Work Text:
No matter how many time she tried to breath deeply and feel, Rey couldn’t get herself to relax.
She had had worse mornings of training. The Force was there for her today, at least. Some mornings the Force was overwhelming, like she was feeling every emotion from everyone on the Resistance base, even the droids. And they all had so many emotions even when she wasn’t tuning in through the Force.
She had slept badly, last night, with the planet in the middle of its 72-hour daylight period, and today the Force was speaking to her in all the ways she didn’t want. She could sense the busy activity of the wildlife all around her, but not the steadying influence of the trees. She could feel Leia’s energy, a strong, cool presence, but not her motions. And every time she tried to direct herself through the Force the way Leia wanted her to, she felt her mind pulled somewhere else.
She also kept expecting the blackout helmet to feel like her old helmet from Jakku, but it was distractingly scratchy and smelled weird.
“How old is this thing?” she asked, as she pulled it off. Then she looked around and realised Leia was twelve paces behind her. She was supposed to be following Leia’s movements just by feeling her through the Force, and it clearly hadn’t worked. How had they ended up on opposite sides of a huge tree stump without Rey noticing?
“It’s as old as everything else stashed here from my training days.”
“It’s itchy.”
“Yes, I too find complaining a good way to distract from the fact that an exercise isn’t working.
Rey clenched a fist behind her back, as if that would stop Leia from noticing. It wouldn’t, but Leia would pretend.
“You’ll have bad days, Rey. It’s okay. Nothing about this is simple.”
“I thought I’d be able to do what you asked by now. Staying beside you shouldn’t be that hard. I thought I was doing it.”
“There’s no point in saying ‘should’ when you’re talking about the Force,” Leia said, as she sat down on the tree stump. “You don’t control it. It’s like swimming in a river. When it’s calm, you can go whichever way you want, but sometimes a current will take you in directions you don’t want to go and you can’t just turn around and paddle the other way. You have to work with it.”
Rey decided not to point out that she’d never even seen a river until they came to this planet and she didn’t know how to swim.
“So, should we try again?”
Leia had a glint in her eye. “Yes, but let’s try it in a way you’re more comfortable with,” she said, and reached to her hip for her lightsabre.
“Are you sure?”
“Come on, fly girl. Helmet on.”
Rey stalled as soon as it covered her eyes. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“What are you afraid will happen if we fail?”
That I’ll fail, she thought. Wasn’t that enough to be afraid of. But as Leia kept telling her, everyone had to fail sometimes. For most of Rey’s life, though, any kind of failure meant almost certain death, and she could only see the high stakes.
“Rey?” Leia prodded her.
What was the real fear? “I could hurt you. I could fall over and look stupid. The Dark Side could get me.”
“That’s not how the Dark Side works. But it doesn’t help to be afraid of hurting me. Let’s start using branches instead, and just taps, not hard blows. Warm up sparring.”
She picked up a tree branch, and waited while Rey took a moment to pick out one that she liked the feel of.
“I’m ready,” she announced, when she had a branch that had a comfortable weight and balance in her hands, and pulled her visor down.
Rey knew the instructions so well she could recite them in her sleep. Don’t try to look. Feel the Force, let it move you. She couldn’t see a thing, but Leia had been on to something – holding a weapon, her body poised to react, Rey knew where she was, no matter what the Force was doing. This was familiar enough that her lack of sight barely felt weird at all.
From there, it wasn’t so hard at all to feel Leia stepping quietly around her. They circled each other, and this time Rey wasn’t lost at all. She could feel Leia’s steps and even the way Leia was looking at her, sizing up potential openings in her guard. When Leia moved to strike, Rey didn’t have to think before she stepped to the side and deflected Leia’s branch away.
Leia followed it up with another quick strike, though, and that’s when things went sideways. All of a sudden Rey was seeing too much and feeling too much. The helmet didn’t blind her enough. She saw Finn departing with Poe and Chewbacca on the Falcon, again, and another tired argument about whether she should come with them instead of staying here and training. She saw Kylo Ren’s demand that she join him, again. She heard her own ragged breath in the dark of her home on Jakku as scavengers circled her ruins at night. She saw her parents leaving, again. She couldn’t see their faces.
She knew she had to move, but she couldn’t tell which way to go. She couldn’t even tell whether she was attacking or running. She just took everything she felt and moved with all hermight. It wasn’t that surprising when the ground was suddenly in the wrong place and her left shoulder searing with pain.
“Oh dear. No, don’t move. No more sparring today, we need to get you fixed up.”
Rey craned her neck. She was only faintly aware of any blood. “It doesn’t look bad to me.”
“That’s because you still have your helmet on.”
It was only then that Rey realised she wasn’t seeing with her eyes. With the helmet off, though, she could see that when she tripped, she’d torn the skin from her shoulder almost to her elbow.
It looked awful, but all she could say was a faint “Ugh, I suck at this.”
Leia didn’t respond. She usually didn’t respond to what Rey said about herself. She was bafflingly different to Luke that way, or to anyone else who had ever tried to teach her something. Unkar would have hit her. Luke would have shrugged and told her to give up, then, he couldn’t train her if she wasn’t going to make an effort. But Leia said, “This is a good opportunity to practice your healing.”
Rey squeezed her eyes shut. She was tired of failing and tired of people leaving and tired of the gnawing feeling that there was something worse going on than just not being able to reach the Force. She didn’t fully understand the Dark Side, not with the patchwork education she’d had from Luke, from the stories she heard on Jakku and from the labyrinthine Jedi dexts, but she knew enough. Finding fear and anger in the Force wasn’t a good sign. Acting on them was worse.
“I don’t think I can heal. Not right now.”
“Okay, so don’t try to heal. But if you’re not in too much pain, take a moment before we go to the medics. Reach into the Force and see where it takes you.”
Rey dearly wanted to just get up and go back to camp. But she wasn’t in too much pain compared to other things she’d been through. She couldn’t even pretend it was too much. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried.
Instantly she was alone again, watching a ship take off, and not even sure which one it was. It didn’t matter. She was alone, and she was tired. It wasn’t supposed to be like this any more. But she put her hand over the gash, anyway, and although she couldn’t make the anger go away because she was feeling every time she had ever been alone, she could also feel every tree around her thrumming with life, and Leia’s presence next to her like the brightest tree in the forest.
She only opened her eyes when Leia said, “I don’t think Doctor Kalonia will be able to fault your work, Rey,” and realised her arm was healed.
“I think we’d better finish up for today,” Leia said, as Rey stared at her arm. “That was hard work, and I’m sure you don’t want to miss seeing Finn before he and Poe leave for Karranix.”
“No,” Rey said, heavily. “No, I wouldn’t want to miss that.”
***
If Jessika Pava hadn’t already gotten over her long-ago crush on Poe Dameron, his distracted lecturing while he packed his bag for a mission would be killing it.
“You have to remember to keep the squad in position when someone shoots through the Antilles formation. I know you want to adapt but just regroup, you have to keep the formation on course.”
He wasn’t looking at her, he was busy stuffing socks into a knapsack. Who needed that many socks for a five day trip? But this meant Jess could safely roll her eyes without him seeing.
“Do you know how many times you’ve ordered us to change a plan mid-battle?”
“Yes, which is why I know it’s important not to change this one. You have to keep everyone together.”
“I’m not your lieutenant! Snap is in charge when you’re gone! Why are you telling me all this?”
“Well, you came here.”
“Yeah, because you asked me to. I wouldn’t have come if I knew you were going to lecture me about Snap’s job.”
Poe stared at her for a moment and then rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. I want to make sure you’re okay while I’m gone. Might be overdoing it.”
“Things will be okay,” Jess insisted. Patience wasn’t one of her strong points, but she could try to force her way through this conversation. “Snap’s got this. We’d all like it if you were flying with us, but we know why you’re going with the Falcon crew. Trust us.”
“I trust you. I just don’t trust me.”
There are three types of Resistance members, now. There are survivors of the Battle of Crait, carrying a particular kind of pain everywhere they go. There are people who joined up afterwards, full of the fire of the newly converted. And then there was Jess.
To be accurate, it was Jess, Suralina, Snap and Kare. The squadron who had deployed on another mission straight out of the battle of Starkiller Base, who missed the evacuation of D’Qar and the Battle of Crait. They’d gotten the message they expected about where to rendezvous with the Resistance after evacuation, and arrived to find a single ship’s load of survivors where there used to be a fleet.
Now Jess felt out of place in what used to be her home. It still looked like home – all the same tents and X-Wings and boring briefings, many of the same astromechs arguing over who got the short straw of flying with her even though all the droids that got destroyed on her ships were total accidents. It was only when she was with people that it didn’t feel like home. She didn’t have the bright enthusiasm of the new recruits, and she couldn’t connect with people like Poe when they went into those long stares and talked haltingly about the evacuation. She hadn’t seen what they had seen.
But there was still a huge hole that was meant to be filled with people, the people who were all gone one day as if they’d never been there at all. They held a memorial, but there were too many names, too much loss and grief for Jess to understand. So she drifted through the Resistance and tried as hard as she could to connect. Which often meant trying not to yell at people.
“I trust you,” she said, after a deep breath. “Finn trusts you. Although maybe he shouldn’t trust you to be on time.”
Poe looked at the wall clock and swore. “I have to go!”
“You sure do!”
“I have to kick you out, sorry, good luck with everything!” He threw the bag on his back and a scarf around his neck and tore the door open. Then he stopped so suddenly that Jess walked into his back.
She peered around his shoulder to see Finn and Rey looking up from their conversation in the hallway; Finn with a quiet smile, and Rey with her lips pressed together in a hard line.
“Rey,” Poe said, warily. “Are you coming with us after all?”
She crossed her arms. “Can’t we say goodbye without fighting about it?”
“Hey,” Jess said, loudly. “If I’m going to leave your room you have to get out of the way. And it’s breakfast time and I’m starving.”
“Sorry!” Poe stepped out of the way, brushing up against Rey, and they stared at each other warily again. Jess just caught an apologetic smile from Finn before she made her escape to the mess hall.
Like many in the Resistance, Jess found Rey more that a bit intimidating. Jess had never met Luke Skywalker, but he was her childhood hero and she used to keep a picture of him on her pocket until it fell apart somewhere between getting captured by pirates on Dandoran and badgering the New Republic fleet to take her in as a runaway. He was a towering figure in her mind. Rey had come out of nowhere, saved the Resistance and then gone off to learn Jedi magic from Luke Skywalker. And then saved the Resistance again. Plus she was the primary pilot of the Millennium Falcon, which looked like even more of a piece of junk than it was in the General’s stories but handled as well as a new X-Wing when Rey was in the pilot’s seat. And now she was getting private tutelage from the General every morning.
She was fascinating, and made even more so by the way she was always at the edges of the Resistance when she wasn’t on official business. When she wasn’t with the General, she talked to Finn or to the droids but otherwise kept to herself. Perhaps there were four kinds of people in the Resistance: survivors, newbies, Black Squadron and Rey, an even lonelier class all of her own.
This is why Jess made a beeline for her at lunch that day and said, “Hi. I’m going to sit here.”
Rey looked at her, surprised. “Oh. Okay?”
“Wait, I did that wrong.” Jess was halfway to sitting down, but picked up her tray and stood up again. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
Rey looked around her, and didn’t look back at Jess.
“I was asking you if I could sit here.”
“Oh! Yes, please.” Rey was suddenly beaming, with dimples in her cheeks and everything. “I didn’t know if I was in charge of who sat at the table.”
“There’s nobody else here,” Jess said, before she could stop herself. Then she sat down and stuffed a roast tuber in her mouth before she could say something else stupid, like So you don’t have any friends, huh?
Rey just said “I know!” and kept beaming at her.
This was the other reason Rey seemed like she was apart from the rest of the Resistance, Jess realised. Yes, she was the last remaining heir of an incomprehensible mystical power and one of the best, youngest pilots they had ever seen, and she was also a huge dork.
And very cute when she grinned like that, so Jess kept stuffing her mouth while she tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t be embarrassing.
“So I know you talk with the droids a lot,” she said, at last. “I hope they haven’t told you too many bad things about me.”
Rey’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh! You’re The Great Destroyer!”
“It’s not like I’m careless! I’ve just had bad luck with astromechs.” She sighed. “At least it makes me sound cool.”
“You seem pretty cool even without destroying droids.”
“That’s nice of you to say, but I’m like everyone else here. Kind of a mess and trying to get by.”
“Really? Everyone here seems to know what they’re doing. I thought I was the one with no idea.”
“That’s not what it looks like when you’re flying.”
“Flying isn’t the problem.” Rey looked down at her tray. “There’s no way of telling whether I’m doing Jedi training well, but it doesn’t feel like. Luke taught me one way, Master Leia tells me another, and the books are different again.”
The mention of Jedi training prickled the hairs on the back of Jess’s neck. She wanted badly to know more – didn’t everyone? But she resisted the urge enough to just not blurt out questions.
“I’m sure you’re trying your best.”
“Is that good enough?” Rey’s gaze was distant, she was drawing into herself, but at least she kept talking. “The costs of making a mistake are terrible. I feel like I’m always brushing up against the Dark Side and if I go the wrong way I could ruin the Resistance. I don’t want to end up like Kylo Ren.”
“You won’t.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because you don’t want to.” Jess gave her a wry smile. “That’s an important first step to not being a bad guy.”
That got a small smile in return. “I guess you’re right. I just wish I knew what the right way was.”
“This might sound stupid, but I idolised Luke Skywalker when I was a kid and I used to read some stuff about what he was like as a Jedi and I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t help, but I could try to find some of it for you?”
“No, that would be great!” Rey’s real grin was back now, dimples and all.
“I don’t have them with me on base, but I should be able to get copies.” She was pretty sure she could recite two of them from memory, but she wasn’t going to offer that when the costs were as high as Rey said they were. She also maybe didn’t want Rey to know that she was so obsessed with Luke Skywalker that she memorised a research paper about him.
“How long will that take? When should I meet you?” Rey asked, with the impersonal distrust of someone who had a lot of people screw her over.
“Ten days? Most of it’s on the holonet, but it might take some digging and I’ll need to be careful to avoid tracing.”
“Ten days. Okay. I’ll see you then.”
Jess put a hand on her wrist as she was getting up to leave. “We don’t have to wait ten days to meet. We could hang out sooner just for fun.”
“For fun,” Rey said, gravely. “Do you mean we’re friends?”
Her earnestness made Jess want to scoop her up in a hug and take her out, show her a good time, or at least what passed for one on base. Maybe make them some friendship bracelets. But she remembered that feeling, the skittishness of it, and restrained herself to “Yeah, we’re friends. You want to meet me here again for the evening meal?”
The slow-dawning smile and the crinkle in Rey’s nose were almost enough to make her melt.
***
“Rey,” said the voice through her earpiece. “You ready to go?”
“I just need a moment.” She was relieved when Jess didn’t push her any further. It was strange to sit behind the controls of a real X-wing. She knew the controls of the sim she learned on by heart and it was familiar and strange to have the real ones under her hands, in a modern ship. (“Modern-ish,” Jess had said. “We pick up whatever we can get.”)
“Okay,” she said, at last. “Let’s go.”
She was gripping the controls hard as she brought the ship hovering off the ground, making sure she could still do this right. When she kicked the engines in and shot away into the bright sunlight, she surprised herself by letting out a gleeful whoop.
Jess had taken one look at her at breakfast that morning and said “We need to get you in the air again.” Rey had tried to brush her off – there were other things to do, reading, training, meditating. Her session with Leia that morning had been downright terrible – she couldn’t sense the Force at all until she got so frustrated that she brought down an entire tree. She had work to do.
“Come on, let’s fly. You’ve never seen the inside of an X-Wing, right? Don’t you want to learn how to fly one?”
“I know how to fly an X-Wing.”
She expected Jess to bother her with arguments like Poe always did, but instead she grinned and leaned closer, close enough that Rey could smell her flight suit and see the fineness of her eyelashes, and said, “Prove it.”
How could Rey say no to that?
Once she was in the air, she took a few minutes to just enjoy it, just flying alongside another pilot for only the second time in her life. The first few times she noticed Jess on her flank, she started. On Jakku, that was another scavenger who could be looking to take you down and snipe your haul. After a moment, though, she got used to it, as long as she kept reminding herself this was someone who has her back, not someone on her tail.
Then she noticed Jess peeling off into a roll, diving a little for momentum before a steep climb, and before she even thought about it, Rey was chasing her.
There was only one other time that Rey had raced someone just for fun. It was when they were still searching for a new base after the Battle for Crait and they’d secured some new ships. Poe had been enthusing about the power and finesse of the new X-Wings, and while he hadn’t meant anything by it, Rey felt compelled to defend the Falcon. It wasn’t long before they were both in the air and doing their best to out-manoeuvre each other.
That was a different time, but not that different, as their first adrenaline-filled meeting morphed into an uneasy conflict over who was more important to Finn and where a trainee Jedi fit in the military hierarchy. It wasn’t a battle, but as Rey guided the Falcon through moves that only the best pilots could pull off, the momentous efforts it took to match a fighter like an X-Wing, it wasn’t exactly fun. She got a deep satisfaction from outmatching Poe when she could, but it was driven by something harsher, a need for victory. A need to beat him.
Flying after Jess, on the other hand, was pure fun. Sometimes one was in pursuit and sometimes the other, but they were always close by each other and their radio chatter was filled with laughter. Despite it being her first time in a real X-Wing, Rey was soon flying without thinking, like her body had always known what to do.
When they finally met up on the ground again, Jess looked happier than Rey had ever seen her. When she said “You have to let me buy you a drink,” Rey didn’t even think about saying no.
‘Buying her a drink’ turned out to be crashing Snap and Kare’s quarters and borrowing a bottle of their liquor.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jess said, wiping the back of her mouth, “But I can see where Poe’s coming from.”
Rey took a sip from the bottle and grimaced at the words as much as the burn. Jess hastened to add “Not that you’re wrong, either.”
“Other people can fly. There’s nobody else who can learn what I’m learning. Nobody in the Resistance, anyway.”
“No, of course you have to do what you’re doing. But you’re so good at flying.”
“I know,” Rey groaned. “Like, it’s so easy and it feels so good and I can do it. Flying is like walking, I don’t even think about it, and using the Force is… a lot of the time it’s like walking through a maze blindfolded. And why am I doing that when I could be, you know.” She waved a hand at the sky.
“I think you’re amazing at whatever you do.”
Rey shrugged. “I’m not, though.”
“Think of it like this. I don’t know how long it’s been since you last flew, but you haven’t forgotten anything. You keep doing your Jedi training, and when we really need you in the air you’ll still be more than up to it.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so. Your first time in an X-Wing? Are you sure? Where did you learn to fly like that?”
People had asked Rey that question before and switched off as soon as she started explaining, but Jess was leaning forward on her elbows.
“So… you know I’m from Jakku, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I learned on a flight simulator there. A Rebel Alliance one, so I kinda knew X-Wings. And as for the hardware, well, it’s pretty much a ship graveyard. I know ships in parts and computer programs.”
“That’s so cool! I didn’t learn until I badgered my way into flight school. I’d never flown anything except the ship I stole when I was running away, so it’s a miracle they took me, really.”
Most people in the Resistance knew the outlines of Rey’s story, but she didn’t tell them everything. She could see something similar in the crumbs in Jess’s story. Things said and not explained.
“You must have been pretty impressive if you flew your getaway ship well enough to get away.”
Jess took a deep breath, and then told her story in a rush. “I was captured and taken into slavery when I was a kid, but I always wanted to get out. So I studied ships whenever they were nearby, or whenever I was in one, so I’d be ready when I got the chance.”
“And it worked. No wonder they took you.”
“Almost as good as flying an X-Wing when you’ve only ever used a sim.”
Jess took another long swig from the bottle and handed it over. As Rey touched it to her mouth, Jess blurted out, “I’m so happy that we’re friends. You’re really cool, and everyone’s been so weird since I got back you’re like the one person who feels normal. Like half my friends are dead but we don’t talk about it and Poe’s still here but he’s changed so much it’s like I can’t talk to him about anything any more. I know he feels awful and that’s why but I lost people too, and…”
She paused for breath and lost her train of thought, flushing and looking down at her hands.
Rey had barely drunk a drop from the bottle while Jess talked, but it felt like her lips were burning when she said, “I’m really glad we’re friends, too.” When Jess smiled back, she took another sip and felt warm from her stomach down to her toes.
***
Jess knew what she was looking for. She knew what she had to do to get it. She had been honest with Rey when she said it would take her ten days. Finding old research papers while keeping her location secret was turning out to be harder than she expected, though, as was finding stable archives to sift through.
“Jess.” She looked up from her console to see a familiar pair of hands on some equally familiar hips. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m researching, Javos. What does it look like?”
“It looks like you’re working through the night, which isn’t very Pava of you.”
“There’ll be time for other things later,” she said, running her finger down a list of files.
Suralinda perched on the edge of the console and Jess shuffled to the side slightly to make room, without her gaze ever leaving the screen.
“There’s not that much time if you were planning to catch Snap at the bar, though. He’s flying out the day after next.”
That finally got her to look up. “Wait, is it that late?” She’d come here straight after eating and planned to work for an hour or so. Now her entire evening was gone. “Damn. It’s hard to keep track with this stupid planetary rotation.”
“Yeah, when you didn’t show up at the bar I got worried.”
“I don’t have to come by the bar every night.”
“No, but you usually do.”
‘The Bar’ was the box of liquor that Jess and Rey had raided a few nights ago. Snap and Kare kept it in their quarters and usually brought it out to share in the parade grounds on clear evenings, or what passed for evenings in the Resistance schedule. It wasn’t exclusively for the four of them, but it was where Snap, Kare, Suralinda and Jess had spent almost every evening since the Resistance made this place its new home. Despite being squadmates, they never used to be this tight-knit, not the kind of group that spent all their free time together. But right now, this was what they had.
“I’m researching.”
“Ooh, what is it? More ex-Imperial spies? You know you can always run names by me, I might have some intel.”
“No, I’m working on something for Rey.”
“Rey? The Jedi kid?” Suralinda cocked her head. “You really want a joy ride on the Falcon, huh?”
“It’s really not like that,” Jess said, and Suralinda knew her well enough to stop teasing and listen.
“What’s it like, then?”
Jess sighed and pushed her chair back. “I’ve never met anyone else like her, you know?”
“Oh, so it’s a different kind of joy ride. Fair enough, she’s hot.”
“No! Well, okay, yes. But I meant, she’s so on her own. I don’t think she really knows how to talk to people? She has to do these really hard things that nobody else can do, and it must be so lonely, and she keeps doing it because there’s no other option, and I can’t help her beat Kylo Ren in lightsabre combat or read people’s minds, but if my past life as a Skywalker fanatic can help, then I want to help.”
“Yeah, I get it. You’re good people, Jess.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Took me long enough to get there.”
“Nah, that was me. You just took a long time to get socialised. You were always good, and it sounds like you’re good for Rey.” She paused. “I assume when the nice telepathic lady takes you out on the Falcon to say thank you, I’m never going to hear the end of it.”
“No, you are absolutely not.”
***
The Millennium Falcon returned when they were coming to the end of the planets daylight cycle and into the long twilight. It was the sixth hour of dusk when Rey paused in her sabre drills as she sensed its passengers nearby again and ran through the forest to meet them. Finn wrapped her in a hug that she could feel all the way down to her bones, and Chewbacca ruffled her hair as he walked past, lugging their cargo.
When they broke apart, the first thing they saw was Poe standing there, awkwardly.
“How did it go?” she asked.
Poe shrugged. “We managed.”
“Don’t get bashful with me and think it’ll make me come with you next time.”
“I’m not!” he snapped, and then rubbed his face. “Sorry. I’m not. I wish I was better. I need to be better. Look, it was touch and go at the end and I should probably… I need to…”
Finn put an arm around Poe’s shoulders and squeezed, a motion that looked more natural every time Rey saw it.
“Sorry, Rey. I want to catch up, but someone needs to make this guy lie down. And eat something. Maybe not in that order.”
“You make him lie down and I’ll get some food?”
Poe looked warily between them. “Why do I feel like I’m being managed?”
“Because you are,” said Finn, fondly. “Come on, old man, let’s go get your slippers.”
Poe looked at Rey, and he looked the same as always, really, but Rey had never noticed just how haunted he was. She maybe wanted to hug him, too. She didn’t think they were people who hugged much, yet, but she put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a sideways smile before she slipped off to the mess hall.
***
By the end of Dusk Day there was only a bluish tinge of light left in the dark sky. Jess found Rey reading by firelight after the dinner hour, camped out just underneath the Falcon.
“Did you miss your ship that much?”
Rey looked up with a half smile. “Hey. I don’t know that I can really call it mine.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “It was Han’s for such a long time.”
“And it’s an icon, and has a long history, etcetera. But if you love it so much that you want to hang out with the ship instead of your friends, I think you get some claim to it.”
Rey just sighed and gazed at the ship again. She was quiet for so long that Jess started to think she should just leave when Rey suddenly said, “Would you like to see inside?”
Jess had dreamed about setting foot on the Falcon for years. She should have been jealous of the way Rey moved around the ship with such familiarity, checking fixtures that Jess wouldn’t even have noticed and touching things as they moved through, making sure everything was just as she remembered. Jess wasn’t jealous, though, she was just in awe of Rey; how much she cared about a ship that looked like garbage, and how well she knew a ship that was the stuff of legends.
“How did you even end up with her?” Jess asked, when they reached the cockpit, gazing around in awe. Many of the controls looked like they’d been taken apart and then put back together with nothing but spit and Wookie fur.
“She was under my nose for years and I didn’t even know. Not until Finn and BB-8 had to get off Jakku, and Han and Chewbacca captured us to take her back.”
“He captured you, and you would up her next pilot. That’s a hell of a story.”
Rey wasn’t smiling, though. “I don’t know whether the Falcon should be mine, though. Maybe I don’t deserve it any more.”
“Of course you do!”
Rey shrugged. “Thanks, but how you can you know that?”
Jess didn’t know how to explain that it was obvious how much Rey loved her ship. She was so fond of it and it makes Jess even more fond of Rey, so it was incomprehensible that Rey wouldn’t see it, too.
That was when Jess gave up and kissed her. Rey made a noise of surprise, but she didn’t move away; she leaned into Jess, melted against her, in a way that suggested she wasn’t surprised at all.
This is it, Jess thought, as Rey pushed her down into the copilot’s seat. This is the best thing ever.
She was making out with a hot Jedi in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, something so fantastic that she’d never even dreamed it up before. If she could find her thirteen year old self, the one who went on the run from her slavemasters with nothing but a stolen ship and a tattered picture of Luke Skywalker, they would high five so hard.
In a terrible way, it was therefore fitting that Rey sprang back with a hand to her mouth and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I think you’ll find that I did that,” Jess said, and reached for her again.
Rey backed towards the door. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Wait! You’re just leaving me with the ship?” Jess yelled after her. “What if I steal it?”
“You won’t. I trust you,” Rey said, and then she was gone.
Jess glared at the cockpit. “Well then, as long as you trust me,” she muttered.
Then she moved to the captain’s seat and imagined flying off with the Falcon anyway. If she’d just gotten a brush off, she could at least enjoy the view.
**
Training during the night cycle was terrible. As if 72 hours of daylight weren’t confusing enough, Rey had an even worse time adjusting to three days of darkness.
Though it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if she hadn't stayed up all night thinking about kissing Jess. For one excellent moment, it had felt like the galaxy was making sense for once. It was like things just fell into place, until she realised what she’d done and it felt like the ground fell out from under her instead.
Rey had grown up hearing garbled stories of the Jedi as if they were either fictional or impossibly perfect, and now she was trying to be one. She was reading and listening to Leia and remembering Luke, all of that getting jumbled up with the things she learned on Jakku.
All night she lay in bed, replaying the memories that suddenly made a lot more sense. The crude jokes from smugglers passing through when she asked for Jedi stories, the ones she never understood before. The warnings from the Force acolytes who visited from the Sacred Villages from time to time. The pieces of Jedi text she’d deciphered about the closeness of love and hate.
A ship, leaving with out her. Kylo Ren’s outstretched hands.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Rey said, when Leia suggested sparring.
“That’s what you said the first time, and you’ve been getting better.”
Had she? It didn’t feel like it. When Rey lit up her lightsabre, it felt more alien than it had a week ago. She didn’t know where to find the Force at all. When they began sparring, Rey was meeting Leia’s blows, but it felt like she was hanging by her fingertips from the edge of a cliff, like every moment she stayed in the fight was more dumb luck. The Force wasn’t there for her today.
Until she missed an attempt to parry and felt the heat of Leia’s sabre by her cheek, and then the Force was blinding her.
She was lost in the kaleidoscope of images and feelings that came at her from everywhere at once. The Jedi texts that forbid attachment, the times people she loved had gotten hurt, the way Luke looked at her when she reached for the Dark Side without a second thought. That no matter how good it felt, a Jedi falling in love was wrong, the damning step down a path to darkness that already felt perilously close. She saw a ship leaving without her, again and again and again. She was afraid, and she was angry, and that could only be where she got the strength to hurt Leia.
It left her, of course, as soon as she saw Leia fall.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, over and over, through her tears. “I’ll go back to base, I’ll get help, we’ll fix this.”
Leia gripped her wrist before she could get up. “No.”
“Master, I have to, the Resistance needs you.”
“Which is why you’re going to fix this.” Leia’s other hand was clamped over the gash in her side, but she was looking at Rey as calm as ever. “You could heal yourself the other day. Now is a chance to heal me. Just try.”
Rey went through the motions of trying. She put her hands over Leia’s wound and tried to focus. But after the storm of anger that brought them here, she just felt empty. No Force. No nothing.
“I can’t do this.” It felt like the only thing she ever said to Leia any more.
“You can.”
“I can’t!” Rey wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. “I’ve failed you.”
“The only way you fail is by not trying.”
“No, I have. I’m like all the Jedi who have fallen to the Dark Side.”
“Rey, I just can’t believe that. Everyone struggles with the Dark Side when they’re training, it’s part of how you learn, but you’re here trying to heal me. You don’t need to worry.”
“Yes I do! We all do. I… I kissed someone last night, and all the texts tell me what happens to Jedi who fall in love or get attached and I’m so bad at all of it.”
Leia gave a weak chuckle. “Is that all you’re worried about. Rey, it’s okay.”
“Of course I’m worried! I kissed someone and the next day I almost killed you!”
Leia propped herself up on one elbow. The steel was back in her eyes. “I never met Kenobi or Master Yoda or any Jedi but Luke, and I never studied the Jedi the way you are. I don’t know anything except what Luke told me and what I felt from the Force. But what you take from the Force when you reach out and touch it is just as real than anything in an old book.”
“What I take from the Force is what scares me.” Rey shivered. “You don’t reach out and meet the Dark Side every day.”
“Yes, I do. Of course I do.”
“Then how do you touch that and stay you?”
“If there’s one thing I can teach you, it’s to stop being afraid of losing yourself. The more you fear the Dark Side, the more you try to hide from it, and then every time you brush up against it you get more afraid, and your connection grows stronger. I don’t want you to practice using the Dark Side, but to listen to it, and be curious about it, means you know what you’re dealing with.”
“That sounds even scarier.”
“Lots of things are scary. Loving people is scary, too,” Leia smiled. “I think Master Yoda would disagree with me, but I think we have to embrace what we love, and look our fears in the face.”
“Master Yoda would absolutely have disagreed with you.” Rey paused. “That is such aJedi answer, though. Can’t you just tell me what I’m supposed to do?”
“The choice is always yours, Rey. To the rest of the Resistance, I’m the General, but the Force doesn’t work like that. You have to make your own choices, and I don’t think you’d want it any differently. If I told you what to do about Jessika Pava, you’d go and do the opposite.”
Rey ground her teeth for a moment before she said, “You’re right.” And then, “Hey, I never said it was Jess.”
Leia laughed. “What can I say? I pay attention to the people under my command, and it’s a small base. I notice things.”
“I don’t know how you can laugh about this when I hurt you,” Rey grumbled. “I started to love someone and I’m not good at this healing thing, and you’re telling me to do what I want and be curious.”
“Who said you’re no good, kid?”
Then she gently moved Rey’s hand away from the gash in her robes. The skin underneath was completely healed, as if it had never been injured at all.
“One day,” Rey said, after a moment, “I’ll be able to do that on purpose and not have to have you distract me.”
“Stop selling yourself short,” said Leia, as she got to her feet. “That’s a good first step.”
“I just wish I could be sure of something. Anything.”
Leia was thoughtful as she reached out a hand and helped Rey up, and stayed silent as they began the walk back to base.
“Here’s what I can tell you for sure,” Leia said, at last, when the base came into view. “Love never led me to the Dark Side. I always loved, and I never held back. I loved Han, I loved Luke, and I loved Ben. I still love Chewbacca like he’s my brother. And I love everyone who fights along side me. If you want proof that you can love people fiercely and keep to the Light, then here I am.”
***
If you don’t want to kiss me, you can just say so, you don’t have to make a big deal out of it.
I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I hope I didn’t. Oh my god I’m the worst.
It was really scary when you left me hanging like that, can you at least tell me something about what you’re thinking if you’re going to just run off?
Are you okay?
Jess half-expected Rey to stand her up for their study date. She kind of didn’t want to see her anyway, but she still went. She knew what it was like, never expecting anyone to come through for you, and how much more disappointing it was to be proven right.
That didn’t make it easy to wait there, trying to think of what to say and rejecting every single line. She had twenty different feelings and wanted to tell Rey all about them and was scared of saying anything at all.
I can’t say sorry enough if I hurt you.
It’s fine if you don’t like me like that, just please tell me we can stay friends.
This used to be my home and it didn’t feel like it any more until I met you and I don’t want that to go away.
Rey still came, her face a mask of determination. She launched into an awkward apology before Jess could get a word in.
“I’m sorry I ran away, that was really rude. Also, I really do like you and I don’t want you to think that I don’t.”
Instead of any of the lines she’d been running through her head, Jess just blurted out, “What do you mean you like me?”
“I liked the kissing and I’d like to do more of that. Also, uh, other things.”
Jess dropped her discs full of Jedi history papers without even looking where they went. “Great. Me too. Let’s go do that.”
“You don’t even want to know why I ran away?”
“Sure, I just want to do the good stuff in case you run away again.”
Rey wasn’t smiling, but there was a twitch at her mouth that told Jess she was thinking about it. “That’s not entirely ridiculous.”
Jess sat down on a nearby bench and gestured for Rey to join her. After a moment, Rey did, and let Jess settle an arm around her shoulders.
“So…”
“How much of those Jedi texts did you read?”
“All of them when I first found them. Skimmed through them this week.”
“Did they say anything about relationships.”
“Ah.” A few passages flashed through Jess’s mind. “They did.”
“That we’re not supposed to have them.”
“There were some like that, yes.”
“And Darth Vader…”
“Okay, sure, lots of people wrote about where Darth Vader went wrong. But there are also stories about Jedi who left the order to marry, and it’s not as if their powers disappeared unless they went evil. And there were Jedi who were separatists, not because they went to the Dark Side but because they didn’t agree with the Council. And then there were Jedi who got special permission to marry anyway.”
“Huh. I don’t think even Master Leia knows about some of that.”
“She’s not telling you we can’t date, is she?”
“No, she says I should do what I feel is right.”
“Okay. So… what’s that look like?”
Rey groaned. “I don’t know what’s right. I like you, and it doesn’t seem like that’s bad, but I’ve felt the Dark side and I hate it.”
“Well, I don’t know about the Dark Side, but I’m on your side. The Resistance side. And I know we’re doing the right thing. We’re risking our lives for it every day and there’s nothing dark about it.”
“Okay,” Rey said, and they both let out a deep breath. “Okay, we can do this. But you have to tell me right away if you ever think I’m in too deep, and I’m going somewhere dark, you have to tell me…”
Jess cut her off with a kiss, hard and fast. “I will, Rey, of course I will. But you’re a good person. If you were the kind of person who would go to the Dark Side then I wouldn’t love you anyway.”
Rey smiled a small, wry smile. “You’re that sure, huh?”
“I can be sure enough for both of us,” Jess said, and kissed her again just to prove it.