Chapter 8: Broken Pieces

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Rey rested on a bench in the common room of the small freighter, staring up at the ceiling with her elbows flexed and hands behind her head while laughter from Poe and Finn trickled through from the cockpit.

They'd been at this journey two days already, and still hadn't arrived at their destination to recruitment. She was getting antsy with nothing to do but listen to them yammer on about the ship, and the porgs they brought along from the grounded millennium falcon.

Rey listened to them a few more moments before snapping upright from the bench and marching toward her quarters. Sliding the door closed, she turned to the bed and knelt down, reaching under the sleeping pad. She groped around until her finger caught a slender loop of string, and she pulled out a woven bag that clinked as she raised it up.

Crossing her legs on the floor, she loosened the top of the bag and proceeded to pour out the contents. The shards of the lightsaber clattered unceremoniously in front of her; The two halves, and all the pieces from the middle, including the kyber crystal were a pile on the floor.

Rey sighed. She had not looked at these pieces in months.

The lightsaber was pulsating as the force pulled it in both directions.

The memory was slowly coming into focus.

Kylo Ren's face went from painful shock, to strained desperation as his hand outstretched to counter the pull.

She was pulling...yanking the Force with all her might. It had come to her instead of Kylo in the forest, what had changed now?

What would she do when she got it to her hand anyways? What would he do if he got it back?

She noticed that he never reached for his own lightsaber; all attention was focused on preventing her from receiving it.

Rey's feet were sliding on the ground as her body was locked in the position of reaching; an invisible wall between them was pushing them farther apart as their wills refused to cease.

A concussion wave rocketed her and Kylo backward off their feet. The last image she saw was the lightsaber, orange and furious, splitting in two between them.

She held the one half of it up to her eye, peering inside to survey the damage on the charred edges. Her left hand went into the pile of pieces and fished out the blue kyber crystal. Rey then laid out the halves, and then the shards one by one with the crystal beside them, and she studied them.

She leaned forward with her knuckles under her chin, realizing she knew nothing about lightsabers, and wondered if it was even possible to rebuild it again.

Rey was so lost in analyzing the pieces, that she almost missed the sound of the air rushing toward her.

She took a deep breath but decided not to look around to find out where Ren had landed in the room.

Not now, please, she begged internally.

"I'd prefer not to be here either."

Rey, still cross-legged on the floor, twisted her body around at the sound of his voice to find him sitting on her cot with his back against the wall and his legs dangling off.

Their eyes connected briefly before she turned to her work again.

"Please stay out of my thoughts" she spoke indifferently.

"I'd like to," he responded, "but you're not very careful with protecting them."

Rey nodded to herself, mentally noting his comment. "I'm sure if we wait long enough and just ignore one another, the connection will fade out."

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