11/2/1

The first time Rey watches it, she's alone. Morning on Qualee Prime, Untrrch is still the cool dark hours of just past midnight for Lirium.

It's true that since Rose put up the antenna array they've got a fairly wide range of information and entertainment available, but it's also true that in general they don't spend too much time watching current events.

It's, for most of them, just easier to stay here, now. Orlac's avoidance of political entanglements makes more and more sense to Rey as each day passes.

Finn and Chewie probably keep up the closest with the news, because knowing what's going on around the galaxy makes it easier for them to pick the right cargo and get it to the right place. One planet's drought is a water trader's gold mine and the like.

But, for most of them, it's a communication device, and a way to get something fun to watch or read in the evenings.

Today though… There are news channels, and there's even one run by the Order that does nothing but broadcast information by, for, and about what they're up to. She figures that if Kylo's morning will be anywhere, it'll be there.

And it is.

She knows when it's going to happen and to the degree that she knows the name of the planet and city, she knows where.

She's seen him fight before, she's been by his side when he's killed in battle. She knelt before him as he assassinated a Supreme Leader, and she's asked him to make sure when he killed a man that it hurt.

But she's never watched him execute someone. Never seen him go at it cold and calm. Never watched his blade move as… justice? Revenge?

Leaders kill people. No planet, no country, no system, no matter how humanely run, has had a history so peaceful that its leader didn't end up killing others.

Though she knows, through her reading and Threepio's history lessons, that normally there's a good length of distance between said leader and the death he commands. For Kylo, that distance appears to be a bit shy of a meter of glowing red.

She watches.

Kylo Ren, Master of the Order, in his combat blacks drags, with the Force, a woman to kneel before him.

She's tiny. Though it's possible she's normal-sized for a human woman, but he's big for a human male, so kneeling before him, she's tiny. Her head, staring straight ahead, is just above his knee level.

"Look at me."

She raises her eyes to him.

"You are General L-en K'Rias, sister of the head of the K'Rias family, leader of a twenty-three family strong coalition among the ruling families of the Qualeen."

She nods.

He stares down at her, waiting.

"Yes."

"You gave the order to attack my recruiting stations?" Whatever camera is filming this is staying close on them, keeping everything around them in soft, blurred focus. Rey knows the fluttering black behind them is Kylo's Order symbols, though, caught in whatever breeze there is around them.

"Yes."

"Of your own volition, on the orders of no one else?"

"It was my decision, and mine alone."

"One hundred and seventy-three of my people were killed in my stations because of that order. Another three hundred and eleven were injured. Ninety-six died, and four hundred and ninety-two of them were injured in securing and evacuating my people from the stations you attacked. Why did you call the strike on my stations?"

Even on her knees, less than a moment from her death, she's smiling. "Because I knew you'd hit back."

He nods. "Indeed." And in one fast move he lights his saber and takes her head off.

When her corpse slumps to the side, he looks out to the crowd for the first time. "First, last, and only warning. The Order protects its own, and if we fail, we avenge them." He looks to the cameras that are recording this, broadcasting to the rest of the galaxy. "Don't try it again. I will not start a fight with any of you. If you start a fight with me, I will end it and you."

Then he extinguishes his blade and leaves the podium.

Dark and Evil… She's certainly talked about it. Certainly thought about it.

She wonders if she should feel… revulsion… disgust… something at seeing Kylo decapitate a person. She doesn't. Maybe she should, but she doesn't. At least, not this person.

It's when the broadcast flips, moves to the next bit, footage of what used to be cities, and are now kilometer deep smoldering wastelands that something clutches in her guts. K'Rias deserved what she got. She's significantly less sure that those cities deserved what they got.

You'll do what you do, and I'll abide or not as I can… She remembers saying that to him.

Can you abide this? She's not sure if she's asking herself, or if that's a shadow of his voice.

She can. She feels that through her. It makes her uncomfortable. She's not sure it was the right decision. Worse, she doesn't know what the right decision may have been. That's where most of the uncomfortable is coming from. She has no idea what the right thing to do is. He got the people out; that's right. She can feel that. Knows that in her guts. If they wanted to go, he got them out or gave them time to go.

Compared to that, the rest of this is just… things.

But things matter to people. And…

And if he'd let the cities stand… would he take more attacks? Did this save lives in the long run? And… what did K'Rias mean about hitting back? Why choose to attack someone who would level you?

He asked her to watch. Asked that if she would fight by his side, that she be there for things like this. She doesn't know what she would have done up there. He seemed more than enough on his own.

She feels him behind her. For a moment, he leans against the door to their bedroom, tired wafting off of him, watching her watch the newsfeed. "Am I still welcome here?" There's nervousness in his eyes. Now that he's cold, that the battle rage is drained out of him, he's worried he's gone beyond what she can condone.

She turns to him. "Why would you not be?" He slumps a little at that, a lot of nervous bleeding off of him.

He settles next to her in the chair, groaning a little. She shakes her head, standing up, tucking the datapad away. "Come on, let's get you of out this and see what's underneath."

He's not exactly looking like he wants to get up, but he's been in his armor for more than a day and a half now, and he's likely more of a mess than he wants to be under it.

It's barely a dozen steps to her refresher. He's quiet, tired, angry, achy.

Peeling the armor off, achy makes a lot of sense. His face, the only bit of his skin she's seen since yesterday, is fine. The mask made sure nothing got him there. The rest of him, though… There are some cuts, tears, and dents in the plates of his armor, but underneath he's in one piece, skin unbroken. Bruised, he's got black, blue, purple, screaming red, and mottled yellow-greens from where some of the hits only glanced against him, covering him from neck to foot, but no cuts, no burns, no broken bones.

"It didn't hurt while I was doing it," he says.

"I suppose that's something," she lightly traces her hands over his skin, before shrugging out of her robe, and turning the water on in the shower. It's cooler than she'd like, and warmer than his skin needs, but for right now, for rinsing off sweat and anger, it'll do. "Come on," she gently tugs him into the shower, and just as gently washes him off. Her touch isn't exactly perfunctory, but she's mostly just getting him clean. Whatever comes next, will come next.

He leans against her in the shower, his head on her shoulder, his weight balanced between the wall and her body. She can feel he's crashing from the adrenaline rush of the last two days. Not enough rest or… "When did you eat last?"

He shakes his head, no idea.

Food, he needs food, and there's something else in there, something he doesn't want to touch, yet.

She pokes it anyway, feeling like it needs to be poked, like it's a festering boil, and the only way it's going to heal is to lance it and let the poisons out. "Tell me."

"I found out, a bit before I took General K'Rias's head, that the Ruling Oligarchs of the Qualeen System was a council of one hundred and twenty-six families. To join, a family needs a net worth of five billion credits. Within the Oligarchs, there are four main factions, each with around thirty members. K'Rias's brother An-Dra, is the head of the smallest faction. They are primarily rural, dealing mostly in mining, farming, and construction."

Rey winces, seeing where this is going.

"I just liquidated the net wealth of eighty-seven of the ruling families, and made K'Rias's faction the most powerful remaining one. They now control the Council of Oligarchs, and because they control every major construction company left in the system, they'll be solidifying their control for the next millennia."

She feels him slump further into her.

"I do not have the manpower or resources to hold the system, so I can't fix this."

She strokes the back of her neck.

"And I've just shown the entire galaxy that I can be manipulated into a weapon against any political faction, assuming the people who use me are motivated enough to die for it."

She holds him close, and pets his shoulders. "Oh, love…"

They stay like that, holding each other in the shower, for a few long moments. Eventually, Rey says, "What happens now?"

"My lawyers and theirs are fussing about over terms."

She raises an eyebrow. "Destroying the cities wasn't enough?"

"No. Kinear had an idea to try and… mitigate the damage. We're stripping the K'Rias and their coalition of enough credits and property they won't qualify for the Oligarchy, either. So… maybe they change their laws, or maybe they fall into civil war, or maybe the handful of remaining Oligarchs take over everything. I don't know."

"Will it help?"

"Enough." He's flat, listless right now, about to drop.

"Okay, enough of this for now. Sleep, eat, sleep some more." She turns off the water, dries him off, and tucks him into their bed.

There are two hours until she needs to be up and teaching. She lays next to him, stroking his skin, letting her Force gently mend bruises, and hopefully soothe a roiled mind.

The second time she watches it, it's with the oldest of her students.

This time they watch footage from several sources, and some footage of the fight.

At the end of the fight, the evacs, the destruction of the cities, and Kylo decapitating the General, she says to Critt, Jacen, Elias, Savarah, and Magiit, "We talk about dark and evil. We talk about figuring out where the line is and what we need to do." She looks at the now blank screen. "So, talk to me. What was that?"

Jacen speaks first. "Dark. Flat out dark. He did exactly what he had to do." Rey's not even remotely surprised by this. Jacen's fond of Kylo, looks up to him, and, because he actually knows who Kylo is, and what Kylo's Recruiting Stations have personally done for him, he's beyond protective of this whole idea. He could have been one of the people inside that station, and the idea that the Master would personally come to save him is thrilling through Jacen.

Critt's just staring at where the video was. That red blade is the nightmare of his childhood. The Jedi Killer was the reason his family moved around so often after it became clear that he had Force powers. It was the reason why he always had to keep himself under control, because when he got upset sometimes things would happen around him, and… Anytime he did something they had to move, so the Jedi Killer couldn't find them. He's too scared to say or think much of anything right now.

Savarah just watches. She's not very talky even under the best of circumstances, and this isn't the best of circumstances. She likes a good long time to think about things before saying anything. Rey knows, eventually, privately, she'll have and opinion and talk to her about it, but it won't be today. Today, she'll think.

Rey's got a feeling, that if there are ever sacred books of the Maji, Savarah will have been the person to write them, because she's the one who sits down and really thinks about all of this before talking about it.

Magiit grew up in Canto Bight, where the rich and mighty got to be that way by supplying weapons to the First Order. Yes, those recruiting stations were a way out, one they were desperate enough, even though they were all Resistance supporters, to flee to, though Poe found them, and got them out, first. "Not sure about that, Jacen. Killing the General, sure. That's… dark, but… justice? Probably. But the cities…"

"He got the people out of the cities…" Elias says. He grew up, more or less, as much as anyone could be, outside of the First Order/Resistance fight. At least, the little station where he and his lived traded with anyone who came through, but they were far enough off the beaten path that didn't involve much in the way of Resistance or First Order people.

Jacen takes that as a point in his favor. "See, dark. The evil man kills everyone. He just taught them a lesson hard enough to make it stick."

Critt's still looking at the video, seeing… A million moves. Stuffing things into a ship, fast, ripped away from friends, starting over again, and again, and again. He quietly says, "You can't get everyone out in seventeen hours. We were ready. Did it over and over, always ready to run, but it still takes time. Grabbing everything, figuring out what you need, getting out. It's slow on the ground, and… He didn't get all of the people out. Maybe a lot of them. Maybe most, but not all."

"But he had to do it," Jacen says.

"No." That's pretty much the only thing Rey thinks they absolutely need to know about this, all of it. "He didn't. No one had to do any of this. They're all choices. This may have been his best option. Or not. We'll never actually know that."

"So, you're saying this may have been a bad decision?" Magiit asks.

"I don't know. If the rest of the galaxy looks at this and leaves those recruiting stations alone… It's a good decision for him. If Critt is right and not everyone got out… It was a bad decision for them. If other systems use this as a way to make the Order take out other political powers they don't like…"

The kids are all looking at each other, and Rey, and back to the blank holovid player.

Rey looks at them, and says, "According to Luke, the first time he met Obi Wan Kenobi, he told Luke that Darth Vader had betrayed and murdered his father. Later Luke learned that Anakin Skywalker had become Darth Vader. When he talked to Kenobi about it, Kenobi said the story he told Luke the first time had been true, from a certain point of view." She can feel Kylo sleeping still, in their bed, about eight hundred meters away from her. "I think we can all agree that was dark. We may never agree about evil, because we may never have similar enough points of view to agree on it."

"The lady who gave that order in the first place, that was evil," Jacen says.

Rey half smiles at that. "I don't disagree." She eyes the rest of the kids, and none of them challenge that. "Though, I'm fairly sure, that if you were to bring this up with the Kennas, or the Ticos, they may tell you that any attack against Ren is warranted. That he's done so much bad stuff in his life that any and everyone who wishes to attack him is justified…"

She lets that dangle.

Jacen either picked what she wanted out of her head, or is far enough in his own judgement that he can make the argument himself. "Fuck that! Sorry, Rey." The official rule is to not curse in front of the grown-ups. What they say on their own is up to them. And all of the adults are more than aware that everyone on the planet over the age of twelve has an interesting vocabulary. Which is why they've got said rule in the first place, because there's only so many variation on the theme of fuck coming out of the mouths of adolescents that they want to hear. "But fuck that. They didn't fly up to the Supremacy to hit Ren, they went against his recruiting stations, and if it's anything like the station I went to, it never hurt anyone. Look, if they'd blown up a training facility, I'd have a lot less to say about that, because some of those fuckers were sociopaths, but the recruiting stations… No one ever got hurt there.

"That's like… attacking the enemy's medical cruiser. Just… wrong." Jacen pauses to think for a moment. "Okay, you want to make the argument that Ren deserves what he gets… well, I may understand it, don't like it, but if we're saying those cities didn't deserve what they got, then just being near Ren can't mean you deserve whatever he does. If those cities weren't responsible for what their General did, then the new recruit sitting in one of his stations isn't responsible for his past."

Critt snorts at him. "Being near Ren makes you dead. That's what the Jedi Killer does. If he knew about us here… We'd be so fucked." And that's part two of why they aren't allowed, generally, to curse in front of the adults, once one of them does, all of them follow. "Why do you think Padme gets guys like you out of the Order? So Ren can't kill you!"

Jacen looks at Rey, rubbing his lips together, hard, and she thinks at him, no.

He looks annoyed by that, and she just knows, in her bones and guts that he won't keep the secret. Not with Critt. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but…

"And look, I know what the Order did for you, Jacen," Critt continues, "but… The man is evil. And if someone wants to—"

Jacen cuts in. "Make sure people like me have no way to get away! That's what burning his recruiting stations is about. It's not about Ren. Luke Skywalker could have been running those stations, and they'd have hit them. You saw that, too, right Magiit? Slavers doing everything they could to keep people like us from getting away."

She nods. "That's why all of us came. We needed all eight of us to get through the city. If Poe had just taken Marrok, we'd have been… Still there probably. They had slave catchers all over the city after those stations went up. You could barely set foot on the street without getting your papers checked." She rolls her eyes. "The only reason they didn't raze the stations was that they made too much money off the First Order. If anyone else had been running them, they would have leveled them."

Elias has been thinking, fiddling a bit with his Maji pendent. "It's about balance, right? That's what you told us, Rey. He did all of that bad shit before, killing people left and right, fighting for Snoke, and now, he's not. Now…" he looks to Jacen, "You're here because of him, and so are a few of the rest of us."

"They're here because of Padme," Critt adds.

"Padme couldn't have gotten me if I hadn't gotten to a recruiting station, first. Padme isn't scouring the galaxy looking for orphan slaves to help. That's Ren," Jacen says, Force thrumming through his voice.

Rey eyes him and shoots him a quick, Stop it.

He thinks back to her, I'm trying. It's hard.

I know. "Anyway, I wanted you to see, and to think about it. You don't have to agree on what happened or how you think about it. You do have to feel it, and understand what and why you're feeling it. It's about time for you to be getting to lessons with Threepio." The kids know it's time to break the conversation, and start getting up. "Jacen, stick around for a moment, okay?"

The others leave them, watching Jacen with Rey.

Once they're out he says to her, genuinely, "I'm sorry. I just…"

"Look, I understand."

He half smiles at her, frustrated. "Yeah, you do."

"That said, don't use your voice on them when we're talking about this, and when you tell Critt, and no that is not me giving you permission, I just know you're going to do it, make sure he doesn't spread it around."

"Are you giving me permission to use my voice, then?" Jacen looks much too amused by that idea.

"I'd prefer it if you didn't have to, but… You ever see that huge scar on Finn's back?"

He nods. He's got his own marks on his back, the slavers on his planet liked to make sure no one would ever mistake him for a freeman, and one day Finn was commiserating with him, and showed him the big one on his.

"You want to guess who put it there?"

Jacen winces. "Is everyone he managed to not succeed in killing here?"

Rey sighs, uncomfortably aware that Jacen might be right about that. "There are reasons why he's Padme here. And… I hope, eventually, he won't have to be, but there's still a lot of raw feelings about him, so… Keep the secret."

"Sure. It's just…" There's this huge wave of indignant adolescent frustration sloshing all through Jacen. His hero, which is likely the most fitting term to cover what Kylo is to him, is hated by people he rather likes, and it aches.

"I know, Jacen, I really do."

"Yeah, I guess you would, Lady Ren."

She returns to her cottage, and can feel him still sleeping in their bed.

She makes lunch and debates waking him up. Tired Kylo's not exactly a right little bowl of sunshine and porgs, tired, hungry Kylo's somewhere between a Rancor and a Rathnor. Neither of which is a good thing. Tired, hungry, doubtful Kylo, because she can feel, even in his sleep, that her darkling is spiraling into a lot of shit, I just fucked everything sideways is likely something she hasn't seen since he was holding out his hand to her in Snoke's throne room as everything around them burned.

And then she knows she's waking him up. He rarely sleeps for more than six or seven hours at a time, so, even getting a longer sleep than normal, making up for everything yesterday and the day before, he'll still wake up in their bed, alone.

Not today.

She slips into their room, and lays on the bed next to him. He's on his back, spread out, aware, enough, that it's her, that he hasn't gone springing up in a panic. She snuggles in next to his chest, and pets his face gently. "Hey, wake up… I've got food."

His eyes don't open, though he makes a little "Mmmm…" sound. He shares the sensation of his limbs each a thousand kilos and his body so comfortable he just can't move.

She kisses him. "Okay, but remember this when you really wake up."

"Mmmm…" His lips move enough for a half-hearted kiss back.

The third time she watches it, she's in the microfarm. They've got the first of them set up, and right now, they're planting.

Most of this one is 'practical' food. Lots of nutrients, and a good long shelf-life. They've got, right now, shallow troughs for potatoes. But as they grow, they'll add new layers to the trough, let the potatoes grow up, and maximize the yield through vertical space.

White potatoes, red potatoes, purple potatoes, sweet potatoes, taro, yams. Root veggies that do well with cool soil. One five meter long by one meter wide trough for each of them.

Rose, Finn, and a few of the kids are working on them.

The Kennas are building extra troughs. This microfarm will fit ten troughs. So, six of "practical" food, and four for "fun" food. Rey's got half a trough for her own goodies, and she's working on it.

Rey's planting strawberries. She hasn't mentioned this to Kylo. They'll be a surprise. As she pokes little holes into the soft soil, dropping seeds, she's happily imagining the dinner where he brings the meal from the Supremacy and sees a bowl of strawberries on the table, waiting for him.

Poe comes running in, looking worried, "Rey!"

She jerks up from her planting.

"Did you—" He sees the kids, Cassie among them. "Hey, uh… can I get some time with just the adults?"

None of the kids like that, but Poe so infrequently asks for alone time, and he's generally so good about telling them 'secrets' that they shuffle out, wondering.

Once they're out, he steps next to Rey, and Finn and Rose crowd in on the other side. Rafe and Millie join them. "What?"

"Is Padme… okay?" Poe asks, pulling out his datapad, showing them the footage of the fighting.

"Yes. I've… He's in our cottage, resting, now."

"Did he get hurt?" Finn asks.

"No."

The Kennas are staring at the execution, the same, bone, gut, heart deep horror on their face that Critt had.

"He's done with them, now, right?" Rafe asks, voice hard. "He wouldn't stay after… that."

"No. He can't be done. Ren's still there," Finn says. "He's not leaving until the job is done."

Rey can feel Luke's voice in her head. You said Vader betrayed and murdered my father! And Luke's version of Obi Wan: From a certain point of view. She supposes that the vaguely amused idea in the back of her head, You said Padme betrayed and murdered Kylo Ren… is irony. Padme saved and redeemed Kylo Ren… No. She knows that. Padme/Kylo they're one. She thinks of Vader/Anakin and Ben/Kylo/Padme, but the only real insight she takes from it is that the Jedi became so wrapped up in the idea of inviolate light and dark that they couldn't accept that the same person could be both.

"Did you not see that! The job can't be done! He was just—" Millie's voice stops as the saber falls on General K'Rias's neck.

"An entire army couldn't take Ren out. Why would Padme think he can?" Rafe adds. "You need to get him out of there. If Ren ever finds him, he'll lead him right to us, and… Then it'll be us…"

Rey sighs. "Trust in the Force. We're in no danger from Kylo Ren, not here."

"We're in danger from Kylo Ren no matter where we are," Rafe says.

Rey shakes her head, and feels that Poe and Rose are watching the holovid differently than the rest of them.

"How many?" Rose asks.

Poe shakes his head. "Not enough. He evacuated the cities and only attacked them after his own people were attacked. The only recruits I could get from something like this are the same ones I could have gotten yesterday."

"Really?" Rose doesn't want to hear that.

"Yeah," Poe doesn't want to say it, but wanting or not, it's true. "There's not a major player in the galaxy that will back me if I go up against him for defending his own people. None of them want the precedent in place that that's a legitimate cause for attack."

"But it's Kylo Ren!" Finn says, watching the video.

"Trust me, I know," Poe replies. "I can likely get more individuals. Maybe some credits and a few dozen more ships, maybe even pilots for them, on the off chance that Ren may go further over the line. But I won't be able to get any real support, and…" he shakes his head. "Leia, who had more tactical sense, better connections, and the fucking Force on her side, couldn't win a war against the Order with two hundred people and a few dozen ships. But I'm not Leia, and I'm done getting people killed in hopeless gestures."

"There's got to be something…" Rose says.

Poe looks over his shoulder, through the transteel of the microfarm walls, to the town they've been building. The town Rose has put so much energy into. "I'll take up the slack in here if you want to fly around all over hell and gone looking for someone to give me a fleet."

Rose snorts an annoyed sound.

"If she got one, would you use it?" Rey asks, curious.

Poe sighs. "Moot point really. There's no fleet with my name on it."

"Yeah, but…" Rey leads. She can feel the Kennas hoping the answer is yes. She can feel Rose and Finn ready to sign back up and get into the fight.

But she doesn't feel that from Poe.

He swallows, hard. "Leia said she was fine being a rebel, but she wouldn't be a terrorist. Every system in the galaxy holds that self-defense against attackers is permissible. There's nowhere that's against the rules of war. That's why we weren't terrorists, but rebels. Supposedly, we were rebelling against the idea that you could just attack people willy-nilly, or because it made things better for you. That being a conqueror wasn't, ever, justified. I spent twenty years doing it, so… If that meant anything to me, beyond excitement and a sexy TIE fighter, then…"

"We're not talking about attacking some little innocent bystander, Poe. It's Kylo Ren!" Finn says, voice hot.

"Look, I do not like the guy, but… From everything I can see, since he's been in charge, he's been playing by the rules." He sighs. Unlike Finn and Rose, he's old enough to remember the New Republic. Hell, he'd been Captain Dameron of the New Republic before he left it, with Leia, for the Resistance. So, he knows what the game was, and if there's a difference between what Ren's doing now and they were doing, as the New Republic, he can't spot it. He no longer wears the mark of the Resistance, and that's part of why, but he knows Rose still has one in her ring. He taps her ring, gently, and says, "If that mattered, then… It mattered, right?"

Rose looks like she wants to spit. She can't let herself disagree with Poe, because she doesn't like the idea of who she'll be if she disagrees with Poe, but she's still too angry with the First Order to divorce it from the Order.

Rey can feel it. Poe joined the Resistance for a cause, for his hero, Leia. Rose joined it for her ghosts.

Rey's not wearing the token right now. It's still with Kylo, where it probably needs to be, but she wants to touch it. She remembers telling the Kennas that what they're doing here is for everyone. That the Force isn't about our team being good and their team being bad and…

"Poe's got it. The rules… whatever they are… apply to everyone. That's got to be part of it, or it won't balance."

"I think Ren gets to be an exception. He broke all the rules," Finn says, and Rafe's quietly cheering him on.

Poe looks tired, and sighs at that. "So did I." He doesn't elaborate, but Rey can feel him thinking of it, feel the memory of it, and… She hadn't known that about him, and she's got the sense that Rose and Finn don't, either.

He'd been ordered to break off the attack on the Fulminatrix, and he didn't follow those orders. He went in, took his fleet with him, and got two thirds of them killed violating a direct order to retreat. Poe's comment about being done getting people killed makes a lot more sense to Rey now.

She catches his eye as she says, "We don't live in the past, or the future, just now. So… forgive the past, hope for the future, and only hold people accountable for their now," She figures that's as good as she's going to get on this. He nods at her, and she can see he understands that she already knows what he's feeling the need to confess.

Poe says, quietly, "Rose, Finn, would you get a walk with me?"

Rey knows that Poe's going to tell them about what he did with the Fulminatrix.

"I've got this," she adds, nodding to the rows of troughs that aren't getting any more planted. "Go."

When they leave, Rafe says, "What was that about?"

The walls of the microfarms are transsteel. The same sort they made the chapel dome, and the windows of starships with. They're perfectly clear, so it's not like they can't see the three of them, about fifteen meters away. They can't hear, but they see Rose slap Poe's face and start to cry. Finn looks startled, and very hurt, as he wraps his arms around Rose.

"Not everyone has a pristine past of excellent decision making."

Notes:

So, apparently, I have *opinions* about Poe Dameron, and the way fandom has been treating him since The Last Jedi. I also, apparently, have opinions about derailing the thrust of my story and distracting from the main content. So, instead of a long, ranty note at the end, I'll just post a link.

kerylraist dot wordpress dot com /2018 /08 /07 /in-defense-of-poe-dameron/

If you're interested in seeing me break down why, exactly, Poe hate is utterly unwarranted, go have a read. It'll likely be amusing.