moodiful819:

darth-tantrum:

The only angst I want to see from Rey and Rose is them doing something mundane till Rose accidentally calls Rey Paige.

It was a kind of therapy after her sister was gone. None of the junk parts in the hanger needed polishing, but it kept her hands busy. If her hands were covered in grease, she wouldn’t touch her necklace. She wouldn’t cry because she wouldn’t be able to wipe her tears away with greasy fingers. If she focused on making every thread in the pile of spare parts shine, she wouldn’t be able to think about how her sister was gone goneGONE.

She had been polishing for a few days when the Jedi joined her in the underbelly of the ship. At first, she thought she’d be reprimanded, but Finn’s friend—Rey, she corrects herself—picks up a rag to join her.

“Thanks. I had been meaning to go through the parts, but I haven’t been able to slip away until now,” she explains with a grin, and Rose understands why Finn would want to run away to save this girl now. Her smile is like the sun, disarming and warm in the cold vacuum of space, and she feels a faint glow rise up in her throat.

There’s a faint thread of suspicion though. Not that Rey is an enemy or a romantic threat, but that she has no idea what she’s doing. What would a Jedi know about ship parts, after all?

Except Rey obviously does know what she’s doing, picking through the jumbled box of parts with a practiced ease and using her nails to guide the rag into the tiny crevices of the screw threads. She even knows to go counter-clockwise as she avoids the delicate gold wire connections on a cylindrical drive component, and it’s enough to make Rose relax.

After a while, it becomes a common sight to see the two together with a box of parts between them. Small talk begins to eek out between them. Rose finds out both of them are from nowhere, and that Finn seems to always make awful first impressions.

It’s when Rey makes a teasing remark about Finn’s doting over Rose that she makes her mistake.

“I can’t believe you said that, Paige!” Rose shrieks when she notices the stunned, perplexed look on her friend’s face.

And the avalanche of thoughts begins.

It’s not Paige she’s talking to, but Rey.

Paige isn’t the one teasing her about Finn.

Paige doesn’t even know she has a boyfriend now because Paige is gone and she isn’t coming back.

The realization is a cruel knife in her chest. Her face is crumpling with tears before she even realizes it.

“S-sorry,” Rose forces out. She’s making Rey uncomfortable; she probably has no clue why she’s crying, but it doesn’t stop Rey from wiping off her hands and rushing forward.

She tries to wipe the tears off Rose’s face, calloused thumbs sweeping over the apples of Rose’s tear-stained cheeks.

But the kindness does nothing to fill the pit of grief swallowing her whole.

It’s not the same, Rose thinks to herself.

And then she realizes, it never will be.