A/N: I'm out of town this weekend, and have a busy day planned for tomorrow. So, early fiction! Enjoy!

4/29/1

"Think I still rule?" Kylo says as they return to his ship, ready to go "home."

"I think we'd have heard if a coup broke out while you were absent."

He shrugs. If he, or any other marginally competent officer, were planning one, it'd be dead silent on the Supremacy until after they shot him out of the sky when he attempts to return.

He decides that instead of flying back, he'll leave the ship with Rey and teleport himself back. Just appearing in his office should go a ways toward reclaiming his command if he's lost it.

He can always fetch the ship at a later date.

She shakes her head at him, as he opens the hatch. "They aren't going to overthrow you."

He snorts a laugh at that. "There are better than even odds that at least a quarter of them would shoot me in the back if they could."

"Well, this time last year, it was all of them, so things are getting better. Besides, they have to know you're the only thing holding this together right now, and if you go, so does their power."

He sighs, sitting in the passenger's seat. She wants to fly out, so he's fine with that. "You're likely right about that."

Once they're in hyperspeed, hurtling toward Lirium, a thought hits Rey, one she's been working hard on not having. Namely, part of what she's coming back with it currency. A lot of it. Way more of it than she should have.

And she still doesn't have a good story for why.

"I suppose Master Padme stole it wouldn't exactly go over?"

He looks up from his data pad. He's already getting back into working mode, checking over his reports. "I'd imagine that depends on if you intend to tell them I've robbed the Order blind and then ran away. There's no way anyone walks out of the Supremacy with that sort of cash without permission, unless they're never setting foot on it again."

She shakes her head. "I don't think so." They're both quiet for a moment. "So… what'd we do to get 200,000 credits over two and a half days?"

"They know where we went?" Kylo asks.

"Naboo. Not exactly where."

They both think about it, very aware of the boxes of coins and paper tucked under one of the bench seats.

For some reason, an image of Lando pops into Kylo's mind, and then he smiles. "Gambling. Games of chance with people who can manipulate probability and read minds are likely lucrative."

Rey feels the smile spread across her face. "Gambling… Okay, so… what are popular games?"

They land, and Kylo knows it's time to get back to being Master Ren. He kisses Rey, holds her close, and she snuggles into him. "Tonight."

"Tonight."

It feels odd saying goodbye. It's not like they don't do this almost every morning, but… That moment holds, and holds a bit longer, until Rey catches sight of Poe heading toward the ship.

She gives Kylo one last, quick kiss, and he slips out of the ship to his rooms on the Supremacy.

His hand is on his saber, his body is ready, his senses on high, but… At least in here, everything is as he left it. Black and tidy. He lets his mind spiral outward, to his office and throne room beyond, and… Nothing seems out of place.

Only one way to find out for sure, and that's to explore.

He changes out of Padme, feeling a… flush of pleasure at not taking the ring off, of having a tangible mark of her that's not a mark of anger, or hidden away in front of the wrong people or… He pulls Master Ren back onto his skin, and almost leaves the gloves off.

If he were certain he wasn't about to walk into a fight, he'd likely keep them off, just to be able to show off his hands, and the ring.

He banishes that as silliness. His life here is vastly too dangerous to be wandering about without his protections.

Though maybe, depending on what he finds out there, he might get to the point where he doesn't have to keep every inch of his body covered.

He thinks about the outfits Jon made for him. The Warrior King has gloves and a belt designed for a lightsaber. The Emperor has neither. The Emperor lives in a palace, with his Empress, and they rule a galaxy at peace, and…

And she asked if he still felt that future, and he does, but he also knows they aren't ready to get there, not yet.

But maybe the path is getting clearer.

"This is sweet!" Poe says, heading up the hatch of Kylo's non-Order-branded transport ship.

"Thanks."

Poe keeps looking around, dissecting the ship with a practiced eye. "Your boy knows his way around a ship, I'll give you that."

Rey half-inclines her head. "He's a pilot."

"He steal this from the Order and wipe it clean?" He's checking a few places where ship ID numbers are normally located, but they're clean.

Rey decides this would be a good time to distract Poe, so she grabs the first of the boxes, hands it to him, and takes the lid off.

"Rey!" Poe's mouth open and closes as he sees what's in the box. "How…" He's goggling at the amount of money in front of them. "What did you two do, hold up a bank?"

She smirks. "Nothing like that. Don't gamble against a Maji. Especially not when two of them are at the table." She winks at him. "Still think giving me a few days away was a hassle."

"Good, gods… There's… what?" He's staring at the boxes.

"Two hundred and eleven thousand credits worth of currency. I wasn't sure what kinds you'd need, so…"

"You bring that kind of money back, you can leave as often as you want! Watching the sprogs isn't that troublesome."

She smiles at that. "Not sure when we'll get away again, but it will happen. Meantime… we need things, and I don't really know what they cost." She gently presses a toe against the box of currency and nudges it to Poe. "I think you've got some shopping to do."

He's grinning at her. "Oh… And if Chewie's willing to go with me… No one slicks a deal like Chewie!" His eyes are sparkling. "A library and a school room. I know you want something like that for the kids. No… that's the next box. There will be another one, right… We can't… Oh… God… You read minds!" His eyes go even brighter. "You control motion. Roulette. Oh… 64 to one odds if you bet on one number. You'd have to lose, a lot, for a while, to sell the con. Can't just plop down money and pull it all in in one throw, but if you had enough seed cash, you could spend a few hours losing, and then… One big hit. Or better yet, you lose for hours, we win a little each turn, and then you have one big one. Oh… Rey… The library, the school, real houses, not these prefab things, a good irrigation system… Greenhouses! Enough seeds to figure out what the hell grows here! Hell, we could get a droid to do that. Get a few of them, one to cover teaching formal subjects, one to figure out what to plant, some sort of weather monitoring thing-"

"We know what the weather's going to be, rain."

He shakes his head. "Frost yesterday morning."

She sighs. It felt like autumn had moved into winter and hopefully they were getting ready to ease out of it to spring. Apparently, they're easing out of autumn all right, but into winter.

"There has to be summer eventually. It didn't rain every single day when we moved here."

He shrugs. "Who cares if it does? We can build a real gym, a space for the kids to run around inside, so they're not going bonkers trying to stay dry…" He can't contain the grin. "Every casino. There are literally millions of them scattered through the galaxy. One night, maybe two a month. I can't believe you didn't think of this sooner! We'll get real ships, we'll teach 'em how to fly. We'd be able to build a real city here!"

To say that Poe is excited by the potential of Maji gambling is an understatement. He's delirious at the idea of it. He's singing about how the lean days are done. He's giddy.

And when he pulls Finn into it, and the possibility of going to Canto Bight to play hits… Okay, he looks around, double checks because Rose isn't a fan, but… "We are so doing that! The odds on some of those machines…" He's grinning wide and easy. Then that grin gets even bigger. "She'd be fine with it. We're going to cheat. We're going to break them from the inside!" He leaps up, running toward their cottage, eager to share the news. They hear him calling his wife's name, and Rey wonders if she didn't just get way in over her head.

Poe nods to the bag that's got new stuff in it. "Got something to wear to a fancy place in there?" he says with a grin. "Maybe something to go with the ring?" He gently bops her with his hip. "It's not nice to elope and not invite at least a friend or two."

"We didn't elope on vacation, and… are rings common? Rose and Finn don't have them."

Poe smirks. "You didn't… uh huh…" He's not buying it, but she's not exactly lying, either. "And not exactly common but not rare, either. It's a thing on about a quarter of the inner rim worlds. Anywhere settled by the G'Ranthans, and they spread through the galaxy like spores on the wind. So, it's just… pretty?"

"No. It's not just pretty. But we didn't hunt down a registration official and elope, either."

Poe's aware that she just made a very specific statement with some serious wiggle room to it. He nods, and it's clear on his face that he knows that something is up. "A token of Padme's affection. Good. I want to get drunk and dance at your wedding, too."

Rey tries to imagine that, and she can… sort of… or maybe, more accurately, she can fantasize about it. The potential for it to be real still seems small. She does say, "I'd like that. Also…" She lifts the bag with her dresses in it. "Uh… I don't know if it's fancy enough for something like Canto Bight. It's nicer than anything else I own, but… We went to Theed, and it's not fancy by their standards."

"Told you they were stuffy."

"And you weren't wrong! The desk clerk ignored us for seven whole minutes because we weren't dressed right!"

He sniggers at that and then grabs one of the boxes, puts it on top of another one, and she grabs the third. They've got to find a place to put this until they can use it.

"Threepio's cottage?" Rey asks, sensing what he's thinking.

"Not like he really needs the space. So… come on, juicy stories. Besides get a ring, what'd you do?"

"Ah, you're back. Splendid." C8 looks exactly the way he always does. "I've kept today's schedule free of meetings, not knowing exactly when you'd be back, though you do have a good number of communications in need of your attention." He nods to the stack of datapads on Kylo's desk. "I know it's later than normal, but would you like your usual cup of coffee?"

Kylo looks at the stack of datapads representing people who want his attention. It's a big stack. "Yes."

"I'll be back in a few moments." C8 heads off, and Kylo sits down, pulling the first of the pads to him. His eyes start to scan over the document, and apparently, there is a system that's willing to offer him a mining colony in exchange for a formal mutual non-aggression treaty.

He's still reading, nodding slightly, aware of the fact that it's, as Schiff would likely say, a shit colony, small and badly run, but he can likely do something with it. Just getting good equipment into it would likely make a difference.

He reads further and purses his lips as he gets to the poison pill. He can have the colony and the planet it's on, as long as he agrees to put no recruiting stations anywhere else in the system. He also notices that the rest of that system will, once he's got that colony, more or less cut off all contact with it.

He puts the pad down, thinking. Apparently, this thing he's trying to do is terrifying to a certain class of people.

The question is, is he scaring them into behaving, into building a world of palaces, or is he scaring them into attacking, setting into motion a future where he'll need to defend himself even more than he currently does.

He has the unsettling sense that both are true, just for different parts of the future that's coming.

"Two hundred and eleven thousand credits…" Rey says.

Finn and Rose share a look. Poe nods. Rey's sitting at her table with the three of them. If Chewie were on-planet, he'd be here. Threepio's standing beside the table. The kids are outside, taking advantage of a somewhat sunny, though chilly, day to just run around outside and play.

They're working on the list, figuring out what they really need.

"First and foremost and non-negotiable, we're paying Chewie back. I know he's sunk a lot of his own money into this, and that comes first, okay," Rey says. "And Poe, you figure out what you've put into this and take it."

"Rey… I wanted to do it," Poe says. "You don't need to pay me."

"I know. But I want you to be able to keep doing this, you and Chewie, so… call it your rainy day fund or whatever, and take it."

The others nod.

"Food," Rose says. "That's probably the most important thing we get with whatever's left. If we're ever going to really live here, we can't just depend on one lake and the Falcon for food. We've got to have some way to feed ourselves."

Rey nods at that, and Poe agrees, too.

"Like the cottages, there are modular greenhouses and small food farms you can buy," Threepio says. "Many ships use them for longer term voyages. Tantive IV had one whole deck dedicated just to producing fresh food for the crew."

"What do you need to run one of them?" Finn asks.

"That, I do not know. I never interfaced with it. I'd assume that it's just a matter of buying the parts and putting them together, but I've never done it," Threepio says. "When Chewie gets back with R2, he'll likely have more information than I do. Actually… he'd be a good one to ask. When Luke left to set up his Jedi school, R2 went with him. I know they took on an almost empty planet and built the settlement from scratch."

"Okay, so, modular food farms," Poe says. "Say… enough to keep… thirty people in fresh food? Fruit, veggies, and grain. How many more kids can we take here without adding more adults?"

"Not many. I'm about at as many students as I think I can handle. I'm thinking three or four more, and that's it," Rey says.

"Could Padme do this? You've mentioned he's Maji, too, and…" Rose adds.

"He's finding me new people."

"That you can't handle without another teacher, and we're really low on teachers right now," Poe says. "He'll be useless as a scout in a few more students, so… Maybe he can teach, and I'll spend more time scouting. It won't be the same, but… I can't teach them how to use the Force, and he could, right?"

"He wouldn't have to hide any longer if he were here all the time. Once he leaves the Order, it's not like he's got to worry about getting outed, and we could double the number of sprogs. That'd be doing something good, right?" Finn says. "Maybe not as exciting as infiltrating the Order, but… We're not fighting them, so it's not like we need spies, and once we've got as many kids as we can take, it's not like he can be rescuing them any longer, so… why stay?"

Rey doesn't have a good answer to that. "We'll… talk about it. So… okay, modular farms, and… Animals, maybe. Something for milk and something for eggs and maybe some sort of meat animal?"

"More protein would be good," Rose says, accepting that Rey's gone as far as she can, for now, on getting Padme here full time. She looks to Threepio. "Do you know if they had modular animal farms?"

"Vat-grown protein?" Finn says. "The First Order had some ships equipped for that. It's some sort of yeast, and if you give it enough sugar solution it'll make you… well, it's edible, and it's protein."

"That's a ringing endorsement," Poe says.

"It's not bad… It's not much of anything really. Just white and bland and squishy. It's fine mixed into things, but you don't exactly want to eat it by the spoonful on its own."

Poe writes that down. "Maybe one of them and some sort of… do you know what a chicken is?"

Finn shakes his head. Rose nods. Rey knows what a chicken is after it's been cooked, but is a bit fuzzy on the before side of it, because she's only seen pieces of them on a plate on The Supremacy.

"They're avians, found on many of the core worlds. Bred for meat, eggs, and feathers. They require little in the way of care, and are often used to keep insect populations in check," Threepio adds.

"Sounds right." Rose says. Her settlement always had chickens. "They're tasty, and could probably survive on the bugs around here. Build them some coops, and we're in eggs, and once the eggs start to hatch and we figure out which ones are roosters, we've got meat."

"What do you do with the feathers?" Rey asks.

"Pluck them off, throw out the stiff ones, use the fluffy ones to make warm blankets and clothing," Rose says.

"With the right equipment, you can denature the proteins and then reconfigure them into a lightweight plastic." Threepio says. "Those plastics can be used for anything from clothing to rope to building materials."

"Chickens," Poe writes down, and then looks at their list. Three things, after paying himself and Chewie back. Not much of a list, but, realistically, especially if they're looking for good stuff, that's all 211,000 credits, if not a bit more.

He sighs again, and crosses out vat-grown protein

Rose raises an eyebrow at him.

"We need seed money to gamble with. This should keep enough behind for us to put a few of us in, lose some, and then have Rey hit big, once, for each of us. Spend the rest of the night on the card tables, round it out by staying a bit ahead, and maybe we can turn 15,000 credits into 500,000 credits."

Finn whistles. "That wouldn't be a bad night's work."

Rose is grinning. "No, not bad at all." Her hands rest on her belly, where Baby Tico is squirming around. "Little one is looking forward to making some rich people cry."

Finn's grinning now, too. "Oh, they will! When they see us cut through those casinos… Threepio, where do the well-off, well-connected, obscenely rich like to play?"

Poe holds up his hands. "Just remember, that's not where we're starting. It'd help if we really knew how to play, first. And second of all, if we're going where the stakes are high, we're going to need the kind of seed cash where we can invest hundreds of thousands in the right clothing and the right transport yacht to get us there, and then lose a few million before we win it all back. That's not where we're going first."

"But we'll get there," Rose says, eyes sparkling. "We'll light some new fires, all right."

When they've broken up for the night, and Rey is getting ready for dinner, Threepio is still in her main room, looking… he can't actually look pensive, or maybe he always looks pensive, but…

"What's wrong?"

"General Solo used to say to me, 'Never tell me the odds.' Many humans don't find the odds comforting. So I am wondering, would you like the odds of keeping your secret all the way to the end of the year, or the year after, or would you rather just go into it blind?"

Rey blinks.

"Humans remember and recognize based on patterns and associations. Change someone's clothing and hair style, see them from behind, or far away, or at night, or in the wrong place, and they won't be able to associate the image to the pattern. I do not work that way. The odds that your Padme just happens to be the exact same size and shape as Kylo Ren are 1 in two hundred forty-five billion—"

"You're right, I don't want them."

"The money is from him." Threepio says, looking at the black blanket on the chair and the black cutlery that's wandered from Kylo's room to their home.

"Yes."

"He's been coming here the whole time I've been here. I've seen him around in his… Padme costume?"

She nods. "Been coming here the whole time there's been a here."

"Two years ago, he had an army aimed at us and was shooting our people out of the sky."

Rey makes her voice stay calm. "And now he's not."

"I noticed." Threepio says, and then he spends a moment thinking. Rey can't read him, not the way she reads the humans around her, but if she had to guess, he's feeling a sense of… duty maybe? Finally he says, "If Leia herself had somehow gotten charge of the First Order, it would have looked very similar to what he's doing with it, which is why I haven't said anything, and why I will, as long as that's true, continue to not say anything, but… What do you think you're doing?"

She shakes her head. "Hoping that if enough time goes by, they'll see him and not Snoke's shadow."

"Have you ever heard the expression 'having your cake and eating it, too'?"

"No." Hell, the year before last, she didn't even know what cake was.

"Think about it."

She does for a moment, and goes, "Oh."

"Yes. They will find out. The only questions are: when, and if you'll be able to rebuild their trust after."

Rey knows that, cold and hard in her belly. She knows something else, too. "Threepio, what are the odds of them not blaming him for everything Snoke did? Today, I mean. He's had the Order for almost a year and a half, and he's changing it. Deeper and faster than anyone else would have ever expected, but… Would they see that? Would they care?"

He doesn't say anything for a moment. And another one. And finally, "Bad."

Kylo's still staring at the treaty in front of him. He could more than use the materials on offer. Yeah, it's a shit colony. But it's an iron-rich XO planet. Good stores of uranium, too. Ice on it, so maybe water, too. He's got more than a few things to do with that. It would probably take his people about three months to suck everything of value out of the place and leave a hulk of frozen rock behind.

There's thirty-thousand people on it, now, and from what he's reading the Polnians expect him to take custody of them, too. They're part of what he gets with the colony.

He needs people, too.

He told Rey that he was looking for people, not planets, not systems. But if he takes this deal, he's cutting off his access to people to get a planet.

He's feeling it. People. That's the important part. He could have a planet, a system, full of raw materials, covered in all the mineral wealth he could want, but without people he can't do anything with them. They'll just sit there, useless.

That feels right, important, but what to do with that, how to apply it…

How does he get what he wants?

He spends another ten minutes staring at the stars and planets whirling around him through his window.

People.

He takes the contract back, and adds a paragraph. He won't put any recruiting bases on Polnia's planets. He won't demand free travel or trade between the colony and its home world. He does add a ten year right of return to the home world for any of the colonists he's about to take charge of.

Scoop them up, treat them right, do well by that colony, and in five years when all 30,000 of them are his citizens, he'll send them back to Polnia, and make sure that they can get people to him. Recruiting stations have their place, but they're things, and he's investing in people.

And if he does right by them, they'll get him more people.

About an hour later, as they're sitting down to dinner, Rey says to Kylo, "Apparently, I'm going to have to learn how to actually gamble. Poe just realized this is the fastest, easiest way to finance everything we want to do."

Kylo chuckles at that. "I suppose there are worse ways to make money. Want to hear about my gamble for the day?"

"Sure."

So he tells her about hoping that he can get people and then seed them into Polnia, and then have them bring him new people, or demand access for him.

He can see she's going along, nodding, listening, but not really caring, or paying much attention.

"You're distracted."

She pokes her food. "Yes."

He waits, letting her fill the silence. And eventually, she does, filling him in on the Padme conundrum. How there's not much need for him to be part of the Order if he's not rescuing children for her. He's not really sure how to respond to that.

The part of him that doesn't much care for her 'friends' is more than comfortable with just showing up in full daylight, in his command blacks, and hitting them with an "It's me, take it or leave it," sort of thing.

But the more he thinks of it… Caring about her friends or not, that's likely the right, best, whatever, way to handle it. He's not going to ever be anyone other than himself, and they're unlikely to ever think, "Oh, that Ren's a great guy, I'm so glad he's around," so…

But they matter to her, so…

"I could have told you your parents were traders. That they got sick, and desperate, and gave you to someone to keep you from catching their illness… I could have told you they traded you for medicine, hoping to get better, but unfortunately they died from it. It would have been true, sort of, if you squinted. Would you have preferred that?"

Her eyes are sad, but she's looking dead at him, not evading it. "Probably. People like the lies that keep them happy."

"Then I won't press you to stop lying about me."