In all his long years, Chewbacca said, he had never once ventured this far out from the Galaxy's core. It sounded more poetic in the original Wookie wording than what Rey translated for Kaydel's benefit. The general upshot came across however - that Chewie was every bit as awestruck as them at what they saw.

"Pity the others aren't with us on this one," Kaydel murmured. "Dameron, in particular, would give his front teeth to see this view."

"I don't doubt it," Rey replied. She tried and failed to keep her reply dry and reserved. Out here, she couldn't keep the awe from her voice. The stars were sparse, stray pinpricks of light against the inky black.

"Let relic hunt number three commence," Kaydel announced, all mock-grandeur with a note of giddiness. The nature of this mission - securing an ancient Jedi holocron from a derelict ship - meant she'd only been allowed to take a small crew. The Resistance was busy all over the Galaxy and Poe, Finn and Rose were needed elsewhere.

They coasted gradually through the void, skimming under the ring of a deep blue gas giant as they moved toward its day side.

"Coming up on the target," Kaydel said.

Rey glanced down at the console in front of her, then ahead. "I see it. Looks like it's mostly intact." A curved hull hung beneath the planet's ring. Three kilometres long, but with a jagged tear along its belly. "Looks like it used to have a big undercarriage - I guess that's our way in. Have the computers pulled up a class?"

"Only a guess, Valor cruiser."

Chewie murmured.

"Yeah." Rey nodded. "Old class." Another few decades, and this ship would probably be dragged into the ring by the world's gravity and dismembered by collisions.

Kaydel was flicking through her data-slate. "You're looking at a kilometre's spacewalk through it, if those records are correct. No way that thing'll be powered up, so Zero G and no atmosphere."

Rey nodded. "Like we drilled for. Chewie, shall I leave you to fly the rest?"

Her answer was a growl and a pat on the shoulder.

/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\

In her cabin, she stripped to her underwear before pulling on some thermals, and then cranked the door just open enough to poke her head around it. "Kaydel, can I get some help?" Upon hearing the answering call, Rey stepped around the corner, using the Force to hit the switch and let Kadyel in.

Upon seeing Rey in her close-fitting ensemble, Kaydel let out a low whistle. "Damn, Rey. You been working out, or have you been hitting people with a stick for a living?"

Rey laughed and went red, feeling self-conscious but flattered all the same. "Err, thanks."

Then she reached for the bright orange flight suit and stepped into it. The pilots' outfits only needed a few additions to make a full spacesuit, though Kaydel had to help her into the harness for an air tank and check the seals. Rey had only used these with minimal equipment before, carrying out essential maintenance on the Falcon in the vacuum.

"Comms interface sits here." Kaydel pointed to her wrist. "HUD sits in the top left of your visor. Rose made a few tweaks. There's a gyroscope in there, most prominent meter should still be your oxygen."

"Rose and Ki'rii have taught you well."

"They're good teachers. Anyway, Rose also added a thermoprobe and there's an impulsor coil that Ki'rii cooked up. That's gonna be especially important…"

/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\

Rey always found these suits peculiar. They weren't actively uncomfortable, but certainly didn't qualify as nice to spend time in. Add to that the awkwardness of the Falcon's cramped airlock, and it was a genuine relief to get out into the vacuum.

Chewie had brought the Falcon in close, close enough that she could simply reach out from the airlock and grab a handhold. She pulled - gently, she'd learned that lesson when carrying out repairs on the Falcon the first time and only a harness had kept her from flying off into the depths.

She didn't have that luxury here. Some veteran spacewalkers liked to carry a couple of hook-tipped cables, using those to slowly traverse ships just like the more cautious scavengers back on Jakku. But the slow pace didn't mesh well with a limited oxygen supply. And, as Rey knew from bitter experience, a derelict ship often didn't always come with plentiful, convenient holds to rig a cable to.

So she climbed free and went steadily, carefully, working hard to keep her momentum in check. The suit was tough, but if she caught a sharp enough edge or point, the legend of Rey the last Jedi would come to a sudden and very messy end.

She tapped the comms device on her wrist, and Kaydel immediately responded. "You good? Med readings all look steady." Of course her eyes would be firmly on the feeds from the suits.

Rey still wasn't entirely comfortable with the knowledge that someone, even a friend, knew what her vital organs were doing in real time. But that was a conversation for another time.

"Just wanted to talk, and I thought you might be curious about what I'm seeing here."

Kaydel chuckled. "You got that right. Gimme the tour, Rey."

Rey smiled, already feeling less alone. "One observation, speaking as a scavenger. I like knowing if I miss a handhold, I'm not going to plummet and break something."

"Every time you mention your childhood, it sounds rougher."

"I don't mean to do that."

"It's Jakku's fault, not yours."

"Hmm." She pulled herself up a stairwell, finding the latch at the top already open. "Enough about me, anyway. I'm in the main hull." The beam of the torches built into her helmet panned over the interior, as she took it all in. "There's battle damage in here. I'm seeing smoked bits of droid. Actually, that one's relatively intact. Gimme a sec."

She drew close to the mostly whole droid. It was a little shorter than her, with a hunched, arachnid shape. That recalled the Droidekas of the Clone Wars, but the aesthetic was different - all sharp, jagged lines. It was almost more of a precursor to the First Order's favoured look.

The thing was spinning slowly. Rey found an angle, still keeping back. She drew the camera from her belt and took a few pictures before shunting the best to Kaydel. "Does this match anything on file? I'm guessing Sith Empire."

She heard a faint sigh at Kaydel's end, a mere hint of a reproach which still brought some heat to her cheeks. "You oughta press on, Rey. But I'll ask Artoo to run it." Rey managed to move on a bit further, pulling and kicking her way from one handhold or surface to the next, before Kaydel spoke again. "You seeing anything else?"

"No bodies. The droids are the only casualties I see here. The ship must've been stripped." She found a shut door, and pulled a fusion cutter from her belt. "I wonder why they didn't take more and never came back."

"Who knows? Lost to history."

Rey put the cutter to a panel, opening up the socket to insert the impulsor. "I wonder if there's a lost ship from our war, somewhere out on the fringes. Some heroes who we'll never know about."

"Huh," was all Kaydel could manage in response at first. "You, uh, feeling OK there, Rey?"

Rey paused, frowning at the odd melancholy which had stolen up on her. "Yeah, think so." She activated the impulsor, opening the portal. No change in pressure as it did. Still vacuum on the other side, then.

"Good. Oh, Artoo's got an answer and you were right. Sith war droid. Ugly bastards, huh?"

"Well, I've never seen a pretty battle droid."

"Don't let LM-276 hear you say that."

Rey laughed, returning the impulsor to its holster and pulling herself through the door. According to the old schematics, this should put her among the engineering decks. Then her torch penetrated the darkness ahead and she groaned. "Well, kriff. My trip through the hull just got longer."

Whatever fight had spelled the end of this ship had ripped through its central decks. The gantries were simply gone, leaving a huge gap between her and the far exit.

"You're gonna want to cut around," Kaydel said when Rey told her. "I can see about finding you a route."

"Actually..." Rey said. Then she stopped and thought. "There might be a quicker way. You saw when Leia had her spacewalk, didn't you?"

"Hard to forget, Rey. Wait, what are you-"

"I've got an idea." She stretched out a hand, feeling with the Force and getting purchase on a ladder some ten metres away. And in zero gravity it would be the smaller object that moved…

And she floated out into the gulf.

Suddenly, engaging with the environment like this, she felt immeasurably freer. Everything here was suddenly leverage, or something to kick off. She could swing and swoop, almost flying through the space.

She found herself laughing. "This is brilliant! No lie Kaydel, I'd have done bad, bad things to get around like this on Jakku."

There was an audible smile in Kaydel's voice. "I'm glad you've managed to have some fun in there."

"It's still gonna take a little while to get where I'm headed. So I was wondering, Kaydel, and I've been meaning to ask. How did you get here?"

"I think you know that one, Rey. I was in this tunnel, looking at a rockslide-"

"C'mon Kaydes-"

There was a confused, gruntish noise through the radio. "Kaydes? "

"Just trying something. Anyway, how'd you end up in the Resistance?"

There was a note of genuine surprise in Kaydel's voice, though she didn't make anything of it. "Well, you could say I'm like Poe, second-gen Rebel - though nowhere near that impressive a lineage for me. My parents were a logistics manager and a clerk."

"You shouldn't knock it," Rey told her. "We wouldn't get far without people doing those jobs - or yours."

"I know. And they were a proper part of it - part of the ship, part of the crew. Actually," her voice dropped. "Wanna know a secret?"

"Wouldn't say no."

"I…" she whispered, "happened at the tenth anniversary celebrations for the Battle of Endor, on Hosnia Prime."

"You were born at the party?"

"Uh, no Rey. The other thing-"

"Oh. " She couldn't help but giggle.

Kaydel took up the giggling as well. "Yeah. Oh, the day I found out about it, I could've curled up and evaporated, but nowadays it's pretty funny for me."

Rey laughed again, hoping it sounded sympathetic. She pulled her arms in tight, moving into a corridor again. "So you joined because of them?"

"Not exactly." There was a pause, an intake of breath that made Rey halt as well. "But my brother did."

"Your brother?" Rey swallowed. There was an edge to Kaydel's tone now, which told her several things. First and foremost, that her brother wasn't with them any more. But she owed it to Kaydel to hear her out.

"We're - we were - three siblings. My big brother Sokka, my sister Kira and then me. My parents have always liked alliteration." Rey listened in silence, letting Kaydel ramble on and then catch herself. "Sokka always wanted to be a soldier or a pilot. He got himself into the academy and made it to one of the border fleets, but within two months of graduating he'd fallen out with his superiors. Made too much noise about the First Order."

"What?" Rey found that simply baffling.

"Oh, that was quite normal. A lot of people didn't want to face the danger, even ex-Rebels."

Rey hesitated, realigning herself to move up a lift shaft. "Even your parents?"

"It's complicated." Kaydel's tone was circumspect. "My parents didn't trust a lot of the senators and they worried about what the First Order was doing. But when you're safe, and you've got kids and friends and you've got a routine, the idea of breaking off from that and giving your life to something uncertain…"

Rey nodded silently. She knew that kind of inertia well, had been held down so long on Jakku by it. Then she remembered that Kaydel couldn't see her nod. "I understand."

"I'm glad you do. But I struggled with it, back then. Got into fights with kids at school who said Leia was 'the crazy lady'."

"Wow. People really felt that strongly about it?"

"Yeah. This might say a lot about how much comfier Gatalena is than Jakku, but the main thing lots of people fretted about during my childhood, was their kids growing up scared. The idea that we'd have to go through our own war… that was more than many of them were willing to confront."

Maybe, Rey thought, that was the counterpoint to Luke's fear, which had led him to almost turn on his nephew. People were afraid to lose what they had, and the tyrants were ever-ready to exploit that.

"And then Sokka died." Those were the words Rey had been bracing herself for, but she could still hear how difficult it was for Kaydel to speak them. "He'd joined the Resistance in the year 30, got put in Blue Squadron with Poe."

"He's never mentioned it."

"At my request." Another slow breath. "They got into a skirmish in the Anoat Belt. First Order later claimed they were patrolling for pirates, but the truth is they were hunting for Resistance squadrons. Poe showed me the combat logs when I first met him. He had two Interceptors on him and couldn't shake them, so Sokka looped back and went for them. Just like that, didn't even hesitate."

Rey let out a long, low whistle. "Stars' end."

"There was nothing anyone could do after that. The enemy closed on him and that was that." From her voice alone, Rey knew that Kaydel's lip would be trembling. "When you lose someone with a fighter, there's nothing left to bury or cremate. We just found out one day that he was gone."

"I'm…" and she knew how insufficient it would sound, "so sorry, Kaydel. What happened after that?"

"I couldn't understand how they were all so calm. The three of them. We got back from the funeral, I said something - was probably something stupid, can't remember what exactly. But I was angry about what the First Order had done to us, and…"

"Kaydel?"

"No, I can say it. Kira said that the First Order were just the means. In her words, Sokka killed himself when he went off on his stupid quest."

"Kriff. And then?"

"And then? Supernova. Grief, Rey, the things I screamed at them that night. I went to my room and cried, and when the tears stopped I just started packing. The bridge was burned, I was going to do what I could to see Sokka avenged."

Rey felt a tremor in her chest, the sudden, urgent need to throw her arms around Kaydel and hold her tight. But Kaydel was clicks away from her reach. She remembered to check her oxygen level. Three quarters. She started moving again. "And that was how you ended up in the fight?"

"There was a little more. I turned up wanting to be given a blaster. Poe himself said otherwise, and when he'd had a look at my aptitude scores he called in a favour with staff. And that put me in Leia's orbit." Her voice took on an altogether new tone at that, hushed and reverent. "I was this angry, lost eighteen year-old, half ready to run back home, and that's when Leia saw me. She took me through some of the basics that afternoon, but she really wanted to talk about Sokka."

"That sounds like Leia," Rey murmured.

"Yeah." Kaydel's voice suggested that a smile had begun to creep back onto her face. "She told me that you can't sustain yourself on anger and sadness, and that Sokka wouldn't want me to. Sokka had only ever wanted to help and protect people. So from then on, I told myself that that's what I was gonna do."

Rey felt that tender stirring in her heart again. "Sounds like a good motto to live by, Kaydel."

"Honestly Rey, I don't know if I always manage that… but we've had that conversation. I mean, thanks. Those words mean a lot coming from you. And anyway, where've you got to?"

"I'm in the captain's quarters, looking now. Say Kaydel… did you ever hear from your family again?"

"Yeah. Yeah, just once. After Crait I got a transmission - a recorded message they'd made after Hosnia happened. They said they were sorry for how we parted, and hoped I was safe, and that we'd see each other again. And since then, I've just had to keep hoping, you know?"

"I know." Kaydel didn't say anything else after that. Rey let the silence settle, busying herself with searching the chamber and rifling through the cabinets. She didn't want to risk saying something tactless. The knowledge of Kaydel's grief saddened her enough.

And despite all this, she felt a strange, melancholic tug at her heart. Was there jealousy in there? Maybe, because despite the arguments and heartache which Kaydel's words brought to mind, there was also the image of a family. Loving parents and siblings, and Rey had never had those.

She even found she envied Finn. It troubled her, but she couldn't deny the stab of jealousy which caught her whenever it crossed her mind. His parents might still be out there - and she'd leap at the chance to help him find them. But no one was waiting for her.

Your parents threw you away like garbage. She tried to forget the words, but they were always there like sharp rocks under a sea.

Just as unpleasant was the realisation that there was - "Damnit. No trinket."

"It's not there?"

"Nothing here. So if the holocron's anywhere, it'll be in the captain's emergency quarters." That meant heading up to the bridge tower, getting out in the void.

"Sure you want to risk it, Rey? You're on two-thirds oxygen."

"I think it's worth the try. I'll be careful."

/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\

Her worries and thoughts persisted though, as she manoeuvred through the increasing confines of the upper levels. Their preemptive scans had pronounced all the lift shafts to the bridge thoroughly blocked. Trying to get through with her cutter would use up her remaining air twice over.

There was a ladder up to the back of the bridge. So Rey went to an adjacent airlock, another maintenance one. She cut the seal away, and connected the impulsor again. The airlock swung open above her.

She pulled herself forwards, eyes on the rim of the airlock and then the gantry for fear of catching her suit on anything. Only when she was out did she look up, and so only then did it hit her.

The great arc of gold that was the nameless planet's ring seemed to fall away beneath her, curving away behind the whorled blue orb and plummeting down into infinity. And beyond, the thick band of stars which contained everywhere she had ever been until now.

She stood alone on this little gantry, clutching the rail. Feeling the way it tugged at her, herself nothing but a speck against its size and grandeur.

Never before had she felt so confronted by the sheer vastness of something - the insane, sense-defeating scope and scale of the Galaxy itself. It was beautiful, in many ways a sight that she was privileged to see and should treasure for the rest of her life. But at the same time, it was a sight that no human mind was meant to process. She felt the immensity of it all beat against her senses, feeling utterly alone.

The old words came back to her. You're nothing. Ben Solo's plain, blunt statement of fact. And out here, she couldn't find anything with which to answer it.

Her eyes were prickling with tears, the threat of a sob taking hold of her throat.

There was a crackling in her ears, breaking the pitiless silence, and then Kaydel's voice. "Rey?"

She fumbled for the radio. "Kaydel," she gasped.

"Your vitals are spiking, you're eating into your oxygen. Rey!" she raised her voice. "You need to ease down."

Rey's world was still spinning. "H-how…"

Kaydel stepped up her firm, forceful tone. "Talk to me, Rey. Just… talk to me." A tether back to sanity, and Rey could only grasp it with faltering hands.

"It's… it's…"

"Rey, you've gotta get your eyes forward. Look down, look at the ladder. You're going for the door at the top, you're gonna find it, and you're gonna pull yourself to it like you did in the ship. You've got this, Rey."

She tore her gaze from the planet and the heart-stopping vista beyond it. Saw the doorway, focused on it, blotted out all else. Ignored the fearful sheen of sweat which had broken out on her skin.

She reached out, took hold of the metal rail in her mind's eye, and called it towards her - or rather, the other way around. And she was in control again.

Her hands and knees met the ladder with a thud, but she stopped herself rebounding. The impact almost helped. It was real, tangible. She took a deep breath, and made her way upwards.

Kaydel's voice sounded in her ears again. "Chewie and I are coming round. We'll be there with the Falcon when you get out."

"Thanks." She reached the top of the ladder, worked the portal and entered. She reached out with the Force, and this time she felt something. Despite herself, she grinned, and began moving purposefully again.

Another couple of doors, and she was cutting her way into a storage case. There it was; a dodecahedron of blue crystal, encased in copper. "Kaydel," she breathed. "I have it."

A contented sigh was her answer. "Great, Rey. Now come back to us."

Back onto the gantry she went, and true to Kaydel's word the Falcon was waiting, its underbelly dead opposite and the outer airlock open for her. Pausing below, Rey took hold of the rails and pushed backwards, flipping herself to align with the ship. For She risked another look out - this time at the inky darkness which filled her sight beyond the wreck. For a second it stilled her again.

Then she pushed off from the rails and the airlock closed behind her, blotting out the sight. The comforting embrace of gravity returned. Her spacewalk was done.

/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\

A while later, Rey was sat on her bed, eyes on the drawer where Luke's broken saber sat but really staring at nothing. Her hair was still wet from the fresher when Kaydel knocked and came in.

"Hey, dinner service for the Jedi." She put a ration pack in Rey's hands. "After today, you've got to eat. And we oughta talk." Kaydel's tone brooked no argument.

Rey ate the contents of her pack, finding she was indeed ravenous, and eyed Kaydel warily over the rim of her mug. "Is this about what occured out on the bridge?"

She got a nod in reply. "You scared us there. That kind of thing doesn't come from nowhere, Rey. Even in those circumstances."

She wanted to shrug it off, insist that seeing a view like that would probably overwhelm anyone. Kaydel hadn't been out there after all.

The trouble was, she knew that would be a lie, and she suspected Kaydel would see it too. She'd given her a peek inside her own mind after all, and more and more Rey began to suspect that Kaydel had seen more than she'd intended. That had been the case with Kylo Ren once, after all.

A breath she hadn't realised she was holding in escaped her. "You're right." How to begin? "You know we've talked about how I grew up alone, right?"

"Yeah. After your parents left, and when they never came back."

"And there's a reason why they didn't." Rey forced herself to meet Kaydel's eyes and keep talking. "I wasn't just left on Jakku, Kaydel." She screwed her eyes up tight and forced the words out. "I was indentured as a scavenger. I was sold. By my own parents."

"Hell, Rey…"

She couldn't keep the emotion out of her voice now, could only speak in a whisper. "The people who brought me into the world, the ones I longed for all this time and who I thought would make my life make sense... they betrayed their own child like that. I can't understand it - I'll never get to find out why. And I know I can't let it eat me up because that will lead me straight to him. " Another pause, gathering herself again to voice another truth she despised. "But every time I think about it it's like broken glass in my heart." She silenced herself again, staring down at her feet.

Kaydel nodded slowly. "That's awful, Rey. No sugarcoating that. But listen," she said, leaning forward, "family doesn't have to be what you're born with." Kaydel set down her plate and shifted over to Rey, put an arm around her and leaned her head on her shoulder. "I want you to know, Rey, you've got a family in us now. Finn, Poe, Rose, Chewie… all of us will have your back, without question. Sure, we're a weird mess of a family, but we'll be your family if you'll have us."

Rey lifted her head to meet Kaydel's eyes. "A weird mess sounds like the right place for me, Kaydel."

Kaydel smiled, and Rey finally managed one in return. "We'll be the best weird mess in the Galaxy, the bunch of us. Wherever we go, that's home. If nothing else, it'll definitely be cuddlier than Jakku."

Rey huffed a little laugh. "Not that that's hard, but no argument." She shifted a little, letting Kaydel lean on her a bit more. "If it's not prying too much Kaydel, I'd meant to ask. Your parents, are they…"

Kaydel stroked her hair absentmindedly. "Still kicking out there? Far as I know, yeah."

Fatigue was welling up to engulf her now. Her voice was a half-yawn. "If you ever patch it up with them, I think I'd like to meet them."

Kaydel smiled back. "I think they'd be on board with that, Rey."

She lay back. "Great."

A little later, Rey dropped off into a warm, contented sleep. Carefully, Kaydel got up, pulling a spare blanket from under Rey's bed and laying it over her still form. Tenderly, she stroked the sleeping woman's cheek. Then she padded to the door, and with a fond last look at Rey, she slipped out.