Title: Fashion Statements
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: J.J. Abrams & co's Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens and Rian Johnson & co's Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, and general knowledge of the previous trilogies.
Warnings: None.
Characters & Relationships: Rey x Ben
Summary: Two years after the Last Armistice, Breha starts growing out her hair. / fem!Kylo AU / 805 + 280 words
Author's Note: Enjoy!
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Fashion Statements
Two years after the Last Armistice, Breha starts growing out her hair.
At first, Rey thinks she must have forgotten her bi-monthly sit-down with her attendant droid, because she has only ever known Breha to be a stickler for her preferred length; long enough to hide her ears, but short enough that no matter how she sweats and tosses her head in a fight, it won't blind her eyes. But one morning, Rey arrives on the Order's flagship and walks in on Breha in her underthings, the droid brushing bits of hair from her broad, pale shoulders while what remains of it still curls below her jaw.
"This is new," she says, leaning on Breha's shoulder and rubbing a silky black lock between her fingers. "Are you keeping it like this?"
"No. Longer."
Breha nudges the back of Rey's wrist with her chin, so Rey leans down to greet her properly, with a kiss. Her eyes drift closed and she sighs against Rey's mouth. The ache of separation evaporates like the nightly frost off of her old AT-AT. Rey loves the way Breha loves her, the way Breha misses her: that little twinge of longing and proof in her chest. Rey knows she'll never be lonely again, because Breha loves her so much it hurts, no matter how far they are apart.
"Mhm." Breha cups Rey's jaw and presses their cheeks together. "Much longer."
"I can't even imagine it," Rey says. Straightening and looking down into Breha's narrow face, she tries and fails. "Any particular reason, or did you just feel like changing things up?"
It never suited me, Rey can hear her thinking, small and furtive. Hair like that was for pretty, elegant, dignified girls. I looked like a happabore in a wig. Princess Laughingstock.
But she can also feel Breha's conviction when she says: "I can't take traditional Alderaanian braiding back up without long hair."
"Traditional Alderaanian braiding... is that what Leia does with her hair?"
"Hm-hm." Breha ducks her head and crosses the room to dress. Black shirt, pants and boots, fit for any military commander; crimson kaftan overtop, held together with only the belt that holds her lightsaber so it's easily shucked in an altercation, to acknowledge her position as a political figure. Rey tries to imagine that powerful frame crowned like her mother, and this time she succeeds. "Don't tell her yet. It's been a long time. I'm out of practice."
Breha is embarrassed.
Rey wraps her arms around her from behind and stands on her tiptoes to hook her chin over Breha's shoulder. "She'll love it, Breha. And it'll be beautiful."
Breha snorts. "I'm not expecting it to be beautiful. I'm expecting it to humiliate every man, woman, and other sentient being who professes their loyalty to me with their words while in their hearts they keep clinging to the Empire, still."
Rey can't help but laugh. That, she has to admit, is more like her.
"They probably won't even recognize it for what it is, but I'll know," Breha whispers fiercely. Her fingers clench around Rey's. "I'll know."
Kylo Ren had not been a woman, or any other kind of person. Faceless, sexless, rootless, and – if not for Breha Solo's incurably sensitive nature – heartless; merely a bottomless fount of Dark power in the Force, to be drained dry by her treacherous false-father, fill the void left by a grandfather she had never known. Kylo Ren had been nothing but an instrument stripped bare of everything but her Master's cause and her scars.
Breha Solo is so many things she is still taking inventory years later. Breha Solo has more legacies than just her grandfather's to choose from, and understands as she never had before that she doesn't actually have to take up any of them. But if atoning for her mistakes means chaining herself to her grandfather's, she'll use her fetters to tame his beast and make it her own, cut it up finely enough to find the parts worth salvaging, and reshape what remains into what she thought it always should have been. And apparently, she'll return whatever justice she can to the grandmother she was named after, whose name and legacy she had so long rejected, in the process.
Rey presses kisses to Breha's jaw until she turns her head and meets Rey's mouth with hers, and says: "That sounds like another slew of assassination attempts waiting to happen. Want a bodyguard?"
"Yes," Breha says without hesitation.
"Then we need to get these clothes off of you again."
The droid makes an inquisitive noise.
"Are you hungry?" Breha asks her.
"Always."
"Breakfast for two in the other room," she tells the droid. "And privacy in this one."
The droid dutifully beeps away, and Rey buries her hands in Breha's growing hair and pulls her into bed.
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PSAN: Bonus!
"Hey, Breha?"
Breha sleepily burrows deeper into the crook between Rey's chin and shoulder. "Hm?"
"What if you'd been Ben Solo instead of Breha Solo, though?"
Breha stills and raises her head, face scrunched up in confusion. "Ben?"
"That was your Grandpa Organa's name, wasn't it?"
"Bail, sweetheart."
"Ah, right. What would you have done with this – " Rey tucks a lock of dark hair behind Breha's ear. "– if you'd been born Bail Solo?"
"Born a man, you mean?" She raises an eyebrow. "Grow it out and braid it. The reigning monarch and their heir wear braids. It's a unisex tradition."
"Huh. Okay."
Breha buries her face in Rey's neck again, curling around her to soak up every bit of her body heat. Sighing with contentment, Rey nuzzles the crown of Breha's head in answer.
"Something tells me you'd have been a Ben, though," she insists.
"Never."
In Rey's experience, her 'something tells me's are usually Force-given insights, but she doesn't push the issue. It's a silly thought anyway.
"It was acceptable for men to braid their beards if they went bald, though," Breha murmurs as an afterthought.
A moment of silence. Then:
"Stop that. Rey? Get that image out of your head!"
Rey gasps and shakes her head, writhing with suppressed laughter.
"Stop thinking that!"
"I can't. You put the thought there!"
Breha huffily pushes Rey out of bed and puts her clothes back on.
Rey, however, only stops laughing when she can no longer find the breath about how awful Breha, or Ben, or Bail, or any version of her spouse, would look with a head as bald as a ball bearing and braids dangling from her upper lip.