my skywalker feels, let me tell you them
So who wants to read an extensive outline for a story I might not actually write about how I would work out the prevailing theory on who Rey really is? Gather round!
So according to this theory, Rey is Luke Skywalker’s daughter. Here’s my take on how it all went down:
Rey is about 10 years younger than Ben. I’m iffy on who her mother was, how they met, what their relationship is like - it would be interesting if they don’t stay together and try to co-parent baby Rey, which could lead to some conflict later, but it also works better for the emotional arc if Luke and Rey’s mother were together and in love. And it’s possible that her given name was not Rey, but I’ll call her that for simplicity’s sake.
Anyway, Ben starts to waver towards the Dark Side when he’s around 15 (Rey is 5). I see the Skywalker-Organa-Solo(-Chewie) family as being incredibly close, as they are in the OT. Luke loves Ben almost as much as if he were his own son, and Han/Leia feel the same way about Rey. But Ben was always troubled in certain ways, never feeling like he could measure up, and I think there was some confusion over the correct age to start his training. Obviously in the PT Jedi start training when they’re very wee, but I can see Luke a) thinking this is a bad idea on its face and b) not having a lot of experience with children, compounding his lack of experience with teaching and limited resources. In TFA Leia says that she lost Ben when she sent him away, which makes me think he was a little older and that he probably only trained with Luke for a couple of years at most. At that point Luke had other students, although none as young as Ben, and maybe he thought there needed to be some distance between them so he wouldn’t be tempted to go easy on Ben because he’s family, and also so the other students wouldn’t feel he was playing favorites (there’s just one Jedi Master to go around, after all). And this, obviously, would be confusing and hurtful to Ben. He might also be jealous and resentful of Rey, who I imagine was a very happy baby that everyone doted on. Some kids are just easier than others, and the child who is harder to raise will see that and wonder why. I’m not saying it excuses anything he does, but I can see him being that kid who just doesn’t fit in, and no one knows how to deal with it or realizes how bad it is until it’s too late.
Ben somehow has some contact with/influence from Snoke while he’s at the Academy - perhaps Snoke planted an ex-Imperial for the purposes of turning the kid’s ear? Someone who can tell him stories about how great and powerful his grandfather was, and plant seeds of doubt about Luke’s teachings, and how obviously Rey is the favorite and destined to carry on the family legacy. He manages to gather some supporters of his own, who become the Knights of Ren that we see in Rey’s flashback.
Re: the flashback, it seems like poor tiny Rey witnessed the massacre of the rebuilt Jedi, though she obviously got out alive. My theory is that her mother saved her, but that one of Ren’s followers (either trying to impress him or thinking he didn’t go far enough, probably goaded by Snoke either way) goes after them. He kills Rey’s mother but she kills him right back, so her family is able to retrieve her. Kylo Ren sideplot: this is where Snoke manipulates Kylo into disposing of the other Knights. What Ben had wanted was a group to challenge his uncle’s leadership, but Snoke convinces him that obviously they can’t be trusted (serving his own purpose as one emotionally unstable teenager is a lot easier to control than half a dozen adults) and anyway Vader never had followers, so they have to go. Thus reinforcing Ren’s isolation and loneliness and cementing his fall to the Dark Side.
Back to the Skywalker fam. Obviously everyone is in the midst of a complete emotional breakdown. Han and Leia have lost their only child to the Dark Side (and the First Order is probably starting to make a lot of noise right about now). Luke has lost all of his students and failed in the one task he was meant to accomplish, lost his wife, and the one remaining Force-sensitive is his little girl which puts her in extreme danger. He’s not quite sure how and when he fucked it all up, but he feels like he has to shoulder all the responsibility. So he thinks: What Would Ben Do? That’s when he hatches the plan to hide Rey away to keep her safe, while embarking on his vision quest to find the Jedi temple and figure out how everything went to hell.
Leia is NOT ON BOARD with this plan - she’s just lost her son and she’s not about to lose her niece. She and Luke get into a huge fight about it, culminating in Luke declaring that only he has the right to make this decision and Leia retorting that what happened to Ben happened on HIS watch so his track record is shot. This is the first time the Skywalker twins have ever gone toe to toe: there are crackles of static electricity in the air, Chewie’s fur is standing on end, and the whole room smells like ozone. Han finally gets them to break it up before someone gets hurt. Luke is horrified by how close he came to losing it, which only reinforces his belief that he needs to completely remove himself from his family’s lives. Leia is still dead-set against the plan. Han pulls an “I won’t get in the way” - he doesn’t necessarily agree with Luke’s decision, but believes he has the right to make it and will support him. This is another factor in the rift between Han and Leia down the road.
Rey’s flashback takes place in the desert and, if you pay close attention, you’ll hear a deep voice say “Quiet, girl” with a large, fleshy hand restraining her by the arm. I am 99% certain that this is Unkar Plutt, and now we have to figure out how to make that make any kind of damn sense. My proposal: Plutt was going by a different name and was a fairly respectable security/bouncer type, perhaps introduced by one of Han’s old contacts. Luke found a couple who was willing to raise Rey like he was raised, and hired Plutt as a bodyguard for all of them (no doubt thinking of the Imperial attack on his aunt and uncle). BUT! They are not on Jakku; they are on Tatooine, his home planet. If you’re going to pull a Ben Kenobi, you might as well do it up right.
Leia flat-out refuses to go with them to say goodbye, though Han and Chewie do. Luke holds his daughter one last time, then uses the Force to manipulate her memories of him, their family, and her nascent Jedi training. He doesn’t erase them (maybe he couldn’t even if he wanted to) but he locks them up deep inside so she can’t access them and she can start a new life with her guardians. When he’s finished, she’s holding her foster parents’ hands and blinking curiously up at her father and uncle like they’re strangers. (Is this the appropriate place to mention that she and Han had a special bond and he used to zoom her around the room making Falcon noises?). They turn back to the ship, and Rey has just been essentially mind-wiped but she senses something is wrong, which is when she starts to cry and beg them not to go in the flashback (and when Plutt holds her back). Luke walks away, his heart shattering into a thousand pieces, believing that he’s doing the right thing. He has to believe it.
Flash forward a few months, maybe even a year. They get regular updates from Rey’s guardians so they know she’s safe. Luke is off looking for the temple and he and Leia still aren’t speaking, but he checks in with Han from time to time. Then they suddenly lose all contact with Rey’s guardians. Going back to Tatooine, they find that history has repeated itself: the house is burned to the ground, the guardian couple dead, no sign of Plutt or Rey. Luke’s search for the Jedi temple becomes a search for his daughter or any hint that she’s still alive, and that is when he disappears off the map. (Han fudged the timeline a little for the kids, whether because he’d realized who Rey was already or just because the Skywalker baby is a verboten, practically forgotten subject, I’m not sure yet).
What really happened: a bounty hunter got lucky and figured out who Rey really was. Plutt and Rey were in town, so they come back to find the guardians dead and the assassin waiting for them. Plutt hides Rey and manages to fight the assassin off; she tries to get him to join her and split the profits from selling the girl to the highest bidder. Plutt is tempted, but in the end he can’t do it - he kills the bounty hunter and tells himself he’ll keep the girl for himself, ransom her off when the time is right. He takes Rey and they go into hiding on Jakku (this is when he takes the name Unkar Plutt). He lies that her parents (or who she believes were her parents) will be back for her someday. It seems clear from the movie that Plutt is definitely not 100% benevolent even if he is sort of guarding Rey still, given how hard she works just to make it through the day. But he’s not wholly evil, either, since he never does sell her to the First Order. I’m conflicted on what happens after she refuses to sell BB-8; he clearly calls down his own henchman on her, but I don’t believe he sold her out to the Order. Anyway, she lives with him for a little while and he keeps her alive, but he never signed on to be a full-time caretaker for a little girl, and eventually her questions annoy him and he turns mean. Rey spends more and more time on her own until she finally stops coming back and moves into the AT-AT (I’m imagining at around age 10). She had a little trouble forming memories after what Luke did, but she does vaguely remember her guardians (sometimes mixed up with a brief and confusing flash from her real childhood) and fruitlessly hopes they will indeed come back for her one day.
AND THEN THE FORCE AWAKENS. I’m not sure of the exact moment when Han realizes who she is (although I’m certain he knows when she tells him her name - look at his face). And the big clincher, when they land on Takodana and Rey says wonderingly, “I never knew there was this much green in the whole galaxy,” there is guilt on his face (well-deserved guilt). All the rest of this is my personal fannish speculation, but I really do believe that scene was an intentional hint. Oh, and also, Chewie knew right away because he remembers her scent. Han argues with him that it would be a ridiculously impossible coincidence and that they all accepted years ago that Luke’s little girl is probably dead - but then Rey starts to do her Rey thing, and he figures it out. Maybe it’s a little nudge from the Force. Anyway, THEN they argue about if they should tell her - Chewie is for it but Han wants to talk to Leia first so he swears Chewie to secrecy, and Chewie keeps that promise even after Han's death.
Maz Kanata asks “Who’s the girl?”, and Han trusts her implicitly so he tells her, which is why she follows Rey down to the chamber with the lightsaber. Han then tells Leia after they discuss Ben, and they agree that they need to find Luke before anything else. And then, of course, the Starkiller attack goes down. When Leia embraces Rey, there is so much emotion on her face - grief for her husband’s death, and her son’s actions, and also because her niece is alive after all these years.
At some point during Rey’s initial training the truth comes out, or at least an inkling of it does. Some memories get unlocked (maybe accidentally, maybe not), and Luke admits that he’s her father. She runs off in the Falcon (alone, since Chewie’s complicit too) because who the fuck does that and she doesn’t want to be a Jedi anymore and they've all been lying to her and she can’t stand to look at Luke’s face. She sends Poe and Finn an urgent message to meet her on some random planet (oh btw, Finn/Rey/Poe has been established at some point).
When they get there, she’s drunk and picking fights and wiping the floor with some barflies even though she’s unarmed (she left the lightsaber behind). Finn and Poe are like “wtf is up with our girlfriend,” but things are getting dangerous and they have to hurry back to the Falcon and take off (Rey throws up right outside the ramp because even in this state she wouldn’t sully it, and they banish her to the passenger seat where she finds everything very funny and is sarcastic and they are super weirded out).
They’re safe in space and Finn and Poe demand to know what is going on, because she’s not making any sense. She snaps at Poe not to touch her and asks if he knew, because his family was friends with the Skywalkers. Finn had no idea that Luke Skywalker had a wife and daughter; Poe did but says “but she was killed along with her mother…” Rey: “No, she wasn’t.” She breaks down and they finally Get It, and comfort her and put her to bed and hold her tight while she sobs and tell her that they’re her family now.
Rey is practically catatonic for a couple of days. The boys gradually get the story out of her but she really doesn’t know any details - she remembers things here and there, but she doesn’t know how the story fits together and trying to figure it out gives her vicious migraines. They gently convince her to head back to base so she can talk to Leia (Poe notified Leia and also Chewie that Rey was safe with them, which pissed Finn off because they spent fifteen years apparently not caring if she was alive or dead so why do they deserve an update, but Rey is okay with it because she realizes she doesn’t know the whole story yet).
They go back, and Leia and Rey have a heart to heart. Rey is suspicious and keeps her distance, and Leia doesn’t push even though she’s hurt. She acknowledges that she was against the decision to send Rey into hiding, but she doesn’t throw Luke under the bus; she has come to terms with it over the years, and she tells Rey that he was hurting and afraid and felt that he didn’t have any other choice. Rey is not convinced, but she is glad to put most of the pieces together. Her memories are still a jumbled mess, but Leia can’t help with that - only Luke can.
This is when they decide to go visit Poe’s family - or rather, Poe decides it and drags them along for the ride (see my little ficlet “the beauty of the rain is how it falls” which is also the first time Rey reaches out to the Force since leaving Luke). He just wants everyone to get some peace for a little while, and also he’s realized just how hard he’s fallen for these two kids (he’s never taken anyone home before). Problem being, he’s not quite sure how to explain to his dad and grandmother that he’s in a committed poly relationship (it’s not unheard of, but it’s not common either), much less that his lovers are a secret Skywalker and an ex-Stormtrooper. Finn has to be reassured that it’s not because Poe is ashamed of them; Rey doesn’t want to reveal her heritage anyway so she’s kind of okay with it.
They do have a nice time, and start to bond with Poe’s family a little (Rey pretends to sleep in the spare room and Finn pretends to take the couch, but they sneak into Poe’s room because they all three have trouble sleeping alone now). Then Kes catches Poe and Finn making out in a corner somewhere, and comes to the conclusion that Poe is cuckolding them both. So he has to explain that no, they’re actually all together and he knows it’s weird, but somehow it works - they fit. He also confesses that Finn is the stormtrooper who saved him from the Order (everyone knows aboutThe Stormtrooper, but not exactly who he is) and that Rey is Luke’s daughter, which helps bring Kes around.
Poe goes into the kitchen where Finn is sitting at the table and Rey is cooking with his grandmother (no, I haven’t given her a name yet, and it was actually Poe’s maternal grandfather who helped raise him but I misread that and made it his grandmother while writing, so let’s just pretend Granddad died not long after Shara and Grandma came to live with them). Grandma Dameron praises Rey’s skill, and she starts to say that her master taught her...then she pauses, considers, and says, “My father taught me.” Poe squeezes Finn’s shoulder - they know what a big deal this is - and kisses Rey’s cheek. She’s surprised and pleased to realize that they’re not being sneaky anymore (Finn just keeps forgetting and touches them all the time anyway). Grandma Dameron cracks, “You brought us one who can cook and one who can eat” (Finn: “Oh, I can eat, all right”) and winks at Poe, and he realizes she knew all along.
They give a toast over dinner. Finn (awkwardly after asked to start): “Uh, to friends.” Rey: “To old friends no longer with us.” Poe: “To family” (looking across at Rey and Finn). Kes: “To Shara, always.” Grandma Dameron: “To kicking the First Order’s collective fear-mongering ass.”
Later Rey asks if she might use the holo comm (to call Luke); Poe and Finn ask if she’d like company, but she wants to be alone. It’s late into the night before she is able to make the call. She says she would like to talk to him, though she isn’t promising anything and isn’t even sure if she wants to continue her training. Luke says of course, and she adds that he has to meet her at the base - “The general would like to see you.” Luke is overjoyed by anything she is willing to offer him, and asks if she’ll tell Kes hello from him.
Rey slips into bed; the boys tried to wait up for her but Finn fell asleep and Poe is nodding off. He asks if she's okay and she says yes, finally believing it. She says she loves them; Poe blinks in surprise then says it back. Finn (who is not as deeply asleep as he appears) mumbles "loveyoutoo" and cuddles up to Rey. And they sleep.
And...that’s it. That’s all I got for now (“all”). I’m not promising this will ever all get written, because as you can see it is extensive. I'm not sure I want to put it on tumblr because it seems like a lot of text posts are head canons that don’t ever actually get written? And that seems like a jinx. But I wanted to get it out of head because I've been obsessing over it all day.
So according to this theory, Rey is Luke Skywalker’s daughter. Here’s my take on how it all went down:
Rey is about 10 years younger than Ben. I’m iffy on who her mother was, how they met, what their relationship is like - it would be interesting if they don’t stay together and try to co-parent baby Rey, which could lead to some conflict later, but it also works better for the emotional arc if Luke and Rey’s mother were together and in love. And it’s possible that her given name was not Rey, but I’ll call her that for simplicity’s sake.
Anyway, Ben starts to waver towards the Dark Side when he’s around 15 (Rey is 5). I see the Skywalker-Organa-Solo(-Chewie) family as being incredibly close, as they are in the OT. Luke loves Ben almost as much as if he were his own son, and Han/Leia feel the same way about Rey. But Ben was always troubled in certain ways, never feeling like he could measure up, and I think there was some confusion over the correct age to start his training. Obviously in the PT Jedi start training when they’re very wee, but I can see Luke a) thinking this is a bad idea on its face and b) not having a lot of experience with children, compounding his lack of experience with teaching and limited resources. In TFA Leia says that she lost Ben when she sent him away, which makes me think he was a little older and that he probably only trained with Luke for a couple of years at most. At that point Luke had other students, although none as young as Ben, and maybe he thought there needed to be some distance between them so he wouldn’t be tempted to go easy on Ben because he’s family, and also so the other students wouldn’t feel he was playing favorites (there’s just one Jedi Master to go around, after all). And this, obviously, would be confusing and hurtful to Ben. He might also be jealous and resentful of Rey, who I imagine was a very happy baby that everyone doted on. Some kids are just easier than others, and the child who is harder to raise will see that and wonder why. I’m not saying it excuses anything he does, but I can see him being that kid who just doesn’t fit in, and no one knows how to deal with it or realizes how bad it is until it’s too late.
Ben somehow has some contact with/influence from Snoke while he’s at the Academy - perhaps Snoke planted an ex-Imperial for the purposes of turning the kid’s ear? Someone who can tell him stories about how great and powerful his grandfather was, and plant seeds of doubt about Luke’s teachings, and how obviously Rey is the favorite and destined to carry on the family legacy. He manages to gather some supporters of his own, who become the Knights of Ren that we see in Rey’s flashback.
Re: the flashback, it seems like poor tiny Rey witnessed the massacre of the rebuilt Jedi, though she obviously got out alive. My theory is that her mother saved her, but that one of Ren’s followers (either trying to impress him or thinking he didn’t go far enough, probably goaded by Snoke either way) goes after them. He kills Rey’s mother but she kills him right back, so her family is able to retrieve her. Kylo Ren sideplot: this is where Snoke manipulates Kylo into disposing of the other Knights. What Ben had wanted was a group to challenge his uncle’s leadership, but Snoke convinces him that obviously they can’t be trusted (serving his own purpose as one emotionally unstable teenager is a lot easier to control than half a dozen adults) and anyway Vader never had followers, so they have to go. Thus reinforcing Ren’s isolation and loneliness and cementing his fall to the Dark Side.
Back to the Skywalker fam. Obviously everyone is in the midst of a complete emotional breakdown. Han and Leia have lost their only child to the Dark Side (and the First Order is probably starting to make a lot of noise right about now). Luke has lost all of his students and failed in the one task he was meant to accomplish, lost his wife, and the one remaining Force-sensitive is his little girl which puts her in extreme danger. He’s not quite sure how and when he fucked it all up, but he feels like he has to shoulder all the responsibility. So he thinks: What Would Ben Do? That’s when he hatches the plan to hide Rey away to keep her safe, while embarking on his vision quest to find the Jedi temple and figure out how everything went to hell.
Leia is NOT ON BOARD with this plan - she’s just lost her son and she’s not about to lose her niece. She and Luke get into a huge fight about it, culminating in Luke declaring that only he has the right to make this decision and Leia retorting that what happened to Ben happened on HIS watch so his track record is shot. This is the first time the Skywalker twins have ever gone toe to toe: there are crackles of static electricity in the air, Chewie’s fur is standing on end, and the whole room smells like ozone. Han finally gets them to break it up before someone gets hurt. Luke is horrified by how close he came to losing it, which only reinforces his belief that he needs to completely remove himself from his family’s lives. Leia is still dead-set against the plan. Han pulls an “I won’t get in the way” - he doesn’t necessarily agree with Luke’s decision, but believes he has the right to make it and will support him. This is another factor in the rift between Han and Leia down the road.
Rey’s flashback takes place in the desert and, if you pay close attention, you’ll hear a deep voice say “Quiet, girl” with a large, fleshy hand restraining her by the arm. I am 99% certain that this is Unkar Plutt, and now we have to figure out how to make that make any kind of damn sense. My proposal: Plutt was going by a different name and was a fairly respectable security/bouncer type, perhaps introduced by one of Han’s old contacts. Luke found a couple who was willing to raise Rey like he was raised, and hired Plutt as a bodyguard for all of them (no doubt thinking of the Imperial attack on his aunt and uncle). BUT! They are not on Jakku; they are on Tatooine, his home planet. If you’re going to pull a Ben Kenobi, you might as well do it up right.
Leia flat-out refuses to go with them to say goodbye, though Han and Chewie do. Luke holds his daughter one last time, then uses the Force to manipulate her memories of him, their family, and her nascent Jedi training. He doesn’t erase them (maybe he couldn’t even if he wanted to) but he locks them up deep inside so she can’t access them and she can start a new life with her guardians. When he’s finished, she’s holding her foster parents’ hands and blinking curiously up at her father and uncle like they’re strangers. (Is this the appropriate place to mention that she and Han had a special bond and he used to zoom her around the room making Falcon noises?). They turn back to the ship, and Rey has just been essentially mind-wiped but she senses something is wrong, which is when she starts to cry and beg them not to go in the flashback (and when Plutt holds her back). Luke walks away, his heart shattering into a thousand pieces, believing that he’s doing the right thing. He has to believe it.
Flash forward a few months, maybe even a year. They get regular updates from Rey’s guardians so they know she’s safe. Luke is off looking for the temple and he and Leia still aren’t speaking, but he checks in with Han from time to time. Then they suddenly lose all contact with Rey’s guardians. Going back to Tatooine, they find that history has repeated itself: the house is burned to the ground, the guardian couple dead, no sign of Plutt or Rey. Luke’s search for the Jedi temple becomes a search for his daughter or any hint that she’s still alive, and that is when he disappears off the map. (Han fudged the timeline a little for the kids, whether because he’d realized who Rey was already or just because the Skywalker baby is a verboten, practically forgotten subject, I’m not sure yet).
What really happened: a bounty hunter got lucky and figured out who Rey really was. Plutt and Rey were in town, so they come back to find the guardians dead and the assassin waiting for them. Plutt hides Rey and manages to fight the assassin off; she tries to get him to join her and split the profits from selling the girl to the highest bidder. Plutt is tempted, but in the end he can’t do it - he kills the bounty hunter and tells himself he’ll keep the girl for himself, ransom her off when the time is right. He takes Rey and they go into hiding on Jakku (this is when he takes the name Unkar Plutt). He lies that her parents (or who she believes were her parents) will be back for her someday. It seems clear from the movie that Plutt is definitely not 100% benevolent even if he is sort of guarding Rey still, given how hard she works just to make it through the day. But he’s not wholly evil, either, since he never does sell her to the First Order. I’m conflicted on what happens after she refuses to sell BB-8; he clearly calls down his own henchman on her, but I don’t believe he sold her out to the Order. Anyway, she lives with him for a little while and he keeps her alive, but he never signed on to be a full-time caretaker for a little girl, and eventually her questions annoy him and he turns mean. Rey spends more and more time on her own until she finally stops coming back and moves into the AT-AT (I’m imagining at around age 10). She had a little trouble forming memories after what Luke did, but she does vaguely remember her guardians (sometimes mixed up with a brief and confusing flash from her real childhood) and fruitlessly hopes they will indeed come back for her one day.
AND THEN THE FORCE AWAKENS. I’m not sure of the exact moment when Han realizes who she is (although I’m certain he knows when she tells him her name - look at his face). And the big clincher, when they land on Takodana and Rey says wonderingly, “I never knew there was this much green in the whole galaxy,” there is guilt on his face (well-deserved guilt). All the rest of this is my personal fannish speculation, but I really do believe that scene was an intentional hint. Oh, and also, Chewie knew right away because he remembers her scent. Han argues with him that it would be a ridiculously impossible coincidence and that they all accepted years ago that Luke’s little girl is probably dead - but then Rey starts to do her Rey thing, and he figures it out. Maybe it’s a little nudge from the Force. Anyway, THEN they argue about if they should tell her - Chewie is for it but Han wants to talk to Leia first so he swears Chewie to secrecy, and Chewie keeps that promise even after Han's death.
Maz Kanata asks “Who’s the girl?”, and Han trusts her implicitly so he tells her, which is why she follows Rey down to the chamber with the lightsaber. Han then tells Leia after they discuss Ben, and they agree that they need to find Luke before anything else. And then, of course, the Starkiller attack goes down. When Leia embraces Rey, there is so much emotion on her face - grief for her husband’s death, and her son’s actions, and also because her niece is alive after all these years.
At some point during Rey’s initial training the truth comes out, or at least an inkling of it does. Some memories get unlocked (maybe accidentally, maybe not), and Luke admits that he’s her father. She runs off in the Falcon (alone, since Chewie’s complicit too) because who the fuck does that and she doesn’t want to be a Jedi anymore and they've all been lying to her and she can’t stand to look at Luke’s face. She sends Poe and Finn an urgent message to meet her on some random planet (oh btw, Finn/Rey/Poe has been established at some point).
When they get there, she’s drunk and picking fights and wiping the floor with some barflies even though she’s unarmed (she left the lightsaber behind). Finn and Poe are like “wtf is up with our girlfriend,” but things are getting dangerous and they have to hurry back to the Falcon and take off (Rey throws up right outside the ramp because even in this state she wouldn’t sully it, and they banish her to the passenger seat where she finds everything very funny and is sarcastic and they are super weirded out).
They’re safe in space and Finn and Poe demand to know what is going on, because she’s not making any sense. She snaps at Poe not to touch her and asks if he knew, because his family was friends with the Skywalkers. Finn had no idea that Luke Skywalker had a wife and daughter; Poe did but says “but she was killed along with her mother…” Rey: “No, she wasn’t.” She breaks down and they finally Get It, and comfort her and put her to bed and hold her tight while she sobs and tell her that they’re her family now.
Rey is practically catatonic for a couple of days. The boys gradually get the story out of her but she really doesn’t know any details - she remembers things here and there, but she doesn’t know how the story fits together and trying to figure it out gives her vicious migraines. They gently convince her to head back to base so she can talk to Leia (Poe notified Leia and also Chewie that Rey was safe with them, which pissed Finn off because they spent fifteen years apparently not caring if she was alive or dead so why do they deserve an update, but Rey is okay with it because she realizes she doesn’t know the whole story yet).
They go back, and Leia and Rey have a heart to heart. Rey is suspicious and keeps her distance, and Leia doesn’t push even though she’s hurt. She acknowledges that she was against the decision to send Rey into hiding, but she doesn’t throw Luke under the bus; she has come to terms with it over the years, and she tells Rey that he was hurting and afraid and felt that he didn’t have any other choice. Rey is not convinced, but she is glad to put most of the pieces together. Her memories are still a jumbled mess, but Leia can’t help with that - only Luke can.
This is when they decide to go visit Poe’s family - or rather, Poe decides it and drags them along for the ride (see my little ficlet “the beauty of the rain is how it falls” which is also the first time Rey reaches out to the Force since leaving Luke). He just wants everyone to get some peace for a little while, and also he’s realized just how hard he’s fallen for these two kids (he’s never taken anyone home before). Problem being, he’s not quite sure how to explain to his dad and grandmother that he’s in a committed poly relationship (it’s not unheard of, but it’s not common either), much less that his lovers are a secret Skywalker and an ex-Stormtrooper. Finn has to be reassured that it’s not because Poe is ashamed of them; Rey doesn’t want to reveal her heritage anyway so she’s kind of okay with it.
They do have a nice time, and start to bond with Poe’s family a little (Rey pretends to sleep in the spare room and Finn pretends to take the couch, but they sneak into Poe’s room because they all three have trouble sleeping alone now). Then Kes catches Poe and Finn making out in a corner somewhere, and comes to the conclusion that Poe is cuckolding them both. So he has to explain that no, they’re actually all together and he knows it’s weird, but somehow it works - they fit. He also confesses that Finn is the stormtrooper who saved him from the Order (everyone knows aboutThe Stormtrooper, but not exactly who he is) and that Rey is Luke’s daughter, which helps bring Kes around.
Poe goes into the kitchen where Finn is sitting at the table and Rey is cooking with his grandmother (no, I haven’t given her a name yet, and it was actually Poe’s maternal grandfather who helped raise him but I misread that and made it his grandmother while writing, so let’s just pretend Granddad died not long after Shara and Grandma came to live with them). Grandma Dameron praises Rey’s skill, and she starts to say that her master taught her...then she pauses, considers, and says, “My father taught me.” Poe squeezes Finn’s shoulder - they know what a big deal this is - and kisses Rey’s cheek. She’s surprised and pleased to realize that they’re not being sneaky anymore (Finn just keeps forgetting and touches them all the time anyway). Grandma Dameron cracks, “You brought us one who can cook and one who can eat” (Finn: “Oh, I can eat, all right”) and winks at Poe, and he realizes she knew all along.
They give a toast over dinner. Finn (awkwardly after asked to start): “Uh, to friends.” Rey: “To old friends no longer with us.” Poe: “To family” (looking across at Rey and Finn). Kes: “To Shara, always.” Grandma Dameron: “To kicking the First Order’s collective fear-mongering ass.”
Later Rey asks if she might use the holo comm (to call Luke); Poe and Finn ask if she’d like company, but she wants to be alone. It’s late into the night before she is able to make the call. She says she would like to talk to him, though she isn’t promising anything and isn’t even sure if she wants to continue her training. Luke says of course, and she adds that he has to meet her at the base - “The general would like to see you.” Luke is overjoyed by anything she is willing to offer him, and asks if she’ll tell Kes hello from him.
Rey slips into bed; the boys tried to wait up for her but Finn fell asleep and Poe is nodding off. He asks if she's okay and she says yes, finally believing it. She says she loves them; Poe blinks in surprise then says it back. Finn (who is not as deeply asleep as he appears) mumbles "loveyoutoo" and cuddles up to Rey. And they sleep.
And...that’s it. That’s all I got for now (“all”). I’m not promising this will ever all get written, because as you can see it is extensive. I'm not sure I want to put it on tumblr because it seems like a lot of text posts are head canons that don’t ever actually get written? And that seems like a jinx. But I wanted to get it out of head because I've been obsessing over it all day.