I Can Get It Back

Battles with the Mind and the Timid Stand off

Rey brandished her lightsaber and stepped between the throne and Ben. "What do you want?" she snarled.

Her dark reflection only smiled more broadly. "Come here, Kylo," she crooned.

To Rey's shock, Ben – or perhaps really Kylo – walked around her and knelt before the throne, holding out his lightsaber hilt. "Ben?" she whispered, confused and uncertain how much of this was real. If any of it was.

"Is this not what you wanted, Rey? Him to serve you?"

"No!" The word was both an answer and a reaction to Kylo Ren fading, as did the throne, as the Dark one approached her. "Ben!" she called, hurrying forward with no clear goal in mind.

She was halted when her shadow ignited her saber and blocked her path. Recoiling, Rey lifted her own weapon and swung, furious at having been stopped when she was so close.

"Are you sure you didn't want him as your own slave? You could have made him leave the Supremacy with you, become the Resistance's real hero, like you wanted," the other version of herself suggested with a cold smile as she easily parried Rey's attack.

That made her hesitate in spite of herself and her shadow laughed.

"You were their hero for hardly a day, and already looking for a way out. You just wanted to be a footnote in the story, the one who brought Luke Skywalker back to save the galaxy. And when that wasn't working out, you thought you'd bring back Leia Organa's lost son. Anything to keep from having to shoulder the burden yourself."

"That's not true," she whispered. But her chest constricted with the knowledge that, on some level, it was. She was no hero – she had loved the stories and had always imagined herself in one, but the responsibility of saving the galaxy on her own was too daunting to accept. Too much pressure when all she knew was how to survive. Besides, who was she to take up such a mantle? She was just a scavenger. She was nobody.

"Nothing?" her shadow suggested, almost gently.

She drew back again, watching the double-bladed lightsaber the Dark one had. Other than keeping her from rushing after Ben, her shadow hadn't moved it to attack. Obviously she didn't need to, Rey thought grimly, when her words were effective enough.

"I'm not nothing," she answered through clenched teeth.

"No? Then why did you spend the last year hiding on the Resistance base?"

"I was training!" she snapped.

The woman's laugh was sharp, like the sound of a bone snapping. "Training? Whatever for?"

That threw her. Why had she insisted on training? Her friends had never questioned it, just thought obviously she would want to hone her skills. But Ben had still easily outmatched her on the Death Star wreckage. She had learned to heal with the Force, which was a rare power, but Ben had brought her back from the dead. No one else in the galaxy was a match for her in the Force except for him. And her training had been of no use against the Emperor. So why had she isolated herself and relied on that excuse to keep from leaving the base?

"You were afraid you might see him. And that you wouldn't be able to leave him a second time," her shadow said, cutting to the truth with ease.

"I..." She faltered, her lightsaber wavering in her hand as she was forced to admit it, at least to herself. Her friends trusted her and she had been desperately afraid of them finding out about Ben, just as she had always been afraid of anyone finding out about her abilities when she was younger. Both were gut reactions to save her own hide, but what was the point when they made her miserable? When she had to pretend to be someone else, while cutting off the one person who understood her?