Closed to morally_cryptic

[talentedscavenger]

Rey had experienced a whirlwind of events from locating Luke Skywalker's lightsaber to being pulled through time to meet the person who started it all; Anakin. The man was her grandfather, someone who was the 'chosen one' to bring balance to the Force. If that wasn't enough, she learned of her own powers and had to be trained to use them. It was an interesting time, spending weeks learning about the man and studying under him. They developed a friendship, a strange bond between two adults who happened to be generations apart. As much as she enjoyed her time with him, she was thrust back to her present time.

Anakin was right, it was like she never left. Everyone was still at the Cantina, looking for her. The First Order arrived...it was chaos.

But that was then, and this was now. She found out about Kylo Ren and the man he idolized so much. It pained her, no, angered her to know the same person she met had turned to the Dark Side. Rey kept her mouth shut to her cousin, managing to use the Force to keep him out of her mind and push him back. Now, she had a target on her back. The events didn't go well from there, losing her friend and semi-father figure, Han.

Now she was on a quest to find Luke. The man who could or could not be father. She didn't know how many children Anakin had, though she still remembered those strong Force visions of two children. Chewie and her managed to land the Falcon on the right planet, now she had to make the journey to find the Jedi. At least the time to herself would let her deal with her emotions. She was conflicted, angry, and hurt. From losing a friend to learning some of the truth about her grandfather...it was disheartening.

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[morally_cryptic]

Even that slight smile sparks a memory for Anakin, he's seen it before and seeing it now on Rey is a bit like meeting a ghost.

Then again, his mother was captured by pirates and she'd never really spoken about any extended family they might have had. He'd always assumed they'd died but...maybe not?

Her mention of how the business would go to Unkar anyway just prompts a scowl. Just another thing to dislike about Jakku really...the scavengers were slaves in all but name.

"Fine," he says in clipped tones, clambering up on the starfighter's wing so he can reach into one of the cockpit (helpfully opened by Artoo) compartments for the right tool to get at the hyperdrive motivator. "Even if it's only a partial fit, I'm sure I can make it work to get at least as far as the nearest planet with better parts." That probably sounds like boasting and it would be if Anakin couldn't back it up. Not that she knows he can.

[talentedscavenger]

Unkar kept all the scavengers together, making them believe they were free, but made them work in exchange for food. Rey didn't think about it in that sense, considering she was too busy trying to survive. Making sure whatever scraps she had at least amounted to a quarter of a portion to keep herself from starving entirely.

"Was that so difficult?" Rey quipped, finding it easy to actually tease and even talk with Anakin. Which was odd, since she was serious and mostly business when it came to anyone else looking for parts. Then again, he seemed like he could easily get annoyed, which made for more fun on her part.

"It wouldn't just be a partial fit." Nope, she was going to make sure she could modify it to make it fit entirely. Any other scavenger, or junkyard dealer would make it so the part would only do half the job, forcing the poor pilot to go back to them and spend more money. Rey wasn't like that. She was honest with herself and tried to do her best in what she did.

Looking at the components of the starifghter, Rey fell quiet, taking in each item, her mind whizzing with on how they worked. How each component fit with each other, what each part did and how it made it possible for flight. Her hands were moving from one spot to another, checking things out, unknowingly listening to the Force and letting it guide her on what she needed to do.

[morally_cryptic]

He leans on the starfighter, watching her closely mostly to see if she actually knows what she's doing. There's a big difference between knowing what parts to sell to a junkyard dealer like Unkar Plutt and knowing how to actually use them. At first he's just impressed she actually does seem to know what to look for, especially since it'd be a design she wouldn't have seen before...at least not specifically.

But then he notices the stirring in the Force and it has him leaning in closer to her instead. "Do you always do that?"

[talentedscavenger]

There is a big difference between knowing what someone was doing, and picking apart items to see what could be worth a lot. Rey had to learn at an early age what could get her close to a full portion or portions. As time went on, she began to learn how each component and part worked together. How every piece was vital in order for something to work.

"Do what?" she asks, not phased by how close he is, rather there's a stirring in her mind. As though she was trying to remember a vague dream from so many nights ago, only clinging to wisps of it.

Rey was about to continue her work when she finally looks at Anakin. Her brown eyes meeting his dark ones. Eyes that seemed so familiar, yet foreign at the same time. There was a tug, an urge to remember something, but what was there to remember?

[morally_cryptic]

In many ways, they'd both learned machines in similar fashions but that wasn't what had his attention now. "The Force," he says, gaze intent on hers, "it's all around you. Is that how you find the things you bring Unkar?"

Is that why she seems so familiar?

[talentedscavenger]

"The Force?" Rey repeats, confused for a split second before shaking her head at Anakin. Her focus returns to her work, taking out of her pouch a tool she needs and takes out his motivator.

"I'm no Jedi, I can't use the Force. I've lived here for a long time, you learn which parts are worth more." And how they work. It's how she was able to build her speeder, and flight simulator. She starts to take apart the motivator, examining it over and over to find out why it blew up on him.

"How often do you clean the parts of your starfighter?"

[morally_cryptic]

"I didn't say you were a Jedi," he says with a slight roll of his eyes, "I said you were using the Force. You think I can't tell?"

Give him a tiny bit of credit, Rey.

"And often enough. Why?"

[talentedscavenger]

"Not many people talk about the Force without including the Jedi." She could feel his eyes rolling at her. A soft smile started to come over her lips. Yes, it was fun to push his buttons. Huffy thing. Did the Jedi take anyone in?

"I don't use the Force," she tells him, only to turn her smile into a soft smirk.

"Apparently, not enough. It's dirty, that's why it blew up on you. A bit of cleaning and it should work." Which would mean he wouldn't have to pay for her part. Which would mean no revenue for Unkar, and no portions for her. Would any other scavenger do that for him? No.

[morally_cryptic]

"Not many people think very hard about it," he quips. "I was starting to think I wouldn't have to include you in the 'many people' category though," he adds wryly as he takes the part back from her and giving it an experimental rub with his thumb.

"And how would you know if you do or not? Some other Jedi tell you that?"

[talentedscavenger]

Rey shook her head at him, reaching into her pouch to take out a rag and offered it to him. At least he could get the grease on the cloth and not on his fingers. Granted, her hands were dirty from sand, metal and from touching the parts in his starfighter.

"You're the only Jedi I've met, but if I could use the Force, do you think I'd still be stuck here?" If she could use the Force, she wouldn't be stuck here. She would have put together her own bucket of bolts and flew out of Jakku...but there was something else keeping her on this rock.

She began to pull back, believing her work on his starfighter to be done. Once he cleaned his motivator, he would be good to go.

"Need help with anything else?"

[morally_cryptic]

His hands have been dirty from mechanical parts before, they'd certainly be grease stained again at some point but he accepts the rag anyway.

"You could be," he says conversationally, "I might still be on Tatooine if the Jedi hadn't found me." It's not something he likes to think about since he'd always intended on getting away from there, but he can't deny that something might have kept him from leaving. His mother of course, or he might have tried to stay and get others out instead. No way to know what might have happened.

[talentedscavenger]

Rey shoots Anakin a look, silently wondering if he had gone mental. Her? A Jedi? That was as far fetched as anything else. A scavenger couldn't become a Jedi. Besides, wasn't she a bit too old for that?

"Don't think I could be." I'm no one. Nothing important. She was a scavenger who was waiting for her family to come back. Becoming a Jedi was not in her plans. However, learning he came from Tatooine sparks the image of a woman with a face she did not recognize but that made her heart ache. She takes in a slow, controlled breath. No, she's imagining things.

"Think it's a bit too late for that. Not exactly, a kid, you know."

[morally_cryptic]

Sigh. "I meant you could be able to use the Force and still stuck here. Just because you're sensitive to it doesn't make you able to really use it effectively and it doesn't make a Jedi."

He waves around them to indicate either the planet or the outpost or just her life in general. "We've actually got a lot in common. Desert planet. Taking junk apart and putting it back together. Using the Force and not even realizing it." And a strange tightness in his chest when he looks at her that he can't even put a name to.

[talentedscavenger]

Anakin would have to forgive Rey for her lack of knowledge, considering most people didn't talk about the Jedi. They didn't want anything to do with them, considering they were more of a police force and got in the way of their illegal activity. The more Anakin talked about the force, the more Rey felt inclined to just roll her eyes. She wasn't Force sensitive. She wasn't anything. If he was trying to inspire her to achieve greatness, he was talking to the wrong person.

"Minus the Force part, think that's where our commonality ends," she told him, doing a double check on the starfighter to make sure everything else working well. He didn't know what it felt like to be left alone, or to wait for someone who may or may not ever come back.

"If that's it, I need to go back. I have other work I need to finish up."

[morally_cryptic]

He finishes giving the motivator a good scrub and hands the now extra-greasy rag back in her direction. "You could at least tell me your name so I know who to thank for the help."

Even if it had been irritating help.

[talentedscavenger]

Rey easily catches the rag, tucking it away in her pouch again.

"Saying 'thanks' is enough," more than anything else than the other thugs actually say to her. However, she got the feeling he wouldn't just let it end on that note. Not until she actually told him what he wanted.

"My name is Rey."

[morally_cryptic]

Rey.

It's not clear enough to be a memory, more like a half-snippet of something important. Of his mother's voice, upset and crying out. And it's enough to leave him shaken and staring before he remembers he ought to say something return.

"Anakin. I mean- my name. It's Anakin Skywalker."

[talentedscavenger]

Rey wanted to say it was nice meeting him, but the idea dies just as it was born. His name tugs at her heart and sends a brief flash of images and sounds in her mind. The face of the woman she never met, hearing a voice crying out for her...and suddenly feeling like she's small, holding a hand to someone she knew so well. Then, forced apart with the sound of a mother crying.

The images and sounds make her feel like the wind has been knocked out of her. The emotions she experienced (her own or the woman she envisioned) leave Rey raw. All she can do is stare at Anakin with wide eyes, confused, shaken, and trying to piece together what she was feeling.

[morally_cryptic]

It's probably just as well that he hadn't landed his ship right near the main thoroughfare of the outpost, such as it was. At least it meant they had a little privacy for this...whatever it was.

Anakin reaches out to her, but doesn't quite close the gap between them, unsure maybe if he really wants to. Unsure of what this really is. "I know you," he finally says in a halting tone. "Somehow."

[talentedscavenger]

Privacy for better for situations like this. No one needed to know two people were about to be reunited for the first time since they were born. No one needed to see either of them vulnerable.

Rey sees him reach out to her. Part of her wants to run, to stay away from him. She's afraid, and wants nothing to do with what could change her life. The other part of her, the part she's starting to listen to, tells her to go to him. To bridge the gap between them. Tentatively, she takes one step and then another.

"You shouldn't." They're never met. They've never had a conversation until now, yet as she reaches out to touch him, a feeling of nostalgia comes over her. Holding onto him with small, fragile hands, and listening to a beating heart that matched her own.

[morally_cryptic]

When she reaches back to him too, he clasps his hand with hers almost instinctively. The touch is like a shock, or a wave of warmth that travels through him, a feeling he only remembered ever associating with his mother. Like she'd just stepped into some hole in his life shaped perfectly for her.

"I shouldn't," he echoes, his voice thick with emotion, "but I do."

[talentedscavenger]

The shock traveling through her is something she hasn't felt before. A warm, comforting feeling. Something she's always wanted, but never had, yet with him it's there. Her emotions were getting the best of her. She needed to stop, pull away and sort everything out. But the idea of pulling back makes her tighten her hold on his hand.

"..what does this mean?" she asks, her voice soft and small, unsure of what to do. She hasn't felt this lost since she was young. So lost, but at the same time, found.

[morally_cryptic]

He lets out a short laugh, only barely resisting the urge to tug her close and throw his arms around her. "I have no idea."

Except he does, maybe. That sense that of course this is more than just a chance encounter, that of course he can't discount this at all. And he certainly can't leave her behind.

"I think we must be-" he hesitates over the word siblings even with the echo of his mother's voice in the back of his mind, "-related."

Maybe every Jedi felt this way when they met a blood relative? How would he even know?

[talentedscavenger]

Rey lets out a short laugh of her own. It sounds too far-fetched for it to be true. Them? Related? No, it was....whatever was transpiring between them was something that would fade away in time. He needed to get back and she....she needed to keep waiting.

"You think? Or know?" Two difference things, even with her own instincts telling her they were. She found herself drifting close until her arms were thrown around him, holding him. Her heart jumped to her throat, beating loud enough that he might even hear it. The sense of nostalgia grew then, making her believe she had held him like this for hours.

Every feeling coursing through her, Rey was trying to ignore it or rationalize it away. She didn't want to get attached only to be left behind again.

[morally_cryptic]

Her embrace just gave him permission to wrap her in his arms so he holds her tightly like a promise she won't be left behind on this forsaken dirtball. And it's impossible not to notice the way it feels their hearts are beating in sync.

"I know what I feel," he murmurs. "My mother never told me about her family." So Rey could be a...cousin?

No, he doesn't know what other people feel for their families, not really, but he's fairly certain this is not what cousins feel like. This closeness? He's only ever seen hints of it between siblings.

"And I don't have a sister," he adds even as he can almost taste the lie on his tongue now that he's said it. "At least...I didn't think I did."