“So that’s Supher?” Ben communicated to the Millennium Falcon.
“Yes,” Rose replied with a slow nod. “That is where the Resistance base is.
“Is my mother there?”
It was Lando who answered Ben’s question. “Let’s just say she’s looking forward to your homecoming.”
Sure enough, Leia, Shudu, Akinli, Beatrice, and a group of Resistance heroes waited in the spaceport when the Falcon dropped in for landing. The children jumped with excitement, assuming Rey was on it.
However, it wasn’t Rey who walked down the Falcon’s ramp but Lando, Chewie, Yamo, Hux, Rose, Poe, Finn, Temiri, and the droids.
Kylo Ren was nervous to crawl out of his ship because he didn’t know how the Resistance would react when they saw him.
Noticing that Rey wasn’t part of the group, the children asked simultaneously, “Where’s Master Rey? We thought she was with you guys.”
“Well, she’s not! Okay?” Finn snapped. Just as he said that, his mind returned to when he and his friends found Rey unconscious on Jakku.
Akinli, Beatrice, and Shudu jumped when he raised his voice. Why did he get so angry all of a sudden? Did something happen to Rey?
Leia kept a close eye on Finn, who left the homecoming and headed toward Palm Tree Beach. She begged Po, Rose, Yamo, Chewie, Temiri, Lando, and Hux, “Tell me everything that happened.”
***
Ben could not join the Resistance, even though he had redeemed himself. They were going to get on his case and call him a monster. He was sure of it. Why did he decide to come there when Rey was in danger? Inhaling, he tried communicating with her through another Force bond.
***
Rey’s head burst with pain when she heard Ben. With a few Sith Troopers, she stood on The Limpton’s bridge, her hood still over her head. Her right arm tingled as she tried to remember why she was there in the first place—the Beacerika. It led her to her destiny, but why did she still feel like she didn’t belong?
Ben tried to reason with her. “Rey, don’t let Palpatine win. I know you. I may be the monster here, but you’re not. Palpatine is trying to kill you so he can remain in power. He’s using you as bait, and I’m afraid I won’t be there to save you when the time comes.”
“Stop it! Stop it! Why would my grandfather kill his own granddaughter?” Rey frustratingly yelled.
Beside her, a Sith Trooper asked, “Is everything all right, Empress?”
Rey never got a chance to answer. There was too much going on. Not only that, but she froze when she thought she heard a cry for help. It came from one of the hallways that branched off from The Limpton’s bridge.
“Do you hear it, too?” asked Kylo Ren. “Those are the cries of the First Order troopers and passengers whom Palpatine possessed and hid somewhere in the ship. They need somebody to save them, and you’re the only one there.”
Again, Rey heard the screams. No! If she tried to save the troops and passengers, Palpatine would unleash his Force lightning on her again. “I’m not going to save them, Ben.” Nonetheless, fear was in Rey’s voice.
Ben sensed it. “And that’s your weakness—your fear. You are too scared to confront your evil grandfather after what he did to you on Jakku. You’re shaken by your Sith lineage, which I understand, but you have to come out of your shell. To be a Palpatine does not mean you have to be evil. Rey, you need to learn to fight your fears.”
He had a point. Fear was never a good power for a Jedi. Rey thought about that momentarily, and then she excused herself from the Sith Troopers. The screams she heard led to one of the darkest hallways in The Limpton. Just staring at it, Rey felt like she was staring into the unknown. Taking a deep breath, she pulled her hood off her head.
“You can do this, Rey,” Ben said.
Hearing him, Rey nodded and lifted her foot. Without another word, she vanished into this mysterious hallway.
***
Back on Supher, Ben snapped out of his trance when somebody spoke behind him.
“She’s struggling, isn’t she?” The voice belonged to General Leia Organa. The Force led her to her son’s ship.
“Mom,” Ben spoke in a low voice without looking back at her.
She chuckled and ordered, “Let’s go find the Last Jedi.”
***
Finn just made it to Palm Tree Beach with at least an hour of sunlight left to spare. While there, he tried practicing the Force.
He dug his feet into the fluffy, white sand and held his hand out to a pile of coconuts. However, none of them lifted into the air. How the heck did Rey do it? Hot air blasted Finn’s shoulders, causing him to sweat. He kept trying, but he was impatient like Luke Skywalker before him.
Because of that, he could not lift the coconuts.
Finally, Finn gave up. He pulled back his hand and sank to his knees in the sand. Temiri was wrong. He wasn’t Force-sensitive. The conversation he had with Rey in the Falcon was merely the work of his imagination. He was so torn apart by the Resistance’s decision to leave Rey broken and unconscious on Jakku that he thought it was his fault. After all, he tried to stop her when she ran off after she and he met Lando. Leia stopped him, and Finn let her.
He saw Rey and remembered when she knocked him down with her staff in Niima Outpost. He remembered when they boarded the Millennium Falcon, met Han Solo, and fought Kylo Ren in the forest. He then remembered his joy when he and the other Resistance heroes saw her lift the rocks during the Battle of Crait. Finally, he recalled talking to her just before Lando crash-landed in the No-Ela Lagoon. Her entire face brightened after telling her that Leia would give her another chance. Finn still felt her arms around him when she hugged him thank you.
Thoughts about Rey strengthened Finn, and he even laughed a little. Everything changed when she went to Dark Side Island, but deep down, Finn knew she was still the kind-hearted scavenger he met on Jakku.
He crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and placed his hands in his lap as more memories bombarded him. The past was the past. This was the future, and Rey needed him. She needed Ben, Finn, and Temiri if she had any hope to return to the Light side of the Force.
While Finn thought about that, slowly and carefully, the coconuts, one by one, lifted from the pile, but he was unaware. Also, three figures appeared behind him: Leia, Ben, and Temiri.
They watched the young man open-mouthed. It was Rey who unlocked Finn’s Force abilities. Kylo Ren unlocked hers, and she returned the favor.
Leia, who held a lightsaber, nodded to Ben and Temiri. “The Force is strong with him.”
“Let’s do this,” Temiri spoke. “It is time for us to train.”
***
On her way down the Sith Hallway, Rey ran her palm across its smooth walls. She listened to the First Order’s pleas, only to find herself even more nervous than she already was.
Inside her, Palpatine realized what she was doing and unleashed his power.
Just like what happened on Jakku, Rey yelled when a wave of excruciating pain broke across her body. She fell to her hands and knees and begged Palpatine to stop punishing her, but he kept at it.
Too frightened to go further, Rey retreated toward the hallway’s entrance. The pain left, but she still shivered. She couldn’t do this. Palpatine would kill her if she tried to free the First Order. She had to remain on her course for Supher to make him happy. He was the only family she had left.
Sitting there, she had a flashback of her parents. Within it, Rey was a child, and her parents just dropped her off on Jakku. Her mother, a beautiful woman who looked just like her, hugged her close to her chest.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she told her young daughter, “‘Rey, be brave.’”
Little Rey nodded, even though she didn’t understand what was happening.
The next person to enter her vision was her father. “‘You’ll be safe here. I promise,’” he said, rubbing Rey’s cheek with his index finger.
In the background, Rey heard the evil cackle of Emperor Palpatine. He was looking for her. That was why her parents abandoned her on Jakku. They wanted to protect their daughter from her grandfather, just as Obi-Wan hid Luke and Leia to defend them from Darth Vader. Her parents sacrificed themselves to save her. It didn’t matter if her grandfather was the evilest man in the galaxy. What mattered most to Rey’s parents was Rey herself. She was their “Stardust”.
With that in mind, Rey decided to head back down the Sith Tunnel. For the second time, Palpatine punished her, but she pushed through the pain.
She remembered her mother’s words—“‘Rey, be brave’”—and repeated them to herself as she kept moving.
Palpatine’s punishment grew worse, causing her vision to blur, but she kept on fighting until she finally reached the end of the hallway. By then, Palpatine had stolen all her strength, and she collapsed before a group of cages and gates.
Weakened by Palpatine’s punishment, Rey said hoarsely, “I don’t belong here.” However, she still had enough strength to lift her head and peer into the many cages and gates surrounding her. What she saw shocked her, but she wasn’t able to get a good look because she closed her eyes and ended up lying half-dead in the Sith Tunnel.
***
Finn felt her pain. “No! Rey!”
Leia, Temiri, and Ben Solo felt it, too.
“We’re too late,” Temiri cried, but Leia quickly shook her head no.
“No! There’s no such thing as too late! Buckle up, boys! We have a long day of training ahead of us.”
“But Rey’s dying!” Finn shouted.
Beside him and Temiri, Ben Solo crossed his arms. “We’re going to save her. I know we are. We just need to devise a plan to take back The Limpton from the First Order.”
“Correct. And that is what I’m going to teach you boys,” said Leia.
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