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Rey turned eighteen over the summer before college - after the celebratory dinner, her father gave her a handsome journal, which made sense, given that Luke Skywalker was a world-famous author. The Sacred Texts had sold over a million copies worldwide in the eighties.
“Now, remember, I’d written my first bestseller by 19,” he told her cheerfully, handing her a beautiful fountain pen as well. “But, no pressure.”
She stuck her tongue out at her father, and later on that night, when everyone else had gone to bed - Uncle Han and Aunt Leia in the guest room, and Ben stretched out on the couch with Artoo snuggled up close to his side, Chewie curled up at his feet - Rey took out her present from her father and opened it.
Smiling at the crack of leather as it was opened for the first time, Rey smoothed her hand over the creamy blank page and set her pen at the top of the page. There was something important she had to write...but what to write first?
Tapping her feet on the floor under her desk, Rey shut her brain off and just started to write.
“Heroes and thieves at my door. I can't seem to tell them apart anymore. And just when I've figured it out - Oh, darling it's you I'm without. ”
Rey stared at the words, the ones that had flowed from her pen without any effort on her part. She frowned, thinking furiously. Had she seen them somewhere? Heard them on the radio? Maybe on a tumblr post? She wracked her brain but came up with nothing; she hummed a few tunes, but nothing seemed to work, not the national anthem, not the Jonas Brothers, not the Pirates of Penzance.
Her heart began to pound in her throat; soulmates were incredibly rare these days. Her father and mother were not soulmates (Mara always claimed that worked in their favor), but her aunt and uncle were. Leia and Han had finished each other’s song twenty-five years ago, and had been inseparable ever since. You got your half of your song, and when someone was able to finish it, it meant you had found your soulmate.
Rey never would have guessed in a thousand years that she had a soulmate.
But, this wasn’t quite right.
In all the stories, each soulmate in the pairing got half a song, music and lyrics. All Rey had were lyrics.
Maybe it isn’t a soul song, she thought, her hopes already deflating. Maybe I’m just writing weird poetry.
Still, though, the words haunted her long after she turned off the lights and got to bed, the lyrics floating past her eyes when she shut them, trying to block out the feeling that something incredibly important had happened.
***
More lyrics came spilling out of her pen when she sat in her
8 am Physics class six months later. Without bidding, her diagrams and figures became words - “ I'm looking for wisdom in all the wrong places, But still want to laugh in disappointed faces. But you can't help me, I'm blinded by these -”
“Ms. Skywalker, are we boring you?”
The pen skittered across the paper, and Rey looked up with a quiet gasp. Professor Ackbar was staring at her, a thick eyebrow raised. The rest of her classmates were out of their seats, practicing equations on the boards that lined the walls - she was the only one still sitting.
“No, sir.” Rey hurried to the nearest whiteboard, tucking her hair behind her ear. Rose Tico, her roommate and frequent classmate, smiled at her kindly.
Rey let her hold the dry erase marker.
***
Some other words popped up here and there for the next few years. The words that showed up the most though (usually when she was tired and not focusing on what she was writing) were the main lines, the ones that had shown up when she turned eighteen.
Eventually, Rey grew to hate the words. Her soulmate probably wasn’t even looking for her - if they even existed. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do; there was no protocol for a soul song without, well, a song. All she had were words, words, stupid words.
Should she compete in slam poetry contests? Should she go to open mic nights around the city and shout her lines of semi-poetry into the microphone?
Rey cried, heartbroken (or at least, heartsick) over it more than once in college.
In their junior year, Rose started dating Finn, a boy Rey had really liked when she was a sophomore - but he hadn’t responded at all to the lyrics she “accidentally” let him read in her notebook. It was more than a little unfair that Rey couldn’t date Finn; she had liked him, after all, but something had felt...off...when they started to do things as more than friends.
So, Rose got together with Finn instead, and they fell in love, and after graduation, the trio headed off to start their adult lives in Coruscant. Rose and Rey became engineers, and Finn became an architect, and Rey just accepted that she was going to die alone, the sad, spinster aunt to Finn and Rose's two dozen children.
***
With Rose out of town visiting family, Finn was absent a plus one for his company’s holiday party. He’d only had to whine a half dozen times before Rey relented; it was a over a week before Christmas, after all, and she had no legitimate reason to be busy on a Saturday night.
She had used the Golden Girls as an excuse too often in the past - she still smirked at the memory of Finn discovering that Rey didn’t actually have friends named Blanche and Dorothy.
Wearing her prettiest dress, Rey stood awkwardly in the corner while Finn mangled a drawing in pictionary (thankfully with his buddy Nines, and not with her). She sipped at the drink in her hand and made a face, setting it down on a nearby table when she discovered it was far too strong for her tastes.
There was a piano in the corner, one that she had seen when she walked in, and Rey decided to check it out, take a photo and send it to Ben, whose prize possession was a Steinway he inherited from their grandmother. Nearing the instrument, however, Rey discovered that someone was already occupying the bench.
Their face was hidden from view by the propped lid, but the carol they were playing was reaching an end, a spritely rendition of Sleigh Bells. A tall man with a bushy beard was standing near the piano, and he whinnied in the correct spot, a shorter man with interesting eyes clapping immediately afterwards, and Rey snorted at the nerdy high five they traded. There was a brief pause in the music, and then a new song started.
And the entire world stopped.
The chords sounded … not familiar, not at all. But -
Rey walked forward as though in a trance, barely noticing the two men near the piano rolling their eyes, the shorter one shouting, "Play something else for once!"
The words came to her lips, the words that had appeared on her paper a few years ago: “Well disaster, it strikes on a daily basis. I'm looking for wisdom in all the wrong places.”
She sang quietly at first, surprised at how the words flowed out alongside the melody, as though she’d always known this melody. But she hadn’t, had she?
“You’re always playing this damn song!” The man with the beard roared, leaning forward to punch the still-hidden musician on the shoulder. “Play a Christmas song!” The music faltered for half a second.
Rey sang louder now, completely convinced that this was the song she’d been missing - “But still want to laugh in disappointed faces ” - the man stopped joking around and stared at her in shock, but Rey didn’t spare him a second glance, not as she reached the side of the piano, in time to lock eyes with the man playing the instrument.
“But you can't help me, I'm blinded by these…”
- Something clicked inside of her, something almost physical. Sometimes, when she was in the lab, she ran her hands along the humming equipment, enjoying the way the vibrations ran up her arm, her body resonating at the same frequency even for a few seconds, as the machine - it felt like that, but more powerful, more meaningful, more -
His large brown eyes were beautiful, and shocked, and Rey put her hand on the smooth wood of the piano, not breaking eye contact for a second as she sang the lyrics that first emerged when she was eighteen, over six years ago: “Heroes and Thieves at my door. I can't seem to tell them apart anymore. Just when I've figured it out, well darling it's you I'm without.”
The fingers moving swiftly across the keys faltered for a moment, and the two men that had been teasing the musician a few moments ago were staring in open shock at them.
“Oh, damn,” the taller, bearded one whispered, but Rey ignored him still. She moved around them, slipping around the corner of the piano, and she settled on the bench next to the man. Distantly, she noticed that he was handsome, incredibly so; he was older than she was, his shoulders broad in the tailored suit he wore, his hair thick and curly, and his large hands obviously skilled, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his face - a face she decided that she liked, on instinct alone.
He seemed to be playing on muscle memory, and Rey nodded encouragingly at him to keep going. She knew a few more lyrics, but she’d always gotten it in pieces - now that she’d found him, she didn’t want to stop for fear of losing the rest of the song.
“Well I'm stubborn and wrong, but at least I know it” - he cracked a smile at that, his eyes growing soft at the corners, and Rey felt herself melt at the sight - “I keep moving along and hope I can get through this - But maybe this song is the best I can do it. So I'm patiently waiting on these” -
A honey-warm, rough tenor joined her voice, and he looked as surprised as she felt when he started to sing along with what she now realized was the chorus. “Heroes and thieves at my door. I can't seem to tell them apart anymore. And just when I've figured it out: oh, darling it's you, darling it's you, oh, darling it's you, I'm-”
His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, as his fingers continued to move over the keys. Rey also kept singing, and without any warning, the lyrics she’d been stuck with for years unraveled in her head, and suddenly, finally, she knew the next verse.
Rey felt her instincts take over fully, the lyrics being pulled out of her easily, coming from a place deep inside of herself that she never really bothered to tap into. Warmth flooded her body, and she still found herself unwilling to look away from the beautiful brown eyes of the man who knew the music to her lyrics. Tears pricked at her own eyes as the gravity of the situation settled around her - she loved her family, loved her friends, but she’d been convinced that she had a defunct soulmate gene, a random mutation that had her without any real connection to a romantic partner.
She ducked her head and laughed as the lyrics that poured out of her grew more hopeful, and she sensed the man doing the same; she watched his fingers instead, marveling at the way his tan skin looked against the white keys. “Give me a year or two, and I'll mend my ways and see these mistakes, and when I see the truth, well darling trust me when I can see - I'll be coming back; I'll be coming back to you.”
Around the party, people had started to murmur to each other.
“ Did you know Dameron had a soulmate?" -- “ No, he never mentioned!” -- “You don’t think they just found-" -- “Pffbt. Are you kidding me? Those two have obviously known each other for years."
Rey couldn’t be bothered to listen to the whispers. She was too focused on the man playing the piano.
They sang her original lyrics one more time, and the last line hung in the air around them, like thick fruit on a summer vine - “Darling, it’s you I’m without.”
The song faded away as the man played the final chords, and people around them burst into applause. The din sounded far, far away as Rey looked once more into warm, brown eyes, and she smiled tentatively.
The man didn’t smile, and it made her nervous for a moment, the butterflies in her stomach churning dangerously close to a hurricane, but then he spoke. “It’s you.” His speaking voice was just as enchanting as his singing. “It’s really you.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Rey joked, and he finally smiled at that. This smile hit her in the gut just as much as the first, and she felt the warmth spread through her body intensify, her fingers and toes tingling.
”I’m Poe.” He held one of his lovely hands out to her. “Poe Dameron.”
“Rey Skywalker.” She took his hand, and they both gasped when they touched.
The warmth in her body seemed to flow to two specific points - her hand, where she was touching Poe, and her chest, which was suddenly unbearably flooded by hope and a brightness she’d never felt before.
“Oh-” Rey felt tears in her eyes, and she saw them mirrored in Poe’s.
“I found you.” His voice cracked, and he cupped the back of her hand tenderly, so that his hands were covering hers. “We-”
“We found each other.”
And they stayed like that, as though time had frozen around them, sitting on the bench and sharing an infinite moment.