I Can Get It Back

I See a Ghost in a Photograph, I Feel that Wave Come Up Under Me

Part I: Denial and Depression

The heat was sweltering. It was always hot here. She never could get used to it. Her clothes were lightweight and airy but felt smothering even as they blessedly kept the sun from burning her skin. She wrapped her head and neck as she left her shelter to get to work. It was important to start early, before the desert really baked around her.

The sand shifted beneath her feet as she walked, but she was used to that. The idea of a more solid surface was becoming a distant memory. Once, she had experienced other climates, other planets. Someday she might again. But not now. Now there was work. Maybe not ideal work but something at which she excelled. She was very good at fixing broken things, after all.

When the heat of the day became too much, she returned to her shelter dissatisfied. She never managed to do as much as she wanted to before it became necessary to get out of the sun. There would be much to do when it cooled off. There were things to be repaired: to remove the sand and grit from their parts and return them to working order. There were things to be bartered for, to aid in her repairs and to keep herself alive. There always work and she was grateful for the distraction.

In the shelter that served as her current home, she carefully arranged the mechanical devices on the floor, gazing at them with a critical eye. Some had little use for her and were already functional enough to be traded. Most required cleaning before she either traded them or made use of them herself. The cleaning was not easy. Even her home was difficult to keep free of the choking sand.

As usual, she had not gotten so far as she had hoped before the hottest part of the day had passed. Still, she packed a number of things into her bag and headed to the nearest outpost. Trading went poorly for her, just as it always had. She could defend herself and her belongings but lacked the personal connections necessary to get a good deal. Her desperation was too evident for her to drive up the price. Her single-minded focus turned the scraps she had found into supplies that would last a few days, but she never managed to do better than that.

It grew dark as she walked home, too busy considering what parts she needed most and how to go about obtaining them to notice much about her surroundings. Perhaps she had gotten sloppy, become overly confident in her abilities. But she didn't notice that she was being followed until she was too far out for even the most altruistic person to help her. Assuming there were any nearby – this was not a place altruistic people thrived.

"Look what we have here, Qiz. Are you all alone, little girl?"

One of the humanoid creatures spoke as he smoothly cut in front of her. He had four friends and all of them were smiling cruelly.

"What if I am?" she snapped back.

"Well, I'd say that it's a damn shame, is what. Why don't you show us what you've got in that sack and we'll see if you have enough to pay the toll," another of them drawled.

She frowned a little, considering how to deal with this new development without attracting unwanted attention. "I don't think so." Everything she had was necessary – some of it quite hard to get ahold of. Nothing she was willing to part with.

"No one leaves Mos Eisley without paying the toll," the first one insisted, reaching for his blaster.

It was easy to pull all of their blasters away from them, to pile them at her feet. Easier still to draw her lightsaber and ignite it, then wait.

"What are you?" one asked fearfully. "One of them Skywalkers?"

Something like a smile tugged at her lips. They fled and she continued on her way, leaving their weapons to be buried in the sand, forgotten and eroding, like everything else.

Back on the moisture farm, she continued the task of getting it up and running. It had been abandoned for over thirty years and needed considerable work. But it was a place of happy memories for Luke, something the family had had so few of. She wanted to do a proper sendoff for her master, but Alderaan had been destroyed long ago. This felt like the next best thing. There was also the option of going to Master Leia's family home on Chandrila, but that was something Rey could not do. Not yet, anyway.

There had likely been moisture farms on Jakku, but she had never been near one. Scavengers were not entry in such respectable businesses. Still, fixing this one seemed to be coming along. She had buried Master Leia's lightsaber as well as Luke's. Some nosy woman had asked who she was and she felt that she could take their name to explain her presence on the farm. It hadn't really worked, but no one was coming to investigate who was squatting here.

"Ow," she muttered as one of the sharp edges of the tech she was fixing cut her finger. She sucked on the wound instinctively, surveying her progress. The suns were setting and soon it would be too dark to keep working. And then she would have nothing to distract her from her thoughts as she lay in the dark, aching for sleep to claim her.

She got up and walked outside to watch as the suns disappeared slowly behind the horizon, gazing into the distance. When the first of the suns was gone, she took a steadying breath and went inside to make something to eat. The rations she had brought with her were wearing thin, but still felt like a fortune to her. Even if her friends at the Resistance had always complained about them being bland and tasteless.

The house, much larger than any she had ever been in, became fully dark swiftly as she finished her dinner. She was tallying up how many more parts she would need when a sudden clatter broke her concentration. Frowning slightly, she rose to find that her lightsaber and blaster had fallen, apparently of their own volition, on the floor. They had been setting near the edge of the table, but she didn't think they would have rolled off. Odd, she thought as she headed to bed.