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Ben’s connection to her had been a tide coming in, washing over her, knocking her footing out from under her, until she didn’t know the way up for air. He had pulled her in, slowly, deeper and further until the shore was a speck in the distance. For a moment, she could’ve drowned caught in his undertow, lost forever in a sea of darkness.
But now the storm that was Ben had receded; she saw clearly the ruin left in his wake. His small deceptions, how they’d chipped away at her intuition. She was not nothing. It was not her responsibility to turn anyone’s heart for them. Finn’s embrace, real and firm, had planted her back on solid ground. He gave freely the support, love, she’d nearly forgotten was there for to take whenever it was needed. She was all the hope he, and the rest of the Resistance needed. She knew that now. Though knowing and confidently accepting were concepts lightyears apart in her mind.
That warmth she felt from Finn, from Leia, from being in the midst of the Resistance. Around Poe it was more of a fire, burning away any fog that might’ve lingered. He hid nothing. No lies, no tricks. He sat alongside her when she meditated, trying to match her even, slow breath. The first time he had asked to join her, he had only a rueful confession as an explanation. “It’s been brought to my attention that I have impulsive tendencies that could ‘destroy the Resistance and doom the galaxy.’ Meditating should help, right? Even if I won’t move rocks or read minds?” His bright, sharp energy now a comfortably consistent beacon that helped focus her mind.
After, they often naturally transitioned into working on ships, usually the Falcon. Repairs were their own kind of moving meditation. One where they were equals, finding a flow together in comfortable silence, seeming to read the other’s mind as they worked the problems in front of them. Only the occasional clatter of tools on cement threatened to break the hushed spell. This realm was logical, with tangible solutions. Solid and familiar. When the silence grew to be stifling, because Poe was still Poe after all, he regaled her with every story of the Rebellion he knew. Stories from Leia or Han. Stories his father had shared as warnings before he left home for the academy. Bedtime stories his mother had reenacted for him with his toy ships. Every story a new connection for Rey to the past, to the people she admired and missed.
She had gone years on Jakku without so much as smiling. Now he made her laugh, worked at it like it was his most vital mission. Like the fate of the Resistance and balance of the Force depended on her, at least a couple times a week, laughing until her chest burned and her cheeks ached. She smiled and laughed often all of a sudden it seemed, in the halls, over dinner, during training. As though his own easy smile was contagious.
Rey sits in a briefing on a sunny afternoon, Leia’s terse but confident voice going over a mission. She watches Poe’s face, focused in concentration, and catches herself thinking of the Resistance base as “home” for the first time. The word effortlessly sweeps into her conscious as though it had always been there. When she finally says it out loud three months later, she can’t remember feeling any other way.