Log: Rey (CL) and Rey (AU) WHO: Rey and Rey. That is, Rey (CL/canon) and Rey (AU) WHEN: December 30 WHERE: New arrival quarantine WHAT: Rey is here. Rey arrives. Rey senses Rey. Rey meets herself. WARNINGS: None for content/triggers, but TLJ spoilers
______________
For a very long time, Rey hadn't had any reason to visit the Military Base. Unlike the majority, her arrival had been waking in an amphitheatre, with the feel of vibrations beneath her form. She'd registered the vibrations far before she'd registered the mass amount of people because, for Rey, it'd been over a year since she'd been on a ship of any kind. Excitement had filled her and she'd leapt to her feet, snatching up the belongings that had been sprawled out by her side, and rushing past the gentlemen who had been waiting to try to explain to her what was going on. She hadn't wanted to sit through another dull lecture about magic and realities. She'd done it before and she was finally on a ship again. Being planet bound, in a vibrant and bustling city, had made it so her priority was getting to the nearest view port she could find, to take in the stars the way they were meant to be seen.
And she'd run practically straight into Poe Dameron.
That had been her introduction into the new set of circumstances. A quick rundown had been given. They couldn't opt to be sent back to their time. They were never certain if they were going to remain in one place. And people left just as frequently as they had in Chicago, because she herself had evidently departed just weeks before, even though she had no recollection of doing so. All of this should have felt strange and unusual but due to living in Chicago for the amount of time she had, well, it just seemed like the norm. It was an adjustment and Rey was adaptable.
For the most part, they'd been in Texas since that journey had come to an end. She'd settled back into a routine. But she'd skipped over the arrival via Military Base and it had only been upon Finn's arrival that she had even bothered to venture to the facility. She'd gone once more when Leia arrived but that was it. Two visits and both of those had been for her loved ones to help dampen the blow.
This situation was different. Her morning had started as it usually did. Pilot and her went out for a run well before the sun rose. She'd returned him to the care of his other owner, Finn, before heading straight back out into the early Texas morning. Out she went to dive into the engine of the Copter she'd received less than a week before. The aircraft of this world was not complicated but she still wanted to familiarize herself with the mechanics of it all. She needed to have a firm grasp of understanding. A book had been tucked away in the cockpit of the Copter and occasionally she glanced towards it, but for the most part, she'd went about finding out information by looking inside the inner workings. This had been where she was before.
And now she was here, just outside the visitation area, with her eyes glued ahead of her. She'd witnessed the arrival of alternate versions of people before. After all, there were now two Leia's, who both had similar memories to a certain point before one went down one path and the other another. She just hadn't ever expected it to happen to herself. Emerging from the doorway, and coming in closer to the window, she looked ahead. "Hello," she said, as she slipped her hands into the deep pockets of the pants she'd commandeered that morning. Perhaps they were Finn's. Perhaps they were Poe's. She wasn't entirely certain but they were now covered with stains of oil, grease, and cakes of sand.
The room was quite comfortable— too comfortable, actually. Rey had slept in a hammock for years in her AT-AT home, every so often on the floor of a wrecked ship when something kept her from getting home before nightfall. In transit on the Millennium Falcon, she would sleep on the firm curved sleeping berths. Since then she had lived on the island on Ahch-To, and she usually slept on a pallet on the floor of a hut. Every once in awhile, she slept outdoors in the grass for the novelty of it. The soft and flat mattress in this room was just too unfamiliar for her. She'd already prepared pillows and blankets on the floor for when she eventually slept.
So far, though, she was too wide-awake to really sleep. Her weapon had been confiscated and she'd been assured it was a temporary arrangement. The instincts that she'd been honing further with Luke told her these people were honest and their intentions were from caution rather than hostility.
She'd taken advantage of the real water refresher to indulge in a lengthy shower, and out of long habit had pulled her wet hair back in the trio of buns she'd been styling her hair in since childhood. She understood now that she'd once done it as an attempt to hold onto her past self and stay recognizable to the birth family she'd never regain. It was more about simple muscle memory now.
Not long ago, she'd experienced an unsettling vision of herself— and only herself, repeated over and over in an endless stretch before and behind her. There were extremely subtle variations between each otherwise-identical image, growing ever so slightly more different the further they got from her, but they were all her.
On the other side of this room's window, she saw just one other Rey, simultaneously identical in body and yet not. It wasn't like looking into a mirror; it was more like seeing a holovid of herself when she was accustomed to the reversed image of her own reflection. The other Rey wore clothes that were unfamiliar in their make, but very familiar in their state of obvious work use. The other Rey's voice through the comm speaker was unsettlingly her own.
Rey walked up to the window and pressed her hand flat to it, staring back at the other Rey before answering. "... Hello myself."
Rey wondered what it must have been like for others in this situation. There were a handful of people in the community who had come face to face with a variant of themselves. She wondered if there had ever been any doubt for them and whether the question of whether they were simply an identical face or another of themselves was brought forth. She wondered what it was like going into this situation without absolute certainty. If she would have any doubts, she supposed, there were plenty of clues in front of her to put them to rest.
The girl in front of her was wearing an outfit that Rey knew she'd once worn herself. The hair was pulled back in the fashion that Rey had styled it in every day back home. And there was the certainty she felt from her senses, of course.
Her eyes shifted to the floor, taking note of the blanket and pillow, and she gave the slightest of smiles as her mind leapt back to her initial departure from her home. She'd had been in a habit of sleeping on the floor herself back then, sleeping in what was intended to be a closet. The bed had been ignored for months and her acceptance of it had never been fully complete. She'd hung a hammock overtop of the mattress back in that dwelling, letting Pilot take the mattress for himself, and that very hammock had moved with her to the Millenium Falcon when Han had invited her to stay.
She moved her attention back to the girl on the other side of the window now, having only looked away for a moment. "Have you come from Ahch-To?" This was the very last memory Rey had of her life back home. Her hand extended towards Luke, holding Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber out, uncertain of how that meeting would go. She'd been waiting for answers for years now. In her early months, she'd been scourgering the internet, trying to find answers to that question and many others. The answers never came. She kept waiting for new memories but they never arrived either. It got to the point where she wondered if the universe was telling her to focus on her current path, but the questions were always still there, even if she tried to make the most of her time in Chicago and now Tumbleweed.
Inside the room, Rey looked at "herself" incredulously. That was the first question? She'd read the "welcome" materials about different worlds and times, though she hadn't quite accepted them yet. Visions from the Force were very different from an actual physical double. That hadn't been the first question to come to her own mind.
"Of course," she said, frowning; wasn't that obvious?
Then again, nothing about talking to yourself was really all that obvious, so maybe she should be a little more understanding of… herself. She pressed a hand to the window, wondering for a moment if it was real glass or transparisteel or some other transparent material.
"Is Master Skywalker here, too? Or Chewbacca, or Artoo?"
Rey's head bowed for a moment with the answer. A wave of slight disappointment came forward but she quickly pushed it aside. Her double coming here from Ahch-To did not mean that she was coming from the same point in time.
She glanced up, looking to her hand against the glass, and her fingers twitched inside of her pocket. "Chewbacca is not presently here," she began, with a shake of her head. "Artoo is here, as is Master Skywalker, but he..." she hesitated for a moment as she tried to find the right words. "...isn't from our history."
"He's lived a different life."
"I don't understand." Rey stepped back from the window and held up one finger, then turned to grab the welcome packet. It was strange having it on flimsi, but helpful for being able to press it to the window so the other Rey could also see it. "Here, go down a couple of paragraphs. It talks about 'worlds' and 'timelines', not worlds like planets but… well, it sounds ridiculous. But here we are, looking at ourselves. So what do you mean by isn't from our history, because this didn't really clear it up for me."
Rey took a step towards the glass once the packet was pressed against it. She removed her hands from her pockets and pressed one palm against the glass to steady herself, as she tilted her head down, reading over the passages quickly. "I mean history as in a timeline," she replied as she continued to read, before glancing up to look back into her eyes. "I know it sounds ridiculous," she empathised, because this had been her own feelings once.
"Something happened in the past," she began, "and in one timeline, one decision was made, and it had ripples. He is similar but different."
Ripples? Rey listened and tried to come up with a mental image for it as the other Rey was explaining it. The island had made her more familiar with water than the watering troughs on Jakku ever had, but the imagery didn't come readily to her. She tried another way instead that was much more familiar for her. "Or flip a different switch and you get a cascade failure instead."
Was that another meaning of that vision she'd had, herself across different timelines? She'd interpreted it differently before. "Right, 'timelines,' that's ridiculous enough, but how can you be me and I'm you?"
"Yes," she said with a nod of her head and the slightest smile. That was a better analogy. "I don't know how," she answered, easily enough, because this was true. She didn't understand how it necessarily worked. She only understand that it was simply a fact and had something to do with someone's powers or magic.
"We're probably different, somehow," she offered up, as a possibility. "A different switch," she added, calling back to the analogy. She removed her hands from the glass and stood up straighter. "How long have you been on Ahch-To? I don't have memories past my arrival there."
Understand later; accept as fact now. That's what Rey would have to do to just move forward with whatever this was. She didn't have to understand the why or how of this yet (although she'd really like to know).
"Two hundred and one days." It wasn't scratches on a wall anymore; instead, she collected a pebble every day since settling there for training. Their measure no longer counted time waiting and surviving, either. "I didn't count the first days, though, because I was just there to get Master Skywalker, not staying. I started when we came back."
She held up her hand towards the glass, closed her eyes, and started to reach out— then frowned. She tried again, then looked over the window and the walls in confusion. She talked quietly to herself, not aimed at 'herself'. "It didn't work. Does this block the Force?"
"Two hundred and one..." She repeated as her eyebrows came together in confusion. The plan had been to convince Luke to come back to the Resistance, to bring him to Leia. She was ready to leap forward with another batch of questions, about why it was taking so long to leave, but her other self answered the question before she had the opportunity to spring it.
Ah.
So, they had left. That was far more reasonable. The notion of a return to the Island was intriguing but she didn't want to overload her with question. Not yet. Then, she frowned, catching sight of what she was trying to manage.
"I think so," she replied. She hadn't been in Quarantine ever herself so she couldn't say with complete certainty. She did know that it had the ability to stop powers, just as the Pods had. She didn't know if it completely dampened the ties to the Force or not. "It won't be that way once you are out."
"That's so strange." Rey ran a hand around the edge of the window frame, but she couldn't tell what was special about any of this. "Luke— Master Skywalker— said there are things in the galaxy that can naturally suppress our connection with the Force."
Of course, they'd also discussed the technique he'd used when he withdrew from the galaxy, unable to be away while retaining his powerful connection to… everything, really. If he'd stayed aware of what was happening, especially to his friends and family, he'd have been tempted to end his long hermitage.
And they had especially discussed how Rey could use such a method to keep Kylo Ren from ever connecting with her again.
"Is… anyone else we know here?"
"It is," Rey agreed, as her thoughts went back to the period they'd spent up in the mountains of the desert, having arrived through the Pods that severed all powers. She'd been unable to reach out with the Force while inside of the Pod and it had been an ordeal to get out. She suspected it was very similar in operation to how the Quarantine room worked.
"Yes," she then said, glancing back to herself before taking in a breath. "The Leia from our timeline is here, as is Finn. And Poe. Have you met Poe?" She asked. Her first introduction to Poe had been during her time in Chicago. Perhaps, back home and in the future, they hadn't had the chance to meet him. It didn't seem completely unlikely but she didn't like the idea of living her life without Poe in it. Not now that she was so accustomed to his company.
"There is the Leia from Luke's timeline, as well. And then Leia's children from that timeline." She hesitated for a moment. "Ren is here."
"Maybe I should find something to write on." Rey was only half-joking about that.
Ren was here. Rey clenched her jaw and looked down at the floor for some moments. It had been months now since their last encounter. She'd been certain that wouldn't be the last, but she hadn't been prepared to cross paths with him again before she finished more stages of her training. Physically standing up to him wasn't a problem, given how she'd twice now beaten him in combat, but preparation for his Force abilities was different.
She drew in a breath, held, released. Acknowledge your emotions, then give them to the Force; that's what Master Skywalker would probably say. Master Kenobi, too, when he made his rare appearances.
"Yeah, I've met Poe." That brought a bright smile that lit up her whole face. "And Finn's here, too? That's good. Very good. BB-8?"
"I can ask for you. Or there's a place for writing on the device they give you," she told her, shifting to reach into her pocket. She pulled it out and held it up for the other version of herself to see, now smiling as she did. "It's handy," she added, before closing her fingers around it and lowering her arm.
She didn't comment on the reaction to Ren. Rey herself wasn't necessarily comfortable with his continued presence in the town but she'd tolerated him, always on guard. There encounters had been minimal and none of them violent. That didn't mean she trusted him so the reaction she saw ahead of her, from the version behind the glass, made sense.
Her smile returned when she answered her. Good. She liked knowing that Poe was still someone to be counted on back home. "BB-8 is here. And Leia's protocol droid."
"It's not really a datapad, is it? But what is it?" Rey looked at the one her other self held up, then moved away from the window to retrieve the one she'd been given.
What was that protocol droid's designation again? She could always ask, but she wanted to pull it up from her own memory if she could. Later, though; she was too thrilled to know another of her friends was also here.
"What about Rose? How long have you been here, anyway?"
"No, it is similar, but they call it a phone." She turned hers over in her hand and looked down at the screen. She shifted, moving closer to the glass, so the other could see better. She pressed the side of her shoulder against the glass and tilted the screen towards her, before dragging her finger across it and unlocking it with a pattern. She pressed on the button for the 'memo' application. "I use this one to write sometimes," she informed her, before turning her head slightly to look at her better. "People use it to talk to one another. And look up information or watch holovids."
Then she blinked and tilted her head inquisitively. "I haven't met Rose. Is she a friend of ours?" Then she shifted, pocketing the phone. "I've been away from home for almost two years. I've been in this world for about 10 months. I was somewhere else before."
"A phone." She could explore the device on her own, or… learn from herself what she'd already done? This was very confusing, should she think of them as two people or one? The same and not the same.
Her face smushed against the glass for a moment as she got a little too close to viewing what the other Rey was demonstrating.
Apparently Rose was one of those not-sames, and spending years somewhere else definitely was. Rey stared at the other Rey in shock. "What? Really? You just met Luke, then, and then you were gone to… wherever it was. Did you see something kind of like hyperspace, too?"
"Yeah," she replied and glanced down for a moment. The subject of Luke, in general, was one that brought moderate disappointment. She hadn't even really tried to reach out to him again. She just lived in his vicinity these days. "I'd only just arrived on Ahch-To before I was brought to Chicago. "
Then she nodded her head, looking back up to her. "When I came from Chicago to Tumbleweed. Chicago was...more like turning and everything around you had changed."
She hesitated for a moment before speaking again, "Do you think you can tell me more? About what happens?" She paused before adding, "Later. Not today. Eventually?"
Rey wanted to know.
"Chicago? I've never heard of that planet before. Or is it a system?"
They both certainly had a lot to talk about. Rey turned from the window for a moment, and held her hand out towards a chair. This hadn't worked on the window itself… She concentrated, and the chair came sliding over to her. That was a deep relief— not that she could specifically move furniture, but that she hadn't lost her connection to the Force. She just couldn't get out of the room yet.
"Do you think right now you could tell me what I need to know about being here, for when they let me out?" She sat in the chair and put the 'phone' down.
"It is a city on this planet," she answered.
She gave a small nod of her head before she glanced around. She supposed she would ask one of the Military people when they came through for a chair. For now, however, she did not mind standing. "Of course," she agreed. She could wait a little longer.
She turned so she was giving herself full attention once again before she took in a breath, prepared to go over everything she thought the girl might need to know.