1/3/2 21:40
Rey's tidying up what's left of dinner when Kylo gets back from taking Jon home.
For a moment, he just re-acclimates himself. Poe, and apparently, Cassie weren't kidding about the storm. It's hit full force now, and even in the house, he can feel the power of the wind. Everything around them is just, slightly, shaking. He can hear it, too, certainly. It's howling around them. He steps over to the window, and cups his hands around his face, blocking the light of the room reflecting off the transteel, and looks out. When they left, he knew he could see the lights of the rest of Lirium. They're gone, now. Just howling, shifting, black.
Kylo shrugs a bit. As long as no one goes out in it, everyone should be fine. Cold, but fine. Then he heads over to Rey, taking up the dishes she washes, pulling a towel to hand, and drying them.
"Thanks," she says.
He nods. "If we got a rack over the sink, we could just keep them there, and they'd dry off, drip into the sink, and we wouldn't need to dry them."
"You guys have something like that at Luke's?"
"Yeah. None of us, even Luke, loved chores that we didn't have to do." He steps across the kitchen, to the shelf where the dishes live, and puts the dry one back. She can feel he's thinking about today, and talking with Jon, especially about who's bankrolling this place. "Of course, we could also just get a sonic for the dishes. Pop them in that, run it, and not have to worry about cleaning them at all."
She shrugs a bit. Aware of the fact that sonics aren't just for cleaning people. "I suppose we could. Do you have any idea what they cost?"
"Nope. Can't be too much. Jon's got one in his apartment."
She nods, and hands him another clean and wet plate. "How much do you get paid?"
He shrugs. "I honestly don't know. Probably around fifty thousand credits a year, but…"
"Is that a lot?"
Kylo shrugs again. "I don't know the answer to that, either. It's more than the thousand a month we pay the newest recruits who are still in testing and training. It's probably, I hope, less than we pay top-rate navigators."
"You hope?"
"The report I'm supposed to read next is about how far below our recruiting goals we are on navigators. I've been told good ones can go for more than a million credits a year, so… Part of why that report's on my desk is they want my approval to start paying navigators a hell of a lot more, and to fast track citizenship for any of them who agree to sign up."
"Ah…"
"Yeah." He shrugs, and then floats the plate over to the shelf. "All part of offering a better deal, I guess."
"Good luck."
"Thanks."
They stand there, quietly washing and drying dishes for a few moments. Then he says, "There was something you wanted to talk to me about…"
She nods. And points to the faucet, which is on, with a modest flow coming out. "That's it. The tap's fully open, and that's as much will come out."
Kylo narrows his eyes a bit. He generally doesn't pay that much attention to the sink. He turns the handle, water comes out, but… This is looking awfully sluggish. "There should be a lot more of it than that, right?"
She nods. "The pipes are freezing."
"Again."
"Again. And the lake's frozen down to the point where the ice is going to block the intake soon."
He nods at that, too. "Finn and Poe buried it deeper last month, right?"
"Yes, they did. And the ice has caught up to them, and unless this is it," she gestures to the storm raging around them, then her voice goes sarcastic, "and it magically warms up in the next day or so, it's going to overtake our water intake in the next few days."
He rubs his lips together. "Ice over the intake means no running water."
"Yeah."
He looks at the limp trickle of water, and Rey, and back to the water. "I rather like running water."
"Yeah. Me, too. My sense is there's no one in the settlement who prefers lugging blocks of snow and ice inside their cottages to thaw it out and use it like that." She feels like that's necessary, because, of course, they can bug out, live in his rooms in the Supremacy and enjoy all the running water they like. Everyone else though…
"I can't imagine that's anyone's idea of fun." He echoes her point.
Rey can feel he's making conversation to let her work up to saying it out loud.
She sighs, bites her lip, and then does it. "I need help. We need help. Rose thinks that if we had a precision drill, and a team who knows how to do it—"
"Done."
She doesn't blink. It's not like him agreeing to this is anything of a surprise. The warm, pleased, happy feel coming off of him at the fact that he can really do something for the settlement is also not a surprise, other than it's more intense than she was expecting.
The fact that he blinks out of their home, and is gone for a quarter hour before popping back up and saying– "Got it. C8 tells me that I'll have an engineer in my office first thing in the morning. I'll bring him… her… whoever over and they should have it set and ready to go day after that. C8 asked if we wanted an entire water processing plant, or just the pipes… but I didn't know, and the engineer will be able to give us plans and what'll be necessary to set them in place."– is something of a surprise, though, really it shouldn't be. He's always been eager to help here, and she's finally giving him something concrete he can do. Or at least get done.
Rey nods, slowly. Feeling somewhat numb. Their… hiding place… not so hidden. Maybe…
"How are you going to bring him here?"
"I was just going to," and he ports to the far side of the room.
Rey nods a bit, and then says, "Do you want people to know you can do that? Jon's probably safe, but…"
Kylo grits his teeth. That's a good point. There's probably a lot of advantage that comes from people not knowing he can do that. "Fly, I guess. Not like I'm low on ships."
"Fly yourself, right?" Because if someone else flies then someone else will know where they are.
He nods. "Yes… Fly the team that does whatever it is, too."
She nods a bit at that. "In between all of the reports, and meetings, and the rest of it…"
He rolls his eyes a bit. "Yeah." Maybe there's a setting on his reports that'll make them read themselves to him. He can fly and listen. Might be worth looking into.
"The only thing Poe's got set for tomorrow is working with the kids."
Kylo purses his lips. Or maybe he could… ask… for help. Because, after all, he's not the only pilot he knows… "So… take Poe with me tomorrow…"
"He probably likes running water, too, though."
"Probably. But since his comes from his ship and is a side product of his fuel processing, he's not quite as dependent on the lake as the rest of us."
"True. But… Maybe he's a bit less busy, but still willing to fly."
Kylo inclines his head. "And he obviously knows the coordinates for Lirium." He smirks a bit, "and how to get off the Supremacy."
Rey smirks at that some, too. "So, you'll ask him, in the morning?"
"Sure. And if he's busy or whatever, I'll fly the engineer myself."
"Okay." She hands him the last dish. As he's drying it, he says, "You know… I could get you your own ship."
"I know."
He nods at that, too. "Just like… engineers, or droids, or… whatever… Just say the word."
"I know."
He looks around their small cottage, and then wraps his arms around her waist and his chin on her shoulder. He nuzzles close, inhaling the scent of her skin and hair, laying a kiss on her neck. "I didn't tell you that story, did I?"
"Mmm?"
"The I know story."
She shakes her head a bit. He was going to tell her, but it'd slipped both of their minds. Apparently, until now. He steps back, takes her hands, and in a moment, they're in the comfy chair, snuggled together under the blankets.
"So, the war's on, and like usual, Mom and Dad are running from the Empire, because, that's just an average day for them. They've got a lot of heat on them, the Falcon is, again, falling apart, and they're low on fuel, or something like that. Pretty much anything that could have gone wrong, did. Which is also, at least from how they tell the stories, also a pretty average day for them.
"They're in the middle of nowhere. A billion klicks from the nearest Rebel base. So, Dad gets the bright idea to take a chance on his old buddy, Lando, and sends the Falcon limping to Cloud City."
"Where things are going to continue to go wrong?" Rey asks.
"Where things are going to continue to go wrong. If anyone was going to ever write the story of Han Solo's life, 'I've Got A Bad Feeling About This, and I'm Right,' would likely be a good title for it."
She chuckles a bit at that. "What happens in Cloud City?"
"Vader wants to lure Luke into a trap. Jabba's got a huge price of my father's head. Cloud City is Lando's first attempt at ruling something, and… He actually was a pretty good ruler. Even then. So, the Empire showed up, wanted my parents and Chewie, they were going to sell Dad to Jabba, and grab Luke when he shows up to save them. Vader made it clear to Lando that this was either going to go easy or hard, and Lando decided his 'Old Friend' wasn't worth the number of people who'd die if he went the hard way."
"Not so good for your dad and mom."
"But very good for the tens of thousands of people who lived in Cloud City. As soon as he got the Empire immediately off his back, Lando cleaned his people out, double-crossed Vader, and then piloted Falcon into the second Death Star, blew the fucker up, and personally crippled the Empire. Did more to win the damn thing than any other person."
"Which is part of why you're taking pages from his book, and not your Mom's."
He smiles. "That, and I look better in a cape than braids."
She laughs at that. "Okay. So, your parents are visiting Lando. So's Vader?"
"Yes, he showed up personally, because apparently my family really enjoys intense meet-the-future-in-laws types of gatherings. Granted, he apparently never figured out Leia was his daughter, so…"
"How?"
"I don't know, and when I asked he didn't have a good answer. For whatever reason, he could feel Luke a billion klicks out, but Mom flew under the scanners. Apparently, being blind to the reality of your offspring is another Skywalker family trait."
She strokes his hair. "I like this."
He smiles a little, and kisses her. "Me telling stories?"
"You feeling comfortable telling them. Joking about them. I can feel some of the sarcasm is defensive, but some of it's just funny."
He thinks about it, watching her, wondering if she'll tell him some of her stories, but she shakes her head, so he keeps going. "Anyway, Uncle Lando hands my Dad over, and for whatever reason, Vader decides that he's going to let my mom and Uncle Chewie watch Lando's guys attempt to freeze Han in carbonite."
"Why?"
Kylo holds up his hands. "No idea. I can tell you that if and when the Order captures someone on our wanted list, we don't set things up so they can have dramatic, teary farewells with their loved ones. We just grab them."
"You hate good stories, don't you?" She's smirking as she says it.
"When it comes to my organization grabbing criminals who've done us wrong, yes. Absolutely. I'm completely in favor of making sure they never get the chance to tell rousing stories of how they got away by the skin of their teeth. Anyway, they've got him chained up, but my Mom lunges forward for one last kiss…" He pauses for a moment… "Might have been their first kiss. I'm not sure about that. Anyway. She says, "I love you," and he, standing there, about to be frozen in carbonite, which, by the way, had never been tested on humans before, and likely wasn't going to be very good for him, says back to her, "I know." Then, into the deep freeze he goes, and…" He rolls his eyes. "Their story goes on pause for three years while Luke comes up with the least intuitive rescue plan in the history of rescue plans."
"So… that's where it ends?"
"No. If it'd ended there, I likely wouldn't have ever heard it as a story. Or existed, period. Time skip a bit, and Dad's out, he's back with Mom, and off to Endor they go. They're trying to get the shield generator down, in yet another amazing plan… Seriously, everyone in the Empire needs to be deeply shamed by getting beaten by these twits. They brought in the entire fleet before they had confirmation the shield was down."
"Uh…"
"And, instead of sending in a bombing team to hit the shield generator from atmo, they landed the craft, walked up to the generator, and then sauntered on in to put the bombs inside of it."
"I'm sure they would have done it from atmo if they could?"
Kylo rolls his eyes. "Maybe… The versions of the story I've heard never indicated there was ever any plan other than using a faked code, landing on the planet, and then taking it out manually."
"Shield around the entire planet?"
"Maybe… I suppose that'd be a reason not to to try and take the shield generator out from atmo… Not a reason for not firing on the generator with the ship they flew onto the planet with. Even the Rebellion had a few guns big enough to blow a hardened target to smithereens. Anyway, they're on the ground, and of course, it's like, six of them versus a billion Stormtroopers, because the Rebellion never believed in sending ten people if five doing the job would make for a really good story.
"And, of course, they get into a fire fight, because from what I can tell the entirety of the plan was, land, walk to the generator, without even so much as a Stormtrooper uniform, sneak in, blow it up."
"How were they going to sneak in?" Rey asks. She's heard Threepio tell this story before, and Kylo's version is… different.
"No idea. Charm and the Force? They had a code to get in and land, but didn't think to keep the ruse going.
"Anyway, fire fight, they're trying to break in. Dad's hot wiring the blast shields. He can hear more Imperials coming up. Mom's covering him. She gets hit. He crouches down next to her, paying attention to her, more Imperials coming up behind them. His body is in front of hers, so they can't see what's going on. He raises his hands, but he can see she's still got her blaster. He looks down, says, 'I love you,' she says, 'I know' back to him, and he jumps to the side and she starts shooting.
"Then Chewie shows up, and saves the day, because he's got a big enough gun to shoot through the blast doors.
"Then they blow up the shield generator.
"And then, the six or so ships that had survived the fight with the two thirds of the Imperial Navy that was up there, all go streaking in against the Death Star, and ten months later, I was born."
She laughs at that. "So… Your parents celebrated the victory?"
"So, my father tells me."
She can feel that's a memory that's warm and pleased.
"Anyway, ever after, they didn't say 'I love you,' but they would say, 'I know' to each other. And, for a while I didn't get it, because it'd be at weird times. Like, they'd be… not fighting. They fought a lot, too, but they'd also just sort of complain at each other, and they'd be doing that, and then one of them would just look at the other and say, I know. And the other one would grin."
Rey stretches up a little bit, and the kisses him on the tip of the nose. "I know."
He kisses her back, looking pleased. "So, you'll be here in the morning, looking to chat with an Engineer."
"Rose'll probably do a lot of the talking, but I'll be here, too. You going to tell him he's doing a favor for 'Mistress of the Maji Rey?'"
"Would it bother you if I did?"
"Might be better than him thinking it's a favor for you. Or… I don't know. Is this the sort of thing we're supposed to… see ramifications for?"
Kylo sighs at that. "I think making sure they can't find their way back here is enough ramifications for one night."
"Probably."
It takes both of them a long time to get settled down. Howling wind shaking their home isn't helping. The fact that Rey's not willing to leave Lirium, wanting to be close if any of the kids need anything, means they're not getting away from the storm.
But slowly, eventually, they sleep.
It's a dream. Kylo knows it's a dream. Beyond that though…
"Please, Ben, you're breaking my heart…" Rey's staring at him, eyes wide and liquid, lips trembling, voice cracking with anguish.
"I have to do this!" He can feel his own tears, feel the heat in his body, and the rage just pouring through him.
"No, you don't!" Her own anger is burning through her sorrow.
"It's the only way…" And it is, anyone even marginally aware of what's going on could see it, but she just won't, and if he could just make her see it, if… He can feel the power starting to coalesce.
There's no place, no sense of why they're saying this to each other, it's just the words, and fear, and hurt, and so much pain, and Rey's backing away from him, tears in her eyes, and his heart is screaming, howling… If she'd only just look she'd understand, but she's blind. Blind to the truth, to reality, to… Everything.
And he can feel his rage piling up, arcing through him, and lightning is sizzling from fingertip to fingertip, and she's holding her… Luke's lightsaber.
Everything around them is shaking and screaming, rending apart. Like the explosion, but bigger, all around…
"Rey, please…" He reaches his hand out, electricity sparking off his fingers. "Please…"
Tears are streaming down her face, but she shakes her head, and steps back.
The lightning arcs off his hands, and her blade rises…
And Kylo wakes with the taste of fear and hate in his mouth, and his heart pounding, clammy with a cold sweat.
For a moment, he's not sure where he is. Silent. Everything is silent and chill.
Then he's oriented again. He's home. In bed. He was asleep. Awake now, really. He sits up and rubs his eyes. It's been a while since he's had a nightmare. Rey's eyes open, and she looks at him, and he shakes his head.
She sits up. "What happened?"
"Bad dream. Go back to sleep."
She can feel how scared he is. "What sort?"
He lies down again, and she snuggles in next to him. He's not sure. It was intense, but… "Just a dream." She was calling him Ben in the dream, and carrying Luke's saber, and there's no version of the present or future where that'll be true, so… "Just my brain feeling a little twisted, I guess."
"You're shaking."
"I know." His body is sparking with electric fear. Or maybe electric dreams. At least the storm is over. That certainly wasn't helping him stay calm.
The images keep dancing in his mind. He supposes that could be the future, a future… a future of a different past, maybe. Force lightning is a skill he hasn't learned. Doesn't intend to, either.
"You want to talk about it?" Rey's rubbing his back.
"No." He kisses her. "Just want to lie here, cuddle until my heart calms down, and go back to sleep."
"Okay." She yawns.
He kisses her again. "Sleep. We don't both need to be tired tomorrow."
She burrows further into his arms, and her breathing evens out.
His does, too. A lot more slowly. He holds Rey close, feeling her warm in his arms, her hair against his face, her skin on his.
He tries not to think about the dream, but it keeps coming back.
They were fighting again, that's clear. She was trying to leave. That's clear, too. They weren't them… That's also clear. The life that let them get here obviously hadn't happened.
It's not real.
He holds her close, his chin on her shoulder. It could have been.
But it didn't.
He's here, now, with her, in their bed, in their home, that tomorrow he'll round some people up to help it make it through the winter and… It's not real.
He rubs his lips together, trying to make himself go calm and quiet.
He misses his mantra. Not the content of it. He doesn't need to be dwelling on everyone who's ever done him wrong. It wasn't great for sleeping, but if he couldn't sleep, meditation at least helped him feel somewhat more rested, but he still hasn't found a new path on that.
It's an old image, but it comes to him. Young Ben, sitting next to the other Padawan, though this is early enough it's only him, M'Gll, and Runa. They're in the chapel, and Luke is sitting before them, comfortably cross-legged, looking peaceful, and saying, "Just relax into it. Settle in, open your mind, and feel the Force. Let it guide and support you."
It's not without some resentment, because he was never good at feeling it, at least not the way Luke wanted him to, (In fact, by a few months later, when it became clear that Ben would happily settle into the dark side of the Force, that Luke would modify his instructions, making it clear he wanted them to settle into light feelings.) that Kylo clears his mind, and lets himself settle.
He doesn't try to pull himself lightward or darkward, he just lets himself float.
According to Luke, the goal was to give up your cares, worries, mind, self, to the Force, and allow yourself to exist, cradled in the power that made starlight into life. He made it seem easy. Like he could just close his eyes and slip into it. Even in the best of times Ben was never great at shutting his mind up.
But… It's late. He's tired. He doesn't have anything better to try. And… He knows the dream isn't the future. It's not a warning per se… Maybe a view of who they could have been. Encouragement to continue the path he's on… Maybe.
He snuggles in deeper against Rey, makes sure the blankets are well-tucked around them, and lets himself sink into the flows of Force around them.
Instead of trying to shut his brain down, he lets it skitter from thought to thought, but doesn't focus on them. They're just things that are happening. And eventually they slow down. Everything does. There's his life force and hers and the glow of their Force, and the flow of energies around them.
And eventually, she's poking him in the shoulder, reminding him that if he hopes to talk to Poe before he heads to the Supremacythat he's got to get up and moving.
And he's tired, and really wants to go back to sleep, but…
It's the first time he can remember praying… or communing really… and not feeling wrong about it.
And that's a pretty nice sensation. (Even if his eyelids crusted to each other, and bones a million kilos, and how the fuck is he this tired… isn't.)
1/4/2
"You look like shit," Poe says when he opens the hydraulic ramp to his ship to let Kylo in.
"Good morning to you, too," Kylo replies, walking up, swathed in head to toe black to combat the cold and snow of Lirium.
Poe's just staring at him, waiting, as Kylo takes off his cowl, and brushes the snow off of himself, and then just stands there for a few moments. Finally he says, "Look, I'm not going to start reading minds anytime soon, so, you've got to talk to me."
Kylo who'd been staring out into space, wishing he'd gotten a few hours more sleep, blinks a few times, remembers where he is and why, mentally curses the fact that, apparently, now that he sleeps on a regular basis he can no longer skip sleeping and still function, unless he's got adrenaline pouring through his system to keep him going.
Poe's still looking at him. "You okay? You and Rey didn't have a fight, did you?"
That jerks Kylo into the present. "What? No! Uh… Nightmares. I have fewer of them now, which means I sleep now, which I didn't used to, but because I sleep now, I turn into a mindless fig if I don't sleep, and… Anyway… You doing anything today?"
Poe nods, pokes Kylo toward his galley, sits him at the table he's got in there, and starts making up the coffee. "Congratulations, you're getting old. When I hit… thirty-three I think, I suddenly couldn't go all day and all night and all the next day without help."
"Lovely."
Poe hands over the coffee, and Kylo slorps it down like it's a lifeline. "So, what do you want my help with?"
"I was wondering, if you'd like to help me get an engineer here to take a look at our very rapidly freezing water system, and make sure that no matter how bloody cold it gets we still have running water. But only if you want to, because I'm trying not to be an entitled asshole about it."
Poe laughs long and hard at that. "And by get an engineer here, you mean?"
"Would you please fly to the Supremacy, and offer transport service to an Engineer, and whatever team and equipment he/she ends up lugging over here to get the job done?"
"A: Yes. And B: Don't you have your own transport?"
"I've got an entire fleet of transport. At last count, I've got over 850,000 ships under my command, and last count was a while ago. That said, I am short on pilots I trust with the location of our settlement."
Poe grins. "Awww… You feel safe with me. I'm touched."
"Uh… Yeah… Sure." He blinks, takes another drink of coffee, feels his brain speed up a bit, and then says, "Shouldn't that be my line?"
Poe raises an eyebrow.
"You knew where Lirium was well before I'd ever let you anywhere near me with a weapon. That said, you appear to be trusting me enough to fly onto the Supremacy."
Poe purses his lips, he hadn't thought about that, and then nods, and then shakes his head. "Apparently, so."
1/4/2
"Good morning," Rey says to Rose and Finn as she steps into their home, much earlier than she usually comes.
Finn is certain that something is going on just outside of his view. Rose appears to know why Rey is here, or at least has a good idea of it, but he's not in on the story.
"Morning," he says, as he works on getting a bite of mushed rice and fluthery into Paige's mouth. Paige seems mostly interested in smearing the mush into her hair and skin.
The ladies are looking at each other. Then Rey goes over to his sink, and turns it on, and… He glares at it, stupid fucking pipes are freezing. Not solid, not yet, but today the water's just dribbling out. Which means they're pretty much hit the point where they're going to have to keep the taps running all the time, otherwise the pipes will burst. But running all the time means the water will freeze in the drains and…
It's a mess. And they're going to be doing a lot of digging, which he's not exactly looking forward to, especially digging through frozen ground, in the very, very cold air. (He's not the weather witch Cassie is, that girl can feel a cold snap coming three days away, but he's got an awfully good feel for it, and if it gets above -15 today, or less than ten centimeters of snow, he'll be damned.)
He's glaring at the water, as he says, "I guess Poe and I and the big kids are going to be doing a lot of digging the next few days."
Rey sits down at the table next to him. "Uh…" She's looking really tentative, like she doesn't want to say something. "Maybe not?"
His eyes narrow further. "What?"
She rubs her lips together. "Later this morning we should have an Order Engineer here to survey the situation, design an all-weather water treatment system, and then depending on how complicated it is, later in the afternoon or tomorrow there'll be a team here to install it."
The first sensation is ice flowing through Finn's body. It's bad enough that Ren's lurking around just down the road, and teaching the kids, and just… being… here. But this! He swallows, hard, rolling his lips together, not sure if he wants to yell, or stalk off in a silent huff.
The next sensation is hot. Hot at the fact that Rose fucking approves of this. Because she would. Because she's practical, and she knows that no water is a deal breaker. (Messy nappies don't wash themselves, and messy hands from cleaning up messy nappies need water, too, and… on and on and on…) Because she saw Ren for ten minutes swanning over Rey and decided he's a good guy. (He's mentally glaring at that. He's got a kilometer of scar tissue down his back, three prosthetic vertebrae, a pile of synth nerves in his spine to help out the ones they could regrow, but that asshole makes googly eyes at Rey for a minute, and his wife decides he's turned over a new leaf and on the road to redemption and all the rest of that shit.)
Rose is saying something, and… Right… "Let me know when she's here. I'd like to talk to her about what she sees and what she wants to do."
"I think we'll all know. Kylo's asking Poe to bring the Engineer. I'm not sure when exactly they'll get here."
"So, he just orders someone here and you're fine with it," is what Finn manages to say.
Rose looks at him. "I asked her to ask… I mean… We need water. He can get us water, faster, easier, and for a longer amount of time than we can get it ourselves."
"We're not his charity project."
"Fixing up your own home isn't charity," Rose says.
"His home is that flying monstrosity. This is our home, and he's going to march his… monsters… all over it." He glares at Rey, too. "It's one thing if he's just… here, but… They're going to know where we are. You trust him, great. But the next idiot who wants to hit him, will just dig our coordinates out of the computer system, punch it in, and kill us dead, just to annoy him. That's how they do things there."
"Unless he said no, Poe's going to provide transport for everyone," Rey says.
Finn's ready for that. "And get one of those tracking devices slapped onto his ship. They're going to know, and someone is going to use it. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someone, somewhere, in one of those ranks is watching, and they're going to get us killed if they know where we are."
Neither Rey nor Rose has anything to say to that. It's not even an unreasonable fear. Unlikely perhaps, but… Kylo Ren has enemies. A decent number of them do work for him. And the ones who don't likely pay very well for anything out of the ordinary that Ren's interested in, like, say a little planet off in the middle of nowhere.
"I suppose Poe could fly from the Supremacy, and you and Chewie could pick them up somewhere neutral. No chance at someone sending the coordinates where they don't belong," Rey says.
He shakes his head. "They'll still know. Even if they don't know where we are, just knowing we exist is enough. They'll come looking."
"Finn…" Rose says, voice soft. "Either we trust that no one's coming to take us out for being tangentially next to Ren, or we get driven out by the lack of water. This isn't a problem we can fix, in time, with what we've got. And by the time you and Chewie can get what we need, and then we get it fixed, it'll have been weeks without proper water, and… That's just not tenable."
He glares again, looking at the water dribbling out of the faucet. Then he gets up and heads for their bedroom, not wanting to be 'reasonable' or around 'reasonable' people right now.
When C8 said, first thing, he wasn't kidding.
Kylo's been in his room for less than a minute, when there's knocking on the door, followed by, "Captian HR-0098 is waiting for you, sir."
Kylo blinks a few times, so much for a moment to regroup his thoughts before he starts his day. "I'll be out in a moment."
And that moment is spent changing out of his soggy, snow-covered staying-warm-on-Lirium garb and into his current command blacks.
As he's doing that, he knows he's going to have to explain to HR-0098 what it is he wants done, which isn't a problem, and why and for whom, which… might.
With the exception of his intimates, he hasn't introduced Rey as his wife, yet. Part of it is setting her into people's minds as the Mistress of the Maji. Part of it is that wedding thing, which he'd rather like to do, and at least as he understands it, one generally has the wedding before getting a spouse, but… well, obviously not for them, but… That's complicated. Part of it is being aware that his wife will absolutely get a lot more attention than Rey likely wants, and not all of that attention will be complimentary.
Yes, while they were talking to people, most of them were pleased to meet her, and see that he had a 'beloved companion' as the the news people appear to be reporting, but… He could feel it at the dinner, some people are very interested in securing their own pet as his wife, and him already having one complicates things in ways they don't like.
He didn't feel any threat to Rey, that would have been taken care of, fast, but he did feel a lot of people looking to manipulate the situation.
And he's just… not sure what to do with that.
But, it doesn't matter. He's dressed, and the person who is going to fix their home is in his office, waiting for him.
A moment later, he's out of his room, pleased to see that C8 has coffee already on his desk for him, and appears to have offered a cup of it to HR-0098.
She's younger than he would have expected a captain to be, but… She's got a number, so she's been with them since she was a baby, and if she tested well, she likely got her first command rank before she hit fifteen, so the mid-twenties she is now isn't unreasonable for a Captaincy.
"Captain."
She shoots into a standing position, at high attention, waiting for him. "Master."
"At ease." He gestures to the chair she'd been sitting in, and she gingerly returns to it. He grabs his cup of coffee, sips it, feeling something like life coming back to him. (Which usually happens after cup number one, not cup number three.) "I've been told you're the person to see about setting up a water treatment facility."
She nods. He can feel she's nervous.
"Really, ease." He adds a bit of Force to his voice, just a bit to help her relax. "Mistress Rey has a project… We have a small settlement… and the current water processing is vastly under-powered to handle the cold. I was hoping you could help."
"Whatever you need, I can do it. How many kiloliters per hour are you looking to move?"
Kylo blinks. "Uh… I have no idea. There are about twenty-five people, five faviers, a few other small animals, and three micro farms."
HR-0098 blinks back at him. He wasn't kidding about small. "Less than one probably."
"Possibly per day." He's fairly sure a kiloliter is a thousand liters, but he's kind of nebulous as to how much water that is. His bath in the next room maybe? Do they go through that much water an hour at Lirium? A day?
She nods at him. "How are you currently moving it?"
"We have a pump in the lake, and about two klicks worth of pipes. The problem is our ho– colo— settlement is very cold, and they're freezing, and the lake we get the water from is also freezing, so we need some way to get water out of the lake, even if it gets colder."
"Ah… What kind of pipes do you currently have?"
Kylo doesn't know the answer to that, either.
"You don't know the kind of pump, either?"
He shakes his head.
"And before you ask, I don't know what kind of water processing we've got on the pump. I know where the pump is, and if I turn the handle at my sink water comes out."
He can feel HR-0098 wondering where Kylo lives. She'd assumed he lived on the other side of the door he'd come through, and now she's not sure.
"Do you know how deep the pipes are?"
"That I do know, about fifteen centimeters."
HR-0098 blinks at him again, and he can feel she's never dealt with pipes that had a smaller than fifteen centimeter diameter, so the idea that they're buried less than fifteen centimeters below the ground is stunning to her.
"Do you want me to… make suggestions based on… this…"
"I'd like to take you to the settlement, have you take a look, and make suggestions for how to get water through it, preferably by tomorrow."
She doesn't blanch. It's clear she wants to. Apparently by tomorrow is fast for any sort of piping project, even a tiny one.
"How many people can I have for this project?"
"As many as you need to get it done as fast as possible."
He feels her relax a bit at that answer.
"Budget?"
"Same. It doesn't have to be absolutely top of the line. It's got to be good enough to get through the winter. Come spring we can re-do if need be. I'm willing to sacrifice some longevity right now for greater speed."
She asks the logical follow up question. "How long is winter?"
Kylo grits his teeth. "I don't know that, either. At least six more months, likely."
On the upside, HR-0098 is no longer terrified of him. The downside is she's thinking he's something of a twit. Or suicidally reckless if he's got a 'settlement' on a planet he doesn't know how long winter lasts for. Well, he is reckless on things like that, but… Nothing to be done for it.
He's not reckless about what comes next. "I'd like you to come with me. I have a ship that will take you to our settlement. You can survey, figure out what you need, and then take care of it."
He's not exactly asking, and he's not exactly ordering either. He's absolutely making it clear with his voice that she's never going to tell anyone about where she's going today and tomorrow.
"Yes, sir."
"Good." He hits his comm, calling up Poe. "You close?"
"I'm in the queue. My ship is the next one to get scanned."
"Where are you landing?"
"Sub dock 45-B."
"I'll be there, with Captain HR-0098, soon."
Poe had forgotten the sheer scale of the Supremacy.
And right now, he's rather wishing he could keep forgetting.
His current ship is not tiny. It's a decent-sized cargo freighter. Fifty kilotons, which, for the kind of work he does, is exactly right.
He looks like a speck of dust floating next to the Supremacy. Fighters look microscopic. It's just stupid how fucking big that ship is. Bloody thing is the size of a small moon, or a huge asteroid.
And, of course, because the loading and unloading bays are toward the bottom, he's got to fly under the thing, and it just blots all of the light out of the sky. One moment there were stars and the glow reflected off of several nearby planets, and then there's just nothing.
It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, and then find the small lights leading him toward the landing bays.
He's got his comm open, and for a heartbeat, he just can't talk. He's… going to ask permission to land on the fucking Supremacyunder his own name in his own ship, and… Fear's up to his throat, trying to shut it down, and…
He can feel Leia behind him, sense her, and he doesn't turn around because if she's not really there he doesn't want to see it, so…
"Supremacy this is 67-Micah, pilot Poe Dameron, seeking landing authorization."
There's a moment of silence followed by, "67-Micah, we see you and have you scheduled for landing on sub dock 45-B. You're third in the queue, and there should be about a twenty minute wait until you can go through the scanners and land."
"Noted." He checks the glowing labeled docks, finds 45-B, and pulls up behind two other ships. He can see several Order ships hovering around the first one in the line, likely scanning, and after a few moments they move one ship closer to him, and the scanned ship moves forward into the dock.
Slick, easy, professional. Just like a million other places he's landed, just with… Yeah, that's a lot of scanning ships, way more security.
He's not sure what they're scanning for, but his first guess, something that'll blow the atmo in the landing bay, and likely a lot of the ships around it, isn't getting into their docks.
Kylo and HR-0098 get to the dock just as Poe's touching down.
And they are causing quite a stir. Because Poe is flying a cargo ship, he's in one of the cargo bays. Most of the ships around him are unloading raw materials, food, equipment, and the like.
None of the people who work down here with mostly droids and mech suits have ever seen anyone with a rank higher than Lieutenant. So the Master down here, on his own, with a Captain, has them dumbstruck.
A lot of them are staring. Staring so much that the unloading is beginning to get sluggish.
Finally the Lt. in charge, who apparently spends most of his time up in the control tower notices the slow down, and comes down, yelling orders, until he, too notices Kylo, and goes dead silent, frozen, and then begins yelling even louder, and everyone around them jerks into action.
Kylo doesn't smirk at that. At least not where anyone can see it.
But, as Poe's stepping off his ship, he's got the idea he can feel the amusement behind the look on his face.
"Captain HR-0098, this is Poe Dameron."
And as soon as he's said it he feels Poe tense. HR-0098 doesn't. Poe, even without Kylo's skills can feel she doesn't recognize his name, which means this meeting is going to go rather smoothly.
"Poe will be taking you to our settlement. Once there, you'll talk to Rose Tico and Mistress Rey, and they'll fill you in on what exactly it is we need there."
The Captain nods, eyeing Poe's ship, which is a rather odd choice for this sort of transport run.
Poe nods to his hatch. "Hop on in. I'll be there in a moment. Want to talk to the Master a bit."
She's not comfortable with that, but Kylo nods, so she follows Poe's order.
Once she's in the ship, he says to Kylo, "That was close."
Kylo nods. "Yeah. I didn't think about it until the two of you were face to face. She doesn't know who you are."
"Good. I'd rather not have to fly with my hand on my blaster."
"She's not armed."
"You hope."
"I know. You think I'm going to let an armed Order officer on Lirium? I may be reckless, and possibly insane, but not in that direction."
Poe inclines his head to indicate that's not a version of insane he ever thought Kylo might be. "Uh huh…" He looks around at the ships and the mechs and droids unloading, and the people supervising. "You want to talk about one of the most surreal experiences of my life?"
Kylo smirks a bit. "I can imagine."
Poe looks around again, able to see a lot of Order people, none of them in stormtrooper armor, pretending to not be watching them. "You're creating a stir by being down here."
"I'm getting that sense."
"When we come back, she's going to want to bring people and equipment, so this ship will work, but if something like this happens again, a transport that doesn't stick out this badly, let alone you down here, would be a good plan."
Kylo nods. "I have a personal transport ship."
"Your Silencer isn't subtle."
"I have a non-Order branded transport, too. Tonight, I'll bring that home. If you or Rey need a ride at some point…"
"Good. What does she know about where I'm taking her?"
"It's a settlement. Rey's… maybe mine… I… didn't have a good story prepared. I also haven't explained who exactly Rey is, other than the Mistress of the Maji."
"Who you occasionally tongue on stage in front of several million people."
Kylo rolls his eyes at Poe. He can see people watching them, but none should be close enough to hear what he's saying. "Like you wouldn't have if you'd had the option."
Poe gives him a little shove. "Kylo, there are so many flavors of wrong with that sentence, I don't even know where to begin."
Another eye roll followed by, "Get her back to Lirium. Don't tell her too much about who's there and why."
Poe waves that off. He doesn't need instructions on how to do this. "The person I can't charm with piles of creative bantha shit hasn't been born yet. That said, Finn's not exactly looking forward to this."
"Going to cause trouble, not looking forward to it?"
Poe shrugs. "After he got done glaring at Rose and Rey, he came to me to bitch about it, and found I was getting ready to fly, and… He's had better days."
"Well, he can sulk about it while he gets his next shower."
"Be nice. You wouldn't enjoy it if a pile of New Jedi came and invaded your home."
"Didn't. I didn't enjoy it when Luke showed up."
Poe raises and eyebrow at that, then nods, and says, "One day, we're going to sit down and talk about ghosts. But today isn't that day."
Kylo almost asks, but he can feel Poe really doesn't want to touch it now. And he's trying to not be an entitled asshole, so he doesn't just barge into Poe's mind.
"He's bringing some of them here," Finn says to Chewie, voice bitter, as they go through their pre-flight plans.
Them?
"Order fuckers. Supposedly it's an engineer and a team to put in a water processing system."
Chewie thinks about that for a moment, and then says, Better them freezing their nards off chipping through a million meters of frozen shit than us.
Finn looks up from the news reader to him, almost startled, and then thinks about it for a second more, and laughs. "Fuck… Okay, yeah. You've got a point." He wasn't exactly loving the idea of having to re-dig the pipes.
They're quiet for a few more moments, both of them catching up on the news. "You see this," Finn points to a report about a small settlement not ridiculously far from them.
Chewie howls in agreement. Rich pickings if no one else has noticed.
"You know anyone there?"
Nah. We'd be flying in blind, but…
"But…" The news is reporting that the settlement on Hitlnor IV had a recent fire, and that fire took out their bacta plant. Also, judging by the rest of the report, it's harvest time. So, if they were to swoop in with a lot of bacta, which is dirt cheap on planets that can make it easy, they could probably get a lot of fresh produce, which they're pretty low on, unless they want greens, radishes, or carrots. No one on Lirium has had a piece of fresh fruit in weeks, so… Finn shrugs. "Not like we can't use the bacta here if we can't sell it. One of the little boogers scrapes something every day, so…"
Chewie's nodding, and starts looking for the closest, least expensive bacta producing planet.
Finn goes back to skimming the news, looking for another planet likely experiencing a shortage of something they can fill their hold with on the cheap. Preferably something either on, or near, a bacta producing planet.
That holds his attention for a few minutes, but he sees Poe's ship landing, and he glares at it.
Chewie lays a hand on his shoulder.
Finn nods, and then makes himself focus on the pad in his hand.
HR-0098 has had a lot of difficult assignments.
In the twelve years she's been in charge of setting up water treatment facilities on different First Order bases and worlds, she's done it with not enough resources, not enough time, not enough people, and often with locals or the Resistance actively working to sabotage everything she was doing.
After all, in a camp, or city, or any concentration of people, the easiest way to take them out is to reroute a pipe or two and lead the waste line into the clean water. Or sneak into the water treatment facility and muck with it. Or break a few pipes and kill the waste removal system.
Any of those will cripple a battle force faster that any ground attack.
And with many fewer casualties to the attacking force.
So… she's used to doing this with more security people than engineers, and with local populations that hate her, and…
This is not that. Okay, she's been stuck in a cargo ship with an overly chatty pilot for more than an hour. And he's not exactly answering any questions she might have about this place. (And after the second non-answer, she stops asking.) Even though he also won't shut up.
And it is kind of nice to be able to sit up front, in the cockpit, and actually watch the stars zoom by. Her personal rooms don't have a view, and her job means she's basically never sees the sky. So that's nice. Once they break atmo, and the pilot says, "Welcome to Majirium," she's got a view of… nothing. The whole bloody thing is white.
Still, Majirium… Mistress Rey of the Maji. Maybe this is the Maji homeworld.
Granted, as they get lower, she can see that Master Ren was not exaggerating when he said twenty-five people. There's barely a dozen buildings on the ground, so, if this is their homeworld, it's awfully sparse.
Or, this Rey isn't Mistress of much…
Or… shit… It could literally be a school. She's a mistress in the sense of teaching classes…
Huh…
Poe, the pilot, lands the craft, and a moment later, he gets up, and then vanishes. He's back a minute later with what looks like the blanket from his bed. He's also got a coat, a scarf, a hat, gloves, and goggles.
"I don't have extra winter gear for you." He hands her the blanket. "If your great coat isn't warm enough."
She'd roll her eyes, an Order greatcoat is designed to keep the wearer comfortable from 15 to -35, but she doesn't have a scarf, hat, or goggles, and with all the snow outside, having something to put over her head may be welcome.
Whoever she's bringing back to work here will have full winter garb.
When Poe opens the hatch, there are two… people… she steps closer and realizes they are women, and, she doesn't know the shorter one, but she recognizes the other one… She bows, low, before saying, "Mistress Rey."
The other woman appears to be smirking under her goggles and hat. And the pilot doesn't snigger out loud, but she's got a feeling he wants to. He introduces her to the women, and she learns the other lady is Rose Tico.
She's also got a feeling that the blanket wasn't a bad idea. Any part of her covered by her coat is fine, but the wind keeps trying to open her coat, and it's creeping up under her trouser legs, and trying to whip down her collar. She's wrapping up.
"Master Ren wasn't kidding about cold."
Rose nods to her. "No, he's not. Cassie says we've got another cold front coming in later tonight, so it'll be even less pleasant tomorrow. More snow this evening, as well."
Everyone she brings to this will definitely be covered in head to toe winter garb. Starkiller wasn't exactly cozy, and they've had people stationed in even colder locals over the years, and for once, they're really going to test the limits of that gear.
Rose smiles at her, and says, "Come on, let's show you the issue, fast, and then you can think and work somewhere warm."
HR-0098 nods. She appreciates that.
It's, honestly… quaint.
It's a tiny little settlement on the edge of nowhere, with way too many kids and not nearly enough adults, and the kids keep 'wandering' over to check her out.
HR-0098 gets the sense that they don't get a lot of visitors here.
She's also getting the sense that Mistress Rey is, in fact, literally a teacher. Of a tiny little school. That's not, exactly, what the news feeds about the 'beloved companion' were hinting, but they didn't outright say anything one way or another.
It's occurring to her, the people talking on the news feeds likely didn't know. Because if the way the littlest of the kids stare at her is anything to go by, no one else has ever been here to see this place.
She's looking around at the scattered buildings jutting up from the snow, and if this is a place for visitors she'd be stunned.
The one thing that isn't stunning her is the job. She could have done this as a first year. It's an idiotically simple job. From what she can see, the current set up is just fine, it just needs to be lower, and given how the surface layers of the planet are going to freeze solid, set up with a heating system.
Get a drilling rig, plop it in a retaining bubble, down into the lake they go, find where the frost line is, go a bit deeper, fill it with plexiflass pipes, wire it into the shipstones they've already got here, hook it to the buildings, maybe, if Ren's willing to add an extra day without water, she can get a decent filtering system into the lake, too, and they'll be good to go.
Granted, that's half of the problem, getting water into the settlement.
Getting waste out…
They're using cisterns now, and that'll likely keep doing the job. Flushing them out if winter lasts too long and they fill up while the ground is still frozen solid will be annoying, but compared to the time it'd take to get a full sewage treatment plant up and running here, they're probably in good shape.
She's in… She's not sure. Rey's house? Maybe? (The Master's house? Does he actually live here? The only thing she could think of to tell that, pictures on the walls, aren't up. If he lives here, there's nothing obviously his in the kitchen/living area.) She doesn't think this is Rose's house, because Rose has a baby on her chest, and she doesn't see a crib or any baby things in here.
So, sitting in a pleasant, mostly white and cream colored room, munching on some cookies and sipping a mug of tea, she talks mostly to Rose about what they're going to do, and Rey just nods along.
Finally, Rose says, "So, how many people are you going to need to do this?"
"Master Ren said I could have as many as I need, but given how small everything is, putting more than four people on it would be overkill. There's only so many you can fit in a drilling rig, and we only need the one rig to do this."
"Will you need extra shipping beyond Poe's to get everything here?" Rey asks.
"No. I won't even fill half of his hold. If we ever put in a full sewage treatment plant, we'd need more cargo space than he can offer, but until the ground thaws, that's not worth it. Not with the system you've currently got."
Mistress Rey nods at that. "Good. Starting tomorrow then?"
HR-0098 shrugs. "It's important, right?"
"You saw the kids," Rose says. "We can make do without water for a few days, but we'd prefer not to."
"It was an hour getting here, probably another hour to collect people and things, another hour back. If you can put us up for a night, we could get a few hours in tonight, and wrap up early-ish tomorrow."
Rose and Rey glance at each other.
Rose says, "We do have an empty cottage. It's… Really just a ceiling, walls, and floor."
"Running… well, dribbling water, a cooker and cooler, and a refresher. It's better than a tent, but there aren't any beds in there right now. You'd basically be camping," Rey finishes.
"We've lived harder than that before. Let me get back to Mr. Dameron, and before the sun sets, we'll have started on setting up the retaining bubble and getting through the ice on your lake."
Rey and Rose walk her back to Poe, and HR-0098's got the sense that they don't want to leave her alone in the settlement, though what they think she can do here, by herself, she doesn't know.
But, it's not exactly like being wary of stranger is a new thing in the Order.
Once HR-0098's off, Rey says to Rose, "Is he going to be okay with them here overnight?"
"I can't imagine it'll be any worse than them being here during the day."
They both share a look. Both of them well aware of the fact that sinking suns and slumbering minds have a tendency to intensify both the good and the bad.
Finn's feeling okay when he sees the Order engineer go heading off with Poe. And he's feeling pretty proud of himself. He did notmarch on out of the Falcon and demand that she get no where within a thousand meters of his wife and daughter.
(Likely because, as Chewie pointed out, a strong wind would knock the girl over, so between Rey and his wife, she'd be over-teamed in about a minute. And while Finn would have liked to suggest that First Order-trained officers were tougher than that, at the rate Ren's been picking up new people, he's got not idea if the girl actually is a First Order-trained officer.)
Still, he breathes easier when he sees her get back onto Poe's ship, and head off.
Chewie watches him eyeing the girl, and then says You know it's going to be fine.
Finn rolls his eyes. "Yeah, the part of the brain that thinks knows that this woman is not going to show up at Ren's house and blow it up, because she's not fucking stupid or suicidal. Ask me how close to in charge the part of the brain that thinks is."
Chewie gives him a long, knowing nod. Been there, done that. Wanna go shoot some shit?
"Nah. Want to wrap this up, have a good night with my wife. Pretend a herd of stormtroopers aren't going to show up here tomorrow to do Force alone knows what. Snuggle my girl. Soak up some family time, because day after tomorrow we're in the air for at least a week."
Good plan. Could use some baby cuddles myself.
"And Paige is always good to cuddle her PapaChewie, so I think we can work with that."
Chewie grins at him. Good.
Finn shoves the trade roster aside. They know where they're going, what they're hoping to pick up, and where they want to trade it. He sits back a bit. There are a few hours before supper. An hour before he'd normally get home and start working on supper, so… "I appreciate you not telling me to get over it."
Chewie smirks at that. It'd be like telling you to fly. You're not going to do it, so why waste my breath."
"Rose… doesn't think I should… but I know she'd like it. Rey would, too. Even Poe's somehow been charmed by this bastard into… Getting along."
Charmed? Unless he's learned a lot of new tricks, charm isn't in his arsenal.
"Magicked?"
Probably not.
Finn raises an eyebrow at that.
I'm not saying he couldn't. I don't know if he can or not. Luke could but I don't think he ever used it more than once or twice. Obi Wan certainly could. I'm sure Yoda could. I don't know if Ben can, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't. Doesn't seem the type to care enough to make people like him. Not like that.
"I wouldn't know. Other than he hates being called Ben apparently."
Fuck that. I was there when they named him, and I'll call him Ben whenever I like. He's lucky I don't call him Benny.
"His nickname as a kid?"
Benny, Ben-ben, Little Starfighter, Lando'd call him that. I've got all the peeing on the rug and running around naked stories. He was a baby, just like everyone else.
Finn's voice is dark. "Except for when he wasn't."
Except for when he wasn't. Toddler tantrums are… unpleasant for seasoned parents, and terrifying for virgin parents when the kid can blow the power if he's particularly upset about not getting a cookie. Worse when blowing the power freaks him out, too.
"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that."
And I don't blame you at all. Give our little Paige a year, and she'll be running around, yelling at you for trying to get her to drink out of the wrong sippy cup, and then yelling when you give her the right one, and then yelling some more because yelling is making her tired and unhappy.
Finn lets out a long sigh. "Thank you, Chewie. That's a whole new nightmare to add to the list."
Chewie grins at him. Yes, but just think. She's in a tearing fury, and then you can take her over to Uncle Kylo, and plop her angry, angst-y self on him, and laugh your way home for a nap.
"And then have nightmares about what he'd do to an angry, angst-y toddler."
Look disconcerted and chew on his lip. Probably get Rey to help both of them calm down.
"Look, yes, I pretty much know that's likely true. Rey's telling me that. Rose is telling me that. Poe's flying his ass into this guy's lair. Poe flew into his lair, and obviously flew back out of it. Ostrae gave me a handful of cookies… So… I know, but… I don't." He eyes Chewie. "You're less angry about him than the last time we talked about this."
Chewie shrugs. His dad's really happy with him right now. It rubs off some.
"Some?"
He's happy, and that makes me happy, then I remember I'm talking to a fucking ghost, and why I'm talking to a fucking ghost, and… He would have been a ghost by now anyway. Except, if he'd gone naturally, maybe he wouldn't have been a ghost… Maybe he'd have just been gone. So… It's complicated. Still… The things that make Rose happy, they make you happy, too, right?
"Her being happy makes me happy. I'm not always keen on the things that make her that way."
That works, too. This makes Han happy. And… we wanted Ben to be happy… Well, we honestly never thought he'd get there. We wanted him to be not murdering people and vaguely content-ish doing it.
"That's a remarkably low set of goals."
You didn't know him as a teenager.
Finn inclines his head, and decides he's rather glad of that.
When he gets home, Rose is already there, starting on dinner. Paige is on the floor, working on getting up onto her knees and rocking back and forth, seriously thinking about doing some crawling soon.
He picks her up, and cuddles her close, inhaling her sweet baby scent, and feeling her cuddled against his skin, and tries to imagine… a dark, Force sensitive kid.
And decides he'd rather not.
Instead he puts Paige, down, pulls off his coat, and snuggles up to his wife, kissing her warmly, before asking, tentatively, "How'd it go with the Engineer?"
"Her name is HR-0098…"
Finn shakes his head. He doesn't know her. Though, he supposes, it was possible he could have known her. If she's on water, and he did sanitation. He knew… or at least knew of… a few of the water and waste engineers on the Supremacy.
"And it went fine." Rose turns on the water, and a bit trickles out. "She's bringing the crew in tonight. Should be here soon. And by the end of the day tomorrow, we should have full running water. And it should stay warmer longer, because the pipes will be heated."
Finn doesn't like hearing about stormtroopers showing up sooner rather than later. But Rose also knows he's something of a shower fiend, and really, really likes a long, hot shower. Likely because he never actually had a water shower until he was with the Resistance. And, at least lately, with the water so much colder before it hits the water heater, it doesn't get as hot, and it gets to lukewarm a lot faster.
"What's a crew?" Finn asks. Rose is cutting vegetables… He knows that's the last of the fresh veg in their cooler. He reaches for the meat she's got out, and begins to chop that up with her.
"Her, four workers. They're going to sink a retaining bubble into the lake, find the frost line, and put the pump under it."
"Can't get more than four into a bubble like that."
"Exactly. She's sure the job won't take long."
He glares a little at that. "First Order jobs never did. Take too long once, and you'd be 'reconditioned.' Take too long twice, and they'd kill you."
She winces at that. Then she turns to Finn. "You're planning on leaving the day after tomorrow, right?"
He nods.
"Okay, here's my deal with you. When they come back, we'll get HR-0098 away from the crew. Bring her in for tea or something. Have her set up the rooms for her crew. You wander on out and talk to them. If they want to run, plop them on the Falcon and get them out of there."
Finn blinks at that, and then smiles, wide. "I don't tell you I love you nearly enough, do I?"
"You say it every day."
"And I should say it more. I love you." He bends down to kiss her, and she kisses back.
Just like Rose said, once everyone has landed and gotten started, she and Rey pull HR-0098 away, and the crew is out there, on the lake drilling through the ice, and setting the retaining bubble into place.
He walks toward them. Hot thermoses of tea in hand. The snow's pouring down right now. More than anyone who spends most of their time on a ship would be used to. But there's still a good thirty meters of visibility, maybe a bit more because the sun is down, but the snow catches the light of the houses, and the lights the Order men have set up so they can see what they're doing. By Lirium standards this isn't a bad storm.
The four of them are looking pretty miserable. They've set up windbreaks. They've got First Order Winter garb… Though as he gets closer he can see it's not First Order winter garb. It's still white, but there's no armor, the symbol is wrong, the workers have name tags (and only two of them have numbers).
It's… not what he was expecting.
Still.
He idles over, and says, "Fucking frosty today. Thought you guys might like something tasty and warm."
And just like every soldier in the history of soldiers left out in a cold place doing a job they'd rather not, they're all over hot drinks.
So, they slorp down the chai, and thank him for the hospitality, spend a moment introducing themselves and shooting the shit. And Finn's good at it. Another life, a different choice, he'd have been one of these guys, or at least very similar to them.
When they hand the thermoses back to him, he says, quietly, "I've got a ship, if you want out, I can get you out."
That has gotten their attention. Two of them are shifting from side to side, very uncomfortable that this apparently nice man has just said something wrong to them. The other two are staring at him like he's insane.
One, (Finn mentally rolls his eyes) named Hrver, at least according to the patch on his coat. Because of course his coat has a patch with his name on it. Hrver, like all of them is wearing cold weather gear which covers his face, but it's clear it's there to keep him warm, not anonymous. Hrver looks at him nervously before saying, "Why would we want to do that, sir?"
Finn slumps. Of course. Yeah, he claims he's changed things, but… Hux method training beats the idea of any life other than the First Order right out of you.
Then Hrver throws a twist at him. "We can leave whenever we want. Ralph used to be on this crew, but he left last month. Decided he wanted to try and make a go of it on Rndll. Fucking stupid, if you ask me. But he had his five in, and wanted to settle down, try something new, so…"
"Ralph?" Finn asks. Anyone with their five in should have a number, at least on this sort of crew.
"That's what he decided he wanted to be called. New life, new name. RL-478F. That's the number they gave him, but he wanted something different, so… He took it. He and his lady up and left. Anyway, I've got three and a half years to go before I've got my five, and I'm not heading out a moment sooner. After that, maybe. I don't know." He glances at the video feed of the retaining tube he's putting into place so the pipes can stay insulated and warm. "I like doing this, and it looks like the Colony Emancipation Program is going to need people with my skills, so… Anyway, that's later. Right now, this is good."
FR-9985, the man working the forward drill says, "You've got to test into the Colony Emancipation Program, and you're shit at tests, Hrr."
Hrver glares at him. "I'll ace that bloody test. They say you get into that program, there's a monthly bonus, and they're talking about single billets."
"I'd heard that," Ygrine says. "Of all the things I miss about home, not sharing a room with five other assholes, all wanking and farting at me all night is the top of the list."
"Awww… does the Prince miss his comfy room at home?" FQ-4586 says.
Finn's stuck with whiplash. This, griping about shit, feels like, home. He's spent about a billion hours doing it with other First Order soldiers. Names and plans, and a program they're trying to get into, that's different.
Ygrine glares at him, and adds, "If you'd ever had your own room, you'd fucking well miss it, too. Some things you don't want a constant audience for."
Finn tries not to snigger at that, because of all of the things he appreciated most about getting out of the First Order and into the Resistance, having a space of his own was pretty high on the list.
He decides to ask, "What's the Colony Emancipation Program?"
FQ-4586 replies, "So, we go to planets that have stuff we need, and see if they want to stay part of whatever system they're part of. Most of them are someone's colonies. Supposedly, if they say, 'fuck this deal, we're out of here,' they can sign up with us. We head over, spruce things up, and then slowly pull back over time. Test well, have useful skills, and you get to join the group setting up the colony. It's a ten year period of time, so if you stick around for the whole thing, you get to be an Order citizen in a newly freed planet."
Hrver's nodding. "I'm seriously thinking about it. Assuming we can get a good colony planet. Some of them are pretty rough, but… Get in at the beginning, start fresh, build it up, build your stake. I can get used to that idea."
"Just got to pass the test," FR-9985 says.
"I can study."
"Sure. You can barely read. Study all you want," Ygrine says with a sneer.
"Prince-y here is doing his time until he can stand for election," FR-9985 adds. "Poor boy's slumming it with the likes of us, and wishing every single day that Daddy didn't make him join up."
"Fuck you. Some of us have homes and lives that need to be protected. Some of us are here because there's something greater than ourselves at stake."
Finn raises an eyebrow. The idea of joining the Order to protect your home is something that hadn't occurred to him. Though he does vaguely remember Leia saying something like that. He doesn't recognize Ygrine, but he wonders if he was part of the Resistance, or at least nearby it.
Ygrine, as well as Finn can tell with someone wearing goggles, a hat, and scarf, looks annoyed by this. "Anyone with eyes can see you either join the Order or you hope to hide. We're too damn big to hide, so…" He shrugs. "Here I am. Two of my sisters, and a few cousins are here, too. And yes, come that first slate of elections, we'll all be citizens, and we'll all be up for election. If you don't want to be run over, you damn well better be steering the ship, and we're going to steer the ship."
Finn laughs. "Ren's going to steer the ship. You're just making it look pretty for him."
Ygrine's eyes are sharp as he's overlooking the tiny settlement on the plain. "We'll see about that." Then Ygrine looks around. "So what is this place? We saw Mistress Rey for a second when we got here. This her pet project or something."
Finn doesn't like that look, doesn't like Ygrine, doesn't like any of this. He hates the fact that he knows what he's going to do next with this. Hates the fact that by protecting himself and his family, he's going to protect Ren, too.
His teeth grit. "Or something."
Finn's annoyed when he goes to Rey's house after supper. They're wrapping up, and Ren is… He grits his teeth harder. Stupid bloody things are going to end up cracked at this rate. The Master is… drying the fucking dishes. Megalomaniacs out to shatter the galaxy don't dry the fucking dishes. Husbands at home, with their wives, killing time, talking about their days, dry the fucking dishes.
And when he sees Finn, and feels the… everything coming off of him, he does do that stupid chewing on his lip thing. It's like he's going out of his way to look like a nervous puppy.
A fucking huge nervous puppy who practically cut you in half.
Finn grabs one of the dry ones from Ren and puts it away. At least he doesn't have to look at the bastard when he says it. "Ygrine means trouble, for you, for us. And apparently he's got a few sisters, and some cousins in the Order, too."
Ren nods. "You think him knowing about Lirium will be an issue."
"Yes."
Ren's face grows dangerous. And Finn feels that spear of ice up his back and in his bones. "I'll take care of it."
Rey's washing the dishes, listening. She doesn't seem terribly concerned.
Finn is. He's got the image of Ren and the lightsaber, and his eyes hot and cold and the power and dark just pouring off of him in the forest pounding through his mind. "How? You're not going to kill them, right?" Just because he doesn't want Ygrine to become trouble doesn't mean he wants the man gutted like a fish.
Ren glares at him for that. "I have a few more tricks in my book than murder. They're here tonight, camping in the empty cottage. Tomorrow they'll finish the job. I'll escort them back to the Supremacy. Everyone on the team will be under the impression they set up a water system for my personal vacation retreat. On an island of temperate plains, with green rolling hills, trees in the hollows, and a well set up, flourishing, farm."
As he's saying it, Finn's seeing it. "Will it hold?"
"Well enough. Unlike a lot of memories I've built for other people, this one I know inside and out. They'll never have any reason to think they weren't there."
"Is that… home… for you?" Finn asks, hating that he's curious.
"Rey is home for me. That's just a place I lived for a while."
When Finn's done with that, Rey offers to walk him home. "You okay?" she asks.
"Can't you just feel it?"
"I can feel you're conflicted."
He rolls his eyes. "Probably a good word for it. I know he's your man, and even I can see you love him, but… Did you hear what he said? Like it was no big deal. He'd scramble five people's memories, on the fly, just like that. Yeah, I suppose it's better than killing them, but…" His head shakes, and his eyes are earnest. "How do you trust someone who you know can do that?"
Rey sighs. "I just do." They take a few more steps. It's only a few hundred meters between his house and Rey's. Then she says to him, "You still remember the fight. He's willing to take you hating him rather than alter your memory of it."
Finn brushes that off.
"You might as well just say it. I can feel it's bugging you."
"I hate the fact that the safety of my family is tied to his safety."
"The Force doesn't do things like that as an accident."
He narrows his eyes. "Han once told me, 'That's not how the Force works,'"
Rey's beyond skeptical of that, but… "Then break the tie. Head off. Settle somewhere else. We'll… talk and send letters, and I'll visit from time to time. Clean ship. Won't lead anyone to you. He'll just be part of my life you can ignore. And I'll be Auntie Rey who comes from time to time with neat presents and cool stories."
"Until the Order shows up in my corner of the galaxy."
"And does what? Opens up a recruiting station you don't have to go to? Even Chewie trusts him to behave."
"It's not him I'm worried about. Not now. I don't like him, but I know I can turn my back on him. Sort of. I keep telling myself that. I know it's real, and wrong, and… Anyway… It's getting caught in the crossfire when someone comes gunning for him. That's real, too."
"We've all got enemies."
"Not like him."
Rey doesn't have an answer for that. She knows it's true. She doesn't like it. And she can see a time when people who get too close to the Order will be targets. She can just feel it. They're going to upset too many places, and people will hurt them for it.
And innocent people nearby will get hurt, too.
Finn knows she understands. He nods. "It's fucking freezing. I'm going home. See you in the morning?"
"Yeah. You heading off soon?"
"Day after tomorrow. We've got a week long run coming up."
"I'll miss you." That's true, too.
He rolls his eyes, and pulls her into a hug, giving her a little kiss on the cheek. "I'll miss you, too."
1/5/2
Finn watches the Order workers head toward Poe's ship at the end of the next day. He's far enough away he can't see or sense their expressions, but he's sure that Ygrine did not miss that Ren is there. That he came from one of the cottages to join them in Poe's ship.
And then they vanish into the ship.
And he tries to sense, tries to feel it, but… Whatever Ren's doing in there, he can't feel it.
But somehow, a collection of people are going to get a very wrong idea of what they just did.
And he doesn't know what or how to think about that.
He turns away from the window of his house… His home. For better or worse, this is his home. This is where lives with his wife, and where his daughter was born, and… Everything in the world that really matters to him is here.
He steps to the sink, and turns it on. Water comes pouring out. Clean, clear, hot, gushing water.
Finn closes the tap, and closes his eyes, and tries to find a way to make this make sense.