Thank you so much to everyone who's followed and favorited, I can't express how much that makes my day to see your interest. Especially to the reviews, they mean so much. Next chapter will go into the start of the movie and might have Poe actually in it, which I'm hugely excited for. Although, if you pay attention I do reference him in this chapter. Thank you very much for reading, I do hope you enjoy.
Eris woke with a start having not realized she'd fallen asleep, and her body gave a sudden jolt as her mind slammed into consciousness. It took her a moment of staring at the rusty metal above her head to remember where she was, and when she did remember she turned regretfully to the door to see the same sandy planet through the same fraying tarps. She could tell by the shadows the sun cast it was well into the day, she must've fallen asleep right before dawn: and after almost three days without she'd slept hard.
Rolling onto her back she rubbed the tired from her eyes. She stilled, a fist curled against her eye, at the sudden realization that her right hand was still laying across her stomach. She was sitting up immediately looking for the chain, raising her other hand to find it wrapped around only one wrist.
With a sigh she fell on her back having let herself hope to be free; hope, such a dangerous thing and no more so than when it fell through. Though after two days she was glad to not have her hands cupped together; she was able to spread out, to stretch, take up more space than she needed just because she could. She laid on her back with her arms held out on opposite sides of her, hearing in the silence that she was once more alone. A soft hum of a speeder, a high pitched whir of a plane, a rogue voice calling out – but these were all at a distance, far away, muffled.
What Eris tried to hear was breathing, the soft sound of someone shifting their weight: any sign to say there was a beating heart somewhere within her vicinity. There wasn't. It left her unhappy with only her thoughts to keep her company; no one would look for her, no one cared to. The only people that knew where she was were the Resistance, and they were likely to wait until she stepped out of line before they tried coming after her again. She was well and truly on her own, something she hadn't minded before but now she was understanding what an old acquaintance once told her – we all need someone. And there Eris was too stubborn to need anyone. And no one was coming for her.
Same as the day before it was hours until Rey returned, portions shoved in her pockets, an extra canteen in hand, and Eris lying with her feet propped on the wall only this time she was tapping a tune. "What'd you find today?" she asked without even opening her eyes. She was so bored and wound she almost felt tired, all she really wanted was to run and pacing the span of her leash just didn't cut it.
She quickly regretted asking as Rey happily spouted off names of things that made up a ship; Eris knew things such as an ion drive or hyperdrive or repulsorlift. But those were all things a ship did, things she used, buttons she knew to push to make it happen – she didn't know what made it work. Rey apparently did and she was thrilled at having found the parts so she could sell them. All Eris understood was electrotelescope, which Rey hadn't quite known when most ships now used a surveyor – but older models, the ones Eris found were easier to steal, had manual scopes.
"We've got enough for four days," Rey told her excitedly as she counted the packs again. Eight total, they could each eat an entire portion a day. It was more than she'd had in a while.
Eris realized this, and she sat quietly stomaching her portion at the sad thought of how happy this had made Rey – something so simple as being able to eat one's fill. And that we, how quickly Rey said it, how easily she'd accepted Eris – as if it wasn't a thought at all for Rey to include her. It struck Eris hard as any physical blow, struck her silent so that Rey continued to babble about the ship she'd found half buried in the sand.
Until Rey had finally quieted and turned to Eris to ask how her day had been, and then it was Rey who fell silent because she knew how Eris' day had been – empty, meaningless. There wasn't much Rey knew about Eris only what she'd gathered and she gathered that Eris didn't stay in one place for long. She preferred adventure, danger, her every action's reaction to possibly end in death. To be stuck in this one place with nothing at all to do, Rey thought it must've been agony. "What were you doing in the Western Reaches?" she finally asked starting with something simple, something less accusing she'd be more likely to answer.
Eris dropped the rest of the jiggling mass on the plate and slid it across the floor where Rey eagerly finished it for her. "Tracking someone," she answered simply. And it was simple, a name had been given with the last known whereabouts and so started the job. It was a puzzle, and she was to collect the pieces for the person who wanted it solved – less simple was the who.
"For The Order," Rey said not needing to ask.
And because Eris was shameless she gave a short nod. "He lived with a group of," she paused to think of an adequate word to describe the Church of the Force, "heretics. They wanted information I was told only he had."
"What information?" Rey asked without hesitation, by then far too curious about this woman to pay much mind to the details of what she did.
Eris shrugged. "It wasn't important to my finding him," she answered bland and matter of fact. She'd long since given up on the details of what she did, of the deaths she caused by finding people who didn't want to be found; it's how she was still able to live with herself.
"You crossed the galaxy to find him, you're not curious why?"
But Eris only raised her shoulders offhandedly again. "After a while it all bleeds together: the reason's always the same, no one wants to be found, the money always comes. How they're found," she turned to Rey to see she had snuck closer again, probably didn't realized she'd done it, "that's always new. All the different places they'd been, the people they'd known. You get to really know a person that way, finding different parts of their lives and the stories that live there." She turned back to the door to see the shadows had grown longer, the sand darker. What she didn't say was there were a rare few individuals she'd been paid to hunt down that she'd grown to respect, once heroes of their time – something she found hard to deal with was that not everyone deserved it.
Rey heard the intention behind her silence, could feel the reservation. "What happens when you find them?"
Without pause Eris said, "you're a smart kid, you know what happens."
They were killed. Rey knew that, had known when Eris first said she'd been hunting someone; it wasn't to reunite old friends. Rey also knew that not everyone would want to cross the galaxy to go after a target, like The Order, which meant Eris was the one to do the killing. These were the details Rey tried to avoid, the part of Eris she wanted to keep in the shadows because they were hard to swallow in the light. The first thing Rey thought to ask was why, the next was how could you – she didn't understand how Eris could sit so unfeeling at admitting she was a murderer.
It took Rey several long quiet minutes before she realized Eris had stopped caring – not that she couldn't but that she didn't allow herself to. And with that realization came the next, that Eris had become far too good at being alone. So Rey, who wanted so much to not be alone anymore, did what Eris had always done in that she pushed it aside for something easier to handle. "Where'd the pilot come from?"
She thought for sure it'd shut Rey up, turn the kid against her. But she was full of surprises. "I tracked one of Lor San Tekka's old friends to a planet nearby, I'd gotten this planet's name and almost had his location before the pilot showed up." She knew Rey wouldn't understand, would only start them arguing, so she left out the part where she killed the friend to keep the Resistance from finding Lor as well, whom the Resistance were now aware The Order was after.
"The Resistance want him too?" she asked moving past the 'old friend' because she was in fact a smart kid and she could easily guess what Eris had done for the sake of the job. Rey imagined a space where the Resistance took up the right side and the Order took up the left, and Eris existed smack in the middle enjoying too much the game of toeing the line.
Eris nodded curling her long legs to her chest feeling the temperature drop as the sun fell. "I almost lost him," she said without any anger to his responsibility for her current plight. Instead she almost reverently said in a quiet voice, "he was a damn good pilot." She never even saw his face, a good thing because then she'd hunt him with the intention to kill him for knowing her face – and with skill like that death would just be a waste.
Rey sat back almost amazed at hearing from the soft honesty of that statement that Eris had been impressed by the man who'd shot her down. A man who downed her pod and then took the time to search for her on the chance she might be alive and injured, rather than leave her stranded to die from her wounds. "What'll you do when you leave?" she asked having an idea of what her answer would be.
Only Eris didn't make it easy. She turned to Rey and asked; "that mean you plan on lettin me go?"
Rey rolled her eyes and scooted herself back toward her side of the ship. "Well you are terrible company," she said before she thought about it, before she could think that Eris might not hear the lightness of her tone.
Whether or not Eris knew Rey was only half serious, she laughed. A deep laugh that came from her stomach, something she hadn't done in a long while. "That I am," she agreed still chuckling lightly. Though she quieted shortly and gave her answer: "I'll probably finish the job, collect the money."
"Then what?" Rey asked not understanding why she wanted so much to hear her say she'd come back. It was true Eris wasn't a good companion, she was rude and demanding, threatening; but she had stories, her strange ideals after seeing the galaxy and finding its faults, she was a warm body in an otherwise lawless barren land. And really Rey was just tired of being alone.
All of this Eris had quietly observed over those past few days; Rey had been abandoned here, and she'd spend the rest of her life waiting for a family that wasn't coming back for her. Eris knew what Rey was asking, knew both the burden of being tied to someone and the comfort of having someone to come back to. "I haven't decided," was her answer, which wasn't an answer at all. But it was the truth. She turned to Rey only seeing the whites of her eyes in their dark space and said, "thought you didn't like my company."
She stared at where Eris sat more visible in the streaking of the moonlight as it shone through the space between the tarps; her skin made pale, her almost-yellow eyes nearly glowing, her tangled hair glowing violet. Rey had seen nothing beyond Jakku, and there were a great mix of different races that inhabited the planet, but Eris was by far the prettiest. And she had no right to be. "I don't," Rey told her before climbing in her hammock and turning so her back was toward the other woman.
Following suit Eris laid on the cool metal floor pulling the blanket around her as she smiled to herself. Whether or not Rey would admit it the two shared many similarities. Granted Rey's moral compass pointed only one way and Eris' was stuck in a magnetic field constantly spinning, but that stubborn refusal to the want of companionship was something Eris knew well.
.^.
It wasn't the sun that woke her, nor was it simply consciousness. Eris opened her eyes knowing something had drawn her out of sleep without knowing what, and it left her lying on her back straining to listen with the sense of impending looming around her. Her position on the bottom of the ship allowed her to feel even the smallest of tremors in the sand from passing vehicles, and after several silent moments she was sure that's what it'd been. Only now she heard the soft shifting of sand, the gentle rubbing of fabric together, the subtle sound of wind breaking over something else before it broke over the ship.
Every movement was calculated, deliberate. She slowly sat up and began gathering the chain in her hands allowing herself a gentleness she normally didn't spare in order to remain silent. And when she'd gotten herself to where she could stand she quietly crept back releasing each chain link individually as she moved closer to where Rey still slept. With it wrapped around only one wrist Eris was able to stand with her right arm extended and her left stretched toward the hammock she could now reach.
Rey woke to a hand covering her mouth and nose, her first conclusion immediately went to Eris smothering her. Before Rey could do more than wrap her hands around Eris' wrist she heard a short quiet 'shh,' and she allowed herself to still, to let herself trust this ambiguous untrustable woman.
Feeling the strain in Rey's muscles relax Eris removed her hand from the girl's mouth and bent as low to Rey's ear as her fully stretched leash allowed. "Someone's outside," she whispered on a breath so soft Rey thought she'd imagined the sound.
Rey herself strained to hear what Eris clearly had as she turned her head sharply to see outside. Rey heard nothing just the normal sound of the wind brushing against the top most layer of the sand. So she tried harder, because Eris had begun gathering the links again only this time she was headed for the door. There wasn't a sound, not that Rey's ears were trained to notice, but there was a feeling – it was strange, Rey could feel that there was a fluttering heart moving around the right side of the ship.
Eris was hearing what Rey felt, and over that she heard Rey climb out of the hammock and move behind her for the staff she kept propped against the inside of the door. There was nothing for Eris to do as Rey slipped outside, and at the sound of Rey's loud 'hey' Eris gave up masking the sound of the metal links and let them drop from her hand as she looked for anything to free herself. She resumed her useless assault as she grabbed the chain and began pulling, holding her feet firm as she gave sharp violent jerks. There were two of them – Rey was struggling against the first who was far larger and a better fighter. The second Eris heard step onto the ship, his large heavy feet causing the whole thing to tremble, and she froze in place turning to the door seeing a broad massive shadow. In an effort to go unnoticed she pulled the chain taut to silence it as she moved on light feet further back in the ship.
She'd just reached the wall she was bound to when he threw aside the tarp to look inside and she caught enough of a look at him to see the claws and fangs, the protruding ridges the circled their head like a crown – Noghri, she cursed their bad luck. On a good day she could fight one and still be able to walk away, though bleeding and bruised and not so much walking as limping. But two, with no weapons. She slipped behind the wall just as he turned her way and she heard the scrape of a knife being pulled from its sheath as he caught sight of the chain.
They'd come for her. Her name had been given, Jakku was her last known whereabouts; these were her bounty hunters sent to keep her from telling the Resistance anything. Her job was essentially done, she'd come as close to Lor San Tekka as needed for another hunter to locate him. This time she was the target.