#finn with shoulder length hair supremacy. he pulls it off

[saltyb0ba]

sometimes i think about how many scars finn has gotten

[azems-familiar]

young woman (who do you wanna be)

Rey wakes up in the throne room and wonders what she’s supposed to do now. the Force offers her some help (in the form of our favorite Force ghosts). 1.7k words, background reylo.

read on AO3.

[or: in which Anakin Skywalker tells Rey all the things he wishes the Jedi Council had bothered to tell him.]

She wakes slowly, a bit at a time, in that almost languishing way she’d thought she’d trained herself out of years ago, after thieves had invaded her AT-AT and made off with her emergency portion stash. Memory returns in the same way: trickling slow and thick back to her, like blood in the sand.

For a long moment, she expects to feel the gritty, sand-dusted metal floor of her home beneath her cheek; the smooth, cool surface she feels instead just serves to confuse her even more thoroughly. Where is she? Why isn’t she on Jakku? Maybe her parents finally came--

And then she opens her eyes, and everything comes rushing back.

She’s on the Supremacy, in the throne room. Snoke is dead--killed by Ben. Her parents have been dead for a long time, courtesy of the desert. And the Resistance…

The Resistance is decimated, nearly destroyed (perhaps all gone, she didn’t see what happened after he refused to give the order), and it’s all because of Kylo Ren.

For a while--she’s not sure how long, but it’s probably less time than it feels like--Rey just lays there on the mirrored black floor, now scored by lightsaber blades and dotted with the red-armored bodies of Snoke’s personal guard. She needs to get up, to move, to meet Chewie at the rendezvous, but there hardly seems to be a point anymore. She’s failed, completely and entirely; Luke wouldn’t come back and Ben wouldn’t turn and the only thing she’s accomplished is getting Snoke killed--and the cost was her lightsaber. An invaluable weapon, the weapon of a Jedi, and irreplaceable to boot. The only other lightsaber she knows of is Ben--Kylo’s, and as much as she wants to she can’t bring herself to take it from him.

She should, but…

“Hey.”

The unexpected voice where there shouldn’t be one (she knows no one’s come in, she would’ve heard them) startles her, sends enough of an instinctive adrenaline surge through her muscles to overcome the listless exhaustion and propel her to a sitting position. Rey doesn’t bother to get to her feet, though; let them kill her, if they want to. At this point, she’s not even sure she could stop them (and she doesn’t quite know if she wants to stop them).

“Alright, that’s enough moping,” the man’s voice says, and almost against her will she turns to look at him.

He’s tall, decently so, with tanned skin, bright blue eyes (that look vaguely familiar, though she’s not sure why), and nearly shoulder-length curly golden-brown hair. He’s dressed in a black outfit eerily similar to the Jedi robes Luke had been wearing when she’d first arrived on Ahch-to.

Oh, and there’s a strangely flickering blue glow around him.

Rey blinks, eyes wide, and then she says the first thing that pops out of her mouth: “You’re not part of the First Order.”

He doesn’t respond, his eyes instead going to something laying on the floor. “You broke my lightsaber!” he exclaims, affronted. “Only I’m allowed to break my lightsaber.”

She’s not quite sure what to say to that. “That’s--my lightsaber?”

It’s not supposed to be a question.

“Did you build it?”

She blinks again. “What?”

“The lightsaber,” he says, slowly, as though he’s talking to a child. “Did you build it?”

“Of course not!” Rey stares, askance. “I don’t know the first thing about building a lightsaber. It was given to me.”

“Excellent,” he says. “I’m glad we got that cleared up.”

It takes a moment, but finally it clicks. “You built it?”

That infuriating smile--smirk, really--just widens.

“Then you can help me fix it!” Suddenly, she feels a rush of hope--all is not lost, she hasn’t completely failed yet.

But all that fades away, leaving her just as cold as before, when he shakes his head, the smile dimming. “I can’t, I’m afraid. It’s well and truly broken this time.” He shakes his head, rueful, a touch of nostalgia entering his voice. “Obi-Wan would be so… proud.”

“Resigned,” a faint voice whispers. “I believe the word you’re looking for is resigned.”

“This is my conversation,” the man yells. “Keep your nosy collection of half-truths and hyperbole out of it!”

There’s a faint huff of amused laughter, and then the man returns his full attention to her, stepping closer.

“Who are you?” she blurts out. “And why are you--glowing?”

“Glowing?” He looks down at himself, confused, and then waves a hand. “Oh, that. It’s an unfortunate side effect. I’m Anakin. It’s nice to finally meet you, Rey.”

“How--” He just grins, and she cuts off, shaking her head. “Right. Why are you here?”

“Frankly, you’re terrible at shielding,” Anakin starts, “and all that emotion spilling into the Force was giving me a headache.”

For a moment, all she can feel is sheer indignation. “That’s not my fault!” she says, sharply. “Master Luke didn’t teach me anything!” And then she sighs, slumps. “He told me this would happen, but I didn’t listen. I thought--”

“You thought he was old and too cautious and keeping you back from something you knew you could achieve,” he finishes, a knowing look on his face.

She sighs, admitting defeat, bowing her head and dropping her eyes. “... yeah.”

“And now?” She looks up questioningly, and he elaborates. “What do you think now?”

“I think…” Rey hesitates. “I don’t know what to think. Just that--I can’t be what the Resistance wants me to be, but… I can’t be what Master Luke wants, either! And--” She looks over at Ben--no, Kylo--and closes her eyes, swallowing. “I don’t even know what to do for Kylo.”

“Ben,” Anakin corrects gently.

“What?”

“His name is Ben.” At her skeptical look, he adds, “Names are important, Rey from Nowhere.”

“Alright then,” she says, trying not to flinch at the title she’d given herself. “I don’t even know what to do for Ben. I don’t know what he wants from me!”

“So what?”

She blinks, stares at him in utter shock. “So what? I can’t do it, that’s what!” She jumps to her feet, fueled by a burst of sudden anger. “I can’t be a Jedi, I can’t stay away from the Dark, and I won’t turn!” By the end, she’s shouting, chest heaving, tears coalescing on her eyelashes. “I can’t save everyone,” and she slumps, voice falling to a whisper. “I’m just a scavenger, and the galaxy wants a legend. I can’t be one.”

She stares, defeated, at the broken pieces of the lightsaber, the legendary weapon of the Jedi, that would never work again. The mystic legend shattered, just like the images of Luke Skywalker shining with glory, the golden child of the Rebellion, just like the glimmering future she’d been so sure was true. You have no place in this story, you come from nothing. You’re nothing, Ben had said, and it’s never felt so true.

(She studiously ignores the rest of his words: but not to me. She’s not ready to even begin to deal with the implications--she’s not sure she’ll ever be.)

“Then don’t,” Anakin says, drawing her attention back to him.

“Huh?”

“Don’t try to be something you’re not,” he explains, stepping closer, something softening in his expression. “Don’t let others pressure you into that--don’t make the same mistakes as I did. The Force knows what it’s doing, Rey, and I promise you this: you might not be what the galaxy wants, but you’re exactly what it needs.” And then he grins sardonically. “There’s more to the Force than the Jedi and Snoke. ‘Only the Sith deal in absolutes.’” The last sentence sounds like he’s reciting a quote.

And, for the first time, a bit of weight lifts from her shoulders.

For a moment, she imagines the Resistance’s reaction when she tells them she’s not going to be a Jedi, thinks of the betrayal Finn will surely feel, and then--”General Organa’s Force-sensitive, but she’s not a Jedi--I’ve never even seen her use the Force,” she starts, slowly. “But she’s done more for the Resistance, and for the Rebellion and the New Republic, than any Jedi has.”

Anakin smiles. “Now you’re getting it.”

“But--” Rey hesitates. “I don’t know what I’m doing, I haven’t had any training. I don’t know where to go from here--I don’t know what to do. I failed.”

“You know everything you need.”

She shakes her head. How can he say that? “I already told you, Luke didn’t teach me anything!”

“From a certain point of view,” that same whisper-soft voice says again (she looks around, but there’s no one else in the room besides her and Anakin and Ben’s unconscious body). “From a certain point of view, however, he taught you everything.”

“Still not your conversation, Master,” Anakin grumbles, but he’s grinning. “Trust your instincts, Rey. Listen to what your heart tells you.”

“My heart hasn’t exactly been very reliable, lately,” she says, swallowing, and gestures around her. “Look at the mess I got myself into because of it.”

“You call this a mess?” He stares at her, raising his eyebrows. “Amateur.”

“Anakin!”

“Right, er,” and he looks sheepish, for once. “Look, my point is that you can’t save everyone. You’ve done what you can for Ben, and now it’s up to him to save himself.” He tilts his head to one side, face briefly taking on an expression of intense concentration. “Someone’s coming--you need to go. I’ll see you again, I think.”

Rey nods, already turning to run towards the back of the throne room--there’s an escape craft there, probably for Snoke in case of an emergency--Force-pulling the two halves of the lightsaber into her hands. A few steps in, though, Anakin calls her name. “Rey?”

She stops, turns halfway around again. “Yes?”

“Don’t give up on him just yet--he needs time to process everything. He’ll regret this, eventually, and he’ll come back. He will.”

It’s almost too good to be true. “How do you know?”

“Because,” he says with a lopsided smile, “I’ve been in almost the same situation. And he’s a Skywalker. We’ll do anything for our women.”

And then, before she can process that statement, he’s gone--faded away as though he was never even there.

Rey stands, frozen, for a long moment, and then she turns and runs.