Rey has a wide grin that she lets loose when she is really happy. Her eyes squint together and her brows go up and suddenly her face is half teeth, baring them in a way that would be ferocious if she didn't also radiate delirious joy.
Kylo doesn't come to know this until several weeks of living with her in the house on the island.
He realizes it was because she was never truly happy around him before- passionate, intense, wanting- but not the pure sort of upbeat elation that she is free to experience now. It captivates him, like everything else about her. He keeps a catalog in his head of these moments.
When the rain stops and they get their first truly warm, sunny day. Rey wants to go swimming, but Kylo sits on the shore with the baby. He's nervous when she first descends into the water- she's from a desert planet, she probably can't swim well, he needs to be on alert if she starts to down- but she surfaces a few seconds later, her hair wet against her head, face positively aglow.
When they decide they should use the Force to catch fish. For some unknown reason Kylo rolls up his pants so he can stand in the water to do it, then immediately slips and falls face-first into it. He doesn't mind, because it makes her laugh, but he still stalks off angrily back to the house without saying anything. Just on principle.
When they are poking around their newly acquired ship and discover a holovid that must have been left aboard by the previous owner. More specifically, when they begin to play it and realize just exactly what kind of holovid it is. Rey covers her eyes and all he can see is teeth as she almost chokes on her laughter.
When he is passing her bedroom and he hears Rey howling. She is laying in the bed on her stomach, opposite of Ash. When Rey notices him standing in the doorway she ushers him inside and looks back at the baby. Rey make a low, animalistic growling sound and Ash's eyes go wide, before scrunching up at responding with a fierce little growl of her own. Rey explodes into laughter again, and she looks up right into Kylo's eyes with that smile.
They're not every day, or even every other day, but they are some days and Kylo remembers them.
"We should train."
Rey puts down the spoon full of mashed fruit and looks up at Kylo. She had been trying to feed Ash solid food for the first time, but it had not been going particularly well, as evidenced by the light purple splotches on both of their faces. Rey wipes her hand across her cheek, rubbing off most of the actual fruit, but leaving a violet stain.
He has laid his lightsaber down on the table.
"Train with that? " Rey thinks of her own lightsaber, left safety in her room back at the base, and wishes she could have the feel of it in her hands again. It would be good to train. She doesn't want to get rusty. It has been so long since she has practiced. "I don't particularly feel like messing around with that crackly thing. I'd kill myself. I don't know how you use it."
"I want you to be comfortable with using it," Kylo says. "In case of emergency. In case you ever need to defend yourself with it. However peaceful it seems right here, we are still fugitives. We can't let ourselves become lazy or complacent." His eyes look passionate, as if he has been giving this a lot of thought. "I can teach you."
In her mind, Rey sees the young knight in black, hair whipping around him, wet from snow, his maddened face lit by the glow of their sabers. You need a teacher.
With her eyes, Rey sees a young man in tan pants and blue tunic, short hair wet and freshly showered, picking up stray clumps of fruit that have made their way across the floor.
Kylo stands back with Ash and Rey turns it on, red light striping through the air. It still gives her a start, seeing it, even though she is the one holding it this time. The lightsaber, and the person who held it, had once been her enemy. It could have ended her life. Now he has handed it to her willingly, and watches with anticipation.
"It feels strange." Rey's face is twisted in slight confusion as she gives it a few experimental swipes in the air. "It feels like...like I'm holding a few lightsabers tied together in a bundle. Like they're all shifting around each other." She shakes her head. "Again, how do you fight with this thing?"
"It's cracked, but that doesn't make it anything other than one full piece, still," Kylo explains. "Try not to feel the fracture- fill it in with the Force. See it all for the way it works, together." His eyes are full of passion as he guides Rey through her movements.
She tries to concentrate on the Force, but her mind also keeps going to an image she conjures herself- a boy no older than fifteen, shaky hands full of rage and anger and fear, constructing his lightsaber with his cracked Kyber crysal. This is mine. This is for me.
It is unstable, but it is powerful. It has been used for striking down lives, with now it can also be used to save them.
They practice like this most days. Sometimes with the saber, sometimes with practice ones they've carved from sticks, sometimes just hand-to-hand combat. It's nice to have something to do. Rey finds herself looking forward to their sessions first thing in the morning. Kylo seems the most relaxed he ever is when they are out there together, losing himself in the physicality of the actions. It isn't the only time she has seen him like this, and sometimes this distracts Rey, when he's shirtless and sweaty and he gives her a little grin. This is where he gets his best hits in.
Sometimes they'll be stopped in the middle of the spar if the baby needs them, or if one of the frequent rain storms moves in. Rey is just about to land a blow to Kylo's left shoulder when Ash starts to whimper, and both parents drop their positions immediately.
"I think that's enough for today." Rey scoops up Ash and they begin the way back up the path to the house. They walk together in silence, but it's a comfortable quiet, really. They have lots of comfortable quiets, as Kylo isn't often one for meaningless chit chat, but Rey is okay with that. She grew up alone. She does appreciate it, though, when he finally does speak.
"What do you hope for her? When she is older?"
His eyes are on Ash, who has gone sleepy against Rey's shoulder.
"I just want her to be happy, really," Rey says, cheek pressed to the top of the baby's head. "And safe. And kind." There are other things Rey doesn't say, little fears that go unspoken, but she knows that she doesn't have to vocalize them.
"What I mean to ask," Kylo says, straightening up and looking ahead. "Is do you plan to have her trained as a Jedi? I don't doubt that she will demonstrate amazing power when she becomes older. Her family history kind of ensures it."
Something about contemplating Ash's potential power bristles Rey. She's a baby, she's five months old, why should anyone be speculating on her future? She has thought about it, of course, but she always tries to brush it aside. As happy as Rey had been to train with Luke Skywalker, something about her daughter embarking the training necessary to become a Jedi makes her feel kind of sick. Part of it, of course, is due to her unsaid fears of the Ash's dark heritage, but it is also just the inevitability of it all. The things that will be expected of the small girl who is now just so new and innocent.
"If she wants to," Rey says finally. "But I don't want her to feel pressured. It feels so easy, now, just the three of us here, but I don't know what is going to happen once we get back with the others."
Mentioning the others seems to bother Kylo, and he looks down towards his feet. "I'm still not joining the Resistance."
"You don't have to fight," Rey says, as if she has any power to decide the fate of this former terror of the First Order. Rey has actually spent many nights awake in bed picturing what would happen the day they finally go back, both realistic and unrealistic fantasies. She never lingers too long on the unpleasant ones, but the nice ones, those she can hold on to until she slips into unconsciousness, hoping they bleed into her dreams.
Kylo has different ideas, she knows.
"What do you think waits for me back with your friends?" he asks. "With the Resistance? I am their enemy. They have every right to bring me to try me for war crimes. At the least I'll be imprisoned and I'll probably be executed." At this, he puts a light hand on Rey's arm for just a moment, then moves to take the baby from her arms. She gives her up readily, and watches as Kylo holds Ash tight against his chest. He holds her like she is something precious, but, Rey sees for the first time, something he feels he only has borrowed time with. Kylo drops a kiss on his daugher's head, then looks up an meets Rey's eyes. "Don't forget what I've done, Rey."
"I haven't," Rey says. "But I'm sure that the general-"
"My mother doesn't have complete sway over everything," Kylo interrupts. "And even if she does, I doubt I will be a wanted presence there. I do not think that the Resistance fighters want a monster living in their midst."
"Then where are we going to go?"
She is at the door of the house now, but when Rey looks to Kylo, he's no longer beside her. Kylo has stopped a few steps back, and he is looking at her with eyes full of shock.
"You- you mean to stay with me? Even if we aren't forced together by circumstance? Even when you have the option to return to your friends?"
Rey's face fully flushes. She had spoken her words so plainly because she had thought of the circumstance in her head so often it had become commonplace. In none of her fantasies, realistic and unrealistic, did she ever leave Kylo behind. Only now, when she is taking in Kylo's complete befuddlement at her questiont, does she realize that he has possibly not made the same assumptions. That his questions about Ash's future are not just conversation- he assumes he is not going to be there.
"You're her father," she says. "You need to be in her life."
"You haven't always felt that way."
"Kylo," she says, and the name is warm leaving her mouth. "You know things are different now." They never really speak of the way things are different. Rey thinks that he has to know, though.
No matter anything else, he is a good father. Rey had once doubted that he could love Ash they way she did, but now she knows that he does. It feels ridiculous to even wonder. She can't imagine taking Ash away from him.
"Rey."
All of his features look softened when she turns to see him.
His hand is on her cheek, and without even thinking Rey closes her eyes and presses her face further into his palm. His fingers circle around her chin and pull her face up to look at him. His pupils are overblown, he looks maddened, but there is nothing frightening about his madness this time. Nothing and everything. With a shuddery breath, she lets her eyes meet his, and then he lowers his face down. Rey knows that Kylo is much taller than her, but it feels like he is towering over her at this moment and it takes forever for him to reach her. The space between the time she realizes he is going to kiss her and the moment his lips finally touch hers feels like a millenia.
Rey feels his arm curl around her waist and pull her closer to him, Ash against both of their chests. She doesn't remember Kylo ever kissing her so softly before. She sighs into it, a hand come to rest at the base of his neck. She doesn't ever want to open her eyes, doesn't want to face the moment after this kiss. Rey just wants to float in this exact second forever, when her entire universe is wrapped up right here, pressed skin to skin with her.
It does end, though. Kylo's lips leave hers, but he keeps his palm on her cheek, lets it tickle down her neck before coming up again. He looks so earnest, expecting, and Rey doesn't know what to say.
"I-I can't." Rey hears the words leave her mouth before she realizes she has spoken them. Kylo's hand goes stiff against her, and it slides back to down to his side. All of the enthusiasm has drained from his face, and he is left blank.
