4/13/2
Home is cold.
That shouldn't be a surprise. It's not like the bloody planet was going to warm up while he was away, and honestly, if it did, he'd likely be in the process of getting them out as fast as possible, because nothing good, at all, would warm it up now.
But it's cold.
And empty.
And just him in his bedroom in this house they share that's more hers than his and…
He flops on the bed.
Their bed. The one on the Supremacy is still his, really. But this one here… Every night of it's existence it's been slept in by both of them… Okay, maybe not, he was sick, he was in the Supremacy… He really hopes she caught some sleep here where she didn't have to smell him and get assaulted by his misery.
But this bed, piled high with comforters and blankets and more bedding than he'd have ever anticipated putting on a bed, is theirs.
And it's cold, and empty, and… He just doesn't want to sleep here without her. Kylo rolls onto his belly, scoots over to the bedside table, and looks at the chest where the sex toys live. He could open it up, grab some fun stuff, go back to the Supremacy, and fuck himself into a coma, and hopefully wake up in the morning feeling like a human being, and then tell Rey all about it when she comes home, and maybe show her, too.
He doesn't hate that idea. And, as he said to the guys, deep and thorough investigation may be in order. Rey'd probably like hearing about it after. And… well… especially on his own, he could really play with the fantasy of her and Zurie and the three of them and…
He opens the chest and looks at the toys.
And sighs.
And closes the chest.
And ports back to his room on the Supremacy, because it's bloody cold at home, and especially in the kilt his knees are getting cold.
He starts to undress, hanging up the kilt, tossing his sweater, socks, and shorts into the hamper.
He looks down at his shaft, just sort of dangling about as he heads to the refresher to take care of his nightly routine. He's not… averse to getting off tonight… He'd certainly like to spurt, though he's not feeling particularly aroused on any level right now, but… they're their toys, and playing with them on his own feels weird. Sort of like how sleeping in their bed on his own feels weird, too.
He brushes his teeth, and takes care of himself, and…
It's one bloody night, he really shouldn't feel this out of sorts.
Back in his bed.
He's still somewhat out of sorts. Part of him wants to say, "You've done this a million times," but he hasn't, not really.
It's been… shit, Poe's got something with that. He was always a bad sleeper as a kid, but that meant he had a difficult time staying asleep, and tended to have nightmares. After Luke, a bad sleeper meant that in addition to having a hard time staying asleep, he also couldn't easily fall asleep.
It's really only been the last six months where he routinely manages to fall asleep in less than an hour and then stay that way until morning.
Before Rey… He'd read reports until his eyes didn't want to focus any longer, get undressed, slip into his pajamas, settle back in bed, not fall asleep for an hour, then shift into his meditations, and usually that could get him into something kind of like sleep for a few hours.
His hand falls to his lap, just cupping his shaft and stones. Spurting tends to make him sleepy. That's something else that's shifted with him and Rey. They started out playing after dinner, and then doing whatever, reading reports/studying, and then going to sleep.
Starvation sex. Grab as much as quickly as possible. Wait for after dinner? No. Now, do it now, and maybe read after. Now, and again, now. Because maybe later wouldn't be an option. But… He's not going to open a report, and Rey's not going to read over his shoulder, see what's in it and leave him. He's not going to say something at dinner and make her go. He doesn't have to grab her as soon as the opportunity offers itself, because he's secure in next time.
And secure in next time means other patterns get to change. Spurting makes him feel good, calms down his mind, snuggling with Rey after calms it down further, next thing he knows, he's asleep. And he's asleep because he's not laying there, clinging to her, afraid he'll wake up and find that she decided she could or should do better, and left.
He begins a slow and easy up and down, letting his fingers just stroke over his shaft. Giving himself a little pull at the end, warming up. It feels good.
He tries thinking about Zurie. It's… different. He's not turned off, but it's not the hot flush of a lot of his other sexual fantasies… It's not watching videos with Rey. It's not even the rush of thinking of him and Rey and Zurie. He's curious, mostly. He really is wondering what she looks like naked, but it's an almost intellectual curiosity. What is her coloring really like? Are her pink bits… well… pink? And, well… do they look like… pussy? Does she have body hair?
He supposes he could just ask Jon.
Which brings a new image to mind. Zurie wanting to play with the three of them. Zurie on Jon's lap. The two of them kissing. That's… doing a whole lot more for him than Zurie on her own was. Zurie between Jon and Poe… His hand moves a little faster, but… That's not where Poe would want to be. Jon between Zurie and Poe… That's… working significantly better than he expects it should. He's rapidly stiffening at that image.
Poe suggesting he was too put out by not being interesting to him. That pops into his head, and brings things to a halt.
He takes Zurie out of the image. It's vastly less interesting to him. But it's not repulsive. It just isn't anything he wants to leap into. There's no rush at all once Zurie's out of the picture.
He puts himself into the image. Jon and Poe and Zurie and him. It… won't coalesce in his mind. He can watch the three of them play, and enjoy it, but his imagination won't throw him into the game.
He slips Rey into the mix. That works. That works it a hot, rush of stiffening blood and need. As soon as he adds her to the game, he can play, too. And his imaginary version of her is having a very good time. He half notices that Jon and Poe vanish as his strokes get faster, and it's him and Rey and Zurie and all three of them are really enjoying each other.
Or, more specifically, they're really enjoying him.
His breath is picking up. They're really enjoying each other, and he's watching, helping a little… Showing Zurie how to properly lick Rey. Sitting back against the headboard, like he's pretty much doing now, Rey on his shaft, Zurie licking her, but her tongue wanders every now and again, soft little laps against his stones.
Rey clenching on him, shaking, moaning, head against his shoulder, hands clenched in Zurie's hair. That's the image that puts him over.
He lets himself relax, lets his body go soft and still, hopes that this'll do it. He'll just fall asleep and that'll be that.
It's not. He's tired. He's relaxed. He cleaned up, and snuggled into the covers, and took Rey's pillow and shifted it around so he could hold it like he holds her, and he's awake.
"Fuck it." And in a heartbeat, Kylo's with Rey, wrapping around her.
And in another heartbeat, he's back in his room, because it's occurring to him that if he's going to have a squad of security go breaking into that room the second a sensor notices he's there, he's bloody well going to be at least wearing a pair of pants.
He puts on his pajamas, and then again ports to Rey. He's on top of the blankets, she's under them, and he's content enough just to be holding her that he doesn't care too much about the fabric between them.
He's tense, waiting, but he doesn't feel anyone leaping up and about to rush in. Whatever else is true about right now, he doesn't appear to have triggered any of the sensors watching this room. They apparently are, just, wired for sound.
She doesn't wake up, not on any real level, though he can feel her sleeping mind recognize he's here, and cuddle into him.
He rests his face against her shoulder and neck, and breathes her in.
Maybe he is pussy whipped, but as Jon said, it was what he wanted to be. This is… good. He shouldn't have to be alone, not if he doesn't need to be.
He's idly wondering if the Kinears set this up this way just to test him, or Rey, see what they'd do with a night alone.
Or maybe the test is for him and Rey, let each other see what they'd do with it.
Apparently, this. This is what he does with it. His eyes close, and he lays with his wife, calm and centered.
But not sleeping.
He's… supposed… to be asleep. Probably. It's late. Almost morning by New Alderaan's clock. Several hours into first shift by his clock.
Sleepy-time.
His body is soft and relaxed. The room is dark, and a little cool. The bed is comfortable. Rey's dreams are sloshing around in her head, and he could easily slip into them.
Should be the perfect recipe for sleep, but it's not happening.
He lets his mind wander a bit further. Away from Rey and here and now.
Ah… The soft glow, the… feel… of something that's supposed to happen. Something not in this room.
Probably a good thing he put his pajamas on. He's already not supposed to be here, and wandering about naked would likely not improve the situation.
He can feel it. He's not supposed to be on this planet, because he wasn't invited. He's not supposed to be in this room, not right now, because there's something outside this room, waiting for him.
He kisses Rey, and gets up, wandering to the wide glass doors that open onto the balcony over the… His eyes take it in, slotting what he knows about this space, his mother's bits of conversation about it, into what he's seeing… Remembrance Garden.
Memories of a world he doesn't have. Couldn't have. He was born after most of this died, but…
He closes his eyes and feels for the electronics. He can feel the buzz of moving energy all around him. He doesn't know why he tried, he's always been shit with using his Force with or for electronics, beyond the most brutal level of being able to blow the circuitry of anything too close. There's no way he could just turn off one camera, or even figure out which energy flow is a camera.
If there's monitoring on the garden, well… They can wonder how he got there.
He leaps off the edge of the balcony, and lands gently in a crouch. Then stands and begins to wander. It's… familiar. He doesn't know if it's somehow wired into his head, a… sense memory passed down through his genes, but this feels… familiar.
He doesn't recognize the plants. Can't, shouldn't. He's never been here, and had never been to old Alderaan. But like the rest of the garden they feel like something he… dreamed of? The memories of the ghosts who never deigned to visit?
The eternal flames. He hasn't seen them before, but he did see the ones that burned for Padme. He knows why they feel familiar. The sarcastic part of his brain wonders who's job it is to keep the 'eternal' flames fueled. The less jaded bit decides that's how everything works. Nothing, literally, is eternal. Nothing of humans at least. But they can endeavor to try, as long as they think something's important, they'll fuel it up and keep it burning.
The rock in the center. Nineteen meters high, eight wide, a chunk of what was left of Alderaan, captured by a ship, and drug here.
It's just cold, jagged stone. There's no connection here. No sense of blood or history.
His hand rests against it. He wonders how many millions of other lost children of Alderaan have done that, hoping for some spark of magic, a feel of belonging, the sense of the home that no longer exists. He wonders how many of them got it.
He circles it, and finds what he's expecting. It's a holo projector cut into the face of the stone, and a keypad. Put a name in, and… He types for a moment, and up they come. Breha and Bail Organa. Her Royal Highness, and her consort. Last, true, Queen of Alderaan.
It starts with a formal portrait. The two of them, a bit stiff, staring at a point past his head. After a few seconds, the image shifts. Relaxed, still… he can feel it, formal. This is them, being the Royal Couple, out and about. He doesn't expect there'll be any real, informal, them at home, being themselves, sorts of pictures.
The only pictures like that likely went when the planet blew.
He makes a note. A camera. He knows they exist. He knows lots of people have them, and he wants one. He wants the sort of life where he has pictures of him and Rey being him and Rey. Where there's proof that there were people who weren't just the Master and Mistress of the Order. He wants soft, easy, relaxed images of them, for him and her and their children.
He wants… something real. Something that will last beyond them. Something he can look at decades from now and remember 'this was us when.' Something generations from now can do that with, too.
He's hit with an image, himself, older, gray of hair, wrinkly-faced, holding a small child, showing them images, and saying things like, "This is Gran and I when we were young. And that's your Uncles Poe and Jon, and…"
He wants that so badly it burns.
He looks at the memorial. His grandparents are literally no more. Blown to atoms and potentially the atoms shattered, too. His father is gone, also blown to atoms and beyond. His mother, his uncle, rejoined the Force. And eventually, he and Rey will be no more, too. They'll rejoin the Force. So… something… tangible needs to remain.
He stops it on a shot where his grandparents were likely… fifty? Thereabouts. Leia is with them, and she looks to be about ten. Still a girl, holding their hands, laughing at something.
The image of the perfect family.
He doesn't know if the image conjured her, or if she's been here the whole time, waiting for him to get to this, either way, he feels the glow more than sees it.
"They're just pictures."
He shrugs a bit, and thinks, You can understand this, right?
"Of course."
He nods. Not sure how wired we are right now. I don't know if you'll show up on the feed, and I'm already not supposed to be here, but I figure me talking to myself isn't going to improve the 'image' of Prince Ben.
Leia laughs at this. "Oh, I'll show up. That's how this works, right? The Force puts us where we need to be?"
That's certainly how you taught it.
"Well, they want proof. Here I am. Here you are. And I know for a fact that there are ten cameras on us."
Lovely. I have absolutely no reason to trust The Force won't set this up so I'm standing around talking to myself on the feed.
Leia sighs at that, but doesn't argue with it.
He's still looking at the picture on loop. Her with her parents, laughing. It looks real.
"It is. That's…" She remembers. "Almath's coming of age celebration. It's not staged, or a public outing."
He rolls his eyes a bit. Not what I meant by real. You're happy. They are. It's real.
She nods. "Papa didn't get home as much as we'd have liked, but… Yes. When he was back, we always had a good time." He can see the brittle edge on her smile, as she steps forward and shuts the images off.
He blinks, not having been aware that ghosts could do things like that. She looks a little surprised by it, too.
He turns the images back on, and sits back to watch. Most of these images he's never seen before. He's speaking with his voice before he can even think to stop it. "I should have had these. I shouldn't be almost thirty-three and setting foot here for the first time."
Leia turns her back on the images. She looks exasperated and a little annoyed. "It's a graveyard, Ben. For people you never met. For a world that wasn't yours."
"It should have been. Even if we weren't ever going to live here. Even if I was never going to be a proper Prince Ben, and if you didn't want to be Queen Leia… This," he nods to the images, "should have been mine."
She shakes her head a little, and sits next to him. "You didn't need my ghosts, Ben."
"Please stop calling me, Ben. I didn't like it when I was twenty. I really don't like it now. It's… disrespectful to call someone by a name they've specifically asked you not to."
She considers that, and he feels her decide to not bring up how respectful it is to shun the name your mother gave you.
"Thank you." It feels weird to say it, but he appreciates her not picking the fight.
"Kylo."
She looks peaceful. She was always good at that. That calm, peaceful, knowing gaze. He can feel she's not; the roiling under the look. The sorrow she always seemed to hold so tightly. He sets the images to scan through. Images of Bail and Breha, together and by themselves… But she won't look at the images. She keeps her gaze on him looking at the images.
He spends a few moments watching, thinking about the fact that she thinks this is a graveyard, the one where her history, her past, the people who made her her are all represented here. And she never brought him here. Never let him touch this, or even attempt to internalize it.
And in a flash, he's angry. Angry at missing this. Angry at the walls she's always kept between them. Angry at the distance, physical and mental, they've always had.
"We build graveyards so we can grieve, Mom. We're allowed that! We're… supposed to ache and miss and hurt, because we lose precious things." He thinks of Jon and his Lane and… the value he gets by being near genuine sorrow, and he hopes the value he offers Jon in his grief. "We don't, and probably, shouldn't, just stuff it all down and pretend it's all right."
"It's a trap, Kylo. You set foot here, and… It pulls you in, and you can't get out, and…"
"And you pretend you didn't bleed. You slap that soft, almost smile on your face," the same look she's got aimed at him now, "the one that even as a child I could read was fake, the one that you'd flash at me and then change the subject, and then go away for a week or month 'on business,' and only come back when you were 'happy' again. Maybe I wouldn't have been so fucking lost in the dark if I'd had anyone show me how to deal with it instead of just push it away." The image of Bail and Breha and Leia is up again. "Did they shut you out? Only show you the happy side? Live such a charmed life they only had the happy side?" His voice smooths out a little, as he watches more images. "I know so little about them."
"I told you stories about them."
"A few. And then you'd get sad. So, you'd leave. And I stopped asking because you'd get sad, and leave, and…" He looks at the flames, looks at the well-worn paths. He can feel what people do here. She's right, it's a graveyard. "Families share sorrow. That's… part of the idea, or ideal, right?"
"A child doesn't need his parent's sorrow."
He stands up, so she has to lean back and crane her head up to look into his eyes. "Do I look like a child to you, now?"
"You look like my child. You look like someone who was drowning in his own dark, shouldering more pain than he could carry, someone who could not take a single other thing to the burden he was already carrying. I was the adult, and it was my job to make your life easier, not the other way around."
"You think running away made my life easier?" He can feel she believes that, but it's still shocking to him.
"It didn't make it harder." She takes a breath, or a pause, and lets herself calm again.
He stares at her, and she's looking back up at him. Her expression isn't hot or cold or challenging. It just is, and he doesn't know what to do with that.
He steps back a bit, sits next to her again, really looking, really feeling. He shakes his head. "You're so hard to get a read on. Sometimes, I think you're well in the dark, with Dad and I, then you pull stuff like this, and it's all light side non-attachment. I know there's passion in there, but… When it came to me, you might have just as well been a Jedi. There's no intimacy, no attachment."
"No attachment?" She sounds horrified.
"You'd leave for months. I can't make it one night away from Rey, because I am deeply, intimately, committedly, attached to her. I was reading the history of Alderaan, and got to the part where faster than sound travel got online and suddenly anywhere on the planet was no more than a few hours away from any other part. Chandrilla wasn't that big. You didn't have to be gone that much. You didn't like being… intimate… with me. So, you ran away."
"I was protecting you."
"From you? From us actually having a relationship? From the fact that we weren't ever," he gestures to the picture of Bail and Breha and Leia. "So, we didn't live up to the picture book fantasy. It didn't have to be perfect to be worth having."
That perfect, unperturbed, calm look on Leia's face cracks, real sorrow starting to etch through. "I'd get sad, and you'd cry. And I couldn't get you calmed back down, because I couldn't get me calmed back down. I'd have to leave, because if I didn't, you'd start to scream, and… We figured that out when you were a little baby. And all the deep breathing, and find the quiet spot, and… It doesn't matter if the wound is that big and there's just a hole of rage where your heart used to be, and… You didn't need that. You had enough of your own sorrows, and your own rage, and you didn't need mine on top of it.
"You didn't need to grow up in a world where horrible people murdered entire…" her voice catches, "planets, because they wanted to show off how powerful they were. Your nightmares were vivid enough without that on top of them."
Kylo has a flash of Leia waking up, heart thundering, seeing Alderaan blow up, again, hearing him screaming in the background because her dream had leaked out of her head into his.
She glances to the picture. Bail and Breha, together, his hand on her back, soft and gentle as the pose for some picture or another. The Queen and her Viceroy perfect.
"And you didn't need to be in the middle of Han and I fussing. We didn't have the picture book. Fine. We also couldn't reliably fake it for you, either. We'd argue, and you'd cry."
"So what? Babies and toddlers are allowed to cry. Sad people are allowed to cry. Angry people are allowed to cry. The fucking world wasn't going to explode because we were in pain!" He's so frustrated at this. At the idea that he spent so much of his childhood alone because his mother couldn't stand to let him feel and be part of what was their life. "Maybe if we'd tried it together, we could have been," and he gestures to the image. "You don't get the picture book if you only try to live the good bits."
Leia shakes her head. "That's the dark side talking."
"Force, Mom, we're all fucking darklings. That's why we're shit at doing light side stuff like breathing deeply and getting calm. Luke got every iota of light in this family, possibly for every generation of it."
She snorts at that. "You'd be dead if you were all dark."
He rolls his eyes. She's trying to redirect them from arguing about all of the Organa-Solos being dark to Organa-Solos being all dark. She'd do that with Han, too, find an argument close to, but not actually, what mattered, and use that to stay away from the thing that really hurts. He can feel himself tripping into it. And he stops. "Fine." Then he takes the moment to settle himself, to lean into his light, and his empathy.
Not attached? She'd been horrified at that. He goes back to feel that.
"Right," he says. "Deeply attached, and terrified, and negating attachment to avoid fear. I should have recognized that sooner." He rolls his eyes again. "Jedi coping mechanisms, lesson one, day one. Don't get attached so you never have to feel bad about anything. No highs, no lows, everything dwells in a mucky gray haze. I wasn't a fan of that at sixteen, and have seen absolutely no reason to think any better of it in the last sixteen years. Hell, even Luke didn't think that was the greatest idea the Jedi ever came up with."
Leia's on the verge of saying something like, 'Try losing something that matters to you,' but she bites her tongue before it gets out. She looks at him, at the scars, at the body built big and strong by too much anger and too much pain, and lets her own empathy come into play.
Her lip curls, and he's about to leap to fight at that, to make an attack, but again, he lets his empathy do its job. She's not sneering at him. She's hating these feelings. Hating the vulnerability, the fear, the fact that anyone or thing you love can and will, eventually, leave.
"Hope's not a promise. Your father said that?" she asks.
"Apparently. It's at the top of my head?" He wasn't aware of thinking about that.
"It's what I'm getting right now. But maybe not from you." There's no sense of Han here right now, but Kylo supposes he's likely not that far off. "He was right. It's not." She sighs. And he's got the sense of, 'Well, you asked for it,' though she doesn't say it. "You weren't exactly ideally timed."
He snorts at that. "Dad already covered the fact that I wasn't planned."
She rolls her eyes a bit at that, but… Well, that's true. "There was… well… everything going on. And… pregnant and battle commander don't exactly go hand in hand." She blinks. He's, obviously, an adult. And also an adult in a sexual relationship, but one that, as of yet, has produced no children. But Luke also handled… everything… so… She doesn't know what he knows about this. "Just because you're pregnant doesn't mean you have to have a baby."
Kylo looks a little surprised. He imagines that's the sort of thing that he'd know if he'd thought about it, but he never has. Then what she's saying to him clicks and he understands. "Oh."
"But… hope. And… the will of the Force. Mostly hope though, and what's more hopeful than a new life? Than building a home, and a family, and… doing the work to make the future better than the past? It's all… good ideas, but… just because you want it doesn't mean you know how to get it, or…" This time she looks to the image of her parents. "It always looked so… easy… for them. Papa primarily lived on Coruscant, because of his job with the senate, but he was back every season, usually for a few weeks, and… They loved each other so much. They didn't get into stupid fights about public functions. And… It just… worked for them."
"And when it wasn't effortlessly easy for you, you got angry. Because it was supposed to be easy. Because you could see people around you doing it practically without thought. That's every light side Force lesson I ever attended. But you're not allowed to get angry, are you, because the New Republic is being built, and you're Leia Organa, the not quite Jedi, and you're supposed to be calm and centered, and this fucking image of Alderaan..." And then, looking at Bail and Breha and Leia, he gets another level of it. "And I was supposed to be easy, too, right? Babies cry and they get upset and have tantrums and whatnot, and you knew that, but… You couldn't calm me down, and that's what a mom is supposed to do, right? Especially a light-sider. Find your calm, and then spread it around. You couldn't soothe me, and you couldn't get me to sleep, and you couldn't make me happy, and… It felt like failing all over, didn't it?"
She inclines her head a bit. "According to your nannies you tended to have an easier time when I wasn't around. Slept better, ate better, less volatile." She glances at her mother. "She could run a planet, seek alliances, do the political dance, keep everyone on an even keel, and nurse a cranky baby, bandage a booboo without it turning into a screaming tantrum, and I couldn't come home without you turning into a high-pitched wookie on a bad day, and… The nurses kept saying babies don't hate, and they don't do it on purpose, and you weren't trying to make me feel bad, and the more agitated I was, the more agitated you'd be, and I needed to calm down, and sometimes new mums get the blues, and that they make medication for that, and maybe I should talk to a med droid, and… Out there, I was a war hero. Out there, I made deals that brought peace. Out there, I could handle anything and everything that came my way. And at home… I couldn't be in the same room with my man for more than an hour without a fight breaking out, and I couldn't get a cranky toddler to go to bed and not wake up with night terrors two hours later. At home, everything failed."
Kylo lets loose a long sigh. Given the chance, he would have done everything in his power to avoid all those light side lessons he was miserable at. He, if he could have, would have run screaming from constantly, every fucking day, having to fail over and over and over, with an audience. "It was easier to stay where you were… good. Do things people praised you for, and," he bites his lip. She threw him the bone of not fussing about Kylo, so he'll grant this, "It's not like what you were doing wasn't important. Like you said, there was a war on, and trying to build a Republic to prevent the next one, and…"
"And you were eight and… nothing… either of us did worked, anymore. And the nannies couldn't keep you calm, and… The Jedi started training young. Luke had told us that. He was sure you needed training, that he could… help. And, I agreed. The dark was there, and… easy to blame."
"And if Luke failed, it wasn't on you. The greatest Jedi alive… He could do anything, fix anything… or one, but if he couldn't, then you'd tried your best and it was out of your hands."
There's some real fire in her expression as she says, "Your dad said something like that to me. I believe I slapped the shit out of him."
Kylo's got a very jaded look on his face as he says, "Truth hurts?"
"Like a bitch. But I also wasn't wrong on that, too. You did need training, and it's not like there were twenty-five Force academies to pick from. Luke was it. At the very least, you needed enough control to not blow the power every time you got angry about something. The fact that a lot of the problems were in my head doesn't mean there weren't actual problems on your end, too. And… I know… It wasn't all, or necessarily even mostly you, but…"
"You do?"
"Now." She's looking gently at him. "He was… there always. That's probably why… I know you heard conversations about you, about your dark, and we always talked about it like it was something—"
"Parasitic. Like you could cut it out and cure me and somehow I'd magically turn into Ben."
She just looks at him. "It's different now. I can feel your own dark. You're right, it's there. There's a lot of it, and it's quite powerful, but… Back then, it wasn't all your dark. We just… I just… It was always there, so… I had no way to know, not really, that it wasn't you, but… It felt alien, too. It was… always with you, but it wasn't… you."
Kylo stares at the gravel on the path in front of them. It wasn't him. But it was. It wasn't wrong to talk about it like some invading alien, because some of it was. And some of it wasn't. And neither of them know what a past where only his own dark had been in play would have looked like.
When he looks up, she says, "Sun'll be up soon." Then she points to a corner of the garden. "No camera coverage there. You can head over, and the get back to Rey, or the Supremacy from there, and they won't see how you did it."
He nods, knowing deeper conversation is over. His hand brushes where hers would be if she had hands. And then he goes to the blind corner to get a few more moments of snuggles with his wife.
Kylo's almost asleep when he feels a wave of appalled electronic emotions wash over him. He doesn't open his eyes, but he does smirk.
Yes, I know you're in here. Your feet make a lot of noise. It's a gamble, because he's got no idea if he can communicate silently with an electronic mind. Let alone that electronic mind.
And it fails, because he just feels Threepio thinking something along the lines of What are you doing in here? How are we going to explain this? This room is wired for sound so I can't say anything. Maybe if I don't, he'll just leave and then we won't have to explain why he's here… Mother of the Force! Did he go anywhere else, anywhere with camera? If he stayed quiet in here they may not have noticed him, yet. If they did notice him, how are we going to explain this?...
"It's customary for men to sleep with their wives, Threepio. I'm sure absolutely no one will be fussed by it," he says.
"You're awake," Threepio's voice is nervous and clipped. And there goes any possibility of them not noticing him here.
"We both are. I take it it's time to get up and dressed," Rey says, not moving from Kylo's snuggle.
"Yes, Rey, we have a breakfast meeting, and then a tour of the main town, and…" He's glaring at Kylo.
Kylo touches his own comm. "C8, is there anything set for this morning I absolutely have to be there for?"
"Sir, your first appointment isn't for another six hours. It's 03:00."
Kylo nods. "Right." He lays against Rey. "That's why I'm not completely unconscious. I haven't actually had a full night without sleep, yet."
Rey feels curious about that. I thought you were here.
I was. Couldn't sleep. Had a wander in the memorial garden, and a chat with Mom. Tell you about it when we're free to talk.
She nods.
"As charming as this little tableau of domestic bliss is, Kylo, you were not invited to any of the morning's doings." They can feel Threepio is glaring. "And, unless I'm about to be utterly shocked, you also are wearing the only clothing you have with you, which does not, among other things, include a shirt, let alone shoes, or anything approaching proper court gear, and you need a shave. You look like a bum."
Kylo tries to remember what he's wearing. Pj pants and scruff. Could have been any morning his father was actually home for. "I look like my Dad."
"That's nothing that will improve the situation here this morning. Go home."
"And stop fucking up your carefully orchestrated affair of state?"
"Exactly. You hired me to do a job, now let me do it. You go home, get some sleep, and do your own damn job."
He lays his face against Rey's shoulder, and mentally smirks to her, I made Threepio curse.
He feels her roll her eyes at him. I'm so proud.
That gets a little laugh for him, and another quick nuzzle. "You want me to go home?"
"Not really. My brain thinks it's 03:00, too. I want to go back to sleep." He laughs at that. "But it'll probably go better if it's just us. Queen Heloise seems to like me. I'll invite her for a visit back to our place, and you can play King Ben, there."
"Thank you, Rey, that is a sensible reply. Up you get. Back to bed with you, Kylo, your own bed, not here."
"Did you ever have to do this for my parents?"
"They had the good sense to lock the door."
Kylo snorts at that, too, and then kisses Rey. "Okay, I'm off."
She kisses, and hugs back, and then gets up from a bed with only her in it. "Time to rise and shine?"
"Exactly, Rey."