Work Text:
The planet’s sand is different than Jakku’s. Not as coarse, not as unforgiving, but still it sinks into her shoes and works its way under her tunic the same way it did all those years ago.
She was different then. A scavenger, a sand rat. Too thin for her age and scarred from too many days spent out in the sun, collecting scraps to trade for too few rations. She’s still scarred, her hand running absentmindedly over the strip of leather wrapped around her forearm, but there’s no denying that she’s changed.
She feels strong, the blood pumping steadily in her veins, fortified by training and regular meals. She senses the way it’s tied to the very air around her. To the dirt and the dust and the creatures that stalk the desert under the light of the planet’s moon. The energy pulses from one living being to another. It flows.
Then there’s a disturbance. A barely perceptible shifting of energy that grows and spreads until the source of it is close enough for her to hear. And then to see.
The TIE silencer cuts through the horizon, a swath of gunmetal durasteel in a world of dirt and rock.
It barrels straight toward her, the shriek of the engines slicing through the wind until it’s all she can hear. She stays steady on her feet though, unafraid of the ship or the man she knows must pilot it.
He doesn’t slow until he’s less than a kilometer away, the nose of the ship dipping up to the sky before settling back down to the earth, sand rising like waves where the landing gear digs into the earth.
Rey waits, her hands by her sides, fighting the twinge of fear now working to crawl its way up her spine.
She isn’t afraid. Not of the ship and not of the man. But the memories, the images that still plague her dreams—of burning rooms and blazing eyes and outstretched hands—they set her nerves on fire.
She fights to steel her courage and her spine, choosing to believe in the power of the force and what it has shown her. Still, she isn’t quite prepared when the hatch to the silencer opens and the man inside drops to the ground.
Like her, he’s changed with time. His hair falls in waves to his shoulders. Still wild, but more tamed than the last time she saw him. He wears the robes of a supreme leader, the material too dark and thick for the harsh desert landscape. There’s a boldness, a regality to his form that wasn’t there before and for a moment, Rey can see the ruler he might have been. In another world or perhaps another life.
He casts his eyes down to meet hers and she notes with a flicker of surprise that the scar that marks his face has faded somewhat with time, the skin around it no longer fresh and raised. Still, she could close her eyes and trace it with her fingers, knowing every dip and every curve as intimately as she knows the scars that mark her own body.
He stalks toward her, heavy boots sinking into the sand with every step, and Rey notes with some relief that his lightsaber stays clipped to his belt. There was always a chance, when she initiated this meeting, that it would go precisely the way Finn and Poe feared it would. But Rey can feel him now in the force, an unrelenting power that fuses with her own, and she knows she is safe.
“Have you felt it?” she asks when he finally stops on the sand, less than a pace away from her.
His face stays shielded at her question, but Rey can feel his confusion, his curiosity. It roils with other things—fear and anger and guilt—things she can’t quite make herself consider too closely.
“Something is coming,” she continues, her voice more desperate than she’d meant it to sound and she swallows, centering her mind and her body the way an old Jedi master once taught her to do.
He tilts his head, muscles tensing in his jaw as he considers her words.
“And if I have?” he finally asks. “Felt it, that is.”
Rey’s eyes drift to his lips. She’d forgotten, somehow, how red they were. How soft they looked.
“Then you must know what it means.”
He nearly smirks at that, his lips tipping up for a fraction of a second before settling back down into their usual line.
“Indulge me.”
“It means we have to stop this,” Rey urges, stepping toward him in the sand. “The fighting, this war. It has to end.”
He’s so much taller close up and Rey feels the intensity of his gaze as he stares down at her.
“Does it?”
She fights the urge to look away.
“Yes,” she insists. “Surely you must know that.”
“I know that I’ve spent every day of the past three years strengthening the Order, stemming the chaos that you and your rebels are so bent on wreaking throughout the galaxy.” His voice dips low, eyes set ablaze in a fury that is all too familiar. “And now you think that because you’ve sensed something in a force you still don’t seem to understand, I’m going to forget all of that and stand by your side?”
Rey’s heart beats an unsteady rhythm inside her chest, but when she speaks her words are resolute. Assured.
“Yes.”
“Why?” he nearly spits.
“Because you feel it too. As surely as I do now. You know that what’s coming will take more power to fight than either of us have alone. It’s what we saw all those years ago, isn’t it? We just didn’t understand what we were looking at yet.”
He continues staring at her, dark eyes reflecting sunlight and not for the first time, Rey wishes she could crawl into his mind to see it up close. There’s a sense of his thoughts in the force, but it isn’t clear the way words are clear. It’s grey, a shimmering tide that ebbs and flows as surely as the water that lapped on the shore of Ahch-To.
Rey can feel the heat from his tunic. It travels through the air and lands at her chest, warming her skin through her wrappings and making her shiver.
His expression shifts at the movement, drawing his eyes down to her chest, her arms. They stop at the band wrapped just beneath her shoulder and before she can think to move, he reaches out to touch her there, his gloved hand gently stroking against the leather.
“You covered it,” he observes. “Why?”
Rey swallows, trying not to lean into his touch and failing when his fingers slip past the band to stroke her bare skin.
“I needed to forget,” she manages to say, her voice sounding small.
He catches her eye again, brows drawn together in a frown.
“And did you?” he asks. “Forget me?”
“No.”
The truth escapes from Rey’s lips before she can even think to lie, the word slipping from her tongue like a sigh. What happened between them was ingrained in her soul, fused to her chest by the force itself. How could she forget?
He nods once, his expression shifting to something she remembers from long ago—from that day on the Supremacy and all the dreams that came after. One of determination and control. Half concealed hope.
“If we do this, we do it my way,” he finally says. “We’ll need forces. We’ll need to train.”
Something like relief foods through Rey’s veins upon hearing his words. It snakes its way down her spine, soothing her muscles and her mind.
His hand still lingers on her arm and she shifts to grab it with her own, her open palm sliding across the cracked leather.
“Together?”
His fingers slot between hers, heavy and firm.
“Yes. Together now.”