She hasn't been feeling great.
Grandpa, when he's with her, seems worried, but she always brushes aside his concerns with the same stubborn determination that helped her to survive fifteen years alone on Jakku. The conversations tend to run along similar lines, though her responses get shorter the more often they repeat.
"I'm fine," she insists, keeping her head down so it doesn't look like she's talking to thin air while she picks at her breakfast. Poe and his squadron are flying patrol, and she doesn't have anyone else she can sit with in the mess hall –- not that she's feeling especially hungry, not that she ever feels especially hungry, her stomach heavy and nauseous and unused to three meals a day, but she knows that she should be eating if she wants to keep her strength up, even if she still feels like there is too much of it all. "Felt worse."
Which, in technicality, is a true statement. Bleeding out on the sand dunes was worse than this. Scouring sand out of decade-old salvage under the unforgiving heat of Jakku's sun was worse than this. But this- whatever this is- is a close third. But she has been through worse, and she's felt worse, and since that's true it means she doesn't need to worry about this- whatever this is- because she's survived worse with much less. And the Resistance doesn't need to waste its resources on her for something she can get through on her own.
"Rey-" her grandfather tries, likely about to say something about how she needs to take care of herself, or go and get her grandmother so they can both try to get her to change her mind, but she only glares and points a fork at him like a weapon; thankfully, the pilot at the table behind him is looking at his cup of caf in bleary exhaustion and isn't alert enough to be confused by her behavior.
"I'm fine," she repeats, and he makes a frustrated kind of sound and dissipates into thin air.
Something twists inside of her that isn't related to how awful she currently feels. He's been like this before, Grandpa, generally after he tries to convince Rey to steal a ship and leave Jakku and Rey refuses, after they've both argued. He always comes back, though, even if it takes a day or three. He's promised he'll always come back to her, and-
Her stomach rolls. She presses her lips together in a thin line, breathes deep through her nose, and cuts out a small bite of pancake. Puts it in her mouth. Chews, swallows.
She makes herself eat all of her food even as she fights down the urge to vomit with each mouthful, because she'll be damned if she lets food go to waste. Actually standing to throw it away will be more likely to make her lose this fight than continuing to eat.
Still it takes her longer than it should to finish, long enough that the mess hall is crowded and the noise crashes dissonant with the pounding in her skull, an overlapping barrage of noises almost making her long for the solitude of her shelter on Jakku, her battered hammock half-filled with sand and the way the wind would blow cool over the dunes just before sunrise. She floats her tray over to the stacks of used ones when she leaves, her grasp of the Force shaky but not quite as shaky as her hands, slick with sweat, and hurries out into less crowded hallways with her head ducked down in case someone notices something wrong. She's fine. Nothing she can't handle. This- whatever this is- isn't going to give her anymore trouble.
All the same, she finds that she's stumbled to the med center without being aware of it, and she pauses in the hall outside the doors. She's fine- she's fine- but Finn? She doesn't want to make Finn sick, not when his recovery is going so well. She wants Finn to stay awake for longer than thirty minutes at a time and hear his voice and see his smile. This- whatever this is- is something she can deal with, but Finn, still recovering, doing so well-
-she turns away. Poe and his squadron are out flying patrols, and Grandpa's stormed off in a huff to wherever he goes when he's not with her, and the only other people she knows on base who aren't Finn and Poe are her aunt and uncle- Han and Leia- legends- and she doesn't dare get near enough to talk to them, not yet. She's afraid of what they'll say. Afraid she'll be handed the map she fought to bring here like she wants to see her father again- but she does- doesn't-?
She doesn't have anyone to talk to on base who isn't Finn or Poe, and Finn needs to stay healthy and Poe isn't here. Her head is too fuzzy for ship repairs or sketching out saber diagrams or anything requiring any kind of focus, a little bit like when she hasn't had water in too long, and she knows from experience that trying to work when she's like this only makes it worse. And here, she doesn't have to work, strange as it is. She stumbles back to the quarters she was assigned and crawls into bed, and she thinks, as she closes her eyes, that the static in her ears and the too-loud thudthud of her heartbeat sounds a little bit like a sandstorm.
Maybe she'll feel better when she wakes up.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," Poe says, hoping he comes off sounding as casual and calm and collected as he means to be.
On one hand, Finn is lying in bed, barely able to sit up on his own, and he doesn't understand a lot of things because the Order evidently brainwashes kids into being Troopers- and now is not the time for anything that even remotely resembles flirting. Besides, he's pretty sure that Finn and Rey are dancing around the same things he is right now.
On the other hand, looking at Finn puts butterflies in his stomach and a smile on his face, and he hasn't ever really considered himself to be someone interested in sex or, really, relationships in general, but he thinks he might try for the man in front of him. And, he hasn't spoken much to Rey, but the funny feeling in his chest that manifests whenever he talks to Finn is there with her, too.
But, in all honestly. Now is not the time for this, Dameron.
"How've you been?"
"They're gonna let me start walking, soon." Finn beams, and Poe valiantly does not cry tears of joy at the beauty of the expression. Then he hesitates, a crease appearing between his eyebrows, and asks: "They said something about chocolate with dinner tonight? And new ration shipments? Sounded really excited, but I don't know what they meant."
And that effectively derails both the conversation and Poe's train wreck of thought until he has to run for a mission debrief, smiling apologetically and saying he can't stay longer- though he wants to, he does. Even if Finn is half-asleep after forty minutes of idle chatter. He's at the door when a question occurs to him.
"Where's Rey? I feel like she never leaves this room."
Finn hums sleepily and blinks a few times, and his heart does a backflip. "Thought... thought she was on a mission? She hasn't been by all day. Or maybe I was asleep when she was."
Poe frowns.
He's at the door for five- ten-? minutes before he gets an answer, and if he's being blunt, "answer" is really kind of a loose term. There's finally a response to his repeated knocking – he'd asked around, and no one's seen Rey since early breakfast, and she's not in the Falcon or in any of her usual hideaways, and the only place left he can think of is her quarters – and the door slides open a few moments later.
Rey is wearing shorts and a tank top, cheeks flushed and eyes glassy with fever, and she doesn't really seem to recognize him before she pitches forward. Poe swears, just barely manages to catch her before she hits the ground; she's scarily light, all bones and sharp angles, weighing next to nothing in his arms. BB-8 shrieks in alarm from by his ankles, and the hallways is otherwise empty but for the three of them, and he moves on instinct, carrying her back into her room while snapping orders at the little ball droid to hurry to the med center and tell them they had a patient at this room number, quick-
He's somewhat calm in tense situations, in that he can keep a level head and not panic and take charge if he has to. He oversees three different squadrons at any given time; he has to be. But just because he's calm doesn't mean he can't be worried, and he is very, very worried right now.
"Rey," he says, setting her back down on the mattress, noting the clothes haphazardly deposited across the floor – she is nothing if not organized with her things, few as they are – and the way the sheets are damp with sweat. He finds that he hates the feeling of her skin hot with fever. "Rey, can you hear me? Rey- Rey?"
Her gaze flicks to his face, breathing shallow, no recognition. He bites back a curse. "...?"
"Just- hang in there. Keep your eyes open, Rey- stay with me. Stay with me."
The first time she wakes up- properly wakes up, catching more of the outside world than hazy voices and glimpses of faces that might as well be out of fever dreams, seeing things with any sort of lucidity- she is thirstier than she can ever remember being, and strangely exhausted, and the Force is brighter around her than Jakku's sun could ever be, even at the heat of midday.
She blinks a couple of times; her eyes feel gritty, and her limbs are heavy, and the world is mostly white- the Resistance medical bay, she recognizes it from all her time spent looking after Finn. She's in a small room; Grandpa is smiling, relieved, blue and shimmering in an empty chair, says, "Hey, kid," in an exhausted kind of voice. She opens her mouth to speak and manages nothing but a near-silent croak; turns her head to look around, sees Grandma braiding her hair, and a small pile of her things from Jakku, her flower and her helmet and her doll, and the source of the brightness sitting on the floor, cross-legged, eyes closed.
He's an oasis in the Force, a vast kind of tranquility she can feel washing over her even in her weakened state, and it almost makes her fall back asleep- but she's thirsty, her mouth and throat painfully dry. She tries to speak again, but nothing comes out, and she tries to move and can't, and she'd think the man was meditating, except his chin is down against his chest, like he's fast asleep. His clothes are coarse and gray; he has a beard and hair brushing the tops of his shoulders, coarse and gray; his hands are folded neat in his lap, one flesh, one battered metal.
"He came back," Grandpa murmurs.
Rey lets out a breath of air, the most amount of noise she can make, and sets about moving her arm- painfully slow, fingers twitching across the sheets and dragging the rest of the limb behind, because she can see a water bulb opened and mostly untouched next to the pile of her things. It's not a big room. Smaller than the inside of her Walker. It's not that far.
The water bulb moves in fits and spurts, coming close to spilling but never quite tilting over enough to do so, skittering through the air towards her outstretched hand even as her mind goes fuzzy again with the effort. She doesn't care. She's thirsty.
The world blurs.
The man snaps awake as water drips onto the floor, darkening the fabric of his robes, her own control slipping, and the bulb hovers shakily just inches from his face. He says nothing, just reaches up to take it from the air- the metal hand. Droplets slip down the durasteel digits. His eyes are not hers in color, a vibrant shade of blue like the desert sky at noon, but that color is something like home. He's tired, the man, in expression and in signature, the Force vast and calm and tranquil but inexplicably weary, now that he's awake.
Papa was never so tired.
The man moves stiffly to his feet, only to settle again on the edge of her mattress, hands careful and gentle helping her shift up, her head in the crook of his arm as he offers sips of water. Even a couple swallows makes her tired, but she thinks she's slept for long enough and wills her eyes to stay open- Papa was never so tired, and the man wears the face of a stranger, but she thinks she liked to crawl into her parents' bed at night to sleep between them, because Papa was always so calm to be next to.
"I'm sorry," the man says, and she blinks, slow. "I thought you were safe."
She tries to speak. Can't. Pushes at him instead, the dark of her house rattling away under the force of a sandstorm, lit by the gentle blue glow of Grandpa, Grandma. The man, when he smiles, still looks sad, tired; she understands, a little bit, but there has to be something to push away the gloom there.
"The doctors wanted to know when you woke up," he says, but he makes no move to stand. "Is there anything else...?"
By the small pile of her things, her helmet and her flower and her doll, dusty with sand despite having been cleaned- who brought her things? who found her house?- her doll twitches and shifts a fraction of an inch towards them. It's floated over in a moment with a wave of the man's shaking hand and pressed into her palm with trembling fingers. He looks so sad.
"Your mother made this for you."
He's whispering. Her father. She tries yet again to speak, doesn't recognize her voice when she hears it, rough and quiet.
"Pilot. Like you."
"Yeah." He makes the effort for another smile and falls short. "I..."
"Left. Didn't know. But you left."
The oasis ripples, a gust of wind, precursor to a storm blowing in. "Yes."
"Didn't know."
"It doesn't excuse anything."
"Papa," she sighs, and it's like a roll of thunder in a dark gray sky, though she has only vague memories of rain and Jakku has no clouds to speak of. He flinches minutely. "Didn't... didn't know. Water?"
He helps her drink a little more, eases her back down, brushes hair from her face. His hand lingers on her cheek. "Rest," he murmurs. "I'll be here when you wake up."
And she believes him.
A missing scene set towards the end of lights will guide you home, second chronologically in the found families 'verse. As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you all enjoyed.