Ajan Kloss- Wednesday

[thatwaslucky]

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!]

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[thatwaslucky]

"Hey," Rey greeted her, immediately going in for a hug there too. "Sorry I wasn't back earlier."

Remember when she thought she'd be in Fandom like on Saturday? Good times.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I think this might be the very definition of a 'good excuse,'" Annie told her lightly, watching her strength as she hugged Rey back. "I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner."

'Here' being space, and frankly, she'd gotten here as fast as she could once the call had gone out, anyway. But still. Annie knew, from very recent experience, that the public cry for help probably came after a lot of intense personal shit.

So have a hug, Rey.

[thatwaslucky]

"I didn't even know anyone was coming," Rey admitted. "I had no idea until I was sensing people in the fight."

Was it because she'd freaked out and run off from her friends like a paranoid weirdo having a crisis? Yes it was!

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I figured you might have been kinda busy," Annie noted, understating things perhaps a tad. "Were you on that ship with us?"

There had been so much happening, but Annie was very sure she had not seen Rey on space horseback, or spotted her lightsaber with the others.

[thatwaslucky]

Rey shook her head. "I was on the ground. I was there where the lightning went up."

[defenderofdesmoines]

And that was what Annie had been a little afraid of.

She frowned a little as she pulled back, clearly choosing her words carefully. "What do you need?"

'Are you okay' was a stupid, stupid question. And she also didn't know if Rey would want to talk about what had happened.

[thatwaslucky]

"I haven't the faintest idea," Rey said with a sigh. "I'm still... processing, and it all hasn't sunk in yet. Right now I feel like I have to just focus on helping everyone here, and that's about all my brain will hold."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"This has been going on so long that it probably doesn't feel real," Annie offered, literally not even knowing the half of it. "I brought chocolate?"

Sometimes taking a break with a little candy helped, even if it was just a little break and chocolate didn't actually fix anything.

[thatwaslucky]

"I could go for chocolate," Rey said, like she was surprised by that.

She also probably hadn't been great about eating, she realized.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Fortunately, the candy Annie had brought was stuff that verged fairly close to being sort of real food.

"Want the Almond Joy, or the Snickers?" she offered, reaching into the little crossbody she was wearing. (Look at the concession she'd made of keeping Snickers on her person, just for people who weirdly didn't like Charleston Chews and such like she did.)

[thatwaslucky]

"Whichever you don't want," Rey said. Because really, the only thing she wouldn't eat were most shots with food in them.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Which meant Rey was getting the Snickers -- not because Annie wanted the Almond Joy more (though, of course, she did), but because it was more like real food and also the Almond Joy came in halves in case Rey wanted some of that, eventually, too.

"So you look okay," she offered carefully, in a tone that suggested that she knew appearances were not everything. "You weren't hurt?"

[thatwaslucky]

Rey paused, really focusing on candy for the moment, because this was a really weird thing to say. "I died for a bit."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"...for a bit?" Annie repeated, eyes widening. "Holy shit, Rey, what happened?"

Like, she had an in-law-to-be who could talk to ghosts, and if Fandom had taught her anything, it was that death wasn't always permanent.

But it also had to be a hell of a thing to know you had died.

[thatwaslucky]

"I don't know how to describe it, exactly," she said slowly. "It's a life force thing. The Emperor took mine, and killing him... I guess it took the last of what I had left."

Only it was somehow more complicated than that, and there had been spirits of dead Jedi, some that she knew other versions of... Really there was no way to explain it all succinctly.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Did you...like, see Heaven?" Annie asked softly, watching her closely and tamping down on her own horror at this revelation. "Did you know what had happened?"

Crisis of faith or not, Annie one hundred percent believed Rey would have gone to whatever Heaven was for Jedi.

[thatwaslucky]

"If I did, I don't remember." And thinking about things like Force ghosts and things just confused things more. "I kind of remember the last moments and then I remember waking up."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"How did you wake up?" Annie had to ask, naturally finding that to be the miraculous part.

She'd been to (or, you know, distantly attended from a distance) two other friends' funerals this month; she was very grateful, in hindsight, that she wouldn't be attending a third.

[thatwaslucky]

"Ben- Kylo Ren- brought me back. Which is why he's gone now instead."

Days ago she wouldn't have expected that to be as upsetting as it was. Now it felt crushing.

[defenderofdesmoines]

And maybe Annie was making a point to move a little closer, just in case Rey wanted the comfort.

"...that seems different from the last time we talked about him," she noted softly. "He figured himself out a little?"

Also, what was up with all these sacrificial Bens?

[thatwaslucky]

What, Rey wanting comfort? Never!

"He turned back. Sometime between me almost killing him and then," she said. "I don't know why. He came to Exegol to help me."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"And he knew where you were because of the...head thing?" Annie asked, moving to slip an arm around Rey's shoulders. She was treading carefully, a bit. Maybe it was all the prior conviction that Kylo Ren seemed like a huge asshole. But, then again -- people did sometimes change. Even people who refused to believe they could. "And he sacrificed himself for you?"

[thatwaslucky]

Don't mind Rey just leaning in a little there.

"He had the thing I needed to get to Exegol, so he knew where I was going." He'd probably assumed she took his ship straight there. He might have gotten there thinking it was already too late. "He and I were always Complicated."

Could you hear the capital letter?

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Complicated like you thought maybe he wasn't so bad, even when he was doing bad things?" Annie suggested gently, having had her own fair share of Complicated relationships. (Though, naturally, she and, like, Maeve didn't have jack on the likes of Rey and Ben's Complications.)

[thatwaslucky]

Rey twisted her lips as she considered how to put this. "When someone turns to the dark side, it's them, but corrupted. And I got to see who he was underneath that. Who he could be if he wanted to be better."