31. Chapter 31

Rey opens her eyes and looks up at an unfamiliar white ceiling.  She’s laying on something soft and she’s warm in a muzzy sort of way, which is nice.  Her eyes close again and it could be a blink or a lifetime before she opens them again.  

Cognition comes back slowly and then all at once, and with it comes pain.  Rey tries to take a full breath but gags on something in her throat. Panic twists in her stomach and as she reaches up to her face, she finds that her arms are bound at the wrists. Scrabbling with both hands, fingers sliding over the slick plastic that covers her from nose to chin, she finds a loop in the tubing and pulls.  She sits up, ribs protesting, using what strength she has to rip the mask off.  The thick tube slides up and out of her mouth and she wretches, a full body convulsion, vomiting clear fluid and blood onto the white floor beside the bed.

Her eyes follow the hose that leads from the mask, now dangling, wet and glistening, around her neck, to a glowing tank on the wall. She’s in a small room: white, sterile, full of instruments she’s never seen before.  She’s naked beneath a sheet, and when she bolted upright she jostled the apparatuses suctioned to her chest and sides. There’s a bandage wrapped around her arm and something warm and moist stuck above her eye.

Blinking away tears from the vomiting makes her eyes hurt, and that small, specific pain sparks the memories.  The fight. The escape. The blood. The landing. The Resistance. Kylo. They took him somewhere, away from her, and she can barely feel him now. She calls out in her mind, almost hysterical, and finds him on the edge of her awareness.  There are no thoughts, just a dim presence, a deep discontent that stirs beneath the surface of his unconsciousness.  

An erratic beeping and a shuffling, clanking step sound from the corner of the room.  Her head whips to the sound and she regrets that - her head spins with the quick motion.  A droid ambles towards her, silver pincers gleaming in the soft light. Rey shrinks back into the softness of the bed. “Please remain calm. You have sustained severe injuries to the head, throat, and chest. You are in a medical facility. You require an additional one hundred and twenty nine minutes of bacta treatment for adequate physical optimization. Please remain calm.” The droid sounds put out in the only way a computer generated voice can.

A medical facility.  A Resistance medical facility.  Rey heaves a sigh, coughs up some more fluid, winces at the taste.  She gestures to the mask around her neck as best she can with bound hands. “Get this thing off me!” She means to yell but it comes out a croaking gurgle.

"You require another one hundred twenty nine minutes of bacta treatment for adequate physical optimization," the droid drones again. A panel at the base of it’s arm retracts and a glinting hypodermic needle slides out. “If you cannot control your behaviour within the prescribed parameters, sedatives will be administered.”

Panic flares again at the threat and Rey shakes her head, fighting for calm. She doesn’t want to be drugged. She’ll be good, despite a whispering in the back of her head that urges her to smash the droid, rip herself free of the medical tangle and blast through the door. It might work, but it feels wrong.  She tries for a mild tone when she speaks again, but the effect is lessened by her rasp. “How long have I been here?”

The droid catches her hands in its claw with surprising delicacy and lowers them. “You were admitted four hours and fifty-two minutes ago. Please do not attempt to remove the bacta-capsules. I will remove them according to the proper medical procedure once initial healing is complete.”  The pincers nudge her forehead back and Rey allows herself to be settled, allows the sheet to be draped over her again.  The droid buzzes and hums and warm, sticky liquid trickles over her skin as the treatment continues.

One hundred twenty-nine minutes later, the sheet flies off. The plungers are retracted from her chest and sides, the patches on her arm and head are replaced and covered with a clean gauze wrapping, and she’s subjected to a quick chemical rinse from a nozzle released from the med-droid’s chest. For a moment she shivers, then a thin gown is thrown over her shoulders.  The droid manages the ties to secure it with surprising ease. The droid checks her over once more, pronounces her stable, and then tromps back to a corner. Rey calls to it, asks about the cuffs on her wrists, but it lapses into standby mode without answering.

There’s not much in the room to look at - the bed, a small ‘fresher in a corner, a plastic chair, the droid, an array of medical equipment, a door in the wall. No windows.  Rey turns her attention to the thick padded cuffs.  They’re bound tight around her wrists, so her finger-prod examination of her injuries is clumsy and fumbling.  She pulls the neck of the gown away from her chest and looks down.  The puncture where the spear pierced her is skinned over but still angry, and her torso is corded with red, shiny slashes.  If that’s all the damage Snoke’s lightning did, she reckons she got off easy.

Rey folds her hands in her lap and considers meditation, but there are too many thoughts vying for dominance in her mind, too many worries.  Where is Kylo?  What did the Resistance do to him after they knocked him out? Is he alright? How long can they keep her here? How can she convince them to spare his life?  Her descent into true anxiety is halted by a murmuring of low voices at the door, the clattering of key cards.

The door slides open and she winces away, but it’s Poe Dameron and he’s beaming with all his might.  His smile is a sunrise after a sandstorm and it burns away the chill of the room.  Rey stumbles to her feet as her own smile dawns. He shouts her name, tosses away the bundle he’d been carrying, and then he’s hugging her, lifting her off her feet, crushing her to him with an urgency that knocks the wind out of her chest but she doesn’t care. BB-8 rolls around Poe’s feet, chirping in greeting and whistling in concern.

Rey’s grin stretches her cheeks, tugs at the new skin above her eyebrow. She can’t hug back, not with her hands bound, but she nestles her head into the crook of his neck and pulls him to her with her chin. “Poe!  You did it! You were so brilliant!” He laughs, joyful, and gives her a squeeze as she pulls back to look at him.  Seeing her flinch at the extra pressure, he sets her down as if she is made of glass. He holds her at arm's length for a moment, but she’s still smiling and he laughs again and pulls her in for another quick hug before releasing her.

BB-8 beeps expectantly at her feet and Rey crouches to the little astro-mech, leans over to kiss its domed head. “You did splendidly as well, BB-8. Thank you both so much.” She looks back up to Poe. “You saved my life.”

BB-8 whistles, smug and satisfied with the praise. Poe clasps her shoulder as she stands, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “Just barely. You looked pretty rough when I saw you last. That scared the shit out of me. What the hell happened? ”

The smile falls from her face. Her head aches again, and she shuffles back to sit on the bed, scrubbing her hands over her face before she begins. “Snoke happened.” The name feels slick and slimy on her tongue. “Not the best host, that guy. Though,” her voice hardens, “This isn’t quite the welcome I was expecting, either. What was with the strike team?”

He grimaces, runs a hand through his hair, then squares his shoulders and lifts his chin, the Resistance hero again. “That was about Kylo Ren, Rey.  I would have, by the way, loved a little heads up on that one.” He snorts. “If we’d known you were going to bring a war criminal home with you, we’d have set up a guest room for him.  As it is, we just had to shove him into a storage unit.”

Rey jumps to her feet, indignant and furious, and BB-8 scoots out of her way as she almost trips. She regrets the move instantly and leans back on the bed for support. “You put him in a storage unit?!”

Poe shrugs. “This is technically the first time the Resistance has had any prisoners.  We’re not really set up to house them.”

She stares at him, wooden, and raises her cuffed hands. “This is a pretty well equipped storage unit.  How long am I going to be kept in here?”

BB-8 whistles and turns its sensor to Poe, who backpedals fast. “Not you, Rey. You’re not a prisoner. This is just the medical ward.”

She nods, feigning agreeability. “Oh, good. So that’s not a guard outside? I can just stroll out of here when I feel like it?  These are just pretty bracelets that someone thought I'd like to wear? I don't think so. I know I'm new to this whole game, but I'm pretty sure that when you slap a pair of cuffs on someone and lock them in a room, they're considered a prisoner."

Poe glances from her eyes to her wrists a few times, working his jaw. “Excuse me.” He holds up a finger as BB-8 starts to follow him. “I’ll be right back, buddy.” He ducks out of the room. Rey crouches down as BB-8 rolls back to her, running her hands over its dome. Moments later, raised voices float through the door, someone shouting. BB-8 bobs its head at her and lets out a proud, bright whistle that makes her smile. Then Poe steps back in and she stands. He twirls a swipe card around his fingers, gives her a smug grin, and passes it over the cuffs binding her wrists. The locks open with a click and he catches them before they can fall to the floor. “That was... a misunderstanding. I’m sorry.” BB-8 beeps in agreement.

“Thanks, Poe.” Rey massages her wrists.

He stows the card in the back pocket of his pants and sighs, drags the plastic chair over and flops down in it, tossing the cuffs into a corner. He rests his elbows on his knees and drops his head to his hands. BB-8 rolls to rest between his feet.

“Look, Rey, no one knows what’s going on. People are scared.” Poe looks up at her, tone almost pleading. “You disappeared. No one survives with the First Order for long. We thought you were dead, or worse. Then, a week later, you’re calling me in the middle of the night and demanding to speak to the General. You call in an air strike out of nowhere.” His mouth quirks up again and she thinks he should be on recruitment posters. “That was the easiest run I’ve ever done, by the way. Thanks for that.” The grin fades. “But then you show up mostly-dead with a mad dog Sith in tow. Not as a prisoner, nope. He’s your pal now, right? You were standing in front of him as the doors opened. When the team came in, you were screaming for him. They were trying to save your life and you made them drag you away from this guy.” He shakes his head. “You have to understand how that looks.”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Rey mumbles, unable to meet his gaze.

“Which part?” Poe folds his arms over his chest. “Accidentally picking up a Dark Lord on your trip? Bleeding out all over that gorgeous Upsilon-class transport?” BB-8 beeps appreciatively. Poe shushes the droid and continues. “Using yourself as a meat shield between him and half of Ary’s squad?” He stands, walks to her. When she looks up at him, he’s smiling, but it’s almost sad. He holds his arms out. “I’m on your side here, but I need you to help me understand.”

She steps into his embrace. He’s warm, and he rests one hand between her shoulder blades.  The other cups her elbow, and something about his gentleness makes her want to cry. “We didn’t kill him, Poe.  We couldn’t. Snoke was too strong. We barely got out.” Rey shudders, thinks of the boxes Yali told her about, and shoves her sorrow, her fear into the biggest one she can find.  She pulls back from him, and he gives her another one of his smiles.

“Maybe you should start from the beginning.” He steps away to grab a bottle of water from the pile of things he’d dropped on the floor, hands it to her, and sits next to her on the bed as she gulps it down.  The movement of her throat hurts but cool water is cool water and she’s never been able to drink delicately. She finishes the bottle, sets it to the side, and adjusts herself so she can look him in the eye.

“We were going to kill Snoke. That was the plan. Kill Snoke and then go our separate ways. But we failed, and I couldn’t leave him there to die. I wouldn’t be here if not for Kylo. He protected me from Snoke, helped me stay alive, helped me stay me .” She she shakes her head and even that small motion hurts. “I couldn’t just abandon him.”

“He’s a bad person, Rey.” Poe reaches out to touch her wrist, voice is heavy with compassion. “Bad people can do good things but that doesn’t make them good people. He’s done terrible, terrible things in this war. You know that.”

“I know.” She takes Poe’s hand, squeezes it, remembering not for the first time that he’d suffered torture at Kylo’s hand. “I know.  But no one in the universe could deserve the fate he’d have suffered if I’d left him behind.” She pauses, looks at him from under her eyelashes, and asks, in a small voice, “Is he alright? Can I see him?”

Poe twitches at that, unclasps his hand from hers. “See him? Don’t you want to see Finn? General Organa? Your friends?” His face clouds.

She blanches, a sick misery settling on the back of her tongue. “That’s not fair, Poe. Of course I want to see Finn and the General,” she whispers, closes her eyes tight.

“I’m sorry,” Poe sighs. “No. You can’t see him. The leaders are still debating what they’re going to do with him. Your visitors are being screened, but if I can come and see you, I’m sure I can get Finn in here. He’s so excited to see you!” He grins and she offers a weak smile for a moment before Poe continues. “Messengers have been sent to Master Skywalker-”

Her eyes fly open and she stands, interrupting him. “Master Skywalker is coming?” Her stomach lurches and she doesn’t know what that means. She can’t sort out the emotions bubbling in her chest.

Poe nods and BB-8 mimics the movement with a bob of its dome. “He should be here in a few days. He’ll know what to do.” He looks around the room, then back to her face. “Just, you need to sit tight until then.”

Rey stretches for the elusive calm again. She doubts, somehow, that it will be that easy. At least Poe didn’t try to promise her that everything would be okay.