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They’re nearing the end of it. Rey can feel it coming over the horizon. After all the fighting, all the loss, there will be a new dawn soon. And she’ll make it over the crest. She doesn’t understand how she knows, but she does. Maybe it’s the baby growing in her womb and the plans she’s made for them that make her believe there will be life after this unceasing war.
She hasn’t told anyone, not yet. Rey thinks if Leia were still here, she’d be able to share it with her. Leia is the one she would have gone to for advice in all of this. Instead, she carries this small marvel in isolation. It would be a distraction for her allies, and a target for her enemy.
Rey hasn’t even told Poe about his child. It’s constantly there, on the tip of her tongue, but there’s never that perfect moment and always something that’s more pressing. She wants to tell him when he has a chance to absorb and enjoy the news, and not run off into the next disaster.
She kisses the ring on her finger and twists it around as she sits anxiously waiting in the cockpit of the Falcon docked on their lead cruiser. They’re waiting for word from the advance strike team, then the rest will jump in. Finn says it’s the final push. They’ll have what’s left of the First Order cornered and then they can end this, once and for all.
Rey knows he’s right. He’s rarely wrong. And she can feel it; almost see it.
“When we get out of this,” Poe had said as they laid cramped in a bed made for only one person, “I want to build you a house, like my dad did for my mom. Someplace quiet, near the water.”
Rey had let out an amused huff of air and adjusted to try and look at him in the narrow space. “Is that some sort of proposal?”
“Only if you say yes,” he had said, holding out his mother’s ring, now free of its chain.
“Yes.” She had said it without hesitation. Their love had been sudden and unexpected, but altogether welcomed and deeply cherished.
It’s a pleasant dream, the small trip back to that happy memory. Rey doesn’t even realize she’s fallen asleep, though it’s an often occurrence as she waits in this seat.
“Hey,” a familiar voice calls and there’s a warm weight on her arm that drags her back to almost waking.
“Poe,” she murmurs. “Why are you here? You were supposed to call. Is it done?”
He crouches down next to the seat and nods. “Yeah. They’re ready for you, babe.”
“Why are you here?” she asks again. Her head is still heavy, though she’s trying to shake herself the rest of the way awake. The world is still too foggy.
“To tell you not to do it for me. Don’t go in there looking for vengeance.”
“Vengeance? What? Poe, you’re scaring me.”
“You’re sunshine, Rey,” he says as his hand barely grazes the side of her face. He smiles, his eyes shining even in the muted light of the cockpit. “Don’t let hate in. Don’t let what happened to me dull any of that brilliance.”
“What happened to you?” she asks in barely a whisper. Poe’s not here, not really. It’s almost like an echo in the Force. It’s reverberating across the stars, but the sound has long since stopped.
She should tell him. It’s the last chance. Poe’s gone and he’s not coming back. But what good would that do now? Their child will grow up fatherless and Rey knows she can’t do it alone. She wants to scream and beg and curse this rotten galaxy. There’s a list that’s too long of people she’s cared about that are gone. At the top is Han and now, the latest entry is Poe.
“I can’t--I can’t do this without you. I don’t want to do it without you.”
“Oh baby,” he says with a smile. “You can do anything.”
She’s falling apart, but he’s strong. Somewhere out there, his body is broken, his heart still, but here he lifts her up and holds her together.
“I gotta go now,” he says as his lips brush across the top of her head. “Mama’s calling me home for supper.”
“Poe, please, I have to tell you--”
“We’ll see each other again, but not too soon.” He gives her a wink like he’s done a thousand times before.
And then, he’s gone.
Rey bolts upright in her chair with tears streaming freely down her cheeks. She was somewhere between sleeping and waking, in the place between life and death. The incoming message light is blinking and Rey knows that it’s time. They won’t tell her Poe’s dead, not until it’s over. During the swell of victory, when she starts searching for him, they’ll pull her aside and deliver the devastating news. Despite his goodbye, she’ll still look for him and collapse to the ground when Finn, nearly drowning in his own sorrow, breaks it to her.
In a few months, she holds Poe’s son, but only long enough to give him his father’s name. In victory, she feels empty. And with new life, she feels only bereft. The loss is too heavy and she can’t do it on her own.
But she’s not alone, even if it takes her a long while before she sees it. She has Kes Dameron, who holds her up the way Poe did and loves and nurtures her boy while Rey struggles. She has all of the people she grew close to in the Resistance--Kaydel, Jess, Bastian--people who knew Poe and keep his memory alive. And she has Finn. Finn, who loves the both of them, who stood by them through every horrible thing since he fell with Poe, out of the sky and into the sands of Jakku.
Rey stands on the crest looking at a fresh horizon. Maybe, one day, she thinks she’ll step into it.