It infuriated him not knowing what was going on. He had been in another one of Hux's long monotonous meetings when it happened.
How he hated that man! He didn't need to be there, but as a commander he was required to be present. He would pass the time in silence, sometimes thinking of inventive ways he would like to murder the ginger general, but often times just thinking of her.
He could feel stress and anxiety seeping through the bond, more so than usual. He wondered what trials Skywalker was putting her though and fought back a simmer of rage at the thought of his old master. She was his! She should be his to train! The force gave her to him! And he believed that to the very depths of his soul. What Jedi filth was he filling her head with? A bunch of nonsense about peace and serenity, no doubt. His hands tightened into fists until the leather of his gloves creaked. One of the admirals at the meeting cast a wary eye in his direction; even a non-force-sensitive could feel the volatile atmosphere around Kylo Ren.
Then he felt it, he felt her piercing terror, and he could hear her voice cry out. Suddenly, he sprang up from his seat, upending his chair, which made a loud smash against the floor. An immediate hush fell over the officers as all rose and jumped back from the table, terrified of what he would do, and wondering what had been said that had set him off. Even General Hux stared with his mouth gaping.
Without a single word, he turned and stormed out the door. He thought he heard the ruddy general call after him; "Ren? What is the meaning of..." but he ignored him and stormed back to his private quarters.
What had happened? What had he felt? Was she hurt? Did something attack her? Was she in a fight? He searched across the bond and sensed a feeling of relief mixed with dissipating fear coming from her. She had nearly dodged some disaster; of that much he was certain. Suddenly he could only see red as he shouted in frustration and pulled out his saber and began hacking apart the sofa in his room - his third sofa that month. This was Skywalkers fault! He was botching her training. He would be the ruin of her, just as he had ruined him.
He tried to push back into her through the bond, he wanted to know; instead she gave him nothing and put up barriers against him, rejecting him again, pushing him away. The thought that she would cling to that idealistic old fool, even at the cost of her own life, and all her great potential, just made him rage even harder. It was a waste! A waste!
He vowed that he would take her away from Skywalker, if it was the last thing he did.
---
Master Luke had no answer for her. "I will need to meditate on this," was all he said, as he laid down the food and water he had brought for her and disappeared into the hills.
For the rest of the day she walked up and down the beach feeling the weight of her double-bladed saber in her hand. At first she was afraid to turn it on again, but the song of the kyber crystal within it seemed to be pleading with her to once again feel the power that she now could wield. At last she powered it on and allowed herself to look on it again. It was frightening, but beautiful, she couldn't deny it. The black metal of the hilt as glossy as a mirror, and the white beams begged to sing as she moved the blades through the air, the hum of their movement sweeter than any music.
She practiced the seven martial stances for defense with an air of grace that she had never managed with Anakin Skywalker's more traditional saber. When she moved into the patterns for offence, she could feel an exhilarating flow of power from the force move throughout her whole body. She had never felt so alive, so strong, so in control. Her weapon felt not just like an extension of her body; it felt like an extension of her soul.
She practiced her forms with the saber until the sun was fading into the water on the horizon. She had barely noticed the passage of time until she heard her master's voice.
"Rey, come with me."
She followed him back into the hills, she wasn't sure exactly where he was leading her to, but she could sense a great weight of dread from her master, and it filled her heart with fear and sadness.
This was it! Her saber had failed the test, it was all wrong, she was all wrong. She knew he was probably going to tell her that her training was over and to pack up and leave. She wouldn't even be able to stand the disgrace of returning to the resistance as a failure, she would never be able to hold up her head after such a shame. Everyone would be so let down. They would never want to see her again anyway. They would think she was no better than him. As she followed silently in Luke's footsteps she tried to swallow a bitter pill.
"This is it! There is nothing for me now, but to return to Jakku and rot!" she thought.
"Rey, please sit down," he motioned towards a log in front of a campfire. She hadn't even noticed that they had arrived. "There is something that we must discuss."
She felt her heart pound in her chest but she sat obediently, trying to fight back the tears that were only a moment away.
Luke sat down on another log across from her, clasping his hand with his robotic hand and leaning forward in a pragmatic manner. "Rey, I do not believe you are meant to be a Jedi."
That was it; there was no stopping them now. She stared stonily into the fire as the tears streamed down her cheeks. Her heart broken, her world shattered. A moment ago she had lived in a dream, a dream too beautiful to be true, but it wasn't true. It had only ever been just a beautiful dream, and nothing more.
Luke continued. "There is both light and dark within you. The saber forged of your own force signature is proof that you have no allegiance to one side or the other. But, I stand by what I said before. I do not believe that makes you evil, but it does mean you cannot walk the path of a true Jedi. No...but there is another path."
"I will never turn to the darkside!" she shouted as she jumped to her feat. "I would die first! I would never let myself become a monster. I will never be like him!"
"I didn't mean the path that leads to the darkside," he corrected.
She just froze and stared confusedly at him.
"She needs your guidance now, and so do I," he called out.
Just when she was beginning to wonder if her master was losing his mind – she heard them.
"Rey...the force is with you," spoke the distinguished voice of a shimmering blue apparition of a man in Jedi robes, with a short groomed beard.
"A Jedi, you are not. A sith, you are not," spoke a much smaller Jedi, who clutched a gnarled stick in his tiny alien hands.
"The first temple, you've long suspected its purpose. It could be her only way," spoke a very tall Jedi.
"We don't know what it will do. We've only speculated about what it was for," argued Luke. "It is not a risk to be taken lightly."
Finally finding her voice; "The temple?" Luke had told her it was best left undisturbed. She had suspected because it was some sort of Jedi holy ground, and she had never dared to press the matter.
"These are my old masters; Master Obi-wan, Master Yoda, and my father; Anakin Skywalker," Luke introduced.
"Anakin Skywalker!" she gasped. The man who had been Luke's father and Kylo Ren's grandfather had always been an enigma to her. Luke spoke of his light, but she had seen in Kylo Ren's mind that he idolized the darkness that had once existed in this vision of the man who now stood before her. She suddenly yearned to speak with him, to have him answer her questions, but now was apparently not the time. He seemed to give her a knowing look, as if he could sense what she was thinking.
"It was once a place where light and dark existed together. The knowledge of its purpose and power are so ancient it is lost even to us who only live on through the force. I do not think it should be feared, perhaps long long ago, the force had not always been as divided as it is now," said Obi-wan.
"Meant for us, its secrets were not." Master Yoda pointed a small finger towards Rey, "Go, you must. Your true destiny, it is."
"She needs to know the risks!" chimed Luke. "Rey, the ancient temple may be able to offer you a path towards balance, but it may not. We have no way to know for sure. We don't know what it could really do to you. The force in there is unlike anything I've ever felt before. If you choose to seek your destiny in that temple...I cannot help you."
She looked around at the waiting expectant faces. Since the moment she had touched Anakin Skywalker's saber, she had been offered only one of two options. The more desirable of the two being to stay within the light and become a Jedi, but she had always known, deep down, that that had not been her destiny. She knew she felt too many raw emotions, and she knew she didn't really want to entirely let them go. To do so would be to destroy who she truly was on the inside, to become something cold, detached, and not at all like herself. It was a part of her that she would have to sacrifice, and it was a sacrifice that she had never truly wanted to make. The other option, to fall into the darkness, had always been unthinkable to her. No matter what passions possessed her, no matter how far into the dark she was willing to go, she knew there would always be a line she would not be willing to cross, even though there were times where she had felt herself stepping terribly close to it.
But now, maybe, just maybe, there was a chance. Could there really be a balance between light and dark? A safe grey between? Could good and evil exist within one person and not tear them apart? For all she knew she could be destroyed trying, and she sensed that this was Luke's greatest fear for her.
"If there had been a way to find balance when I was still alive, maybe I would not have made the mistakes I had made, and maybe my grandson would not be living to repeat those mistakes," added Anakin.
"I will take this risk, no matter the cost. I will accept the dangers, no matter what they may be. I will pursue the balance between light and dark, or I will die trying. I think I've known all along...this is my destiny," she said.
---
That very night Luke led her down to the Falcon. The island where the temple was located was too far to row to in the night when the ocean was at its roughest, and the force ghosts of the old masters had agreed that she should set out on her quest immediately.
The Falcon landed on what outwardly looked like a quiet unassuming island, but the moment she set foot upon the soil, she could feel the force flowing through her. All around were crumbled structures. Everything above ground was so old that the planet had reclaimed it, but the true heart of the temple was below ground.
"I can only take you part of the way. I cannot step beyond the middle circle, but perhaps you can. That is what we are here to find out."
They walked down a stone spiral stairway that seemed endless. The walls glowed with an eerie phosphorescence. At last at the bottom of the stairs was a great arch. There on each side, were two marble sentinels. These were warriors, knights of old. The right sentinel was the figure of a woman in flowing robes, her right hand outstretched, palm up, and a mysterious light of pure force swirled and glowed like a living galaxy above her hand. The left sentinel was a man with a crown of glowing force light, similar to the light that glowed in the woman's hand. In his right hand he clutched a gigantic kyber crystal. Immediately both Luke and Rey could feel the crystals within their own light sabers thrumming in time with the crystal of the sentinel.
"No one may pass through here that is not gifted with the force. To pass you must have the force, and a kyber crystal in your possession. At least that's my best guess. I can't leave my force powers behind, but I know if I try to enter without my light saber I feel an oppressive weight upon me so strong that nothing I do can get beyond it. I feel it distinctly, that it is the male sentinel that stops me, while I feel the female welcomes my presence."
Beyond the arch Luke led her into a massive circular room with a domed ceiling that looked like the entire known galaxy that swirled and displayed the light of all the living stars.
"It's a map; more detailed and complete than anything we have now. A testament to how advanced these ancient force users were. The walls are covered in runes that I spent years trying to decipher. The only thing that I could make out are the many references to light and dark. But there in the center is the greatest mystery of all, and I cannot reach it."
In the very center of the room stood two gigantic kyber crystals, one black and one white, they glowed softly, but between the two pillars of kyber there flashed a brilliant silver light, and Rey instantly felt inside that she ached to go to it.
"If you look at the floor you will see why I could never go to it, even though I feel drawn to it as much as you do."
The center where the mysterious light shined was in a great circle of silvery grey, around the circle of grey was a circle of white, and beyond that a circle of black.
"I can't pass beyond the white circle. I am forced back in much the same way that I cannot pass the arches without my saber. I can only imagine that a force user like a sith, would never be able to pass beyond the outermost black circle. This is as far as I can take you. I don't know if you can make it all the way to the center, and I'll understand if you want to turn back. You don't have to do this. I can't tell you what to expect if you do make it to the center, and once you pass the white circle, I can't help you if you're in danger."
She looked into her masters worried eyes, and she felt his sorrow. "I've made my choice. I know I have to go, but if I don't come back, if something happens, please - go home. They need you! If I must fail at everything, at least let me succeed in getting you back to the resistance. It might be the only good I can ever truly do."
Luke gave her a warm embrace. "You've done more good than you'll ever know – may the force be with you!"
With trembling legs and a pounding heart, she stepped into the black circle. Then she stepped into the white circle. She looked over her shoulder one last time, at the man who had taught her so much, then placed her foot into the innermost grey circle.
She had been allowed to pass.
She was pretty sure she could hear Luke give a sigh of relief from behind her. Before her glimmered the silver light. At first she thought to test it by putting her hand in it, as one would test the temperature of water, but then she felt something insider her, the force, it was guiding her, and that was when she knew there was nothing to fear. She closed her eyes and disappeared into the silver light.
-----
And then she exploded!
Just Kidding! Just Kidding!
Ahhhhh I'm goin to hell for that one! Anyway, just a note from your humble author: I hope that more people will let me know what they think of the story so far, because I love love love reviews!