“Look, we can deal with this. We will take it on debt.”
“Again? I don’t think so. This is your 54th time, to be more specific, when you buy on debt from me. It is not going to happen again. Also, the money you owe me, either you give it to me now or I will eat for dinner fried human meat. It’s tasty, especially if it comes from low lives people like you.”
Both, the man and the woman froze at the sound of Unkar Plutt’s words. They did not want to end up on that crolute’s plate. They had to think of a way to get the money fast. In those mere seconds of silence, their thoughts were either from where to steal the money they owed or how to run far away from that place as soon as possible.
“Well? What do you choose?” Unkar disturbed their heroic train of scrambled thoughts. The woman suddenly had a revelation. She dared to take the word and said:
“How about a trade?” Her lips were trembling, heart racing and mouth drier than the desert outside.
“Don’t make me laugh. You have nothing valuable that could bring me any benefit.” He was already losing his patience.
“Our daughter. Rey. She will be in your service in the exchange for the forgiveness of debt. Please. We have no other way of paying you, we got no income and we don’t know anyone rich enough to steal from around this place. We are all poor. Maybe you will give her a better life than we did.” The woman had tears in eyes but it was all she could of think of. She needed that alcohol, and so did the man, it was all that made them happy those days. Their lives were indeed too miserable to care for anything else anymore.
Rey was standing in the same room, watching her parents give her away like an unwanted piece of cloth and she knew she could not stop it. It was the past. At first, she hoped it wouldn’t affect her, but she did not understand why she was seeing this. When Kylo first told her that she was sold for drinking money, she did not believe him. She just did not want to believe him. But he was right and if it hurt her greatly before, now it was tearing her apart because he told the truth. Rey was crying uncontrollably because she always hoped that it was all a mistake, that somehow her parents will arrive one day back on Jakku and get her back. Reunite with them. She even kept the same hairstyle for so many years… just so they can recognize her.
I don’t want to see this anymore! Her wish was granted and the scene faded to black. She was wondering what she will see next, if it will be again about Kylo and his past or find out answers to questions she never asked before.
“Look, we can deal with this. We will take it on debt.”
“Again? I don’t think so. This is your 54th time, to be more specific, when you buy on debt from me. It is not going to happen again. Also, the money you owe me, either you give it to me now or I will eat for dinner fried human meat. It’s tasty, especially if it comes from low lives people like you.”
What? This is the same! I don’t want see this! It hurt her, she wanted to be out of that miserable memory, she didn’t want to think about it anymore. Again, her wish being granted, the scene faded once more to black, only to start all over again.
“Look, we can deal with this. We will take it on debt.”
NO!
“Again? I don’t think so. This is your 54th time, to be more specific, when you buy on debt from me. It is not going to happen again. Also, the money you owe me, either you give it to me now or I will eat for dinner fried human meat. It’s tasty, especially if it comes from low lives people like you.”
Why do I have to keep seeing this, I hate it! I saw enough! Please… No more…
“Well? What do you choose?”
“How about a trade?”
WHY DID YOU SELL ME? WHY??? WHY DID YOU GIVE ME AWAY SO EASILY?? I WAS YOUR DAUGHTER!! Rey was screaming at her mother, but nobody heard her pain.
“Don’t make me laugh. You have nothing valuable that could bring me any benefit.” He was already losing his patience.
“Our daughter. Rey. She will be in your service in the exchange for the forgiveness of debt. Please. We have no other way of paying you, we got no income and we don’t know anyone rich enough to steal from around this place. We are all poor. Maybe you will give her a better life than we did.”
MONSTERS! You loved alcohol more than you loved me… And sold me… Like I was nothing. Like I was a nobody… I am a nobody… Her voice was slowly fading, replaced by sobs. It was pure torture.
“Look, we can deal with this. We will take it on debt.”
“Again? I don’t think so. This is your 54th time, to be more specific, when you buy on debt from me. It is not going to happen again. Also, the money you owe me, either you give it to me now or I will eat for dinner fried human meat. It’s tasty, especially if it comes from low lives people like you.”
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Is this broken? I don’t want to see it anymore I said!
“Look, we can deal with this. We will take it on debt.”
FUCK THIS! I want out! I saw what I had to see, now let me out!
“Look, we can deal with this. We will take it on debt.”
Is this a joke of the Force? This is already getting on my nerves! Why do I have to keep seeing this? Just so I can hurt? Congratulations, dear Force of the Universe, I already do! What more do you want?
“Again? I don’t think so. This is your 54th time, to be more specific, when you buy on debt from me. It is not going to happen again. Also, the money you owe me, either you give it to me now or I will eat for dinner fried human meat. It’s tasty, especially if it comes from low lives people like you.”
And I hope you somehow cooked them good in the end because that’s all they deserved! She was feeling hatred for who she once called her parents. For all the time she spent thinking they will come back to her. For all the food portions she saved for them because she always imagined that when they will meet again, she will gift them those, showing that she cared and missed them all this time. She never felt this way before; her emotions were the ones guiding her and to a darker path but she did not ask anymore for it to end. This time she wanted to see the nightmare until the end, no matter how miserable it made her feel.
“Well? What do you choose?”
“How about a trade?”
“Don’t make me laugh. You have nothing valuable that could bring me any benefit.” He was already losing his patience.
“Our daughter. Rey. She will be in your service in the exchange for the forgiveness of debt. Please. We have no other way of paying you, we got no income and we don’t know anyone rich enough to steal from around this place. We are all poor. Maybe you will give her a better life than we did.”
“Deal. One more scavenger, more profit to me as well. Now get me the girl and I do not wish to ever see any of you again afterwards.”
Both parents bowed before Unkar with the utmost humiliation. Hate was boiling through Rey’s veins and she instinctively reached out for her lightsaber. For a moment she thought it to be just an irrational act because she was aware her lightsaber was destroyed. But it was there this time. She was relieved to have it because what she was about to do defied any logic she thought she had, any feeling she ever felt before. When the woman turned around, Rey got out her lightsaber, pointed it in her mother’s chest direction and then turned it on. It was all in the impulse of the moment, she just had to get it out of her system, knowing it will not affect anything, that she cannot even interact with the surroundings. But to her surprise, her mother, with wide opened eyes, looked straight in Rey’s, cupping her daughter’s cheek with her hand. It was that one last look that made Rey look down at her hand, but it wasn’t right. She was wearing a black leather glove and it wasn’t her lightsaber, it was Kylo’s. And when she looked back up, it wasn’t her mother anymore, it was Han Solo and she was his murderer. It’s just a vision, it’s just a vision, none of this is real. Rey was scared and she didn’t understand much of what was going on. She was back at the Starkiller Base but it was supposed to be Kylo the one that killed Han, no her. Something wasn’t right. While she was watching the man fall in the abyss of death, suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her right arm. It was burning her so much, it almost made her lose her breath. She tried to take off her glove to see what was happening, but her hands were trembling too much and palms were too slippery from sweating.
The scene changed again, now she was in a bedroom she had never seen before but she assumed to be on a ship, belonging probably to the First Order by the design of it. There was a tall mirror on the wall and she walked towards. Her heart stood still when she looked at herself. Dressed up in clothes similar of Kylo’s, all black and with a gracious robe, the same black gloves and on her face, the same scar that Kylo himself had. She was trembling from fear, what did this all mean? She slowly took off her right glove and rolled up the sleeve. “MONSTER” was burned on the skin; it felt as a label, as a definition of her existence and it made her remember how she once called Kylo the same.
Rey’s self-pity was interrupted by a man’s voice whom she recognized immediately and made her turn around, only to see him stand in front of her quite close, but in an intimidating manner.
“Words hurt, don’t they?”
“I… I am sorry… I…”
“Save your excuses for people who care. I don’t.”
“Ben…”
“That name is as dead as my father. Or even better, as dead as your parents.”
“Kylo, I’m really sorry for everything. I don’t know what else to say. I am at loss of words. I shouldn’t even be, you’re not even real, I’m probably talking with myself, nothing in here is real, just memories and I don’t even know what this is. I’m stuck in here and I want to get out, this journey was a nightmare for me.” Rey was talking fast, but indeed with herself, because she wasn’t looking at Kylo. As if he wasn’t even there, let it be real or not. But the man took off his glove and gently grabbed her chin with his hand, forcing her to look up at him, in his eyes.
“You wanted the truth and now you have it. They brainwashed your head with me being the bad one, the irredeemable, the curse, the atrocity of this Galaxy and you blindly followed empty words like a fool. Could it be stupidity inherited by genetics or just lack of experience? Soon you will find out the truth about the Resistance and what your role in there really is. But you will not have an alternative, you will not have an escape anymore. You don’t know them like I do! My mother is on her death bed and I will never be able to go to her funeral. And once she is dead, you will see their true faces because she was the only one with a different point of view. This is why she was silently hated and nobody answered her help call when Luke Force-projected himself in my last battle with him.”
Rey’s eyes were filled with tears, those words hurt and confused her. And his hand, the way he was holding her chin, made him look so closely, yet so far away from her soul. The man was hurting and so was she.
“I offered you a chance to join me.” He continued. “Instead, you chose them. Enjoy now the times that are to come because I promise you, you will beg for my forgiveness and I will not be there to offer it to you.”
And once more, everything disappeared in the unknown.
----------------------------------------
Waves. Breeze. Heart-ache. Despair. Emptiness.
Rey opened her eyes. She was back on the island, back on Ahch-To, back to reality. But how? It was night time and she was laying on the ground by the entrance of the cave. She crawled back, afraid not to enter it again even by mistake. How did I get out? She instinctively turned around her head and her heart stood still again when she saw a black cloak fading away in the darkness of the night. She reached out after him with her hand and wanted to call after him, but she couldn’t.
Something stopped her, a force beyond her power to fight, and so she remained as silent as the cold, dead night.