(Very sorry for the delay! That is what happens when you try to write two stories at once! It's unbetaed, I'll put a link to a betaed version once I'm finished with it).
The Star Destroyer behind her house crashed sixteen years ago.
Her parents left her on Jakku five years ago, and Rey had patiently waited for them ever since.
Nothing changed on Jakku after that. She would explore the same wrecks, scavenge the same components, take the same path towards Niima Outpost, say hello to the same people, and sell her loot to the same person for food. Even the food didn’t change.
So the little astromech caught her eye, naturally. It was a new model, like she had never seen before. Its body is a ball, painted in white and orange and grey, rolling way ahead of her, beeping cheerfully. They had met the night before, when it explained to her that it was a Resistance droid on a secret mission for the General.
She had to muffle her laugh. Why would the general of the Resistance send a droid on a secret mission on Jakku? There was nothing but wrecks and people trying to con you out of the few credits you could have managed to make. She had offered to take a look at its circuitry to make sure it wasn’t just saying these things because there was too much sand in it. He had beeped angrily at her, daring her that tomorrow she take him into town and that they would surely find a Resistance agent who would help it. It promised that she would be a hero if she helped it.
She had shrugged. If it was telling the truth, she would get money out of the deal, probably. If it wasn’t, the droid was worth enough to buy the missing parts for her speeder.
Once they had reached Niima Outpost, and she saw how Unkar Plutt looked at the droid with envious eyes, she didn’t have the heart to sell the droid. The promise of 60 rations had been definitely tempting, but BB-8 had softly beeped at her, its photosensors pointed in her direction.
She immediately regretted her decision when she noticed two thugs cornering her behind Unkar’s stall. They drew out their vibro-shivs.
“Give us the droid and we’ll let you live” one of them threatened.
“I don’t target little girls, and I don’t want you to be the exception today” the other one growled.
She grabbed her staff behind her back, holding it before her in a defensive position. “Come and get it if you want it!” she dared. The first one jumped on her, shiv pointed before him. She grinned, crouching down, staff pointed upwards, and the man landed on her weapon, groaning in pain as his abdomen hit the end of her staff. She hit him on the head for good measure. Behind her, she heard the other man running towards her, and all she had to do was pull on her stick, stopping his course. He collapsed on his back. She put her foot on the man’s chest, pointing his head with her staff.
“Little girl, uh?” she grinned, before knocking him out. She looked at both of the thugs and let out a long sigh, the rush of the fight vanishing from her body.
“Look at what you’ve done!” she yelled at BB-8, as she realized what just had happened. “Now Unkar Plutt will never want to trade with me again!” A little voice in her head told her that it really wasn’t BB-8’s fault at all, but she didn’t care. “I’m sure you’re just some malfunctioning droid your master abandoned here, and I got in trouble because of you for nothing!”
BB-8 wasn’t even looking at her anymore, the ungrateful little piece of junk. It beeped something about a coat and a coat thief and why was she even listening to it anymore? She watched the droid run into a kid about her age, knocking him on his ass.
She didn’t remember having seen the kid before. Much to her surprise, he smiled as he watched the droid before him, white teeth contrasting sharply with his dark skin. He definitely wasn’t from Jakku, either, judging by his impractical outfit. Instead of the loose, light clothes people wore on Jakku to shield themselves from the heat, he was wearing all back, tight clothes. On top of that, he was wearing a cape, but she realized that it was instead a leather jacket with the sleeves tied together on his chest.
“Round, white and orange!” the boy yelled joyfully, apparently not understanding that BB-8 kept calling a coat thief and asking him what he did with his master.
She took hold once again of her staff, pointing him towards the boy still sitting in the sand.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The boy raised his arms in surrender. “FN-”, then he stopped, shaking his head. “I’m Finn! Please don’t hit me with that!”
She didn’t lower her weapon. “Why does the droid say you stole his master’s jacket?”
“I didn’t steal anything!” Finn yelled back, and there was a spark of anger in his eyes. “I-I just.” He put his head in his heads, taking a deep breath. “Poe was captured by the First Order but we escaped together in a TIE fighter, and then we got hit and I don’t remember much else, but the last thing he said is that he had to get back to his droid.”
BB-8 beeped more softly at Finn. “It wants to know where his master is.”
“I don’t know!” Finn cried, voice cracking. “I think he’s… I think he’s dead.”
BB-8 rolled away from them, settling for a corner between two crates full of junk. Finn had put his head back into his hands, shoulders shaking.
She lowered her staff, and crouched beside him. The boy was sobbing, and she was torn between leaving him here, because she had no use for a boy who cried, and putting her hand on his shoulder to soothe him a little bit. Finn seemed to calm down on his own after a few seconds. He sniffed loudly and raised his head from his hands. Under the tears, there was a newfound determination in his eyes that made her smile.
“We need to get the droid to the Resistance. It was very important.” He stood up, brushing his pants to get rid of the sand.
“How do you want to get out of there?” she asked him.
Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe there are some people working for the Resistance here?”
Rey wanted to reply that there were no such people on Jakku because it was just a junkyard, but she was interrupted by the sound of aircrafts flying above their heads. She looked up, and recognized the distinctive shape of a TIE-fighter.
She felt Finn take her hand into his, dragging her away from Plutt’s stall, as it got hit by a blaster shot.
“I can walk all by myself!” she protested once they had taken cover behind the rusty-skeleton of a carrier ship. “And you don’t even know where you’re going, anyway!”
The TIE-fighter spotted them again, shooting at the wreckage and forcing them to move. “This way!” she yelled, pointing at the exit of the outpost. They made a run for it, BB-8 rolling fast behind them, beeping loudly. Around them, people were running in every direction, going back to their speeders or trying to take cover for them. Finn stumbled on a scared tiny droid, landing face first. She groaned, turned around, and held out his hand to help him get back on his feet.
He didn’t let go of it all the way to the area where Unkar Plutt would park his second-hand ships you had to pay a fortune for. There had been one that caught her eye for a long time already, and they ran towards it.
“What about this one?” Finn asked, about the Corellian freighter that was closer to them.
“This one’s garbage!” she replied, yelling, not wanting to delve into a debate on the merits of Corellian freighters versus quadjumpers. She watched in horror as said quadjumpers was blown up to smithereens by a well-placed blaster shot.
“The garbage will do!” she yelled, dragging Finn behind her, and pushing him inside.
She ran to the cockpit, climbed on top of the pilot’s seat, kneeling and hunched over the control panels. She sighed in relief as the old ship started up, the sounds of the engine filling the air around them. Finn was standing in the middle of the cockpit, looking around, eyes wide and gaping mouth.
“Finn! Wake up! I need you to man the blaster cannons!” she said in an authoritative tone.
Finn jumped on his feet, and started running in one direction, before coming back on his steps. “Where are the cannons?” he asked sheepishly. She groaned. “It’s this way!” she answered, gesturing towards the corridor behind them. “There’s a ladder back there, climb it and it’s on top!” Outside of the ship, she heard another blaster shoot coming from above, miraculously avoiding them. She took a good look at the control panel before her. She summoned from her memory everything she had read on Corellian freighters. The fallen star destroyers had been her libraries ever since she had found an undamaged datapad two years ago. Apparently, the pilots of the Empire liked to be ready to fly just about anything.
She pushed some buttons, and the ship took off.
It felt incredible. Like when she would jump from area to area, hanging from her rope, floor several feet below them, suspended in the air for a few seconds without falling.
She felt weightless, ready to soar into the blue sky, ready to touch the stars. The ship responded perfectly under each of her commands. Something exploded in her chest, something electrical spreading to her whole body, and she howled in joy.
Before her, she saw the figure of a TIE-fighter that she avoided gracefully by a light push on the flying stick. The ship was huge, but it was starting to feel like an extension of herself, like she could control it with as much precision as she would move her body.
She was going to kick the First Order’s ass. Nothing would stop her, as long as she was in control of this ship. She also had an edge over them, because she knew exactly where to drag them so she could lose them.
“Hey” Finn’s voice said, coming from a headset laying on the control panel. She took it and put on her head. It was a little too big and too heavy for her. She tried to put the microphone as close to her mouth as possible.
“Finn!” she answered back. “It’s so amazing!”
She needed to share the thrill of flying with someone, anyone, because she would burst if she kept it inside herself.
She heard his warm chuckle in her ears, and she was happy that he wasn’t sad anymore.
They weaved in and out of the wreckages in the Graveyard of the Giants. She knew this place by heart, knew all the places where she could fly the freighter in, where there was an opportunity to make a unexpected sharp turn.
They were no match for her piloting skills. Finn was helping, too, as she noticed the dots on the radar disappearing as she heard the blaster cannons being fired above her.
“Nice shot!” she yelled, as Finn managed to shoot down a TIE-fighter who had avoided all the obstacles they went through.
“I think they’re all gone” Finn said in a soft voice.
“Great! Now, let’s go find the Resistance base!”
She pulled the flying stick towards her, and increased the ship’s acceleration, flying almost vertically away from the ground.
Once they had left Jakku’s atmosphere, she jumped down from the pilot’s seat, and put her hand above the control panel.
“Sorry I called you garbage” she mumbled.
She didn’t know if the ship heard her (and it was ridiculous to think ships could hear people, she knew that but felt like she had to anyway), but suddenly several alarms went off, the lights turning red.
She heard Finn climb down the ladder and run towards her, panicking.
“What is happening?”
“I don’t know!” she yelled. “I’m not sorry I called you garbage anymore!” she continued, looking up at the ceiling.
Finn was watching her with his eyes wide open.
“No, you’re not the garbage, this-“ she turned on herself, arms spread before her “-is the garbage!”
Finn’s worried expression vanished a little.
“Okay, we’ll look to see if we can fix it” she declared. “Come with me, if I remember right from what I read about it, there should be tools in that room back there.”
Once they had found the tools, she dismounted the control panel, and stared at the various cables. Finn was sitting next to her, fumbling with his hands, ready to hand her the tools she might need.
“What is your name?” he finally asked, as she was scratching her head, trying to understand the cause of the breakdown.
“I’m Rey” she answered, turning her head with a bright smile. If she deviated the alimentation to this part of the ship to the other one, there would be enough energy to get the engines starting again, she supposed.
“So where is the Resistance base?” Rey asked in a casual tone while flicking off some switches. She heard the sound of a machine powering off below them. So far so good.
“I don’t know” Finn answered shyly.
“What do you mean you don’t know? You get rescued by a Resistance pilot and he doesn’t tell you where his base is?”
“He didn’t have the time to!” Finn said harshly, lips twisted downwards.
“Besides, I rescued him as much as he rescued me!”
“You’re just a kid!” she retorted.
“You’re a kid too!” Finn replied in the same tone.
The ship suddenly shook, much to Rey’s dread. BB-8 emitted a long worried beep.
“Did you start the engine back?”
“I didn’t” she mumbled quickly.
They felt the ship move upwards, apparently of its own will. Rey stood up to look outside of the cockpit. She couldn’t see clearly, but there seemed to be another, bigger ship pulling them upwards.
“We need to hide!” she yelled, coming back and taking Finn’s hand. “This way!” she hurried him, guiding him towards the back of the ship. She remembered that some Corellian freighters were dotted with secret compartments to hide smuggled merchandises.
She sighed in relief once she found what she was looking for. “Get in!” she said, pushing Finn inside the trapdoor. She let BB-8 follow behind him, before herself crawling inside the compartment and closing the door behind them.
“First order?” Finn whispered.
“I have no idea. Maybe.”
Finn reached out for her hand, and Rey didn’t let go of it.
She closed her eyes, trying to hear something. There was the sound of feet walking on the metallic floors. Then there were one- no, two voices. A human man and another voice she didn’t recognize. It was more like a series of growls than a proper language to her ears.
The sounds were very close to them, now. Rey breathed in a short breath. She was sure that whoever was on the ship also knew about the secret compartment, and she blamed herself for her stupidity. She opened one eye to look at Finn, in the faint white light of the room. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be counting, his lips moving slowly. He was sweating profusely, his fingers crushing her hand.
Re: FILL: Gen AU, age changes - Jakku (part 2)
The Star Destroyer behind her house crashed sixteen years ago.
Her parents left her on Jakku five years ago, and Rey had patiently waited for them ever since.
Nothing changed on Jakku after that. She would explore the same wrecks, scavenge the same components, take the same path towards Niima Outpost, say hello to the same people, and sell her loot to the same person for food. Even the food didn’t change.
So the little astromech caught her eye, naturally. It was a new model, like she had never seen before. Its body is a ball, painted in white and orange and grey, rolling way ahead of her, beeping cheerfully. They had met the night before, when it explained to her that it was a Resistance droid on a secret mission for the General.
She had to muffle her laugh. Why would the general of the Resistance send a droid on a secret mission on Jakku? There was nothing but wrecks and people trying to con you out of the few credits you could have managed to make. She had offered to take a look at its circuitry to make sure it wasn’t just saying these things because there was too much sand in it. He had beeped angrily at her, daring her that tomorrow she take him into town and that they would surely find a Resistance agent who would help it. It promised that she would be a hero if she helped it.
She had shrugged. If it was telling the truth, she would get money out of the deal, probably. If it wasn’t, the droid was worth enough to buy the missing parts for her speeder.
Once they had reached Niima Outpost, and she saw how Unkar Plutt looked at the droid with envious eyes, she didn’t have the heart to sell the droid. The promise of 60 rations had been definitely tempting, but BB-8 had softly beeped at her, its photosensors pointed in her direction.
She immediately regretted her decision when she noticed two thugs cornering her behind Unkar’s stall. They drew out their vibro-shivs.
“Give us the droid and we’ll let you live” one of them threatened.
“I don’t target little girls, and I don’t want you to be the exception
today” the other one growled.
She grabbed her staff behind her back, holding it before her in a defensive position. “Come and get it if you want it!” she dared.
The first one jumped on her, shiv pointed before him. She grinned, crouching down, staff pointed upwards, and the man landed on her weapon, groaning in pain as his abdomen hit the end of her staff. She hit him on the head for good measure. Behind her, she heard the other man running towards her, and all she had to do was pull on her stick, stopping his course. He collapsed on his back. She put her foot on the man’s chest, pointing his head with her staff.
“Little girl, uh?” she grinned, before knocking him out. She looked at both of the thugs and let out a long sigh, the rush of the fight vanishing from her body.
“Look at what you’ve done!” she yelled at BB-8, as she realized what just had happened. “Now Unkar Plutt will never want to trade with me again!”
A little voice in her head told her that it really wasn’t BB-8’s fault at all, but she didn’t care. “I’m sure you’re just some malfunctioning droid your master abandoned here, and I got in trouble because of you for nothing!”
BB-8 wasn’t even looking at her anymore, the ungrateful little piece of junk. It beeped something about a coat and a coat thief and why was she even listening to it anymore? She watched the droid run into a kid about her age, knocking him on his ass.
She didn’t remember having seen the kid before. Much to her surprise, he smiled as he watched the droid before him, white teeth contrasting sharply with his dark skin. He definitely wasn’t from Jakku, either, judging by his impractical outfit. Instead of the loose, light clothes people wore on Jakku to shield themselves from the heat, he was wearing all back, tight clothes. On top of that, he was wearing a cape, but she realized that it was instead a leather jacket with the sleeves tied together on his chest.
“Round, white and orange!” the boy yelled joyfully, apparently not understanding that BB-8 kept calling a coat thief and asking him what he did with his master.
She took hold once again of her staff, pointing him towards the boy still sitting in the sand.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The boy raised his arms in surrender. “FN-”, then he stopped, shaking his head. “I’m Finn! Please don’t hit me with that!”
She didn’t lower her weapon. “Why does the droid say you stole his master’s jacket?”
“I didn’t steal anything!” Finn yelled back, and there was a spark of anger in his eyes. “I-I just.” He put his head in his heads, taking a deep breath. “Poe was captured by the First Order but we escaped together in a TIE fighter, and then we got hit and I don’t remember much else, but the last thing he said is that he had to get back to his droid.”
BB-8 beeped more softly at Finn. “It wants to know where his master is.”
“I don’t know!” Finn cried, voice cracking. “I think he’s… I think he’s dead.”
BB-8 rolled away from them, settling for a corner between two crates full of junk. Finn had put his head back into his hands, shoulders shaking.
She lowered her staff, and crouched beside him. The boy was sobbing, and she was torn between leaving him here, because she had no use for a boy who cried, and putting her hand on his shoulder to soothe him a little bit.
Finn seemed to calm down on his own after a few seconds. He sniffed loudly and raised his head from his hands. Under the tears, there was a newfound determination in his eyes that made her smile.
“We need to get the droid to the Resistance. It was very important.” He stood up, brushing his pants to get rid of the sand.
“How do you want to get out of there?” she asked him.
Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe there are some people working for the Resistance here?”
Rey wanted to reply that there were no such people on Jakku because it was just a junkyard, but she was interrupted by the sound of aircrafts flying above their heads. She looked up, and recognized the distinctive shape of a TIE-fighter.
She felt Finn take her hand into his, dragging her away from Plutt’s stall, as it got hit by a blaster shot.
“I can walk all by myself!” she protested once they had taken cover behind the rusty-skeleton of a carrier ship. “And you don’t even know where you’re going, anyway!”
The TIE-fighter spotted them again, shooting at the wreckage and forcing them to move. “This way!” she yelled, pointing at the exit of the outpost. They made a run for it, BB-8 rolling fast behind them, beeping loudly. Around them, people were running in every direction, going back to their speeders or trying to take cover for them. Finn stumbled on a scared tiny droid, landing face first. She groaned, turned around, and held out his hand to help him get back on his feet.
He didn’t let go of it all the way to the area where Unkar Plutt would park his second-hand ships you had to pay a fortune for. There had been one that caught her eye for a long time already, and they ran towards it.
“What about this one?” Finn asked, about the Corellian freighter that was closer to them.
“This one’s garbage!” she replied, yelling, not wanting to delve into a debate on the merits of Corellian freighters versus quadjumpers.
She watched in horror as said quadjumpers was blown up to smithereens by a well-placed blaster shot.
“The garbage will do!” she yelled, dragging Finn behind her, and pushing him inside.
She ran to the cockpit, climbed on top of the pilot’s seat, kneeling and hunched over the control panels. She sighed in relief as the old ship started up, the sounds of the engine filling the air around them.
Finn was standing in the middle of the cockpit, looking around, eyes wide and gaping mouth.
“Finn! Wake up! I need you to man the blaster cannons!” she said in an authoritative tone.
Finn jumped on his feet, and started running in one direction, before coming back on his steps. “Where are the cannons?” he asked sheepishly.
She groaned. “It’s this way!” she answered, gesturing towards the corridor behind them. “There’s a ladder back there, climb it and it’s on top!”
Outside of the ship, she heard another blaster shoot coming from above, miraculously avoiding them. She took a good look at the control panel before her. She summoned from her memory everything she had read on Corellian freighters. The fallen star destroyers had been her libraries ever since she had found an undamaged datapad two years ago. Apparently, the pilots of the Empire liked to be ready to fly just about anything.
She pushed some buttons, and the ship took off.
It felt incredible. Like when she would jump from area to area, hanging from her rope, floor several feet below them, suspended in the air for a few seconds without falling.
She felt weightless, ready to soar into the blue sky, ready to touch the stars. The ship responded perfectly under each of her commands. Something exploded in her chest, something electrical spreading to her whole body, and she howled in joy.
Before her, she saw the figure of a TIE-fighter that she avoided gracefully by a light push on the flying stick. The ship was huge, but it was starting to feel like an extension of herself, like she could control it with as much precision as she would move her body.
She was going to kick the First Order’s ass. Nothing would stop her, as long as she was in control of this ship. She also had an edge over them, because she knew exactly where to drag them so she could lose them.
“Hey” Finn’s voice said, coming from a headset laying on the control panel. She took it and put on her head. It was a little too big and too heavy for her. She tried to put the microphone as close to her mouth as possible.
“Finn!” she answered back. “It’s so amazing!”
She needed to share the thrill of flying with someone, anyone, because she would burst if she kept it inside herself.
She heard his warm chuckle in her ears, and she was happy that he wasn’t sad anymore.
They weaved in and out of the wreckages in the Graveyard of the Giants. She knew this place by heart, knew all the places where she could fly the freighter in, where there was an opportunity to make a unexpected sharp turn.
They were no match for her piloting skills. Finn was helping, too, as she noticed the dots on the radar disappearing as she heard the blaster cannons being fired above her.
“Nice shot!” she yelled, as Finn managed to shoot down a TIE-fighter who had avoided all the obstacles they went through.
“I think they’re all gone” Finn said in a soft voice.
“Great! Now, let’s go find the Resistance base!”
She pulled the flying stick towards her, and increased the ship’s acceleration, flying almost vertically away from the ground.
Once they had left Jakku’s atmosphere, she jumped down from the pilot’s seat, and put her hand above the control panel.
“Sorry I called you garbage” she mumbled.
She didn’t know if the ship heard her (and it was ridiculous to think ships could hear people, she knew that but felt like she had to anyway), but suddenly several alarms went off, the lights turning red.
She heard Finn climb down the ladder and run towards her, panicking.
“What is happening?”
“I don’t know!” she yelled. “I’m not sorry I called you garbage anymore!”
she continued, looking up at the ceiling.
Finn was watching her with his eyes wide open.
“No, you’re not the garbage, this-“ she turned on herself, arms spread before her “-is the garbage!”
Finn’s worried expression vanished a little.
“Okay, we’ll look to see if we can fix it” she declared. “Come with me, if I remember right from what I read about it, there should be tools in that room back there.”
Once they had found the tools, she dismounted the control panel, and stared at the various cables. Finn was sitting next to her, fumbling with his hands, ready to hand her the tools she might need.
“What is your name?” he finally asked, as she was scratching her head, trying to understand the cause of the breakdown.
“I’m Rey” she answered, turning her head with a bright smile. If she deviated the alimentation to this part of the ship to the other one, there would be enough energy to get the engines starting again, she supposed.
“So where is the Resistance base?” Rey asked in a casual tone while flicking off some switches. She heard the sound of a machine powering off below them. So far so good.
“I don’t know” Finn answered shyly.
“What do you mean you don’t know? You get rescued by a Resistance pilot and he doesn’t tell you where his base is?”
“He didn’t have the time to!” Finn said harshly, lips twisted downwards.
“Besides, I rescued him as much as he rescued me!”
“You’re just a kid!” she retorted.
“You’re a kid too!” Finn replied in the same tone.
The ship suddenly shook, much to Rey’s dread. BB-8 emitted a long worried beep.
“Did you start the engine back?”
“I didn’t” she mumbled quickly.
They felt the ship move upwards, apparently of its own will. Rey stood up to look outside of the cockpit. She couldn’t see clearly, but there seemed to be another, bigger ship pulling them upwards.
“We need to hide!” she yelled, coming back and taking Finn’s hand. “This way!” she hurried him, guiding him towards the back of the ship. She remembered that some Corellian freighters were dotted with secret compartments to hide smuggled merchandises.
She sighed in relief once she found what she was looking for. “Get in!” she said, pushing Finn inside the trapdoor. She let BB-8 follow behind him, before herself crawling inside the compartment and closing the door behind them.
“First order?” Finn whispered.
“I have no idea. Maybe.”
Finn reached out for her hand, and Rey didn’t let go of it.
She closed her eyes, trying to hear something. There was the sound of feet walking on the metallic floors. Then there were one- no, two voices. A human man and another voice she didn’t recognize. It was more like a series of growls than a proper language to her ears.
The sounds were very close to them, now. Rey breathed in a short breath. She was sure that whoever was on the ship also knew about the secret compartment, and she blamed herself for her stupidity. She opened one eye to look at Finn, in the faint white light of the room. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be counting, his lips moving slowly. He was sweating profusely, his fingers crushing her hand.
The trapdoor was yanked open, making Rey jump.