Dum vita est, spes est: "while there is life, there is hope"

"Okay, now are you sure you want to do this by yourself?" Finn asked for the third time as they stepped into the diner. "We can come with you, if you want."

"No, I should… I should do this on my own." Rey nodded, as if trying to convince herself.

"You got this, kid." Poe reassured her from the other side.

"Yeah. I'll be fine." Rey attempted a grin, then stopped in her tracks. "Oh my God, is that them?"

The boys looked over, then peered at the photo in the folder Rey brought with her.

"I think so." Poe agreed, a hint of excitement creeping into his voice. "You're finally going to meet them!"

"I am!" Rey repeated with a smile, then her eyes widened. "Oh my God, I am. Oh my God. What if this is a terrible idea? This is a terrible idea. I should just go home, right? I should go home. Why did I want to do this? I don't want to do this. What if they're awful? What if-"

Finn took her by the shoulders, "Peanut, breathe," he commanded, and waited until she took a long breath in, and then out.

"Okay, one more time."

She closed her eyes, then breathed out, then in.

"Alright, now look at me." She opened her eyes to stare into his dark ones as she gripped his hand tightly. "From the day I met you, you've dreamed about finding your parents. And I don't know how this meeting is going to go,"

He tapped her shoulder as her eyes drifted to the couple at the table. "Hey, hey, but I do know this - if you walk away now, if you leave before you meet them, you will regret for the rest of your life."

Taking a breath himself, Finn leaned towards her and said softly, "I know you're scared."

She bit her lip as she glanced up at him, seeking reassurance.

"I don't have any memories of my parents, or the car accident, and if I could meet them, after all this time, I'd be scared too. But I want you to remember, no matter what," he made sure to look her in the eyes before he finished, "you are not alone. You have family. You have us."

Poe put his hand on her arm and nodded as Rey pulled them both into a tight hug.

"You're right." She told him, then straightened her shoulders. "Okay. I can do this."

"Yes, you can. And if you need us, we'll be right over there," Poe pointed to an open table across the way. "Just wave, or wink, or nod, or anything, and we'll come running."

Rey gave them both a grateful smile, then let out another calming breath before walking over to the booth with the dark-haired couple.

"Hi." She said, voice only betraying a bit of nervousness. "Um… I'm Rey."

The woman on the end stood, with wide, hopeful emerald eyes, surprising Rey with how short she was. For some reason, Rey thought she'd be taller.

"Rey." She repeated, also with a British accent, then smiled tentatively and shook her hand. "Um…" she swallowed, and Rey felt relieved that she wasn't the only one with anxiety. "I'm Jyn. Jyn Erso-Andor."

The man stood as well, his dark beard and kind eyes somehow familiar to her. "Cassian Andor," he introduced himself with a nod. "Please, sit."

"Thanks," Rey murmured, then slid into the bench on the opposite side.

Their server arrived with a cheerful greeting, "Hey, folks, how we doing? Oh, hiya Rey, good to see you. What can I get everyone?"

"Hey Lu. Chai latte for me, please."

"Two espressos, please." Jyn ordered, then fidgeted until Cassian put his hand on top of hers.

"So, you are a regular here?" He asked in an accented, musical tone.

Rey was happy for the small talk. "Yeah, um, it's… it's close to my apartment, plus it's on the way to campus too, so that's nice."

"You're in law school, right?" Jyn asked. "The DSS didn't give us many details."

"Uh, yeah." Rey nodded as Lu brought their drinks over. "I'm studying to go into Family Law." Suddenly realizing that her standard explanation of how broken the foster system is might not be the most appropriate at this moment, she quickly replaced it with, "But I'm still a first year, so I'm taking the same classes as everyone else."

They sat in awkward silence for a moment, then Jyn leaned forward. "I'm sure you must have a thousand questions for us."

"Oh, well, the folder had a lot of information, so that was helpful." Rey stirred her chai, then tilted her head in slight curiosity, "Is it true you were DEA agents?"

Cassian grinned. "I was the DEA agent. She was my CI."

"Hey, just because I didn't jump at working for the man doesn't mean I'm a second-class citizen," Jyn replied with an eyeroll, then explained to Rey, "But yes, we both worked for the agency."

"She just needed a little push." Cassian added with an accompanying hand gesture.

Jyn narrowed her eyes. "More like a little extortion."

Despite their attempts at levity, Rey could sense their apprehension as they kept sending little glances of uncertainty her way.

"I know that it sounds a bit… fanciful," Jyn told her, eyes worried. "But it's true."

"Please, we are here for you. Ask us anything." Cassian told her, clearly more experienced in hiding his emotions than his wife.

Rey stared at her drink, overwhelmed by all of the questions she had imagined ever asking her parents, then settled on the one that had plagued her every night. The simplest, most complicated one.

"What happened?"

Cassian and Jyn glanced at each other, eyes flickering back and forth in a silent conversation, then Cassian sighed and looked at Rey, clearly designated as the story-teller.

"We had been working for the agency for a few years when we were asked to take on an assignment in Mexico. They had gotten word of a new drug in production, one more dangerous than anything on the street, being made somewhere out in the desert. They called it pícaro, and there were already rumors that the Ameddas cartel, which was the largest drug trafficking organization we had ever seen, was getting ready to flood the market in both Mexico and the US as soon as it was ready to go."

Jyn added, "There were rumors that the Ameddas had help from someone in the States, someone high up with governmental access, but no one could prove anything."

"So we went undercover," Cassian continued. "We were there for almost a year, serving as halcones, the lowest level in the cartel, and found nothing. They kept the drugs too well hidden, well guarded."

"Until I intercepted a call from one of the lieutenants of the Ameddas calling..." Jyn looked around, then leaned forward and whispered, "Orsen Krennic, the Director of Advanced Weapons Research."

Rey's eyes widened. "As in Callan Krennic's grandfather?"

Cassian nodded. "The call linked the cartel directly to Krennic, and to Admiral Tarkin, one of the highest ranking leaders in the military. We recorded the call and sent it to my boss, Draven, who sent it to his superiors."

Jyn narrowed her eyes and sneered into her coffee, "And that's when we got disavowed."

"Disavowed?" Rey repeated.

"It's the way spies get fired, except instead of a severance package, they leave you out in the cold and cut off all contact." Jyn explained resentfully as Cassian shot her a look.

"Krennic had people within our organization," he said, more to Jyn than Rey, with the weariness of a familiar argument. "We gave them everything we were supposed to, and technically we were going against protocol."

Jyn looked at Rey with hard, jade eyes. "Technically, we were disavowed because our relationship wasn't 'sanctioned'," she spat out the word bitterly. "But at the same time, the recording of the call disappeared, all of the evidence we had gathered was lost, and Bodhi, the last person of our support team who still cared, told us that the Ameddas cartel had somehow gotten our faces, and our names. Our real names."

Her gaze suddenly softened, and she offered a tentative smile. "And that's when we found out I was pregnant with you."

Rey blinked and sat back, still trying to process all of the information that was washing over her.

Cassian took up the thread of the story. "We had no one, nowhere to turn. We could not go home, but we had to leave. So we found a small town, close to the border, and hid there."

Jyn pulled out her wallet, then slid over a worn picture of a small baby, wrapped in a rough, bright blanket. "That's where you were born. Where we raised you. For three and a half years, we stayed there, thinking… hoping we were safe."

"Until they found us." Cassian said, jaw clenching in anger.

"They burned the whole town, and we barely made it out with our lives. The only reason we survived at all was because our neighbors, Baze and Chirrut, helped us escape." Jyn touched Cassian's arm subconsciously at the same time he reached for her hand. Rey observed them wordlessly, both awed and slightly envious of how in sync they were.

"Once we were out of danger, we knew…" Jyn bit her lip and closed her eyes for a moment.

"We knew the risks of our job," Cassian continued. "We signed up for them. But you didn't."

As careful as Cassian was, Rey could still see the cracks of pain in his mask. "We had to make sure you were safe. We had to protect you."

"We had one source left in the agency, someone who could take you across the border without raising suspicions."

Rey had been haunted her whole life by the story of how she was abandoned, left at a fire station by a tall, red-headed man with nothing more than a curt, "This needs a new home. It's name is Rey. I've never understood why."

The social workers had gossiped about it in whispers, the other children had shouted it at her with shoves and kicks. "Not even a person! Just an 'it'!"

"Who… took me?" She asked softly.

"My friend Kay, an analyst from the agency. He's a bit odd, but I trust him with my life. I wouldn't have trusted him with yours, otherwise." Cassian told her, picking up the tension in her voice.

"What's he look like?"

Jyn shrugged. "Ginger. Abnormally tall. Blue eyes."

Cassian watched Rey fidget for a moment, then asked softly, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. It's just..." Rey glanced up for a brief smile as Lu brought her another chai latte. "I thought, for a while… that he might have been my father."

His dark eyes studied her, eyebrows furrowing. "Whatever he said, it's not because he didn't care about you. Kay's not good at being…"

"Human?" Jyn supplied, which earned her a look from Cassian.

"Around people." Cassian finished pointedly. "He's not good at being around people."

Pushing aside the mix of relief and trepidation she still felt, Rey focused on the last portion of the untold story. "So, after you… after I went into the system, what happened? What did you do?"

"The only thing we could do - we hid. We had one copy of the recording left, but there was no one we could trust with it. But then, we heard of someone who might listen to us. Someone in the government who wasn't afraid to stand up to Krennic, to Tarkin."

Rey leaned forward, curiosity overtaking her. "Who?"

Jyn came closer, then whispered with in an awed voice, "Senator Organa."

"Leia?" Rey repeated in shock.

Cassian blinked in surprise. "You know her?"

"Yeah! She's…" What? Her sort of ex's mother? "Yeah, I know her. Wait, I heard something about her taking down a drug cartel at the start of her career. Was that...?"

Cassian and Jyn nodded. "She was the only one who believed us, who tried to help us. She risked her career, and probably her life, to get the information we had out into the open. But it worked! She took down Krennic, Tarkin, and the Amaddas drug cartel, all in one fell swoop."

Their memories of victory quickly faded as they both glanced at Rey.

"That's when we started looking for you," Jyn told her, green eyes heavy with regret. "But we couldn't… we had no proof, no records, no idea where you were. All we could do was fill out paperwork."

Cassian took Jyn's hand as he added, "We looked everywhere we could think of. I think we sent petitions to every state at one point."

Jyn reached across to touch Rey's arm. "We always loved you. We only ever wanted you to be safe."

Somehow, despite the fact that they were giving Rey the answers she had always dreamed of (They loved her. They didn't want to give her up. She wasn't alone. They had been trying to find her for years), every reassurance only increased her anxiety.

It was too good to be true, whispered the small insidious voice that grew louder after every bad foster home. It's just a story they're telling you. A ridiculous story! They aren't your family. You don't have one.

You're all alone.

They're lying to you.

You don't deserve a family, not with people who love each other, who love you.

You don't deserve any of it.

She pulled her hand away from Jyn's and stood, digging through her bag to hide her face, to hide her fear, to hide her desperate hope. "I'm so sorry, I… Thank you for coming all this way. I… it was good to… I have to go. I have… something I need to-"

Cassian stood smoothly, emotional mask in place. "We understand," he told her, his grip on his wife's shoulder the only sign he wasn't as calm as he sounded. "This is a lot to process. We are in town a few more days, so should you need anything…"

Rey gingerly took the card he offered, staring at the official DEA seal before shoving it (and her rising optimism that he was telling the truth) roughly into her bag. "I… Thank you. I will."

As Jyn pressed her lips together to conceal her pain, she rose to her feet and attempted a smile. "It was wonderful to see you, Rey."

Nodding, Rey started to extend her hand, then gave in to the part of her that wanted this to be real, wanted them to really be her family, and stepped forward into Jyn's embrace.

Nearly overwhelmed by the amount of information and emotions she had encountered in the last few hours, Rey let out a long sigh into Jyn's shoulder, then froze.

Scents of vanilla and lavender filled her nose, and she was suddenly transported to somewhere warm, with millions of stars sparkling in the darky sky above them.

"You are my starshine, my only starshine. You make me happy, when days are gray," a sweet, slightly off key song echoed in her ear as she felt the ghost of a kiss on her forehead. "I love you so much, starshine."

Her fingers traced rough, crystalline edges, connected by soft string to the woman behind her as she clutched the jewel to her chest. "Love you too, Mummy!"

"Mi alma! Mija!" It was sunny now, with the hum of a busy market in the background. "Hay guayabas!" Sweet fruit burst onto her tongue as she paused to spit out the seeds.

A laughing voice teased, "Cuidado, mijita! You almost got me with that one." Hands picked her up and tossed her into the air as she screamed with delight, pretending to fly.

"Higher, Papa, higher!"

"Rey?" She heard the first voice again, then opened her eyes to see Jyn staring at her in concern. "Are you alright?"

"Do... do you have a necklace?" She asked quietly, unsure if those were dreams, or memories, or wishes born out of decades of longing.

Jyn blinked, then pulled out an opaque crystal hanging by a soft cord. "How did you know I was wearing a necklace?"

Wordlessly shaking her head, Rey stared at the jewel Jyn placed in her palm.

"It's a kyber crystal," she told Rey as it caught rainbows from the sunlight. "My mother gave it me, and you always loved playing with it as a baby. I wanted to give it to you, but we thought it would make it too easy for them to…"

Rey ran her fingers over the pendant, unsettled at how familiar the cracks and grooves felt, at how it seemed to contain Jyn's voice, her warmth, her worry. Her love.

Ever so slowly, Rey raised her eyes from the shining crystal to Jyn's worried expression.

"Mummy?" she breathed, so frightened that she was wrong, that everything being offered to her would somehow disappear if she reached for it.

Jyn's eyes filled with tears as she gently cupped Rey's cheek.

"Hello, starshine," she whispered back.

Turning haltingly to Cassian, Rey let out a shaking breath. "Papa?"

Relief and love washed over his face as he gave her a soft smile. "Te extrañe, mija."

Bursting into loud, shaking sobs, Rey clung to Jyn as Cassian held both of them in his arms, all of them surrounded by the pain of waiting, of longing, of desperate, wild hopes draining away to leave behind giddy, tearful, disbelieving joy.

"Rey?" Finn's cautious voice called out her name, and she looked up to see him and Poe standing awkwardly nearby, unsure whether or not they should intervene.

"Guys!" Rey shouted, launching herself across the way to hug both of them tightly. "I'm so glad you're here," she told them as they exchanged confused looks.

Throwing out her arm in a wide, carelessly happy gesture, she announced, "Guys, these are…" Rey paused to take a breath, to savor the words that had always hung just out of reach, then finished with only a slight waver in her voice, "my parents."

Jyn and Cassian nodded and gave their names as Rey introduced them. "This is Poe, one of my best friends."

Looking both surprised and touched by her words, Poe smiled and shook their hands.

"And this is my brother, Finn," she offered almostly shyly, and there was a moment of silence before Finn beamed and pulled them into a surprised hug.

"It is so wonderful to finally meet you both," he told them as Rey suddenly needed to wipe more tears away.

Cassian invited the boys to join them, and Lu brought over another round of coffees and beignets for the table while everyone asked questions and laughed and talked.

"You were the cutest baby!" Finn cooed as he looked at the picture. "Look at your little nose!"

"According to my father, it's from his side of the family and he apologizes," Jyn smiled, then met Rey's look of wonder.

"I have a grandfather?"

"And a grandmother! Galen and Lyra. They're both university professors out East, and they'll be over the moon to hear you're in Takodana Law School. He teaches renewable energy courses, and she's a romantic literature professor."

Rey blinked, then repeated, "I have grandparents." Glancing up at Poe with a wide grin, she bumped his shoulder and shouted, "I have grandparents!"

"And a last name! The post office will be thrilled," he winked.

"I do have a last name!" She smiled, then tried it out softly, "Rey Andor."

She looked up in time to see both Cassian and Jyn fight back tears, then had a sudden thought. "Wait, do I have a middle name?"

They nodded at the same time, then Cassian spoke in a gentle, loving tone. "Esperanza."

"Esperanza," Rey said, the accented name flowing easily off her tongue.

Finn tilted his head. "My Spanish isn't as good as it should be. What's it mean?"

Jyn smiled, eyes overbright, then told them, "Hope."

The word struck true to Rey's heart, encapsulating the thread that kept her going, despite the loneliness, the doubt, the pain, the fear, there was always that small, sometimes fading, light that she could cling to. That no matter how broken the world is, how dark it got, she could have faith in others. In herself.

"Hope was all we had for so long," Cassian said, Jyn leaning against him as they smiled at Rey.

"We had almost given up," Jyn continued, "until that young man called."

Rey, who knew that the DSS office was run primarily by women and a few men in their fifties, snapped her head up and stared at Finn, who looked equally startled.

"What young man?"