Chapter Text
On Jakku, Rey dreamed of family. Their faces were always indistinct, features blurred in her mind, but they always smiled and their lips were soft when they pressed kisses to her forehead. She dreamed of being loved, being held, being wanted.
She would watch people in Niima, familiar ones and the uncommon new faces. Sometimes families came, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. She would watch them and try to imagine what they were saying, what they were doing. She would try to imagine how it felt, having someone to care for you, to protect you, to always watch over you.
Rey could never quite picture it.
-
The first time Rey met Poe Dameron, it was in the midst of a crowded room full of Resistance members celebrating the completion of the map to Luke Skywalker and she hugged him without thinking. Or maybe he had hugged her; she wasn’t entirely clear on who had initiated what. She didn’t even know his name and it was exactly as awkward as you might expect. He was sweet, though, and his embarrassed nervousness somehow made Rey feel less dumb.
As far as introductions go, it wasn’t terribly momentous, to say the least.
Then again, Rey felt, nothing about her was very momentous.
After they put the map together, everything seemed to pass in a bit of a blur. Rey was excited and nervous and conscious of the responsibility she was being given, to be the one to find Luke. She wasn’t entirely sure why it had to be her, but somehow she knew it was something she had to do. Not just because Leia had asked her to, or because Maz had told her she should, but because Rey herself knew it, deep in her bones.
The hardest part was leaving Finn behind. The doctor had told her he would be okay but it was difficult, seeing him lying there, still and quiet.
“If it helps,” someone said, “I’ll watch over him while you’re gone.”
Rey raised her eyes and saw Poe standing there on the other side of Finn’s bed, watching her. He had been spending as much time in the med center as she had, not sleeping, his concern for Finn all over his face. Rey didn’t think Poe’s face hid much of anything; he displayed his emotions without shame.
It had been him, she suddenly realized. The dark-haired pilot racing after Finn on the med cart after the Starkiller Base, running alongside him, murmuring to him to stay with us, Finn, stay with me. Everyone had been celebrating but him. That had been Poe.
“Thank you,” Rey said, the words feeling thick in her throat. She didn’t know what else to say but she somehow trusted Poe to make everything be all right. She barely knew him but she felt as though she knew him in all the important ways.
He would watch over Finn. He would never let anything happen to him.
“He’ll be okay,” Poe said, as though he was convincing himself as much as he was reassuring Rey.
But this was the one thing Rey was most sure of. Finn would be okay. “I know,” she said, and she smiled at Poe. “I know.”
-
Rey spent weeks on Ahch-To, and then those weeks stretched into a month, and then two. Communication with the Resistance was shaky over such a long distance and without any actual civilization on Ahch-To but she was able to transmit a few messages back and forth over the Falcon’s systems, with some help from R2-D2. She wished she could have seen Finn’s face but it was enough to know that he was okay, that he’d woken up, that he was fine, he was healing.
Poe was taking good care of him, just as he had promised. Rey thought maybe Poe was the sort of person who always kept his promises.
Luke wasn’t what Rey had expected. He was just this small, ordinary-looking man, clearly tired of the weight that came with being Luke Skywalker, but he was kind to her, and he laughed easily. He didn’t look much like a myth. He didn’t act like one, either.
He made terrible tea and was an even worse cook. Quite frankly sometimes Rey was amazed that he had survived so long without poisoning himself. Or starving rather than sit through one more barely edible meal - and this was saying a lot, coming from Rey. She knew a thing or two about surviving on druk you didn’t actually want to eat.
He did, however, tell amazing stories and he had a subtle sense of humor. He was gentle, not like the formidable warrior she had thought he would be, though she soon saw evidence of his not inconsiderable skills in that area. He saw the best in people.
Maybe that had been the problem with Kylo Ren.
When Rey brought Luke down the rocky incline to see Chewbacca, she watched the two of them approach each other with mild trepidation, suddenly worried about what would happen. She knew what a Wookiee’s temper could be like. How close were Luke and Chewie, really? Would Chewie blame Luke for Han? Had this been a terrible idea?
But Chewie was embracing him, Luke getting engulfed in the Wookiee’s long arms. Luke buried his face against Chewie’s fur and Rey could feel the emotion radiating out from the two of them, the love, the loss, the aching sadness, the regret for what had passed.
She needn’t have worried.
On Ahch-To, Rey learned about the Force and the Jedi and the Dark Side. She learned a lot about Luke, and Leia, and Han. She learned about herself, too, about her own strength, about the part of herself that had been locked away until Kylo Ren tried to break her. She even came close to learning how to swim, dipping her toes in the choppy seas, until Chewie remarked that there were maybe better places for it and Luke wryly pointed out that between a Wookiee, a droid, and a man who had grown up on Tatooine, she wouldn’t have much back-up if she floundered.
“Maybe Finn can teach me,” Rey said. It would be something to look forward to. If Finn knew how to swim. Did Finn know how to swim?
She would have to ask him.
On Ahch-To, for the first time, Rey felt like she had found somewhere she belonged, just as Maz had told her she would. Luke seemed to fill this empty hole inside of her, this need for acceptance, for guidance, for kindness.
Rey loved Ahch-To.
She missed Finn.
When Luke told her it was time, she was ready to leave.
-
Returning to the Resistance was more jarring than Rey had anticipated. She had been so focused on seeing Finn again that she hadn’t stopped to think how different it would all be, away from the serenity of Ahch-To. People everywhere, constant noise and motion and bustle.
She hadn’t stopped to think about how Finn would be different.
Not that he had changed, exactly. He was still Finn, he was still the same brave, kind, funny, loyal man Rey had met on Jakku. But Rey had been away for months and in the meantime Finn had become a fully-fledged member of the Resistance. He had friends Rey didn’t know and he had routines; he belonged there.
And he had Poe.
While Rey had been gone, apparently Poe had become Finn’s other favorite person. Maybe he had been before, too, actually, but regardless, he certainly was now.
Not that there was anything wrong with that. Poe was nice. Rey was grateful to him for having taken care of Finn while he recovered, while Rey had been unable to be with him. Finn was an amazing person with a big heart and he deserved to have friends. Rey was happy for him, she was.
It was just… different, that was all. Rey had been flung into this adventure with Finn, into this whole new world, and she had maybe latched onto him a bit. But now things were different, their lives were different. Rey had Luke and apparently Finn had Poe.
She just wished that sometimes she could go in to Finn’s quarters to talk to him and he would actually be alone. (Of course, the fact that Finn’s quarters actually were Poe’s quarters, too, only made it all worse.)
Rey mentioned this to Luke once, sort of off-handedly as she was leaving him, and he quirked a smile at her and said, “I think that’s what they call jealousy.”
“I’m not jealous,” Rey said immediately because that sounded horrid. Jealous. Like she thought Finn was a possession of hers who couldn’t do anything she didn’t want him to.
“But you wish Finn would spend more time with you than with Poe.”
“Well, yes. I suppose.”
Luke wasn’t laughing at her but he did look amused. “Are you, er, interested in Finn?”
Rey narrowed her eyes. “Interested how?”
“Um. In a romantic sense.”
Rey couldn’t help the undignified snort that came out of her. “No! No, he’s… I mean, he’s Finn. He’s my friend. I love him,” she said, stumbling slightly over the words but realizing she meant them. “He’s important to me. But I don’t think of him like that. I mean, I don’t think I do?”
Rey had never thought of anyone like that. How would she know? She thought about Finn a lot. She thought about things she wanted to tell him, stories, things she thought would make him smile. She enjoyed spending time with him. She trusted him more than anyone else. She knew he was nice to look at; she wasn’t blind.
Did that mean she was interested in him?
She didn’t particularly want to kiss him, though. The idea made her feel faintly uncomfortable, like kissing a brother. Or at least, she imagined so, considering she didn’t actually have a brother.
Luke was talking again, jarring Rey out of her thoughts. “How does Finn feel?”
“How would I know?”
“Do you think Finn is interested in Poe? Is that the problem? Are you afraid they’re going to push you out?”
“No!” Rey exclaimed. “No, I never…” The idea had never occurred to her.
But did Finn want to be with Poe? It would explain a lot. Rey had been gone a long time. How would she know?
“I have to go,” she muttered, and left Luke standing there on his own.
-
Settling the issue was easy. There was only one course of action ahead of her, Rey reasoned.
She found Finn outside the armory. “Are you in love with Poe?” Rey demanded.
“What? No!” Finn was looking at her like she’d grown another head.
“Oh. Okay, then,” Rey said, feeling stupid. This conversation had been less awkward in her head.
“Rey, what’s the matter? Why would you ask me that?”
“No reason.”
“Rey.”
“What? I was just curious, that’s all.”
“Odd thing to be curious about,” Finn said, though he let it go.
Rey couldn’t quite let it go herself, though. She found herself thinking about Finn and Poe in odd moments, found herself watching them interact. Was there something there?
She believed Finn, of course. He wouldn’t lie to her. Was it possible that he didn’t realize himself, though? Or was it possible that Poe was in love with Finn?
Yes, Rey thought, looking back on what she had observed. Yes, it was certainly possible.
The thing with Poe was, what you saw was what you got. He was open and unpretentious, free with his words and with his emotions. Poe wasn’t a person to hide.
That should have made it easy to figure out whether he was in love with Finn. You would think.
But it wasn’t easy. The problem, Rey discovered, was that Poe was as friendly and kind to the least important person on this base, to every last astromech, as he was to General Organa or to his closest friends. Or to Finn.
It was almost annoying. How could a person be that cheerful all the time? How could a person always have time for everyone, always treat them like they were the most important person in the room?
And he smiled all the damn time.
Unfortunately Rey couldn’t just come out and ask Poe if he was in love with Finn. There was, however, someone she could ask.
“Beebee,” Rey said, dropping down until she was eye level with the droid. “Is Poe in love with Finn?”
BB-8 emitted a sharp noise of surprise and then informed Rey that Poe thought very highly of Finn but was not, in fact, in love with him.
“Are you sure?”
Obviously affronted, BB-8 said that if Poe were in love with anybody, he would be the first to know.
“Hmm,” Rey murmured, though she didn’t disagree. She listened to BB-8’s inquiry and then said, “Just wondering, that’s all.”
BB-8 asked if Rey was in love with Finn.
“No! Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
Then he asked if she was in love with Poe.
Rey laughed, startled. “Of course not! No! Why would I be in love with Poe? I’m not in love with anybody!”
BB-8 uttered what was the binary equivalent of an unconcerned shrug and then said that if Rey were in love with Poe, that would be okay, and BB-8 would be entirely supportive of them.
“Don’t go getting any ideas,” Rey warned the droid before walking away. “Stars,” she muttered to herself.
Perhaps talking to BB-8 had been a poor decision after all. The last thing she needed was a droid with a propensity for matchmaking messing about. Or for BB-8 to tell Poe what she had said. Oh, blast, she should have thought about that. BB-8 was as bad at keeping secrets from Poe as Poe was from him.
Rey never truly wished to go back to Jakku, but she did sometimes long for its simplicity.
-
Even if no one was in love with anybody else, Finn still seemed to want to spend all of his free time with Poe, but also with Rey, which meant that more often than not, Rey was hanging out with not just Finn, but with Poe as well.That was okay, she supposed. It wasn’t that Rey had anything against Poe, particularly. He was cheerful and easy-going and a bit dorky, and Rey respected his competence as well as his obvious devotion to the Resistance, to General Organa, and to his friends.
But, okay. Maybe she was a little jealous. Only a tiny bit.
At least Poe was still General Organa’s go-to pilot so he was constantly busy, going to meetings, running missions, repairing ships, orienting new recruits… It meant that Poe wasn’t always around. But he was around enough.
As he was right now, sliding his back down against the wall to sit next to Rey while she sketched, just outside the boundary of the base. She pretended not to notice him.
“You’re good at that,” Poe said, watching her, because he was incapable of being quiet.
“Thanks,” Rey said, because it would be rude to ignore him.
“I’ve been talking to Beebee-Ate.”
Rey felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Blast. Whatever BB-8 had been telling Poe, it couldn’t be good.
“I just thought maybe it seemed like you don’t want me around?” Poe continued. “I mean, I thought we’d gotten along pretty well, before, but lately I’ve just felt… And Beebee said you’re normally pretty friendly with everyone, so I thought maybe it was just me? Did I do something wrong? Because whatever it was, please tell me so I can apologize and not do it anymore and hopefully make it up to you. But maybe you just don’t like me very much? That would stink. But also I was thinking, and this was because of Beebee mostly, maybe you’re upset because of Finn, you think I’m intruding, but really I just want us all to be--”
“Poe,” Rey said, looking at him rather than her flimsi.
“Yeah?”
“You’re, uh, you’re babbling.”
“Right,” he said, looking chagrined. “Sorry.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Rey said, because that much was true.
Poe seemed momentarily relieved but that soon faded into resigned disappointment. “So, you just don’t like me, then.”
Rey imagined that must be an unfamiliar sensation for Poe. He was clearly the sort of person who made friends easily, good-natured and affable and effortlessly charming.
“Not exactly,” Rey said, hedging.
“It’s kind of an either-or thing, generally.”
“I don’t not like you.”
“So you like me? Because a double negative equals a positive?”
Rey blew out a breath. “You’re so annoying.”
Poe laughed. “Guilty as charged. I’m just… I’m confused. You seemed okay with me before, and if I haven’t done anything to upset you, and if you sort of like me, then, what’s the problem? Why do I always feel like you’re outwardly tolerating my presence but inwardly picturing bashing my head into something?”
Startled, Rey found herself laughing now. “Well, I never quite got that far.”
“Consider me relieved.”
“I think… I think I was just surprised, that’s all,” Rey admitted. “I came back and everything was different. Finn was already settled and I…”
“You didn’t fit,” Poe said. “Or at least, you felt like you didn’t.”
“Yes.” Rey stared ahead of her. “It was so easy for him, but I’d thought… I’d thought we would do it together. Only I had to leave without him and when I came back he didn’t need me.”
“That’s not exactly true. He talked about you so much while you were away. He missed you. He’ll always need you.”
“Maybe.” Rey hoped so, anyway.
“The thing is, Rey, you were gone a long time. It wasn’t easy for Finn. The Resistance is not the First Order, let me tell you. You were just gone for the hard part.”
Rey didn’t know why that made her feel better, but it did, knowing that she wasn’t the only one struggling. It was probably a bit selfish.
Poe hesitated as if he wasn’t sure he should say what he was thinking about saying. Being Poe, of course, he ended up saying it. “Finn had help. We can be there for you, too.”
“We?” Rey teased.
Poe’s smile was easy and unself-conscious. “Okay, me. I meant me. But I’m not the only one.” He paused. “You know you do fit here, even if it doesn’t feel that way to you. You fit.”
“Thanks,” Rey said, with a lot more self-consciousness than Poe ever seemed to have. She was flushing, looking back down at her flimsi.
Nudging her in the side, Poe said, “You wanna go get a tutorial on X-wings?”
Rey raised her gaze and blinked at him. “What?”
“I’ll show you how they work, give you a quick lesson.”
“I already know how to fly, you know.”
“I know. But you’ve never flown an X-wing.”
“I think I could figure it out.”
“I have no doubt, but honestly I’d rather not have your first time in an X-wing be when we’re under attack.”
Rey remembered at odd moments that Poe wasn’t just Poe. He was Commander Dameron, Black Leader, and Leia trusted no pilot here as much as she trusted him.
Poe stood up, offering her his hand. “What do you say?”
“Sounds like an opportunity I’d be crazy to pass up, learning from the great Poe Dameron himself,” Rey said, tongue-in-cheek, accepting his hand up.
He laughed and said, “I maybe know a thing or two but I think calling me a great anything is probably an exaggeration.”
“A great big dork?”
“All right, I’ll give you that one.”
Black One was out on the tarmac and Poe led Rey over, letting her climb the ladder first so she could sit in the cockpit. Poe went up after, settling himself up on the side so he could lean in and point out various knobs and switches and et cetera on the console. His enthusiasm about his ship was infectious and he taught without ever being patronizing. He smiled a lot and clearly respected that Rey knew her way around a ship, even if she had never been in an X-wing specifically.
Rey looked at Poe as he sat there on the edge of his ship with his legs hanging over the side, the loose collar of his shirt open beneath his jacket, the breeze catching in his hair and ruffling it. She thought to herself, no wonder Snap teases him about being the Resistance’s poster boy, and had to stifle a giggle.
Perhaps unsuccessfully, as Poe said, “What?”
“Just thinking about how great you’d look on a recruitment poster. We’d have First Order troopers defecting left and right.”
Poe groaned. “Not you, too!”
“I could draw one for you, if you like. Maybe show it to the general.”
“That’s it, let’s go,” Poe said, waving his hand in a ‘get out of there’ gesture. “Lesson’s over, let’s fly.”
Rey felt a grin stretch across her face. “Little game of one-upmanship, flyboy?”
“Bet I can show you a thing or two.”
“You’re on,” Rey said, climbing down the ladder so she could get her own ship.
Turned out they could both show each other a few things, and when they landed again, Rey was happy and laughing and Poe was excitedly running over to her, still holding his helmet, saying, “You have got to show me how you did that!”
“And spill all my secrets?” Rey said, pretending to be appalled.
Poe’s smile was a tad wicked. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”
Rey’s brain momentarily went somewhere it had no place being and she felt her cheeks heat up. Stars, Rey, she said to herself.
“Deal,” she said aloud.
-
While Rey had been on Ahch-To with Luke learning about the Force, Finn had been learning, too. Like how to play sabacc, apparently. Poe had taught him and now Finn was teaching Rey. They were sitting at a small table in what was used as a general recreational area on base, where people gathered off-duty to relax. Rey was sitting with her cards across from Finn, with Poe and Jessika Pava looking on.
Rey liked Jess. She was fun and had a good sense of humor, and she had this hero worship thing for Luke that was sort of adorable. She and Poe teased each other relentlessly but with an obvious underlying affection.
“Stand,” Finn said, and Rey examined her cards more intently. They weren’t actually playing for credits and technically it was more of a practice game, but damn if Rey didn’t want to win anyway.
Poe was having a hard time sitting still, continually getting up and wandering around the table so he could look at Finn’s and Rey’s hands. Now he was bending over behind Rey, close enough that she could smell whatever product he used in his hair and feel his breath on her skin. She tried to ignore him.
Rey began to reach for a card but Poe said, “No, you don’t want to do that, you--”
“Oh, get off,” Rey said, pushing him. “I know how to play!”
“Not very well,” Finn said, grinning.
“Like you’re any better?” Rey retorted.
“Let the girl play, Dameron,” Jess said. “You’re just getting in the way. Not to mention you’re all but giving Finn her cards.”
“Thank you,” Rey said.
Poe raised his hands. “Sorry, sorry, just trying to be helpful.”
“Yes, you’re always so helpful, even when people don’t want your help.”
“Okay, point taken, Rey does not ever need help.” He had straightened up now, moving away from Rey to return to his own chair.
“I didn’t say that,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Poe likes to be dramatic,” Jess said, smirking.
“It is kinda true, though,” Finn said. “I mean, you’ve definitely never actually needed any help every time I’ve gotten all prepared for a big rescue, Rey.”
“But you are very cute when you rush in like a big hero,” Rey said, echoing Finn’s grin from across the table. Hoping Poe was suitably distracted by the conversation, Rey elected to stand rather than take that card she had been intending on. Couldn’t hurt to listen to advice just once, right?
When she looked at Poe out of the corner of her eye, though, he was smiling faintly. Busted.
Rey finished with a score of twenty-one. Finn had twenty. In the midst of her jubilation Rey couldn’t help but look over at Poe and his big smile. It wasn’t that he was crowing over the fact she’d won in part because of his advice, he was simply happy for her; Rey could see it in his face. An easy joy that he had helped her in even a small way, and that she had trusted him enough to allow him to do so.
He winked at her, and Rey’s stomach felt like it was doing a tiny flip. She flushed and turned back to Finn, who was cheekily trying to claim credit for Rey’s victory due to his superior teaching skills.
“Then maybe Poe should take the credit because he taught you,” Rey countered, and let herself smile at Poe.
-
At first, Poe had held a very clear distinction in Rey’s mind. He was Finn’s friend Poe. She wasn’t entirely sure when that distinction fell away, when he started being her friend Poe.
Possibly it had been while they were up in the air flying X-wings, or when they were bonding over starship maintenance, or perhaps the third or fourth time he brought her extra food from the mess hall.
Poe would help her make repairs on the Millennium Falcon without being asked; he would just invite himself over and suddenly he was pointing things out from over her shoulder, his breath against her ear, or handing her tools without her even having asked for them yet. He would be standing there cleaning gunk out of the engine, singing under his breath, and Rey would realize he’d been there ten minutes already and she’d barely noticed.
Chewie kind of liked him, even. Chewie clearly appreciated Poe’s appreciation for the Falcon as well as his healthy respect for Han and for Chewbacca himself. Poe didn’t comprehend Shyriiwook very well but they seemed to understand each other well enough regardless.
Honestly Rey probably shouldn’t have been surprised by it. Poe made friends so easily and Chewie was a good judge of character.
All of this was fine. Poe had become someone whose presence Rey didn’t mind; whose presence, in fact, Rey enjoyed. He actually liked listening to her babble about ships and engineering, unlike Finn, who found the topic boring. (Boring! Pffft.)
So Rey couldn’t quite explain why she ended up so irritated at him one afternoon. Later she tried to attribute it to the uncharacteristic heat, though of course that wasn’t much of an excuse for someone who had grown up on a desert planet. Rey wasn’t normally bothered by a bit of sweat.
But Poe was crowding her, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his hair curling in the humidity. He was reaching around her, showing her a valve, and the sudden unusual closeness of him startled her, made her stomach squirm as though it were full of bugs.
“Don’t you have your own ship you could be fixing?” she said through gritted teeth.
Seeming equally startled by her tone, Poe drew back. “Just thought you could use a hand, that’s all.”
“Well, I couldn’t, so, you can go. Chewie’s here.”
“Sorry. I was--”
“I don’t need your help. I can do it myself.”
“Sorry,” Poe said again, backing away from her. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I only… Well, you let me know if you do need anything. I’ll stop bothering you.”
Rey didn’t bother watching him leave, focusing her efforts on the Falcon. Though she didn’t want to look up, the heavy weight of Chewbacca’s disapproval eventually defeated her.
Chewie was staring at her, his opinion clear. When a Wookiee thought you were overreacting, well, you had definitely overreacted. Rey felt somewhat ashamed. “I didn’t need his help,” she insisted. “I can do this on my own.”
When Chewie responded that the point was she didn’t have to do things on her own anymore, Rey said, “That’s what I have you for.”
He remained unconvinced by that logic, reminding her that having one friend didn’t preclude her from having others. Everyone had something different to offer.
“Says someone with one friend,” Rey said unkindly, regretting it as soon as the words came out. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
Han was not my only friend, Chewie said, and neither are you.
“I know,” Rey said. “I just… He’s so…” She didn’t know why Poe was so confusing and he made her feel so… She didn’t even know what. It was easier not to think about it.
Chewie rumbled at her and Rey muttered, “Shut up, I do not.”
She was blushing, she could feel it, and Chewie was laughing. She ignored him.
-
Rey’s childhood had been lacking in a few normalities, to say the least, as had Finn’s. Such as, holofilms. Poe was determined to make up for the fact that neither Finn nor Rey had been in a position to watch many of what he termed classics, and so in the evenings when they were free, they often piled onto his bed and watched projections of Poe’s favorite holofilms.
Rey had her doubts about his taste but it was fun all the same. Even if she didn’t precisely enjoy the particular film they were watching, she liked spending time with Finn and Poe.
Currently they were watching something that hovered between suspense and horror. It was actually rather good, Rey thought, though occasionally hard to follow. Especially because of the continual interruptions on the part of her companions.
For instance, just now Finn shrieked, actually shrieked, which made Poe burst into laughter.
“It’s not funny!” Finn protested. “That was horrifying, I was not expecting that, were you expecting that?”
“I’ve seen this film four times, so yeah, I was expecting that.”
“Well, excuse me, Mister I’ve Seen and Done Everything, I’m So Cool.”
“That’s not what I said, now you’re exaggerating. You do that a lot, doesn’t he, Rey?”
“Yes, and you talk too much, especially when I’m trying to watch this,” Rey said.
“Pardon me,” Poe said in an approximation of Rey’s accent, and then all three of them gasped almost in unison. Poe grabbed Finn’s leg. “Okay, that part gets me every time, I admit.”
Finn was too busy staring at the holofilm to respond. He didn’t even seem to notice that Poe was still holding onto his thigh.
Rey noticed, though. She was staring, actually, her attention completely diverted away from the film.
Poe was always doing things like that. Touching people. Only he never touched her. Sometimes it seemed like he was going to but he always caught himself, aborting the movement in what had to have been a conscious thought process. He rarely even let himself close enough, now, not after the incident at the Falcon.
Like right now, they were all three of them sitting on the bed up against the wall, and Poe was slumping against Finn, but he was carefully angled entirely away from Rey.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to be touching her. Poe was… he wasn’t…
Rey didn’t mind when Finn inserted himself into her space. She found herself reaching for him sometimes, and she liked knowing he was there, liked sitting beside him on her bed with his knee touching hers, or resting her head on his shoulder after a long day training with Luke.
It wasn’t like that with Poe. Rey didn’t know why. She didn’t know what made her different to Poe, why he would lay his head in Jessika Pava’s lap and let her play with his hair while he told stories, or why he would clutch Snap Wexley’s shoulder as he doubled over in laughter, but never her. Never Rey.
Rey could scoot closer right now. She could invade Poe’s space if he wouldn’t invade hers.
She kept looking at his hand, now resting lightly on top of Finn’s leg. He had strong-looking hands, short fingers, tanned skin, blunt fingernails. Rey wondered how his hands would feel on her skin, if his palms were rough and calloused, if his touch would be gentle. She looked at his profile, his long nose and the lines by his eyes. She wondered if his hair was as soft as it looked.
Her breathing had quickened faintly and Rey made herself look away, made herself look at the holofilm. What was she doing?
She scrambled off the bed, obviously startling the two men. They were staring at her. “I need to use the ‘fresher,” Rey mumbled because she definitely couldn’t say, I need to go walk around for a while so I stop thinking about Poe’s hands on me.
“We can pause it until you get back,” Poe offered.
“Don’t bother; I don’t know what’s going on anyway. Like I said, you talk too much,” Rey said, and tried not to think about the way Poe’s mouth pursed like she had actually hurt his feelings.
Poe never cared when Rey got sharp with him. It was the foundation of their relationship. He didn’t care.
Rey felt sort of crummy anyway. It was her own fault that she hadn’t been paying attention, too busy looking at Poe’s dumb face and his dumb hands.
She walked down the hallway outside Poe and Finn’s quarters, not going anywhere in particular, and tried to stop thinking about Poe. She wished she knew what she wanted. It bothered her that Poe treated her differently but she didn’t know why, she didn’t know what she wanted. Did she just want him to be easy and familiar with her like he was with everyone else? Or did she actually want…
No. That was ridiculous. Right? It was ridiculous, she had already decided it was. Rey didn’t want… Maybe she was curious. It was all right to be curious. Objectively speaking, Poe was pleasant to look at, and he had nice hands, so Rey could be curious. That was all. Nothing weird about that.
Absolutely nothing at all.
“Rey?”
Startled, Rey spun around to see Jess approaching from the other end of the hallway. “Hello,” Rey said, hoping the heat she felt rising in her cheeks wasn’t as clearly visible as she feared it was. Jess couldn’t know Rey had been thinking about Poe and even if she could, it wasn’t like it had been anything bad. Right? Right.
“Thought you were having holofilm night with Finn and Poe.”
“We were, I just… just needed to use the ‘fresher.”
“You’re going the wrong way, then,” Jess said, not quite laughing. She pointed. “’Fresher’s that way, remember?”
“Right,” Rey muttered. “You know, I don’t need it after all.”
With more concern, Jess asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Yes, fine, absolutely.”
Jess was regarding Rey curiously but she only said, “Okay. Well, enjoy your film.”
“Will do,” Rey said, fleeing. So stupid. Ugh, she was so stupid.
And now she had to go back into Poe and Finn’s room before they started wondering whether she’d gotten sick or something. Unfortunately she was no better off than she had been when she’d left.
Maybe the only thing that mattered was that Rey wanted to be close to Poe like she was to Finn. Maybe the ‘why’ of it all didn’t matter.
Poe and Finn were talking when Rey went back in, though they stopped abruptly at Rey’s entrance. “We paused it for you anyway,” Poe told her. “We can go back a few scenes too, if you want?”
Rey felt a stab of regret for her words earlier. “Thanks, but that’s okay. I might have been exaggerating a little myself.”
As casually as she could, which probably wasn’t casual at all, but she could hope, right? Anyway, Rey casually sat back down on the bed, closer to Poe this time, pressing against his side and leaning her head on his shoulder.
She felt him stiffen, in horror or surprise or something else, Rey had no idea, but then he relaxed. He moved his arm out from between them and draped it behind Rey’s back instead.
Rey bit her lip so she wouldn’t smile, internally congratulating herself, proud of her own nerve. Then she made the mistake of looking across Poe at Finn, who was grinning like a loon. He gave her a thumb’s up.
Rey wished she could have pinched him without Poe noticing.
-
Rey could sense Luke’s presence as she came out of her meditation, the calm shape he made in her mind. She opened her eyes to his familiar worn face. “Hello, Master.”
“Rey,” he said.
She liked the way Luke said her name. He always sounded so fond.
“You’re getting better at this,” he said, sitting down across from her on the floor.
“I can feel everything,” Rey said eagerly. “The flow of the Force through the lifeforms on base, through the animals outside, the plants. I can feel how everything is connected.”
“And yourself?”
“That part’s harder,” Rey admitted, chewing on her lip. She had a hard time articulating it even in her own head, but it was like she… She was formless, conflicting pieces that didn’t quite fit into one being. Luke seemed so central and whole and perfect but Rey couldn’t see her own place in anything. She felt like she couldn’t grasp her own person even as she could see the pattern of life in everything else.
Luke was watching her, not in judgment or even in concern, but simply with a desire to hear what she was saying, to really hear it. “Do you still feel isolated here?”
Rey shook her head. “No. It’s not that, it’s… I know this is where I belong but I… I’m not sure I know who I am. I don’t know if that makes sense. There’s still this part of me that I feel is blocked, my history, where I came from, and I feel like I can’t move forward without going back first. Except I don’t know where to go back to. Maybe I never will.” Not Jakku. Jakku had held none of the answers; Rey knew that now.
For a moment Rey felt this odd sort of spasm within Luke’s being, this conflict of emotion in his mind that he was projecting outwards, but it was gone so quickly Rey was certain she must have imagined it. What he said was, “Perhaps you should stop looking outward for answers. You’re here, Rey, everything that matters is inside you,” he said, gently touching his fist to her chest, over where her heart was.
“I suppose you’re right,” Rey said, though that aching feeling of something being missing still lingered in her mind.
Maybe it always would.