"No," said Rey.

No. Absolutely not. Master Yoda sat on his stool in her little hut, his cane held in front of him, hands resting on the handle. He sighed.

"Try it alone, will you?" said Yoda.

Yoda had asked her to try taking someone else with her when she used the Bond. Since she had no idea where she would pop up in Ben's past timeline, she couldn't be sure it was safe. For her or anyone else. Yoda had pointed out that the Mandalorian didn't appear to be afraid of anything, and that she should ask him to try it. When she had told him that taking a Mandalorian onto a First Order ship was a great way to get lots of people killed, he had shrugged, and agreed that she was likely correct.

Then he had suggested she take Little Yoda. No. He had neatly maneuvered her into this position. There was no way she could take a child with her. She hoped there was no way she could take anyone with her. She couldn't keep them safe.

"Practice, you must," said Yoda. "Go back, repeatedly. The limits, you must find."

"I'm not opposed to going back to different points in the past. But what if I mess something up? What if I change the future because I go back to the wrong place? I could change everything!"

"Know the future, you do not."

"But I have the power to change the future. And I don't want it."

"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."

Rey belatedly realized her mouth was hanging open, and snapped it shut. "But this is the future. This right here." She flung her arms wide, as if he didn't realize she was talking about the present. "I could ruin all of this. I could change some event in the past and end up as the next Sith lord vessel."

"Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."

"But," Rey stopped herself from stuttering and spluttering over the word. He was infuriating.

"Practice, Rey Skywalker. Return, I will."

He vanished.

Rey growled at the vacant space. She actually growled at her master. Well. At the place he had stood, anyway. She considered herself a patient person, but he had pushed her to her limit. Maybe that was the point of why he taught the way he did.

Ben hadn't returned since his last visit days ago with Leia. She missed him.

Little Yoda had continued to train with Luke and Yoda, and hadn't spent any more time with her explaining what they were teaching him.

And Yoda was fading fast. She couldn't make out his fingers anymore. His ears were faint smudges. If she looked hard enough, she thought she could make out empty spaces in his abdomen she could see straight through.

She had a general idea of Ben's early timeline. And of his later one, after their first encounter. But the space between, the years he had spent under Snoke and with the Knights of Ren. She was pretty sure she needed to avoid that at all cost. Stepping back into the more recent past was what she had accidentally done several times now. Instead, she focused on the part of Ben's life he had spent with Luke, before he had become Kylo Ren.

She opened her eyes and found herself in a dense forest. The trees were so big she wouldn't have been able to wrap her arms around one and touch her hands together. She sucked in a sharp breath and stepped behind a tree as a young Ben Solo, his back to her, stilled in his staff practice. He turned, but she made it behind an oak trunk in time.

He frowned, and closed his eyes. He was about fourteen in this timeline, closer to her age now than he was in their present. He had reached his full height, but he was much thinner. He hadn't yet put on the muscles she would come to very much enjoy.

"What are you?" he said, his voice nearly a whisper.

Rey froze, and willed herself back to her present on Ahch-To. It took a few seconds, but she snapped back into her own body. That was close. Too close.

Had he really felt her just then? Did he know she was alive in fact as a child at that time, too? She wasn't sure the Bond worked without the Force, and she hadn't been aware of the Force until she was much older.

Repetition verified mastery. She went back again, and immediately moved behind a tree. Ben was there, his back to her, swinging his staff at another tree like a madman. He stopped again, his head tilted to the side.

She was going to give him a complex if she kept appearing here and vanishing.

Back on Ahch-To, she took deep breaths. Perhaps she could control the bond.

She worked through the timeline, and appeared on Kylo Ren's command ship, on the command deck, with a slew of First Order pilots and soldiers surrounding her. Kylo's eyes widened, soldiers raised blasters all around her, and she pulled herself back to her present before they could fire. Not that they'd likely hit her. They really did have terrible aim.

Holy shit, that was close.

And a little bit too early. She hadn't yet slept with him.

If she didn't accidentally appear in his timeline when he was alone on the first try, she wouldn't be able to come back to that same spot.

She finally found a moment when he was alone in a practice room, swiping at a flying training droid with his lightsaber. This was after their night together, and he seemed pleased to see her. She appeared right in front of him. He retracted his weapon at the sight of her.

"I'm working on something," she said. "Will you help me?"

He grabbed her face and pulled her against him, kissing her thoroughly. Breathless, she put a palm on his chest and pushed herself back. There was a plan. She had a lesson to learn.

"If you reward me for my help, I will provide it."

"Deal," she said, and returned to Ahch-To.

She repeated this exercise many more times than was strictly necessary, but one could never over-practice.