1/29/2

The days when Chewie and Finn come back from their adventures are always the best days. At least, that's the consensus among the kids at Lirium. (And Rose.)

And this time is no different.

But there are best days filled with new stories and new hardware for the settlement.

And then there are best days filled with new stories and new foods for the communal kitchens.

And today is a best day where box after box after box of fresh produce and new goodies are being unloaded from the Falcon.

"Where were you?" Rey asks, wind trying to steal her voice away. They've got to get this loaded and moved fast, or all of those lovely crates of yummy fruit and veg are going to be frozen.

Finn nods to the Faviers, all of whom are hitched up to sleds. "Hilthor III. It's harvest time, and they're low on bacta, so we stocked up and made a killing. There's at least a month of hay for the critters, and a lot of goodies for us, too."

"Why were they low on bacta?" Critt asks, putting one of the boxes on another sled.

"They only had one factory that made the stuff, and it burned down. We got there with a ship full of it, they took every drop we could find, asked for more, so we grabbed more, and then one more run, and… well, we've got more food than we know what to do with now," Finn replies

"Small place?" Jacen asks.

"About twenty-five thousand Hilts scattered over fifty square kilometers. They've got the start of a decent town going, but they're mostly still farming," Finn says with a sniff, while handing over a crate of strawberries.

Which is good for us, Chewie growls, a cage of very unsettled… somethings… Rabbits he says, apparently able to tell that Rey and Jacen don't know what those soft, fluffy things in the cage are.

Torine, back for another load of goods to take to the kitchen looks at the rabbits and blanches. "Don't tell me we're going to eat them! We can't eat them! They're too cute."

The adults glance at each other, as Chewie puts the cage on the sled with the hay for the Faviers on it. Finn's the one who rescues them. "They're fiber animals. That long fur can make yarn. Go on, into the Falcon, grab another box."

"Fiber animals? You mean stew animals, right?" Jacen says, voice low.

"That, too. They do make yarn out of them, also. That's why we got them."

Chewie growls, quietly for him, Figured you could use animals that breed fast, don't eat too much, give you something warm to wrap around yourselves, and then a good meal when they get old.

Rey nods at that. She also makes a mental note to make sure Kylo never sees one, or rabbit will no longer be on the menu for them, either. Like Torine, he has a difficult time eating things he can empathize with, and these sweet, little balls of fluff have empathy written all over them.

"Sounds perfect," Jacen adds. "So, you gonna let me come along on the next one of these trips?"

Chewie and Finn both glance at each other, and then at Jacen, and back to each other. A third set of hands who can fly the Falcon and sweet talk anyone who gets in the range of his voice wouldn't be a bad addition to their crew.

We'll talk about it, Chewie replies.

Five minutes later, when Jacen's in charge of getting the sled with another load of fruit and veg on it heading to the kitchen, Chewie asks Rey, Can Jacen come with us?

Rey shrugs. "I don't see why not. I mean, if you want him to." She sees the way Chewie's looking at her. It's clear that he thinks it's her job to have an opinion about things like this. She rolls her lips. "I don't know. I'm not his mother, and he's old enough to decide this sort of thing for himself. Right?"

Chewie sort of shrugs. It's clear that he's dubious as to the ability of seventeen-year-old human males deciding much of anything for themselves.

"I was on my own at his age."

Chewie nods. He doesn't say anything, but it's clear that he's thinking about how orphans don't necessarily make great parents.

"He is a pilot in training, so… If you're willing to put him in the Falcon. It's probably good for him to keep learning how to fly different ships."

We can always use more pilots.

"So. Yeah… I'm okay with him going. Just make sure he behaves and learns something useful on the trip. He's still a kid, sort of, right?"

Chewie pats her shoulder. You'll get better at this. When we figure out what the next run is, I'll let him know and see if he wants to come along. Hopefully won't be a long one the way this one was.

"Yeah, what happened with this? Weren't you supposed to be gone for eight days?"

We were, but Finn wasn't kidding about every drop we could bring. We scraped the bacta supplies of three different settlements before we ran out of sources. They gave us exactly as much cargo as we could carry, and fifty thousand credits on top of that. If we could have found more on the cheap, they would have taken it. You don't notice how important bacta is until you've got to ration the stuff.

Rey would have to imagine that's true. Given how often she's helping to take care of small cuts and bumps and burns and whatnot. If they didn't have any sort of Force healing here, they'd likely be swimming in the stuff.

Chewie looks over her shoulder. The kids are back with the sleds, time to load up more food.

Then to the kitchen, cooking, eating, party time!

"You okay?" Critt asks Finn after he turns his head from the food and coughs. Again. They're next to each other, in the communal kitchen, sharing the counter, cutting up plums to pickle.

They're small, the size of Finn's last thumb joint, delicate, almost translucent purple tinged green. More sour than anything Rey thinks of as a plum, but she's been told they make awesome sweet pickles, so that's what they're doing with them.

Jade plums. Chewie had said when the kids were all drawn to them.

"Yeah," Finn grabs a plum, popping it in his mouth, grinning around it. Right now the whole settlement, minus Rose, who is getting Paige down for the night (and will be joining them soon), Poe (currently off doing whatever it is he does when he's not here) and Kylo, who isn't home, yet (and Rey hopes he'll join them), are in the kitchen, gorging themselves on the fresh fruit and veg. It'll only be fresh for so long, so they're eating their fill as they clean, chop, and sort everything for freezing, pickling, or turning into jams and jellies.

The kitchen smells excellent, and it's warm. Everyone is in there, all of the cookers are going, heating brines and simmering berries into compotes and jams, so for once, it's warm enough for everyone to be in shirt sleeves and trousers. But Finn's sweating. "Throat hurts a little," he says, feeling a bit of a tickle behind the roof of his mouth.

Rey catches that, and looks across the room at him. "Is that normal?"

He glares a little and then rolls his eyes. "Actually, yes. Every time we go to one of those farming communities, the ones with… Chewie, what do they call those things?"

Chewie howls.

"With them. They're like the Faviers, but smaller, with hooves and pointy ears that stick up. Anyway, I get within a klick of them, and my nose starts to run and throat hurts. I've been coughing and sniffling since we got to Hiltnor. Should be done in a day or two, though."

"Allergies," Kven says, nodding. "Before I moved here, I used to get them every fall. They've got shots for them."

"I'll ask MX-6 about it the morning." Because he'd really rather not end up feeling like his head is a leaky faucet every time they run into a settlement with horses.

Rey? Kylo's got supper, and is looking forward to eating it with his wife, but right now he's sitting in an empty cottage. A cold empty cottage. He pokes the heater. It's on full blast, which means… He checks the thermometer, and outside is cold. Winter with a vengeance, indeed.

Communal kitchen. Come join the party. We could use someone who's handy with veggies and a knife.

He bites his lip, thinking. Everyone there?

Poe's off planet. Rose is getting Paige down for the night, otherwise, yeah. Finn and Chewie are back with a lot of fresh produce. We're taking care of it. Jams, jellies, pickles, chopping things up for freezing. Xanth's got some music going. We're telling stories. It's a party.

He smiles a little at that, and she hits him with his mental image from more than a year ago of being able to join story time and be part of the gathering.

So, come on.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, decides that… well, if being in the same room with Chewie is a problem, he can leave. Then he strips out of his blacks, slips into Padme… Well, Ren now. The difference a few months makes, apparently. No matter what he's wearing, he's Ren, now. Kylo tucks dinner into their cooler, and grabs the two knives out of the block that he particularly likes. Then he bundles up.

It's cold outside.

He pauses at the door. He's never actually been in the communal kitchen before. He knows it's there. He knows a lot of the kids don't see much purpose to using up space in their cottages for food storage, and prefer to eat together in here.

Plus, it's easier to rest knowing the little guys don't have a cooker in their places. Just that much less of a chance of someone or thing getting burned.

He knows that Poe also likes this set up. His ship doesn't have much of a galley, so this space is for him, too. And… for all he knows the Ticos might not have a kitchen in their cottage. Maybe they turned that space into a nursery for Paige, or… Actually, no, they slapped an extra room on top of their cottage. That's got to be the nursery.

Anyway… He's dithering. And shivering. The wind's cutting right through his cowl.

Come in, Rey thinks to him, so he does.

It's, especially compared to outside, bright and hot and loud. There's at least twenty-five people shoved in there, ranging in age from five or six (Sometimes Rugh will say she's five, sometimes six. MX-6's, the med droid, best guess, based on her teeth, is five and a half) to Chewie's 248.

Chewie.

He's just staring at Kylo; who's staring back. Every Force sensitive in the room can feel the tension crackling off of them. There's a lot of anger pouring off of Chewie, and Kylo can feel his defenses rising at it, along with a deep, heartsick shame. And sorrow, so much sorrow, that's wavering around Kylo like the black cloak wrapped around his shoulders. Grief, loss, regret…rage… It's pouring off of Chewie, a silent howl of loss undulled by time.

The Order kids, Jacen lead among them, are projecting a wave of protective feelings toward Kylo. He blinks, that's… new. But that also means they're starting to look at Chewie differently, because the wave of anger and pain from him is just overwhelming, and they don't know why Chewie so clearly, vibrantly, passionately loathes Kylo. Why him just being in the room makes Chewie flare sparking red.

Rey's stepped over to him. "Hey, come in," pulling him gently deeper into the room. Chewie turns away from him, and goes back to chopping up olmelts.

You're okay. Rey's thinking to Kylo.

Maybe.

Jacen shouts out, "Turn this up; I like this song," and that gets the kids talking again. Then he sees Kylo take his cloak off, hanging it next to the other ones, and the knives he's got tucked into his belt.

"You've got your own knives?" Magiit asks.

"He's a tool snob," Rey says.

Kylo pulls a cutting board toward him, standing next to Rey, and scoops some of the peaches from her board to his. He really sees what fruit she's got and feels her giggling in his mind. Yeah, I saved some. Might play with them later.

He doesn't blush. Intentionally. At least, not so anyone else can see. The tips of his ears feel hot. It's not like it was a preference or anything. Just… what was available.

Uh huh… And what if I want to nibble one off of you? She lifts one of the pieces from her board, gives it a little lick, and then sucks on it before popping it in her mouth to eat it.

His eyes light up at that and an entirely different warmth spreads through his body. I can likely go along with that.

You know I can hear this, right? Jacen thinks at them. Probably about three of the other kids, too.

Rey whimpers. Kylo blushes, completely uncontrolled, now. Everyone near them is staring, feeling something is up.

Jacen winks at them. Nah. Just fooling with you. You two are pretty good at keeping your thoughts down. That said, if you're gonna think naughty at each other, keep your expressions under control. It's really easy to see the bedroom eyes.

Kylo sighs, stabs the peach in front of him, splitting it through the pit, while holding hot eye contact with Jacen, and thinks at Rey, I wanted to do this why?

She leans over, up on her tip toes, and kisses him. "Because it's fun."

And really, a few minutes into it, it is.

Kylo doesn't often fondly remember anything about learning to be a Jedi, but sometimes kitchen duty was pleasant. Working together with other people you… well, in his case tolerated, in a companionable sort of way is nice.

And, Finn can really tell stories. He's great at it, and apparently they had a good time on this latest trip. Listening to him, and yes, he does have to stop to cough a little now and again, apparently those things he's allergic to set him off for a few days, is entertaining, and Chewie keeps breaking into the story with his own bits and pieces.

And it's just nice.

Rose joins them once she's got Paige down. She's sharing Finn's cutting space now. And they're working companionably next to each other. He's peeling, she's slicing, nibbling choice bits from each other's fingers, and both of them are radiating a gently content glow just being together.

She's got some stories of doing this with her family. They were miners, not farmers, but they, and everyone in their mine, had a small garden for fresh produce, and harvest time was always a party.

And Kylo, as she's talking about bringing in the olmelts and swecklers and pumpkins and musk melons, decides to add a bit of his own past to it.

"Harvest time was year round where I was. We didn't have winter… At least not like we do here. It'd get cool. Deepest winter might mean a day or two of frost, and maybe a night of freezing rain, but nothing like here. We had snow, once, in fifteen years. Once the days got short, we'd switch from warm crops, fruits, berries, to cool ones, potatoes, cabbages, rye, Rose's olmelts."

Rose is looking across the table at him, curious, "You used to farm?"

"Luke was a farmer first, Jedi next, so his temple… monastery… whatever, was a farm. We had crops going year round."

Chewie adds a bit, Took us three years to find a planet with the right climate for that. He wanted a place that wasn't too wet or dry. Not going back to Tatooine or Dagobah. It couldn't get too hot or too cold, and it couldn't have too many people on it.

"Best I knew, we were the only people on it," Kylo says.

Lando took care of that. He bought it for Luke. There were three small settlements there when we found it. He made it worth their while to go elsewhere.

Kylo hadn't known that.

Took him four more years to get it set up after that. Clearing out a place. Building it up. He had some of the same domes we've got here.

Kylo nods. "Yeah. Our gym. One of the meditation spaces."

"Did Luke set up his monastery on his own?" Savarah asks.

R2 was there, Chewie says.

"But you weren't?" Xanth asks Kylo.

Kylo shakes his head. "If it took him three years to find the place, that means I was two when he got there. They didn't take me there until I was eight."

"Were you the first student?" Cassie asks.

"Second. He found M'Gll before I got there. Second of the New Jedi." He looks to Rey. "Second Maji." He goes back to chopping more peaches. He and Rey have finished the blush ones and moved onto the white ones. "They had a peach orchard?" he asks Finn.

Finn doesn't say anything until Rose gives him a bit of a kick under the table. "Yeah. Peaches, plums, apricots, pluots. Almonds. Lots of them, but we don't need to do anything with them, so they're already stored."

"And berries," Elias says. He's been taking kilo after kilo of berries, and gently heating them on the stove with lots of sugar. "We're going to have jam until the end of time."

"Good. Plain toast is boring," Opal says.

"So's plain porridge," Kylo says.

Chewie howls. Luke was the only person I ever met who preferred his plain. Not even any butter or salt. Just naked, mushy oats and wheat.

Kylo rolls his eyes at that. "He liked jam and sugar, or salt and butter on his just fine. Probably better than just fine. But if he liked it, then he'd want it, and wanting was on the direct route to the Dark Side path. And no one who isn't starving, especially not Jedi Master Luke, ever wanted plain porridge."

Ostrae, who's overseeing very carefully straining the seeds out of the raspberry puree she's making for jam for her cookies, looks at Kylo and says, "Jedi weren't allowed to have yummy food?"

He shrugs a bit. "We cooked for ourselves, and none of us had your touch with it. But, in general we weren't supposed to want things, and it's easy to want yummy things, so food was plain and nutritious. We did cookies because we were able to talk him into the idea that physical training days were hard, so we needed something with a lot of fat and sugar to keep our energy up. He might have just wanted a good excuse for cookies, too.

"When things got ripe, we could just pick them and eat them." He takes a slice of peach and pops it in his mouth. "This is good, but there's something to be said for eating it the second it's ready, right under the tree it grew on.

"We didn't let food go to waste, so anything that didn't get eaten when it was fresh was put away, preserves, frozen, dried. Luke kept trying to get fruit to dry properly, like it did on Tatooine, but it was too humid for that. Even the Jedi Master couldn't make good fruit leathers in 70% humidity."

"So there was jam for your porridge?" Kven asks Kylo, voice quiet, feeling shy at speaking directly to him.

"There was, but… Luke ate his plain. And it's not like he'd look down on you or say anything if you put jam or butter or salt on your porridge. You didn't have to eat yours plain. It wasn't a rule or anything like that. Especially when kids were first with us. New place, new rules, new everything, no family or friends around. Luke didn't want us to feel like we were being punished, and a diet of plain everything certainly feels like punishment. But he was the one who 'knew how to do it right.' And he was the one telling us about the dangers of pleasure and wanting and attachment. And, especially as kids… eating is a big sort of wanting and pleasure.

"So, M'Gll, she's the one who got there before I did, ate hers plain. And would drink room temperature water with it. And she'd be just fine. Never giving so much as a hint of anything less than perfect, smug satisfaction at that. The only thing M'Gll ever wanted was to be the perfect Jedi, and at least from where I was sitting, she was well on her way to it.

"I'm his nephew, and Leia Organa's son, so I'm supposed to just ooze perfect Jedi-ness out of every pore, and…" He takes another bite of peach. "I want things. I like wanting things. And plain porridge and lukewarm water is fu—awfully gross, okay?" The teens snigger at that catch. "You have too many meals of that, and you stop wanting things, all right. You stop wanting everything and get really listless, which I loathe. But, again, I'm supposed to have been a super-Jedi since birth, so I'm not supposed to want anything, and I hate it. And, of course, Jedi aren't supposed to hate anything, either. I always felt like everyone was staring when I'd even put salt on my food, or add some jam to my breakfast toast, or… Whatever. They probably weren't. A lot of it was likely in my head." He shrugs. Most of these kids likely don't need to know about him and Snoke, not yet. "But it always felt that way." He glances to Chewie, able to feel him really listening to him. "Most of the time I felt like every step I took, and every move I made there was wrong." He taps the Maji pendant on his throat. "I felt like that about almost everything I did before I put this on."

Chewie just looks at him. Kylo can't read the expression, but he can feel the emotions aimed at him are more sad than angry.

That's probably good enough.

For now.

The kitchen is the warmest bit of the entire settlement by the end of the night.

It's really nice in there.

Nice in a you-could-toss-off-all-of-your-clothing-and-cavort-about-naked-without-having-to-keep-yourself-swaddled-from-head-to-toe-in-blankets sort of way.

This is relevant, because, as the fruits and veg have been dealt with, and the tools put away, and the children have headed back to their cottages, Kylo and Rey and Finn and Rose are lingering, cleaning more and more slowly, looking to take advantage of the very nice and warm galley, and the privacy that would come from being the last ones in there.

If, say, they just happened to be the last ones in there.

Rey and Rose are talking with each other, keeping up conversation about what they hope to get done soon, namely snow breaks, because they've spent more than enough time shoveling snow out of the street, and… well, they've hit the point where they just don't have much room for it. It's a meter high in most places now, and then bits they've shoveled over and over are two meters high, or higher now, and…

Something's got to get keep some of the snow out of the town, and Rose has been researching snow breaks.

But, really, there's only so much to say about snow breaks, and there's only so much cleaning to do in the kitchen, and there's only so slowly you can do it, and… Well, when you've wiped up the same bit of counter for the third time, it becomes really obvious that you're intentionally not leaving.

Finally Rose just says it. "Look, you two have an entire other ship that's not freezing, so off you go, and let us enjoy here."

Rey breaks out in giggles as both of the men look scandalized and refuse to even get in the neighborhood of meeting each other's eyes. She grabs a few peaches, and Kylo's knives before saying, "Come on," and porting him back to his room on the Supremacy.

Once they're there, Kylo flops onto their bed, saying, "Remind me to never eat in there."

She laughs at that. "I'm sorry, did I misunderstand what you were hoping to do in there?"

"No, but if I'd done it, then I wouldn't need the reminder."

Rey laughs at that, and sits next to him, pulling off her jacket. The peaches are lying on the bed next to them. She glances at them, and him, and back to them, a very amused and sexy smile on her face, "So…"

He sighs a bit. "You really want to see this?"

The grin on her face isn't on any level obscure.

Kylo glances at them. He can remember being fifteen, and just so, so, so randy all the fucking time, and so bored of his hands, and just desperatefor anything new. And they were new. Soft, ripe, juicy, sun warm… But… right now, they're just a few orbs of fairly tasty vegetable matter and not even close to triggering any interest on his part. "They're a hell of a lot less interesting now that you're in my world."

She laughs. "I'd really hope so." She settles herself in his lap, and kisses him gently. She got the sense of his last few thoughts. "If it's not fun, they can just be part of breakfast."

He shrugs a little. "They could be fun, and maybe one day they will, but… right now, thinking about them and sex just makes me feel desperate in a way I don't like."

She kisses him. "Then they'll be breakfast."

He kisses her, long and slow, feeling his body rise against hers. His hand comes to her breast, cupping it, feeling the soft, supple weight against his palm.

He kisses it, through her shirt. "This. You, soft and warm. A pretty handful against my lips. This is what I want." He kisses again, feeling her nipple perk through the fabric of her shirt. He glances back to the peach. "That was just killing time until you came along."

Rey squirms invitingly, and then pulls her shirt over her head. His lips follow the path of naked skin from her throat to her breast. His thumb traces over her nipple, and he admires the tanned flush of her skin. "It's been months since we've seen a warm day. Longer since we were playing in the sun on Lirium, but the sun's still in your skin." He nuzzles against her curves. "I love this."

She strokes his hair, fingers trailing down his neck, dipping under the collar of his shirt, tracing along the line of his shoulder. She tugs his head up, looking him in the eyes. "And the stars in yours."

Their lips meet again, and again, as they wriggle each other out of their clothing, as hands follow a familiar dance.

It's not long before he's deep in her body, and she's deep in his mind, and both of them are rocking, slick and eager, against each other.

And not long after that, they're curled together, under the deep blankets of their bed at Lirium, breathing in unison, chasing slumber.