For the twenty-second day in a row, Rey walked the familiar path to the rundown cantina. For the twenty-second time she looked in the window, and was disappointed that Voroll wasn't there, again. But this time she saw his smuggler partner, a woman she learned was called Ridiu.
Slowly walking so as not to attract the attention of the bartender, Rey gently tapped the woman on the shoulder, startling her. The woman's face shifted from surprise to annoyance when she saw the scavenger.
"Voroll isn't here," she scowled.
"Will he be back?" Rey asked timidly. Ridiu shook her head.
"First Order got ahold of him smuggling some New Republic propoganda, haven't heard from him since. Can't imagine they're happy about him blabbing about Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker either," she said grimly, her eyes staring off at something the others in the cantina couldn't see. Shaking her head, she brought her focus back to the girl in front of her. "He meant a lot to you and everything, but don't expect Voroll to come staggering in here like he used to," she said, a trace of empathy in her voice. Without another word she laid some credits on the table and made her way out into the night.
Crestfallen, Rey shuffled out of the cantina, not wanting to look at the beige walls any longer than she had to. Taking off at a run, she sprinted back to her partially-constructed swoop, and took off across the dunes. Voroll had been her only point of contact with the outside world, the only person who could give her real hope on this barren planet. And now he had vanished, just like Luke Skywalker.
Back at the down AT-AT she called home, Rey ran to the computer simulator she had scavenged from an old starfighter. Scanning through the finals and simulations, she tried to hold back any other thoughts of Voroll. She could learn anything she wanted to on it, the types of ships from both the Old Republic and the Empire, what they did in combat, alien languages, schematics for the ships, piloting emulations, whatever the computer had to offer. But all of that paled in comparison to what Voroll had told her about. A real life Jedi, not one on a computer screen.
Leaning back against the walls of the AT-AT, she closed her eyes. What was she going to do now? Jakku seemed to crush anything good that entered it's atmosphere, and she was beginning to wonder when her luck would run out. She was fifteen on a planet where hitting forty was a rarity. Was her life already halfway over and she didn't know it already? Would she be out scavenging one day and come across the wrong people, the same way Voroll had flying across the galaxy?
Calm down, a voice in her head said, you're getting all worked up over nothing.
"But it's not nothing, Voroll is as good as dead," she said to herself, putting her face in her hands. Voroll had been one of the few people she had known on the planet who saw her as more than an excellent scavenger, and now he was gone, just like all the others. All she had left to look forward to was her family coming back for her. They may not have known what Jakku was like when they left her here, but it had been years, and no doubt they had heard stories of the harsh life on the planet. They were probably saving up money now to come and get her, all she needed to do was wait for them to come.
The next day while scouring a star destroyer, Rey talked to her fellow scavengers a little bit less, keeping to the more isolated parts of the ship. As the days went on, she spoke to them on fewer and fewer occasions, only trading advice and experiences at Plutt's tent. There was no more talk of the Jedi and the Empire, as all the older folks who had seen them in power had long since gone. The stories Voroll told her largely fell into the back of her mind, only coming out late on a cold winters night, or when there was total silence in a ship she was scavenging.
She wouldn't think of the stories seriously again in a long time, until she came across a BB-8 unit in the desert, four years later.
And that's the end, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed the read and please don't forget to review!