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The next order of business is to change their appearance. She attacks Ben's hair with a shaver, much to his horror and cuts his hair down short and then dyes it a rich brown. Her own dark hair goes blond and short, though long enough that she can tie it back if she wishes. But Ben is still recognizable, comes from being the most wanted person in the galaxy so they have to take more extreme measures for him.
"We don't have enough money for the tech and the procedure," Rey says as she pokes at the terminal. The tech in question is tiny implants that, over the course of a couple weeks, alters the wearer's face into someone else. Ben leans over her shoulder to watch the terminal and then says:
"Can we afford the tech alone?"
Rey pokes at the screen and then nods. "Yes but…" she trails off when she realizes what he means to do. "Ben no!"
He looks at her, eyes dark and hooded. "What choice do we have?"
They buy the tech.
Then Ray sits with a salvaged scanner trained on him while he levitates the implants in front of his face. The implants look like tiny balls but no matter how small they are, they will still hurt going in.
"Okay," she says her voice shaky. "When you're ready."
"Ready," he says, voice far steadier than hers. Then he uses the force to push the implants into his face. It hurts. She knows it hurts even though Ben is not uttering a sound, yet still his concentration doesn't waver.
"Okay the one on the far right has to go two millimeters down," she directs, eyes trained on the scanner. The tiny ball shifts into position and then Rey directs him how to position the others.
When they're all done he drops his hand and slumps, gasping. Rey drops the scanner and puts her arms around his shoulders to steady him.
"Ben? Ben? Are you alright?"
"Fine," he rasps. His pain threshold as usual is incredible. Rey fetches the medical kit and patches up his face. What extra money they had left had gone into them buying the best kit they possible could so the wounds seal over just fine. She wipes the blood of his face gently doing her best not to hurt him more. When she's finished he lies down in his bed in the room they've rented. Rey sits on the ground next to him and rests her and on his shoulder until he drifts off to an exhausted sleep.
They keep moving until the tech has restructured Ben's face. It's odd Rey acknowledges, to look at him and see someone else but she knows it has to have been even stranger for him. More than once she's seen him catch a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror and do a minor doubletake.
But once it's done, they head off planet to somewhere remote. They barely have any credits left so they work their way there. Rey is a great engineer and they're both fantastic pilots and that gets them far away enough from the republic and lands them on a small Outer Rim world.
Ironically the first job they end up with is scavenging. Ren looks like he wants to laugh at their predicament but by dint of rarely seen self-control, doesn't. Rey joins a scavenger team for a cut of whatever they manage to find and Ben joins a small coalition of pilots that transport the scavengers' goods to and from the field and the markets. They don't earn much credits but it's not as bad as it was on Jakku and with two of them working, they even manage to save some.
Ben's skin slowly loses his pallor, becoming tanned in the sun. Rey collects more callouses and tiny electrical burns. In the nights, far from the camps, they spar against each other. It's too dangerous to bring out lightsabers but pieces of wood work just as well. Kylo turns out to be proficient in using a staff as well and he teaches Rey how to use hers more effectively. He also gets far more comfortable with his prosthetic than he'd been before.
"Do you regret it?" she asks one night as they're sitting outside the tiny trailer they've claimed as their own.
"Regret what?" he asks, eyes trained on the horizon where the last gleam of the sun still lingers.
"This," she says. "It's far from luxurious."
He tilts his head to look at her. "No," he said. "Luxury doesn't mean anything to me."
Porg1 comes chirping out the trailer and Rey lifts him into her lap. "Hello there," she says.
Ben feeds the little creature a bit of his rations and then Porg1 settles on Rey's shoulder and goes to sleep leaning against her head. She sees the corner of Ben's mouth twitch into a smile and then he says, softly:
"I don't regret this, Rey."
"Me either," she says just as softly.
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