3/13/3
Most women of Thea Schiff's station have a droid to do the errands and shopping for them. She doesn't begrudge them that convenience, but a long, long time ago, she found that going out, personally, to do the sort of chores and errands the other wives of her husband's men do, makes it a lot easier to see where the rough edges are.
It's been a long time since the days of the Empire, back when her family, and the families of the men her husband commanded, would be stationed in actual cities all around the Empire, but the lessons learned there are still valuable.
After all, the way the local butcher treats the spouses of service men tells someone who's paying attention a lot about how that occupation is going to go.
And there's no substitute for walking through town, no better way to get a feel for the attitudes, often unspoken, of your men, as well.
A man in uniform will often be cagey about directly bitching to his commander about issues that are 'beneath' them. But he'll complain to his wife and girlfriend, and she'll complain to her friends, and if you happen to be in line behind them at the store, or sitting in the next booth at the cafe… Well, it's always good to keep an ear out.
The Supremacy is a bit more contained than the towns, cities, and freeports she'd been stationed with while Josh was working his way up, but the practice keeps her sharp.
And lets her see… interesting things. Like… it makes her smile, Lady Ren is actually out and about, sitting on one of the benches on the F-Deck, reading.
Thea settles in to watch. She, in general, approves of the idea of their leader having a consort. She, in specific, thinks that the idea of Rey, a calming, softening presence, will help them shake off some of the harder edges the days of Snoke left them with.
She's not entirely sure she buys Kylo's idea of just… letting people come to them. It seems… inefficient. But… given who Kylo… Ben used to be, that's likely as good as it's going to get. She really can't expect the child of Organa to be a conqueror. If it takes them longer to increase their grasp, well… This might be slower and more stable than the way they've done it before.
At this point in her life, much closer to eighty than seventy, she's okay with slower and stable.
She's also very okay with what she's seeing. Rey being out, in public, letting people see her. That's… good.
Maybe… Thea's eyes narrow. Not everyone recognizes Lady Ren, not yet, especially not how she's dressed right now. Some idiot captain is trying his luck. And he's not exactly noticing, or doesn't care, about the first two brush offs. He's absolutely not noticing who he's trying to chat up.
Thea's about to get up and offer her own company, because nothing wards off unwanted male attention like a seventy-six year old woman, but… Rey tells him off, and he leaves, tail tucked between his legs.
The next one does, too. Nothing like a pretty girl in a pretty dress, without a man next to her, to attract the rascals.
From the way she's reading, it looks like she's not interested in company… Anyone with the sense of a gluber should be able to tell this is not a woman looking for a friend.
Oh. Thea's eyes go wide.
Lady Ren's not interested in her previous company. She seems very interested in this one.
He's… a friend. She's an adult woman. She's allowed to have a tall, blonde companion, with horrible fashion sense. Who puts an orange jumper over a pair of drab green trousers or wears… spectacles? She hasn't seen a pair of them in fifty years.
She can feel the cold growing in the pit of her stomach. Just… a friend… a companion… to… talk… They're just… talking…
Fuck! She thinks it loud and vicious. Stupid, stupid fucking girl!
She's not just kissing a man who isn't Ren, she's doing it in public, on the fucking F-Deck, of his flag ship.
At seventy-six, Thea Schiff doesn't run, but she can hustle awfully quick. She does wear a comm. She hits the buttons on automatic. "Darling, meet me in our ship."
Josh Schiff, Grand Admiral of the Order, second highest ranked man in the entire system, second only to Lord Ren, knows that when his wife comms him out of nowhere and calls him Darling, it's time to drop everything and run.
That's their system.
If she calls him Darling, everything is about to go so fucking sideways that the universe is on the verge of imploding.
He doesn't even make an excuse. He cuts his meeting short, and is heading to their ship.
Their private, routinely debugged, unmarked, ship.
He doesn't beat her there, but he's not far behind. As soon as he's in, she shuts the hatch, and has the coordinates planned. They're getting out of Order space, and fast.
Just because the ship is debugged, doesn't mean there hasn't been something they missed. That said, they know the range of both the furthest scanner, and right now, they're beyond it.
"What happened?" Schiff asks, once they're clear to talk, really talk.
Thea tells him.
For a moment he inhales slowly, and exhales, and nods. "Baby, are you sure. Those eyes of yours…"
Her vision isn't as sharp as it used to be, that's true, but it's not bad.
"I was less than twenty meters away. She didn't notice me, but I noticed her. And her… friend. Tall and blond. Short, shaggy hair. An orange jumper! There is no possible way that was Ren."
Shiff cradles his head in his hands for a moment, and bites out the same thing Thea said, "That stupid fucking girl!" He growls softly. "Fuck. FUCK!"
She nods. "What…"
"How many people saw?"
"She was right there, out in public. I don't know how many noticed. I didn't see a lot of heads turn or people tracking them. On her own, she's a lot less noticeable than he is. Two men actually came up to hit on her before her… friend appeared. Neither of them recognized her."
"Fuck!"
He turns his comm on. "C8, where is the Master right now?"
"His comm is in his room, right now. I'm fairly certain he's not in there, though."
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
"Sir?" C8 sounds, as best he can, concerned. "Do you want me to check on him?"
"Just poke your head in and see if he's in there." He covers his comm, and says to Thea, "Get Ylness up on your comm."
Thea nods. Any and every commander of Josh's level needs people absolutely loyal to him. Ylness Urath, Commander of the Resh Squad is that for Josh. Officially, Ylness and the Resh Squad don't exist. They are not on any roster of Order personnel. Technically, they weren't part of the Empire, either. But Resh Squad has a long and glorious, if you ride in the right circles and can catch a hint of them, history.
"He's not in his room, sir."
"Thank you, C8. Let me know when he's in, okay?"
"Certainly, sir. Should I ask what this is about?"
"No."
"Then, I won't."
Thea hands her comm over. Josh doesn't even begin with a hello. "Top secret, Ylness. You, me, and no one else knows this. I need you to grab Mistress Ren and take her into protective custody. Take her to my wife, and then get both of them off the ship. Do not tell me where you take them. Tell her you're there on Ren's orders and you have to get her off the ship, fast, and then do it. If her companion fights you on it, kill him, just get her off the ship, okay?"
Ylness doesn't ask questions. "Protective custody."
"No harm is to come to her. Just find her, and get them off the ship. Thea'll be waiting for you and your men in her ship. As of an hour ago, Lady Ren was on the F-Deck, keeping company with a…"
Thea describes the man with her.
"I don't care what you do to him, just get her off ship, preferably before Ren finds her. If he engages with you before you can get her off the ship, she's at his mercy, but… please, get her off the ship before he finds her."
"And once she's secure?" Ylness asks.
"Treat her gently. She is a guest of my wife and under my protection. I'll eventually tell you what to do with her, but right now, first priority is getting her off the ship." He doesn't say, So, he doesn't kill her when he finds out but he's sick to his stomach at the idea of it.
They're twenty-seven minutes out from The Supremacy, which means that Josh and Thea have a little time to plan.
"Are you going to tell him?" Thea asks.
He's rubbing his forehead. "No. It's not… It shouldn't come from me."
His comm chirps. C8's voice. "Grand Admiral. Master Ren has just returned to his rooms. Shall I tell him…"
"No. Just… if he tries to leave, keep him in there, okay?"
"I can do that."
Josh comms off. "Small miracles."
"So, who tells him? Pat?"
Josh feels like he's tasting that. "Almost… Just… No. No, whoever tells him has to be fast enough to dodge whatever comes when he hears."
Fast enough is what gets Thea's attention. "The new Grand Marshall."
"Jon. That's… Yeah. His friend." He pulls up Jon on his comm.
"Grand Admiral?" he sounds confused to see who's calling him.
"Is this line secure?"
"Uh… No. Give me a minute." There's a few moment's pause, followed by, "Okay, we're on the hex-quad-code now, and I'm in a private room. What's going on?"
And Schiff explains.
Jon's first thought is that this is a joke. Anyone who's ever seen the two of them together knows that this just… There's no way. Let alone the idea that after what Rey shared with him… There's no way she's that good of a liar.
"Are you sure?" Frakes asks, tentatively, after all, this is the Grand Marshall offering him this. He might not believe it, but it wouldn't do to just smack him in the face with it. "I mean… That's… really out of character."
Thea's voice is steady. "I watched her do it."
Frakes is still doubtful. But, now he's got the Grand Marshall's lady as an eye witness and this is going to be a heap of trouble if he flat out tells her she's wrong. He thinks for a moment for how to work with this. "This feels like a plot. Someone fucking with him. I mean… We know face dancers exist. They're rare, but… They won't fool a camera, right. Do we have footage of it?"
That takes both Schiffs up short. "Good point. Let's…" Josh spends a few moments keying requests into his pad, checking with Thea, getting exactly the time and where they were. It takes five minutes, but they get the security feed that covers that section of the F deck, playing on both is pad and Jon's.
It's a bad angle, and it takes them a moment to find Rey, but when they do, it's clearly her. And her companion…
"He did not look like that in person. It's not even the same clothing," Thea says, looking uncomfortable.
Josh grabs her comm and gets Ylness up again. "Ylness, bely those orders. False alarm. Call them off." Then Josh looks to Thea. "Well, I suppose we've got confirmation of that rumor that he can appear to be someone else."
Jon snerks a bit on his side of that. "Tall, blonde, and an orange jumper?" he asks Thea.
"Spectacles, too."
Jon's chuckling at that idea. "He really doesn't enjoy the kind of attention The Master gets when he's out and about. But Force alone knows what he was thinking with that. I'll, uh… discretely mention to him at some point in the not wildly distant future that if he and Rey want to play in public he's got to work the magic on both or neither of them."
"That's… a good plan," Josh says.
"I'm going to comm off," Jon says, and then his line goes dead.
Josh looks at his wife, shoulders slumping in relief and exasperation. "You know, the Emperor never used his powers to pull shit like this."
"How would we know? We were both twenty years off when he was a young man."
"I suppose." He shakes his head. "I told you about our last meeting, right? The one where I couldn't keep Ren focused on anything but her."
She chuckles at that. "You did. Poor boy's got it bad."
He pulls her a little closer. "You miss those days?"
"Sometimes." She kisses him. "Nothing saying we couldn't have a night out ourselves."
He does smile at that.
3/16/3
"Good date?" Jon asks Kylo a few days later, when they get some time not dominated by work.
Kylo blinks at him, completely unaware of what Jon's talking about.
"A few nights ago. You and Rey. F-Deck. Apparently, Thea Schiff saw Rey out flirting and kissing with someone who, on the video footage, looks an awful lot like you, but she couldn't, by sight, identify as you."
Kylo's mouth opens and closes, and then he winces, hard.
"Yeah," Jon says. "Schiff had his pet stormtroopers searching the ship for her, to get her into protective custody before you found out, fortunately we got video of it before they grabbed her."
Kylo rubs his lips together. "Protective custody?"
Jon just looks at him. Then he says, "And I was the one going to get dragooned into telling you, and I was going to go into that meeting in head to toe body armor, or possibly do it over the comm, because… Well, you're fucking scary when you're mad, you know?"
Kylo swallows at that, too. He's… actually incapable of imagining what he'd do in that situation, because he cannot begin to imagine Rey off… fucking around with someone else… But… if it had been real… He supposes being wary and armored, and… likely in a different ship, possibly quadrant of the galaxy, and doing it over the comm… might not have been a bad plan.
"So, whatever it is you do that makes people report you as being tall and blond, with blindingly terrible fashion sense, go do that to her, too, before the two of you go off and have fun on the Supremacy."
Kylo's thinking that's a good plan, and then he tilts his head to the side, "Blond?"
"Thea reported you as being big, tall, blond, no scars, wearing spectacles, and a bright orange jumper."
"Huh…" Speaking of things Kylo can't imagine, a version of himself that looks like that is on the top of the list.
"Huh?" Jon asks.
"It's a do-not-recognize spell. I've got a do-not-look spell, too, but we're out, and part of the fun of being out is other people seeing us. It's… difficult to order dinner if people won't look at you. So, this one makes them not see, me. I have no idea how it looks to them. I can't see it in a mirror, and Rey sees the real me, too, so…"
"Apparently, your alter ego is a big, blond guy, who was wearing an orange jumper."
Kylo rolls his eyes. "Have I told you before the Force is an ass?"
Jon sniggers. "No, but I get that sense from time to time."