Morning brought with it the wind and sun and dry heat. Rey covered her head with a helmet and pulled the goggles down to protect her eyes. She didn't dare wear her white garments while on Jakku. They'd be brown with sand within seconds. The darkness of the previous evening seemed light years away now, as it always did the morning following an episode of despair or nightmares.

A whirring sound of gears grinding sand heralded D-0's arrival. He'd been charging inside the cabin. He generally just started up as soon as the charging was complete and came to look for her during breakfast. But Rey had eaten already and was anxious to get going.

"Ready for our scavenging run today?" Rey leaned forward to tap the little robot on the head, but he dodged her and circled around her twice. 

"No thank you," he said in his tiny voice.

Rey smiled but signed nonetheless. "Still sketchy, aren't we?" 

D-0 rolled backwards while facing her, then forward again. Rey lifted her goggles, realizing that D-0 didn't recognize her. She quickly pulled off her helmet and D-0 did a little spin of excitement, in one spot. He rolled up to her and spun his wheel against her leg, looking up at her.

"It's me," Rey said, laughing. She reached down again and this time D-0 didn't roll away but pushed his tiny head up into Rey's palm before she even had the chance to pat him. He was such a genuine little robot, and yet Jorii had said* that D-0 had been on the same ship that her parents had left on. And that D-0 had been sent to Jakku, when Rey was little, to 'bring the little girl' onto the ship. Had Palpatine tried to use D-0 to lure her away when she was just a child? But she had no memory of that, surely...

Suddenly Rey picked up D-0 in a moment of worry. His wheel spun in the air in surprise. Who knew if D-0 hadn't been sent yet again, after all these years, to track her.

D-0's wheel spun even faster as he began to panic and his head turned side to side, looking for a way to escape. Rey snapped out of her reverie and quickly set him down again.

"I'm sorry-" she began to say but D-0 sped away. Her shoulders slumped. Now she would have to build his trust again, and it would likely take longer than the first time around.

Rey watched as D-0 sped across the desert sand, kicking up a fine cloud of dust behind him and leaving a long streak path, like a line directing the way to go.

"Wait for me!" Rey called after her little friend. She pulled her scarf back over her mouth and nose, and set her goggles and helmet back into place. Then she quickly jumped onto her clunky sand speeder, which she'd built from scavenged parts a lifetime ago it seemed, and turned on the engine. It purred to life and the feel of the metal beneath her made everything right again. She reached for the Speeder's clutch but before she could head off after D-0's winding trail in the sand, her helmet speaker kicked in with static and Poe's voice crackled through.

"You awake, Rey?"

She pulled down her scarf again, just enough to speak. "Have you ever known me to be sleeping?"

It was a joke, but the brief silence on the other end made Rey's stomach knot. She hadn't meant to make Poe worry.

"I actually had a great sleep," Rey said quickly, at the same time that Poe said, "glad to see the receiver is working."

The high frequency receiver outside Rey's small temporary dwelling connected to her helmet, receiving Poe's message from wherever he was at the moment, off planet. She let go of her grip on the clutch and the Speeder took off, following the direction D-0's tracks had been earlier. The wind had already blown over the path but she picked it up again at the bottom of the hill where the wind hadn't moved through yet. The line swerved through the sand, left and right, but Rey kept her Speeder straight, following the general direction of the path.

"How long will you be on Jakku?" Poe asked. It was harder to hear him now but Rey didn't slow down. She needed to go scavenging today, there was a new ship that had been dropped off, finally, and she needed to think about something other than the loss of Ben.

"I'm not sure, why?" she asked. The sand that the Speeder was kicking up around her was getting into her mouth so she put the scarf back.

"We're having our General Meeting..." Poe trailed off but Rey didn't reply. "They'll be inducting me into the position of General, officially. I thought you might want to be there."

Rey slowed the Speeder. D-0's little head bobbed up and down ahead of her on a hilltop. So the Resistance was still regrouping and re-organizing, without Leia and even though the war with the 'Final Order' was now over. They'd destroyed the fleet of battle cruisers. What was there left to do?

"Ma will be presiding," Poe continued, "and there will be large dinner afterwards."

Rey saw the crashed ship up ahead. It was already covered in so much dust that she couldn't be sure what model it was. It had been quite literally dropped off by a police-force cruiser from a planet she didn't know much about. Some planets didn't have the resources to impound large ships that were stolen or even to salvage parts from them to use on their own ships which were made with completely different materials, so they simply dropped them off here for the junk boss.

Rey stopped her cruiser at a little distance from the fallen ship and lowered it down onto the sand, still idling. All she wanted to do was scavenge in peace.

"There's something else," Poe continued. "Palpatine..." The name gave Rey shivers despite the heat of the first rising sun. "He's still... alive, if that's what you would call it. Taken on another clone body, is the story that's going around."

Rey didn't know what to say to that. What exactly did they want her to do? Go and try to kill him? That's what he wanted, so that she'd become 'Empress Palpatine.' If he was still out there, going anywhere near him, without Ben, was too dangerous for her.

"And what would I do?" she asked, a little more bitter sounding than she'd intended.

"We believe he's regrouping for a surprise attack, when we least expect it."

"So are we."

"We lost a lot of good men in that last battle. Another one could do us in."

"I'm only one person."

"You're the strongest Jedi there is."

Rey didn't respond.

"We need you."

A gust of wind blew dust up around her, so dense that she could no longer see through it.

"Sorry, Poe," Rey said. "I'm having a hard time hearing you. There's a sandstorm blowing through. I'll touch base again soon." And with that she turned off the receiver.

The wind passed, and the sand settled down. D-0 was back, spinning in an eternity symbol pattern on the sand. Rey knew now that it meant there was something he wanted to show her. His vocabulary was limited, a handful of recorded words in English, but mostly he just said 'no thank you.' He sped off again and she followed after him towards the ship.