The Call to the Light
Chapter 1
"Aren't you a bit boyish-looking for a whore?"
Rey is seventeen (she thinks) and standing in a tent outside Niima Outpost. Unlike every other day of her existence, digging through dirty old ships and crawling into her hovel to eat and sleep, she's taken care of her appearance tonight. She may not be dressed in finer clothes with any color besides that of the sand, and there probably is still sand left in the curves and crevices along her skin. But what she lacks in finer wares and fine-smelling cleanliness, she owns in her unabashedly youthful appearance. Her face has fine lines and, if she would just stop scowling for thirty seconds, there'd be a softness about her.
Staring at the man sprawled in a chair, scruffier than herself, like he was born from it, Rey thinks of what exactly to say. She's shed some outer layers of her only outfit. The outer sash she's draped and wrapped over her chest is gone, to show the curves of her breasts, as are the wraps around her arms. The skin there, as well as from her collarbone, gleams (she hopes) from the lamplight.
Rey has come up with nothing of any value for three days. She's starving and was forced to steal water for the first time since her adolescence, when she didn't know any better. They had branded her for that on her arm. For doing it the second time, fate hadn't given her a break. She got caught – by this broken-nosed, glassy-eyed grub – and now –
…and now. Now she's paying the price.
Squaring her shoulders, reminding the humanoid fella that she could hurt him again, Rey replies coolly, "Don't see you've got anything better around here."
"Says you," he drawls like they're hovel-mates. "I've had my nose halfway up a Trillian's snatch a few hours ago. She, at least had some nice meat on her bones."
"She was probably saggy and had you do all the work."
The humanoid actually cracks a smile. The sound in his mouth is sticky and warm, almost like old oil. It's a low laughter, something Rey hasn't heard for so long that she compares it to a predator's purr.
It's absurd. All of it. She's seen how womenfolk around here are treated – if they don't do anything of value, if they look a little too pretty, if they even look not too ugly, or if they're generally in the wrong place. She's seen one poor alien tied outside a shop, naked from the waist down and sitting on some rug for some passerby to rut with, if he bargained the right price.
It chilled Rey when she first saw it, knowing what exactly that female's fate entailed. It had made more sense from that day forward to bind her breasts a little tighter and hide her hair until she looked sexless and plain.
People on Jakku are cruel. Males are usually the crueler of the sexes. Unkar Plutt is actually decent, but that's because he can afford to be. Rey's lucky she hasn't been completely raped or mutilated just by looking at them funny.
This man, though.
Rey shifts uncontrollably at his lingering stare. Though his face is more tanned than hers, with brown-black hair (like old oil again) and indecipherable lines along his face that could be scars or wrinkles, he has blue eyes. Blue eyes, in a human, never mind any other alien she'd seen before. Rey has seen in a reflective surface that hers are brown. Shocker. His are brighter than the sky.
If Rey hadn't resented him for catching her at their water trough, she'd stare at them all day.
But it's a ridiculous thought and she's reminded of how his arm seized her entire person in a vice, and threw her into his tent to size her up. He could've dunked her head in the trough to drown her like last time years ago. He could have had her, legs spread and privates bruised…. and that had almost happened before.
No, he'd just shrugged, given her a slap, and kicked her out the doorway with a brusque "on your way."
Maybe he won't pay for shit for her. It's true; she's awfully bony. She's more on the frail than lean side this season, and she's tired from the walk up here.
"Look, you wanna do this or not?"
The blue-eyed fella leans over for his cup and ignores her for a minute.
"Let's not rush things, luv," he muses. And that's the other thing – he's got the same accent as hers, a strange, glinted lilt that makes everything sound less harsh, guttural. "You haven't even mentioned your price."
Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
"Rey. Wake up. We're about to drop hyperspace."
On the other side of the duel cockpit, Ben Solo, once the proud and fearsome beast Kylo Ren, speaks to Rey. They spent the last 16 hours flying through the black.
Rey feels a trace of drool from her mouth and is thankful the seats face away from each other.
"Yeah, all right," she yawns. "Kelado, right?"
"I'm searching for a place to land now. Based on – "
"Hang on, I got it." Rey fumbles for a datapad near her where she stored coordinates. Leaning the pad behind her for him, she says, "Plug these in. I know the place, we'll go unnoticed here."
Ignoring how odd he sounds taking orders or asking questions, Rey waits for the man to grab the datapad and punch in the numbers.
They sail into the atmosphere and wait for the rocky red terrain to swallow them. Globelike, catacomb structures hang from jagged edges. Like a soothing reprieve, the chill from space breaks finally. Rey shivers in shock as the warmth from the very thermal planet seeps into their little fighter.
Though it's against her intention, Ben feels Rey's sudden comfort like a wave. He has to hold in his breath, but he feels himself go slack from the unexpected pleasure.
Shaking his head, Ben severs the flood of sensation and focuses on the terrain that soars past them.
"You haven't been here before," he reminds his younger companion.
"No," says Rey, "But there are people who can help us trade in this fighter for something more comfortable."
She doesn't say more than that. The space in their cockpit is too small for an escape from his still-existent temper. If he knew the real reason why they came to Kelado, he'd flip.
Deftly, Rey directs their little craft far from the amber-lit city. The clouds hang low and offer some cover as they get closer to their location. She switches a few controls and they slow.
"Dampen the frequencies, Ben. I'll find my way around."
Behind her, Ben sniffs and does as she suggests. They're still far away from the attention of the First Order, or even the Resistance. This is still technically the Outer Rim, but they have to try their best and remain discrete. The people they're about to shack up with don't want the kind of attention a Jedi apprentice and a defected Knight of Ren attract.
"Can you open up a channel," Rey says as she swings through the navy clouds, feeling for any obstacles through the Force.
Ben flicks a switch from overhead. "Careful, there's a – "
"I see it," she cuts in as she steers away from a weather radar.
"Channel's open," he tells her.
Rey brightens on instinct. "Hey, strangers, care to let a group of tired pilgrims in for the night?"
She changes her accent to basic, just like Ben's, for the transmission. He turns in her direction quizzically. Before he can ask, the transmission buzzes. "Hey, there, pilgrim! Come on out back and we'll see what we can do!"
The voice is male, older but very homely.
"I'm trying to find your house, but it's too dark to tell," Rey adds in a strangely lax, girlish tone.
"We'll leave the front light on for you, you can't miss us."
Five minutes later, Rey is docking the fighter deep within one side of the canyon. It juts out past the gap until it overlooks a flat plane of hard ground, not quite like a desert.
This is the home of Boshtar Webb, a retired podrace manufacturer and occasional smuggler. Rey had saved his son a few months ago when the First Order bombed the shite out of a Resistance hideout in some village on Vardis VI. The Webbs have extended an invitation for Rey, whenever she needS it.
The only problem is that they don't know Rey is a Jedi.