9/27/1

Rey's grinning at Finn. "No problem, at all. Paige and I can have an evening together. We'll get on fine. Go, do something fun."

"You sure?" Finn's looking a little nervous about this as he asks. He's hoping to surprise his wife with a nice evening out to celebrate their wedding anniversary. But before he can put that plan into play, he's got to find someone to take care of their daughter.

"I'm sure. How often do you get to have a first wedding anniversary? Go, enjoy!"

"You and Padme gonna play house?" Finn asks with a smirk.

Rey rolls her eyes at him. "I'm pretty sure it doesn't count as playing when he lives there, too."

Finn spends a moment looking at her, and then asks the question they've all been wondering about for months now. "Rey, how does he get home?"

"The Force."

"Yeah, we all got that. No ship, but we see him around from time to time, so obviously he's not flying here, but… how?"

Rey's never tried to explain it, so… "Just… uh… watch." And then she's standing on the other side of the room.

"Did you just… teleport?" Finn's staring at her, and where she used to be, and where she is now, astounded.

"I think so. I just… focus on where I need to be, and I'm there."

"Can you go anywhere?"

"I think I need to know where I'm going. Be able to really see and feel it. I couldn't just pop up somewhere based on you telling me about it, but I could probably get back to Takodana." Though, she knows that's not strictly true. She was able to bring herself to Kylo's room, and office, even though she didn't know it inside and out when they started this. He was there, and that was enough. She's fairly sure she can bring herself to anywhere he may be.

"Moving things? Like could you get to Chewie on the Falcon?"

"Yes. I don't think it's a where thing so much as a knowing thing. I don't have to pinpoint exactly where the Falcon is, I just have to know it."

"So… the kids say you leave when you 'meditate,' you're really gone when you do that?"

"Yeah."

"Where?"

She gives him an arched eyebrow and an arch look. "Where do you think?"

"He's got a high enough rank to have his own, private, chambers?" Finn's shaking his head. "No one below First Lieutenant has their own quarters." Finn thinks a moment longer, about what he and Rose do when they're alone, and what Padme and Rey likely do. "Private and secure… He can say, 'No disruptions,' and then not be disrupted. He's got his own ship, doesn't he?"

She nods, and glances around to the several marks of the Order in her cottage. There are a few thick, warm black blankets draped over her chair, some black plates and cups, the jar of coffee beans and coffee press, a few condiments, several tools on her workbench, just… Little things people bring back and forth when they eat or move from one room of their home to other. "When it mattered, he was better at keeping his mind shut than Snoke was at reading it."

Finn shakes his head. "Poe's got to know who he is. There's… No shot that he was part of the Resistance and Poe doesn't at least know his face."

Rey just looks at him. "Like I said, Leia and Chewie know him. I don't know if Poe did, he'd… been with the First Order for a long time."

"Leia got him in there when she started Resisting?"

She shrugs. "Leia and I never exactly talked about how he ended up there."

Eventually, even on a place as out of the way and secluded as Lirium, parents leave their babies.

And, like probably every other parent who's besotted with their child, but still wants some time to do something like eat an entire meal and maybe have a full conversation without it getting derailed by said small person, Finn and Rose want some time away.

Granted, getting away is still a bit trickier than expected.

Finn's more or less ready to sprint away, but Rose is lingering, as they're handing Paige off to Rey.

"Bottles, extra bottles, nappies, more nappies, wipes, extra clothing, cradle…" Rose says, touching each of the things she's brought over to Rey's. From the looks of it, she's making sure that Rey's ready for a few months with Paige, not a few hours, but… It's normal.

Rey's gently bouncing Paige, who's looking at her, and the cottage, and just generally getting the lay of the land. "Rose, your cottage is less than four hundred meters from here. I can rummage around if I don't have whatever it is here."

"You're really sure you're good with this?" Rose asks, about to take Paige back from Rey.

"Go! You're leaving for four hours, not four weeks. Paige and I will be fine."

Finn grabs his wife's hand, kisses his baby girl, mouths thank you to Rey, and pulls her out of Rey's cottage.

Rey looks down at Paige, who's bright eyed and awake right now. "So… What do you want to do?"

She looks at Rey, and starts to fuss.

Rey begins to rock her, making little "shhhh" sounds. It takes a moment, but she gets the feel of intensely sucking on something. Rey holds Paige so she can look into her tiny, dark eyes, and says, "I know you're not hungry, I can feel that."

She can also still feel the desire to suck.

Rey goes to her sink, washes her hands, and then lets Paige have the tip of her finger. She starts slorping away on it, fussing stopping fast.

And that's what Kylo comes home to, Rey in her chair, reading a renegade gray Jedi's theories on dualism, Paige in her arms, sleepily sucking away on her finger, settling into naptime, as Rey hums at her.

And, if Kylo could have gotten her pregnant just by wanting it, baby Ren would have been in the works. But even with the Force, it doesn't quite work that way.

Sleeping babies are fun and pleasant to be around. Other than Kylo and Rey both being a bit nervous about making any noise, dinner is awfully easy. Paige snoozes in her crib, they share food, and talk in their heads, and it's a quiet evening.

Awake babies, especially newly awake, hungry, wet, and somewhat crabby because food has not instantaneously appeared the exact millisecond said baby wants it, are significantly less pleasant to be around.

On the upside, as two Maji, they have a significantly easier time than an average first time babysitter figuring out what Paige wants. (Food.)

On the downside, neither of them has ever changed a diaper before.

"And why I had nannies is suddenly abundantly clear," Kylo says as he's washing his hands, and wishing he'd never seen or handled that.

"Don't think Leia enjoyed baby poop?" Rey says, fetching the bottle for Paige, who, thoroughly cleaned up, is much more pleasant to cuddle, or will be, if she stops yelling, which Rey hopes will happen when she gets some food into her.

"If I had to guess."

"Here…" Rey scoops Paige up from the changing mat, and cuddles her in close. "Look, food."

Paige isn't entirely sure about bottles, but she is sure about eating, and she gloms on, fast.

"Good girl. Look at you eat!"

More enthusiastic slorping.

"Do you think I can…" He really wants to hold Paige, and they're both very aware of the fact that that's nothing he'd ever be granted permission to do.

Rey stands up, and nods to the chair. Kylo sits. "Don't tell on Uncle Kylo, okay?" she says to Paige as she bounces her a little.

"Like I'll ever be Uncle Kylo," he replies, holding his arms out for Paige.

"Well, that's normally what a little girl would call her aunt's husband, so…" She hands Paige over, who takes a moment to get settled in Kylo's arms, not entirely sure if she likes this new body and smell near her, but… Okay, the big black blur has the bottle and suddenly she's really pleased to be in his arms.

Kylo's staring down at her, watching her sucking on the bottle, seeing her eyes looking up very intently at his.

Rey smirks a little. "When I was with Luke, the caretakers asked who I was. He told them I was his niece."

Kylo glances up at her, away from Paige. "Really?"

"Really." She strokes the back of his neck. "After all, that's what you'd call your nephew's wife, right?"

"Only if he'd gotten so senile he lost a few years."

Rey snerks a little at that.

"She doesn't like the bottle," Kylo says, sensing the way Paige is feeling it in her mouth. The texture and shape are wrong, and it's not warm, and doesn't smell like Rose.

"But she'll put up with it because she's hungry," Rey adds. She sits on the arm of the chair, her arm around Kylo's shoulders. "See, she likes you."

"Because I'm feeding her."

"She's almost four months old, if you're warm and bring her food, you're awesome."

They sit there, quietly, as Paige sucks up her dinner.

"You know, if it's their anniversary, it's ours, too," he says, looking up at her, a bit of spark in his eyes.

Rey shifts his hair, and kisses the back of his neck, huge grin on her face, and some very warm thoughts in her head. "Yeah. I know."

"How long were they going to stay out?" That spark's getting warmer as plans for the rest of the evening coalesce around the feel of her teeth against the nape of his neck and the images in her mind.

Rey shifts up to look him in the eyes. "About four hours."

He raises an eyebrow.

"About another hour." She grins down at him.

"She's getting sleepy," Rey says half an hour later, after Paige has finished dinner and is resting on Kylo's chest. He's humming tunelessly at her, patting her back, and she's opening and closing her fist in his tunic.

"I know." He can feel tiredness clinging to her eyes, and how she's a few moments from just slipping off to sleep on his chest.

Rey glances from him to the crib.

He shakes his head, his hand gently stroking up and down Paige's back. "She doesn't want to go there."

Rey inclines her head a bit. It's perfectly clear to both of them that Paige is awfully happy where she is and would prefer to stay on the warm, solid, gently vibrating person under her. "I know. If it was up to her, she'd spend pretty much all of her time on a warm human." She glances at the crib again. "Finn and Rose like to, at least occasionally, not have a baby on them, though."

He nuzzles the top of Paige's head, and then looks up at Rey with a smirk on his face. "What sort of dark menace would I be if I don't break the rules to suit my own desires?"

She rolls her eyes a little, but doesn't move to take Paige away and put her in her crib.

Kylo makes a pleased little hum to Paige, and nuzzles her again. "After all, I'm not the one who's going to have to try and get you to sleep on your own later tonight."

Rey gives him a little shove.

He smirks at her, his hand gently rubbing up and down on Paige's back as her eyes drift shut. "Small indulgences and rule-breaking is the pointof uncles."

She has a flash of several whispered conversations between Kylo and Lando, most of them along the lines of "Your mom and dad don't have to know about this."

"Did they?"

"Probably. But it made me happy to believe we had secrets."

Rey feels Finn and Rose coming before they get to her door.

And she feels Kylo sigh, a mixture of annoyed, resigned, angry, and sad, all of them muted down, pastel versions of bright colored emotions, as he hands Paige over to her, and heads to their bedroom, to hide.

She's mostly feeling… she doesn't know… torn about that. Making him hide feels… awful, especially in his own home, and part of her really wants to just be done with this… just, be out in the open with him and let it fall how it falls, but… she's so scared of everything going sideways if they're out in the open and…

Moot point, for now. There's knocking at the door, and she opens it, attention on Rose and Finn who are looking like they had a good time out and about, and she gets hit with this wave of abject pleasure at seeing Paige again. It's this huge, sharp, joy sparking at the sight of their daughter and…

And she sort of knew that she might have trouble with Finn and Rose leaving. She could expect that might be an issue for her, but it wasn't. It was utterly clear that they weren't rejecting Paige or throwing her away or doing anything other than trying to get a little time with each other. So, they left, and it didn't set any of her past off.

And now they're back, and Rose is holding Paige, cooing at her, and Finn's got his hand over Rose's on Paige's back, asking how his baby girl is and if she had a good time with Aunt Rey, and…

And it bursts over Rey, in a long, shuddering almost wail of abject anguish. She swallows it down, hard, determined to not break down sobbing in front of Finn and Rose because they came back, and her parents didn't.

On the other side of the bedroom door, Kylo is having something of an existential crisis. He absolutely knows Rey doesn't want him out there with Finn and Rose. And he can feel her all but screaming beneath her skin, and all he wants to do is pull her close and cuddle her.

And, either she's doing an astonishingly good job of hiding her pain, or Finn and Rose are so besotted with the baby girl in their grasp that they just can't feel Rey dying next to them, or they just don't care, or…

Fuck it!

He steps out, fast, pulling Rey near, noticing for a tenth of a second both of the Ticos staring at him in utter horror, Finn scrambling for the blaster he's not wearing, and Rose going pale, cuddling Paige to her, turning her back, putting her physical body between the monster and her baby.

He casts, quickly, fingers moving, anger, fear, the desire to comfort his woman all lending extra power to his Force. "Not him," his fingers move across his body, and Finn and Rose go soft and easy, comforted by Padme's presence. "Leave." And they do, without another word.

They're not even a step through the door, when he's pulling Rey to him, holding her close, his face against the top of her head, his arms around her, a soft, dull sound coming from him, trying to comfort her.

He feels her heart wailing. Feels eons of waiting for someone to come back to her. Feels the empty lies she told herself, the days she marked onto a metal wall, every near-starvation meal, every aching muscle torn from too hard work, all in the service of keeping the truth that no one was coming back at bay. Feels that moment when she finally broke, finally gave up on anyone ever coming back for her. He sees her standing in front of him, tears streaming down her face, as he broke her lies open and made her face them. The lie of her parents were somewhere just out of reach, searching for her, too.

"Shhhh…"

He remembers her making that noise to him when he mourned Leia. Not to quiet him, but just to provide a soothing vibration. He can feel her holding him as he cried himself out for the loss of his mother and everything that went with it.

He strokes her back, and picks her up, settling both of them on the floor, in front of the armchair, holding her steady, feeling her shudder and sob against him.

Dark side. He's always worn his pain on his face and his skin. Cloaked himself in it. Drew strength off of it. Hurt himself when he needed more, needed to endure another moment, fight a little stronger or harder. He can remember pounding the wound Chewie gave him when his adrenaline was flagging, the spike of pain keeping him going beyond what he should have been able to do. No one has ever had to wonder if he was in hurting. It'd cling to him like his scent, fill any room he was in. Always there, always with him. For decades, his nightly meditation was a litany of pain. Of every slight, insult, hurt, intentional or not. He filled his mind with it and thrived on it.

It may not have been healthy, or good for him, or… constructive. But no one, ever, had a chance of pretending Kylo Ren wasn't in pain.

But light side Rey, with her easy smile and helpful demeanor, and pretty looks… Even he could forget it was under there. And maybe sometimes she did, too. Maybe that's important. Maybe it makes everything else in life easier to bear if there's not a constant thrum of pain in the background.

He holds her close, feeling her heart pounding and all of the pain of all of those years of begging them to come back. But it was always there, always hiding back there.

He rocks her, gently, lips pressed to the top of her head, as she wails. The cry of a small child being ripped away from her parents. Parents who didn't deserve her.

There's a knocking at her door, "Rey… What's wrong, Rey?" And then it slips open and Jacen's there.

His eyes flash wide, at Rey sobbing in Kylo's arms. Kylo just shakes his head. "Nothing anyone here did, and nothing anyone can help."

"They'll be here in a minute if she keeps crying like this. Everyone can feel it, and no one wants Rey hurting."

Kylo nods. "Send them away. She'll talk when and as she wishes, later."

Jacen nods.

Kylo pulls the back to the Supremacy, to his bed, where she can be as loud and sad and hurt as long as she needs without having to answer any questions about it.

He can feel the sounds in her mind. "I'll be back, sweetheart." He doesn't know if they actually said it, or if it's a lie she told herself so many times she can't find the line between truth and a hope. He doesn't think it matters if it happened or not, not in the sense of making things better or different or…

He strokes her hair, and takes her left hand in his right. His thumb glides over her ring. I will always, no matter what, dead or alive, come back to you. Always.

He feels her understand his vow, and nod a little, but right now he knows that's a vow for him. A promise to himself, for himself, for how he'll treat her. There'll be a time when she's less mired in her own sorrow, a time when this vow can be for her, but now isn't it.

I love you. That's for her, but with the knowledge that one love doesn't erase the pain of the lack of others. If anyone knows that, he does.

You are enough. That's for her, too. And again, it's thought with the awareness of the fact that for her parents, she wasn't. They valued a cheap drunk more than they valued her, and that was that. And nothing he or anyone else can ever do can even come close to making that better. It's just something she's got to endure.

He holds her close, rocking her gently, and makes one more promise, to the future, to their children not yet conceived. There aren't words to go with it, just feelings, love and acceptance, hope and patience, a determination to cherish her light, and to use his dark to shield and protect them, and wrapping her in them, in the world he will give their children, that slows her crying, some.

He can't erase her past any more than she can erase his, but they can be better to the future than the past was to them.

And that's something.

This is a dream. He knows they're in his bed, clinging closely to each other. And like his dream of Anakin, one of his ghosts has come to visit. Unlike his dream with Anakin, he knows from the first breath that this is real.

"Are you here as a warning or…"

Han's very Han right now, at ease, all but oozing confident charm. He crooks a half smile and says, "Thought you might want to chat with your dad a bit. Maybe… advice?"

They're in the Falcon, not as it is, but as he remembers it, dingy off-white paneling and Han's half-in, half-out one of the maintenance hatches, about to dip down and work on something.

Han lowers himself down, into the inner-workings of the Falcon. Most of their best moments with each other were spent like this, Han deep in the electronics, messing around, Ben handing him tools.

Kylo strides over to the hatch, but it's only two steps away now, and sits next to it, easily folding his legs under him. "Not sure I'm looking for advice."

"Not sure you'd take it if it were on offer?" Han says, not looking up.

Kylo shrugs, leaning over so he can see down to where Han is. "I'd listen to it. I'm getting better at that. Don't necessarily take it, but I do listen to it more often now."

Han nods. "Gamma spanner?"

Kylo hands it down, and waits. Han doesn't actually tighten anything with that tool. That one's entirely for whacking things that are out of place back into place. After a few sharp bangs, Han tucks it into his belt. He may need to whack something else, soon.

"So…" Kylo leads.

"Wait," Han says, looking up at Kylo from his spot under the floor. "You want it so bad you can taste it. I can feel it. Fantasies of her and your baby and all of it. But, wait. Give it time. She's not going anywhere. You two actually get on, more than just…" Han doesn't fill in that sentence, but Kylo can feel what he's not saying about his relationship with Leia. "Anyway. Wait."

Kylo just looks at him. "That's it, wait?"

Han nods. "Wait. How much of everything you hated about growing up can be blamed on your mom and I being in the middle of one war or uprising or civil disturbance or another?"

Kylo thinks about that and decides that maybe not all or even most of it, but enough was, and it made everything else more difficult, too. He nods.

Han climbs up, so he's once again half-in, half-out. "Get as secure as you can. I know you don't want to be the father I was, always gone, kid tucked away, hidden from the new threat each week brought up. And I know if you wait to be completely secure, it'll never happen, so, I'm not saying wait until you've got everything under control, but… wait long enough you feel like you at least control your home territory. If that's theSupremacy or wherever you end up, make sure you've got that safe, that you've got a second-in-command or better a few of them you trust. So that you're not feeling like every minute you aren't personally overseeing everything that you're in danger."

"Is that you or Mom talking?"

Han rolls his eyes a little at that. "Just because I did a better job of keeping the worry off my face and out of my voice doesn't mean I didn't feel it. And we learned about controlling our home the hard way. They bugged your first nanny droid."

"Is that why—" All the nannies he remembers were human.

Han nods. "Yeah. You can't really bug a person. And if any of them were telling our secrets, your mom would have felt it. But we had to learn that the hard way. That's why we moved out of Hanna City, too. If someone was coming, we'd make them have to hump it way the hell out into the boonies to do it."

"Did they come?"

Han doesn't exactly shrug, but he's not exactly bubbling over with the truth right now.

"I'm not ten anymore."

"A few times… a year. We had perimeter guards. They took care of it. Nothing got within a klick of our home, but that's a lot closer than your mom and I wanted them. Especially since it tended to happen when we weren't around."

Kylo can certainly understand that. And with that something else slips into place. "That's part of how she convinced you to take me to Luke."

He half shrugs. "It certainly didn't weaken her argument. By the time you were eight, everyone knew where we were. The number of people who knew where Luke's Jedi school was could be counted without taking off your trousers, so… Yeah. It helped."

Kylo raises an eyebrow at that. "Did you run into a lot of people who couldn't count to twenty-one without help?"

Han smirks brilliantly at that. "More than you'd think. The galaxy's full of idiots."

Kylo inclines his head; he's sure that's not wrong, too. "If waiting's such a good plan, why didn't you and Mom?"

Han snorts a quick laugh, and says, "Speaking of being unable to count…" Then he just looks at Kylo.

Kylo's mouth opens and then closes and then, for the first time ever, he realizes the fact that his birthday is pretty much exactly ten Imperial Standard months after the Battle of Endor. "Oh."

Han nods, and smiles. "The party after the Battle of Endor is one of my best memories. Sometimes, you're just so happy… everything else fades away."

"I'd guess so."

He stares at his son. "Are you going to tell me you've never been there?"

Kylo feels the half-smile spread across his lips, remembering what day this is the anniversary of, and even if they didn't get any level of celebration he was hoping for, there'll always be tomorrow, or next month, or year. "No. That's… uh… one of my best memories, too."

"Uh huh." That gets another Han smirk. A genuinely amused one this time. They're quiet for a moment, holding a companionable silence. Probably the first once since Kylo was eight.

Kylo breaks it. "Why didn't you… talk to me like this when I was younger?"

"I tried. I'd call, remember, and you'd duck out, tell me you were busy, or not answer, or we'd start fighting."

Kylo swallows. "I always felt like… you didn't want to be talking to me. Like you called out of… duty, or so you could tell Mom you tried. And I didn't want to… be a chore you did so Mom wouldn't yell at you."

Han exhales long and slow at that. "Nervous. I was nervous." He rolls his eyes a little, and half-shrugs and rubs his lips together. "You were young, and a Jedi…" another eye roll, "and I was supposed to be encouraging that, and most of my stories weren't exactly… appropriate." He rubs his hand over his lips. "'Hey, Ben, did I ever tell you about that great party after Endor? Your mom and I got really drunk on victory, one cup of wine, and each other and… ten months later there you were!' That's not a story for your fourteen-year-old, even if he wasn't training to be a monk. How about… 'What'd you do this week, Dad?' 'Got into a twenty ship dogfight while carrying 'medical supplies' that were really intelligence on some general or another who hadn't taken the Concordance as personally binding to him, almost died three times, killed a few dozen people, saw your mom for a night, and then off to the next fight. Lando and Chewie and I spent two days creeping through a maze of cantinas and casinos picking up intel. Got into three more fights, including two shootouts, and then hot-tailed it out of there in the Falcon.' I had… nothing… appropriate to talk to you about, and no one thought the sort of stories I could easily tell, would make it easier for you to stick with your training. And then, on top of that, even if I was just thinking about them, you could pick them up, and then Leia and Luke would be annoyed at me for sabotaging our best hope and…"

"Well… that's not wrong. I wanted that!"

"I knew." Han's quiet. "And… seeing you over the holovid… When you were having a good day it was fine, and… On the good days, you were so much better. But the bad ones… seeing how miserable you were… how angry… That made it hard to leave you there."

"Good!" there's a sharp pleasure in Kylo's voice. If he had to suffer, everyone else should, too.

Han just looks at him, eyes cool, and then voice dry, he says, "Yeah. It's easy to say that, here, now, looking back. Give it time, kid." And then his voice is not dry. "You are going to do things your kid hates. And all you've got is the hope that it'll work out. And hope's not a fucking promise. You'll beg the Force and any and every god you've ever heard the name of that it works out, but you won't know until it's done, and even then… You won't know." Han looks up at Kylo, keeping deep, serious eye contact. "You'll do everything you can, bleed for it, die for it, if you need to, for the hope that it'll help, but you'll never know."

Kylo swallows, hard, at that.

And Han nods, slowly.

It's a dream, not a ghost vision, so Kylo reaches out. Han's still below him, head about knee level with Kylo, and he gently strokes his father's face, fingertips making contact with skin rough with stubble. His voice is harsh, broken, as he says, "Thank you."

Han nods, and squeezes Kylo's hand.

The dream fades, and Kylo slips back into normal sleep, but he doesn't forget it.