5/4/1

Babies show up when and as they please. This is one of the inalienable truths of the galaxy as a whole. Often, when they please will not be when their parents please. This, though said parents are often unaware of it, being focused on waiting for said baby to arrive, will eventually be good training in the sort of patience and emergency coping skills necessary for the rest of the adventure that is parenting.

Thus, it is… approximately seventeen months past when Finn (to a lesser extent) and Rose (to a much, much greater extent) would like Baby Tico to get moving, that Baby Tico finally decides that it is, indeed, time to move.

All of the Force sensitives on Lirium feel it when Rose goes into labor.

It's a… unique sensation. The last few days there'd been a sort of urgent swelling, a ripening, a feel of getting ready, and then it burst in a sort of tingly glow.

(Rose will later report that she would have preferred the Maji got the contractions and she got the tingly, bursting glow, but… That's not the way it works.)

The thing is, readiness and tingly, bursting glow aside, babies take a while to get themselves out.

So, yes, there's this very intense wave of now and life and new all throughout the settlement at Lirium, but… Especially if you aren't Rose or Finn, there's just not all that much happening.

The other thing is there are, now, eleven Force sensitive children, and nine non-Force sensitive ones, and they're all really curious.

The original eight of them, who worked the stables, are at least familiar with how babies get out of their mums and are happily telling everyone else who wants to know, in somewhat gory detail, of how baby Faviers get into the world.

And some of the children remember the births of their younger brothers and sisters, so they add those stories.

Rey listens with interest, because this is an area where the children know more than she does. Women at Niima Station rarely had babies, and she never witnessed it. And she certainly didn't feel it, not the way she feels this.

"Rey." Halee, Rugh's older brother, who generally isn't all that talkative, comes over to her. She can feel how nervous he is.

"What's wrong?"

"Rose is going to be okay, right?"

"Of course."

He's looking up at her, serious, eyes wide. "Do you know that? Feel it, like with the Force? Do you know?"

"Uh… No. I don't." Though thinking and feeling about it, she's… pretty sure… not certain, but better than nine out of ten odds, that things are going to be all right. She figures that's as good as anyone ever gets, and focuses more on Halee. She feels why he's so nervous. His mum didn't make it through Rugh's birth. She reaches out to him. "Come here," she puts her arms around him, and though he's generally not too huggy, he accepts the comfort.

"Da said she'd be fine. The doctor knew how to help, but they'd have to leave… Get to the Doc. He came back three days later with Rugh, but Ma wasn't fine. He took us away. When she was two, he left us. He didn't want to, but he'd killed the Doctor when Ma died, and they finally tracked him down, so… That was that."

She hugs him a little tighter, and kisses the top of his head.

She knows he can't feel the life energy thrumming around them, not the way she does, so she holds his wrist, and lays his fingers on his pulse.

"Feel it?"

"My heartbeat? Of course."

"Okay, good, now focus on it, really feel it. That's your life, thrumming around in your body. That's your Ma and Da, and their moms and dads, and on and on before you to the beginning of time. That's stardust given breath by the Force, set free to walk the universe, experience it, stretching a billion years before you to a billion years past." She lifts his hand from his wrist, and lets his fingers hover above his hand. "Feel the heat, the glow? That's you, here, now, and all of your ghosts, and every drop of love they had for each other, forever alive in your skin, and they'll live in the skin of your children and their children."

He looks at his hand. "It's hard to feel her. I… don't remember what she looked like anymore."

Rey nods. "I don't remember my parents anymore, either. I thought I did, but…"

"But it's like a story. You heard it so many times, you don't know if it happened or if you just heard it."

"Yeah." She holds his hands. "But they're still here. Whether we feel them or not, they're literally, here. Your body, your soul, your life… It's them, together, melded through the Force, combined into something new and wonderful, you."

He gives Rey a little hug. "I think you're pretty wonderful, too."

"Thanks."

Supposedly, walking around is good for labor. It helps get things moving in the right direction, and eases the pain, and it's just something to do. Dancing is supposed to be good, too.

Rey doesn't want to be snooping, but she can feel the dance. The high buzz of anticipation. The low pull of centering pain. The slow, easy rock, similar to, but different, from how Finn and Rose got to this moment.

She can sense the touch. Rose's life doing what it's meant to do, get this new life out into the world. Finn's supporting hers, lending her his strength, his body to lean on when she gets tired.

And both of them, together, surging one contraction at a time, toward a new life, a new consciousness.

She supposes it makes sense how this makes her feel, though it also takes her by surprise. Hour after hour of being submersed in this deep, heady thrum of life. Of course her body would react to it. Of course it triggers a deep, needy ache, a pull to life, to more life, to existence continuing on and on beyond her and them.

Of course.

After another hour of it, she just can't take it anymore.

Not alone.

Your room, now!

Are you hurt? Alarm flashes through Kylo as he hears Rey in his mind.

I'm really not. Please!

I'm making my excuses.

"Hello to you, too!" Kylo says, very happily surprised, as he finds himself with two arms full of a half-naked Rey, her legs around his hips, hands in his hair.

She dives in for a fast, hard kiss, while reaching between them, pulling at his trousers.

He's not sure why this is happening. Well, he understand the general level of why, obviously she's wanting sex, but not the specific this-particular-second-in-time aspect, let alone the RIGHT NOW aspect of it, but… Compared to his quarterly budget meeting… Okay, no, he has to do that, too, but he can damn well take a ten minute break from it!

There is not a single member of Kylo's general staff who is not aware of the rumors that he has a "friend."

In fact, not having enough of a coterie of spies and whisper-listeners in place to have gotten said rumor is the sort of thing that should disqualify a man from being on the general staff.

It's true that none of them are sure how said friend gets onto and off of the Supremacy, because no one's seen said friend come or go, and s/he… No, that voice is certainly a she, so it's clear that she doesn't live in that room, but… Anyway… Apparently, she is here now.

They all know, but… There's knowing, and then there's hearing because apparently the sound-proofing between Kylo's rooms and office is awful, and there's hearing and then knowing that, in a matter of what it likely to be minutes, judging by what they can hear, they're going to be facing a man who can fucking read minds and is extremely unlikely to be aware that they can all hear him in his room with his friend who is apparently of a mind that right now is an excellent time for a quickie.

And Kylo appears to be enthusiastically agreeing with her assessment as to the appropriateness of this endeavor.

Kinear's smirking his ass off, and very quietly says, "It's good to be young."

Which gets some quiet chuckling and sniggering from several of the other members of the general staff, none of whom are in any danger of passing for young.

Again, quietly, Kinear says, "Gentlemen, I'm thinking this is a dandy time for you to go find something else to do for an hour or so." After all, being embarrassed is normal, it happens, but if you can contain it, you should. So, the fewer people The Master has to face when he gets out of that room and realizes that they all heard what he was up to…

They all glance at each other, and decide that Kinear's likely right, and then shuffle out.

Kylo's heart is beating a million times a minute as the last pulse of his spurt fades into a very pleasant memory. Rey's in his lap, his face against her shoulder, her lips against his ear, tiny, harsh breaths slowing down against him. He can feel the last few twitches of her body on his, as she comes down from her high.

He lifts his head, slowly, and gently kisses her, following that with, "Not that I minded that, at all, but…"

She smiles at him, and gently kisses him back. She's never just popped up in the middle of the day and jumped him. "Rose is having her baby, and… It's very intense and real, and we were talking about life and…" She gives him a little squeeze and feels him twitch, slightly, inside of her in response.

He smiles all over at that, lips, eyes, spirit all brightening, at the idea that she'd seek him out, needing him now, not willing to wait the four hours until tonight, at the feel of that.

She makes a little mmm… sound, snuggling close to him, and then says, "I don't want to leave."

He kisses her, and then swallows. He doesn't want to leave, either. He's feeling exceptionally relaxed and boneless and right now would be an excellent time to just drop back onto his bed and get a nap with her.

That said, there are twenty men on the other side of his door, waiting for him. "You don't have to, but I do. There are twenty of them out there, and…"

"You were in the middle of a meeting?"

He nods.

She's halfway between a laugh and a cringe. "I didn't know."

He smirks, kissing her once more. "Apparently, there are some things I'm willing to ditch… or, at least, pause, a meeting for."

She stands up, giggling, legs shaky, and calls a towel to hand, cleaning up. "For a moment or two."

He checks his trousers, they look okay. Down around his knees, they weren't in danger of getting anything on them. His tunic on the other hand… She already had her pants off when she leapt into his arms, and there are some marks of her… enthusiasm… for this. He starts to strip that off. She hands him the towel and he gently wipes himself off, too.

She pulls her shorts and trousers back on, and he gets his own clothing changed.

"Here," she says, undoing his hair tie, and then quickly pulling his hair back in the tidy queue he normally wears it in when he's out there. "I pulled some of it loose."

He smiles at her, at that, at all of it. He pulls her close, and cups her delta, "Any day, any time, you want to do this for real, and I'm ready. Takes about a month for the preventative to dissolve, and…"

She stands on her tiptoes and kisses him again. "I know." Love you.

He blinks, and kisses back. Love you, too.

It's an odd sensation, and one that Kylo doesn't often run into. As the top of the heap, he almost never finds himself in a situation where he feels like he's been caught doing something he ought not to. After all, he's the man who makes the rules.

The last time he felt this, he was… He's not entirely sure. Either on the Supremacy, intensely aware of a small hut lit by fire, sitting on a comically small stool, or he was in the fire-lit hut sitting on the comically small stool, just, barely having touched Rey for the first time, to feel a storm of incensed Force aimed right at him as the hut then exploded around them.

And then he was, certainly, on the Supremacy.

He still remembers how he responded, looking over his shoulder, caught.

By Luke.

Of course.

Because it's not like he doesn't have 200 other memories of being a teenager and getting caught by Luke doing… a whole slew of things he wasn't supposed to be doing, ranging from using his lightsaber to work his anger off, instead of letting it go, to yelling at one of the younger students when he was the one "in charge" of breakfast and she burned the porridge, to the second time he had his hand on himself and Luke came in for... Force alone knows what… And… that time he was meditating, and was supposed to be keeping what Luke called the Dark Voice out of his head, but wasn't… And…

It happened more than often enough that he's got a deep sense of shame hardwired to just being near Luke.

But Luke's gone. And he's Master of not only a ship, but a political dynasty, and all of that's fading away as he's facing a room with just Kinear in it, and he can feel the smirk that's not making it to Kinear's face and all of it's crashing back onto him.

Because he is CAUGHT!

Kinear nods, apparently able to read that off Kylo's face, and then says, "For the next few minutes, we're going to forget about rank, and position, and who you are, and who I am, and we're going to have a little chat. An old man to a young one. And when we're done, I'm going to forget we ever had this chat, and with any luck, you're going to remember it."

Kylo bites his lip, but sits at the conference table, and nods.

"First of all. Always make sure you control the sound in a room."

Kylo nods, slowly. "You heard…"

Kinear smirks, but it's clear that he apparently approves of this, and that makes his next line a little easier for Kylo to take. "Like you did it in front of us."

But only a little, Kylo full body winces.

"Second of all, there's not a man alive who hasn't, at least once, ended up with his stones flapping about stark naked in the breeze, metaphorically if not literally, so, learn to suck it up, act like you intended it, and then back to business. You can get away with anything if you act like you planned it and you aren't ashamed of it."

"You sound like my father." Han was the champion of pretending that whatever happened he was in control of, and planned it that way.

"I wouldn't know; I never met him. But if I do, it's because he was giving you good advice when he said that. Looking like you meant to do whatever it was, and you're not ashamed of it, will get your further than you can imagine. No shame. No fear. Keep those off your face, and you can get away with almost anything."

Kylo's eyes narrow a little at that, because he's not entirely sure if Kinear's saying he knows who his father is specifically, or if it's a general statement that's true regardless of who Kylo's father might be. And either way, Kinear's moving on, fast, from that line.

Kylo's got the sense that Kinear spent more than enough time around other Force sensitives to know that one of the best ways to not get your mind read is to make sure you never stop on any one thought for any real length of time.

"Third of all, everyone on this ship who matters knows you've got a lady friend and have for most of the last year if not longer. It's normal. Three quarters of us on your general staff are married or have a companion and sometimes both, occasionally with someone else on the side. Even the Emperor had a collection of mistresses. Also, all of us were your age at one point or another, and yes, memory dims the details, but not so far down we don't remember it. Occasionally skivving off for a pretty girl will, assuming you don't leave something important, get smirked at, because a lot of us have done it at least once or twice, too. No one expects you to be an asexual monk, so you don't have to act like one unless it pleases you to do so."

Kylo nods.

Kinear shifts a bit, gets more serious. "Finally, and this one really is just for you and I. No one on our level is stupid. Greedy, sure. Ruthless, of course. Morally flexible, definitely. But not stupid. Absolutely no one believes that a girl just happened to show up on this ship, and you just happened to take her to Snoke, and she somehow, by herself overpowered you, killed the Praetorian Guard and Snoke, and then just, on her own, skipped away from the ship and vanished, leaving a pretty little power vacuum for you to step into. No one believes that story. No one, ever, believed that story.

"If Hux hadn't been so damn scared of you, he would have laughed when you tried it.

"None of us cared, Snoke was too unstable to keep in power, and if you had to bring in help to take him out, no one cared. Even Hux was fine with it, because he knew he couldn't take out Snoke on his own."

Kylo blinks. He knew that Hux didn't believe that lie. He didn't know that it had spread that far.

"Most of us, who know about your lady friend, assume she's the same woman who helped you win your throne."

Kylo nods at that, too.

"Good. You've cleaned a lot of the house. We've got your back and are cleaning up the rest. Give us a bit more time and you can show your lady's face here, safe in the knowledge that she'll be as much of a hero for taking out Snoke as you are."

That's several levels of information Kylo didn't have, and he takes a moment to sift through and figure out which one is the most important. "You're… cleaning house?"

"From the top of the spire, it can be hard to see the cracks in the foundations. Though you are doing a very good job with the top levels. We're taking care of the bottom ranks for you."

Kylo rubs his lips together for an entirely different reason. "How are you cleaning house?"

"By removing the people who don't want to go where you're taking us."

Kylo nods, slowly, and just as slowly says, "And have they… noticed… your efforts?"

Kinear laughs, truly, genuinely amused by this. "I survived The Old Republic, Palpatine, The New Republic, and Snoke. No one notices if I don't want them to. If you didn't look like you had a shot of actually doing something useful, you'd have never known I was even on your staff."

Kylo tilts his head, acknowledging that's likely true, he's got close to 1800 generals, and if Kinear had kept his position lurking about in the middle of nowhere, and done his job properly, he would have never noticed him. "And you're telling me what you're up to."

"Yes. Like I said, tell me where you want to go, and I'll plot a course. I know you don't have the full view of it, yet, but you're working on it, and I'm going to make sure you get there." He pats Kylo's shoulder, standing up, ready to go get the rest of the general staff. "With your lady friend."

Kylo swallows, and spends a moment just feeling Kinear. The offer is genuine. Self-serving. Like Rey said, he knows that his fortune is tied to Kylo doing well, but that doesn't make his advice any less useful.

"Peace. I don't care if we've got to scale down to get secure. We'll grow from there. But… peace. A galaxy where they realize that what I've got to offer is valuable, so they come of their own accord. Snoke took. He conquered anything that came under his gaze. Not me. I don't care about land, couldn't care less about systems. I want people. Get enough of them, and we don't need planets. The entire universe works because the right people are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. I want those people wearing my mark, working for me. If I don't have land, I'll put them in ships, and scatter them across the galaxy, and… We're changing the game. It's going to be about alliance and association and ground is just dust. We'll take it when it falls in our laps because we got enough people in one place who want us to have it."

Kinear exhales long and slow, he sits down, slowly, and nods, pleased. "That's a goal, alright."

"Can you plot me a course?"

Kinear looks excited. "I can damn well try."

Twenty minutes later, the rest of the general staff is assembled. Admiral Schiff, who's more of a smartass than he needs to be, and more valuable than any two other men at the table, decides he'll be the one to stick his neck out and test the waters.

"Did you have a refreshing break, sir?"

There's a heartbeat where Kylo's feeling like he's transgressed, stepped out of line, but… He's the man who draws the damn lines. He can feel a third of the men surrounding him just tensed, afraid of what he's about to do to Schiff. Another third are expecting him to have a fit, they're already planning their escapes from the room, looking for the most direct route between them and the door that doesn't involve getting within two meters of him. Schiff's just staring at him, challenge in his face, daring him to… succeed at this.

He and Kinear didn't talk about it, he can feel that. Not… in the last hour, but… they're of a mind and trying to move him to something. Trying to… humanize him.

Snoke was alien. He was a nigh-eternal monster in an ornate robe. He was… a dark god bent on domination and pain. And right now Schiff and Kinear are… Kylo can feel it… They are trying to make him distinctly different from that. Men will pledge their lives, service, minds, and wealth to another man they respect.

And this is part of building that. Part of being worthy of their respect.

He looks Schiff right in the eye and says, "Yes, quite. I've often found a quick break to work off tension helps focus the mind. General T'Chandra, I believe you were up."

Kylo can feel about a quarter of his staff really approves of this. They're happy to see him do things like that. The third that was getting ready to sprint out, they all relax. Maybe they don't care as much about him getting his kicks or being the kind of man who has kicks to get, but they do need a leader who they aren't constantly terrified of.

Kinear and Schiff both seem especially pleased by how he handled that.

He supposes that's the sort of thing he could actually talk to Kinear about. He supposes that's the sort of thing he also should talk to Kinear about. Or… maybe Jon…

Snoke was more than a thousand years old by the time Kylo first heard his voice in his head. He'd had literally eons of time to learn everythingbefore he even thought about moving in the direction of trying to rule.

Kylo's not quite 31. He told Rey about how ridiculous it was that he was supposed to be wise at twenty. It's less ridiculous now, or would be if he were still Master Kylo, Jedi. But he's also expanded the sort of thing he's supposed to know about so widely, that it's probably more ridiculous than his attempted mantle of wisdom as a brand new "Master."

But he can borrow it. He can ask for help and advice.

Eat at home? Kylo's voice in her head.

Sure. Uh… why? Normally, they eat on the Supremacy.

Tell you when I get there.

And a moment later he's with Rey, standing next to the table, a bowl of mango salad in one hand, and some sort of curry over minced taro in the other. He sets them down and sits on the bench next to her.

She's looking at him, curiosity all over her face.

He takes a second to feel the… Rey's right, it's very present and really intense and not exactly sexual in an erotic sense, but… erotic and life are of course bound to each other in any animal with sexual reproduction, so he can feel how it's not going to take long to slide over that line, and it's just… "Oh… That's…" he doesn't exactly have words for it. "Nice."

She smiles. "Yes. Wanted to get here before it ends?"

"I hadn't thought of that." And he hadn't, but he's glad he's here and able to feel this. He assumes people have to have babies on the Supremacybut… Between the fact that it's ten thousand times bigger than Rey's settlement, and that he's here, feeling the glow of Baby Tico refracted through almost a dozen Force sensitive minds, too, it's likely more intense than it'd ever be there.

Rey's still looking up at him, curious about why they're here and not in his room.

He feels a little blush on his cheeks. "Uh… Apparently… There's… uh… no soundproofing between my office and room."

Rey blinks, slowly, then rubs her lips together, a light pink flush lighting her cheeks, and… "Your office with the twenty members of your general staff in it?"

He nods.

She makes a little, "Eeep!" sort of noise.

He nods again.

She nods back, that pink deepening into red, and then she starts to giggle uncontrollably. Kylo, out of the view of his staff, decides that, yes, all in all, it is fairly funny, and he joins her laughter.

Eventually, she can talk and says, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah… Maybe next time call me here?"

"Next time?"

He starts to spoon the salad and curry onto plates for them, and then sits down, on the bench next to her. "Well, I didn't mind." He flashes her a naughty smile. "And… it led to an interesting conversation with Kinear. And… Schiff wanted to see how far he could push me, so he set a toe past the line by asking if I'd had a refreshing break, and… I told him yes, and that I could focus better after one, and… actually, I could. I'll usually make sure I've got some time to go beat on the training droids between bad meetings, but this was just a boring one. Still… I was much more present for the second half of it."

She lays a hand on his shoulder, and kisses him. "Are you telling me you think you'll be a better ruler if you get tuffed regularly between meetings?"

He gives her thigh a gentle squeeze and grins at her. "Your pilot's a bad influence on you, that's an awful word."

She raises an eyebrow. "Do you have a better one?"

He cups his hand around the back of her neck, drawing her over, and gently licks her lower lip before saying, "I've always liked fucked." His voice caresses over it, and his tongue caresses over her lip again. "If you're old enough to do it, you're old enough to use an adult word for it."

In a heartbeat she's in his lap, rocking against him, hands on his chest. "And tuffed," she rolls over him, rubbing just right, "isn't?"

He's undoing her belt. "Tuffed is a word for spotty-faced boys giggling with each other, telling lies about the girls they haven't actually fucked."

She undoes his belt, taking it off this time instead of working around it. "Uh huh. And you would know?"

He pulls off her belt, and begins undoing her jacket. "I was one, once upon a time."

She nibbles his lip. "Do a lot of lying about girls you didn't fuck?"

He smirks, kissing her neck and shoulder as she's undoing the hooks and eyes on his tunic. "I heard a lot of it."

His hand finds her breast, worming its way under her shirt, and she pulls his face up to kiss her lips, rocking against him deliciously, moaning softly at the feel of him against her, and his hands on her breast. But rocking is only going to get them so far, and both of them, sitting at her kitchen table, kissing and petting, want more. "Unless you let that go, I can't get your clothing off."

He pushes the bench back, and she stands up, quickly, he does, too, both of them stripping down. A moment later, she's sitting on the table, food pushed to the side, her feet on his thighs, and he's on the bench, running his hands over her back and hips as he sucks a nipple. Her fingers stroke over his hair. He purrs a bit at it, and gasps as she pushes off the table and slips onto him.

It shudders through both of them. The feel of sex and life slipping through both of them in shivery light and supple dark.

"Fuck! You weren't kidding about this being intense," grinds out of him through clenched jaws.

She's shuddering all over, at the stretch of him in her, at the thrum of new life around them, at the feel of how all it comes together, spinning into eternity, both before and behind them, and…

They're moving fast, grinding against each other, seeking, needing more.

"Yes!" her voice, higher, breathy.

His hands grip her thighs, and hers grip his shoulders. Lips meeting, stroking.

"Yes!" his voice, deep, ragged, panted between heavy breaths. He hasn't prayed in decades, not… the way he was trained to. Not slipping into the flow of the Force and letting it carry him, secure and cradled by it. Not allowing himself to open all of his needs and wants to the Force, letting himself experience them and offer them up.

But he is now.

Commune together in mutual affection and accord.

He can feel her with him, her body tight with pleasure and life and the feel of the Force and love coming with him. He can feel his body, poised, flush with pleasure and growing tension, and needing and wanting and almost… there… with her.

Communing together.

They were meant to praise the Force as the giver of all life. That's what most of the prayers boiled down to. That which turned stardust into life. That which turned life into consciousness. That which rose consciousness into discernment.

And he feels all of it right now, present in her body and his, rushing toward both physical bliss and mental contentment and joy, sublime, restful, easy, joy.

They're so close. The line between her mind and his melted minutes, hours, seconds… he doesn't know which… ago. But this time the line between his/their body/life and the eternal, that's also slipping away. The line between them growing thin and translucent, bleeding away in vibrant color-feels of emotion and motion and sensation and they're not even sure if they're moving anymore, and it doesn't matter if they are or not.

Transcendent. Glowing together. Luminous creatures… that's what Luke taught them, and right now, they really, truly, are.

It takes them a long time to untangle from that. Pull their mind back into their body, and then into their own individual forms and from there to let go of each other, though they don't break physical contact for the rest of the night.

Lying in bed, stroking her hair, he says, "I don't think that was ever on offer to the Jedi."

She stretches languidly, purring, rubbing up against him like a content maomao. "Why do you think that?"

"Because you can't experience that and not want. Can't feel that and not dedicate yourself to getting back there again, can you?"

She nuzzles against his chest and chin. "We'll get there again. And maybe that was the idea, give up all of your little wants, seeking the one big one?"

"Maybe…" He's skeptical, but honestly, feels too damn good to fuss with this. "If it was, it got lost in translation. I read almost every book Luke had, and I don't remember anything about this in there."

She smirks a little. "Maybe that one got stuffed into a locked trunk. He probably didn't want you guys just off fucking each other, looking for it."

Kylo smirks back at her, kissing the top of her head. He could certainly see Luke doing something like that. Then he smiles. "In a trunk Yoda locked a millennium ago. He probably wanted the Jedi to do something other than each other."

She giggles at that. "Lucky for us we're Maji."

He kisses her. "Lucky."

"Whooooo!"

Kylo's up, standing on the bed, over Rey, naked, in his defensive crouch, saber lit when the second bit of the loud, exuberant yell that just echoed through Lirium, and pulled him out of deep sleep and his saber to hand without any actual thinking, hits. "She's here! She's here!"

He extinguishes the blade and flops back onto their bed, heart galloping, as a fist pounding at the door joins the happy yelling.

"She's here, Rey! She's here."

Rey gets up, giving Kylo a quick glare for singeing the bedspread, before pulling on a night shirt and robe, yelling out, "I'm coming, Finn!"

She closes the door to the bedroom behind her, but Kylo can hear, "She's here! Paige Liria Tico is here! She's a bit over three kilos, fifty-two centimeters, she's got her mama's eyes and my hair, and she's the most beautiful girl, ever! Come on, come meet her!"

"How's Rose?" He can hear her pulling on her boots.

"Fine! Great! Sore and tired, too, but… The droid says that's normal. They're both asleep, so I came over. Come on, I want you to meet her!"

He can hear Rey laugh. "In my robe!"

Finn does something, Kylo guesses he's looking at himself, because he then says, "I'm in my pjs, too. Come on!"

Kylo lurks in the back of Rey's mind. He knows he's not invited to close, intimate family moments, especially not for the Tico family.

But he does want to share the feel of this with Rey. He can't see the scene, but he can feel her reactions to it, feel her understand it.

The child is, as newborn babies tend to be, tiny. But there's knowing they have to be tiny, and holding one for the first time and really feeling the sensation of an entire person fitting in your two hands.

She's wrapped into a little bundle, and Finn's showing her off like she's the most precious jewel in the galaxy.

And to her daddy, she is.

He lets Rey hold her, and the soft, warm weight of her against Rey's shoulder feels… more intense than he was expecting.

There's a visceral wanting that goes with it.

And he's honestly not sure if it's his or Rey's or both of theirs.

The little girl starts to cry, and that startles Rey. She doesn't like not knowing what to do about it. Finn's still besotted with everything his girl does, so he gently takes her from Rey, and coos to her, "Hungry, baby? Let's get back to Mama."

He can sense that Rey's following Finn, and the shock of seeing Rose, who is apparently several levels beyond tired. What he and Rey know, combined, about babies could fill an especially small thimble, and apparently said thimble is woefully inadequate when it comes to what happens as said baby goes from being inside her mom to outside.

He can feel her swallow the desire to say, "You look like you got run over by a bantha," as Rose takes Paige back, and slowly, gently, gets her settled for a meal.

Finn's sitting on the bed, with them, holding both of them, still beaming. Rose is dozing against him. And Paige is slorping away, as her daddy strokes her face.

"Can you get a picture of this?"

He assumes Rey does it. She's not really thinking about it, just going through the motions, focusing on the family in front of her.

Finn's voice is quiet as he says, "Makes you want one, doesn't it?"

He feels the flush of pleasure at that idea, through her, and his own echoes it.

"Don't deny it. I saw that look."

Rey still isn't saying anything.

"She's gonna need a best friend, someone to watch her back, and go on adventures with," he's staring up at her with a big grin. "A little brother or sister, by love if not blood."

"Finn!" Rose stirs enough to poke him for that. "Lay off. We haven't even met Padme, yet. Stop planning their family for them."

Rey gives Rose a gentle squeeze. "Thanks." Then she looks to Finn. "One of these days."

Yes! pounds through Kylo at that.

Finn strokes his daughter's face again, and kisses his wife. Then he looks to Rey. "You want this, right?"

"Yes." It's a small word, but it doesn't feel that way.

"Then why haven't we met Padme? Poe says it's been at least a year. Why do we only catch glimpses of him, from the back, at night?"

Rey shakes her head.

"Is this the double agent thing? If they catch Chewie and me, they're not going to be asking about Padme. Ren's not going to grab me and interrogate me personally. They don't even seem to be looking for Resistance members any longer. The price on my head's down to a few thousand, and the bounty on Chewie's higher on the local level than on the Order's scale."

"You'll meet him when you meet him."

Finn's eyes narrow at that. Kylo feels the wave of protective surging through Finn right now. Protective towards the people he loves, all of them, including his friend. "There's something wrong with a man who doesn't want to meet your family. He won't show his face to the people who love you, he's not for you."

Kylo can tell she smiles at that, but it's sad. "Chewie's met him. Leia did, too."

Finn sighs at that. "There's something, then. Bring him to her naming celebration."

"He works, a lot."

Finn doesn't say it, but Kylo feels the wave of bantha shit coming off of him. "Even soldiers in the Order have downtime. Twelve off for every twelve on, unless they're actively fighting. And they aren't."

"Finn. Stop it," Rose says. "She'll share him with us when she's ready to. When she's sure that we can't give him away."

"Thanks, Rose. And I will, Finn, but not yet."

Rose yawns.

"You've had an exciting night, and I'm going back to bed. You three rest, okay?" Rey says.

"Okay," Finn starts to get up, but Rey waves him off. There's no reason for him to jostle everyone by getting up. She leans down, hugging him, kissing Rose's cheek, and laying another kiss on Paige's head.

When she's back in bed, lying against his side, Kylo says, voice low, "I have a feeling that showing up for her naming ceremony would involve significantly more excitement than they'd appreciate for the day."

She nods against his shoulder.

He kisses her forehead. "I'd go if that weren't true."

"I know," she says, lips against his shoulder. He'd go strolling through town in the middle of the day in is command blacks if it wouldn't upset her. They're not hiding for him.

He rolls over to face her, his forehead against hers. His hand falls to her belly. "Another year?"

"Two, tops."

Some say the sky glowed red when Paige Liria Tico, the first child born on Lirium was announced to the settlement by her daddy.

But that's the stuff of omens and fairy tales, not real life.

Though the three children who share the hut across the street from Rey's cabin swear it's true.

Notes:

So, a few of you have over the last several chapters suggested that there may be a certain level of willful blindness on the part of Rey's friends on not putting together the puzzle pieces and who Padme is.

I'm never sure how explicitly to answer things like that, so I'll leave this here: I suggest re-reading the bit about what Anakin was doing with the original Padme, and then thinking about what, say, one and a half very powerful Force users can do, subconsciously, if they really don't want a secret to get out.