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Kimiya Ren feels anger coursing through her veins as she disembarks the ship. The doors open, the ramp drops, and she catches her first glimpse of a planet she hoped to never see again. The desert sky is cloudless, and the sand is a bright, eye-searing shade of orange. Jakku is as desolate as the day that she left it. Honestly, she had hoped she would never have to return to this desolate planet after leaving all those years ago. She had hoped that Snoke would find her family and they would all move to greener pastures, or at least pastures that weren’t made of sand.
Things didn’t go quite the way that she planned. Kimiya is back on Jakku, walking through the sandy pastures, and her family abandoned her long ago. People don't always get what they want. Kimiya never got what she wanted, even back when she was a little girl named Rey. She has sort of resigned herself to the fact that she never will get anything that she’d like.
Kimiya treks across the dunes as blaster bullets buzz through the air. The bloodshed has already started, of course. The stormtroopers are shooting down civilians, the way that they always do. Kimiya walks through the carnage, and stands in the center, her hand ghosting over her lightsaber. She’s ready to draw it at a moment’s notice, though she can tell no one here will put up much of a fight. The troopers drag a man before her with a little white beard and a hardened face. He doesn’t look as though he wants to talk.
“Where is the map,” she demands.
“You will never find it,” he tells her. She reaches into his mind, and weeds through his memories. She finds one, incredibly recent, of his gifting his piece of the map to a man in an olive shirt and a brown leather jacket.
“I already have,” she says. She considers letting him live. She sort of wants to, but this man is Resistance, and the First Order cannot appear to be going soft on Resistance members. Kimiya generally prefers to snap necks. It’s quicker, more painless, and more effective. She doesn’t delight in suffering. But she has not demonstrated her prowess with a saber in a while, and that makes her decision for her.
The troopers hold the man in place, and Kimiya stabs her saber through his heart. The troopers let go of his arms, and his lifeless body falls onto the desert sands. Lightsabers are clean and efficient, cauterizing the wound the moment that it’s made. No blood stains the sand as his corpse lies on the ground, and Kimiya looks away from the dead man. She sees a group of troopers dragging the man from his memory in front of him, clad in the same leather jacket as before. A smile curls across Kimiya’s face. He falls to his knees, but the man doesn’t look nearly as afraid as he should.
“Do you talk first, or do I?” the pilot asks. Kimiya rolls her eyes in her helmet.
“Take him to the ship,” she orders immediately. She catches a glimpse of a stormtrooper that is just standing amid the carnage as the rest of them rush to obey their orders. She can feel his fear, and she ignores him. She hopes that his commander didn’t notice his behavior. She doesn’t know what reconditioning is like, but she’s heard enough of the stormtrooper’s screams to know that it can’t be pleasant.
She does not let Hux send men to question him first. She takes that privilege herself.
“Are you going to torture me?” the man asks, not sounding nearly as frightened of the prospect as he should be. He seems resigned to it.
“Perhaps,” she says, deciding to humor him for a moment. This will be quick. He doesn’t have much longer to speak, or to do anything else, really. He’s almost reached the end of the line.
"Kinky," he says with what looks like a smirk. For a moment, she seriously reconsiders her no torture rule.
“What did you do with the map?” she asks. Kimiya always offers prisoners an easy way out of this, but they almost never take it.
“Do you think that I’d tell you?” he asks.
“No,” she admits, “I was just giving you the option. To avoid a lot of suffering.” Kimiya has been on the receiving end of this sort of interrogation many a time, and in some ways it’s worse than physical torture.
His look turns steely, determined, “You can torture me for years. I won’t betray the Resistance.” This prompts a chuckle from her, one that sounds mechanical with her voice distorter. She admires determination, even when it’s completely futile. It’s almost cute.
“You won’t have to,” she says. He sends her a confused look, but she starts her work before he can speak again. She reaches into his mind, softly at first. It takes him a moment to realize what’s even going on. It takes even longer for him to push back against her.
The man is strong, but he’s not Force Sensitive, and he can no more resist her than she can free him. Kimiya weeds through memories of him laughing at the pub with friends, his daring piloting stunts, his one-night stands. Recent memories, even when people try to bury them are found close to the surface. It doesn’t take her long to find his memories of the battle on Jakku.
She sees a small droid, orange and white, composed of two metal balls positioned on top of each other. He rolls away from the battle as Poe runs beside him. The battle rages on around them, the sand searing his eyes. When they are a safe distance away from the thick of things, Poe grabs something out of his pocket, a small drive, and he places it inside the droid.
“It will be safer with you, BB-8,” he says. She watches the memory until it ends, when the stormtroopers drag him before her. The droid is roaming around Jakku, simply waiting for someone to snatch up the map to Luke Skywalker. Kimiya has the information that she needs. She has no further use for the pilot. She calls out to the Force, and swiftly snaps Poe Dameron’s neck. It’s a quick and clean kill, her preferred method for prisoners. It’s much less painful and messy than a lightsaber through the chest. She removes his jacket from his corpse, and places it in the hands of a stormtrooper.
“Take this to my chambers,” Kimiya tells him. She doesn’t know why, but she feels she’ll have need of it. The trooper moves to obey immediately, and Kimiya leaves the room, intent on speaking the general.
She finds him quickly enough, and starts speaking before Hux has time to bombard her with insults or “friendly” suggestions.
“The map is inside a droid on Jakku,” Kimiya tells Hux, “I plan to retrieve it myself.”
“Yourself?” he sneers. Sneering is the only way that Hux knows how to communicate.
“Yes,” Kimiya says, trying not to let herself becoming angry this early into their conversation, “myself.”
“Snoke would never approve of your plan,” Hux says, making sure to emphasize how little he thinks of her and her abilities and ideas.
“Then we’ll ask what he thinks.” Kimiya decides aloud. The Supreme Leader never sides with Hux over her.
Hux’s face goes white at that, and he says, “No, I really don’t think that will be necessary, Ren.” If nothing else, it was completely worth it for the look on Hux’s face.
“Are you afraid that he won’t approve of your plan,” she mocks, saying the word exactly the way that Hux did earlier. Hux’s jaw clenches.
“Fine,” he says, “call the Supreme Leader. Whatever you want, Ren.”
They meet in the communication room, and then they call him. Snoke, thankfully, picks up. He does not seem happy about it, but Snoke does not express a large range of emotions. Kimiya has learned that after studying under him for eleven years.
“Why have you called me?” Supreme Leader Snoke demands.
“I have discovered the location of the map,” Kimiya says, before Hux can twist her perspective, “it’s in a BB-8 unit on Jakku.
"I want the droid retrieved," Snoke orders, "If that is not possible, then I want it destroyed."
“Of course, Supreme Leader,” Hux says. He seems ready to burst into his idea, but Kimiya beats him to speaking.
"I want to retrieve it myself," she says, "I have intimate knowledge of the droid's owner. I know Jakku the best-"
"We need to send an entire squadron of troopers to retrieve it,” Hux says.
“You two called to settle your childish dispute?” Supreme Leader demands. He sounds incredibly displeased.
“Undercover, I am more effective than a squadron of stormtroopers,” Kimiya says.
“Hardly,” Hux says, “you’re not even more effective than one-”
“If I did not think this was the best course of action, I would not have suggested it,” she says calmly, “you know that I hold no love for Jakku.”
"Alright," Snoke says, "do not fail me, Kimiya Ren."
"Why would we send a single girl after it when we could send our entire army?" Hux sneers, "Supreme Leader, I can have this job done much more efficiently."
"Kimiya will take care of it," Snoke says in his raspy voice. She smirks beneath the mask, and Hux glares. Kimiya smirks even wider.
"Leave us, general," he rasps. Hux looks angry enough to kill, but he leaves them. His well calculated steps sound more like stomps, and Kimiya revels in the sound of it. Pissing Hux off is a personal hobby of hers. She can hear Snoke inhale and exhale calmly before speaking.
"There has been an awakening in the Force. Have you felt it?" he asks.
"Of course," she says. How could she have not, when the force constantly flows through her, like a babbling brook? Lately, it has felt more like a rushing river.
"You must resist the temptations of the light," he warns her. This has been his warning for the twelve years she has studied under him, so she isn’t surprised. She has never found the light particularly tempting. She thinks Snoke only worries about this because she does not delight in the dark.
"I will, master," she says.
"You are mine, Kimiya Ren," he says, and she only nods in response. She has known that since she found out her family abandoned her, since Snoke finally became the only figure in her life who cared at all. Rey was a lonely scavenger girl. Kimiya is lonely, perhaps even lonelier, but at least she has a purpose. Kimiya Ren has a place in the world, one that she’s fought many times to keep.
She walks through the metal halls, single-minded and bound for her chambers. Kimiya doesn’t normally mean to read thoughts. Most people’s thoughts are mundane, irrelevant things, and they become white noise that she can mostly tune out. This thought, however, sounds like a foghorn within her mind.
"I'm going to save the prisoner," one of the troopers thinks. The fool is going to get himself killed. She looks at him, and realizes that he was the same trooper that refused to shoot on Jakku. This fool has a rebellious streak going. It’s going to get him killed.
“FN-2187,” she says. The trooper freezes in place.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies. The nervousness is dripping from his tone. He’s lucky that Kimiya is the one that caught him.
"Poe Dameron is already dead," she tells the stormtrooper- FN-2187.
"What? How-"
"You were thinking very loudly, FN-2187," she tells him. She can feel the fear rising inside of him, but decides not to try to quell it. His fear might become useful.
“What?” he asks.
“Come with me,” she orders. He follows, thoughtlessly obedient even though a moment ago he was going to betray the entire Order. She opens the door to her chambers, and forces him inside. The only place on the damn ship where they might have any semblance of privacy is in her chambers. They aren’t spacious. There’s room for a bed, a dresser, a desk, and then a small attached bathroom. It’s not ideal, but it’s far preferable to the gutted ship that she lived in as a child. As they enter, she makes sure that the door slams behind them.
“Sit down,” she tells him. He starts to fall onto the bed. She had intended for him to sit on the chair, but she doesn’t correct him. She supposes that it doesn’t matter who sits where. Kimiya pulls the chair out from the desk and turns it to face the man sitting on her bed. He’s practically dripping with nervous sweat, and she can feel the fear radiating off of him. She wants to alleviate some of that.
“You can take your helmet off, if you’d like,” she offers. She knows that her own helmet can make her feel like she’s suffocating at times, and she chooses to wear it. Stormtroopers don’t have any choice in anything they do. He removes it immediately, revealing his face. He’s fairly attractive: dark skin, darker eyes, and a look that’s half terrified, half menacing. The perfect sort of soldier. He tosses the helmet onto the bed beside him, and waits for her to initiate conversation.
“Why were you planning to save him?” she asks, her metallic, robotic voice sounding as inhuman and intimidating as usual.
“I-I” he stammers, trying to find words that clearly are not coming to him.
“You what?” she asks. With her enhanced voice, she sounds far more displeased than she actually is. He looks nearly ready to wet his pants, but when he speaks it’s with conviction. He knows that he’s a dead man walking now.
“It was the right thing to do,” he tells her looking her straight in the eyes, daring her to react. Okay, that’s.. that’s really hot. It takes her a moment to regain her composure after that.
“Hm,” she says, curiously, “the right thing to do?” Kimiya hasn’t thought about right and wrong for a long time, only what works. She finds it so interesting that a stormtrooper, someone trained from birth not to question orders, has made this sort of decision on his own.
“Aren’t you going to kill me?” he asks, looking a little bit confused by the fact that his heart is still beating. He obviously expected her to have killed him already, which is understandable. She has a bloody reputation within the Order, one that’s well deserved.
“No,” she says, simply. It takes a minute for Kimiya’s response to sink in. Then he looks even more confused than before.
“But, but why?” he asks.
"You are going to help me retrieve Poe Dameron's droid," she tells him. Kimiya had planned to do this on her own, the way that she always does things. But she wants to spare this man from reconditioning, and taking him on as her own seems the only way. Plus, having backup on the planet could never hurt. The fact that he’s as hot as Jakku might be a factor as well.
"I am?" He asks. It's almost refreshing to have her orders questioned by a subordinate for once.
"Would you prefer I leave you be?" she says, though she doesn’t really plan to do that, "I could report this incident to your Captain instead." His eyes widen in terror at the threat.
“Please don’t,” he begs, his voice little more than a whisper, “I can’t go back to reconditioning, I just can’t-”
“You won’t,” she assures him, “if you cooperate.”
“What do you want?” he asks cautiously. The boy’s a stormtrooper through and through, and he knows that no kindness comes without a catch.
“I want you to help me find a droid,” she repeats. That’s all the information that he needs, and it’s all the information that he’ll get.
“But why me?” he asks.
“Because I saved your life,” she says, “you owe me a favor.” It’s not the truth, not really, but it’s enough for him. There’s something about this trooper. He’s gone through the same sort of training as the rest of the troopers, but he was willing to betray the Order because he felt like he was doing the right thing. They haven’t stomped the free will out of him. If there’s anyone worthy of her attention, it’s him.
Kimiya takes off her helmet, and her hair comes tumbling down. He stares at her open-mouthed. She sends him a grin. She always feels a hint of childish glee the first time she shows someone her face. They’re always pleasantly surprised by what they find out what’s underneath the mask.
“We’re going undercover,” she tells him. Her normal, unaltered voice sounds odd, even to her own ears. She wonders what it sounds like to him. Instead of examining her voice, he seems to be examining himself.
“I don’t think I’d do well undercover,” he says, gesturing to the distinctive white armor that he’s coated in. Even without the helmet, a stormtrooper’s armor is one of the most distinctive images in the galaxy.
“Take off your armor,” she orders, “I’ll be back in a minute.” She grabs an outfit from her drawer that she has never worn, and goes to the bathroom to change. She returns, wearing clothing much like what she used to wear as a girl on Jakku. She knows that she will fit in just perfectly. FN-2187, however, still looks like a stormtrooper, albeit one without his armor.
“You can’t wear that,” she says. His black underclothes don’t look like something any self-respecting person would wear outside of their home.
“I don’t have any other clothes,” he tells her. She rolls her eyes, and grabs the dead pilot’s jacket off of her desk.
“Put this on,” she orders. He eyes it, and realization dawns in his dark eyes.
“I’m not wearing a dead man’s jacket,” he tells her, sounding horrified by the prospect. It probably hits him even harder, considering the fact that he had planned to save the man.
“You are if you don’t want to join him,” she growls. He slides it on, quickly. The jacket fits him surprisingly well for not being his originally. It suits him well.
“What do I call you?” he asks.
She sends him a confused look, so he clarifies, “I can’t exactly call you Lady Ren on Jakku.” She thinks for a moment, groping for a suitable cover name. She doesn’t find one.
“Rey,” she answers, after realizing that she doesn’t know any other names she feels comfortable using. It’s still odd saying the name, even though it was hers once. She hasn’t gone by her childhood name for years.
“And what will you call me, Rey?” he asks. She thinks for a moment, rummaging through her mind for names that she’s heard for men. None of them seem to fit FN-2187, but she realizes that the first two letters almost sound like a name to begin with.
“Finn,” she says, and he smiles, bright as the sun. He’s never had a name before. She wonders how he still has such childlike joy in him, after what the Order has put him through.
“Come on,” she says, and she opens the door to her chambers. He follows her out into the hallways, and they walk briskly through the corridors of the Finalizer. He matches her pace perfectly, but walks just a few steps behind her, the way that stormtrooper always do when accompanying higher ranking officers. It makes Kimiya feel uncomfortable, but she can’t identify why.
“Just walk beside me,” she tells him.
“Ma’am?” he asks. They’ve stopped in the middle of the corridor, and the other stormtroopers are gawking, but trying to make it look like they’re not. They seem confused by the situation in general, trying to identify whether these people are intruders or they’re actually supposed to be here.
“Just walk beside me, Finn,” she says, using the code name to remind him of the mission. He looks confused, and doesn’t seem to understand why she would ever ask him to do that.
Kimiya clarifies, “No one will believe our cover if we don’t act like equals.” Finn nods, and when Kimiya starts walking again, he matches her stride for stride as they finish walking to the hangar area. Kimiya picks out a TIE fighter, and opens up the door. A sunny smile spreads across Rey’s face as she sits down in the pilot’s seat of the TIE fighter. She loves to fly, but she doesn’t get to do it often. Snoke’s schedule doesn’t leave much time for that luxury.
“Do you know how to fly?” he asks, sounding frightened and concerned.
“I am an excellent pilot,” she assures him. He shakes his head, but gets into the ship, taking his position as the gunner. Kimiya tries to take off, and realizes that the ship is still strapped down. She groans as she undoes it with the force, and a few confused troopers shoot at them as they exit the hanger.
The flight is smooth, and fast. FN-2187 doesn’t have to fire a single blaster bolt, and Kimiya even feels comfortable enough to pull off a few tricky maneuvers, just for fun. While Kimiya is an amazing pilot, she’s not exactly skilled at landing places that aren’t the hanger bay of another ship. They crash. There’s no way that they’ll be able fly the TIE fighter back, but at least neither of them was harmed in the crash. The ship, however, is smoking. The town is a speck in the distance, and Kimiya sighs as she steps out onto the sandy ground. She’ll never stop despising this planet. FN-2187 steps out as well, and scans the horizon.
“Where do we even start?” he asks.
“We’re going into town to investigate,” Kimiya tells him.
She looks back at the smoking, ruined ship and says, “And to find new transport.” He looks around a little more, and then realizes that she’s referring to that blotch at the edge of their vision. He sighs audibly. Kimiya starts to walk towards the town though, and he follows. He follows reluctantly, but he follows. Nearly an hour later, when the town is significantly closer, Kimiya spots something in the distance. She walks towards it, and soon she can see that it is a Teedo riding a luggabeast. This, in and of itself, is not an odd sight on Jakku. Teedos scavenge through the wreckage just like Kimiya once did, but this one’s got something caught in his net, and that something is moving. Kimiya walks closer, and gets a better look at the thing caught in his net. It’s a tiny, orange and white droid: a BB unit to be more specific.
“That’s our droid,” Kimiya says. She can’t believe that they’ve found it this easily. They stride over quickly, and the Teedo doesn’t even seem to notice their approach.
“Leave the droid alone,” Kimiya says, trying to sound menacing. She doesn’t feel like she sounds nearly menacing enough without her voice changer. The creature hisses at her, and Kimiya realizes that she won’t be able to do this the easy way. She wants to fight the creature, to cut him down where he stands, but she only brought her lightsaber for a weapon. There would be no surer way to blow her cover than to draw a red lightsaber in the middle of a desert planet. She regrets not grabbing a blaster for herself. FN-2187 has grabbed his own, and is looking to her for guidance. Kimiya realizes that they can get out of this situation without shedding blood, and realizes that’s definitely the course of action that she would like to take.
“This is not the droid you’re looking for,” Kimiya says, using the age old cadence of a mind trick. The creature blinks his eyes, and it seems to have worked. He removes his net, and reigns his luggabeast away from them, leaving the droid to them. The droid beeps happily at her, and actually rolls to her side. Kimiya was not suspecting that. She doesn’t know what the droid is saying, because she does not speak basic, but she can make the assumption that it doesn’t think that she’s affiliated with the First Order. If it knew that, the beeps would be a lot more frantic, and it would be rolling far away by now.
Kimiya really doesn’t want to have to deal with that.
“Are you Poe Dameron’s droid?” she asks. The droid beeps again, but this time it sounds more concerned and frightened. Kimiya doesn’t need to understand basic to realize that the droid is demanding an explanation for how she would know that.
“We’re with the Resistance,” Kimiya promises. FN-2187 looks at her in terrified confusion. Kimiya takes a moment to think through Poe’s memories, and try to concoct a story that this droid he loved so much would believe.
“General Organa thought that he might have sent something with you,” Kimiya says. Apparently, that was a good enough lie. The droid beeps, happily, and nods its little metal head. It opens up the small compartment in its front to reveal a drive, and then quickly closes itself back up again.
“Rey?” FN- Finn asks. She has to think of him by that name, or she’ll forget to call him that.
“Yes, Finn?” she asks. She’s already started to head back towards the ship.
“What are we going to do about transport?” he asks, jerking his head awkwardly towards the little droid.
Kriff, Kimiya thinks, she hadn’t really thought that one through. Kimiya considers coming up with an intricate lie to tell the droid. She considers trying to simply trick it, but decides that might end up being more trouble than it’s worth. The moment that the droid realizes that they’re lying, it will roll away faster than Kimiya can catch it. She sends an electrical pulse through the droid, and it short-circuits. The droid dies with an unpleasant mechanical noise, almost like a scream. After it quiets, she pries its container open and takes out the small drive that she assumes contains the map to Luke Skywalker.
“You didn’t have to kill it,” Finn says. He sounds disgusted, and a little bit sad, like he’s mourning the droid. It might be sweet if it weren’t at such an awful time.
“It’s better this way,” Kimiya says. The droid can’t figure them out if it’s dead. It can’t run away if it’s dead. It’s certainly easier to keep hold of a flash drive than it is to keep that sandstorm of a droid in check. She makes her way towards the town, and Finn looks awkwardly around for a moment, as if deciding what to do. He decides to follow her, though, no matter what all he was considering. That’s all that really matters.
They finally reach the town, and Kimiya tries to remember the best places to try to buy a ship. It turns out that she doesn’t need to because the moment that they arrive everything goes to shit. First Order ships land right outside of the town, and Kimiya swears.
“Rey?” Finn asks looking on in terror at the ships that have just started to land. Others buzz above them, ready to shoot at anything that looks threatening. She grabs his hand, and starts to run.
“What is happening!?!” Finn shouts. He does not, however, let go of her hand.
“Hux sent men out!” she tells him, trying to keep her voice low enough that the droid can’t hear, “against Snoke’s orders!” Finn groans, but keeps on running. They run through the town, passing startled townspeople and piles of scrap metal. By the time that they are almost outside of the town, Kimiya spots a ship. Hypothetically, this ship could get them off of the planet. This ship looks like it was made before the rise of the Empire, though, so Kimiya’s not sure that she wants to chance it. They run past it, and towards a ship that looks much nicer and more modern. It might only be as old as Kimiya is. Then, that ship blows up in a fiery explosion. Kimiya groans as they turn around and run towards the ship that she had deemed too awful to try earlier.
Kimiya runs inside, and Finn and the droid follow quickly after. Once Kimiya gets inside, she realizes that this ship isn’t just awful. It’s the shittiest ship that she’s ever seen, and the ships are shooting at them incredibly fast. Finn is looking around the ship, trying to get his bearings on a ship with a much older design than he’s used to.
“Where are the guns on this thing?” he asks, frantically.
“At the bottom,” she says, pointing towards it as she runs towards the pilot’s seat.
He starts shooting, and she can hear him say, “Can you move a little faster?” Kimiya knows how to start this ship, in theory, but she’s doing it without a copilot. Even using the force to kick start some mechanisms isn’t easy. She does get the ship off of the ground, and after some crazy maneuvering she’s able to get the ship out of Jakku’s atmosphere. She heaves a sigh of relief, and she can hear Finn cheering.
“We did it!” he shouts, and he’s laughing, loud and giddy. It makes Kimiya feel something warm and unfamiliar, she thinks that it might be affection.
“We did it,” she replies, and he smiles even wider at that.
She starts them on a course for the Finalizer and tries to relax as she flies the ship. Kimiya doesn’t get much of a chance to relax, because a few moments later their trash ship gets caught up in a tractor beam. Kimiya doesn’t have any plans for a situation like this. Finn runs into the ship’s common area. Smoke has started to pour into the ship, and Kimiya feels terrified for a moment. She doesn’t know what’s going on, and she doesn’t know how to handle it without blowing her cover. This is a first for her. They try to huddle underneath the floor of the ship, but they can hear the voices of the intruders. They don’t sound particularly menacing.
“Chewie,” the one man says, “we’re home.” The other one- a Wookie, Kimiya presumes, howls back in response. Kimiya lifts the lid, and they peek out. Kimiya might have to blow her cover to defeat them, but silencing two individuals is easy enough. Kimiya and Finn both peak out from underneath the floor, and the aging man and the Wookie send them a confused look.
“I’m not even going to ask,” the man mutters.
“Who are you,” Kimiya demands, “and why are you stealing our ship? It’s a hunk of junk anyways.” Finn actually laughs at that, but it’s more of a nervous giggle than anything. The old man looks incredibly offended by something that she said.
“This is my ship, kid,” he says, looking fondly at the shit ship, “The Millennium Falcon’s never let me down.”
“This is the Millennium Falcon?” Kimiya asks. Even as a girl on Jakku, she’d heard the tales of Han Solo, the famed smuggler. As a girl in the First Order, the tales that she heard of Han Solo were much different. They spoke of a lecherous idiot who helped overthrow the Empire because he wanted to get into Leia Organa’s pants. The only thing that Kimiya knew for sure was that he fathered Ben Organa, the Jedi that Snoke couldn’t turn and she couldn’t kill. Kimiya felt like she’d always live in Ben Organa’s shadow, but Kimiya couldn’t help that she still admired Han Solo. She’d heard the other stories when she was just a little girl, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was someone worth admiring. He wasn’t exactly giving her a different impression.
“She’s the best ship in the galaxy,” the man says indigently.
“You’re Han Solo,” Finn says, and Kimiya wonders if he only just put it together. Perhaps it just took him that long to put his thoughts into words.
“I was,” he says, sounding a little wistful. They hear a gigantic crash, and Han swears.
“We need to get this ship flying now,” he says.
“What?” Finn asks, “Why?”
“Let’s just say that there are a lot of people here that don’t like me,” he says. Kimiya laughs at that, and they all rush frantically around the ship to try to get it up and flying. Kimiya’s not in the mood to meet whatever it is that Han Solo is running away from right now. It takes all four of them to get the ship out of there, and they fly for twenty minutes before they decide that it’s safe to put it into autopilot. They all end up sitting down at the table, and Han Solo looks both physically and emotionally exhausted. Mainly, he just looks fed up with the universe.
“Okay,” he says, “so I’m gonna ask who you are and how you two found this ship.”
Finn’s face lights up at that, and he says, “I’m Finn, and this is Rey.” Kimiya smiles at how excited her was to actually get to introduce himself by a name instead of a designation, and decides that no matter what happens, she won’t let them make him a stormtrooper again. He’ll be Finn as long as Kimiya lives.
“We were getting off Jakku,” Kimiya says, and that seems to answer his question. He seems pissed off about it, though. Kimiya suspects that he lost some sort of bet to the guy that owned it before they stole it.
“Why were you getting off Jakku?” he asks. Kimiya thinks over a thousand answers. She could say that Jakku just sucks, because that would be true. She could say that they just want him to drop them off at the nearest planet. It would be easy enough to commandeer a ship from there and then to get the drive to Supreme Leader Snoke, but there’s a part of her that doesn’t really want to leave. Plus, she knows that if she were to gain inside information on the Resistance base, then that could be incredibly useful.
“We need to get to the Resistance,” Kimiya settles on. Finn sends her a confused and almost terrified look. He doesn’t know what she has planned, and he doesn’t think that whatever it is can be good.
“Why exactly should I take you two to the Resistance?” he asks skeptically. Kimiya sighs, and realizes that either needs to play her trump card or give up on this entire endeavor. She takes the drive out of her sack.
“This drive contains a map to Luke Skywalker,” Kimiya says, “we found it on a droid on Jakku.”
“Why would a droid on Jakku have a map to Luke?” Han asks skeptically.
“It was Poe Dameron’s droid,” Finn adds helpfully. Understanding passes over Han’s face.
“What happened to it?” Han asks.
“There were First Order ships all over the planet,” Kimiya says, “the droid gave me the drive. Then some of the troopers ended up picking it up.” He doesn’t ask why the droid trusted them, but she doesn’t expect him to. Kimiya is a good liar.
“Yup,” Finn says, “that definitely happened,” Kimiya is a good liar, but Finn is not. Han sends him a skeptical look, but doesn’t say anything.
“Alright,” he says, “say that I believe you. We can’t exactly go straight to the Resistance.”
“Why?” Finn asks.
“I don’t know where it is,” he admits with laughter. Kimiya doesn’t know why General Organa’s husband wouldn’t know where to find her, but decides that it’s shrewder not to ask.
“Then where are we going?” Finn asks.
“Takodana,” he says as a bright green planet appears in the horizon, “I have a friend there that knows everything about everybody.” They fly in closer, and even though Kimiya hasn’t been a little girl from Jakku for longer than she can remember, the bright green landscape still takes her breath away. They land the ship close to a bar with an enormous statue on the top.
“Okay,” he says, “we’re here. All of you get off of my ship.” The Wookie growls at that, and Han rolls his eyes.
“I didn’t mean you, Chewie,” he says, sounding fondly exasperated.
They exit the ship, and Han stops her before she enters the bar with the others. He takes a little, silver blaster out of his jacket and hands it to her.
“What is this for?” she asks.
“I can see that your friend has a blaster,” he says, “and it didn’t look like you did.”
Kimiya actually laughs, and says, “I can handle myself.”
“I know you can,” he says, “that’s why I’m giving it to you.”
They all enter the bar, and Kimiya is surprised that Han’s all-knowing friend is a small, bald woman. The woman, Maz Kanata, takes them over to a booth and she and Han discuss important matters of war and economics as Kimiya and Finn awkwardly try not to bring attention to themselves. Then, of course, Maz decides that she needs to draw attention them. She looks Rey directly in the eyes.
“You know,” she says, “When you’ve lived as long as I have, you see the same eyes in different people. Those are the eyes of a woman who feels trapped, of someone who desperately wants to change her path in life, but doesn’t feel like she can.” Kimiya’s breath catches in her chest. Then Maz turns her attention to Finn.
“And you have the eyes of someone who wants to run,” She says.
“And my eyes are the color of bantha shit,” Han says sarcastically.
“That isn’t inaccurate,” Maz says teasingly. Finn looks between them, and then looks desperately to Kimiya.
“Rey,” he asks, “would you come talk to me, somewhere more private?” Rey follows him to a different part of the floor. She wouldn’t exactly call it private, but at least neither Han nor Maz can hear them.
“What is it?” she asks, hearing legitimate concern in her own voice.
“Maz was right,” he says, “I do want to run.”
“What?” Kimiya asks.
“I can’t go back to the First Order,” he say, “I just- I can’t Rey. I won’t kill for them.”
“You won’t have to,” Kimiya says, fierce determination in her voice, “I won’t let them make you.” Finn has a compassionate soul, and Rey thinks that he’d shatter like glass if he had to do what most stormtroopers do. No matter what, Kimiya won’t let that happen.
“Rey,” he says, “you don’t know that that will work.”
“Of course it will,” Kimiya says, “Finn, I won’t let anything happen to you.” That’s as close to saying “I care about you” as Kimiya feels comfortable with at this point.
“Rey,” he says softly, “I can’t go back, but I don’t think that you should either. Please, come with me to the Outer Rim or something. We just need to get away from the Order” That sends a warm affection through her as she thinks, Finn wants to run away with me?
“I can’t, Finn,” she says.
“We can outrun the Order,” he says, “get as far away as possible and never look back.” That sounds really nice, to be honest. But Kimiya knows that she couldn’t outrun Snoke if she tried. Before the Order, she had been completely alone and without a purpose in life. Now, she has blood on her hands and guilt in her heart, but she has a place to call home. If Finn will come back with her, she’ll have a friend, maybe even something more. She can show the map to Luke Skywalker to Snoke, and finally prove that she was a more worthy apprentice than Ben Organa ever would have been.
“Please, Finn,” she says, “just stay with me for a little while. We can go back. I won’t let them make you a trooper again, just please don’t-“
“I’m not going back, Kimiya,” he says. For some reason, hearing him call her Kimiya doesn’t feel right. Kimiya is the name of Snoke’s apprentice, of the Jedi Killer. Rey is the scared little girl from Jakku, the one that still has enough compassion in her heart to save a stormtrooper and fall at least a little bit in love with him. She wants Finn to think of her as Rey. He starts to walk away and she feels the panic start to build within her. She doesn’t want Finn to leave her. She grabs him by the forearm.
“Please stay,” she asks, but he shakes his head as he breaks away from her grasp. Then, Finn leaves the bar. Kimiya does not try to stop him. She feels too numb to try to stop him.
Rey sits despondently back at the table with Han and Maz.
“What happened?” Han asks.
“He left,” she says, numbly. Han doesn’t press her any further, and she is grateful. Finn left her, and she doesn’t know what she can do anymore. She can’t feel anything. She gets up from the table.
“Rey?” Han asks, but she can barely hear him. She feels too betrayed, too empty, and she can feel a strong presence in the Force. Something is calling to her, and Kimiya Ren is not one to deny a call. She follows the feeling though the crowd, and away from it. It feels different than Snoke’s presence. His is dark, foreboding, and all encompassing. Sometimes, it makes Kimiya shiver in fear. This presence is warm, inviting, as if it only wants her to find it. It’s not commanding her to do so. She finds herself following it into a secluded basement, and opening up an old, dusty crate.
Visions pass through her mind. She is seven years old again, and Rey, a little girl abandoned on Jakku, and the Supreme Leader has come to collect her. Her family left her, but Snoke sought her out for her Force Sensitivity. He cared enough to take her away. The scene shifts, and Kimiya is nine and a half years old, and standing on the steps to the new Jedi temple. She is trembling in fear, and can already feel herself regretting what she has been ordered to do. She clutches the red lightsaber, which is large and awkward in her grasp. She sees herself knocking Ben Organa unconscious, and striking down the younglings again. She has tried not to think about that day since it happened.
She pulls herself out of her vision, and looks cautiously down at the lightsaber. She extends the blade, and realizes that it’s blue, like a Jedi’s blade. She hears footsteps, and turns her head. She sees Maz Kanata.
“You found the lightsaber, didn’t you?” the short, old woman asks her.
“Yes,” Kimiya says. She’s afraid that saying anything else would reveal her extreme fear and guilt, all of the emotions that coursed through her at the memories that she’d been forced to relive.
“That was Luke’s lightsaber,” Maz Kanata says, “and his father’s before him.” It was Darth Vader’s lightsaber, Kimiya realizes. It might look like a Jedi’s blade, but it was Sith’s blade, as sure as hers. She laughs bitterly. A true Jedi’s saber would never call to Kimiya, she’s already too guilty for that. Kimiya takes it out of her bag, and hands it to Maz. Even though it’s Darth Vader’s lightsaber, it was Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber as well. She still doesn’t deserve it.
“Keep it,” Kimiya says, “I don’t want it.” She doesn’t need another lightsaber to kill people with. Maz pulls her hands back, and refuses to take the lightsaber.
“It called to you,” Maz says with a smile on her face, “not me.”
“I don’t deserve it,” Kimiya says. She realizes that she might have blown her cover, but Maz just smiles at her knowingly.
“There’s still light in you, Kimiya Ren,” Maz Kanata says, and she feels her blood run cold. How did she know?
“My name is Rey,” she says, and even she can’t tell if the words are a lie or not.
Maz nods at her, and says, “Hopefully, it will be again.” She runs up the stairs, both her and Darth Vader’s lightsabers in her bag. Then, she feels a disturbance in the Force. Terrible, like millions of souls being snuffed out at once. She realizes instantly that they’ve deployed Starkiller Base. She runs right into Chewbacca, and then she sees Han Solo, who’s drawing his blaster.
“We’ve got company,” he says. She looks out the window, and sees First Order ships landing, and stormtroopers starting to surround the area. They run outside of the building, and Kimiya is suddenly aware of what it’s like to be on the other end of First Order attack. What it’s like is fucking terrifying. She draws the little blaster that Han gave her, and they run out of the bar shooting, trying to make their way through the battle and towards the ship.
Kimiya realizes that she could just draw her lightsaber now, and board a ship back to the First Order and Snoke. She could. She could take the drive with the map to Luke Skywalker and be done with this futile quest. But she doesn’t want to. Kimiya doesn’t want to go back to the First Order, killing, and Snoke. And to be completely honest, she doesn’t want Han Solo and Chewbacca to hate her. She wants to find Finn again and run to the Outer Rim with him. She wants to give up on all of this. She might not be able to truly escape her past, but she doesn’t want to go back to it. She wants to change her path, like Maz said. She wants to be Rey again, no matter how scared and powerless that would make her. Just as long as it’s with Finn, she doesn’t think that she’ll mind. She’ll help Han and Chewie get out of this, hand them the drive, and then find Finn. Then, they will run far away from this war and everyone who has anything to do with it. The three of them fight their way through the crowd, and they are within sight of a ship that was hers, once.
The she spots something off in the distance. A few troopers seem to have taken a prisoner, who’s kicking and screaming. She focuses harder, employs a bit of the Force, and then she is able to hear it as if she were standing beside them.
“Traitor,” one of the stormtroopers spits. It only takes Rey a moment to realize that it’s Finn that they’ve taken. She can’t believe that she didn’t realize it sooner, but the silhouettes were so hard to see so far away. On top of that, Rey couldn’t help hoping that it wasn’t him. Chewie guns down another trooper with his crossbow blaster.
“Rey?” Han asks, turning around to look the same direction as her. Rey watches as they carry him on board, and the doors to the ship close.
“They took Finn,” Rey says, and she feels numb again. The stormtroopers surround her again, and she draws her blaster. She’s not a good shot, but she gets the job done. They shoot their way to the Falcon, and somehow, they make it out of the sky with just one gunner. Han tells her where to set their course for, where the Resistance base is, but it doesn’t matter much to Rey.
She’s already veered too far from her course for Snoke not to have realized that she’s had second thoughts, that she’s not his perfect apprentice anymore, but Rey can’t save Finn without getting back into Starkiller Base. She can feel her chances of saving him dwindle by the minute. Stormtrooper reconditionings and decommissionings take place quickly. There is no appeals process, and once a decision is reached about which one will happen, they move right along. Finn has a day, tops, before they either erase everything that made him him or kill him outright. Rey feels guilty that she never thought much about how awful the stormtrooper program was before Finn.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Han says. If she’d just left with him, then they never could have been taken by the Order.
“I’m going to save him,” Rey tells him, even though she’s not quite so confident. The only part that she’s sure of is that she’s going to try.
“You know,” Han says, sounding fond and nostalgic, “that reminds me of someone.”
“Who?” Rey asks. She doesn’t know who that could possibly remind him of.
“Luke Skywalker,” Han says, fond and regretful and wistful, “he always came to save us, Leia and I, I mean. Even when people told him it was stupid. Even when I told him it was stupid.” Rey is shell-shocked. There’s no way that she could be anything like Luke Skywalker. She’s the one who killed his students, who almost led Snoke to him to kill. Whatever Luke Skywalker is, he’s intrinsically good, where Rey is anything but. She remembers the lightsaber in her bag, and how it belong to both Luke and his father, who was anything but a good man. She suspects that it was the part of the saber that belonged to Vader that called to her, because there was nothing about her that Luke Skywalker could care for.
Han looks like’s ready to say more, but then they finally arrive at the Resistance base. They walk around the base, and find General Organa, who is not very happy that her husband left her after her brother and son did too. Rey tries to make herself blend into the walls. She doesn’t want anyone to notice her, and she certainly doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Rey wonders how many of these people’s spouses, siblings, parents, and friends she’s cut down. She feels a pang of guilt, and tries to stifle it. She can’t change the past, and the only thing that brooding about it will do is get her discovered.
The members of the Resistance don’t dawdle, and they start the important diplomatic and strategic talks a little over an hour after they arrive at the base. The talks begin with the map to Skywalker. Of course they do, and Rey does not hesitate when she hands over the drive over to Leia. However, she does groan when it’s reveal what exactly is contained on the drive. It’s only a partial map of a system that no one in the entire room is familiar with. The map is absolutely useless. Rey can’t believe that they went through this much trouble for it. It’s no good to the Resistance or the Order.
The strategy talks involve discussing the plans for Starkiller Base, which Han insists they can just blow up. She doesn’t know much about the design of the base, luckily, because she wouldn’t know to explain it if she did.
“I’ll lead a team onto the base to disable the shields,” Han volunteers, and General Organa nods her head.
Han Solo looks to her, and Rey says, “I’m going too.”
“She has no experience,” some officer says.
“She has more experience with the Falcon than you,” Han says, and she can hear a few people snicker, “I need another person that knows how to steer that ship with me, in case Chewie or I get injured.” She appreciates him making up a bullshit excuse to bring her along, and she cracks a smile.
They finish up strategizing, and they go onto the ship. Han and Leia have a moment, and even Rey finds it beautiful. She thinks that it must be hard to reconcile with someone after being away for so long. It would be a bit like Rey’s parent finally coming for her a few months ago. Rey doesn’t know what she would have done then, as a bitter Sith, but she knows that it would have been more drastic than a hug. Then they board the ship, and fly towards the enormous base. Apparently, Han’s brilliant plan for getting onto the ship is flying in through the shields at lightspeed. Rey thinks that she’s probably going to die before she even gets the chance to rescue Finn.
Somehow, they survive the collision with the planet, and they sneak into the base. Rey wants to save Finn immediately, but Han convinces her that they have to disable the shields first. She supposes that he’s right. She promised, and she has as good as turned her coat already. She finds Captain Phasma, and they make her disable the shields.
“You seem familiar,” Captain Phasma says. It doesn’t seem like a threat. Captain Phasma has never seen her without her helmet before, so there’s no way that it could be.
“I doubt if we’ve met beofre,” she says. And then, they shove her in a closet. Rey doesn’t feel too bad about that, because she’s sure that someone will find her eventually.
Rey knows enough about the inner workings of the First Order to know where to find a stormtrooper that has been taken into custody. It’s not an uncommon thing. Stormtroopers rebel in small ways all of the time and end up reconditioned for it, and occasionally, someone tries something like what Finn almost did. They never live long enough to get off of the ship. Rey looks at the metal door. It doesn’t look any different than the others, but Rey knows that this is the right one. This is the door that all of the screaming always came from.
“You two go plant those bombs you were talking about,” Rey says.
“What?” Han asks.
“I’ll be fine saving Finn,” she says, “just please, go finish your part of the mission.” Han doesn’t seem like he wants to leave her, but Rey can tell that he wants this damn thing destroyed before it takes out the Resistance base, and the wife that he just reunited with. He leaves her alone to face her fate.
Rey pries the door open with the Force, and then steps into the room where they hold condemned troopers until they face their sentence. The room is completely empty except for General Hux. He looks as ghostly as normal, but he’s sporting a smirk that is even larger than normal.
“Ren, I presume,” General Hux says. He says it cordially, so smoothly that it worries her. He knew that she was coming, and there’s a reason that Finn isn’t strapped to that chair.
“You must be wondering where you pet stormtrooper is,” he says. Rey closes the gap between them, and grabs Hux roughly by his shirt.
“What did you do to him?” Rey demands.
“Me?” he asks, faking innocent but sounding nothing but cocky, “I didn’t do anything to him that the Supreme Leader didn’t request I do.”
“What did you do?” she demands. Hux, as always, doesn’t answer her question but instead says whatever he feels like.
“Snoke has been watching you,” Hux says, “and he knew how attached you’d gotten to that trooper. He knew that you were going to desert him.”
“Where is he, Hux?” Rey demands, shoving him against the wall with the Force. Hux laughs.
“He’s chained up in the throne room,” he says, “personally, I would have decommissioned him on the spot, but sometimes you just have to listen to orders.” He’s sporting a smug grin, and Rey can tell that he means every word that he say. Finn wasn’t a person to him, just a weed in his flower garden. Hux would have ripped him out by the roots and laughed as he died. Rey can feel the anger boiling deep within her, and she wants to kill him.
She wants to reach out with the force and choke him slowly until he never breaths again. But Rey doesn’t have time for that, and it isn’t worth putting another death on her soul to kill Hux. She shoves him against the wall again, and runs through the ship towards the throne room. She swings open the door, and runs into the enormous expanse of the room. Finn is near the back of the room, chained to the throne that Snoke would use if he were ever actually on board the ship. She runs over to him.
“Finn,” she says, trying to help him sit up, “Finn, are you okay?”
He’s groggy, but conscious as he asks, “Kimiya?”
“No,” she says, “it’s Rey.” Even though he’s groggy, barely conscious even, Finn grasps the subtle meaning behind her correction.
“You’re lucky I wasn’t already dead when you got here,” Finn says, feigning seriousness, and Rey laughs even though she really shouldn’t. Jokes about the dead are always insensitive, but this one’s probably doubly so since Rey was the one that killed Poe Dameron.
“I hope that you appreciate the reunion, Kimiya,” Snoke says, voice rasping, “your trooper did not come quietly.” Rey turns abruptly around, and for a moment she’s terrified by the thought that Snoke actually came. She has not seen him in person since she was fourteen and he decided that she no longer needed to be trained in person. That was about the time that the Supreme Leader of the First Order became one of the most wanted men in the galaxy. But he’s not there in person, of course he’s not. Snoke is an arrogant man who has had her under his thumb since she was seven years old. He surely didn’t think that she’d be enough of a problem that he’d need to come and do this in person.
“Supreme Leader,” she says, taking a few steps forward.
“Rey?” Finn whispers frantically, “what are you doing?”
“If this bit of rebellion is over him,” Snoke says, “you needn’t have it. You can keep the trooper. He doesn’t even have to remain a stormtrooper if you don’t wish him to.” Rey didn’t know if she’d truly have the authority to keep Finn from reconditioning and from active duty. She is, was she reminds herself, technically outside of the hierarchy of the First Order. What she was able to do depended completely upon what Snoke let her do. She was worried that she would not have been able to keep Finn safe from harm, but that was not the only reason that she decided to rebel against Snoke.
“Rey?” Finn asks, sounding terrified.
“Just stop with this foolish rebellion,” Snoke says, “return to my side, and you can keep him. We can even recondition him so that he doesn’t run from you again.” Rey can feel anger burning within her, fiery hot and uncontrollable.
“He’s a person,” Rey shouts. Snoke can’t offer him to her like a prize. Snoke doesn’t address that. Instead, he goes straight to the guilt trip.
“I raised you,” he says, “I took you in after your family abandoned you.” He cared about her when no one else did, but now there are others. Even if Han decides that he hates her after he finds out what she truly is, she would not be alone. Finn asked her to run away with him. He cares about her in the real way. Snoke couldn’t care about her as a person if he tried. She’s a weapon to him, and always has been. Rey is tired of killing, and she is tired of following Snoke’s orders. She’s ready to try something different.
“You’ve become a better apprentice than Ben Organa would have been,” he says. Rey realizes that he’s changed tactic, this time he has moved into flattery. If he had said those words before this mission, then Rey would have done whatever he asked. That was what she had always wanted to hear him say. But now, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if she became a better apprentice than Ben Organa would have been, because she doesn’t want to be Snoke’s apprentice anymore. She’s her own person, and she wants to start acting like it. She walks towards the control panel, and summons one of the lightsabers with the Force.
“You are mine, Kimiya Ren,” he says, sounding desperate. It’s his last ditch effort, but it doesn’t affect Kimiya at all. She draws the saber, and realizes that she called Vader’s instead of her own. It will work just as well.
“No,” she says, “I’m mine.” She strikes the control panel with Vader’s lightsaber, and Snoke yells as his hologram disappears. Finn laughs as Rey runs over to him. She focuses as hard as she can on his manacles and they fall off of Finn’s hands.
“I’m gonna be honest,” he says, looking sheepishly overjoyed, “I was a little afraid that you wouldn’t tell him no.”
“I’m not going to be his apprentice again,” she says seriously, “and you deserve better.” Finn looks like he’s ready to say something, but then Chewie and Han burst into the throne room.
“What are you two doing?” he asks, looking desperate, “the whole planet’s about to blow.” He looks quickly around, and spots the lightsaber hanging from her belt.
“What the fuck is that?” he demands. Finn and Rey exchange a look.
“We’ll tell you on the way,” Finn says, and he grabs Rey’s hand as they run through the hallways. Rey, at least, is winded by the time that they reach the Falcon. They fly out of the atmosphere, and Starkiller Base blows behind them. Han sets the ship on autopilot, and then they all go to sit at the table.
“Okay,” Han says, sounding nervous and confused a little bit angry, “would one of you tell me what happened. And who you are?” Rey and Finn exchange a look, and an understanding passes between them. They’ll tell the truth. It’s a risk, but Rey decides that it’s one that’s worth taking.
“I used to be a stormtrooper,” Finn says. Rey feels so grateful to him, for not making her speak first.
“And I used to be called Kimiya Ren,” she says. She pulls the red lightsaber out of her bag, and draws the blade.
“Holy shit,” Han says, and Rey doesn’t think that it’s a good kind of holy shit.
“You’re the one that killed all of Luke’s students,” he says, looking terrified. Rey retracts her blade, and stares at it.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice sounding hollow and far away, “I did.”
“But that was ten years ago,” he says, sounding terrified, “you can’t be any older than what, twenty?”
“I’m nineteen,” she says.
“You were nine?” Han says, and she realizes that his horror isn’t directed entirely towards her.
“Yes,” Rey says. She really wishes that they could switch topics.
“You were nine when he made you kill people?” he asks, sounding terrified. Rey bites her lip. She doesn’t know what he wants her to say.
“Ben couldn’t remember enough of it to give us a proper profile,” Han says. Rey had knocked Ben Organa out first. She told Snoke that she forgot to kill him, but really, she just hadn’t wanted to. She had already killed so many that day, and she didn’t want to add another, even though she had hated him when she was young. It was a small act of defiance that Rey has always savored.
Rey and Finn tell Han and Chewie the story of how they actually happened across the Falcon.
“I can’t believe it,” Han says, “I thought you two seemed kind of off, but I didn’t think you were with the Order.”
“Um,” Finn says, “surprise.”
“We aren’t with them anymore,” Rey promises him.
“I didn’t think so, kid,” he says, and his tone still sounds fond. Rey doesn’t know how he could still be fond of her now that he knows what she’s done.
“And then I left,” Finn says, “or at least, I tried to.”
“I’m sorry, Finn,” Rey says, “I was going to try to find you, to run away with you.”
“You were?” he asks, and he sounds so terribly hopeful.
“Yeah,” Rey says, “I was.”
Finn grins at that, and says, “I was actually captured when I was coming back.”
“You were coming back?” Rey asks, and she can barely comprehend that idea.
“Yeah,” he says, “I was coming back. I decided that I couldn’t just leave you.” Rey feels an absurdly warm, happy feeling, and leans into Finn’s side of the booth and hugs him hard. She doesn’t let go for more than a minute.
“Um,” he says, “I’m not going anywhere, Rey.”
“I know,” she says. Han rolls his eyes.
“Okay,” he says, “but what happened on Starkiller?” Rey and Finn both give him a quick rundown of what happened.
Finn says, “And then we got on the Falcon.”
“And now what are you two going to do?” he asks, “still going to run away to the Outer Rim?”
“It would probably depend on if you’re hauling me in for war crimes,” Rey says.
“Rey?” Finn sounds confused, and a little bit afraid.
“What do you mean?” Han asks, sounding just as confused but not as afraid.
“Look,” she says, “I’ve done some really, really bad things, and if people think that I should be tried for them…” She’s not exactly going to kill them to stop them.
“Look,” Solo says, “back in the day, Luke insisted that there was some good in Darth Vader because he was his father. We all thought that he was crazy.” Rey knows very little of the story of Darth Vader, other than the part where he faithfully served his emperor. He was a Sith through and through, the sort of apprentice that Snoke always told her to strive to be.
“What happened?” Rey asks, waiting on baited breath. She’s sure that there’s a kicker at the end. Luke was crazy, and completely wrong. In the end, Vader tried to kill him. Han Solo’s about to tell her that she’s not capable of redemption. Whatever fondness he held for her will be gone.
“Vader turned on the emperor to save Luke,” he says simply. Rey gasps audibly. It’s ridiculous, and she blushes moments after the sound leaves her mouth. Han Solo laughs amicably at her confusion. Rey didn’t think that Darth Vader’s story would have anything resembling a happy ending.
“If there was some good in that guy,” Solo says with a crooked smile, “I don’t see why there can’t be any left in you.” Apparently, no one has all that much to say after an admission like that. Rey doesn’t know what to say, and neither does anyone else. They arrive back at the Resistance Base soon enough.
“We’re at the base,” he says, “and like, if you wanna come and join us you’d be welcome. I’d still vouch for you, but if you two want to leave, I ain’t gonna stop you.” Han and Chewie step off of the Falcon, leaving Rey and Finn alone.
“So,” Rey asks, “do you want to head off to the Outer Rim?”
“I want to join the Resistance,” Finn says, and he sounds incredibly confident. The last time that he sounded this confident was when he told her that freeing Poe Dameron was “the right thing to do”.
“What?” Rey asks. She thought that he’d be completely down with running off to the Outer Rim. It was his idea in the first place.
“I want to join the Resistance, Rey,” he says, “I want to make a difference.”
“But Finn,” she says, “aren’t you scared?” Rey is terrified. Rescuing Finn was one thing. That was necessary, and it was important, but Rey can’t think of anything else that could motivate her to stand up to the First Order. They’re ruthless and powerful. Rey doesn’t want Snoke to get his hands on her now that she’s rebelled against him.
“Rey,” he says, “I’m scared shitless.” He’s holding her hand, and looking right into her eyes. Of fucking course Finn is scared of the Order. It’s all that he’s ever known, and they would recondition him or decommission him the moment that they got their hands back on him, now that Rey has turned traitor as well. They’d have no reason to treat him any differently than any other deserter now. No matter what they do, Rey won’t let that happen.
“We can’t run away from this,” he says, voice gaining the same sort of conviction that it had when he tried to save Poe Dameron, “The Order blew a whole star system out of existence.” Rey shivers as she remembers how it felt as those millions of people died. That was sicker than anything she’s ever done. She doesn’t ever want that to happen again.
“You’re right,” Rey says, and she realizes that she had been craven before. She should at least try to atone for her sins, and there is no better way to do that than to help the Resistance fight against the First Order. Who cares if she’s scared? This is what Finn wants, and it’s what she needs to do.
“Really?” he asks, “you’re going to do it?”
“Yeah,” Rey says, and she smiles as she says, “it’s the right thing to do.” Finn grins at her in response, and stands up. Rey takes a deep breath, and clutches her red lightsaber, the one that she’s killed so many people with.
“Rey?” he asks.
“There’s something I need to do,” Rey tells him. She focuses on the lightsaber, on making it fall apart, on making it crumble. The lightsaber shatters in her hands, and she stands up and tosses its remnants into the garbage. Finn sends her an understanding look. He gets why she had to get rid of it, why she shed the name Kimiya and retook the name Rey. Then, she grabs Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber and hangs it on her belt. If Darth Vader could be redeemed, then so can she. Her hands ghost over his lightsaber, a Jedi’s lightsaber, and Rey allows herself to hope.
Rey holds out her hand, and Finn takes it in his. Then they walk hand in hand into the unknown.