The next few days brought more of the same. Another hangover, another blinding headache, more days of self inflicted misery, trudging through meetings and conferences.
One evening, when I returned to the townhouse, I learned that it was Cardo's night to cook, which meant it was my night to clean. The Knights were seated at the massive dining table, weapons and armor stroan about as if they came in to eat and just tossed them aside.
I snagged a dinner roll off of the table, and leaned against the door frame, chewing slowly as I did a count of everyone in the room.
I stopped. Rey and Beau were missing.
"Where's -"
"Your sister wives?" Kuruk cut in, and the rest of them laughed.
"That wasn't funny." I deadpanned.
He shrugged. "It was a little funny."
"They're shopping." Ushar told me. "I have my shadows watching them."
I relaxed, crossing my ankles, and took another bite.
"Where did we leave off?" Cardo asked.
"Trugden." Vic said.
A smile broke out on my weapon master's face. "Trugden, truth or dare?"
Truth or dare? Maker spare me. I scoffed. "Really, guys?"
"Pipe down." Vic snapped. "We'll get to you later."
I shifted uncomfortably against the door frame. I didn't want them to get to me later.
"Truth." Trugden answered.
Cardo chuckled, his cheeks turning red. "Is it true…"
A low rumble of anticipation sounded across the table.
"That you are who Belizaire cheated on Ap'lek with?"
Trugden groaned as a few of the guys laughed. "C'mon, this again?"
"I'll be the one asking the questions." Cardo said, and Trugden let out an exasperated sigh. This had only been going on for about two years, this interest in his relationship with her.
"For the last time, I did not sleep with Belizaire." He insisted.
"That seems suspiciously defensive to me." Kuruk interjected, and Cardo nodded his agreement.
Trugden glared at my pilot. "What about you? Did you ever sleep with Belizaire?"
Vic and Ushar both let out low breaths, their eyes widening as they looked at Kuruk.
He just shrugged. "It's not my turn."
"It is now." Ap'lek said. "Kuruk, truth or dare?"
Kuruk met his gaze. "Dare." Vic huffed out a laugh.
Ap'lek didn't so much as blink. "I dare you to tell me if you ever slept with Belizaire."
He looked down, his lips pursed as he considered. Then, he took a breath. "It was after you were already broken up."
Ap'lek's mouth flew open. "Dude!"
Kuruk showed him his palms. "You were broken up!"
"Broken up for how long?" Ap'lek demanded.
"That's irrelevant." Kuruk told him, and for a moment, I thought Ap'lek was going to leap across the table, but Trugden spoke up.
"Vicrul." He said. "Truth or dare?"
Vic watched a shadow slither to wrap around Ushar's hand and cringed. "Truth."
"Is the lie that you told Elmi still a lie?"
The Knights laughed, waiting for his answer, but his face fell, his warm hazel eyes cooling a bit. "Dare."
The laughter died immediately and we all stared at him in disbelief. Vic had never refused a truth. Now, because he switched after the question had been asked, whatever the coming dare was had to be done, per the rules we'd set when we were twelve.
"The next time you're in front of your troops," Trugden amended. "I dare you to give instructions after you suck the helium out of a balloon."
Howls of laughter sounded all around, and Vic shoved himself away from the table. "I hope you burn in HELL, Trugden!"
He stomped out of the dining room and downstairs, our mocking following his every step.
The rest of the game was uneventful, and about half an hour later, Bean and Rey returned, arms full of shopping bags.
Rey didn't look up as she walked past me and disappeared upstairs. I heard the bedroom door close, and I sighed, disappointment filling the hollow in my chest. So, she was obviously still ignoring me.
Beau gave me a sympathetic look.
"Are you hungry?" I asked. I was about to start clearing everything off of the table.
She shook her head. "We already ate."
I nodded, and she carried her bags upstairs.
After everyone else had gone to bed, Ap'lek strode into the kitchen. "Not that it is any of my business," he started. "But, what's going on with Rey?"
I set my jaw, focusing on the countertop I wiped clean. "I dont know."
He leaned against the counter. "You don't know?"
I shook my head. Things between us were worse than ever. Even her first week on Mustafar, after our first wedding, hadn't been this tense. She was eating, and taking her medication, her vitamins. She was going to her doctor's appointments and seeing her therapists. She'd even gone back to training with Ushar and Vicrul, though her training with Vic was mostly balance and stretching. If she wasn't with them, she was with Beau, who'd quickly become the girlfriend that Rey needed.
I tried to not let it get to me, the fact that she preferred time with them while ignoring me, but it did.
"Have you tried to talk to her?" He asked.
"I try." I said, going back to the sink to rinse the sponge I was using. "She's just so….different."
"You know as well as the rest of us how trauma changes a person." He reasoned. "She's adjusting."
"I know, I just-" I moved to the stove. "I didn't think it was possible to miss her more than I did before I got her back, but I do." Even i could hear the ache in my voice.
"You knew this wasn't going to be easy." He reminded me.
"I don't want it to be easy." I countered, stopping to look at him. "I want it to be whatever she needs it to be, I just want to be a part of it. I want to be there for her, I want to go through this with her. Not just her healing, but the pregnancy, too." My throat burned, and I swallowed, returning to my work on the stove. "I've already missed the first four months, and I hate the idea of missing more, I hate it."
"Then this tiptoeing around each other has to stop." He insisted. "You only have a few more months until the baby gets here. But, when you talk to her, you need to really hear what she has to say."
I stopped again to give him a glare. "What does that mean?"
He shrugged, as if asking how he could have been any clearer. "Exactly what I said."
The problem wasn't me hearing her, it was her choosing not to speak. "I know that she blames me for what happened-"
"She doesn't." He said, shaking his head. "You blame you, just like Vic blames himself. But, Rey is the only one who actually puts the blame exactly where it belongs, and may that demented pervert rot in hell." Of course Ap'lek knew what Vic, Rey, and I felt, what we thought. I often forgot that around him, I was never entirely alone with my thoughts.
I went to the sink to rinse the sponge again. "Then, what does she have to say?" I asked.
He gave me an annoyed look. "You know I'm not going to tell you that, don't be a child."
I snorted. "I'm being a child for asking you what my wife needs?"
"Instead of asking her yourself, yes."
I ground my teeth together.
"You have to figure out how to communicate with her. You have to have difficult conversations with her. You have to use your big boy words and actually talk about your feelings, Ky. That's how relationships work."
"The fuck do I know about relationships?" I snapped, tossing the sponge into its holder in the sink. "I spent almost thirty years avoiding them."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Those weren't relationships." I said, not having to use the Force to read his mind. "I could never let myself get involved or attached to anyone, which is why I always made arrangements with Kings wives. But I never had anything real with any of them."
He was silent for a moment before his blue gaze came back up to me. "Because of what Mom said that night? About what he would do if he found out you loved someone?"
I'd forgotten that he'd been there, and I nodded, a lump growing in my throat. "I know that he's dead, but there's still a part of me, a big part of me, that knows that if I let myself love anyone, it would be absolutely detrimental for them. All of this, it's just…not fair to ask anyone to endure long term. So, when I married Rey, I fought it."
"I remember." He told me.
"It was a battle I knew I would lose, because Mom had already told me I would love her, but, I still put myself through all that unnecessary torture because I thought that the second I admitted that I loved her, she'd be taken from me." I shook my head. "I never told her I loved her, I never said it out loud because I had it in my head that I was protecting her by not telling her what she already knew." My eyes stung, my voice cracking when I said, "And, I still lost her." The admission ripped through me, through the hole in my chest that hadn't healed.
"You got her back." He reminded me.
"Did I?" My voice dripped with acid, with the hurt that had turned into resentment.
He sighed, cocking his head to the side, and gave me a deadpan look. "Did you really just say that?"
I set my jaw, and looked back down, not answering
"What you need to be asking, instead of whether or not you got Rey back, is if she got you back." He sighed. "Which she absolutely did not."
My eyes widened. "I'm here!" I argued. "I've been here! Fuck, all I do is sIt around and wait for her to notice me."
He nodded. "Yeah, and when was the last time you were sober?"
My breath caught, my defenses immediately snapping up and locking down. "This has nothing to do with that." I growled.
"This has everything to do with that." He said, pushing himself up to face me fully. "Literally everything."
I shook my head in denial. "Rey didn't have a problem with my drinking before."
He raised his eyebrows. "Really?"
"Yeah, really."
He hummed a quick little quip as if he found that interesting. "Were you drinking when you married her on Lothar?"
I pursed my lips, but didn't answer.
"No?" He raised an eyebrow. "What about when you started your super fucking weird number thing, were you drinking then?"
I felt heat rising in my chest, but still said nothing.
"Were you ever drunk when you took her to bed?"
I shot him a warning glare that he ignored. But, the answer to his question, to all of his questions, was no. Id been completely sober when I said my vows to Rey, when I said them the second time, at least. Our trip to Lothar was a turning point in our relationship, where we became physically intimate. From that first night when she came out of the bathroom wearing my shirt, to the last night when we made love, I was purposefully sober, because I wanted to be fully present for all of it.
It was true that I never had anything real with any woman other than Rey. Id had plenty of sex with multiple partners, but every one of the encounters before her were just empty, emotionless release. She was the only person I ever got lost in.
"Be honest with yourself, Ky." He pleaded. "Rey didn't have a problem with your drinking before because it wasn't this bad. It's never been this bad."
I wanted to argue with him, but he was right. I'd gotten my drinking under control after marrying Rey, and when she was taken, I relapsed. Hard.
"I stopped once." I tried to tell him. "I can stop again."
His face clouded, his blond eyebrows pulling together. "No, you can't, Ky." He shook his head. "Not this time. Not by yourself."
Not by myself? I scoffed. That was ridiculous. "What, you want me to get a sponsor? Take the first of twelve steps? Tearfully confess my sins in a group therapy session?"
He shrugged. "It doesn't have to be in a group."
I glowered at him. "I was being sarcastic."
"I wasn't." He said, his voice turning razor-sharp.
Silence fell over us as we stared at each other.
"Is that what you think of me?" I demanded. "I'm some junkie who can't walk away?"
"No." He said, and the sincerity in his voice was haunting. "I think that you had to shoulder more than anyone could carry. Not just with Rey, but there were days that we thought we'd lose Vic. Then, what Hux made you see, what he made you believe-"
"Stop it." I growled, my stomach rolling at the memory. Even if he hadn't succeeded in forcing himself on her, he'd still gotten so close that it unleashed her power. And, I hadn't been there to stop him…
"I know why it's so bad, Ky. I was there. I felt it. I heard it. I saw it. And, I see it now. Admitting how much this broke you doesn't make you a failure."
I turned away from him to walk out. "I dont need to hear this."
He caught my elbow, stopping me, and pulled me back to face him. "Hearing it from me is a hell of alot better than what you're going to hear from her." He warned, but I snatched away from him, and stormed out.