Nothing is Ever Truly Over
Chapter Five
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"Oh, I've got a bad feeling about this," Poe muttered as he gazed upon the rising sun out the window. Sunrises were always lovely, even on Coruscant. That combination of natural beauty combined with man-made ingenuity made for an interesting contrast that somehow complimented one another.
"You always get a bad feeling when it comes to political maneuvering," Finn remarked at the obvious statement.
"Yeah, and for good reason." Poe turned around to face everyone else. "Because I'm not good at this sort of thing."
"So why not find someone who is?" Jannah proposed, raising an eyebrow sardonically.
Poe glanced around, and caught Zorii's visor tilt towards him in a meaningful way. He remembered the little talk they had which ultimately was about the same thing. He knew she was right: he didn't have to go it alone. "Got someone in mind?" he asked Jannah.
"Lando," she dropped.
"Lando?" Poe questioned, uncomprehending.
"If I may elaborate, General Calrissian may be the best fit for leading a new government. His experience in governing Bespin and its resulting flourishment certainly speak for themselves," C-3PO logically inserted his own opinion.
R2-D2 booped an obvious agreement from his side, in such a way as to make anyone who thought otherwise feel like an idiot.
D-0's tiny self had nothing to say. He knew nothing about the going-ons of this new group of people who had taken him in. His cone head merely swiveled from subject to subject in observation.
Poe thought about it for a bit. He knew Lando was experienced as a governor from Leia, and was good at it. And considering he was pretty much the only person available for the job… "Okay, then." He nodded at Jannah. "Call him."
"Already on his way." She waved her comm link. At his befuddled look, she rolled her eyes. "I knew you'd be for it anyway. All you needed was convincing."
He instinctively glanced towards Zorii again at Jannah's words. "Yeah, I was convinced alright."
He saw the former bounty hunter look down, flattered. She may have a hard skin, but he knew that once that outer skin was breached, she was sweet at her core.
"I just understand now that we need someone who's capable of leading people in these difficult times, and I know I'm not that person."
"Perhaps I can help."
The new and unexpected voice in the room took everyone by surprise. Both Zorii and Jannah drew their weapons – the former bounty hunter beating the former stormtrooper to the punch thanks to her dual E-851 blaster pistols being specially designed for quick-drawing – and Poe nearly drew his. But Finn's shout of delight stopped him and made him actually process who he was about to pull his blaster pistol on.
"REY!"
Rey was quickly smothered into a bearhug by Finn, and Poe quickly followed. Both of them were just so relived to see her again that they didn't even take notice of her notable discomfort. Their hugging bothered her now.
"Oh, Master Jedi Rey! It is so wonderful to see you again!" 3P0 greeted with his usual eccentricity.
"Please 3P0, don't call me that," Rey grimaced and looked away as she gently pushed Finn and Poe off of her. After Mos Eisley, she couldn't consider herself a Jedi at all. "Just because I'm the only known Force-user left doesn't make me a Jedi by default."
"Oh, that's something I actually wanted to talk to you about, Rey!" Finn said, excitement lacing his face.
Rey raised a prompting eyebrow.
"I think I might have the Force!"
She burst into laughter. It was a rather disturbing cackle that put goosebumps on everyone's arms. It served to further convince Zorii to keep her pistols up and aimed at her.
While Jannah had lowered her energy bow, she did still keep an arrow nocked just in case. She had only known her for a little bit and didn't even know her all that well beyond how she was Force-sensitive, so she was still wary and untrusting of Rey.
As was Rose. She could tell from the moment Rey revealed herself that not only was something off, but also that she was threatening. She was definitely not the same girl who left the Resistance.
Kaydel merely observed closely. She did find something off about Rey, but not enough to act on it.
Rey's cackle served as a wake-up call for Finn and Poe. As they stepped back from her cautiously, they finally took notice of her all-black outfit and the gleaming lightsaber hilt on her belt. It was so reminiscent of what they remembered about Kylo Ren's outfit that it placed them on edge.
Eventually Rey recovered. "You don't have the Force," she bluntly told Finn, a distinctly amused quirk of her lips visible.
Finn was taken aback. It didn't quite make sense to him. "But… I've been able to feel you for a long time now. I felt you die," he pointed out.
Rey was in front of him in an instant, rage and a dash of agony flashing across her face at the reminder that she only lived because Ben Solo traded his life for hers. "Do not EVER bring that time up again," she seethed, jabbing her left index finger in his chest.
He took notice of the black ring on that finger, reminiscent in design of Leia's. He didn't quite understand why she was dressed up the way she was or why her attitude changed so drastically, but it made him uneasy all the same. Finn nodded quickly, the point being driven home that she didn't want to talk about it.
She stepped back. "Anyways, feeling just me isn't proof you're Force-sensitive."
Finn observed as she folded her hands behind her back. She looked so regal like that, yet so condescending also. "What do you mean?"
"If you were Force-sensitive, you'd be able to feel everyone, not just me. Feeling just me only proves that you have a strong connection to me."
Looking elsewhere, she caught notice of Zorii, and how she had not lowered her pistols from her.
Rey's gaze hardened on her. "I thought I was okay in your eyes."
The former bounty hunter recognized her own words from their first meeting being thrown back at her, and so mockingly too. "I didn't think you cared about that," she shot back.
Rey's lip curled up in twisted satisfaction as she relished in stirring up the pot. "I don't."
The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a lightsaber. Rey could tell she was angering Zorii, and she found delight in it. The former bounty hunter just couldn't stand the condescension from the dark princess-attituded Force-user.
"Whoa, hey now!" Poe stepped between them, gently taking the former bounty hunter's arms and coercing her to lower her pistols. It spoke volumes to the trust between them that she allowed such an action at all.
"Girls, come on. This isn't the time for arguing!" Finn said. His intervention earned him a smoldering glare from Rey.
"Tell that to the smart-ass little girl," Zorii snipped.
"Come out from behind that mask if you're such a grown-up woman!" Rey snarled towards her. She hated her young age of twenty being tossed around as an insult like that.
"GIRLS!" Rose's shout pierced the large office.
It was enough to get Rey and Zorii to stop their argument and look towards her. As small a presence as she was, Rose could make herself heard when she wanted.
"If you could stop for a minute, I think we have more important things to do now." Rose pointed out the window.
When everyone looked, it was plain as day. Though not quite so much to Rey, as she was the only one out of the loop. Regardless, she knew something important was going on just from the little she had heard so far. An ostentatious yet simultaneously reserved ship descended down towards the landing pad, next to the Millenium Falcon Rey had come in. Only one such person could be arriving in such a way.
"Lando," Poe noted, punching the air with glee.
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Chewie roared his displeasure with Lando.
"Hey, you gotta see it from my point of view!" the former rogue argued as they descended down the ramp. "Would you like it if I came to your place and stashed whiskey everywhere?"
A few sarcastic moans returned.
Lando let out a laugh. "You're right. Bad comparison, fur and alcohol."
Lando Calrissian along with his old friend Chewie watched the younger generation of the Resistance come out to meet him on the landing pad. His interest was immediately drawn to the black wraith leading them.
"Hello, what have we here?" he drawled out suavely, looking Rey up and down with a curious grin.
The girl couldn't be sure if he was just being a flirt or if there was a greater meaning to his words, but it made her self-conscious regardless. She had never gotten accustomed to people examining her. She always felt uncomfortable when she was under the microscope, because she was just waiting for someone to find something wrong with her and cast her out.
But not this time, she swore. She was reborn into a new woman, one that did not stand by and let the galaxy trample over her. She would not just take her place. She would own it.
"I hope you took care of my ship."
Rey tilted her head, grinning. "I believe it's my ship now."
Chewie huffed a laugh at her claim on the ship. Leave it to her to stake her claim on what was hers and never renege on it. He came in for a hug, which Rey allowed, but the discomfort returned and she broke the hug soon after.
"Why are you here, though?" she asked Lando, inquisitive for answers she had not yet been told.
"No one told you?"
"I only just got here." Rey decided to give her friends the benefit of the doubt. There really was no time to inform her beforehand.
"Ah." Lando nodded in understanding. "Well, the Resistance asked me to be the leader of their new government."
"Oh?" Rey's eyes sharpened on Lando like a predator at that little token of information. His taking up of leadership put a block in her path.
"Yeah. Get it out of the junta phase and make something legitimate so they can focus on eliminating any First Order holdouts," Lando continued, seemingly unaware of the belligerence he faced from her.
"You know, speaking of just getting here," Poe inserted, attracting her attention. He grinned in barely restrained excitement. "I haven't seen my droid yet. Where's my little buddy?"
Rey fell silent. How was she to break the news that the ball droid was gone forever, to his master no less? And that didn't even consider how difficult she herself found it to talk about. BB-8 meant something to her, too. The droid had been her first real friend.
She faced away from Poe, deliberating how to even begin. "I made a mistake. I failed to realize how hostile Tatooine was to droids. I let my guard down, and some scrappers… caught him. And they… tore him apart, beyond repair."
She turned around, and she could see Poe felt just like how she felt. The unshed tears in her eyes were mirrored by the moisture within his. She noticed Zorii step forward and comfort him, something she appreciated even despite her bad outlook of the former bounty hunter.
"I made sure those responsible paid for their crime," she continued, a determined resolve shining through. "But that's why I've come back. I want to stop this from happening ever again. I will not lose anyone else. And I will do whatever it takes to achieve that. Nothing will stand in my way." She ended as she looked at Lando like he did stand in her way.
It was a statement that everyone felt vividly, but everyone felt differently about her declaration. Finn, as he always was with Rey, was on her side. He never doubted her, had never had any reason to. He didn't see one now.
Rose, Jannah, and Kaydel didn't really know how to feel. Each of them held their own doubts but didn't lack so much faith as to openly object.
Poe and Zorii were more indisposed however as the pilot mourned the loss of his little buddy and the former bounty hunter did her best to help him through it. They paid no mind as the rest of the entourage headed back inside, instead staying on the landing pad together.
As Rey passed, though, she and Zorii locked gazes. What the former bounty hunter received was a glare, one that warned her to stay out of the way.
Zorii gave no sign that she acknowledged it beyond just staring back at her. From the life she lived, and the experience gained through said life, she wasn't so easily intimidated.
When they were all gone, the former bounty hunter swiftly removed her helmet, dropping it and embracing a silently crying Poe.
"Just let it out," she soothed, rubbing his back.
He let out a shaky breath, not quite ready to speak. Instead, he just clung to her. He was greatly upset by the loss of his little buddy, but this woman, this woman he took for granted, was really helping him. She didn't even know BB-8 yet she could still tell that he was important to him. She just knew him so well.
After a minute, they parted. "Okay?" she gently asked.
"No… but better than I was." He rubbed at his more reddened eyes. "Thank you," he said sincerely.
She didn't register her own nod because she was caught under his gaze. Poe always managed to invigorate something within her, without fail. She thought it silly to deny how he was an attractive man, because it was so obvious. Anyone with functioning eyes could tell he was a magnificently attractive man, even when he was at his lowest.
She eventually realized she was staring at him for far too long and awkwardly broke away. She picked up her helmet, now facing away from him.
"So… what do you think of Rey? What she just said?" Poe filled the void of silence.
The topic of Rey made her stare down at her helmet in contemplation. "What do you think?" she turned his question back around on him, unwilling to answer for herself. She knew he considered Rey important and would value her opinions, so Zorii wanted to respect that, even though she didn't particularly like her now.
"I mean…" Poe fumbled a bit on how to express his feelings. "She's changed, but I understand where she's coming from. She wants to stop all this meaningless death. Who am I to oppose that?"
She nodded, accepting his answer for what it was. She may not have agreed, but she respected his view.
Her lack of response prompted him to ask, "What're you thinking about?" He walked up behind her, looking over her shoulder to see what she was looking at.
Zorii stared down at her helmet, remembering Rey talking about it as if it was something she had hid herself behind. In truth, she kind of was. "When you left, I never took this off. I always kept it on because there was no one I trusted enough to show myself to." She looked to him, resolve filling her. She wouldn't be brought down by Rey's belittlement, but she also found it unnecessary to even have it now. "But I don't need it anymore."
He understood the truth in her words. She didn't need it anymore because they had met again, and she trusted him enough to see her true self. He nodded at her and took a step back, letting her do what she needed to do.
She tossed her helmet forward and up into the air, then quickly drew one of her pistols and shot it. It split apart into dozens of pieces. The shattered remains rained off the landing pad and down into the pits of the Coruscant underworld.
She and Poe recognized the irony of it. The destruction of her mask and the shattered pieces falling into the underworld paralleled her own decision to leave the criminal life behind and ascend to a higher calling, a calling that brought her back to Poe.
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Lando exhaled as he stretched his arms above him. "Whoo, what a day."
He fixed himself a relaxing drink in his darkened rooms. His definition of a 'relaxing drink' translated to a shot of Corellian whiskey. He made it a more regular thing to take such a drink for the past year ever since he got word Han had died. It was the way the scoundrel would've wanted to be remembered.
He took a weary seat on his couch, then raised his glass in a toast. "To Han, you old pirate," he toasted before knocking back his shot.
In the darkness of his rooms, the spit and crackle betraying the ignition of unstable lightsaber blades filled the area as the walls were shadowed in blood red light.
"To Han," Rey chillingly voiced her agreement as she held her extended double-bladed lightsaber. "May no one else suffer his fate."
Lando didn't break from his relaxed state. He wasn't really intimidated by her, not because she wasn't fear-inducing, but more because his experience allowed him to persevere even in the face of fear. It was something he was forced to learn after meeting Darth Vader. "I had a feeling you'd come by," he noted as he appraised her. His laid-back nature never deserted him even now.
"Then you know why I'm here." Rey sinuously advanced, like a serpent stalking its prey.
The former smuggler shook his head in amazement. "You really are just like him, aren't you?"
Rey stopped, standing opposite him. Only a table separated them now. Because she stopped, Lando could tell he had caught her off guard.
"Sneaking around in the shadows and manipulating events so you can put yourself into a position of power all while presenting an amicable exterior… Your grandfather was the exact same way, dear."
"So, Leia told you," Rey assumed, purposely holding herself back but she tensed up all the same. She still didn't quite know how to feel about Leia just ignoring her lineage like it meant nothing when to her it changed everything.
Lando gently shook his head. "She didn't need to." He didn't exactly deny it, but to him it didn't really matter. "I may not have known he was a Force-user until Luke told me about him, but looking back I can see he was the architect behind the creation of the Empire. He was a real snake. He destroyed the Jedi because they were a threat to him, just like you want to destroy those who are a threat to you. The resemblance between you two is uncanny."
Her lips curled in disgust, her anger rousing itself at being compared to someone she utterly detested. "I'm not arguing with you over something so stupid as familial traits. I know what I'm doing here."
"I'm not sure you do." The former smuggler could tell she was severely off-balanced, even when he first met her on Pasaana. But now… "Something's been different about you, ever since you came back from Exegol. What happened?"
Rey immediately felt a surge of grief flow through her, and she turned away. She hated talking about that time, but perhaps he could understand. "I finally found the love of my life," she began unsteadily. "Ben Solo."
Lando's eyebrows went up in intrigue. He hadn't heard about his nephew for a very long time. He loved the kid, and a part of him was happy someone truly loved him. Though he was curious how such a love came to be.
"He was the most wonderful man I'd ever known. He may have been a right bantha's arse at times-"
The former rogue cracked a smirk at that. He knew the boy got his sense of charm from his father.
"-but he was always there for me when I needed him most. I finally got to show him just how much I loved him. I had never been happier in my life than I was then." Rey's delightfully reminiscent face then darkened with her next words. "And then he was taken from me right after."
Oh. He didn't know that. He had suspected his nephew had been dead, but hearing it definitely left its mark on him. He felt his own sorrow over his death. It was very hard to hear the son of his best friend was gone.
"Do you understand now? I'm DEAD on the inside!" The snarl in Rey's voice and face was apparent as she turned back to him. "I have nothing left to live for!" The ferocity in her died down a little as she struggled to regain control over her emotions. "But then I discovered something about myself. I have power, the power to prevent what happened to me from happening to anyone else. And I intend to use it." She leveled him with a glare of a thousand suns. "The only problem is that you're in the way."
He could kind of understand why she was the way she was now. She only wanted to put a stop to all the death and war. "I get it, Rey. Believe me, I do." He was the same way when he got word of Han's death, followed by Luke's, and most recently that of Leia. "But this isn't the way to go about it. Grow too obsessed with stopping something and through your own desperation you might just make it come to pass."
"I don't care," she bluntly countered. "No price is too high if it puts a stopper to endless war."
She was so direct that Lando had to do a double take. If she didn't care even after he had spelled it out to her, then that meant… "Well then you're lost," he remarked resignedly.
Rey tilted her head and cracked a wicked smirk. It made her look positively insane. "When you've already lost yourself, what more do you have to lose?" She straightened out, the smirk dropping from her face as she grew severe. She held her lightsaber up so one of its blades was aimed at him. "Hand over your position to me, or you will die. This is your only warning."
Lando exhaled heavily. Rey was a woman who had lost the love of her life. Yet, it was exactly that which made her impossible to reason with. So he didn't. "If you want my position, then you'll have to kill me."
She let her saber drop to her side. Oh, how she hated that defiance. It made her blood boil. She really didn't want to spill blood to get what she wanted, but if left no other choice, it was a price she would pay. "Your choice," she pointedly reminded him.
Then, with absolutely no hesitation, she shot her hand out and unleashed a lightning strike at Lando. The light was the last thing he ever saw, literally and metaphorically. He went out still doing what he could to help, not betraying himself most importantly.
She slowly stepped over to where his body had been knocked back towards and looked down on it. Smoke rose from where his body was struck. She had not just killed him. She had fried him, even if just a little.
She looked down at her hand. There was a part of her that still felt horrified at this power, and she had just used it to kill someone she had personally known. Not like the bounty hunters at Mos Eisley. It was easier to kill people she didn't know.
She clenched her hand into a fist. Yet there was such an incredible thrill that shot through her whenever she used that power. It made her feel so incredibly powerful every time she unleashed it. She never wanted to lose it.
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There's chapter five! I was stuck on this one for a little while, because I found it more difficult to articulate what I wanted to happen. But I got it eventually! Anyway, Rey returns to the Resistance but with her own objectives in mind, she's begun causing discord among the gang, Zorii finally lets go of her mask, and Rey eliminates Lando.
I just couldn't help myself with taking a shit on the Force-sensitive Finn stuff. It's fucking ridiculous and only exists now because of Lucasfilm's terrible marketing for TFA. Really, was it really so hard for them to just market each film for what it was and focus on the Reylo connection that is the beating heart of the ST? Whenever they did market that particular aspect, it was actually an honest representation of what we got.
I came up with the thread of the significance of Zorii's helmet on the spot. It came to me after I rethought the significance of what it means when someone has a mask in Star Wars. It means they're hiding a part of themselves away. And, at least the way I see it, the path to balance is to accept every part of yourself. So, with the destruction of her mask, Zorii has finally accepted the part of herself that longs to be by Poe's side and stopped rejecting him.
The death of Lando was hard to do, but necessary to me. I wanted to set the tone to make it feel like no one is safe. That's something I actually did enjoy about the ST: how dangerous it was and how no one was safe. Lightsaber fights in the ST actually felt dangerous. Every blow could be felt. And while it was sad to see the OT characters die, I like how they all went away in meaningful ways while also reminding everyone that no one is safe in war.
I also seriously enjoy the hell out of writing Rey on the Dark Side. So it's fun for me whenever she does terrible deeds, muhahaha! But seriously, I find Rey especially interesting when she's on the Dark Side because of her complex psychology. She's not evil for the sake of evil. She just believes she's justified. Much like how Kylo was.
Anyways, feel free to favorite, follow, and leave a review! I love responding to reviews, it always feels great.