Chapter Text
After months without any letters at all, Rey receives a gilded note from the Republic the day after her 18th birthday. There are no pleasantries, no enquiries into her health, merely a missive informing her that she will be married as soon as her betrothal is finalized. The news comes as little surprise. To marry and to marry well is her only purpose, the only future where a girl from a disappearing family tree has any significance, but that doesn't make the news any less disheartening.
She will no longer be Rey, but someone's prized chattel, doomed to forever accept that her life will never truly be her own.
Though it's not as if she was in charge of her fate in the first place. Were that the case, she wouldn't have been forced to wait for her inevitable betrothal at a decrepit Jakku manor, wasting away in the unyielding heat as the rusted foundations slowly sink into the sand with each passing year.
Fleets of chattering servants flit about the halls after the news arrives, but none are bold enough to include her in their gossip about who her husband is to be. During the famines, their own hunger was too great to pay attention to the "little princess" the Republic's nobility had foisted upon them, but they seem no more eager to include her during this apparent celebration.
Even as she thinks it, Rey immediately regrets her sour attitude towards her lodging. She's been kept healthy enough and free from any abuse or scandal. There have been lean times but that's nobody's fault. Jakku is a lean place.
Nobody seeks her out for company but that also means she's left to do as she pleases. In her loneliness, she's devoured any book she could get her hands on and spent more time on a horse than most noble ladies do in their entire lives. She likes the horses kept in the manor’s stables, they don’t speak but they serve as a calming presence as she rides out under the glare of a bright red sun.
The manor's corpulent master, a foul man named Unkar Plutt, chastises her for any time spent outdoors, saying that no self-respecting man will find her beautiful with freckles, but any beauty she might possess doesn't really matter so she pays him no mind. Even if she were more vain, she probably wouldn't care. Her body doesn’t exist for his benefit.
Even if she had five arms and a face covered in green spots, Rey knew she’d be married off. Her bloodline is too important. There's no shortage of nobility who would eagerly wed and bed a Skywalker bride, even if her accounts are near penniless and the bodies of her parents long cold in the ground.
Rey is given only one day’s notice before she is to be relocated and it is more than enough. She fills a battered chest with the few properly fitting gowns she owns, simple dresses in cream and tan, before placing her prized items near the bottom of her trunk.
She's stolen her favorite books from the estate's library, the sensational romances that were gathering dust before she came along and a genealogy that traces the histories of every noble family for when she feels lonely. Though most of the characters are long dead, it is still comforting to trace the well-worn pages and find some small connection to the past. She adds the trousers she wears when Plutt and his cronies are out of sight at the bottom of the chest before delicately wrapping what little she has of her father's belongings in the mended fabric.
His hat, once part of his military uniform and a proud ivory, is now more dust than anything else. She can remember him placing it on her head when she was a girl,the way he'd crown her the General of Sleep before tucking her in, curing her of her feeble attempts to stall bedtime. His sword is tucked even more delicately inside the cloth, so not even a hint of the sapphires on the blade can be seen.
She has just closed the chest when she hears a delicate knock against the wall. She turns to see an old woman standing in the doorway, her dark eyes made wide by almost comical spectacles.
"Lady Rey," the woman says gently, her voice surprisingly clear for someone so impossibly old and impossibly small. "I'm Maz Kanata, I'll be journeying with you to D'Qar."
"Is my intended there?" Rey asks, hoping to sate her own curiosity as to who will be sharing her bed.
"He isn't," Maz tells her, not unkindly. "You won't be meeting your betrothed just yet, not until everything is finalized with the Imperial delegation. You'll be staying with your aunt while preparations are being made."
It's both a relief and an annoyance that she won't have the chance to meet her future husband but a rush of excitement floods through her at any mention of family.
"My aunt?" Rey asks tentatively, as if any hint of jubilation was enough to cancel any pending meeting. She can remember her aunt from when she was a little girl, her thick brown hair and kind eyes still present in her memory.
Maz smiles, a strip of white on her wizened dark face. "Of course, my dear," she says, motioning for Rey to follow her out to the coach.
"You there," she barks, her head gestures towards Plutt who'd been eavesdropping by the door. "Grab your lady's belongings, do you want to keep the princess waiting?"
Plutt mumbles something snide under his breath but does as he's bid, following the women as they make their descent into the courtyard to meet their coachman.
Unkar Plutt hoists the chest on top of the carriage that waits at the gate. He gives her a curt nod, only a basic show of deference, before hastily making his way back into his languishing estate. It's not a fond farewell but Rey wasn't expecting any sobs or promises of lasting friendship. The man, however loathsome he was, had kept her safe and fed. His services were no longer necessary.
Rey can make out the silhouette of their coachman coming closer towards them, his hand waving amiably as a small dog nips at his heels. The journey feels real now. There will be no turning back.
"We'll be out of here soon," Maz tells Rey, patting her arm kindly. "Say goodbye to your wasteland, darling."
"It's not my land," she says, taking in the arid desert for the last time. "It never was."
The rolling sands used to seem romantic when she was younger, like she was Scheherazade waiting for her husband's nightly embrace. They just seem barren now.
Even if her husband is to be an utter tyrant, he's the reason she's freed from her virtual exile. For that, Rey supposes, she will be eternally grateful.