[ she starts from an unplaceable dream one night ( —dark colors, swirling, her vision obscured by a low lying mist, the path before her tenuous and uncertain ) and she's in near agony, the skin on her face stretched and raw and overwarm, a diagonal cut, a low, simmering pulse of throbbing pain in her side above her left hip. Rey lingers in a few terrified moments of confusion before it abates and she realizes these sudden wounds are not her own, the healing remnants of a saber cut, a purposefully missed blaster shot.
Drenched in sweat in her cramped little bunk on base, the small of her back damp, she lifts a hand to touch her own face, smooth and unmarred, a phantom pain that eases the longer she's conscious until it's only a memory— a memory that isn't truly her own to begin with. Knees bent, her elbows sling across them, head bowed between them as she reigns in her focus, dredges up that infinite well of calm deep within in.
It finds her and her pulse evens out. She can hear Finn's endearing snoring a room away, grateful someone is having a peaceful night's sleep, BB-8 on lower power mode at the foot of her bed while Poe's away doing secret reconnaissance for the Resistence, a sincere promise to keep the faithful little droid by her side in his absence. They keep her grounded, her unexpected trio, a family she'd never anticipated finding, hodgepodge and mismatched but fitting together just the same, and stronger for it.
Her attention shifts back to the present and Rey closes her eyes again, inhaling slowly through her nose, exhaling out through her mouth and she inches up that carefully constructed wall damming her mind shut, a tentative prod across the bond to him, ghosting at the back of his neck, the curve of one wrist. Unbarred, the connection is as strong as ever, the channel between them open and obvious even as she shields the most important places in her mind from him.
no subject
Drenched in sweat in her cramped little bunk on base, the small of her back damp, she lifts a hand to touch her own face, smooth and unmarred, a phantom pain that eases the longer she's conscious until it's only a memory— a memory that isn't truly her own to begin with. Knees bent, her elbows sling across them, head bowed between them as she reigns in her focus, dredges up that infinite well of calm deep within in.
It finds her and her pulse evens out. She can hear Finn's endearing snoring a room away, grateful someone is having a peaceful night's sleep, BB-8 on lower power mode at the foot of her bed while Poe's away doing secret reconnaissance for the Resistence, a sincere promise to keep the faithful little droid by her side in his absence. They keep her grounded, her unexpected trio, a family she'd never anticipated finding, hodgepodge and mismatched but fitting together just the same, and stronger for it.
Her attention shifts back to the present and Rey closes her eyes again, inhaling slowly through her nose, exhaling out through her mouth and she inches up that carefully constructed wall damming her mind shut, a tentative prod across the bond to him, ghosting at the back of his neck, the curve of one wrist. Unbarred, the connection is as strong as ever, the channel between them open and obvious even as she shields the most important places in her mind from him.
Are you there? And of course he is. ]