ladyofleithian: (stormjedi: hug)
ladyofleithian ([personal profile] ladyofleithian) wrote2020-03-20 07:08 pm
Entry tags:

For trope_bingo

Title: Meeting Your Heroes

Summary: Rose Tico meets — and fangirls over — Jannah for the first time.

Prompt: Minor Characters

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author’s Notes: Poor KMT; she went through so much.





It’s sometime after Rey’s flown off to Tatooine to pay her respects to Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker that Rose is working on inventions. Maybe that’s what she’ll do now that the war’s over, Rose thinks. Make things. She thought that she’d retire to a farm with Pai-Pai and raise farm animals, but, she supposes, some things don’t go according to plan.

Even thinking about Pai-Pai...she knows that Paige Tico will always be with her. Not just her death, but how she lived. Vibrant, brave, daring, selfless, compassionate...she was simply Paige, and Rose will have it no other way.

“This hangar taken?”

Rose looks up. This voice, possibly Coruscanti-accented and charming to listen to (somehow, it makes Rose wonder if the speaker is Coruscanti somehow), is a new one. She looks up, startled, only to see a slight but strong young woman (early twenties, Rose can only assume) with a mount that Rose can’t say that she’s seen before. She’s beautiful too, Rose can’t help but notice, with her curly black hair and fine features, her smooth mahogany skin. She thinks she recognizes the woman; she’d been talking with Lando at the celebration, almost like an old friend.

“Oh!” Rose says. “No...of course not.”

“Thanks.” The woman strokes the snout of her mount; there’s something about her where she just seems to know this mount all too well. “It’s just been pretty loud in here. A lot of clean-up to do too.”

“I know.” Rose can remember comforting Finn after the fight he had with Rey. She can still remember his words. “It’s my fault, Rosie. I accused her of thinking Ren was more important than me.” Rose has no idea what Kylo has to do with anything, but she knows Finn and Rey are both acting like idiots, and she told Finn as much (if gently). And then there’s just about everything else, of course. “The hangar’s nice. I’ve been...making things. They’re just outlines...”

She can’t help but feel shy even showing the woman the drawings she’s made, but the woman smiles. She’s...beautiful, Rose thinks. And somehow she doesn’t want this woman to stop looking at her like that.

“They’re nice,” the woman says. “I like them. I’m Jannah, by the way.”

“Wait. Jannah?” Finn had told her a bit about finding more defected stormtroopers on Kef Bir, and Jannah was one of them. “ You’re Jannah?”

Jannah looks surprised. “So I’m famous now?”

“Well, yes and no. Finn told me about you.” Rose is talking fast now, like she does when she gets excited. Rose’s mother had affectionately called her “our little hyperdrive” when she was little, just because of how quickly she talked. Rose can’t say that she entirely gets the nickname, but her mother was a good woman and Rose misses her. “I mean — I knew Finn defected; I didn’t know there was more of you! My sister, Paige — she actually wanted to meet Finn. Before...”

Rose slows down. It’s been a year, but she still misses Paige. She hopes that Paige, wherever she is, is flying spaceships and tending to farm animals like she wanted to.

“You lost her?” Jannah says, gently.

Rose nods.

“She must have been very brave,” Jannah says, and Rose thinks she’ll take that over General Organa’s assessment of her as a dead hero without a leader. General Organa was a good woman, but she didn’t know everything.

“She was,” Rose says. “Still...I guess that she’s not entirely gone.” She caresses the crescent moon necklace in her hand. “She wore a necklace like that. I think of that when I think of her.”

“Of course,” Jannah says. “No one’s ever really gone.”

They talk about other things. Mounts, like the one Jannah rides — Jannah asks her if she’s ever ridden mounts, and Rose talks about Cantobight and escaping prison with Finn on a fathier. Jannah laughs at the right points, and Rose can’t help but be drawn to how she laughs — how vibrant, and alive. She didn’t just survive being a stormtrooper — she’s living now.

“That sounds like Finn,” Jannah says. “Some former stormtroopers I was leading too. I remember one of them threw up after getting off a mount, poor girl.”

“Yikes,” Rose says.

“Yeah. I still remember that she asked if using speeders was an option. She got used to the mount, thank goodness.”

“You sound like a good teacher,” Rose says. “And a good leader. Taking all these beings, and showing them the way.”

Jannah smiles. “Well, thanks. Can’t say I’m special though — I’m just someone that had to rebuild her life after being taken away.”

“I say that’s pretty special,” Rose says.

Jannah’s look of wonder...Rose thinks that it makes her day and breaks her heart all at once. Has anyone told this wonderful, strong woman how amazing she is? Then again, she supposes that growing up (if you can call it that) under Phasma had to have been hard.

“You’re very sweet. I like you, Rose,” Jannah says.

“Yeah. You too. So,” Rose says, “Maybe we could make things together? Pass the time. I mean, it’s not like much is going on...”

Jannah’s grin makes it. “I’m all for that.”






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