her arms ached, into the belly of the ship.

She found herself in a control room that her datapad informed her had been made redundant by new growth. The controls themselves were an older style, embedded in the walls and grimy with disuse. She sat on the floor and rested her head on her knees, gasping for breath and fighting not to sob.

Luke, her father. The thought didn't make any sense. She told herself she remembered her parents, but at this point it was the weakest of recollections. She often wondered, on the bad nights, if what she thought were memories were really just the helpless and ignorant longings of a long-since orphan.

If Luke was her father, she wouldn't be an orphan. But she wouldn't - couldn't - imagine it, because if Luke was her father, then he was also a liar, and he was also someone who'd abandoned his child.

You carry his lightsaber, the dissenting part of her whispered. You dreamed of him. You knew him immediately.

All true, all undeniable. But it couldn't be true. It just couldn't.

She took a deep breath, and then another, until she sank into a meditative trance.

The trance, she thought, was probably why she didn't hear the noise until someone began pounding on the control room door.

When she came back to herself, she opened her eyes to find the lights were on. Her - the First Order's - datapad was blinking wildly with news of attack, and the pounding on the door was almost loud enough to drown out the not-so-distant sounds of fighting.

"Rey!" the would-be intruder yelled. "Rey! Are you in there?"

It sounded like Finn, but it couldn't be. "Snoke," she said. "You won't trick me again." She felt proud for having gotten that much out without his power stopping her.

"Oh, for -" said the person behind the door. Belatedly, she realized that she couldn't feel Snoke's influence anywhere. Impulse guiding her, she slapped her hand on the room's controls, allowing the door to open to reveal Finn's face.

Everything in her froze. It was him - or a brilliant facsimile. But she didn't feel Snoke, and she didn't feel Liren or any of the others. Instinct insisted it was Finn and only Finn, and her vision agreed.

"Rey." Finn looked relieved, which Rey thought inappropriate, given the circumstances. Surely he'd die here now, too.

"Finn. I don't - how -"

"We're here to rescue you." Finn held out a hand. "But, uh, some stuff went wrong, so we need to get going. Now."

She let herself be pulled to her feet, and followed Finn out into the hallway. He kept hold of her hand, but didn't look back at her. It was a kindness, she knew: if he looked at her and really saw her, she'd fall apart.

She'd done terrible things. She shoved it out of her mind, viciously, as they walked into the melee.

The Resistance had arrived in force. Several bodies lay on the floor, mostly stormtroopers. Rey averted her eyes, even as Finn handed her a blaster and said, "Don't miss. We're waiting here for evac."

"Here?" Rey couldn't cover up her incredulity. When she looked around, all she saw was a site for an ambush.

"Like, I said, things went a little wrong." He aimed and fired at two stormtroopers running into the bay. "Let's find cover."

He had been tasked with protecting her. She wished he wouldn't do it by putting himself in front of her; all she could think of was him being shot, losing control and dying. They held off the stormtroopers for several minutes, crouched together behind a fighter, keeping alert eyes on the hangar entrances.

Then several things happened at once.

Rey felt Snoke's influence and staggered away from Finn. Finn said, "What's wrong?", and the lights went out in the hangar. The vacuum shield slammed down as an X-Wing roared into the bay, and the lights came back on as Luke exited the ship.

For a moment the hangar was so empty and quiet that Rey could hear her own terrified breathing. But then, as Rey and Finn both watched, a youth entered the hangar.

It wasn't Ren, though for a moment Rey thought it must be. Luke stiffened as the youth drew closer. He threw back his hood, revealing Human features: pale skin, light eyes, and an expression twisted by hatred.

"There are dozens of me," the youth said. "You can't stop us now."

Luke reached forward with his mechanical hand. His lightsaber glowed as he touched the youth's temple. The boy crumpled to the ground, and Luke turned to lock eyes with Rey.

She felt no sudden jolt of recognition, but in a way that made it worse. She had, somehow, known for awhile - and now she couldn't ignore the truth.

"You came," she said.

Luke nodded. His eyes darted back and forth, surveying the hangar. "We've done some damage. We're retreating."

"I'm -" She struggled to get the words out: I hurt someone. I hurt several someones. Snoke nearly got me. You're my father. But her throat closed up.

"It's okay," Finn said. "Rey, it's okay. Let's go."

In the end, it was he who guided her to the ship. Luke followed - her father followed - but he went up front with the pilot, and Rey stayed in the tiny passenger room, strapped into a seat that smelled vaguely of wet moss, her eyes screwed shut.

They landed several hours later. Rey had managed to sleep most of the way, but she startled awake as they entered the atmosphere. Her chest eased a bit when she heard Poe say, "Hang on, everyone."

"We needed someone who could dodge the First Order when we had their most important hostage," Finn said.

He meant her. Maybe he even meant it as a compliment. Rey looked away.

"Hey," Finn said. "I was on one of their ships too, remember?"

Of course she did. She'd been so damn afraid for him. And she'd never really asked him, she realized. She'd only assumed that he'd bury the fear and memories, like she'd tried to do with her own troublesome past.

"I'm sorry," she managed to say.

"No. Nope. That's not what I meant. I just mean that I'm here for you."

"I hurt people."

"I was a stormtrooper," Finn said. "I know how that goes."

"You left."

"Not before I did some damage."

But not in battle. Of course, Rey's damage hadn't exactly been in battle, either. "Thank you," she finally managed to say.

"Any time."

He said it lightly, but she knew he meant it. She kept hold of that feeling, that tiny comfort, as they descended into the Resistance base. Leia would want to debrief her, and Luke - her mind skittered away from Luke. One thing at a time, she thought, fumbling with the buckles on on her seat.

Finn, thankfully, stood by while she got herself together. She stepped off the ship into humid air; the Resistance camp was surrounded by green, without a fortress in sight.

"We're laying lower this time," Poe said from behind her. "You okay?"

"I'll need to report." She had seen others do it before. "To the General."

"The General's not back yet," Poe said. "And your report's going to be pretty long, I bet, and need-to-know only."

He was trying to imply something. Rey didn't know what. She turned around to see him standing next to Finn, both of them with deliberately easy posture, and both of them watching her carefully.

She finally managed to say, "I'd like to sleep." Safely. Without worrying about Snoke clawing his way into her dreams.

"Follow me," Poe said.

The barracks on this planet were much like they'd been elsewhere, with a few notable exceptions. The room Poe led her to had two narrow beds, rather than one, and from the belongings in it, she could tell it was both Finn and Poe's room. A strange kind of anger rose in her, then: two beds? They were lying to everyone. What they did in here didn't require two beds.

"Rey," Finn said quietly.

As soon as she looked at him, the anger died. She let herself be guided over to one of the neatly made beds. It was far too warm for a blanket, but Finn tucked a sheet around her; the material felt soft and slippery and cold to the touch, and it soothed her instantly.

"They won't want to keep me after this," she said.

"Rey. You were captured by the enemy. Get some rest first."

She was glad he didn't tell her she was wrong or being silly; she'd have seen through the lie. Still, when he reached out to her and brushed her hair back, trailing his fingers down her neck and rubbing his thumb against her collarbone, she sighed.

"You should have been more careful. They took you before. They could again."

"I was just a good opportunity," Finn said. "I'm not the one Snoke wants."

"He wants both of us." It was a sobering thought.

Finn stayed quiet for a long moment. Finally, he said, "We'll deal with that after you've had some rest." He leaned forward and kissed her, a gentle press of lips that she barely had to move to return.

It felt so good. She couldn't remember a time when she'd felt like she'd been touched enough, had gotten enough chances to be close to someone. The short time with the First Order had left a horrible kind of eternal loneliness - Snoke's creation, terribly effective when it nested in her brain.

This was the opposite of that. She pulled Finn down onto her, kissing him back with increasing enthusiasm. This felt like standing in the warm sun.

Distantly, she heard a throat clear. Finn jerked away like someone had yanked his collar, which in turn brought Rey back to herself - whereupon she immediately remembered Poe's presence.

He stood as far away from them as was possible in the tiny room, and stared into the distance. Rey felt her cheeks color. "I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize." But his smile looked forced. "You're traumatized. We've all been there. I slept through half the Resistance after my first kill mission."

The words weren't themselves hostile, but his tone made Rey flinch, which in turn made Finn say, "Poe!"

"I'm sorry." He sounded it. "I'm tired. It's nothing."

But it wasn't nothing, Rey thought. There was hurt in him - hurt she could fix, perhaps, by letting go of Finn.

So she let go. She turned away. She said, "I need sleep."

Finn didn't reply. Rey hadn't been lying: she was so tired that she fell asleep before she heard any more movement.

She dreamed true.

For a moment she was a man holding a baby, a man in robes who looked down at the baby with worry. Then her perspective shifted, and she saw that the man was Luke. Beside him stood a woman who carried a blaster and looked coolly confident. Rey watched, the dream affording her detachment, as a group of men surrounded them, sent out a pulse of something that knocked both the adults unconscious, and took the baby.

She understood then, as she watched the people she'd seen as her parents leave her on Jakku. Snoke's influence had been there all along. The people who'd treated her kindly, kept her fed and brushed her hair, had given her away without realizing that the same fearful power that chased them to Jakku had given them the baby girl to begin with. Snoke.

He'd hidden her from everyone, even Luke. Rey watched her young self sob, then be pulled away by Plutt. Anger rose in her, even as the dream faded and changed.

She slept, and then dreamed again.

This time she had a body - her own. She stood in an old house, rustic by any Core planet standards: wood floors, wood walls, and a warm solar-absorbing ceiling. Rey stood over the sink, rinsing some kind of vegetable, as Poe worked over a stove. The stove, Rey noted, had real flame.

Poe caught her looking and smiled. "Don't worry. It doesn't emit much of anything. Special polymer fuel - my parents' top choice."

His parents, dream-Rey knew, lived in a nicer house now, a fully automated home by the water. Poe had taken the old house, and now it fit all three of them.

All three. She turned to look out the window. Down a rolling hill, right before the trees began, Finn sat reading a book. His blaster sat next to him, but it hadn't been used in months. Rey knew with quiet certainty that whatever scars they carried, they'd found peace.

The dream faded. Rey remembered nothing else. When she woke, the room was dark, and her heart was racing. As soon as she moved, a low light came on. Finn slept in a chair inches from her bed; Poe lay in the other bed, sprawled across it. Neither of them so much as twitched when she slipped away.

The trees on this planet leaned into one another. They had vines and twisting branches, and swayed in the breeze. Rey had seen the signs posted indicating that the red-barked trees were classified as quasi-sentient; she didn't give them much thought until, deep in the woods, two trees moved in front of her to block her path.

"I'm sorry." It came out almost automatically. She'd done a lot of apologizing to strangers before; trees were easy compared to semi-enraged scavengers. "I'm only looking for a place to rest."

The trees rustled, then bowed aside. Rey found a path worn into the dirt, and followed it to a beautiful, sun-filled clearing.

A clearing which held Luke in the middle of it, his robe cast aside for drab canvas clothing.

She wasn't lucky enough that he didn't see her. He said, "I'd appreciate it if you didn't leave."

It would have been easier to ignore the request if he'd delivered it as an order. As it was, yelling 'you're not my father' and stomping off would have been a clear overreaction.

But that didn't mean she didn't want to. "You suspected, and you didn't tell me."

Luke nodded. "It was my hope that you'd realize on your own."

"And it was my hope that my parents would come back and get me. But that didn't happen." Even months after leaving Jakku, it hurt to say it. She'd held that hope so long, sheltered it against a thousand disappointments. Even knowing what a lie it was, it still hurt to let it go.

"You saw." It wasn't a question. "You know what it was for me. We didn't know there was anyone to look for."

And thus, she couldn't blame him, which in turn only fueled her helpless anger. "Yes. I know."

Luke didn't say anything else. He only watched her. And Rey knew what she had to say. "I can't keep doing this. Not right now. I can't be trained by my father after for all of this."

He nodded, like he'd expected it. "Leia has training."

"Or my aunt."

Luke grimaced. His I've-been-tired-for-decades expression got just a little more exhausted. "Snoke will try to find you. We can't leave you half-trained."

"You can for a few weeks." Rey wasn't sure of that at all, actually, but she forced herself to adopt a neutral expression. "I can't do it right now. Don't try to make me."

She couldn't really give a threat there, couldn't say 'or I'll rebel' or anything similar. But Luke backed down anyway, nodding and averting his gaze from her. "I'll do my best to respect your wishes."

Lacking anything else to say, Rey said, "Good," and fled from the forest.

Finn and Poe were nowhere to be found when Rey returned to the Resistance base. A military person she didn't recognize arrived to tell Rey she needed to be debriefed. The knots in her stomach at the prospect of seeing Leia lasted until Admiral Statura came in; then she had to hide her relief as she explained what she'd seen and done on the First Order ship. The admiral took notes, but he also recorded it all. Rey's crimes would be immortalized, then - though he assured her they weren't truly crimes, committed as they had been by an illegally tortured prisoner of war.

The reasoning didn't resonate with Rey. When she finally got to leave, she felt like she had lead in her stomach, and her schedule held no events to distract her.

She made her way back to the room the admiral had assigned her. It was small, much smaller than Finn and Poe's, and empty but for the pack Rey had left behind at the old base. Maybe, she thought as she sat down on the bed, it would always be like this: fighting and running and hiding, with no real rest or sense of belonging.

She'd thought, for a little while, that it would be different. More the fool her.

After a day spent mostly resting in her room, Rey found herself in one of the Resistance's many common areas. She'd meant to sit quietly and eat her portion of fish, but she'd scarcely begun when an enormous group of Resistance fighters and techs walked in, with Finn at their center.

She'd picked an unobtrusive corner to sit in, and it paid off just then: no one in the group saw her, not even Finn. Poe sat at the center of the revelry, pressing drinks on everyone and keeping an arm possessively wrapped around Finn's shoulders.

The third time they all toasted Finn, Rey found herself tapping one of the revelers on the arm and asking, "What's going on?"

"He's going offworld," the tech said. "Big mission. Plus, there's free swill."

The swill apparently was the alcohol. "Oh," Rey said. The tech wandered off, thankfully - she didn't see Rey's pained expression.

It was stupid. Finn didn't need to tell her everything. Stop being ridiculous, she told herself.

She was put off her food, at any rate. She binned the rest, then made her way out of the room.

She almost made it, in fact stood inches from the door when Finn yelled, "Rey!"

"Oh," she said, turning around and forcing herself to smile. "Hi."

"I'm going offworld. I sent you a message. We sent Phasma off in deep cover, so I get to go get info from her, do a little snooping of my own."

"Wow. I've been -" Pathetic. "Busy," Rey finished lamely. "I'm sorry."

"No problem." He smiled at her, welcoming, motioning back to Poe. "We're all having a drink. I'm reporting at dawn tomorrow, so it's kind of a last hurrah."

"You'll be back," Rey said, too sharply.

Finn winced a little. "I hope so," he said. "But either way...it's a pretty big job."

Of course it was. Rey tried and failed not to grit her teeth. "I'm tired," she said finally. "I had - I'm still adjusting."

"Of course. Yeah. I know how that feels."

Being captured by the First Order. Right. He was every inch a hero, and unlike Rey, not a lonely one. "I hope - good luck."

He got a weird look on his face, half distress and half frustration. Rey didn't know how to fix it, and didn't feel capable of even beginning to do so. She blurted out, "Right, okay, goodbye," and scurried out of the room.

She expected to be very alone that next day, with herself and Luke still mutually avoiding each other. Poe surprised her. When she left her room, he was standing there, leaning against the opposite wall of the barracks like he planned on spending the whole day there.

"Don't run," he said when she opened her mouth to object.

She scowled in spite of herself. "I hadn't planned to."

"Or tell me to fuck off." His smile was half self-effacing, half inappropriately suggestive. "Well, you could tell me that if you wanted."

"Why are you here?" Probably because Finn was gone. He was bored, and she was an idle target.

"I thought you could use some company."

"And Finn's gone."

"Believe it or not, I have other friends." Poe looked at her with a disarming frankness. "You don't, though."

"I could!"

"But you don't."

And she couldn't. He didn't know that, which made Rey profoundly grateful. But how someone like her made friends on a rebellion's base - what would she do? Sit down next to some ship's mechanic and discuss the weather? "I'm fine on my own."

"Sure. I, on the other hand, am having a persistent issue with my cruiser that I need help resolving. And all the mechanics are busy on the fighters."

Rey had no resistance to a promised mechanical problem. To an expectant Poe, she said, "Lead me to it, then."

Poe's cruiser sat in a lot near the woods. He'd clearly taken care with it; the paint shone, and the controls were free of even specks of dust. He even sounded chagrined when he said, "It was functioning just fine until we got here. Now it's acting up."

"Acting up how?" Rey had never seen a model like this before, but no matter; circuits all worked the same, and she'd worked with similar ships before. She eased the control panel's cover off and began rummaging around.

"The anti-grav stabilizers are off. They - jitter, I guess. And sometimes it stalls for no reason. Oh, and the receiver cuts in and out, so sometimes I have nav and sometimes I don't."

"I've had those symptoms." The wires directly behind the panel all looked fine, so she replaced the panel itself. "Mine was sand."

"There's not a lot of sand around here."

"Obviously." She circled the vehicle twice, noticing the slight bulge in side coverage on her second go-round. "This is the energy tank?"

"Straight solar, converted to proton energy," Poe said. "It's state of the art."

Rey nearly smiled at how defensive he sounded. "I know you take care of your things."

"And my allies."

"Those too." Though this cruiser wasn't an AI like BB-8; it couldn't tell him what was wrong. She reached out and separated the chassis from the belly of the vehicle. At first, it all looked very ordinary. There were coils and wires and compressors and quad-ion chips. But on closer inspection, everything was slightly off, and as Rey studied the contraption, she came to understand why.

"They're moving away from something," she said. "You said this started when you got to this planet?"

"Trust me, it ran great before then."

"Mm," Rey said, and reached out, brushing the wired-together chips aside.

At the center of the cruiser's energy tank lay a thick, glistening vine.

"There we are," she said, gesturing for Poe to look.

"I - what?" He swore in a language Rey didn't know. "How?"

"A stray seed, maybe," Rey said. She wasn't a horticulturist. "It's definitely here, though. I'm not sure I want to touch it."

"You think it might be poisonous?"

"Or it might bite," Rey said, thinking of the carnivorous plants Luke had made her dodge. It seemed like much longer ago than it really had been. "Hand me a wrench?"

Poe did so, and Rey set to work trying to disentangle the plant from the cruiser's guts. It was easier work than she'd expected. When she touched the plant, it didn't really move; it certainly didn't try to bite her. She pried it out in quick order. "Okay. Now I just need to check and make sure it didn't break any -"

The plant sneezed. That was the only word for it. It reared back, and then the sticky goo that had been on the outside of the vine was instead on Rey and Poe's hands and face.

"Augh." Rey scrubbed at her face. "Are you okay?"

"Sure," Poe said. "Disgusted, but okay." He frowned as he scrubbed the goo off his face. His nose, Rey was amused to note, had gone bright red.

On the heel of that thought came the realization that she felt flushed, too. Almost overly warm, though this camp tended towards cool weather.

"It's all over my shirt," Poe said. "I only have so many of them."

"It'll dry."

"And then I'll be even more annoyed." Poe shook his head and pulled his shirt off.

Rey had always been aware of him. It would have been incredibly difficult, maybe impossible, not to be. He was beautiful from head to toe. But she'd never been incapable of looking away.

Never, at least, until right then. Her heart pounded, her breath came short. And she was suddenly, overwhelmingly, desperate to touch him.

She licked her lips - and then, looking up, realized that Poe was also looking at her.

"Ah," he said.

He didn't manage to continue. "Yes?" Rey said. Her skin was beginning to itch. Barely thinking about it, she shrugged out of her top, stripping to the waist, rubbing the goo off her arms. Better, a bit. But looking over at Poe again, she saw that he was staring at her still. "Are you okay?"

Poe looked past Rey, into the belly of the cruiser, then back at Rey. He grimaced. "I don't think either of us is okay."

It took a moment for his words to make sense. Too long, of course. "Oh," Rey said. "Oh. You think that plant did this?"

"I'm almost certain," Poe said. "You know that Finn and I have been close."

"Close, is that what you're calling it?" Rey winced as soon as the words left her mouth. She sounded jealous, almost angry, and she wasn't really either of those things in reality. Was she?

"We were fucking. I told him I cared, I tried -" Poe groaned, dragging both hands through his hair. "This isn't natural. This isn't normal for me."

She felt, suddenly, a bit cold. "Is it me?"

"No. God. No." He laughed, bitterness edging his voice. "Trust me, if you weren't - if I wasn't -" He shook his head. "No, Rey, okay? It's not you."

"We could go find a doctor."

"You're ready to be that embarrassed?"

"Not particularly. But you don't look..." She lost the words, shaking her head instead.

He didn't look like he wanted her, was what she meant. She generally preferred to sleep with people who didn't look pained by the prospect.

Poe took a step forward - and then, when Rey didn't move, another step. They were of a height, so when he lifted his hands to curl his fingers around her elbows, when he pressed his forehead against hers, it barely took any movement at all.

They didn't discuss it. Rey didn't think they'd have been able to, even if they tried. Rey knew without even needing to reach out with the Force that Finn was on both their minds as they kissed.

The arousal was definitely unnatural, because kissing felt like diving into cool water after a day in the desert. She needed more immediately, and she got it, running her hands through Poe's maddening hair as he pulled her closer.

He kissed easily and with skill, even when addled. She dragged her nails over his back, down to his bare hip, and then back up again, and he half-carried them both down to the ground, barely stopping to make sure they didn't end up on the toolbox. She felt his dick then, pressed against her thigh, heavy and ready. When she moved against him, he groaned, then reached up to touch her breasts.

It felt better than it should feel, better than it had any right to feel. She gasped as he pinched her nipples and squeezed her, then laughed with disbelief as he leaned up to use his mouth. "Inside me," she managed to say. "I need - I need it. Please."

But he didn't go that quickly, even when she managed to get her pants off. Instead, he pulled her on top of him again, wrapping one hand around his own cock and beckoning her upwards with a finger.

In that moment, it seemed like the perfect idea. She straddled him, crying out when he slid his fingers into her, stretching her nearly to the point of pain, even as she pressed down on him, desperate for more. He flicked his tongue over her clit, hard and fast, curling his fingers inside her. Every movement spoke of practice, and somehow, that made it better; when he pressed down on her hip, encouraging her to fuck his face, she let herself go entirely.

The orgasm that crashed through her was simultaneously too much and not enough. Her thighs trembled as she came down from it - and then, without so much as a word, Poe rolled them, tumbling her on her back and kissing her.

She kissed back and reached down, guiding him inside her. His stuttered gasp broke against her mouth, and she bit his lip, just the right side of vicious, as she thrust against him.

"Please," he said, sounding broken. She kissed him again, then dug her nails into his shoulder, deliberately painful.

"Harder, Dameron," she said.

He obeyed. He fucked her until they were both shaking of it, and after he'd come, she pushed him onto his back again and rode his hand, rubbing her own clit until she flew apart one last time.

She didn't mean to collapse in his arms. It was too intimate, too heavy with implication. And he didn't want her, really - he'd said. As her heart rate slowed, as she finally stopped feeling like she might explode, the real guilt set in. Aphrodisiac or no, they'd both been thinking of Finn and they'd both slept together anyway.

Damn, Rey thought, closing her eyes.

"Hey," Poe said. He stroked Rey's arms. "It's okay."

"Is it?"

"I'll talk to Finn. It's my responsibility."

Finn. Her heart twisted even then, treacherously. She wanted to do this with Poe again, and she wanted Finn there too. After a lifetime of deprivation, she'd become too greedy. Selfishly so.

"We should get dressed," she said, and climbed to her feet. "I'll get a droid to clear the cruiser out. It'll be fine by tomorrow. We should alert the medics about this, too. For their records."

For a moment, Poe lay still on the ground, looking up at her. She couldn't have guessed his thoughts just then, not for all the glory and peace the Resistance had to offer.

"Right," he said finally, and followed her example, straightening his clothes and making himself decent again. Rey finished first, efficient as she was. She left Poe alone without a backward glance.

-

They didn't talk after that. Rey threw herself into work, yet again.

News that the recon crew had returned spread quickly. Rey wanted to meet Finn on the tarmac, but she was acutely unwilling to risk Poe being there, too. Her instinct proved to be correct: she saw them barely half an hour later, Poe hanging all over Finn, the both of them laughing together.

Anger and jealousy twined together in her stomach. She did her best to press it down, but as seemed to be happening all too regularly, it didn't work. She didn't even realize she was staring until Finn said, "Rey!" and untangled himself from Poe to run over to her.

He looked so happy, Rey thought as she forced a smile. "It's good to see you. How was the mission?"

"Useful," Finn said. "I don't know if I can say more than that right now."

"Rey's got higher clearance than I do." Poe laughed, but his discomfort was obvious to Rey. Finn didn't seem to notice anything - but then, Rey thought with more than a little bitterness, Finn had no idea what they'd done.

"We were going to drink with the pilots," Finn said. "Rey, you should come."

Rey's better judgment told her not to - but she'd been ignoring her better judgment a lot lately. "Sure."

That was how she wound up three drinks in, leaning into Poe as he told the story of his first Resistance mission. Finn sat on Poe's other side, tucked even closer than Rey, and Rey kept swinging between picturing a young and fearless Poe, and wondering what they looked like to all the other pilots.

"And then," Poe said, "they found me. Four TIE fighters behind the mountains."

"Bullshit!" Jess yelled. "Come on, Dameron. I've talked to Hutts with more believable stories."

"Check the logs," Poe shot back. "Or better yet, ask this guy. Finn, I can fly my way out of that kind of trouble, right?"

"You've been buying me drinks," Finn said. "I have to agree with you."

"How about the Jedi?" a pilot Rey didn't know said. "Aren't they supposed to be master pilots?"

"That's only Skywalker," Poe said, but of course he turned to Rey anyway. "But Rey'll know. Tell them."

Everyone looked at her and Rey, her head spinning, could only hear: Skywalker. Master pilots. Skywalkers.

But she wasn't the only drunk one. Jess said, "If she's keeping quiet, it's settled! You're a liar, Dameron."

"Betrayal," Poe said, clutching his chest with a laugh. His eyes stayed on Rey, uncomfortably speculative.

Rey stuck to water after that. People faded away, one by one, clapping Poe on the shoulder and telling Finn goodnight. No one really spoke to Rey, but Jess waved.

Then she was alone with Poe and Finn. Realizing too late that she'd missed her window to leave with the others, Rey sipped her water.

"I thought Finn would be more like you," Poe said.

It was wrong, Rey knew, to take advantage of drunken honesty. "Oh?"

"You know." Poe waved a hand. "Awkward."

"Poe," Finn said.

"Turns out he's the one who had friends," Poe said.

"Poe!" Finn clapped his shoulder. "Not now. You're drunk. I'm drunk."

"Rey's not drunk." Poe caught her gaze. For someone who'd been drinking half the night, he looked much too alert. "And she knows what I mean. She's the one I can't figure out."

"You're making her uncomfortable." For the first time, Rey heard a note of warning in Finn's voice. "Stop it."

"No," Rey said. "It's fine. I mean, he's right."

"Am I right that you're a Skywalker?"

Rey froze.

"Poe! Sorry, Rey. He's normally better than this."

The apology didn't really fix things, because Finn apologizing for Poe just reminded Rey how close they'd grown, and what a liar she was. She said, "Maybe I'll have more to drink."

"Ah," Poe said. "I'm sorry."

He was so disarming just then. His hair had long since been mussed, and he was flushed from drink. He looked so earnest and so, so much like he had when they'd -

Rey stood and went over to the keg. "It's nothing," she said. It was only after she'd filled her glass and taken a long drink that she got up the courage to say, "And the answer's yes."

Finn spat his beer out. "What?"

She couldn't look at him. "I found out just recently. I didn't want to tell anyone."

"You're a Skywalker? What? I don't - how? When?"

"Since she was born, I'd assume." Poe smirked at Finn, Finn looked down with obvious embarrassment, and Rey -

Rey felt like she was eight again and watching a feast she'd be given scraps of. "When Snoke had me. He was using me - the information. He wanted to hurt me."

"And he succeeded," Poe said. "That's obvious."

"Hey!"

He pointed to her drink. "Keep going and you'll admit I'm right."

She already half wanted to. "It's late."

"All the more reason to keep drinking."

"No." If she kept drinking she'd tell them she didn't want to sleep alone. Their brief time on Chandrila had been, for the most part, painfully nerve-wracking, miserable, and just plain painful. But sharing a bed, having even false togetherness - she hadn't realized how much she'd wanted it, and how much she'd miss it once it was gone. "I have to go to bed."

Poe looked ready to say something persuasive and maybe suggestive. Finn, thankfully, was ready. "We'll walk you back."

It was the right thing to do. Rey dumped her mostly-full drink, and the three of them walked out together. Finn and Poe both stumbled much more than Rey did. Rey tried to act like she didn't notice, until they got to her room, at the far end of the stretch of barracks. Then, Poe said, "You've got the Skywalker grace."

He caught her off guard, and so she turned to look at him without thinking better of it. He was holding Finn's hand, she saw, and staring at her with that same alarming intensity.

"Goodnight," she said, her mind presenting her with a paucity of alternatives.

"Goodnight." He smiled at her, wide and open, warming her down to her toes.

Then Finn stepped forward, crowding into her space - and kissed her.

He didn't move so quickly that she couldn't have pushed him away. That would have been easier, actually; it would have seemed simpler. But in reality, he swayed into her, and she reached up to him, returning his kiss, pressing herself against him.

Poe was still there when Finn pulled away. And he was still, Rey saw, holding Finn's hand.

"Sleep well," Finn said.

She knew she wouldn't. "You too," she said, and escaped into her room.

-

The next morning brought claustrophobic regret. She escaped her room as soon as possible and was nursing a glass of juice in the cafeteria long before anyone but a few harried-looking technicians passed through. After her third glass of juice and fourth slice of toast, she was starting to feel like she might not run away if she saw Poe and Finn. Naturally, that was when Testor plopped down across from her with an expectant look.

"We're friends, right?" she said.

"Um," Rey said.

"Great," Jessika said. "So, as a friend of mine, you are obligated to tell me what in the world was going on with you last night."

Rey had made it all the way to adulthood without realizing how much she blushed. Now, she could hardly avoid the knowledge. Her cheeks were on fire as she said, "Me and Finn and Poe, we're just friends."

"That's not what I meant, though that's a fascinating tidbit of information that I'm sure is totally true. I meant, what's the deal with you and Skywalker?"

The name made her flinch. "Nothing."

"He was just a name to us for the longest time, you know. Some people remembered him, but it's not like the General was gathering us all around a campfire to hear Jedi legends."

"He's a good person." Even if he'd lied to her. Even if he'd never found her.

"He lit up when you two came back. Now he's back to being a ghost." Jessika raised her eyebrows. "Spill. What's the deal?"

"I told him I can't train with him right now." That had to be safe information, much less specific than her newly discovered parentage. "I was taken hostage by the First Order. I'm told trauma is normal."

"Plus you're his kid."

Rey nearly spat her food out.

Jessika's shrug was unapologetic. "That's what everyone's saying."

"Everyone?"

"The pilots, at least."

Of course that was Jessika's 'everyone'. And by that definition, someone must have overheard Poe's speculation and then immediately gossiped - as pilots always did. It all made a horrible kind of sense, and at the center of it was Rey's inability to deny the truth for as long as she'd have liked.

Which, to be fair, was more or less forever.

"That's what Snoke told me," she said.

"Huh." Jessika made a show of looking her up and down. "Well. It makes sense, I guess. Everyone knows you're super-powerful."

Part of Rey - the mean part, the selfish part, the part that had been getting more and more unavoidable lately - thought that maybe Jessika was feeling pleased with herself. Maybe she'd connected the dots and realized she'd slept with the last Jedi's last apprentice.

Jessika wasn't like that, though. And she had her own claims to fame, even if she was. She forced the speculation away. "It didn't make sense to me."

Sympathy immediately overwhelmed Jess's expression. "That must be hard. I'm sorry."

"Plenty of things are hard," Rey said. "Do you know what kind of intel Finn brought back?"

Jess shook her head. "The General's not even telling anyone why she sent him. Even Poe doesn't know, and he's Teacher's Pet. We'll find out soon, though." She took a bite of fruit. "Hopefully."

Rey told herself not to ask. The resolution lasted as long as it took for Jessika to blink. "Do you ever see it ending? This whole thing?"

"The Resistance? It was supposed to end before I was even born." She shrugged. "It will or it won't. It's not like democracy's simple."

"But it's worth fighting for?"

"Having some doubts, Skywalker?"

"Don't - no!"

"Uh-huh. Well, anyway, it's not about the iffy ideology to me. I just want to be on the team that's not blowing planets up all the time. The only other option's the Outer Rim - and no offense, but that's not my first choice."

"None taken." Rey had always known people saw places like Jakku as minor stopping points at best. That must have been why Snoke found it so easy to hide her there.

Snoke. Damn him.

"We have to win." As soon as she said it, it became more important. "We can't just let the First Order take over everything. Stuff like freedom, it matters."

"And not being murdered for saying you don't like the military, sure." If Jessika was put off by the sudden display of zealotry, she gave no sign. "Has anyone given you a job to do when you're not off Jedi-ing?"

Pilots were apparently pros at making a person feel self-conscious. "No."

"Great. You can help me out with a thing, then. Hurry up and finish up."

Filled with an entirely new kind of alarm, Rey obeyed. Jessika led her out to the Resistance's fleet of x-wings. "I have a mechanic," she said, "and he means well, I'm sure. But what I really need is someone who's a little less by-the-books, you know?" They stopped in front of a ship, and Jessika said, "This is mine. And I need you to help her learn how to lie."

"What do you mean?"

Jessika launched into an explanation. The First Order had wised up to even most of Poe's favorite maneuvers. The Resistance's military tech was out of date - as could be expected from a rebellion, sure, but the mechanics were uncreative when it came to dreaming up ways to surprise the enemy. "I asked my guy to rig the guns to look broken without actually, you know, breaking them. She looked at me like I'd been drinking all day."

"I'm not surprised. That's a time-consuming request." Jess's mechanic was likely several other pilots' mechanic too. If she got multiple good nights of sleep in a row, ever, Rey would be surprised.

"But it's possible. Am I right?"

She was, of course, and Rey already felt drawn into the problem. Broken guns - visibly broken, broken enough to fool the First Order - would need to show differently on radar, and would need to look broken from the outside. But, of course, the guns had been designed for maximum dynamism, which meant they were only as large as they absolutely needed to be. There was no cosmetic shell she could ding a bit to make them look useless.

But that didn't mean it couldn't be done. When Jessika asked her if she had any ideas, Rey waved her off. Having a mechanical problem to focus on was like being given full portions for lunch and dinner. Making the weapons appear offline on the First Order's scanners would be comparatively simple; the controls would need to be insulated and wired internally, but that would just make them ugly and useless on a scanner, not truly broken. The scanner, though, was the lesser half of the story. Jess wanted the ship to pass an eye test, too - presumably for some kind of stealth or recon mission.

It wasn't a make-or-break feature. That was why the mechanic had declined the work: a nice trick wouldn't win the war. But it was a challenge, and an entertaining one. Rey set about making something of it.

First she insulated. Then she obfuscated. If the guns couldn't be damaged to make them smaller, she'd make them seem ruined in some other way. She disassembled one gun chassis entirely, then rebuilt it with scraps from the nearest toolbox. A plasma node here, a tangle of wire there, and by the time she was done, she had a gun that looked like it had taken some kind of heavy impact; it tilted at a right angle instead of pointing straight ahead. She took her time after, too, to make sure all the systems were working, to confirm the ship was still singing despite its modifications.

She didn't realize how much time the changes had taken until she looked up to find herself alone among the ships. Jess had left, she vaguely remembered, but she'd been so absorbed in her work that she hadn't taken the time to really notice.

But it worked now. Oh yes, it worked. Rey ran through as many tests as she reasonably could while on the ground, and laughed with pride when she got the green light from the x-wing's systems.

She'd done it. And in just - well - several hours.

Her stomach grumbling cut off her gloating. She wiped herself down, getting as much of the grease off as she could, before making her way back to the cafeteria. It wasn't until she stood in front of the sideboard and put her food order in that she realized she hadn't thought of Snoke, Luke, or Finn and Poe in hours.

Finn, having terrible timing, broke her streak by coming up behind her and saying, "Everyone's talking about you. That soup looks good."

"Everyone's what?" She pulled her tray with soup and sandwich off the sideboard. "I didn't do anything."

Her chest clenched when she looked at Finn. So much for not thinking about him.

"You did, though," Finn said. "You took Testor's plane apart and put it back together in a morning. Did you really not see people watching?"

The fact that she hadn't didn't sit particularly well with her, so she just shrugged.

Finn still looked incredulous, but he at least stopped staring. "You hit peak lunch hour, so good job there. Come sit with us. Poe's telling us about BB-8 charming some Hutts."

"Impossible."

"Not according to him. Come on."

He smiled at her. She still, always, had no defense against his smile. She followed him back to the pilots' table, doing her best to ignore the many sidelong glances she collected as she sat down.

Poe was on his best behavior. He didn't mention Rey's newfound heritage or even Testor's plane. Instead, he caught her up on his story - which didn't sound any less impossible in person - and continued to tell it.

"Now, Hutts, they don't tend to value machinery just for the hell of it, but even this one could tell BB-8 is special. She offered me three very pretty Sarkhai for him."

"You didn't," said a pilot Rey didn't know.

"Debtor slaves aren't really my thing," Poe said. "I did get them out, though. BB-8 met us on the bluffs. They live a very peaceful life together on Plexis now."

"That's a whopper," Jess said. "Rey, you're practically a Jedi. He's lying, right?"

She couldn't possibly know what Ren had done to Poe. Rey only knew because she'd seen it in Ren's own fears. But Poe met her gaze for a moment with a pain she could sense more than see, and it was obvious he knew she'd found out.

"I'm not a Jedi yet," she said. "Poe's impregnable, if you know what I mean."

That got a round of laughs and the subject dropped. Rey's heart pounded with relief.

Something changed between the three of them after that. It didn't become any easier for Rey, personally, to be around them. They still had the strangely charged moments, and she still felt guilt, overwhelming and sharp, when she thought about what she and Poe had done - and what they'd kept from Finn. Despite all that, they worked together more easily. Rey became an on-call mechanic, and spent three weeks making planes fly and giving suggestions for future weapons purchases. It felt nice.

Then, on a cool morning where the tiniest amount of frost blanketed the ground, the base alarm sounded.

Rey ran out of her room to find that everyone else had done the same. No one looked particularly panicked, though. Her neighbor, a net-tech named Jilon, said, "This is the severe threat alarm. It's probably a test. Follow me," and began walking briskly down the hall.

Rey obeyed him, right until she got to the clearing at the edge of the barracks. Then she saw the source of the alarm and froze.

Snoke's acolyte Liren stood in a circle of staring people, all of them captured and held with Liren's power.

For a moment, she heard nothing but the rush of blood in her ears. Panic wound its way through her limbs, and Luke's training disappeared.

She screamed, and she attacked Liren.

Liren's power couldn't hold her, not while keeping a dozen other Resistance fighters away. She got in blows to Liren's face, hard hits that split her lip, before Poe pulled her away.

"Settle!" he shouted. "Settle, damn it! She came here with a truce signal."

"She's lying! She's Snoke's!"

"Not anymore," Liren managed to say. She spat out blood. "If you'd like proof, I have it."

"Rey." A different voice now: General Leia's. "Let us handle this."

It wasn't for nothing that Leia was a Skywalker. Rey felt the pressure to back down, the looming almost-threat of Leia's power. Her aunt's power, she reminded herself.

Every nerve was still screaming at her to destroy the threat Liren represented. But she couldn't prove herself out of control. She let out several low, deep breaths, and stepped away.

"Get her somewhere safe," Leia said. She met Rey's gaze. "Take some time."

It wasn't an offer so much as an order. Rey nodded and let herself be led away.

She spent hours pacing, alone, long after Poe left her. Liren's presence on the base felt like sharp nails raking against her skin. She hated her, and even if it was unfair - even if some tiny part of her conscience whispered that Snoke could influence anyone, and had likely influenced and hurt Liren - no matter what her mind or heart said, she wanted Liren off the same planet as her, by way of death if necessary. The hatred was sharp and visceral and burned in her heart.

She didn't realize how much she was indulging it at first. She'd never been particularly angry, even when things got really bad - the first time she bled and had had no one to discuss it with, or the first time she'd been injured while scavenging and worried that she'd die alone in the desert. Then, anger was an indulgence she couldn't really afford. To be angry in that way was to risk her life.

Now, she was relatively safe. And so the anger grew.

Desert snakes could burrow under whole cities undetected until, on some fateful day, the right combination of storm circumstances caused the city to collapse the tunnels and be swallowed by the elements. So her anger burrowed into her heart and stretched down her veins, curling her hands and causing her stomach to churn.

She barely refrained from lashing out when someone knocked on her door. She managed a tense, "What?"

It was Finn. Of course it was. She let him in because she knew she didn't really have a choice; he was probably acting as Leia's emissary in this, and Rey didn't want to give the impression that she was really losing her mind in a dangerous way.

Even if part of her worried that she was.

As soon as the door closed behind Finn, Rey let him have it. "How can anyone think this is a good idea? How can General Leia, of all people?"

"Maybe the General understands that giving people a second chance is important."

"Maybe she's deluded by wanting her son back."

"Rey!"

It was the kind of thing, Rey knew, that was very carefully Not Said in the Resistance camp - and with good reason. General Leia had devoted her life to freeing the galaxy from the First Order, or the Empire, or whatever they'd decided to call themselves at the moment. But Leia - her aunt, though the thought felt like nettles ripping over her heart - was a legend, not some kind of infallible god. And Leia had never spoken with Liren, had never felt the power of Snoke's acolytes.

It had to be a trick. Rey didn't know why no one else could see it. "No one else is saying it, but plenty of people must be thinking it."

"Sure. But they're not not saying it because of fear or intimidation." Finn shook his head, sitting down on the small crate that contained most of Rey's belongings. "That's how it was with the First Order, you know. Plenty of us knew we were people - we had friends in the squadron. But they didn't want us to think that way. Any stray idea, any suspicion that maybe things weren't the way they told us, got stamped out."

Rey waited for his conclusion. At first it didn't come; then he said, "The Resistance isn't like that. People want to believe her because the point of the whole movement is supposed to be greater kindness and understanding."

Greater kindness and understanding sounded, to Rey, like a gateway to death. She wasn't far gone enough to actually tell Finn that, though. "I know. But she's dangerous, Finn. I'm the only one who knows what she's like."

"The General wants to talk with you about it," Finn said. "We're not just accepting her into the fold. But we can't turn her away, either. If you know what she's like, you also know what Snoke's like."

Meaning, they couldn't send her back into the arms of an enemy that would torture and kill her. Right. "I know that," she said. "I do, I swear I do. But part of me - doesn't."

Even in her mind, it sounded like a pitiful excuse. But Finn said, "Sure," and held out a hand.

His palm was broader than Rey's and had callouses where, she assumed, his stormtrooper's gloves had rubbed. His skin was warmer than Rey's, and her fingers felt tingly when he curled his hand around them.

"I'm not going to make you do anything, say anything, that's not honest," he said. "Neither will the General. But we think it would be helpful if you were present when we took Liren's testimony."

Testimony. What were they planning? But of course Finn wouldn't know. Poe probably didn't, either. "Okay," she said. "Let's go." She tried for, and failed at, a smile.

Finn led her to a room she hadn't been in before, one that was equipped with several holoscreens and, at the center, a plasma-bound prison.

Liren stood in the prison, otherwise unrestrained. Rey didn't ask if that was smart. She didn't lash out at Leia,who stood just a few feet away, or at Luke, who glowered in a corner. She didn't, in fact, say anything at all.

But her heart thudded in her chest in what felt like double-time. Even like this, Liren was still dangerous.

"Rey," Leia said. "Thank you for coming."

Rey didn't point out that she hadn't been given a choice. She nodded.

"I've been asking Liren how she escaped Snoke's influence." Leia's expression was drawn - and of course it would be, Rey realized, guilt curling in her uncomfortably. Liren had done exactly what Leia's own son couldn't manage. "We've encountered a complication."

"Oh?"

"She says you're the reason."

Rey blinked. She'd had no expectations for this meeting, really. Yet somehow, this was like being hit by asteroid shards in open space. "What?"

"You reek of the Force," Liren said.

The barrier wasn't soundproof, then.

"Reek seems a little rude," Rey said.

"And yet." Liren waved a hand. "It's all over you. Snoke's powers of persuasion are unmatched; even thinking about contradicting him is like trying to break light speed on a speeder bike. Your thoughts slide away from it. It's not force you even notice; you're loyal down to the bone." She narrowed her eyes as she looked at Rey. "Or I was, anyway."

She looked, impossibly, angry about it, like Rey had stolen something valuable from her. "I didn't do anything."

"No. But here we are. And here you are, and I can feel my mind getting clearer by the minute."

"You should be happy about that!"

"Don't tell me how to feel, Skywalker."

Rey didn't react - not because she didn't feel anything, but because she was too tired for the pain in her mind to make it out to her physical expressions. "Fine. Then be sad. But you're here either way. Why did you want me?" She directed the last query at Leia.

"For this kind of information," Leia said. "She's been taciturn up until now."

Liren turned in a circle inside her cage, moving slowly, her eyes passing over every occupant in the room. Leia avoided her gaze - to avoid compulsion, Rey assumed, though she couldn't imagine how much power it would take to compel Leia to do anything.

Liren's eyes narrowed when she got to Luke. "Were you ever planning on training him?"

For all that Luke enjoyed the Old Man On Top Of A Mountain aesthetic, he wasn't exactly hard to read. Liren's question surprised him. "Who?"

"That one." Liren pointed at Finn.

Finn was the only "him" in the vicinity, but he still looked around like he expected someone to be standing behind him. "What?"

"He has clear potential. Not as much as your daughter, of course." Liren laid contempt on your daughter. "But enough to benefit from training, unless you really plan to embrace the Jedi way of doing things."

"And what way would that be?"

"Letting him wander off until he kills himself or falls into the wrong hands."

"Excuse me," Finn said. "I'm right here. Hey!"

Liren turned to look at him. Luke looked at him, too. Rey personally would have been intimated by the twin glares, but Finn stood steady. "I already fell into the wrong hands, remember? I'm an ex-stormtrooper."

"And you didn't think to test him."

Finn pointed at Liren. "No snide asides."

"I only want what's best for you."

She said it in that way Rey was too familiar with - treacly and threatening, with a note of avarice. Regardless of whether or not she'd truly defected from Snoke, she was clearly still one of his. She wanted Finn's power to use for herself.

The realization send a wave of anger through Rey. It was strong enough that she finally managed to speak again, stepping forward and putting an arm out in front of Finn. "Whether or not he gets training isn't your business. You're here to answer our questions, unless you'd like us to feed you to the nearest wild animal."

"The Resistance would never."

"Maybe," Rey said. "Maybe the Resistance wouldn't. We'll see if anyone asks questions once I've done it."

"Rey," Finn said.

Rey didn't answer; she also didn't look away from Liren. Finn could protest all he wanted after she'd dealt with this, after he was safe.

Liren smiled. Something about Rey's response satisfied her. The violence, probably. But she didn't say anything; she held up her hands in a universal gesture of surrender and stayed well within her plasma cage.

Luke walked forward. "Rey broke Snoke's hold on you."

"Yes."

"With all due respect, it doesn't seem like his hold was the one thing keeping you from being a rebel." Leia's tone strongly implied no respect was due. "So what are you trying to sell us on? That you have nowhere else to go?"

"You mean you don't think I truly believe in the Resistance."

"I mean you could not convince me of that if you brought to bear all the power in the galaxy."

"Aren't you tired?" Liren looked Leia up and down. "You look tired. Snoke had no love for Vader, but he still mentions you. You're on training tapes for stormtroopers and acolytes alike."

"Charming," Leia said. "My mental state is none of your business. Tell me what you want from us."

She made it sound more like a threat than a suggestion. Liren said, "Safety. And in return, information. If the Resistance wins, I go free, and my presence is erased from history."

"You want to be a ghost."

"A very informative one."

It was obvious Leia didn't approve, and even Rey understood why. Leia wasn't the type of person who'd be okay with serving as an informant for a cause she disagreed with, but even beyond that, she couldn't imagine not leading in some capacity. Liren was a coward, and a morally bankrupt one besides. Of course Leia hated her.

Rey hated Liren, too, but a fearful part of her whispered that she'd hated nearly everyone since the whole mess with Snoke began.

"I'd like you to stay," Leia said to Rey, "and verify what she tells us. Can you do that?"

'Can you do that without going crazy and attempting murder' was clearly implied. "Yes."

"This interrogation session is being recorded," Leia told Liren. "Please vocalize your full consent for the records of the New Galactic Republic."

Liren only sneered slightly when she said, "I consent to interrogation."

And so they began. Leia asked Liren questions for well over three hours, and Liren answered in painful, graphic detail. Rey's role wasn't to talk, for which she was grateful, but listening and then confirming Liren's reports of death and control and overpowering evil was hard enough. When Leia finally concluded the interrogation session, Rey let Finn lead her out of the room without protest. She felt overwhelmed, exhausted, like she'd been running for those three hours.

"Rey. Rey?"

"Sorry?" She blinked and focused on Finn - who, she realized too late, had been calling her name for some time now.

"Luke wants to talk to us."

She tried to focus on him. It almost worked. "Luke." Her father. Ha. "About what?"

"My training, probably the fact that you look ready for the hospital."

"I don't like hospitals." She'd never been. Even basic med centers on Jakku were for people with more money than she'd ever seen.

"He told me to meet him in the training room." Finn frowned. "If I need to go alone, I will."

Of course he would, Rey thought. Finn had the makings of a true hero, unlike herself. "Let's go. I have to deal with it sooner or later."

But when they found Luke, he zeroed in on Finn immediately. "Liren was right about you."

"Then why didn't you tell me?"

Luke winced, getting that selfsame chagrined look he'd sported when Rey confronted him. "I'm sorry."

"That's not an answer."

"Training in the Force is difficult," Luke said. "It's challenging and it's painful. I wasn't sure you were -"

"Capable? I am!"

"Ready," Luke said. "Beginning training from a place of pain and anger can end - badly."

There was some history there that Rey didn't - couldn't - know. She bit back frustration. "You have to train him now, then. He needs to be able to protect himself."

"It's not just about protection."

"You can tell him all the mystical stuff too, I'm sure," Rey said. "But now, before -"

Before Snoke could find him. She choked the words off, but of course Luke knew what she'd meant to say anyway. "I can't stop Snoke. I don't think anyone can right now."

"Why not?"

"For starters, we don't know who he is. Where he is. What he wants - aside from Force users."

The answer was reasonable and comprehensive, and so of course Rey found herself infuriated by it. "It's still important that Finn be trained!"

"I'm not really angry," Finn cut in. "So we can probably leave that assumption to the side."

"You ran from your entire life," Luke said.

"The pain started before then. I made my choices. I'm fine with them."

Rey believed him, looking at him just then. He didn't look like someone who was uncertain or afraid. On the contrary: he looked steady and strong, not calm, but certainly not panicked. Ready.

Jealously slithered through her. She did her best to push it aside.

"I can train you," Luke said slowly. He looked between them with no change to expression, nothing to let on what he was looking for. "I'd need to train you both."

And so Rey saw the trap. "Or, what? It's dangerous?"

"Yes," Luke said. Then he grimaced. "If you're uncomfortable - Leia could teach you. She knows enough. For now."

"But not forever." Again, always, anger, a ball in the pit of her stomach. "Because you're the only real Jedi. She can't teach me everything."

"No, she could. But you'll learn faster with me. She's a general; she still has to lead."

Finn looked between the two of them. "Is this about you being Rey's father? What?" He dodged Rey's elbow. "It's a fair question."

"Rey's angry with me," Luke said. "Reasonably so."

"I don't want to talk about it." Talking about it, or really even thinking about it, made her feel like a petulant child. "If we're going to train, let's just train."

"I'm not sure I want to train when there's a, what." Finn waved a hand. "Poe's favorite holonovela going on in the background all the time."

Luke ignored the jab to focus on Rey. "I regret what happened. I do. I never realized you were being hidden from us."

Rey wanted to ask a thousand questions, starting with the most obvious and most painful. Who is my mother? caught in her throat. She couldn't express it. Luke would tell her, she knew; she wasn't worried about his honesty. She was, however, worried that her mother was dead, or evil, or hadn't wanted a daughter after all. It was that fear that kept her silent.

"I'd like to make it up to you now," Luke said. "I want to help you."

Help. Right. Everyone in the Resistance, apparently, wanted to help. But Rey knew when she was beaten. "We can both train," she said. "It'll be better that way."

Luke nodded, like he'd known she would give in all along. She swallowed back fury at the implication.

If he noticed, he didn't let on. "Finn. Leia's been kind enough to share some of your intel on stormtrooper training with me. You're familiar with stick fighting?"

"Not like the Jedi do. Or did."

"You'd be surprised," Luke said. "From what we got from you, and from what our spies have told us, it's pretty similar, even if there's no Force training involved."

"You have First Order spies?"

"More to the point," Luke said, "we might as well start with something both you and Rey are familiar with."

"You're not going to make him meditate?" Rey said.

"Jealous?"

Yes. "Of course not."

Luke just barely smiled. "Get moving," he said, waving at them. "Call me if you need me." He left without specifying if they should use a datapad or try to use the Force.

Finn, at least, was optimistic enough to try using the Force. He got staffs for both himself and Rey, and said, "Winner buys the other dinner?"

"It's free here. And we're in a jungle." There were no nice restaurants in their immediate future.

"Winner gives the other...something. I'm trying to create stakes."

"Were there stakes with the First Order?" Rey asked, then immediately regretted it.

But Finn didn't wince, or even really react at all. He said, "Punishment, mostly. That's why I left," and lifted his staff.

"A kiss," Rey blurted out.

"A - what?"

It was a stupid idea, based on a love of drama streams and the pulpy books Rey had managed to snag from abandoned datapads. But having said it, she knew she'd be even more embarrassed if she backed down. "A kiss. Don't tell me you don't know what that is."

"Of course I know what a kiss is." He was blinking rapidly, clearly shocked. Good. "Whoever wins gets one?"

"Whoever wins gets to pick." Rey spun the staff in her hands. "Agreed?"

For a moment, she thought Finn would back out. He looked away from her, and swallowed hard. She found herself hoping that he'd say no, so that they could both escape the trap she'd set for them.

But he didn't. He said, "Agreed," and they began sparring.

Rey had only fought with people who meant to hurt her, and Luke. Even before she'd known Luke was her father, she'd only known him to be a dedicated teacher. Finn was very different. He attacked her with grace and skill, not visibly holding back. She felt safe - he'd never hurt her - but also more challenged than usual, and on edge from it.

For a moment, she forgot that they were playing for stakes. Then Finn said, "I didn't think you'd done much kissing on Jakku. You told me you didn't have a boyfriend."

It took her a minute to remember. "Why'd you ask?"

"I hadn't met many people at that point. Non-First Order people, anyway." Finn leaned forward, moving faster, the staff spinning in his hands. "And you were memorable. You still are." He struck at her ankles.

Rey felt his intention to move; by the time his staff reached its target, she'd danced away. "My reputation's bigger than me at this point." The pilots gave her sidelong looks more than they spoke to her, Poe and Jess aside.

"Not for me." Finn darted in, and too late, Rey realized she'd been distracted. He landed a tap on her shoulder before backing away. "One," he said with a brilliant smile.

Her heart wanted to flutter. She forced the feeling down, using Luke's training to isolate her mind, to make everything around her seem crystalline and detached. He probably hadn't meant his training to be used in order to repress how badly she wanted to kiss someone, but even Snoke's influence paled in the face of Finn, laughing as he deflected her blows.

"Ha," she said when she broke through and brushed his ribs. "We're even."

"I'd think you'd be trying harder," Finn said, "given the reward you suggested. I know what I'm going to pick."

Surprise made her stumble, and his staff rapped her boots. "Two."

"Stakes," she said. "They're stakes. Not a reward."

"Same thing." He moved to trip her.

She jumped, rolled and got his legs on the way up. Two to her - and then desperation took hold of her. It had been her suggestion, true, and she felt stupid for thinking of it, much less saying it. But now Finn had the better of her. He seemed perfectly confident, and Rey felt like a stumbling fool trying to lose her virginity at the nearest cantina. making too much of every touch and every look.

She fought back with renewed urgency, determined to control the outcome. Finn looked surprised at first, but as she advanced, forcing him to defend, his expression faded to concentration. He was good, better than nearly anyone Rey had fought before. But she could read his intentions easily, and that gave her the advantage in an otherwise even fight. She reached out with the Force, a quick strike at Finn's awareness, and he stumbled.

She swept his feet out from under him, then knelt, placing the rounded end of her staff on his shoulder. "Three," she said, breathing hard.

He could have pushed the staff away, but he didn't. He also didn't say anything. He just looked at her with an undefinable expression as he raised a hand and, slowly, gently, touched her cheek.

"What do you want?" he said. "It's your choice. You won."

She didn't feel like it. She felt torn, trapped. He must have realized, because he stroked her hair as he said, "Poe told me about you and him."

She couldn't stop herself from jerking back. "What?"

"Hey. It's okay. I wasn't exactly mad." He half-smiled. "I told him I'd have done the same thing. It's true, you know."

He'd do the same thing. Meaning - "You'd - with me?"

Finn looked away. "I mean, you had to, right? Weird alien biology stuff was happening. It's not like - you're pretty. Obviously! You're very pretty. And Poe and I both like you, and you're already halfway to being a Skywalker-style hero, so I mean, sure, I would, if there was some kind of plant or pollen or -"

She kissed him, right there on the practice mat. It turned out to be very simple. Her lips slid over his, and as a shiver went down her spine, she fell forward, leaning into his touch, until he pressed her against him.

They were clumsy. Rey had experience, and she supposed Finn did too, but somehow it felt very different, kissing someone she knew so well. He kissed, she realized after a long moment, like Poe - or maybe Poe had kissed like Finn. The thought sent a shiver through her, and she kissed him that much harder, hoping to crowd out any hesitation.

It didn't work. He pulled back first, but the moment he did, she felt like a cold bucket of water had been tossed over her. She pulled away, then stood, avoiding his gaze.

"Luke will probably talk to you tomorrow," she said.

"Rey -"

"I have to go." Blunt and stupid-sounding. She followed it up with out and out running away.

Rey didn't know how old she'd been when she freed herself from Plutt. Ten, maybe - and it wasn't really freedom, of course, but at least then she'd been able to live alone and rule herself, even if her food was held hostage for old ship parts. The first few nights after she'd found shelter, she had lain awake, practically trembling with excitement. But then the days came again, and with them, the same drudgery of scavenging. The nights became long, and then they became frightening. Animals scuffed outside her door, and the wind howled too loudly to ignore, even with a ship's thick walls to insulate her.

Then she had curled up on her side, shaking with fear and loneliness, keeping her eyes screwed shut for terror of what she might see. She'd clutched a blanket around her, as much to pretend her mother still held her as for warmth. And she repeated to herself, over and over, that she must be brave. She must be strong. They'd come back someday, and in the meantime, she must be brave.

It had never really worked.

Now, comparatively, she had very little to fear. The Resistance base was as safe as any place in the galaxy could be for her. If she had things to fear, anyway, they'd be Snoke's influence, or Liren, trapped in the center of their camp like a time bomb. Being afraid of Finn was ridiculous.

And she wasn't afraid of him, exactly. Finn, kind and determined and competent, didn't scare her. But the memory of what she'd felt, lying over him - the strength of it, the sheer mind-altering force - did. It had been ten years since she'd survived those first few nights alone, but lying in her room in the Resistance barracks, she felt that same fear-filled loneliness.

If she went to them, they might accept her. Or, well, they probably would accept her. Multi-person relationships weren't so uncommon, and Finn had said Poe liked her, just as he did. But that was all it was: they liked her. Maybe they wanted her, physically. And none of that was bad or wrong; it was nice to be wanted, wonderful to be liked. But Rey had lived with herself long enough to recognize what she was feeling. She'd been in danger even before she'd kissed Finn on the practice mat. Now, the danger had clarified itself, and it terrified her.

She could love them both, and it would be easy. She couldn't imagine anything more likely to hurt her.

The night seemed heavy. She tossed and turned, and neither the room's white noise nor complete darkness helped. When she woke up the next morning - forced to, more or less, by automated lighting and the room's roof fading to transparency - she felt like she was moving through healing gel. Every limb took more effort to move than it should have done.

Her mood was already in jeopardy, then, when she entered the cafeteria to see Finn and Poe all over each other. They were hardly the center of anyone's attention - the cafeteria was large and, when the pilots ate, incredibly noisy - but she became aware of Finn instantly, and with him, Poe. They were the center of her attention, and she hated it.

She hid from everyone with great success, until well into twilight. She'd have been in the clear to spend the rest of the night blissfully alone, but Luke found her hiding place in the woods as it began to get dark.

"It's not that safe out here," he said by way of greeting.

"I can take care of myself." It came out more aggressively than she'd intended, but she felt absolutely no desire to make amends.

"Even against Liren?"

She flinched.

Luke sighed and sat down in the grass across from her. He looked, she thought, like an exhausted frog. His robes crinkled beneath him, billowing at the sides. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"Aren't Jedi supposed to be immune to -"

"Pettiness?" he suggested when she struggled to find a word. At her nod, he said, "Maybe. I wouldn't know. People call me the last Jedi, but the truth is a lot more complicated than that."

"The pilots think they know all kinds of things about you."

Luke's lips quirked. "Pilots usually do."

Luke had already worked on teaching her how to manage her emotions. A lot of the advice had to do with introspection: understanding your own motives and thoughts, and ensuring those didn't frame your speech without your permission. She tried to follow his teachings just then, to sort through the morass of emotions that seethed inside her. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make them all make sense, couldn't reconcile herself to feeling so awful. Not to mention that she'd rather die than tell Luke about her Finn- and Poe-related troubles.

Finally, she settled on saying, "I don't like it. This idea that I'm part of something so huge."

He didn't need to speak for her to register the irony in what she'd said. "Not the Force. I meant the rumors. The whole Skywalker thing."

"The whole Skywalker thing isn't really a portent of good luck, so that makes sense."

"It's not even that," Rey lied. "Oh, okay. It's not entirely that. I know about Vader."

"And my nephew."

"And Ren. But -"

"You think you can avoid that?"

"I stayed hidden for years," Rey said. "I don't want to go back to that."

"I would never force you to." He spoke with vehemence, just then. Almost protectiveness. Maybe this was what it would have been like if he'd raised her. "You won't be left somewhere like Jakku again."

"Still," Rey said. "I'm not really worried about going evil, or - whatever. But there's just so much. Expectations, speculation." She shook her head. "I was no one on Jakku. And now I'm part of some legacy."

She felt so oddly defensive just then. After all, Luke may have wanted a daughter, but she hadn't known she was a Skywalker until a few weeks ago. It was reasonable to worry, normal to fear, absolutely fine to wish she could have just been a Force-skilled person from some family no one had ever heard of.

But of course, Luke didn't say anything remotely critical. Instead, he nodded. "I know it's difficult."

"You were happy about it." She'd already been given the Story of Luke Skywalker from various Resistance members, and she'd read about him before. "About having a legacy, I mean."

"I also didn't know about my father for awhile."

His father. Vader. Her grandfather, she thought, repressing a shudder. "Okay, but -"

He held up a hand, and when she quieted, said, "I understand that you're afraid, and that you're frustrated. I understand that you'd like to avoid the Resistance's scrutiny. Unfortunately, Snoke will continue trying to reach us. I can't stop that, or put it on pause. I wish I could."

She knew all that already. Hearing it again only caused a slow, depressing variety of frustration to course through her. She opened her mouth to say something - 'I know', maybe, or 'leave me alone' - and found her throat closing up.

A moment later, she realized what was happening: she had begun to cry.

Sobs wracked her body, and her eyes teared up. She curled in on herself, avoiding Luke's gaze, trying not to think about what this proved. She was weak after all, weak and doomed by Snoke's own power. It seemed very likely just then that she wouldn't last the week.

Luke's tentative hand on her back was such a shock that she jumped. But she didn't move away. He patted her back like he'd never been around a crying person before, and said, "There there," the way you might try to comfort an unclassified alien. When that only made her burst into harder sobs, he said, "I won't let anything happen to you, Rey. I promise."

He'd probably promised the children, too, the ones Ren had killed. It comforted her anyway, as did the fact that she could feel both his power and his certainty. It was easier to reach out to him with the Force than it had been with anyone else; Rey now knew enough to understand that that should have been a sign.

They stayed like that, on the ground, her crying and him patting her back, until her sobs eased and her breathing slowed. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and scuttled away as soon as she was able, saying, "I should probably get back. I have things to do." A complete lie, but one she hoped Luke would accept.

"One thing," Luke said. "I doubt you want anyone to see you like this."

She didn't bother contradicting him.

"You can't stay invisible forever, but you've used the Force to deflect attention before. Try using it consciously this time."

A lesson, sneaked in as advice. But it was useful advice all the same, so Rey nodded and said, "I'll do that."

No one even glanced at her on the way back.

The person who knocked on her barracks room door later was not Finn or Poe, Rey discovered upon letting them in. It was Jess.

"You weren't at dinner," Jess said, sitting down on Rey's bed uninvited.

"I wasn't feeling well." Sitting next to Jess would mean they were almost touching, so Rey stood in front of her, fully cognizant of how awkward she was being. Anger, too - her constant companion, it felt like - rose in her. Jess hadn't even asked if she could sit.

"Uh-huh. Well, forgive me, but you look fine."

"I was training," Rey ground out.

"Finn said you were going through a rough time, post-capture."

Finn had been gossiping about her? "Out," Rey said. "I'm fine, but I - you need to leave." Irritation, anger, jealousy - they all clawed at her, trying to rise and take over. "Now!"

She didn't yell it. She had, in fact, barely raised her voice. But Jess obeyed instantly, hopping off the bed with eyes wide and leaving before Rey even got the door.

As it slid shut behind Jess, Rey sat down in the spot she'd vacated, breathing hard. What was wrong with her? Stress, she thought. It had to be stress. Trauma, perhaps, from her imprisonment with the First Order.

Dread crept through her. Or maybe, she thought, it was Liren. Maybe Liren, and Snoke through her, were poisoning her. Maybe she was becoming like Ren.

Ren had killed a Jedi school and sent Luke on a painful journey. But he hadn't been at the center of a Resistance camp. What damage could Snoke do if he controlled someone here?

She closed her eyes, then opened them, then closed them again. No. She was her own person, and that person had gone through a lot, and was struggling to manager her issues. That was all. Sleep would help, she thought. She tapped her bedside panel and took the tea it produced, then kicked off her shoes, lying back on the pallet.

The tea contained sleep regulators. Against those, she didn't stand a chance. She wasn't even aware of falling asleep, but she woke almost eight hours later with a much clearer head. If she'd dreamed, she didn't remember it - and thank the heavens for that.

Luke had sent a schedule to her datapad late the previous night. It called for training in the morning with Finn, and individual training for two hours in the afternoon. Compared to a grueling work-for-rations schedule, her day would be relaxed, but it marked a return to daily lessons all the same. She arrived at the first one feeling a marked lack of enthusiasm.

But she got through the day, and managed to keep her head, even as Luke had her and Finn trying to move objects using the Force. He watched Finn more closely than he did Rey, which made sense; his was the newly discovered power, after all. But Rey found herself pushing harder, struggling with jealousy, as he explained the same principles to Finn that he'd explained to Rey back on the island.

She was being ridiculous, and she knew it, but that didn't make her feel less annoyed. Finn could go back to the barracks after being coddled by Luke, and be kissed by Poe. Who cared? Not Rey. She didn't care enough that when Finn avoided her gaze once they were done, and departed for lunch without even looking at her, she didn't say a word.

Luke hung back as he always did, watching her. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Rey snapped, and stomped off.

She wasn't fine, of course. Well - physically, she'd never been better. But she felt like a cornered animal. She wanted to know more about her family; right now, she didn't even know who her mother was, much less what had truly happened back on Jakku. But she couldn't ask Luke. Even the thought of doing so was laughable. It wasn't until she was back on her bed, curled up around her datapad and feeling sorry for herself, that she realized she could use the datapad for things other than watching holodramas and looking up her schedule.

"Tell me about Luke Skywalker," she whispered, half convinced that even asking would cause some kind of embarrassing notice to be sent to Luke.

The datapad obliged, without any obvious violations of privacy. The network had, unsurprisingly, thousands of articles on him, dozens of videos just on the first page, and interviews with people who'd known him. Altogether, it was more information on him than she'd ever seen in one place. It more or less stopped years ago. When he'd lost the school, Rey thought, and become the person she knew now: sad and withdrawn and impossible to really know.

Her father. It seemed impossible.

She found no hint of her own existence in those files. She took a shaky breath when her schedule alert popped up, reminding her she had more work to do that day. The cause of the Resistance, she tried to remind herself, was more important than her own checkered past.

It didn't really work. She was relieved when, before she even made it to her afternoon private lesson, a droid waylaid her in the hall. "General Leia requests that you report to the East Building to guard the prisoner known as Liren while others are on an off-world expedition."

"Of course," she said, and whirled in the opposite direction with relief ballooning in her chest.

"It's a sad world when I'm easier to spend time with than your own father, isn't it?" Liren said by way of greeting.

Rey trained her eyes on the opposite wall and didn't respond.

"I'm not a hostile, you know. Look at this prison cell. Compared to how Snoke punishes nonbelievers, it's practically a palace."

Rey glanced over in spite of herself. Liren wasn't lying; the cell looked more or less like every barracks room did, only with plasma bars instead of walls. An effective demotivator to escape, Rey thought, even if the effect was Liren's face glowing, unsettlingly confident, just a few paces away from her.

"I know why you don't want to talk to me," Liren said. "Snoke hurt me, too."

"And you might still be his agent." Rey did her best to sound bored. "So the world turns."

"He makes you stop caring, you know."

Rey didn't respond, but she felt her mind catch on terror anyway. Liren had to be using some form of compulsion; her words were impossible to ignore. Rey could tell Liren was staring at her even without looking at the prison cell, and part of her wanted to bow to Liren again, to get that very specific safety she'd felt subsuming her will to that of someone much more powerful than she.

No, she thought. She hadn't felt that at all. She'd felt terrified and sick in her days with Snoke's acolytes.

And yet, the desire persisted, and with it the false memories.

"Stop it," she finally managed to say.

"Stop what?" Liren said. Then, when Rey didn't answer: "Oh. Oh, my."

Tension saturated her spine. "What?"

"Nothing," Liren said.

A flash of anger. For a moment, Rey was back on Jakku, watching scavengers bigger and stronger than herself taking her portions. No. "No," she snarled. "You'll tell me now."

Liren touched a corner of her robe to the plasma prison bars. It went up in smoke. "I came to the Resistance in peace. Unless you think your General approves of brutalizing prisoners, I'd watch my tone, were I you."

The words cut through the rage, a bit, enough for Rey to back down. She turned away from Liren and stared at the far wall, trying to get the rest of her calm to return.

She met with mixed success. The world still felt like it was about to fly apart around her when Poe, Finn, Leia, and Luke entered the room.

"She's fine," Rey said. "I haven't let her do anything."

But none of them were looking at Liren.

"He's in her mind," Liren said. "I can sense him. If you leave her like this, he'll catch me, too. And you." She pointed to Leia.

For a moment Rey couldn't understand. Then she did, and horror suffused her. "Liar! She's lying," she said, turning to Leia. "I wouldn't - I'm not -"

"Snoke," Luke said, in a tone neither threatening nor violent, but deeply and profoundly weary.

A moment of terror. A moment of pain. And then, Rey's mind quite simply broke.

Later, she'd watch the video that showed what happened. She screamed, first off, and then raced at Leia with her hands in grotesque claws. Finn and Poe wrestled her to the ground, painfully, scratching her arms in an effort to keep her still. Both of them looked down at her with fright in their faces, and concern. Concern for her.

But at the moment, she registered none of them. The seed of anger and pain that had been in her mind since before she'd gone with the First Order blossomed into a vine, embedded in every part of her mind, sending her whirling into the Dark.

And this was the Dark, there could be no doubt about that. Her body convulsed and she retreated into her mind, past the oases of Luke's invention, into the most honest part of her: the part that Snoke had owned for weeks now. That he'd found her long ago.

"Rey," he said.

She stood, in her mind, on hard-packed earth. Darkness and cold surrounded her. Snoke himself, the Lord of the First Order, was all around her, and yet nowhere. She couldn't see his face.

"You did this," she said. Even panicked, she could see the connections. The rage that had welled up in her at the merest slights. The frustration. The jealousy and avarice every time she looked at Finn and Poe.

He chuckled, a sick and slimy noise. "That wasn't me," he said.

"It was!"

"Not that last. That sort of affection -" He spoke the word with contempt - "belongs only to you."

"Then why? Why are you doing this?"

It was a weak question. She felt his contempt towards her, a mirror of her own. Or maybe it was her own, she thought, desperation welling inside her.

"Control," he said. "Not that I'd expect a desert rat to understand."

"You're joking." He had to be, because if he'd been in Rey's mind, then he knew. She feared everything, it sometimes felt like. People, events - the First Order, certainly. If she could control it all...

"Ah." He sighed. Cold wind whipped past her face. "You do understand."

"No."

"Liar."

She was; of course she was. She couldn't escape agreeing with him, which surely was his design. He needed her, she thought, because he burned through the Force sensitive, and he was losing acolytes every day. Acolytes like Liren.

Being aware of it didn't help. Every second that she spent here, she was losing herself. "I'll never be what you want. I'm too old."

"Luke has worked to disabuse you of that notion."

"Luke's an optimist."

"He is, isn't he? Ben has shown me."

Ben. Kylo Ren. Rey gritted her teeth. "Let me go."

"He tried to fight me, too. It didn't end well for him."

Snoke showed her: Ren, crying. Ren, killing children. Full of anger and pain.

"No," she said again. If she just kept saying it, maybe Luke could pull her back. If she resisted long enough, someone would save her.

"Rey Skywalker," Snoke whispered inside her. "No one is coming to save you."

Then he began to hurt her.

The physical pain was oddly specific. He gave her the pain of a sunburn, a vicious relic of her first scavenging trip. She'd been only eight and had no protective gear at all, and so the sun had blistered her, made her feverish and raving. Plutt had turned her out into the cold desert night in disgust, and there she'd almost died, shivering and crying for her mother.

If she'd had power, it would have been different. With the right power she could tear Plutt apart and -

No!

She lashed out, but only for a moment. The Force wanted nothing to do with her here. She could barely push Snoke away, and he was immediately back, nudging another memory into existence.

Fifteen years old. Four years ago, now, but the memory was still fresh. A traveler named Joksta who'd stayed for three months. Rey had fallen in love and then watched Joksta leave; two months later, her ship's signature blipped out of existence. Shot down or simply fudged to drop a law enforcement hunt, Rey would never know. She had lain alone in bed, wondering if hearts stayed broken forever. Joksta hadn't wanted her, not really; she'd been convenient, for a short time only.

"Do you have a boyfriend back on Jakku?"

Poe didn't want her either. Nor did Finn. If she'd practiced more, perhaps she could keep them, convince them that some power was worth staying close to.

That thought was harder to push away. When she did, she lost all awareness for a moment, her mind spinning beneath the weight of Snoke's power.

And still he pressed on. Loneliness. Hurt. Anger. Pain. Every rejection, every indignity, every robbery and beating and petty cruelty Jakku and Plutt had seen fit to bestow upon her. And the promise of freedom, of control, so seductive that she could hardly breathe for wanting it.

Here, then, was the secret. When she finally gave in, she'd think she was going willingly. She'd kill everyone in the Resistance with a smile.

"Rey."

Whose voice was that? Maybe it was her own. Maybe this was the end.

"Rey Skywalker. I need you to come out of there now."

No, that wasn't her voice. This one was older, firm and more than a little annoyed.

"You've almost defeated him. He doesn't want you to know. One last try, Rey."

A blatant lie. He'd almost defeated her, not the other way around.

"Come with me," the voice said, and suddenly the Force blossomed all around her.

It was green and warm and beautiful, and she felt vigor rise in her. Snoke was weak and afraid. Only a shadow of him had managed to lodge in her, and now she'd rejected him twice. Once more, one last push.

"I love you," the voice said. "Now. Finish it."

With everything she had, with every power she could lay claim to, she attacked, feeling the sickening darkness all around her and pushing it, burning it, away.

She woke screaming, cutting it off with a gasp when she realized. The first person she saw wasn't Luke or Finn; it was Leia.

Warm eyes. Comfort. "You," she said.

"Me," Leia agreed. "Welcome back."

"Is he -"

"Gone, for now," Finn said. "Luke told us."

He still held her, though his hands were gentle now. She turned to him. "I'm sorry."

"You're safe," he said. "That's enough."

Rey opened her mouth to reply, to say anything that wasn't twisted by the Dark. Before she could get a word out, though, a new voice spoke from the door.

"No one here is safe."

Rey tried to turn and look, succeeding in hitting her nose on Poe's bicep. Luke, on the other hand, appeared and disappeared in her range of vision. When he spoke, he sounded more exhausted than Rey had ever heard him - an achievement on its own. "Mara. You shouldn't be here."

"Luke, darling," the voice said. It was feminine in tone, as well as tense in a way Rey was almost certain denoted fury. "You've been busy."

Leia didn't move from Rey's side, but she did nod at Finn and Poe, who released Rey immediately - Poe with a lingering hand at the small of her back, supporting her as she scrambled to her feet.

"Mara," Leia said. "It's good to see you."

She didn't sound particularly happy about it, nor did the woman sound friendly when she said, "It's good to see you, too."

Then, finally, Rey could turn on shaking legs and get a look at her: a tall woman, with dark hair.

Rey gasped. Her own eyes stared back at her, down the long barrel of the blaster.

"Hello, daughter," Mara said.

"Ah, hell. Shit. Damn," Poe said.

Rey very, very much agreed. "Who are you?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"My mother." Rey shook her head. Her hands, she noted, were shaking. "Luke's -"

"Your father's partner. Yes." Mara's eyes didn't waver from Rey, even as Rey wished, acutely, that they would. "We lost you very early on."

"He's told me."

"How did you know to find us here?" Luke said.

Rey turned to look at him, and found herself unable to look away. He was looking between Mara and herself with tears in his eyes. The sight made Rey want to hide; it hadn't occurred to her that Luke even could be moved like that.

"Of course he can be," Mara said. "He's human."

"You're perceptive," Finn said.

"She's my daughter." That, Rey thought, explained nothing. "I felt her presence as soon as you began training. I hadn't expected things to be this dangerous for her."

"You should have," Leia said tightly. "This is a Resistance base."

Mara nodded. "And the enemy isn't a Skywalker, this time."

"It wasn't last time, either," Luke said. "The Empire was always bigger than that. As you well know."

"Who are you?" Rey burst out. "What is this?"

Mara reached out. It was an innocuous gesture, meant to touch her shoulder, but Rey instinctively recoiled.

A shadow passed over Mara's face. "It occurred to me that the Resistance might need some...wider-ranging contacts. After you lost Han." That last was directed at Leia. "And I wanted to meet my daughter. He didn't tell you about me, did he?"

"I wasn't sure you were alive," Luke said quietly, before Rey could respond. "Rey. I wanted to."

"Now is not the time for protestations of responsibility," Leia said. "Snoke nearly broke her, and none of us noticed."

"Except me," Liren said. They all turned to look at her, standing behind the bars with a carefully bored expression on her face. "I knew. It only took me a moment."

"And you'll be at the table," Leia said. She nodded to Luke, who went over to the prison's control panel and disabled the plasma bars. "But right now..." She looked around at the group. Mara still held the gun; Rey still shook. "You," Leia said to Rey. "Get some sleep. You two, take care of her." That was directed at Finn and Poe, who both nodded. "Liren, you'll be debriefed. Find Admiral Statura, it's his shift at the shield deck. And you." Leia stabbed her fingers at Luke and Mara. "Come with me."

It was in that moment that she really looked like Luke's sister. Luke's shoulders slumped and he grimaced with guilt as he and Mara obeyed Leia's directions.

Liren, thank the Force, left with them, so that Rey was alone with Finn and Poe.

"Seeing him crying," Finn said, "was weird. Really, really weird."

Rey nodded.

"They're both people," Poe said. "Everyone fighting this war is."

"Snoke's not." She could almost feel him still, a reflection of her own fear.

"He was, once," Poe said. "Or at least, that's the popular theory. Human, even."

"Really?" Finn said. "I'd have assumed he was like Maz."

"No one knows who Maz is," Poe said. "Or what she was. That's beside the point." He placed a hand on Rey's shoulder. She forced herself not to flinch away again. "You're okay?"

She had no way of evaluating an answer. "I'm alive," she said finally.

"Do you want to be alone?"

She looked at him. He was older than her or Finn, but she hardly noticed most of the time; they were none of them short on life experience or naive about pain. But right now it seemed painfully obvious. His expression was too knowing, his eyes too perceptive.

"I'm fine," she said. She didn't even sound convincing to herself.

He took a step forward, and then another one when she didn't move away. His arms came around her, and his hand rested on the back of her neck. She exhaled in a rush and leaned into him, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

"It'll be okay," he said quietly. "You're safe now."

"For now," she said.

"You're safe," he said again, more firmly. "We're not gonna let anything happen to you."

Another hand patted her back, awkwardly at first, but then with more confidence. Finn. She wiggled a hand out of the embrace, grabbing his wrist.

It was one of those moments that would have been easy to disentangle herself from. All she had to do was step away and tell them to leave. But she couldn't. They were both so damn warm, and more familiar than they should have been. They were alive. They were of the light, and she couldn't bring herself to step away again.

"Stay," she said. She knew she was tipping the scales; in that moment, she didn't care. "Stay with me. Please."

Finn's lips brushed against her neck for the space of a breath. A shudder raced through her. Poe's grip tightened, his thighs tensing against her legs.

"Anything you want," Poe said.

He didn't mean it; that was why it hurt worse than anything else could. Maybe he meant comfort, physical or otherwise, but he didn't mean love. He didn't mean permanence. Rey hadn't needed Snoke's taunts to know that.

But for the time being, at least, he did mean that they'd do as she asked. "I'd like to go out to the woods," she said. "Where Finn and I train."

"Not your room?" Finn said. His voice sounded oddly hoarse. She must not have been the only one screaming as she battled Snoke.

"It'll be - please," she said. "I need to be outside."

They took her there as she asked, Poe keeping her hand in his. She stretched out in the grass and tilted her face to the sky. This planet had generally predictable weather, and today was as all the other sunny days had been: clear and cold, but beautiful, and nothing like Jakku. It was what she needed, just as much as she needed to not be alone.

"Tell me about your training," Poe said.

Rey didn't need to respond. Finn, new to the practice, was more than ready to launch into discussion. It occurred to her midway through his recounting of Luke's training that Poe had probably heard it all before - in bed, maybe. The talk was for her benefit. She laughed when Finn cracked a joke, though, and his resulting smile made it worth it.

"We were all afraid of him," Poe said. "Back in the day, you know."

Before Snoke had gotten Ren. Rey winced. "Sure."

"He was so powerful, ridiculously so. Testor had a bit of a crush. I might've too."

"Poe! That's my father!"

Poe was laughing too hard to continue - a blessing, Rey thought, for both of them. She smacked at him anyway, out of the principle of it all.

Finn looked between them with a tiny smile on his face. He plucked at the grass and wove it as Poe talked about Testor's crush, about his mother, about the early Republic.

It was almost too nice a story, Rey thought. "And now we're all here, fighting the First Order."

"Sure," Poe said. "It's not that bad, though."

"Luke's not exactly cheerful these days," Finn said. "Not that I've seen from him, anyway."

Poe lay back against the grass. His shirt rode up, exposing the smallest slit of stomach. Of course it was beautiful; Rey looked away. "That's life," Poe said. "You'll understand when you're older."

Finn smacked his shoulder lightly. "Come on. Be serious."

"Oh, trust me, I am," Poe said.

Finn snorted.

"No, seriously." Poe propped himself up on an elbow. "It's terrible now, I'll grant you, but we're fighting for freedom. There's nothing more important than that."

"If only it'd stuck the first time," Rey muttered.

"That would have been ideal." He looked directly at her then, expression serious. His eyes, Rey was disconcerted to note, were bright and interested, painfully charismatic. And practiced, of course. he probably gave this mini-speech a dozen times a day. "But we're here now. We'll do what we have to."

"Because it's the right thing to do," Finn said.

Poe sent a smile his way, then, like it had been a joke. But of course Finn had been serious - even if Rey didn't know what he really wanted, why he'd stayed with the Resistance. Her ignorance sent a bolt of guilt through her. She'd had months to become closer to him, and she hadn't done it. She'd avoided them after the undercover disaster, too - and meanwhile, they'd both become closer. Her mistake.

"Tell me what you know about Mara," Rey said.

"Your mother?" Poe said. "She's a little out of my league. In uh - more ways than one."

"I know," Rey said. "I - that's not what I meant!"

"We had a file on her, actually," Finn said.

"Oh, really." Poe raised his eyebrows. "The First Order has a file on Mara Jade? I guess that's not a surprise."

"What does that mean?" Rey said. "Who is she?"

"It's more like, who was she," Finn said. "A legend, in some circles."

"And a bit of an outlaw in others," Poe said.

"She worked for the Emperor," Finn said. "She was an assassin."

"Oh...oh, maker."

"Then a smuggler," Finn said. "And, well, our file ended then. But I guess at some point, she...with Luke."

Poe tilted his head, like he was thinking about it. "Stop that," Rey said, unable to help herself.

"Sorry," Poe said. "It just seems kind of poetic, right? Given - ah. Damn."

Han. Silence settled over the group.

"Anyway," Poe said after a long moment. "She's a character. Handy with a blaster, too."

"The parents I remember were no one," Rey said. "No one important, I mean." And they'd hurt her. Stolen her under Snoke's influence, apparently. But her mother had cried. Surely Rey hadn't misremembered that in the intervening decade. Any scared little girl would want to believe her parents missed her. But she hadn't invented that detail. They'd both screamed. Her mother - the woman she'd remembered as her mother - had cried.

"Did Luke tell you what happened?"

She avoided Poe's concerned gaze, shaking her head.

Finn moved just a bit closer to her, until she could feel the warmth of his body. She wanted desperately to lean into it, but a glance at Poe put an end to that idea. The way he was stretched out on the grass, comfortable and practically glowing from the sunshine, served as a horribly guilt-inducing reminder of exactly what had happened between the two of them. Finn might be okay with it, but somehow, that didn't make Rey feel anything but horribly lonely.

"I'm sure there's an explanation," Poe said.

He managed to make it sound believable, even. Or mostly believable. "She said she could feel me."

"Um, well," Finn said, then stared at the ground.

Rey narrowed her eyes. "What?"

"It's nothing."

"Finn!"

He sighed. "Most people could," he said. "Force-sensitive people, that is. The First Order tracks this kind of thing, but Maz knew, too. Whatever happened with you, it wasn't exactly subtle. I've heard people talking about it still, even now."

Rey could think of nothing more to say than, "Oh."

"Either way," Poe said. "It's good that she's here. She wasn't wrong back there. We're low on parties who can move between our space, Republic space, and First Order space. Especially now that those latter two are so cozy."

"Have we heard anything from the Senate?" Rey said. "Has Snoke's control faltered at all?"

"It's not just his control," Poe said. "And that's the problem."

"They can't possibly want to go back!"

"To the Empire?" Poe shrugged. "Freedom's hard. I wouldn't bet on it, personally."

Rey had no rejoinder to that, so she settled for scowling.

"On the bright side," Finn said, "there's two of us now. Young Force users, I mean. So - maybe we can defeat Snoke."

"Two whole Force users." Rey shook her head. "I'm not surprised people are capitulating to Snoke."

They sat in silence after that, more than a little depressingly. It was only after the suns descended below the trees that Finn said, "We should get back."

"Think the dust has settled?" Poe climbed to his feet.

Finn followed, and offered a hand to Rey. It was only a hand, Rey told herself, and took it.

"Here's hoping." Finn started back towards the camp. He didn't let go of Rey's hand, and she couldn't bring herself to ask him to.

They heard nothing from the main command for days. Rey felt jumpy all the while. Having Snoke out of her mind made it obvious just how thoroughly rooted in there he'd been. She found herself infinitely more relaxed, but also keyed up every time she thought about how much more relaxed she was. On top of that, the one time she tried to meditate - Luke's cure-all! - she found herself so aware of Mara that she had to stop.

Yet despite all that, she saw absolutely nothing of Mara herself. Leia was still around in the way she always was, giving orders and overseeing debriefings. Luke occasionally lurked in a corner, disappearing before Rey could track him down. Her and Finn's schedules had been put on hold, though, and Mara and Liren were both nowhere to be found.

A side effect of the disruption was that Rey found herself suddenly spending most of her time with Poe and Finn. And neither of them, apparently, shared her consternation.

"This kind of thing happens," Poe said. "When they're done with whatever they're doing, they'll let us know."

"My mother, Poe. My mother!"

"My mother was in the Resistance. I know it's not the same, but - just. The General has everyone's best interests in mind."

"I'm going to climb out of my skin," Rey said.

"It'll be okay," Poe said, for the fourth time that day at least.

She knew what it meant. It meant that she should calm down. But if she stopped talking about it, she'd become the girl who kept her mouth shut and panicked about everything privately, and then...

Snoke. Always lurking. Was this what it had been like for Ren? She could almost feel sorry for him.

But only almost.

Finn touched her hand. "Hey. Want to spar?" They'd been keeping Poe company as he and BB-8 worked on diagnostics for the Resistance's captured TIE fighter, but since the diagnostics had to be formal and no parts could be pulled out or fiddled with, Rey's own usefulness was limited.

"With staffs?" Rey tried a hopeful smile.

"Oh, so you want an assured victory today?"

"Of course not! I'm just trying to help you get better. They're an important weapon, you know, for form and speed - augh!" She dodged Finn's jab to her ribs.

"Get going, both of you." Poe laughed as he nudged Finn's boots with his foot. "You're distracting my droid."

"Fine, fine." Finn sighed. "Let's go. You'll be sorry when I come back with bruises," he told Poe.

"Oh, I think I'll enjoy it," Poe said.

"Joker," Finn said, laughing as they left.

If Rey fought harder given evidence of Finn and Poe's attachment, so what? She had to survive. This was as good a way as any. Perhaps feeling the loneliness would even temper her against future pain, and future invasion from Snoke.

Right. And perhaps Jakku would be next year's hottest new resort planet.

In the next few days, she came to understand what the Resistance looked like when actively preparing for expected battle. People were more serious, of course, but it went beyond that. The pilots drilled longer and with higher stakes. No raucous cafeteria parties even started, much less went till dawn. She hardly saw Leia at all, and when Luke gave her lessons, he was serious and withdrawn.

She didn't see Liren or Mara at all. Perhaps that was for the best. Part of Rey wasn't sure what the point of a mother was, really, after she'd spent so much time alone, and after the parents she'd fought to remember were revealed as frauds.

Of course, part of her was just lonely. No sense in ignoring that. But if things stayed the same, more or less, then she could navigate the loneliness. It was bearable.

As a direct consequence of such thoughts, her first reaction to being asked to report to the command room was sheer panic. Fear that she had done something wrong or that Mara or Leia or even Luke would reject her trampled all common sense. It was only after she'd spent several minutes breathing deeply and fighting to remember that she wanted to be in the Resistance, and that the Resistance wanted her, that she could comply with the request and leave her room.

Snoke's influence was gone - his Force-powered influence, at least. But clearly some of the lessons he'd tried to teach her, of her own lowliness and worthlessness, remained.

Self-awareness didn't make seeing Mara for the first time in two weeks any easier. She stood in front of the Resistance's commanders and said, "Reporting, as requested, General."

"Rey, thank you for coming." Leia walked over to her and hugged her. She clearly meant to be comforting, but she stepped back more quickly than she had before. "Luke says you're progressing quickly."

"I'm trying," she said. She heard someone clear their throat behind her, and turned to see Finn and Poe standing in the entryway.

"Come on in," Leia said. "I've got news for you all."

After they'd come to stand by Rey, Leia said, "Bring up the display, please, Mara."

The holovid flicked to life, filling the air with a map. Rey didn't recognize it; none of the quadrants were labeled.

"The Resistance became necessary due to Dark side influence," Leia said. When Poe opened his mouth, she held up a hand. "I know it's a history you all know. Bear with me.

"We all thought, and hoped, that the Rebellion would end Sith control over our galaxy, and over the Senate particularly. For awhile, it seemed as thought we'd succeeded. The Sith were never set up for long-term rule; they relied too heavily on operatives who weren't entirely loyal, and their use of the Dark side was only potent with comparatively few people. Snoke has proven to be different - and has, in fact, always been different." She turned to Liren. "You'd better explain."

"To put it bluntly, we don't know where he is," Liren said. "The galaxy is vast, but Force users have always been easier to track, if you have the right power. Not so with Snoke. He's hidden somewhere. Even his closest allies don't know exactly where that is. He uses the Force, kyber crystals, and other tools, to allow himself to project anything he wants over long distances."

Including taking control of other people. Rey said, "If it were possible to find him, wouldn't you have done it already? When Ren was taken?"

She hadn't meant to be gentle, but when Leia flinched, guilt still welled in her. "I'm sorry. I meant -"

"I know what you meant," Leia said. For a moment, she looked much older, her face shadowed, her pain radiating through the room. "It's true that we haven't been able to find him before. It's also true that we haven't had an asset that might allow us to find him."

An asset. "Liren? You can't be serious. She just said no one knows where he is! And she was dark side until five minutes ago!"

"I told you," Liren murmured.

"Hey," Poe said. His voice was mild, but he looked at Liren with a hard expression. "She's not wrong. Why shouldn't we be wary of you?"

"I'm outnumbered, for one."

Finn said, "So were you when you took Rey."

Rey looked over at Finn. They hadn't talked about it because there wasn't much to talk about - but if Poe was a bit annoyed, Finn was ready to fight. She'd hardly ever seen him this genuinely angry.

"I've dealt with traitors and scumbags before," Leia said. "Traitors on both sides, actually. She's useful, and we aren't the Resistance if we treat Galactic citizens like the First Order does. For now, we trust her."

"So what does she know?" Poe said.

Liren took a deep breath. "I think I can find Snoke."

"Seriously?" Poe said. He looked from Liren to Leia. "How do we know she's credible? Next she'll tell us she'll lead us right to him, as long as only Rey comes."

"Dameron, I understand you're feeling protective, but believe me when I say the potential for a double-cross has already crossed my mind." Leia spoke in the kind of firm voice that meant she was delivering, however kindly, a firm setdown. "Now, for the last time, let her finish."

"I'm not going," Liren said.

"Coward," Mara muttered.

"No. More. Commentary," Leia said.

Liren moved slightly, placing her back more directly to Mara. Then she said, "The reason it's difficult to find him is that only his acolytes, those in his trust, have enough of a connection to him to follow the Force as far as you'd need to. If I took a ship with all of you, the same power that let me find him would convince me to kill all of you on the way."

The hair on Rey's neck rose. "What are you saying?"

"Simple." Liren looked her dead in the eye. "You're the only one who's managed to push him out like that. You're the only one who's related to three other powerful Force users - and connected with another, besides."

Out of the corner of her eye, Rey saw Finn flinch. She'd deal with that later, or she wouldn't; it barely signified in the face of what Liren was telling her. "You're saying you want me to...give in."

"No, that would almost certainly kill you. I want you to lie."

Rey could do nothing but gape.

"If you travel with others who are strong, if you keep your edge and draw on others' power, you have a better chance than anyone of finding Snoke. And killing him."

She'd never killed anyone before. Even under Snoke's influence, she'd only barely considered it. She shook her head. "This is crazy."

"Rey."

She looked over at Luke. He was a calm presence, always, but she could tell he was projecting it harder right now. He said, "Let's talk for a minute."

She let him lead her over to the far corner of the command room, out of earshot of everyone else.

"Please don't try to convince me I can trust her," Rey said.

"Trust doesn't tend to define whether or not someone's dangerous," Luke said. "As we both know."

"She's evil!"

"Probably," Luke said. "Or maybe she's just weak. But her information is legitimate. We've tested her in as many ways as possible, and we're confident about that."

She could hear what he wasn't saying. She had no reason to mistrust Leia and Luke's judgment in this. It had to be obvious to everyone that such mistrust wasn't the only, or the real, reason she was afraid.

Finally, she said, "I'm scared. If Snoke gets in my head again, he could destroy me."

"He could," Luke said. "If he keeps gaining power, he could destroy us all. We want to travel with you and prevent that."

She didn't scream or hurl accusations. Luke clearly didn't want her to have to do this, but that didn't change the fact that it was necessary. Still, she took a shaky breath and said, "Why can't someone else do it? Why can't you?"

"I can't push Snoke out. I tried, long ago, and failed - dangerously. I tried again more recently. I'd like to be the person to solve this. And I can't be."

She heard the failure in his words, the heavy awareness of his own limitations. It was almost enough; she almost didn't feel like a human sacrifice.

"We're not going to force you," Luke said. "The Resistance is asking this of you, but if you don't want to, we'll try to find another way."

Try to. Because this was the only avenue of action they thought they had, and it was one they hadn't managed to get for years and years.

She hated it, with the kind of strong and visceral feeling she'd always tried to avoid. Was this what she'd wanted, back in the desert, daydreaming about being a member of the old Rebellion? Had part of her known it might end like this when Finn had told her he was with the Resistance? She'd always wanted to be a hero; it hadn't occurred to her that it would be so terrifying. "I tried to run away, before. At Maz's."

"Chewie told me. It was a normal reaction."

Normal. Right. "What if I do that again? What if I get halfway there and just decide I can't do it?"

"It won't be the first time someone's run away."

Heavy irony in that, and self-awareness besides. Rey still found herself saying, "You were looking for something on that island."

"A reason to keep going," Luke said. "And maybe some obscurity."

"You didn't get that."

"No."

There was nothing to be done. They both knew it. "I'll do it," she said, swallowing past the lump of ferrocrete that felt permanently lodged in her chest.

He placed a hand on her shoulder for just a moment. Maybe he was proud, she thought. But he didn't say anything, just walked with her back to the group.

"Rey's agreed to try," he said.

"Rey?" Poe said.

"He's right." Rey looked over at Leia. "The chance to destroy Snoke is a big deal. I'll go."

Poe swore softly.

"Enough," Mara said. "Everyone needs to get packing. There aren't maps of where we're going, and we need to leave as soon as possible."

"General?" Poe said.

"Oh, I'm coming," Leia said. "Admiral Statura will direct the troops while I'm gone." She swept her gaze across the small group. "Tell no one of our goal, or of who's coming with us. Report back here in six hours. We'll be taking Mara's ship."

"Pray to whatever gods you worship and say goodbye to your loved ones," Mara said. "We might not come back from this."

"Seriously?" Finn said. "You're not going to try to be motivating?"

Mara regarded him with a bland expression. "That was my motivation."

"Six hours," Leia said again. "Bring only what you can carry."

Rey didn't want to watch Finn and Poe walk out together. She turned her back on the group and left.