[ The 'fresher stings injuries that Rey had long since forgotten about, obtained during the fight on Corellia while laser fire threatened to bring the forest down around them in a hail of smoke and ash, and it stings, the steam rising up around her in a familiar portrait that brings her right back to that moment. The paranoia of the Hapans strikes a familiar cord in her, for they're not the only ones second-guessing those who walk their halls: even now, Rey second-guesses her own decisions as well as those of her companion. In a far-off memory, she quietly urges him—
I'd like to try something.
This grand experiment has dug her deeper than she'd foreseen, and she can't help imagining all the ways it could go wrong while the water courses over her. Her eyes snap open to stave off the haunting image of Han Solo's face illuminated by red light, far but easily distinguished all the same before he plummets down. She doesn't waste water, shaking out damp hair and stepping out the moment the last suds are drained out of it to leave her staring at bruises and cuts while she towels off.
Three portions, she determines as she glimpses at the water trickling down the drain.
Her hair is still damp when it hits the pillow, and no manner of plaguing uncertainties can keep her from sleep for long. It's the easiest she's ever drifted off in such a soft bed, and even in her present condition, a part of her longs for the stiffness of the floor below, but she can't drag herself out of the sinking plush of the mattress once she's lying in it, darkness closing in around her with a new kind of warmth, distinct from the Jakku sun.
Nightmares haunt her, though she can't say with all certainty that it's all they are for they feel too real and too familiar to be anything of the sort. They come in flashes, and in them, she's always freezing in the dark, distinguishing it from the light of Hapes, and a rasping whisper tells her that she is a weapon wielded by the Resistance and nothing more, that their affection and warmth is a mere mask, from behind which they command her potential. In some of them, a piercing blue saber glides cleanly through a slim black shadow. In others, she chokes on her own blood and stares into a mask of black steel with hollow eyes. The worst of them aren't characterized by the violence of burning ozone and clashing beams of plasma, but by a thick sheen of sweat and labored breathing.
She sleeps longer than she expects to, thrashing around and sweating as she does, but hours later she wakes with a wheezing start, as though a cold hand were clutched around her windpipe. A wild look around the room tells her that day has broken, and she re-dresses and tears out of the room to search the pod for her companions. A number of Resistance officers greet her, but none of them can recall seeing Chewie or Kylo Ren in any room that night.
Fear for the worst carries her past the scrambled offers of Hapans to help her find what she's looking for and into the hangar, running over the clean steel and duracrete floor to the Falcon, some mixture of relieved and unnerved to find it still there, for she realizes only then that bringing harm to Chewie did not implicitly walk hand-in-hand with absconding on the Falcon. Her exhaustion got the better of her, and she's cursing herself as she climbs aboard. ]
Chewie!? [ She jogs up the ramp, out of breath and trailing Hapan officers who wait at the bottom. ]
some professors just need to stop
I'd like to try something.
This grand experiment has dug her deeper than she'd foreseen, and she can't help imagining all the ways it could go wrong while the water courses over her. Her eyes snap open to stave off the haunting image of Han Solo's face illuminated by red light, far but easily distinguished all the same before he plummets down. She doesn't waste water, shaking out damp hair and stepping out the moment the last suds are drained out of it to leave her staring at bruises and cuts while she towels off.
Three portions, she determines as she glimpses at the water trickling down the drain.
Her hair is still damp when it hits the pillow, and no manner of plaguing uncertainties can keep her from sleep for long. It's the easiest she's ever drifted off in such a soft bed, and even in her present condition, a part of her longs for the stiffness of the floor below, but she can't drag herself out of the sinking plush of the mattress once she's lying in it, darkness closing in around her with a new kind of warmth, distinct from the Jakku sun.
Nightmares haunt her, though she can't say with all certainty that it's all they are for they feel too real and too familiar to be anything of the sort. They come in flashes, and in them, she's always freezing in the dark, distinguishing it from the light of Hapes, and a rasping whisper tells her that she is a weapon wielded by the Resistance and nothing more, that their affection and warmth is a mere mask, from behind which they command her potential. In some of them, a piercing blue saber glides cleanly through a slim black shadow. In others, she chokes on her own blood and stares into a mask of black steel with hollow eyes. The worst of them aren't characterized by the violence of burning ozone and clashing beams of plasma, but by a thick sheen of sweat and labored breathing.
She sleeps longer than she expects to, thrashing around and sweating as she does, but hours later she wakes with a wheezing start, as though a cold hand were clutched around her windpipe. A wild look around the room tells her that day has broken, and she re-dresses and tears out of the room to search the pod for her companions. A number of Resistance officers greet her, but none of them can recall seeing Chewie or Kylo Ren in any room that night.
Fear for the worst carries her past the scrambled offers of Hapans to help her find what she's looking for and into the hangar, running over the clean steel and duracrete floor to the Falcon, some mixture of relieved and unnerved to find it still there, for she realizes only then that bringing harm to Chewie did not implicitly walk hand-in-hand with absconding on the Falcon. Her exhaustion got the better of her, and she's cursing herself as she climbs aboard. ]
Chewie!? [ She jogs up the ramp, out of breath and trailing Hapan officers who wait at the bottom. ]