#shmisolo

“Well, here you go,” the agent said, and a lump lodged in Rey’s throat.  

Home.  She has a home.

She’s never had a home before.

She’s had the carved out shell of an AT-AT, a bunk on a smuggling freighter, a shared room in a youth hostel on Abregado-Rae, but a house that belonged to her?  All on her own? She’d only let herself dream that that might be possible on her loneliest of nights.

And sure, rural Tatooine is not exactly the most ideal place to own a home.  But it’s spacious--a proper homestead with moisture vaporators, and it’s not a long speeder ride from Mos Eisley.  She could have done a lot worse. This was one of the nicer places the bank had had to offer. It had gone un-spoken-for for months because of its location.  But Rey was a creature of the desert. And Tatooine had two suns.  Twins that burned hot and strong and would be far warmer than the cool dry desert that had been Jakku.  

“Miss?” the agent says again and Rey turns to smile at him.  

“Yes, thank you,” she says and she takes the keys.  “That all?”

“Just need you to sign here,” he says, offering her a datapad.  “Proof that you’ve received the keys.”

She runs her finger over the surface of the datapad and signs the millionth form the bank has made her sign.  Yes, she acknowledges that the home has been foreclosed; yes she acknowledges that the former owner may seek damages should he reappear; yes she acknowledges that she is also purchasing the contents of the homestead--homestead!--including the old X-Wing model that no longer runs, and it will be her responsibility to get rid of what she wants to get rid of, not the bank.

Rey, she signs every time.  

“No family name?” the bank representative asked the first time she did it.

“Just Rey.”

The agent gets on his speeder and takes off and Rey looks down, biting her lip.  She has a home. A home that she purchased with her own money.  It’s hers.  

She has a place of her own.

The complete work will be released on February 14 as part this year’s Reylo Charity Anthology: Across the Stars. Donate today to receive your copy!

Her eyes are so bright as she begins to circle him.  It’s like he can hear everything again—the music, the whispering wind, the distant river where he’d first met her, first kissed her, first made love to her—but mostly he hears the way his own heart is thudding in his chest as she revolves around him, like the earth around the sun—except that’s wrong.  

If one of them is the blazing, lifegiving star...

...it’s Rey, not him.  

from Yichud, by the incomparable @shmisolo  

He sees her again at a party and it feels like a movie.

The music dulls in his ears, the heat of everyone in the room sends a chill across his spine, and movement seems to slow because Rey is there, chatting happily with her friends, looking like a memory.  She’s wearing a gold dress, and her hair is pulled back from her face because she hates it when her hair gets in her eyes.  Why don’t you cut it, then? he had asked her one night while she’d been cuddled up next to him.

Because then I’d have to cut it all the time.  At least now I can cut it when it’s too much, and keep it out of my face in the interim.

He swallows, and tries to regain the present.  Hux has already pushed his way into the house, undoubtedly to pick a fight with Dameron.  He hasn’t even noticed that Ben’s not shadowing him anymore.

I should go, he thinks, unable to take his eyes off Rey.

You should go, she had told him, closing the door in his face that last time.  But he can’t bring himself to move right now as he stares at her.

The complete work will be released in November as part this year’s Reylo Charity Anthology.