The Balance

Encounters

            Now that she was as awake as ever, Rey surveyed the sleeping resistance members with a great curiosity until she heard voices in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.  At this hour, the ship should have been silent, but it wasn't.  Tucking away the books, she stood carefully, making sure that she didn't wake anyone near her feet. 

          Navigating the narrow spaces between the sleeping resistance, Rey moved around the bodies.  She then tip-toed near the entrance to the cockpit, listening to the people within it.  Their speech was unintelligible, but then she heard something she hadn't truly heard in a long time.

       A laugh.

      Not a normal laugh. Not a nervous laugh.  The laugh of someone in love. 

     This noise echoed throughout the room, filling the inhabitants with something, something more than friendship.   It was filled with companionship.

      "Shhh," an equally enamored voice responded, "you'll wake the whole resistance up!"

      "You'd better listen," a third teasing voice recommended.

      This voice was different, the odd one out of this conversation.  Not unwelcome, just not on the same frequency as the pair.

      Peeking her whole head in, Rey began to enter the room.  The trio only noticed her with a gasp when she was standing right behind them, peeking over the seats.

     "Gods, Rey!  You almost gave me a heart attack!" Finn whisper-shouted to her.

     "Hey, I needed to check what was going on here, you guys were quite loud."

      "Fair point," Finn obliged.

      "Poe, Rose, how are guys?" Rey asked, intimidated by Finn's friends.

       "Great, except that we're nearly out of gas and have nowhere to land," Poe snarkily replied, spinning his chair towards Rey.

       "So not good?  Weren't we just in this same situation?" Rey questioned.

       "Something like that," Rose said for him, fiddling with several buttons on the dash.

      Then, out of no-where, Rey's breath hitched, killing the room's atmosphere.

      Finn, Rose, and Poe looked at each other quizzically.

      Tatooine.

    "Tatooine."

      "What?" Poe, asked, disbelieving.

       "We are to go to Tatooine." Rey replied firmly.

        "Why? They hate the resistance there." Finn stated.

        Poe's eyes widened, "but not as much as The First Order."

         "Bu-"

         "Shh, She might be on to something," said Poe, pointing at Rey, then spinning his chair toward the controls once more.

         Clicking several buttons in complex maneuvers, he pulled up a red screen.  The tiny text moved across the screen rapidly, Poe absorbed the information with the eyes of a hungry wolf.

         "Tatooine," he laughed hysterically, " is the nearest planet in this orbit."

        Rose, also hunched over the text read aloud, "The craft will reach it naturally, without fuel, in approximately twelve hours."