Rey Skywalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thatwaslucky) wrote2019-08-04 10:01 am
thatwaslucky) wrote2019-08-04 10:01 am
The Millennium Falcon- Sunday
What was left of the Resistance was currently stuck together on a single ship, mostly with a lot of downtime. Rey was sure things were going on that she didn't know about, but she hadn't really been part of it before now, and if she had any job at all it was to fly the Falcon. Once they were in hyperspace that job was done for a while, and that eventually left her sitting at the dejarik table between Poe and Finn while she examined her broken lightsaber, with BB-8 rolling happily around the deck around them.
She'd been considering it Luke's, rather than hers. But if he could never take it back, and she was resolute in the idea that it didn't belong to Kylo Ren, then she supposed it was hers, broken or not. Actually, it felt more fitting that way. Old, cracked, mostly unused and forgotten through the years... she was good with things like that.
"What happened to it?" Finn asked, watching her.
Rey hadn't decided exactly what to tell people yet. She wasn't sure what she was comfortable telling people yet. She wasn't sure how anyone would react to hearing about things like Force bonds with Kylo and the fact that it still made her heart ache that she had been so wrong about him. She went with the simple explanation. "Kylo Ren and I were fighting over it, and it broke," she said, and added, "It's a very long story. A lot's happened."
"Tell me about it," Poe said with a sigh, stretching out across the seat. "You know, Rey, if things had gone a little differently, we'd have met a long time ago. Probably been sitting right back here, all four of us, headed to bring that Jedi map to Leia."
"If there's one thing I'm beginning to learn, Poe, it's that you can't dwell on changing the past," Rey said quietly. "Concentrate on the present. Work with what you have."
"Oh, I know. Could've just avoided a lot of heartache, you know? Considering everything we just went through, it's hard not to think about different paths."
She looked up briefly. She hadn't heard the full story of what happened, just a few comments here and there from the others aboard. It didn't seem like anyone was holding anything back, she just didn't know how to ask about it. She was still an outsider here.
"Tell you what," Finn said, "if we'd met Rey together, it would've saved me from getting a beatdown. Almost knocked my head clean off!"
"I thought you were a thief, Finn!" she reminded him. "BB-8 said you'd stolen that jacket from his master, what was I supposed to do? Not hit you with my staff?"
BB-8 agreed with her.
"Come on," Finn said, "It was either the jacket or the stormtrooper armor, and anyway, I thought Poe was dead."
"Dead? Come on, I've walked away from tons of crashes," Poe said proudly. "Takes more than that to knock me down."
"So you're the best pilot in the galaxy, and you crash all the time?" Rey asked, eyebrows raised.
"There were extenuating circumstances."
"Every time?"
"Every time!"
"I'm just saying," Rey teased, "I don't think I've ever crashed anything I've been flying…" Outside of a simulator, anyway. She had crashed a lot in the simulator.
"Huh," said Finn. "Maybe Rey's the best pilot in the galaxy."
Poe frowned at him, but shrugged. "All right, all right, but let me say one thing. Finn and I might have crashed, but we both walked away, and that doesn't happen without some pretty fine flying."
"You never actually told me what happened back there," Finn realized.
"What?"
"What happened after the crash. All you told me was that you were thrown from the ship, but that's barely anything. I mean, how'd you get off-planet?"
"I never told you?" Poe asked. "Hmm. I guess we haven't had much time to talk. We've all been going in different directions lately."
"Tell us," Rey said, since she was curious anyway. "Might be a nice distraction."
He considered that. "Yeah. It might be. All right. So, General Organa said she had a mission for me. Lor San Tekka got in touch and said he had the map to Skywalker, so she needed someone to go get it. Leia was so sure her brother would just solve everything. Boom, that'd be it."
"One man with a laser sword," Rey said, under her breath.
"No Black Squadron, that many X-wings would draw too much attention. It had to be just me and BB-8. It'd be easy," he continued, and smiled wryly. "It was not easy. I had to make a quick detour to pick up BB-8, but I made it to Jakku all right. Man… I loved that ship. Anyway, me up with Lor San Tekka, got the map, and then everything went to hell. First Order showed up outta nowhere, still don't know how they found us. I stashed the map with BB-8, then went back to do what I could to help. Maybe I should have just flown away, but I couldn't leave Lor San Tekka there defenseless. I just couldn't. Not that it did all that much good. They killed him, burned the village… and that's how I met Kylo Ren. I believe you're both familiar with him. Delightful guy. Real charmer. A little light torture, a little time in a cell, and who comes along but my buddy FN-2187. Finn breaks me out, we steal a TIE fighter and get out of there. It was all going really well, actually. And then it wasn't. I triggered Finn's ejector seat, got him out of there."
"Oh, you did that?" Finn asked. "I thought it was automatic, maybe."
"Nope. You're welcome."
"Is that how you got out? Ejected?" Rey wondered.
"I would've, if it weren't for that blaster jacket," Poe groused.
"I thought you loved that thing," Finn said.
"Nah. Why do you think I gave it to you? Damn thing almost got me killed. It was caught in the ejector mechanism for my seat. By the time I got it off, it was almost too late for that anyway. I had to try to fly the ship in, put it down as gently as I could. But I had all that velocity from an orbital descene, and the controls were shot. Luckily, I'm a great pilot."
"So we hear," Rey said dryly.
Poe ignored her. "I got thrown clear from the TIE as it was crashing. I'll admit, that was mostly just good luck, but it didn't feel like it at the time. I was out for a while. When I woke up, it was night. Couldn't find Finn, couldn't find the crash site, couldn't find anything. But you can't let that stop you. I walked through the night, into the day. Turns out it gets a lot hotter in the desert when the sun comes up. Eventually I saw a speeder far out in the distance. Didn't know who it was, and at that point, I didn't care. It was a Blarina. Said his name was Naka Iit."
"Oh, you did get lucky," Rey told him. "There are some really bad people out in the wastes. Naka's all right, though."
"He didn't seem that way at first. Didn't really believe I was who I said I was. He dropped me off at a waystation called Blowback Town. Not really a town, though. Like two shacks and a tent. A friend of his lived here who owned a starship. He was a good guy, agreed to get me off planet once I convinced him I was really Resistance. But I had another stop to make first, to Niima Outpost. Figured that's where I had the best chance of meeting my little pal here."
BB-8 warbled at him.
"Yep, you were long gone. The whole place was talking about the notorious lady scavenger and a guy they'd never seen who'd flown right off the planet with my droid."
"Why, Rey, I think he might be talking about us," said Finn with a proud smile.
It was a little weird for her to hear. The people at Niima had known her. Months ago she'd wanted to get their attention by swooping in a ship she could sell, and here she was, getting it by leaving. "I think he might be," she agreed. "Never really thought of myself as notorious… but I'll take it." She looked to Poe. "That was it?"
"That was it," he said. "Flew away in the ship, and it was bye-bye, Jakku, hope that's the last time I see you."
"That makes two of us, Poe. Never again," Finn said, and it almost sounded like a warning.
"I suppose… three," Rey admitted. What was the purpose of going back there now? There was no point in taking up her old life again, and too much had happened since then to be able to do it anyway. It'd been her home, and everything she'd had, she'd gotten by making or earning it, and it felt odd to leave it behind so easily, but the alternative would probably feel like torture now.
"That's the story?" Finn asked. "Thought maybe you'd stolen a ship or something."
"Nah. I only steal ships from the First Order," Poe replied.
"That's for the best," Rey said. "Not everyone on Jakku is a good person, but some are, and everyone is barely scraping by, good and bad. He might have ruined someone's life if he'd stolen a ship."
"You know," Poe said slowly, "just asking… but didn't you two steal this one?"
"That was different," Rey said immediately, as Finn said, "Well…"
He let them off with an "Uh huh."
"So I was dreading seeing Leia, but by the time I got to D'Qar, she told me BB-8 had already been spotted on Takodana. That General Organa, she'll surprise you every time," Poe continued, and it was nice to hear how much respect he had for Leia. "That battle on Takodana, that was something else. It was the first time the Resistance had gone up again the First Order. For real, I mean. I'd shot down my share of TIEs before that- I have a special missions team, Black Squadron, and we'd had some tangles- but this felt different. We were out in the open, where everyone could see. It gave us all this energy, I think. This… oomph. I took down nine TIEs in one run, and a bunch of ground targets, too. It felt like I was really tapping into something."
"You know, Poe, that almost sounds like the Force," Rey told him.
"Wait, is that how the Force works?" Finn asked. "Because I've gotten some conflicting reports on that."
"Nah, I don't have the Force, Rey. I grew up with this tree… It's kind of complicated to explain," Poe said, waving a hand vaguely. "But I think if I had it, I'd know."
"Of course you have the Force, Poe," said another voice. That was Leia, joining them on her way aft from where she'd been in the cockpit with Chewie.
"Uh… what?" he said.
"We all do," Leia went on. "It's life's music. The song we make."
There were a lot of things that Rey very much didn't understand, and other things that she did understand now, in a way she couldn't explain. That was one of them, and she thought it was a very nice way to put it. It was more than the big stuff; it was the little stuff, the minuscule, how ordinary people reacted and interacted with everyday things.
"I will never understand this," Finn decided.
Leia smiled briefly. "So, you're all getting to know each other. That's good. We need to know each other as well as we can. We're all we've got left. I need to rest- I'm still not a hundred percent, but soon, Captain Dameron, you and I need to have a conversation."
Rey had also heard enough to know why Poe felt just a little bit nervous about that. Leia would sense that off him, too. "Uh, right. Of course. Whenever you want, General."
"Good. I'll send for you," Leia said, and gave them all a nod before heading back to her cabin. Space was limited, but no one had questioned that she got her own space here. After all, the Falcon was as hers as almost anyone's. Except Chewie.
...Maybe Rey's? She wasn't sure what her place was here yet. She wasn't getting too ahead of herself.
"I'm going to go, too," Finn said, already standing. "I want to check on Rose, see how she's doing."
"Oh. All right." Rey didn't know what to do with that, either, and wasn't even sure how to begin finding out without sounding weird about it. She'd spent too long on her own to have the social graces to say What's going on there, don't read anything into me asking. "See you soon."
As they watched him head off, Poe said, "Great guy, that Finn. Saved my life."
"You told me. He's saved mine, too," Rey said. "He's special."
"Uh, so," Poe said, slightly awkwardly, "how about that stuff with Luke Skywalker? That was just-"
That was another thing Rey didn't know how to talk about. She'd been so angry and disappointed when she left Ahch-To, and in the end the Resistance had been saved by him somehow appearing in front of the mine on Crait to take on Kylo Ren one on one, giving them time to escape to where Rey could help them out. She had a lot of conflicting feelings about him, and his last moments, and it was further complicated in that she still didn't know exactly how to talk about the Force, or how to explain any of the things that had happened.
She was saved from having to talk about it by the porg that flew onto the dejarik table, landing with a screech, startling both her and Poe.
"Man, what are these things?" he asked. "They're all over the place."
"They're from Ahch-To. Luke called them porgs," Rey answered, giving the porg's head a little scritch. "They're adorable."
"Adorable. Right. I better not find any in my X-wing." He paused. "Well, assuming I get another X-wing. Anyway, thinking about Takodana, the only thing I regret about that battle is I wish we deployed sooner. We might have been able to save Maz's castle. That was a hell of a place."
"Do you know what happened to Maz?" she wondered. "Is she all right? She was kind to me. Gave me some good advice." Even if she didn't know it then. In retrospect, she wished she'd listened to Maz earlier.
"Yeah, she's fine," he assured her. "She's out in the galaxy, doing her thing. Didn't even seem too bothered. It makes sense, though. You don't get to be a thousand years old without getting a few castles blown up under you. At least we sent the First Order packing."
"I must have just missed you," Rey said. "I missed a lot. Starkiller Base firing, the destruction of the Hosnian system… By the time you landed after the battle, I was already being tortured by Kylo Ren."
That was something she was still reconciling, too, considering how hard she'd fought to save him. There was going to be a lot of that.
"Hey, he did that to me, too! How about that?" Weirdly, Poe sounded like this was some cool thing they had in common. He even lifted his glass to her in a toast and said, "Torture buddies!"
Rey stared at him, but also couldn't help but laugh a little at the oddness of that. "Torture... buddies… Okay, sure!"
He sipped his drink to complete the toast, and said, "I should get going, too."
"Make it harder for Leia to find you?" Rey asked.
He stopped, still in the process of standing, and then walked off without saying another word, and she had to smile.
[Taken from Poe Dameron #27-28. Poe is a ginormous dork and I love him.]
She'd been considering it Luke's, rather than hers. But if he could never take it back, and she was resolute in the idea that it didn't belong to Kylo Ren, then she supposed it was hers, broken or not. Actually, it felt more fitting that way. Old, cracked, mostly unused and forgotten through the years... she was good with things like that.
"What happened to it?" Finn asked, watching her.
Rey hadn't decided exactly what to tell people yet. She wasn't sure what she was comfortable telling people yet. She wasn't sure how anyone would react to hearing about things like Force bonds with Kylo and the fact that it still made her heart ache that she had been so wrong about him. She went with the simple explanation. "Kylo Ren and I were fighting over it, and it broke," she said, and added, "It's a very long story. A lot's happened."
"Tell me about it," Poe said with a sigh, stretching out across the seat. "You know, Rey, if things had gone a little differently, we'd have met a long time ago. Probably been sitting right back here, all four of us, headed to bring that Jedi map to Leia."
"If there's one thing I'm beginning to learn, Poe, it's that you can't dwell on changing the past," Rey said quietly. "Concentrate on the present. Work with what you have."
"Oh, I know. Could've just avoided a lot of heartache, you know? Considering everything we just went through, it's hard not to think about different paths."
She looked up briefly. She hadn't heard the full story of what happened, just a few comments here and there from the others aboard. It didn't seem like anyone was holding anything back, she just didn't know how to ask about it. She was still an outsider here.
"Tell you what," Finn said, "if we'd met Rey together, it would've saved me from getting a beatdown. Almost knocked my head clean off!"
"I thought you were a thief, Finn!" she reminded him. "BB-8 said you'd stolen that jacket from his master, what was I supposed to do? Not hit you with my staff?"
BB-8 agreed with her.
"Come on," Finn said, "It was either the jacket or the stormtrooper armor, and anyway, I thought Poe was dead."
"Dead? Come on, I've walked away from tons of crashes," Poe said proudly. "Takes more than that to knock me down."
"So you're the best pilot in the galaxy, and you crash all the time?" Rey asked, eyebrows raised.
"There were extenuating circumstances."
"Every time?"
"Every time!"
"I'm just saying," Rey teased, "I don't think I've ever crashed anything I've been flying…" Outside of a simulator, anyway. She had crashed a lot in the simulator.
"Huh," said Finn. "Maybe Rey's the best pilot in the galaxy."
Poe frowned at him, but shrugged. "All right, all right, but let me say one thing. Finn and I might have crashed, but we both walked away, and that doesn't happen without some pretty fine flying."
"You never actually told me what happened back there," Finn realized.
"What?"
"What happened after the crash. All you told me was that you were thrown from the ship, but that's barely anything. I mean, how'd you get off-planet?"
"I never told you?" Poe asked. "Hmm. I guess we haven't had much time to talk. We've all been going in different directions lately."
"Tell us," Rey said, since she was curious anyway. "Might be a nice distraction."
He considered that. "Yeah. It might be. All right. So, General Organa said she had a mission for me. Lor San Tekka got in touch and said he had the map to Skywalker, so she needed someone to go get it. Leia was so sure her brother would just solve everything. Boom, that'd be it."
"One man with a laser sword," Rey said, under her breath.
"No Black Squadron, that many X-wings would draw too much attention. It had to be just me and BB-8. It'd be easy," he continued, and smiled wryly. "It was not easy. I had to make a quick detour to pick up BB-8, but I made it to Jakku all right. Man… I loved that ship. Anyway, me up with Lor San Tekka, got the map, and then everything went to hell. First Order showed up outta nowhere, still don't know how they found us. I stashed the map with BB-8, then went back to do what I could to help. Maybe I should have just flown away, but I couldn't leave Lor San Tekka there defenseless. I just couldn't. Not that it did all that much good. They killed him, burned the village… and that's how I met Kylo Ren. I believe you're both familiar with him. Delightful guy. Real charmer. A little light torture, a little time in a cell, and who comes along but my buddy FN-2187. Finn breaks me out, we steal a TIE fighter and get out of there. It was all going really well, actually. And then it wasn't. I triggered Finn's ejector seat, got him out of there."
"Oh, you did that?" Finn asked. "I thought it was automatic, maybe."
"Nope. You're welcome."
"Is that how you got out? Ejected?" Rey wondered.
"I would've, if it weren't for that blaster jacket," Poe groused.
"I thought you loved that thing," Finn said.
"Nah. Why do you think I gave it to you? Damn thing almost got me killed. It was caught in the ejector mechanism for my seat. By the time I got it off, it was almost too late for that anyway. I had to try to fly the ship in, put it down as gently as I could. But I had all that velocity from an orbital descene, and the controls were shot. Luckily, I'm a great pilot."
"So we hear," Rey said dryly.
Poe ignored her. "I got thrown clear from the TIE as it was crashing. I'll admit, that was mostly just good luck, but it didn't feel like it at the time. I was out for a while. When I woke up, it was night. Couldn't find Finn, couldn't find the crash site, couldn't find anything. But you can't let that stop you. I walked through the night, into the day. Turns out it gets a lot hotter in the desert when the sun comes up. Eventually I saw a speeder far out in the distance. Didn't know who it was, and at that point, I didn't care. It was a Blarina. Said his name was Naka Iit."
"Oh, you did get lucky," Rey told him. "There are some really bad people out in the wastes. Naka's all right, though."
"He didn't seem that way at first. Didn't really believe I was who I said I was. He dropped me off at a waystation called Blowback Town. Not really a town, though. Like two shacks and a tent. A friend of his lived here who owned a starship. He was a good guy, agreed to get me off planet once I convinced him I was really Resistance. But I had another stop to make first, to Niima Outpost. Figured that's where I had the best chance of meeting my little pal here."
BB-8 warbled at him.
"Yep, you were long gone. The whole place was talking about the notorious lady scavenger and a guy they'd never seen who'd flown right off the planet with my droid."
"Why, Rey, I think he might be talking about us," said Finn with a proud smile.
It was a little weird for her to hear. The people at Niima had known her. Months ago she'd wanted to get their attention by swooping in a ship she could sell, and here she was, getting it by leaving. "I think he might be," she agreed. "Never really thought of myself as notorious… but I'll take it." She looked to Poe. "That was it?"
"That was it," he said. "Flew away in the ship, and it was bye-bye, Jakku, hope that's the last time I see you."
"That makes two of us, Poe. Never again," Finn said, and it almost sounded like a warning.
"I suppose… three," Rey admitted. What was the purpose of going back there now? There was no point in taking up her old life again, and too much had happened since then to be able to do it anyway. It'd been her home, and everything she'd had, she'd gotten by making or earning it, and it felt odd to leave it behind so easily, but the alternative would probably feel like torture now.
"That's the story?" Finn asked. "Thought maybe you'd stolen a ship or something."
"Nah. I only steal ships from the First Order," Poe replied.
"That's for the best," Rey said. "Not everyone on Jakku is a good person, but some are, and everyone is barely scraping by, good and bad. He might have ruined someone's life if he'd stolen a ship."
"You know," Poe said slowly, "just asking… but didn't you two steal this one?"
"That was different," Rey said immediately, as Finn said, "Well…"
He let them off with an "Uh huh."
"So I was dreading seeing Leia, but by the time I got to D'Qar, she told me BB-8 had already been spotted on Takodana. That General Organa, she'll surprise you every time," Poe continued, and it was nice to hear how much respect he had for Leia. "That battle on Takodana, that was something else. It was the first time the Resistance had gone up again the First Order. For real, I mean. I'd shot down my share of TIEs before that- I have a special missions team, Black Squadron, and we'd had some tangles- but this felt different. We were out in the open, where everyone could see. It gave us all this energy, I think. This… oomph. I took down nine TIEs in one run, and a bunch of ground targets, too. It felt like I was really tapping into something."
"You know, Poe, that almost sounds like the Force," Rey told him.
"Wait, is that how the Force works?" Finn asked. "Because I've gotten some conflicting reports on that."
"Nah, I don't have the Force, Rey. I grew up with this tree… It's kind of complicated to explain," Poe said, waving a hand vaguely. "But I think if I had it, I'd know."
"Of course you have the Force, Poe," said another voice. That was Leia, joining them on her way aft from where she'd been in the cockpit with Chewie.
"Uh… what?" he said.
"We all do," Leia went on. "It's life's music. The song we make."
There were a lot of things that Rey very much didn't understand, and other things that she did understand now, in a way she couldn't explain. That was one of them, and she thought it was a very nice way to put it. It was more than the big stuff; it was the little stuff, the minuscule, how ordinary people reacted and interacted with everyday things.
"I will never understand this," Finn decided.
Leia smiled briefly. "So, you're all getting to know each other. That's good. We need to know each other as well as we can. We're all we've got left. I need to rest- I'm still not a hundred percent, but soon, Captain Dameron, you and I need to have a conversation."
Rey had also heard enough to know why Poe felt just a little bit nervous about that. Leia would sense that off him, too. "Uh, right. Of course. Whenever you want, General."
"Good. I'll send for you," Leia said, and gave them all a nod before heading back to her cabin. Space was limited, but no one had questioned that she got her own space here. After all, the Falcon was as hers as almost anyone's. Except Chewie.
...Maybe Rey's? She wasn't sure what her place was here yet. She wasn't getting too ahead of herself.
"I'm going to go, too," Finn said, already standing. "I want to check on Rose, see how she's doing."
"Oh. All right." Rey didn't know what to do with that, either, and wasn't even sure how to begin finding out without sounding weird about it. She'd spent too long on her own to have the social graces to say What's going on there, don't read anything into me asking. "See you soon."
As they watched him head off, Poe said, "Great guy, that Finn. Saved my life."
"You told me. He's saved mine, too," Rey said. "He's special."
"Uh, so," Poe said, slightly awkwardly, "how about that stuff with Luke Skywalker? That was just-"
That was another thing Rey didn't know how to talk about. She'd been so angry and disappointed when she left Ahch-To, and in the end the Resistance had been saved by him somehow appearing in front of the mine on Crait to take on Kylo Ren one on one, giving them time to escape to where Rey could help them out. She had a lot of conflicting feelings about him, and his last moments, and it was further complicated in that she still didn't know exactly how to talk about the Force, or how to explain any of the things that had happened.
She was saved from having to talk about it by the porg that flew onto the dejarik table, landing with a screech, startling both her and Poe.
"Man, what are these things?" he asked. "They're all over the place."
"They're from Ahch-To. Luke called them porgs," Rey answered, giving the porg's head a little scritch. "They're adorable."
"Adorable. Right. I better not find any in my X-wing." He paused. "Well, assuming I get another X-wing. Anyway, thinking about Takodana, the only thing I regret about that battle is I wish we deployed sooner. We might have been able to save Maz's castle. That was a hell of a place."
"Do you know what happened to Maz?" she wondered. "Is she all right? She was kind to me. Gave me some good advice." Even if she didn't know it then. In retrospect, she wished she'd listened to Maz earlier.
"Yeah, she's fine," he assured her. "She's out in the galaxy, doing her thing. Didn't even seem too bothered. It makes sense, though. You don't get to be a thousand years old without getting a few castles blown up under you. At least we sent the First Order packing."
"I must have just missed you," Rey said. "I missed a lot. Starkiller Base firing, the destruction of the Hosnian system… By the time you landed after the battle, I was already being tortured by Kylo Ren."
That was something she was still reconciling, too, considering how hard she'd fought to save him. There was going to be a lot of that.
"Hey, he did that to me, too! How about that?" Weirdly, Poe sounded like this was some cool thing they had in common. He even lifted his glass to her in a toast and said, "Torture buddies!"
Rey stared at him, but also couldn't help but laugh a little at the oddness of that. "Torture... buddies… Okay, sure!"
He sipped his drink to complete the toast, and said, "I should get going, too."
"Make it harder for Leia to find you?" Rey asked.
He stopped, still in the process of standing, and then walked off without saying another word, and she had to smile.
[Taken from Poe Dameron #27-28. Poe is a ginormous dork and I love him.]