Chapter Text
Rey looked at the man crumpled at her feet; the stormtroopers had not been gentle to him, his face was battered, blood on his lips and on his temple from where he’d been struck by the butt of a blaster. She hated every part of being where she was, she hated the sandy planet of Jakku that had raised her. Just being back made her insides tighten, if anyone could see her face then they would see her discomfort immediately, but that was why she wore the mask.
A long time ago, Rey had let go of the lonely little girl from Jakku and she’d turned her isolation and pain into rage. Her raw power and mastery of the Force carefully cultivated by her master, the Supreme Leader.
Burying the memories of her life before, she knelt in front the broken old man. “The map to Skywalker, we know you found it,” she stated barely recognizing the sound of her own voice through the mask. “It now belongs to the First Order, you’re going to hand it over.”
Lor San Tekka looked at her with sad eyes, “The First Order rose from the dark side, but you are something different. Who were you before you put on that mask? Before you took the name Kira Ren?” he said with quiet confidence in spite of his injured visage.
Something white hot burned in the pit of her stomach, she hated him instantly. She’d lived alone, half starved and forgotten by everyone but her master not half a day’s walk from here. He couldn’t see her face but if he could, would he recognize her as the dirty faced girl struggling to scavenge enough to eat. Maybe he wouldn’t… so many eyes had passed her over and left her to starve. The thought made her want to burn this entire worthless planet to ash.
She’d never met the man before, and he knew her by reputation alone.
“I won’t ask again, old man,” Rey said stilling her anger. Not yet.
“You’re barely more than a child,” he said. He was wrong. Despite her actual age, she had grown up far too fast, urged on by the struggle to survive alone and the voice that crept into her mind.
She raised her hand to the old man’s temple, without care she pressed her own consciousness into his, probing his mind for the intel she needed. Rey wasn’t gentle, she watched his face contorted with pain under the scrutiny of her own mind. After a moment she found what she needed: the hand off of the map had taken place just before their arrival and it was in the hands of a Resistance pilot.
She stood, igniting the dual blade of her lightsaber and striking down the old man in one smooth motion. Before she could quell the anger she’d channeled, Rey felt a disturbance. She rose her free hand, stopping the blast in mid air and stilling the wayward shooter.
“Seize him,” she commanded.
Two stormtroopers rushed forward to grab the young man. He was unable to resist when they grabbed him roughly by the arms and hauling him past his suspended blast still buzzing patiently in mid air. The troopers dragged him before Rey where she scanned him over. He was handsome, she could tell he was charming, he probably had the kind of smile that would be easy to fall in love with.
“The old man gave it to you,” she stated. It wasn’t a question, she had already confirmed this with her trespassing into Lor San Tekka’s thoughts. The man tried to hide his discomfort but there was no hiding it from Rey. Before the pilot could come up with a witty retort (and she knew he was planning on one) she turned, “I’ll interrogate him once we’re back with the fleet.” She strode off towards her transport, the pilot and a retinue of stormtroopers at her heel.
“Lady Ren, the villagers?” The chrome-plated, Captain Phasma asked.
“Do as you will,” she said, not pausing in her march towards the ship. Rey didn’t look back at the small huddle of villagers, but she knew what the Captain had planned.
“Very well.”
Rey was halfway up the ramp when she heard the mingling of the screams of terror and blaster fire. She took one look back to see the lone stormtrooper not firing his weapon, he hadn’t fired it all throughout the entire exchange; too overcome with emotion, crippling fear and shame at what was transpiring. For the very briefest instant Rey could sympathize but she buried that thought fiercely, not allowing those emotions to bubble up again.
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“You can’t be serious,” Kaydel said, she practically had to jog to keep up with Ben Solo’s long strides, “The General would never agree to this.”
Ben tried not to think about Leia’s reaction to hearing about what he was about to do and quickly decided he’d deal with it when he got back. “So we don’t tell her,” he said casually climbing into the cockpit of the Light Y-Wing fighter that everyone acknowledged as ‘his’.
Kaydel looked a little helpless from the ground as Ben strapped into his seat. “Don’t you dare die, Ben Solo, because I am not going to explain that one to your mother,” she shouted.
“At least if I die, I don’t have to deal with the fall out from all of this,” he stated. It was true, he was likely to get an earful when he got home and he may as well be a boy again when he was on the receiving end of Leia Organa’s scolding.
Kaydel shot him a dark look and he ignored it, powering up the engines. He prepared for take off, skipping a lot of the preflight checks, he was already breaking dozens of Resistance regulations, what was a few more? The Y-wing’s engines roared to life and Ben took one last glance at Kaydel, the General’s aide, who had stepped back to give him room for take off. He did feel a little bad that she was gonna have a lot on her plate once Leia found out.
Ben punched the accelerator, the old engine shook around him and he felt that familiar thrill as the inertial dampeners kicked in and he was suddenly soaring into D’Qar’s bright blue sky. In mere moments he’d breached the atmosphere and the cockpit was shrouded in the darkness of space.
Not wasting any time he plugged in the coordinates to Jakku, prepared for the jump to lightspeed. Flying was one of those things that came naturally to him, it was in his blood. But he tried not to think about how much like his family he was, that was a whole can of worms he didn’t need to open right now. He was the golden child of the Resistance, but it was only because of who his parents were. Leia was too eager to keep him out of harm’s way, and in doing so sidelined him from being part of a cause.
But not today, when news reached the Resistance that Poe had been captured, he wasn’t going to let the damn General tell him ‘no’, mother or not.
Jakku was remote, the hyperspace route wasn’t a fast one, and would take several hours at least. He sat back in the pilot’s seat watching the stars race past him, with the time he had he focused on the plan. It wasn’t a particularly good plan, he’d never been to Jakku and it occurred to him that he wasn’t sure how he’d find Poe or the map that Poe was there for. The only thing he knew about Jakku was that the final battle between the Rebellion and the Empire had happened there in the days following the Emperor’s demise. That had all been before he was born, it was a giant planet-sized junkyard now. How could you find anything in all that sand?
He planned to start out at Tuanul, where Poe’s contact was, and hoped he could pick up a trail from there.
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Rey exited the interrogation room, leaving an unconscious Poe Dameron still strapped to the gurney. The Resistance pilot had certainly fought her harder than anyone in recent memory but he still cracked under the pressure. In the hallway General Hux was standing stiffly waiting for her orders.
“The map is in a droid, a BB unit,” she stated. She turned and Hux marched alongside her.
“If the droid is on Jakku, then we will find it,” he assured her with confidence, matching her stride. Rey knew that Snoke wouldn’t accept any excuse if they returned empty handed, so for both their sake she hoped he was right.
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He landed just outside of the settlement, his heavy leather boots hit the sand and were immediately unsteady in the shifting sand. It was much hotter than Ben had been expecting and the Jakku sun bore down on him mercilessly.
Tuanul was utterly destroyed, most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition and a heavy black smoke hanging over the settlement from the still burning fires. Gritting his teeth he checked for survivors, but there were none. It seemed that the First Order had only taken one prisoner; Ben tried not to think of all the things they might be doing to his friend right now.
He climbed a nearby sand dune and surveyed the area, spotting the wreckage of a ruined X-Wing. Unlike the rest of Jakku’s graveyard of destroyed ships, this was recent, still smoldering. The fuel injectors were still burning, bellowing out wisps of toxic black smoke. Ben covered his mouth and nose with the lapel of his jacket and approached carefully, struggling to find secure footing in the loose sand.
He doubted that Poe was inside, intel had specifically noted capture, but there’d been no mention of BB-8 or any droid for that matter. Ben pulled back a panel to check inside the astromech compartment, hoping that he didn’t find the remains to the destroyed droid that Poe had fawned over for years.
The compartment was blessedly empty and Ben breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he was away from the wreckage. Ben walked back up the dune to get a better vantage point, pulling out his macrobinoculars from his jacket pocket. He adjusted the lenses a few times but he couldn’t spot the droid, he did however see the outskirts of Niima Outpost and that seemed to be the droid’s most-likely destination. He made his way back to his fighter trying to calculate the land speed of the rotund astromech in his head. The First Order had Poe, but it was possible, likely even, that they did not have BB-8. He was starting to piece together what had likely happened; leave it to Poe to save his damn droid, Ben thought tucking the macrobinoculars back into his jacket.
If the First Order was as good at interrogation as they wanted everyone to believe (and Ben didn’t doubt it) then they either had the map, or Poe had passed it off to his droid prior to capture. And if Ben’s hunch was right, it was the latter and Poe had gotten captured to give BB-8 time to escape. If Ben was wrong then the First Order would be moving in to capture Luke right now and Poe was no longer useful to them. With that thought he opted to pursue the other possibility, which pitted him and the First Order against each other in a droid hunt. He never really considered himself an optimist but he’d make an exception for now. Find the droid first, then go rescue Poe’s sorry ass… Easy.
He decided he'd search Niima Outpost, if BB-8 wasn't there then he would run a few more scans from the Y-Wing; he really didn't want to think about how much of a target the little droid would be on a planet like this. Every scrapper within a hundred klicks would be itching to trade something like that for half a bite to eat. Climbing into the Y-Wing’s cockpit, Ben powered up his engines eager to leave the site of such blatant destruction.
The trip to Niima Outpost was a short one. Ben landed on the outskirts, so as to not draw attention to the fact that his ship was actually space-worthy. One of very few it would seem. Once both boots were on the ground he took a look around, the sandy Outpost was nothing more than a few tents and some ramshackle shelters pulled together with scrap.
The wind picked up slightly, tussling Ben’s dark locks and rustling the tents. Sheeting covering a nearby ship blew up and the movement caught his eye.
Ben’s jaw nearly dropped comically as he approached the ship in awe. A glimpse under the patched sheeting brought back a flood of memories and not necessarily good ones. How many times had he watched that ship fly away, angry and hurt that the pilot would leave him behind?
“You gotta be kriffing kidding me,” Ben murmured under his breath as he stared up at none other than the so-called legendary Millenium Falcon.