[Fic] "Foundlings" -- Star Wars
musesfool said: I think something with Finn, Rey, & BB8 for your "cute" cotton candy square would be awesome. *g*
Note: I cribbed some information about Jakku and Rey's past from Wookiepedia, but most of the worldbuilding in this ficlet is blithely made up -- because I wanted to and because I can. :D
This is pretty dark for a fluff ficlet, since it contains discussion of animal death and general references to Finn and Rey's traumatic pasts, but the main theme is about hope and togetherness and stuff. (1,175 words)
[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]
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Foundlings
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"I never thought droids could be cute," Finn says idly to Rey, as they sit on a workbench at the back of an empty flight deck, waiting for Poe's squadron to make their overdue return from a reconnaissance flight around the Kathecora system. Safely out of earshot, BB-8 rolls restlessly back and forth at the open door of the new Resistance base, silhouetted by the bloody glow of Kathecora's red giant sun. "The First Order doesn't use a lot of them -- probably because they didn't want stormtroopers to start comparing ourselves to them and get ideas -- but there are a few in interrogation, medical, and construction, and they're all terrifying. And the droid-related combat courses were mostly about how to rig them up as improvised bombs and EMP generators."
"That's a terrible thing to do to sentient beings," Rey says, but there's a hollowness under her words, like she's trying to convince herself as much as Finn. They both grew up knowing bone-deep how chillingly indifferent the galaxy is to suffering. Terrible things happen to people every second of every day, without any need for active malice. It can be hard to sustain moral outrage over something that you were raised to think is just the way of the world.
That doesn't mean either of them will stop trying.
"It is terrible," Finn agrees. "But see, because that's the only context I had for droids, I didn't realize that they build personalities over time, just like biological people. And I definitely didn't realize they could miss people, or act like they need a hug."
He gestures toward BB-8, who has rolled away from the ledge and settled next to Poe's neatly coiled fueling hose, where it's now warbling to itself in melancholy binary.
"Like a jinnua missing its pack," Rey says. "They're social scavengers and small game hunters, a bit like cats with scales and venomous fangs, and about as clever as a three- or four-year-old child," she adds in response to Finn's blank look.
Then she turns away, fixing her gaze on BB-8, like whatever she's going to say is too big for her to speak while watching his reactions. "I left Niima Outpost when I was sixteen, to work in a shipbreaker yard in the scrublands south of the Starship Graveyard. Some of the mining co-ops figured it was cheaper to bust up ships on the surface than dig for ore underground, and I figured I needed a steadier job than scavenging, after my swindler partners stole the freighter we'd restored and left me with nothing. The jinnuai don't like dunes, but you can find them all over the canyons and plateaus where the ground stays fixed, and if you're polite and patient they'll take you as... I don't have the words. It's a little more than friends, but a little less than family. What it feels like between you and me and Poe and BB-8."
"Like a squad's supposed to be, the good kind where you all have each other's backs," Finn says. The kind of squad he always wanted and never found, until he stretched his hand out into the terrifying unknown beyond the First Order's indoctrination and found Poe reaching his own hand back so they could haul each other to freedom.
"Yes! Like that," Rey agrees, still turned away. "I fed them scraps since I wasn't used to eating full portions, and dug holes under the scrapyard fences so they could get in to hunt gnawers, sting-scuttlers, and even a flock of steelpeckers that tried to build a nest in the containers we were preparing for export. On my days off, they'd let me follow them to their dens and play with their cubs. They were round and cuddly, with big dark eyes, and colored in all the shades of sand from cream to rust--"
"Definitely like BB-8," Finn says.
Rey's laugh strikes the air like a cracked bell. "Just as cute as BB-8. And their baby scales were so soft that petting them felt like skimming my fingers through clean water. I loved them."
Finn has a sinking feeling that this story doesn't end well. He met Rey at Niima Outpost, after all, not in a scrubland shipyard. And he knows what happens to trainee stormtroopers who try to adopt local wildlife or shipfaring vermin.
"I must have taught them to be too trusting, though, or maybe they assumed the other yardworkers were my pack and would follow my lead," Rey continues. "The jinnuai stopped hiding in the shadows and started getting underfoot. Eventually the yard boss decided they were vermin and needed to be poisoned and shot. She didn't care that we'd stopped losing work-hours to poison sting reactions, or losing supplies and product to the gnawers and steelpeckers. She just didn't like visible disorder."
Finn starts to put his hand over Rey's on the bench. Then he thinks that might be presumptuous, or seem like he's saying she's too weak to face her own past without breaking.
Rey reaches up to clasp his hand while he's still hesitating, and squeezes his fingers in a wordless gesture of reassurance.
"The one survivor came to me and I hid it in my bunk for two nights while it cried," she says, eyes still fixed on BB-8, who has extended a tool-arm and started pushing Poe's spare helmet back and forth on its shelf. "That was when I realized the scrublands weren't any kinder than Niima Outpost. They only put a pretty paint job over the rust. So I quit that job and went back to where my family would know to look for me. I looked for more jinnuai on the way, and dropped the survivor off near where I surprised a pair out hunting. I didn't have enough portions to wait and see if they let it join their pack, but I hope they did. No one should be alone in the world."
"I bet they did take it in," Finn says. "Just like the Resistance took in you and me, and we're building a squad with Poe and BB-8. The one thing the First Order gets right is that it doesn't matter who your makers -- your blood family -- were. What matters is who you choose to trust and protect. I bet that's true for jinnuai too."
Because the universe is indifferently cruel, but that doesn't mean the people who live in it have to follow that example. The point of life is that you can choose how to act. He chose to defect. Poe chose to trust him. Rey chose to help him and BB-8 escape Jakku. They all chose to fight for a better world than the one they grew up in -- one where nobody, biological or droid or any combination in between, ever gets abandoned or treated as a thing instead of a person -- and they keep choosing that every day.
"Let's go keep BB-8 company until Poe gets back," Finn says now, and waits for Rey to join him when he stands.
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End of Fic
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Ha, victory!
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