IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS YET, STOP READING RIGHT NOW. THIS PIECE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS.

You have been warned.

He always saved them in his dreams.

He'd run faster, fly further, try harder to get through to Ben, or inexplicably be there to stop the Horizon from crashing down on the dusty surface of Jakku (though in reality he'd been parsecs away taking care of some diplomatic incident that he couldn't even recall anything about anymore). He'd bring Ben back to the light side. He'd pull Mara into an escape pod and flee the crashing starship beside her. He'd scoop his daughter up in his arms and carry her away from the danger. In every scenario, they were safe. Whole. Free.

And then he'd wake up. And he'd remember. And there was nothing in the galaxy – no, nothing in the entire fekking universe that even cut close to how much it hurt him.

He wondered if this was how his father had felt… knowing that he couldn't save the people that he loved… being partly responsible for their deaths… hating himself as he never had before. The ache in his chest, the longing, the pain… it was so real, so strong, almost like a literal presence pounding beneath his throbbing ribs.

The guilt, the despair, the agony and the fury… it burned him, scorching the tattered remnants of what once had been his soul. Grief overwhelmed him – grief for the nephew he had failed to help, the wife he had been unable to protect, the daughter he had never had the chance to meet – and it was all that he could do to keep himself together. Living in isolation on the sight of the first Jedi Temple, he would sit alone with the ghosts and the memories and just focus, day in and day out, on breathing.

Breathing, it seemed, was all that he could do.

And then… it came. The lightest brush against his mind, felt from a great long distance, pulled him abruptly out of his meditations one day. A hauntingly familiar presence had touched him, just briefly. Hardly daring to breathe, he closed his eyes and probed the connection. It was still there, though it had retreated somewhat, pulling back into the darkest folds of his mind. Steeling himself, he reached out a little more to follow the connection.

He was met with a blast of darkness in the face. A familiar mixture of anger, hate, resentment, fear, guilt and pain bubbled into his senses, and he frowned.

Ben.

Beyond his nephew's presence, though, is something else. Something… lighter… innocent… and so, so familiar…

His eyes widened. It can't be…

Then the connection was abruptly severed, and he was left in the dark once again. Sitting atop one of the many moss-covered stones dotting the surface of the island, he gazed out over the endless array of water, head spinning. That presence… it couldn't be… but what other explanation was there? Groaning, he dropped his head into his hands.

And once again, Luke Skywalker was alone.

Part 2: Luke and Rey's meeting during the last scene of the movie, and how I think it could play out.

All explanations of Rey's heritage in this are purely theories – theories which I am fairly confident in, but theories nonetheless. So take these with a grain of salt, OK?