This story is canon-compliant to The Force Awakens but diverges at The Last Jedi. It was written primarily before TLJ, but I will be taking elements from the film in later chapters. It is primarily posted on Archiveofourown under the username aquafizzy10, and shares a Finn/Poe soulmate au equivalent in a conjoining work written by a friend. That work is linked on the Archive account.

This work is being posted here just for fun, and will hopefully be finished in 5 chapters. For more consistent updates, follow the story on this site, my Archiveofourown account, or my tumblr account which is listed on my profile here and on AO3.

Enjoy!

Her dreams all start the same way.

The sea breeze is gentle on her face, the water of the ocean cool on the tips of her toes. Behind her, lush green trees sprout up into the sky, reaching towards the stars. The air is not the dry heat of the desert, but so humid she feels as though she can stick out her tongue and drink from it. Rey walks alone, but she is not the only person on the island.

Other than the sounds of the ocean, she can hear life. Birds chirping in the trees, loud and foreign to her ears, insects buzzing around her head, chasing each other in the wind. There is laughter, and her family mirrors the bugs, running after one another and breaking free of the wall of green. There are several of them, including her parents, her siblings. A cousin, maybe. Each time she has this dream, she thinks she can almost remember their blurry faces.

She stares after them, distanced but with a warm heart. The young ones laugh and play in the sand, splashing salty water onto each other's clothes. They are all dressed like her, and their parents, her parents, watch from the side, just as she does.

"Rey," a kind voice whispers from behind her. She turns around, startled, but is not frightened. She doesn't know what his face looks like, but she knows that he is gentle, and honest, and one day he'll be the one to come back for her.

"It's you," she says yearningly, as if she has not seen him in her dreams for a long time. Rey reaches out to touch him.

Her hand claws through his body like smoke. To her left, her family calls out her name, and Rey looks away for just a single moment, in between the time of two heartbeats. When she looks back at him, her Soulmate, he is nowhere to be found.

She wakes up.

The name on her wrist is hidden behind layers of material. Despite the wrappings, it still occasionally tingles, like the blood pulsing through her veins tickles the skin where the tattoo rests. It's dark blue in color, written in neat, careful handwriting.

Ben Solo.

She's never met anyone with the name of Solo. She's heard stories—legends, really—of the great pilot and smuggler who has the same surname. Ever since she was a child, she has wondered if, maybe, the two were related. But Ben is an odd name, for her area, where names are difficult to pronounce with her human tongue. Rey has always wondered if she will get the chance to meet him. Rey doesn't dream of him being family to someone great. She dreams that the universe will be merciful enough to let them coincide in the same space at the same time. Breathe the same air. Know one another.

It isn't uncommon, in an ever expanding universe, to never meet the person who has the name that is on your wrist. She doesn't know what it is that draws two people together. Some stories say it's magic, others say it's their god. Mostly, though, people say that it's the Force.

However, out here in the desert, there is nothing she can do. All that is left for her here is to scavenge for spare parts, for scraps of metal that burn her fingertips if left in the sun for too long. Out here, the only thing that matters is the fine line between life and death. Small white scratches line up against the wall beside her bed as a painful reminder that she is never changing. She is forever locked in a tower of her own making, stuck on the planet Jakku.

The desert is always dry, just like her eyes have learned to be. Maybe one day, when she finds her island surrounded by water, will Rey be able to cry.

The thing about Finn is that he's the first person Rey has ever allowed herself get swept up by. The words "Resistance fighter" jangle around in her mind like loose screws in a tin can, and she finds that she is too easily willing to drop her entire life to help a small droid and the man who wears his master's leather jacket.

His sleeves are long like hers, the ends of his cuffs dirty and a bit worn. She cannot help but stare, as if her gaze could penetrate the material. Growing up among several different species, it is refreshing, and unfamiliar, to see a human tattoo. Finn, a trained soldier, must think her to be very rude. Still, he grabs her hand to run away but doesn't even glimpse at the name that peeks out beneath the edges of her wrappings.

His manners are the strangest thing about him, including the way his voice goes high when talking about his home with the Resistance and the way he clutches the jacket that lies across his shoulders as though it's a lifeline. She can tell by the bags under his eyes that there is an emotional weight on him, like doubled gravity, and Rey wonders if it's pressure from the mission with BB-8 or something else altogether.

His hand is warm and scratchy in hers, with calluses from heavy work. She does not rely on his grasp, finds the heat of his skin too much for her desert-trained fingers, and does not accept it. But she wonders, the thought like a small trickle of water at the back of her mind, if the name on his wrist is her own. If Finn is a codename, because his arrival is like fate to her, and she would run with him and the small orange droid across the whole galaxy.

She wonders and wonders as they run through the sand. His feet are unbalanced and unpracticed, his shoes made for water and not for the desert. She bats his warm hands away from her own, clutches her staff for her own protection, and steals a craft that is nothing more than a pile of garbage.

At least it works.

The freighter ship zips at light-speed through space, passing through an empty zone while Han Solo recalibrates, stubborn enough to refuse her assistance. As he tinkers with a piece of sparking metal, taped together with chrome-laced cloth, Rey sees the name that spreads across his wrist, font beautiful and regal. Leia Organa. Han ignores her, but she stares at him for a few moments, and wonders if he is still with her—if they have ever even met.

When he turns to look back at Rey, the tails of her clothing whipping backwards in the air behind her are the only thing he manages to see.

Sometimes there are quiet moments, between her and Finn. With their running, they've barely had time to sit and breathe, let alone talk with one another. There is something dark inside him, she can see it in the stiff line of his lips and the way he hunches his shoulders when he thinks she isn't looking. Something dark inside him, yes, but not evil.

The word she thinks of is troubled.

Though she has not known him for long, Rey feels a swell of emotion when she looks at him. Her heart feels lighter, the gaping hole of loss feels less hollow. She wonders if this is what Soulmates feel like, but her guts instantly tells her that it is not. She knows, deep down, that this is only friendship, something she has not had in a long time. Still, she asks anyway, unable to help herself from knowing.

"Do you," she pauses, ponders for the right words, uses the first thing that comes to mind anyway, "have one?"

Finn looks up at her, catches her eyes, and then looks down at his arm where her gaze is drawn. He nods, and folds the leather sleeve back, showing her the lines of his veins and the name on his skin. Poe Dameron.

The fact that the name isn't her own is both a disappointment and a relief. Disappointment, because she still has to look for her own, but immense relief because Finn does not feel right to her. "Have you met him?" she asks moments after she sees the name, overeager to hide her true feelings.

When Finn looks way, her questions turn genuine. Rushed. "Finn? Is he in the Resistance, like you?"

He nods, as if he never hesitated. "I did meet him. Once. And yeah," his eyes turn so incredibly sad, "he was."

Rey feels her blood go cold, her stomach dropping. "Was?"

"He died on Jakku. We crash-landed together." Finn looks distant, but strong, like a true fighter. It is not surprising that the Resistance would use a man like him. A soldier to finish the mission, given to him by—

Rey lets out a small, involuntary gasp, remembering suddenly, "He was BB-8's master!" The name on his wrist and the name given to her by the droid are one in the same.

Finn only hums in reply, looking as though he is deep in thought. He doesn't look as though he's lost his whole world, but lost something that could have been. Rey knows exactly how that loss feels. She doesn't remember her family, only remembers the emptiness that was left over from their absence.

Rey thinks of Han Solo, and how they've all come together, as if the universe has plucked all of their strings and pulled them all towards one another. She says softly, words gentle, a hand light on his knee, "I've heard that the names on our wrists come from the Force linking two people together. For whatever reason, they're meant to come into contact with one another. Sometimes it isn't the person you're most compatible with. Sometimes you have a purpose—something the two of you have to do."

"Like a mission," Finn says quietly. He squares his shoulders and straightens his back, looking as though he could tear a whole mountain apart with his bare hands. The dark pressure on his body lessens, and Rey feels pleased to help.

"Have you met yours?" he asks her, and finally makes solid eye contact, more than just the fleeting glances at her face. Rey stands from her crouching position in front of him when her thighs begin to burn. She shakes her head.

"Nobody new ever really comes to Jakku." She thinks on that for several seconds, "Nobody but the Troopers. But I don't think it's one of them." Rey snorts, the possibility ludicrous in any scenario her brain could make up. Though she has never met him, she feels as though she knows her Soulmate from her deepest dreams. He is kind in a way that a Trooper is not—the Troopers who are notoriously known for murder, kidnapping, and arson.

"Give me your hand," he requests, even though he takes her arm before the words are finished coming out of his mouth. He traces his fingers up her palm, and digs them under her tight wrappings, inching the material up enough to see the full name. He smiles crookedly at her, "Nope, definitely not a Stormtrooper."

"How can you be so sure?" she asks.

He releases her. "Stormtroopers don't have names, only designations. Letters. Numbers."

"That's a relief." She feels so strongly connected to Resistance, feels their cause flow through her like air into her lungs.

"Yeah, I guess it is."

Han says Maz is an old friend, but it doesn't matter if Finn leaves her. Of course he cannot be her Soulmate. She doesn't know if he will ever come back.

Luke Skywalker's lightsaber calls to her through layers of dirt and stone. Rey hears her own screams through grime-covered walls, and is drawn to the hidden room in a trance. She can hear its past before she lays a finger on it, and when her hand grips the edged handle, Rey's entire world shifts on its axis. She doesn't realize it there, in the darkest depths of an ancient castle, but her life, and the way the Force interacts with it, changes.

She leaves the saber, but it's not the last time that she will place her hands on it. It is, however, the last time she will take it in her grasp with an untrained hand. Even in the future, when she uses it in battle, does she understand at least the basic fundamentals of the Force. Rey will never be so innocent and naïve again.

She realizes now that her family is never coming back. The kindness in Maz's eyes does not mask the painful truth of her words, and Rey only begins on her descent into fear and self-doubt. If her family will not come back for her, who is to say that Ben, a stranger, would even try to?

Needing to escape, she runs. Her shoes are not made for the terrain of the forest. She can feel the different levels and textures beneath her thin soles, all thick dirt and twigs and leaves. Like Finn before her, she is unbalanced, in more ways than one. When the Stormtroopers arrive, she is not ready.

Before she sees him, she can sense his presence. His aura is ominous, is dark and suffocating. She can feel it surround her, can feel anxiety creep up her throat as his heavy weight rests against every part of her skin, clammy like cold sweat. Rey acts on the survival instinct that has kept her alive for so long, firing her gun as many times as she can squeeze the trigger. He will not be her first kill, and she wonders if he will be the last.

His saber, which glows red like dark static, smells of burning metal. It fills the air with an eerie scent of death, and he uses it to dodge any shot that she sends his way. Kylo Ren backs her into a rocky corner, and she barely has the time to lift her lithe frame up onto the ledge. Rey tries to escape and fire as she moves away, but he lifts his hand and her entire body freezes. Her eyes are free to move in their sockets, but her muscles are locked, contracting against the Force, trying to move and becoming a body-wide cramp.

"The girl I've heard so much about." His words are slow and masked by a filter, his helmet a wall between him and herself. She looks at where his eyes should be and sees black and silver, two slits covered by an opaque lens.

Rey grits her teeth, her jaw flexing painfully as she tries to break against the pressure on her body. Her eyes follow him as he circles her, and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up when he moves where she cannot see him.

"The droid." She doesn't answer—can't. "Where is it?"

Rey's jaw clenches, her teeth locked together, and his saber shoots out beside her face. The ends of her curls are singed beside her, and a drip of sweat runs down the side of her temple, down her cheek. He threatens her, and she can do nothing.

Then he pulls his weapon away. "You've seen it." His words are surprised, an offending accusation. Of course she's seen it, but she won't tell him a thing.

"Sir," a Stormtrooper interrupts, breathless from her run up the rocky hills of the forest. Rey can see her out of the corner of her eye, and is suddenly relieved. "Resistance fighters! We need more troops."

"Pull the division out," he orders with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Above the sound of her own heartbeat, Rey can hear shooting and screaming, the sound of rock colliding with the ground. "And the droid, sir?"

"Leave it. We have what we need."

He violates her mind, as though he stuffs his fingers inside of it and pulls something out of her. Rey collapses before her mind goes entirely dark. The last thing she sees, with darkness encroaching on her vision, is the sight of her legs being pulled up in front of her, and the dark uniform of Kylo Ren. She cannot smell anything but seared steel and chrome.

Then there is nothing.

The room is ice cold, and Rey feels a shiver run down her spine the second she wakes up. The cuffs of her restraints are tight against her wrists, solid and hard, and she bruises her skin when she clashes against them. Her head feels heavy, and her mind dizzy, like she's experienced heavy whiplash. The first thing her eyes focus on is her captor, who is crouched directly in front of her. She cannot see his eyes, but she knows he's watching.

"Where am I?" She looks around, quickly, and notices that the details of the room are limited. There is a control panel, and a table, but the lighting is dark like a metal cage. The adrenaline in her system does not have much to focus on.

"You are my guest," Kylo Ren says simply, and she cannot help the chills that run through her at the sound of his low voice. Rey's stomach turns, and she wishes she had food in her stomach to vomit up all over him. She hates to admit that she's frightened.

"Where are the others?"

Kylo Ren rises and hums. "You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?" The pause he gives is like a shrug, "You'll be relieved to hear that I have no idea." She hates that he is right, but the rush of relief at Finn and Han's safety is worth it. The feeling quickly dies down, though, leaving anger in its place.

"You still want to kill me," he muses. Her fury, stemming from her fear, bubbles inside of her, threatening to break free. It takes everything in her to keep from spitting in his face, a sign of great disrespect on Jakku. She's not sure if he'd understand, but thinks it would paint her point across well enough.

"That happens when you're being hunted by a creature in a mask," she says instead.

The way his body tenses makes her think that he is going to hit her. Instead, his fingers curl underneath his jaw, and the helmet that covers his face comes off with a sharp hiss.

He reveals his true face to her, and he is not what Rey expected. He is young, with dark eyes that scream instability and danger. He looks as though he has never smiled a day in his life, and has not bothered to cut his hair in a couple of years. There are shadows under his eyes, purple and heavy, and she is not surprised because the darkness seems to follow him with every thudding step he takes.

Kylo Ren drops the helmet into a box of rock and coal. He moves to her, slides his hand across the smooth metal of the restraining chair she's tied to. He is so close that if he moves another inch, he could easily skim his nose along the side of her face. Rey holds her breath and stares forward, cursing her shaking body for betraying her. She will not be frightened by him. Her arms flex as she tries to find her inner strength. Her body feels nauseous and weak, but she will not let it disable her.

When Rey does nothing but stare at him, eyes bright, he goes on. "Tell me about the droid."

Rey says quickly, nervously, "He's a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator—"

Her words are cut off by the raise of his hand. He does not use the Force on her, but her throat clenches up from anyway. He cannot tell, but her heart beats rapidly in her chest. "No. He's carrying a section of a navigational chart. We have the rest, recovered from archives of the Empire. We need the last piece. And somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you. You. A scavenger." He sounds so intensely irritated, one step away from threatening her and then going through with it. His words cut through her, and the phrase she said to herself echoes throughout her head.

I'm nobody.

His hand rises, fingers moving to caress her face, though they never close the distance. His gloves remain just a centimeter from her skin, and a beat passes through them both, pulsing, like a heartbeat or an electrical shock. "You know I can take whatever I want," he murmurers.

Then he closes the gap between them both, and all she can feel is cool, sticky leather against her cheek. She feels him probe at her mind, at her safe protective bubble. He's dark and sharp, puncturing it far too easily, delving in faster than she can hold back. He's like black sand slipping through her fingers.

"You're so lonely," he says quietly, distantly. She can feel the dark tendrils of his mind lashing and digging into her own, like hooks grounding themselves into the earth. She sees the same things he does, and like he promised, he takes the images of her quiet thoughts and yanks them away from her. He tears apart her strongly built chains as though they were made of air.

"I see it now. Your island." In her dreams, where Rey and her family sit on the beach, he is there with her. He watches like a dark omen, and separates her from the others. The shapes that take the form of her mother and father walk away from her now, hand-in-hand with a daughter who has short brown hair curled into buns against the side of her head. Rey wants to move, to run after them, but Kylo Ren holds her down by the shoulders and forbids her to leave.

Rey panics and searches for help inside the prison of her mind, but even her Soulmate is lost, nowhere to be found. Kylo Ren has not only killed him, but destroyed his image from her thoughts completely. Kylo Ren stands as a dark shadow in his place, and forces Rey to sit on the beachy sand. The water is hot. Boiling. The air is achingly dry, and her mouth begs for water. Her most sacred dream has become nothing more than a nightmare. Aloud, Rey grunts, but inside, her mind howls.

He speaks again, in physical reality, but his words sound like drunken slurs to her, her mind hazy as though plunged underwater. She tries to resist him, and thinks that there may be tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, but it's hard to tell. He surrounds her, encompasses her. There is nowhere she can go where he is not.

Almost as though he can sense her disconnection, he pulls back slightly, enough to keep her present and coherent. Her eyes can focus again, and she concentrates hard on the chrome wall in front of her, half-covered in blackness.

Her mind pushes back, fights his dark invasion with the light inside of her. She pushes against him with memories that give her hope: the flowers that sometimes grown in the dead of winter when the heat dies down, her Resistance Fighter helmet she found buried by her home, the doll she made as a child, the memory of rain, the smell of evergreens on the planet covered in them, Finn, gushing about her piloting skills aboard the Millennium Falcon, BB-8 beeping and chatting about how kind his master is while accompanying her on a scavenging quest back on Jakku, Han Solo offering her a job, the highest honor she thinks she can ever possibly achieve…

Kylo Ren recoils.

"Han Solo," he says, her ears recognizing his voice as words again, "you feel like he's the father you never had. He would've disappointed you."

His presence is like agony to her. "Get out of my head," she grits out, certain that her teeth will shatter with the force she clenches them with. Kylo Ren inches closer, so near that she can feel his breath on her face. "I'm not giving you anything," Rey says.

"We'll see about that."

The connection between them intensifies, solidifies into something real and tangible. He pushes against her in waves, each more powerful than the last. But Rey has been starved since she turned five and searched for junk parts in the desert to survive. She has suffered from abandonment and gang beatings, gone days without water, and has learned by bruises and broken bones how to defend herself and the things she owns. She has not had to protect people she loves before, but now she will put her own life at risk to do so. Anything he does cannot, will not, break her.

Her mental walls, at first translucent like glass, become hard and opaque like stone. They become impenetrable, pushing him out. Her mind feels raw, like it was scrubbed with a stiff brush over and over again. Kylo Ren comes back at her with his full force, but she feels as though she's ready for him, suddenly fueled with faith and light. He tries to break back inside, but cannot.

Instead of cowering beneath him, Rey locks their gazes, and stares into his eyes. They are dark and bottomless, like an abyss, or a miles-deep canyon. She mirrors him, pushing with her whole self, battling his anger with something else. Her fury from moments before only made her more frightened, but having something worth fighting for makes her body feel strong. She exercises her mind so much that she feels as he does, like a ghost trailing behind her, faint as a shadow.

Rey is sure she can see into the thoughts in his mind. Only what's on top, on the very first layer. His mind is strangely familiar to her, different than the offensive Force used to invade her own thoughts. She can feel his anger, and turmoil, and most prominently, fear. "You are afraid," she says, amazed that he is as human as she is, "that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader."

All at once, the mental connection is severed. Her head still buzzes as though he has not completely left, but Kylo Ren looks at her as though she is something to be feared. He does not breathe for a moment, but she pants, not breaking her eyes away from his own until he turns away from her and exist the room. He walks as though he is stepping on fire, and his hands curl into fists at his sides as he stalks out of the sliding doors.

Kylo Ren leaves the helmet behind, and it stares at her as one white guard files in at the door to fill his place.

And you will drop your gun.

"And I will drop my gun."

The Starkiller is full of never-ending corridors and high-powered panels. Every corner she turns, there is another group of soldiers, armed to kill her. They walk neatly and orderly, backs so straight she thinks it must be impossible for them to breathe. The fact that Finn came from this, escaped from this, makes her wonder what she even knows about him. Imagining him in white, full-body armor makes her feel ill, but she can see the traces of him in all of them. The black material underneath the white shells, the consistent footsteps- even the gun she holds matches how he shoots a weapon. No wonder he knew so much.

She feels stupid for not seeing all the facts, and feels even stupider for running without a plan. Escaping proves to be harder than she thought, and Rey knows it's because she was unconscious when they brought her on board. She doesn't even know which way the hangar, full of ships that lead to home, is. While Rey is strong, and armed with a gun and the growing power of the Force, she is not sure if she will make it off the planet alive. She knows that she will either escape, or go down fighting.

Her thoughts go back to the old woman scrubbing spare parts on Jakku, and she knows that there are worse ways to die.

It's strange, though, that she seems to be made for this. Made for infiltrating, for escaping. Her skills of survival ruled her childhood, and she uses them now with ease. She climbs without fear, jumps and dives without being bothered to look down below her. She knows the stakes, and knows the familiar feel of adrenaline moving through her veins, powering her every move. Rey's small body is unseen, not even a blimp on the security scan of the entire ship, despite being on full lock-down. Being nobody is something she excels at.

Rey thinks she may have done it on her own. She could have escaped, and run away, and maybe regrouped with survivors or gone back to Jakku. If she had not gone around that specific corner, and crossed into that very hallway, then the Resistance would have been destroyed and she would have been on the run until a saber went through her chest after months of paranoia.

But that is not how this story goes.

Rey sprints and runs face-first into the chest of Finn. His hands automatically catch her by her arms, holding her upright in front of him. Her heart is like a quick rabbit in her chest, and she forces herself to stop the stinging of tears in her eyes. Like any other reflex, she throws her arms across Finn's shoulders and pulls him into an embrace without another thought. He came back for her.

"Can we save the hugging for later? We have to go now." Her legs still impatiently bounce, and after one look at Han Solo, she is ready to run once more. For a few blissful minutes, she thinks that when they make it out of here, she will be a part of a new family. Kylo Ren was wrong to pick out her most secret dreams, but that does not make anything that he said incorrect. She is lonely.

"Plant these," Han says to her later, when she is covered by Finn's large jacket, which hangs off her shoulders like large branches off a tree. He fills her arms with dark little bombs, and she and Finn are quick to place them. Every time Rey looks up at the sky, the sun is smaller and smaller. On Jakku, she had always dreamed of the sun one day vanishing, of being able to live one day in cool, dark bliss. She never thought that the actual event would be a tragedy.

"They're still inside," Finn says nervously, and he curls his fingers around her elbow as a way to pull her closer to him. He hesitates, staring at the gaping entrance of the thermal oscillator. Rey takes one look at his face and pulls them in together.

"Ben!" The name is quiet by the time she and Finn stumble inside, and snow shakes off of them. The room is so dark she can barely see anything but blinking red lights and two silhouettes, dozens of floors below them. Rey has to squint her eyes to see them, but Han's voice is loud as it echoes across the walls of the chamber, the sound bouncing back and forth. They manage to catch the tail end of what he is saying, and Rey's heartbeat spikes. Confusion hits her like the powerful winds of a dust storm.

It becomes obvious that the other figure on the bridge is Kylo Ren, she can tell by the way the red lights reflect off of the silver in his mask. He must have gone back for it when he went to retrieve her, and found her torture restraints empty. As Han and him stand in front of each other, time seems to stop for one horrifyingly long moment. She hears nothing but her and Finn's labored breathing and the pounding of her heart.

"Take off that mask and face me." His words are demanding, but Han's tone sounds like a plea. It's something she's never heard before.

"What do you think you'll see if I do?"

"The face of my son."

Hesitation. The mask is removed, held in his one hand. "Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish like his father, so I destroyed him."

Another standoff, and Rey understands.

Ben, his son.

The tattoo on her wrist suddenly burns. Her hands shake, a grip too unsteady to even hold the railing out in front of her. She cannot see Finn by his face, but he holds her close to him, as if he knows, too. He did see the name after all.

She strains to hear the rest of their conversation, but their words are too quiet to rise above the loud roaring she hears. She can only watch, acting as a bystander, as Kylo Ren impales his own father with his lightsaber.

All at once, Rey can cry again. Unfortunately, unlike she promised herself as a child, these tears are not of happiness, but of grief.

The planet-sized First Order base implodes on itself. Chewbacca manages to fly the Millennium Falcon smoothly on his own, the seat next to him lonely and empty. It spins slightly with a quiet creak at every turn the ship takes. The course is set for D'Qar, location of the Resistance. Rey has always wanted to go there, but wonders how she'll be able to look anyone in the eye after this. They're a man down, and she feels dirtied by what she knows now.

However, she can't afford to worry about it. Wet and sticky blood covers her hands as she presses her wrappings against Finn's wound. It's long, stretching across the line of his spine, and is a mix between a cut and a burn. Rey knows how to treat either, has had her fair share of makeshift ointments and stitches, but does not know how to treat them both. Finn's breathing is shallow and uneven, and she has never wanted anything more in her life than for him to live.

Rey lets her eyes close, a small flutter of concentrated action. She blocks her mind of everything that has happened, ignores the aching in her shoulders and the scratches on her face, and just focuses on her, and Finn. Breathe in, breathe out, and they'll both be okay.

When she opens her eyes again, they've landed.

On the fourth night of sleeping in a small, uncomfortable chair next to Finn's bedside, Rey is kicked out of the med-bay.

The room is dimly lit, with monitors and machines beeping every few seconds. She's gotten used to the sounds by this point, though she won't sleep fully until she can hear the peace of the desert and the quiet howl of the wind. Or, at least, something like it. There is nothing left on Jakku for her now.

Rey's hand supports her head as she dozes in and out of sleep. She only wakes up when the door quietly closes, and she blinks her heavy eyes to see Poe, the pilot, stepping into the room. Her hair sticks to the side of her face, and a large, blotchy red spot shows up on her skin from her hand. "Hey," Poe greets quietly, talking as though Finn is asleep and he could wake him up. He does it for himself, she knows, because he's so frightened that Finn's gone forever.

Pulling herself upright, she gives him a small smile. "What are you doing here? It's late."

Poe laughs, and grabs the seat next to her. He drags it around so they're facing each other, still in the direction of Finn. Always watching him, always checking. "I could ask you the same thing, ma'am."

Her face goes bright red, flushing down her neck. "Please, just Rey. I've told you that already."

"You're a hero here."

Rey gives him a look, "So are you."

Poe has the decency to give a sheepish smile. "Maybe, but I was born with these people. I've got things to protect. You saved a whole rebellion that you weren't even a part of."

She's quiet for a minute. She stares at Finn, and his breathing, eyes trailing over the tubes that keep him going. His jacket rests on the back of her chair, and his whole upper-torso is covered in bandages. "I had things to protect," she replies.

Poe watches her. "You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say he was your Soulmate."

Rey really gives him a look this time, and he raises his hands as if to surrender in defense. "Hey, I said if I didn't know any better. Which clearly, I do." He jokes, and taps at his bare wrist. His two fingers hit against the N's in Finn's name. Rey looks at herself, and how she hides every part of her arm from the elbow to her fingers, her wrappings like long, fingerless gloves. She's told no one.

"Do you have someone, Rey?" Poe asks, and his hand goes to pat her own, which sits on the armrest of her chair.

She's had time to think about it while she's waited for Finn to wake up, but that doesn't make the truth any less painful. She's had to deal with so much pain, recently, has had to come to terms with truths that she never wanted to know. Responsibility she's never asked for. "I have a Soulmate, if that's what you're asking." Her words are guarded, but she finds she can trust Poe. How could she not trust the match of Finn, whose hands she's put her life into? "But we're not together. It's not… it's complicated."

"Complicated," Poe hums. She knows he's looking at her covered wrist, squinting as though he's trying to see through the material that hides the name, but he doesn't push. Instead, he says, "Maybe the only thing you can do with 'complicated' is give it time and see what happens."

"Maybe," she echoes. She examines Poe closely, the most attention she's really paid to his appearance since they've first met. On first glance, he's as handsome as ever, with a charismatic smile and sparkling eyes. But now, in this lighting at this hour, she can tell how much stress is on him. His eyes look more sunken, the bags showing how exhausted he is. His smile is strained, especially when he looks at Finn. It kills Poe to see him like this, she realizes.

"You're good for him," she says out loud. They've had a couple conversations before this, but nothing important, or in depth.

"I'm sorry?"

"For Finn," she clarifies, and leans forward. "You two are a good match. You're both good men."

His eyebrows pull together, making him look vulnerable, not believing her. The cheerful pilot is gone, taken a momentary leave of absence while his Soulmate remains in a medically-induced coma. "You really think that? Honestly?"

"Truly. I'm lucky to know you both." She thinks about her next few words, and says them slowly, not sure what's going to come out of her mouth until it happens. "You are the… perfect definition of love. I've seen bad matches, and impossible matches, but you two are the first pair I've seen who I think will actually work."

Poe blinks rapidly and looks away. She watches the side of his face in the dark. His cheek rises, mouth smiling, and he's a bit less exhausted when he turns back to look at her. "Oh, Rey, stop it. You're gonna to make me blush."

This time, instead of patting her hand, he takes it in his own. For once, she allows it. His face is inches from hers, and she knows he's genuine because there is no hiding his eyes. "Trust me," he says, "you're going to be happy. No matter who they are, or where they come from, or how bumpy the road there is, it'll happen. I know it."

"Thank you," she says, because there is nothing else she can say. How can she tell him how wrong he is, without telling him everything? She cannot even admit it to herself just yet. She has never said the words aloud. Doesn't matter, her Soulmate is as good as dead. Escaping an imploding planet without a ship is next to impossible. It's complicated.

He releases her, but she is comfortable in his presence. They sit in silence for ten more standard minutes, and then Poe lightly taps her ankle with the toe of his boot when he sees her dozing off again. "Come on, let's get you to a real bed. General Organa will have my head if she knows I let you stay in here again. The nurses told me two days ago that you're not allowed in here after hours."

"I'm fine."

"Yeah, I'm sure you are, but do it just to humor me." He offers her his hand, and raises his eyebrows when she looks up at his face. With one last look at Finn, she sighs, ignores his hand, and stands up on her own. She likes Poe, because when she walks past him, he lets out a loud laugh.