She should probably have explained a little before now, but once she's on the spot and expected to answer she doesn't even know where to start.
"This is where I grew up. In that." She says, and starts toward the AT-AT after looking back to be sure he'll follow. "I made that speeder. I scavenged every single day to find the parts for it. This will make sense once we're inside."
So she just leads him in and is surprised at how accurate the inside of the walker actually is. There's her hammock, there's her cook top where she prepared the same rations she gave him. There's her dried flower on a table, and most importantly, the wall of scratches marking out every single day she'd been on this planet.
There are thousands, and she swallows thickly as she stares. This was her life, and she had thought she had escaped it.
"I did the same thing every day. I woke up, I took my speeder to a downed ship, and I scavenged anything worthwhile. I took it to that little settlement and I cleaned it and I traded it for food- for those rations I gave you. The exact same thing."
Tommy doesn't do pity very well, and he doesn't do it now. He looks around the ship and recognizes all the indicators of a very lonely, very hard life- but she isn't the only person in the universe who grew up lonely and hungry, and she came out of it a strong, admirable woman.
But he wonders why she's showing him. When he really isn't very good at comforting someone, and this is obviously something that has hurt her a great deal over the years. And it has been years- she grew up in this thing, and if he's judging the scratches right they could count the days.
But he won't ask her yet. He just ducks his head to look at something a little closer. "You did all this by yourself?"
It's why it had to be him, because he doesn't immediately start to apologize for what she's been through, doesn't try to make it better. She's not the only one who knows what this wall looks like anymore, who knows what it means, and that's already a relief.
"I did everything by myself." She turns to see what he's doing, but doesn't stop him. He can touch all he wants, this place isn't real and she knows that, none of it is really hers. The doll she made, that's still on Jakku unless someone has picked her home clean by now.
Which they probably have.
"Everything on Jakku is like that. You do everything for yourself or you die."
She's grateful for that, for the directness that will let her get straight back to her point without drawing this out any more than it has been already.
"When the Admiral first said we should expect there to not be enough food, I asked him about it. He said where anyone who was listening that I knew how to live through this, and he was right."
She turns towards the wall, all of those scratch marks, reaches out to trace the last one she had made.
"Each one of these lines is one day, but most of them are one meal too. The entire time I was on Jakku I never had enough to eat. There were times I went days because none of the salvage was good enough to impress Unkar Plutt. What I gave you, that's all I'd ever had to eat my entire life. Usually in that same amount."
This is turning into a speech and she hates that a little, she wishes she could stop, but now that she's finally started talking the words just keep pouring out.
"When I left Jakku, I thought I was done with that. When I came here and there was always enough food I felt hope. I never wanted to go back to Jakku because the only thing there is sand and disappointment, but now, with whatever this ship is heading towards, it feels like I never left at all. I wanted to show you because I can't keep it to myself anymore and you're the only person I can tell who won't feel sorry for me."
She isn't usually a big talker, so the amount she's saying now surprises him. But he respects how calmly she's telling him this, with how hard it must be for her to imagine going back to that life. If someone had told him, two months after France, that he had to sit in a wet trench and make the best of it, he would have been far angrier than she is now.
His eyes follow her fingers as she traces the scratch mark, and then snap back up to her when she says that last part.
"You don't need pity, Rey, unless I've judged you very badly."
Maybe she would be more angry if this was something that didn't keep happening to her, but right now she's just tired of it. It's exhausting, getting your hopes up and being shown you were wrong to again, and there's a part of her she wishes would just die so she'd stop letting herself be fooled.
"That's why I asked you to come," she says, turning to face him again. "Anyone else would tell me that this will all get better instead of just letting me say what I need to so it's not bottled up under my skin anymore."
He's silent for a few seconds after that, as he looks at her and lets that sink in. She needed to share this with someone and chose him, and he's not sure why that makes such an impact but it does. Even after all this time on the Barge, he doesn't consider himself a good man. He isn't. But at least here, he can do a good thing.
"Thank you for telling me," he finally says, sincerely.
Being in the Enclosure as they are, they don't hear the announcement. When the flood hits, it's just them, on this ship in the desert- but he knows something happened. Because suddenly he can feel someone else's exhaustion and worry besides his own- and Rey may feel a little more soothed than she might have been just from his words, just from having him here.
"Are you...?" He frowns, turns to her completely. Is she feeling this?
She feels less beaten down by this place now, still far from happy but at least at a place where she can see the light at the other end of the tunnel again. She hadn't gotten to thanking him yet, so when he beats her to it she realizes maybe this was something they both needed. Something good for both of them. She had referred to him as her friend when asked about him before, but at the time she had only used that word because she didn't know a better one.
Now, she's a little more sure that's right. And that's something she can try to focus on instead of the gnawing hunger in her stomach, the uneasiness about the future. It's a help, and she can at least reciprocate.
"Thank you for letting me," she finally says, and that's much better.
She doesn't feel a change, though, as she's looking around the AT-AT one last time before intending to step out of it and leave it behind as much as she can. She'll never be entirely free of Jakku, she knows that now, but she doesn't have to dwell.
"I'll be fine," she says, misinterpreting his question entirely. "This can't last forever, right?"
"No," he says, frowning and shaking his head, bringing up a hand to silence her-- and there it is. He can still feel something, like he's hearing it in his head.
"Can't you feel that? I--"
He's about to try and explain it to her, how there's a shift, how there are things in his mind that aren't coming from him.
And then the lights go out, and the space they're in gets smaller, and suddenly he can't quite think of anything but his own emotions anymore.
She's been in small places before, of course, so they don't bother her, but she can absolutely do without all the lights going out on her like this, leaving her feeling exposed and abruptly remembering why this was supposed to be a short trip to the enclosure. They both know by now this has been happening, problems in the enclosure, but she had timed it on purpose to the most recent one and had been so sure that they'd have at least enough time to get in and out.
Things must be getting worse if the enclosure is failing at a faster pace now.
As the space gets smaller she's forced closer to Tommy, can feel her back bump into his chest before the walls finally stop their closing in. She's hesitant to reach out and find where he is, and even more hesitant to reach out to feel for where the walls are because now that she thinks about it she can't remember if anyone said pushing back against the walls was painful or not.
"I thought we'd have more time," she says, and her voice is even, she's calm enough about this that she won't spike his fears any higher on accident.
He's breathing hard already, trying to keep himself calm by closing his eyes- she won't see, not in this darkness. He lets her calm wash over him but can't quite-- he can't quite manage it.
The warmth of her body nearby makes it a little easier to focus, and he grits out the words: "Call someone to come get us out?"
She knows that won't work, they've all heard by now that the enclosure powers down and doesn't open up until it's ready to, but she can tell this isn't settling well on him. She knows it won't do any good but she brings her communicator out anyway, and calls Furiosa to tell her what's happening.
But all they can do is wait, so once the call is over Rey sighs heavily and shakes her head.
"There might be enough room to sit down if we sit closely. It might be awhile."
"I'm not," he starts, and then bites the inside of his cheek to get himself to focus. It's been almost two years, he tells himself, get the fuck over it already.
He searches out the wall, to see how far he has- not far at all, and when he sits down he can feel his knees shaking a little.
"Rey," he begins again, hesitantly, wondering if it'll make it better or worse to tell her, but in the darkness it still feels like the walls are closing in on him, like there's no air to breathe, and he isn't sure but he thinks he can hear it, can hear the knocking, like a nightmare while he's fully awake--
He doesn't even realize it, but he's shaking, breathing fast enough that she'll know he's having a panic attack.
Rey has never witnessed a panic attack, but it doesn't really matter when it's immediately clear something is very wrong here. This is more than not liking a small space, she can hear in his voice that it's more than that, and there's so little space in here that when he sits she can feel him trembling when he bumps her.
She's still not afraid, but now there's concern blooming in her and she's not at all sure what to do with it, how to help him. She gets down beside him, somehow manages not to smack him with her knees, and when she reaches out to find where he ended up her hand lands in the center of his chest.
Which won't do. She moves it immediately to his shoulder instead, settles down beside him without really registering how closely pressed they are.
"It won't last all day," she says, because clearly he needs to not be in here. "It's- it always comes back on. We'll get out."
He can feel the concern piling on top of his own anxiety, her uncertainty over what to do. And something inside of him is reaching out to her, piling comfort on her worries, her troubles, but it's making the mess inside of his head even bigger.
His nails are digging into his palms so hard that he thinks he's drawing blood, but even that can't bring him back.
He can hear them, on the other side of the wall. Whispering ich hör es and sei ruhig, and they're going to kill him, they're going to burst through and run him through and shoot Freddie and this time the blast will kill him with all of them.
He's crying without sound, tears rolling down his cheeks in an attempt by his body to push the tension out as the pressure on his chest gets bigger and bigger.
With her hand on his shoulder she can feel what's happening to him. He's shaking, yes, but it's different now. He's crying.
Something happened to him long before he ever came here, something that has nothing to do with her, and it must have been something in a dark, trapped space just like this. He's got to be terrified if this is what he's reduced to because he's always been so strong, so stoic, and that had been what she found comforting about him from the very first time she had run straight into him after a confrontation with Kylo Ren.
But she has no idea how to turn that around and help him like he had helped her. She's not good at comfort on a good day, but this? This requires action, and she has to do something because her heart will break if she doesn't.
She's done what she can to leave the breach behind her and for the most part she has. Those memories are not hers, that woman was not her, but that woman knew how to take care of that version of Tommy. She had been there for him in his times of need. She had known what to do.
Is it right to take the actions of someone she never was and apply them to something like this? Wouldn't it be worse to not do anything she can? That has to be worse. She has no idea what she's doing, but relying on memories of what it felt like to love someone and help them through their lowest points can't be bad.
Her hand moves from his shoulder up to his neck, around to the back of his head, and she gives him a light tug to pull him towards her.
"It's not going to last." She says quietly, but there's a firmness to her voice that makes it hard to question that as anything but fact. Her other arm goes around his shoulder, and it's odd but she's holding him anyway and if he lets her she'll go on doing it until he's calmed down. "The lights will come back, and you're not in here alone. It's just the Enclosure, it isn't dangerous."
It doesn't filter through at first: he can hear her voice, but lost in memories like he is it's warped into something different, something hostile. Her worry threads through his panic, her uncertainty making his own worse, and he hunches to try and get away from it all.
If he remembered he had a gun, right now, he would have started shooting already.
But he doesn't: in fact, he hardly remembers that she's there at all until she cups the back of his neck just so-- until she's so close that he can feel her against his entire front, and she's saying something. Someone is teling him it isn't dangerous, but they must be mad, and the lights haven't been on for what feels like weeks.
It tears a sob from his throat even as he moves into her body, fists still clenched at his side. "They're right there," he whispers, and once he opens his mouth he can't stop: "They're there, I can hear 'em, we have to get out, they'll blow us all up--"
She has no idea who they are, of course, but when it comes down to it it really doesn't matter if she understands what he's talking about in this moment. Maybe she'll find out some day, but it won't be right now. She doesn't really care about the details right now.
"No, Tommy, it's just us. It's just you and me, and we're on the Barge." Something makes her move her hand from the back of his neck to the back of his head, makes her rub his back as she keeps him in close. "You're on the Barge and they aren't. It's just us, Tommy. Look."
He can't look in the dark, but she moves her arm away for just long enough to follow the line of his arm down with her hand, find his fist and unclench it and press it to her cheek.
"See, Tommy? It's Rey. You're with Rey on the Barge."
Later, he won't know why that broke through the fog: her cheek underneath his skin, warmth, the calm she's radiating into him somehow. He doesn't understand it, but the fact of the matter is that he stops weeping for long enough that he hears her words.
It's Rey, he hears, and he hears Barge, and it's jut her and him, just him and her, in the darkness, together.
She's overcome for a moment by the intense desire to turn her face in his hand, to kiss his palm, and it almost happens. Something about the dark, on pulling from memories that aren't hers, it's blurring things too much and she almost slips.
But she doesn't. She does lean her forehead against his, though, because that seems okay. That's not too far.
"That's right. You showed me horses here, remember?"
"I did?" He sounds genuinely confused for a second, but somehow he feels loved, cherished, desired. There's still confusion in there, and some pain, but mostly it's just calm.
"I did," he then decides, eyes still closed tight against the darkness outside. At least this is a darkness he chose. "You-- ate the bloody jerky."
Despite everything, that makes her smile a little. Out of everything he could latch onto, it's her eating the jerky he had wanted her to give to the horse.
"I'd do it again, too." She says, and her hand is absently smoothing down the back of his head, the stubble there is catching on her fingers but she hardly cares when he's coming out of this and she just feels relieved. She's never felt the impulse to care for someone like this, to want to protect them, but now it isn't going away.
She wants to do everything she can for him, and if that includes staying exactly like they are right now until the lights come back she's going to do it.
"Gotta--" He shivers, hiccups a little sob before he can try again. That hand on his head feels so good, and he tries very hard to relax into whatever it is that's happening that is letting him feel relief. And there's care, again: more care than he's felt in a long time.
"Gotta save it for r-rations, now," he finally manages. His chest still feels tight, painful, and in his head he can still hear the shovels. But she's giving him something else to think about.
She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from saying Oh, Tommy when she hears his voice crack, and there's a fresh wave of concern that she still can't make any sense of. She was never in love with him but that doesn't mean she likes this at all, she wishes she could stop it, that she could take her lightsaber and cut the walls down and get them out, but it won't work. All they can do is wait.
If she ever gets the chance to, she's going to beat the Admiral bloody for this. For Tommy, for her, for the entire barge.
"I know, I've been careful." She murmurs, and it feels odd and not at the same time to pitch her voice so it's soothing and gentle. "I've got a whole stockpile now, we'll be set in the Falcon."
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"This is where I grew up. In that." She says, and starts toward the AT-AT after looking back to be sure he'll follow. "I made that speeder. I scavenged every single day to find the parts for it. This will make sense once we're inside."
So she just leads him in and is surprised at how accurate the inside of the walker actually is. There's her hammock, there's her cook top where she prepared the same rations she gave him. There's her dried flower on a table, and most importantly, the wall of scratches marking out every single day she'd been on this planet.
There are thousands, and she swallows thickly as she stares. This was her life, and she had thought she had escaped it.
"I did the same thing every day. I woke up, I took my speeder to a downed ship, and I scavenged anything worthwhile. I took it to that little settlement and I cleaned it and I traded it for food- for those rations I gave you. The exact same thing."
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But he wonders why she's showing him. When he really isn't very good at comforting someone, and this is obviously something that has hurt her a great deal over the years. And it has been years- she grew up in this thing, and if he's judging the scratches right they could count the days.
But he won't ask her yet. He just ducks his head to look at something a little closer. "You did all this by yourself?"
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"I did everything by myself." She turns to see what he's doing, but doesn't stop him. He can touch all he wants, this place isn't real and she knows that, none of it is really hers. The doll she made, that's still on Jakku unless someone has picked her home clean by now.
Which they probably have.
"Everything on Jakku is like that. You do everything for yourself or you die."
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"Why did you want to show me?"
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"When the Admiral first said we should expect there to not be enough food, I asked him about it. He said where anyone who was listening that I knew how to live through this, and he was right."
She turns towards the wall, all of those scratch marks, reaches out to trace the last one she had made.
"Each one of these lines is one day, but most of them are one meal too. The entire time I was on Jakku I never had enough to eat. There were times I went days because none of the salvage was good enough to impress Unkar Plutt. What I gave you, that's all I'd ever had to eat my entire life. Usually in that same amount."
This is turning into a speech and she hates that a little, she wishes she could stop, but now that she's finally started talking the words just keep pouring out.
"When I left Jakku, I thought I was done with that. When I came here and there was always enough food I felt hope. I never wanted to go back to Jakku because the only thing there is sand and disappointment, but now, with whatever this ship is heading towards, it feels like I never left at all. I wanted to show you because I can't keep it to myself anymore and you're the only person I can tell who won't feel sorry for me."
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His eyes follow her fingers as she traces the scratch mark, and then snap back up to her when she says that last part.
"You don't need pity, Rey, unless I've judged you very badly."
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"That's why I asked you to come," she says, turning to face him again. "Anyone else would tell me that this will all get better instead of just letting me say what I need to so it's not bottled up under my skin anymore."
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"Thank you for telling me," he finally says, sincerely.
Being in the Enclosure as they are, they don't hear the announcement. When the flood hits, it's just them, on this ship in the desert- but he knows something happened. Because suddenly he can feel someone else's exhaustion and worry besides his own- and Rey may feel a little more soothed than she might have been just from his words, just from having him here.
"Are you...?" He frowns, turns to her completely. Is she feeling this?
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Now, she's a little more sure that's right. And that's something she can try to focus on instead of the gnawing hunger in her stomach, the uneasiness about the future. It's a help, and she can at least reciprocate.
"Thank you for letting me," she finally says, and that's much better.
She doesn't feel a change, though, as she's looking around the AT-AT one last time before intending to step out of it and leave it behind as much as she can. She'll never be entirely free of Jakku, she knows that now, but she doesn't have to dwell.
"I'll be fine," she says, misinterpreting his question entirely. "This can't last forever, right?"
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"Can't you feel that? I--"
He's about to try and explain it to her, how there's a shift, how there are things in his mind that aren't coming from him.
And then the lights go out, and the space they're in gets smaller, and suddenly he can't quite think of anything but his own emotions anymore.
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Things must be getting worse if the enclosure is failing at a faster pace now.
As the space gets smaller she's forced closer to Tommy, can feel her back bump into his chest before the walls finally stop their closing in. She's hesitant to reach out and find where he is, and even more hesitant to reach out to feel for where the walls are because now that she thinks about it she can't remember if anyone said pushing back against the walls was painful or not.
"I thought we'd have more time," she says, and her voice is even, she's calm enough about this that she won't spike his fears any higher on accident.
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The warmth of her body nearby makes it a little easier to focus, and he grits out the words: "Call someone to come get us out?"
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But all they can do is wait, so once the call is over Rey sighs heavily and shakes her head.
"There might be enough room to sit down if we sit closely. It might be awhile."
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He searches out the wall, to see how far he has- not far at all, and when he sits down he can feel his knees shaking a little.
"Rey," he begins again, hesitantly, wondering if it'll make it better or worse to tell her, but in the darkness it still feels like the walls are closing in on him, like there's no air to breathe, and he isn't sure but he thinks he can hear it, can hear the knocking, like a nightmare while he's fully awake--
He doesn't even realize it, but he's shaking, breathing fast enough that she'll know he's having a panic attack.
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She's still not afraid, but now there's concern blooming in her and she's not at all sure what to do with it, how to help him. She gets down beside him, somehow manages not to smack him with her knees, and when she reaches out to find where he ended up her hand lands in the center of his chest.
Which won't do. She moves it immediately to his shoulder instead, settles down beside him without really registering how closely pressed they are.
"It won't last all day," she says, because clearly he needs to not be in here. "It's- it always comes back on. We'll get out."
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His nails are digging into his palms so hard that he thinks he's drawing blood, but even that can't bring him back.
He can hear them, on the other side of the wall. Whispering ich hör es and sei ruhig, and they're going to kill him, they're going to burst through and run him through and shoot Freddie and this time the blast will kill him with all of them.
He's crying without sound, tears rolling down his cheeks in an attempt by his body to push the tension out as the pressure on his chest gets bigger and bigger.
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Something happened to him long before he ever came here, something that has nothing to do with her, and it must have been something in a dark, trapped space just like this. He's got to be terrified if this is what he's reduced to because he's always been so strong, so stoic, and that had been what she found comforting about him from the very first time she had run straight into him after a confrontation with Kylo Ren.
But she has no idea how to turn that around and help him like he had helped her. She's not good at comfort on a good day, but this? This requires action, and she has to do something because her heart will break if she doesn't.
She's done what she can to leave the breach behind her and for the most part she has. Those memories are not hers, that woman was not her, but that woman knew how to take care of that version of Tommy. She had been there for him in his times of need. She had known what to do.
Is it right to take the actions of someone she never was and apply them to something like this? Wouldn't it be worse to not do anything she can? That has to be worse. She has no idea what she's doing, but relying on memories of what it felt like to love someone and help them through their lowest points can't be bad.
Her hand moves from his shoulder up to his neck, around to the back of his head, and she gives him a light tug to pull him towards her.
"It's not going to last." She says quietly, but there's a firmness to her voice that makes it hard to question that as anything but fact. Her other arm goes around his shoulder, and it's odd but she's holding him anyway and if he lets her she'll go on doing it until he's calmed down. "The lights will come back, and you're not in here alone. It's just the Enclosure, it isn't dangerous."
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If he remembered he had a gun, right now, he would have started shooting already.
But he doesn't: in fact, he hardly remembers that she's there at all until she cups the back of his neck just so-- until she's so close that he can feel her against his entire front, and she's saying something. Someone is teling him it isn't dangerous, but they must be mad, and the lights haven't been on for what feels like weeks.
It tears a sob from his throat even as he moves into her body, fists still clenched at his side. "They're right there," he whispers, and once he opens his mouth he can't stop: "They're there, I can hear 'em, we have to get out, they'll blow us all up--"
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"No, Tommy, it's just us. It's just you and me, and we're on the Barge." Something makes her move her hand from the back of his neck to the back of his head, makes her rub his back as she keeps him in close. "You're on the Barge and they aren't. It's just us, Tommy. Look."
He can't look in the dark, but she moves her arm away for just long enough to follow the line of his arm down with her hand, find his fist and unclench it and press it to her cheek.
"See, Tommy? It's Rey. You're with Rey on the Barge."
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It's Rey, he hears, and he hears Barge, and it's jut her and him, just him and her, in the darkness, together.
"Rey," he croaks, and then again: "Rey?"
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But she doesn't. She does lean her forehead against his, though, because that seems okay. That's not too far.
"That's right. You showed me horses here, remember?"
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"I did," he then decides, eyes still closed tight against the darkness outside. At least this is a darkness he chose. "You-- ate the bloody jerky."
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"I'd do it again, too." She says, and her hand is absently smoothing down the back of his head, the stubble there is catching on her fingers but she hardly cares when he's coming out of this and she just feels relieved. She's never felt the impulse to care for someone like this, to want to protect them, but now it isn't going away.
She wants to do everything she can for him, and if that includes staying exactly like they are right now until the lights come back she's going to do it.
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"Gotta save it for r-rations, now," he finally manages. His chest still feels tight, painful, and in his head he can still hear the shovels. But she's giving him something else to think about.
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If she ever gets the chance to, she's going to beat the Admiral bloody for this. For Tommy, for her, for the entire barge.
"I know, I've been careful." She murmurs, and it feels odd and not at the same time to pitch her voice so it's soothing and gentle. "I've got a whole stockpile now, we'll be set in the Falcon."
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cw: mention of child abuse
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