adarkergray | Kenoma

Kenoma

Previously:
Escape From Starkiller Base
At the Monuments of Madness
A Living Weapon

To Jacob's surprise, they made it to Ahch-To's system without incident - but then, it was clear now that the Force was on their side. As per his calculations, they'd dropped out of hyperspace a few hundred thousand kilometers away, just beyond its outermost moon's orbit, and as they headed toward the planet at sublight speeds, he tried to ignore the way his protective instincts were going into overdrive.

However, the closer they got to the planet, the more he couldn't help being aware that everyone there, everyone they were going to see, was someone who'd hurt Kylo terribly, and Force, how could Jacob even begin to justify taking him down there? To put him in that level of danger, in the kind of condition he was in--

He made himself take a deep breath, though the fingers of his free hand were clamped tightly around the hilt of one of his lightsabers. The urge was incredibly strong to tell Kylo that he couldn't in good conscience do this, that there had to be another, better way to defeat Snoke, and they would find it - but, deep down, he knew that if there was, the Force would have shown it to Kylo instead. He had to have faith in his master, and in the Force.

Instead, right now, he had more sympathy than ever for why Snoke wanted to destroy the Force's will - not that he had any sympathy for Snoke himself. That thought was enough to settle his nerves slightly by reminding what they were here for, why it was important, why they could all work together just this once.

Snoke had to die. That was the one thing they all could agree on.

Finally, he calmed his mind enough to push his senses outward through the Force, to see whose presence he could detect. Even this close in, he still couldn't pick up Skywalker, but he could sort out Rey and General Organa from the background energy of the planet. He turned to Kylo. "...Your mom's still here. Do you want me to ask her to leave?"

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((It's hella stubborn, and I'm still sick with the tail end of it, but at least I'm sort of functional finally.))

If anyone could do it, it was the two of them; of that, Jacob was certain. "You know I have faith in you." He gave Kylo's hand another gentle squeeze, then re-focused himself on the Force.

Though they were investigating a few different routes to accomplish it, their overall strategy was the same: cut Snoke off from the source of his power, crush his mind before he could connive his way out of their trap, and then strike the finishing blow. The shock of Force projection might just be enough of a distraction to catch him off-guard so they could strike the first blow, or perhaps a diversion to keep him from recognizing what their target really was - or perhaps it was meant to distract Kylo's children, who, if they were by Snoke's side, would no doubt make some kind of effort to protect their captor. Either way, the Force had told Kylo it was integral to their success. As for the rest...

Jacob let the island's Force energy wash over him, feeling the ebb and flow of the light side and the dark; it took some time for him to find his way back to that place where he could sense the fact that he was only on the surface, that the Force was a whole ocean beneath him. Remembering the breakthroughs that Kylo had made while they were on Xashiri, Jacob didn't try to draw on the power of those depths the way he would the dark or light side, didn't go into it with any expectation of the Force bringing him anything - he just let it come to him. He stilled his mind, as though trying to stop swimming so he could allow himself to sink.

If Kylo was a bridge to Snoke and the connection could indeed work both ways, then it was far more like their time in Thuban’s temple than he previously considered. He couldn’t trust himself. Not fully. Not without his apprentice to parse through what was real and what wasn’t.

Drawing a deep breath, Kylo pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the cot. He was as quiet, careful not to disturb Jacob’s meditation until he had centered himself properly again. He didn’t focus on the light or the dark. Instead, he stayed in the space between, on the edge of the Force wound where energy itself seemed to swirl like stars around a black hole.

“...Feel what I feel.” He whispered. “Let it flow through you.”

He put a hand on Jacob’s back and closed his eyes. Their breath fell into line and their heartbeats synced.

“Don’t fight it. Don’t accept it. Just... just direct it...”

When Kylo sat up, Jacob shifted position as well, moving to lean his head slightly against Kylo's thigh. He allowed his master's energy to spread gradually into his focus, deepening Jacob's awareness of him in the Force. When Kylo's hand came to rest between his shoulders, Jacob let that awareness draw him in further, and he could feel the way the currents in the Force changed around him, the way the wound in it affected them profoundly - not just on the surface, but all the way down.

Deep waters aren't still.

It was a level of power that Snoke couldn't even begin to fathom, yet this was what he wanted to control. As much as Jacob wanted to think that was impossible, he could already feel how responsive those currents within the Force were.

If Kylo wanted Jacob to direct it, then he could direct it, along with everything that implied.

Through Jacob, Kylo felt the Force more deeply than his own meditation had ever allowed. He was there, and yet not there, present but lost, floating yet sinking down through their bodies, though the soil, through the very core of the planet and into the heart of the galaxy. This was what true power felt like.

It was incredible.

And then, more abruptly, Kylo felt something seize him. Strong hands grabbed his shoulders, physically wrenching him away from his apprentice, pinning him roughly against the cot. Their trance was so deep that it actually took a moment for Kylo to register that this wasn’t a vision. Leia and Rey were just inside in the doorway. Luke Skywalker was literally standing over them both, shouting in panic, “what do you think you’re doing?!”

It took Jacob a moment to pull himself free from the depths of that trance as well, but when he did, he came up swinging. "Get your hands off him!" He managed to connect a decent left hook with Luke's jaw, knocking him back, then tossed up a Force barrier around Kylo and himself before the situation could escalate any further.

He helped Kylo to sit back up on the cot, making room for Jacob to sit down next to him - though he'd acted on instinct to protect his master, he was still disoriented from snapping back out of the trance so quickly. Finally, he asked, "When we touched the deeper energy currents of the Force, what happened? What did we do?"

The effects hadn't seemed particularly dramatic - they'd seemed localized, dissipating like ripples through water, and though they had been alarming as a proof of concept for what Snoke was trying to achieve, in and of themselves they hadn't seemed dangerous.

On the other hand, Jacob couldn't help recalling the archetypal illustration of chaos theory - a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the planet, and on the other, that tiny disturbance builds into a storm...

When Jacob threw the punch, Leia and Rey both ran foward. Leia tended to Luke while Rey put herself between them, her hand pressing right up against the barrier that Jacob threw up.

It took Kylo longer to come out of the trance. The Force wound inside him was active enough that he still felt he pull of those deep currents. He was aware of the barrier first, then of Jacob’s arms around him, anchoring him to the present - at least until he saw Luke’s horrified face.

“All of you, dabbling in power you can’t possibly understand!” Luke spat. Even after disconnecting himself from the Force, he could feel them. And that feeling scared him more than anything else. When Rey turned to him, he narrowed his eyes even more. “You did it too! Against my wishes, when you went into the mirror cave! The Dark Side calls to you and you dive right in!”

It was the same face he saw that night, albeit this time, without the green glow of his lightsaber. Kylo shivered, but somehow found his voice.

“It’s not the Dark Side. It’s not any side! It’s just the Force!”

“I was right about you. You’re a monster.”

Jacob was back on his feet in an instant, moving toward Luke again. "How kriffing dare you!"

He hadn't even made it to the edge of the barrier when Leia - no, General Organa - took control of the situation. "Icarus!" she snapped in a tone of absolute command that was enough to freeze even the Knight in his tracks. Then, she gave her brother a slight push toward the door of the cottage. "Luke, outside. Go cool off." She nodded toward Rey. "Rey, take a step, back, please."

As Rey backed off, Jacob returned to Kylo's side, wrapping his arms protectively around him. After a few moments, once he was satisfied nothing else was going to happen, the Force barrier flickered out of existence. "...Sorry, General."

It was only now that she began to relax as well that he realized how tense the situation had made her, which only made her control over it even more impressive. "...Tell me what you two were trying to accomplish."

Jacob took a deep breath, then let it out slowly as he tried to find the words to explain it to her. At last, he began with, "We believe that the Force destroyed the Jedi and the Sith for a reason - and that reason was that their way of relating to the Force, through the light and dark sides alone, was no longer beneficial to the life, the spiritual health, of the galaxy itself. Those who were born after the great purge, like all of us, even Luke, are able to connect with the Force on a much deeper level, and we believe that power is what it needs now, to rid itself of Snoke and bring itself into true balance."

“We believe Snoke is attempting to access this power... or at least something like it. But he can’t... not yet.” Kylo added. “If he could, he wouldn’t be trying to influence and control so many Force sensitives. He wouldn’t have needed to turn me into... into this...”

He gestured weakly to his chest. The Force wound was a microcosm of a larger phenomenon. The ebb and flow of the entire galaxy was wedged inside his heart and soul. The damage done to his body and mind was extensive, and whether any of it could be reversed was still being researched.

“He’s trying to push the balance of power so far to one side that it will destroy everything. But fighting back from the other side... it’s just going to give him something else to feed off of... the... the answer is balance. Exchanging power for true balance.”

He glanced at his mother, but diverted his eyes again.

“That’s what we were trying to do.”

Jacob gently pulled Kylo a little closer, stroking his back lightly, and as he did, he noticed a faint tinge of pain in Leia's eyes - that she hadn't been there for her son, that she couldn't be the one to comfort him now. Secretly, he found it just a little gratifying, seeing how aware she was of the mistakes she'd made.

Rey's gaze, meanwhile, was unfocused as she hung onto their every word, turning them over in her mind. It was clear that what Kylo and Jacob had discovered was what she'd been looking for, the piece she'd felt was missing from her own efforts to connect with the Force, and Jacob was about to ask if she wanted to train with them when Leia began speaking again, her tone calm and measured.

"How can you be sure that you aren't just playing into Snoke's hands, or that you're not going to do the same kind of damage to the Force you're trying to prevent him from inflicting?" She asked as though she actually expected them to have a reasonable answer to that question, which made Jacob feel a little better.

"We've both already learned to recognize how Snoke's influence feels inside our minds, and we know how to reject it so that we won't fall into his traps again. What's more, the part of the Force we're communing with now is one that he doesn't have access to - which is something that will make it easier to listen to its voice and shut out his. And, believe me, we are listening for it, because attuning ourselves to the will of the Force is the only way to, as you said, avoid the kind of destruction that Snoke is seeking to inflict."

Jacob was far more confident than Kylo in his answer. He deeply feared that, at some level, they were still playing into Snoke's hands. His former master had always known what he was going to do before he did it. Snoke knew Kylo Ren better than Kylo Ren knew himself. This could have been a trap all along...

But he didn't feel that, even if his worst fears were realized, that the end result would damage the Force as Snoke intended.

"If we are playing into his hands, it will be by opening a door that he can't..." he added. "But that is why my apprentice is here with me. I know I am a link to Snoke. He was manipulating me before I even knew how to talk. My apprentice... I trust him to see through my visions and help me parse the will of the Force from Snoke's will."

Kylo found Jacob's hand and squeezed it gently.

"I am a power source. I am a bridge. I... I'm a conduit of the Force. Nothing more."

((Unpacking is even worse than packing x_x but at least it's finally all done except for a few odds and ends I need to find a place for))

Jacob gave Kylo's hand another gentle squeeze in return. "You need to give yourself more credit than that. You were the one who broke his hold over me - if not for you, I would've gone along with his plans despite the disaster they would have unleashed." Snoke hadn't needed to push hard for that, though - it was Jacob's natural inclination to experiment, to try to determine whether things were possible without necessarily considering how good an idea they were. When Jacob was determined to resist, however, it was an entirely different matter; there might still be moments when Snoke would manage to derail him, but they would only be moments. He'd find his way quickly back to the path the Force had laid out for him.

No matter what, he'd be the compass Kylo needed. Nothing his master asked of him would ever be too much.

Jacob turned his attention back to Leia. "Does that answer your question sufficiently?"

She nodded briefly. "I'll see if I can't have a talk with Luke, and convince him to give you the benefit of the doubt. He knows just as well as you do that there's no longer a place in the galaxy for the Jedi - or the Sith - but I think it scares him, not knowing what's coming next."

"We can still do this without him if we have to," Jacob replied. The thought of introducing Luke to a new source of power didn't sit well with him when, once they left here, they'd all be enemies again - but then, a tiny voice was starting to whisper in the back of his mind that, maybe, if they all understood the Force a little better, a little differently, they'd understand each other as well and things wouldn't need to be like that.

[good luck with the unpacking. Things have been crazy busy for me too. Lots of work. Stuff with the dojo I got myself voluntold into...]

The benefit of the doubt? There was a part of Kylo that felt insulted and just as neglected as he had been as a child. But this wasn’t the time for those emotions. And it wasn’t the time to rile up the chaotic energy of the Force wound.

Rey felt all of this - Luke’s anger felt more like the Kylo Ren she fought on Starkiller than the man sitting before her now. Leia felt torn between opposing sides. It was her sworn enemies that felt like the stable ones, despite the surge in the Force powerful enough to resonate across the entire planet. (And to her, that’s exactly what it felt like. It was more than the mirror cave. It was as if the mirror cave, the ocean, the tree, the rocks, everything sang in one voice. It was more intense than anything she felt through meditation alone.)

It didn’t scare her the way it scared Luke.

But she waited until Leia had left before confessing that to the Knights of Ren.

“If you’re going to do that again... I know places here, not just the sacred tree, that are strong in the Force. I can take you to them.” She offered. And more importantly, she added, “I want to feel it too.”

((Oh man, good luck. The things you get voluntold into are always the ones that take the most unreasonable amount of time.))

Once General Organa had left, Jacob sighed softly, stroking Kylo's back again and trying to soothe some of the hurt that he felt his master tamping down. You don't need Luke. You never have. All you need is for him to get out of the way. Despite everything, Jacob still hated that Luke and Leia had to be here, that they had to work with them, but the Force hadn't given them much choice in the matter. And the only way they were going to get through this was to heed the Force's will.

He pushed back his own negative emotions as well, focusing instead on centering himself in the Force and letting Kylo feel how much he loved him to bring them both back to a more even keel. And he noticed that, contrary to his expectations, Rey wasn't leaving. The request to work with them didn't catch him off guard, however. "I think that would be best. I was just about to ask if you wanted to join us, because we're going to be counting on your help." Unlike Luke, he wasn't going to leave her adrift, scrabbling for answers on her own and then criticizing her for the ones she did find; as much as he could, he was going to try to bring her in as an equal.

They might have to reconvene on it later, though, and he turned his attention back to Kylo again. "Did you want to continue right away, or did you want me to bring breakfast down from the ship first and see how you feel afterward?" At this stage of Kylo's recovery, it was just as important to make sure he was keeping his strength up as it was for them to forge ahead with their explorations in the Force.

“Thank you...” Kylo nodded, welcoming the scavenger’s willingness. She was strong in the Force, but miraculously uncorrupted by either side. Kylo, by comparison, had been burned alive by both.

He wanted to push forward without delay, to spite his uncle. But Jacob was right - he needed energy beyond what just the Force could provide. But before he could answer, Rey interjected, “Oh! I brought you a couple bottles of thala siren milk. It’s outside.”

The thick green liquid, she told Jacob as she fetched the bottles, was the most nutritious thing on the island. It was a staple in Luke Skywalker’s diet, as well as her’s.

“You might have to water it down. I still can’t drink it straight. It’s too...” she had to search for the word, “rich? Sweet?”

Kylo nodded to his apprentice. Eating a lot at any one time was still difficult, and the Force wound, when active, burned through whatever reserves he still had left. If that would help him regain his strength faster, he’d try it.

He smiled back at Rey as he accepted one of the bottles, and she set the rest by the desk. "Thank you." Jacob hadn't had a problem getting through the undiluted thala siren milk this morning, but he figured he was used to richer food than Rey - and, unlike Kylo, he was at the peak of health. He took her advice and diluted it down before handling the cup over to Kylo. If he couldn't manage to get a more solid meal into him until later, giving him a few cups of the thala siren milk whenever his stomach would accept it might actually be an even better way to get his caloric intake up.

"How's that?" he asked Kylo. "Do you need me to dilute it a little more?" As long as he was getting some much-needed nutrients into his system, that was the most important thing. The amount of stress he'd been through lately, the strain of the Force wound and the stress of their escape and knowing what lay ahead of them, had made it difficult for him to gain ground in his recovery, and Jacob couldn't say he wasn't starting to grow concerned.

At least there was one thing that was going right, and that was how quickly Rey was coming around to their side. As Jacob had said, they'd be counting on her, especially with Luke too paralyzed with fear - of the unknown, of Snoke, of the idea that nothing was within his control and perhaps nothing ever had been - to be of any use to them.

To a starving desert scavenger, milk was a luxury she’d only heard about in stories. Water was hard enough to come by. But here, both of those things, as well as fish and edible plants, were practically everywhere. She was still trying to get used to all of it.

Kylo tasted it first, and then shook his head. “No... it’s actually pretty good.”

Rey did pick out the right words. It was rich as well as sweet, but it was also much less of an acquired taste than she made it out to be. He drank it slowly, but over the course of their conversation, he would finish the entire cup.

“...where were you wanting to go?” He asked Rey.

“There are a few sacred locations on the island.” She told them about a couple of the places Skywalker had her meditate - on the cliffs overlooking the sea, within the cave that served as the original Jedi temple - and one of the places where he expressly prohibited it. “Out of all the places that called to me, the mirror cave calls the loudest. He says it’s the gateway to the Dark Side, but I don’t know. When I snuck in there, I didn’t see darkness. I didn’t even see answers. I only saw myself.”

“Is it far?”

She was about to say, ‘no. It wasn’t.’ But when she looked over at Kylo again, holding the cup as though it wasn’t trivial, she amended her answer. “Not to me. But... but it might be for you. I fell through the ceiling, into the underground lake.”

Seeing neither light nor dark, just the depths of their own connection to the Force, was just what they needed right now. "That sounds like the perfect place for what we're trying to accomplish." It wasn't exactly praise, but Jacob managed to make it sound like it anyway.

Between the three of them, Jacob was the only one who'd had a mother who was worth anything at parenting, and he could almost hear her voice in the back of his mind now - Jake, baby, it doesn't cost you anything to be kind.

He pushed the thought aside, before the memory that he'd never see her again could become solid enough to hurt.

"...And if straight down is the shortest path in, I've got rappelling gear in the ship." Some of it was equipment he'd used on missions, and the rest was what he had used to get down into Thuban's lair, but all told, he did have a full set of gear that was suitable for the terrain. All he would need to do was get Kylo into a harness, secure it to his own, and lower them both down - which, as light as Kylo still was, would be almost unsettlingly easy. "Would you mind helping me find it?"

Despite the question ostensibly being directed toward Rey, however, his focus was on his master. If Kylo felt like he could handle being alone with Rey, and if he thought any good could possibly come of it, then Jacob would head back up to the ship without her; otherwise, he'd insist that there was no better time than now for him to continue teaching her how to fortify her mental defenses, so she should definitely go with him.

"It's the closest entrance." she admitted. "I couldn't get back out the way I came, so I wandered until I found another passageway. It wasn't much easier of a climb, and it took me most of the night to hike back."

As much as it pained her to agree, rappelling down was probably going to be their best option. She'd read that Jedi could levitate objects, but the most she'd been able to do was pull a lightsaber toward her - and even that was just as much an emotional reaction as it was a conscious choice.

She agreed to go with Jacob back to the ship.

"If you want to go scout, I'll try to eat something... rest a little while now so we won't waste any more time when we need to get started."

Jacob had wanted to get an actual, decent breakfast into Kylo, but at this point he'd take what he could get. Among the rations he'd brought down from the ship were items that didn't need to be rehydrated if Kylo didn't feel like screwing around with the meal packets, and Jacob figured he'd help himself to whatever he felt like he could handle while Rey and Jacob were rounding up gear and securing lines to get down into the cave.

He extended his senses out through the Force to make sure that Luke was elsewhere; fortunately, he'd retreated almost to the other end of the island, and Leia was still with him. It should be safe for Jacob to leave Kylo unattended for the time being, but he'd monitor the situation, just in case. "I'll be back when we're ready to head into the cave."

As he and Rey headed up the slope toward the ship, he gave her another smile. "I can already tell your mental defenses are more secure than they were even last night. You're an incredibly fast learner." When their fingers had brushed as she'd handed over one of the bottles of milk earlier, he'd been paying careful attention for whether he could pick up any of her surface thoughts or emotions, and gotten almost nothing. That skill at picking techniques up almost as though they were nothing, as though she'd known them all her life, was exactly what they'd be relying on. "Did you want to practice that a little more, anyway, or was there something else you wanted to see if I could teach you?"

The Force would guide the trajectory of all of their focus, their training, once they were down in the mirror cave, but right now they had a window to catch up on anything that she felt her training with Skywalker had been particularly deficient in.

If Jacob wanted to return with better food than the rations they brought down from the ship, Kylo would wait. As it was, he was just trying to do what he knew he had to do to recover. His body needed rest. It needed proper nourishment. It needed a cure from the maladies Snoke set in motion before the sum total of all of them outpaced any momentum he could make in the opposite direction.

As it was, Kylo felt as though he was running in place - maybe a few gains here and there, but always with something to pull him back. It was like a pendulum, perhaps. Another metaphor for the Force at work.

As they walked toward the ship, Rey was thoughtful. She hadn’t even noticed Jacob attempting to enter her mind - a testament to her raw abilities. It was why Skywalker feared her just as much as he feared his fallen nephew. They both could do thngs long before they understood why or how they did them. Rey was more like Kylo Ren than she wanted to know.

“...when Luke attacked your master, you made some kind of barrier with the Force. Not just inside your mind. But a physical one I could feel and touch. How did you do that?”

"Honestly, that's the first time I've been able to get that technique to work, so I'm not completely sure how to do it or what was different this time. Maybe it was my deeper connection to the Force, or it could just be that I acted entirely on instinct to protect Kylo, whereas I was overthinking it before. That's how it is with a lot of Force techniques: you have to just act, and unequivocally believe something is going to happen, or else it won't. Like with telekinesis - you have to expect that the object you're trying to move is going to obey you on the same unconscious level that you expect your limbs to move when your brain sends a signal to them. You basically have to get the whole idea of 'trying' out of your head, because that's not how it works, and even I still struggle with that, occasionally." Despite how much his powers had grown, he'd still only been training in the Force for four years, and his natural tendency to try to take things apart to see how they worked wasn't especially compatible with executing certain techniques.

They entered the ship, and it only took a few moments for them to find where the climbing gear was packed in the secondary hold - there weren't many places it could be to begin with, and Jacob kept everything neatly organized. As they gathered everything they needed into a backpack, he turned to Rey again. "By the way, do you want me to throw some breakfast together for you? I'm going to try to get a little more substantial of a meal into Kylo, and it's the same amount of work to make two portions as it is to make one."

Rey eyed him critically. Skywalker had been very tight-lipped when it came to applying the Force, but could he really have been hiding something so instintual? So... simple?

Before she knew what she was doing, she was poking at his mind and scanning his intentions through the Force. She felt honest sincerity, and may have even glimpsed a thought of his own shortcomings - but she wasn’t sure if that was real or just her interpretation of his words.

“The Force is a sense. As natural as opening your eyes or listening to the sand move...” she whispered her tiny epiphany. “It’s an extension of you...”

Her mind mulled the revelation over as she helped him gather the equipment. Then, she hoisted the backpack onto her shoulders to help him carry it back down to the huts. At the offer of food, she accepted with a smile. “Thanks. I’d like to try something new.”

Jacob could feel Rey examining the surface of his mind, and while it wasn't entirely comfortable, he allowed it. Things couldn't be one-sided between them if they were going to succeed in working together to kill Snoke; he had to show the same kind of trust in her that he expected for himself.

He smiled back at Rey as he led the way to the ship's tiny galley. "My cooking is better than Skywalker's, but that's about all I can say for it." At least he had decent ingredients to work with; a couple days ago, he'd thrown in some fresh things from Xashiri's agro-military camp just in case he and Kylo needed to make a trip - he'd been expecting it to be shorter than this, granted - and it needed to get used before it spoiled.

As he began preparing and cooking everything, he returned to the subject of the Force. "Anyway, remember that the Force isn't just an extension of you - it's an extension of every living thing in the galaxy. That's why there are limits to what you can do with it: it's working to preserve life as a whole." Try to push past those limits, and the consequences could be massive in scope; the Force struck back hard against anything that threatened its ability to balance and heal itself, but things would be even worse if it didn't. Jacob didn't even want to think about the scope of the fallout if Snoke actually succeeded in breaching the Force's safeguards. Fortunately, that was never going to happen.

When it came to cooking, it wasn’t gong to be hard to impress Rey. Anything Luke cooked up from the wildlife here was infinitely better than the reconstituted portions she was used to subsisting on. Everything was new to her. Likewise, she was almost as curious about the fresh ingredients as she was the Force.

“Luke said the same thing, in a way.” She added. “When I meditate, I can feel a sense of connection to the other creatures here. Even to the rocks, to the planet itself. It’s almost like there is no limit.”

However, that was where his teaching ended. She wasn’t aware of what the limitations of the Force were, or what her own were. She only knew the limits that he forced upon himself.

"To our senses, there's no limit, but our powers are bound by the Force's ability to correct itself. If you try to push it too far - say, by manipulating the creation of life and trying to circumvent death, like Snoke is attempting - it will snap back against you. It won't always do it directly, though; sometimes, when an individual or a group has strayed, it's less damaging overall for the Force to prompt others to move against them. In a way, those of us who are sensitive to the Force are like... its immune system." As he finished prepping his ingredients - vegetables and a few eggs - and added it to a pan over one of the induction burners, he considered how best to explain to her the other part of what being Force sensitive entailed.

The easiest way was not to dress it up. After all, Snoke certainly wouldn't, if he was trying to use it to get Rey on his side.

"...There are some uncomfortable things I need to tell you about the nature of our relationship with the Force - things you might not want to think about, but you need to hear them from me so that Snoke can't catch you off guard with them. The other side of the coin to being sensitive to the Force, to being able to wield its power, is that it is also able to wield us. As attuned as we are to the will of the Force, we don't have the same kind of free will as normal sentients - and while we can resist it, it takes an incredible toll to do so." As he'd told Rey the night before, he wouldn't still be alive now if Kylo hadn't taught him how to accept the Force's place for him. "And sometimes, it calls on us to make sacrifices for the sake of the whole - sometimes, unreasonable and excruciating ones." He portioned out the ingredients into two wraps, packing one to take to Kylo and handing the other to Rey. "That's what happened to Snoke. He was a Jedi, until the Force demanded something of him that left him physically and psychologically broken, bereft, and capable of no other thought than revenge."

He took the bag of climbing equipment from her, shouldering it instead. "Being connected to the Force, the way we are, is an incredible thing. You'll experience the galaxy in a way that very few other beings do, and most of the time, you'll have no regrets. However, the Force has also taken a toll on all of us - and I think that's another part of why Luke didn't want to train you, because he was hoping to spare you that. But I'm not going to assume I know what's best for you. Like I'm always saying to Kylo, it's not my place to try to dictate that to you - it's something you have to tell me."

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