Rey will not admit to herself until later that she doesn't notice the cavernous silence in the back of her mind for several days after she first feels It happen.
She's been busy.
That's what she tells herself, anyways, teeth clamped around a fresh orange bread roll made from Nubian wheat as she pulls her boots up, secures her room, and surveys the yellow sandstone walls for a brief moment before striding out into the hallways of the Resistance base on Savareen, intent on making it to General Organa's—Leia's—quarters as quickly as she can. Officially a part of the Resistance or no, she is the last Jedi, and Leia is one of the only Force-sensitives she knows she can trust.
Leia has a fire in her eyes unmatched by anyone on Jakku, no matter how hungry they got. Rey can respect that.
Her mind begins to drift toward other eyes and other fires, and in some kind of paltry rebellion, she swallows her bread roll and sets her jaw. The trip to Leia's quarters does not take as long as it usually does; distracted, she only barely notices the way her allies watch her with worried looks as they step aside to make her path clear. She trots through the atrium into the long, narrow passageways that used to be railways, takes a sharp left, and dives into the rickety maglev elevator just before it closes, holding herself a little taller and lifting her chin when the other occupants give her strange looks.
"Lovely weather today," she says, staring a Twi'lek pilot dead in the eye.
All she gets is an easy smile in return. "You're the Jedi, huh?"
People keep saying that to her lately. She still doesn't understand why.
When she makes it to the largest room (the one that had been set aside for housing Leia on-base) she raises her hand to knock. The door slides open to admit her automatically.
Rey blinks. Inside the still rather cramped lodgings, Leia sits at a holotable with three datapads spread out before her. Poe is fiddling with the projector settings on the table, and Rose—
She's back, talking with a small smile, saying something to Poe that Rey doesn't quite catch as she gestures to the holographic starfighter currently displayed on the table. Rey takes a step forward with a small exhale. If there's a bit too much relief in her expression, none of them are going to point it out to her. "Rose?"
All three look up at the sound of her voice. Scarcely before she knows what's happening, Rey finds herself subject to a crushing hug from her dear friend. She freezes for a second, but she melts into it. The warmth is so, so good. "Rey," Rose is saying into her shoulder. "Boy, it's good to see you again."
After a moment both too long and too short for the longing in her bones, Rey pulls back and puts her hands on Rose's shoulders. "Your mission—"
"I was safe. Fixing the problem just took us longer than we expected," Rose assures her, patting one of her hands. She had taken a team of engineers to investigate another abandoned base from the days of the Rebellion on dusty, barren Lok, parsecs off of the Triellus Trade Run. After their hurried evacuation from D'Qar and the ensuing events on Crait, the Resistance had agreed that preemptive maintenance on bases reachable within hours would be something of a smart investment.
Rey had gone on one of those trips herself, to Christophsis, and the work involved in shoring up the defenses of the Clone Wars-era bases (practically ancient things, legendary things, was she meant to hold that legacy—) had been both intense and intensive, punctuated with bursts of fending off the wild things that had grown in the crystal forests as they overtook all the places sentients had once inhabited.
The memory of those strange insectoid creatures still makes her shudder a bit. The steelpeckers of Jakku had not been a pretty sight to look at, but at least their anatomy had made some kind of sense.
"No foul beasts, then?" she asks as Leia nods to the seat opposite hers. Rey takes it, absently waving at Poe, who gives her a brief smile before his hands finally catch on something on the other side of the table and he lets out a little 'a—ha' as a HoloNet feed pops up in the starfighter's place. It scrolls rapidly for a moment, then settles on a block of text Rey can't read from the side she's on.
Rose looks over at Poe's accomplishment with a raised eyebrow and a hint of a grin. "No, nothing of the sort. Good job figuring that out yourself, Commander Dameron. That technology's even older than you are."
"I managed," Poe replies, good-natured and easy. "It's not quite the same as flying a fighter, but I'll learn with time, you hear?"
"Speaking of time, learn on your own. We've got a hell of a situation on our hands." Leia is generally drier than dust, but the way she ends on a sharp note makes Rey sit straighter. She's heard that tone before—from Han, from Luke, from...
Well. It runs in the family, she supposes.
Poe's smile fades into a grim line. "The reports are just coming in. The First Order's command structure has been gutted."
"What? What do you mean?" She blinks once, then twice, but neither Poe nor Leia's expressions lighten.
"It means that the top generals—the core of the organization—and their aides were all found dead a standard day ago," Leia says, and for a moment Rey's heart seizes in her chest before a strange look flashes across the General's face. "Everyone at or near the top is dead... save for Kylo Ren. We think."
Her blood freezes in her veins. With a careful intensity, she keeps her airflow regulated and calm. Absolutely even. In and out. For the first time in a long while, she lets herself think about the bond. About the connection between them. Almost without thinking she leans forward a bit, reaching out with her mind, stretching, yearning—
—only to be confronted with It. The massive block in her path, like an ancient vent welded shut by desert heat, that she has surely been ignoring for far, far too long.
Kylo? she whispers into the Force between them. The name feels wrong on her tongue, in her heart.
No sound comes in response. She is left with only the kind of quiet that rings in the cavernous depths of a half-drowned starship and the sense that something is not right.
Rey shakes herself. Of course. We aren't talking to each other. It's not like—
Leia clears her throat. Rey jolts and makes the mistake of meeting her eyes. "I thought so," is all she says to Rey's silent guilt, ignoring the mystified looks from Rose and Poe. "Our saboteurs didn't find Kylo Ren in that room, unfortunately. But they did find something else: his belt, folded up under this."
She reaches deep into her pockets and pulls out Kylo Ren's lightsaber in a smooth motion so graceful she had to have been trained to do it.
"His looks so different from yours. Why do you think that is?" Rose asks quietly, nudging Rey, eyeing the 'saber as if she'd like to take it apart and document its innards.
"It packs a hell of a punch, that's for sure." Poe's arms are crossed. Abruptly the memory comes to her: another pilot, telling drunken stories at the cantina, slapping Poe across the back and saying hells, you were in a tight spot on Jakku, huh? Witnessed that village get torn to shreds by that Ren bastard before your capture and your valiant escape?—and his face had been troubled, so unlike his usual devil-may-care mien. Yeah, I did.
Rey swallows. Her heart beats fast in her chest. Willing her hands not to shake, she proffers one to Leia. "As a Jedi, perhaps I should—take care of it?"
Poe and Rose quiet as Leia lets the silence stretch on, deep brown eyes burning into Rey's in search of something beyond anything Rey knows how to name. Her face is lined with the weight of the years, but the gaze boring into her seems older somehow; the dry heat of Savareen and the gritty sand in her boots and the sensation of her tunic chafing against a light burn she'd acquired trying to work on a vaporator earlier all fall away, and there is only the moment: a general and a desert scavenger and the unspeakable truth between them.
Kylo Ren lives, even now. When she casts the thought into the Force, the words reverberate with a sound like rumbling thunder.
That is... positive? If she had to hazard a guess. If. She is the last Jedi, but she knows so little about the Force.
"Perhaps you should," Leia says slowly, and her quarters come back to Rey in a heady rush of air. She places the lightsaber in Rey's hand and her fingers close around it in a heartbeat. "The word is that the room was a mess, but the bodies were pristine. Our people had no part in any of it. I want answers, sooner or later, and something—" they exchange glances again and Rey meets her gaze as evenly as she can, "—tells me that poison is too neat a solution. However, given the circumstance, the Resistance can't afford to send anyone out. I need every Resistance member currently on-base to start preparing for incursions into First Order territory—taking what we can get while it's flailing, trying to fill the vacuum. One of the most important parts of any leadership role is prioritization."
Breathe in, Rey says to herself rather sharply, like she's still eight years old, stuck in the Star Destroyer haggling with a Teedo to cut her out of a tangle of wires. Only for a moment—she remembers herself, remembers that everyone on base right now is an ally, even though she's not technically a member of the Resistance—but the thought still follows: Breathe out. They'll look for weakness. "I understand, General."
While Rose stays at a small gesture from Leia, Poe follows Rey out into the stuffy corridor and keeps pace with her. Rather impressive, given that she's walking at a clip that's barely below a run. She has to plan, to prepare, she'll need to touch up her ship, see if Chewbacca will help with repairs— "Hey, Rey."
"Yes," she replies, distracted and on the annoyed end of neutral. His face falls a tad. She hasn't spoken to him much, but she likes him well enough when he's quiet, and Finn adores him. Jedi are supposed to be—serene, or something. Kind. Wise. All things she has to be careful to put into practice. She can try that, can't she? "Can I—is there—do you need something?"
"Yeah. I had a question."
Rey pauses, watches him. He looks rough around the edges, a few rumpled sections of hair where normally he would have combed it all into place, tired lines under his eyes that speak to nights of too little sleep and too much wondering. Everyone on this base has ghosts, she's learned, so that's normal enough. But there's a set to his jaw and a careful determination in his brow that puts her on guard. Poe is not a terribly careful man. "Sure. Go ahead," she says after a moment, stopping in a beam of sunlight shining through a slit in the ceiling, her posture fluid and her arms ready.
"That lightsaber," Poe says, sounding like he already knows the answer. "Why did you ask to have it?"
Kark!
"I asked to take care of it," she corrects. Her hand falls to where she's clipped it to her belt. It rests steady and secure, and for just a second, she can remember again what its wielder felt like at her back, burning through her, burning with her, strong and stalwart and as dirty a fighter as any scavenger.
That is a memory she will not let anything take from her. No matter what came after.
He shakes his head. "That's what you said, but one thing you learn about being around General Organa is that there's always something between the lines. I've seen that thing in action. If I had to guess, I'd say you have, too."
"And if I have?"
"Well, nothing related to the Resistance, really. Just—take it from someone who's seen a lot of the Force in the galaxy, even though I don't understand it all." Poe runs an unhappy hand through his hair and rests the other in the new jacket he'd found in the Falcon sometime after Crait. "Lightsabers like that? They cast a shadow wherever they go. I was taught pieces of the old lore by some people I once knew—not much, but enough to know that as lightsabers go, that one's broken."
Rey looks down at it with a dubious frown. She has indeed seen it in action, and it looked to be functioning perfectly well enough both when it was arcing toward her head and when it was being jabbed through the heart of one of those strange, droid-like crimson guards to protect her.
"Not the outside. The crystal. It's probably damaged. From what I was told, damaged crystals tend to produce unstable lightsabers. If you want to see any long-term use out of it—or if you want to turn it to some good—taking a crack at fixing that might help you on your way."
"I..." She trails off, digesting his words. "I'll see if there's anything to be done about it. Thank you," she adds brusquely, a moment too late, but Poe waves it off with a smile.
"Just think about it. See you, Rey. Be careful out there, alright?"
"I can handle myself. I'll be fine."
For some indeterminable reason, Poe's smile turns into a grin. "I know. But I've gotta tell you anyways. Finn and Rose do too, right?"
"Well, yes..." She had done the same when they'd gone on their missions, because it had seemed like the right thing to do. But Finn and Rose are her friends—her only friends. It's different.
"Perfect. All of us want you to come back alive and safe, Rey. Don't forget that while you're out there in the galaxy, searching for answers." He nods at her and takes a step toward the corridor leading to the mess room. "And hey—may the Force be with you."
Bewildered, Rey stares after his retreating form. "You too?" she calls, and Poe waves a hand as he turns the corner.
I'm experimenting with a shorter chapter format for this, but knowing myself, it'll end up getting beefier again. At any rate-feedback appreciated!