He reaches out and squeezes her elbow, before ushering them into the same corner they sat in last time, when he'd confessed to having felt her emotions in the Enclosure.
Her eyes close when he touches her, just for a moment, and she moves with him so easily it's a little like floating. Once they're sitting she finds she's sat down closer to him than she might ordinarily, but it's... it feels alright. It doesn't feel out of place anymore.
"That doesn't seem to matter to them. Steve Rogers came here and asked me if I was a danger to the rest of the people on this ship." Her voice is so flat when she says it, disbelieving and so pained it's like she can't tell where one hurt stops and the next one starts. "And then Lark came to tell me all about how I'm a failure if I think wardens are allowed to act this way to inmates. No one seems to understand that what I did has nothing to do with this place."
He frowns and reaches out, wrapping his hand around her elbow again to make her look at him, to keep her present with him.
"Lark has a chip on his shoulder about this," he says, calm but firm. Not that he doesn't understand where that comes from, but the man hardly knows Rey and he shouldn't have come to her cabin to lecture her. He's very sure about that.
"Look- whatever it is, Rey, they don't know. Do they? They don't understand."
It works, of course, and she turns towards him a little more and there's a moment where she considers just touching his hand, keeping that touch from ending, but after last night, after everything he did for her... it feels okay, now, lean forward and slip her arm around his waist. The bruise on her cheek is worse today, she knows it's swollen and it hurts enough that she's careful where she rests her head on him, but it doesn't stop her from resting her forehead on his shoulder.
She's learned by now that he gives her strength and she needs that more now than she did last night.
"They don't know, but that doesn't stop them from thinking I'm no better than Kylo Ren."
That's a surprise. He knows she's upset, but she isn't shell-shocked now, she isn't crying and she hasn't woken from a nightmare. But she's still holding onto him, she's still curled so sweetly into him that it makes the breath catch in his throat.
His hands shift almost hesitantly, to rest on her back, the back of her head, right between the buns.
She's not crying right this moment, but has off and on a lot today. She's still shaken from speaking to Han and it's only by the grace of some miracle she doesn't start immediately sobbing the moment Tommy's arms close around her, the second she feels his hand against the back of her head.
"I'm trying not to. I started to lose that fight when Han called me."
She comes dangerously close to trying to stop him from pulling back, but the second she recognizes that's something she might do she stops herself. She shakes her head, dismissive of her own pain because she can hear the edge to Tommy's voice and she doesn't want anything else to happen to Han.
"The same thing everyone else did. It was a short conversation, I don't know how to explain to him what he means to me when I don't even know him like this. I know him when he's an old man, when he actually... when he cared about me too."
He settles against the wall of the little nook, so he can pull her in against him, resting more comfortably. He finds he now knows how she fits with him, where they have to shift and where they can just rest easily.
"They'll see it eventually," he promises her. "They'll understand, Rey." And in the meantime, there is Tommy, who believes her with everything he has.
It's so easy to just follow him over, to all but lay down against his side and close her eyes for a moment and just let out a long, shaky breath. She'd lost Han twice now, she's still coping with the grief from the first time and the fears that come with knowing she has the potential to fall so far if she slips, and that's already too much on top of the parade of people who want to tell her she already has slipped.
She slips both her arms around Tommy, curls into him a little more and presses her face into his chest with no care for her injuries or if it hurts. It's worth it.
"It doesn't matter if they do in the long run. I know who I am." And she does mean that, and she will be fine with time. That's the problem, though. She needs time, and instead of being given it there's just been more and more to deal with being piled on top of her.
He drops a careful kiss on top of her head- it isn't an absent gesture, it isn't casual. But he knows it made him feel better when she did it, and it had worked yesterday, and he feels such deep tenderness and concern for her right now that he doesn't hold back.
"If the Admiral thought you'd be a bad warden, you wouldn't be here right now. You didn't do anything I wouldn't have done, and I'm still here, aren't I?"
It's different now, when she isn't quite so upset and he presses a kiss to her head all the same. It's a little distracting, actually, but in such an unexpectedly nice way all she can do is curl in a little closer to him.
"You are." And she hopes he always stays because now that she knows how much she can rely on him, how easy it can be to trust him, how good it feels to be this close to him, she doesn't think she can go back to being alone. "And so am I, and a few people who have no idea what they're talking about will never be able to change that."
He wonders, now, if she understands what he's feeling for her- if she
understands that, perhaps, she's feeling the same things. The start of
something pleasant, just a curl in his stomach that means intimacy in a way
he hasn't felt for a while. And it's so much safer than last time.
He won't tell her yet. Not now. Not when she's feeling like this, because
he wants this to be something good for them to share, not something that
only comes up when one of them is feeling bad. So he nods and tightens his
hold on her, and lets those other things rest for now. "Good. Fuck 'em,
Rey- you know what you're worth."
Some part of her does, certainly, but it's not something that she recognizes on a conscious level. She'll berate herself for not seeing it sooner once she does put the pieces together but for now, they're in the same book even if they aren't on the same page just yet.
His phrasing gets so soft laugh from her, though, and she looks up at him with a raised eyebrow.
Without even thinking about it, she leans into his touch, lets his hand brush her unbruised cheek. It's too natural to think twice about it, too pleasant to avoid.
"I'll have to take your word for that." She says, but it's not as grim as it could be. She didn't ever have anyone to tell jokes to before, but she has him now.
"You will have to," he agrees, smiling just very slightly. He's still
stroking her cheek, still keeping her close to him, and it's like he feels
more alive right now.
On Jakku if she was ever hurt, there was really only one option when it came to taking care of it. She couldn't, or maybe just wouldn't, trade her salvage for medicine unless it was something particularly life threatening when she could trade for food. Occasionally she'd get lucky and find first aid kits on old ships, but for the most part all she ever did when hurt was wait it out.
It hasn't even occurred to her to go to the infirmary when Han and now Bull are there, not when all she needs is a few days and her injuries will have healed on their own.
But that's not really what she's thinking of now. She's thinking of how much she's come to like being touched like this, about how much she likes to see Tommy looking so content. Han's death still matters, it will always matter, but the pain of it is fading so fast now she's having time to realize that isn't the only thing she's feeling right now.
His question breaks her out of that line of thought, though, and she blinks when she realizes she didn't answer and she should do that.
"It'll go away eventually," she says, bringing a hand up to check the swelling. "I usually heal quickly."
"I've some ointment," he says, all the same, reaching up to trace a thumb
just around the edge of the mark. "It smells bloody bad, but it works."
He isn't usually very good at taking care of people like this: delegating,
yes, and he knows like no one else where to go to solve a problem. But this
is simpler, this is soothing a smaller, physical pain, and he usually
leaves that to the women. But Polly isn't here, and it's Rey, who right now
feels so alone. He just wants to do something.
It would be something she would say no to under normal circumstances, an item she didn't desperately need and so she wouldn't make a trade for it, but it's never been like that with Tommy. She knows it never will be now, and what's more important is she knows that these are things that people will sometimes offer with no other purpose than helping.
That's what this is, she can see it in his face while he touches her so softly, and it's all but impossible to turn that down, but there's something nice about that. He says it smells bad and she can't help the small smile that gets from her.
Immediately she misses the lack of contact, but just as quickly she realizes that's perhaps not something she should be worrying about.
"Now?" She asks, and that strikes her as not quite right immediately too. He'll be back, so why is she worried about his leaving? She sits up even after she says it, looking a little surprised with herself as she does. "It doesn't look that bad, does it?"
So it didn't cover for her at all. This is what happens when she lets herself open up to someone, it would seem. They start to see through her, but it isn't really the worst thing in the world.
"No, you're right. But-"
She reaches for her communicator and then taps something out on it, glances up at him when the text goes through. It's the code to the door, the code that so far only her and Luke know.
"I'd like to avoid any other visitors, so you can just come straight back in. There's the control panel in the center of the door, you just put that in there."
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"Kylo Ren found him after I left."
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"So you know that- others know that. Yeah?"
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"That doesn't seem to matter to them. Steve Rogers came here and asked me if I was a danger to the rest of the people on this ship." Her voice is so flat when she says it, disbelieving and so pained it's like she can't tell where one hurt stops and the next one starts. "And then Lark came to tell me all about how I'm a failure if I think wardens are allowed to act this way to inmates. No one seems to understand that what I did has nothing to do with this place."
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"Lark has a chip on his shoulder about this," he says, calm but firm. Not that he doesn't understand where that comes from, but the man hardly knows Rey and he shouldn't have come to her cabin to lecture her. He's very sure about that.
"Look- whatever it is, Rey, they don't know. Do they? They don't understand."
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She's learned by now that he gives her strength and she needs that more now than she did last night.
"They don't know, but that doesn't stop them from thinking I'm no better than Kylo Ren."
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His hands shift almost hesitantly, to rest on her back, the back of her head, right between the buns.
"You're not letting them get to you, are you?"
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"I'm trying not to. I started to lose that fight when Han called me."
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Because honestly, Tommy might kill him if he said something bad enough.
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"The same thing everyone else did. It was a short conversation, I don't know how to explain to him what he means to me when I don't even know him like this. I know him when he's an old man, when he actually... when he cared about me too."
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"They'll see it eventually," he promises her. "They'll understand, Rey." And in the meantime, there is Tommy, who believes her with everything he has.
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She slips both her arms around Tommy, curls into him a little more and presses her face into his chest with no care for her injuries or if it hurts. It's worth it.
"It doesn't matter if they do in the long run. I know who I am." And she does mean that, and she will be fine with time. That's the problem, though. She needs time, and instead of being given it there's just been more and more to deal with being piled on top of her.
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"If the Admiral thought you'd be a bad warden, you wouldn't be here right now. You didn't do anything I wouldn't have done, and I'm still here, aren't I?"
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"You are." And she hopes he always stays because now that she knows how much she can rely on him, how easy it can be to trust him, how good it feels to be this close to him, she doesn't think she can go back to being alone. "And so am I, and a few people who have no idea what they're talking about will never be able to change that."
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He wonders, now, if she understands what he's feeling for her- if she understands that, perhaps, she's feeling the same things. The start of something pleasant, just a curl in his stomach that means intimacy in a way he hasn't felt for a while. And it's so much safer than last time.
He won't tell her yet. Not now. Not when she's feeling like this, because he wants this to be something good for them to share, not something that only comes up when one of them is feeling bad. So he nods and tightens his hold on her, and lets those other things rest for now. "Good. Fuck 'em, Rey- you know what you're worth."
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His phrasing gets so soft laugh from her, though, and she looks up at him with a raised eyebrow.
"That seems like contradictory advice."
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He snorts softly and reaches up to brush some hair away from her eyes. "You're a funny one, eh?"
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"I'll have to take your word for that." She says, but it's not as grim as it could be. She didn't ever have anyone to tell jokes to before, but she has him now.
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"You will have to," he agrees, smiling just very slightly. He's still stroking her cheek, still keeping her close to him, and it's like he feels more alive right now.
"Do you need something for that bruise, Rey?"
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It hasn't even occurred to her to go to the infirmary when Han and now Bull are there, not when all she needs is a few days and her injuries will have healed on their own.
But that's not really what she's thinking of now. She's thinking of how much she's come to like being touched like this, about how much she likes to see Tommy looking so content. Han's death still matters, it will always matter, but the pain of it is fading so fast now she's having time to realize that isn't the only thing she's feeling right now.
His question breaks her out of that line of thought, though, and she blinks when she realizes she didn't answer and she should do that.
"It'll go away eventually," she says, bringing a hand up to check the swelling. "I usually heal quickly."
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"I've some ointment," he says, all the same, reaching up to trace a thumb just around the edge of the mark. "It smells bloody bad, but it works."
He isn't usually very good at taking care of people like this: delegating, yes, and he knows like no one else where to go to solve a problem. But this is simpler, this is soothing a smaller, physical pain, and he usually leaves that to the women. But Polly isn't here, and it's Rey, who right now feels so alone. He just wants to do something.
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That's what this is, she can see it in his face while he touches her so softly, and it's all but impossible to turn that down, but there's something nice about that. He says it smells bad and she can't help the small smile that gets from her.
"I can just hold my breath, then."
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"Alright, then," he nods, dropping his hand from her cheek when he notices how intimate that is, how close they are.
"I'll go get that, then. You sit tight."
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"Now?" She asks, and that strikes her as not quite right immediately too. He'll be back, so why is she worried about his leaving? She sits up even after she says it, looking a little surprised with herself as she does. "It doesn't look that bad, does it?"
Hopefully that covered for her a little.
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That-- surprises him a little, and it shows in his eyes. His eyebrows draw up, and his hand curls lightly around his own knee.
"It doesn't, but the longer we leave it the longer it'll hurt. Or I could- stay?"
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"No, you're right. But-"
She reaches for her communicator and then taps something out on it, glances up at him when the text goes through. It's the code to the door, the code that so far only her and Luke know.
"I'd like to avoid any other visitors, so you can just come straight back in. There's the control panel in the center of the door, you just put that in there."
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