11/4/35 ABY Lirium

"Balance."

Rey stares at the transteel pieces hovering above her.

Chewie brought them yesterday. Supposedly, if you put them together correctly, they form a dome twenty-five meters across, fifteen meters high, clearer than glass, stronger than steel, and lighter than either by a factor of a thousand.

Supposedly, if she's got them placed properly, and balanced correctly, when she lowers them the last few centimeters, all twelve of them will lock into place, and her chapel to balance will be have a dome.

If…

She's been holding them up there for a good minute, minutely adjusting the plates. If any one of them is so much a five millimeters off, all twelve of them crash to the ground, instead of locking to place with one another, forming a watertight seal.

So, far, she's successfully spilled them all to the ground five times. Her floor, that she's spent so long placing swirls of light gray and dark gray rocks on, has been violently rearranged by transteel plates to the point where she feels like she's going to have to start from scratch on it.

So, each additional crash makes balancing, keeping calm and centered and focused that much harder.

She gently eases them down just a hair more, and then readjusts again, and another hair down, from here, on the inside, she can see the plates just barely, almost, not quite touching the carefully leveled plastcrete base she spent all of yesterday and the day before setting into place to support the dome.

No matter how wet or muddy or frozen or whatever the weather might bring here, the ground under the plates won't be able to shift enough to take the roof down.

Rey walks around under the dome, looking at everything, studying it, checking again and again.

"I hit a three meter target going 90 kpm blind by feeling it. Just relax and feel it, Rey," Luke says, staring up at the pieces of her dome.

She rolls her eyes. "I did that. It collapsed. It's felt right several times. That didn't keep it standing. Now I'm checking."

Luke doesn't look even remotely shocked when she releases her hold on the Force, lets the dome settle, and it collapses again.

"Feel each piece, Rey. It'll tell you where it goes."

"They're numbered."

"Of course. You've got directions, and a manual, and numbered pieces. Obviously, that'll work." He pointedly looks around at the fallen pieces of dome.

"You know, no one says how sarcastic you were when they talk about you."

"Because I didn't used to be sarcastic. Watching every dream you ever had come true while being lauded as a hero and a bringer of a new golden age doesn't make a person sarcastic. Seeing them all die, betraying yourself and everyone who ever mattered to you, does. Back to building. Feel them. They've been in transit for a long time, their balance has shifted."

She grits her teeth, and tries to feel what's around her. Lumps of empty metal.

"I don't suppose you'd use your great Jedi Mastery to do this for me?"

"Nope." He smirks at that. "Though I'll give you a pointer, use your hands and actually feel it this time."

"This from the man who whacked my hand when I 'felt' with it the first time."

"You weren't building a dome that time."

She picks up the first piece. It's not heavy. It is huge and unwieldy. It feels like… thirteen meters of transteel trying to catch the wind and sail away from her.

She sees Luke smirking, and gets a flash of what he's thinking. "Oh."

He smiles. "Jedi and domes. I don't know what the attraction is, but I collapsed eight of them before I got the first one up at my own temple."

She laughs at that.

"And if Chewie got this from the same place he got mine… Those instruction manuals are basically just suggestions."

She picks up the next one, pulling it away from the center of her floor. The weigh is different, and the feel a little off.

He sees her feel it and nods. "I think the guy who makes them was a friend of Lando. Probably a better gambling buddy than engineer."

She continues picking them up, and begins to move them around her chapel. The order they were numbered in certainly was a suggestion, and not a good one. By feeling, literally feeling them, she can feel what the problems are, among other things they aren't all exactly the same shape.

"It's funny, if this had been a ship part, or a… mechanical problem… the first thing I would have done was pick them up. I'd have felt this." And she would have. She's always been good at laying hands on a problem and just fixing it by how it felt.

Luke nods. "But you saw a problem you wanted to solve with the Force, so you used it." He saunters over to her, and lays his hands on hers. "It's all feeling, and it's all the Force."

"That's what you mean by floating rocks is a trick."

"Part of it. Most of the skills the Force has given you, or sharpened for you, you use every day without even noticing it. Don't rewire what works so you can 'magic' something."

Rey nods.

On her seventh try, the dome of the first chapel of the… whatever they are… goes up, and stays up.

She's excited about it, pleased to see it finally up, and sends a Come, see! to Kylo, before going back to setting the floor back into place.

She gets a sense back from him. He's busy, but will come by, with food, as soon as he can.

Food… Her stomach growls at her, and she sends back. Soon.

Soon.

Protein bars are fast. Food, real food, produced by his cooking staff, is not. He's started asking for real food, for both of them, breakfast and supper. One plate, with a large portion of whatever the chef is making for himself. He has C8 scan it, make sure there's nothing in there that isn't food, and then he and Rey eat it.

The first few times they did this, C8 pointed out higher than optimal levels of fat, sugar, and salt, but… Turns out that's apparently part of what makes a lot of food taste good, so he's not exactly regretting that.

Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it isn't. But it's different, and new, and… He likes the… pleasure of it. There's something really nice about sitting down with her, and real food, and exploring it, together.

But real food takes time.

Kylo's been dealing with minutia all day, and just wants to get away from it. He grabs a few protein bars, and shifts over to Rey. He's barely a meter away from her, looking up at what she's built. For a second, he's appreciating the dome, seeing what she's excited about and then a smell hits him, and his adrenaline spikes, hard, and he's springing towards her, looking, frantically, for what's wrong, for how she's hurt, before either of them know what's happening.

"Kylo!" Not that Rey's particularly bothered by getting jumped by Kylo, but his isn't erotic or affectionate, he's… touching everything, pushing her clothing up, a string of fast, worried words spilling out of him. She finally grabs hold of him and stops him. "What?"

"What! You're bleeding!" His eyes are wild, and he's still patting her down, looking for the wound. "Are you in pain? What's…"

Her eyes close, and she mentally growls.

He jerks back, worried he just made everything worse, and she pats him, "I'm not growling at you. Just… Yes… I'm fine… I thought the back pain" She grabs his hand, because he's about to start putting pressure on her back to stop whatever bleeding must be going on. "was because I was bending over, fixing my rocks." She glares at the lake, too. Sometimes there's something to be said for a functional bathroom.

Which she doesn't yet have.

"You mind if we go back to the Supremacy?"

"If it gets you to an infirmary, I'll bring the Supremacy to us."

"I'm fine. I don't need a doctor."

"You're bleeding. I can smell it."

She's suddenly understanding that moment in the bath when he was having a fast and somewhat astounded mental debate about preventatives, because she's having one of her own right now about menstrual cycles. However, since she's shifted positions, and is no longer lying on her side, lining up little rocks, gravity is adding its own effect to the situation, so she's got to figure out how to have this conversation a lot faster than he did, or else she's going to have some serious laundry issues, too.

"Give me five minutes, I'll explain everything. I'm not hurt, not dying, nothing is wrong. Just… let me get to your bathroom." She darts to her tent, and then flashes back to his rooms on the Supremacy.

She says she's fine. She's acting fine. At least, she's not nervous or worried or scared or anything like that, so… That's helping. That's the only reason why Kylo has not burst into his bathroom to find out what's going on. He is, however, pacing, fast and agitated around his room.

Okay, not the only reason, but the main one.

And honestly, if it's for her, he can stuff the fact he doesn't much like blood.

Another two minutes later, he hears water rushing, and a minute after that she's out and sits next to him, looking calm, and he can't smell anything besides her now, so…

He's staring down at her, with a very obvious, That was terrifying, so how about you put me out of my misery and explain it, please, sort of look.

Rey's still not exactly sure how to do that. Her mouth opens a few times, and closes and… Finally… "You remember us talking about preventatives, right?"

He nods.

"Well, this is how I know we didn't make a baby."

He blinks at that. "Oh…" Then he winces a little, feeling stupid. "Blood… It's blood…"

Now she's staring at him… "Kylo?"

"Apparently sexual education with Luke left something to be desired. 'And if the egg isn't fertilized, at the end of the cycle the lining of the uterus sheds.'"

Rey supposes that's true, but… "That's not very descriptive."

"Apparently, he didn't think we'd need a more in depth one." Though he's supposes it might be possible that that's all Luke knew on the subject, too.

"Didn't you have some very surprised girls at his school?"

"Maybe they got a better lesson?" Kylo shrugs. "He'd talk to the boys when we got to twelve. I was the only boy my age, so I got a one on one conversation, and after an embarrassed half hour, where I asked exactly no questions because it was clear he wasn't comfortable talking about it and didn't have any practical experience to answer my questions with, we were done."

"So… what did you think happened? Like… snakes shedding skin?"

He looks embarrassed, but, that's actually a pretty accurate description of how he thought it worked.

"Oh…"

He sits next to her, and then takes her hand in his. "So… you're okay?"

"Yeah."

"You said your back hurt…"

"It does… Backache on day one, cramps…" she realizes that's probably not specific enough, "abdominal cramps day two, and three and four are fine."

"Four days?" He's looking, and feeling, horrified at that.

"Sheds didn't involve a duration?"

"NO!"

She's looking up at him, feeling his mind and slow curdling sensation in his gut, and she starts to smirk. "You're squeamish!"

"No! I'm…"

"You don't like blood! The single most terrifying man in the galaxy gets sick at the sight of blood." She can't help it; she starts to giggle, flopping onto her side on his bed, curling around him, and laughing.

"I..." he glares at her. "I can take it when I'm fighting or angry. It doesn't get to me then. But… There's a reason for the lightsaber, beyond it being a good weapon. It cauterizes wounds as it creates them, so you don't usually bleed with them."

"So, you can lop off body parts and it's fine, but blood gets to you?"

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, and then hands over one of the protein bars. "You're hungry, right?"

"YES!" She pounces on it and tears into it. "I eat everything in sight the first two days, too, and tend to get annoyed easily the two days before."

He nods, and puts that into things he should probably know, and answers her question as she gobbles the bar. "As Luke and Snoke taught it, there are light side skills and dark side skills and some that are in between. I've always been at best, mediocre, at any light skill, and probably the top of the light side skills heap is healing.

"I was working with Tash M'Gll." He holds up his hand, takes off his glove, and pushes down his sleeve. His arm is just sitting there, looking like an arm. "Not a blemish or scar. She was good at it. She was good at any sort of light skill." Rey can feel he still resents how easily Tash could do whatever Luke asked of her. "We cut ourselves, and she healed me up" he snaps, "like that. She could hook into her calm, feel the energies, and get them moving properly. A minute later the skin knits itself shut, and I'm fine. She cut herself, probably deeper than she meant to, and… she was really bleeding, and… I'm not good at calm in the best of circumstances, and it hurt more than she thought it would, so her panic bled into me. I took the cut no problem, because dealing with pain, at least the way I do it, is a dark skill, and I had that down better than anyone in my year, better than anyone at the school, so she probably wasn't expecting it to hurt because when she worked on me, I didn't appear to be in pain. But it hurts. She's starting to cry, and bleeding all over the place, and it's all over my hands and our robes, and I can smell it, and then she's sobbing, because I'm trying to get it fixed, but my hands are clumsy and slick and I'm hurting her worse, and I can't get it stopped let alone the skin back together, and… Eventually, Luke took over, and got her fixed up, but… I don't like blood."

Rey can see how that might put a person off blood. She squeezes his hand. "I was still living in Niima. I'd felt off for a few days, thought I was getting sick, which was weird because I never get sick. I just don't."

"Light side. Your body takes care of you without even having to think about it." He pulls her sleeve down and double checks… "When the guard got you, here," his thumb rubs gently over the spot, "I felt it. Just the flash of it hit me." He kisses her arm. There's a tiny white line, and if he had to guess, he'd say it'll be completely gone in another year or two. "Barely a scar."

She nods. "It was… ten years ago… eleven… something like that. I'd gone to bed feeling off, and woke up covered in blood, and thought I was dying. I think I screamed, because a few of the other women came, and told me what was happening, got me set up to deal with it."

He looks at her. He can't see anything different, but he can't smell blood any longer, so obviously she's dealing with it.

"How… do you deal with it?"

"A little soft plexiplastic cup." She holds her fingers apart so he's got an idea of the size. "You fit it inside of you, and it collects the blood. Pour it out before you go to bed and when you get up in the morning."

He squirms a little. "There's enough to pour?"

"The first two days. No so much the last two." She finishes the first bar, and eyes the one he's holding and not eating. He hands it over, not hungry. "How'd you smell it? I'd barely started when you got near. I didn't know I was bleeding, yet."

He half shrugs at that. "Defense mechanism. Certain smells, motions, emotions… They set my danger sense off. That's one of them. Sometimes someone will try a stealthy attack. Creep up behind you, take out the guard silently. Sometimes they'll succeed. Make no noise at all. But I'll feel it. Smell the blood, feel the guard's fear when he notices what's up."

"Oh."

They sit quietly while she munches down the second bar.

When she's done, he says, though he doesn't have to, neither of them have felt the spark of new life, but it feels like the kind of thing he should say. "You're not pregnant, then."

"Yeah. That's what that means. And you… took care of a long term preventative?"

He nods. "Med droid said it'd take two months to make sure no living sperm are lingering in my system. So, come New Year's no more slicks."

"Good." She's starting to understand why he's not a huge fan of them. They aren't horrible or anything, but without seems better.

He strokes his hand down her back, gently. "Can you… during…"

She arches an eyebrow at him. "I thought you didn't like blood."

"I don't feel sick when I'm fighting, the emotions of the fight block it out. I imagine sex would work similarly."

She laughs at that. "Not day two. Everything hurts on day two, and I don't know about the rest of it."

He kisses her shoulder. "Experiment tonight?"

"Sure, and if it hurts or you can't take the smell or… whatever… we do something else?"

He wiggles his fingers at her. "Always an option."

She smiles at him.

Every piece of fabric on the Supremacy is tagged with a day and its owner. That's the only possible way for the laundry service to even get close to getting everyone the right bath cloths, bedding, and clothing.

And every day, the laundry service picks up anything with the correct tag on it, and sends it into the labyrinth system that is the Supremacy's laundry rooms.

Kylo Ren and his cloths are no exception to this rule.

Because every piece of fabric is tagged, the laundry service is able to quickly, and easily, sort, pre-treat, and then launder everything, because, most of the time, laundry requires the same cleaning every week.

So, two bloody hand towels in his bath cloths, and his sheets, which are, suddenly, in significantly less tidy condition than usual, get some conversation because the usual treatment (toss with the rest of the black laundry) isn't going to work.

The sheets get some smirking. Apparently the Supreme Leader has been enjoying himself, and from the looks of it, someone else, recently.

The hand towels get some worrying. That's a lot of blood.

For a while, the laundry workers wonder if Supreme Leader Ren had somehow damaged himself, but there are no reports of that. (Granted, the infirmary has no human workers, because that way there is no gossip from them.)

And then they wonder if he damaged someone else… There's not a lot of blood on the sheets, but some. And, especially among the people who used to do Hux's laundry, that gets a lot of gossip.

Some of the staff, female members, have a different take on the story. Kylo Ren's looking to make a baby Ren, otherwise his lady friend would be on a suppressor. After all, who menstruates if she doesn't have to?