It was a long, silent walk, and Luke had tried several times to engage in conversation with his student... but to no avail. A very confused, very hurt, Rey had shut herself off from him. After this morning's turn of events, she didn't know who could or couldn't, trust. The only thing she felt certain of was the nagging feeling in her gut, like something bad was about to happen and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't shake it.

The further from camp they walked the more her anxiety grew, her gut twisting and her stomach roiling more intensely with each step forward. Even her fingers were beginning to tingle.

Luke turned to find his student white in the face. He unconsciously reached a hand out to her, and she froze, her feet planting hard on the ground underfoot. Rey's weary eyes narrowed suspiciously at him, causing Luke to withdraw his invitation of help from her.

"Rey,'' He began with a voice filled with blatant concern, "—I think we should take a look at your head." But his enthusiasm shrank back under the 'I dare you to try' look she shot back at him.

Though Rey could tell, Luke was safely keeping his distance, most likely for her comfort, she could feel his calming influence reaching out to her through the Force. The last thing she needed was to let her guard down, even if this was still the Luke that'd she'd spent the last several months seclusively living with. She could see the concern in his eyes, but when he stepped forward, supposedly to extend his help to her, she couldn't help but rear back in defense of her personal space. It was impossible to deny that she'd noticed a drastic change in him these last few weeks, but what had transpired between them this morning was like witnessing a complete and utter metamorphosis. She was rightly more cautious of him now.

Ignoring any signs of his guilt and the outreach of concern for her, Rey took a long, deep breath in hopes of settling her nerves before speaking to him.

"How much further is it?" She griped, impatiently.

Wishing she had her walking stick with her, and sore through her whole right leg, she stepped heavily on her left foot, shifting the weight unevenly to support the injury on her right side. There was an ache spreading over her right thigh and hip that she surmised must have happed when she'd clipped a good sized rock while rolling under the pressure of his Force wave.

Luke eyed her carefully, taking note of her condition, but he didn't press to examine her further just yet.

"We're not far now." He spoke quieter then usual and his eyes were doleful.

Rey couldn't help but picture the way her, Master had looked at her when she'd been struggling to keep, Kylo Ren from using her body to execute him. She knew looking down on him, while he regrouped in the shoreline of the salty sea, that if he wanted to, he could have fought her back, but instead he'd looked up at her in personal defeat, his usually serene demeanor, contoured by remorse and shame. He had that same look now.

Prompted by his pathetically, sorrowful state, Rey suddenly asked, "Why did you do it? Why did you attack me?" After her inquiring outburst, she anxiously awaited his response, her own eyes reflecting a similar pain as she scrutinized him.

Luke took a deep breath and let his eyes momentarily flicker to the ground in thought before returning to hers. The first thing, Rey noticed when the blue of his eyes reached her hazel gaze, was the steel resolve that had hardened the cloudy sky of his irises to a solid azure. He suddenly appeared more serious then even her now. "I had to push you!" He exclaimed, matter of factly, and she could feel the genuine sincerity in his words.

"Why?" The word was simple and direct, an effective way to probe him further for the details she needed to accept the necessity of his questionable actions.

"Because, Rey, I had to know what exactly it was that I was dealing with."

He'd given her a narrow answer to her direct question, which only led her to more questions and, Rey was determined to display her obvious disapproval. She petulantly stopped in her tracks, refusing to move even an inch further, even with her curiosity over where it was this, reclusive Jedi had been retreating to everyday still nagging at her. She required a broader understanding of what reasoning he had for nearly killing her, multiple times, and to what means?!?

"Explain." She kept her interrogation simple, to the point.

"Everything you told me since the first day you arrived here, has pointed to a Force connection with, Kylo Ren." He said bluntly, cutting through the delicacy he'd been trying to show her before. If she preferred it straight, then he'd give it to her that way. Luke knew he needed to reinforce, if not rebuild completely, his trust with this girl.

"The same night I threatened to send you home, you had a nightmare. You were so tormented that I sensed your struggle, and when I found you tossing and turning in your sleep, I reached out to you. I saw flashes of your encounter with him and when he reached for you, I pulled you out." He paused there and his voice softened before he spoke again. "I knew then that your connection was a Force-bond. I had a feeling that you knew it too, so I never confronted you about it. I could feel you holding back from me every time you told me the events that brought you here."

  In a concerned motion, as though he were moving to help her from a dizzy spell, the old Jedi, stepped closer to her. But regardless of her physical state, she wasn't dizzy, she was standing her ground, strong and tall. Though still cautious of him, Rey allowed, Luke to approach her as he spoke. Her head throbbed and her gut was still twisted with an anxiety she couldn't quite understand, but she didn't waver while she patiently waited for him to continue.

"I needed to know how developed your bond was. How deeply your Force was intertwined with his. You pulled from him twice before when your life depended on it, so I put you in those circumstances again." He said, flatly.

As though something suddenly dawned on her, Rey stepped forward with unexpected enthusiasm. "That's why you had that heavy aura around you this morning... you were conflicted about what you were doing." She surmised, and her composure softened.

"I didn't want to hurt you and when we started, I didn't think it would go that far." Luke's head dropped and his eyes followed, and Rey felt the weight of his sympathy towards her, but it didn't last long before his determination came back and his face hardened again. "I underestimated your strength and your will. Still, I had to push you to that point. I had to break your shields to force you to pull on him."

She shook her head at him disapprovingly. "Why didn't you just ask me?"

Now he was shaking his head at her. "No. You wouldn't have done it on your own." He stated, matter a factly.

"You don't know that!" She exclaimed, leaning into him as she accused.

"Yes, I do! Since the night you woke from that dream, you have spent every waking moment of every day and most nights shutting that connection off. I should know, I've done everything I could to help reinforce your internal walls. Why do you think so much of your time here has been spent training to mentally build and strengthen those walls?" He asked, her rhetorically. "If something happens to me, what'll you do?" He paused, as though waiting for her to answer, but she knew he wasn't done.

The information soaked into her head slowly, and it weighed a ton.

"If I were gone tomorrow, how long would you stand against his mental assaults? You think I would have let him use you to strike me down?" He scoffed at her. "If I needed to, I was fully prepared to intervene in your struggle, if it had come to that." He was inches from her now and though she was fully aware of it, she put up no resistance.

Lost in her own dazing stupefaction, Rey could only blink up at him. What was she supposed to say? She felt foolish now.

He's right. She admitted to herself. Given a choice there was no way on Mustafar, that she would have knowingly sought out, Kylo Ren —not after all the time and energy she put into keeping him at bay.

There were some nights that she'd just lie awake, fighting to keep her sanity intact while she heard and felt him berating her mind, beating at her mental shields. Eventually, when she couldn't take it anymore, she'd end up dragging herself out of her hut in hopes of finding, Master Luke outside by the fire pit. And he was always there, waiting for her. She hadn't thought that he'd been aware of her struggle then, but now she knew he was. Now she knew why when she joined him there, everything would go silent. He was shielding her. Reinforcing the cracks that, Kylo Ren had caused in her defenses.

As Rey realized her transgression, her eyes dropped to his feet and she felt her anger towards him slip away. Had she been open with him in the first place, her Master, wouldn't have had to go to such extremes to help her.

"I..." She started, but he chose just then to cut her off, saving her from admitting her humiliation.

"We were both wrong." He spoke bluntly.

He turned from her then, and started back in the direction they'd been heading in, before getting side tracked into reconciliation. At least, he was hoping they had reconciled. "Come on, there's still something you have to see."

This time, Rey didn't hesitate when followed closely behind him. She didn't know what else needed to be said, but she was sure when it was time, he would be there, guiding her as he always had.

But... the second they started forward again, she felt it —that warning in her gut and that rolling nausea in her stomach. She stopped and it immediately lessened. Luke must have sensed her discomfort because he stopped too. He looked like he was going to ask her if she were ok, then his posture straightened. He rolled his head and eyes in unison. "Oh, I'm so sorry." He waved his hand across her face, and suddenly it all went away.

Again, she blinked up at him in confusion, shaking her head clear of the fog that had been present only seconds ago. The world around her seemed to open up. It literally seemed to clear, like her vision had been blurry before now and she hadn't noticed it.

"Wha... what just happened?" She asked, stupefied.

When her body swayed from the effects, Luke grabbed her arm and steadied her. "It's ok Rey, just let it pass." He calmed her as she visually adapted to her new surroundings.

It was like her view of the world around her shifted. Like before now, a veil had been cast over her eyes. She was still on the island, but now she stood in front of a part, she had never seen.

Maybe forty feet in front of them, there was a large wall of stone and rock. It stretched out in three directions as though it were protecting something. Jagged peeks of rough stone walls grew around an opening that seemed to appear from nowhere, and now, she and her, Master were heading right for the clearing. Shocked and confused, her jaw dropped and she looked back to, Luke Skywalker for answers.

Continuing forward as though nothing had changed ahead of him, Luke cheekily smiled back at her.

"You see it now." He said as though he were announcing her enlightenment.

"I... I couldn't before." She confirmed.

"You're not meant to. It's a Force shield. It's meant to repulse you from the area and to interrupt your sight from viewing what's being protected here."

Rey stepped around him carefully, her feet following her eyes in their shared excitement, which were now locked on a strange sight.

A long path was cut into the rocks of the mountainous hill just ahead of them. It led to the mouth of a gorge that was naturally crafted by stone. The earth here looked like it had been summoned up from the mountain itself. It reached around a large dark entity that stretched up and out of the center of the clearing. There were small patches of forest on the island and, before now, Rey had wasted no time exploring what she thought to be all of them, one at a time.

They were mesmerizing, and she found herself playing in the woods more often then anywhere else on the island. In all of her time doing so, she had never seen anything like what she saw now. Her legs took to the steps and she climbed two at a time in her eagerness to reach the flat landing at the top. When she finally got there she was lightheaded, but it had been worth it to examine the thing in front of her now.

It had been some kind of tree... She thought, as her mind tried to identify what her eyes were seeing.

A massive stump rose from the earth beneath it like a thick multi layered vine growing up from the ground. As though it had been comprised of some kind of hardened clay or stone, the bark seemed almost grey in color. It was meteor like in appearance and texture, yet she knew it had been a living entity at one point. She pictured what it may have looked like before it's bark had hardened into this skeletal shell, of it's former self. Judging by the size and girth of the base of the tree, she could imagine how massive it must have once been when it thrived.

It could have easily enveloped this half of the island... She excitedly gushed in wonderment.

It's roots alone were huge. They spiraled up and out from the ground in such a way that it looked as though they had reached down to the ground from the sky and had dug themselves into the stony earth like reaching fingers. The trunk itself twisted up as if opposing the roots, reaching back up for the sky. It was cracked low in the colossal trunk and she wondered what could have destroyed such an indomitable looking tree. It took her several minutes to inspect the whole husk as she walked the wide circumference.

There was an opening hidden in the back of where the steps had led and she wanted to enter through the breach in the bark, but she thought it best to wait for her, Master, though she had to admit, she felt a pull well beyond her own curiosity. It was a very familiar feeling. She recognized it as the same feeling she had when she decided the day before, after much taunting she might add, that she needed to discover where it was that, Luke Skywalker had been sneaking off to during their spent time apart. Some anxiety, brought on by her growing curiosity, was relieved when, Rey didn't have to say anything to, Luke before he motioned her to follow him.

Of course he could feel his student's excited interest centered on the shadowy entrance, so he wasted no time leading her there. It's what he had brought her to see, after all. If he was going to train her and involve her in his plans, then she needed to know why.

Rey followed him with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.

"When I left after my academy was destroyed, it wasn't because I was running away, although I'd be lying if I said my new role didn't serve a double purpose, with that being one of them. I left to come here, to study and guard this place." He waved his arm around him in an arc as he spoke, referencing the area around them.

"So you didn't go into exile?" She asked, curiously.

He gave a sheepish smile. "Not exactly." They slide through the opening in the trunk and stood in an open chamber in the center of the tree. "I was distraught after the massacre and destruction of my temples—" He began, but an outburst of curiosity cut him off.

"You had more then one temple?" She asked before she could stop herself. His shoulders slumped and he leaned against a natural shelf in the trunk.

"I had several. The temple where the massacre ensued was the largest and most populated of them. The rest had been simultaneously attacked, but they had been special academies. There were few attendants and even fewer students involved, most of which had fought back or escaped."

"What happened to the survivors." She asked, carefully.

He shrugged.

"Most went into hiding while others tried fighting against the, First Order. You can guess what happened to them." He said, sullenly. In an attempt to offer him comfort, Rey rested her hand on his shoulder for a brief moment. Luke's posture straightened then, and he continued with his tale.

"Anyway, I came here because there must always be a guardian of..." He stepped to the side so his body was no longer blocking the view of where a thick beam of light poured through a small aperture to illuminate a shelf full of...

—Rey didn't know what they were.

"...The Journal of Whills." He finished.

Rey stepped closer to the brightly lit shelf. Her fingers ran across the spines of the bound pages before her. "What are they?" She asked, glowing with more curiosity then she'd ever felt before.

"They're books. It's what we used to record information on before holo pads were the primary source of our data collection." He explained, his eyes carefully studying his student as she looked upon the ancient collection of works that he'd spent most of his adult life acquiring.

"Books..." She repeated, mystified.

One of these books were lying open on the shelf. Colors decorated it's pages, stretching from one to the other, joining together to make one larger image. She reached out to touch the pages and, Luke quietly stepped back to give her space. Rey's hand hovered just over the image and her breath hitched in her throat. She couldn't help but feel small and insignificant next to the ancient text. Her eyes took in the picture first, tracing the curves and lines of gold and azure blue as they went.

There were so many things going on in the image. She started with the outside first. The image was circular. Two main colors comprised the pictures. She looked at the colors separately to analyze each section not wanting to miss any hidden details of the overall image.

A thin gold line encompassed the entirety of the picture. The top of the circle was dissected by two, much larger quarter moon rectangles. Below those, centered in the circumference of the gold lines, was a large gold star. The star was located closer to the bottom half of the circle and it had gold shooting from the top of it as though the star had crashed to the bottom of the circle. Below the star was a thick gold trunk like line, that dipped down and formed what looked like a pool of water that splashed out upon impact.

From further back, Rey let her eyes focus on that portion of the image as a whole, and that's when she noticed it, her eyes widening as she transcribed the bigger picture. It wasn't water that splashed out. It was the trunk of a tree and roots. And the star didn't look like a star if you viewed it separately from the top half of the image, it looked like the crown of the tree, tying it all together as one piece.

The realization that she was currently standing inside of a massive tree, gave her chills. At the base of the golden roots, on either side were identical sharp, azure wings. They stretched out beyond the limitations of the thin golden lines that structured the circle of the image. Rey reached out with her hand, allowing her fingers to finally touch over the pages, though barely just skimming them, and even only that inconsequential contact, took the air from her suddenly tight lungs. The world around her pulled back at an alarming speed, like hitting light speed in reverse.

Her view turned into an arial perspective and she looked down on the planet from somewhere along the atmosphere. The world below her was no longer mostly water, but one beautiful green piece of land with tiny dots of small islands freckled around the giant face of the earth. She saw a brilliant, golden light careening towards the center of the planet. It broke through the atmosphere around her and she closed her eyes expecting to feel the searing heat of it as it passed by, but she didn't. She felt both a peace and a darkness of the likes of which she'd never known. It collided with the earth beneath her as it forcefully planted itself like a seed beneath the planet's crust —and the world ruptured.

It split into many islands of varying shapes and sizes. It didn't break apart as though she would have expected. The crash site of the star didn't split. Instead of destroying the land at the impact, it inhabited it as the largest of all of the islands. She watched as the star grew from the crater it planted itself in. The glowing, living structure, stretched up as though trying to pull itself free from the earth. Desperate with a longing to return to the heavens from which it came, it reached with a dangerous determination.

The other half, however, held true, refusing to return home. It dug deep into the ground, fingers like roots, spread out and plunged into the earth like puncturing, claws.

The two were at an impasse, and from this, grew the tree that she was standing in now. A beautiful blue light radiated upward from the ground and it surrounded the tree like brilliant azure wings, keeping it safe and bathing the top of it with unwavering light. The tree sprouted branches for arms and held thick foliage of many colors. Feathery white petals peeked out from golden bulbs of fruit and the crown of the tree shadowed everything beneath it in a cool yet comforting darkness. It was breathtaking. She watched in light speed as many different races found the tree and ate from its fruit, spreading what she somehow knew, was the Force, through out the universe.

There was a peace for a time... but then the two halves got greedy, the light spreading further from the tree and the shadows stretching well past the crown above them, they each competed for real estate until the individual halves neglected their home. Eventually the fruit died and the tree wilted. The light dimmed until it faded and the trunk became brittle and cracked. The two warred with each other until there was nothing left for either of them to nurture.

The desolation that welled up in Rey's chest was so profound, that she thought her heart might stop beating from the overwhelming emotion until an unbearable sadness was all she was left with. She felt empty and hollow like she had suddenly lost the will to live. Just as she thought it may become too much for her to survive, she followed the same path the brilliant star had, and she plummeted to the earth at a blinding speed. But she didn't connected like the star did and she found herself once again, back in her body, her hand still resting on the ancient pages as thick, heavy tears, mercilessly slide from the corners of her eyes.

Luke reached out for her, then. He pulled her into his arms and she let him. She buried her face in his chest and she wept as though she had just watched someone she loved die. She felt it like the loss of a parent, or both. It was tragic and confounding. Her, Master held her there as she emptied her soul of all the sadness in the universe.

*Shwew, this one was intense to write. I was a wee bit intimidated taking it on but I really want to provide a story worthy of these characters to exist in and a plot to keep it strong. I'm still not sure where it's going (for the most part) but I'm excited to find out! Don't worry there will be more Reylo soon! As always thanks for reading, please comment and star if you liked it. I appreciate the time and the readers! *
-DarkGuardian-