She's danced with Ben before, dozens of times. Just never with an audience. Never with the stakes quite so high.

The weight of those stakes is made heavier by the memory of Virya and Ben, who sweep before Rey's eyes like specters as she step down onto the ballroom floor. The two of them dance together in all their regal, untouchable grace. Despite hours of practice, Rey had never caught up to that. Even given a lifetime, she still wouldn't. Rey knows what she is. A fighter, a scavenger, a tinkerer and a pilot. She knows fuselages and haggling. With training, she had become a Jedi connected to the Force.

But she wasn't a Vorian, and no training in the universe could make her into one. Rey would never be as stunning beside Ben as Virya had been beside Kylo. That was just a fact. She hadn't let it bother her much before. After all, she and Ben shared other things, more important things, that Virya could never touch. But here at the Frost Ball, she felt suddenly nervous and insufficient.

Would the other guests notice? Would they be able to tell, just by watching, that she was a fraud? True, no one knew that the mystery man was actually their dead Supreme Leader, risen from the grave to bring everything down on their heads. But even the sight of Virya with a new fiance would prompt the comparison. As the guests watched more closely, comparing the two couples, wouldn't they notice the one lacking was not the masked man, but Virya herself?

The violins warm up. Rey's guts flex and tauten with the strings, tuning her nerves.

She looks to Ben, the only person who might know what she is feeling. But instead of his face, Rey sees Virya reflected in his visor. She looks away from the other woman's reflection, further unsettled. Annoyed with herself for even needing to seek reassurance.

Snap out of it, she scolds. You weren't this nervous with Jae.

But that was because Rey had never seen Virya and Jae dancing together. She didn't have a mental image to compare against her own deficiencies. And because she'd been able to distract herself with work.

The orchestra plays the opening notes of the dance. Ben bows. Rey curtsies. Then Ben's hand lands on her waist. His touch is like an anchor, pulling her from the dark storm of her thoughts. Bringing her back to herself. He frames her in his long arms and broad chest. It is the most familiar place she's been all night.

"Nervous?" he murmurs.

"A little."

"This isn't your first time, though."

"No," Rey says, deflecting. "I've been nervous many times."

The waltz begins. She recognizes it. It's one that involves the starting partners to separate and spin in overlapping circles with the other dancers before coming back together again. It was more about timing than technical skill, a dance that required you to not only to be in sync with your own partner, but with all the others couples as well. The first three times Virya had tried to teach it to them, she, Finn, and Rose had all collided like pin balls. It had taken days of Virya verbally cutting them up to get it just right.

But for the first few movements, it is just Ben and Rey. Rey who is not Virya and never will be. But she won't let herself burrow into what she isn't good at. Instead she'll focus on what she is: her mission. Taking down the First Order. Saving the universe from war and darkness. Again.

"My first dance with Jae was informative."

Ben tenses slightly. He twirls her, his free hand resting on the small of his back. Rey's dress whirls around them like a swirling nebula.

"I saw."

The orchestra cues the first separation. Rey and Ben turn from each other, briefly facing other partners. Rey's is a young man, who seems surprised and thrilled to be face to face with the Virya Vorian. She dips politely past him, their wrists briefly touching, then she circles back around to Ben.

"Good news," she says. "I know when and where the meeting is tonight."

"Bad news?" His hands frame her waist and, while twirling, lifts her off the ground. She dips her head down to his ear.

"He wants me to go alone."

Ben puts her down. Hard. Before they spin away from each other, his fingers clench on hers. It feels like an involuntary spasm rather than an attempt at unspoken communication. They circle different partners, then reunite. Ben twirls her one, twice, then pulls her so sharply back to him that Rey has to catch herself on his chest. He's fuming.

"Absolutely. Not."

"Listen. Maybe if I-"

"No."

"Wait, just… just listen for a-"

"No."

The music demands they separate again. Rey spins out, ignoring a quizzical look from her new partner, a middle aged man who must see the irritation on her face. She dips perfunctorily around him, wrists touching briefly, and then banks for another round with Ben. He wheels around his own partner and angles for her like an X-wing. When the meet, its practically a collision.

"You think I like it?" she whispers harshly. "I don't. But if I don't go alone, they may not let me in at all. So we need to discuss the possibility-"

Ben dips her. Very sudden and very deep. Rey's stomach lurches, displacing the words that had been in her throat. She clutches instinctively to him for balance.

Then he pulls her back up and continues the dance as if he hadn't nearly dropped her.

"Nice," she snaps. "Very mature."

"We're not discussing it. You are not going alone."

He twirls her. Rey grits her teeth, trying very hard not to let her Rey-annoyance break through her Virya-veneer. They separate, spin around other partners, then come together again.

"Why do you always have to be so difficult?" she hisses.

"Look whose talking."

"You're the one who said this was important. Remember? You're the one who keeps reminding us that everything rides on this. If we don't pull this off tonight, it all goes to nothing."

"And if you die tonight, my life goes to nothing," Ben snaps. "So stop talking about going alone."

Rey's mouth snaps shut. The music cues for separation and she, a bit numbly, starts to turn away from Ben for the partner change.

His hand catches her wrist. He pulls her back into him. Despite the crescendo of music around them, the dancers all swirling and twirling as fast as they can, Ben stands still in the middle of it all, holding her there with him.

"What are you doing? The dance-"

"Promise me you won't," he says, his voice still fierce but now sapped of anger. "We figure something out. We lie or cheat or deceive them in some way, I don't care, but you don't go alone. You have to promise me that, or I'm not letting you go."

Rey stands enclosed in Ben's arms, shocked at the risk that he is taking. At the sudden intensity of his emotion.

Behind her, she can hear the outrage of whoever was meant to be her final partner, demanding Ben release her.

"-cuse me, Sir… Sir! If you please, you are breaking the form of the waltz!"

Ben doesn't care. He ignores the man behind her, and the woman waiting behind him. He ignores the dancers spinning all around them and just stands there, waiting for her, anchored in a world within the other world. A world from which, until she gives her promise, she will not be able to break free.

Does she even want to?

"Okay," she says, even though she cannot fathom how this will work, how the two of them aren't dooming the entire mission by making an impossible promise to each other. Even still, she says to him, "I promise."

#

As the music ends, the couples drift off the floor. Rey is still slightly dazed by Ben's sudden break of emotion and the impossible promise she'd made to him in response. They say nothing to each other, but as they reach the edge of the steps, Rey cannot bring herself to let go of his hand.

Two men are fast approaching them, each holding two drinks. Rey is half way through waving them off when something about the darker man's gait catches her eye. She does a double take.

"F-" She chokes down the name in time from saying it aloud. Finn? Poe?!

"We thought you could use a drink," not-Finn says, holding a glass out to Rey.

Rey accepts it, albeit a bit dumbly. It's warm against her fingers. Ben takes the other glass from not-Poe.

"So, old friend," not-Poe says a bit louder than necessary and, to Rey's surprise, claps Ben on the back in a very chummy way. "Won't you introduce me to your fiance? You said she might be interested in investing in my little project, didn't you?"

Ben's mask stares at Poe, silently asking what in the Force they're doing approaching them directly.

"Perhaps we can go somewhere with a bit of privacy? The project is all very… proprietary." Not-Poe indicates over his shoulder at a series of small balconies lining the exterior of the dome. Rey hadn't noticed them earlier, either because the snow outside had been too thick to see them clearly, or she'd been too taken with the rest of the room.

"If you'll lead the way," she says. "I'd be interested to hear more."

The four of them stroll toward an empty balcony, not-Poe chatting enthusiastically away about what a good business opportunity he thinks this venture would be for the Vorian estate. Ben stops to lever open the balcony door, a pane of glass and steel that blends seamlessly with the rest of the dome. A frigid wind gusts around them. They step out quickly before the other guests can notice and Ben shuts the door behind them.

Outside the air is stiff and cold, making Rey's chest tighten. She takes a sip of the drink, which warms her slightly, some sort of mulled wine. She tries not to think how they are standing thousands of feet over an alien canyon. How someone might be watching them from inside the dome.

Once outside, not-Finn turns to Ben. He asks a question that Rey can barely hear over the wind. "… private out here…? Safe… speak?"

Ben nods.

Finn nods, then wheels on Rey. "No," he says. "No way in the Force."

"No, what?" Rey raises her brows, maintaining the persona of Virya just in case someone is watching them through the glass, snow-pelted walls. She angles herself so her back is to the ballroom just in case.

"No… conversation you… had on… dance floor." Finn is nearly whispering. Rey is only catches every other word, but it's enough to get the idea. He knows about her and Ben's argument on the dance floor, and that she'd suggested going to the Inner Circle meeting alone.

"What? How did you-"

"Forgot about these?" Poe tucks a dark curl behind his ear, his thumb lingering on his earlobe for a moment longer than natural.

The nano radios. The thought hits Rey like a sack of bricks. I'm an idiot.

"Turn it on and you can hear us through the mic."

Rey thinks about the device turning on for three full seconds and hears a little beep in her ear.

"Better?" Poe whispers, so soft that she can't actually hear the words from his mouth. She hears them, however, through the microphone planted in her ear.

Ben's must have been activate when they were dancing. And that means Finn, Poe, and Rose (wherever or whoever she was), had heard their conversation. Their entire conversation.

Rey is suddenly grateful it's so bloody cold out here. She can blame the temperature for the red pooling in her cheeks.

"That's already been settled," Rey says, a little sharper than necessary. "I won't go it alone."

"Great," Poe says, turning to Ben and Finn. "But I vote we put together at least a sketch of a plan before she changes her mind. First, where exactly is this happening?"

"The tower at midnight," Rey whispers as low as she can. The wind lifts her words away into the night, but the others can hear her through the nano radios in their ears.

"I know it," Ben says. "At the very top of the palace. Don't look up in case one of them is watching."

Finn's head jerks back down. "Are there any other ways inside? Could we could sneak in without them knowing?"

Ben goes silent for a moment. Long enough that Rey knows he doesn't like the answer. "No. There's a staircase. One way in and one way out. As far as I've ever seen at least."

"Then we make them let us in with her," Poe says. "Say we're her special advisors or something."

"That won't work," Rey says. "Jae wasn't even supposed to tell me about the meeting. They don't want her there. I think it will take all the convincing to just get me in the door."

"Wait," Ben says suddenly. "I just remembered something."

Finn glances at him. "Another way in?"

"Of sorts."

"Of sorts? What does that mean, 'of sorts'?"

"Yeah, now really isn't the time to be cryptic. I think I preferred when you were throwing Force tantrums. At least I always knew what you were thinking."

Ben ignores the comment. "The tower only has one door. But it also has a balcony. Like this one, but even smaller. I could wait there, just outside. The nano-radio connection would let me hear everything. With the snow storm, they may never notice I'm there. If we're lucky."

"If we're lucky?" Rey repeats incredulously. "Ad what if we're not?"

Ben doesn't have an answer for that.

"Wait, hang on," Finn frowns. "So there's one stairway up, right? And one door in. And the tower is the only room that opens onto the balcony?"

"That's right."

"Alright so, maybe I'm being stupid here," Finn continues. "But how are you going to get onto the balcony if you can't go through the tower."

In response, Ben's helmet tilts marginally toward the cliff face, out of which the palace itself has been carved.

It takes Rey only a moment to catch onto what he is thinking. When she does, her stomach drops.

"You're joking," Finn says, his tone deadpan.

When Ben doesn't answer, Rey takes his hand, gripping it hard. "You're not."

"Sorry," Poe interrupts. "Now, I'm not following. What exactly is he not?"

"This idiot," Finn says, crossing his arms, "is planning to climb."