5/8/2

Kinear comes into Kylo's office with a few pages of actual paper in his hand. Kylo's eyes narrow at it. "You looking to sweeten me up?"

Kinear raises an eyebrow at that. "Kylo?"

Kylo nods to the paper. "Paper." He can see that's completely whirled past Kinear, and he has no idea what Kylo's on about. Kylo smirks. "So, you don't know everything about me." He glances at one of the seats near him, and the cup of tea, the way Kinear likes it, waiting for him.

Kinear sets the papers in front of Kylo and sits down. "Well, that's part of giving you these. I didn't want them in the system, so Ellie found some paper, and I dug up a pen, and wrote them down."

Kylo scans the pages and knows he's going to have to give them to Rey to read. Kinear's handwriting is horrible. He can, however, feel what they are from Kinear. "The interview questions."

Kylo hadn't exactly been keen on the idea of 'an interview' let alone 'many interviews' but Jon patiently explained how this would be a way for a very large number of people to feel like they were getting to know him and Rey, without (and this was the perk) either of them having to personally go out and meet the tens of millions of people who would eventually watch these things. Put that way, he's still not keen about sitting in front of a camera talking about himself for an hour, but it seems better than the alternative.

Kinear sips his tea. He notices Kylo's got tea in his mug, too, but doesn't say anything about it. "Obviously, we're setting this up to be as easy and pleasant as possible for you and Rey, which means not jumping out of nowhere with questions you don't want to talk about. So, these are the things people want to know about you. This way, you have time to figure out what and how you want to answer them, and if there are any you don't want to touch, just cross them out, and Ms. Holaran won't ask you them. If there are any you want to add, just write them down. If you're okay with the idea of a question, but want to tailor it, same deal, just shift it around."

Kylo's nodding, staring beyond the paper, not really seeing it. "Who's Holaran again?"

"The most popular newsreader on our channels."

Kylo ponders the idea of a newsreader. "Does she just… read reports our people write up for her?"

It's clear that Kinear is pondering the fact that Kylo does not, apparently watch any of the newsies the Order broadcasts. He's thinking about if that's a good thing or not, and not immediately seeing a solution, so he decides to punt it to later, and answers Kylo's question with, "Yes. She's very pretty, but in an intelligent sort of way, has an excellent voice, does a good job of telling stories, and actually is a rather good interviewer. Since we control the news that gets out, she doesn't do her own research, except for interviews."

"And she doesn't find that boring?" Kylo's not sure he can fathom just reading other people's words all day every day and not going bonkers.

It's clear that Kinear seems to think he's missing the point of this. "You could ask her that."

Kylo nods and rubs his lips together. He spends a few moments staring at the script, seeing words and phrases start to sort themselves out as he begins to decipher Kinear's scrawl. Then he sighs. He doesn't hate the questions, but he'd rather not be spending an hour, even a very highly scripted hour, talking about himself.

"Second thoughts?" Kinear asks.

"Constantly."

"Are they yours or Rey's?"

"I'm fairly certain these are mine, though she'd certainly understand why I have them."

Kinear nods. "Okay. Ellie'd kick me to get me to shut up, but… Remember you and Rey do not have to do this. We think it will make things easier, especially in the long run, but that doesn't mean it's right or something you should do. It just means that this is one possible route you can take."

Kylo glances at the gray line. It's up again today, but it would be, no new income has come in, but a lot of people have. He closes his eyes for a moment, thinks three years, and nods. Everyone who likes them better, the more valuable to the galaxy they become, the easier everything gets. "That's… good actually. Knowing I can tell it all to fuck off." Even if he shouldn't, just the option feels good. He rests his hand on the questions, and then says, quietly, "My second thoughts. Twenty-nine years of never being good enough, of people wanting me to be someone else. Ten years of no one wanting to know what was under the mask. Most of my life people wanted the mask, or a mask, trying to shove them onto my face, and now… Everyone wants to know what's under there. What if they don't like it?"

Kinear knows that's the single most vulnerable thing Kylo's ever allowed himself with someone who isn't Rey.

He rests a hand on Kylo's shoulder. Then he scoots closer to him, and sighs. "This is a mask, too, Kylo. Just like Rey's title. Just, hopefully, one you build yourself and to your liking. A… prettier one than your black one. One designed to make people love, and not fear." He takes a breath and sorts his thoughts. "If we succeed at this, we'll end up spreading across the galaxy, hundreds of trillions of people, billions of ships. It's too much for any one person, Kylo. Too much for every one person. No GodKing, no Emperor, no one can do this. We're building an ideal, and heroes, myths for them to cling to, to build… some sort of common culture around… and one of them may, to your liking, look like you.

"But like I told your love, keep yourself for yourself. Keep The Master as your shield, or mask, or however you like to think of it. This," he lays his hand on the questions, "is about giving all of them, the billions and trillions of them, something to look at and romanticize and adore." He lays his hand on Kylo's chest. "And that's you. Under the masks. That's for you, and Rey, your children and your intimate loves." He sighs a little at this. "Generally, those of us who have a nemesis, he or she, too, will know you, who you really are, where you live, metaphorically if not literally, but the rest of the galaxy out there… They're too busy with their own personal lives and their own masks, and their own futures and pasts."

Kylo nods. He looks over at Kinear, "Who are you, Pat?"

Pat thinks about that for a long minute, and Kylo can feel him thinking about what the Kinear family could, or would, have done had Kylo been born into their midst, before saying, "The grandfather you deserved."

Kylo snorts a bit at that. Though he also imagines how growing up in a place where the family, no matter what, always came first. "Don't suppose you had a few wild months back in… Corelia, in say…" Kylo just gives up on translating the date. He learned it on the New Republic system, so that's how he says it, "late 33 BBY?"

Kinear smirks at him. "My wilding days predate that by a bit and were on Coruscant. You don't know your father's people, do you?"

"No. He didn't, either. An Empire official gave him the surname Solo when he signed up, because he didn't have parents." That's not quite true. There was a mother, and a few memories of her. Sick, poor, tired, and then gone. She had black hair. Han told Kylo that. He'd gotten the black hair from his grandmother. And there was a father, or at least conversations about him. He'd been a freighter pilot, at least that what Han's mother had said. But she died, or left, or… something, when Han was still young enough to just know her as Mama. And after that, the only name he had was Han.

"Too much family on the one side, and not enough on the other."

"Something like that."

Kinear stares at Kylo. "I met Vader a few times. Once when he was still Anakin. Granted, I did my best to be permanently on the opposite side of the galaxy from him, a long life expectancy and getting close to Vader didn't go hand in hand, but Tatooine was under my control, so…"

Kylo thinks about that, and about the mask that's sitting in the back of his closet, and the saber he hasn't worn in months. He wonders how many days in his life Vader put his saber down. Wonders if even Anakin had many days where he walked unarmed. "People keep telling me they expect to see more of him in me. I guess I did, too."

"It's the shape of you. Though," he smirks a bit, "You've actually got the shape. On him, the height and width were mostly his life support suit. Back when he was a man, he was built more like Jon than you."

"I noticed." Comments like that always make Kinear curious and uncomfortable. Kylo chooses not to expound, let the man have at least a few mysteries. "He told me I resembled Padme."

Kinear looks seriously at Kylo, really seeking out the bone structures shaped through time and the vagaries of genetic drift. "Around the eyes, some. And the coloring, some. Her hair was brown, not black, though. I think you've got the same color eyes. But mostly, you're just you."

"Did you know Bail?"

"Again, I'd seen him. Ellie likely knew him well enough to nod. She was on Coruscant more than I was, and when I was there, I tended to be home." He shrugs a bit, long dead secrets… "He wasn't my department, but…"

"There were no departments you didn't have at least a feeler in," Kylo says.

"Exactly. Didn't want a blind spot to jump up and grab me. The Emperor's security forces knew he was involved in the Rebellion, and for the most part let it go. He was… useful. Actually, so was the Rebellion. Better to keep your enemies small, where you can see them, and fussing with each other. I think the Secret Security department was actually running three of the different Rebellion cells. So, that kept your grandfather's group, the Alliance to Restore the Republic, squabbling with splinter cells who used tactics he didn't like."

Kylo sighs. "And let me guess, those tactics made the Rebellion look bad, and gave the Empire innocent victims to blast all over the media."

Kinear tilts his head. "There were, also, genuine terror groups in the Rebellion, too. We didn't run all of them."

Kylo raises a brow.

Kinear nods, slowly, and adds, "Many a leader has found it useful to have an enemy, one that poses an existential threat, and if the universe won't conveniently turn one up, sometimes you have to make one. Love is good. But if you don't have the temperament for it, fear and hate will work just as well, if not better."

Kylo fiddles with his cup. He sips it, winces a bit, and doesn't know why he put tea in there. He doesn't actually like it, and it's not doing what coffee should. He glances at the gray line again, and takes another sip. "I don't know if that makes me feel better or not." He thinks for a moment. "The Death Star? The one Luke blew? Did the Rebellion have... Erso?"

Kinear shrugs. "To this day no one knows what Crennick and Erso were doing. His daughter… Erso's, was with the Rebellion for about nine minutes before she died, but… Before it blew, every report about the man said he was brilliant and lived for the Empire."

"How many of those reports were written by Crennick?"

Kinear smiles at that. "You're learning. Always make sure your intel comes from multiple sources, and preferably those sources don't know each other. Crennick was paranoid that if anyone else got access to Erso something would fall apart, so they didn't, which means we only got reports from him."

"Does that mean I should be listening to you less?"

"Realistically, yes. And you should be running anything I offer you by at least Poe, and likely a few others as you find them." Kinear's thinking of Leia, but he doesn't know how that works, so he doesn't say it. "Whoever comes after me likely won't have the same soft spots I do."

Kylo raises a brow at that.

Kinear waves it away. He doesn't feel a need to expound on that. He does pause, and think, and then says, "Ultimately, and I don't know if he'd go along with it, but if you want to know what I'd do with Poe, I'd send him back to the Resistance and use him to make sure we actually control it."

That steals Kylo's breath. "I…"

"Wouldn't even think of it, and if you had, you'd never mention it to him. And I don't know him well enough to know if it's worth trying. But, this is part of what I mean by working on training you and Jon up. You've got the makings of proper devious bastards; we've just got to get you there."

"And Poe?"

Kinear smirks at that. "Already is one. Just got to figure out how much of a bastard he's willing to be. My guess is, he's already aware of what he could be doing for you and has chosen not to."

"Do we… have ears in the Resistance?"

"Some. A few useful idiots, and a few more intentional spies. The different branches all put together number fewer than five thousand people, so there's not really room for too many of them."

"How about the New Republic?"

Kinear gives him a long look after that question. "You've got a look in your eye that scares me."

"Potential long-term planning. Beyond your time horizon," Kylo tries to brush the idea aside, but part of him really wants to talk about it, too.

Kinear seems to understand that. Or he just can't stand not knowing. "Then you bloody well better run it past me when I'm still around to comment on it, and have enough wits to make sense, then."

"We talked about it a little bit. Trying to make peace with the New Republic."

"Longshot. At least, if you want to keep your head attached, and I'm assuming you would."

"I would."

"Good. That's the bloody tragedy of you Skywalkers. You burn so damn bright, but you burn out fast. Let's see if we can keep you going past fifty, okay?"

Kylo smirks at that. "Well… That's… Part of the idea. I'm… really hard to kill, you know?"

It's clear on Kinear's face he doesn't like anywhere this conversation might go. "You're still fucking mortal, Kylo."

"I know. But… Force sensitives… We don't leave corpses. Luke burnt Vader's support suit, not him. Obi Wan just left clothing behind, same with my Mom, same with Yoda. I won't leave a corpse behind. One moment I'll be there, and the next I won't, and… If I time it right…"

Kinear exhales long and slow. Kylo feels the first level, which is a spark of fear. The old coot does genuinely like him, and doesn't want to see him come to harm. But he banishes it for the second level, for the tactical planner to take over and see what they could do with it. "Well… That's…a thing."

"A thing that could happen. The sort of thing that'd… We'd need to get the peace offer in before the New Republic orders the attack, right?"

Kinear nods. "Always better to play from strength. And offering before they manage to get a vote up for an attack makes it look like you actually want a workable peace, and aren't just trying to save your skin."

"That's the idea. Are they... a real threat?"

Kinear blows out a long breath. "Now, no. Hux killed off something like 95% of their military in one strike. But, again, enemies. Now the New Republic has an enemy, one that's still alive, something to unite behind. When your Mum was trying to get it to go against Snoke, it was wallowing in the usual issues, the struggle between central command, or decentralized alliances, and where the military power goes, and if individual worlds could get a better deal by playing both sides of the issue.

"That's done now.

"And, while the military is ruined, they are rebuilding, and they have vastly more people and resources to pull from than we do. Just like for us, building weapons takes time. Training fighters takes time. Unlike us, if they decide to set up conscription, they've got literally hundreds of trillions of people to pull from. We do not. If they decide to start strip mining planets for resources, they have millions of them to pick from. We do not."

"So, if they decide to play by the First Order, or the Empire's rules, they can crush us, easily. Just by sheer numbers."

"Exactly. So, yes, if we can get a peace play in, before, they can take advantage of that. And if they feel... secure enough to stick to an actual decentralized Republic-"

"Big if?" Kylo asks.

"Palpatine came to power by making people feel week, threatened, and insecure. Hux literally murdered tens of billions of people in one fell swoop. He didn't make them feel insecure. He showed them they were."

Kylo sighs. "Love, huh?"

Kinear tilts his head. "The more likable you and Rey are, the more peaceful the Order is, the better for the galaxy we are, the more you defang the people who want to kill anything wearing a hexagon. But, they're still going to have to get the Republic to vote to go to war." He sips his head. "And the more ties we can build with other New Republic worlds, the harder it'd be for them to get it through a vote… The more ears we've got…" Kylo can see him going through the permutations. "You've got New Alderaan coming to you in ten days… Let me…"

Kylo waits to see where Kinear's thoughts are going.

"Alderaan is peaceful. Alderaan, cousins of the Order. Hell…" He thinks… "Their second senator is your literal cousin. Alderaan, has a permanent vote in the New Republic, and it's near veto power… When Alderaan says no, people listen. It's… We've got to find something other than that fucking ship that doesn't exist that they want, and we need to be seen to give it to them… We'll… keep working on that."

Kylo nods. "So… do we have ears in the New Republic?"

"Not as many as I'd like us to have. That's part of the problem, they're… significantly… pickier about who gets to join, now."

"Potential allies?"

Kinear thinks. "Again, the obvious one is Alderaan. Depending on what you do with Naboo, that's a potential angle to work with. We've got a non-aggression pact with the Ygrines, and they've got a seat."

"How about the Calrissian Corporation?"

"Your… Aunt?"

Kylo nods. "I think. Though I was more thinking that maybe I'd see about seeking out my cousin. He's… likely to be more… understanding of my current situation than my aunt is."

"Isn't he… also in exile? He's… running an art school?"

"Something like that." Though given what's in Rey's library, Kylo's fairly sure that 'art school' is a convenient cover for what Orlac really does.

"Probably not a bad idea to reach out, except his art school is politically neutral and might not want anything to do with you, and, of course, it's his mom and her nieces and nephews that are actually in the Republic."

"I'm thinking of trying to get near the Republic, not in it. I just… want to know what's going on. Not get in the middle of it."

"Wise."

Kylo looks at the papers in front of him. "And in the meantime…"

"Exactly." Kinear taps the page. "Your mask. Young, attractive, personable… Real, enough. Go be likable and pretty and make them want to join us. Fill our ships and planets with people who want to be near the romance. Sell them the dream, Kylo. If we become valuable enough, end up with enough citizens, we may be able to sell a peace treaty without having to fake your death to do it."

Kylo sighs long and hard at that. He's looking at his desk where his saber lives. Then he floats it to himself, just to hold it. "Sometimes, I think the saber'd be easier."

"Certainly, in the short term," Kinear says. He's looking at Kylo, carefully. "Amidala… To an extent, part of why she was picked for Queen is that the Naboon like the idea of young, innocent, and pretty leaders."

"And part of it is that young, innocent, pretty people are easy to steer?"

"Well, the Trade Federation was certainly expecting that to be true. Palpatine did, too."

Kylo remembered that part from reading up on Padme. "They were wrong."

Kinear nods. "Moments like this, I see more of her in you. But again, you're still yourself." He fiddles in one of his pockets, and pulls out his personal datapad. A moment of keying codes in, and then an image pops up. Kylo recognizes Pat and Ellie, sitting among of wide swath of people. "Clan Kinear. That's us, the kids, the grandkids, and the great-grandkids. Got two more tiny ones since this was taken. One is a great-grandkid, the other is the first great-great-grandkid. And they're all their own people. Even the little, drool-y ones. Some of them have my hair," he's looking at the picture, and doesn't look away from it as he says, "Don't scoff. I had a full head of hair once upon a time, and it wasn't always gray… or Ellie's eyes, but… None of them are clones of us. Even if they were clones, they aren't us. Can't be. Didn't live our lives, survive our trials, or anything like that."

Kylo stares at it. "There's got to be… fifty people in this picture."

Pat nods. "Well, a good marriage on Coruscant was designed to merge family lines, enrich them, and then keep that line going. And then the Empire was all about making new Imperials to spread across the galaxy, and, well," Pat smirks a bit, "we really liked making them, too, you know?"

Kylo grins at that. "I certainly hope to find out."

Kinear grins back at him. "Usually, this is a wedding night chat, but in that you've been married for more than a year at this point, I'm probably a bit late, but… Sex is fun. Sex with a woman you adore, to make a baby with her, that's…" he beaming, "beyond fun."

"Like I said, I certainly hope to find out."

"You will. It's silly, but the only other thing that feels like it is a fight for your life. Where you really don't know if you're going to make it out or not. And that moment, where you know you're alive, where you know you've made it." He's watching Kylo, and Kylo nods, he's been in that moment, and remembers it, "It feels like that."

"The last time I had that kind of fight, Rey was with me."

"Look at how not shocked I am by that." Kinear's face is dead. Then he breaks into a smile.

"How old is that picture," Kylo asks.

"Three years. We try to get all of us together every five."

Kylo nods at that, too. "It's a good tradition."

"Come to the next one. You and Rey and baby. I've adopted three sons-in-law, two daughters-in-law, and a slew of grandkid-in-laws. We've got room for three more."

"Would your kids be… alarmed by that? An outsider among them?"

"We've welcomed a lot of friends of the family over the years. Three more won't make anyone blink. And… if you and Rey come, rather than the Master and Mistress, you'll find a warm welcome. They're all their own people, but… there are some family traits that seem to have bred true, a certain talent for discretion and fact finding among them."

"You're going to bring me home to your entire spy circle aren't you?"

Kinear looks pleased. "I'm not going to comment on that, beyond this: some jobs are best kept in the family. And some jobs need a big family to do." He smiles again, and stands up. "Okay, I know the rest of your day is busy. Read those questions, and figure out what you want to tell Ms. Holoran."

"I will." Kylo's quiet for a moment after that, and then asks, "Do you have a picture of you and Ellie when you were my age?"

Kinear smiles at that, and fiddles with his datapad. "We're a bit older… Well, I am… Ellie's your age." He turns the pad to Kylo. "Like I said, once upon a time, I had hair, and Ellie's wasn't white, and… We weren't born old."

Kylo stares at the picture of the two of them, looking happy and relaxed. "I don't recognize the uniform."

"I was still with the Coruscant police at that point. That's before the Old Republic fell." He thinks about it. "Connor took it. I'd been off with the Clones, loaned from the Coruscant Police Force to the Army of the Republic, training them in urban warfare scenarios. That wasn't part of their tactical package. Probably should have been a hint things were going to get bad, but… I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I was home, for a bit, and he'd been wanting a camera—"

"Connor is…"

"Oh. Our oldest boy. He was about ten when he took this. You can's see from this angle, but Ellie was cooking our Keith at that point, he was about four months along. He took another one of all of us together, but…" He turns the pad back toward him. "That one didn't make it through one move or another. I've had to bug out a few times with the stuff that was just on my back, and that one wasn't."

Kylo nods. "I really need to get a camera."

Kinear smiles at that, tucking his datapad back into the pocket of his coat. "Presents are common at weddings."

"So, I've been told."

Rey sees the sheets of paper, off to Kylo's side as he sits at their table, and she hovers at his back for a moment, watching what he's doing. Namely staring at the paper, squinting at it, running his eyes over a line again and again, and then typing answers to the questions on the sheets, before asking, "Are we writing a script?"

Kylo shakes his head. She feels his relief wash over him, a flush of thank the Force you're here now, as he pushes the papers to her. "I… not for me at least. I just find it easier if I write it down. That way I can plan my thoughts out, make sure I've got them organized, and then go from there. Both of the speeches I've given, I strayed off what I wrote, but I needed to write it down first, so I could stray into something useful." He smiles at her. "And I need you to read these bloody things if I'm going to do more than one per ten minutes. Kinear…" he sighs. "It's stupid. I know he's old, but I don't think of him as old, but…" he nudges the paper toward her.

She looks at a lot of very shaky, jittery handwriting.

Kylo nods at her. "That's someone who learned how to write, but doesn't have the fine motor control to do it well any longer."

Rey thinks about that. She also knows the Kinears are old, but again, she doesn't really think of them as old. But… those are some awfully shaky letters. Hers look tidier than that, and she still doesn't have them all mastered. She sits next to him, and says, "Okay. So… Let's see these questions."

They're fairly standard, normal, average get-to-know-you interview questions. Once Rey's got them deciphered. And, it turns out there are some very basic things they don't in fact know about each other, like for example, "You have a middle name?" Rey asks, reading over Kylo's shoulder as he types out his answer.

He looks at Ben Bacca Solo, and shrugs a bit. "I mean. I never use it. My parents didn't either. I think I've heard it spoken maybe four times."

"Bacca… Like, Chewie?"

He nods. "Yeah. Ben was my mom's hope, and Bacca, Chewie, was my dad's so… Ben Bacca Solo."

Rey looks really pleased by that. She strokes his hand, and says, "You ever… uh… think about names?"

He goes very still and stares at her, wide-eyed. "You mean… for… our kids?"

"Yeah. Finn and Rose and the kids were talking about it this evening. Possible names for Baby Tico Two, and… Well, Ben Bacca…"

He bites his lip, but gently, she doesn't like seeing him hurt himself, and he quietly says, "Yeah… Sometimes. Maybe."

She raises a brow.

He looks away, not sure why he finds this so squirmy, but… He likes the idea of talking about it, and it's terrifying at the same time. Naming something like this. It's… making things more real.

"I think about… uh… Han… or Hannah…" His eyes feel hot and wet. He's pretty sure he's not crying. Probably.

Rey's got a very soft look on her face. "I like that." There's a moment, a heartbeat of an image, maybe sparked by the idea of the name, maybe a touch of Force, but there's the sensation of a baby, a girl, how or why they know it's a girl doesn't matter, it just is. Dark black hair, fine and sticking out in twenty directions, and sleepy blue black eyes that will one day shift to hazel, tiny fingers wrapped tight around one of Kylo's big ones, as she rests her face against her Mama's chest.

One day.

Kylo chews his lip a bit, and then says, "I guess that answers the 'do you have kids question.'"

Rey squeezes his hand, and nods. "So, let's see what's next… Favorite foods… Do people really want to know what our favorite foods are?"

Kylo shrugs. It seems silly to him, but… It certainly wouldn't be the first time something seemed silly to him.

As they play with different ideas, him answering some of them, her taking others, something that isn't exactly a script, but a… version… of who they, or who The Master and Mistress, are starts to form.

Toward the end of it, Kylo takes Rey's hands in his, stretching her fingers, and rubbing his thumb deeply into her palms.

"That's the most typing you've ever done in one day, isn't it?"

She nods. He knows she's been, along with the children, learning how to actually read. Or, in her case, write. She's slower than he is, but she would be. She hasn't been doing this since she was three.

He flips her palms over and kisses each one, and then flips her hand again, kissing the backs of her fingers. "Can I say I'm proud of you for learning it, without it sounding condescending?"

"It's not condescending… It's just… Go me! I've mastered a child's skill."

He shrugs a bit, and kisses her pinkie finger. "Last I checked, I was still routinely having temper tantrums at 29; sometimes you don't get all the steps in the order everyone else says you're supposed to."

She smiles a bit at that. And he lowers her hand to his lap, rubbing it further. He works over her palm and into her wrist, rubbing his thumb into the muscles, digging in deep and steady between the bones of her forearms.

They both go still.

His thumb is pressing into a tight bit, and it feels really good. A tight bit that he's correctly determined needs to be rubbed. A tight bit that's several centimeters above the part that was actively hurting, but is definitely involved in why it's hurting. That's when it hits, he's giving her a massage, to make sore muscles feel better. It's not complicated healing, but it is healing. It's him using his body, his feel for her, his Force, and his sense for how things are supposed to flow to find the tight bit and rub on it until her hand feels better.

If anyone had suggested he'd be even marginally competent at something like this last year, he'd have laughed. Five years ago, he'd have hit that person so hard, they likely wouldn't have gotten back up again.

"With each new skill we get closer to the people we were supposed to be?"

He shrugs. "With each new skill we become the people we are?"

"I like that." She sighs again as he stretches her fingers. "I think supposed is a word the Maji should banish."

"Do or do not, there is no try? That was Yoda's great perspective on the issue, at least according to Luke." Kylo's voice does not sound approving at that idea.

"I'm not sure about that. But I'm getting sure that 'supposed' clouds things up. Gets us wrapped up in ideas and futures and pasts that didn't or maybe couldn't happen. We're probably better off with whatever is, rather than what was 'supposed' to be."

"She says to the 'supposed to be' scion of the New Jedi, or Darth Vader, or child of the New Republic, or…"

"Exactly." She leans up to give him a quick kiss on the lips. "Meanwhile… I think trying is important."

"Well, as Luke tells the story, he was being kind of whiny and self-defeating, so it might not have been a general lesson so much as a bit aimed directly at Luke and only in that particular situation."

"Ah."

Kylo thinks about that, and about the Yoda stories. "Most of Luke's Yoda stories seem to fit into that category. I was never entirely sure if Luke was telling them to us to teach us the lessons Yoda offered him, or to remind us that he wasn't born knowing everything."

"Both?"

"Could have been." He kisses her palm again. "Better?"

"Yeah. I never want to type anything again, but…"

"Tell me about it when we get around to some of that mythical free time and I start teaching you how to actually write."

"As long as you're willing to rub the cramps out after," she says it with a smile in her eyes and voice, and that's the moment where he really gets what he was doing.

He looks at her hands in his, and kisses her hand again. "Fuck supposed to."

"Indeed." She looks at the questions. They're basically done. "And fuck me, too?"

He stands up, lifting her in his arms, and says, "Any day, any time, and anywhere, love."