The first time Rey was caught alone in a sandstorm, she was eight.
Everything was already burning, every muscle in her little thighs, every scrap of negligently exposed skin. She could feel her eyeballs, actually feel them they were so dry, her pupils tired from pinpointing against the impossibly bright desert.
Something else deep inside her burned, like a foreign tumor sheathed in tissue to protect it from metastasizing. Something far more dangerous than the sun or the sand: hope.
Two hours behind her lay Plutt's junkyard. She had slipped out before he awoke, tired of hiding from his greedy leer every night under a new pile of scrap. It had become the first game she can remember playing, a game that made her stomach invert: hide and seek. Except there was no laughing and clapping when she was found, just a rough tug on her emaciated arm, or leg, or hair, whatever he could grab first.
She had spent years in his hovel, too young to understand.
But at eight, she had run. She understood, she had learned. She knew anything was better than him.
Anything.
When she saw the sandstorm on the horizon, she reconsidered that stance. Maybe being buried alive in a sandstorm was NOT better than Plutt, maybe she had been wrong.
But it was too late to have an argument with herself, because the sun had already blotted out and the desert had cooled a few degrees by the looming shade.
For the first time she can remember, her mind became a checklist of survival, pushing everything else out. It would do this almost constantly from that moment on.
The value she had in being small and undetectable, which had thus far only served to make her easily exploitable by Plutt, now become beneficial to her. She had been privy to the conversations of grifters, of wanderers and tramps who slid into Niima outpost, who scoured the desert before her. Their gruff conversations entered her mind, of how they survived the whirlwinds, or how they found others dead after the torrents.
Counterintuitively, she forced her alighted thighs to trudge up to the top of a dune, fighting the urge to hide behind one, having heard that was an easy mistake that would bury one alive. The little skin she had left uncovered she wrapped now in her linens, and dampened some fabric to cover her mouth. She hadn't scavenged her goggles yet, so she pressed her eyes into the crux of her arm at the elbow.
She crouched, making herself into a ball, waiting for it to hit.
And it did hit.
It felt like Jakku itself was clashing against her. Like all the elements had conspired in a personal vendetta against her tiny body. Sand lashed against her, the coverings seemingly useless against the winds. She could feel microscopic cuts from the small grains of sand that managed their way through the weavings of her linens. She tightened her muscles impossibly together, folding closer into herself, and waited. If she could keep this position, she may live. As the thought crossed her mind, there was an almost imperceptible jump in her center of gravity. Dread dragged her stomach down, turning her blood into lead.
The wind forced her crouched body to skitter against the surface of the sand, inching her further and further back, until it become a continuous drawl, indifferent to her form. She fought every instinct in herself to uncurl and dig her hands into the dune, to claw and fight to regain traction. She knew if she moved from her ball it would be certain death.
Her body remained resolutely huddled, not willing to budge to stop herself from drifting, gouging a channel in her wake. The dune around her started to raise up on her sides, and she knew then, she was being buried. As it dragged her, it was burrowing her into the sand. She was going to die anyways, whether or not she kept the position.
And then suddenly, she stopped. The storm raged on around her, but she had hit something that ended her drift.
Her mind went blank without explanations. She hadn't seen anything but sand for miles before the storm it. She was miles out from the Starship Graveyard, miles away from settlements. There was nothing that should have stopped her. But she was definitely stopped, she knew that much. She still felt the sand against her outer thighs and gathering in her lap, but she wasn't slipping any deeper into the dune.
She wanted desperately to look up, but she couldn't, the sand still ricocheting around her. She leaned a bit, into the mass flush against her side, to try to test it. It wasn't firm like steel, like an abandoned machine would be, it gave a little as she pressed into it, which only served to make her endlessly more curious.
Briefly, for the first time she could ever remember, she felt safe. Safe, in the middle of a hostile, threatening tempest. Safe, after knowing her death was eminent only moments before. Safe.
A warmth washed over her and then it was gone. The storm, the weight against her side, the warmth, it all disappeared in an instant.
Everything was still. The sun came back.
She raised her head, shaking loose the grainy particles. Her eyes were so encrusted she would cry nothing but sand for the next few weeks, but she knew she needed to open them to see what had stopped her. Once she parted her lashes, she looked up. There was nothing there. She was buried in sand to her waist and there was nothing there, nothing that should have stopped her from being dragged by the storm. Disappointment loomed in her, but she didn't know why, what she was disappointed about. She brushed off the feeling.
She moved her gaze down to start to dig herself out when she saw it next to her.
A flower. Blue. It's petals perfectly undisturbed by the raging torrents of the storm. Almost automatically, she found her little hands caressing its stem, before plucking it from the softened earth.
She never saw a flower like that one again on Jakku, and she had looked. She had catalogued all other flowers, Nightbloomers and Spinebarrels, she had surrounded herself with their small, resistant beauty, but never again did another pale blue flower come her way.
She never saw a flower like that one again until the Resistance visited Stewjon, a small farming planet, in their travels to rebuild. There, she had seen fields of them.
It was the first flower she put in her new home, when she found it later.
It is sitting in a jar in the Hellhound Two on Jakku to this day, probably, shriveled and dry.
She thinks she will go back for it, eventually, if it hasn't been destroyed in a ransacking.
More likely still, though, is that she will never see it again.
This image of the sandstorm whirls around her as she is forced out of the connection, the bond weakening without proximity. The air around her is whipping rapidly and that same feeling of tiny cuts exposed to stinging air litters her skin again as she is pushed further and further out.
Her body crumbles unto itself when she reunites with her corporeal form, her muscles too tired to engage instinctively to keep her sitting upright. There is a low throb in her head as it connects to the steel floor below, shaking her brain in its casing. She stares up at the ceiling.
She takes a labored breath. Then another.
There is an emptiness, a morose emptiness that builds in her. It almost feels nostalgic. She realizes it is the way she felt before her force abilities had awoken. She can only feel the rise and fall of her own body, can only feel the tight sinew of her own muscles. She can't feel the spokes of energy radiating from the force towards every living thing around her anymore. She is alone.
She knows she should panic, she knows something isn't right, but she can't. There is no more energy left. The display of raw power spanning light years was too much. It was the most powerful she has ever felt, the most powerful she has ever been, and now, laying on the floor of this beat up freighter, she feels as powerless as she had against that storm.
Which is why it comes as no surprise when, for the second time in her life, she feels an almost imperceptible jump in her center of gravity.
This time, she is too exhausted to tense, or think about what comes next. This time, it feels like peace to allow herself to drift.
It takes a moment for her to recognize what pulls her. It's the force. The force is drawing her back into meditation, except it isn't meditation. It feels deeper than that, if it were possible.
The force is drawing her into itself. Trying to fold her into its fabric. An overwhelming feeling overcomes her at the realization that the force is calling her back.
But back where?
Her eyes are shut now, but she can't remember shutting them.
The dream she had as a child, of swimming out into a dark sea, washes over her and slowly ebbs behind her eyelids. But this time, she's not swimming. The undercurrent has caught her and is pulling her out. She feels it all around her, the slow pulse of the waves drawing her up and down, the lights fading in the distance. And there is nothing she can do but let it.
Then, there is blackness.
She moves, knowing exactly how this recurring fantasy should play out, knowing that under her touch should bloom bioluminescence, that under her touch should bloom the light to guide her back, but instead, she finds that her body is pinned. She can't move and everything slowly constricts. Her breathing becomes shallower, and all she can do is listen to her exhaling breaths as they grow weaker and weaker.
This is how it ends. There was nothing left in her to make light from, she had spent it all on the only thing that mattered. On him. For him.
Kylo. Ben.
At the thought of him, an unseen hand envelops hers in the water, and the waves around her illuminate more brightly than they ever had in her dreams.
Suddenly, everything flips, and she can once again feel the deep resonant power of everything around her. Her brain is a minute behind, but her body is already fighting against the tide. Fighting to get back to him.
Because she loves him.
She loves him and he's going to die, soon, if she can't get to him.
This isn't her time. She still has more she needs to do.
The edges of the blackness turn pale the harder she fights against the water, until it breaks.
Sputtering, she gasps into the air of the freighter, her torso shooting her into a sitting position and she bursts out of the current. She gulps at the air around her before coughing violently, salt water pouring from her lungs.
It takes her a few minutes to feel like Rey again, but she gets there.
She looks down her hands when she can think clearly again, looking for any clue as to who had reached out to her, who had taken her hand under the water, and finds none.
But something in her knows, has always known.
The weight, the shadow, the voice, the flower. The hand.
Get up.
These are your first steps.
He needs your help.
They all had a name now.
Obi Wan. A name for the entity that has been silently helping her whole life.
Now she thought she understood why.
It was all for Ben. It was all for Vader.
No, not Vader. Anakin.
Those lost boys in the world with no one to guide them.
It had been Obi Wan who ultimately raised Anakin, she had seen it deep in the caves of Mustafar. He had been so blinded by the ideals of the Jedi, by bending to the light always, that he had failed to notice his padawan turn. If he had noticed, he could have taught Anakin differently, he could have been what Anakin needed: a father. Anakin had come to him like a son, and all Obi Wan knew was how to quote truisms. Empty words. He could have stopped the whole bloody galaxy from burning, but he hadn't. By the time he realized his culpability in it all, the charred remains of Anakin had already been resurrected as Vader on Mustafar.
By the time he realized that Anakin had needed a family and a teacher, it was too late. Padme was already dead, the twins already in new homes of his choosing.
And then, he realized what he had been given. There was a second chance. Luke. The sandy haired boy he watched from afar on Tatooine. The boy, and his sister, who had been worth the sacrifice on the Death Star, because they had ultimately brought Anakin back for the briefest of moments.
And it had been enough, at the time. It had been enough.
Until Anakin's grandson.
Until the raging war of light and dark took their toll on another young Skywalker boy who needed a teacher, but needed a family more.
Anakin had needed both.
Ben needed both.
But all they got was light sided sycophants, unable to balance tilted souls.
Obi Wan realized too late. Luke realized too late.
But then, as the force willed it, there was another.
The moment Rey was born into the world, Obi Wan had form again, after being dormant for so long. It was at that very moment, he knew that she was it. She would end the prophecy that Anakin started.
The moment she was born into the world, he had attached to her, feeling that one day, this little one would be the most important link in the galaxy. She would be strong, strong enough to continue what Luke had started, strong enough to hang onto what they all had lost along the way.
Balance.
Through Rey, he could atone for his sins against the grandfather by saving the grandson. To settle the imbalance of the Skywalker legacy, forever.
Forever.
Because she could be both. She would bring balance to the Skywalkers' tilted souls.
And so he watched her. Righted her wrongs. Whispered the right path. Or the wrong one, depending on what lesson she needed. Watched impotently as she endured hardship after hardship, abandonment and loss, knowing he couldn't step in, not completely, not in the way she needed. But he could muster enough force to push her when she really needed it, and so that is what he became.
A weight, a flower, a voice, a helping hand in the darkness, guiding her back to the light.
They were kindred souls, twin flames, unconnected by blood, but tied together by the force, which was trying to right its wrongs, too, by linking these two in purpose.
Purpose. She had a purpose. She knew what she needed to do. Obi Wan had laid the steps out in front of her. All she needed to do was take the first one.
When she musters the strength to stand, everything goes light for a moment, and she has to steady herself on a bunk. She anchors her touch and brushes alongside the entire bed until she is pushed up against the wall. Using her shoulder, she skims alongside it until she finds the door and pours her body against it, so that when it opens, she falls out.
And right into Jessika Pava.
"Rey! Kriff, are you alright?" Jessika's voice is strained as she tries to prop Rey up to keep her from falling face first into durasteel.
"I'm okay. I just...Poe, I need to get to Poe," Rey tries to find her footing but can't, forcing Jess to dip a little to readjust her grip. Jess comes up from under her arm and props Rey's body against her own.
"I think making him come to us is a better idea."
Rey swallows hard and nods, allowing herself to lean into Jessika's petite body. She looks over and sees Jess's hair matted to the sides of her face, her signature helmet hair, a sign of a her immense skill, as she turns them around, back into the bunks.
Jessika presses a small comm on her shoulder harness, "Blue Three to Black Leader, I need you in Black Squadron's bunk room."
Jess ushers Rey to her own bunk, and pushes her freshly laundered jumpsuits and breast bands out of the way to give Rey room to lay down.
"Sorry, I wasn't expecting company." Jess's voice is softer than Rey has ever heard it. It wasn't that Jess was a hard person by any stretch of the imagination, but she didn't suffer fools. She couldn't, in her line of work, "Are you sure you're okay? You look like hell."
Rey laughs at that, "Thanks, Pava." Jess smiles at the sarcasm, which is more her speed than sweet comfort. "I feel like it, too, but I promise, I'm fine."
Almost as quickly as Rey gets settled, she hears Poe approaching from the doorway, his voice preceding him.
"I knew you couldn't resist me forever Jess…" his usual flirtatious bravado makes Rey's lips twitch upwards a bit, because she can hear the hint of sincerity with it that he reserves exclusively for Jessika.
The voice stops abruptly when he crosses the threshold and lays eyes on Rey.
"Kriff, Rey, what happened?"
"Forgot about me already, Flyboy?" Jess's voice bites from across the room.
Rey lets out a quick laugh and Poe softens, seeing she's fine.
"I could never forget you Pava," he says with a wink, before kneeling down next to Rey, "Did you forget to turn off the catalytic converter again before disengaging the exhaust?"
Rey feels thick, not thinking this far into the future, for how she would explain it all to Poe. Her eyes go wide as she thinks and Poe notices.
"Hey, it's okay, I'm not judging," Poe playfully puts his hands up, as if surrendering to a fight that hadn't started yet.
"No, Poe, it's...it's Kylo."
He shoots his eyes to Jess, whose jaw had just dropped open so dramatically he thought he heard it.
"Kylo...Ren?" The question comes out of Jessika almost in a growl.
Rey ignores it, has to ignore it, to get this out, "He's...Hux launched a rebellion. They're hunting him on his own ship."
Now it's Poe's jaw's turn to drop, "How do you know?"
The bond.
The secret she had kept from everyone, even Leia, even Finn, for the past few years. The thing that felt too shameful and sacred and singular to share. The thing that felt like a sin to speak out loud, like disloyalty to divulge.
Now she had to tell Poe.
She measures her words.
"It's the force. It connects us sometimes."
Poe stands up quickly, as if she's burned him.
"What do you mean?" he takes a step back, and it hurts Rey more than the cuts etched into her skin.
"It's…" she wants to explain, wants to tell him, but can't find the words. She turns and meets Pava's disturbed expression before looking back to Poe, "We don't have a lot of time, I don't think. The First Order is torn, we need to act. Please, Poe, I know this is crazy, but I need you to trust me. We need to find him."
"Find him?" Jessika's voice is incredulous, tearing through the air, but both of them are ignoring her now, staring at each other.
It takes a while for Poe to react, but when he does, he acts quickly.
"Do you think you can stand?" he takes a step towards her as he says it.
"I don't know. I think I just need some time."
"Okay, that's okay. I just need to think for a second."
"Jessika," her full name sounds weird from his lips, as he almost always refers to her by her callsign or nickname, "I need you to get Connix. Tell her to dig out a CIS Mobile Command Center and come here. Get Finn on your way and tell him to gather the commanders and bring them here, too."
"I'm on it," her sense of duty, to the Resistance and to Poe, override her utter confusion, and she turns quickly out the door.
Jess is out of the room, leaving Poe and Rey alone. It's laughable how often they found themselves at the center of some huge conflict lately, laughable how much she had come to depend on him for guidance and support. And here she was again, feeling his gaze on her like the disappointment of a brother. Poe began to pace the small room, his black boots dulling his steps against the durasteel.
"Since when?" Poe's rough voice breaks the tension, when the beat of his steps against the silence becomes too unbearable for him to handle.
"What?"
"When did it start, the-the bond?"
"Since before you and I met. Since Ahch-To."
Poe pauses briefly, before resuming his pacing. He is silent again, and she knows it is her turn to offer up something.
"We could see each other. Talk. But I learned to close it, after Crait. It wasn't an issue. I had it under control."
"Really? Until when? Until he almost killed you? Until you almost killed yourself? Because this," he gestures up and down her body, "This doesn't look like control Rey."
"Until Leia died," her response to him is almost immediate.
Poe stops pacing.
"The night she died, I felt him, and he was broken, Poe. I-I couldn't let him be alone then."
It was Kylo and hers oath, their vow. She couldn't speak it to Poe now, wouldn't break their silent covenant.
"And then it was different. It was stronger than before. I could see him, all of him. And now," she gestures to her cuts, the bruises already forming under her skin, "And now it's something else. I could fight alongside him through it. Hux is sending everything against him, every trooper on the ship is marching towards him. There are thousands of them. I have to help him. I can't let him die."
Poe shakes his head as he sits down next to her on the bunk, the weight of it all, the weight of who he knew Kylo Ren to truly be, descending on him. He runs his palms over his face and into his thick hair as he lets go a stuttering exhale.
Three years ago he would have yelled, he would have rallied and called her traitorous, thrown her off ship for her lack of loyalty. But now, he could see it, he could see her.
"Did I ever tell you I grew up next to a force tree?"
"A what?" the question comes out with more force than she intended, balking at the sudden change in Poe's demeanor.
"A force tree."
"Is that...a thing?"
Poe laughs, "I never thought I would have to explain this to a Jedi."
"I'm not a…"
"You are. Look at you. It is all you are: compassion, courage, wisdom," he pauses, "Balance. I used to play on that tree, swing from its branches and feel that balance. I feel the same thing now, from you. You must know by now what you are."
Rey swallows and meets his stare. She opens her mouth, but before anything can come out, Connix walks in, all business carrying the mobile command unit, its huge size and obvious weight doing nothing to upset her perfect posture, "Odd place for a meeting, General" she nods as she sets the machinery down on the opposite bunk.
Her shoulders slump as soon as she turns to see Rey.
"I'm afraid I'm to blame for that," Rey replies to her concern, as she swings her legs off Jessika's bunk, angling to avoid knocking Poe off.
"Are you okay?" Connix's buns shake as she asks.
"Feeling better, there's no need to worry," Rey waves it off and shifts awkwardly into a sitting position, ducking her head out to avoid the bunk above.
"Should I get Kalonia?" Connix points to the door, taking a step, then another towards it.
Both Poe and Connix wait for a response, which Rey supplies quickly, "No, no, there's no need. I suspect it looks worse than it actually is." Rey had actively been avoiding Kalonia since her revealing return from Mustafar. She had never gone to see her again, after Kalonia had asked her to, and she couldn't face any of that right now.
Before anyone can say anything further, a group of officers file in, crowding the room.
As the rest of the officers in the fleet trickle in, Rey explains more that yes, she is alright, and no, she doesn't need anything.
Finn is the last to march in, the room now almost filled to the brim with people, but he still gravitates to Rey almost instantly, always being able to find her first in a crowded room.
"Rey…" his voice is stern as he dips into Pava's mattress next to her, into the spot everyone saved, knowing it was Finn's.
"I will explain everything, I promise, I'm okay…" she provides a weak smile and grabs Finn's hand on his thigh. He squeezes once, before Poe's rich General's voice fills the room.
"Thank you all for coming. I called you in here today because I have information that suggests The First Order has devolved into a state of Civil War."
The room devolves into gasps and titters, before Poe's palm deftly rises above the crowd to quiet them.
"So, let's talk."
That night, unable to sleep, Rey sits up against the dejarik table, one foot perched in front of her on the bench, deep in thought. Her lower lip is raw from her having chewed on it all day, and she is covered in bacta, more to make Finn feel better than anything else.
She had explained it all, to the three of them, when the meeting had ended. The bond, how it had started, how she had managed it. And they had listened. They didn't call her a traitor. They didn't abandon her at the first outpost. They listened, Rose holding tightly onto her hand as Finn applied bacta and Poe paced slowly. She braced for yelling, for fighting, for tears, but all she got was a family who wished she would have told them sooner, so they could have helped soothe her troubled soul.
She was so dumb. She was so lucky.
But she can't sleep, so she mindlessly thumbs at the hem of her ripped linens in common room after they all have gone to sleep. She is so lost in her mind that she doesn't notice when Poe comes in and sits in the chair opposite her.
They sit on either side of the game board. It takes her a while, past her initial shock of seeing him here, to turn to him and plant her feet back on the Falcon's floor.
They sit in silence for a long time. He slumps slightly in the chair, but still holds himself like a General. Rey knows that is who sits across from her now. The General of the Resistance Fleet, not Poe, who had kissed her forehead after she had told them the truth earlier that day.
It is the General who breaks the silence, "Something happened on Mustafar, didn't it? Between you and Ren."
Rey doesn't answer, instead she looks down at her own body, her own hands, remembering how much it had given away to his enemy. Her enemy.
"You love him," she hears Poe in it, not just the General, and her head comes up. A tear runs down her face. Involuntarily, she gives the slightest of nods.
Poe closes his eyes. He leans forward in the chair and puts his face in his hands. Rey has never known the disappointment of a parent, she has only ever known what it feels like to be disappointed by a parent. But this must be it. She wipes her tears, running her fingers against the waterline of her eyes, trying to stop more from coming.
"He's a war criminal Rey," he's not looking at her, can't look at her, "The entire Hosnian system is gone. Millions, billions of lives," he stops. He flicks his head up, "And Han."
Rey knows there is nothing she can say. There is nothing that could come from her mouth that wouldn't sound like a child pleading her feelings against the monstrosity of reality that Poe is dealing her.
"This isn't going to end well. I can't protect you from what will happen. I have a Galaxy of hurt souls wanting justice on his back, and I can't stop that because-because someone I care about loves him."
Rey breaks their gaze, looking down at the empty board which separates them.
Poe continues, "You were right. The First Order is tearing itself apart. Once we found the right place to look, we got all the intel we needed. I'm going to issue the order to jump for a full strike tomorrow morning."
Rey looks deeply at him, her face lengthening in awe, tears gathering and blurring her vision once again.
"I made a mistake once, a big mistake, trying to do the heroic thing. I won't make that mistake again. I can't sit here and expound to you virtue or honor anymore, Rey. This war has taken too much. I don't know if that truly matters anymore. What I do know is this: I trust you. I trust that whatever you do, it will be the right thing." He pauses, as if what comes next will pain him in some way, but he says it anyway, "If you think there is still something in him, when we get to their fleet-find him. Then, it's up to you."
Rey's eyes widen, allowing her welled tears to fall out.
"What's up to me?"
"What happens to Kylo Ren."
"What do you mean?"
"Tomorrow night, the log, if there still is a log after all of it, can say one of two things: Kylo Ren was captured by Rey of Jakku and brought to the Resistance for execution."
Rey's head cocks to the side.
"Or, it could say the Millenium Falcon, captained by Rey of Jakku, was destroyed, killing all on board, including the prisoner Kylo Ren. And that's what history will record. No one will come looking for the Falcon, no one will bat an eye. And you can run, far away from this, and find something like peace, for once."
With that Poe reaches across the table, wiping a falling tear from Rey's face and giving her a last, sad smile, before breaking away and standing up.
"I'll see you tomorrow, kid. 0400."
Rey can't say anything back. She can't do anything but sit stupidly against the dejarik table as she watches Poe disappear back into his quarters, her mouth wide in shock, her heart seized with every emotion, because she has already made her decision.
Side note: when I started this, I had no idea that Rey and Poe would have so many scenes together (I wanted it more Finn and Rey, honestly), but I really like seeing his evolution through her and how they respond to one another with their version of familial love. I like that he is more of a big brother/dad to her than Finn can be, because of their age and power difference, so I hope it isn't too much for you all!
Thank you all for your patience and being so incredible. It is really hard to work on this sometimes, because life can get crazy, but so worth it to get to see your response and feel like I am a part of a bigger community.