The Art of Broken Pieces

44 Porgs and Lunch

Though they'd barely said a word to each other in the last four cycles, Rey couldn't just drop him off at the Betrayal. She also couldn't let herself hug him, or even start to say any of the things she wanted to say to him that preceded the inevitable goodbye, so she worked on his ship instead. She tuned it up, reset the crystalline communication transponder, and made several other minute and almost-pointless tweaks until she could no longer justify staying.

Then it was just her and Ben, standing on the ramp of the Betrayal. She looked up at him, her lips twitching into the slightest of worried smiles.

"I'll be back," she said. "Don't leave here, or I'll hunt you down. And you don't want me after you."

"Are you sure?" He tried to joke, though it fell flat to his ears. "It might be a nice change of roles for us." He met her eyes, finding that he was trying to memorize her face. The part of him that didn't trust her to come back, desperately holding on.

Sighing, he crossed his arms, mostly to keep them from reaching out and pulling her in. "You have my frequency." He narrowed his eyes. "So if anyone uses it to hunt me down, I'll know who to blame."

"The only one hunting you down will be me," she said. "Or maybe Ari'li, if you're especially unlucky." She stepped in, tipped up on her toes, and kissed his cheek. "For luck," she said, not really knowing what kind, only that they'd both need it.

It was a long, solitary flight back to the core planets. She fueled up in the inner rim, performed the perfunctory porgish purges, and spent a good deal of time answering every one of Finn's short messages. He and Rose, it seemed, had moved somewhere off base, though he swore they'd both be there to meet Rey when she landed. Rey only stopped responding when a brief, amused message from Poe flashed across her screen, asking her to please stop distracting Finn during a senate meeting.

The overly large porg had fallen ill, and much though the little things somewhat confused and annoyed her, she found herself unable to kick it out of her bunk. It had a tuft of white down that stuck crazily off the top of its head, and though she fell asleep with it at the foot of her pallet, she always woke up with it snuggled under one of her arms.

She named it Lunch, because it would have made Ben snort.

At last, she pulled the Falcon out of hyperspace and streaked into the atmosphere of Yavin IV. As Rey zoomed along the descent line, she saw balconies dripping with golden flowering plants and vast marketplaces shaded by a latticework of glass and vine, all mixed in with the deep jungles and old Massassi ruins

She was shocked to find the airfield was private, and even more shocked to find that the berth the comms official directed her to was registered, permanently, in her name. She felt her friends nearby, their excitement and nerves, and she didn't think she'd ever completed a landing sequence so fast.

She didn't wait for the hatch to fully open, but vaulted off of it the second it was wide enough to let her through. Then, all at once, she was wrapped up in arms—Finn and Rose, attacking her from both sides.

"Mind if I cut in?" Poe's voice was laced with warm amusement, and before Rey could even fully turn around he swept her up in a hug, lifting her feet off the ground.

"Hello there, gorgeous!" He laughed, grunting softly as he wobbled back and braced their weight. "Good to see you in one piece!"

Setting her back down, he held her at arms length, hands light on her shoulders. He looked her over thoroughly, narrowing his eyes in a parody of serious appraisal.

He nodded at Finn. "Looks healthy, good teeth. I'll take this one."

Rey laughed, and shoved him away, only to drag him back in a second later for another hug.