[ In the instant after he presses her, Rey’s mind goes blank, as if every reason she’d ever used to justify the scrambling process of dragging him by the ear back into the light fell to pieces under scrutiny. Multitudes surge in a moment later, a counterattack to beat down the presumption of their nonexistence, leaving her unable to settle on which is most accurate, on which drove her completely.
The day Kylo Ren slayed Han Solo, Rey and Leia shared the loss of their loved one, and Rey mourned him as if he were her own. She could not mourn with Leia if she were the one to take the General’s son from her, and then she would suffer the loss of the only maternal warmth she’s ever felt. It’s selfish, surely, but in the empathic way that Rey manages best.
Then there’s the paralyzing responsibility of being the Jedi’s hope for balance, for resistance against the dark shadow that looms at the edge of the galaxy. The isolation of being Luke Skywalker’s only apprentice while he gives her insight into the Force in part and parcel, only offering what he believes she can manage and holding the rest back as leverage of some kind. Leaving Jakku should have meant leaving her loneliness behind, but it grows and stretches in the void in her chest that swells with each expanded understanding of what it means to be a Jedi. Abstinence from companionship, from connections, while maintaining the rich well of compassion within her asks a lot of a girl who is clumsily drunk on the sudden flood of affection that comes with breaking out of her hermitage.
The Jedi code asks her to offer compassion to Kylo Ren rather than the point of her lightsaber, but that is even less valid than claiming Kylo Ren had spared her life out of the kindness of his heart on Takodana. She spared him because she fears being the only one, restricted by what Luke will offer her, carrying the weight of the Jedi code alone on her back and hoping to make the best of it.
The threat of being left adrift and alone is two-fold, then: the danger of losing the mother she’s never had to grief and blame on the heels of losing Han Solo, and the tremulous responsibility of being the sole carrier of the Jedi legacy. Both swirl together into a selfish, dark justification for the fact that Kylo Ren has been allowed to survive his father, and acknowledging that fact leaves Rey—not for the first time—wondering if she has made the right choice. ]
The first time I saw General Organa, we wept together. Even though she knew it to be true, could feel it in the pulse of the Force, she didn’t understand how Han Solo could be dead because she could still sense a light in her son, and she believed that it burned brighter than the darkness that Snoke had drowned him in.
[ Even with Kylo Ren sitting across from her, she speaks of Ben Solo as a lost boy, a forgotten memory of a third party that is far away from the dejarik board and the Millennium Falcon, for the light that Leia accounts for is not a light that Rey has seen firsthand, not a belief she can force onto him in the same way, even if she has no problem levying the name against him where appropriate, brandishing it as a weapon. ]
When I first saw that vision, I thought you were a nightmare, a haunting specter with an army at your back ready to cut me down. But like your mother, you showed me another possibility—on Yaga Minor, do you remember? [ She lifts her gaze, leans intently forward as the metal of the table sighs and settles below her weight. ] You and that cloaked figure were towering over me when you cut him down: I believe, when the time comes to destroy him, you’ll do it to protect me.
[ She has to believe that because the only other choice is to acknowledge that she’s made all the wrong choices, and the right one would have been to cost herself everything by killing him. ]
Oops gives you homework. I should do that too probably because all I have rn is Boba Fett
The day Kylo Ren slayed Han Solo, Rey and Leia shared the loss of their loved one, and Rey mourned him as if he were her own. She could not mourn with Leia if she were the one to take the General’s son from her, and then she would suffer the loss of the only maternal warmth she’s ever felt. It’s selfish, surely, but in the empathic way that Rey manages best.
Then there’s the paralyzing responsibility of being the Jedi’s hope for balance, for resistance against the dark shadow that looms at the edge of the galaxy. The isolation of being Luke Skywalker’s only apprentice while he gives her insight into the Force in part and parcel, only offering what he believes she can manage and holding the rest back as leverage of some kind. Leaving Jakku should have meant leaving her loneliness behind, but it grows and stretches in the void in her chest that swells with each expanded understanding of what it means to be a Jedi. Abstinence from companionship, from connections, while maintaining the rich well of compassion within her asks a lot of a girl who is clumsily drunk on the sudden flood of affection that comes with breaking out of her hermitage.
The Jedi code asks her to offer compassion to Kylo Ren rather than the point of her lightsaber, but that is even less valid than claiming Kylo Ren had spared her life out of the kindness of his heart on Takodana. She spared him because she fears being the only one, restricted by what Luke will offer her, carrying the weight of the Jedi code alone on her back and hoping to make the best of it.
The threat of being left adrift and alone is two-fold, then: the danger of losing the mother she’s never had to grief and blame on the heels of losing Han Solo, and the tremulous responsibility of being the sole carrier of the Jedi legacy. Both swirl together into a selfish, dark justification for the fact that Kylo Ren has been allowed to survive his father, and acknowledging that fact leaves Rey—not for the first time—wondering if she has made the right choice. ]
The first time I saw General Organa, we wept together. Even though she knew it to be true, could feel it in the pulse of the Force, she didn’t understand how Han Solo could be dead because she could still sense a light in her son, and she believed that it burned brighter than the darkness that Snoke had drowned him in.
[ Even with Kylo Ren sitting across from her, she speaks of Ben Solo as a lost boy, a forgotten memory of a third party that is far away from the dejarik board and the Millennium Falcon, for the light that Leia accounts for is not a light that Rey has seen firsthand, not a belief she can force onto him in the same way, even if she has no problem levying the name against him where appropriate, brandishing it as a weapon. ]
When I first saw that vision, I thought you were a nightmare, a haunting specter with an army at your back ready to cut me down. But like your mother, you showed me another possibility—on Yaga Minor, do you remember? [ She lifts her gaze, leans intently forward as the metal of the table sighs and settles below her weight. ] You and that cloaked figure were towering over me when you cut him down: I believe, when the time comes to destroy him, you’ll do it to protect me.
[ She has to believe that because the only other choice is to acknowledge that she’s made all the wrong choices, and the right one would have been to cost herself everything by killing him. ]