dunes of sand (star wars | rey~kylo, amilyn/leia)

[fiachairecht]

dunes of sand. star wars sequels, rey~kylo, amilyn/leia. senator ben organa goes to jakku to evaluate the state of the old imperial base and finds so much more than he could have imagined. 1.7k words, rated t. for bornintogrief in a reylo fanfic anthology exchange.

Nightfall on Coruscant is little more than a courtesy of the sun. Light spills still over Galactic City, the steady glow from the windows of the sleepless and the flickering dots of cheerful speeders darting between transparisteel towers on unknowable missions. There's no true midnight sun, but the gleam is enough to keep those with uncovered windows awake.

Ben Organa rests his head against his Level 3204 bedroom window and lets himself imagine the chill of the night seep into his bones even through the climate controls, thinking longingly of summers on Gatalenta when he really could outrun the darkening night.

"You're up late." He smiles as his mother's voice breaks the silence.

"Just thinking about tomorrow." He straightens up and turns around, hands jammed in the pockets of his robe. His mother's face is soft in the dim light, and for a moment he hates himself for even thinking to disturb her with his fears about the Jakku trip. She doesn't need to know his dreams, not when she's faced so much already.

"Nervous?" She raises her eyebrows as she walks forward, searching his face for an answer.

Ben flushes, ducks his head and lets his hair swing forward to cover his face. "Not really."

"Mm." Ben doesn't think for a moment that she believes him, her connection to the Force and to his emotions has been a feature of his life since long before he became New Alderaan's senator, but she lets it drop. "Amilyn's bringing you tea."

Ben sighs, settles cross-legged at the foot of his bed. "She doesn't have to."

"When has that ever stopped me before, little star?" Amilyn asks fondly. In pale blue, wreathed in steam from the mugs of tea she's holding, Ben thinks she looks like something stepped out of his recent dreams, and he suppresses a shiver.

Amilyn raises her eyebrows at Leia, who shrugs, and Ben sighs at his mothers' silent communication. "I'm right here. And fine, I promise."

"Your aura's unsettled," Amilyn says matter-of-factly, pressing a mug into his hands. "Understandable, of course, going to a place with as much Imperial history as Jakku. This will help."

She kisses the corner of Leia's mouth, the top of Ben's head, and settles next to him on the bed as he takes a sip, pulling Leia into her lap as she does.

As experienced with Amilyn's teas as he is, Ben has to stop himself from making a face at this one. It's surprisingly strong, smoky with a floral, syrupy aftertaste, and Ben thanks every interminable diplomatic meeting with safe but unpalatable drinks he's ever been to for the strength to finish his mug.

But Amilyn hadn't served in the Senate herself for more than a decade to let him off so easily. "It's a Gatalentan caravan blend," she grins, before he can ask. "Cassius flowers for health, Angelica root for protection against any lingering Sith influences, and chamomile for calming your emotions."

Ben sighs into his mug. "Doesn't sound like I'm the worried one, here."

"We've all been worried since the rumors of the First Order started," his mother says. Ben can feel her hands in his hair, separating out the strands in preparation for braiding, can see, out of the corner of his eye, the flash of Amilyn's rings as she does the same for Leia. "But they shouldn't be near Jakku. We believe in you, Ben."

That's what I'm worried about, he thinks, but in the quiet of the night it doesn't feel right to say. Instead he sits in silence and sips at his tea as his mother braids his hair, and wonders if he will ever know even this much peace again.

When his mothers have left, with hugs and apologies for not being able to see him off in the morning, he runs his hands down his new braids, reading the message she's left there for him.

One for protection.

One for love.

One for the possibility of war.

*

Ben dreams once more of the girl, wrapped in gauze, hands outstretched, but for the first time since she first appeared to him, he does not fear.

*

Nightfall on Jakku is another cruelty of the sun, as it dips under even the lowest of the dunes and leaves frost to sweep cold across the sands. The moons and stars strewn across the sky provide a map to lonely travelers, and yet the air shivers sharp and lethal around anyone who dares venture out.

Rey leans against the cracked stone wall of the Observatory's broken atrium, as far out of the way of the winds that howl through the cracked ceiling as she can be and examines the bits of her speeder's engine spread across the ground in front of her. She's never spent more than one night away from her AT-AT in Niima before now, and this third night in the Observatory feels heavy with an unnameable weight.

Maybe tomorrow she'll walk, bring what water she can and brave the twelve hours back to her workbench and retrieve a better set of tools. The Observatory is hidden, the likelihood anyone would happen across her broken speeder while she's gone low.

The wind sounds more like voices than she's heard in years, and Rey shivers, reconsidering her previous thought. The Observatory has never felt particularly welcoming, the energy dark and the presence of ghosts a possibility she tries not to spend much time thinking about.

"Don't be silly, Rey, the Imperial Remnant weren't the Sith of stories," she says aloud, and the wind seems to pause momentarily. "I'm not afraid of you!" she calls, and when the wind resumes, it sounds like laughter.

Rey sighs and pulls her knees closer to her chest, tightening her grip on her wrench. Let the ghosts try, she thinks, they could hardly be scarier than facing down Unkar on one of his bad days.

Still the wind sings, and the fear knotted around Rey's heart grows with each passing hour despite her words. There were too many ships in the air this morning, more than she's ever seen come to Jakku on one day before. Part of her feared, a childish fear: what if her parents were on one of those ships, waiting at Niima while she sheltered in the wilds? But they would wait, she reasons, just like she had waited all these years.

Her real fear, the one that she keeps coming back to, threatening to spread as wide as her hope had ever reached: what if war was to come again to Jakku?

She pulls her doll out of her pocket, stares into Dosmit Raeh's eyes as she re-ties her hair back in its three buns, lower on her head to ease her sleep.

One for protection.

One for her parents.

One for all of Jakku's dead.

*

Rey dreams once more of the boy, robed in light, hands outstretched, but for the first time since he first appeared to her, she does not fear.

*

The boy from her dreams is standing at the entrance to the Observatory when she emerges into the morning air. He's dressed more simply, and his hair is braided more elaborately, but it's him, unmistakably, and the energy surrounding him sings to a part of her she hadn't known was waiting.

Rey has spent to long in the desert to trust new songs. She raises her staff. "Who are you?"

He steps back, hand dropping to the blaster strapped to his waist, but every line of his body reads deference rather than fear. "It's you," he says.

"What do you mean?" Her voice doesn't waver. "You're not supposed to be here."

"I was sent here," he says slowly. "Why are you here?"

"This is my home." Rey tightens her grip on her staff.

His eyes widen. "T-The Observatory? But you—"

"All of Jakku is my home," she interrupts. "And this is my — wait, how did you know it was the Observatory?"

He sighs, squinting up at the sun. "I owe you an explanation, if you'll put down your staff. My name is Ben Organa, and we don't have much time. Can we talk, somewhere far away from here?"

But Rey's thoughts are caught on Organa, all words after a blur. Even on a place as remote as Jakku, she's heard stories, and she can't help but smile. "Organa, like Leia Organa?"

"My mother," Ben says with an answering smile. "And the reason I'm here. But we have to leave, now."

As the shock of seeing Ben made manifest in front of her fades, she can hear the undercurrent of fear in his voice. "My speeder's in pieces and Niima's a day's walk," she says. Even as the words leave her mouth, part of her wonders why she should trust him. Sand and stars, is she really going to walk further into the desert with someone she's just met?

But Rey trusts herself, and her dreams, and she believes in the fear in Ben's eyes as he looks up to the strangely shaped black ship streaking through the sky above them.

"You'll fit on mine," he says, and as the first bolts fly from ship to sand she takes Ben's outstretched hand without another word of protest.

"There's a functioning YT-1300F light freighter on the northern outskirts of the Graveyard," she says, when she's pressed so tightly against him there seems hardly space for sound.

The wind steals his murmur of agreement as sand kicked up by the speeder's wake spins around them. Rey isn't sure if it's a target or armour, but she thinks that as long as she keeps her arms around Ben's waist, as long as the hand he isn't using to steer stays clutching hers, they might both live long enough to find out.

*

She tends his wounds from the journey on the ship, hands deft and sure with more than a decade of desert living marked in her callouses, and in meager thanks he offers to braid her hair.

Rey hesitates for a very long time, hands lingering on the now mostly unraveled buns. She's left Jakku, now, and there will be time to re-do them before she returns. Before her parents come back.

Ben does her braids with shaking fingers, unsure if he hopes she'll ask what the braids mean or if he'll never have to say.

One for protection.

One for gratitude.

One for freedom.