Happy May the 4th everyone!

Everything about the scene felt wrong.

The sun shone brightly, its heat having finally pierced through the salt heavy fog that had blanketed the early morning hours. The port town was now full of life and bustle. Dock workers carried goods up and down gangplanks, captains haggled with each other over new crew, and a musician was performing on the nearby promenade to earn his daily wages.

Even Lando, Rey's breakfast companion, had a mood far too sunny for what was occurring behind the scenes.

"And this is called pi'ana," he told her. "It's an herb local to the Guarama islands. The locals there like to mix it with the saffa paste and top their morning bread with it."

He picked up a large, crinkled green leaf the color of a gemstone and began to demonstrate exactly that. Rey smiled tightly, forcing herself to try and at least pretend to match her hosts high spirits.

She took the offered treat with a polite nod. It tasted light and minty yet sank like a bitter stone in her stomach. Her husband was alone on the Falcon now. She had wanted to be by his side but he had insisted otherwise. Rey had tried to hide her hurt at this request, and Lando had immediately guided her away to an adjacent cafe to ply her with lighthearted tales of sea life.

His stories had drifted from the raucous to the outright improbable. From high seas naval battles to a far-fetched story of distant northern island haunted by bloodthirsty mermaids. Rey feigned listening. Her husband had been saying goodbye to his mother's corpse for over an hour now. It wasn't until Lando, perhaps a little short on conversation with his largely mute companion, began to narrate particularly wild adventure he'd had with Kylo's father that Rey's control snapped.

"He doesn't have anyone else now!"

Her voice was pitched enough that the next table looked up from their meal in alarm.

Rey immediately quieted. She dropped her voice and leaned closer to Lando. The steam rising from her cup of caf itched at her nose.

"My husband is all alone now," she repeated. "He has no family left at all. No one to turn to or guide him. Unless you count his uncle and, er-"

She didn't know quite how to finish that sentence. Lando nodded. He reached out and lightly patted the top of her right which was currently clutching her unused serving fork like an anchor.

"I am very aware of the Prince's relationship with his uncle, believe me. But you're also wrong, Rey. He's not alone. He has you."

The sun shifted its angle to be covered by the clouds. Rey didn't answer until it came back.

"I can't help him. I can't. He needs someone to- can you? Can you help him? Tell him that… that he needs to go back. Become the Emperor and..."

And somehow fix everything. Her eyes met his, her gaze all but begging. Captain Calrissian pulled his hand away and shook his head.

"I was close with his father. In the Prince's mind that makes me his enemy. He'll no more listen to me than he would that abysmal redheaded snake in his mother's court."

Rey gave a humorless snort. The description felt far too generous for the likes of Hux.

"Who then?" she asked quietly. "Kylo wants to leave. Wants to disappear and just let Alderaan fall to war. We may win, or not, but he acts like he doesn't care. He acts like the business is already decided and the matter is settled."

She lifted up the pi'ana bread to her lips then set it down. Lando turned his gaze from her slumped shoulders to the shadow of the Falcon's prow behind her.

"Does he care?" he asked.

Rey had thought about that all morning long, from the moment she had woken up in bed alone to find her husband already dressed and about to set out to the docks without her.

She hesitated before answering. The table next to them had moved away and they were alone out on the balcony garden now.

"He does. It's his birthright and part of his soul."

Lando nodded. He leaned away now that there was no need for hushed voices. The deep lines on the corners of his eyes crinkled as a smile began to form. Rey had tried to guess his age but it was hard to place. Seventies maybe? Or judging by the spanning of his spoken adventures perhaps even older?

"You talk to him and he'll listen. A man only needs love to guide him. He loves you and you love him, that much was clear from the moment I saw you together."

Warmth crept up Rey's cheeks so suddenly she had to sip her still too hot caf to hide it. Captain Calrissian had such an easy going, familiar way about him. It was far too easy to forget that he was a stranger she was pouring the worries of her heart out too.

"But… but what if he suffers from it? If I convince him to- to take the throne back and his life becomes a misery and its all my fault? Shouldn't I guide him to happiness? Isn't that what a wife is supposed to do?"

Calrissian's smile fell. The almost scolding look he gave her made her sit a little straighter in her chair.

"And who would suffer for that, Rey? Would it truly be happiness at the expense of so many others?"

She shook her head immediately. Mouthed the word no when her breath wouldn't let her speak. It was a question she had already decided on the answer to, but it still stung to have it brought out into the open.

"Sacrificing comfort for the sake of a whole kingdom? That's a noble action, Rey. Nobility runs in that family's blood. Nobility and reckless poor decisions. It's up to you to help guide which one the Prince chooses. Ah, speak of the little devil."

He stood up from his chair. Rey frowned, confused, until her husband's shadow blocked out the glare from the water.

Kylo held out a hand to her and helped her rise. He ignored Lando completely. Rey studied him. There wasn't a single trace of emotion now or from before. Her husband's expression was as cold and neutral as when he'd caught her sneaking about his room that fateful night.

"We can go now, Rey. Your meal is-"

"Already paid for, courtesy of the coffers of the Falcon," Lando interrupted. "Now sit down, kid, I'm going to have a word with you. Miss Rey, if you'll please give us a moment?"

Kylo's grip on her hand tightened. He turned his attention from her to the Captain and a familiar shadow crossed his face.

"While I think you for your assistance with the circumstance Calrissian, we have nothing further to say to each other."

He turned, beginning to pull Rey away with him. Lando cleared his throat and loudly kicked Rey's now unoccupied chair out from the edge of the table again.

"Sit your damned ass down, boy. I've got some things that need saying, and you're going to hear them."

Kylo's face turned red. His lips tightened and then two men held a silent face off. Rey bounced her wrist, reminding him that he was still clinging to her like a manacle.

His palm snapped open, freeing her, and she stepped aside.

"I'll be waiting downstairs by the front doors."

Kylo's gaze fell heavy against her shoulders as she retreated.

They walked with silently driven mispurpose as she poured her grief out into him. It should have been the other way round.

The city was left far behind them as they walked. Kylo had lead her like a man haunted, but his face had rarely given anything honest away. Now they were so deep out in the grass covered sand dunes ringing the port city that they could hardly even hear the noise of it above the crashing of the waves.

She talked. Cried. He listened to both, but it wasn't until Rey had uttered her final plea that Kylo stopped.

"It's just you and me, Rey. Us against the world. You're all I have."

He caught her falling tears against the smooth palms of his gloved hands. The gesture held a softness that his words didn't quite match.

"And you to me as well," she whispered, her heart aching in strange directions.

The day was becoming overcast. She wrapped her husband's shawl tighter around herself. Skin that only an hour before had begun to brown in the sun was now bristling with the change in weather.

Kylo directed her to a large piece of fallen driftwood and drew her into his lap as he sat down.

"Yesterday you wanted this, darling wife of mine. What changed you?"

He wasn't' angry with her, Rey was sure of it, but there had been an edge to him since he'd left the cafe. Rey had heard sounds of a disagreement from upstairs, but it hadn't drawn enough attention from the staff to cause too great of concern. The fact that Lando had emerged unscathed and kissed her hand goodbye as Kylo loomed a thundercloud in the background revealed far more about the two men's encounter with each other than her own husband had told.

"You mean who had changed my mind?"

"Yes."

That same nettlesome tone that he'd held when he addressed his uncle. Some day in the very far distance Rey resolved to find out exactly what had swept through the Skywalker line to cause so much bad blood with all associated to it.

"Lando had made things clearer, yes, but he hadn't changed anything. I needed to hear what he had to say. What we want is selfish, Kylo. Too selfish to bear."

A silent tear streaked down her cheek. Kylo softly huffed and pulled her to his chest.

"What is selfish? A chance at a life of our own? For us to make our own way free of the burdens of the man you were married off to? I would give you anything in the world to make you happy Rey. I know that you will never truly be content back within those stone walls."

Rey flinched at that. At the way he was trying to make her his scapegoat. She caught one of his gloved hands and began to roll her thumbs around his knuckles in figure eight motions.

"It was never just the two of us, Kylo. Never will be, either. Even if we run away. Live on a land far away. Have a family of our own, a quiet life of our own. What you are will always be there. You can't run from that nor should you. It wouldn't be right of me to tell you anything else. Lando simply helped me to understand that."

Kylo's scoff sounded like a growl with her face pressed against his neck.

"Karking Calrissian. Always did have a way of getting into things he shouldn't. No wonder he and dad were such good friends."

It was the first time her husband had used anything other than his father's first name. Rey started to peel back the soft leather of his gloves. He hadn't been wearing them this morning but, when he'd left the cafe with her by his side, he'd drawn they from his jacket pocket.

The skin across the knuckles of his right hand was red and broken. Rey frowned and looked up.

"You struck him? That nice old man?"

Kylo was glaring off into the distant ocean. The direction he had been so determined they should go tomorrow. Rey elbowed him and his sighed.

No, I didn't hit him. I tried to. He dodged. I hit the wall instead and then I was angry so I hit it again."

"Oh… Kylo."

The worst part was that Rey believed him. Believed him absolutely.

"Clearly this is behavior of the noble Emperor of a proud Kingdom, isn't that right Wife?"

Ah, there was the bite of anger. Bitter and caustic, Rey could see how easily her husband could have fallen prey to it once. That it, like his nobility, will always be a part of him no matter what.

She pulled away and sat next to him. Kylo's arms clung on, making each movement pettily difficult for her.

"So we go across the ocean and buy a house. You make love to me every day and keep me full with your children. Is that what you want?"

Kylo's gaze darkened at her words. He tried to reach for her and she swatted him away. Caught his left hand and held it steady.

"Ah what a terrible existence indeed, Rey. How dreadfully happy we could be."

She shook her head and started to pull his glove back, bearing his impossibly pale skin to the chilled air. The leather caught on the simple band of his wedding ring before sliding free.

"What would our happiness be like when we hear of the war then? When we are so far away that it's too late to change our minds? When we here of kingdoms falling or rising, of so much death and chaos as our little ones run about our feet? What would that be like, Kylo?"

She started to pull off his wedding ring. He frowned and curled his hand into a fist to stop her.

"This is our time to choose," she pushed. "Answer me what that would be like."

The breeze picked up. Sand was pulled along with it and Rey closed her eyes before it could sting. When she opened them her husband was as still as a statue.

"Kylo-"

"It would be unbearable."

Rey hummed in assent. Unbearable was too nice a word for the crush of endless guilt that existence would bring. She uncurled his hand and began to work that ring off.

"You said you would do anything for me, Kylo. Even this?"

He watched listless as she pulled off her own ring. Her finger felt so strange without its surprising weight.

"Yes."

Lando had made her mind clear, but brought up her worst fears along with it. The vision of a life fraught with endless self recriminations of what should have been. But it brought with it another question as well.

"Life is too short to spend grieving for the future. What is it you're most afraid of?"

She clutched both their rings in her open palm now. Kylo reached out and ran his thumb across them before wrapping his hand over hers.

"Losing you."

He hadn't spoken about what had happened on the ship. In Rey's mind she pictured him sitting quietly next to an empty coffin and confessing all his sins. Likely she would never know if that was the truth of it or not.

"Death will come for me some day, husband, but its the only way I'll leave you and it won't be for long."

His gaze held steadily down. The grip on her hand tightened until the two bands began to make their presence known against her palm.

"I forced you into a marriage-" he began. Rey cut him off immediately.

"Let's do it again then. Here and now."

She rose, this time the one to pull him along with her.

"Rey-"

She pointed to the left.

"Up there on that hill. We'll have a view of both the desert and ocean. That's a good place for it."

The sand dune was short but the way slippery. Rey kept their hands locked, their two rings held firm between the both of them. Kylo followed like a man either being lead to the gallows or holy communion.

From the top the view was as she had hoped it would be. The ocean was vast and endless to one side, the desert disappearing in a haze of salt dust turning to sand with the growing distance. She would have to imagine the mountains behind them, and somewhere even further laid Alderaan and the palace.

It was here that they exchanged their vows. Their real ones. Rey began first, reciting words were only half formed from when the notion of this had first crossed her mind as she waited in the cafe. She forgot all of what had been planned in an instant and could never remember them again afterwards.

Kylo, for his part, changed from confused to shy to half broken. Finally, at the very end when he professed his undying love, it was filled with the same perfect arrogance Rey had come to be so ruined by.

Rings were returned to where they belonged. This kiss was different then any of there others. A pact was made. They were going back to the palace. What would happen next was up to the gods.

Kylo took her head between his hands and kissed his next words against her forehead.

"We fight together and we die together. That's all that's left for us now."

Rey didn't have to think before she answered. Only breathed and accepted the path that fate had taken them down.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," she said, and there wasn't a part of her that didn't mean it.

Author's Note:

Okay. Okay? Okay I hope!

And yay! Vow renewal or 2nd marriage? I'll say 2nd marriage, since Rey hadn't really meant what she'd been forced to say the first time.

And yes, the decision to have their exact vows private was a conscious one :)

Neeeeext chapter (zero zilch nada promises when that will be) will either be a continuation of the main storyline or….. or just our duo frantically raw-dogging each other on their (re)wedding night ;) I may actually put The Boinkening in its own side fic because I feel like it wouldn't quite fit in with the tone of the story where it is at this point.

Anyhow, see ya'll again soon hopefully! :)