PublicPrivate

by Keryl Raist

This is the third book in the Tao-of-The-Force-verse series. If you haven't read Tension/Balance or Rumors/Gossip, it's not going to make a lick of sense. If you have... We're starting off right where we left off. The First Year parties are ending, the Order is coming into it's own, and Rey and Kylo...

54. Date Night II

4/20/2

"So, wait… They're coming here?" Finn says to Rose as they're both getting dressed to go 'out.' He hadn't quite envisioned that as part of the plan, but… if that's what his wife and Rey have come up with... Well, Rey's got his back, so…

"That's the idea. Just seemed easier to have them here, rather than transport all of her stuff over to them."

Finn sighs, and pulls on his trousers. He's standing next to their bed, and Rose is in the bathroom. The door is open so they can talk, but she's got a 'surprise,' so he's not looking. Given all the fuss that went with getting Paige's stuff back last time… Them coming here makes sense. "And he's coming, too." (He's fairly sure that if he makes no comments about Kylo being part of this, Rose will immediately decide something is off.)

"You know he is. You wouldn't be pouting like that if he weren't."

He is not, in fact, pouting, but… This time last week, he likely would have been. "Yeah. It's just…"

"I know, but Paige loves him…" Finn flashes a not real glare at his daughter, who is sitting on the floor seeing how many of her blocks she can get on top of each other, and mouths the word traitor to her. "I felt that."

"I didn't—"

"Yes, you did. We did not just meet, Finn Tico. I know your ways. Think about it, babysitting. Real babysitting. We get to go out tonight, and don't have to be back for hours."

He smirks. She doesn't know the half of it!

"There is that," he says with a nod. "Hours!" And he has plans for those hours. So many plans.

He's putting on a tie. They're going to be a tad overdressed for the beach, but he's not doing to complain about getting to see Rose all… She steps out of the bathroom, and his jaw drops. "Oh… baby…."

Rose does a little twirl for him. Her hair is soft and fluffy, and she's in a low-cut jacket and snug trousers, pretty shoes that lift her up several centimeters, and his heart is beating fast, and his tongue feels too big in his mouth.

"Out. We are getting out of this house!"

She grins at him. "And are we going anywhere other than your bunk of the Falcon?"

He smiles at her, eyes wide and happy, pleasure just pouring off of him. "Never you fret; I have plans."

Rose giggles at him, looking very pleased as she picks up their daughter and then saunters out of their bedroom, a sassy sway in her hips. Over her shoulder she calls out, "No matter what, you're on the hook to feed me."

He swallows, mouth dry, a few images that likely aren't what she meant by that statement rushing through his head. He quickly glances at the chrono, and then thinks, Get here fast, Ren.

He just about falls over when, I thought we weren't supposed to be there for another ten minutes, rings in his head.

"Are you reading my mind?" Rose is looking at him in surprise, since he just said that in an empty room. Finn rolls his eyes. "I thought to myself, 'Get here fast, Ren,' and now he's talking to me."

Rose laughs at that.

Not intentionally. I was getting changed out of my work clothing and talking to Rey, and then you were yelling in my head. Do we need to be there now?

"No. I…" He's blushing, or would be if his skin were lighter. As it is, his cheeks feel hot and…

Oh, you just want to get going. Right. We'll be there soon.

---

Rey's smirking at Kylo. "Are you being friendly?"

He's pulling on his sweater, running his fingers through his hair, freeing it from the ponytail it was in all day. "I'm attempting to follow Poe's instructions and engage in acts of empathy. He was so eager to get his wife alone, he thought loudly enough I could get it, so…"

"And that's something you've got empathy for."

"Amazingly enough, yes, I do." He kisses Rey. "Apparently, loving your spouse has a finite number of flavors, and both of us understand them."

---

Be there in a second. Finn has just enough time to understand the thought in his head, and then Rey and Kylo are in his living room.

"That still gives me the shivers," he says.

To which Rey replies, "Yeah, but you'll let me port you to the Falcon anyway, because walking out there will really give you the shivers."

(The arrival of what the denizens of Lirium would call a minor blizzard, meaning that it'll be gone in a few hours and he can take off in the Falcon through the winds) shifted his and Rey's plan a bit, so now there's no reason at all to come up with any lie for why Rey needs to go to the Falcon, and there's no need for stealth porting. They just… won't land where Rose expects them to.

Rose is looking eager. She hands Paige to Kylo, and for a moment they just look at each other, then she's saying, "Okay, we've got her bottle in the cooler, and the rest of the baby food is in there, too. Bedtime is usually—"

"Baby," Finn says. "I wrote it all down for them, and sent it to Rey. She's got it. Let's go."

Rose looks a little skeptical, but Rey nods at her, and Paige doesn't appear to be upset, so… "You can get us if you're having problems…"

Rey's nodding. I can literally think questions in your head. We've got this.

"Okay. Maji babysitters. Right." Rose gives Rey one hand, and Finn the other, Rey grins at Kylo, and then they're gone.

---

Kylo looks at Paige. She's looking up at him. It's not the first time he's held her, but it's also not yet the fifth.

"This okay?" he asks.

She makes a noise. It's… an attempt at talking. She notices that the people around her make noises at each other, and he's got a pretty good sense that she understands at least a few words, but the concept of I think this is okay, but I'm also a little uncertain because it's just you and me, and you feel like maybe you don't know what you're doing is vastly beyond anything she can attempt to communicate.

"Yeah. Me, too." They keep looking at each other. "Rey'll be back soon."

She wriggles and just about manages to flail her way out of his arms, and he feels his heart rate spike into the stratosphere at the idea that he might have dropped her less than two minutes into looking after her himself.

The downside of this is, because she attempted to flail her way out of his arms, that he slammed his Force around both of them, so nothing is moving anytime soon, which has her severely rattled and yelling at him. It takes him a moment to calm down enough to grasp that she wants to get down, and is attempting to let him know that, but she does not understand the idea of the meter and a bit between her and the floor.

He exhales, releases the Force, and puts her down on the floor.

She sits, back very straight, now that she's on the floor the yelling has stopped, and then tugs on his pant leg, so Kylo gets down, too. For a moment, they're just there, staring at each other, when Kylo feels a familiar presence.

And sees a blue glow.

"You look stumped," Han says.

Paige's attention snaps to the new visitor.

Kylo rubs his hand over his face. "It's not like I spend a lot of time with babies."

Han laughs a bit. "But you're raring to change that. Lay on your back, pick her up, and let her 'fly' over you. Babies like that."

Kylo says to Paige, "Want to try?"

She looks away from Han, and starts to crawl toward Kylo. He settles onto his back.

"Looks like a yes," Han says.

She's kneeling next to Kylo, hands on his chest, when he says, "Okay. First off, no trying to leap out of my hands, okay? I will catch you, but I didn't like that."

Han laughs at that, and leans against the wall, watching his son gingerly pick up Paige and hold her over his head. (Or, as he tends to think of her, Chewie's grandbaby.)

"Just lift her up and down."

Kylo does, and Paige makes happy noises.

"Sometimes they like it if you toss them a little at the top of the arc, but their moms generally don't, and I imagine Finn'll skin you alive if he caught you doing it."

Kylo smirks. "Do you like getting tossed?"

Paige smiles down at him. "Okay, let's try this." He lets go of her, but she hovers above him. For a second, she looks really startled, and then starts to shriek with laughter as Kylo zooms her around a bit, swooping her up and down over him, using his Force.

"We did this," Han says to Kylo as he hovers Paige above his head. "Granted, I had to use my arms to do it, but…"

"She seems to like flying better when she's… flying." He experimentally tries rolling her over in the air, and the laughing just gets louder.

"Show off." Han looks at the floor next to Kylo. "No bloody knees anymore. Damn things are completely gone, but the idea of sitting on the floor still seems daunting."

Kylo's almost not sure what to do with that, and then he pulls a chair up next to Han. "Have a seat, old man."

Han snerks at that, and does sit down. "I'll admit, I was hoping that we'd eventually see the Solo smartass come out of you. Be nice to know something of me was in there. Put her down for a bit, let the girl breathe."

He catches hold of her, and gently lowers her to his chest, before sitting up and letting her get back on the floor. "I got your crooked chin, too." Paige starts to crawl toward Han. "You can't touch him, honey. He's just there to look at."

"So, she sees me?"

"I'd guess." He takes a moment to get a feel for what's in Paige's mind. Images and emotions mostly. "Yes. She's curious about you."

She reaches, and her hand passes through Han's leg. That gets a mad wave of confusion from her, and she sits back on her haunches to think. A moment later, there's another tentative swipe at his leg, and again her hand goes through.

Han watches her do that. "Finn doesn't see me. Sometimes, I think he's got the sense of me near, but it might be he's getting really good at reading Chewie, who always knows. Rose never has. Jacen gets me as soon as I even think about showing up."

"How… does it work?"

"How would I know? You're the Jedi."

He shoots his dad a stink eye, but chooses not to argue about the Jedi/Maji thing. He knows Han means Force-sensitive. "Not, how does Jacen get a feel for you? How do you show up?"

"I…" He shrugs a bit. "Sometimes I'm there. Sometimes I'm not. If I want to interact, I can sort of… pull myself together, and do it, otherwise I'm sort of drifting."

"And Jacen gets you as soon as you decide to… pull together?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he would. Kid's off the charts as a mind-reader."

"Better than you?"

Kylo shrugs a bit at that. "I'm not really a mind reader, not the way he is."

"Always seemed like you knew what we were thinking."

"I always knew what you were feeling, and your feelings shaped your thoughts. A lot of people work that way. But if you're just flat out thinking about something, without feeling it, I'm going to have to work a lot harder to get it out of you."

Han smirks. "That's why you couldn't just read the answers to the math problems off the tutors. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why you weren't doing that, and your mom just got annoyed when I talked about it. She thought I meant, why wouldn't you cheat if you could, but that's not where I was taking it."

Kylo shoots him an I'm so over this glare. Then rolls his eyes. And then says, "Yes. I could get it now, but back then I didn't have the focus for it."

Han thinks that's pretty funny. Paige is staring up at him, and smiles at him when she sees he's laughing. "Is she…" He glances to Kylo. "Like you?"

"Force sensitive?" he shrugs. "Not that I can feel, but she's awfully young, and this place is swarming with Force sensitives, so…" He glances at Han again. "Does it rub off? Did you feel more… sensitive… aware, when you spent a lot of time with Luke or Mom?"

He exhales a long breath. "Not sure. I've always had that… bad feeling… when things were about to go wrong, and it seemed to come up more acutely if your mom or Luke were around, but…"

"But they'd pick up what you were feeling and mirror it back to you?"

"Maybe? Or the bad things I ran into tended to be worse when they were around? You're the Jedi Master, you tell me."

"I'm really not, Dad. Certainly not now, and not really back then, and… Even if I had been, that isn't the kind of question any of the books I read even thought to ask, let alone attempt to answer."

Han shrugs. "Maybe. Sometimes it felt that way."

Rey appears in the living room and Han blinks… "You know, you'd think, with the way I show up now, that this wouldn't feel weird, but… Do people not walk anymore?"

"Han!"

"Hey, darlin'"

Paige goes crawling over to Rey, who picks her up. Rey looks at the Solo men, and Paige, and back to them, and then says, "Are we… having a family dinner?"

---

Honestly, it's a little awkward.

Han, of course, doesn't eat.

Rey doesn't know if she's ever had a family dinner, with… well… family.

Kylo doesn't remember the last time he and Han did this, but he assumes it had to have happened at some point.

And Paige is starting to get suspicious that Mama and Daddy are not coming back in the next few seconds and is getting a little anxious at that.

So, there's an undercurrent of tension burbling along beneath a bit of just standing around figuring out what happens next.

After a few more seconds, Kylo jerks into action. "Food," and then he's gone.

Han blinks again. "This is just… normal? You or he just blip out?"

"You get used to it," Rey says. "It's awfully convenient. Especially, here. Our place is only a few hundred meters away, but it's cold out there."

Han nods at that. "Okay." He thinks. "Yeah, if I could have blipped from warm spot to warm spot on Hoth, I'd have done it."

And Kylo's back with a bowl and platter. And gone. And back again with a pitcher and mugs. Then he's standing at the table portioning out their supper.

Han just shakes his head a bit, and sits down at Finn and Rose's table. He can see Rey looking around for where to put Paige while she gets food for her, and he chuckles a bit.

"That one, over there. That's a high chair. She goes in it."

Rey slides the high chair over to the table, and settles Paige.

"She gets little bits of what we eat, too?" Kylo asks her, as he's spooning up their supper. (Veg, more veg, some sort of chop, and rolls.)

"Yeah, she's still mostly on soft food, so probably just the muruls and rolls." Rey is poking around in the cooler, knowing that there are little jars of mushed food for Paige in there.

He nods and breaks a few tiny pieces off of one of the rolls, and plops a few muruls onto the little tray on the chair. Paige grabs for a bite of roll, and side eyes the muruls. He looks at her, picks one up, and eats it. "See, they're good."

She does not appear to be convinced as she eats her bite of roll.

Once he's got the meal served out, he puts the remains in the cooker to stay warm and pours for them.

And Han watches. It's… dinner. Most people do this every night. He and Chewie did a version of this thousands of times. It still feels a little amazing to sit here and watch his son and his lady, working together, to put a meal on a table, and then sit down with every intention of eating it.

"You're the cook?" Han asks Kylo.

Kylo shakes his head a bit at that.

Rey nods.

Han looks between them.

"If one of us is going to cook, it'll probably be me. Luke didn't exactly teach us gourmet food preparation, but I can make eggs and porridge or whatever."

"Cookies," Rey says with a smile, sitting next to Paige with one two of the little jars and a spoon. "Okay, peas and potatoes, or ham and squash?"

Paige makes a little grabby gesture toward the ham and squash, so ham and squash it is. Rey cracks the jar, and gets some on the spoon.

"Bib!" Han says as Rey's about to give Paige the food.

Both Kylo and Rey are staring at him blankly, and Paige is annoyed that the food is hovering just out of her reach. "I promise you, somewhere around here, there's going to be something like a napkin that you're going to wrap around her neck, so all the food that doesn't end up in Paige doesn't also end up on her clothing."

Kylo's the one who spots the little pile of fabric that is indeed bibs. He grabs one, and leans across the table to hand it to Rey. "Got it. Better?"

Paige appears to be mollified because the food is in her mouth now.

"Have… either of you ever taken care of a baby before?" Han asks, wondering exactly how brave Finn and Rose were in this mission.

"We've babysat her before," Kylo says.

"Just the last time we did it, she was still eating her meals from a bottle."

Han nods at that. "Yeah. That's a bit easier." He grins a little. "More fun."

Kylo raises a brow at him.

"Well, when they get to this phase, most of your job is just making sure the food actually gets in them, instead of on," And Paige, as if understanding the lesson Han wishes to teach, spits out some of the squash and ham, and then smears it on her chin. "them. Just scoop it back up and try to get it in her mouth again.

"But a little guy with a bottle is cute and cuddly, not as messy, and in general, less frustrating."

"Are you saying, once upon a time, I was cute and cuddly?" Kylo asks with a brow high.

"And little, too. Once upon a time," Han cups his right hand about pectoral high, and his left hand about shoulder high, "my right hand would have been on your bum, and the left on on the back of your head." He grins at Rey. "Ears like scanner dishes, and like Lando said, he always had a schnoz, but the rest of him was tiny."

"Dad…"

"Oh, please. I never thought I'd get the chance to embarrass you in front of your girl. I'm enjoying it."

"What's a schnoz?" Rey asks.

"The only thing you could have possibly asked to make this worse," Kylo replies, with a little bit of a smirk.

Han grins at her, pats his nose with his index finger, chuckles, gives her a dirty wink, and then says, "Not that."

Kylo rolls his eyes extravagantly, and reaches across the table for the salt. Apparently, when he wasn't paying attention Rey's drink moved, so it's not where his hand thinks it should be, resulting in him accidentally whacking it, sending her drink cascading across the table.

"Fuck!" And then he looks really alarmed at Paige, who isn't quite talking, yet, but… There's a few heartbeats there, as the cider drips onto the floor, where it looks like she might decide fuck is a perfectly good first word.

But she doesn't.

And there's a bit of a mental sigh, and Kylo fetches a rag to clean up the mess. As he's mopping up the cider Han says, "You were… I don't know… Little. Only sporadically talking. And it was a night when all three of us were home. And I was… fixing… the oven," Kylo flashes Rey a look, "And it wasn't going as well as it could have been, in the sense that I'd whacked everything that needed a good whacking and it still wasn't behaving. So, I pulled a condenser out, and sparks started shooting out of it, which was not exactly making my day, so I told the kriffing thing that it could fuck the fuck right off and out again through the other side and then I was going to sell it's shitty crap for scrap, and there you were, very quietly watching the whole things, eyes like saucers, and Leia's staring daggers at me, and my hair's singed.

"And then you chirp up in your tiny little toddler voice, 'FUCK! Fuck? Fuck. FUCK!' It was the single clearest thing you'd said up to that point, and you tried it as every possible part of speech and with every inflection you'd ever heard.

"Not exactly my moment of crowning glory.

"But, like I told his mom, and technically you, though you don't remember, it's best for children to learn words like that from someone who knows how to use them with style." Han offers up a sassy grin, and Kylo does laugh. Rey covers her mouth, attempting to envision that.

"And yes, she was just as happy to hear it as you are imagining. I stand by it, though. If a kid's going to learn how to curse, and they all do, eventually, you can either teach them to do it right, or listen to hours of uncensored word play from people who think talleyknocker is a bad word because someone decided to plant that idea in one of his padawans in order to keep them from stumbling onto real bad ones."

"I knew that was banthashit!"

"Luke didn't let you curse?" Rey asks. The formal rule among the Maji is no bad words where the adults, or the young kids, can hear you. This has worked… to a degree. At least, Rugh hasn't told anyone to fuck off yet, and that's about as much a victory as they hope to get.

"We weren't ever supposed to be irked, frustrated, or angry enough to do it. But, everyone, even Jedi Master Luke, gets irked on occasion, so he let that one loose once, and a bunch of the kids didn't know any better, so… I got a stern lecture for saying kriff, and Luke was less than thrilled when I pointed out that you said it to him all the time and…"

Han's chucking. "Oh, I bet." He looks up at the ceiling. "Gods… I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if we'd just done what we wanted instead of what we thought we were supposed to be."

"He… didn't want to be the Jedi Master?" Rey asks.

Han shrugs a bit. "No one ever asked; I don't think. I remember him talking about the will of the Force, and feeling pulled by it, but… I know I didn't ask. Never thought to. I went under the freeze and he was still Luke, and I came out, and he was Jedi Master Skywalker and… he was different. I mean, I get it, I was under for a while, and… Things, people change, and he was a kid when I went under, and after… Was, well, after, so… Last of the Jedi, destiny, the Force, Darth Vader for a father, all the rest of those big capital letter words that mean something to people who have things to mean something for and… Chewie and I sort of just went along as much as we could."

They eat for a few moments, and it's Rey who gets up the courage to ask. "Did you," she gestures to the Solos, 'used to do this? I mean, when he was little?"

Han nods. "Leia and I really did try to make a go of it for the first three years. I wasn't home every night, couldn't be, but we got to see each other, and you, a lot more often than any time after."

"What did you do, those first three years?" Rey asks. She's scooping up a bit more food and trying to get it into Paige, who appears to consider not getting the food in her mouth something of a game.

"Tried to pretend to be General Solo. It was an honorary title. Leia got it for me. I think it made her happy. I never commanded more than a handful of men. Really wouldn't have known what to do if I'd ever had more than twenty of them.

"The first year… You were cooking away, and the war was wrapping up, and I'd be out on missions mopping up bits and pieces of the Empire. The first year after the Concordance… We, Chewie, Lando, and I, were chasing his Grand Admiral. Schiff was the biggest defector from the Empire. He refused to come in and seek terms, and he was wanted for a list of war crimes longer than my arm, so we went looking for him. Fastest ship in the galaxy. The three best pilots. Three of us on meant we could go all the hours of the day. More sources, intel, ears, out of the way cafes where people'd whisper the right intel for the right currency, and we actually had an expense account so there was plenty of it, and… We couldn't do it. We got within seven minutes of him once, and that was it. Never got closer."

Both Rey and Kylo know how close, and how far, seven minutes is in a galaxy of hyperspeed.

"What happened?" Kylo asks.

"Best pilots in the galaxy," Han says. "But we weren't in the galaxy. We were on the rim, and Schiff was going past it. We've got the Falcon, so we're faster, more nimble, and better at hiding. If we can find him, we can tag him and skedaddle before he knows we're there. And it's not like we've got to get his flag ship, just… Any fucking TIE'll do. Tag it and go. Then the Navy of the New Republic can show up at their leisure and bring him in.

"But again, he's on the rim. And he's got a fleet, which means he can carry way more fuel than we can. And he's not shy about just grabbing any fuel he finds along the way, while we're being nice and paying for it. And yeah, we can call for help, but once the Falcon is out of fuel, it's got 22 hours before everything in it is dead, so we can't go more than 20 hours in hyperspeed past the last friendly outpost if we want someone to come before we're frozen solid." He gives them a look. "And I know for a fact that once on that was enough.

"Schiff knew the territory better than we did, and he could go longer without refueling, and put those together and we couldn't keep the hunt up. So that was a year of maybe getting home once every other week. Refuel, get more intel, see you and Leia.

"It's not that we wanted to be out there, but… Supposedly, it mattered. It… looked good. Made the New Republic seem… respectable. A lot of people out there wanted everything in Imperial colors to burn, so…" Rey and Kylo can feel the tired heat of arguments over, long past the point of fighting anymore, but not settled.

"Lando gave up first. Once the New Republic was really up and running, he retired his commission, and became the First Senator of Cloud City.

"Chewie and I did it for another six months before throwing in the towel, too. It wasn't going to happen. We weren't going to catch him, and… Leia didn't like that, but she had other things to work on, so she wasn't too upset when we gave up, and Chewie and I retired our commissions. She tried to get Chewie to seek to be a representative for Kashyyyk, but he said no to that."

"And you tried to be Han Organa-Solo, Prince of Alderaan, political spouse?" Rey asks.

Han flashes them a sheepish look. "I think that was part of being General Solo. So, I'd look better for the constituents. I'd say I tried. She'd say I didn't. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, closer to her or me depending on the day and the situation."

Kylo and Rey share a look. Rey's wondering if General Solo was also trying to help Han feel more like he belonged up with the powers that be. Kylo mentally shrugs. He could see his Mom trying something like that.

"But you were a bit older than little girl here, and for about a year and a half there, I was home every night. So, I did things like this, gave you bottles, and tossed you around, and held your hands while you worked on walking. Technically, Chewie and I were being respectable. For a while there, we had an on-the-books, legal shipping company." He glances to Kylo and Rey. "Don't look so shocked." He shakes his head a bit. "Okay, yeah, I was still running goods under the floorboards that weren't supposed to be there, which was another reason why Leia didn't think I was trying, but… No one searches a senator's personal ship, and… Well, that's what the Falcon was. It'd have been a crime not to do it!"

Kylo can just imagine how his mom took that. "What changed? Kylo asks. "Why… stop being respectable?"

There's a heartbeat with a lot in it. And Kylo's fairly sure that if he dug a little there'd be… well, all the things Han is desperately trying to not think about right now. So, he leaves it alone.

Han relaxes a bit when it's clear to him that Kylo and Rey chose not to go see what was floating around in his mind, and says, "Beyond the most obvious level, that we were complete rubbish at it?"

Kylo and Rey both look at him.

"It's fucking boring! We'd run goods from one side of Chandrilla to the other, and back again, weren't even breaking atmo, and… Pick stuff up, drop it off, pick more stuff up, drop more stuff off, come home, go to sleep, do it all over again. Break the week up by getting dressed up in the most stupid fucking uniform you ever laid eyes on, with a billion jingly medals that all bonked around every time I had to move, spend a few hours sipping something that needed to be a hell of a lot more alcoholic for me to deal with political dinners, and feel your mom staring at me like I was an abysmal failure in everything I'd ever set out to do."

Neither Rey nor Kylo have much to say to that. There's still the feel of old arguments, well past the point of won or lost, scarred over, but the wounds still ache.

"Yeah, that's a light and fluffy dinner conversation," Han says, running his hand through his hair. "Uh… How was your day?"

Rey and Kylo sort of look at each other, and then back to Han, and there's sort of a sense of, you really want to know…

"Yeah, I mean… You're my kids, so… Families talk about what they've been up to. So, how was your day? That's a thing people do, right?"

Kylo's about to shoot back with I wouldn't know, when Rey squeezes his hand and leaps into the conversation with, "Pretty good. Our places here are all pre-fab units put together following the directions, so they all look and work pretty much the same way, but we're moving, so we spent the day reading up on how to make functional buildings and trying to figure out what we'd need, and stuff like that."

Kylo smiles at that. "Pipes to electric and over and above?"

"Yeah, start on the ground level, what's got to be under the houses to make them work, and then how to build them up. The kids seem to think domes make more sense than squares."

Kylo thinks about that, while chewing. "Sounds like a lot of space that'll be not terribly useful. Too short."

"Yeah, well, not everyone is two meters tall."

He rolls his eyes. "I'm not either."

"I don't know when they measured you last, but you are at least two meters."

"Uh huh." He rolls his eyes. Phasma was two meters. He's not.

"We can get Jon here."

"Okay, fine. I'm tall. Unless it's a dome on a cylinder, it sounds like you're going to have this edge of your home you can't do much with."

"Who's Jon?" Han asks.

"Our friend," Kylo says. "He's also a designer, and makes clothing for me, so… If anyone knows how tall I am…"

"Someone makes clothing for you?" Han asks.

"For both of us, when we have to be fancy, but primarily for me, because I don't… look right… in anything off the shelf." He hunches in a little on himself, making himself look smaller. Rey squeezes his hand.

"Fuck that," Han says. "You look fine, the bloody clothing is wrong."

Kylo raises a brow at him.

Han just looks back. "It wasn't me that was stupid or wrong, it was the bloody uniform. I was fine. You're fine, too. The clothing is the problem."

Kylo and Rey keep looking at him.

"It's a… code or something. Lando told me about it, not in so many words, but… It's like a club, and the outfit is part of how you know who belongs in the club and who doesn't. Nobs who were raised in it, know how to wear it, and people like me, and… well, you maybe, don't know and feel weird about it. So, either you sit there feeling weird, or you tell 'em where to shove it, and and be comfortable in your skin.

"I'll grant you, it's easier if the outfit actually fits, but… Look, there is no possible way to make a pair of tights, and a tunic, and a billion jingly little metals, with fucking shoulder pads, and shoes with buckles, and the stupid fucking hat had a plume, look like anything other than a steaming pile of stupid. But that was the traditional, formal outfit of a Knight of the Republic, so I've got to prance about in that stupid pile of… Lace. Did I mention lace? There were little lace knickers that went under the tunic and on the cuffs and…" He shudders. "Chewie took one look at Lando and I and literally hurt himself he was laughing so hard. He actually sprained a rib! I didn't even know ribs could get sprained, but apparently, that's a thing that can happen. We got through the whole damn war, and the biggest injury he got was laughing at us at the first, formal opening ceremony of the Senate of the New Republic."

Kylo's voice is dry, "And let me guess, Lando added a cape to that, put the hat at an angle, and next thing he knew there were thirty women crowded around him wanting to get to know him better."

"And five men, six I could just identify as 'not human,' and one droid." Both Rey and Kylo are just staring at him about the droid bit. Han shrugs a bit. "Lando had broad horizons, and apparently, other things with broad horizons liked him, too. Anyway. He's dressed like the fop, but on him it looks good, so he grinned at Chewie, swept the cape over his shoulder, and sauntered on out. According to him, he was showing me how to do it." Han sighs. "It worked for him. And your mom looked great, she was…" His eyes and smile are soft. He swallows. "That was one of the last things we went to before you were born, so she was seven months along, and… Uh…" Both Rey and Kylo can feel the extremely content, possessive, and sexually thrilled energy that goes with his mental image of his woman beautiful and round with his child. "She looked great. Didn't much like standing around in those shoes, but that gave us an excuse to cut out early, so… It worked out.

"But the costumes, that's just… A way for them to make sure you feel like an outsider. Fuck it. And them."

Rey's smiling. She actually really likes that lesson.

"I think I would have liked Lando."

"You would have. Granted, the old coot would have flirted with you mercilessly and made B-Kylo blush, but… That was Lando."

Rey's amused by that idea, and Kylo's over it.

"Made him blush, how?" she asks with a naughty little grin.

"Probably the same way he made me. He'd have swept on over, all cool and perfect, kissed your hand, looked deep into your eyes, told you you were beautiful, and he," he nods to his son, "wasn't nearly good enough for you and the luckiest man in the galaxy to have you. And he wouldn't say it, but unspoken would be the idea that if you wanted to trade up, he was more than available."

"And what did Aunt Anilie think of that?" Kylo asks.

Han chuckles. "She'd sweep over and beg you to take him and get him out of her hair. They were pair, those two."

Paige redirects attention to herself by flinging her cup off the highchair. She's really surprised when it stops mid-flight and then levitates back onto the table area.

"Nice catch," Kylo says, mostly so his Dad knows which one of the two of them did it.

She nods at him, but is looking at Paige. "You're done now, aren't you?"

Paige doesn't nod, but she does try to twist and lift herself out of the chair.

"And on the floor you go," Kylo says, standing up, and picking her up, depositing her onto the floor. "Better?"

She looks up at him, and seems fairly content. Then she's spotted her toys and is scooting toward them.

She's been on the floor for a minute when Han stiffens and says, quietly, "Uh…"

This has Kylo and Rey's attention. He's looking at Paige, so they are, and… "Uh…" Rey says.

There's a smear of… food and drool on the floor, trailing behind her, because it didn't occur to any of the three of them to take the bib off first.

All three of the adults look a little embarrassed. Han sighs, "This is the kind of thing I'd do, and your mom would just look at me, clear on her face that anyone with the brains of a gruslack would have known whatever the hell the thing I didn't do, was. It's actually, relieving, to see that you two don't know, either."

That gets a little snerk from Kylo, and Rey quickly hovering Paige off the floor because she's almost to the carpet, and getting mushed food off the tile is one thing, the carpet is another all together.

"Looks like you two have this figured out," Han says.

"And by figured out you mean…" Rey asks.

"Uh… At our place, baby eats, then gets cleaned up, then bed, then adults get to finish dinner or whatever."

"Ah…" Kylo says. "And let me guess, you're not volunteering to clean."

"There's not a lot of times when I like being a ghost, but right now, it's not so bad," Han says with a smirk. "I'll let you get to it. Enjoy her." And then Han is gone.

And Kylo and Rey are in possession of a food-smeared, and somewhat sticky baby.

Who does not want to stop hovering around the room.

---

The job breaks down into two parts. Wash the floor or wash the infant. Having not particularly enjoyed Paige trying to leap from his arms when they were both dry, dressed, and standing in the kitchen, Kylo doesn't exactly jump on washing the floor, but he also doesn't argue when Rey takes over on shower-time.

Yes, he will, no matter what, catch her. No, he didn't, at all, enjoy the spike of fear that went with her trying to launch herself out of his arms, and he can't imagine it'll be even more fun if she's wet.

Meanwhile, the floor is just sitting there, slightly smeared with food, and a good wiping off will take care of the issue, no heart rate jumping to the ethers involved.

Rey's amused by that, but she doesn't comment on it.

He can sense humming. He's sure he can't hear it, because Rey's got to be in Finn and Rose's bathroom, and he can hear the water running, so… But he can sense it, and imagine it, Rey getting Paige ready for bath time, humming to her…

He likes that image.

Enough that he hurries through cleaning the floor so he can join them.

Kylo's not at all prepared for how what he walks into is going to feel. He's just… Not.

Just like their cottage, there is no bathtub in Rose and Finn's. Just a shower. So, Rey's in the shower, with Paige in her arms, holding her close while they rinse off. Paige is looking like she might be getting a little sleepy, or maybe she's just enjoying the cuddle, or the water, because she's draped all over Rey, looking very content.

And Rey's holding her, lips against the top of her head, humming softly, eyes closed and…

He feels like his heart is going to explode. Not fear, not this time, just… He doesn't have words for it. It's so intense, how badly he wants this, how much he adores seeing it, how… This isn't his child… Well… His niece, right? His woman, his niece… Not his blood or body, but she's still his.

Hell, even Finn likely wouldn't mind if he and his saber were between Paige and something dangerous.

His family. The start of it, anyway.

Rey looks up from Paige, and sees the way he's looking at them. That… aching hunger to be part of this, to be in it, not on the far side of the glass, staring at it. "Come on. We're just getting wet. Grab the shampoo, will you?"

So, he does.

---

Bath time with an agreeable little girl is fun. It's soapy and slippery and splashy and just fun.

Rey's holding Paige, and Kylo's washing her feet, tickling each little toe, kissing the souls of her feet, and Paige is squealing with laughter.

Then he's holding her, and Rey's soaping up her back and hair, careful about the hair, because, according to Finn, her tightly curled hair is a bit more complicated than taking care of straight hair, and Kylo's shielding her face with his hand, making sure she doesn't get shampoo in her eyes.

Then Rey's got her, and Kylo's attempting to clean under her chin, and she very much does not want under her chin washed, so she's doing her best to make sure that soap goes nowhere near her secret stash of not quite eaten dinner, but Rey blows on her ear, and that distracts Paige, gets her looking up at Rey, and Kylo sweeps in with a washcloth and a decisive victory against the crud hiding under her chin is won.

---

And if bath time is fun, story time is better. Apparently, story time is usually in Finn and Rose's bed, or at least that's where Paige seems to think it's supposed to take place. And, well, she's not exactly a font of extensive communication, but it's clear that when they attempt to move her to her room before reading the story, she is irked.

So, they're on Finn and Roses's bed, reading.

It can't be an old book. Rose doesn't have family heirlooms, and if Finn does, they belong to the family he lost when he was taken.

But it is a book. An actual, physical book. Rabbity-Babbity Says Good Night. It's got thick, stiff pages that look a little gnawed on around the edges, and those pages are covered in bright pictures of what the illustrator is calling a rabbit (It does not, on any level beyond the ears, look like the critters that Chewie brought home, but… well, rabbits, at least the ones in the barn, also don't roam around a house saying goodnight to everything.) as it wanders about, tucking everything into it's house into bed, and saying goodnight to them.

Paige is in Rey's lap, back to her chest, staring at the pages. Rey's sitting between Kylo's legs, back to his chest, too. She's reading, Paige is listening, and he's holding both of them, feeling so… everything… he can barely stand it.

"Goodnight forks…" And Rabbity is tucking each fork in the kitchen into its own little bed. "Goodnight storks," and he's got a few bird-looking things that he's settling into nests. It's a beyond silly book, and he has to assume it's just to help build vocabulary for little guys, or maybe just the base sounds. (After all, how many kids really need to know what a stork is? The author must have been looking hard for something to rhyme with fork. Maybe on his own planet they're all over the place…)

He's not really thinking about that. It's just buzzing around in the back of his head as Rey reads and Paige looks at the pages, relaxing against his wife.

In the front of his head is how good this feels. Shockingly good. Stupidly good.

Sex good.

Which is… well, weird. He's not turned on. Certainly not hard. And while he's hoping things will move in that direction later, it's not like he's gotten off recently, but…

It does feel a lot like drowsing in afterglow, except he's not sleepy, and hasn't gotten off, and…

Weird. He files it under 'sex is how you get to be in situations like this' and snuggles closer against Rey and Paige.

---

Story time, done.

Bedtime, up.

It's true that Kylo has spent exactly no time thinking about what kind of, or how, Rose and Finn parent. He just doesn't. But he's about to start now as they head up to Paige's room, and there's the crib, and it's… Just a mattress with a sheet on it.

It's a nice sheet. And the crib is nice, too. But there's no pillows and he doesn't see any blankets, and okay, yeah, it's warmer in here than in their house (Which he'll wonder about eventually, and find out that since Finn and Rose's place was done later than theirs it's got extra foundation insulation… But… Yeah, learning curve when it comes to putting together houses…) it's not warm in here, and there's no possible way he's going to put Paige in a cold crib all by herself.

Nope.

She can come and stay warm and sleep with them until the end of time or until someone (and he's thinking that may be him) smacks some sense into her parents.

Fortunately, Rey, who has put Paige down before, knows what's going on, and she flips on a little switch, and suddenly the crib starts to hum slightly and the air above the mattress warms up.

"Oh," Kylo says, putting a sleepy Paige into her bed.

"Yeah," Rey replies. "Little babies don't get pillows or blankets because they can trap pockets of CO2, and they can smother. That's what Rose said, at least. So, the crib has a self-contained atmosphere field that keeps everything and one warm, and circulates the air around."

That's a whole bunch of things he didn't know, and the idea that babies can smother in their own exhalations is ice down his spine, and now he's not sure if he's going to sleep tonight, but… The crib is humming away, and when he lowers his hand to rest it on Paige's belly, he can feel the air moving, so…

It's probably okay.

He still feels that it's just wrong that she doesn't have some sort of little stuffed toy or something to keep her company in there.

"What are you thinking of?" Rey asks, quietly.

Apparently, he's thinking loudly of his own little stuffed friend. "Moomoo. My stuffed tokka." He hasn't thought of it for decades. But once upon a time, a very small Ben Solo had a little blue and yellow stuffed tokka that went everywhere with him. And it had to come with him when he slept.

Rey nods to the rocking chair, which was not used for story time, and is currently housing something like ten little, soft toys.

He nods, deciding that Rose and Finn maybe do know what they're doing.

He bends down, kisses Paige, and says, "Goodnight, baby."

Rey does the same, grabs the monitor that'll let them keep an ear and eye on Paige, and they creep out of her nursery, to go and finish dinner.

---

Back to dinner. Which is good, because Kylo's still kind of hungry. Between talking and watching Paige, he basically got a snack, instead of a meal.

But he also wants to sort of go back up and just watch her sleep for a while.

Or maybe scoot in close to Rey, and snuggle into her, but… "Do they just not cuddle or something?" he asks, noticing that nothing in this house is well-suited for people who like to be in close contact all the time. There's no sofa, or benches, or… Anything besides the floor and bed. The chairs they're in are nice, but he can't just scoot closer to Rey and eat hip to hip with her the way they do on the bench at their house.

Rey shrugs. From what she can see the Ticos are affectionate, but… Outside of bed, there's not a really good snuggle spot in this house.

"C'mere," Rey says, standing up.

Kylo heads to her chair, pulling his plate along, and sits down, so she settles in his lap. "Better," he says. She spears one of the now lukewarm murals on her fork, feeds it to him, and then takes a bite of chop for herself. They chew quietly for a moment, him holding her, her relaxing against him, feeling what's in his head.

"You're baby-drunk," Rey says.

Kylo shrugs a bit. That's probably an okay way to describe it. Maybe. He thinks while he takes a sip of his tea. "Yes, but no. It's silly, but… Drunk is loose and giddy, and… This isn't that. This is… Shit…" He feels stupid, but… If anyone gets stupid-Kylo, it's Rey, "It really feels like after sex."

"You about to start snoring?" she asks with an amused lilt in her eye.

He gently bites her ear. "Later."

"I'm going to hold you to that."

"Good." He chews another bite of supper, and pulls out of his own feelings enough to check in with hers. "You're not. Baby-drunk. You liked that, but… not the way I did."

It's clear Rey was rather hoping he'd have not noticed that.

He shifts a bit so they can look at each other a bit more easily. "Hey… Just… talk to me, it's… okay." Though he's not sure if it is.

"I know you want it, so bad." She looks anxious and guilty. "And… I… like doing things that make you happy, but…"

"And you don't." He feels… he doesn't know… at that. And he can sort of feel another shape, Rey pressing herself into versions of herself to make him happy, and he doesn't know what to do with that, either. Rey who spent more than a decade trapped, trying to be good enough to make her parents come home. That makes him feel awful. He bows his head and presses his forehead to hers. "It's okay."

"I don't want it the way you do. And… Rose says it's normal to be terrified at things that will completely upend your entire life. And it's normal to fear starting relationships you know have to end. That… it's normal to be… uncomfortable with the idea that you'll build someone and love them so much and then they just… leave…"

And both of their histories crash into that. Into Rey's parents abandoning her, and Kylo running away from the life his parents wanted for him, and all of the scars and aches of being parents and children and…

"It'd be different for us," Kylo says.

"Probably," Rey says, because she knows that most adults manage to successfully parent their kids and… "But we don't actually know that, and… Three years, like Kinear said, we've got… Stuff… The outside world, and…"

"And…" He deflates a bit. "Hope." As his mom said, what's more hopeful than a new life? A literal, new life. "What's more hopeful than building a new life?" Building a new home on Achc-To, a new life, as in a literal person, a wedding, all of it. Hope.

She can feel he's thinking in those directions. She adds to it, "The Order, getting people out, resettling them into new and better lives. Are we leaving time for our own hopes and better, and… How much time, realistically, do we have for a child right now?"

"Fuck." He mutters it because she's right, realistically, right now, they've got all the balls in the air, and if they add another person to the mix, it means shorting something else. Like all the stupid shit they're supposed to start going out and doing to make the Order presentable and respectable and peaceful and… "Shit."

For a second, he's imagining the beach. They could just… leave. Build a home there. Follow through with the Order long enough to sweep Canto, get the funds, and then take the Maji and vanish.

She strokes his hair. "You'd hate it after a month. And Jon'd come find you and kick your ass to next year if you tried to leave him in charge. And if you didn't leave him in charge, in a week those two old coots'll be rebuilding the Empire in their image."

Long, painful exhale of breath. "I know… It's…"

"A fantasy."

"Yeah." His face is pressed to her shoulder. "You're rationalizing reasons not to do it."

"Doesn't mean I'm wrong."

"I know."

She squeezes his hand. "The Jedi dealt with fear by not wanting things."

He kisses her neck. "And that's part of this?"

"Maybe. But the Order stuff already scares the shit out of me, so… One terrifying adventure at a time, okay?"

He sighs. Breathes in and out long and slow. "Okay." Quiet. "But, eventually, right?"

"Not today," because it's clear he wants to be in the medbay tomorrow to get his shot reversed, "not tomorrow, not before the wedding stuff, sometime after that… When… we feel like we've got things stable enough that we don't have to be your parents, juggling the galaxy with one hand and a child with the other." Dropping both. She doesn't say it. She doesn't have to.

She's rationalizing again.

But she's also not wrong.

---

Slow and easy, on their sides, facing each other, belly to belly. Soft kisses, gentle touches.

Her leg over his hip, his arm under her head, lips together, just the tiniest bit of the tops of their heads out from under the blankets. Warm and secure in and with each other.

Meal sex. Nothing fancy, neither of them going out of their way with fast and frantic. Just… connecting and re-connecting and ending the night in a good place.

He pauses, just feeling this, her, him. Their bodies and lives, physical, and more, the intangible flowing in and through these physical forms, and how this slow, wet slide is supposed to make more life. How the glow, his, hers, contained in these physical forms, sparking with pleasure and purring with the contentment that comes with being with each other, underscored by a low ache of wanting, how all of that can/should/will eventually spark another life.

He's praying as they speed, as pleasure kindles, as life force, life/Force surges, and he can feel it, in the pulse, in the quieting of breath and heart, in the thrum of her life surrounding, cradling his, that now isn't time.

But there are things he can do to bring that time closer. Things he needs to do to help build the home their child will need.

The past is dead, but that doesn't mean he/they can't or shouldn't learn from it.

---

Kylo's seen his share of 04:00s. And several other people's as well.

And it's not that he thought Rose and Finn were kidding about Paige waking up at 04:00, he just thought that maybe it was… an estimation or something. Like maybe she's get up at 04:03 or 03:58.

But no. It's exactly 04:00, and they're listening to the sound of a small person announcing to the world that she is apparently starving and if food, and someone to get her out of her crib does not arrive right now the entirety of the universe is going to explode.

It's also occurring to him that he and Rey did not figure out who would be removing themselves from their nice, warm, soft, sleepy bed, and getting up to take care of the small person who is screaming into the heavens as if 30 years and not thirty seconds had passed. (He does, absently, notice the sound of someone singing in the background of the sounds coming out of the monitor. Apparently, Han's keeping watch, too.)

He feels I'm getting them at 07:00 and breakfast with the kids at 07:30, and your first meeting isn't until 10:00. You've got her.

And that seems to be a sensible argument, especially coming from someone who very much appears to be asleep.

---

"Okay, I'm here."

"You're naked."

"She doesn't care, Dad." And Paige doesn't. She also doesn't immediately calm back down when he picks her up, but a bit of snuggling seems to help. "Yeah, I know. Mama and…" He looks to his father. "What does she call Finn?"

"Daddy."

"Mama and Daddy are out, enjoying sleeping through 04:00 for once. They'll be back, soon."

Tiny baby eyes glaring at him. Likely because he does not know the routine. He blinks, and holds her, bopping around a little, trying to think what comes next.

His sense of smell fills him in just about the same moment that Han says, "Usually, diaper first, then food, then play for a bit, and back to sleep."

"We're going to play?"

"She looks awfully awake to me."

Kylo doesn't growl. "Okay, diaper…"

---

Breakfast, first breakfast, is a bottle.

Paige is definitely disconcerted by this. She should be in Rose's arms, nursing. Instead she's in Kylo's and he's warm, certainly, and has a good hold on her, but this isn't sleepy drowsing in bed with her parents getting her first snack of the day. This is sitting up, in the living room, and the lights are bright, and…

And he doesn't smell right.

And for that matter a bottle is not a breast.

"You'd give me that look when I'd take over a feed from your mom," Han says, hovering behind them.

"Yeah, and she's not so much hungry as a little peckish and wants a snuggle. I can feel that." He looks back down to Paige. "I'm not going to turn into her, so I'm doing the best I can. You want the bottle?"

He holds it to her lips, and she does spend a moment contemplating before deciding that she'll deign to have a snack.

"With the way you were screaming earlier, I was sure you'd be starving."

She's staring up at him, bright black-brown eyes taking his face in.

"I think little guys mostly just like knowing that if they yell, someone'll come and get them," Han says. "According to the nannies, that's part of what we were supposed to be training you in by not running in the second you squeaked. Self-soothing."

He shrugs a bit. "Apparently, I'm still shit at that."

Han doesn't have anything to say to that.

---

"You done?" Kylo asks Paige when she's slowed down on her bottle. He can feel she is, but… conversation is good, right? Part of how babies learn to talk and stuff?

Or maybe it just feels weird not to talk to her.

Either way, she's done. "Now what?"

She's eyeing the floor and her toys. "Okay. Good. Down you get." He doesn't see Han, but he can feel him near. "You keep an eye on her while I go put some clothing on?"

Paige is in a nice, warm little onesie and sweater. He's wrapped in a blanket, because he didn't think through the logistics of get dressed first, tend to screaming baby later.

"I've got her. Just… yell if she needs something?"

"Sure, I'll be there in a heartbeat."

And Kylo's gone.

---

And a minute later, he's back, this time with pants and socks and a sweater.

Han's next to Paige, on the floor (apparently having gotten over his literally non-existent knee issue) and from the looks of it, trying very hard to stack the blocks for her. He looks up at Kylo when he's back. "Sometimes, if it matters, I can move stuff, but this…" His hand passes through the block. "Not happening today."

Kylo nods and sits next to him. He hovers one of the blocks up. "When I do it… I just… Feel the block, get a good sense for what and how it is, and then," and he hovers the next block up.

Han tries, the blocks stay on the floor.

"I didn't get it my first time, either," Kylo says. Stacking the rest of the blocks by hand. Paige grins at them, and then takes a wild swing at them, sending them scattering through the living area.

"Okay, little girl, you go get them, and I'll pile them up again."

And Paige goes off on a seek and fetch mission.

Han's smiling at him, a very soft look in his eyes.

"Did you want to be a dad?"

Han shrugs a bit. "I… uh… Obviously didn't go out of my way to avoid it… Well, not with you, but I also wasn't thinking about it. Uh… When I was… I was about your age when I met your mom, older when I got out of the ice, and…" He looks a little uncomfortable and a little naughty. Halfway between confession and pride. "She wasn't my first."

Kylo rolls his eyes, and shoots his father a completely deadpan look. "Look at how shocked I am."

"Yeah, fine." He gestures between them. "We didn't do this, when you were a kid, so… I don't know exactly what's in your head or may be shocking to you."

Kylo can't stop it. There's this huge surge of anger. At all the conversations with Poe and Jon where both of them want to slap the shit out of Luke because he didn't do the job right, and that he should have had the chance to have conversations like this, with someone who actually knew something about how to be a sexually functional adult male. "That wasn't my choice."

Han looks confused for a second, and then his face hardens. "Oh, stop that! It was your choice, at least some of it! I tried to talk with you about stuff like this. I'd visit. I'd call. You'd ditch me. You kept me at arms length from the time you were fifteen, and then ran away at twenty-three. I tried to get closer to you, and you froze me out."

"Ran away? He fucking tried to kill me, and then half the school went after me, too, and by the time that was done I had nowhere left to go!"

"You had me! And… Don't give me that we wouldn't have believed you shit you told Chewie. That's… I don't know, Snoke in your head or something. Yeah, maybe your mom would have had a hard time with it, but you didn't have to go to her, you could have gone to me. Or fuck, Lando, if you couldn't have stood the sight of me. You two always got on. And he would have given you a place to get your head on right if you couldn't have come to me. You were not an orphan adrift on the whims of fate.

"Hell, Lando fucking sold me to Vader, and we're still friends. Nothing happened that couldn't have been fixed."

"I murdered M'Gll, Dad!"

Han's quiet for a moment. And Kylo can feel what he told Rey and Finn, that Luke had had a student who murdered the others. Because that's the version of the story he had, what Luke believed. Luke turned on Ben, and Ben blasted him into the rubble and when he got out, everyone else was dead. And he's remembering what Kylo told Chewie. That he'd killed one of them. Then he says, "You just crept up on her in her sleep and stuck a blade through her? Like Luke was going to do to you?"

"I… no."

"She armed and fighting you?"

"Yeah."

"She go after you? With a saber?"

"Yeah."

"And she was Luke's star Jedi. The only other Master. A full-grown adult who had just as much skill as you did with the Force?"

"Yeah."

"Then you didn't fucking murder her, and you know it! And Chewie and I have been through versions of this a lot, and maybe we don't read minds, but we know banthashit when we smell it. We would have known you were telling the truth. You could have come to us, and you didn't."

Kylo just glares at him. "You knew I was miserable with Luke. You knew I didn't want to be a Jedi. You knew I wanted to be off flying around with you. You didn't do anything with it. You didn't tell Mom to stuff it. I finished the training, but you didn't offer me a lift to get away from Luke. You left me stranded on a planet, in a life, you knew I didn't want, so why the fuck should I have assumed that coming to you after everything went… wrong… would have been any different?"

Han's silent at that, and then his voice is quiet, sad as he says, "Because it would have been. And… I'd always hoped that you could at least feel that I wanted more, even if we couldn't get there. Your mom would say that to me, 'He knows you love him.' Did you?"

"Rey asked why I hated you, and I told her I didn't. I… never did. She told me I had a father who loved me, and I didn't correct her. So, enough. But I… didn't think you would, not after."

Han feels so sad at that. How many stories didn't they tell him? How much more easily could he have rested in the idea that one, or even many bad decisions didn't mean it was all over… "Did you… feel it on the bridge? Could you?"

Kylo offers up a tiny nod. "And it just made me angry, because it didn't change anything. You asked me to come home, and… To what? What home? We didn't have a fucking home." He gestures to Rose and Finn's home, and to the little girl who is not playing on the floor, but is watching the adults intently, and to the sense of peace here, even with two thirds of the family gone. "We didn't have this. The Falcon may have been your home, but it wasn't mine. I idolized Lando, but it's not like I got to visit him regularly, or more than twice a decade. I only went to Cloud City once. I never even saw Mom's apartments with the Senate after you shipped me off to Luke, the first time I set foot on New Alderaan was last bloody week, and I set fire to Luke's school, so what fucking home was I going to go back to with you?

"We didn't have a home, not us, not… Organa-Solos or whatever the hell it was we were supposed to be, because you and Mom didn't build one for me, and you asked me to come home and there was this aching rage because the only thing that ever built a place for me was fucking Snoke, and he built a cage."

Han looks very old and tired at that. "Yeah. I know. We did. When you were little. Have a home. But… Once you were with Luke, there wasn't really… We didn't split up until after you left Luke, but we didn't keep a home after you went to him. Leia had her place. I had mine.

"We… If she hadn't gotten pregnant, we wouldn't have lasted. She'd have gone and found a prince or something, and Chewie and I would have wandered off, and…

"And… uh, no I wasn't exactly looking forward to being a father. It wasn't something I had dreams or fantasies of. And, especially, back on Corelleia, with my first sweetie… You have a kid, you've got to feed that kid, and making sure we had enough to eat was a day to day thing, so…" He doesn't say it, but Kylo understands that adding a kid meant another generation of what he'd been born into, crushing poverty, early death, and kids on the grind by the time they could do anything useful. "I cared enough about both of us that we weren't going to risk it.

"And… I really wasn't thinking about it with your mom. When she said it, she caught me completely flatfooted because it hadn't ever crossed my mind that it could have been a possibility. I mean, for a good ten seconds I was really relieved she wasn't giving me the boot. And then the floor sort of opened up under me and there was a massive, 'Oh shit!' moment, followed by one of the few times where I actually managed to be something nearly as cool as my mental image of myself, because I realized she was freaking out, and… Well, at any given time only one of us got to freak out, and I figured she earned it more than I did, so… By the time I had a few moments to be on my own with my thoughts, well… That was that. I was a dad. You weren't on the outside yet, and wouldn't be for a while, but…" He's looking at Paige. "The deal was done, you know?"

Kylo sighs at that. "You didn't… think about running away, or suggesting a termination?"

Han looks pretty surprised at that. "Running away, yeah. I… uh… did. Couple times, because I was sure I was liable to fuck things up pretty bad if I'd been around." And he just looks at Kylo. And it's clear between the two of them that he's still not sure if it would have worked out better if he'd just buggered off. It's absolutely clear that he's certain it couldn't have possibly ended up worse. "We'd fight, usually about something stupid, something that anyone with the sense the Force gave a button would have known not to do, but I'd done anyway, so I'd bugger off, sure you'd both be better off without me. But I kept coming back, before your Mom noticed I wasn't just away on business.

"Granted, when I'd get that look in my eyes, Chewie'd usually talk me down, too. He'd have ripped my arms off if I got too serious about leaving for more than a week or so.

"And, when she told me she was pregnant, I did tell your mom that I'd be fine with whatever it was she wanted to do, but… Even I'm not stupid enough to suggest a termination to a woman who hasn't brought it up first, let alone a member of the Church of the Force. And she never brought it up. But… You'd been cooking for a bit when she told me, so… That's a conversation she had with herself, I guess."

"So, one day, you're just…" Kylo's trying to get a better feel for what happened, and how, and… Just fill in the damn holes in his history and his idea of these people who made him.

"Working on the Falcon. About two months after the Death Star went up. We were still at Endor, dealing with victory, which was a lot more complicated than I expected it to be. There really wasn't a whole lot of plan after 'blow up the Death Star,' or maybe there was too much plan. Every third officer had a plan."

"And you didn't."

"Because I'm not actually an officer. I hunkered down and waited to see who'd sidle over with a plan. Your mom, though… She was sitting through all the meetings, and talking with everyone, and making plans, and working with Mon Mothma on what came next, and… I didn't really see much of her those days. Maybe catch a meal together. We didn't even get another date in. She was busy. So, I kept busy, help mop up tiny pockets of the Imperial Navy with Luke and the rest of them, and I really was sure she asked if we could talk to tell me that our fling had been fun, but she had bigger things to do, and maybe I could see myself out."

"That didn't happen."

"No. She got really tense, and she tended to get angry when she was tense, but I was pretty sure I hadn't screwed anything up recently, so for once I stayed calm, and then she's in my arms, which was fine, but then she was crying, which wasn't, and she didn't say anything, which was really worrisome, and… Eventually, she said, 'I'm pregnant,' and by the time she got that out, I'd had a million worse scenarios in my head all flying around, so I said something like, 'Oh. Is that all? I thought it was something bad.' And I guess she really wasn't expecting that, and she sort of collapsed and began to laugh, so I did, too, and then I held onto her, and stroked her back, and made sure her face was against my chest, because that's about the time when my brain caught up to my mouth and realized what she's actually said to me, and she really didn't need to see my face at that moment.

"But, it worked out, and a bit later, I was holding you against my chest and… It felt right. The kind of deep, settled joy you maybe feel once or twice in a lifetime. Terrifying, too. Single scariest moment of my life. I suddenly had this person I was completely responsible for, and who depended on me for everything, and who'd be… mine. The nurse told me later that I was doing fine. A lot of new dads pass out during the delivery or right after, and I didn't, so there was that.

"But, apparently, you needed more than someone capable of remaining upright and conscious, and…" He lets that trail off. After a minute he says, "I couldn't shoot your problems, and I couldn't fast talk them, and they didn't go away on their own, and the only other things I had left on my arsenal of problem fixing skills was to whack it with a spanner, which I knew wasn't going to do the job, or to run away, and that always felt… wrong.

"And what the fuck do I know? Your mom and Luke, they always knew. And, of course, your mom's a literal princess. We'd go to New Alderaan, and… I'd call her 'your highness' as a joke, but they'd mean it. People'd fucking bow to your mom." He shakes his head and sigh. "And Luke's fucking magic. He levitates and talks to dead people. People get near him and they look to the floor, and talk to him in a whisper like he's sacred or something, and…

"And me. I'm one tiny step above a pirate, and really the only reason Chewie and I have that step is because we didn't like taking out guys who were worse off than we were, and we weren't well enough armed to take out the guys who were bigger.

"And they know. And I don't. I'm a walking pile of mistakes, like, for example, knocking up your mom when it was utterly clear neither of us had any business trying to have or raise a kid, let alone then. It's not like I didn't know how it worked, but I just… went with it. They've got plans, and I've got… reacting to plans.

"All I've got is a feeling that maybe this isn't the way to go, and Chewie's backing me up, but it's not like he ever raised a human kid, and… I tried."

"I know."

Han looks at him, really looks, feels all the history of his life in those two words. "Do you?"

"I know, Dad." Kylo watches Paige on the floor. She's crawling toward one of the blocks, so he gently tugs it a little further away from her. She lights up. She's never played chase the block, so she goes after it, and Kylo tugs it around the room. "He was in my head… You said that; Snoke in my head. He was… All the time. Mom was upset about the 'grandpa' stuff. That was Snoke. Not Anakin. I saw him for the first time last year."

Han's quiet. "Yeah… She… didn't tell me, about him, and what he was doing… I knew about the Grandpa stuff, because you told me about that. As best I knew, your grandfather was lurking around the edges and we just couldn't get rid of the bastard. That was part of giving you to Luke. He'd at least listened to Luke in the past." And suddenly getting stuck off with Luke, and his father going along with it, makes a lot more sense.

Han looks old, and sad, and he glances around this home, and Paige chasing the block that Kylo's still scooting around for her, and he says, "Both of us… Your mom and I… We… wanted, hoped, dreamed, that someday you could… be this." He gestures to Kylo, here and now, married, stable enough to keep watch on a child. "Even if we weren't good at it, we hoped maybe one day you might be. And maybe you'd get to have this. And, as best we knew, going to Luke meant that idea of a future vanished. We knew you had power, and darkness, and… There's a reason you didn't go off at three the way the Jedi used to be trained, and it wasn't just that Luke didn't have the school set up.

"But… this… and the hope of this sort of life got dimmer and dimmer, and… We knew being a teen was going to be even harder, because it's hard on everyone and… By the time you'd choked Master Hefper… We'd shifted from trying to get you to this to trying to make sure you didn't have a tantrum and kill someone, so…

"Luke. And being stuck with Luke. And the life you didn't much want, but…" You weren't killing people or yourself. Unspoken, but Kylo understands. "I didn't know about Snoke… Not until… A few hours before. I knew you were dark. I didn't know… I didn't know that there was something I could have shot that might have helped."

"You didn't know?" Kylo's voice is almost non-existent as he says it. He doesn't know why that's shocking to him, but it reverberates through him like the crack of a whip.

"I knew you were dark. I knew you were like Luke. Neither of them ever saw any reason to tell me they thought there was a parasite in the back of your head trying to use you as a puppet, because why the fuck tell me that? I'm just your Dad…" There's the spark of a lot of old arguments, also long past the point of any functional resolution. Though Leia pressing harder and harder to get Kylo under Luke's protection slots into place, along with the fire and effort she put into fighting the First Order, long before they were anything beyond a blip on anyone else's scanners.

"Probably because you would have tried to go and shoot him and just gotten yourself killed for your troubles."

"We all die, kid." He snorts at that. "Would have rather gone out like that, taken that old fucker with me, than have to…"

"Dad…" His voice is soft.

"B—Kylo."

"I needed you on that bridge. Because you wouldn't have taken the old fucker out with you. You'd have just died there, and that would have been that. He'd have owned me.

"It was a test. There were always fucking tests. And each time, another chance at breaking free vanished. Another door shut. Another tie to anything but him died. And he kept promising that, soon, soon, I'd be able to just settle into the dark. Soon it wouldn't hurt any more. Soon…

"I killed you. I fucking murdered my own father. I cut you in half while you begged me to come home. I gave myself, body and soul to the evil, and it just laughed. I didn't get better. I couldn't settle. I'm dark, but not evil, and I couldn't give into it, because I'm not of it, and…

"And Rey's kneeling in front of me, and he's promising that if I strike her down, that this time it'll work. This'll be the magic moment where somehow—It was fucking shit! I was never going to settle, and he was using my pain, my anger, my anguish to feed himself, and all the fucking lies and promises cracked open with your body, and…

"I needed you then, and there. And you were there."

Han offers a little half smile, but Kylo can feel that him saying that, knowing it, matters to his Dad. "Well, the one thing I was ever really good at was showing up at the last possible second to save the day."

Kylo sniffs. "Yeah. You are."

"Okay, enough of the mushy stuff." Han nods to Paige, who's not going after the block so aggressively anymore. "I think you tired her out. Time to go back to sleep."

Kylo exaggeratedly sighs, "Thank the gods, I'm tired, too."

"Yeah, you look it. Put her back down and go crash yourself."

Kylo nods slowly, and goes to gather Paige up.

---

When Rey gets back to Achc-To the sun is well and truly up.

Rose and Finn, not so much.

They look comfortable, though, snoozing together on the beach, wrapped in the blanket, and Rey smiles for her friends before making a bit of noise and deciding to go off and study the sea a bit.

She can feel them waking up behind her. "Good night?" she calls out, over her shoulder, feeling them getting dressed behind her.

She can feel the smiles, and the little smirk, and the rustling around grabbing for clothing.

And something else.

She grins wider.

"Yeah, very good night," Rose calls out.

"Great!" Rey says.

"Just, need another minute," Finn says.

"Take your time," she gets a feel for Kylo, and then smiles at that, too. "No rush."

---

Finn and Rose are standing on the sand, holding the picnic goodies one second, and in their living room, the next.

Their silent living room.

Silent and empty.

A quick check on the chrono tells them that it's 07:10, so this is still during the time when Paige is in her morning sleep, but… That doesn't explain the lack of Kylo.

Rey looks really amused though, and heads through the living room to the open door to the bedroom, and points quietly inside.

Kylo's curled onto his side, mouth open, breathing deep and steady. Paige is on her back, head pillowed on his arm, also snoozing away. "He got the 04:00 wake up," Rey says, quietly. They back out a bit, and go into the kitchen area. "Looks like you two had fun," Rey says with a smirk.

Fun? There's a sleepy timbre to Kylo's thought.

You awake?

Enough.

"Yeah," Rose says, and then gives Rey a little shove. "Gonna take me to the Falcon, huh?"

Rey looks innocent. "It was his plan, I just helped."

They hear quiet footsteps, and Kylo joins them. For a second, he's just looking at them, and then he grins. Am I… feeling it right? He thinks to Rey.

She grins back to him. Yeah, I think so.

"Good night, I take it?" he says.

Finn just grins. It's a very male, very satisfied grin. Kylo immediately smirks back at him, and for maybe half a heartbeat there's a moment of empathy and accord. Rose pokes Finn in the belly while starting to get out breakfast food. "Did she go down okay?"

"Oh yeah. She never gives us trouble about sleeping," Rey says.

That gets an eye roll out of Finn and some muttering about magic users, as he starts to put the picnic gear away.

"Yeah, well, magic means you two get to come home to a sleeping kid, so…" Kylo replies, still staring at Rose and her… glow.

The glow that wasn't there when they left.

The tiny… little… glow.

He looks to Rey and both of them grin at each other.

"What are you two smirking about?" Finn says. "Wait, were you… here?"

"Wait, what?" Kylo has the grace to look horrified at the idea of… that… in Finn's house. Hell, the only reason he was even on the bed was because they don't have a decent sofa or comfy chair in the living room.

"Okay, he's not a good enough liar to pull that look off and not mean it, so… What?" Finn's looking from Rey to Kylo suspiciously. "You look like you know a joke, and that was the only one I could think of."

"Just happy, for you," Rey says, suddenly also realizing she doesn't know what to do with this. Last time… Well, they were getting married and there was all the wedding stuff, and… she was a bit… preoccupied… and then she didn't see them again until after they were ready to tell, but now… That glow wasn't there when they left last night, so…

"You look like you had a really good night out," Kylo tries.

"We did," Rose replies, "And both of you are shit liars. You're pleased about something alright, and it's not that we had a good night out. You didn't prank us by having sex in our bed, so spill, what's got you grinning like that? Wait…" Now her eyes are glowing and she's got an idea, and a slow, wide grin spreading over her face, and Kylo and Rey both catch it, and it's the right idea, just in the wrong direction.

"Sort of. It's… related to the good night out…" Rey says, grinning. She shakes her head. "Your good night out. Uh… You've got… a little glow… That you didn't have… before you left." And then she very pointedly drops her gaze to Rose's belly.

Kylo nods at Rose's wide eyes and Finn dropping the picnic blanket from shock-numbed hands. "We can both feel… well, living things. Two lives went out to picnic. Three came back. Sounds like it was an excellent date night."

There's a moment of absolute silence followed by Rose suddenly sucking in a very deep and excited breath and an all over frisson of joy just bounding through the house as she more or less leaps into Finn's arms. He catches her, head pressed to her neck, and he's very, very quiet, and it's clear that he's trembling with emotions too deep, too intense to be let out through sound.

Rey and Kylo watch for a moment, and then Rose waves them over to join the hug. Rey goes easily, wrapping herself around her friends, but Kylo holds back, fairly sure Finn does not want to be hugged by him, and also not sure if he's the kind of guy who hugs Finn even if this is a fairly big celebratory moment.

At least right now, Finn's so in the moment, in his love and the life of his second child, that he's basically oblivious to Kylo right now.

Kylo snuggles up against Rey and puts a hand on Rose's back. That seems to be a decent compromise.

A moment later, the hug breaks, and Finn's still holding Rose, his hand over her belly, his chin on her shoulder. "Can you tell… Girl or boy?" he manages to say through a choked voice.

Rey shakes her head and Kylo does likewise.

"Just a bright, steady spark of life," Kylo says.

Rey looks a little sheepish. "I… uh… honestly can't even tell that it's human, just that it is." She looks to Rose's long jacket. "You don't have a gerbil in your pocket or something?"

It's a stupid joke, but it gets a much too much of a laugh because everyone in this room is just stupidly happy right now.

Rose turns her pockets out. They're empty, and more laughter follows.

---

Dinner with the kids is rolling along. Rey and Rose are 'more or less' riding herd on them. And Finn's saying goodbye. Time to go get his partner(s?) from Cloud City. Time to hunt down the next deal. Time to make sure that nest egg keeps growing because he's got another chick to fend for…

He's not quite ready to leave, yet, though.

"Your man at home?" he asks Rey.

She, thankfully, doesn't ask why Finn wants him. She does focus and then nod. "Yeah, for about a minute from the feel of it. You want to talk to him?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I can port you over."

Finn shakes his head. Yes, it's convenient, but it still makes him feel mentally wiggly in a way he doesn't much like. "It's just cold right now." And blessedly, it is. For once, the skies are clear and calm.

He kisses his wife and daughter one last time, before heading out.

Kylo looks surprised when he opens the door. Finn does, too for that matter, because Kylo opened it before he knocked, but… Magic users.

"Rey's not here."

"I know," he says, stepping in. "Came to talk to you."

Kylo looks wary. "Why?"

Buggered if I know… He makes himself not think that. "I… This morning. You were really pleased for us."

Kylo nods. "I am really pleased for you." He doesn't say, Wish I was in your shoes but he does, to a degree, feel it. Now may not be right, but that doesn't mean now isn't wanting. "Another baby, that's a good reason to be happy, right?" Then he stops. "I mean… You want another baby, right? Rose felt happy. I thought you did, too."

Finn holds up his hands. "I'm good. Yeah, we… Were planning on waiting for Paige to hit a year old, but…" His facial expression covers a lot of but.

Kylo nods at that, smirks a little. "Yeah, but…"

They stand there awkwardly for a bit.

"Uh… When she was still on the inside, we were talking with Chewie about doing a life day party for Paige…" Kylo's nodding. He's familiar with how that works. "But we didn't get around to it. So, it got moved to her first birthday. That's the beginning of next month. I know she won't remember it, but I bet Paige would like it if you came."

Kylo smiles a little at that. "And would you like it if I came?"

Finn glares at him. Then he shrugs. "I wouldn't hate it."

Kylo nods at that. "I'll make sure I'm there."

"Good."