Chapter Two

Rey was exhausted.

She was a week into her first term at Alderaan Grammar and the summer holidays already felt a lifetime ago. She had been up late every night filling in her planner with names of students and making seating plans. She adjusted lesson plans for classes who were more advanced and smarter than the classes she had had at her previous school. On Thursday, she stayed late to hold try-outs for the Under 14 girls hockey team she was coaching as her extra-curricular responsibility before pouring over training schedules over Chinese takeaway until her eyes swam.

Friday morning, she had vowed to Finn that she would get an early night, but that was before Poe sent an email inviting everyone to celebratory end-of-the-first-week drinks in the local pub after school. How could she not go and miss an opportunity to get to know her new colleagues better? After all, her euphoria at how much she loved her new job needed some outlet and it had been a very intense week.

And so she had found herself in the George and Dragon for one drink… and then a second… and then several more and at some point they ordered food and somehow she didn't get home till almost midnight, pushing her motorbike slowly along the road, her shoulder bumping against Finn's as he wheeled his bicycle next to her, both making an effort to walk in a straight line.

She loved her colleagues. Admittedly, she still hadn't even talked to most of them and she couldn't remember the names of everyone she had talked to but it was enough to know and like the ones she saw immediately around her. It was wonderful being in the same school as Finn, of course, but they hardly saw each other during the school day. As for the Physics department, it consisted of three other teachers, all middle-aged men. Rey didn't mind this, though, as they were all lovely and keen to support her in a way nobody really had before. Besides, on the second day, she met Rose Tico, the Physics lab technician. Rose was a similar age as her, had been at the school for three years already, and had outright squealed at learning she was the new Physics teacher.

"You can't imagine how excited I am that you're joining the department," she had cried. "I mean, they're all great guys, the other teachers, but it's like having three dads and, well, you can have too many dads, right? The jokes…!" She pulled a face and made a slicing motion across her neck.

Rey had smiled but privately she had disagreed. When you didn't have any father at all, the prospect of being surrounded by three sounded amazing. Nevertheless, she and Rose had latched onto each other and sat together at lunch, joined by Finn who had somehow never spoken to her before.

"Teachers and the technicians…" Rose had explained, "we don't really mix. Can be a bit lonely, being a techie."

"That's stupid," said Rey. "You're every bit as important as we are. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be able to do any experiments in my lessons."

So she had made sure that Rose had come out with them on Friday evening, which she eagerly agreed to do. In fact, if Rey did not meet a single other person in the school beyond her department, Rose and Finn and occasionally sharing a smile and greeting with Poe, she would be perfectly happy.

Saturday morning, she slept in and by the time she stumbled into the kitchen in her pyjamas to get some cereal, Finn had already left for the first rugby match of the year against Mandalore Academy. Sun streamed into the sitting room and Rey slumped on the sofa, relishing the first real moments of peace and relaxation since the start of term.

She quickly decided that it was too nice a day to spend inside, however, and after breakfast, she went for a run round the local park. Back at home, she opened her planner to get a start on the following week's lesson plans but she could not settle. This felt too much like all the bad habits she had got into the previous year of holing herself up indoors all weekend and allowing work to take over her life. This was a new year, a new start, a new Rey. She might have to do work but she didn't have to stay at home to do it, especially not on such a lovely day.

She packed up her books and laptop and made her way into the centre of town, eschewing her bike for once in favour of a walk, considering how good the weather was. Soon autumnal gloom would be setting in and she was determined to make good use of the sunshine while it lasted.

Alderaan was small cathedral city, barely worthy of its title, with an attractive centre of cobbled streets around the cathedral green. The grammar school's original site was close by, even if it had moved to a larger sight a little further out in the nineteenth century. Rey walked past the original building, now used for cathedral administration and a place for the choir to practise, and gave it a knowing nod. She was a part of the city's heritage now. Getting the job at the grammar school had given her a purpose and a connection to something worth being allied to for the first time in her life. She had never cared much for anywhere she had lived or worked before, but she felt she could really belong in Alderaan.

A sunny Saturday brought the tourists out to play but Rey avoided the common tourist traps and went to a place she had discovered the previous spring and been back to several times since. The cathedral cafe might be attached to the city's most distinguished attraction, but it was also tucked away in the cathedral crypt and very poorly advertised. It was rarely full, especially on a day when most people would want to sit outside or at least be near a window.

Rey got herself a mug of coffee and a scone and found her favourite place to work, the cafe's one sofa in the innermost room, pushed up against the rough, stone wall. She plugged in her laptop, kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the sofa, congratulating herself on having found a good spot. It was cool down here, welcome after she had grown warm from walking in the sun.

Although the outer room was reasonably full, only two other tables in this room were occupied. At one, a pair of elderly ladies were gossiping in hushed voices over large pots of tea; at another, a tall, young man was hunched up over some papers. He must have arrived only a few minutes before Rey, because she was still getting out her books when a waitress came through to the back area, calling out, "Sweet chilli chicken panini!" and the young man leapt up to claim it.

Rey managed to work reasonably solidly for about forty-five minutes, though both the other tables were rather distracting in their own ways. The cafe had no music so the old ladies' conversation, although quiet, was nevertheless often audible and Rey could not help occasionally tuning into the apparently scandalous and inappropriate lives and relationships of Anne and Janet's respective children. Meanwhile, the young man seemed to be struggling with whatever he was working on. He frequently let out a huff of irritation or flung himself back in the wooden chair that seemed too small for him, running his hands through his wavy, black hair as if to rid himself of some source of frustration.

Therefore, when Rey eventually got up to get another coffee, she passed close to his table and could not help glancing down at whatever he was working on in what she hoped was a subtle manner.

They were essays, some typed, some handwritten, which he was correcting using an elegant fountain pen with green ink.

"You're a teacher!" Rey blurted out, before she could help herself.

The young man raised his head and stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. He had the largest, darkest eyes she had ever seen.

"I mean, that is, so am I," she continued, inwardly cringing at how awkward she sounded. "Sorry."

"Right," said the young man after another long pause. He had an appealingly mellow voice. And then, when she continued to stare, "We don't have to have a conversation just because we're both teachers. It's a common profession. Don't feel obliged to stay. You can go and get your coffee now. I need to work." A faint flush was beginning to rise on his neck as he glared at her.

"Okay, thanks for nothing." Rey rolled her eyes, flushing too, and hastened out of the room towards the counter. By the time she had ordered, waited and collected her coffee, however, embarrassment at being dismissed by a relatively attractive man she had accosted out of the blue for no good reason that she could rationally explain had turned into annoyance. She might have been awkward, but she had been friendly. He had been rude!

When she returned to her sofa, she stopped by his table again. He looked up at her again. "What now?"

"Look," she began more firmly than she had spoken before, "I said I was sorry for disturbing you, but I was just trying to be nice. Teacher solidarity, right?"

"Sure, if you say so," he replied, still sounding as if he had no idea why she was talking to him. Rey was also beginning to wonder that herself but felt that having initiated a conversation she had to see it through.

"So, what do you teach?"

He moved his fountain pen off the pile of essays and held the top one up so she could read the title.

Discuss whether Hamlet is a coward or someone driven by his conscience.

"English then," Rey surmised. "Nice!"

He nodded once and his eyes briefly flickered over her. "You?"

"Physics."

His eyebrows rose. "That's unusual."

Rey's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"There aren't many female Physics teachers. You were probably hired to look good on their diversity reports."

He spoke in such a measured way that it took a moment for his words to sink in and when they did, Rey's jaw dropped. "Okay, that's bullshit," she snapped, her heart pounding.

He shrugged. "Not really. It's a well-known fact. And you're probably not even a real physicist. If you were, you'd be working in industry and earning twice as much. Most Physics teachers are actually biologists forced to teach Physics because of the shortage of properly qualified Physics teachers. Especially women. Women tend to prefer the soft sciences for some reason."

"You sexist troglodyte!" spluttered Rey in disbelief. Her mug of coffee shook in her hand. She swallowed. "I have always wanted to be a teacher! I care about my job! I love my students! I bet you only fell into teaching because you couldn't think what else to do with an English degree!"

The young man blinked at her. "That's ridiculous," he muttered. "You don't know anything about me."

Rey took a deep breath. She was wasting her time here. She couldn't think why she'd even spoken to this pretentious prick in the first place. "Okay, you said you were busy. Have lots of fun marking all those long essays."

She stomped away from him, slammed her mug of coffee down on the table, shoved all her books and laptop back in her bag in a hurry, and crossed back across the room, abandoning her drink, still hot. She no longer wanted to work there.

Pausing before she left the back room, she suddenly turned round and called out in a low but distinct voice to the young man who had turned in his chair and was watching her with undisguised curiosity and animosity, "I bet your students hate you! And buzz off, Anne!" she added, seeing that the two old ladies had long since paused their gossip to watch the more interesting show going on before their eyes.

She sped out of the cafe, running up the steps and blinking into the sunshine, still feeling his dark, surprised eyes following her long after she had left the crypt.

Finn was home from his match and sprawled out in front of the Xbox by the time she stormed back into their flat.

"Hey, what's up, Peanut?" he asked, pausing the game when he saw her face.

She threw her leather jacket over a chair and flopped down next to him. "Met a jerk in the cathedral cafe. Pass me a controller; I want to blow something up."

Finn dug out the second controller from down the side of the sofa, saved his own game and booted up a new one for two players.

"What happened?" he pressed, once Rey was sitting forward, hunched over the controller and entirely engrossed in running through a forested landscape wielding a laser sword and swiping unnecessarily at trees that got in her way.

"Nothing really," she muttered, bringing down an entire tree and chopping it into bits as gold sparks shot across the screen before she continued, "There was this bloke sitting in the cafe and I realised he was a teacher because he was marking essays so I talked to him and he was well rude."

"Why'd you talk to him in the first place?"

"Dunno," replied Rey, doing a triple somersault onto a high rock, jumping up and down several times and then sawing a boulder in half. "Guess I felt the teaching love and wanted to share it. He didn't."

"Sorry. I guess not all teachers are like the ones at AGS. He didn't deserve you." Finn laughed suddenly. "You know, he was probably from Starkiller. They're all dicks there. What did he look like?"

"Tall," replied Rey and was then distracted by a hooded man in a mask appearing behind her. She did several largely pointless backflips before charging at him. "Dark hair."

She didn't want to add that he had been attractive in an unconventional way. Strange that she should have found him so, but she had. Until he had started speaking more than two words at a time, that is. Then the appeal had significantly decreased.

"Tall and dark. Really narrows it down, Reyna."

"Teaches English. Oh fuck." She jabbed hard at her controller, waving it around as it really was her laser sword.

"You are so shit at this game, Peanut. You have literally no technique."

"Then help me, dammit. We're meant to be a team and you're still pratting around at the temple."

"I got lost in the stone tunnels. Okay, coming to get you. Just hold him off. Try to, you know… try to…"

"Do this?" Rey slashed violently at the masked enemy and succeeded in wounding his arm.

"Ow. That hurt," said her antagonist's tinny voice, deadpan.

"Hell yes it did!"

"Wait, Rey - don't let your guard down! Oh damn."

A dialogue box appeared on the screen.

You have been captured by the Dark Prince. He is taking you back to the Black Castle for interrogation.

"Fuck my life!" cried Rey and threw down the controller with a sigh.

They sat in silence for a while and Rey rested her head on Finn's shoulder.

"Well," said Finn eventually, "I don't know who he was. A tall, dark, English teacher. I mean, that could be practically anybody. I don't even know who half the English teachers were at Starkiller. Out in the Games department, you don't mix so much with the academic staff."

"It's okay, I don't really care. I shouldn't let it get to me. He was just a jerk and I'm never going to see him again. It's just…"

"What? What did he say?"

She shrugged and snuggled closer to him. "Just stuff. It doesn't matter."

"Well, you ever see him again, you let me know and I'll kick his ass for you. Got it?"

She smiled up at him. "Got it. Love you, Finn."

"Love you too. Always."

It really didn't matter. That's what she told herself. If she didn't talk about it perhaps it would go away. It was nothing more than bad luck that he'd happened to have hit on two of her greatest insecurities in quick succession just after meeting her. Fortunately, the chances of their ever meeting again were slim.


A/N: They finally meet! I'd love to know what you think. :)