Note: Reytaka. Rey/Mitaka.
Prompt filled for ewanotsoyoungadult on tumblr: 'um... Rey/Mitaka in Modern AU ;) I'm just really, really curious, how somebody would make this pairing work, and Modern AU seems to be the easiest one for writing it~'
Well, here's my take on it. More friendship-based, but the hint is there for a possible future relationship. I hope that this works! I must admit this was quite the brain exercise for me. Hadn't ever really thought of this sort of thing.
He was a quiet boy. He always had been. The first time she'd seen him had been when she was seven. The first day at a new foster home and she was already stepping into a fight. She was short, wiry, small, but she could handle herself. And there was no way she would ever stand by while an injustice occurred before her eyes. She might have been young, but she already knew that about herself.
"Rey," she said confidently, sticking her hand out towards the taller, older—but just as skinny—boy. She ignored the blood dripping down past her left eye as she squinted up at him.
"I…" He couldn't quite meet her eyes, which caused Rey to frown and step closer towards him.
There. A small, fleeting glance before he looked away again. Good enough.
"Thank you," he whispered as he shoved his black hair up and off of his eyes. The right one was puffy and darkening already.
"What's your name?" Rey asked, incapable of leaving him be, as his body language was desperately hinting at her to do.
He was silent for long enough that she was about to open her mouth again, but finally he answered. "Mitaka. Dopheld." He flushed, embarrassed. "Please call me Mitaka. I hate my first name." He glowered, his fists clenching.
Rey grinned. "Nice to meet you, Mitaka."
Her grin widened when she saw one corner of his mouth twitch upwards. "So! When's the next meal?" she queried cheerfully.
She didn't last a month. Something about her being too rowdy; too quick to get into trouble. But Rey knew it was because she'd punched their real son smack dab in the nose, breaking it just like the nerfherder deserved.
Off she went.
Unwanted, unloved…
Well.
She would never forget the way Mitaka had looked at her through his first story window as the car backed out of the driveway. It was… He had become the closest friend she'd ever had in two years in the foster system. He was almost like… well, almost like family.
But she refused to dwell on it. She wrapped the feelings, the memories, up carefully, and then locked them up deep inside of her hardened heart where no one could find them―where no one could take them from her like everything else she'd ever had.
It was the only way to survive.
The next time she saw him, she was thirteen. He had to be, what, seventeen by now? She wasn't sure. Back then it had been rather low on her list of priorities to learn those sorts of things about her new friend. There were much more important things to learn, like who he was inside, what kind of person he was.
Rey had become hard and insular. At least, she appeared that way to everyone else. She needed to protect what she was on the inside, or else risk being ripped open and ruined, made jaded and mean like nearly everyone else in the system. Like the people she fought, time and time again. She refused to be like them, but it led to her never lasting long in any one place.
It was worth it. She didn't need anyone else. She was happy with being by herself, and had become so inured to being unwanted that it was no more than a passing thought to her anymore.
No, she didn't want to become what she hated. She didn't want that. And she knew Mitaka didn't either. It was what had drawn them together in the first place, their friendship a bastion against the loneliness of living amongst people who would never be anything more than strangers.
She was glad to see he hadn't changed; glad to see that he hadn't become like nearly every one of her so-called 'siblings'. He had kept that softness, that gentleness about him, even if it made him a target.
Yet there was a certain strength in that, also, Rey admitted. It took strength to stay the same, even when all it garnered you were beatings and ridicule. He simply ignored it all, carrying on with his life without giving anyone else the time of day. He just picked himself up and moved on, refusing to be bogged down in the pettiness of it all.
Rey couldn't help but admire him.
He might have ignored everyone else, but Mitaka made time for her. He'd been so pleased to see her that first day she'd arrived at her new home, possessions barely filling a single duffel bag. They immediately fell back into their previous pattern, as if years hadn't passed, and as if they hadn't only spent just over three weeks together.
It was as if nothing had changed, but also as if everything had changed.
He told her about school, about how he had been approached by the military to work communications for them, and he told her how, with lowered voice and a wary glance around, he suspected that they wanted him for covert, special operations.
Rey was ecstatic for him, but worried. Worried that a career like that would eat him alive. She couldn't stand to see this vibrant, brilliant young man, with so much promise, be taken in and spat out, made into an automaton―or worse, ruined completely. She might be young, but she already knew how the worst of the world worked.
She said as much, and Mitaka looked at her in that way that he always did: as a peer, not as someone years younger. He had never treated her like a child. "I'll be okay, Rey. I promise. I'm stronger than you know."
She blinked at him and then nodded. "You're right." She smiled softly. "I'm happy for you."
Three months later, he was gone. He'd never once mentioned that his birthday―and thus aging out of the system―was coming up. One day he was there, the next he wasn't, his room spotless and empty.
Rey supposed it was better that way.
It wasn't until later, when she returned to her room, tears repressed so tightly that her throat hurt, that she saw that he hadn't left her with nothing. He had, in fact, left her something to remember him by―a retractable quarterstaff of lightweight metal that must have cost him too much. Too much for a nobody like her. Yet she had no way of giving it back, and so she would cherish it and her memories of him. She would practice with it every day so that his gift would not go to waste.
And it wouldn't. She was good at using a staff, and would only get better. She had a passion and a gift for it, and had roped Mitaka into being her sparring partner for the last two months, both of them using lengths of sturdy cane to hone her skills.
It had been something she'd picked up in her fourteenth home. She'd since lost count.
But she would always remember this home, because of him. She'd always remember him.
Because he cared, where no one else did.
She tried to convince herself that she'd opened her shop near the military base outside of town because it was the right choice to make for her growing business. The military personnel on base needed mechanics just as much as the general population, and it wasn't like they could take their personal vehicles to the shops on base, already overwhelmed with military vehicles and short on staff from budget cuts.
It was the right thing to do, but she also knew, deep down, that she was here for more than the money to get her through her Master's in mechanical engineering.
She was here with the hope of seeing him.
He was here. She knew he was. She'd seen his name in the paper over a year ago, in an article about an up-and-coming young officer by the name of… Mux? Hex? Whatever.
But him―he had been mentioned, and Rey's breath had hitched. She was looking to open a shop in the following months anyway, her plans already in motion. A simple change of venue wasn't that unusual… was it?
Yet she hadn't seen him. Not yet.
It wasn't like she could go looking for him, either. She didn't even know his phone number, and she couldn't find it anywhere online or from anyone she asked who might know him on base. But they all knew of him. He was going places, they said, and everyone spoke exceedingly well of him. That made Rey happy.
But she'd been here for five months, her eyes always scanning the cars that passed her shop on the way to the base's entry checkpoint. She was getting antsy, almost enough to risk the new general's wrath by stealing onto the base in the middle of―
"Rey?"
She froze.
It… it couldn't be.
She had nearly given up hope.
Her heart thudding so loudly in her chest that she could hear it, and very little else, she turned around slowly, eyes clenched shut,
It couldn't be real, and the longer she kept her eyes closed, the longer she could live without facing the reality that she would never see him again. She had resigned herself to as much.
She'd accepted that all she would have were her memories and the sole, tangible gift he had left her with over seven years ago. She would have those, and the articles that mentioned him and his career through the years.
She heard footsteps coming closer, the firm tread of military boots upon the concrete of her shop floor.
Was he really here?
"Rey?"
It was definitely his voice, soft and tentative, yet with an undertone of steel that was new―and yet fit him oh so well.
Her eyes flew open, and she tightened her greasy hands into fists to stop herself from reaching out to touch him―his uniform was spotless, and he looked like he belonged for the first time in his life. He looked comfortable and sure of himself.
"Mitaka," she whispered. The smile she had been repressing slowly took over her features, and she saw an answering one spread across his. He reached out and, before she could protest, gathered her into his arms in an all-encompassing hug. All she could get out was a squeak before her dirty face was pressed against the clean fabric covering his solid chest.
"I missed you," he said into her hair.
Rey, who had held herself together for so long, ever since she'd last seen him those many years ago, felt something crack within her.
"I missed you, too," she admitted, her voice muffled against him. But she knew he'd heard her when he tightened his grip around her smaller frame.
She didn't know how long they stood there, together, in silence, but she did know it was everything she needed―everything she had needed for a long time.