[ for as long as rey can remember, family has been an intangible concept, some fleeting memory beaten out of her by the relentless sun on jakku and the neverending ache of hunger under the thumb of unkar plutt. what had family been, when she'd scavenged to survive? only some far-off dream, a child's desperate motivation to keep surviving, a reason to tack off day after day in a line of endless rows in the underbelly of an at-at.
now, rey has a family. broken, tired, and healing from loss and pain — but still a family. poe and finn held tight in either hand, chewie's warmth always there to lean on, bb-8 and now d-0 to join the droids. there were memories, too: of luke and leia and han, each draped over her like warm blankets through the force, their voices an echo of hope in each new day.
but it's not the family. not the mother and father she sought out for so long, the ones that left her alone on jakku either by choice or by force, not the birthright of happiness she was denied for so long.
it isn't family that sends rey to endor. it's a clue, a hint at some mystery left behind in the margins of notebooks leia left behind, the possibility of rumored legacy and family shrouded in question marks. something protected by the force, hidden from the sith by a mystery even luke and leia did not understand — or rather, someone. a pair of someones.
they should have died, in leia's neat penmanship, but the force provides. look for a woman with a kyber crystal, and ask her what rebellions are built on.
so rey looks. she searches. she follows leia's request in blind faith, focusing on the mission in the desperate, unrelenting way she has always done, and makes her way through forests and jungles and mountains, always climbing and searching.
until now, when she stands at the foot of an impossibly tall clutch of trees, peering up at the sprawl of wooden houses held tight in the canopy, wondering... ]
[ endor is something like hiding in plain sight, despite there seemingly being no need to hide at all. whatever had kept them alive on that beach so long ago also made them untraceable. they had become one with the force and in the aftermath of the death star's strike seemed to stay that way. the twins couldn't feel her when she was standing right in front of them.
endor has become home now, lush and green and simple, a solace that she doesn't deserve. the ewoks are kind to her, a kindness she also doesn't deserve. they are still rebuilding after the empire razed parts of the forest for their outpost, jyn helps as a kind of penance.
she is returning home from a day at the market when she hears the young woman speak, not looking up from her data pad. ]
Ask the tree politely and she will let you climb her.
[ this is, of course, absolute and complete bullshit, but jyn delivers it with a kind of distracted yet noble solemnity that makes it sound very real. ]
[ rey trained under former hermit luke skywalker. she is unfortunately quite used to bullshit being delivered with the dry gravitas of someone who knows what the hell they're talking about, so when the woman offers her solemn advice, rey takes it without blinking.
it doesn't work, though.
no matter how politely rey asks, no matter how sweetly she clasps her hands together, no matter what she places at the rootline of the tree, nothing happens. no branch descends, no bark solidifies into clumps, no rope bridge drops from the skies. it's only rey, her staff, and a giant tree just staring her down.
and the woman, still staring at her datapad, acting for all the world like nothing out of the ordinary is happening at all. ]
Maybe I have the wrong tree. [ a hand twists around the top of her staff, nervous energy wiping sweat onto the hilt. ] I'm supposed to be looking for a woman with a —
[ force, what was it called? why hadn't she written it down? ]
A crystal of some kind. Have you seen anyone like that?
[ jyn doesn't stop walking but she plods along so slowly as she listens to this girl politely ask the tree for permission that she might as well have stopped walking. she won't make it home before nightfall at this rate. it isn't until the next question is out of the girl's mouth that jyn even looks up, arm stretching out as it to indicate where the rope for the doorbell is.
her arm falls, mouth falling open as well.
jyn's memory is patchy in some places -- her childhood, the beach, experience and memories and propaganda warring together so she doesn't know if what she remembered was completely accurate -- but in other places her memories are so clear they could be great crystallized statues commemorating her grief.
she remembers tiny, thin arms clutching her tightly, tears down dirty cheeks, the cold, hollow feeling in her chest that no desert heat could warm. sorrow, guilt, loss, the curdled sick of shame that still remained, clinging to her like a perfume. she remembers the trio of buns, the only hairstyle capable of containing such fine, silken hair off a rambunctious and active little girl's face.
Rey, be brave. You'll be safe here, I promise.
jyn remembers rey.
she swallows, licking her lips to chase away the cotton in her mouth, forcing the shame and guilt and fear down deep, even if the grief-stricken expression doesn't fully manage to fall away. she looks like she has seen a ghost but the only ghost in these woods is jyn erso herself. ]
[ rey's memories are foggy, patchwork pieces, a fact she has always attributed to the stress of abandonment, the necessary steps to cope with a childhood of loneliness and a complete lack of self-worth — only to find out that, perhaps, that wasn't the case. leia's theories and luke's whispers, scrawled into notebooks and left behind in garbled data entries, suggest that perhaps it was the force itself, scouring her memories so as to cover her parents' tracks.
they hadn't abandoned her. they'd left her behind to protect her. she knows that now. she just doesn't know who they are, or what they look like. all she knows are flashes: the shaky embrace of a parent trying desperately to peel away, the choked whispers and promises of someone who has so much to say but cannot get it out. be brave comes a whisper in her memory, and rey's cries always answer in return.
come back, she'd screamed, but nothing had come back. only unkar plutt's tight grip on her small arms had stayed, and the unrelenting heat of the sun a consistent reminder of her fate.
but here, there is no sun beating down. there is only the humid damp of the forest, the gentle light filtering through the canopy. and a voice, now audible, offering an answer to her question. ]
Yes. Right. A kyber crystal.
[ but just as jyn is stunned with grief and memory, rey's voice calls back stilted, uneasy. her question comes uncertainly, hesitantly, the puzzle pieces of why leia might have sent her here beginning to click together in a way that makes her stomach churn with anxiety.
[ the question hits her in the gut, thinking of the way the council room rang quiet for only a brief moment after she'd declared, echoing cassian: rebellions are built on hope.
she wishes he was here now, wishes she hadn't stopped despite the fresh rush of guilt that crashes over her. she had never wanted to leave rey behind, had tried desperately to search for another way, any other way, but the truth of their heritage was too powerful, too dangerous. rey needed to be safe more than jyn needed her daughter in her arms. ]
[ she stumbles over the words, half-mouthing leia before her brain course-corrects to something more formal, less telling. people know of princess leia of alderaan; they know how the legacy of her father's turn to the dark side cast a dark cloud over her political aspirations. but it's only the rebellion that knows the identity she chose to take next, dropping the royalty for rough work and the losses that came with it. ]
She said the woman who knew the answer would be able to help me.
[ and there, in that moment, rey knows what she's been sent for. not the secrets to the death star, no stardust datatape tucked away in a hidden nook. this is not war she's winning. it's the answer to a mystery far more profound than palpatine's grandiose claims for world domination.
it's rey, and the blood in her veins, and the answer to a question that's still carved into every nook and cranny of her being: who am i? where do i come from? ]
Is that you?
[ are you my mother is not a question she is prepared to ask. ]
[ jyn can't answer the other question because the guilt is overpowering. all she needs to say is yes, but the word gets caught in her throat. she doesn't want rey to be disappointed that she has traveled so far only to find jyn erso.
it doesn't surprise her that her own daughter found her way to the resistance after being hidden away for so long, hadn't jyn done the same thing? leia would have looked after her, she knows that, the way baze and chirrut had looked after her and cassian. the rebellion had built a family for jyn, the resistance would have built a family for rey. ]
[ for a moment that feels like an eternity, all rey can do is stare. she tries to blink, but her eyes feel heavy, pin-pricked with something that could either be tears or tree sap fallen into her eyes. she wipes at them, a stubborn gesture, but doesn't look.
she doesn't want to know.
all she wants is to hear an answer that makes sense of her life, that finally puts the puzzle pieces together. is this the woman whose voice rey has heard her whole life? is there someone else, the man whose face she cannot even recall, only the solidness of their hands and the slight smell of cloth and polish?
would this have been her life, hidden amongst the trees? or is this their life only in her absence, hidden away from her? she has so many questions, so much she aches to know, but none of them come.
only one, the same one, echoed out again in different words. ]
[ they had hidden rey away on a junk planet full of dirt and sand that people only stopped at long enough to refuel and drink, not long enough to for anyone to discover the power that ran deep through the little girl's veins. leia only would have sent rey to find her when it was safe, when she had nothing to lose.
jyn has no sense of the force. she knows it exists, she knows it is the reason she exists, but like her mother, jyn had no access to it nor did she want access to it. the force had only brought her trouble. so she hadn't sensed anything, had no feeling one way or another, if she and rey are all that remain in her family line...
it's good to know. ]
I can tell you about your family. [ a beat, she looks up at the canopy, at the darkening sky, and sets off again, trusting rey will follow. ] The one you were born into, at any rate.
[ of course she follows. stubborn, determined, she was born with these traits from a woman she barely knows (and a father she wonders if she'll ever meet, now) even if she does not know where they come from. they walk through the trees until the woods get thicker around them, the sky above blotted out by canopies that close in on them.
even still, the woman's steps do not falter. rey's hand trembles around the hilt at her side, but she does not draw it. not yet. not now. ]
I want to know.
[ she has always wanted. she has never believed she was anyone special, and still doesn't know if it was true, but she wants to know her family more than anything else. wants to know, and wants to belong. ]
I know your father. He is a good man, the best man I have ever known.
[ it is only a handful of words, but it is impossible for jyn to disguise how much she loves him. maybe if they had stayed in the rebellion with their little family, if they had had a chance, she would still be able to force her voice into the same neutrality that had kept their romance secret on base, but that neutrality had been left behind with their daughter. ]
He was a rebel. That is what first brought us here. He was closer to Leia than I was. [ lies. jyn and leia were very close, but cassian and leia were more alike so over the years jyn has turned that into a deeper friendship. ]
[ the history of the resistance — what was the rebellion, what has now blossomed into something more steadfast, something with a symbol and a purpose and a bonafide collection of generals and leaders — has never been something anyone has spent much time on. no one has sat down to teach rey the history of what came before. there simply hasn't been time.
so she doesn't recognize the name, but that doesn't mean anything. that doesn't mean the name doesn't mean anything, either. she just doesn't know enough to decide either way.
besides, it doesn't much matter, does it? he means something, by virtue of being her something — her father, an idea that still socks her in the gut, leaves her momentarily speechless, as if trying to fit that reality into her worldview is like relearning how to breathe. and maybe it is, because if going off the way the woman says his name (like a prayer, like a confessional, like the best word she knows) then that connection ought to be more obvious still. ]
And you?
[ what are you, rey wants to ask. but she settles on something else. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
you know, the thing and the place
now, rey has a family. broken, tired, and healing from loss and pain — but still a family. poe and finn held tight in either hand, chewie's warmth always there to lean on, bb-8 and now d-0 to join the droids. there were memories, too: of luke and leia and han, each draped over her like warm blankets through the force, their voices an echo of hope in each new day.
but it's not the family. not the mother and father she sought out for so long, the ones that left her alone on jakku either by choice or by force, not the birthright of happiness she was denied for so long.
it isn't family that sends rey to endor. it's a clue, a hint at some mystery left behind in the margins of notebooks leia left behind, the possibility of rumored legacy and family shrouded in question marks. something protected by the force, hidden from the sith by a mystery even luke and leia did not understand — or rather, someone. a pair of someones.
they should have died, in leia's neat penmanship, but the force provides. look for a woman with a kyber crystal, and ask her what rebellions are built on.
so rey looks. she searches. she follows leia's request in blind faith, focusing on the mission in the desperate, unrelenting way she has always done, and makes her way through forests and jungles and mountains, always climbing and searching.
until now, when she stands at the foot of an impossibly tall clutch of trees, peering up at the sprawl of wooden houses held tight in the canopy, wondering... ]
How am I supposed to get up there?
no subject
endor has become home now, lush and green and simple, a solace that she doesn't deserve. the ewoks are kind to her, a kindness she also doesn't deserve. they are still rebuilding after the empire razed parts of the forest for their outpost, jyn helps as a kind of penance.
she is returning home from a day at the market when she hears the young woman speak, not looking up from her data pad. ]
Ask the tree politely and she will let you climb her.
[ this is, of course, absolute and complete bullshit, but jyn delivers it with a kind of distracted yet noble solemnity that makes it sound very real. ]
no subject
it doesn't work, though.
no matter how politely rey asks, no matter how sweetly she clasps her hands together, no matter what she places at the rootline of the tree, nothing happens. no branch descends, no bark solidifies into clumps, no rope bridge drops from the skies. it's only rey, her staff, and a giant tree just staring her down.
and the woman, still staring at her datapad, acting for all the world like nothing out of the ordinary is happening at all. ]
Maybe I have the wrong tree. [ a hand twists around the top of her staff, nervous energy wiping sweat onto the hilt. ] I'm supposed to be looking for a woman with a —
[ force, what was it called? why hadn't she written it down? ]
A crystal of some kind. Have you seen anyone like that?
no subject
her arm falls, mouth falling open as well.
jyn's memory is patchy in some places -- her childhood, the beach, experience and memories and propaganda warring together so she doesn't know if what she remembered was completely accurate -- but in other places her memories are so clear they could be great crystallized statues commemorating her grief.
she remembers tiny, thin arms clutching her tightly, tears down dirty cheeks, the cold, hollow feeling in her chest that no desert heat could warm. sorrow, guilt, loss, the curdled sick of shame that still remained, clinging to her like a perfume. she remembers the trio of buns, the only hairstyle capable of containing such fine, silken hair off a rambunctious and active little girl's face.
Rey, be brave. You'll be safe here, I promise.
jyn remembers rey.
she swallows, licking her lips to chase away the cotton in her mouth, forcing the shame and guilt and fear down deep, even if the grief-stricken expression doesn't fully manage to fall away. she looks like she has seen a ghost but the only ghost in these woods is jyn erso herself. ]
Kyber. It's called a kyber crystal.
no subject
they hadn't abandoned her. they'd left her behind to protect her. she knows that now. she just doesn't know who they are, or what they look like. all she knows are flashes: the shaky embrace of a parent trying desperately to peel away, the choked whispers and promises of someone who has so much to say but cannot get it out. be brave comes a whisper in her memory, and rey's cries always answer in return.
come back, she'd screamed, but nothing had come back. only unkar plutt's tight grip on her small arms had stayed, and the unrelenting heat of the sun a consistent reminder of her fate.
but here, there is no sun beating down. there is only the humid damp of the forest, the gentle light filtering through the canopy. and a voice, now audible, offering an answer to her question. ]
Yes. Right. A kyber crystal.
[ but just as jyn is stunned with grief and memory, rey's voice calls back stilted, uneasy. her question comes uncertainly, hesitantly, the puzzle pieces of why leia might have sent her here beginning to click together in a way that makes her stomach churn with anxiety.
she wasn't prepared for this. ]
Do you know what rebellions are built on?
no subject
she wishes he was here now, wishes she hadn't stopped despite the fresh rush of guilt that crashes over her. she had never wanted to leave rey behind, had tried desperately to search for another way, any other way, but the truth of their heritage was too powerful, too dangerous. rey needed to be safe more than jyn needed her daughter in her arms. ]
Who told you that?
[ that isn't the answer but jyn needs to know. ]
no subject
[ she stumbles over the words, half-mouthing leia before her brain course-corrects to something more formal, less telling. people know of princess leia of alderaan; they know how the legacy of her father's turn to the dark side cast a dark cloud over her political aspirations. but it's only the rebellion that knows the identity she chose to take next, dropping the royalty for rough work and the losses that came with it. ]
She said the woman who knew the answer would be able to help me.
[ and there, in that moment, rey knows what she's been sent for. not the secrets to the death star, no stardust datatape tucked away in a hidden nook. this is not war she's winning. it's the answer to a mystery far more profound than palpatine's grandiose claims for world domination.
it's rey, and the blood in her veins, and the answer to a question that's still carved into every nook and cranny of her being: who am i? where do i come from? ]
Is that you?
[ are you my mother is not a question she is prepared to ask. ]
no subject
Hope. Rebellions are built on hope.
[ jyn can't answer the other question because the guilt is overpowering. all she needs to say is yes, but the word gets caught in her throat. she doesn't want rey to be disappointed that she has traveled so far only to find jyn erso.
it doesn't surprise her that her own daughter found her way to the resistance after being hidden away for so long, hadn't jyn done the same thing? leia would have looked after her, she knows that, the way baze and chirrut had looked after her and cassian. the rebellion had built a family for jyn, the resistance would have built a family for rey. ]
no subject
she doesn't want to know.
all she wants is to hear an answer that makes sense of her life, that finally puts the puzzle pieces together. is this the woman whose voice rey has heard her whole life? is there someone else, the man whose face she cannot even recall, only the solidness of their hands and the slight smell of cloth and polish?
would this have been her life, hidden amongst the trees? or is this their life only in her absence, hidden away from her? she has so many questions, so much she aches to know, but none of them come.
only one, the same one, echoed out again in different words. ]
Why did she send me to find you?
no subject
jyn has no sense of the force. she knows it exists, she knows it is the reason she exists, but like her mother, jyn had no access to it nor did she want access to it. the force had only brought her trouble. so she hadn't sensed anything, had no feeling one way or another, if she and rey are all that remain in her family line...
it's good to know. ]
I can tell you about your family. [ a beat, she looks up at the canopy, at the darkening sky, and sets off again, trusting rey will follow. ] The one you were born into, at any rate.
no subject
even still, the woman's steps do not falter. rey's hand trembles around the hilt at her side, but she does not draw it. not yet. not now. ]
I want to know.
[ she has always wanted. she has never believed she was anyone special, and still doesn't know if it was true, but she wants to know her family more than anything else. wants to know, and wants to belong. ]
Did you know them?
no subject
[ it is only a handful of words, but it is impossible for jyn to disguise how much she loves him. maybe if they had stayed in the rebellion with their little family, if they had had a chance, she would still be able to force her voice into the same neutrality that had kept their romance secret on base, but that neutrality had been left behind with their daughter. ]
He was a rebel. That is what first brought us here. He was closer to Leia than I was. [ lies. jyn and leia were very close, but cassian and leia were more alike so over the years jyn has turned that into a deeper friendship. ]
He's called Cassian.
no subject
so she doesn't recognize the name, but that doesn't mean anything. that doesn't mean the name doesn't mean anything, either. she just doesn't know enough to decide either way.
besides, it doesn't much matter, does it? he means something, by virtue of being her something — her father, an idea that still socks her in the gut, leaves her momentarily speechless, as if trying to fit that reality into her worldview is like relearning how to breathe. and maybe it is, because if going off the way the woman says his name (like a prayer, like a confessional, like the best word she knows) then that connection ought to be more obvious still. ]
And you?
[ what are you, rey wants to ask. but she settles on something else. ]
Were you a rebel too?