Three weeks later…
Poe Dameron's face in the holocall image looked excited. "Great news! I found a guy that knows a guy that knows someone who knows something about your mysterious Giant TIE." He said without preamble.
"And?" Ben prompted.
"And he says he has datadiscs that detail the weapons and propulsion systems of that ship. Apparently this someone helped design it." Poe said triumphantly.
"Excellent." Ben's heart leapt, this was exactly the intel they needed.
"It aint gonna be cheap though." Poe warned.
"Once we've verified that the discs are real, he can have whatever he wants." Ben waved dismissively.
"In that case," Poe grinned. "Have twenty million in a standby account, he knows his life is forfeit the moment he hands over those discs and he isn't willing to wait around to catch an assassin's blaster bolt. Not everyone can do that the way you do."
Ben was mildly surprised at the massive fee but swallowed his shock, after all the best intel is never cheap. "Consider it done."
When the transmission ended Ben turned to Rey, "I saw by the logs that you reached a hundred hours in the simcap yesterday."
"I did!" She beamed at him, delighted that he had taken such an interest in her progress. She still wasn't used to being in the spotlight of someone's attention. "You owe me a TIE Silencer!"
"Walk with me." He offered her his hand, which she took, and escorted her out of their quarters.
When they turned toward the interior of the ship, away from all of the hangars, her curiousity was aroused. "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere beautiful." He said cryptically as he lead her to a section of the ship she had never been to before. "In here." He tapped the button to open the door to a cavernous chamber.
The room was entirely painted in a velvety flat black, slightly oblong with a high domed ceiling, no windows, smooth rounded walls, and a slightly concave floor that sloped gently toward the center. Their footsteps echoed as he lead her deep into the room, which had to be at least four times the size of any room she had ever been in.
"What is this place?" She looked around with a slight frown.
"I thought you might want to see what your wedding present actually looks like." He said softly, then called in a loud echoing voice, "Activate."
The room went completely dark for a beat then came alive with a holoprojection of every known feature of the charted galaxy. Stars - in blues, reds, yellows, and oranges, - some no bigger than dust motes, some the size of her fist and a few even larger than her head - twinkled to life all around them.
Directly above the center of the room the largest star of all glowed bright white, illuminating them with it's vibrancy. Partical clouds and nebulae appeared as smudges in a variety of colors from etherial violets to pastel yellows and everything in between. Everywhere she looked Rey found breath-taking beauty that she'd never even dreamed could exist.
"It's so beautiful." She breathed in wide eyed amazement.
Ben couldn't tear his eyes off of her, to him the enraptured look on her face was far more lovely than any view the room had to offer.
In a daze she wandered around, drinking in every detail.
Ben walked with her, his eyes never leaving her face.
"Why have you never shown me this place before?" She asked after a long time of being too speechless to form the words.
"I was waiting for the right occassion." He said quietly enough that his voice did not echo.
"What occasion is this?" She asked, turning her wide, dazzled eyes to meet his.
He held out his hands, the tips of his two smallest fingers nearly touching, nestled in his right palm was a creamy white Alderaanian opal band. It was carved entirely from a single opal, it's inner surface lined in platinum and even in the simulated starlight it seemed to glow from within with otherworldly lights in shades of blue, green, pink and violet.
In his left palm was a shiney black Correlian Diamond band. It was made of a dozen squarecut black diamonds channel set into a simple band of black Correlian Smelt, the gleaming stones reflected the lights all around them in a brilliant display.
"My mother sent these to me along with a message to remind me that what I've found with you is worth more than anything else in the galaxy." He paused to swallow his heart. "My parents wore these rings through the happiest years of their lives... Before my father got the hairbrained idea to replace them with a flashier set." He made a face that clearly spoke of how big of a mistake he thought that had been. "Today would have been their thirty second wedding anniversary and marks twenty two years since they took these off. I thought it would be fitting if today was the day they were put back onto the fingers of a couple that are madly in love."
Rey was overwhelmed by the beauty of the moment, the galaxy slowly rotating around them, the rings, the sentiment behind them… but more than anything, she was completely overcome by her love for the man standing before her with his heart shining in his inky dark eyes.
Unable to speak she slipped into his mind with tears streaming down her face and let him feel how overjoyed she was by this moment.
With trembling hands and tears in his eyes he slid the softly rounded band of opal onto her finger. Feeling as though her skin was the only thing keeping her from bursting into a billion pieces she slipped the gleaming black band onto his. As soon as she finished placing the ring on his finger he crushed her to him and kissed her with every iota of emotion they were both feeling.
Overcome by the depth and breadth of their feelings, they made love right there under the gleaming stars with their entire beings - heart, body, mind and soul - as their cries of passion echoed throughout their own private galaxy.
