He’s meditating. Rey’s attuned enough now to know that it isn’t the simple deep-breathing exercise she’d seen occasionally back on Jakku—she remembers, distinctly, coming across a Teedo perched motionless on a sand dune, and the subsequent fistfight she’d nearly lost when she’d interrupted to make sure they weren’t dead—but with Skywalker it’s almost alarming: the ease with which he dips in and out of the Force, out of reality, and the thick aura of life she can feel coalesce around him like a cloak.
The spot he’s in borders the edge of the water, black rock against endless gray sky, and from here she can see the spray of the ocean as it runs up against the rock over and over again. A wild animal desperate to climb, its cries loud and haunting.
She finds herself closing her eyes to listen. Finds the Force waiting for her. And now it sounds like a song—the crash of the waves a harmony under the melody of life. Creatures she’ll never see living in depths beyond imagination. Fish, tiny and multitudinous, nevertheless pursuing the only lives they’ll ever know. The beings that depend on them—the porgs, the Caretakers, Skywalker, herself.
And then the Force. She can feel it breathe all around her, shimmer through the rock under her feet. Everything is so much bigger than she could’ve possibly comprehended back on Jakku. For every story a visitor told her as a child, an entire forest carpeted a faraway world. Infinite planets with infinite peoples and infinite cultures circling infinite stars, unreachable through the black of space. Seas, oceans—deserts of water, and the one that writhes before her seems to go on forever. It’s strange to remember how small her life had been.
“It’s vast. Isn’t it?”
Rey opens her eyes, pulls herself from the Force’s embrace. Skywalker hasn’t moved from his spot, but she can feel that his presence has returned fully to his body.
“More than I could’ve known,” she replies.
Skywalker doesn’t respond, but when he turns to glance at her, there’s a small smile on his face. “Come on,” he says, ticking his head in a beckoning gesture. “The rock’s more comfortable to sit on, believe me.”
She does. She settles into a spot next to him, the cold of wet rock bleeding through her clothes, and mimics his posture—back straight, legs crossed, hands resting palms-up. From this close, she can feel the waves spray gentle rain across her skin. Greeting her.
“You never get tired of it,” Skywalker says after a moment. “Never. It feels different every day. You wake up and… you know. You know that something’s waiting for you.”
“Even now?”
The words slip out before she can stop them. But Skywalker’s grin, already small, just grows lopsided and knowing. “Even now.”
Rey matches his grin, half-apology, and stares back out at the ocean, watches its undulating waves. “For me,” she says, “it was Takodana. The first time I’d ever left Jakku, and I’d somehow ended up in the greenest place in the galaxy. And I felt so, so small—I mean, the desert makes you feel small. You’re so insignificant. Your life means so little. But it was a good kind of small on Takodana. It was the first time I thought—well, I might only be one life, but I’m one of trillions.” She lets out a shallow sigh—contented. “It was like everything I’d been through had suddenly become worth it.”
“Very poetic,” Skywalker says dryly.
She gives him a look, which he ignores.
“The first place I visited when I finally left Tatooine,” he goes on, “was the first Death Star. I knew that the Empire was a despotic, tyrannical regime built to enrich a few. Everyone knew it, whether they wanted to admit it or not. Actually seeing the worst proof of that with my own eyes was something else, though. Like, imagine standing on a space station that had caused the deaths of billions just because a handful of assholes hated the idea of not being as important as they thought they were. Not great!”
Rey stares at him. He keeps looking straight ahead.
“But…?” she prompts.
Skywalker snorts. “You think there’s a but here? Well, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You destroyed the Death Star! You were just talking about how life was worth living!”
“I was talking about the ocean.”
“You—” Rey huffs a breath and makes to stand up. “Never mind. Have fun on your rock.”
Skywalker sighs dramatically. “All right, fine,” he says, which makes Rey sit back down. “After seeing the Death Star and coming face to face with the biggest symbol of greed and hate in the entirety of existence at the time, we landed on Yavin 4. It was like your Takodana—the whole moon’s just forest, and I’d never seen so much life in one place. Every dream I’d ever had about leaving Tatooine, about flying, about seeing the galaxy had finally come true, and in ways I never imagined. But—”
“Oh, now there’s a but?”
“But,” Skywalker says again. He doesn’t roll his eyes but Rey can certainly hear it. “What was more important than seeing a bunch of trees was seeing the Rebellion. It wasn’t a rumor anymore, the whispers of the desperate. It wasn’t HoloNet propaganda meant to strike fear into the gullible. It wasn’t a fantasy—it was real. And seeing so many people from all across the galaxy actually care… it was more than I’d ever hoped.” He pauses, giving Rey a moment to think—and then shrugs. “But I know better now. Movements and people like that are rare. Hell, I don’t even know how many people in the Rebellion actually gave a shit. We’re lucky that it happened as it did.”
“That,” Rey starts, because she wants to argue. There’s something incredibly flawed in what he said—she feels it someplace more primal than the Force, bubbling—but what can she say? She’s seen the Resistance in action, walked among its ranks; she knows that its hands reach far across the galaxy, bind people together under the banner of righteousness. To think that the Rebellion was rare seems… wrong.
But she also grew up on Jakku. The Resistance was just stories there, too.
She focuses back on the ocean. It writhes against the rock, against itself. Unperturbed. Oblivious. And so much larger than any desert she’d ever braved, so much more alive. She breathes the sharp salt of it in, holds it, and lets it go.