Work Text:
The General finds her at Finn’s bedside a few hours before she’s scheduled to depart.
“He refused to leave you behind,” she says. “Kept saying your name. Rey this, Rey that. You were all he could talk about.”
Rey smiles. A soft, quiet thing, meant for someone far away. “He kept trying to hold my hand.”
There is silence for a moment. She isn’t sure, but she swears she sees something on the General’s face—a quirk of the lips, a sparkle of the eye. It reminds her vaguely of Han Solo. Of c’mon, Chewie, and the cockpit of the Falcon, Finn’s jacket—which is apparently Poe’s jacket, according to BB-8, though she hasn’t yet gathered up the courage to ask the pilot outright—hitched around his shoulders.
“Did you let him?” The General asks, eventually.
Rey thinks of Finn’s hand. The way his fingers twined with hers, how gentle the touch had been. How carefully he’d pulled her from the shadowy halls of Starkiller Base, wrapped in Finn’s—no, Poe’s jacket, screaming Han’s name. Or maybe it hadn’t been the smuggler’s name at all. Maybe it’d just been wordless, one sharp cacophony of grief.
It’s easy to think of those things—the memories come swiftly, yet still on tiptoe. But then she thinks of Jakku. The roar of engines. The distant gleam of First Order insignia, cutting through the pale clouds. The whites of Finn’s eyes.
“I think he was scared,” she says.
“Were you?”
“No.” Which isn’t exactly a lie. She’d felt fear, yes, but not the kind Finn had felt, mouth frozen in a soundless scream. Her fear is a kinder one, she thinks—fear of losing what was once lost, what suddenly feels urgently precious. Though aren’t they both a product of survival? “Which is why I let him.”
The General smiles. And there’s knowing, there. Recognition, like perhaps she sees herself in the smaller woman—bony joints, scrappy mouth. Rey wonders, not for the first time, what she has seen. If any of it could possibly match up to the graveyards of Jakku, trooper helmets filled with sand. Has she seen a TIE Fighter burn up in the atmosphere, a single blaze of light? Was she there when the Falcon flew the Kessel Run?
“Will you look out for him?” Rey asks. And it’s silly, really—she can’t help but worry about him, even when he’s floating in a tank of bacta. She needs to know he’s safe, or the closest he can be to safe, even when she’s halfway across the Galaxy. “Check in on him, maybe?”
She flushes, because what a thing to ask a general. But Leia only smiles, again, face wizened. Dipped, Rey thinks, in a kind of grace. “He’s in good hands, Rey. The best.”
She knows. “I know.” But it’s more than that. And, she thinks, if Finn were here—if Finn were here, she thinks, and nearly shakes her head; Finn is here, and yet, he has never felt so far away, so completely unreachable—he would understand. Survival makes a strange creature. A needy one, with so little trust.
I don’t want him to get lonely. Because haven’t they been lonely their entire lives?
“If he wakes up,” Rey says, after a moment’s pause, “tell him…”
What? That her hand misses his? That every once in a while, her fingers will clench, curl against something invisible, or perhaps even someone? That he was the first to come back for her—and for that, she will come back to him. That sometimes she hears his voice, even now—come with me, he’d said, with those wide eyes of his. And what had she said?
Don’t go, she’d said. Don’t go.
“Tell him I changed my mind,” she says, finally. “Tell him I’ll go.” And it’s an awful thing to say, because she just can’t promise that anymore—she doesn’t know what awaits her across the stars, but she knows she might not find herself here again, gripping Finn’s fingers, pretending she’s gripping the whole of his heart. But she says it anyway, if only to hear the words aloud.
Come with me, he’d said. And now she’s saying, Yes. Now she’s saying, Anywhere you want. But first you have to come back to me.
“You’ll go,” echoes Leia, and she nods. “But first you have to come back.”
“I will.”
“I hope you’re right.” Leia turns, touches her elbow, and Rey jumps. She doubts she’ll ever get used to this, this surplus of touch—the way these people spend it, like it’s not a commodity on the furthest of the flung worlds. “May the Force be with you, Rey.”
The General leaves. Rey is left standing there, trying to imagine the peace she’ll feel when his hand finds hers again.