Chapter Text
It’s flattering when people constantly praise Rey for being so strong, so tough, able to put up with everything that’s thrown at her. She wishes she could go back to her nomadic scavenger life on Jakku, so she doesn’t have to deal with people coming up to her to compliment her steadfast self. She smiles and forces her gratitude. She had honestly imagined company to be so different. She doesn’t feel like a person anymore. There’s a very distinct feeling that people are calling her brave and thanking her for ‘all she’s done’ just to make themselves feel better. She wishes they could see how blank her face is when she’s in her own company. She used to smile just on her own doing things she enjoyed, looking for treasure out of junk, imagining the universe and all it could have possibly held.
She’s seen the universe now, at least some of it. And she is caught so deeply in her disenchantment that she doesn’t see the top of the pit she’s fallen into. Yes, she’s still amazed at how wet things can even be. She remembers jumping into one of the lakes on D’Qar, and had panicked a little at the fear of drowning, but soon found that she could swim just as well as Poe could. It got her a fair share of weird looks from those around her. They’d obviously expected her to fail. The same fake smile had been forced to the surface, then.
It’s an absolutely horrible situation to be in, caught between being thanked for doing well at something she couldn’t understand and being scorned for doing well at all for the things she did.
She isn’t good at some things, though, and she takes a strange pride in not being so naturally good at things (as Luke tells her, is just a Force user thing). She isn’t good at most social cues, for one. Considering most of her company wasn’t even humanoid, it’s understandable, and quirky for the first week or so, but then becomes a hindrance once people realize she can’t take a joke. Or make one. She’s really bad at jokes altogether. She isn’t good at hugs, either. She recognizes it’s an affectionate gesture, and the Resistance is really just one big family, so hugs are almost as common as salutes on the base. She’s terrible at drinking, which Leia says is a trait her brother shares as well. Rey stumbles back to her room and almost forgets that she has to close the door. She’s so used to living completely alone, with no modern amenities. She feels disabled sometimes, not getting references to certain things, forgetting simple things like names and events she has to attend. She doesn’t have a concept of timekeeping, and is never punctual like everybody around her seems to be. She can’t confide in Finn about this last thing, because he’d been raised around something much stricter.
Finn is having the time of his life. After the initial wariness from most of the base at having an ex-stormtrooper among their ranks, everyone was amiable with him. Poe wouldn’t let him be alone for more than a few hours at a time, determined to make a tailgunner out of him. He had mentioned to her that life at the Resistance base was infinitely more relaxed than on Starkiller Base. He still makes sure to be the most professional he can be, which earns him respect among his new peers.
She hates that his eyes start to look at her with pity as time goes on. She doesn’t show up for important all-call events, she doesn’t often listen when superior officers are speaking. It gets her put on extra duty more often than not, which just confuses her and stresses her out. She didn’t ask for any of this. She misses the Finn that asked her to run away with him, to the edges of the known galaxy. She misses so many things, like her freedom and her imagination and she misses feeling happy or sad or angry. She can’t even make herself frustrated anymore.
She wonders what she could do to elicit an emotion from her tired body. Even the Force connection she has feels dull and stale.
The days are filled with pretending, and the nights are filled with panicked dreams. Luke hasn’t spoken with her in weeks. Finn has made too many excuses to escape being around her that she just doesn’t ask. BB-8 is actually doing their job, and only sometimes spares an acknowledging beep her direction in passing.
She thought she knew the meaning of lonely on Jakku, but she was mistaken. She was only familiar with being alone. Here on this crowded base, filled with people who look like her and speak the same language as her, she learns the meaning of being lonely.
***
She wakes from another nightmare-- falling, falling, a body is falling --and knows she has to leave the base. She pulls her boots on and creeps out of her room. Being out of her room after lights-out will certainly earn her extra duty, but she only feels a little guilty for Force-persuading the barracks watch into letting her through without any trouble. With the hood of her coat pulled up to shield her from knowing eyes and the frigid fall winds of D’Qar, she slips into the trees and walks and walks and walks through the forest, hoping to find a reprieve.
Maybe, she thinks, if I get lost, I won’t have to go back and deal with the consequences.
It’s a foolish thought and she knows it. She knows the pains of consequences better than most of the people on this planet. Sure, getting extra duty is one thing for not doing your job right, but what do they know of being hungry because they didn’t do their job well enough? What do they know of having to sacrifice sleep for safety, when the desert wolves are prowling through the sand? Maybe, she adds bitterly, I should give myself some credit for all I’ve gone through .
She is strong, to have lived this long and made it this far. She still believes she’s a nameless nobody, purposeless and burdened with a gift she never asked for. “I NEVER ASKED FOR ANY OF THIS!” she screams into the night. Some birds flutter away from the highest boughs of the trees. She’s not in control of her own body as she ignites her lightsaber and slashes through the forest, felling the trees around her with ease. There’s next to no resistance against her blade as she screeches and screams, her anxiety pouring into her movements.
She doesn’t know how long her scorched-earth rampage goes on for, but stops when she feels a presence nearby. She raises her saber. “Who’s there?!” she demands, barely out of breath. The presence doesn’t move, and she considers the clearing she had made. Her eyes are wild in the glow of the blue light in her hands. She forces herself to concentrate, and focus on her surroundings. She doesn’t feel threatened in any way by the presence. But it feels familiar. Panic rises in her chest and she thrusts out a hand, the Force flowing through her with no resistance. There’s an intake of breath, and the presence is gone.
She is frozen in place for a moment before sheathing the saber and sprinting back to base.
***
Her extra duty hours are getting up there to be legendary. Leia wonders if she’s trying to beat some record. Caught out of bed after hours, off base after hours? What’s going through that girl’s head? She knows it’s not meant to scare Rey, but it does when she summons her to the General’s Quarters. The girl is stock-still when she buzzes herself into the waiting room. “Come in, Rey.” Leia sighs when she greets her.
“Is there something you need to talk about, Rey?” she asks once she’s managed to convince the poor girl to sit.
Rey is taken aback by the sudden shift in how she thought this was going to go. She thought she was going to be yelled at, scolded, the like. She’s convinced that’s how this will still go, so she starts off a rambling, “General, I apologize for my behavior since being welcomed onto your base, I know I’m not as punctual or perfect as everybody else is, and--”
Leia raises a hand to stop her. “Rey, I’m not here to berate you on extra duty. It’s been brought to my attention, and yes, the number is quite alarming for how short you’ve been staying with us, but I’m here to ask you something else.” She takes pity on the shell-shocked padawan before her and continues. “How have you been recently? I know this must all come as a shock to you, after leaving Jakku so forcefully.”
There’s a long, tense moment and Leia wonders if perhaps she’s overstepped her bounds with Rey, but the girl speaks.
“I…I hate being told I’m so strong all the time.” she says, speaking with a confused expression on her face. “I feel like an outsider in a place I should feel like I belong in.” she winces. “I miss my friends. I miss Han.” Leia’s heart pierces in agony for a moment, an echo of the unforgettable pain she’d felt not a few months before. Rey goes on. “I can’t make myself feel...anything.” she shakes her head. “I don’t think I should be here.” she says suddenly, looking rather like a trapped animal. Leia can feel Rey’s anxiety building rapidly through the Force.
“Rey…”
“I have to go.” Rey bolts out of the chair, and opens the door before her with a swipe of her hand. The Force is crackling in the air as the young girl dashes away.
Leia is reminded of her son, and is terrified to not know the reason why.
***
The Millennium Falcon is parked at the end of the flightline. Rey had taken to sleeping there as of late, damn the extra duty, so her things were already packed. Chewie was doing repairs on something inside, and her emotions nearly bubble over for a moment as she lies. “Leia needs you.” she blurts out to the Wookie. He doesn’t ask questions, only runs down the gangway off the ship. Once he’s out of sight she starts to panic aloud, her breath coming in deep and fast gasps, eyes burning, chest aching, hands shaking, pressure building in her head, feet going numb and cold. She slams the repair hatch shut with the Force and ignites her lightsaber. She needs to let out this...whatever it is, inside of her. With a scream, she tosses the saber away, sheathing it. It rolls under a console somewhere. The lights flicker rapidly around her as she stumbles around the ship, closing the hatch door and entering the cockpit, preparing the pre-flight checklists. Once the shields are up she rises up into the air. She initiates the jump to lightspeed while still in the atmosphere, which severely damages the nearest five X-wing ships.
She has no idea what her coordinates are. She disables the tracking on the ship, cloaking herself to every inbound signal retriever, a convenient addition made by a young Han Solo. Her hands work on their own, her mouth still unable to do more than hyperventilate and moan with anxiety.
She pulls herself out of hyperspace once her mind is clearer. The downside to disabling the trackers is that she has no idea where she is in the universe. She sits back in the pilot’s seat and watches her hands shake until they don’t. She feels sick, and can’t make herself feel bad when she leans over the side of the chair and loses her lunch to the deck.
“Sorry, Han…” she mutters to herself, trying to stop her full-body tremors that have replaced the shakes in her hand. She feels cold, and realizes that the trackers also turned off the central heating. She’s deep in space somewhere, and doesn’t see a nearby star. She wonders where the nearest system is, because that’s all she can do, really. She flips on the autopilot and stumbles her way back to the common area. Maybe there’s some rag she can clean her sick up with.
After she’s done with that, she finds herself restless, but without energy. The days where she couldn’t bear to make herself leave the foot of the AT-AT she called home felt familiar. She went hungry because she knew she’d be hungry at the end of the day, regardless. She’d just curled up at the threshold of the opening, one hand playing idly with the coarse sand.
She curls up in the bunk area she’d claimed as hers, and sleeps, under a blanket too thin to combat the chill of deep space.
***
The blare of four alarms at once wake her. She feels weaker than when she had gone to sleep, and has to crawl to the cockpit to see what’s going on. Her teeth are chattering and her vision is so blurry that she can hardly decipher the readouts on the console. She manages to get the meaning, though:
They’re going to be boarded.