[ The Resistance's forces had never recovered from their devastating loss.
Brave souls would rally to their cause. Leia had reassured her of that despite the grim line of her mouth, the shaking in her fingertips, leaving Rey to wonder if the consolation had been aimed toward her or Leia's own method of coping with her life's work falling apart. With each hopeless rejection that came, whittling away at their chances.
No planet was bold enough to ally with them. No government was willing to offer its resources for fear of the First Order's might. Leia's faith had weakened, her resolve dwindling with her health, and Rey had been forced to watch her wither away — a beacon of rebellion reduced to a shell of what she once was. Gone, just like her dream of peace.
They had fought in spite of it — because of it. The losses, Rey told herself, had to matter, could not be in vain.
Until they were. Until the First Order, stalwart and flourishing, had found them. The years could not soften the memory of ash and smoke stinging at her eyes, the copper tang of blood in the air, the strewn bodies across ravaged terrain, the void in the Force that told her the Resistance had been run into extinction. Each night, it projected itself across her mind like a gruesome, inescapable holo.
In the end, she had run. The Last Jedi, the last surviving tie to the Resistance. The last glimmer of hope, if she did not grieve with the weight of what had been taken from her. Returning to her lonely existence once more, worse for how she now knew the taste of companionship.
The Doaba Badlands served as a painful, purposeful reminder of what Kylo Ren had stolen from her. Desolate, barren, as Jakku had been. The people of Soccoro did not blink twice at her, more often than not — unable to recognize her, she thought (how could she fault them when she hardly recognized herself?), from the picture in her bounty. Those that had did not return to their ships with their minds intact, unable to tell stories of the woman that lived beyond the city walls, dwelling in the desert like an exile.
Kylo Ren would not find her here. Three years of survival — because she knew nothing else, because she had not been able to do anything but continue — had assured her of that, no matter how desperate his attempts to locate her had become. No matter the Force poisoning her, infecting her — forcing her to become more sickly with distance, punishing her for her resistance, until even walking into the city without collapsing had become a monumental feat. Maybe, Rey thought bitterly, it would kill them both. A fitting end for them both.
She had nothing else to give him. Nothing else she could, or would, give.
That remained true, even on the day he found her. Time had passed, but Rey could still sense the nearness — vibrating in the threads of the Force like a warning. Gooseflesh seizes her arms, breath wrenched in her lungs, but Rey's pace quickens regardless — pulling at her cloak until her hood obscures her countenance, weaving through the crowd in her haste to wander back into Socorro's wastelands. ]
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Brave souls would rally to their cause. Leia had reassured her of that despite the grim line of her mouth, the shaking in her fingertips, leaving Rey to wonder if the consolation had been aimed toward her or Leia's own method of coping with her life's work falling apart. With each hopeless rejection that came, whittling away at their chances.
No planet was bold enough to ally with them. No government was willing to offer its resources for fear of the First Order's might. Leia's faith had weakened, her resolve dwindling with her health, and Rey had been forced to watch her wither away — a beacon of rebellion reduced to a shell of what she once was. Gone, just like her dream of peace.
They had fought in spite of it — because of it. The losses, Rey told herself, had to matter, could not be in vain.
Until they were. Until the First Order, stalwart and flourishing, had found them. The years could not soften the memory of ash and smoke stinging at her eyes, the copper tang of blood in the air, the strewn bodies across ravaged terrain, the void in the Force that told her the Resistance had been run into extinction. Each night, it projected itself across her mind like a gruesome, inescapable holo.
In the end, she had run. The Last Jedi, the last surviving tie to the Resistance. The last glimmer of hope, if she did not grieve with the weight of what had been taken from her. Returning to her lonely existence once more, worse for how she now knew the taste of companionship.
The Doaba Badlands served as a painful, purposeful reminder of what Kylo Ren had stolen from her. Desolate, barren, as Jakku had been. The people of Soccoro did not blink twice at her, more often than not — unable to recognize her, she thought (how could she fault them when she hardly recognized herself?), from the picture in her bounty. Those that had did not return to their ships with their minds intact, unable to tell stories of the woman that lived beyond the city walls, dwelling in the desert like an exile.
Kylo Ren would not find her here. Three years of survival — because she knew nothing else, because she had not been able to do anything but continue — had assured her of that, no matter how desperate his attempts to locate her had become. No matter the Force poisoning her, infecting her — forcing her to become more sickly with distance, punishing her for her resistance, until even walking into the city without collapsing had become a monumental feat. Maybe, Rey thought bitterly, it would kill them both. A fitting end for them both.
She had nothing else to give him. Nothing else she could, or would, give.
That remained true, even on the day he found her. Time had passed, but Rey could still sense the nearness — vibrating in the threads of the Force like a warning. Gooseflesh seizes her arms, breath wrenched in her lungs, but Rey's pace quickens regardless — pulling at her cloak until her hood obscures her countenance, weaving through the crowd in her haste to wander back into Socorro's wastelands. ]