It's morning before enough of Kylo's spell burns off that Finn and Rose figure out that something really off happened the night before.
Like, really off.
Like, they left Paige's crib, extra wipes, nappies, and clothing at Rey's. In fact, it looks like the only thing they brought home was Paige, which made for a somewhat off night, because she slept in the bed with them.
They're both kind of… fuzzy… on what could have possibly happened where that seemed like a good plan for the end of the night.
They were there. They were saying hello to Paige. They were petting her. And then Padme was in the room, holding Rey, who was… red… Like… flushed, and maybe… something was wrong… and then they were across the settlement in their own place with Paige and…
Weird.
Like, bugfuck insane weird.
"We saw Padme, right?" Finn says, as he's getting their breakfast stuff together and Rose feeds Paige. Padme who never lets any of them really see him just… stepped into the room. He remembers that.
"Yeah. He was in the room. He stepped in and…" Rose's voice trails off because she can kind of remember like… almost… a spike of fear or something, but… Not why or how or… Even how they got home.
"Yeah." Finn has the same muddled expression on his face. "Black?"
"Lots of black. I remember black. Dark hair, and black clothing, and…" The man has to have a face. It's almost literally impossible for him to not have a face, but Rose has no idea what it looks like.
"Big. He's big. Sort of filled up the whole room."
Rose nods at that, too. "Or… maybe not… him… but like… his Force?"
Finn's on the verge of giving himself whiplash he's nodding so hard at that. "Yeah. There was this… power around him."
"Did it scare you?" Rose asks.
Finn's thinking hard. Trying to remember. She was holding Paige. He had an arm around her, and his hand on Paige's back, and he was looking at her face, grinning at her, and she was looking up at them, and there was the sound of the door opening, and then he looked up, and everything went cold for a half-second, and he can remember the feel of the hand around Rose reaching for his belt, where his blaster would be, but wasn't because he doesn't wear a gun on a date, and he was leaping forward, trying to get his girls behind him, and…
They were home.
"I think it must have. I can't remember feeling fear, but… my body was doing fear things."
Rose nods again. She strokes Paige's face. "What happened last night, baby girl?"
Finn puts a plate next to Rose; it's got toast and sausages and eggs on it. Nursing mamas need to eat, and he loves the fact that he can keep her in lots of healthy, nutritious food. He loves the fact that four months on, her cheeks and hips and breasts are still plump and round. For anyone raised on a core world, it's a silly, little thing, but neither of them were, and it's nothing they take for granted.
"How about I go over, get the rest of our stuff, and ask?" Finn asks, stroking Paige's face.
"That sounds like a good plan."
Or it would be, if anyone was home. It's not the first time he's knocked on Rey's door and no one answered. It is the first time there's a pile of his stuff in there, some of which he could really use, so… He pokes his head in. "Rey?"
Nothing.
"Okay, yeah, you're really not here. That's uh… great. All right. I'm just… getting all the fucking stuff I just left here for no good reason last night." Kriffing Force users.
He gathers up Paige's stuff, puts it into the cradle, and… yeah, there's just this off feeling, and…
"She's with Padme," Jacen says, voice soft, though Finn just about jumps out of his skin when he hears him.
"Jacen! Don't sneak up on people like that!"
"I wasn't trying to. The door was open, and I could feel you being curious."
"Yeah, well, we picked up Paige last night and then… nothing."
Now Jacen looks curious. "Nothing? You didn't hear her crying?"
"Crying?" Finn's appalled that he could have missed that. Rey was crying? Rey never cries. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know. I was getting ready for bed, talking with Magiit and Elias, and then there was this horrible wave of sorrow, so I come over here to check it out, and she's crying, and Padme's petting her back, and then he took her away. What happened?"
"I have no idea." And Finn's not sure what bugs him more, that he has literally no idea, or that he can tell that Jacen's figured out Finn's the last person to see Rey before whatever happened happened, and he's using his voice to compel Finn to tell what happened.
And Jacen's staring at him, rapidly coming to the conclusion that Finn really has no idea, but he should, and that when someone who knows how to build this spell does it, they do it right.
"Wait, you just walked in and saw Padme?" Finn says.
"Well, uh, yeah. He brought me here. I've seen him a few times. You haven't?"
"Just… Last night… For a minute."
Finn watches Jacen nod slowly, and then say, "He said it was nothing anyone here had done, and nothing anyone could do about it."
"Oh." And like that, Finn knows that whatever the problem is, Padme is handling it.
Because, that's what a husband does.
Kylo supposes knocking can sound tentative. He's not sure if C8 can do tentative, but it sounds that way. "Master Ren…"
"Later, C8." He keeps his voice low, not that that matters much. He needs to get the soundproofing in his room taken care of, but it keeps slipping his mind.
"You have—"
"They'll wait." Rey stirs a little in his arms, and he snuggles her close. He's going exactly nowhere until she gives him leave to. And that's that. He strokes her hair, pulling as much soft, content, sleepy Force as he can, hoping to wrap her in a warm, soothing blanket of his touch and magic.
It's a good three hours past when he'd normally be up and moving. Their breakfast and coffee are cold, and still on the outside of the door, his morning reading and readying time has evaporated, and his first meeting is looming, and none of it matters a fucking lick.
Kinear and Schiff can handle whatever needs handled for right now.
She cried through most of the night, and dropped into an exhausted sleep a few hours ago.
She held him through his tears, and he can damn well repay the favor.
Plus, she wasn't sleeping for most of the night, so he wasn't either, and then when he was sleeping, he was dreaming intensely, so he's tired. And it's just… good… to be able to rest when you're tired.
"C8."
"Sir?"
"Bring the food in. We'll eat sooner or later." After all, C8 knows there's someone in here with him. Everyone else does, too, apparently. And it's not like he can shock the droid by being, still, they hadn't undressed, in his blacks minus his tunic, belt, and gloves, cuddling his woman in his bed. So, they might as well have some food ready when they finally get up.
C8's in with the tray a moment later, putting it on Kylo's table. He glances to see Kylo in bed, wrapped around Rey, but doesn't say anything. He just nods, and quietly says, "I'll clear today's schedule."
"Tomorrow, too."
"Done, sir."
There's a minute where Finn's feeling pretty good about everything. He'd been on a mission, find out what happened, and he still doesn't know, but he's completely unbothered by that because Padme's on the job, and…
He's a few feet from his house when it washes over him that not only does he not know what happened, he still doesn't have his stuff, and he's going to personally smack some sense into Jacen, assuming he can catch the little bugger and keep his mind about him, because he knows what Jacen just did.
He turns around, muttering to himself about fucking Majis and their fucking magic and their fucking covering for each other. He goes back to Rey's, gets Paige's stuff, looks around, hoping that… something will click, but it doesn't.
They were there, and then they weren't, and…
And Poe's due in today, and he's thinking that when he gets in they are sitting down and having a real chat about Padme, because what the hell is wrong with this guy that he'll mind wipe them rather than let him see them for a minute and a half?
He lets the kids see him. And sure, they're not going anywhere anytime soon, but…
Something about this guy is just off, and if he's making Rey cry…
If he's making Rey cry, he's gonna do some crying, too, and Finn, and Poe, and Chewie are going to personally make sure for every tear she sheds, he sheds at least ten.
Rey has the sense of voices near her, and a moment of maybe thinking that there shouldn't be voices, but… Worrying about it is too big of a pain in the ass. She's exhausted, and warm, and… sore.
She can't think of why she should be sore, but she just hurts all over.
So she snuggles in closer to Kylo, feeling his chin against the top of her head and his arms around her, and burrows back into sleep. Everything else can wait.
Except it can't… She's warm, and tired, but her brain is waking up, refusing to just drift along and…
Sore.
She just hurts. Like… the last time she felt like this she'd just crashed into the floor after Snoke finished flooding her with pain. She feels like an all over bruise.
She feels the scrape of Kylo's stubbled chin against her forehead, his lips soft against her. "Hey," his voice is quiet.
She blinks, realizes they're on the Supremacy where they haven't been spending much time since he found out about the lack of soundproofing on his room. She blinks again, not remembering coming here.
Just… all over pain. Her body, soul, heart, everything screaming at once, bellowing out in agony.
At something so basic as good parenting.
She feels herself flush in embarrassment. And again, lips against her forehead. "None of that. I have it on good authority that part of being a Maji is actually feeling whatever it is that's going on, and trying to understand it, not just shoving it into the back of your mind and pretending it's not there."
She'd glare at him, but her face is against his neck, so it's not like he'd see it.
"Feels stupid," she says.
He gently rubs her back. "I've got decades of practice feeling stupid about my emotions. I've never found a single situation where it helped."
She knows he's right, but, she still feels sore, and stupid, and just… bad. "What time is it?"
"Doesn't matter."
"You've got meetings, and I've got—"
He shakes his head. "Today, it doesn't matter. The Order won't implode if Kinear takes my meetings, and the Maji won't self-destruct if they have to spend an unplanned day without you."
"They'll wonder where I am."
"Jacen knows you're with me." He scoots down a little, so they're face to face, and he gently strokes her cheek. He offers her a somewhat flat half smile. "The first time I touched your mind, I saw your memory of them. Of being pulled away, screaming. 'I'll come back, Sweetheart.' It's in there, clamoring around…" he lets it hang, hoping she'll talk to him about it. But she doesn't say anything, so he finishes the sentence, "but I only hear it in your voice."
She blinks again, feeling the soreness intensify.
He nods at that. "I know it hurts." Another of those limp half-smiles. "That's part of why I can handle pain so well. It always hurt." He kisses her. "You never let yourself feel it, did you? Never mourned it because you never let yourself really admit it happened?"
She nods at that. And he kisses her again, and then shifts up, letting her burrow her face against his chest. "So… no, nothing on the schedule for today. Maybe nothing tomorrow, if we need it. Just you and I and feeling it. You can't kill the past if you won't admit it happened."
"Chewie?" Finn asks as they're setting up the next run. They're hoping to get shipstones at Elysium, take all but two of them (Two are coming home to them here. If they're even half as good a power source as the journals say, they're going to have a lot of good uses for them.) to R'Jiria, in R'Jiria they're planning on picking up more transteel paneling, along with high-nitro soil, again, most of that will move onto Kettal, but some of it will come home with them for the micro farms, in Kettal they're picking up things just for them, Rose and several of the children have put together lists of plants they want to eat, so seedling flats, and then they're off to Cloud City, the next step in Operation Break Canto Bight: Get Finn A Good Suit is up.
It should take them eight days, and it should be pretty straightforward flying. The only contraband on the Falcon for this run is him and Chewie. And, with any luck, those fake IDs Poe got them are good enough that if they get boarded, they'll stand up.
Chewie looks up from the pad where he's doing the navi calculations. He grunts a What?
"Rey says you've met Padme."
He rolls his eyes.
"What's the story with him?"
He's Rey's husband. How much more story do you need?
Finn almost allows himself to be distracted by the term Chewie chose to use for Padme, but decides he can think about that, later. "Come on, I know you know more than that."
Of course I do. Doesn't mean I'm saying more.
Finn's voice is serious. "Chewie… We don't know him. We can't see him. The deep cover in the Order stuff is… shit. Everything about this sets my danger sense off. Last night… something happened, and I've got no idea what, other than, I guess we saw Padme, and he wiped our minds rather than let us remember his face… Chewie, this is wrong!"
Chewie sighs, it's a long, deep sound. He nods. Do you trust Rey to know what's best for herself?
"Yes, but…" He looks around, voice low. Finn's not averse to a hot bit of gossip, but this is personal in a way most of the fluff they shoot around isn't. "Jacen said she was crying."
Chewie looks alarmed at that.
"And I don't… There's just this blank. I can't think of anything that would make her cry, you know? But she was there, and then he was there, and Jacen said she was crying, and she's gone now…"
Chewie's eyes narrow.
"He wouldn't hurt her, would he?"
If he did, it's the last thing he's ever going to do.
"Of course, but… She's gone, and…"
I've got this.
"How?"
I just do.
"Chewie?"
He shakes his head. Not for you. Not right now.
"I hate this."
I know. Bring it up with Rey. He's her secret to keep.
Finn's eyes narrow, and then he nods, leaving the ship.
There are words Rey's never used. Not to Kylo, not in her own mind. Not about herself.
Words like: abandoned, worthless, unlovable.
Words like: burden and slave.
Words like: abuse and rape.
Words she's never let form in the depths of her mind. Words that have never touched her tongue or lips. Words that are unspeakable, unthinkable, because thinking them, speaking them, makes them real, and if they're real they have to be dealt with.
There are things she's never let herself feel. Sensations kept long-banished because she never named what happened to her. Blame she never placed, so feelings couldn't be attributed.
Rage, hate, rejection.
She's never let herself aim those at the people who sold her into bondage for a quick drunk. Never let them blossom in her heart. Fate and the Force can be awful, but there's nothing to be done about it. No one's fault, nothing personal.
But her life on Jakku wasn't a quirk of fate. It wasn't a bad decision made of bad circumstances, giving her the best life they could. Her fate, every day of it, was the manifestation of a deeply personal abnegation of love and responsibility.
Opening her mind to it, she can remember. She was worth three bottles of rotgut. "Skinny, little thing. She won't last long here." Plutt had said that, and then held out three bottles. And they grabbed them, fast, eyes shining with the longing that should have been hers.
Her mother scooped them up the way Rose gathered Paige in her arms.
And that's why that gesture broke her.
And Kylo holds her while she finally acknowledges the past, so she can start to put herself back together.
This time the knock is certainly tentative. And it's not the sound of C8's metal knuckles on Kylo's metal door.
He can feel Kinear on the opposite side of it, and knows whatever it is, it's important enough that he's decided it was worth disturbing him for.
He looks at Rey, her eyes are bright and skin pink from tears, but she nods, okay with him taking care of whatever this is.
He unlatches his door, and Kinear looks up at him, seeing him still in last night's clothing, stubble black on his face, eyes puffy and tired, face pink from sharing Rey's tears, and for a moment he can feel a pang of sympathy. Kinear's read the situation well enough to have decided this is a house that mourns. He doesn't know why, though his guess, that they'd lost a pregnancy, is fortunately wrong.
"This came through an hour ago. Directly for you. General Organa's personal code. None of us can read it, but…" He offers up the pad.
Kylo runs his hand through his hair, knowing where this has to come from. It's absolutely confirmed when he looks at it. There are probably fewer than a thousand people left in the galaxy who can read this. Written Thykarann. Chewie could have put the encryption of the Gods on their common tongue and not had it this secure.
It's short, and he can hear the growls in his head. She better be okay.
He flips the pad, looking for a sketch program, and scribbles back, fast, She is. Dealing with parts of the past that won't stay past. Home tomorrow or the day after.
She's fine. Home tomorrow or the next day. Chewie says to Finn and Rose as they're helping to set up the third of the microfarms.
"You know how to contact Padme?" Rose sounds astonished as she says it.
Only an idiot goes where no one can find them. Rey's not an idiot.
"You know who he is, who he really is?" Rose says, looking up at Chewie.
Yes.
"How long was he with the Resistance?" Rafe Kenna, who's also intrigued with the mystery of Padme, asks.
Chewie shrugs. Wasn't my job to keep an eye on him.
"What was your job?" Savarah asks.
Chewie smiles a little. Mostly kept Han from getting killed. And from there he starts to tell the story of how they accidentally got drawn into the Rebellion because his idiot sidekick fell in love with a princess, and decided to get in good with her by saving a farm boy in over his head.
Setting up a microfarm isn't exactly fascinating. It's fiddly work, putting a lot of little hoses together with plasteel beds and rigging lighting for the plants. A good story makes the job a lot more pleasant.
But neither Rose nor Finn forgets that they've got a mystery to solve.
"You asked about three buns, remember?"
Kylo nods, stroking her hair. He'd mentioned it their first night on the beach, a year and a day ago. She used to wear it that way all the time, and she still does, but less often now, maybe once or twice a month.
"It was so they'd know it was me."
He just holds her tighter, and wishes he could blow Jakku up all over again.
As Luke taught it, healing is a light skill. And maybe, in the sense of knitting broken bone, and setting damaged energy flows to rights, it is, but that's not what Rey needs, not today.
Right now, a dark embrace, the arms of someone who's felt, known, survived and thrived through the storm of emotions that feel like they're going to drown her matters.
When he mourned his mother and all she represented, he didn't need a guide in the dark. He knew the dark inside and out. He needed someone to remind him that there was life outside, and through, the dark.
She doesn't need a reminded of life outside the dark; she knows that. She's intentionally shut herself out of the dark rather than go through it. She needs someone to hold her hand and let her know she's not alone in the dark.
And if she was the light he needed to get to the other side of the dark, he can be the presence that makes the dark not so lonely.
And today is hard, and it hurts, and it feels like nails raked through raw nerves, acid dripped upon open wounds, but tomorrow will be better, a little, at least. And the tomorrow after that will be better, yet.
"So, how was the date night?" Poe asks when he drops by Rose and Finn's for dinner. He got in a few minutes earlier, and tomorrow he can unload their cargo. He's got another plasteel dome. They'll have a proper gym once they get it set up. He's also got a craps table, so Rey can practice stopping the dice on the right number.
It amuses him to no end that the School of the Maji teaches, apparently, the balance of the Force, and how to cheat at gambling.
"The date was great," Rose says, smiling at Finn. Fortunately, both of them remember that clearly.
"After wasn't." Finn adds, and then explains what happened while the three of them have supper. He wraps up with, "You have to know this guy, Admiral Dameron. He's got his own ship, for the Force's sake. Who is he?"
Poe blinks and rubs his eyes. Finn's right, he should know who Padme is. But… "Leia… Because of how she went…" He sighs. "Spies. I got Holdo's after she died. Each Admiral had their own contingent. Reported directly to us. We didn't know each other's. I never knew Leia's pets. That way I couldn't endanger them. She didn't know mine. We didn't know Ackbar's… So on and so forth." He looks at the ceiling of Rose's cottage. "There were twenty-seven deep cover spies I never met. They knew me. And I knew their call signs. Someone tells me it's rainy on Bothan, and I know they're one of Leia's. They tell me what day and month it's raining, and I know which one they are, but…" He purses his lips and looks annoyed. "Ren interrogated me once." He licks his lips. "I'd have rather been tortured. It hurts, you scream a lot, and eventually they give up or you die. But there's just nothing you can do when he's in your mind. Doesn't matter what you try, what you think about, how much you try to hold back… He's going to find it. So… I couldn't contact them. They could find me, but not the other way around."
"And you never knew Leia's spies?" Rose says.
"No." He thinks for a moment. "I know we didn't have anyone on the Supremacy. So… The Finalizer maybe? That was Hux's flagship. Keeping eyes on him would have mattered. And… Padme's Maji, so not sticking him on the same ship with Snoke was likely a good plan."
"Who's flying it now?" Finn asks. "Whoever he is, he's got his own rooms, and enough privacy for her to be there undisturbed. That means it's hisship."
Finn thinks. He hasn't paid attention to this for quite a while. "Captain Mitaka. He jumped, a lot, when we took out the Supremacy. Something like a quarter of the First Order officer class got a promotion, often a big one, that day."
"What's he look like?" Finn asks.
"Uh… I've never seen him." He thinks as hard as he can, trying to remember anything he knows about him. "He's a Captain, so command blacks. Dark hair. Dark eyes."
"Big?" Rose asks.
"I've only read the file on him, and I'm about fifty percent likely to be wrong on this."
"Okay," Rose says. The three of them look at each other. If Padme is Mitaka… he'd want to keep that as silent as possible, but… Why stay with the Order? It's… done. Unless… "You think he's hanging on to take out Ren?"
"Balls of fucking steel," Poe says, under his breath. "He's Maji, probably considered himself a Jedi back in the day, and Ren's the Jedi Killer."
"Chewie wouldn't confirm that he knows Padme through the Resistance. He's really… circumspect about that. But… he knew Luke, and Luke's Jedi School. Han said one of the students, Ren, killed the others… What if he missed one?" Finn adds.
"You know Ren is Han and Leia's son, right?" Poe says.
Rose nods and Finn says, "Yeah, we were there when Leia said it."
"Okay. Well, the Jedi School goes up in flames." Poe speculates, "Luke calls for help. They go, hoping to get their son, and only find this one last kid… Leia would have taken him in, hidden him, felt like she had to take care of him… Made sure Ren thought he'd killed all of them."
"Rey said Luke shut himself off from the Force. That's how he hid for so long. He could have taught Mitaka to do the same. That way he could work his way up in the First Order, get closer and closer, and not get caught," Rose adds.
"Rey got on and off the Supremacy somehow. It'd make a lot more sense if she had help from the inside," Poe says.
"Of the Finalizer?" Rose adds.
"It's one big computer system. If he had access on one ship, he could mess with a different one," Finn says.
All three of them look at each other. "So…" Rose says.
Finn half inclines his head. "I guess we just… leave it be."
Poe nods, and then says, "And you cannot get caught. I promise you, if Ren's staring you in the face, whether you want to think about it or not, you're going to let who Mitaka is slip."
"Fuck," Finn says. "Damnit."
Rose nods. "Don't get caught."
He gives her a little half smile.
Poe rolls his eyes. "Let's hope curiosity didn't kill the spy."
When Poe gets back to his ship, he digs out the datapad that has all of the Resistance's intelligence on it. He puts his code in, and reads. They've got almost nothing on Mitaka, which… would make sense if he's one of their spies, but… What they do have… Dark hair. Dark eyes. Fair skin. So, all of that matches the glimpses he's gotten of Padme, but…
Poe's seen Padme's boots, and their file says the man is 1.75 meters tall. There's just no way he wears boots that big. So… the file is wrong, or he's not Padme.
When Rey goes back to Lirium, her hair is down. And though she'll wear it pulled back, and up, and in a ponytail, she'll never put it in three buns again. Her friends will ask if she's okay, and don't press too hard when she says she is. She can feel that they feel guilty about something, but she doesn't barge into their minds enough to ask. Eventually, Finn's thinking about it loudly enough that she finds out that they've decided that Padme is Mitaka.
She doesn't know who that is, but decides not to mess with it.
Eventually, after a week, on a quiet afternoon, when she gets some time alone with Finn and Rose, she'll explain what happened, and why, and they'll hold onto her, and pet her, and she'll let them, and this time, saying it won't hurt quite so badly.
But it still hurts.
Kylo makes sure his first meeting, before he really 'gets back to work' is with Kinear.
He expects to get briefed on what happened for the two days he spent with Rey, and that's about it, but as soon as Kinear steps into his office, Kylo knows that's not all that's coming.
"Another conversation for you to forget and me to remember?" Kylo asks as Kinear sits.
"We're both fine remembering this one." Kinear gives Kylo's hand a gentle squeeze. "Though part of it is for you as a man and part's for you as a leader."
Kylo waits, not sure what to do with this. He knows Kinear's wrong about what happened, but he's got no good lie ready to cover and really does not want to explain what was actually happening, so… "I'm listening."
"It hurts. The people who tell you it's not a big deal, that it happens all the time, or that it's not really a child; they've never been there. And if they're lucky, they never will. You'll survive it. Time will pass, it'll hurt less, and you'll move through it if you let yourself, but you won't forget, and you shouldn't." Kylo nods, feeling Kinear's past shaping his idea of Kylo's present.
"Thank you."
Kinear gives him a curt nod. "Now for you as a leader. I don't know what, if anything, you're planning for an eventual succession for the Order, but… Everything is easier if your heirs, all of them, are legitimate. And for you, Master of the Order, legitimate means not just a marriage certificate to said child's mother, and matching DNA profiles, but a public wedding of some sort where everyone sees you get married."
Kylo hadn't given that any thought at all. So he nods again. "Noted."
"Good."
"Tell me about the negotiations with the H'renthnols."
Kinear understands that Kylo's not interested in diving any deeper into that subject, so he nods and changes topics. "Going swimmingly. They're quite interested in tossing off their current leaders and switching over to us…"
The people Kylo was supposed to meet with will wonder, and gossip, about where the Master went for two days. Sort of, they know where he was, in his rooms, but they didn't know why he didn't attend his meetings.
Some of them asked Kinear why Kylo wasn't there, and while it's true that Kinear is the king of gossip, and seemingly knows, and is good for, anything and everything happening anywhere and everywhere, on this one, he shuts them down.
"He's not attending meetings today, and that's all you need to know, or say, about it."
And though this is something that won't occur to Kylo, it will occur, and be appreciated by Kinear, apparently enough of the underlings are starting to, if not like, then at least respect Kylo enough that when Kinear shuts them down, they stay shut down.
A public figure rarely has any real privacy, and if for a day or two the Master needs it, then he'll, at least from the people he was meeting, all members of his General Staff, get it.
Notes:
Any speculations about The Force deciding to help keep Padme under wraps are certainly warranted.
And, yes, for my Heinlein fans, Shipstones are stolen from him. Somewhere, out there, Lazarus Long is flitting about the galaxy with Mama Mo, Mike, a certain kitty cat, and all the rest of them.