"I feel ridiculous."
"Look it too."
Rey glares at Poe.
He raises a brow in challenge. "Hey, at least you signed up for this. Unlike some of us."
"I didn't-"
"We did sign up for this. Remember, Poe?" Finn leans forward to look down the line. "We agreed. Wherever they go, we go. If that means we need to -"
Perfectly manicured fingers snap beside Finn's cheek, startling him into silence.
"Means you need to pay attention to your lessons?" Virya's voice drips somewhere between honey and acid. "Then you'd be correct. Please try to focus for more than five minutes at a time. I understand that can be difficult for those of you who never received a higher education."
Their little line straightens. Rose, Finn, Rey, and Poe stand shoulder to shoulder in the empty storage unit. Rey shoots a meaningful look past Poe to Ben, who sits on the sidelines on an upturned crate. BB-8 and D-O whir around his ankles. Ben looks like someone fighting to keep a straight face while being forced to watch a train wreck on repeat.
"Now," Virya commands. "From the beginning. Shoulders back. Chin up. Eyes ahead. On my count. One, two, three. One, two, three. One — It is a box step, not a triangle. Three. One, two, three. One, two, three. Stop imitating a piece of wood. You're dancing not marching. Two, three. One, two, three… oh by the Force."
Virya stops counting, covering her eyes with her elegantly ringed fingers and drawing a deep breath. Her students wobble to a stop.
"He," Virya gestures toward Poe, "is the only one of you with any semblance of natural style."
Poe sketches a little bow, winking at his fellow students.
"I said a semblance. Nothing worth bowing over."
"I like to celebrate the small victories."
"Well, I suppose if those are the only ones you ever have…"
Before Poe can recover with an insult of his own, Virya has moved on to the opposite end of the line, starting with Rose. "You're movements are… unremarkable but inoffensive. Formulaic but technically correct. No amount of teaching will ever change what you are, and so I won't waste further breath on you."
"Lucky me," Rose says.
"You," Virya moves to Finn. "You were clearly a soldier at some point in your life."
"Is that a bad thing?" Finn asks, a touch defiant.
"It is if you dance like you're doing boot camp drills. Try bending your knees. The upper body can continue imitating a plank if you'd like, but the lower body has to move. And you…"
Finally, Virya moves to the center of the line, looking Rey up and down as if she were a grass stain on a white dress.
"And me?" Rey prompts, when the woman's pause stretches out too long.
Virya holds up a silencing hand. "I'm trying to decide."
"On what?"
"Whether there's any hope for you at all whatsoever."
Rey's jaw flexes. "Try advice instead of insults for once, Virya. Maybe then you'd be a useful teacher."
"But you see that's just the trouble. With you I don't even know where to begin."
"All that higher education and you can't use your words?" Poe asks, earning a smile from Rey.
Virya turns to Ben, ignoring her students. "She moves like a man. Of the three of them, she moves most like a man. There's no femininity to her. No grace."
"Maybe if I had an example of feminine grace," Rey snaps, "I could learn some."
Virya smiles, sweeping long blonde hair from her neck. "Very well." She starts toward Poe's end of the line. Then she proceeds to walk straight past him to stand before Ben, holding out her hand. "Shall we?"
Rey's insides prickle.
Ben looks at Virya's hand but makes no move for it. "We agreed that this was your lesson, Virya. Not mine."
"And my lesson requires an assistant. The plebeians need an example of real dancing. Can this little contraption play music?"
BB-8 tips his lens up to Virya and shakes his head, either in refusal to her question or offense at being called a 'contraption'. But D-O gives an excited bobble and, after a soft crackle of static, plays music from his speaker. A lilting tune fills the empty storage unit.
Virya turns back to Ben, hand still extended. "My Lord?"
Ben hesitates, glancing in Rey's direction before taking Virya's hand. The moment they touch, something changes about their bodies. They go straighter, more poised. If possible, more beautiful. Their joined presence unfurls around them, commanding more space than their physical bodies. As they move into the middle of the storage unit, the rest instinctively step back to make room.
Ben bows to Virya from the waist. Virya replies with a dipping motion that should look ridiculous but somehow is just the opposite. And then they dance.
#
The waltz turns out to be a beautiful thing. It hadn't felt beautiful. Not with Virya snapping her fingers and prodding their posture, making them bob back and forth like fishing baubles tangled in the line. But with a pair who knew what they were doing, the sight was mesmerizing. Like the tide, or wind rippling through tall grass. Ben and Virya sweep around the room, perfectly in sync. The hard lines of Ben's body form a frame for Virya's lithe grace; her twirling and leaning, him guiding and tethering, like a sun pulling its planet to orbit. They draw a wide circle, commanding the entire room. Once or twice, Virya spins out as if to move away from Ben entirely, pauses for a moment, then comes back, resuming the pattern.
Rey watches with a pit in her stomach. She wants to look away, but the grace of the dance and her own pride demands that she watch through to the very end. As she does, she can't stop herself from remembering what Rosshel had said at the auction.
You've spent so long saving yourself for Kylo Ren…
Rey can see it now, a glimpse of how things might have been. The future for which Virya had been saving herself. The Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, mantled in darkness, fierce and unyielding. And Virya his Queen, cold, cruel, and achingly beautiful, loyal only to him. There wouldn't have been a soul in the universe who'd have challenged them. There wouldn't have been any who'd have dared.
The music from D-O's speaker warbles, then slows. Rey blinks, shaking off the unwanted glimpse into a future that hadn't come to pass. Ben and Virya come to rest in the middle of the floor. He bows, she dips, and the music fades out.
Ben steps back before the final note dies, his hand sliding out from under Virya's, breaking the spell of their dance. He looks for Rey, trying to catch her eye. But Rey keeps her gaze fixed on Virya. She doesn't want to meet his gaze before she's reined in the unexpected emotions.
Virya, for her part, is watching Ben step away. Something like longing steals briefly across her face.
"Wow," Rose breaks the silence. "That was really beautiful."
Grudgingly, Rey has to agree.
"That was a waltz," Virya says, her haughty demeanor returning. "Hopefully you noticed several moments where we nearly separated. Normally, that would be the moment for a partner change."
"Partner change?" Finn repeats. "You don't stick with the person you started with?"
"You're expected to do this with strangers?" Poe asks disbelievingly.
"So sorry to make it more complicated for you," Virya says with false sympathy. "But a member of high society should be able to dance with any partner, whether you've known them for five years or five minutes. For the next part of our lesson, you will divide into pairs. Once you can each manage a box step without tripping over one another, we'll try to dance in a group."
"How many days do we have learn this again?" Finn asks.
"Not enough," Poe replies.
"My point precisely," Virya agrees, sending a less than discrete glance toward Rey. "Now, form a line again and-"
A light, chiming noise interrupts Virya's directive, rippling relief along Rey's spine. Judging by the sudden sagging down the line of students, she isn't alone.
"Saved by the bell. Thanks, buddy." Poe grins at BB-8. The droid rolls with excitement as the timer on his internal clock continues ringing, signaling that Virya's morning waltz lessons have come to an end. The group flees to a stack of crates, where 3PO had left sandwich bags earlier that day. Virya refuses hers, glancing at the meal as it were a pile of tauntaun dung.
Rey wedges herself between Rose and Finn while she chews, still avoiding Ben's gaze. She isn't really hungry, she never is these days, but there's no way to get out of eating lunch with all her friends standing around her. Besides, food is a distraction to help keep the memory of the waltz at bay along with the unwanted feelings it had stirred up inside her.
"Now we can finally get to the useful part," Finn says, wolfing down his lunch and reaching for a training saber propped against the wall.
Virya scoffs. "I hardly think this part is more useful. If you could dance half as well as you fight, you wouldn't need lessons."
"When the kriff hits the fan, dancing won't keep us alive," Poe points out, swallowing the last of his sub and twirling a blaster around his index finger. "But these will."
"The only reason for 'kriff' to hit the fan is your cover being blown because you're such horrendous dancers."
"You'd think that," Rose says while charging up her own blaster, a heavy model that requires two hands to hold. "But spend some more time around these three, and somehow you always end up needing these."
Virya rolls her eyes and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like 'savages' before slinking over to the same crate Ben had been sitting on earlier and arranging herself on it.
"Don't want to join us, Princess?" Poe smirks. "This is the fun part."
Virya replies with a glare sharper than a vibro-blade.
Poe shrugs. "Your loss. Hey Rose, help me set up some of these crates as targets. I'll teach you how to shoot from the hip. But like, literally."
Rey has hardly gotten her fingers around the hilt of her training saber before Finn is at her side, grinning and eager.
"Ready to start training me, Master Rey?"
Rey laughs. "I'm no Master."
Finn shrugs. "Relatively speaking."
Rey grins and swings the training saber at his shins in response.
#
"You're not going about it the right way," Rey corrects about twenty minutes later. "It's a light saber. Not a sword. Not a Z6 baton. Understand?"
"Okay. Right." Finn pants. "Lightsaber. Lightsaber."
"Are you just… repeating what I'm saying without really understanding it?"
"I think I might be."
Rey sighs, lowering her guard. "It's not about the weight of the weapon. A lightsaber duel isn't won by whoever hits hardest. The energy blade will cut through anything it touches. Got it? Anything except another lightsaber."
"Almost anything."
Rey and Finn turn to see Ben leaning against a wall, arms crossed, watching their lesson.
"Sorry?" Rey asks, dampening the little jolt that runs down her body.
"A lightsaber will cut through almost anything it touches. But not Cortosis or Phrik. Mandalorian Iron was also impervious to a lightsaber, but no one knows how to make that anymore."
"Got it." Finn says in a decidedly final manner before turning back to Rey, steel in his eyes.
"Right. Er. Ready to go again?" Rey asks.
Finn nods, palming the training saber in his hands. If possible, he seems even more tense than before.
"Alright," Rey resumes her dueling stance. "Whenever you're ready."
He comes at her like a bull. Rey sidesteps easily, batting his saber as she does. Finn skids, flat footed, re-grips his weapon, then wheels to charge again. Rey fights back a sigh of frustration. Finn is physically strong and he probably has the most fighting experience out of all of them, after a lifetime as a storm trooper and then as a rebel. But his movements are obvious and unthoughtful. Rey can predict them with ease. He comes several more times at her, and she dodges each one.
Rey's gaze slants to Ben, still watching from the wall. Beyond him, Rey sees Virya sitting on her crate, looking utterly bored. Rey forces her gaze away, face going hot. She'd criticized Virya for being a poor teacher. But it turned out she herself was no better. She feels embarrassed. Not of Finn. But of her own inability to teach. Self conscious because Ben is watching, and annoyed with herself for letting that get to her. The next time Finn charges, Rey strikes harder than she means to, knocking the training saber clear from his hands.
Finn groans as his weapon clatters to the floor. "I don't understand. Why can't I land a single hit?"
"You're still just… taking the wrong approach," Rey says, feeling useless for only being able to repeat what are obviously the wrong words. "It's not about just furiously attacking. It's…" she searches, trying to find a way to express it the feeling of a duel. The pulse of it. "It's like a pace of movement or a kind of rhythm. Like…"
"A dance."
Ben's words land neatly into the hole Rey is struggling with. She should be surprised that he has found the perfect words for her. She isn't.
"Yes," Rey says, shoulders easing. "Like a dance."
Finn doesn't even look at Ben this time. But Rey can see the words have landed from the way his jaw locks tight. Finn exhales deeply from his nose. "A fight that's like a dance? Sorry but I don't get that."
Before Rey can reply, Ben's hand lands on her shoulder, squeezing lightly.
"Then," he says, "how about we give you an example."