Snippets of Ahch-To (AU) (discontinued)

#3: Comfort

The Ahch-To night was dark and quiet. Outside, the porgs plummeted back into their cliffside nests, and the Caretakers returned to their residences.

Inside her hut, Rey writhed in her sleep. Her grey wool blanket was violently kicked to the floor, and desperate cries escaped her tongue. Face scrunched up and tears lingering on her eyelashes, she wailed:

"Come back!"

In the nightmare that she so frequently dreamed, Rey felt the scorching heat of the desert sand, while the torturous bright sun of Jakku blasted into her face. Tears, salty and big, rolled down from her watery eyes as she watched the starship fly away, towards the outer atmosphere and into space.

"Silence, Girl." The blobfish-like alien's fleshy appendages enclosed around her thin, fragile arms. Young Rey tried to squirm away, but the malleability of the hand betrayed the alien's grip strength.

Rey pleaded for Ben to return, to not abandon her on this desolate planet that held only an endless stretch of flaming sand and a blistering sun that reigned down over the vast nothingness. She could not stay here, in this dire place! She wanted mommy and daddy!

But Ben did not come back. He never did.

"You work for me now, Girl. Shut your kriffin' mouth."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" The child howled, utmost dread flowing out in her voice, matching her tears. With all her might, she pulled her arm away from the alien's grasp, and tearful eyes stared up at the cloudless blue sky for a final time, desperately, uselessly hoping for Ben to fly back, to have him carry her in his arms in the way he did when she first started walking, to cleanse the blood on his hands, to have Grandpa Ani wake up and so she could nurse him back to health, to go back to the Temple and find her mommy and save the crying children and revive the limp bodies on the ground and get a nice warm hug and BE HAPPY AGAIN AND-

The starship escaped from view.

***

Though the dark night of Ahch-To and the sound of the rolling ocean waves usually lulled him into a restless doze, today Anakin Skywalker could not sleep. Rey's deafening cries rang out, loud and clear, penetrating his desensitized eardrums. He could feel his grandchild's agony and fear through her non-existent mental shields; it flooded into their Force connection and stung his heart harder than Palpatine's Sith lightning.

With effort, he slowly sat up in his bed. Battered metal hands feebly pulled his thick blanket (he easily got cold in the night; Luke had discovered his father trembling under his old blanket one night, his eyes forcefully shut and teeth clattering) off and let it pile at the foot of the rigid bed. Gradually, he lifted off his breathing mask that he had to wear in the night; his lungs took a few moments to adjust to unaided breathing, and he had to gasp for air. His muscles were rather stiff and his eyes' refusal to focus was more than the typical, but with some fumbling around, the aged former Jedi managed to find his cane.

Heedful to the action, he painfully shifted his weight onto the cane, groaning as his back cried out in agony. His single remaining front tooth bit into his cracked lower lip, blood threatening to seep out. Wheezing, he took one step forward, then another. He had to make it, he had to comfort her...

Anakin finally tottered into Rey's hut. Fatigue slowed him down, and with his violently shaking arms, he could barely open her door. Oh, dear, I am getting too old... He leaned into the door, gasping for breath, his cane precariously lowering to the ground.

"Grandpa! Grandpa!"

In the dim light, he could see her twisting and turning in her bed, her beautiful hair disheveled, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. The rumpled blanket was kicked to the floor, and her bare feet scrapped along the rough fabric that was her bedsheet.