Rey Skywalker

Rey had already needed to do laundry before being drenched in various goos, so after she'd showered and changed she took everything to the laundry room. It started okay, but when she came back to get it after the wash cycle, everything was soaked, and it hadn't run the whole way through. This time it didn't start okay, and she was stuck with heavy clothes she didn't know what to do with.

Maybe she should text Danny and see if she could take this thing apart.

Just wait till she remembered she'd just purged her closet.


[Am I posting from experience? Yes. Open!]

Last week's foray into a working Jedi temple had been amazing and emotional. Rey had only ever been in crumbling, ancient places, and the change of perspective was a great thing for her. It was a memory of a time when Jedi were around and things were functioning, and most of it was very different than she'd imagined.

It was also a lot. And it was a huge building. So rather than try to get through it all at once, they were back to the Danger Shop today. Rey was still excited, but in a normal way, and she was on time.

Rey had actually gone on a vacation, and also felt guilty enough to make a trip home to do something useful immediately afterwards. She'd figured out that she could really just point the Falcon in any direction to any planet and find someone or another who wanted the help of a Jedi, so she'd picked up Finn to bring him along. On the way, they could work on training.

( It could have been going better. )

[NFB, NFI.]

The Falcon was silent this morning. Rey didn't know if she'd ever heard it this quiet, really. It was eerie, and broken only by the times Chewie would ask why it was so quiet.

And when she headed up to the cockpit and saw Finn sitting at the dejarik table in the lounge while Poe came out of the cockpit at the same time, things somehow got more quiet, with more than a tinge of awkwardness as no one really knew what to say, or where to look that wasn't directly into anyone's eyes.

"Okay," Finn said suddenly. "That never happened. Agreed?"

"Yes," Rey said immediately.

"Sure didn't," Poe agreed at the same time.

"Good," Finn said, and it got quiet again.

"So I know the coordinates of where I need to be to catch my portal back," Rey said quickly.

"Probably for the best!" Poe said.

Distance. Distance would make this not weird again.


[Like none of you have ever encouraged me to do it. Establishy!]

Rey had gone home for the weekend. Upon arriving, Anakin had plunked a kid with Finn named Bae with her, and now it was all weird.

But she'd gotten him fed, and she'd even called Finn so he could flail with her Bae could talk to him, and then she sent him into the spare bedroom to play with all the stuff she still had from that one weekend where the animals were around a few years back. And she kept Finn on the line to whisper-speak.

"What the hell?"

"I don't know?"

"Is he adopted? Like some Jedi kid we decided to raise?"

"I don't know!"

"Do you know anything?"

"That he hates the mermaid furniture."

"Not helpful."


[Establishy!]

Rey went to the warehouse every day so she knew it was okay there, but Friday was the day all the weird stuff tended to happen for some reason. And she simply didn't feel like dealing with it today.

So instead there was a different kind of training happening today, and Rey patiently waited outside the flight shed for the guy with the keys.


[For the guy with the keys!]

Weirdly, Rey felt more in shock today than she did yesterday. Yesterday had been so much, after straight days of constant so much, and things had still felt raw and surreal. She had to have a couple rough conversations that had taken it out of her. She, Poe and Finn had ended up sharing the same cabin on the Falcon overnight, with the door to Chewie's first mate quarters open, like they were all a little worried about not having a sense of where they all were for too long.

Today Rey felt better rested, but things were odd in a new way. People were packing up and leaving now. For about a year and a half her time, Rey had considered this place, these people, like a home, and so many of them were going back to real ones now. It was like losing more people on top of losing so many people already.

And the absence of Leia was striking. People looked to Poe for leadership, but they still usually defaulted to Leia. She knew how to do everything. She would know what to do next. She always had answers. But she wasn't here to tell them. Others would look like they were about to bring her up, or go looking for her, and then they remembered, and it hit them again. Rey wondered if she would be able to reach out, to talk to her, but she couldn't bring herself to do it yet.

She'd tried reaching out to Ben this morning. Had a little breakdown when she got nothing. All that time she spent shutting him out and…

Rey was determined not to have any more breakdowns today. Maybe tomorrow, but not today. There were things to do, and she was putting herself to work, finding people to help pack up or load things or take down equipment and tamping down the urge to beg them not to go. That was healthy.


[Open for calls, texts, and anyone who may have stayed overnight!]

When the Resistance returned to Ajan Kloss, they were diminished in numbers and yet so many more now. Most of their ally ships had returned to their own systems and planets after the battle, but a few had followed the surviving Resistance ships home. Their base was fuller and busier than ever.

It was the best kind of chaos. People were finding each other in the crowd, laughing and hugging upon being reunited. Medics tried to get to the injured, but some had decided they could ride this high a little longer before needing to be treated. At the same time, some people had realized their loved ones hadn't come back. People who'd only just met were saying hello just to congratulate each other.

They'd survived. Today was a lot, but they were still here.


[For those who helped the Resistance today!]

The ships exited hyperspace, and Poe's first thought upon seeing Exegol was that it looked dead. It was the the ugliest thing he'd seen in a long while, and he wondered if it had always been this way, or if building a colossal fleet of Star Destroyers here had killed the place.

And when the ships dived into the cloud cover, they nearly ran into the Sith fleet. It was massive. Their triangled hulls were enormous, but they grew even smaller as their numbers seemed to stretch into infinity.

"Great dark seas," Aftab Ackbar gasped across the comm. "Look at that!"

"No sign of the Falcon or allies," Tyce said from her ship.

"Help will get here," Poe assured them.

( there are more of us )

[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Bits taken from The Rise of Skywalker novelization by Rae Carson. Preplayed with somethingwithturquoise, notagoose, sith_happened, grenadesandohana, imafuturist, weetuskenraider, unusual_sith, defenderofdesmoines, heroic_jawline, dishesonthetoprack, and stykera. Thank you all!!]