[ Conflict burns in his eyes, the kind that Rey reads with familiar understanding not because of her ability to tap into his mind, but because she's felt it firsthand. The pull to a calling that feels forced onto her and the wandering uncertainty that she is prepared to accept it, that she even wants to. Then, she had been dragged in by force, and seeing what the fight had done to Han and Finn made her decision for her, but Kylo Ren has no such investments. If anything, Leia and Luke would be just as likely to put him off the Resistance's efforts.

But that's not the question he's asking her, at least not out loud, where he should go when they do return. Dropping her gaze briefly, she accepts the simplicity of his request and turns to glance back the way they had come, where the would-be Jedi school had been replaced with endless stretches of forest. ]

We can't go back. [ There's no place to return to, no journey to retread the ground they walked before the encounter with Snoke had thrust the landscape out of the sinking dark. Only forward. ] Whatever way we find, when we do get out, everything will be different.

[ Not because the physical landscape will have changed, not because of any overt differences, but because Kylo Ren has. Because in experiencing and understanding how the darkness took its hold in him, so too has Rey. If balance is ultimately the goal, and based on Luke's teachings, she has concluded that it is—even if not by his definition—then she must accept that balancing those scales of the Force also means seeing through this complementary connection she has with Kylo Ren; every time the scales tip for one of them, the other experiences a mirror. ]

What is it about this place that calms you? Focus on that, re-center yourself, and the path will reveal itself. [ She hopes. ]