Sometimes, when Rey closed her eyes, she could still see her hesitation wounds, scarred into the womb of the war machine she was formed in. The scavengers and the thieves would have no doubt raided her AT-AT by now, cleansing it of all evidence of the life she had once lived, so that she might pretend that life had never happened to her. But those marks would stay forever etched there, a permanent reminder of the daily claw marks she dug into her own soul waiting for a family that would never come.
Those hesitation marks would be the only trace of her still left on Jakku. It had been so long since she had seen them, had run her hands across them, had stared at them when sleep became elusive, but now, behind her tightly shut eyelids, they taunted her, Poe's words still ringing in her ears.
Leave. With him. Without them. Forever.
There was no hesitation in her life now. There was no waiting. Not if she wanted to survive. Not if she wanted everyone she loved to survive. This life was marked by decisiveness and instinct. It had been since she ran onto the Falcon for the first time, Finn's hand in hers. It was all she had on Starkiller base, and on Mustafar, and now, sitting in front of the dejarik table in the steel belly of her first true home.
She had been given a choice, a real choice, only once before in her fated life: Kylo's outstretched palm in the throne room. The rest of it seemed pre-determined, like all roads lead her here. That choice, and the choice she makes now, are the only two that would come to define her life.
So when two lives diverge in front of her now, there is no hesitating.
Two lives.
One life where The Resistance would rebuild, and she would take her place amongst them.
A life of purpose, and of principle. A life where she would see her best friends walk hand in hand to be tied in matrimony, bustling Rose's dress as she walked down the aisle. At the same moment their rings would be exchanged, Kylo would be sitting alone in a cold prison cell, Rey's skin prickled in his goosebumps.
That life would be one where Poe might finally let her fly his X-Wing, and she would get to see the kind of man he was destined to become, the kind of leader she knew he would be. She would see him write the history of the Galaxy, the first chapter of which would be signing the order to kill Kylo Ren. Rey would be in the room with him when he did. She would watch Poe sign Kylo's life away, and have to swallow the bile down as the diplomats smiled and shook hands, proud of their decision to let the war take a final life.
It would be a life where she would feel Kylo grow colder in her lap after the single blaster shot entered his skull, and would be torn away by Finn after hours of holding his lifeless body, screaming and kicking and cursing the bloodthirsty galaxy.
A life where she would wake up every morning and touch BB's antenna would also be a life where should would wake up knowing Ben no longer existed. A life where she might meet Chewie's wife and children, and grieve with Chewie over the loss of the entirety of his other family, the entirety of the Skywalker/Solo clan. A life where she would listen to R2 and Threepio bicker as she met them for monthly cleanings. A life where when R2 would sigh heavily and only Rey would know the true weight of it, because she sighed in the same way.
A life where Ben Solo, where Kylo Ren, would become only a footnote in history. But a life where his absence would become her everything.
Because she could have had him, and she didn't.
They could have built a house next to a river, her and him. Maybe a sea. Somewhere where it rained, definitely. And they would light fires and fall asleep with intertwined limbs and their breath on each other's faces. They would stand in the rain and train for nothing, but feel the thrum of the life they left behind beneath their grasps and be better for it.
She would have two gardens, in the wet soil, a flower garden and a vegetable garden. She would have flowers she could make grow, instead of watch wither and die in glass urns. There would be life there, life that she could make and cultivate and watch flourish.
Some days they wouldn't say words to one another. She would hand him the washing to dry, and he would put a blanket over her feet as they read by the fire. And it would be enough. It would be more than enough, it would be home.
And somewhere, lightyears away, Finn would be doing the same for Rose. Poe and BB-8 would be running a new Galaxy.
And everyone she loved would be safe. Even if she never saw them again, she knew they would be safe, that everyone would be safe and loved and grow.
Her hands tremble as her blood pumps violently throughout her body. She sits for minutes, hours maybe, staring at them shake in her lap as she plays the paths out in her head. Finally, she stands uneasily, and presses them against the cool durasteel belly of the Falcon in a bid to calm her tremors.
When that doesn't help, Rey leans her head against the side of the Falcon, imagining the streaks of pure light which traverse the outer hull.
Part of her didn't believe any of this. Part of her couldn't believe any of this. She should be on Jakku. She should be living a small, meaningless life. She should be growing old and wrinkled under the sun.
Instead she is here.
You must know what you are by now.
Jakku feels like it happened to someone else. Intellectually, she knows that's not true. Physically, too, the scars and freckles all over her body, that Kylo had made her so hyper aware of, serve as proof that she had been there, had felt the sting of that sun, had grown despite the odds against her.
But she isn't that girl on Jakku anymore, is she?
Is she?
She starts to walk forward, uneasily. Her hands run across the durasteel, catching every once in a while on a rivet shaken loose by how hard the aging machine has been pushed in recent years.
When she breaks the haze of her thoughts, she finds that her legs have brought her to the cockpit, as they so often do. When she tries to take in her surroundings, finally turning her eyes back on, she finds her vision has gone blurry and she feels weak.
Chewie looks back at her, and instantly draws her into a roaring hug.
He heard. She knows he heard, because she's sat in this cockpit when it's quiet, when there is nothing but the whir of the engines softly gliding through the dead of space, and tried not to listen to the conversations in the main room. Tried not to hear the whispers between Rose and Finn that they kept only to themselves, tried not to hear Poe's heavy sighs. Tried not to, but always did.
And she knew Chewie was trying not to hear, but he had.
She buries herself into his fur, and allows all the shaky tension to drain.
She doesn't recognize the warm envelopment of sleep until she brought out of it by the soft blinking of a red light. All her limbs stretch out as the light tickles across her face, and she tries to shift further into Chewie, but meets the worn leather of the empty pilot's seat instead. The cold chair jolts her up, as her mind snaps out of slumber. The cockpit is almost completely black, and that, coupled with the fact they were currently sans pilot, are tell tale signs that the Falcon had been docked sometime in her sleep. The fog of sleep falls, turning the sharpness up on the only light source available, the blinking red light. Rey opens and closes her mouth once, then twice, trying to figure it out. There were so many things it could be trying to tell her. Were the gravity emulators acting up again? The Devo-Pek acceleration compensators? The ion flux stabilizers? Hell, was it the garbage disposal again?
Her eyes go wide as the truth flits in her brain and she stands straight up, hitting her head on the controls above. Without even stopping to gasp, she is running out of the freighter, already desperately behind in heeding its warning: ready for battle positions.
Finn.
Where is Finn?
Everything is movement. All the Resistance members are alight in chaos, rushing here and there to prepare. She wades through them, as they climb under and up into the ships all around her. Droids skitter around, some rounding corners so fast they tip up onto two wheels, but they always pause in their trajectory, slightly, to acknowledge Rey, leftover vestiges of appreciation for their time in her care. Her holopad almost wedges out of her hands a few times in the clutter of the crowd, but she grips it steady, her procrastination at readying the Falcon for the jump written all over the screen. But she needs to find Finn, more than anything, she can't leave without finding him first.
It feels like a tempest, the bodies moving against her, and she's trying to find her calm in the storm.
Finally, it parts, and she sees all three of them standing under Poe's X-Wing in the distance.
She feels her face brighten when she sees Finn's eyes on her already, smiling broadly at her, seeking her out in the chaos.
And then she remembers, and there is a stab in her heart.
She stops dead in her tracks and Finn's smile turns into a head cocked in confusion.
Feet laden with lead, she wills herself to swallow it down and move forward. She forces the smile back to her lips, a smile that fools Poe and Rose, but it wouldn't, couldn't fool Finn.
As she steps into their ranks, they make room for her, Rose bending in to hit her with a shoulder.
"Can you believe this is actually happening?" Rose pseudo-yells over the buzz of the soldiers all around them.
"I really can't," Rey tries not to look at Poe when she says it, but her eyes betray her, and she looks over to see him trying hard not to look at her either.
"The next time we see each other, it will all be over," Finn's eternal optimism cuts through, but his face is still focused on Rey's and she knows he is trying to suss her out.
Rey smiles, trying desperately to waylay his suspicion, and out of the corner of her eye sees Rose paste on the same grin, both of the women used to his hope, but hyper aware of the realities of war.
"You missed Poe in full-on General mode," Finn continues, slapping Dameron on the shoulder, "He roused us all with one of his great speeches."
"Oh, I missed all that?" Rey broadens her smile and swivels her head from Finn to Poe.
Rose turns back to fasten a control panel back on, "We didn't want to wake you, not after…" her voice trails off, knowing she had ventured into unsure territory, "You didn't miss much. Just the usual 'a new hope, we're better together, sunrise imagery' type of stuff," Rose's arms wave with the mock majesty of it all, her screwdriver becoming like an imaginary baton in her hands.
"Thanks, Rose," Poe retorts, his face wrought up into an incredulous smirk.
"Anytime, boss," she returns his smirk measure for measure, "Anyway, it's pretty much the same formations as always. Poe's leading Black Squadron, Finn's gunning the Brigandine while I find fires to put out. You got the Falcon, of course."
"It's the same as always," Poe interjects, taking over from Rose as she deals with a popped spring, "except we're going to jump with small ships, first. Blue Team, Black Squadron, the Brigandine, and the Falcon. All others stay behind until we have eyes on the situation."
Rey nods, knowing the ships listed are small enough that they can jump away again quickly and with a smaller risk of detection. It's a sound strategy, to send scouts first and not risk the fleet, especially because their intel is so new.
"Once we figure it out, we'll call the rest in," Poe continues, draping his arm over Finn's shoulders, in what they all recognize as some sort of false bravado, as if this was just another day on the job.
"And then?" Rey poses.
"And then, we do what we've always done," Poe shrugs.
"What we've always done," Rey nods curtly, engaging in the shorthand they can use now, after all this time together. She can fill in the blanks from there: the Squadrons will flank the ships, acting as a smokescreen for the Falcon so it can slide in unseen to the Discord. Rey will do what she always does, distract the Force User while the rest of them exploit the diverted attention to win the battle. Except this time, it's not just a battle, it's the whole war. It's manipulative, sure, but effective. There has never been a time Kylo didn't come straight for her in their battles, not since Starkiller.
It was no different this time.
Or, outwardly, it would appear no different. There would be no balking by the Resistance members, no suspicions chipping away at their subterfuge, because that was the way it always was. It was always known, or assumed, at the very least, that Rey and Kylo would tear eachother apart. They were fated to be mortal enemies, fated to their last stand together. No one would bat an eye at them being together in what would appear to be their last moments. No one would suspect a thing as Rey became a martyr for their cause.
With that, another alarm blares, signaling that it is time for the X-Wings to launch. Poe smiles.
"Well, that's me. See you on the other side," he kisses Rose's cheek, who blushes a bit at the contact, and hugs Finn.
Before Poe can turn to Rey, her vision blurs. She hadn't felt this, she hadn't know that she was on the verge of tears before it was too late.
"Wait, just, wait," she throws her hands up at her friends, as if calming an animal set to flee, and quickly turns around to C'ai Threnalli, Poe's wingman, who is arguing with his droid as he boards his X-Wing next to Poe's. Rey swallows hard, blinking back the tears, as she hands him her holopad and whispers into his ear, making the gruff Threnalli roughly nod his head as she clicks onto the screen.
"Yeah, I got it, I got it," he waves her off in his usual gravelly way.
"Thanks C'ai," Rey gently squeezes his shoulder as she says it.
"Don't mention it, Little Jedi," he replies, his voice softening at her touch, "Alright, you all get together now."
"Rey?" Finn's voice is inquisitive, and looking back at her friends, he certainly speaks for all of them, as their faces are all contorted in various stages of confusion.
"A picture," Rey's voice is even now, "We need a picture. You know, for posterity."
"Old school," Rose says as she wipes some grease across her forehead, "I like it."
Poe smiles as he rearranges his friends to his liking, "We have to get my good side."
Rey rolls her eyes at Poe as he pulls her between Finn and himself, then uses his hand to draw Rose in.
"All my sides are my best side, so, no worries here," Finn replies, clearly poking at Poe, who takes his arm off Rose and proceeds to mess up Finn's hair with it.
"Hey!" Finn swerves out of Poe's touch, but his smile never falters.
Rey and Rose laugh, and Rey turns her head from side to side to look at them all. All her friends are naturals, of course, their faces widening into beautiful smiles. It's then, looking at all their smiling faces, she notices something is missing.
"Wait, BB! Get down here," Rey yells backwards towards the fighter.
The droid beeps in the glee of being recognized and quickly stops working on initializing the X-Wing's systems and drops out of his position, rolling over in front, causing Threnalli to have to backup a little to get him in the frame.
"Alright, I'm only doing this once, so look pretty," Threnalli grumbles, "One…two…."
On three, two giant paws flank the group and Chewie roars above them, dragging them closer together and changing all of their smiles into laughter.
Threnalli hands the holopad back to Rey, "It's a good one. Good luck, Jedi."
"Thank you. May the force be with you, C'ai."
"And with you." With that, Threnalli instantly resumes his argument with the droid, now perched resolutely atop his fighter.
Chewie ruffles Rose's hair and strides away as quickly as he came, roaring something about seeing Rey back on the Falcon.
Rey keeps her eyes down at her holopad for as long as she can, reveling in a moment she is still living, until she finally sees a tear fall onto the screen. She tries to hide it as she stares at Chewie's large face smiling above their four smaller ones, with BB posed in the foreground, but Poe sees it, and instantly drags her into a lumbering hug as soon as it lands.
"None of that, none of that," he whispers into her ear, "Everything is going to work out, you'll see."
He pulls her tight and she buries herself into his shoulder, and forgets that she never had a father to hold her when she was crying, because she had Poe. She had Poe and Finn and Rose for three years, and that would be enough to last a lifetime.
Poe grasps her shoulders and pulls her away. He lowers his head only slightly, so his eyes are completely level with hers, and she sees the tears she left visibly behind, darkening Poe's orange flight suit, "We love you, kid."
His words jolt her, and she can't be there anymore, she can't take the pain ripping out from some hole deep within her that they had filled with their love. She backs up, as if he has slapped her.
"I...I love you, too...I have to go. Goodbye," she keeps her head down as she walks away quickly from the group, leaving all of them behind in a stupor. Everything in her head starts screaming, that she has to turn back, that she has to tell Finn, that she can't leave him never knowing why she left, why she never came back, but her feet keep propelling her forward. Finn, her brother, both orphaned by cruelty, brought together by fate, she was just going to leave him without a word, without an explanation. She tries to stop but she can't, dodging through the crowded hangar, as everything blurs, until there is a harsh tug on her sleeve and she whirls around.
"Rey, what's wrong?" It's Finn, because, of course it is. He's looking at her with the stern look of determination and love that only he has.
"You know you're my best friend, right?" the words escape her too quickly.
Finn pauses, really pauses, in a way that Finn doesn't do, his eyes searching hers for something.
"Rey, we're going to win this, you don't have to talk like that."
"I just need to know that you know that. I need to know that you know how much you mean to me."
"Rey?" Finn's voice is wobbly now, full of something uncertain and Rey hates herself for making him feel that.
"Just tell me you know that," Rey's eyes are welled full and she wills herself not to blink, not to scare him more.
"I know, Rey, I know," he takes her into his arms and she buries her face into his shoulder, "We've been through so much. And now there's just one more thing, one more big thing, that we have to get through, and we will. We will get through it, together, just like we've gotten through everything else since we found each other."
"I'm not coming back," her words muffle into his chest.
"What?" he pulls her back, hands grasped firmly on her upper arms.
"I'm not coming back...I'm…I'm not," she can't look at him, instead, focusing on the floodlights above them, growing into rising and falling starbursts as her tears flow.
Finn shakes his head, his eyes lowering in caution.
"Rey, it's just another battle. Why are you talking like this?" His moves his thumb to wipe her tears, trying to understand this reaction. Rey didn't cry. Not usually, not unless something was really wrong. A lifetime without water had taught her never to waste.
"No, I-I'm leaving, after."
"What do you mean, leaving?" Finn's eyebrows knit in consternation.
The alarms start to blare, indicating that all battle stations must be ready to jump within five minutes.
"I'm sorry, I love you, I have to go," she says, twisting out of his grip, shaking loose some tears as she does.
"Rey, no wait," there's a sad desperate twang to his voice that Rey can't take.
She rises up and kisses him softly on the cheek, "Take care of her, take care of them."
And with that, her back is to him and she is running too quickly for Finn to grasp as she retreats from him.
"Rey! REY!"
As she boards the Falcon, all she can hear ringing in her ears is Finn's voice, screaming her name after her. It lasts until she is far away from the dock, deep into space, and while she knows it is just her mind reverberating her own pain back to her, part of her is unsure that it isn't still Finn, continuing to scream for her back at the bay.
"Systems are go."
The coordinates are set to the Scarl system, the last place the First Order ships were detected, hours ago, before interference scrambled their signals.
Rey slaps the controls a few times to light up the hyperdrive console, a little harder than she usually does. She can feel her tears drying uncomfortably tight on her cheeks and part of her is mad at herself, but mostly, there is a dark sadness that is somehow calming to her now, in this, their most desperate hour.
Finally, the lights signaling that the hyperdrive is charged and ready blink on.
"Ready to jump."
Chewie's paw finds her shoulder and knocks her out of her self-pity. He follows the touch with a quick, chastising warble.
"I am breathing," she replies, and then starts breathing again.
Poe's voice fills the Falcon's cockpit from over the comms, "Proceed with the countdown. All groups assume attack coordinates."
Then, it is Kaydel, tucked safely within the fleet, who counts, "Black Squadron, Blue Team, the Brigandine and the Millenium Falcon, prepare to jump into hyperspace on my mark. Ten, nine…"
The Universe goes quiet as the engines of the ships all around them quiet, preparing their hyperdrive motivators. They are moving quickly now, slicing through space to prepare for the jump, because the Falcon's days of entering into hyperspace from a cold standstill are far behind her.
"Eight, seven…"
She knows once they jump that's it, and part of her wants those hesitation marks again. Wants to claw her own soul to stay behind, for just one more day. She was being torn two directions and she never expected it to hurt this badly.
"Six, five…"
It was all happening so quickly. But she can't, would never leave him alone, not now, not ever.
"Four, three…"
On the other side of this jump was the man she loved. And she would ruin the Universe to get back to him.
"Two, one."
Rey's "punch it, Chewie" is met with his excited thundering as their bodies lurch backwards with the waning universe.
The ship screeches under the pressure, and Rey fights the urge to press her hands against the side of the cockpit to keep it from falling apart. Something feels off, she looks at Chewie who looks back at her, and she knows he feels it too.
The ship lurches forward, which sends their bodies with it, caught only by the belts crisscrossing their chests. Alarms from every quadrant of the ship blare immediately. Rey engages her abs to press her body back into her seat, and it is then, she sees it, and her whole body starts running the permutations of survival again.
The segmented window is blocked completely by grey, there are no stars, not even the black of space, just grey. Her brain only has time to scream one thing at her: Star Destroyer.
Without thinking, she pulls up on the control yoke, and her hand shoots to the speed brake handle, which is already covered in a furry paw, Chewie being a half second quicker than her on the draw.
Neither of them could open their mouths to scream, there wasn't enough time, they needed to get past this ship. The Falcon groaned and rattled and scared Rey, for the first time, its systems all blaring, soaking her veins in adrenaline.
They had never jumped straight into something like this, there should have been warning, there should have been failsafes against jumping straight into another ship, especially a fucking Star Destroyer.
"Engage the starboard thrusters!" Rey's voice is resolute against the groans of the Falcon. Everything starts shaking, rattling out of place. It feels as if her eyeballs themselves are vibrating violently in her skull and she wants nothing more than to shut her eyes to get them to stop, but she can't, she can't take her eyes off the windows in front of her.
Suddenly, the console in front of them flickers, then goes black.
"No no no no no, just one more time girl, just one more time," she tries soothing the beast, while Chewie is banging on what seems like every button in front of him, the two of them employing different strategies to will the Falcon to hang on just a little longer.
All the noise drains as the main power shuts off and the Falcon freezes in the dead space. Both Chewie and Rey stare wide eyed at one another before the ship slowly starts descending back down, parallel to the hull of the ship in front of them.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Rey's curses blend with Chewie's uproarious screams as they feel themselves drifting. They are all movement, with the Wookie somehow finding himself on her side of the cockpit furiously pressing every button with no seeming pattern and Rey, on Chewie's side, punching out a control panel to fumble with frayed wires on the inside.
The lights flicker on. They can't tell what worked, but they don't really care, as they trade seats wordlessly, and buckle back in.
Chewie roars something, his paws above him dialing into the buttons on the roof of the cockpit.
"Got it," Rey affirms, as she taps on the rear thrusters bit by bit, edging them up and over the titanic structure floating by their underbelly.
But something is still off, Rey can still feel, or not feel, something. She is too bathed in adrenaline to interface with the force now, but they should be dodging fire. Even on the underbelly of a Destroyer, they should be fending off turrets. Why weren't they under some sort of bombardment?
When they crest over the ship, Rey ready to run to the gunner chair, they see why.
She grabs the controls and reels them back, turning the Falcon on its side to avoid the debris.
It's everywhere.
The bodies of soldiers, of Stormtroopers and of black clad Imperialists dot the landscape. Parts of ships, and bodies, hang suspended in the air and they, the Resistance, come to be suspended with them, temporarily stunned at the destruction wrought all around them.
She has eyes on the Squadrons and the Brigandine, as she sways slowly through the refuse. Both look a little worse for the wear, but didn't appear as if they jumped directly into an idle Star Destroyer, so at least that was something.
The comms are silent as they drift more, turning slightly to avoid the large scale devastation. It's everywhere, there isn't a part of their field of vision that isn't littered with pieces of ships. The Falcon whines as parts scratch against its outer hull, the only sound in the eerie silence of this dead place.
This isn't a battle, it is a graveyard.
They trudge slowly forward, until, through all the detritus, they see it, dawning over them, blue and purple glows of flame tearing through the ship.
The Discord wanes, blocking out all light from neighboring stars. It is massive. It had been years since Rey had seen a dreadnought, but this seems bigger than any she had ever encountered. It's more massive than any Star Destroyer she had ever picked through, but as she looks at the flagging ship in front of her, the images of the Imperial Graveyard on Jakku flash through her mind.
Death is all around her, and no one is coming for them. There is no evasive maneuvering to deflect fire, only to skirt around the debris of the dead. Pieces of ships threaten to crash into them, but it is almost like a slow motion snow globe, an oddity she had seen once weaving undetected through the markets of Coruscant. Everything languishes, until finally, Poe's voice breaks through the comms.
"Kriff, what did they do?"
"They tore each other apart."
Finn's reply reverberates through her bones. Rey could almost see the havoc of the last twelve hours. The turrets turning again turrets. Trooper against trooper. The First Order gnawing at its own flesh.
Chaos reigning.
Death.
Shit.
Rey reaches out through the force, immediately, as the tumult passes. She can feel Kylo, like a beacon in the stillness. His signature is different, somehow, more measured than she has ever felt it. Humbled, she realizes. His gait is faltering, stammering through the slowly disintegrating ship. There are no other force signatures besides his. He is alone, his Knights have all fallen protecting their King, and he is alone now on the Dejarik table. Internally, she fights to keep down the panic, balancing her breathing out. It would be no use to give in to her terror for him now, she needs to remain balanced, for him, for them.
They continue to slowly sway through the ruins, the silence deafening. There is life, she can feel it, but it's flickering, at best. Unable to lift its head for the final fight.
It was over.
Poe's voice echoes through the comms the second she thinks it, as if he sensed the finality of it, too, "Black One to Blue Three, the aims of this mission have changed. Be advised, this is now a rescue mission. We need to get on that ship, see if we can find survivors."
The silence returns, and Rey could almost feel the collection of the Resistance here, the strongest and oldest members, holding their breaths at Poe's words.
Finally, it is Jessika who breaks the silence.
"General, permission to speak freely sir."
"Out with it Pava."
"Don't you think we should leave well enough alone? Let them all die, let them burn for what they did?"
"Not all of them."
"Why risk it?"
"Because it's the right thing to do."
Finn smiles as the words he spoke so many years ago to Poe reach him through the comms.
"Let's do this then," Jessika's voice is determined, and Rey can tell that Poe had struck a chord with his hope.
"Bring up the Solace, we'll need medical, tell all other ships to stay at the jump site," Poe orders.
"Blue Squad, on me, let's clear some area for Kalonia in all this..."
Jessika's words are broken by another, more monotonous, voice, blasting through the comms, "Warning. Proximity Alert. Protocol 149, in accordance with First Order code 702, is in effect. Please identify your crafts."
"Poe, are you hearing this?" Finn interjects between warnings.
"Warning. Proximity Alert..."
"Affirmative, any idea what it is?"
"Uhh...it sounds like an automated loss prevention system," Snap Wexley's voice, knowledgeable after years spent as a businessman in the outer rim, resounds as the expert on the matter, "They usually only equip cargo ships with the technology, in case the crew dies in deep space, the cargo is safe from pirates. I've never seen a battleship have it, much less a dreadnought."
"Warning. Proximity Alert. Identify your ships. Further encroachment will be treated as a hostile act under First Order Code 008."
"Alright then. I don't really think they will roll out the welcome wagon if we give them our Resistance callsigns. Let's pump the breaks." Poe's words act as an order, and all of their tiny, rebellious offshoot stop, still swaying every once in a while to dodge an errant piece of metal. "Any ideas on how to proceed Wexley?"
"With extreme caution? Usually these systems are designed to target remaining power directly on the intruding craft, a sort of last ditch effort to protect the payload."
"How much power could it possibly have left?" Poe sounds perplexed, "It's basically self-immolating. Rose, what are your readings?"
"Oxygen is at 85% and holding steady, though anymore breeches to the hull and that will rapidly deteriorate. I can't get an accurate hold on weapons, though they are leaking massive radiation on their backside, so it can't be great. I'm not sure how much they could throw at us, but anything from a ship like that would be enough."
"Warning. Proximity Alert. Identify your ships. Be under advisement..."
Rey blocks out the sound, knowing this is her only impediment to Kylo, and the only true threat to her friends on this stagnant battlefield.
"Wait, Poe, I think I got this."
"Rey?" It's the first time she has spoken aloud over the comms since the jump, and Poe is startled by her sudden re-emergence.
She enters the numbers she has been replaying in her head like a prayer since Kylo first whispered them to her on the very ship that lay in front of her now.
"Ships recognized. Cargo secure. Please advance."
"How?"
"Some secrets I just have to keep, General."
"Fair enough."
Before she can listen to anything else, Rey sees an opportunity, finding a gap in the floating dreck of what was left of the First Order. She pushes the thrusters, resolved to bring the Falcon to its first son.
"I guess Rey has volunteered to be our vanguard," Poe says, with the underpinnings of a smile, "Black Squadron, Brigandine, tail the Falcon to the bay. Rey, you know what to do. Blue Team, bring up the Solace and prepare for transports."
They move forward in relative silence, pushing through. The closer they get to the Discord, the more visceral the suffering around them becomes, with the bodies growing thicker, frozen with their limbs askew, as if reaching out for a savior that would never come. The stygian scene creeps over everyone, and settles in the collective pit of their stomachs.
"How is this possible? Thousands of people, they're just gone? It's not real, it can't be real," a pilot, probably Karé, breaks through.
"It seems pretty real," Rose's voice shakes.
They break the entrance of the Discord, the Black Squadron pulling up. No fire has befallen them. The dreadnought's mechanical atmosphere has not yet failed. The overwhelming surrealness of the situation acts as a blanket to the deluge of despair that surrounds them.
"Permission to land, General," it comes out as more of a command than a question, as Rey has already engaged the landing sequence and routed to a bay left hanging partially unhinged from the main ship.
"Wait," it is Finn's voice, not Poe's, that replies. He has somehow dialed in to a private transmission, no doubt with some help from Rose.
"Finn, I'm sorry…" She has to go, she has to find Kylo.
"Rey, NO, tell me what's going on," something in his voice, in the way it seems to shake, catches her. She can't leave him without an explanation, she can't.
The last three years she has spent running, but not from Finn, never from Finn. Finn, who knew the sting of abandonment just as fiercely as she did. Finn, who became her first true family member, someone who wouldn't leave, someone who had stuck by her from the very instant they met. Finn. How can she explain this to Finn?
"I love him Finn. I love him and he is going to die and I can't let him die."
The words hit him all at once. Rey, his Rey. He wants to open his mouth to object, to tell her there is another way, but there's not, is there? Kylo Ren may be redeemable to her, but to the Galaxy, there was no justice without his head on a spike.
Finn's eyes well up, and Rose, who sits beside him, takes off her headset to hold him.
Rose, who he has loved since Crait. Rose, who he would give up the stars for. Rose, who he would lay down everything in front of just to make sure she smiled again.
"Finn?" Rey's cheeks are hot again with a stream of her tears.
"I know," he says, tears falling as he looks at Rose, who looks back at him ardently. "I know what that's like. We won this war by saving what we love, not killing what we hate."
Rey smiles from the other side of the receiver.
"Go save what you love Rey."
"I love you both, may the force be with you, always."
Rey slings the headset off quickly, drawing her hand over her mouth as she sobs into herself.
Chewie's hand rests on her shoulder as she moves to gather herself. There is only one more step on this path she started so long ago, one more thing left to do.
She moves to deboard, slinging a pack over her shoulder, but before she can move too far down the walkway out of the cockpit, Chewie stops her with a roar. She turns back.
"I'll take care of him. I promise."
Chewie's eyes are full of sadness, sadness for a boy he will never see again, for a man that could have been. Rey drops her pack and walks back to Chewie, who bends over so she can kiss his forehead, "I promise."
Chewie nods and a sad lament escapes him as Rey angles down the walkway and onto the disintegrating Discord. All she has to do is find a spot and wait. She knows he will come to her. He always does.
Rey posts herself at the end of a turbine tunnel, its huge, slowly moving blades framing her as she leans against the exposed rebar.
It was harder, here, to feel anything, encased in so much durasteel. She knew, from how long she had been down there, that the Solace should have been docked by now, with her friends finding the injured and setting up triaging stations. They had run drills before, never for First Order soldiers, of course, but the same principles would apply, she was sure, just with more venomous rhetoric spewing from the wounded.
Briefly, she thinks of meditating, to get a better lock on where everyone truly is, but her body is too jittery with anticipation. Instead, she unsheaths her saberstaff and begins running forms.
Lightly padded steps echoing through the tunnel cause her to still, her staff poised above her head.
Kylo.
She's frozen, waiting for him to appear down the hall. Her breathing picks up, unsure of how it will go, after she left him here, after everything he must have survived to still be alive.
Before she can dwell, the hallway in front of her is alight in red, so much red that for a fleeting moment, she thinks the external fire must has moved inward, and that surely, this would be the end.
Her eyes sharply move into focus to see the true cause.
Hux, flanked by what must be a new version of the Praetorian Guard, stands at the end of the tunnel, staring up at her. They lock eyes, his blue glaze in terror as her hazel alight in rage. Images of First Order propaganda flash before her, filing back to the only time she had seen Hux previously, with his face next to Kylo's masked one, images beamed across the galaxy to breed hate.
Her eyes leave his, though, to the most immediate threats. The Guards armor is different, more amorphous, somehow, than it used to be, lacking the rigidity and sharp lines she remembers, but the color is still exactly the same, etched into her mind from that first time she fought by Kylo's side, instead of against him
Bile rises in her as her eyes tick back to Hux, the cause of all this pain, of all the bodies scraping up against the Falcon, of Kylo struggling to get back to her. Without further thought, she finds herself running full speed down the hall, baring her teeth, spinning her saberstaff. She throws a guard down with a waved hand, and jumps, angling her red saber above Hux's sniveling face. She can see her amethyst in the cool blue of his eyes, terror washing over him and all she wants is to see the inside of his stupid head as she splices it through with her saber.
Hux falls backwards as the blade of a vibro-voulge collides with her laser. She can see him, backing up, hands and feet scurrying away from her on the ground, and a pride wells in her.
Quickly, she backs out of that feeling though, knowing that it wouldn't be productive, not with five Praetorians staring her down now.
They push her back down the hallway as she parries glances from both sides.
"I thought I killed you already," she screams over the hum of their weaponry, "I guess I'll just have to kill you again."
From behind their red armor, he sees Hux being helped to his feet by two remaining guards, and her heart drops as he begins moving in the direction of her friends.
No.
Her strikes aim more true from that moment on.
Kylo follows on Hux's heels. It's less draining to stay two steps behind him, rather than in front. Armitage is nothing if not a forward thinker, leaving the area behind him safe from being re-examined in self-doubt.
He feels Rey, has felt her since she jumped in, but it's hard, now, to keep going. He had successfully launched a counterinsurgence from inside the veins of a dreadnought, funneling the power he had into actionable pieces to use against Hux. And it had worked, if the large nuclear blasts followed by echoing silence were any indication.
But Hux was still alive.
But so was Kylo. He is sure his left shoe is filled with blood, but he can't stop, can't risk being idle. He has to get to her.
He comes to a large hallway and pauses, feeling the string under his left rib tighten. She's near. Concentrating, he can feel her, so strong in the force. His soul lurches as he senses her adrenaline, her determination, but there is no fear, only calm power. Deeping this focalization on her, he senses the others, the guards. There are three waning on the ground, and only two more, scratch that, one more, to be defeated. A fleeting thought passes that she may need help, but he knows she doesn't. He smiles. She's his. That girl, no, that woman, with all her compassion and light and strength, is his.
Something else enters his connection with the force, then. The Resistance. They're onboard. He feels Hux moving closer to where they are huddled. Why are they here? The war is over, the First Order is powerless without their hoard, even the Pilot could see that.
But, he can feel them, loudly thrumming excitement through the force. The Pilot, the Traitor, the Other One, he can feel them all.
Tendrils of darkness flow in like tributaries on his heart.
It tastes like power. It tastes like domination.
It would be so easy, with her preoccupied. He could almost taste it. He would slaughter them, the Traitor, the Other One, the Pilot, most of all. His blood almost lusted for it. He could kill them and when she came to find him, their bodies would be strewn around him. He would look at her.
I tried to stop it, but…
He saw the ghost of her pain. Her eyes welled in agony. He would be the one to catch her as she crumbled to the ground.
I'm here, I'm here.
She would press into his chest, her pain radiating through him, her darkness growing. She would allow it to defile her then, she would have to. And she would be his, totally. She would only be his. Totally his.
He looks down the corridor, where he knows Rey is.
He turns and limps in the other direction.