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Rey had never lost someone before. She’d never had anyone to lose. That was the most difficult thing to come terms with, what was worse? Never having anyone, or losing those you did have. She’d always doubted herself; that she believed so firmly in the former. She believed that even the shortest period of belonging was worth living in the shadow of that experience for the rest of your life. She remembered family, what it felt like, the emotion. Han and Finn had been the closest she had come to feeling it again since before she could remember, and now they were lost to her. Finn would come back, she believed that, she had to believe that.
She’d known Han Solo for a day at the most, and yet here she was, laid on her back under a control panel aboard the ship he’d so clearly loved, fiddling with a screwdriver and biting the inside of her cheek to distract from the dull ache in her chest.
It was just that for the first time someone had valued her, just her, specifically. For the first time someone had noticed her, that she was worth more than just the netted scrap she dragged across the sand or the notches she carved into her wall. She was wanted.
Now she was left with anger, and hatred, and pain, and those she could understand, comprehend as she had done in all those years that had passed since she’d been left, a child screaming up into the sky. She’d never let them rule her, but they were her old friends none the less. Hope, unsure and fitful as it was, had been the one thing that had held her to her beliefs all these years. With it all came a longing, like she’d missed something, not someone, but an unidentifiable something, a ‘what could have been’.
The cabin of the Falcon was the closest she could get to home at the moment. She’d worked on it back on Jakku, piecing it together with the hope that it might fly again one day, but she’d realised that she’d never actually sat in the pilot’s seat until she’d flown it out through the atmosphere.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in here.” The distinct, familiar voice of the General was one Rey had not been expecting.
Rey sat up sharply, drawing herself out from under the panel, eyes wide, “Sorry.” She responded quickly.
General Leia Organa waved the girl’s apology away, gently taking the co-pilots seat. The older woman breathed in deeply, looking out across the busy airfield through the glass. She considered the landscape, eyes dulled against the beauty of it with a sincere and well-guarded pain.
‘Her son killed her husband.’ Rey clenched her jaw and tried not to look pitiful, she had a feeling Leia was not the sort of person who would appreciate that.
“I’ll leave.” She decided, out of respect. She didn’t want to disturb the General’s mourning.
“Stay, if you like. I'd prefer it.” Leia suggested, looking up into Rey’s eyes with a heavy gaze. “I don’t want it to get too quiet in here, make it feel like a tomb. Han would hate that.” She said the last part with a sigh, even in death Leia seemed exasperated with the man.
“He had this ship a long time, before...?” Rey thought she’d asked an impersonal question, it turned out she hadn’t.
Leia paused a while, considering the question. “Long as I’ve known him.” Her shoulder’s stiffened, but Rey couldn’t see her face, “Knew him… so yes, a long time.
It felt so very wrong to take the pilot seat herself, one day, soon, she felt like she might, Han wouldn't have minded, but not today. Rey chose instead to perch on the edge of the passenger seat behind, hands folded, observing Leia’s profile.
“It was a bucket of bolts back then too.” Leia added in a matter-of-fact tone, eyes downcast as she remembered. The nostalgia of the moment hit her, recalling the first time she’d seen the Falcon sat in one of the Deathstar’s hangars. She’d said something to Han in that moment, made fun of him somehow, but she couldn’t remember the exact words. From the start they’d been that way… right up until the end.
“Yeah it's garbage... but I like it.” Rey replied quietly.
“Me too.” Leia sent the girl a small, warm smile. Genuine despite the circumstances of the moment, hoping the girl couldn't see straight through her, but not able to care too much if she could.
“He was…” Rey began, struggling to put it in tangible sentences, “…good. I liked him.” She bit her lip, questioning whether or not she should have said it.
“Yes?” It was half a question, and half an agreement.
“He was fair to me.” Rey explained.
Leia swung her seat to the left to face Rey better, “Very few people have ever called Han fair.” She smiled. “But he was good, in the ways that mattered.” Leia seemed to go off on her own internal tangent a moment, growing distant.
"He was the closest I've had." Rey steeled herself, avoiding Leia's gaze. "Having ...a father ...I'd never felt what that was like until..."
Leia tried not to flinch. Guilty. Scared. Feeling a sudden desperation to comfort the girl sat beside her.
“What will you do now?” Rey asked.
“...Rebuild.” Leia said.
Rey wasn’t sure whether she was talking about the resistance or herself, and the girl knew it was probably true either way.
Leia paused, looking the young woman sat across from her up and down critically, as though she was trying to piece together a complicated equation, “And you?”
“Maz Kanata talked about a calling… I have to find Luke.” Rey had realised this soon after her return to the Resistance base, but she only now acknowledged it out loud. "I have a power, I need to learn to control it."
“A calling.” Leia repeated to herself, a knowing expression crossing her features.
“What is it?” Rey inquired.
“Luke used to talk like that; callings, prophecies… birthrights. I never put much weight on it.”
“Me neither. The only birthrights we have in this galaxy are the first and the last breaths that we take.” Rey said, a dent of confusion appearing between her eyebrows.
“Who told you that?” Leia looked a little deeper into the girl, something about the words were familiar.
“I don’t know.” Rey answered truthfully. There were a lot of things about her past she just couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“Well, when you find him, tell him…” Leia considered her options a second, she considered giving Rey something a little more brittle to say to her brother but instead she said, “…tell him to come home.”
Rey nodded sharply, it was the least she could do. She stood and made to leave.
Leia reached out and took her hand before she could, gripping fast with her fingers, “Rey, you come home too.” It almost seemed to be an order. "You come home."
Rey smiled then, almost as wide as she’d smiled when Han had offered her that job on the Falcon. A chance to belong. A home. She would come back, of course she would, she had Finn to come back to, and Leia was beginning to show her that he wasn’t the only one who cared.
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