Chapter Text
It was warm under her covers, too warm. Rey kicked the blanket off. Something like pure heat licked across her shin. With a gasp, she drew her legs up. The air was thick, dry. It was choking. Rey opened her eyes to a room on fire.
For a moment, she didn’t move. She watched the flame swallow her discarded blanket. She watched it lash against stone walls. There were screams outside her door. High, keening. Pain and fear seeped through the walls. They moved like physical things, curling around her, thrumming through her chest, holding her captive before they passed, before she realized she couldn’t breathe.
It was too late when she sprung from the bed, leaping a flaming rug. Her door was already on fire. Panic, her own this time, built as she spun, as her eyes raked across the strange room. She didn’t know this place. The windows opposite the door were narrow things, too small even for a child to fit through, just three slashes of night in a wall of fire.
Rey’s eyes stung. She would cry if they were so terribly dry. With no other option, she reached for the door. There was no handle. Gasping breath, Rey stared at it—horrified. A datapad hung next to it, the kind you might press your hand to. But its edges had melted, leaving the whole thing warped and askew.
The scent of burning plastic filled Rey’s nose. Desperate, she tried to press her hand to it anyway. What came up was too small, a child’s hand, really. Rey blinked at it. She was losing her mind. She’d taken in too much smoke, and she was losing her mind. After a moment’s hesitation, she flattened that wrong hand to the pad. The pain was instant, searing. She drew back and was sure she left some skin behind. The door didn’t budge. The pad hadn’t even lit.
Rey clutched her hand to her chest. Kriff. Kriff. There was no way out. She was breathing quickly, too quickly. Her feet were burning. A sway had taken hold, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay upright.
But without her help, something was building in her chest, something jagged and desperate, something too large, too volatile for her body. It was fear turned corporal, buzzing, growing. It swelled up from her chest, and Rey released it with a scream. It tore from her, her body merely a vessel. The sound was deafening. Rey’s hands went to her ears. The windows shattered; shards of glass cut across her as the door blew off its hinges, careening into a corridor of flame.
Without the energy, she nearly collapsed. Her legs shook as she stumbled over the wreckage. The strange nightgown she wore had caught along the hem. Fire crept its way up. Rey swayed. She caught herself against the wall, and flame ate at her sleeves. The screams had died out. Now the only sound that filled this place was a hungry crackle. It was a fight to stay upright. Whatever she had expelled had depleted her, left her a shell.
Rey blinked at the fire-filled corridor. Where was she? Terror was unfurling. Doors like her own interspersed down either side. On the ceiling, pot lights flickered. She couldn’t make out the end of the corridor. All she could see was fire. All she could feel was burning.
There was nowhere to go. She didn’t know the way out. Next to her, sparks showered from a dying pot light. Rey stumbled. Her foot struck something. She went down hard, her chin striking the stone. Blood pooled readily in her mouth.
Rey coughed, choking on it, choking on the smoke too. The ground beneath her felt wrong. It was uneven—soft. Rey pulled herself up on her hands and knees and loosed a sob. It was a body, still warm, still burning. She scrambled off it, managing to make it to her feet only to sway into the wall. She thought her hair might be burning. She thought all of her might be burning. She fell. This time there was no hope of rising. Her limbs wouldn’t work. She blinked dully at the flames, each bat of her eyes stretching longer than the last. Her head settled on the stone. Her next blink showed her a corridor on its side.
Heat built. Rey was slipping. A voice pulled her back, not screaming, calling out, calling for her.
She could feel them, drawing closer. She could taste their terror like it was her own. Rey fought to open her eyes. A figure, tall, silhouetted in fire, closed on her. Her gaze flicked down to the blue glow of his blade, and then her eyes slid closed.
Rey woke with a gasp. She reared up and slammed her head on the remnants of a side-mounted blaster. Pain throbbed out from the point of contact. Her hand shot up instantly, and a lump swelled eagerly beneath it. Wincing, she kicked her blankets off. She was drenched in sweat, her nightclothes sticking to her.
Her doll, or her poor approximation of a doll, made from string and old oil rags left at the outpost, stared up at her from the floor. Quickly, Rey slipped from her bed, snatching up Mya and replacing her carefully atop the bed.
Kriff. Her clothes needed a wash. Her sheets did too. But she wouldn’t be able to spare the water rations for weeks. Rey peeled off her nightdress, hanging it on the line rigged up between the offending side-mounted blaster and her drawers.
That dress was her only one. With no other options, she pulled on her day clothes, looking gloomily at the porthole above her bed. First sun rose early on Jakku, but no light slipped through.
She stripped her ruined sheets, hefting them to the door she’d rigged in her walker’s belly. Outside, her feet sank immediately into the sand. It took two tries to throw the sweat-soaked cloth over the side of the walker. Sand would blanket it before morning came, but there was no room to hang it inside.
Heart pounding, Rey collapsed into the sand, leaning against the side of her walker. She pressed her palms to her eyes. The thump in her chest remained a little too quick for comfort. She’d had that dream before.
Rey let her head rest back as she stared up at the stars, breathing in dry but blessedly cool air. No fire. She told herself, running her palms back and forth over skin scarred only by the snags on old starships. Not real. Still her heart beat, like she was there, like the flames were creeping over her.
Rey let her eyes sweep idly over the dunes. She could never fall back asleep after that dream. All she could do was sit up and wait until the panic left her system. She pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin atop them. There was a distant shifting of sands, and she closed her eyes before the gust came. Sand rained over her. Rey could always predict when those gusts would come, better than anyone she’d met at the outpost.
When the wind ebbed, Rey opened her eyes and found a blot on the horizon. It was strange, tiny and distant, but undoubtedly wrong. She knew these dunes; their shapes changed slowly. There was never newness, only steady evolution. She narrowed her eyes at that blot—round, cresting the highest dune in the distance. It was moving.
Rey stood abruptly. She darted back inside her walker, snatching her staff from its spot by the door. Hopping, she jammed her feet into too-small boots and took off. The blot was closer now, larger. She could make out not just one sphere but a second half one resting on top. It was a droid. Despite herself, she felt a swell of excitement.
Droids were friendly—usually. Rey swung her staff over her shoulder. A gesture of goodwill. Better to show that she was friendly too. The droid moved quickly. It dipped down over a dune, and Rey caught sight of it in the valley when she crested her own. The droid stopped, the blinking light on its head fixed on her. Rey held up her hands, showing them to be empty as she descended into the valley.
“Hello.”
The droid's head whizzed, doing a full survey of the area before it turned back to her. It beeped once. A hello. She wasn’t great with binary. She’d picked up as much as she could from droids passing through Niima outpost, but traders didn’t usually let their help wander. Smugglers allowed even less.
She’d never had a chance to try anything past pleasantries.
“My name's Rey.” She touched a hand to her chest. “What’s your name?”
The droid jerked closer. Its head spun again before it emitted three more beeps—two short, one long. BB-8… She thought.
When she tested it, the droid gave a chirp of assent. And Rey felt rather good about her binary abilities.
“Are you lost?”
Niima outpost wasn’t far. The droid must have been separated from its crew.
Two quick beeps—help.
Rey nodded emphatically. “Yes, yes, I can help you find your way back. We'll have to wait till morning. It’s too dangerous to cross the sinking fields at night, but I’ll bring you to Niima Outpost at sunrise. Is that where you flew in?”
The droid’s head drooped forward with a low beep. No. Rey frowned. Kelvin Outpost was days away, too far of a trip for her to make without running out of rations. It was also west. BB-8 had come from the east.
“Okay,” Rey said carefully. She chewed on her lip trying to find a solution. “Well, we can check the starship port at Niima. Maybe someone has heard something.”
Two more quick beeps—help.
Something cold slid into the pit of Rey’s stomach. Some pilots liked to claim droids didn’t feel anything. But this droid was scared. Rey could feel it, no different than if it was a person opposite her.
“Okay,” she nodded, still grasping for an answer. There was no way she could take BB-8 to Kelvin. “Well, how about you come with me? I have shelter. We can wait there until the sun comes up.”
An eager beep. Rey eyed the droid anxiously. What was it so scared of?
She turned, gesturing awkwardly back the way she’d come. It wasn’t a long walk, but as BB-8 set off after her, she could hear the grind of the sand caught in his spinning mechanism. The droid was moving at a crawl by the time they reached her walker. She had to heft him over the lip of her doorway. He slipped her hands and landed with a clunk.
Rey grimaced. “Sorry.”
BB-8 beeped in forgiveness, but when he tried to move, his sphere only ground into the half one, letting out a high scream of metal on metal.
“Just a sec!” Rey hopped over BB-8, scrambling to the back of the walker. She tugged open the top drawer, slammed it closed, and tried another. Kriff, she knew she had it somewhere. She’d used it just a week ago to detach a half-functional compressor—got four portions off that find, so where– There, the pin tool was hidden beneath her wire cutters.
“Got it!” She held the tool high for BB-8 to see.
She was rewarded with a feeble chirp of thanks. Rey shuffled the tight quarters back towards BB-8. Kneeling before the droid, she prodded the body access cover. It sprung, and sand poured out onto her knees. Rey grit her teeth as it blanketed the floor. She really should have done that outside.
BB-8 though, gave another chirp of thanks, a little heartier this time.
“You're welcome.” Rey frowned. “That should help with the weight. Now let me see if I can clear your spinning mechanism. She fiddled with the panel a little higher up. Sometimes BB units usually had a detachment mechanism that allowed you to temporarily remove the head. She wedged her pin tool in the edge and tried to pry it open. The latch wouldn’t come this time. And when she pressed harder, BB-8 reared back.
“Sorry.” Rey followed, twisting her pin tool. “I swear you’ll feel better once I–”
The latch gave. It wasn’t the one she was looking for. Instead, a drawer sprung out. In it was a silver bar—thick and asymmetrical, but no longer than her thumb.
BB-8’s photoreceptor blinked surveyingly as she lifted the silver chunk.
A long beep followed by a short one. It took Rey a moment to find a translation that made sense. “Cargo?”
A beep of assent.
“You're carrying this somewhere?”
Another beep.
“To someone on Jakku?”
Three beeps. Rey stilled.
“What was that?” she breathed.
Three beeps. The same three. She hadn’t misheard. Resistance.
Rey stood abruptly. She was harbouring a resistance droid. Pilots in the outpost had been killed for less than this. But the silver was warm in her hand. Rey’s heart beat quickly. She let her thumb trace over the cubic thing. There was an intangible sort of draw—a need. Her eyes drifted back to BB-8.
“What is it?” Her own voice sounded distant.
BB-8 was silent.
“I’ll help you,” she said quickly, a whisper, as if her walker wasn’t miles from the nearest dwelling. As if someone might hear her. “I just– I need to know what it is.”
Silence stretched. She was sure the droid would say nothing, but then came another beep–short, clipped.
Map.
The hard edges dug into Rey’s palm. She turned it slowly, studying the strange markings, letting her nail catch in the indents.
A low beep sounded to her right. Then another.
Show you?
An offer.
Rey stared at the droid. She shouldn’t. The less she knew, the better. She could take BB-8 to Niima whether she looked at the map or not. But Rey was nodding; she was leaning back down and placing the map within the compartment BB-8 offered. The mechanism clicked. It retracted with a groan, and then her walker was bathed in blue. An entire star system hung there in miniature. And across it, a path. Rey followed the line, walking dazedly towards the planet at its end. She reached up, touching the phantom thing, and a wave crashed over her. She was on her knees—dry, in her walker, tasting a phantom breath of salt.
Rey blinked. There was another mechanical groan, and the blue light vanished. It was a moment before she looked to BB-8, before she could breathe again.
“Thank you,” she said, a little choked, a part of her still caught beneath the wave. “Thank you for showing me.”
BB-8 chirped once, and then again, after she’d retaken her pin tool and cleared the sand from the cash. With his ability to move functional once more, BB-8 nudged her shin gently. Rey forced a smile, moving unsteadily to her stripped bed. She sank onto it, pulling Mya into her lap, seeing water, seeing fire.