Send Your Rain

You'll Find that You've Nothing to Prove

"I was born on Dulathia. Would be nice to go back."

A smile crossed his face. "I'll see what I can do to get you back there, then, Kaydel."

"Thank you, Poe."

His expression turned into a frown as he spotted something breaking off from the main ship. An escape pod. "Where does he think he's going?" he wondered aloud.

"Poe?"

Instead of answering, he fired up his engine and gave chase – hardly a contest. "BB-8, launch the grappling hook," he ordered when they got close. It was easy enough to latch onto the pod. Getting it down safely on the landing platform might be another story, but he saw no reason not to try. The landing was unsurprisingly bumpy, possibly a bit more so than it had to be. He climbed out of the cockpit and went to check it out.

"Ah, General Hugs. What a pleasure to meet in person." The other man glared fiercely, but resigned himself to his fate when Poe leveled a blaster at him. "Come on, then," he ordered and escorted the general to some of Calrissian's people.

"You won't keep me here for long," Hux growled as he was led away.

Poe smiled. "No, I'm sure there are a lot of people who will want your head. I hope you'll be comfortable while you're with us," he added politely, and went off to find Kaydel.

Rey sat by the Dejarik table on the Falcon, trying to stay awake. Ben sat next to her, his eyes closed. She wondered how much of the exhaustion she was feeling was actually his. Everyone else was in the cockpit, fortunately – except for the Knights, of course, who were locked up in the hold – and she was glad to be alone with Ben. It was only maybe, what, the fourth time she had been so in person.

"Ben," she murmured.

He opened an eye to look down at her.

"What's going to happen next?"

"You'll have to tell me – you're the one with visions of the future."

She frowned slightly. "That's not what I meant."

"I know," he replied resignedly, reaching for her hand. He brought it to his lips gently and she felt her cheeks growing warm. "What do you want to do next, Rey?"

"Help the Resistance, if they need us."

"Alright. What if they don't?"

"Then... I don't know. Maybe find other people who do."

He frowned slightly. "Like whom?"

She shrugged. "Other Force-sensitive people, maybe. Ones who want to be trained. Without having to leave their families," she added when he stiffened.

"You would be good at that."

"You would, too," she insisted. "I've only had a couple days of formal training and could use the help."

A smile tugged at his lips. "That's all you got from Luke?"

"I got the sacred texts," she countered.

"So you did." He closed his eyes again, leaning back. Then opened them suddenly to look at her. "You 'got' them? He didn't give them to you?"

She flushed for a different reason. "He wasn't using them," she defended herself.

A laugh was startled out of him and she smiled in spite of herself. "Scavenger," he called her with an unexpected level of affection in his tone.

"I learned a lot of useful life skills scavenging. Collecting items that won't be missed, defending yourself and what's yours, fixing broken things..." she trailed off uncomfortably, acutely aware of how different his upbringing had likely been as the son of a princess.