3/22/2
There wasn't a great disturbance in the Force.
Jacen feels like there should have been. His world. His entire, literal world is… Well, doing exactly what it's always been doing. He just knows about it now.
Still… It feels… shattering, or like it should be shattering, or…
He glares at the pad of calculations he's packing up as they're getting moving.
Finn's in research mode. He's actually really good at it, which is part of why Chewie likes having him around. He can find deals no one else can see, because he's better at getting deep into the data. Right now, he's looking for any mention of Lirium with coordinates.
Jacen't never really thought of Finn like that. Most of how he deals with him on Lirium is that Finn's the guy who teaches basic hand to hand combat, some baton work, and keep them on track when he's around and Rose isn't in charge. Quiet, steady back up for Rose or Rey. He tells good stories, is fun to hang out with, is the kind of Dad most of the kids wished they had, and gets on really well with Poe.
But when they'd been talking, he'd mentioned working hard, studying, officer material, and right now, on the job, Jacen's really seeing it for the first time. The adults talk about working on things, and learning, and studying and whatnot, and he knows they think about it, but… Besides when Rey works with him, this is the first time he's actually seen one do anything that looks like learning-type work, and the idea that they aren't all shitting about having to keep doing this stuff is somewhat novel. (And somewhat off-putting, apparently this working thing never ends.)
And it's also a distraction. Home isn't going where it should. Jacen rolls his eyes at that. Home is going exactly where it should. If the Force is real, if it matters, then Lirium is doing what it needs to do.
Home isn't going where they'd like it to go, that's the actual truth of that statement.
Yes, he's done the math right, or right enough, but the more points they can add, the better the image of what's going on they can get. So, studying. Research.
Chewie's in the cockpit, finishing up a conversation with Threepio. He's got Rebellion and Resistance databases in his head, and right now he's transferring any data he's got on Lirium, too.
When he wraps that, Jacen says, "When we get home, we're going to talk, right? Figure out where we're going next?"
Chewie nods.
"Can I be part of that conversation?"
That brings Chewie up short.
Jacen waits, patiently, because he knows that if he pesters and makes a list of why he'd be good for that conversation, he'll look more like a child, and less like someone who belongs at the table.
Finally, Chewie shakes his head.
"Chewie…"
Look, kid, it's not personal to you. This is… gonna be tense. To the extent this is our family attempting to make a decision together… We've never done that. Finn's had one conversation with Ben. I've had none. Just being in the same room with him is tricky. And now we're going to try and hash things out and come to some sort of agreement. Together?
"Last night… You said…"
I know Han and I fucked that kid over. I know Luke did worse. He still killed my… Chewie pauses, which Jacen finds interesting, because usually, when people do that, it's because they're looking for the right word, or discarding ones that say too much, or trying to get the right spin on the issue. But the word Chewie's thinking means nothing to him, it's… feelings mostly. He's got an okay idea of what he thinks those feeling should be, but he knows that he's, at best, looking at an out of focus, black and white picture of a full color 3D holo. He knows that Chewie also understands that word means nothing to him, so he just continues with, Han, in front of my face. Got it?
Jacen nods. "Got it."
Chewie looks thoughtful. Whatever Ben comes up with, Finn's gonna want something different. That's just… How it's going to work. I'm probably going to want something different, too. Just… Because. But I'm a grown up, or, at least enough of one to admit that I know Ben can actually talk and plan a good deal. The fucking Order would have imploded by now if he couldn't. And I'm just being a contrary old cuss, because that's who I am. So, if the rest of the crew likes Ben's plan, I don't need Finn thinking you swayed 'em. He's already going to be wondering that about Ben, and I don't need the extra complication of adding you to the mix.
Jacen nods at that, too. That's a good point. "Okay."
Rey's with the kids when her comm buzzes. She's expecting Ellie Kinear, because at some point the two of them, and likely Kylo, possibly Jon, probably Mirina, are going to talk about this… wedding… thing.
So, she's not expecting Chewie on the other line.
She's expecting We're heading back, and once we get here, we're gonna need to talk even less.
Bring Ben.
That's got her fear response starting to spike. She can think of exactly nothing good, that they're going to want to talk to Kylo about.
"Why?"
The next bit is quiet, for Chewie, but it's loud enough most of the kids around her get it. Working on training Jacen up. Had him plot the orbit of Lirium.
She takes a deep, calming breath. Both her fear response and Critt's just spiked hard. She seeks out Jacen, and feels him, flashes Critt a quick, he's okay, thumbs up. Whatever happened as he was working, he's alive. "How bad?"
Best we can tell, spring's gonna be in ninety-three years.
There's a moment of no response, because she was expecting, something bad happened to Jacen while he was working on coordinates. Not, the coordinates are bad. But once she switches gears, "Nrghs!" or a sound very similar to that comes out of Rey. She swallows, and sees the kids all staring at her. "Okay. How far out are you?"
Eight hours.
"We'll be ready."
When Chewie comms off, twenty-three sets of eyes are all staring at her. She raises her hands. "I don't know. You all know exactly as much as I do about it. We'll talk—"
"We'll, all of us, or we'll, the grown ups?" Critt asks.
"We'll, the grown-ups, talk. Then we'll talk with you."
"We're going to have to leave, aren't we?" Savarah asks.
Cassie's got her eyes closed and is feeling the weather. "Not right this second." But knowing that things are going to get bad, she's feeling deeper than she usually does, and Rey catches that, along with the worry it brings.
"Nothing's going to happen right this second," Rey says.
"Are we going to get any say in what happens next?" Marrok asks. Rey can feel how nervous he is. He's the reason all of his friends are here, and so far, it's been pretty good, better than Canto was, but if it's about to go wrong, it's on him for saying yes to Poe.
"I honestly don't know," Rey replies. "If you guys want to stay, and it's going to get too cold, then no, you're not going to get a say. If you've got ideas of where next might be, we'll listen. But… I don't know what comes next."
Her voice is shaking. That gets the attention of the kids. "Rey," Xanth's next to her, holding her hand. "It's going to be okay."
She nods. "I know that." She blinks a little. "I… uh… don't get up and move easy. Tend to settle in deep and well, and… This…" She breathes in and out. "This is my first home, and… I don't want to leave." She didn't want to leave when she was in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. Pulling out of here, the right place, for the right reasons, her whole body and mind is recoiling at the idea.
"Then we stay!" Rugh's very certain about that. If something's making Rey sad, then obviously, they shouldn't do it. And, in Rugh's world, that's that.
Rey offers up a sad smile. "Maybe we will. But maybe this isn't a good place for people to stay." Because, recoiling or not… If spring's that far off, it means that this is just the beginning of winter, and… Like the Kennas said all those months ago, when they noticed that there were no above ground animals native to this planet, no trees either, it's going to get cold.
Kylo checks his chrono. And his schedule. He's got a half hour free, which he should probably use to hack through another file or two on his data pad. (C8's 'just send the bloody reports on the internal messaging system' went out, and he no longer has his full body weight, times two, on his desk in datapads. He does have an inbox with a number so large he thinks it's an astronomical designation next to his 'unread messages' tab. The one thing that bringing pads in person did was cut down on the number of messages. People who didn't feel like schlepping a pad to him often just let things sit. Now they send them electronically, and they send everything.) He glares at the pad and gets up.
He's got time to get the blade for Jacen and run it home. He's not sure why he didn't just yank it out of his wardrobe and take it home yesterday, but… He didn't.
And right now, the in-box is a sarlac pit of unending details, and a mono-molecular blade and training Jacen sounds a lot more fun.
As he thinks about what he's trying to teach Jacen, it's occurring to him, that if he's working with Jacen to improve his empathy, maybe he'll be able to figure out how to get a better control on his own. He likely wouldn't mind being able to just know what people are feeling, instead of having to steep in it whenever he's too close to them.
He opens his wardrobe, and reaches for the bundle in the back. He wrapped the blade in one of his pillowcases when he took it from Hux. He did clean the blood off of it before he hid it away. That's a very clear memory, though most of the rest of that day is getting hazy. He was sitting there, in his conference room, before he called for janitorial to take care of the mess, the hem of his shirt untucked, one of the few bits with no gore on it, carefully wiping blood off the sheath. That seemed important at the time. He had to get it clean. He couldn't take it if it wasn't clean. He didn't know why he took it, let alone why it needed to be clean when he was covered in gore. Just that that, too, seemed very important at the time.
He'd sat there, in his conference room, almost two years ago now… more than? He's not entirely sure. Changing the dates over makes it more difficult to track time, but right now he thinks that might be a good thing. He does know he was listening to his commanders blather on and on, knowing which ones were intending to kill him, and who they were working for and with. They weren't nervous, not until he told the six of them to stay, and then instructed one of the others to fetch Hux for a "Succession planning meeting."
None of them knew, what, exactly to do as they waited for Hux to get there. They knew, given who was there, what he had to have figured out. But… run, fight, try to talk their way out, play innocent? They didn't know. One… he doesn't remember her name, tried to get out. Made an excuse about how she was due for… Something. She didn't get to finish that sentence. He froze her voice and pushed her back into her seat.
As he did that, General RX-4868 started reaching for his blaster. Kylo froze him in place, too. "We are not all yet assembled. It would be rude to start before General Hux gets here."
The door opened and Hux entered. And he knew. Probably before he opened the door, certainly after when he saw who was in the room with Kylo.
Kylo froze him dead, looked Hux in the eyes, and said, "General, good of you to join us. I understand you have plans for the succession of the leadership of the First Order." Then he shut the door, locked it, released RX-4868, lit his saber, and the fight was on.
He kept Hux immobilized, made him watch from the doorway. The other officers in the room were fighters. Killers, too, but mostly fighters. But Hux…
Hux knew himself, his strengths, and weaknesses, and he knew he'd never be a fighter, so he didn't even try. After all, why bother with brute force when you could design weapons that could destroy entire systems?
And when the fight was done, Kylo stood amid more body parts than he, or anyone else wanted to count, and he pulled Hux to him, wrapped his hand around his throat, stared him in the eye, felt Hux's hate and rage and pain. No fear. Just blue-green-grey eyes so mad they'd come back round the other side to sane again, and a mind screaming at the galaxy that this wasn't how it was supposed to end, and what a fucking waste it all was. Before his vision slipped to black, Kylo ran him through with his saber. He hadn't withdrawn the blade when he dropped Hux, and it cut through most of his torso as he fell.
He landed in a pool of blood. Kylo doesn't remember who's it was. Not Hux's. His blade doesn't leave the kind of wound that bleeds, and he's the only one who hit Hux. Some of it may have been his own. He knows he left that fight bleeding, with a few broken bones. And, in close combat, some of his commanders hit not just him, but each other as well.
Then he knelt at the corpse's side, yanked off his coat, and took the blade off of his right wrist. And spent the next hour, probably, very carefully cleaning it with the hem of his shirt.
And now, it's here, in the back of Kylo's wardrobe, still wrapped in the black pillowcase Kylo had tucked it into.
He unwraps it, and flicks it open.
Like the dark lightsaber, he can only see the hilt. But the blade is there, he can feel it. Mono-molecular blade, the sharpest edge in the galaxy. Sharper than his lightsaber. The blade you can't defend against. No armor, no shield, no other weapon can deflect it. It cuts… anything.
Hux was the only person he'd ever known to choose to keep something this dangerous on his person. He holds it up, in front of him, by the wrist sheath. Breathe wrong, let your focus waver for a moment, and it'll cut you to the bone and clear on through. Your limb would be off before you even knew you'd been hit.
He looks at it in his hand, before hitting the button that pulls the blade back into its wrist sheath. A tiny 'snick' sound is the only way to tell that it's retracted. It's designed to be triggered from outside of the sheath, or inside.
All Jacen will have to do is pull his hand up, give his forearm a little squeeze with his other hand, or Force, or make a fist hard enough to cause the muscle in his forearm to bunch up, and the blade will trigger. Squeeze again, and it settles back into its sheath with a tiny snick.
This is the only blade Kylo ever feared. He saw it in action, once. Hux was in a snit, and… He didn't see the hit. It almost looked like Hux had slapped the man on the back. But he didn't, and the man was on the ground, bleeding out, heart sliced half, paralyzed from the lungs down, before he even knew he'd been hit. He literally never knew what hit him, and died before he could figure it out.
There is a reason, beyond their eternal jockeying for status, that Kylo never let Hux walk behind him, unless he was focusing, intensely, on what Hux was doing. There was nothing in his arsenal that could stop that blade, but he could stop Hux.
He'd knelt there, next to what was left of Hux, no longer the pretty boy of the First Order, not after Kylo finished with him, and took the blade.
He didn't know why, not really. There was… maybe a shape of a hint that there would be a time he'd want it, but… Mostly he was high on the endorphins, crashing fast, not sure of anything, cold in the knowledge that he'd just killed a quarter of his high command, probably three fourths of the competent ones, and manically laughing, probably sobbing, too, amid the corpses and pieces of corpses, at doing more damage to the First Order than his mother had ever dreamed of. While he very carefully, with a minute attention to detail, cleaned that blade.
It wasn't a good day.
He looks at the blade.
He sees Hux… before. Before he ended him. Sees… a million meetings, and walking through the decks with him. He sees Snoke petting him, but only to rub his triumphs in Kylo's face. He sees Phasma behind him, feels her loyalty to him. He sees crowds of soldiers, adoring Hux, cheering him.
Hux was the face of the First Order. He was what Snoke couldn't be and Kylo wasn't: presentable, attractive, desirable. A good face and a good voice, and the ability to rally people together and make them feel like they were on a holy mission to cleanse the universe of filth.
If he'd been even a centimeter closer to…
"Oh, stop it," Hux says, appearing behind him, casual disdain on his face. "For all your power and mind reading, you never saw anything other than your own image of me."
Kylo startles slightly and almost drops the blade. "You're back."
Hux steps over and looks at the blade in Kylo's hand. "And you kept a memento of me. I'm touched."
"It felt right."
"That's disturbing."
"Everything about us was always disturbing."
Hux half inclines his head in agreement. He looks at his blade. "I built that. Designed it from the hilt up. Built the condenser to create the blade. You can't forge a mono-molecular blade. They're crystals, not metals. You have to grow them."
"I didn't know that."
"Of course not." His face is warm as he looks at the weapon. "It was before you joined us. Technically, before I joined us. Father was…" he's debating his words, picking carefully, "stepping beyond the acceptable bounds of normal familial cruelty. When he got out of surgery with two artificial kidneys, he decided I was old enough to leave his company."
"Why didn't you kill him?"
Hux looks genuinely surprised by that. "I did… or at least Phasma did on my orders, don't you remember?"
Kylo shrugs. He did know that. "Why didn't you kill him then?"
Hux half smiles, half winces. "He was still useful."
"To you, or Snoke?"
Hux's expression is mild, bored almost. "Was there a difference?"
Kylo smirks a little at that. "Loyal servant of the First Order."
"About as much of a servant as the child you intend to give this to."
Kylo acknowledges that. Hux was only a servant in as much as he was planning to take over one day. "I'd say he's as much a child as you were the first time you used this."
"Likely true." Ghostly fingers hover over the wrist sheath. "It's the blade of a man who knows brute force will never be his ally, of a 'mere slip of a boy who'd never amount to anything.'"
Even dead, even long past the hands of Brendol Hux, Kylo can feel the rage, hate, pain, and, unlike when he snuffed Hux's light clean out of him, fear in those words. "You should have killed him a lot sooner than you did."
"Yes." He glances to the stars burning outside Kylo's viewport. "There are a lot of people I should have killed that I never got around to."
"Cyanide tubes throughout the air processing?"
Hux's smile is sharp, and a little surprised to see Kylo knows about that, now. "Well, it's not like I was ever going to get the chance to cut him in half with a lightsaber, now was I? And it's not like he ever checked any of my plans. Finest weapons engineer in the galaxy and he acted like I was a tinker with a few beat up tools and no vision. A few orders, and my people would have been out, I could trigger them remotely, and then space and refil the atmo. A coup in a few simple moves with the Supremacy still intact and ready for me to take over."
Kylo's eyes narrow. He thought that was part of the new, post-Raddus attack, air processing system.
Hux rolls his eyes and sits next to him on the bed. "The first time."
Kylo holds up the blade. "Not planning on putting this in my back?"
Hux barks a short laugh. "What could have possibly given you the idea that I was stupid? I've have gassed you. Even you, with all your magic, have to breathe." Hux looks genuinely amused by that. "If you hadn't done it for me, I'd have gotten all of your little Forcelings. Wipe you wizards and your sorcery clean from the First Order. Consolidate power. Destroy those who are defiant. Any planet, any system... A hundred million billion trillion others." He snaps his fingers. "Gone in a heartbeat. No fear, no pain, one second existence, the next, nothing. Mine the atoms, and build more."
"Why? What would you have left to defend?"
Hux laughs, this one long, cold, and genuine. He's amused at Kylo's question. "Never, ever saw me." He shakes his head, and gently, as if explaining to a child, "You don't build a weapon like Starkiller because you want to defend something. I would have built thousands of them and burned the whole fucking galaxy to the ash."
"Even Phasma?"
Hux's eyes go soft. "I would have danced through the embers with her and run us both through with that blade."
Kylo swallows, hard, feeling those words, and the perverse content ripples of dark Hux's shade leaves in his wake.
He looks at the blade in his hand, and feels a long, cold pull to space it. The sense that… anything touched by Hux is… corrupt and tainted.
He glances up at himself in the mirror, and remembers… Not training fights. They didn't fight. Never, not even that last time. Hux was a killer, too dangerous to even try to fight, so he killed him. But they never fought.
But… They did touch. 'Careful, Ren,' and a hand on his wrist. 'Watch yourself, Ren,' that hand grown tight, angry. He didn't generally say anything when he smacked Hux around. No warning, no threat, just brute force and ringing ears.
He looks at the blade, built by Hux. And at himself. Shaped by Hux. By Hux and Snoke, and Luke, and his parents, and…
Hux is dead. The past is dead. Maybe not gone, but it's dead.
Just like Hux.
And shaped he is, and shaped this blade is, but neither of them are… stained, corrupted… ruined by it. He's getting a better sense for why it mattered so much that this blade was clean. And, looking at it now, it is clean. He did a good job of it.
He re-wraps it. It's a tool. A very good tool. Made by a man who was very, very good at making extremely dangerous tools. Made for a man who will never be the master of brute force. For a man who has to survive by his mind and his tongue.
He knows the scars on Jacen's back. Though they haven't talked about them. Maybe one day they will. Maybe they'll talk about his scars, and how he got them, how they shaped him, and Jacen's scars, and the fact that, at least once, he couldn't talk his way out of trouble.
This is the weapon that makes sure he never gets another one.
His comm chirps at him. Rey's voice, and he listens, nods, listens more, and says, "I'll make sure we've got supper for… seven?"
Rey replies, "Sounds right."
Kylo places the knife on top of his table. Apparently, it'll be in Jacen's hands a lot sooner than he'd anticipated.
Rose flops onto her bed, limp and frustrated.
It's normal. Sometime around a year old, babies go from two shorter naps, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, to one longer afternoon one.
And at a week shy of eleven months Paige is 'somewhere around a year old.'
Great.
Normal.
Of course, like all the rest of the normal stuff, like teething, like moving onto solid food, this appears to involve a lot of crying, massive tantrums, a baby in a tearing bad mood, and Rose counting the minutes until Finn gets home so she can drop this child on him and vanish in the Falcon for as much of a full day as she can.
She loves her daughter. She loves her husband. But some days she wants to get the fuck away from everyone else and have some time on her own. Granted, Chewie's piloting, but he's pretty good about dropping her off at one of a handful of her pre-married days hangouts, and letting her have a few hours where she can just have a decent meal, a good conversation with people who don't know Finn or Rey or the rest of her life, on her own, without having to deal with anyone else's needs.
She closes her eyes and sighs, making herself calm down. As of this point, she has put a very tired little girl down three times, and each time said little girl does not want to go down, at all and there has been much fussing as a result.
With any luck, this time Paige is really down, and she'll have a full hour to get a nap of her own, and then, hopefully in a better mood herself, they can go to the kitchen, have some lunch (she 'supervises' the kids as they make lunch/eat, and they generally do a good job of entertaining Pagie, who really likes crawling around after the bigger kids), do some work in the farm, and then, please, hopefully, afternoon nap and another two hours of on her own time.
Hopefully.
Five minutes pass without a peep. She's down.
Rose sighs with relief, and lets herself rest.
Her eyes are getting heavy, muscles loosening, breath slowing, and then her comm chirps.
She's going to kill Poe.
"What!" bites out.
"Bad time?" Finn's voice, and now she's awake and confused. He knows it's nap time, and if he's calling now, it's a big deal.
"Not great," she says. "What's going on."
"More not great," he says. "I'd have called later but…"
She can tell by his voice he's rattled. Rattled enough to call now. "What, love?"
"Uh… So… You remember how when we were living with Chewie he had both of us plot a planet course and figure out the orbit, and how to get there?"
She's nodding, not understanding what that has to do with anything, let alone why he'd be calling her at nap time to talk about it, but, she can feel how off he is, just by his voice, so… "Yeah, Finn, I remember."
"He had Jacen do it for Lirium." She knows the expression that goes with the long half sigh, half growl that comes next. "The orbit's a fucking oval. And not the two degrees off a circle oval that most habitable for human planets have, this thing's as long as my arm, and just as wide, too."
Rose winces. "Fuck!" she mutters it. "How bad?"
"We've got, maybe, if we're lucky, two more years before we've got to get out."
"Fuck!" This time it's louder. She sits up, looking around their bedroom, and the home they've been setting up for the last year and change. They've been tinkering with it, bringing in new furniture and art and adjusting things and… Okay, this… probably isn't their forever home, but it's a good place to rest and get things into motion to be able to get that forever home, and… "FUCK!"
"Yeah. It's not…" he laughs, but it's a bitter sound, "I almost said, the end of the world, but, really, it's the end of our time on this world. We can't stay."
"How long is winter?"
"A hundred and ninety more years, give or take some. It's just… I mean… I guess underground, like the fucking turtles, is an option, but…"
"I'll look into it, but…"
They don't have to say it. It might be an option, but neither of them like it.
"What next?" Rose says.
"Uh… I think we're getting together, tonight, at Rey's to… talk."
"Talk?" Rose asks.
"Yeah. I mean. I'm not saying we're going along with what the rest of them say. We can bug out with Chewie and go wherever, but… I guess we're going to see if we can sort of keep something like this going, for the kids if nothing else."
Rose and Finn really hadn't intended to half adopt two dozen kids when they decided to move here, but somehow they did, and… while the option to leave is on the table, the inclination, especially if the kiddos aren't properly settled, not so much.
But, if it's leave the kids or freeze to death… Actually, she knows that's not how it's going to go. If it's leave the kids or live on the Supremacy, because if they're talking with Rey… no at Rey's that means this is bad enough Finn's aware that might be the answer, even if he doesn't want to say it out loud. "I wouldn't mind being on the Falcon again," Rose says.
"Yeah," he sounds resigned. They've talked this through and through. "I know." They don't get in fire fights as often as they used to, but just the idea of Rose in a firefight ties Finn's guts up, and putting Paige into one is the sort of thing that wakes him up from a dead sleep into a heart-pounding nightmare. He'd rather go one on one, unarmed, against Kylo than experience the idea of Paige in the Falcon while they're dog fighting their way into or out of something.
"We could go legit, and…" Rose starts. They've had this conversation before, too.
"Starve." They've been tucking away as much as they can of what they make from Finn's runs, and have a fairly decent nest egg right now, but that egg's not going to be getting much bigger if they go legit.
"That's not true."
"Might as well be. Especially if Jacen's actually signing on. Splitting a legit commission two ways hurts, three'll mean we really are at the edge."
"Is he?"
"I… don't know. He looks like a fish just dropped in a pool he's so happy here. Flexing away, and swimming with the current, and… If Chewie offered, he'd take it in less than a heartbeat." He's quiet, and she can sense him looking around, checking to see who's nearby. "If he's serious, I'm going to push him toward Poe. He's… shit, probably a better pilot than I am already, and… He'll be useful for getting and keeping jobs once he knows the ins and out, but… our bottom line… We really can't take a third partner, not if we're going to pay him, and certainly not if we're going to do legit work. We just… The credits don't spread that far."
She wishes she could hold him right now. "Especially, if we have to go somewhere we pay rent… And not if we're saving up for a ship of our own." Legit work, if they have a ship of their own, one that isn't as fast, but is better on fuel and maintenance, and aren't splitting the cut with Chewie… That's the plan. The forever home. They save up, get a ship of their own, do safer, less lucrative work, and stay together. Lirium would be the home base. The place they'd go back to to regroup, do fix-it work, spend some time on the ground, but home, that'd be the ship. Like Poe and Chewie. That's the plan. That's the promise that makes being stuck here, on her own, with Paige, waiting for Finn to get back, bareable.
And the idea that it's about to go sideways makes both of them very nervous.
Critt knows that Jacen can do it. And Rey. Kylo drops words into his mind sometimes when they're training. Savarah does it sometimes, too. They'll be joking around or something, and she'll glance at him, and add a comment in his head, and he'll bust up, and everyone will look and the only really good part about it is, unlike when some sort of weird Force thing would happen back home, everyone here more or less knows what happens, so Rey just says, "Savarah, comments are for later," and then back to the lesson they go.
But Critt can't do it. Not… as of yet. He's a shit empath, worse as a telepath, and sometimes the others joke about that, about how even Magiit, who's got no Force at all, has an easier time picking up on other people's thoughts and feelings than he does, but…
But Rey got that call.
And everyone is tense.
And… And he hates this. Moving. Not so much. New place, new experiences, new… everything. Okay, bring that on.
Except… they can't find him if they leave. He hates that that matters to him, but… If they go, his parents can't find him. (He mentally rolls his eyes. They could. It's not exactly like Kylo Ren is hard to locate, and they know that he knows where he is, but… They'd rather he was gone than deal with Kylo. He knows that.)
So, as they move onto the next lesson, and for Critt that's an hour in the farm, weeding, which means he's up to his ears in quiet time where he can, should he so desire, focus and think, and, maybe, if he's lucky, master, or at least not fail too horribly, at a new skill.
Standing between the omelt and lettuce troughs, plucking the tiny sprouts of fralla grains (being digested by Faviers seems to have no effect whatsoever on their ability to sprout) he mentally quiets himself, lets the world around him slip into the background, and focuses on finding Jacen.
He's out there, heading here, getting closer. His light getting brighter, steady… JACEN.
He's not sure if it worked. For everyone else who can do this, it seems so easy, but…
You're screaming in my head, Critt. Just think normally.
Aren't you too far away for that?
Apparently, not. I'm thinking of you, you're thinking at me, it's working.
So, what's the deal?
I plotted the orbit of Lirium. It's very much not a circle, and if we stick around we're going to freeze, and then the blizzards are going to snow blast the skin off our bones, and the scour the bones to dust.
Critt lets out a long, loud breath of pain. That's a fucking lovely image.
Isn't it? Why there's no above ground animals is suddenly making a hell of a lot more sense.
Fuck! His parents had been worried about that. He remembers that. The lack of trees made them nervous, and apparently those nerves were warranted.
Yeah.
So… Critt leads.
Don't know, yet. Chewie and Finn are collecting data points, getting a better idea of how bad the orbit is. Chewie's muttering a lot about how the Rebellion never did the bloody homework properly. Threepio got all upset about that and shot back with none of these hideouts were supposed to be used more than three or four times over the course of one decade, and Lirium was just fine for that, and…
Fussing? Critt thinks.
Lots of fussing, Jacen replies.
We going to Kylo?
I don't know. That's the thing Chewie and Finn are trying not to think too much about. They aren't. I can feel that. But they're not set to take us, and they know he is. That seems to annoy the shit out of Finn. There's a lot of stuff going on with him right now. They are planning on having the 'adults' sit down and chat about what comes next, so…
Not us. They just going to make all the decisions for us?
They're going to talk. We, me especially, are not invited to this conversation. Chewie doesn't want Finn thinking the Maji ganged up on him and swayed opinions. That said, if we don't like the decisions… Well, wouldn't be the first time I got people I cared about out of a bad place.
Critt thinks about that for a moment and decides that's not a terrible plan. Especially if Kylo's going to be at this thing. Okay. We're listening in, right?
Of fucking course we are! Holy Force, why wouldn't we? If we're really lucky, they'll bring Paige along for the conversation and I can just ride along in her head. If not, Rose is usually pretty good to listen through.
Critt nods at that. He knows that the more telepathic Maji will occasionally, when feeling curious, hitch a ride in a non-Force sensitive head. (In the beginning they'd try with Rey, and found out, fast, that not only was the snooping unwelcome, but that other Force sensitives find it really easy to tell when someone is paying too much attention to what they're paying attention to. So, as much as the Maji have 'rules,' it's against them, but absolutely no one is going to say a peep about Jacen spying on this conversation.) And Rose, who has really good focus on whatever it is she's focusing on, and doesn't appear to get the 'shivery' someone-stepped-on-my-shadow feeling when there's an extra mind using her as a ride, is their favorite one to peek into.
Good. Critt thinks. Home soon?
Six-seven hours. He feels Jacen grin. Oh, and when this dies down, I've got some hot gossip for you.
Really? Critt is beyond intrigued. He likes good gossip, and out here on the edge of nowhere, it's hard to get.
Really. Kylo ever tell you why he's not Ben Solo anymore? Jacen knows that he hasn't. Critt would have told them, but it's a good way to start the conversation.
We get near it sometimes. He talks about how he wasn't ever, not really, Ben. Haven't gotten the full story, though.
Yeah, well, I don't, either, but I've got another chunk of it, and it's a doozy.
Critts eyes gleam with pleasure. Oh boy!
Yeah! Shit, gotta go do more math. Chewie wants me adding the extra points into the calculations, gotta go.
See you soon.
Yeah.
"You on Lirium?" Finn asks over Poe's comm.
Poe glances at Jon across the table they're sharing lunch at on the F-deck; they've got about another twenty minutes before he's got yet another meeting. Apparently, physical plant is already behind on the construction of the new diplomatic floors, and they're only two weeks into the job. Jon's getting ready to, as he put it, 'Go First Order' on them.
(Poe's enjoying the idea of that, and wishes he could watch it happen.)
"Not now, but I could be in like three hours, why? Aren't you supposed to be lightyears away?"
"Yeah, supposed to." They can both hear the frustration in Finn's voice.
"What's wrong?"
"Chewie got Jacen doing some math," Poe doesn't miss the way Jon's eyes widen just a hair at the mention of Jacen, "and the kid just plotted Lirium's course. Best we can tell, with the coordinates we've got right now… You wanna guess when spring's coming?"
Poe's got a cold feeling in the base of his guts. "Not soon."
"Ninety-three years."
Poe stops moving, his drink halfway to his mouth. "Fuck." Jon reaches over and lays his hand on Poe's, and Poe swallows and then nods at him.
"Yeah, and I don't mean sunshine, warm temperatures, and flowers in ninety-three years. I mean astronomic spring."
Jon doesn't know what that means, so Poe says, "When the planet gets to the furthest reach of it's orbit and starts to come back."
"You're not alone?" Finn sounds sorry.
"Got a lunch date."
"Hi," Jon adds.
"Shit, you're having fun. Look, we're not going to be back for another six hours, but… If you can get back, we're going to need to talk, soon."
"Yeah. No problems. Dinner at your place?"
Poe can imagine the look that goes with the next words. "Ren's got it. Rose didn't have dinner for all of us ready to go, and apparently he just waves a magic wand or something, and food appears from the ethers, so… his place."
Poe covers his comm. "Lots of backstory there. One day, we'll get into it."
While he's saying that to Jon, Finn's saying, "And… I mean… Sooner or later, we're going to have to bug out, so…"
That gets Poe's attention back on Finn. "Don't worry, I'll get my charts. Just like Chewie, I've got hide-outs scattered through the galaxy. I'll see what, if anything, we can use."
"Thanks, Poe. Sorry to interrupt your date."
"No problem," Jon adds.
Finn doesn't seem to know what to do with that, so he comms off.
"So, that's the infamous Finn?" Jon asks.
"That's the infamous Finn. He's… uh… normally not that rattled meeting new people."
"Because he's generally not meeting new people within hours of learning that he's going to have to abandon his home?"
"Yeah."
Jon tilts his head a bit, and then looks around the F-Deck. "Not like we're low on space here."
Poe's nodding, and also looking around. "And I'm certain Ren'll mention that when we get talking. And Finn will reply with something along the lines of over his dead body. And Chewie'll point out that the Ticos can go with him in the Falcon, but there isn't room for all twenty-four kids, and… It'll be a mess." Then he grins at Jon. "Wanna come along, and join the conversation?"
"You'd bring a friend to this sort of thing?" Jon asks with a spark in his eye. Poe knows what he's doing. Every time they get together this is part of the dance. Jon pushes closer to romance. Poe pulls back, reminds him he's looking for more than sex.
Poe looks him up and down, notices that Jon's hand is still on his, and flips his hand, so his fingers are against Jon's wrist, stroking lightly. "I'd bring someone I trusted to offer good advice, especially on decisions that might impact his future, too."
Jon takes a sip of his drink, licks his lips, well-reminded of Poe's longer-term goals, and then says, "Uh… Let's see, long, emotionally tense conversation with people who don't much like each other and aren't used to working together for a high-stakes outcome. Oh, and one of them is my boss. While meeting your best friend for the first time, who's already got a few things against me to start with. Hmmm… NO!"
Poe smiles at that. "Good choice." He tilts his head a bit. "Kylo's your boss?" It's clear that Poe's thinking that if he were to ask Kylo what he is to Jon, Boss would not appear on the list anytime soon.
"And friend, and… But, among other things he's my boss, too, so say your Finn pops up with a really good idea, if Kylo doesn't like it, unless Kylo's idea is monumentally stupid, I'm going to back him, you know? Order solidarity or something. I'm not… in a position to go into things like this neutral. Plus, meeting Finn's going to be stressful enough without doing it now."
Poe thinks about that. "Uh… Okay."
"That's not how'd you'd play it?"
He shrugs. "Two parts. Kylo first. In my experience, which isn't vast, and involves a mutiny, so… But, it does involve Organa wrangling, so… It's hard to find people who will stand up to you when you get to his level, and generally, having them around is valuable."
Jon inclines his head. "He's said some things like that to me, too. And eventually I'll get comfortable with it. But, for right now, unless he's coming up with something that'll bite him in the ass so hard it'll take his leg off at the hip, I'll probably go along with his plans, especially for something like this."
"Fair enough." Poe sighs. "Secondly, Finn. I mean… He can at least sit down and have a functional conversation with Kylo, who cut him in half once, so, assuming you're not in uniform, it should go… okay… enough." He hasn't exactly mentioned to Finn that he's pursuing this particular relationship, or where he thinks it might be going, or... anything about it, and Finn, having heard that Jon exists when they were talking about sex with the boys, has apparently decided to let it lie and wait for Poe to bring it up.
"Noted. Not today though."
"Okay." Poe's looking out at the crowd, starting to feel what's happening.
"Not looking forward to it?" Jon asks.
Poe shrugs. "I mean… For me, moving is just a matter of turning Micah on. Same for Chewie. We're not bound to Lirium. But… It's Finn and Rose's first home. Their daughter was born there. It's Rey's first home, too." He shrugs at that. "First house at least. For a while there, she was living in a scavenged AT-AT."
Jon blinks. "How…"
"They were a bloody stupid design. Those legs were just begging to get knocked over. Someone knocked one over on Jakku, and of course, once you knock one over, they don't get back up again, so she turned the main compartments into a cabin."
Jon blinks at that, too. "That's…" He can't find the words for how he feels about that.
"Absolutely nothing in your understanding of how the universe works. Yeah. I'd rather not have to know that people live that way, too."
Jon nods. He's… sketchy, at best on Jakku. He read up a little after learning that's where Rey was from, but there really wasn't much about it, beyond the most basic levels. At one point it'd been a fairly functional planet, big war, lots of weapons, ended up a desert with most of the population dead. Far enough out to be difficult to get to, close enough to still be useful for off-the-books traders. The Empire popped up, and it became a place where people who wanted to skirt the Empire's trade laws would gather to buy, sell, and work out deals. Come the fall of the Empire, what was left of the Navy skedaddled out to there, and that was the location of the final battle of the Rebellion.
The Rebels won, but the battle was hot and hard enough that the whole planet ended up littered with refuse from the fight. And refuse bought scavengers, like Rey's parents.
And apparently scavengers live in and with whatever they can scrape together. Jon takes a gulp of his tea. "Makes me want to stick more recruiting stations all over the galaxy. Maybe I can't make local conditions any better, but I can try and make it easier to get away from them."
Poe nods at that, too. "Yeah. Which brings us to the kids. We don't exactly trumpet it, but… All but one of them are orphans. The one who isn't might as well be. His parents bugged out rather than deal with him not being a lightling. Anyway, all of our kids, they've had their entire lives uprooted at least twice. Once when they lost their original family, and then once when I grabbed 'em up and brought them to Lirium. I don't like the idea of uprooting them again."
Jon can understand that. He didn't exactly enjoy uprooting himself, either. "Should be a little easier this time, their people are going with them, and that makes moving easier."
"I really hope so."
Jon finishes his drink. "It's not my department, not really, but if you want, I can get a list of the planets under our control. Technically, we've got sixty-thousand of them in our territory, and more than a few thousand of them are out and out ours. At least some of them have to be able to support human life in some level of comfort."
Poe thinks about that. "I'd appreciate it. My guess is not landing in Order-controlled space will be important for this to work out, but it'll be good to have options."
"I'll send you some," Jon says, standing up.
"And you've got to go."
"A million and one meetings, and that's just this week."
Poe smiles up at Jon. "Then, I won't keep you from them."
Jon's fingers brush the back of Poe's hand. "I certainly wouldn't mind if you and yours crashed here while you're looking for somewhere new to go."
Poe smiles at him. "We'll see." He waits a few moments, and watches Jon walk off, great coat slightly swishing behind him as he cuts through the crowd on the F-Deck.
Out here, where everyone is an officer, and most of them are off duty, rank doesn't matter that much. But that doesn't mean that people don't notice Jon, don't straighten up a little when he passes, don't watch.
Poe's watching, too. He likes watching. Then he rolls his eyes, swallows a long sip of his drink, and settles back to people watch and think.
He wouldn't mind landing here. Too much. Part of him lights up every time he sees Jon. Part of him knows that if he were to get his own access card to the F-Deck, and maybe C-D and E, he could… call himself a Morale Improvement Officer of the Maji or something, spread the good word, play enough cards to keep himself flush for the rest of his natural life, and have a very good time.
He rolls his eyes slightly, and sips his drink. He's already spinning 'the good word.' Irate people, annoyed at losing, ask him all the time how he's so good at this, and he taps his spiral, looks holier than everyone else, and says, 'When you're in balance, everything else falls into place.' And he'll grin, and then add, "Including the cards."
Sometimes people ask what he means by that, so he tells them. Sometimes they know that he's spinning pretty words. Either way, he wins enough to keep Micah fueled up, and Lirium in nice bits and bobs, and the kids in occasional goodies, so… It's enough.
Except, apparently, the goody Lirium needs is a new orbit, so that's outside of anything he can possibly do.
He settles back into his seat. He really could live here. Easily. Kylo'd fix it for him. A permanent space for Micah to dock. An apartment for him, though he's not sure if he'd use it if he had a permanent space for Micah.
He's toured the currently under construction part of the ship that'll eventually be the diplomacy section. Getting a space for himself there wouldn't take more than a few words. Maybe they'd get around to that thing he's supposed to be doing for the Order. The thing Jon just mentioned, him going in and getting people out of places they don't want to be. They could get that set up, and… This… could be home.
Be easy enough to get the kids here, too. And… It might be better for them. More other kids around. More things for them to learn. Ren talks about making the Supremacy a floating city, a real one, and real cities have kids in them, so…
Finn'd hate it. He wouldn't come here. And if he's not willing to come, Rose and Paige won't, either, not for more than a quick visit. And… He can't even begin to imagine Chewie setting foot on this ship. That's… Just not going to happen.
He sips his drink again, watching the line of people Jon vanished into. He'd see Jon more if he lived here. Their current once or twice a week might become once or twice a day. He doesn't know if that'd be good or not. Good because… because every time they get together he's just… more in love.
That's what this is. They are… getting to know each other… and he just… likes… what he's learning. He likes being with Jon, and being near him, and… And under that glove he knows that ring's just sitting there, glinting away.
Sometimes, when he's not paying attention, Jon'll rub his thumb against it. Poe watches people well enough to know that most of the time it's unconscious. But sometimes it's not. Sometimes, he's remembering Lane, or reminding himself of him, or… Sometimes he's sad. He doesn't like to let Poe see that. He'll say something, and Jon'll look away for a second, rub the ring, and then flash a bright smile at him, touch him, and change the subject.
Poe's pretty sure they aren't at the point where he can say, 'You know, you're allowed to be sad around me, right? It's okay. I'm not going to crumble under your sorrow.' He's not sure if he's at the point where he can admit that he sees it, yet. And he's not sure that if he said that to Jon, if Jon'd flash the pretty boy at him, and try to use his looks and sex appeal to shy away from it.
And he's not sure, that if they saw each other all the time, and he was constantly being blinded by the looks and the sex, if he could keep this up, where he doesn't just give into it. Right now, he can spend a few hours a week with Jon, and enjoy him, and keep learning him, and then go back to Micah, and leave. And he can get his tool serviced, and go dancing, and blow off steam, and come back and be warm and charming and good to talk to and not get so wound up with sexual tension that he loses the ability to stick to the plan.
Granted, if he lived here, he'd still be able to leave. And if he popped over to Rey and Kylo's and reminded him about the whole, 'Hey, there was something I was supposed to be doing, too' bit, that he could likely spend a lot of time in little out of the way places, setting up recruiting stations and getting people out of places like Jakku.
After all, if he could recruit for the Resistance in places the Resistance wasn't supposed to be, he can likely figure out how to get Order cells running. All he needs it time, a good cantina, some decent cards, and an adequate expense account to cover the drinks, and he can get the good work started.
And then come back here, and charm his sweetie, hopefully have some good stories to tell, and see if that ring's come off, yet.
And see the kids, check in with them, see what they're up to. Give it another year or two, and Jacen'll likely be grown up enough to be useful for setting up cells, too. And maybe a good enough pilot to get people into and out of them, too… Be good to have skills like that…
This is… workable. They've just got to… sit down and talk it through.
He sips his drink again and then gets up. Might as well get home before the shindig's going to happen.