Rey washed her face in the sink, marveling at the effortless way the tap delivered water at the wave of a hand. She wondered what life would have been like on Jakku with that kind of luxury. So much of her time had been spent in the pursuit of obtaining an adequate amount of the liquid. The rest of her time had been spent trying to get food. What did people do with their time if those two things were readily available?
"You okay?" Finn's voice broke into her reverie from his bunk.
"Yes. I was just...thinking."
He sighed.
"I wish they'd just come and get us already," he said. "I hate waiting."
As though his words had summoned it, there was a knock on the door. Rey looked at Finn, who seemed just as nonplussed at how to answer a knock on a cell door.
"Come in," he said at last. The door slid open, revealing the bad-tempered guard again.
"Time to go get processed," she said. "You first." She pointed at Finn, who looked momentarily cowed. Then he squared his shoulders and rose from his bunk, throwing Rey a small, reassuring smile as he headed for the door. Rey didn't like being separated from him. She'd had a good first impression of Leia, for whatever that was worth, but Finn was the only person she had trust in on this ship. Separated, they were both weaker.
She waited in the room for what seemed like forever before another knock came. She leapt to her feet and waited. Eventually, the door slid open to reveal a different guard.
"Where's Finn?" she demanded.
"He's still being evaluated. Now it's your turn."
Rey followed him warily, keeping one hand on her staff as she skulked through the door, glancing up and down the hall to ensure there were no surprises waiting for her there. But he was alone, and he waited for her to catch up before he led her through the dimly lit corridor.
"What does 'processing' entail, exactly?" she asked.
"You'll see shortly," he said. He didn't seem as bad-tempered as the other guard, so Rey decided to push him a bit.
"How did you become part of the Resistance?" she asked. She noticed a hesitation in his next step.
"I was born into it," he said. "My father followed the General from when he was a young man."
"What did he do for the Rebellion?" Rey asked, interested.
"He died for it," the guard said shortly. Rey decided to abandon her questioning for the time being.
They reached a small room, which Rey was loath to enter. Seeing that she had little choice in the matter, she stepped in, reassured by the fact that no one had taken her weapons from her yet. The guard closed the door behind her, which she only noticed in her periphery because she had realized that there was another person in the room with her.
He was seated in the far corner on a metal chair that appeared to be bolted to the floor, his face completely without expression, his hair in such a long red braid that it rested on his shoulder. His eyes were an inhuman shade of lavender, but he was otherwise more or less human-shaped. There was an odd sense of flexibility and fragility about him, though Rey wasn't sure what was giving her that impression. She reached down to grip the cold haft of her staff.
"Who are you?" Rey demanded. He didn't answer, didn't even move. She didn't want to move any closer. Her sense of the Force tangled around him in a way she'd never encountered before.
"Well, get on with it, then," she challenged. Still he didn't move. Rey considered braining him with the staff just to get some kind of reaction from him, but she suspected General Leia might not like that very much. She glanced around the small room. Like her cell, there was no decoration to speak of. Just the man and the chair. Not even another chair for her.
"Where is Finn?" she demanded of him too, just for good measure, but he seemed no more inclined to answer her than the guard had been. Her stomach twisted with concern despite the fact that she'd been permitted to keep her weapons. Something was wrong.
"I want to leave," she informed him, turning to the door. At least, she tried to turn to the door. In reality, she only thought about the action, and that's where it stopped, as though a wall had suddenly popped into existence between her mind and her body.
Rey tried very hard not to immediately launch into panic. Instead, she remembered when she'd struggled with Kylo Ren. All she had to do was go on the offensive, find his weakness. She could free herself; she just had to figure out how.
She turned her attention inward, but immediately returned it to the room as the man rose and approached her. He came face to face with her, his piercing eyes staring intently into hers. And then she felt him reach into her mind as though no barrier existed at all.
Her entire being arrowed towards the foreign touch in her mind, feeling helpless revulsion as he combed through her thoughts, sifting through them as Rey had once sorted through the objects she'd scavenged, measuring worth and discarding that which was unsatisfactory. She threw herself at him, but he repelled her without any apparent effort, continuing his work.
Rey screamed silently, unable to figure out how to gain any leverage against him to rid her mind of his unwelcome presence. Every secret she'd ever had was laid bare, and as she watched, he started sorting through her memories of Kylo Ren. These he seemed to find more interesting than what he'd been looking through before, for his perusal slowed as he examined each memory in turn. Rey cast herself out widely, feeling the Force just outside her grasp. That was it! He'd blocked her from using the Force somehow, so she had no weapon to use against him.
Rey subsided, knowing now that she had no way of fighting the man, hovering beside him as he methodically reviewed her thoughts and memories. When at last he seemed satisfied, he withdrew from her mind, and Rey could have sobbed with relief. But she'd be damned if she showed him a modicum of weakness..
He didn't release his hold on her, since he evidently saw the thought she'd had that she would bash him across the skull with her staff as soon as he did so, but the guard entered the room as though he'd been somehow bidden.
"You may wish to restrain her for the time being," the interrogator suggested, his voice oddly soft. "She is...upset."
Rey wanted to tell him precisely how upset she was, but he didn't release his complete hold on her until the guard had her wrists cuffed before her and had relieved her of both staff and lightsaber. Rey tallied this fresh insult to the interrogator's tab and glared at him.
"Don't ever...don't you ever do that again!" she snarled, knowing it was pointless but unable to stop herself.
"What I have discovered will only be told to the General, in the strictest confidence," he told her, as though that was somehow reassuring.
"Never, ever again," Rey repeated, just in case he'd missed it.
"I only follow the General's orders," he told her, and returned to his chair. Rey was half-dragged from the room, wanting more than anything to get hold of the staff once more.
"Easy," the guard said, closing the door behind them. "You passed the test. Though I'd really like to see you calmer before I release you."
"You let him do that to you too?" Rey demanded. "Did everyone here go through that?"
"Not that. Only people who might be a danger to the Rebels have to be interrogated that way."
"That was..." Rey shuddered. "It was horrible."
"But he's cleared you. The General trusts his word absolutely. You can join the Resistance now."
Rey looked at him in disbelief.
"Right now that is the very last thing on my mind," she snapped. "Ask that...that thing. He saw everything I thought."
"He's not so bad once you get to know him," the guard commented. "A little weird. But that's understandable."
Rey didn't dignify this with a response. What kind of General would keep a creature like that on her staff?
She was led to a small room, where she was offered some delicious-smelling food. Her pride told her to let the food rot, but her stomach knew that food was food, and survival trumped pride every time. Rey certainly didn't accept the offering with gratitude, however. After inspecting it carefully, she jammed the food into her mouth without paying attention to the flavor, eyeing the guard and the door alternately.
When she'd finished everything on her plate, and it seemed apparent that she would not be offered more, she rose and faced the guard, who was still holding her weapons.
"Give back my staff and saber, or I will take them back," she informed him. He opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment, the door opened to reveal the General in all of her stately splendor standing there, taking in the situation with a raised eyebrow.
"You may wait outside," she informed the guard. "I wish to speak with Rey alone."
"Er, she's...annoyed at the moment," the guard told her, eyeing Rey's shackled wrists.
"Take those off of her before you go," Leia ordered, and the guard sighed heavily but obeyed. When he'd gone, Leia seated herself at the small table across from Rey, gesturing for Rey to sit opposite her. Rey debated fiercely with herself, rubbing her wrists, but finally, warily, sat.
"I understand you took exception to my techniques of weeding through prospective recruits," she said mildly.
"He...that was not..." She took a moment to force her breathing into a calmer pattern. "You didn't have to do that. I know you can sense if I'm telling the truth or not."
"That was not the point," Leia said. "Also, picking and choosing what truth to speak can conceal lies."
"What was the point, then?" Rey demanded.
"To see if you could hold up against a mental onslaught with the Force," Leia replied.
"Well, I couldn't. He cut through my defenses as though they weren't there at all."
"You just haven't learned how, yet. Your 'training' has been very limited, evidently."
Rey squarely met the older woman's gaze.
"Your son is the only one who has bothered to teach me anything. Before he arrived on Jakku, I didn't even realize the Force existed."
"We will provide you with training," Leia said, seemingly unfazed by Rey's accusatory tone. "And I am certain, knowing my son, that he had tested you much the same as I did."
Rey couldn't argue this, as much as she would have liked to.
"So what now? You scrape through the insides of my mind, and I'm supposed to ignore it?"
"As I told you, it was a test to see how strong you were. And you passed with flying colors."
"What does that mean, then?" Rey asked, her eyes narrowed.
"It means that you are a prime candidate for our targeted efforts to attack the Supreme Leader using the Force," Leia said, folding her hands together on the table top. Rey blinked.
"I can use the Force, but there must be someone who is stronger," she said slowly. "Someone more...qualified."
"The Jedi once recruited children to train to use the Force," Leia said. "Anyone older than a certain age would be rejected for training. That practice, however, has become obsolete. We've realized that cuts a great deal of talented Force users out of the training program. And frankly, we're desperate."
This made infinitely more sense to Rey.
"So I'm to be trained, then. When do I start?"
Leia laughed.
"As soon as possible. Finn is being issued fresh clothing and is washing up at the moment. When you have done the same, I will have Han Solo take you to my brother, Luke. He will take over your training."
"Was that how Snoke uses the Force?" Rey asked suddenly. "Cutting into your mind like that?"
"It's one of the ways, yes," Leia replied, her tone suddenly weary. "There is no match for him. Though there are ways of resisting that kind of attack."
"I want to learn them as soon as possible," Rey said.
"You will. But first you may freshen up. And of course, your weapons will be returned to you."
"Thank you," Rey said, a bit stiffly. She didn't trust this General, and she certainly didn't like what she'd done, but Rey could understand her reasoning. Rey all but snatched the weapons from the guard as they were offered to her, reattaching them to her person and feeling the part of her that had been screaming about her vulnerability significantly lessen in intensity.
Rey was led to the miraculously hot showers, where she spent more time than she strictly needed to, and then she eyed the stiff-looking issued clothing before donning her old garb from Jakku. It might not be clean or new, but it was as much a part of her as her staff, and it would be coming with her wherever she was headed. However, she grabbed the new clothing for later examination in regards to how it might be cut up and repurposed.
She was reunited with Finn, which gave her more of a sense of relief than she was fully prepared for. She told him what her interrogation had been like, and he nodded.
"It was weird...I could feel him rummaging around in my head, but I don't think it bothered me as much as it sounds like it bothered you," he said. "I guess I'm used to not even having my thoughts totally private. We were monitored so much we were afraid to even think about certain things."
Rey shook her head slowly, trying and failing to imagine what that must have been like.
"If you're all set, let's head over to the training hall," the guard interjected. "I can introduce you to some of the Rebels on-base."
"What's your name?" Rey asked, caring about the answer now that she wasn't feeling quite so hostile towards him.
"I'm Darret," he said.
"This is Finn, and I'm Rey," Rey informed him, as though he didn't likely know that already. He nodded and held out a hand. Rey eyed it suspiciously. She had thawed towards him, but that didn't mean that all was forgiven. Finn, however, accepted the gesture.
Niceties more or less observed, they headed for the training hall. Inside, people from a wider array of species than Rey might have guessed even existed in the galaxy were sparring with one another in myriad ways.
"Go ahead, introduce yourselves, try out new weapons. It's just as important to know what you're not naturally good at as it is what you are, so you know where you need to practice," Darret said. Rey wanted to try everything, her hungry eyes going from one station to another. Finn, however, was looking with yearning at the blaster range, so she followed him over to where a familiar figure was helping two others with their shooting technique.
Poe Dameron looked up from the young man whose grip on the blaster he was adjusting minutely. He threw them both a wink and returned his attention to the boy.
"Now, make sure your trigger squeeze is steady," he said. "And believe it or not, you can actually aim with these things. So many people count on the plasma reaching its target without taking the time to get a good sight picture, but believe me, it's worth it to take that extra moment. That's where the First Order goes wrong. It doesn't teach its Storm Troopers to actually look down their sights."
Rey glanced over to Finn to see how he was taking this insult, but she found that he was grinning.
"Can I have a turn?" he asked. Poe's smile widened as he handed Finn a blaster.
"Sure. Just try not to missby too large a margin and blow a hole in the bunker. The General doesn't like it when we do that."
"No promises," Finn said, glancing over the blaster before raising it towards the target downrange. Rey cocked her head to one side, looking from Poe to Finn and back again.
Finn fired, and the exact center of the target became a smoking hole. Poe whistled.
"Do it again," he said, and Finn obliged, this time striking the spot that would have been the forehead of the simple target.
"See how he waits until he gets the shot he wants?" Poe remarked to his students. "And that trigger press was perfect. I want you all to try doing exactly that when it's your turn to shoot again."
Finn offered the blaster to Poe, and Poe accepted it back with an admiring smile. "You're a sniper, I can tell. Gotta get you a long gun."
Finn shrugged, but Rey could tell that he was pleased with the praise.
"You're not wrong about the Storm Troopers," he said. "When I was in training, I just figured out that I should take my time instead of just throwing shots at my target because someone's screaming at me to do so."
"Glad to have you on our side now, for sure," Poe said, and Finn blushed. Rey looked again from one to the other and tried to keep a smile from slipping onto her face.
"Could I have a go?" she asked. "I've never fired a blaster before."
Poe took another weapon from the rack and handed it carefully to her.
"Keep that finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot," he told her.
"Try standing with one foot slightly back. You look off-balance like that," Finn added, eyeing her critically as she pointed the blaster down-range. She adjusted her stance, peering through the sights.
"Get the ball of the sights between the two rectangles," Poe instructed. "Once it's right there, squeeze that trigger back nice and smooth."
Rey obliged, and the shot landed off to the bottom left of where she'd aimed it. Poe nodded at her.
"Nice shot!" Finn said, looking genuinely excited.
"I missed," Rey said, in case he hadn't noticed that.
"But not by much! It takes practice."
Rey shrugged and handed the blaster to the next person to try, awaiting her turn to fire again. As she waited, she noticed that Finn and Poe had fallen into a tag-team style of instruction with her fellow students. She felt a twinge of foreboding. What if Finn wanted to spend more time with Poe than he did with her?
Then you will accept that he wants to do that and stop crying about it like an abandoned luggabeast, Rey told herself sharply. Being around people had begun making her soft, and she didn't like it. She'd fought to keep herself above becoming too dependent on other beings for companionship for this exact reason. It was another vulnerability that she had refused to have.
Until now.
Rey took a few more shots, improving a bit, and when she found that Finn was engrossed in a conversation with Poe about the comparative merits and drawbacks of a method of shooting that Rey had never heard of, she decided to quietly slip off to where two combatants were sparring with their quarter-staffs.
This was much more comfortable ground with her, and she watched with avid interest as they struck again and again, their movements fluid and practiced. One of them, a woman with her sleek black hair bound in a neat bun, noticed her watching.
"Want to try?" she asked, offering her staff. "I could use a break anyhow."
Rey carefully leaned her own staff against the wall and accepted the lighter wooden one, testing its balance.
"My name's Rose," the woman said, watching Rey swing the staff experimentally.
"I'm Rey," Rey replied.
"Nice to meet you, Rey. I hope you're good enough with that staff to thrash my older sister. She's been beating me at weapons since we were kids."
"That's true," the other woman agreed, eyeing Rey carefully. "I'm Paige."
"Watch out for her off-hand strikes; they're nasty," Rose advised, face avid.
Rey and Paige delivered a few questing strikes, which the other was easily able to repel. Rey was working hard to restrain herself. Ordinarily, she'd have launched herself at her opponent, aggression and surprise often winning her the upper hand in real fights. But unlike in those fights, she didn't want to actually crack Paige's skull open. So she mainly operated on the defensive as Paige attacked, each strike growing bolder and more powerful as she gained knowledge of Rey's blocking skills.
"I know you can hit," Paige said at last. "Come on. I can take it."
"She can take it!" Rose agreed gleefully.
Rey sucked in a deep breath and readjusted her mindset. Paige was an opponent, but not a true enemy. She didn't want her dead, just disarmed.
When Paige struck next, Rey hit the staff so hard that it caused Paige to pause for a fraction of a second in surprise. In that fraction of a second, Rey rapped the back end of her staff squarely against Paige's shin. Paige yipped in pain, taking a step to take the weight off that leg. And in that moment, Rey rushed in close, striking her squarely shoulder-to-shoulder, throwing the other woman violently to the ground. As the breath was struck from Paige's body, Rey snaked forward the end of her staff, stopping it with precise control an inch from Paige's right eye.
Rose broke out in applause, and Rey whipped the staff aside and offered Paige her hand, lifting her back to her feet.
"I'm sorry, I probably hit you harder than I should have," Rey said.
"That was...a very interesting way of fighting," Paige commented, still coughing air back into her lungs.
"She kicked your ass!" Rose supplied, grinning widely.
"Pretty thoroughly," Paige agreed, not seeming upset by that one bit. "I'm guessing you've been using that-" she pointed at the staff leaning against the wall- "instead of a wooden one. May I?"
Loath as Rey was to hand over her favorite weapon in general to anyone, she offered the staff to Paige, sensing that the woman would truly appreciate it. And indeed, Paige's surprise at the heft of the makeshift weapon and her practiced movements as she swung it a few times were gratifying to Rey.
"I can see why you have so much strength built up. This thing weighs a ton. And it'll certainly do better in a life-or-death situation. Did you make it?"
Rey nodded, accepting it back from Paige.
"It's beautiful," Paige said. Rey smiled at her.
"Thank you. It's hard getting used to fighting with a lighter staff, but I can move it so much quicker than I can mine."
"Very quickly!" Rose agreed, smirking.
Paige rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. Rey suddenly wondered what it might have been like to have a sister. Probably not much different than how it had been like not to have a sister, she decided. Not when you're competing against everyone for resources.
"Mind if I try to do that trick back on you?" Paige asked. "I'd love to pull that out when I'm sparring with Mirron. He's got four arms, so I hardly ever land a strike on him."
They practiced, switching up combatants so one could get some rest, until they were stopped some time later by a throat clearing nearby. Rey finished blocking Rose's blow, then made sure Rose was stopping too before turning to find Poe and Finn standing off to one side.
"You guys were really engrossed," Poe commented. "We've been standing here for twenty minutes, and right now you look surprised to see us."
"Rey's brilliant at the quarter staff," Paige said. Rose nodded, rubbing her arm ruefully where Rey had gotten a sharp rap in.
"You should've seen her in a real fight," Finn said proudly. "She won single-handedly against an entire roomful of thugs."
"It was just seven, not an entire room, and you didn't even see it."
"I saw enough," he insisted, unfazed.
"Seven?" Rose demanded.
"Time for food," Poe said, and Rey realized that her stomach agreed wholeheartedly with this announcement. She helped put away some of the equipment and followed the general flow of people towards a delicious mixture of smells that seemed to have once source. Eventually she found herself in a spacious mess hall, filled with jostling bodies and tables and benches.
The line wrapped all the way around the room, and Rey joined it, feeling uncertain in the midst of all of these strangers. Ahead of her, Rose went up on tip-toe to try to see the front of the line.
"I can't tell what they've made, but whatever it is, they've fried it," she said excitedly. "Rebel cooks are the best."
Rey glanced back at Finn, who gave her a reassuring smile, even though she sensed similar trepidation in him. Poe immediately engaged Finn in a conversation about the different dishes that they'd served in the past, which Rey half-listened to.
"What is your favorite food they have here?" she asked him, and his brow smoothed once more as he described a dish that Rey frankly couldn't even imagine. By the time they reached the source of the food, Rey's stomach was loudly complaining at the lengthy wait and Poe's descriptive abilities.
The meal was fantastic, and Rey savored each bite, her eyes closing without her volition at the overwhelming sensation of taste. Finn grinned across the table at her, sharing in her sense of enjoyment as she devoured everything on her tray. Rely looked up when she was done to find Poe giving her a kind smile.
"There's more where that came from. Here, even when rations are strained, nobody goes hungry."
Rey couldn't think of the right response to that simple assurance that she wanted so badly to trust. "Thank you," was all she said, in the end. Her trust would take a great deal of time to win, but she wanted to trust, and that would help. There would always be that fear, she thought, that all of this was a sham and that she was a fool for being so easily tricked. She was loathe to try to let that go, especially after the interrogation.
They finished up, and Rose showed Rey and Finn the sleeping quarters.
"You can pick whichever ones you like that are empty," she said. "Blankets and other stuff you'll need can be picked up from the laundry, just down the hall. If you have any questions, my sister and I stay over there, in room 209. Good night!" And with that, she headed for the room she'd indicated. Rey and Finn picked up the incredibly luxurious blankets, Finn selecting a number of other cloths which Rey wasn't sure were for, and they found a room that didn't seem to be too full.
Finn showed her the various sheets and fittings and the order they went on the bed, and when Rey slid between the fresh, clean sheets, she thought there was no better feeling...except maybe the hot shower. She fell asleep almost instantly.