Rey had to remind herself to breathe.
How could someone so in tune with the force forget to breathe? She took a sharp breath, trying not to cry.
These were her first breaths with no Jedi in the universe. Or as the last one. There was only person who claimed to be trained by the last jedi left.
And she was hugging her, trying to make sense of it.
Leia pulled back.
"Don't do that," she said.
Rey blinked, scolding herself for crying. She didn't want to appear to be weak when they had only moments.
"I'm sorry," she said, wiping her face on the back of her sleeve.
"No. You can cry, darling," Leia said. "But don't think you're alone."
"But I am. I mean, there is you," Rey said awkwardly, but she knew as much as anyone in the galaxy that Leia was strong in the force, but not trained and more committed to politics and leadership than Jedi training.
Although she'd learned enough to survive the vacuum of space.
Still, Rey hesitated to ask her for guidance, even now.
Leia shook her head. "Not me, Rey. It wasn't meant to be me. Luke was meant to train you, but me... I was always meant to train someone else. That became clear when you showed up."
"What?" Rey was intrigued, but she also heard footsteps. She quickly reached out to see who it was.
"It's Poe."
Rey said it, not thinking Leia would say, "Exactly."
Rey looked back to Leia, confused by her words.
"Wait? What?"
Leia said, "Poe. While Finn is connected to the force, and you may train him, I sent you to learn from Luke," she hesitated, just as Poe came up out of the brush beside her, "and I was going to train him."
Poe was holding a paper.
The blue paper.
Rey had learned to hate the sight of it.
They were leaving another planet again. Three in the last week.
"We have another transfer order, only about twenty hours to prepare, your highness, and..."
He had stopped talking, his dark eyes darting now between Rey and Leia.
"I missed something. Or you're talking about-" he hesitated to say her brother's name, still confused and grief-weary himself, but Lando's presence had only made everyone miss Luke Skywalker more. "There's an update, that's all, I can come back-"
"No," Leia said, "I can't wait forever to tell you."
Rey blurted out, "Him? I mean... he's a good pilot, but...you were doing to train him?"
Poe took a step back. "General, I'm confused."
"Firstly, Dameron, you are the General now. I know it's difficult for you to wrap your head around that, but it's the truth. If you call me anything from now on," she paused, pulling her lightsaber off of her belt and handed it to him as she said, "it'll have to be teacher. I can't stand the title Master, but I most certainly am not that, and I'm far too important to have to be uncomfortable if I don't want to be."
He stared at the lightsaber in front of him, taking it from Leia's hands, but the confusion continued to numb any expression Rey could read from him.
"I'm sorry, General... I mean, your highness..." Poe turned from Leia to Rey, and even behind him where BB-8 had rolled up beside him with a surprised squeal. Poe pointed to the droid.
"Yeah, what he said. Is this a joke?"
"It might as well be, but I'm growing fairly certain it's not," Rey said, almost to herself.
"Poe," Leia said, turning back to face him, still holding the lightsaber awkwardly, as if holding it as a courtesy for her. "You weren't ready. From the moment I met you I knew that. That's why... I sent you to find him originally."
Poe looked at the lightsaber again, but shook his head. "No. No, you sent Rey to Luke."
Leia shook her head. "Not at first. I sent you to find the missing piece of the map."
Poe squinted his eyes, remembering meeting with the old man, the way he passed the information on to him, as if it was his legacy and Poe's future.
"In fact, I told old San Tekka that if he ever found the map, I would send him the one that would need it most. At the time, I thought that was you. You were the only one remotely in tune with the force the way Luke was. The way you fly… it's like a flashback. Then, she came… and I didn't know..."
Poe still looked like he wanted to run back to base, but he looked back at Rey.
"She's more powerful. So you sent her."
"No," Leia said. "I sent her because... you'll learn. You don't just use the Force, sometimes it asks to listen. The Force speaks to you. I was meant to send her. And I realized I had to teach you."
"By having me almost lead a mutiny against Holdo?"
Leia took a deep breath. "You probably wondered why I didn't tell you the plan. Or she didn't. It wasn't logical. It wasn't meant to be. It wasn't to teach you strategy, it was to teach you the nature of surrender. But it was also to see if you were ready." She stared back at the lightsaber in Poe's hand. "And I think you are."
Poe looked at it. BB-8 let out a beep that sounded like shock next to him.
"You said it, buddy," Poe said.
"Leia," Rey said, "What about Finn?"
"He is strong with the Force, but his path is not to be trained by me. Rey, you will train him in time, but he must also wait to be ready. But Poe-"
Rey interrupted, shaking her head, "Is a pilot and a captain-"
"General," Leia corrected, with the no-nonsense look she got about rank.
"But he doesn't even want to. He doesn't even know what to do with it! And he doesn't-" Rey stopped short.
Leia and Poe looked at her, until they could hear what she sensed moments earlier.
Finn came barreling down the path. He shouted the moment he saw them. "There you are! Poe, they say we're launching in twenty hours, but that we need to wait at least two days because..."
Finn trailed off, but then spoke into the awkward silence.
"Poe, what are you doing with that?"
Poe looked down again at the weapon again.
"Well," he said, "If you ask Rey, I'm not going to manage to do anything with it at all."
The blue paper felt like lead in his hand. It held their next location. It held the safely of moving the rebellion again.
They'd been hopping from planet to planet and had landed on Corellia. The green seemed to make the air thick around them as the afternoon rains had started to evaporate. He was outside, alone again in the tent that he had begged his assistant to post for him.
He needed to be alone.
Except she had found him.
Poe was staying at the lighsaber. He wasn't holding it anymore.
She reached out, not wanting to prod his mind, but he distinctively was thinking of never touching it again.
And then a rush of guilt, like a wave hit her.
Because of her reaction.
"Rey?"
Something about the way his dark eyes moved to her made her feel more vulnerable, but she remained. She would need to be vulnerable if he was going to actually believe her.
"Rey, are you okay? Is Rose out of surgery?"
Rey hated herself for not speaking sooner. "No, I mean... she's recovering. That was at least one of the reasons why Finn didn't want to leave so quickly, but we found out The First Order isn't going to come into the Corellian system for a while. It looks like they are moving more troops onto that moon outside of the Rishi Maze system."
"That's far enough away to be safe for now. That's the one with mostly ocean they said, right?"
"Yes," she answered. "Which should give us some time to recruit more volunteers for the Rebellion and..."
She trailed off, thinking she didn't really want to talk about it anymore. But he had misunderstood her hesitancy.
"Good. Maybe might actually find an apprentice for Leia, not a pilot who can't even-"
"Stop!" she said, almost too forcefully. She wondered if she scared him, so she moved closer and took the seat across from him.
"Poe, I shouldn't have said anything... I'm a scavenger. I'm not sure what right I have to doubt anyone's abilities based on who they are."
"Well, you can doubt mine as much as you want. I never... felt... anything, Rey. I don't have the Force."
"Of course you do," she said.
He closed his eyes, shaking his head as if she had just said something illogical.
"Prove it," he scoffed.
"I can't. And I didn't believe Leia...until I remembered something."
'What?"
"You shouldn't be alive. But you are."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"How did you survive Kylo's torture?"
Poe closed his eyes, wincing at the thought of the pain. "I only lasted two minutes against him."
"Most people only last ten seconds," Rey said, taking a breath, "And surviving Jakku? You landed safely, with only half your chute open, and made it-"
"I'm strong, that's all. I know it was days without water, I heard Leia's other theories, but that doesn't mean I have the force!"
"And when you fly?"
Poe stared at the lightsaber again, with a little more conviction.
Rey spoke again. "I know what it feels like when I pilot a ship, Poe."
He sighed, feeling foolish for telling someone after all these years.
"The ships not... flying. The ship is just encasing me, as I race, as I move, as I brake, as I shoot. I'm flying, not the ship."
"I know. It's how I feel when I fly." She paused because he was holding his breath now, but she had to add the most important part. "And you can see what's going to happen, almost before it happens."
He shook his head. "It's not that… I'm just a good at guessing-"
She interrupted. "But it might be the Force."
"But what if it isn't, Rey? You didn't believe Leia either!" he said, but then the voice that had just sounded like it was about to argue dropped to a whisper. "Are you trying to convince me, or are you trying to convince yourself?"
Rey swallowed, biting her lip before she spoke. But he asked again. "You don't even know if she's right. What if she's not right?"
Rey shrugged. "She said she knew, in space when she was dead, what door to go to. She sensed your presence. Jedis can do that."
Poe remained frozen, thinking of that moment when she moved towards the door, remembering as he ran down the hallway. But then his doubts rushed in again. "Well, I've already stared at a rock and tried to get it to levitate, and it hasn't worked. If I can't do the easiest thing, how do we know for sure? I can't lift a pebble. I'm pretty sure that's a requirement."
She laughed but stopped quickly. She needed to know as much as he did. And she was more determined for an answer than worrying about what he might think.
Rey reached out her hand.
"Hold my hand," she said. "For a moment."
"Why? How do I know you aren't going to pick up the stone to try to prove me wrong?"
She sighed and looked at him sternly. He dropped his head, wondering if he was about to regret what he was going to do. Without lifting his head or moving his eyes off the lightsaber, he reached out his hand. It was shaking, right up until the moment he touched hers.
And then it was still.
He expected to feel nothing.
Nothing different. Nothing impossible. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He stopped breathing.
Because it felt as if he had spent his whole life just pretending to breathe compared to how he was feeling right now.
"Poe, breathe. It's okay."
He felt as if he'd been crashed under a wave, under the pressure of something surrounding every part of him and yet it lifted him up.
All the colors seemed brighter, every detail was clearer, every sound was louder...
He could hear Rey speak, but he also heard a male voice, as if echoed from halfway across the galaxy.
The man's voice whispered as she spoke the same words.
"These... these are your first steps."