PSL ø i run through the rain in the town i was born

[indecisions]

she will come back to us

It goes like this: once upon a time, a small group of rag tags take on the Imperial forces to secure plans to the Death Star, and against all odds the plan works. Somehow they manage the impossible, somehow they get the plans off of Scarif and into the hands of the Rebellion.

It also goes like this: they lose too many good men and women on the beaches. Two survivors are dragged out, barely holding on to life, and it takes seven years in stasis before there's even time to bring them back from the brink, to heal broken bones and bodies and restore them to bodies better than they've ever known. The war is over. The Empire is over. There's peace in the galaxy.

The final piece of the puzzle is this: one day a perfectly ordinary day is interrupted by a jedi of legendary status, with the threat of imminent death looming over a daughter's head. There's something unimaginable coming, and an impossible choice is left in their hands. Just like that two orphans learn what it is like to lose a child.



Fifteen years later, give or take, and one night Rey wakes up and she knows where to go. It's as simple as that. It's still dark when Rey leaves, sneaking out of the base before anyone can convince her this is something it's not. It's as if the map appears fully formed in her mind, and it's easy enough to steal a ship and leave before anyone is responsive enough to stop her from going. The journey takes three days and Rey worries the entire time. The droid autopiloting while she tries to catch a few minutes or hours of sleep along the way is no help, nothing like BB-8, who she couldn't bear to take from Poe and Finn. They need the support more than her. A basic pilot is enough for Rey, and when she finds the planet she knows this is the one she's dreamt of all this time. The ocean, the island, it's exactly like she pictured. She wanders the outskirts for another day before she can muster the courage to fly across the sea and dock on the island itself. A handful of people live here, it's quiet, untouched. Perfect.

Will she know them? Something led her here, but will Rey know the people when she sees them? Will she feel it like she felt her way here? She's never liked unknowns, and this is the biggest one she's ever had to deal with. To be this close, closer than she's been since before she can remember, only to fail...it's the stuff of her nightmares.

Truth be told, she's just terrified that she's going to find a gravestone.

The suns are beginning to disappear when she returns to the water. She's still walking along the tree line but she needs to be close to the sea, it feels...important. Light is dwindling and the reality of going another day with her questions unanswered is setting in. It shouldn't hurt as much as it does -- this has been Rey's life, all she knows is Jakku and a blank space where memories of her parents should be -- but to be this close and still nothing sits as an ache deep in her chest. It's the first time that coming out here feels like a mistake. She's so focused on the water that she doesn't even notice two people walking towards her. Until, in a rush that leaves her dizzy, she does.

It's the Force. It's a parental bond. It's something, but whatever it is Rey knows. She knows, and it's the moment she's dreamed of since she was a little girl when she starts running. She runs and she doesn't stop, dropping her staff and bag and stopping all too abruptly a few feet in front of the pair when she realises -- what if they don't know her?

So this is how Jyn and Cassian find themselves confronted by the girl, stood in front of them with tears in her eyes and an expression caught between joy and utter despair. She's almost too afraid to do it, but she asks the question all the same.

"Do you know who I am?"

Comments

[realists]

Compared to her husband, Jyn finds herself unable to move, unable to speak, staring at her daughter with wide eyes. Her daughter. She doesn't move when Cassian releases her to gather their daughter up in his arms, doesn't speak to defend herself about Rey's lack of middle name, just looks at the grown woman her child had become.

She's almost as tall as Cassian, same dark and disheveled hair, same dimples that Jyn doesn't think she will see. Doesn't deserve to see. She looks so much like Cassian it makes Jyn's chest ache, same nose and chin and friendly mouth that is more suited for smiling than the grief they've been dealt.

But her eyes are Jyn's. Galen's. Stardust.

She listens to Cassian's apologies, remembering the same apologies when she was in labor, all pain wiped away when her daughter was pressed into her arms, wriggling violently like she refused to be tied down even with blankets. She hadn't been calmed by Jyn's familiar heartbeat and warmth and part of her was afraid she'd done it wrong, done something wrong. But then Cassian had run his finger down the bridge of her nose, kissed the top of her dark head, and she'd stilled immediately. Maybe it was just the truth of fathers and daughters.

Eventually, her voice nothing more than a broken rasp, she manages, "Stardust."

[indecisions]

They know. They know, they know, they know and just like that a piece of the puzzle slots into place. Rey takes a second longer than Cassian to react, he's already holding her when her arms finally remember how to work again. When she finally gets her arm around him and clamps down tight, she wonders briefly if she'll ever let go again. Not likely.

"Andor," she repeats, voice thick. Rey Andor, she finally has a whole name. It's a luxury she'd only even begun to imagine, and once again she wonders how she'd ever managed to feel whole before this moment.

The answer, of course, is that she didn't.

Rey does an admirable job of restraining herself before any tears manage to fall, clinging to her father with a lump in her throat and a shine in her eyes, but then Jyn speaks and it's the last straw. She feels the wet against her cheeks before she's even really aware that it's happening, and without fully losing contact with Cassian she unfurls an arm and just reaches out for the woman.

"It's you, it's really you."

[realists]

♪ oceans -- seafret

It's too long before Jyn moves, long enough to feel like a rejection before she moves forward like Rey is the sun and she's being pulled into her gravity. Rey is the sun, had always been her sun from the moment Jyn laid eyes on her, heard her defiant cries.

Rey has her accent, losing her father's the same way Jyn had done when she was a little girl and it makes her ache that the only family Rey will ever know is the two of them. How much would Baze Malbus have doted upon this girl? How great would Chirrut's love for her be? How brave would Bodhi teach her to be? She'd never hear Galen calling her Stardust or Cassian's father giving her pet names in their native tongues. She deserves so much more than she's been given and Jyn can't help thinking that she isn't good enough for Rey. How far did she come to find them only to find Jyn as her mother?

Self-loathing has always been something Jyn was good at. Losing her daughter, abandoning her the same way her parents had abandoned her, had made Jyn excel at it.

But she curls into this offered hug with a selfishness she can't contain, greedy to simply be near this child she doesn't deserve to know. Her arm circles her waist, other hand reaching out to cling to Cassian, fingers catching purchase behind his shoulder.

"You look so much like your father."

[ouzel]

Cassian has been at Jyn's side for too long, has weathered her feelings of inadequacies and not being enough through Rey's childhood and through the emotional volatile wasteland that has been their childless life together, trapped on this planet lest they undo the worst and most important decision of their lives after Scarif. He may not be able to feel the Force but he can feel her sense of self-loathing washing off her like waves from the ocean onto the shore, and so his hand at her waist holds her fast in case she decides to pull away.

"She sounds like you." He kisses Rey on the cheek, and then does the same for Jyn, tilting his head down and keeping it near her ear. They're crying and for once he feels like it isn't an insurmountable well he has to fill lest he drown in it. "Has your eyes, your beauty. Probably your stubbornness."

Don't erase yourself from this, he wants to say, but wanting her daughter may yet win out over the darkness that is Jyn Erso's limited self-opinion. He's willing to wait and see.

"We love you, little Stardust. We have loved you all this time, and there's so much to show you. You'll have to forgive your mother, she functions best when she is angry."