Rey wasn't sure it was her place. She wasn't sure of her place in any of this.
Certainly someone was with the grieving woman tonight.
After all, Rey had been at her own friend's side until a medic had shooed her away with promises of hourly updates-and of the feast currently taking place in the mess.
Hunger had won out in the end—just like celebration had over mourning given the rowdy atmosphere in the base.
But it was the absence of the Resistance's leader that had led Rey to pocket a doughy roll for later and to search the nearest terminal for a schematic of the base's layout.
It was the sound of shattering glass and rending metal from down the corridor that set her measured pace to a run, the anguished cry barely muffled by the bulkhead that set her fist to pounding on the door, her pulse to drumming in her ears.
"General Organa! Are you alright?"
The space around her was suddenly so quiet that Rey was left questioning her senses. Another vision? Some long locked-away memory skirting to the surface?
No. It had been real. She had heard-had felt-that cry.
One palm laid impatiently on the chime to the General's quarters, the other against the door as Rey called once more, "General—Leia, open the door."
Nothing.
Rey studied the keypad that controlled the door and seconds later pried the casing off, snatching a wire from a circuit with a curse as a shock of current bit at her finger.
The door to General Leia Organa's quarters slid open and Rey closed her eyes as another current crept across her skin and pricked at the back of her mind-so much grief-guilt-anger-so much.
When she stepped into the room, the air fairly stung with the after effects-the Force-an outpouring of it, as strong as any Rey had ever felt. She sensed that she had just missed the chaotic upheaval, that the debris now littering the room had once been clothes, mementos.
And in the midst of this chaos, the woman who had stood so resolute in the hectic waves of pilots and medics earlier that day, collapsing in on herself.
"General?"
Back towards Rey, the figure didn't respond, just stayed hunched over, arms wrapped tightly around her chest.
For the first time Rey noticed how small the older woman was.
Rey's fingers ghosted over her back, barely making contact, when a hoarse voice said, "I'd like to be alone."
Rey pulled her hand away but left it hovering between them, offered, "I could find Chewbacca if you'd rather-"
A strangled sound, something like a laugh, cut her off.
"Just ask and get it over with."
"Ask?" For what? Rey thought. Did the General think she expected some sort of reward or payment, that her motives had been mercenary?
"I don't-"
The defense died on her lips as the older woman suddenly turned to face her.
Her eyes.
He has his mother's eyes.
"A week ago you would have given anything for a family—any family," Leia stated, flatly. "But what answer do you want to hear now?"
Rey felt the uncharacteristic sting of threatening tears.
"I'll go," she murmured, knew she should, but stood locked in place, waiting for Leia to pick at the wound she'd found. She stared at the floor, noticed for the first time that she was standing on something beautifully blue.
"Now—you've looked into our heart." Words like nails scratching at a scab. Rey didn't flinch when Leia's fingers gripped her chin, relented and looked down into her eyes again. "And you want to know if you'll see that same dark face staring back at you from a mirror one day." Fingers worrying their way between skin and twisting.
"Stop."
"If you were a Skywalker, the kindest thing anyone could have done for you is leave you on that godsforsaken planet and forget about you," Leia hissed. "You should thank them."
Alone, alone, alone—the feeling beat in her head like a drum. A wave of nausea rolled over her. Too much defeat and self-loathing and guilt to swallow down. I made them leave me and never come back. I am broken. I am toxic.
Rey squeezed her eyes shut against a storm of dust, breathed in and choked.
These were days on Jakku, each one relentlessly tallied.
This was the inky void of space and infinitesimal dust buffeting a view screen as if it hadn't been her whole world seconds before.
Rey stumbled back. It was easier to jerk Leia's hand away from her face, harder to lose the grip she had on her mind.
Rey swiped with the back of her hand at the tears staining her cheek.
"What about you?" she rasped. "You want to ask me if I looked into his mind and saw why."
Rey took a step closer, used her height to her advantage. It should have been intimidating but all she saw in Leia's face was anticipation.
"I know what you want to hear," she said. "You want me to tell you that it's all your fault—that you made him that monster." Rey's shoulders sank; she could barely get out the words: "That monster who killed his father."
Leia's chin tilted up.
Rey recognized the gesture for what it was—not defiance, but defeat. A wounded animal baring its throat for the killing blow.
"I can't," Rey whispered.
The cry that broke through Leia, piercing and primal, shattered against Rey's shoulder as the young woman wrapped her arms around her for the second time that day. This time there were no quiet words of comfort, just a desperate clutching and wailing.
Rey broke Leia's fall to the floor, folding her legs under them and sinking with her to the ground.
Leia's grief was violent in a way Rey remembered from half recalled dreams-struggling to hold onto a hand that slipped away from hers, night after night.
There were never any faces, just arms holding her back and a figure retreating into the dark. She can't imagine what the sorrow would have been like if she had known the faces of those she waited in vain for every day. But she could feel it now in Leia. She could see fragments-that cocky grin tossed over his shoulder, tiny fingers grasping at her braid, her own face distorted and reflected back in a helmet as dark as space itself.
Rey's legs had long since gone numb beneath her when Leia's breathing finally calmed into discordant tremors.
The automated lights seemed overly bright when they flickered on again as Leia moved away from her and stood.
She took the hand Leia offered, crossed the room and crawled up after her into the bed without question.
The wracking sobs began again as Leia buried her face in the crook of Rey's neck, just as she had on the tarmac hours ago. Only this time Rey could feel the pinch of fingernails through her clothes as Leia clung to her.
Her own hand was anchored between Leia's shoulder blades. When the pauses between the other woman's breaths were too long, Rey held her tighter, concentrated on the connection that had drawn her straight from the Falcon and into this stranger's embrace, until another breath shuddered out against her throat.
Instinct had driven her this far but Rey had no idea what to do with herself once Leia was finally asleep.
It was a pathetic thing to admit, but she had never slept this close to another person before, not that she could remember, and her limbs suddenly felt too long, her breathe too loud.
Trying to control her breathing only seemed to make it worse, her heart beat faster.
Over Leia's shoulder she could see a storage locker twisted in a way that would have been beautiful if not for the frightening force of will that had given it shape.
When she exhaled, her breath troubled the tendrils of hair that had escaped Leia's braid. She leaned forward a fraction until her lips brushed across it.
Leia's hair smelled sweet. It reminded her of the air in the forest on Takodana.
That thought set a knot of guilt in her chest.
Rey had no idea where she was. She scuttled backwards in a panic until she fell.
It was a short fall and enough to focus her senses.
Leia.
Leia was sitting on the edge of the bed, a hand covering her face.
She could sense the anxiety coming from Leia like a high frequency hum and had no idea how to quiet it.
Rey scuffed her boot over the cluttered floor, the debris enough to have put a glint in even Unkar's eyes.
"You were pretty thorough," Rey observed, hopefully, if a little awkwardly. "But some of this could be recycled . . . melted down."
Rey picked up what had caught her eye last night-a dress made of fabric that flowed between her fingers. It probably cost more than a year's rations, maybe two.
It was the same shade as the oceans she had so long imagined.
"What color is this?"
Leia glanced over her shoulder, looked from the dress to Rey's face and raised an eyebrow.
"Blue."
Rey felt her cheeks burn. She didn't check the irritation in her voice when she said, "I know it's 'blue.' But what shade of blue? What's it called? I've read so many different names for blue—azure, lapis, cerulean—but seeing it . . ."
"Indigo."
"It's lovely." Rey draped the dress carefully on the corner of the bed, smoothing out what damage she could. Indigo—the oceans surrounding the island are indigo.
"It is," Leia agreed.
Rey looked up to see Leia staring at her with the same focus she'd seen her devote to the star charts yesterday in the command room.
It made her stomach flip in the strangest way.
Leia stood, kneaded her fingers into a kink in her shoulder, and declared, "You need a bath and breakfast."
Rey's hand instinctively reached for her bag and the food she'd secreted away last night.
"Breakfast first I guess."
Rey found she didn't mind the teasing quirk of Leia's eyebrow when it was paired with the faint glint of humor in her eyes.
"I've never managed to recruit any great chefs, so the meals are pretty standard, but you can get food from the mess whenever you want."
"Thank you."
Leia nodded.
"I should check on Finn."
Even to Rey it sounded more like a question than a statement. She needed some sort of assurance that Leia would be alright, even if just for now, before she could leave.
"Tell Doctor Kalonia I said to let you stay with him as long as you like."
That would have to do.
Rey started to leave, only to feel Leia's fingers grab her wrist as she passed.
"And, Rey . . ." Leia's hand slipped to thread their fingers together. "Thank you."