What You Are In the Dark: a Star Wars ST fic

[bluntblade]

Chapter 1​

A pale blue star turned at the centre of the system, far distant. It bathed the worlds which orbited it in harsh, unflattering light, just as it did the Millennium Falcon and the fighters which flitted around it.

They were at the far edge of the Outer Rim, where the stars were sparse specks, and the only meaningful light was the blue-white sun. The Falcon streaked through the void above a pale gas giant and made for the largest rocky world. When it came into view, it was an unwelcoming ball of flint.

"Well this sure looks cosy," Finn said, behind Rey.

She matched his grim tone. "Yep. Everyone, welcome to the Trykon System."



Trykon was little-known, but where it was spoken of, the name was always whispered fearfully. It had been a domain of the Sith Empire, thousands of years before.

Certainly it hadn't been one of their truly infamous realms – it was no Malachor or Korriban – but that had allowed it to endure even when the Sith were broken again and again in their wars with the Jedi, and finally died out with Darth Sidious and Vader. It had been a refuge of theirs through millennia of hiding and plotting.

So the temple they had built here was not stormed and broken by the Jedi, or anyone else for that matter. It lay undisturbed, guarding, so the stories claimed, a relic taken from the Jedi. An ancient holocron, a repository of knowledge and wisdom locked away to spite the Order.

And a prize for an aspiring Jedi who lacked a Master, and was desperate for anything she could get to help her grow. Not least when she regularly felt the weight of the Galaxy on her shoulders, and had a powerful nemesis at large, somewhere out there and intent on destroying her.

Rey was an important enough asset to the Resistance that when she brought this lead to General Organa, she'd nodded it through almost immediately. With the First Order's offensives in something of a lull, the enemy consolidating their gains, it was deemed a worthwhile risk to send her, the Falcon's crew and Black Squadron to Trykon. It was a discreet operation in an isolated, uninhabited system.

But it was still definitely a risk. The Sith had left plenty of defences, including fiendish traps. Those would be both conventional and… other. It all added up to the definite sense that this mission was not an adventure.

And Rey could feel it in the Force too. A formless malice, bleeding out into space. The taint of the Dark Side. She was venturing into the shadows.



Rey had to remind herself that this light wasn't cold, in the way that her mind said blue light should be. The six inner worlds of the system would be so hot that the Falcon wouldn't survive in the atmosphere, let alone its passengers.

The Falcon made for the seventh planet, an unappealing ball of iron. The Falcon's forward scopes reported jagged ranges and tumultuous seas.

"It's… striking," Poe volunteered from his X-Wing. He could see the same scans as Rey.

Kaydel was less pleased. "Rey, do your destinations always look this uninviting?"

"Generally," Finn told her. Rose, squeezed up with Finn in their shared seat, nodded.

Kaydel made a humph noise. "One of these days, we're going Scarif or somewhere else we can bust out a swimsuit."

Rey had a sudden vision of Kaydel in a swimming costume. She shunted it out of her mind, but resolved to return to it at a later date.

For now, bikini-clad daydreams would be a dangerous distraction. Trykon VII had a real bastard of an atmosphere, with storms carpeting hundred-kilometre stretches of the surface. The Falcon and the fighters dived into the soup, and even though they skirted the great stormclouds, the turbulence was vicious.

Chewie uttered an especially vehement Wookie curse as the Falcon shuddered. Rey gritted her teeth and gripped the controls, fighting the squalls.

"Urgh, not a fan of this," Finn muttered as she wrestled through another gust. Similar complaints came from Poe and the other pilots.

Rey didn't have the heart to tell them that it was going to get worse. The coordinates they were seeking lay in a nearby mountain range, overhung by an enormous storm.

Moreover, she couldn't really spare the time to say anything. When she drove the Falcon into its shadow, the turbulence took on a new level of violence.

"Don't we have the backup stabilisers online?" asked Finn.

"Kicking in now," Rey told him as the Falcon pulled out of its descent.

Rain beat against the viewscreen, obliterating visibility. Chewbacca growled.

"Then amp up the scanners, Chewie!" Lightning split the sky above them, making Gial the Porg squeal in terror and take cover in Finn's jacket. "Oh bloody – get the shields up!"

He did, just in time. A bolt of lightning struck the Falcon, webs of electricity coursing over its shields. The ship lurched like a drunken Rancor.

"Damn, you cut that fine," Poe told them reproachfully over the radio.

Rey nodded shakily. "I know."

Another lightning strike – seriously? – was followed by a serious of vicious gusts which had the Falcon and the fighters fighting to stay aloft. Rey's hands were tight enough on the controls that her forearms ached.

"I think," Kaydel said, "I'm guurgh-" Her cheeks ballooned and a panicked look came into her eyes.

"Bag!" Rey shouted. Finn hastily grabbed a paper one and handed it to Kaydel, who put it to her mouth and noisily filled it with her breakfast.

Mercifully, the turbulence eased after that, and it was only a mildly uncomfortable flight to their destination; a cliff face which reared up three hundred metres tall.

"Holy…" said Hallis, in her A-Wing.

"Wrong word, Hallis," Jess Pava replied. "There's nothing holy about this place."

But she couldn't keep a certain horrified awe out of her voice, and no wonder. For as they drew close, the lightning and thinning rain revealed six towering, carven figures in the image of ancient Sith Lords, hewn from the black rock.

Some were the clear image of humans, Togruta and Devorians. The others were unrecognisable, shrouded by robes or encased in armour. One appeared as much machine as organic. Its head was encased in an angular helmet. Then there were the outstretched arms; long and sinewy limbs giving way to mechanical talons which grasped at the air. Rey found it all too easy to imagine those talons suddenly thrusting forward, to close around the Falcon and close with crushing force, grinding them out of existence.

All of them reached out in that manner. They looked as if they had torn themselves from the rock face, propelled by the insatiable desire for power which the Sith cultivated and deemed their birthright. Where their faces were visible, hauteur and disdain showed clearly, despite the abysmal weather and the weathering of the stone. Shadows seemed deeper and darker in this place.

Rey's heart stopped trying to batter its way through her ribs, and Rose and Finn began to relax a little. But faced with a vista like this, none of them could do so entirely. Kaydel, meanwhile, was still shaking, not even noticing Gial when he came to inspect the paper bag and realised he'd made a terrible mistake. She made for the bathroom the second the Falcon set down on the rock.

Rey guiltily watched her hasty retreat. Then Finn reached for her shoulder. "Hey, I think that's on the weather conditions, not you."

LM-276 stuck his head around the doorway to the cockpit. "So it got the Lieutenant too? Nyzar's been hurling like no one's business, but don't let him know I said that."

Sure enough, when Rey made it to the hold the big Zabrak looked pale, despite his heavily tattooed skin. Ki'rii was the same shade of blue as normal, and keeping a tactful silence. "Captain Rey, does it look any better than it felt?"

"Nope," Rey replied. Then she spotted the still greenish Kaydel emerging unsteadily from the toilet. "Sorry, Kaydes."

Kaydel waved a hand doing her best to brush it off. "My dumb choice to get on board, Rey. But in all honesty, I'm happy to stay aboard this time."

"That might be sensible." Rose appeared. "Rey, I don't know if you checked the climate display, but it looks like the weather for heavy coats."

Rey snorted "Hard to miss when we just flew through it."

"I might hang about too," Nyzar said. "The old stomach says no to slippery rock right now."

LM gave his old comrade a look that, despite his impassive metal face, managed to be slightly despairing. "Well, I suppose someone's got to stand guard. We and Lieutenant Connix can hold the fort."

Tannel and Cylarei, the newest Scrappers, both shrugged. They were an odd mismatch, the short Bothan and the tall, sinewy Chiss woman. Cylarei spoke for them both: "We've been cooped up long enough. Might as well stretch our legs and see what we came for."

Chewbacca opted to stay as well, in case they had to leave in a hurry. The rest armed themselves, pulled on heavy waterproofs, and ventured out into the storm.

 

[bluntblade]

Trykon VII might not be truly cold, but the elements were brutal nonetheless. The malevolent aura of the place only intensified, once they were outside the familiar confines of the Millennium Falcon.

The volume of rain wasn't far short of being stood under a waterfall. It intensified the darkness, turning everything outside the Falcon's forward lights into jet blackness. Except, of course, for when lightning turned everything to stark day for an instant, followed every time by a crash and mutter of thunder.

By the time they reached the rusted and crumbling gates, stepping through a gap which had been worn into the metal, Rey's legs were sodden and her socks were squelching in her boots.

"Almost makes me miss the desert," Rey said, pulling back her hood and raising a torch. There was ambient light here, of a pale green hue. It looked off, she thought.

"Forget almost," Finn replied. "Between this and Jakku, I'd take the damn desert."

"I dunno," Poe said. "It rained this hard on Yavin sometimes."

"How often?" asked Rose.

"Oh, every five years or so. Argh, BB-8 that's not necessary!" BB-8 had shaken himself so quickly that he blurred, showering Poe.

The rest laughed. "I think that proves my point," said Finn.

Kaydel's voice crackled over Rey's earpiece. "So I'm not missing much?"

"Not at all," Rey said, keeping her on a private channel. I'm very much up for your beach idea when we get out of here."

"Minds on the task," growled Olesin the Kaleesh, sighting down his rifle. "I suggest," he conceded.

They let it slide. The old Kaleesh had a point. Bounty hunter's hard-earned wisdom and all that.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to examine their surroundings. Everything in the Jedi texts which Rey had taken from Ach-To said the temple would be rife with traps. So as they began to move, fanning out but moving in lockstep, they cast their torches over the place.



Kaydel had finally banished the lingering taste of vomit from her mouth, abetted by multiple cups of water and chewing gum. And now she was at work, looking over the scanner feeds with R2-D2.

"Wish you were out there with BB-8?" she asked.

R2 replied in the negative. He'd spent more than enough time in the wet, thank you very much.

"Fair enough."

"Have you eaten yet?" LM-276 asked her. The orange of his eyes had switched to a passive blue, somehow softening what was normally a daunting metal visage. "Lieutenant, you brought up everything you had for breakfast. You won't do your best work on an empty stomach." She opened her mouth to argue, but he folded his arms and stood there, stolid. "Lieutenant, with respect… I've just talked Nyzar into a replacement breakfast. If he's not stubborn enough to make me give up, then neither are you."

He locked his mace to his hip and took up a blaster, before opening the exit hatch. "And as I said, you need some food." Then he was off down the ramp to patrol.

Chewie grunted in agreement, retrieving a ration pack from a cupboard and handing it to Kaydel before he went to make a fresh brew of caff.

"Chewie, you don't need to do that. You don't even drink it yourself."

He answered with a low growl over his shoulder. He'd spent plenty of time making a brew for Han and still liked the routine. Kaydel smiled, and nodded. Then she turned back to the scanner console.



Size was the first thing that became apparent. To either side the walls were almost lost in shadow, as was the roof. Ahead, the chamber stretched out and vanished into darkness.

The second thing was the materials that made up the place. The temple's had been carved from the black rock of the mountains, but it was supported by pillars of white stone, which caught the green light in a grim, noisome way.

There was something off about those too, Rey decided. Next to her, Poe grunted uneasily. "Is it just me, or does this place look…"

"Grown?" Rose asked.

Finn already had both his blaster and shock-maul drawn. "I wish you hadn't made me notice."

BB-8 nervously warbled, his single eye panning over the surroundings as he hugged Poe's heels.

Rey was also inclined to agree. What she left unspoken was how once you'd noticed it, you couldn't push it out of your mind. The stone flowed in a way that suggested a process other than carving, and she had yet to spy a seam between them.

Rose tapped her knuckles hesitantly against a pillar, frowning. "What kind of stone is this?"

"Not stone." Olesin rapped against it with his own gauntleted fist. He looked at Rose with his hard, reptilian eyes. "This place is made from bone."

Finn turned a disbelieving look on the Kaleesh. "You're kidding."

"Have you known me to jest once so far, Captain?" Olesin's expression was distasteful. "Those tales of Sith blasphemies, they're not all exaggerated."

Now it was impossible not to linger on the thought of where the Sith had got those bones from. Something about the feel of the place told her that this structure had been spun out of the remains of people and creatures.

Anguish poured off them, either a byproduct of the rituals or a lingering echo of the people whose bodies had been desecrated in this way. It was a kind of faint but never-ending scream, which set Rey's teeth on edge. And she couldn't help but think that this was the kind of power that Kylo Ren was seeking for himself.

The others couldn't feel any of this. Their observations were limited to the physical. "These look like gantries and watchtowers," Finn commented, gesturing to walkways and platforms which peeled off and jutted out from the columns. "This place was definitely meant as a fortress."

"Then its builders were old Sith," Rey said. "This is the kind of place the ancient empires created, according to the texts. The ones who kept the Rule of Two didn't tend to maintain armies."

"That does tend to get in the way of keeping a low profile," Ki'rii muttered.

"Aye," Cylarei said, the Chiss warrior finally breaking her silence. Her sword and pistol were held loosely in her hand, but Rey could read the tension in her shoulders.

Olesin and Kuoma were quiet, advancing without a word. Kuoma in particular, once a novice of the Order of the Whills, was deeply uncomfortable here. This place was a monument to everything he had been taught to abhor.

"Do we need to worry about hostiles, then?" said Rose.

Finn answered. "I'm gonna say no. Apart from this place being run down, it looks like it's been stripped of everything that wasn't nailed down."

Poe nodded. "That space there," he indicated with his pistol, "looks like it would've served as a landing zone for fighter craft, and it's empty. And those pillars there… those look like they were gun emplacements."

"Tides of war, I guess," Rose murmured. Rey was inclined to agree. The Sith would be pragmatic about a world like this; it wouldn't be worth hanging on to if the Republic were poised to sweep the entire sector.

They moved on through the open space, still going slowly and carefully. Now they came upon statues, the first of which startled them briefly before they realised that these too were inert. These were more Sith, a few of whom Rey could put names to. Exar Kun, Karness Muur, Srask Yamut… all of them despoilers who had left a trail of loss and agony across the Galaxy.

Kylo Ren could not compare to their power and fell wisdom yet. But looking at these statues, Rey was struck by a grim sense of what he might grow to become in time.

That threat, when all was said and done, was the thing which had brought them here. Rey had to grow in skill and her understanding of the Force, to be able to face her enemy. And if they found a Dark Side relic or two and destroyed them along the way… well, it couldn't hurt to deny the enemy.

There were was power here. It was palpable, buried deep down but radiating out. Rey had the impression of a slumbering beast down there, or perhaps something waiting. And she knew that their goal lay down there.



They pressed on, following a passageway through several antechambers and then into another cavernous space. This was less utilitarian and more… ornate. Formal.

"It's like a cathedral," Ki'rii said.

"Not far off the Yavin temples," said Poe. "In terms of the scale. Yavin's pyramids look a lot nicer, believe me."

Rose shot him a look. "Hope so, Commander, if you ever want us to visit."

"I can tell you for a fact that they smell nicer," Tannel put in. "There's a whiff of… urgh. Old blood, up ahead."

There was more bone here, the pillars marked by statues. Figures protruded from the white surfaces like the huge Sith statues outside. Some were the likenesses of soldiers or assassins; armoured, cowled and anonymous.

The rest, however… their faces were on show, and each and every one wore a look of torment. Rey got the distinct impression that these had been slaves of the Sith, sacrificed for some sinister end and their remains cannibalised into the structure. The nameless atmosphere of horror was thicker here, and there was some faint but nauseating smell in the air, sickly-sweet.

Osseous tendrils coiled around the pillars and one another. They stretched across open spaces high above the party's heads, creating a structure that looked at points like the remains of some vast, flayed beast and at others, a fiendish machine of strange design. Trails of it were inlaid on the black rock of the floor, all converging on an altar at the centre of the cavernous chamber.

Channels were sunk into the bone surface, deep grooves in the bone. Coming to stand near it, Rey realised that they formed the shape of the Sith Order's menacing sigil. But not before she noted the dark stains which covered much of the white surface, pitch black in the gloom.

Despite the cold in the place, the scent carried to her nostrils, and it was unmistakable: old blood, just as Tannel had said, laced with pain and anguish.

Something coiled and twisted In the air at the edge of her sight, became the outlines of figures. People, long dead. Cowled thralls, emaciated prisoners on the altar… and a figure stood opposite a door in the distance.

Veins of bone ran in sunken channels across the floor, away from the altar. Towards the door, as did the bloodstains.

Poe had come up behind her, blaster held in both hands. His keen eyes had already picked out the trail of which and brown-black. "I can see where this is going, and I don't like it."

"I thought I'd told you about the blood rituals," Rey said. It had come up in the Jedi texts more than a few times.

Poe gave her a look. "I was thinking more of where those lead. That's gotta be our way in."

She nodded. "I think so."

"Rose, Ki'rii, come take a look at this door for us."

They found nothing to suggest a lever or a handle. The thing was plain black stone and – they quickly established – quite proof against being shot open.

"Anyone got another idea?" Poe eventually asked.

"Well," Finn said, moving back to the altar. "We can always try option one."

"Finn-" Rey and Rose both blurted.

"Don't worry." He held up a hand, and with the other, drew a knife from his belt. "I'm only gonna give it a little." He dragged the blade across his bare palm, wincing.

Rose quickly moved over to him with a bacta patch, quietly scolding him. The spattering of blood moved with surprising, rather disconcerting speed down the bone gutter, towards the door. When it reached the threshold and disappeared beneath, there was an instant grinding of stone against stone. The door rose.

Despite her worries, Rey had stayed close to the portal, and stepped over the threshold as it ground fully open.

"Well that could've gone worse," Poe murmured, moving to follow.

And then the door slammed shut.

 

[bluntblade]

Rey cried out, racing back to hammer on the door with her staff. After a few minutes she stopped as a realisation sunk in: she could hear nothing on the other side. These doors were thick and unyielding; nothing she had would get through them.

She slumped against the metal. "Kriiiff…"

OK, stop now. She closed her eyes, breathing more slowly. Take stock. What are my options? One: stay here and hope the others have some way of getting through this door – and take cover when they blow their way in.

That was unlikely to be their immediate recourse. After all, they'd talked about how unstable old structures could be. Rey knew that better than anyone; there were enough scavenger stories about foolish hunters who'd tried to blast their way into a wreck's hold and brought the ceiling down on their own heads.

"Welcome, initiate."

Rey spun around, blaster levelled – and found a glowing figure, vast and looming.

It took her a moment to realise it was a male Togruta, his translucent features marked with extensive tattoos. He leered down at her with a look both amused and appraising. She had to remind herself that he couldn't actually see her. The man who this had been was long dead, this was simply a recording.

She straightened her back, listening.

"You come to this place of proving, where you will be scrutinised to see if you are worthy to be a Sith. To determine whether your will is strong enough to serve the Dark Side. Ahead lies the course, with both physical obstacles and a trial of a more… personal nature. Embrace the darkness, demonstrate your power, and your worthiness will carry you to your victory. Fail, and you will be excised from the Sith along with your weakness."

Then it vanished. A shadowy tunnel lay ahead of Rey, leading downhill.

"Kriff," Rey repeated. Then she straightened her spine, adjusted her torches, and ventured into the gloom.



"Falcon!" Finn's voice was a rough bark over the radio. It jolted Kaydel, who was already pouring over the feeds. "Have you got a bead on Rey? Anything?"

Kaydel clamped down on a screamed obscenity. "No. No, I've got nothing here." She felt almost as queasy as she had during the flight down, and the sweat had already started out on her forehead and throat.

She cast around for a solution. "Did you try the thing with the blood again? It worked once-"

"No dice. Olesin already tried. It's not letting us in."

"Should we head over?" asked LM-276. "We've got explosives. Should be able to blow through."

Poe cut in. "We're not blowing up anything in a place this resistant to scanning-" you really have changed, Kaydel thought "-and especially not when we don't know that it won't drop the ceiling on Rey. Chewie?"

Chewie confirmed.

"I want you to take the Falcon up and around the area, run terrain scans. See if there's anything that leads into the temple. Kaydes, reckon you're up to that?"

"Uh huh."

"Hey, do me a favour – sound a little more optimistic."

Kaydel scowled. In spite of that – or perhaps because of it – she barked out, "Aye, Commander!"

"Good." And there was genuine relief in Poe's voice at that. "Hold on to that. We'll poke around here and see what we find. We'll get her back, Kaydel. The Force is with her."



So Rey was telling herself, down in the tunnels. "The Force is with me, and I'm one with the Force. The Force is with me and I'm one with the Force…"

She whispered the mantra over and over, creeping along a passageway. She scanned every shadowed nook, hating the way that the darkness seemed to seep across every surface, like something alive.

In a sense, it was. The Dark Side saturated the dungeon, perhaps the result of the sacrifices performed in the bone temple above. There were tales of how the Sith would corrupt a place with year upon year of desecration. It made them more defensible, apart from anything else – such a locale would instil despair in all but the strongest of will.

She jumped when the image of the dead Sith appeared before her. "Good," it said. "You have committed, and made it this far. Not all who enter keep their nerve."

"I'm not like your apprentices," she told it. Foolish as it seemed, she felt better for saying it.

The hologram, of course, didn't register her words, nor did it take any notice when she made off down the passage. "And now, good Apprentice, to business." The voice was a purr of cruel enjoyment. "You have travelled to the Temple of Trykon and now, you have set yourself upon the Trial of Purification."

Rey found, as she had suspected, that the floor gave way to a pit of indeterminate and forbidding depth. Only a few pipes and rails stretched across the chasm, and she tested their strength. Then she stepped out. This she knew; the scavenger's game of balance and judgement, moving at a careful but not timid pace.

She only came close to disaster when the holocron image appeared above her, rumbling: "Purification, that is… by the excoriation of the self."

Rey slipped, almost toppling into the pit before she caught herself with the Force. She pushed herself back upright and regained her balance, teeth bared in a snarl of effort, and inched forward again, seeing a gloomy corridor ahead.

"Here, an aspiring Sith will be tested, and should they prove that their commitment to the Dark Side is true, then they shall pass through unhindered. Failure, of course, will yield only one result."

"You don't say," she hissed. Mercifully, the ancient kept quiet long enough for her to reach the other side. It meant that she heard a faint click from the wall on her right, about head-height.

A thin blade whipped out, splitting the air where her neck had been just a second before. Rey hit the ground where she'd thrown herself forward, breathing hard. She stared at the blade as it slipped back into its groove in the stone.

She took a hesitant step forward, then another – only to sense a slight movement underfoot and flinch backwards as a cluster of spikes punched out of the floor ahead of her. Her wordless yelp rang down the corridor.

Rey gathered herself, tensed, and leapt the gap, whirling away as a shrieking saw thrust into the space. And another. And another.

Her foresight was a near-uninterrupted scream of one threat after another. Her progress down the corridor became a frenzied dance. One blade swung at her so quickly that she didn't even have time to evade it. She threw up her hands and halted it with the Force, the mechanism grinding and whining as it tried to propel the blade forward into her face. Then, with a snarl of effort, she pulled her staff and brought it down on the metal arm, leaving it to hang limply.

She moved on, darting between traps. She had the measure of this place now, but nevertheless it was a profound relief when she finally got to the other end and her foresight stopped bombarding her with fresh dangers.

Aging bloody wrecks weren't half as treacherous as this.

Her elation didn't last long. The towering image of the ancient Sith materialised before her, now looking perversely amused.

"I have spoken of two factors. You will by now have some inkling of the physical dangers which await you. But it is at this point that I leave you, for here you shall meet your own, particular guide to the trial…"

Which was when Rey sensed a presence in the Force, like a sudden rise in pressure. The air took on an unpleasant, almost greasy quality, even as the temperature dropped. The shadows too seemed darker, and the light of Rey's torches seemed to wane.

This was the presence she had felt in the temple chamber. It wasn't alive – it didn't have the same character that Snoke's power had had. But on some level, it was aware, malevolent.

And then, as Rey found a broader, more open chamber, she became aware of something else. Another presence impinged on her senses, like a shadow detaching itself from a greater darkness. This one was different… closer, she thought, to a person. She detected the traces of emotions emanating from it, mostly cold, cruel amusement. Her hand went to her blaster.

"Would you kill me, brave little Jedi?"

The voice came from off to her left. She turned her head to find the speaker, and found a figure in a black robe. Her hackles rose as it – no, she; the silhouette and the voice were definitely female. As she drew closer, her movements insouciant and predatory.

"Put me down with your blaster, is that it?"

And then she saw the face. It was gaunt and pale, and the eyes were bile-yellow, sure signs of the Dark Side's taint. But none of that could hide the thing which truly chilled Rey's blood.

"Does this trouble you so, dear?" A sibilant laugh followed the words. "You shouldn't be afraid of what you are, Rey."

Because that was her face under the cowl.

 

[bluntblade]

Rey bared her teeth. This spectre was her very mirror, or at least a distorted reflection of her. "You are not 'what I am', shadow," she spat.

"Aren't I?" The other Rey met her with an iron tone and a flinty stare. "Maybe not you as you are now. But I'm what you could be, Rey. What you ought to be." She stepped back into the shadows. "Didn't Skywalker say that you went straight to the dark?"

Rey approached, the glow of her staff and torches banishing the shadow and revealing… bare stone. She frowned, and then she sensed something off to her left. Wheeling, she found the twisted reflection of herself stepping nonchalantly from another pool of darkness. It didn't seem that the stone had impeded her in the slightest.

Rey tried to hide her discomfort. "What do you want?"

The consumptive face smiled at her. "For you to see what you could grow to be, and embrace it."

She made no move to attack, merely circling, but Rey tracked her movements nonetheless.

"I could make you an Empress," the spectre purred. "The consort of Kylo Ren, seated on a throne beside him." She disappeared behind a column.

"You really overestimate how easily swayed I am by an impressive physique and emotional manipulation," Rey said, as airily as she could make her words.

A nasty chuckle sounded in the shadows above her. She risked a glance up, and saw the shadow perched on a ledge. "No one said anything about you having to keep him, or love him in your heart." She leaned closer, her voice taking on a hushed, conspiratorial quality. "You might not even need to kiss him. Just take his hand when he offers it again, and with your free hand, put a blade through his heart. He might even be impressed by that, as the light left his eyes. It's not as if he hasn't earned it."

Rey couldn't help but picture it, and shuddered when the spectre spoke again. "And then it would all be yours." Because in that moment she saw herself – saw herself as this marble-skinned creature in black, seated upon a throne.

"I don't want to rule."

"True. You don't want power, but you're scared that you need it."

Rey moved on in silence, scowling. She found a big chamber, where the floor suddenly dropped away. There was a chasm, and no telling now deep it went. Stone and metal rails ran the length of the chamber, and a few pillars punctuated it, stretching up from the unseen floor.

"I know that fear. I feel it too. It's me you turn to when someone you love is threatened, and you need to fight."

Rey did her best to avoid looking like she'd even heard. She kept her eyes forward, swallowed, lowered her centre of gravity, and ventured out onto a long beam.

"Because as well as being the part of you that wants to win every fight…" the voice came from above, and she looked up to see the pale mirror of her face staring back at her. "I'm the part of you that knows how to keep Kaydel safe, and all to yourself."

The mere mention of Kaydel's name, in that voice, was almost enough to unbalance Rey. She bared her teeth. "It's not like that-"

"It's not like that between us," the spectre mimicked, her voice turning hatefully singsong. She was walking nonchalantly along a parallel beam. "That's what you tell yourself." She touched a hand to her chest and winked. "But you know it's a lie, because I know. I know that you burn with the urge to take her, to kiss her, to hold her. And you're afraid to do it because you know it'll put her in danger… and because deep down you're frightened that she'll abandon you, just the same as your parents-"

"Shut. Up."

It didn't get her half as long a reprieve as she'd hoped for.

"Alright, so let's pretend you're merely concerned for the welfare of dear, sweet Kaydel. Let's assume that you, oh, just want to protect her. And just how well do you think the Supreme Leader will take it, when he finds out about the torch you carry for the pretty comms officer?"

"I won't let him find out."

The retort was a cruel, cold laugh. "Don't delude yourself now, Rey – you've spent enough of your life doing that."

The worst thing, Rey realised, was that she knew that tone of voice too well. She'd heard it inside her own head. It was the voice of ugly sentiments which arose in the back of her mind when her self-esteem ebbed lowest. The voice which had crawled out of the darkness on sleepless nights on Jakku. The one which had come welling up when the cave on Ach-To had shown her the truth.

Now it came sharply. "You know the bond's not fully broken between you and Ren. You feel his rage and malice. Don't you think he'll feel your love for someone else? And what's more…" sharp teeth flashed in a predatory smile. "He will know exactly how to use her against you."

Rey said nothing, trying to focus on her balance.

"Do you feel like you can keep her safe, Rey, from Kylo Ren and his Knights? Think you've got it in you to face down the Supreme Leader when the Eight stand with him, let alone all the Stormtroopers who fight for him?"

Rey did her best to ignore the voice, shimmying along a series of narrow ledges. Then she hopped to the top of a shattered column, quickly propelling herself to another ledge. Her hard-won scavenger's instincts were alive and well, and her gauntleted fingers found purchase on a piece of rough masonry. Warily she searched for a foothold, tested it, and propelled herself up.

"But with the power of the Dark Side coursing through your veins, you need not fear any foe."

Shut her out. Eyes forward and not down. Focus on what you can see and feel. Sound is secondary. She made steady progress, moving forward.

But the spectre wouldn't be ignored forever. Yellow eyes glinted in the shadows as she reached the other side. There was the flash of teeth again. "I'm what you'll become to escape your fears, Rey. You don't want power for its own sake, but really, how many Sith ever did? Certainly not Vader. You know it's not what Kylo wants, if you're honest with yourself."

"And what does that have to do with anything?"

"Because the Dark Side gives you the only means to have Kaydel to yourself, without the threat of her being taken away. After all, we know how well he'll take it, when he finds out."

"Where do you get off on this kind of talk, you vicious little ghost?"

There was that smirk again, and Rey inwardly cursed at herself for losing her temper. "All I'm trying to do is to make you see how useful the Dark Side could be to you. You could be me, unfettered in your power. It'll be easy if you let me in. The whole purpose of this place is to make you see that, Rey."

"I'm not that person and I never will be."

"A pity for your friends, then, when Ren overpowers you and crushes the Resistance." The shadow took a step towards her, amber eyes boring into Rey's. "So many friends dead, for your weakness. And especially for Kaydel, when he takes her away from you forever. I wonder how it will happen. Will he end her quickly, or will you have to watch as he takes her apart, bit by bit? Will you have to see those wide and lovely eyes put out-"

The shock-coils of Rey's staff snapped open and crackled into life. "Enough!"

She leapt at the spectre, only for it to slip out of reach like oil on water.

The dark reflection of Rey laughed again. Then she halted, tilting her head. "Ah, you've woken the pets. I think they're ready to play, Jedi…"

Rey turned at a hiss and clang of retracting locks, her staff rising to a guard position. Slabs of rock had begun to move, retracting to reveal deep pools of shadow… Kriff. Stasis vaults.

"Did you wonder what happened to those apprentices who failed the course?" purred the shadow-Rey. "The Sith liked to make them useful, even in death."

A scream rang from the first of the chambers. It was a hideous thing, born of dry vocal chords and fed through distorted speakers. It was the sound of a creature which had no business making noise any more. And in the depths of the vault, four red eyes flared to life.

Rey shrank back, hands tight on her staff as she sank into a combat stance. She reached out to the Force, feeling it suffuse her limbs as she sought to centre herself. Other sets of crimson eyes had ignited in the gloom of the vaults. They burned, glowing like malevolent coals, and a vicious hiss came reaching out of each vault.

Reluctantly, she found herself asking her shadow guide, "What… are these?"

Breathy laughter answered her. "When they crafted them from scratch, creating life with Dark Side rituals, they called them technobeasts. These, however, they called the Penitents."

And as if those words summoned them, the quarter of creatures emerged jerkily from their enclosures, stepping out into the light.

They were hideous, hunched and twisted shapes. Blank white eyes stared from the grey visage of the first, bionic eyes studding its forehead and cheeks. The faces of the rest were a mass of black metal and silver wiring, nothing to even hint what species they had been. Their bodies looked to have been disassembled and rebuilt, bionics grafted directly onto bone. One of them lacked its original arms, and instead unfurled four thin, bladed limbs.

Its three fellows drew shrilling vibroblades – a longsword, an axe and a vicious cutlass. Next they ignited them, sending red light dancing across the stone and metal. All four hunkered down, coiling like predatory beasts.

"I think you're familiar with this game," the spectre grinned.

This time, the shriek rang out from all the cyborgs. Rey tensed, waiting for the moment.

"Kill," the shadow said, "or be killed."

The creatures howled and leapt.

Rey slammed her staff forward and a wave of solid air smacked into them. It knocked them back, but not down – and the rear creature, covered by its fellows and spared the blast, came vaulting over their backs with its sword already swinging.

Without her connection to the Force, Rey wouldn't have survived the first ten seconds. The first strike of the blade rang loudly against her staff, and she flinched aside from the second. She struck a glancing blow and sent the cyborg skittering away, only for another to come charging in with a distorted scream. It had an axe in one hand, and the talons of the other raked the air centimetres from her face.

They were fast, and their cybernetics leant them frightening strength. They didn't even fight like people. The Dark Side animated them, gave their movements a feral character which made it hard to read them. The skill they had possessed in life was sublimated into something altogether more animalistic.

She fended them off, bought herself some breathing room, frantically tried to strategize. Don't let them surround you. Use confined spaces, take them one at a time.

The third creature lunged at her and she blocked its thrusts and slashes – but then came the fourth, the four-armed creature dragging itself up the walls of the narrow corridor to launch itself down at her with a mechanical shriek. Rey saw it gain the height to attack and launched herself forward to get clear. She bore down on the two creatures ahead of her, shoving one backwards with a thought.

Did her attacks hit home with greater violence down here? Did her rage come more easily, were weaknesses more apparent to her eyes? The Force seethed darkly around her, even as she channelled it to strike back at the cyborgs.

She met the axe-wielder with one blow and then another, battering down its defence before striking a crushing blow to the side of its head. The metal skull caved in, and the cyborg slumped limply against the wall. She could feel creature behind her approaching and turned to intercept the flurry of its blade-limbs. She deflected two swipes, dodged away from the others – but not quickly enough to evade the ghouls on her other side.

Searing pain ignited across her lower back. A shallow cut, but excruciating. Some part of Rey's mind registered that it had cut clean through her armour – without it she would probably have been ripped open.

She hissed and rammed her staff into the faceplate of her attacker, propelling it backwards with a crunch and fizz of electricity. Swung to deflect another blow, jerked awkwardly back to avoid the lashing claws of the four-armed killer.

Wet heat on her back. Blood was flowing under her armour.

A metal foot thudded into her thigh, staggering her, and claws raked along her vambrace. She twisted aside from the cutlass, barely evading it. On her other side, the four-armed cyborg gave voice to a grinding howl. She heard the triumph in its mutilated voice.

She was cornered, hemmed in by the three surviving revenants. This couldn't be a clean fight. It would be a brawl, a gutter-scrap in some back alley of Niima Outpost.

Well, Rey knew how to play that game. She bulled inside one opponent's guard. That earned her a small wound on her right shoulder, but she got in close enough, knocking its sword down and using her staff to pin it up against the wall. She called her blaster into her hand, shoved it under the sharp metal chin and blew out whatever was left of the revenant's brains.

Two left. She parried the next attack before the dead cyborg hit the ground, saw her chance, lashed out. Her staff found a joint in the four-armed assailant's coiling limb and struck with a fizzing crack and a scream from the revenant as the metal segments clattered on the floor.

The red haze had descended. Blood roared in her ears. Rey ducked under the slashing blades and jabbed her staff into its chestplate. The creature flew back, and she wheeled to face the surviving sword-wielder. She locked her staff against the cutlass, but her mind reached out and found the axe. With a bark of effort she pulled away, in time for the hurtling weapon to crunch into the cyborg's chest. It crunched through armour and whatever lay beneath, but still the creature didn't go down.

Rey's shock nearly cost her head, as the revenant took a wild swing. She smashed her crackling staff into its face, reached for the axe and tore it free with a cascade of sparks and reeking fluids.

That did the trick. The extinguished cutlass hit the ground with a clang. The cyborg collapsed in a pile of spasming limbs.

Rey heard the scream of her last opponent, and turned to face it. It loped towards her out of the gloom, one arm crumpled and useless, but the other three still slicing the air as it came on.

No risking the blades now. No need for that. Rey stretched out a hand and the creature before her went rigid, its bionics whirring and wheezing in protest.

"No," she snarled. "I'm putting you down." Her fist clenched.

And the cyborg did the same, its bladed arms snapping inward to impale its own torso. Armour cracked and yielded, sour-smelling blood gushed and steamed where it met live plasma or damaged electronics. The abomination twitched feebly, before toppling to the floor.

 

[bluntblade]

Chapter 5​

"We've come up empty," Finn reluctantly told Poe. He, Rose and Ki'rii had taken the east wing, Poe and the others the left.

"Nothing for us either." Poe's face was grim, those his eyes flicked down to Finn's bandaged hand. "The hand alright?"

Caught up in his worries about Rey, Finn nearly said something exasperated, but restrained himself. "Yeah." In the other, he held his shock-maul. There was something reassuring about its weight in his grip, even if they hadn't run anything dangerous yet.

"Good. But keep an eye on it – this feels like the kind of place that gets into your blood." Poe saw the searching look on Rose's face, and glanced over his shoulder at empty space. "Olesin's combing the armoury down below. Tannel and Cylarei are on the floor above him. Close enough to assist if he needs them, but far away enough to give him some space."

Finn nodded. The Kaleesh warrior could work with others readily enough, but his instincts and temperament were still those of a lone hunter, and they had a fair bit of ground to cover.

"Kaydel," Poe spoke into his radio. "Anything turn up with you guys?" He listened briefly. "Damn. Well, keep searching, and let us know if anything comes up."

Finn looked at him gravely. "Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Ki'rii spoke up. "What's next?"

"We join Olesin. He radioed me to say he thinks the prison is somewhere beyond the armoury, and that's gonna need all of us to cover."

Ki'rii thought for a moment. "And hopefully some of that's underneath, right?"

"Definitely," Poe said. "The Sith were keen on taking prisoners. Not least with the whole sacrifices thing."

"Closer to Rey," Finn and Rose said together.

They looked at each other and snorted, despite their nerves. Finn looked at Poe and nodded. "Let's get to it."



Rey's hand shook as she lowered it, breathing hard. Sweat stung her eyes, her muscles ached, and her wounds throbbed viciously.

Blood flecked her armour, and pooled on the stone floor. The smell of it, and burned flesh, lingered in her nostrils. The Dark Side hung close around her, smothering and oppressive. It was like standing in a slaughterhouse or next to a furnace, and it took all her composure not to recoil from the ruined corpses of the cyborgs.

"My, what a display," came the breathy, hateful imitation of her voice. The doppelganger regarded the bodies with a sly smile, and ran her tongue across sharp teeth. "Truly, you were born for this. Now tell me, Rey," she said, turning to face her. "Didn't that feel good? Doesn't it feel right, the power surging within you?"

Rey stared back at her double, clutching her staff, and clamped down on a particularly vicious curse. "I didn't realise my darker nature included a refusal to ever stop talking."

That got her a chuckle. "It's the confidence to speak your mind, regardless of anyone else thinks or even dares to say. Doesn't that appeal, after you spent so long just staying meekly silent every time Unkar Platt cut your rations?"

Quiet, girl. The crackling growl of Unkar Platt's voice sounded in Rey's head. And under it, almost drowned by it, the screams of a little girl whose parents were never coming back.

She snarled. "You-"

"-dare? Oh yes, I think I do." She was smirking. "It's not like this anger is anything new, though. It's been there every time someone on Jakku decided they'd take something that didn't belong to them. It kept you alive there."

"Training and focus kept me alive on Jakku."

"Oh come on. I'm not Kylo Ren, Rey – I'm you. And I really thought you'd be more honest with yourself than this." She stalked around Rey. "But speaking of Kylo, what about the first time you really let the Force flow through you, hmm? Back in the forest… when you stopped running from Kylo Ren and tore into him."

Rey tried to blot it out, but she remembered. She remembered advancing on the fallen Ren, shoulders hunched and teeth bared. His blood in the snow. Her yell as she raked the Skywalker saber across his face.

"It felt right. You were primal that night, unfettered until circumstance stole the kill from you." She saw the expression on Rey's face. "You were ready to kill him, if only to keep Finn safe."

"I chose not to kill him. Just as I had on the Supremacy."

"Keep telling yourself that. The second time, your heart wasn't just wasn't in it. In any case, was it really so virtuous to let him live on either occasion? You spared the man who now hunts you and all your adopted family." Anger had crept into the spectre's voice, and it was truly startling for Rey to hear her own simmering rage. "How many people would be alive now, had you ended Ben Solo then and there? Wouldn't Luke Skywalker still live?"

They emerged into an open space. Its full size was lost in the gloom.

"Of course," Rey's shadow continued. "There is another lesson in the mere existence of those wretches. Strength is everything. No matter how powerful you are, unless you are the strongest of all, then you will still be at the mercy of those stronger than you. And then, if you can't protect yourself, how can you hope to protect anyone you care about?"

She came close, hissing in Rey's ear. "Don't you remember how degrading it felt to be plucked off your feet by Snoke, and to have him rifle so casually through your head?" Her predatory smile glinted in the dark again, and Rey remembered something else. That if not for Ren killing Snoke, she would never have left the throne room alive. "Do you dare risk being used like that again?"

"I know I need to get stronger," Rey growled. "But strength doesn't need to cost your soul." She turned her torch on the chamber ahead, proceeding cautiously.

"And why are you so concerned for your soul? Power is power; it's amoral. We know that well enough, don't we? Or did it not count when you tapped into the Dark to overcome Ren before, and the Praetorians aboard Snoke's ship?"

Rey gritted her teeth.

"Not that the others will see it that way. You recall how Skywalker responded when he saw the darkness in Ben Solo. Oh, now he might understand… if only he were still with us. If you'd taken up Ren's own blade and done the deed, he would be. But you weren't strong enough to do it."

Rey didn't answer that. Another pit yawned before them, but her eyes picked out holds in the rough stone and exposed metal. A trail, leading upwards to another passage. And not an easy one by any means. Sharp rock, unevenly spaced holds. Thinly spread, in places. And nothing up above which she could easily snag with her grappling gun – for that matter, she wasn't sure she'd trust any hold which looked easy.

"Feeling up to it?" taunted the shadow. "Those wounds are smarting, I'll bet."

Rey turned to face her, and told her, with feeling: "Kiss my arse." Then she took her first handhold, and started moving across the rockface.

The spectre's laughter was cold and spiteful. There was no real mirth in it. "Run from the truth all you like, Rey. You'll still have to confront it in the end."

The climb was every bit as arduous as it had looked, and her wounds made it worse. When she had to pull herself up with her arms – and there were points that were clearly meant to force that – she felt it tug at the cuts on her back.

Testing holds, she found subtle traps. They had nothing on the vicious gauntlet she'd run earlier, but there were several flimsy ledges ready to crumble and send her plummeting to her death. Elsewhere she found concealed blades and caltrops, small but quite capable of costing her a working hand or foot, and with that the climb and her life.

It forced her to be patient, ignore the pain as best she could. A lesson in patience seemed vaguely incongruous to her, amid all the Sith trappings and the oppressive mien of the place. When she thought about it, however, she decided that the intent was quite different. This was meant to fuel her anger, putting her off balance as she headed further along the course.

Her shadow was certainly playing her part on that score. "How much easier would this be if you didn't fear the dark, Rey? If you would open yourself to it, then pain would simply become fuel for you. It would be in your gift to reshape the Galaxy as you wanted it to be, to make rock and metal answer to your power."

And even with the many, many lessons Rey had received about biding her time – and shutting out words she didn't want to hear – it was a struggle.

Then, worst of all, there was one ledge where she felt a click under her foot. Foresight brought the peril to her in a subliminal rush: a hiss growing instantly to a roar, a burst of orange light and the instant, searing agony.

Rey sprang for safety. With no time to think, she hauled and propelled herself upwards in a leap, only using her upper body as the blast of fire erupted below her, close enough to singe her boots.

She made it, taking hold of a stone rail further up, but the pain knifed through her. Her snarling groan and curse echoed vehemently back at her, the sounds dragging out for several seconds while the flame vented into nothingness. Then she finally relaxed a little to seek and find footholds.

Slowly, she made the rest of the climb and hauled herself over the ledge. She wiped the back of her hand across her face, dislodging sweat and grime, and looked up to find, with grim inevitability, her double.

"Your climbing's still up to snuff, then."

Rey gave her a confused frown. "You really don't speak the way I thought you would."

"Did you think the Dark Side has all its followers speaking like ham actors in an old holofilm?" The spectre snorted. "Firstly, I'm you."

Rey resisted the urge to snap back at that. She could hardly spare a breath anyway.

"Secondly, if I tried to entice you with flighty words about power and domination, would you heed me? Better, I think, to just give you the truth and let you make your choice."

Rey stalked past her. "So what's next, shadow? Got a monster or two cooped up down here for me?"

The phantom gave a hollow, humourless laugh. "In a sense."

 

[bluntblade]

The Falcon circuited the fortress again, flying low.The pale blue glow of the sun was gone, and only the lights of the ship and its fighter escorts pierced the gloom.

Aboard, Kaydel found that the storm had subsided enough that she wasn't feeling ill as she busied herself at her console – though she had mag-locked a seat to the floor, the better to work. Gial made worried little noises down by her shins, and she wondered if that was more to do with the turbulence or the unease coming from everyone on the ship.

She frowned at R2-D2, stood on the other side of her seat. "Are you sure there's something we haven't tried yet?"

The old droid wobbled animatedly as he told her, for the third time, that they were out of options.

Kaydel held up her hands, hoping to mollify him. "Sorry R2. I'm stressed, you're stressed-" a long growl emanated from the cockpit "-and Chewie's feeling pretty frayed too. I just… damnit!" She thumped the scanning console, making the image flicker briefly. She glanced guiltily at R2, who stayed tactfully quiet.

Nyzar and LM, mercifully, were manning the turrets and weren't there to see it. Their visual scopes hadn't revealed anything either. The structure beneath them was in remarkably, aggravatingly good shape.

She rose, made for the cockpit and slumped into the copilot's seat. "Chewie, bring her back down. We're wasting fuel up here."

She opened a commlink to Poe. His expression said that he was trying hard to keep his resolve up, and that of everyone around him. "Kaydes. Any joy?"

"Nothing. I've tried everything on the scanning array – thermal imaging, seismic scans, bioforms – and I can barely see you and the others in the surface levels, let alone Rey."

Something impeded their every effort, whether it was the density of the structure, technological countermeasures or some effect stemming from the Dark Side of the Force. Kaydel didn't like to think about any of those possibilities, especially given what they suggested might be in store for Rey down there. She could already be dead down there.

"Keep faith, Lieutenant. You remember Leia's old saying about hope and the sun, right?"

It's no good only believing in it when you can see it. Kaydel managed a faint smile. "It goes for Rey too. I get it, Commander, we've gotta keep believing." She left it unsaid that in so many ways, Rey was her hope.

"Look, come over here when you land. We've still got a lot of ground to cover and it'll be better for you guys if you're with us and busy than if you're stewing aboard the ship."

"Roger that. Chewie, Poe says bring the Falcon back down." But she couldn't fully banish her worries, and she nervously scanned the sensor-feeds again. Rey, where the hell are you?



Rey advanced further into the dark. She couldn't say for sure how long she'd been going. The murk around her was oppressive and disorienting. It might have been an hour, it might have been much longer.

The vapours here were thick around her, dimming the light further. Fatigue and dehydration dulled her senses, making her head swim. Frustration welled up in her, worsened by her confusion – and there was a sharp edge of anxiety under it too. Was there something in the mist down here? Something hallucinogenic? Or perhaps the dark taint of the fortress was getting to her after all.

The silence grew too much to tolerate, and against her better instinct, she spoke to the one person within earshot. She couldn't see her, but she knew she was there. "So, shadow. What's my next test?"

And less than a metre away, the phantom stepped out of the mist. "The one where we learn what it will take for you to slay a friend. The Sacrifice, or rather the process that readies you to make it."

Rey eyed her double with scorn. "You rather messed up there." She smiled grimly. "I don't see any convenient victims. Unless you've got some way of bringing my friends down here, seeing as you didn't let them in with me."

The voice that issued from under the hood was touched with pity, both sincere and mocking. "Oh, poor child. Every bit as unimaginative as a Jedi could be. There are plenty of ways to make the sacrifice. What, say, if we push you across the threshold down here, and then send you up to your friends with a dagger in hand?"

"You're not short of ambition, I'll give you that." She tried to sound scornful, but she couldn't entirely lose the doubt in her voice.

It didn't escape the spectre's notice. She let out a long sigh. "The pretend haughtiness again, Rey? The kind of façade that Ben Solo saw through from the start. So why do you still try and fool me with it?"

Rey tried silence instead. It didn't work either.

"I've seen the violence you're capable of. I was in you when you attacked Skywalker." The yellow eyes had gone cold. "If you could strike an old man when his back was turned, then the potential in you for violence… then in the right circumstances, your friends would have every right to fear you."

Something had changed about the lighting here. The colour? There seemed to be an orange glow up ahead.

"Or maybe…" Something in the echo of her voice made Rey stop. A shiver wormed it way through her. "Maybe, by the time you make it back someone will have already done the knifework for you."

Rey picked up the pace. Was the light brighter up ahead?

"After all, have you any idea just how long you've been down here?"

The mist around her thickened and changed somehow in character. She smelt… burning.

Oily smoke filled her nostrils, and soon she was coughing and spluttering, bent low to avoid the worst of it. Something was still burning further off; the smoke caught firelight. Between that and the fumes, Rey didn't see the first body before she tripped over it.

She thudded down with a shout of surprise and alarm, wheeling around - and recoiling when she saw the corpse. A Mon Calimari lay there, his chest holed by a dozen blaster bolts. And just a metre away, another corpse, this one belonging to a Togruta. Then another body, and another. All of them in Resistance uniforms.

With a lurch, Rey understood where she was. This was the base on Agnoa, broken and burning.

She wanted to tell herself this was an illusion, but she could feel the heat, smell the fumes and now she felt something wet on her palm… She raised her trembling hand, and blood glistened on her skin.

All caution left her, and she raced along the tunnels, sprinting up to the surface.

Corpses littered every space, piled up in grisly heaps. Dead Stormtroopers were scattered among them too – she hadn't yet found a single living person, friend or foe.

She found the hangar aflame, strewn with wreckage and more bodies. The proud fighter squadrons had been blasted to atoms where they sat. A handful of shattered droids lay to one side.

One X-Wing was still ablaze, its pilot caught and consumed by the flames where he sat. The face was so charred as to be unrecognisable, nothing but a blackened skull, but she knew him immediately by the helmet. "Poe!"

She took a step forward and tripped. Another corpse, another one she knew. Hallis of Black Squadron, and a short distance away, Snap Wexley.

The trail of dead friends led from the hangar out onto the landing field. She saw the Scrappers, Rose, Chewbacca, Leia… Finn, a charred hole through his chest. His shock-maul lay shattered close by. Rey sank to her knees, tears already prickling at her eyes.

And then she heard a quiet, wet cough in the silence. She looked in the direction of the sound.

"Kaydel!" She raced to her, finding her slumped against a pile of rubble. The front of her shirt was stained red, and her face was marble white. Exsanguinated. There was nothing Rey could do for her. Even if she could heal the damage, it wouldn't be enough now. Kaydel shouldn't even be conscious. And yet…

"Rey…" she coughed through the blood.

"Kaydel?"

"You weren't... here. You left us-"

"No, I-"

Kaydel grabbed her by the throat, hauling her in close. Her eyes were suddenly ablaze with anger as she hissed. "You left us here to die!"

That last surge of energy took everything she had left. She went still, her eyes glassy and distant.

Trembling, sobbing, Rey clutched Kaydel's head to her chest and screamed up at the sky, a single cry that tore from her throat until her lungs were empty. And in answer, a shadow loomed out of the smoke.

"So you came to pay your respects to the ones you failed. I wondered if you would."

Rey stared up at him. "You."

Kylo Ren emerged into the firelight. "Of course. I looked for you everywhere. On the ships we boarded, on the landing grounds, in the base… and yet you were nowhere to be found, no matter how many of your people I killed. And here we are, with the family you claimed for yourself, slaughtered."

"You murdered them."

"I only did what you always knew would happen, once you refused me. They could have had quick, clean deaths in the void if you'd only joined me. Or if you'd been strong enough, if you'd been here, perhaps they would have lived."

Rey's staff was suddenly in her hand and blazing as she charged Ren. She struck, fast – and hit nothing. She wheeled around, to find him watching her with cold curiosity, as if observing something of mild interest. She couldn't tell if he'd dodged, or if the blow had simply passed through him and done no harm.

"Too weak, Rey. Much too weak."

Rey howled again and leapt. This time he raised a hand, and she was halted in midair, struggling against the vice of his power.
"Enough." He gestured, and Rey was swept up in an invisible fist and slammed down on the ground, hard enough to wind her. "It's over, Rey. You are nothing, an irrelevance even to me now." He turned. "So I leave you to your failure."

Ren vanished into the smog. The clouds of smoke closed over Rey and the darkness became absolute.



She didn't know how long she lay in the darkness; time had ceased to have any meaning in her shattered state. Finally it began to lift, and she perceived walls around her, dimly lit. She was in some kind of subterranean room, bitterly cold.

There was something in the chamber, a queasy pressure which made her head swim. The air was so thick that she almost felt like she was swimming in it.

And then the first voice came hissing out of the dark. "Where were you?"

Rey started. "Finn?"

"Where, Rey?" Poe's voice, on her right.

"Do you know how long you've been down here?" Rose's voice echoed somewhere off to her left. "Have you even asked yourself how long you've been down here – since you left us to die on Agnoa?"

Despairingly, silently, Rey pleaded. Hadn't she suffered enough for this? Wasn't it enough to simply see them dead?

The voices of the lost showed no pity. "See what you left us to become."

And the dead came shambling and lurching out of the shadows. Their skin was pallid and patched with black veins and blooms of decay, their clothes desiccated and cobwebbed.

But for all that the ravages of death, she recognised them. Of course she did.

"You left us to become this," hissed the image of Poe – not Poe, not Poe!

"No!"

"Abandoned us," came a slavering corruption of Finn's voice. Her friend's warm eyes were missing. Empty sockets stared at her.

"Finn-" Rey couldn't help but blurt his name.

"Cast us away…" Kaydel's voice was a mangled wheeze of powder-dry vocal chords. Her eyes were still there, but marble-white. "…like we were nothing to you."

Too late, Rey clamped down on her reply. It was too much like Kaydel not to speak as if it was her. "You know you're not-"

"Who knows what you really felt for us?" It came out as a venomous hiss. "For me?"

She moved closer. Rey clutched her staff tighter, moving backwards.

"You've never told me. So many times, I saw you pull back when you got close to saying anything."

Rey's back hit a wall – what wall? A tunnel?

"And then you abandoned us."

The mockery of Kaydel's voice – but it wasn't really a mockery, because that word suggested mimicry and this wasn't mimicry, this was Kaydel's voice – rose to a vicious, needling pitch.

"Didn't I matter enough to you for you to be honest with me? Couldn't you even open your heart, or do I have to reach in and tear it-"

Rey struck, a blow born of instinct and with all her pent-up turmoil behind it. Kaydel's desiccated face vanished in a burst of bone powder and parchment skin.

For a second Rey was still, eyes almost popping from their sockets. Had she felt an impact? Her moment of disbelief was broken when the corpse hit the ground. The sound of splintering bone went through her like a blade, and it collapsed into dust.

Her scream felt less like a reaction of her own and something which possessed her, made her jaws hinge wide open and rung every last bit of air from her lungs. A violation by her own terror, guilt and despair. And in answer, the high, cold laugh of her double, before the rest of the dead came for her.

Rey shrieked again and lashed out, hoping somehow to deter them, but there was no respite. The shambling corpses reached for her, and she swung wildly, screaming again at every friend's features which crumbled. But there were more, always more, always another face she recognised, however dimly.

And from every parched throat came the accusation, the accusation which she had made truth. Murderer.

Finally she turned, and fled weeping into the shadows.

 

[bluntblade]

Chapter 7​

At some point in her headlong flight, Rey left the accusing voices behind. No idea when. It could have been minutes ago. It felt like hours. Fatigue filled her bones with lead. Her tears had dried up, leaving tracks in the grime on her cheeks. She was freezing cold, shaking with every step she took forward, staggering aimlessly on.

She stumbled into a vaulted chamber, filled with mist. Figures moved through the haze, whispering in the voices of those she had killed, those she had failed. They were close, almost close enough for her to reach out and touch them.

And she recognised them. "Kaydel," she breathed, reaching for one, then another. "Finn – Poe – Kaydel!"

The nearest figure halted, and turned to face her. This time it didn't look ravaged. This was whatever pristine state lay beyond death, Rey thought. Kaydel's features were coldly serene, and her eyes alighted upon Rey without any discernible emotion.

"And what do you have to say to me, murderer?"

"I never-"

"You smashed my head in." Somehow, the words were all the worse for coming out in that bland, dispassionate voice, none of Kaydel's passion or vivaciousness coming through in her words. "You killed us all. So what could you say to us?"

"I never meant to…" Rey protested, leaning heavily on her staff, trying to keep herself from collapse, searching Kaydel's eyes for any hint of compassion.

"But the darkness in you led you to do it. Your rage, your fear, all too great to overcome. Do you really want our forgiveness? What makes you think you could ever deserve it?"

Rey slipped to her knees. "Hear me, I beg you. Please, Kaydel, I never wanted to hurt you – Kaydel please!"

Kaydel stood over her, letting the silence stretch torturously, before she finally spoke. "We deny you."

The words came down like a guillotine blade. Rey gaped up at her, feeling fresh tears begin to trickle down her cheeks. Her last walls began to crumble. Just like the cave on Ach-To, she was alone, robbed of all comfort. But this time, there was nowhere to go, no refuge.

The condemnation continued as she slumped, clutching at the hem of Kaydel's trousers. "You were never worthy to be a Jedi, ad never worthy to be one of us. You were always tainted. So end the lie, Rey, and be the outcast. Be the darkness, Become the monster you were always meant to be."

"No…"

Far above, Finn halted, his breath catching in his throat.

"Anyone hear that?"

"Hear what?" Rose and Poe chorused. Both looked perplexed.

"I could've sworn I heard…" he trailed off, realising that he hadn't truly heard anything. It was the suggestion of a voice, the sense of having heard it.

Then it came again. No…

And he knew the voice. He'd know her voice anywhere.

"Rey?" he whispered, uncertain.

Finn! It sounded like a sob in his head, a strangled burst of desperate emotion. Please, my friend, don't leave me…

We won't. The words came immediately to Finn's mind. We don't abandon our own. You know that. You came back for us on Crait, we'll do the same for you. Besides, he added. I already did the same for you once. Fight on.

I… He felt hope begin to stir in her again.

Fight on, Rey. You know how to do that, and we're coming for you.

Then she was gone, but he felt her… brighten was the word that came to mind. And looking again at their surroundings, he caught sight of a doorway, tucked away in a corner. Some part of his mind told him that this doorway led down to Rey.

How he knew, he wasn't sure. When Poe asked him later on, he attributed it to some mix of intuition and an educated guess. The doorway led down, after all. There were carvings in the wall around it – those were probably significant in some way.

He wouldn't realise the real reason until some time after that.

For now, he simply broke into a run, shouting to the others. "This way!"



In the depths, Rey's world was given back its centre of gravity.

She lifted her head, and now it seemed that the likenesses around her weren't quite right after all. There was some inconsistency or missing element in Kaydel's face. Almost like looking at a waxwork or a high-quality holo: close, but not the truth of the thing.

Suddenly, it was strangely easy to get back to her feet. "No. You're not Kaydel. And you," she said to the image of Finn. "How could you ever pass for Finn? You haven't got the spark in you. I know my friends, and you aren't them."

Then she looked beyond them crowd, gazing after the presence she knew lurked beyond them. "You don't know these people like I do, because you only see things to fear and resent. And that's not how I see them. So you couldn't hope to copy them, not truly."

She cupped the phantom Kaydel's cheek in her hand, staring into its eyes and seeing the glassiness, the mere physical semblance without the playfulness which she always found in Kaydel's eyes. "I know the way she looks at me, and all you can offer is the facsimile of that look… which falls so, so far short." She focused her will, calling a little pocket of air pressure into being. "Now, be gone."

The little shockwave rippled through the air, and the spectres blinked out of existence. Rey braced herself with her staff, standing straight again.

A bitter laugh rang from the shadows. Ah, but of course. Rey turned to face her doppelganger.

Her shadow-self had lost some of her composure. Anger had cracked her smug exterior, and the yellow eyes blazed now. "You think that's your victory?"

"I'd like it to be," Rey said, drawing herself up. Quite suddenly she had found her strength again, standing straight and bracing herself. "But if you need me to win one against you, then let's go!"

No more monologuing. The spectre raised her hand and Force Lightning burst from her fingers. Rey threw up a shield against it but still it slammed into her, a cascade of it, searing across her skin. It rocked her back on her heels, almost blasting her off her feet.

"You know nothing of the power of the Dark Side. Now you will."

But there you're wrong. Rey should feel overwhelmed by the onslaught, and yet she didn't. She lifted her own hands, and the current before her was broken as if it were a wave hitting a barrier.

"You will yield!" snarled the spectre. Was that her voice? No – or at least it wasn't just her voice. There was another, overlaying the words. "The Dark Side breaks, the Dark Side consumes, the Dark Side subjugates. You – will – yield to it!"

"I think not," Rey growled. She leaned into it now, forging a path through the storm.

For the first time, she saw fear in the gaunt face.

"I realise now," she said, finding it quite easy to keep her voice level. "Neither of us were quite right. I can't pretend that you're not a part of me, but in the end that's all you are… a part. One component along with the rest."

"The part which will rule you!" shrieked her dark reflection.

"No." Rey's voice was controlled, her tone adamantine. "I am more than the sum of my parts, and you aren't strong enough to dominate the rest."

"You say that I should be yours, shadow? I say that you are mine!"

Her hand snapped out, and the lightning rebounded upon its caster. Her dark self reeled, her outline fraying and turning ragged. For a few seconds the spectre resisted, howling, but Rey pressed further and her opponent reeled and staggered back. Then Rey perceived the shape behind her; a vast, almost formless shadow. A puppeteer, the entity which took hold of one's darkness and turned it against them.

"This isn't what you want – I see that, shadow." Now that her mind wasn't fogged, it was clear. Where her shadow had appealed to her desire to protect others, the hallucinations had sought to turn her against them. "If your desires are mine, then you don't want to kill our friends or cast them aside. There's another will behind you, using you and trying to twist me. I see it now."

So she lashed out at that, turning the storm's fury upon the spectre and feeling a fierce surge of triumph when it reeled and howled. For all its malevolence, it seemed to have little appetite for a struggle now that the trick was revealed. This, Rey understood now, was its weakness. The presence here had no real power of its own, only what it could take and twist for its own use.

And it wouldn't get anything more from Rey. She pushed harder, and felt something give. The shadow dissipated and Rey's double fell, collapsing onto the floor.

The storm died away suddenly. The only sound in the chamber was their breathing.

After a brief pause, Rey felt strong enough to raise her head, steadying herself on her staff. She looked at her slumped, black-clad doppelganger, and limped over to her. The shadow looked up at her with a look of purest loathing but then, as if a switch had suddenly flipped inside her, she scrabbled backwards.

Pure terror painted the marble face, which had suddenly taken on an oddly girlish look. That, and her hunched, animalistic posture. The same that Rey recalled from times she'd hidden from thieves and bandits on Jakku, taking refuge in the depths of wrecks or fleeing headlong across corroded walkways.

Oh, she recognised this alright. "Hey," she said, gently. "I know you. This is the scared girl, alone on Jakku. It's where the anger comes from, something to scare threats away with."

She approached slowly, keeping her voice soft and low. The abject fear of her double lessened, to be replaced with plaintive confusion when Rey extended her free hand.

"Come on." She smiled slightly at the uncomprehending look on the likeness of her own face. The spirit's strength had died away. The malevolence of this place, which had taken Rey's inner darkness and given it this power and malevolent will, had retreated. "I want to own my darkness, not destroy it. You're still a part of me." She beckoned. "So come on. Let's see what we've found."

Hesitantly, the spirit reached out and took her hand. Rey pulled her upright, and turned to see where she'd come to.

She realised what had drawn her eye. Light. Pale and cold, but light all the same, and as she drew closer she found that it illuminated a hexagonal chamber. Panels of pale metal lined its walls – storage vaults, but far smaller than the ones which had entombed the cyborgs earlier.

Her double sensed her thoughts. "Where better to keep your most treasured possessions, than a place only a true Sith – or so they believed – could venture through and survive?"

Though it didn't look as though vault had gone undisturbed all this time. Someone, it seemed, had been here in between the old Sith masters and her. Still decades before Rey had set foot here, she reckoned, but enough that she could see a few scraps of fabric. The remnants of what might be a bedroll. A metal basin, corroded now.

"This was someone's hoard," she murmured.

There were items strewn across the shelves, the stone surfaces and even the floor. Knives, armour, the remains of clothing and pieces of jewellery. Rey hesitated to touch any, however; she could feel the taint of the Dark Side on them.

"I don't like these," her shadow said softly. With the breaking of the place's hold on her, something had shifted subtly in her. Rey recognised her own anger and fear in this woman – but only her own. The conniving, predatory aspects were gone. "And no holocron either."

"Actually," Rey replied. "That's what you're wrong. Look here."

A holocron lay in one corner, in a half-open casket. It was heavily scuffed, but she could feel its presence. It was intact.

"And even if we hadn't found it, I'd call getting through this a victory." After all, finding these items was still a success, in that they could deny them to the enemy – just as soon as she reached her friends. Torch the place, destroy the trinkets, and Kylo Ren would be cheated of more fuel for his power.

It looked like the place had been vacated in a hurry, enough for Rey to wonder what the circumstances had been. She turned over some scraps of paper, noting the same crazed scrawl and acerbic tone on each page. Most of it felt like an unbroken screed, invective against a master who had… abandoned the author? Betrayed him?

They were fragmented, and she suspected that the same could be said for whoever had penned them. Still, they'd be worth perusing, just as soon as she was out of here.

Rey put them in her satchel for now. They could wait. There were other passages which drew her eye; passages which spoke of a scheming mind directing the pen. A wounded predator, perhaps, considering his targets while his injuries healed.

But then she caught sight of something on a shelf, something which gleamed and lacked the dark taint of so many of the artefacts in here. Aha. A data-stick, with navigation markers. A stellar map. She bagged it along with the holocron.

"Right," she said, turning back to her shadow, and noting that her double's robes didn't seem quite as dark as before, no longer drinking in the light. "Shall we go together?"

"We shall." And with that last, soft smile, Rey's dark mirror dissolved into vapour, curling around Rey. She felt it suffuse her, not overwhelming her but simply affirming its place as a part of who and what she was. Because she could own her darkness, and control it. She wouldn't let it be used against her. And with that, she left the chamber and headed for the surface.



The final door scraped open in front of Finn, and Rey almost collapsed into his arms. Finn clasped her shoulders and held her steady, before she pushed her way forward and hugged him hard.

He sighed with relief, squeezing her back. "Hey."

"Hey."

"Was afraid we'd lost you down there."

Her reply was a moment in coming, and thick with emotion. "Me too, Finn. But I'm back."

She only pulled away to embrace Poe, Chewie and Rose in turn as the others clustered round. She'd plainly been through the ringer. He could see several rents in her armour, some of them crusted with dried blood, and her whole body sagged with exhaustion. But she was here, she was alive, and her friends could hardly contain their relief.

Finn and Poe moved to either side of her and made to take an arm, and after a momentary wince, she smiled when they took the weight. And again, more broadly, when she caught sight of Kaydel.

Awkwardly, she levered herself off Poe and Finn's shoulders to embrace the lieutenant, hugging her tightly. "Bloody hell. You all came out here for me?"

Kaydel put on a smirk, though she couldn't fully hide her relief and soon broke off to gaze into Rey's eyes. "We couldn't find anything better to do than come looking."

"You really did give us a scare," Rose added.

Rey gave her a little smile, and took a halting step forward. "Same here, but we got what we came for, and a little more besides."

"Hold up." Finn took a firm hold of her shoulder, and permitted himself a smile when she did the same. "I think you've exerted yourself enough for one day." Kaydel took her staff, the better for Poe and Finn to slip back in under Rey's arms and support her, and the two women shared another long look.

Finally, Poe cleared his throat and jostled Rey a little. "Can we get you back to the ship now, pal?"

"And quit this hellhole?" She nodded, drawing a slow breath before they began moving. "Bloody yes please."

 

[bluntblade]

A couple of hours had passed since Rey's emergence from the dark, and dawn was just beginning to break over the landing site.

While Rose and Kaydel tended to her injuries and got her cleaned up, the others had retrieved demolition charges from the Falcon and taken them into the temple. They'd used them to mine several sections of the structure, especially the vault which Rey had uncovered – she'd insisted they do that one thoroughly.

They heeded her instructions about not touching anything they didn't need to. Not that they needed telling. Finn had come back aboard looking especially uncomfortable.

Once that job was complete, everyone had braved the elements to watch the charges detonate. As the vile structure collapsed in on itself, Rey had felt something like the lifting of pressure, and the place didn't feel half as ominous as it had before. The taint of the Sith had been driven out of the place.

When the rumbling stopped, Poe had turned to them and said, "That's us done here."



And now they were back in hyperspace, heading back to base. Most of the others had already gone to bed, some before Rose and Chewie had even coaxed the Falcon back into orbit. Kaydel hadn't yet, and now she sat back and tittered at the sight of Rey playing with Gial.

"Who's a good critter? Who's a good, cuddly little critter?"

Gial squirmed, trilling and chittering in Rey's arms as she rubbed the Porg's tummy.

"Letting off some steam, huh?"

"You've no idea," Rey told her, "how good it feels to hold something as cuddly as Gial again after that place. And to see you again, Kaydel." Though I think you know that.

She realised that she was staring at Kaydel, and dropped her eyes to the floor. She could tell, though, that Kaydel was blushing shyly. "I can only imagine."

Rey was still shaky on the technique of following up a compliment. Mercifully, she remembered the star map she'd picked up, and retrieved it from her pocket. She got up, cradling Gial with her free arm.

"We didn't analyse this yet." Kaydel raised an eyebrow at her. "Yeah, I know there'll be time back on base, but I want to see what we dug up. R2, if you don't mind?"

The old astromech beeped and prattled his consent, opening a socket for the datastick. Then he projected the holomap, and Rey and Kaydel scrutinised it. Subsector-scale. Blue and red lines stretched across the gulf between systems.

Rey stroked her chin, examining it. "System coordinates. That's on the far side of the Rust Shoals."

"And the timestamp says late Clone Wars, which explains the fleet patterns." Kaydel had joined her and R2-D2 in parsing the display. "Wow, make that the last days of the Clone Wars."

R2, not to be outdone, warbled and highlighted part of the map, zooming in a little.

Rey saw what he was trying to flag up. "My my. Good catch, R2."

Kaydel peered over her shoulder. "What is it? Oh… annotations. Check it out, Rey." The notations were tied to a far-flung system, designated Vatel, where a red and blue line intersected and both terminated. Kaydel squinted. "That font hurts my eyes – is it Zabrak?" Rey nodded. "So you think it really was…"

"Maul. The half-mad Sith exile. I was looking through the journals, and he calls himself by name. Some of it reads like a manifesto for himself, like he was railing against the whole Galaxy." She shook her head. "I know it sounds crazy, believe me, but it's all there."

Kaydel huffed a half-laugh. "Honestly, today's been crazy enough that at this point, more goes down pretty easy."

"What does it say?"

Rey frowned. "Order 66 operation – kill confirmed. No survivors, no salvage. Believed to be untouched. So…" she let out a low whistle.

She looked at Kaydel, and saw the other woman's eyes light up. "So there's a lightsaber on that world, waiting to be found. Hey, hey…" She tugged at Rey's sleeve, grinning. "Don't try and tell me you don't feel your heart rate picking up there. What are you thinking?"

Rey put her arm around Kaydel's shoulders, smiling nervously. "I think we've got a mission ahead, next time we're free of assignments." Kaydel wasn't wrong; she could feel her pulse speeding up a little as she took this in. A new lightsaber – a long way off, and a long trek into wilderness space, but it was out there, and she fancied she could hear it calling.

"That's awesome, Rey," Kaydel grinned. "Oh, and before I forget…" She went over to the stove, returning with a steaming flask as Rey got comfortable on the seat again. "Scrounged you up some soup. Gotta get some rations in your belly." She held out the cup, which Rey gladly took and held to her nose, inhaling deeply. She recognised the blend of spices, and looked fondly at the other women.

"Mmm… you're selling yourself short, Kaydes. I can tell this is a Connix special." She took a sip and smiled at the blonde. "The vaiheet and stozh give you away."

"In a good way?" Kaydel gave her a slightly nervous look, but beamed when Rey nodded. Gial protested at the lack of soup for him, but was appeased by Kaydel with tinned fish.

Rey smiled softly at her. "I'd have crawled through that dungeon twice if I'd known there was a pot of your cooking at the end of it." She put it away with indecent speed. The Resistance, for all its virtues, wasn't really the place to lose bad table manners.

And Rey wasn't really in the space to worry about etiquette. For one thing, she was hungry and thirsty. For another, Finn and Rose had cleaned her wounds after she got aboard and given her painkillers, along with a jab for any likely infections. Between that and physical tiredness, to say nothing of warm food in her belly, Rey was beginning to feel pleasantly… woozy.

"And you're sure you're alright?" Kaydel asked, sliding up to her. Rey found she was much too tired to pull away or protest – and that, more importantly, she didn't want to right now. "After facing that spectre?"

"I think so. After a point, it wasn't even my own darkness that I was up against." She found herself gesturing, trying almost to conjure her thoughts into being. "The rituals, the sacrifices they carried out in the temple, they bound something into the fabric of the place."

"The ghost of a Sith, you mean?"

"I think so. After a point, the way my double behaved started to change. The presence there, it supplanted her. It wouldn't even have been my own darkness which got me in the end. I'd have been twisted into a monster, one that didn't care about anything but my own survival."

Kaydel's hand clasped her upper arm gently and squeezed, just a little. She avoided the bandage there. "But you beat it, Rey. And now the guys have blown that place to hell."

"Yeah. It wasn't easy, but in the end it was… cathartic." Rey looked into Kaydel's eyes. "I'm feeling stronger, in here." She tapped her chest, over her heart.

"Good." Kaydel put her head on Rey's shoulder. "I like my Jedi strong and happy."

Rey laid her head on top of the other woman's. "I think I'm with you there."

Kaydel yawned, brushing Rey's hair where it trailed over her shoulder. "You know, I also like this long loose ponytail thing you've got going on now."

"Really?" Rey heard the drowsiness in her own voice. Yep, that was the wooziness again, and it was saying you know, your cabin's all the way over there, and this seat's pretty comfortable. So maybe we'll just take it for tonight? Apart from anything else, Kaydel's here and she's rather comfy too.

"Yeah. Says, I'm a warrior who's gonna stomp your ass, but I'm gonna look good doing it…"

"That's," Rey yawned, "one of… the sweetest things anyone's… ever..."

She didn't reach the end of the sentence. She and Kaydel dropped off, almost in unison, into the deep, deep slumber of the thoroughly exhausted. Gial took that as his cue to stretch himself out across the women's thighs and fall asleep too.



They slept right through the flight to the system's edge and the jump to lightspeed. Finn had to suppress a good snort of laughter when he stuck his head out of the cockpit to check on them. The affection which swelled in his chest wasn't so easily ignored, and for a few seconds he just stood and gazed fondly at the two women.

"Pretty cosy," he reported back to Chewbacca and Rose. "Honestly, I don't get how they haven't acted on this thing of theirs yet."

Rose shrugged and smiled tolerantly. The blue flicker of hyperspace danced in her eyes. "You're getting to be as bad as Poe, egging them on."

Finn crossed his arms. "Discreetly. And it's all Poe's bad influence on me, I'm very impressionable." He smiled at Rose's snicker. "But honestly, I don't know how they don't up and admit they're into one another already."

The Wookie offered his view that it never did to rush this sort of thing. Han and Leia had taken years to get together, after all.

"Still," Rose said. "You'd think that having the First Order set against us would…"

Another growl from Chewie. He believed that "concentrate minds" was the phrase Finn was after.

"Yeah."

Well, look, Chewie told him. If they went another six months and Rey and Kaydel didn't get their act together, he'd go and park the Falcon in an asteroid belt and leave just the two of them aboard. Preferably with the Falcon needing maintenance that Rey could carry out. That, Chewie reckoned, would do the trick.

A surprising amount could happen, he said, in an asteroid belt…