21. Chapter 21

            Rey pilots her stolen shuttle down to Coruscant. On the way down, she disables the tracker, erases any prior flight logs from its navicomputer, and patches herself up with the shuttle’s medpac. The black market dealer she sells it to shows a great deal of interest Padmé Amidala’s silver hair ornament, which Rey will not “throw in” no matter how much she is needled. She has to accept a frustratingly low price for the ship in order to ensure no further questions asked.

            With some of the credits from that deal, she purchases an ill-fitting set of clothes, a sewing kit, a pack in which to store her saberstaff hilt and odder possessions, and an overnight stay at a seedy-looking inn. But although she tosses and turns on the mattress for some time, and it seems as though her very bones ache with weariness, sleep does not find her.

            Instead, Rey decides to make herself useful. She washes herself, takes in her new tunic and cuffs the trousers, and salvages what she can from her gala outfit. Her stockings are intact, if dirty; she carefully folds them and sets them aside to sell later, if she must. The fine gown is ruined beyond repair, stained with ash and soot, its fragile fabric victim to a multitude of small tears. When she lays it out on the floor and takes her cutting shears to it, she is only able to harvest enough material from the outer layers for a scarf to cover her face and hair. From the sturdier underskirt, she thinks she has enough to make a second tunic, and she slices it up accordingly and stuffs the pieces into her pack.

            Kylo’s cloak is in much better condition, singed in a couple of places but otherwise intact. She leaves it alone. It’s unlikely, but he may, someday, want it back.

            In the morning she boards a ship to Onderon, then from Onderon to Mandalore, from Mandalore to Lothal, and so on, zig-zagging her way through the galaxy. Sometimes she purchases a ticket for one trip and stows away on another to throw off any pursuers, although none come for her. She tries, and fails, to doze in each transport, and instead makes herself small, hunches her shoulders, and takes the fabric out of her bag so she can work on her gala gown tunic. No one aside from the occasional flirtatious bore pays a small woman preoccupied with her sewing much mind. They certainly don’t see any resemblance between a meek seamstress and Rey, terrorist, assassin, and Jedi pretender, whose constructed holographic image has flickered in almost every spaceport for three years.

            It takes Rey two days to make her way back to Akiva, and during that time she hears the dozens of conflicting rumors rippling their way through the galactic gossip circles. The First Order had been attacked at its annual gala by the Resistance — no! by actors within — no! by a force that had come from beyond the borders of charted space. Kylo Ren was dead, driven into hiding, driven mad, or gloating, because he had successfully orchestrated the whole thing as an excuse to crack down harder on security in the Outer Rim. Or perhaps Armitage Hux was the mastermind, or perhaps he was the one who had been killed.

            Or perhaps the mastermind was the girl Ren had brought as his date, the mysterious beauty — or is she truly a beauty? Some would say she’s plain, some that she lacks the appropriate number of arms or eyes, some that her teeth aren’t nearly sharp enough — who, after she vaulted a table with a lightsaber in hand, was generally agreed to be the Jedi witch that haunted the wanted holos. (A hero of the Resistance, claim a few voices, always in hushed tones.)

            Conflicting propaganda broadcast over the HoloNet as the Hux and Ren factions vie for control of it do nothing to put any of these rumors to bed. Everyone is thoroughly uncertain of which side is winning the First Order civil war. In the absence of solid news, most people simply go about their routines. Stormtroopers remain on patrol, checking identification; a handwave and a Force suggestion takes care of them. Rey keeps her face hidden and avoids trouble. She tries to keep her mind off all of it, and off Kylo Ren, but with the constant chatter around her doing so had been impossible. She notices a strange side-effect, though: hearing him spoken of impersonally, as some larger-than-life figure, desensitizes her somewhat. Now it barely even stings to hear his name.

            The third day after the gala, Rey finally touches down in Myrra, wilting from lack of sleep and nourishment. She drags herself to the doorstep of Resistance sympathizers she knows in the city, a young married couple. She must look like death warmed over, because they quickly usher her into their spare room while they contact the base at the Vigilance over a secure channel. Rey drops to the mattress, and feels an eerie echo of the movement, as if someone very far away is mimicking her. Her eyes are already closed, and leaden, and she can’t will them open to look. But as the currents of slumber bear her downstream, she dreams that her nose bumps up against a sleeping person’s chest, that she turns her head toward him to hear to his heartbeat.

            “Do you think she’s all right?”

            “I don’t know. She looks all right.”

            “You’d think she’d have woken up when she sensed us coming. But if she’s really tired, maybe…”

            A pair of young female voices. Rey shifts a little, squeezes her eyes shut tighter. She’s not ready to wake yet. She could sleep for decades.

            “I guess we don’t know what happened,” the second speaker says, a little ominously. “What she’s been through.”

            “We know part of it,” says the first. “We know about the dance. Everybody knows about the dance. We just don’t know why, or really… I guess you’re right. We don’t know anything.”

            Rey groans softly. She’d hoped to avoid these conversations, but as soon as she saw those holodroids at the gala she should have known it’d be impossible. Without opening her eyes, she says, “Kaela. Tamar. Hello.” She pulls the blankets up over her shoulders. “Remind me what the Jedi Code says about idle gossip?”

            “Oh!” Kaela exclaims, mortified. “I— well, we—”

            “The Jedi Code doesn’t say too much about gossip,” Tamar says, almost automatically. “It’s frowned upon but not forbidden. Gossiping never drove anyone to the Dark Side.”

            “Teacher’s pet,” teases Kaela, fondly.

            Rey rubs her eyes, then opens them. Her two students, one blushing redhead and one wide-eyed Togruta, kneel by the mattress, peering at her. When she turns her head, they fall back on their heels to give her some breathing room. “Maybe we should add in a new rule, then,” she says. “One that deals with gossiping about people right in front of their faces.”

            That earns her a chastened “Yes, Rey,” and a “Sorry, Rey.” “We thought you were asleep,” says Kaela, “And it’s just, the scuttlebutt has it that—”

            “Hey!” calls Finn’s voice from the hallway outside. “You guys were supposed to tell me when she woke up!”

            “Finn,” Rey whispers.

            And before she can even blink, Finn’s in the room with her, kneeling by her bedside, arms wrapped tight around her. He’s warm, and even his scent is comforting— the cracked leather of his jacket, the jungle rains of Akiva. Rey buries her face in the juncture of his neck and shoulder as tears prick at her eyes. She won’t cry, she can’t cry, not with two of her students there, but it hadn’t hit her until just this moment that she’s safe. In Finn’s familiar embrace, she finally feels her muscles relax, her mind quieting, just a little.

            “I’m sorry,” Finn says quietly. “I couldn’t shake them. They heard I was coming to get you.”

            Rey chuckles. “It’s okay. I’m glad to see them. And you.”

            Finn pulls back. Over her shoulder, she sees Tamar and Kaela glance at each other. She’s used to those glances; whether or not she and Finn are an item has long been the subject of base-wide rumors. She realizes for the first time — she hadn’t thought about it before — that those rumors have probably grown a little more complicated in the days since the First Order gala.

            “It’s so good to see you,” Finn says, with such intense sincerity that Rey feels a pang of guilt, for reasons she can’t quite understand. “All that time with no contact, Rey—”

            “I couldn’t. It was too risky—”

            “I know, but with you in the First Order—”

            “I know. Finn, I—” Rey yawns, wide. “Sorry. I’ve been traveling for three days straight. I’ve barely had any time to rest my eyes.”

            “It’s okay.” Finn lays a hand on her shoulder. “Look, it’s pouring outside. Our hosts have offered us tea and cake before we head out. You can bring us up to speed on—” He notices something in her eyes and switches tracks. “We can tell you about all the excitement you’ve missed. The three of us have had a few adventures.”

            Rey presses her hands down into the bed to sit up straighter. Her back is sore from all that slouching, from making herself invisible. “The Force-sensitive children? You found them?”

            “Yeah, we’ve got them. They’re safe. One of them’s a little young, but we couldn’t leave him behind.”

            Young. Rey glances at Tamar and Kaela, still wide-eyed adolescents. They’re all so young. Her stomach twists, remembering how Kylo Ren had accused her back in that cell, how he’d posited that if her pupils were ever called to fight for the Resistance, she wouldn’t be able to deny that call. She feels a creeping sense of cold—

            “We saw you on Canto Bight!” Kaela interjects.

            That’s enough to pull Rey back to the present. “What?”

            Tamar elbows Kaela in the side, but she’s not deterred. “Ow! Look, we’re going to tell her eventually, we might as well tell her now. Rey, we came in before the First Order ship appeared in the sky and had to lay low until it left. When we saw they’d blocked off a whole street we went to see what all the fuss was about.” She pauses. “We saw you with that awful general. Tamar was about to fight the entire Canto Bight Police Department.”

            “I could have,” Tamar huffs. “They didn’t look so tough.”

            Despite herself, Rey’s mouth twitches. “That’s a great way to get arrested.”

            “Well, we didn’t,” says Tamar.

            “Finn saw to that,” Kaela adds.

            Finn, ever-modest, clears his throat. “Tea sounds great,” he says. “Rey, don’t you think tea sounds great?”

            “I think tea sounds great,” Rey agrees, pushing herself out of bed. Finn steadies her with that hand at her shoulder, and until she stands she doesn’t realize how badly she needed it. Her entire body feels as though it’s made of lead, dense like a collapsing neutron star. “Lead the way.”

            Finn does, but Tamar and Kaela lag behind. Noting their conspicuous absence, and following the inkling that they’re troubled by something, Rey breathes in through her mouth, out through her nose, and focuses her senses to hear their whispering.

            “Why did you tell her that!” Tamar says. “She doesn’t need to know we saw her get dragged around.”

            “You didn’t feel it?” Kaela asks. “Something threw her off-balance. It was like— there was a cloud around her. I was just trying to get her back.”

            Tamar is quiet for a second. Then she murmurs, “Yeah. I feel it too. Something’s not right.”

            “Of course something’s not right. She spent the last two weeks with Kylo—”

            Upon hearing that note of disgust, Rey stops eavesdropping. She glances at Finn and notices the lines of worry turning down the corners of his mouth, tempering his relief. She’ll have to keep better control over her emotions. If Tamar and Kaela notice, if Finn notices, then she’s not managing herself well. She has to do better.

            Sure enough, even with no Force-sensitivity, Finn senses her unease. “Hey,” he says.

            Rey looks up at him. “Hm?”

            Finn frowns, trying to figure out what to say to her. Finally, he decides on, “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

            She forces a smile. “I know, Finn.”

            But she doesn’t know that she can tell him about this. She doesn’t know that he’ll understand.

            They return to the Vigilance just in time to greet the returning bombing fleet. Poe and Rose and the rest of the complement assigned to the Dreadnought mission had been traveling back with extra caution, taking only seldom-traversed hyperspace routes. Rey is thankful to find the hangar packed with bodies, because she, Finn, and her two students melt away easily into the crowd, and thus don’t attract much attention. That is, until Poe, who climbs out of his X-wing to much raucous cheering, spots them.

            “Hey!” he calls, waving. “Finn! Rey! Rey, you’re back!”

            Rey arranges her face to beam at him and tries to ignore the shift in the energy around her. It seems she’s unwittingly adopted the Kylo Ren habit of reading the room, and can’t avoid sensing the curiosity, the admiration, the— suspicion. But that doesn’t matter for long because Poe’s cut a path to them to hug Finn, clapping him on the back and laughing wildly, BB-8 beeping away behind him.

            “Ah, it’s so good to see you,” he says, squeezing Finn hard before releasing him. “Both of you. Rey—” He moves toward her as well, but she notices the briefest hesitation in his voice and his manner before he says, “Can I get a hug, too?”

            “Why wouldn’t you?” Rey asks, wrapping her arms around him. “You’ve earned it. I saw the whole thing via holo. That was some fancy flying.”

            “Okay, okay.” Poe returns the hug with some care, which is very unlike him, and when he pulls back he ruffles her hair, lowers his voice. “I’m just trying to, you know.”

            Rey frowns. “No, I don’t know.”

            “Well, I just—” A matching frown flickers across his face. Rey tries to get a sense of his thoughts, but with the crush of minds pressing against hers, she can’t quite pick his out. “Okay. Later. It’s good to have you back in one piece.”

            “Right,” says Rey, unsettled. “Sure. Well—”

            A roar behind her, and then two furry arms lift her clear off the ground. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was about to say to Poe, but whatever it was is lost forever due to Chewbacca’s timely intervention. Rey thinks she should be grateful. They don’t need to open that crate of conduit worms right now.

            “Chewie!” she exclaims, as Chewbacca woofs Shyriiwook endearments and admonishments into her hair. “Of course I’m glad to see you— no, I didn’t tell you where I was going. This is exactly why! I know your feelings on how it went last time. Don’t call me a youngling, just because you’ve two centuries on me doesn’t mean— sorry, I smell like what?”

            Chewbacca puts her down and growls to her more softly, as if anyone standing around them might speak the language. Rey listens, brow creasing, and when she understands what he’s telling her the ever-present weight — on her shoulders, in her belly — returns.

            “No,” she says quietly. “I’ve washed, and I spent the next few days bumping into hundreds of people. There’s no way I still—” A slight groan of protest from Chewie, and Rey nods. “Yes, I understand. You’d know him anywhere.” Me too, she doesn’t say aloud. “Well, I’ll just have to use better soap from now on, in case there’s anyone whose sense of smell’s as good as yours.”

            Chewie strokes her hair affectionately, petting her with his large hand, and keeps peppering her with questions. Rey doesn’t have the heart to refuse him answers. It’s different than with Poe, or even Finn. “No, he’s in one piece, at least. Beyond that, I don’t know. But I thought you’d be angrier.”

            A plaintive moan. Rey nods her understanding. “I know,” she whispers. “I know. I know you can miss him and still be angry.” A huff. “Yes, he is… very stupid.” Another huff, and she laughs, wetly. “Yes, I suppose I’m stupid too.”

            “Rey!” says Rose’s voice, from behind her. It must have been more difficult for her to fight her way over than it had been for Poe. “I’m so glad to— are you okay?”

            “What?” Rey turns toward Rose, pulling away from Chewie’s embrace. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

            “Because… you’re crying.”

            “Oh.” Rey brings a hand to her face, feels wetness on her cheek. She’s relieved to be back, she should be relieved, but with all these people around, she feels only as though she might suffocate. “I’m just so happy to be back,” she lies, and then she excuses herself and retreats to her room.

            Life went on in Rey’s absence, and continues to go on now that she has returned. It never stops merely because the heart wills it so. Rey finds, upon resuming her teaching, that her older students had been able to capably establish a holding pattern until she got back, that no one seems to have suffered terribly in her absence. She meets the two new arrivals Finn, Tamar, and Kaela had picked up while she was away, and is pleased to see that Taylin has integrated a little better into the group, always chatting with one or two of the younger students whenever he comes in from breaks. One morning when Rey enters her classroom, she glimpses Tamar and Kaela holding hands before they quickly separate. She smiles to herself, although she feels a stab in her chest that she’d rather not probe.

            Rey devotes the better part of her days to her students, preferring to focus on them rather than herself. She is able to fall back into the rhythms of instruction easily, with the exception of the morning meditation, the time designated to being alone with one’s thoughts and the Force, to grounding, to balance. Rey knows that she must be in dire need of meditation because she dreads it so much, but her thoughts always pull her straight to the catacombs under Myrra, to the Dark, and the cold, and the shame, and the failure. She sees the face of that girl, Ben’s pupil, asking what Rey has to offer, and even in her visions Rey comes up tongue-tied and empty-handed. She sees Hux, snarling to let everything burn. And she sees Ben, heartbreak etched into his every feature, Ben, astounded as lightning creases his palm, Ben, telling her to run home.

            Repeatedly, in meditation, she is forced to confront the simple fact that she feels him nowhere, which means he’s still closing her out of their bond. She hadn’t realized how accustomed she’d grown to being able to sense his emotions, how strangely comforting that had become. And while some things come to her unbidden, unexpectedly, over the course of the day — the wrongness of sleeping on a mattress without his weight to counterbalance hers; the phantom sensation of his fingers massaging her scalp in the shower; the urge to look to her left and see him sitting there at mealtimes — it’s the naked hurt on his face in the hangar that haunts her quietest waking moments.

            Rey hadn’t thought him capable of feeling such hurt anymore. She hadn’t thought he still had a heart to break.

            She’d been wrong.

            Should it matter, though? The feeling in her chest tells her it should. But the long list of sins he’s committed against her, against his own family, against the galaxy, says maybe this isn’t so important in the scheme of things. Maybe he could stand to take a little hurt. Maybe it was just his turn. But then why does it trouble her so?

            Unwilling to engage in this debate with herself, she begins skimping on meditations, opting to help guide Taylin through his. He, too, is pulled to that dark place in the catacombs, and Rey knows that someday soon she will have to bring him down there. She focuses on strengthening his resolve, and tries to ignore the inquisitive looks Kaela, who seems to sense better than anyone that Rey can’t find her own balance, constantly shoots her.

            It’s not just her pupils who have questions she can’t answer. She is already aware of a new trail of whispers that seems to follow her wherever she goes, like a second shadow. Rey is no stranger to whispers — even before she left on her mission, some of her Resistance peers had found her odd, or intense — but these have a sinister, speculative bent to them. With her unwillingness to say much even to her friends, depriving them of ammunition to combat lies, the rumors only grow.

            Rey’s safe haven is the hangar. When she isn’t teaching, she keeps to herself and devotes her time to repairing the Millennium Falcon. The ship has a litany of complaints, and some, as R2-D2 relays to her with some sarcasm, are decades old. Rey has slowly been chipping away at them, although she doubts she’ll ever make the ship completely happy. Chewie, the only being who seems to judge her for nothing, joins her occasionally, and mostly she is allowed merely to be.

            But even there, her peace of mind can be interrupted. One day she enters the hangar to find a group of pilots chatting in a circle near their starfighters. When they see Rey, they fall silent, tighten the circle, and resume the conversation with hushed voices. Rey picks up her toolkit and straps on her goggles to begin another maintenance session. Despite her best instincts, she sharpens her hearing, too.

            “I always thought there was something off about her. You have to have a screw loose to even think about shipping yourself off to that monster, much less volunteer.”

            “Maybe you just have to be devoted to the cause.”

            “Oh, please. Would you?”

            “Well…”

            “I mean, I’d do a lot, but I wouldn’t do that.”

            “But do you really think she—” This speaker trails off, looking over at Rey, who steadfastly resumes tightening a bolt on the Falcon’s landing gear.

            “They were definitely fucking.” A man’s voice, confident, certain. “You’ve seen the holo?”

            “No, I haven’t yet.”

            “Oh, I have. The way he looks at her, there’s no question.”

            “Then it’s a good thing she’s on our side.”

            “We still know that for sure? That she’s on our side?”

            “She came back, didn’t she?”

            “What if he told her to?” A pause. “People have deserted for less. And she’s a Jedi. They have vows, right? If she broke them, it had to be—”

            “Hey,” says Poe’s voice, at a normal speaking volume. “That’s enough.”

            Chatter from the pilots immediately ceases. Rey looks over. She doesn’t bother trying to pretend otherwise. Poe can be heard across the hangar. The man says, “Commander Dameron, we were just—”

            “I don’t want to hear it,” Poe says. “Rey’s a friend and, moreover, she’s a hero. If you’ve got a problem with her, you’ve got a problem with me. Understand?”

            No one says anything.

            “Hello?” Poe asks. He looks more livid than Rey has ever seen him, his handsome face reddening against his orange pilot fatigues. “Did none of you hear me? Am I making myself clear?”

            Rey doesn’t wait to hear the answer. She throws her goggles down, drops her tools, and removes herself from the scene before her presence makes anything worse.

            A minute or two later, she hears someone running to catch up with her. She knows it’s Poe before she even hears his voice. “Rey,” he calls. “Hey, Rey.”

            “Leave me alone,” she says tightly. “It’s fine.”

            “It is not fine, okay?” He reaches for her, grabs her arm, making her stop in her tracks. “After everything you’ve done, they don’t get to talk about you like that.”

            She whirls around to face him, wrenching her arm from his grasp. “Why?” she demands. “They’re just saying what everyone’s thinking. No reason to punish them for it.”

            “Well, everyone is full of shit.” Poe bangs his foot against a nearby crate, hard, and scowls. “Look, I haven’t told anybody about the talk we had before you left. And I know you don’t want to discuss what happened. But I know enough—”

            “You don’t know anything!”

            “Hey,” he says, taking a step back from her, holding up his hands. She hadn’t realized that she snarled it like that, but Poe mostly just seems worried. “Hey, it’s all right. It’s just me.”

            “I’m sorry, Poe. I just.” Rey rubs her wrist across her forehead, trying to wick away some goggle sweat. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

            “It’s okay.” He pauses, then asks awkwardly, “Have you talked to anybody? Like a doctor or—”

            “What?”

            “You know, like a head one.” He motions at his temple. “A head shrinker.”

            “Why would I talk to a—” She stops, meets his concerned brown eyes. And she finally gets a bead on what he’s thinking, the theory he’s formulated based on the conversation they had before she left, her self-isolation after returning. “Oh, Poe. No, it’s not— it wasn’t like that.”

            “Rey…”

            “It wasn’t,” Rey insists, but she can tell Poe doesn’t believe her. In a perverse way, she wonders if there’s an element of comfort to the fiction. Of course Poe wouldn’t want to see Rey hurt, he never would, but maybe it’s easier to believe that Kylo Ren forced himself on her than to think she bedded him willingly. If it wasn’t like that, then what was it like?

            “Okay,” Poe says quietly. “All right.” He hesitates, then adds, “Look, this isn’t my strong suit. You know me, I’m an action guy. But if you need to talk…”

            “I’m fine.”

            “Right.”

            “I’ll see you at dinner.”

            Poe nods, and he lets her go on her way.

            Rey does not see him at dinner. She avoids the mess and brings food into her room, only to find she’s lost her appetite. Then she tries meditating to no avail, her connection to the Force jagged and spiky, as if it’s sprouted thorns. All she can do in the end is lie on her side staring at the wall, arms wrapped around her middle, until sleep finally claims her.

            Rose comes to find her the next morning, her students’ day off. Rey, irritated at what she perceives as being tag-teamed by her friends, snaps, “Rose, I swear, if you’re here to tell me that I can talk to you—”

            “I was running some tests,” Rose says quickly, brandishing a datapad. “The starboard bridge deflector shield generator isn’t functioning properly. We might not need it right now, but in the event of an attack, we’re going to want it. I was wondering if you’d help me take a look.”

            “Oh,” says Rey, immediately feeling sheepish. “Yes, of course.”

            Rose brightens. “Yeah? Okay. It’s still raining, so bring your cloak. I’ll meet you up on the bridge.”

            True to her word, Rey finds Rose on the bridge a few minutes later with her datapad and a glowrod. The Resistance doesn’t use the bridge much, since they’re not flying the Vigilance anywhere, and its upper sections are in particularly bad shape. A few pieces of the hull have rusted through here, and puddles gather on the floor, which makes walking slippery and dangerous. Rey wonders if they’ll have to go crawling around outside in the storm to locate the source of the problem, which would mean they’d have to go back for special climbing equipment. In space, it’s easy to forget just how tall these ships are. Not so planetside, with the wind whistling past the transparisteel windows.

            Rey uses the Force to move ceiling panels aside as Rose tucks her datapad under her armpit and points her glowrod up at wires and ducts. They’re below the shield generator now, and with only a little bit of searching the culprit quickly reveals itself: corroded power cables.

            “At least that’s an easy fix,” Rose sighs. “There’s probably a leak. It’s so hard to keep things shielded from the elements up here.”

            “Ironic,” Rey points out. “Shielding the shield generator.”

            “Ha!” Rose smiles. “Yeah. Well, when the weather dies down, we’ll replace them. And maybe put in a tarp or something to keep them dry for the rest of our stay. But we should cut power to this sector temporarily to keep any other wires from shorting.” She makes a note on her datapad.

            Rey gives her a sideways glance. “I feel like you could’ve found this yourself.”

            “Huh?”

            “I don’t know that this was a two-person job.”

            “Oh, maybe not,” says Rose, nose still in her datapad. She looks up at Rey, and adds, “But maybe you’re also not in your room anymore.”

            “That’s… true.”

            Rose tucks her datapad back under her arm. Unlike Poe or Finn, she doesn’t move to touch Rey. She just says, “I know it’s tough, but we trust you. Even if half the people on the base are being real sleemos about everything, we’ve got your back. No matter what.”

            Rey nods. Up here, with the monotonous drone of the rain against the hull as the only background noise, she feels strangely calm. She looks at Rose, and momentarily considers telling her everything, but then decides she doesn’t want to test her friends’ trust to that degree just yet. Instead, she says, “I don’t know if I deserve that. Lately I don’t feel like I deserve any of the faith people put in me.”

            Rose listens, mulls this over. And she just asks, “Why?”

            “I’ve been rash.” Rey doesn’t want to get too specific. “I’ve had lapses in judgment. And I’ve— hurt someone.”

            “Sounds like you’re human,” says Rose.

            It’s such a blunt, simple statement, and it gets to the heart of the matter so quickly that it takes Rey aback. She thinks if one of her students or friends had come to her with the same grievance, that might be her response. Part of the human condition. It’s just difficult to see that when looking within, rather than without.

            “I suppose,” she admits. “But what do I do about that?”

            Rose shrugs. “Wish I knew. Aren’t you the one full of arcane wisdom?”

            “Usually.”

            “But if I had to hazard a guess…” Rose points her glowrod back up at the corroded cables. “If you know how you hurt them, and it really matters to you, you try to patch it up.”

            Rey is quiet for a second. If only things were that simple. She asks, “Is it worth it?”

            “Patching things up?”

            Rey nods. “I feel like some people would say it’s not, in this case.”

            Rose taps her chin with the glowrod, casting shadows on her own face. “I’m going to act like I have no idea who we’re talking about,” she says. “I’m going to pretend you’ve wronged a hypothetical person named… Joe Starship.”

            “Fair enough.”

            “Joe Starship is a murderous asshole and you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it.”

            Rey is startled into laughter. It feels good. She presses a hand to her stomach and shakes her head, trying to suppress the smile. “Rose!”

            “What!”

            “Look, I know this may be difficult to believe,” Rey says, “but there is something weighing on my conscience that involves our mutual friend Joe—”

            “Oh, Joe is not my friend.”

            “I know that. But against all reason this does matter to me, so I’m trying to decide what, if anything, to do about it.”

            Rose sighs. “Okay. Well, you know my thoughts, but ultimately you’re the judge of whether it’s worth smoothing things over or not. Just remember that you can’t right all the wrongs in the galaxy, which is sometimes what I think you want to do. There’s a lot on you, Rey. I don’t envy that.”

            “Believe me, I understand.”

            “I guess if you were me, and I were you, I’d probably say something cryptic and Jedi-like, like ‘Sometimes you need hurt to heal,’ or ‘New life blooms from scorched earth.’”

            “I don’t sound like that,” Rey says, with some reproach.

            “You kinda do, sometimes.”

            Rey looks around at the bridge, thinking about how the Vigilance sat here, near-undisturbed, for three decades, left to rust and rot as the jungle reclaimed it. And she thinks of how the Resistance had come in, made it habitable, given it purpose again. She ruminates for a minute or so, until finally she says, “I think I may be able to salvage something. Not everything, but something.”

            “That’s your thing,” Rose points out. “You’re a salvager.”

            “That’s a nice way of putting it. Most people say scavenger.”

            “You basically salvaged the entire Jedi Order.”

            Another smile tugs at Rey’s mouth, which has so long been weighted by frowns. Forever, it seems. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she says. “I guess I’ll see what I can do.”

            “That’s a start,” says Rose.

            “Yes,” Rey agrees, thoughts already far away. “It is.”

            Rey hasn’t spoken to Leia Organa since her return. The General was resting when she arrived, Connix had said. Rey feared the effort of making contact from halfway across the galaxy had exhausted her, and didn’t press. She delivered her debrief on the gala and the First Order civil war to Poe, Connix, and D’Acy, careful to omit any of her personal issues and stick mainly to the coup. From Connix, she learned with some relief that Nara Ordula had escaped the Conquest II and managed to settle temporarily, under an assumed name, on Coruscant. With limited casualties, and Rey herself back in one piece, the entire operation had been a win for the Resistance, even more so because of the First Order split.

            That settled, Rey waits for the General to summon her. And Leia never does.

            So her fifth day back on the Vigilance, once she’s spent some time mulling over the concept of salvaging, Rey goes to Leia’s chambers, instead. She draws up to the door, clutching Padme Amidala’s hair ornament in one hand, but before she can even knock, Leia calls, “Come in.”

            Rey feels a sense of kinship; she has the bad habit of doing that to her friends when she senses them near. The door opens for her, and she steps inside Leia’s personal quarters, which are modestly furnished but far more spacious than Rey’s room. Leia sits on a sofa in a receiving area, her trusty walking stick leaning nearby, a datapad on the side table. Her health does not seem to have improved since their last one-on-one conversation, but Rey is relieved to note that it hasn’t deteriorated either. Even so, the air of frailty around her is distressing. Frail seems like a word to which Leia should be immune, one that should never apply to her.

            “I don’t mean to interrupt,” says Rey, noting the datapad.

            “You didn’t,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for you, Rey. I knew you’d come when you were ready. Have a seat.”

            Rey crosses the room to come sit on Leia’s right side, perching on the edge of the sofa. She begins, “I’m here to return something that belongs to you.”

            The General’s keen eyes roam over Rey, inspecting her, no doubt noticing things that Rey herself had not. “I don’t recall giving you anything.”

            “It’s a gift I received from someone else,” Rey says. “A collector I met during my mission. He gave me this.” She passes Leia the heirloom, and when Leia takes it, Rey notices for the first time how pronounced the veins in the back of her hands are, her skin papering them like thin, translucent parchment. “He said it belonged to your late mother, Padmé Amidala.”

            “And so it did,” Leia muses, tracing her fingers down the ornament’s ribbing. “I’ve seen the holos.” She turns the ornament over in her hands, captivated by it. “I once owned a collection of my mother’s things, but they were all lost. This…”

            Clearly moved, Leia trails off, and Rey watches her run her fingers over the edge of the hair piece. “I’m sorry,” Rey says, feeling the sudden need to explain herself. “I would have given it to you sooner. I had to clean off the blood.”

            Leia lifts her chin to wrench her gaze from the ornament and raises an eyebrow at Rey. “Blood?”

            Rey feels her own blood rush to her cheeks. Here’s an antique of inestimable worth, not to mention personal value to Leia Organa, and she has to confess to handling it like a weapon. “Just a little,” she says, slightly abashed. “I threw it at Armitage Hux as he fled. It nicked his arm.”

            Leia chuckles. “From what I know of my birth mother, she’d appreciate your creativity. And your spirit.”

            Rey doesn’t know how to respond to the compliment. The talk with Rose had helped, but she still doesn’t feel particularly deserving of praise. This seems like a good chance to change the subject. “I’m here for another reason.”

            “I thought you might be.” Leia watches her with bright, intelligent eyes. “Go on.”

            “With the First Order divided, I think we may have a real opportunity to come to some kind of accord with one side. Hux will never compromise, but Kylo Ren might yet listen to reason.” Rey expects to be interrupted, but Leia doesn’t say anything, so she continues, “I believe that if the option is presented to him, there’s a chance he’ll take it. And that might open up other possibilities.”

            “Rey,” Leia says, voice firm but not unkind. “This is more than I’d dare hope for. You understand why.”

            “I know. I do. After all he’s done, I wouldn’t hope for it either. But…” Rey turns on the couch to face her. “He still has a heart,” she says. “I know that, because— I’ve seen it.” She rubs her nose, and doesn’t add that she also broke it. “In his own small ways, he’s been seeking balance, and that does give me hope. Hope that more good might come of all this than destroying two Dreadnoughts.”

            Leia is quiet for a moment. She says, “I think you know that private actions don’t necessarily have bearing on public politics.”

            “Right,” says Rey. “But he’s not a true First Order believer. He can be swayed. The only thing that really stands in the way of an alliance is his pride, and…” She pauses, shifts. “For reasons I’d rather not go into, I feel like he might be willing to set pride aside for your counsel. But the window to act is very short. If too much time passes, he may just go back to what he knows.”

            “My counsel,” Leia repeats. She looks Rey over again, which makes Rey feel somewhat laid bare. “Ah, I see.”

            Rey swallows. “I’m able to contact him to bring him the offer, through our connection. He’s closing me off, but I think I know how to reach him. It’s probably best if I’m not involved much after that, though. He won’t want to talk to me.”

            Leia rests one of her hands on top of Rey’s, as she had before Rey left for her mission. “And you?”

            “What?”

            “You want to talk to him?”

            Rey blinks. “This isn’t— about me.”

            “That’s not what I asked.” Leia keeps her gaze fixed on Rey, calm, steady, piercing. “He never harmed you? I know that’s what you feared. I feared it too.”

            “Oh. No.” She shakes her head. “Although he did make a lot of noise about it, trying to convince himself he could.”

            The spark of a smile lights in Leia’s eyes, although it never quite reaches her mouth. “You don’t know how relieved I am to hear that.”

            “Probably not as relieved as I am to still be alive.”

            “Probably not,” Leia agrees.

            Rey takes a breath. “There was a time when I thought it would be simple for him to turn, and I was wrong. If there’s a path that leads him back to the Light, it’s long and winding. But I saw enough of him — of Ben — to know that there is still a chance.” She sits up a little straighter. “I can’t turn him, but maybe a partnership with the Resistance can set him on that path. Maybe it can be the beginning of something.” She thinks of his students, of how even as he wreaked havoc across the galaxy, he had made choices in private that mirrored her own. “Maybe something’s already begun.”

            Leia doesn’t comment on that. She says, “We might not like the results if we sit this out. Coming to an accord with his faction, if he’s willing, is a sound strategy. No one needs Brendol Hux’s son running the galaxy.” A pause. “Anything after that, we’ll see. You believe there’s a possibility, and I value that. Luke does too, especially after Ben saved your life.”

            Rey had forgotten that Leia and Luke were in contact. “He told you about that?”

            “He did.”

            Scowling, Rey glares into the corner of the room, as if she might be able to intimidate Luke Skywalker out of the Living Force and make him manifest right there. “What else did Master Skywalker tell you?”

            “Enough,” Leia replies, with a small, sly smile this time.

            Rey groans.

            “But he trusts you. As do I.” Leia looks back down at the ornament she still holds. “In fact, I’d like you to hold onto this for me.”

            “Sorry?”

            “Tell yourself it’s for safekeeping, if you want.” She presses it back into Rey’s hand, leaving her no other option but to take it. “The truth is that you’ve earned it, Rey. You were willing to make grave sacrifices, and I know that you’ve suffered through intense personal trials. Now you’ve taken it upon yourself to prioritize the greater good and forge a compromise, even in the midst of heartbreak. No,” she says, when Rey opens her mouth to protest. “Don’t argue. I was young once. I know what it looks like.”

            Rey pulls the ornament closer into her lap. A good excuse to look down at it, and away from Leia. “You must think me foolish, then,” she says. “That my feelings cloud my judgment.”

            “I think your judgment is clear,” Leia assures her, squeezing her wrist. “It is likely that Ben might want to speak with his mother right now. And you’re the opposite of a fool for striving to see the bigger picture.”

            Rey nods. She’d rather they not talk about her, or even Ben, anymore. “I’ll take care of this,” she says, keeping her eyes on the hair piece that had once belonged to Padmé Amidala.

            “I know you will, Rey,” says Leia. “And when the time comes again, I know you’ll wear it well.”