9/5/1

Given how quickly he was able to get formalwear, and informal wear, Kylo would have to admit that he's a bit surprised to just be getting his armor, now.

He doesn't exactly ask Jon why it took so long, but apparently, as he's showing it off, he feels the curiosity.

He taps the outfit in front of him, which looks quite a bit like Kylo's traditional command blacks. "Because this works."

And of all the possible reasons for armor taking a while that strikes him as the best of the bunch.

"First off, you move a lot when you fight. Every joint moves in pretty much every direction it can go, and a few I didn't think they could go in. You fight with fist, elbow, knee, foot, head, and saber. That meant I couldn't use a lot of plate in this." He taps the shin of the trousers. "Shins, thighs, forearms, and arms. Besides your mask, that's the only hard, solid surface in this thing. You can use them block hits as well as attack with them." He pokes the chest of the tunic, but it doesn't give under his finger. "I had to go back, way back, to find something for this. The under layer is the traditional tight mesh we use in the Stormtrooper armor. It won't stop a blaster or lightsaber, but it will spread out the damage, and it'll seal tight if you cut it, keep your internals internal if need be. Next layer is hundreds of tiny plates overlapping each other like scales. It'll bend and flex with you, and again, it won't stop a blast, but it'll deflect or absorb a lot of it. At least ninety percent of the hit won't get to your skin because of this. Top layer looks like wool, but it's a heat and electric dampening layer. Anything that burns or jolts is going to have a hard time getting through, and you won't have to worry about your outfit catching fire because someone hit you with a laser weapon." He taps the gloves. "Your current gloves have a layer of heat protection. These have that, and a fine mesh of the same material that makes up the scales. It's even more flexible than the scales, you'll have perfect range of motion in your fingers and wrists, and this'll bleed off probably seventy percent of a hit."

"So I don't want to attempt to catch a blade in my hand, but I shouldn't be too worried about accidently burning myself with my saber."

Jon thinks about it. "If you absolutely had to, you could, but don't hold it long, and don't do it twice."

Kylo tucks that away. If he absolutely had to catch a blade, he'd do it anyway, armor or not, and trust his Force to keep his hand attached long enough to do what it needed to do. "You said this actually works. I assume part of what you're saying is that our other armor doesn't?"

Jon just looks at him. "You have to know the Stormtrooper armor is designed to be more stylish than protective. It's a uniform that provides the image of anonymous invulnerability."

Kylo knows that his troopers don't exactly seem to shrug off hits to their armor, but… "You mean it's designed to be useless?"

"No." He can feel that useless actually annoys Jon. "It's designed to look good, make it easy to tell rank at a glance, intimidate whomever you may fight against, and keep your men feeling anonymous, which goes a long way to getting them to follow orders without thinking about it too hard. It's just not designed to stop blaster hits, or lasers, or well, much of anything."

Kylo thinks about that. He has way more Stormtroopers than he ever puts on the ground, so it's true that most of the time, they're just here, in one of his ships, perfectly safe, in their uniforms, so… Maybe they don't exactly have to be in top-of-the-line protective gear.

He thinks about his fleet, and about the rest of the things Snoke didn't exactly like spending money on.

Then he looks at his armor. "How much did this cost?"

"Slightly more than a mech droid, sir. Though part of that is a scale issue. If I were making this en masse, it'd be less expensive per unit."

He sighs. That's a really good reason to not have every one of his troopers wearing this. "Would I be correct in assuming that you could design armor, for the Stormtroopers, that works, as armor?"

"Yes, and I have. I had to scale the original design back to fit the budget. All Snoke really wanted was a slight redesign of the Imperial armor, which just like what we've got, was made to look good, not actually protect people."

Kylo nods. "How much better could it be if I doubled your budget?"

Jon taps Kylo's armor. "Not this good, but you wouldn't have your men getting knocked out by an overgrown rodent with a rock."

Apparently, Jon remembered the 'news holos' from the Battle of Endor. Kylo does, too. He supposes that 'These are the blood-thirsty monsters who killed your father all celebrating their victory' would lend a somewhat different feel to the images than "And there's Uncle Chewie! He commandeered that AT-ST and saved our lives!"

"I'll see what I can do. Ideally, they'd all have functional armor, but if you can give me the cost projections for getting my men who are actually in danger into something that'll let them take a hit or two from a blaster without getting killed, I'd appreciate it."

He feels Jon smile, sees it, too. "This is what I'm actually supposed to be in charge of."

"Getting bored of being my personal tailor?"

"No. But this," he touches the armor, and looks toward Kylo's closet. He knows what's hanging in there, "is art, and I love art. Speaking of which, I've got a new redesign on the formal wear for you, but Snoke hired me to do a job, specifically designing body armor, and there is something to be said for doing the job I was hired for."

Kylo can feel the professional pride. "You want to build the kind of gear that keeps them safe."

Jon smiles a little. "It'd be nice. That said, I know that you don't have infinite resources, and the amount it costs to make someone hit proof, and what you can afford are different things, but… I can do better than I have, if I had more resources at my disposal."

"Get me design specs, and I'll see what we can squeeze." He thinks about that for another moment. Most of his men spend most of their time on his ships, where they do nothing even remotely approaching dangerous. "You said part of the point of the armor was making them feel anonymous?"

Frakes nods. "Yes. PsyOps did a few studies on it. Well, Imperial PsyOps. Hux used those reports to hone his training methods, take the Imperial findings a step further. The less any given person feels like a given person… anonymous… part of a crowd… the more likely they are to do whatever you want them to do. It's… a trick to overcome most people's aversions to hurting others. It helps to make it easier to keep up the idea that you're a good person, and some other, nameless, faceless person does all of the messy stuff."

Kylo's nodding slowly. "That's why they have their names stripped."

"And everything else. Easier to do whatever it is if no one knows it's you."

Kylo drums his finger against his hip. "What would it cost to put soldiers stationed shipboard into uniforms? Not armor. Take the stuff we've currently got, scrap it, or use it to build better armor, and put anyone who's not likely to get into a firefight into something like an officer's outfit? Something where their faces show."

Frakes runs the numbers in his head. "Short term, it'll spike costs, longer term… A pair of trousers is cheaper to replace than a thigh guard that got cracked because someone wasn't careful enough with a forklift and a supplies crate. Sizing is easier, too. Fabric bends and stretches, armor doesn't. Downside, I can't use all that much of what we've currently got to make better armor. It's the thinnest, lightest grade of plasteel I could get. Double plate it, and it'll be too heavy, and still not strong enough."

"Can we sell it? Use it for… anything… else?"

"There's someone out there who wants any and everything. And there may be something else we can use this for, I just don't know what it is."

"Okay. Get me cost projections and sketches for enlisted uniforms, too. We're taking the masks off unless they're in combat. I want them personally attached to… all of it. Their jobs, their comrades, what they do, how it reflects on the rest of us."

Frakes smiles a little at that. "I can do that."

"Good…" Kylo's watching Frakes, seeing him, thinking about what he said about what he was hired to do and remembering his mother's words. "Honestly, no… telling me what you think I want to hear, do you like this job?"

Jon looks worried. "May I ask why?"

"You said, 'what I was hired to do…' I can likely find other armor designers. I'm not sure I can find someone else to do what you do for me…"

"I assume you mean beyond tailoring?"

Kylo just gives him a look.

"What do you see me doing?"

Kylo blinks. "I don't have a word for it. Advisor? Chief Diplomat? The person who knows the ins and outs of how to build this thing I've only got a vague idea of in my head… My designer."

Jon thinks that over for a moment. He taps the armor in front of them. "I'm good at this. I… as best as I know, am better at it than anyone else on this ship, but I know I'm not the best in the galaxy, and I may not be the best in Order. I'm the one with the most access to you."

"That's fair. Would you like to be something… else?"

"Not until I've found someone who can design the kind of armor you're looking for, better than I can. Then, yes, I would like to be more."

"Good. Hire your replacement. And then join my general staff, General Frakes."

Frakes shakes his head a little.

"Jon?"

"No. I'll hire my replacement, and I'll do what you want, but if I join your general staff, there are going to be issues, and… I'll do my job better if I don't have people cozying up to me, trying to get me to do it the way they want it done. Kinear and Schiff have already noticed me, and as soon as the others do, they'll all be sidling over with little jobs and bits and pieces they want done. So… Lieutenant Colonel Frakes, and if you ever decide to set up a diplomatic corps, I'll take it, but until then, if I'm on your staff, I'm the most junior officer on your staff, and they will do whatever they can to use me."

"I need a diplomatic corps. Could you set one up?"

Frakes laughs, a little, "In my copious spare time, sure. How about this, for right now, let me get a new head of your tactical design group. Then let me do enough research to find out what's actually involved in a diplomatic corps. I'll go through everything we still have from back in the Imperial days when Officer Decorum classes were a thing, and Palpatine had his own pet senators and a slew of diplomats working every system in the galaxy. Then I'll sort through your people, see if we've got anyone even suited to take a whack at something like this, and if I can get that far without the rest of your general staff noticing and either trying to stop me or subvert me, I'll build you a diplomatic corps."

Kylo smiles. "In your copious spare time."

"Yes." Jon nods. "What was the final count from the dinner? I saw Schiff grinning like he just got a promotion at the end of it."

"Nine new colonies. Not finalized, yet, but in the works."

"Then I better be quick about finding a replacement."

"I'd certainly appreciate it."

"And you're going to need more Emperor-wear if this is something you do regularly."

"I probably will. But, like with the armor, go, find me someone who's an as good or better tailor to make the rest of it."

Jon smirks at that. "So, we're building palaces, then?"

"They tell me I'm four and a half years out on the first wave of new dreadnaughts. So, yes, I'm building palaces. They won't be ready soon, but we're moving there."

"Good. Build me a nice one, because if we're serious about this, somewhere that doesn't look like it was intentionally designed to give people nightmares would come in handy."

"If you think it matters, I'll give you the specs before we go into production, and you can modify them to suit your needs."

Jon inclines his head. "That's a good starting point. Build something designed to be a hub of working with and getting along with other people. A place that's not a huge floating weapon." Jon taps his fingers, thinking, there has to be a use for the weapon encrusted nightmare, even if they aren't actively fighting. "You're always looking for ways to increase the value of what we're doing."

"Yes."

"We've got space. A two-thirds of this ship's cargo holds are empty, and four-fifths of its personnel capacity. We've got guns a plenty, more troops than we know what to do with, more than we need, honestly. We can dock most systems' entire fleets in here. We can offer neutral meeting territory. Let people use our space to hash out their own squabbles. They talk. We provide security. Everyone's happy. Trade deals... We've got people and storage, we can provide escrow for goods or credit."

"And when they come to take advantage of our space, you can get a feel for who to hire away from their local corporations and systems," Kylo says, seeing another angle on this.

"And I can get a feel for who's who in this game, and who's any good at it."

"Jon had a good idea."

Rey looks across their meal to him. "Jon often seems to have good ideas."

He nods. "He's suggesting we offer the extra space on the Supremacy as neutral meeting territory."

She smiles at him, thinks about it, and nods. "That could be valuable."

"I'd think. Especially for people who… can't access the normal ebbs and flows of the different local legal systems."

She raises an eyebrow. "You think I may know someone who could use information like that?"

"Possibly, or pass it on to someone else who could."

She knows he's talking about Chewie. "You could… try talking to him directly."

Kylo shakes his head. He's seen the Falcon around, seen Chewie at a distance even, and knows that Chewie knows he's here, but… "No… It's… no."

Rey just looks at him. "He doesn't hate you. I know you've been close enough to feel it."

He blinks. "He should." He rubs his lips together, trying to sort out all of this, because there are a lot of feelings and layers and levels to it. His breath comes a little faster, and his lips clamp down tighter. He can't make himself say it, barely make himself think it, but Rey takes his hand and gives him a comforting squeeze.

"I think he gets to decide for himself who to hate."

Kylo blinks at that, too.

She strokes his face. "And maybe it would be easier if he hated you, but he doesn't, so…"

He swallows hard, and shakes his head. She kisses him gently, her lips on his, her fingers ghosting after them. "Say it, Kylo, you can give it voice."

He releases the hard press of lip to lip, and they're trembling. He shakes his head again, clamping his lips together. His body won't let those words, feelings out.

She kisses him again. It will be okay. You can think it, you can say it, and all that'll happen is me listening. Try, love, try.

Kylo's eyes are tearing, and his lips rubbing together hard, and for a second she hears the start of his voice, but he clamps it down.

Try, love.

He stares up at the ceiling. His body won't let him say it, but his mind starts, I… He blinks, hard, and now his lips relax a little because he's so close to tears that his voice can't betray him. Words might form, but they won't be intelligible.

I've got you. She stands up, settling behind him, holding him near. Literally. Let it go.

When the thoughts break free they do so in a rush, all tumbling out fast and on top of each other. Just like his tears. He never hurt me. Never did me any wrong. Didn't abandon me. Didn't get my hopes up. Didn't ignore me. He didn't lie to me. He never made me any promises he didn't keep. And I took the one thing that mattered more to him than anything else in the galaxy away from him, and he didn't deserve it, and I cannot bear to be forgiven by him for that. I am not sorry I killed Han Solo. I don't see any other way we get to here, and here matters. We need to be here. So, that was his fate and my destiny and we moved through it, and… That's that. But I cannot be forgiven by him. Not for that.

She strokes his hair. He almost never talks about what he thinks/feels about having killed his father, so she just stands next to him, pets him, and lets him be. She's not going to push any harder on this than she already did.

They've got time.

She kisses the top of his head. "I'll pass it on."

He nods through tear blurred eyes.

A/N: Okay, as of today, I've written the rough draft of all of Rumors/Gossip. Assuming things don't shift too much over the course of edits and re-reads, we're coming in at 64 chapters. So, twenty-seven left to go!

Oh, and the stuff that's coming up... Huge grin over here. I think you're going to love it!