#force tree

That night on Exegol, the power she felt as all the Jedi spoke to her… She hadn’t felt it since then. And she thought that was okay at first, she thought it was because she had restored the balance, that she had ended the tension and what came after was meant to be this quiet. But she couldn’t even convince herself of that.

Not when it all came rushing back through her, sat next to the tree. And now all she could wonder was if she was broken without the direct connection, why she couldn’t feel it until she got here.

Her fingers grazed the roots then moved to grab a few of the fallen leaves and flowers, her fingers mindlessly twisting them together.

“You did everything right.”

The voice came like a whisper in the wind. At first, she didn’t think she was actually hearing it, thought it was just her desperateness playing a trick on her. But it came again.

“You cannot blame yourself.”

She was sure it was real now, her head lifting from the mess of roots and knotted flower stems in her hand to search the now red-hued jungle around her. There was less light, but it was somehow warmer than before as the crimson tore through the leaves and branches, dousing her in an almost unsettling color.

The red, not like blood but brighter. Like the red of the battle of Crait. From what she had seen as they flew away, from the dust she brushed off Finn and Poe the second they ran aboard the Falcon.

It was a color she could only associate with the emptiness she felt as Luke left.

It was his voice, she knew that for sure.

“I don’t blame myself.” She shot back, using the thick root on her left to boost herself to her feet, scanning for the source of the sound.

“It really doesn’t do you any good to lie to me, Rey.”

He emerged from behind the tree, blue and flowing forward as his mere presence made the aura surge tenfold. The red didn’t cut through him, it only glowed around him, and for a second, he almost looked as tangible as the force felt.

The strength coming from him, he didn’t need to be physical to be real, she could feel him as if he was really there.

“I’m not lying.” She tried to counter, holding her ground and he encircled the trunk and moved closer.

“You are. You blame yourself, you shouldn’t.” He had such a soft curve to his face. After it all ended, she looked back through some of the old archived footage, some of the clips of him, Leia, and Han. Seeing him so young was almost shocking, but he hadn’t changed.

Seeing him again now, she was certain of that. He had been roughly the same age after the battle of Endor when he ended his war. She could only wonder what she would look like when that old, would she wear it as well?

Would her eyes be as soft even though the horrors she’s witnessed, everything she’s been a part of?

“He knew what he was doing.”

She caught the tears before they could come out. She could still feel his hand, the touch of warmth which brought her back. The memory made her resent the heat now, it felt almost mocking.

“There was no redemption for him, Rey, not after everything he had become.” Luke continued, stepping closer.

She wanted to reach out to him. But she couldn’t. He was real, he just wasn’t there.

“He gave his life for me-”

“You’re telling me you wouldn’t have considered doing the same for him? Had the tables been turned?”

She couldn’t lie, he had already told her that. He could see through her as easily as he had the first day they met. Upon first words, she felt as if she had known him for ages, she imagined he felt the same.

“You would have been wrong to, but you would have. That’s just who you are.” He argued, gesturing for her to take a seat back down where she had been and him doing the same across from her, onto one of the larger roots.

“He came back for me…” She fought stubbornly, pointing into her chest because she had nothing else to do with her hands and she had to manage something.

Luke gave her a look, somehow superior in its ‘all-knowing’ but soft in its fatherly downturn of his smile. Her hands went back to playing with the flowers she had discarded.

“He did. And saving you was his last full measure of devotion to you and to the Force.” Luke nodded but stopped after a few slow beats of his head. “But that didn’t erase it all, everything Kylo Ren did still bled onto his hands.”

She knew that. She couldn’t imagine a world where she brought him off of Exegol and tried to explain it all to someone like Poe who had suffered so much at his hands for years in the Resistance, or Finn who was stolen from a family he’ll never know to fight his war for him as an expendable number. She couldn’t explain that Ben was someone else because even she knew it wasn’t entirely true.

He became better. Coming to save her, that was his redemption, in Luke’s eloquent words, ‘his last full measure of devotion’. But that was his path.

And she knew that, and maybe that was why she felt so guilty. To know that someone’s path existed just to save her, that he gave his little remaining life for her. He may have been what he was, but she still felt it, she could recognize the situation for what it was and still feel for him.

She didn’t know how to explain that to Poe or Finn. She barely knew how to explain it to herself.

And with how warm they had been to return to, holding on tight to them as nothing else mattered in the world… They had become everything, they mattered to her, she couldn’t bring herself to say what she had to say about Ben to them, she couldn’t explain it.

It was guilt. Luke was right. She blamed herself for so many things.

“I don’t know how to explain what it is that I’m feeling.” She repeated her thoughts aloud to Luke, hoping he had some further realistic Jedi insight.

Maybe he could throw a rock at her and tell her she was overthinking things. Anything to snap her from this strange force funk.

“You don’t have to.”

She glanced back to him, eyes desperate and reddening with the set of the sun, a fallen purple beginning to set over them, redder than blue, but a mix of the two all the same.

“What you feel is real to you, you don’t have to explain that to anyone.” He continued, pointing to her chest with a steady hand. “Ben and everything he gave to you, lives within you. You keep him with you as a dyad in the force. That’s yours alone.”

“Finn and Poe-”

“Are two of the best of them, but people keep things for themselves. You don’t exist for them, you exist for you.” Luke continued with a sigh as he glanced around at something she couldn’t see, she tried to follow his stare but came up with nothing. “Kylo Ren and Ben were the darkness in the force, everything wrong with him lives on just as everything right does. It’s a balance. The light is in you just as the darkness is, as it always has been.”

“How do I feel it all again?” She sighed, “After Exegol, after coming back… It’s harder than it’s ever been.”

“Well.” He shrugged with a laugh, “You were a natural, of course having to put work into it is going to feel hard.”

She wanted to laugh, but her chest felt too heavy.

“You used the force of a thousand generations. I don’t know how to put it simpler than to say you’re tired, you need to rest, to take it slow and easy. It will come back as you do.”

She nodded, already beginning to feel it just by being there.

“You need to find a new way to channel it. Without the war, you need to find somewhere else to focus it.” He explained, standing up and dusting off his legs even if he wasn’t even physically sat in the dirt, just to manage a laugh from her. “I think you already know how, too.”

“Finn?”

“Smart girl.” He pointed, gesturing for her to come back to her feet. “He’ll need training, and you’ve got everything you need to do just that.”

His hand ghosted over her heart, tapping a few times and she could feel the vibrations of it all even without him making contact.

“I don’t know how I’d do this without you. I wouldn’t have been able to manage it on Exegol, we wouldn’t have won-”

“Nah, you’re managing just fine.”

She wanted to argue otherwise, but he was so confident, she immediately felt caught off guard by it all, a faint voice in the back of her head mentioning she may be wrong.

“The war is over, and you’re allowed to feel everything you’re feeling. Not just you, all of you. There’s a lot that comes with the shift from battle to quiet.” He added.

“How’d you manage it?”

He smiled, wry and incomplete. “The wrong way. We all did. But you’ll do better.”

“How are you so certain?”

“Because you are better.”

He faded out with the night, but he wasn’t ever really gone, not when he could still feel him.