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She is a scavenger - it is ingrained in her nature as much as being a princess is in General Leia’s. There is no escape from that fact. Training with Luke Skywalker, flying and fixing with Chewie, speaking with Finn and being introduced to Poe over comm, the odd calls the General would give her - she is Rey the Jedi in training, the Resistance fighter.
Only Finn has seen her as Rey the Scavenger, but even that is a passing knowledge.
It is the part of Rey that she had never been ashamed of until she met all the people beyond Jakku. Until Han Solo, the smuggler and legendary folk hero of the Outer Rim, had seen her and approved of her. Her, Rey who had been abandoned and scrounged in the dirt and dust for meager offerings.
Since formally joining the Resistance, she has tried to put aside the habits - hoarding ration bars, scrap metal and junk parts - when Finn had caught her, and had turned a questioning look on her when he’d pulled out a heap of ration bars from a compartment at the side of her bed. Despite it all, it is a difficult habit to get rid of.
These were things scavengers did, not Jedi, not Resistance fighters.
Jedi do not hoard food jealously. They didn't feel territorial over whatever space they carve out for themselves. They did not envision, in their worst moments, tearing flesh and bone of enemies, of not accepting the idea of political prisoners - not even fully understanding the concept. On Jakku, if someone stole your portion, it was acceptable to kill them. Jakku was a planet that demanded survival.
There was a reason she listened more often than she spoke during meetings. She was out of her element and more than aware of this fact; she needed, wanted to be better than the feral thing she knew she was.
Master Luke showed her Force techniques slowly but surely, hesitant and cautious after the knowledge that he had taught Kylo Ren came to light.
“He felt like an outcast. Different from his parents and failing expectations, he was so angry, so bitter.” Luke had confessed to her once. “We loved him, but perhaps we were too slow to accept him.” Luke had then excused himself to meditate.
And Rey felt it stir, as it had on Jakku when she had fought for portions and scraps, a hunger. A living, twisting creature that lived within her.
Kylo Ren, who killed the father who risked everything for him. Kylo Ren, who had a mother who still loved him and just wanted her child home. Kylo Ren, who was still loved enough by Luke Skywalker to cause him such deep pain. Kylo Ren, the misunderstood boy of anger, who did not understand hunger.
Jedi did not understand hunger. They were not meant to, they were meant to release negative emotions, strong emotions, to the Force.
But how could she, how was it possible for her, when all she had been for so long was hungry?
Rey was ashamed of that as well.
Master Luke was kind enough to only encourage her meditations, filling her up with his calm presence - which helped as much as it hindered her. He calmed her, soothed the ragged edges of her rough life, the dark marks left by Kylo Ren but it fed the yearning she had no name for.
Surrounded her with his presence until she felt that she could subsist on it, gorge herself on the peace and comfort he radiated.
Not just his presence, but everything he gave, everything he taught, Rey devoured. Knowledge and archives, techniques and katas, philosophies, history - and the hole never seemed to fill. The feeling, not quite an emotion so much as it was a state of being, gnawed within her, tearing at the edges in her that Master Luke soothed. She could eat for days and never feel full, a side effect of a lean life in the desert of Jakku. No one on Jakku was ever content.
It was difficult to be content on a planet where food was scarce, water scarcer, and compassion and dignity met quick deaths - or induced starvation.
It was only by chance, a tug behind her navel that prevented Rey from selling BB-8 for the portions Plutt had piled before her. She had learned at an early age to follow the tug. It had turned out for the best; she was here, in this place with all these wonderful people instead of alone in a desert. But the torment that had been birthed on Jakku had followed her here, chewing, chewing, chewingchewingchewingchewing.
In the dark, trying and failing to sleep and refusing to wake Master Luke so he could meditate with her, refusing to comm Finn so she could listen to his long-winded babbling about Resistance life, she could feel the fledgling Force Bond, as Master Luke had grudgingly called it, flapping like a scarf caught in the wind.
She grips it, holds it, thin newborn silk strands trying to twist away from the presence of light and the oppressing want to be filled she radiated. Kylo Ren had not sought her out, after that moment in the interrogation room.
He'd sensed her loneliness first and had tried to make a connection with her based on that, appealing to their sameness. But the yawning abyss that was her appetite, a growing shifting thing that had reached back and allowed her to see in him had never stopped reaching for him. She'd felt his fear, his anger.
She could feel it still, across the stars from wherever he was. Could feel out the outline of his pain and shame, failures and successes.
He'd tried blocking her out before but it had made her suspicious. And, if she could be completely serious with herself, angry. His was the one constant presence, something that allowed her craving to subside even if it was only for moments at a time.
She had no doubt that he had found more than just her lonely island surrounded by a never ending ocean.
He'd found the labyrinth of caves, deep and dark, gaping like maws and stalagmites dripping down like teeth.
He knew. She knew that. But she felt strangely secure, confident in their connection because as much as he saw of her, felt from her, she had felt and seen the same - more clouded, uncertain than he was perhaps. But it was enough. He had too much pride to do anything beyond that; scared of what an untrained Jedi-girl seemed preposterous.
Rey sits now, beneath a blanket of the stars and tugs, tugs, wraps the Bond around her because there is a yank behind her navel, signaling the hunger she has never been able to fill or resist the call of, and feels Kylo Ren hide most of himself in shadow she isn't yet experienced enough to pry open like a seashell to peer at the soft creature inside.
She knows she will be soon. She has no doubt of that. Kylo Ren has his pain and anger to feed off of and it is enough for him, so he doesn’t know what it means to be hungry.
She tugs on the Bond again and feels Kylo Ren gather as much of his mind space as he can from her, a turtle withdrawing into its shell at the sight of a circling bird.
Rey has always starved.
She doesn’t know how not to be ravenous.