—Chapter 5: Mending—

Rey had finished mending the pants, such as they were, and went to find Ben. It was late into the evening, and she was getting hungry, but Poe had been so insistent that she get the information he needed that she didn't want to put it off any longer. She hoped she could get through this quickly.

After a nod and a brief exchange of greetings, the guards let her into Ben's room. Ben's eyes were closed when she entered, but by the time she had shut the door they were open. She was nonchalant. "I come bearing gifts," she said as she held up his pants. She set them down on a table in the corner, then took the same seat next to his bed.

"Thanks," he said. "So have you thought about my offer?"

Rey sighed. "Yes, I have, but before we get into that, I have some questions that I should have asked earlier," Rey said, getting immediately to the point.

"Mmm."

"Okay, so everyone is asking what you know about Leia's death." Unexpectedly, tears pricked the corners of Rey's eyes, but she fought them back and pressed on. "I told Poe you're not with the First Order anymore, and that you don't know what planet you're on. I assumed that meant the whole First Order was also unaware of this base—was that a good assumption or a bad one?"

"A good one. At least, that's what I'd have thought. Given my excommunication, it occurs to me that they may have had information they weren't sharing with me. Take… my mother's death, for instance." Ben's throat got tight as he spoke those last words, and he looked away. "I had nothing to do with that," he finished quietly.

Rey could feel his sadness, and recalled the way Leia's death had hit her. She needed to know if he'd experienced even a fraction of the grief she had felt in Leia's final moments. "Did you feel her death through the Force? When it happened?" she asked, in a low voice.

Ben took a cleansing breath, recovering his voice. "Yes. It was shortly afterwards that they came for me. I couldn't defend myself properly, and a subordinate, another strong Force user, completely incapacitated me. I woke up to a torture session with that traitorous weasel, Hux." He swept his arms out to indicate his convalescence. "They engineered my mother's death so they could catch me when I was… distracted."

There were a million follow up questions she wanted to ask, but she needed to stay on target. She allowed herself one: "Another Force user?"

"One of the Knights of Ren."

That didn't help. "What's a 'Knight of Ren'?" she said, feeling stupid for asking.

"They were students of Luke's with me back at the Praxeum. They left with me when I burned it down." He said this a little too casually for her liking, and she felt mildly disgusted.

"So is one of them in charge now?"

"It appears so," he answered simply.

Rey powered through. "Do you know how they knew about Leia's mission to Coruscant?"

"Yes, my idiot general explained all that to me before he thought he was about to kill me. He predicted that the Resistance would need to find big-money backers, so he had planted spies on the major Core planets hoping to hear word of an attempt at an alliance. Any major diplomatic efforts would've needed to be orchestrated by—her. So, once he knew where and when, he set up a strike team to destroy her ship, and proceeded to come at me."

Rey was stunned. "I don't believe it," she said, slowly shaking her head and staring off into space.

Ben creased his lips and raised his arms in a half-shrug.

There were a few seconds of silence. Then, plainly, Rey said, "I'll train with you."

Ben was surprised at the sudden change of subject, but recovered quickly. "Good. I wasn't looking forward to working in the kitchens. I think I'll probably need another day to recover before I can walk without too much pain, but we should leave the morning after that."

Rey blinked. "Leave? What do you mean? Can't we train right here?"

Ben shook his head. "There are far too many distractions here—your progress would suffer, and I'm too impatient for that. Besides, if we stick around here, I'll have to deal with too much drama from other people I don't want to deal with. Let me be clear: I'm interested in training you; I don't care about the Resistance. We don't have to leave the planet, but we need to get away from the base. Spend tomorrow packing our bags."

"That's not a lot of time. I have other things to do around here, loose ends to tie up. It feels wrong to just leave with so little warning."

"It has to be that way. Just explain it to your friends, and have them deal with the rest. If I have to stay here much longer than that, I'll either starve to death or kill someone." He was far too matter of fact about this for Rey's liking.

She crinkled up her nose, scrutinizing him intensely. "What are you talking about? You have food right there." She pointed toward the tray of food that was sitting on the table on the opposite side of the bed. "And what do you mean, 'kill someone'?"

"I can't eat that. The guy that delivered that wants me dead. I'm 99% sure that it's not safe to eat."

Rey's eyes bulged, and she stood up into a half-crouch to lean toward him so she could bellow into his face. "Are you being serious right now!? You're telling me that people here are trying to poison you—which in and of itself is insane—but to top it off, you just sat there and said nothing about it in spite of being so sure that that's what was going on?"

Ben stared at her with her with perfect, calm indifference. "You had said something about 'avoiding trouble'. Making a fuss seemed like asking for trouble."

Amazingly, this managed to make Rey even more exasperated. Realizing she was about to lose it, she tried to pull herself together, and stood up all the way, laying a hand to her forehead. In a calmer but elevated tone of voice, she said, "Okay, sure, well, we'll have to deal with that, I guess. I was about to head to the canteen for dinner anyway. I'll bring you back a new tray. And I'll dispose of that." She jabbed a finger at his food.

"I'd appreciate it," was all he said.

She abruptly rounded the foot of his bed, grabbed the tray of food, and was out the door. Closing it behind her, she stepped into the hallway and was about to head for the canteen, but she stopped herself. She turned and looked between the two guards, realizing there was no way they hadn't overheard her yelling about poison. They regarded her awkwardly, shifting their feet and twitching their faces between a countenance of stoicism and trying to smile. They couldn't maintain eye contact. It was clear that what Ben had said was true, and that they had been complicit. She stared hard at them under her eyebrows, and they immediately became visibly agitated.

Now it's you who's asking for trouble. It was Ben's voice in her mind.

Startled, she nearly dropped the tray. The fork shifted noisily, and everyone jumped a little. The guards were sweating and looking at her nervously. Her knuckles were white as she clutched the tray, but she bit her lip and left, walking steadfastly towards the canteen.

She was pissed. She knew people were having mixed feelings about Ben's presence on the base, but she had really believed that as long as he was here people would at least respect the chain of command and not do anything that hadn't been ordered—no vigilantism. She felt a knot in the pit of her stomach as she contemplated the possibility that people had been acting on orders when they'd attempted to poison him, but she put it out of her mind. She was almost to the canteen when she nearly crashed right into Finn, who was emerging from the hallway she was about to turn into.

"Whoa! Rey, slow down! You almost spilled that all over me." Finn was being dramatic. He had hardly seen Rey all day, so he was grateful for this chance opportunity to talk to her. "You headed in to eat? I'll join you," and he turned on his heel and was beside her in an instant. "We just finished, but I don't mind sitting with you. Isn't it a little late to just be eating now?"

"I've been swamped all day. I'm starving, and this is my first chance to actually eat anything." Just seeing her friend made Rey calmer. Her knuckles had regained their color.

"So why didn't you just eat that?" he said, gesturing to her tray. "You took it and left, then came back without eating it?" He raised a quizzical eyebrow at her.

"No, this was Ben's. I'm returning it."

"That's weird. Why? It doesn't look like he touched it."

"Yeah, it's a long story, and I don't really want to get into it this moment." As they were talking, they passed a series of garbage cans, into which Rey dumped the contents of the tray. They then walked to the receptacle for used trays, set it down, and got in line for fresh food. "Will you grab an extra tray, please?" she asked.

"I told you, I already ate," he replied.

Rey sighed. "It's for Ben. Will you please just take one? It's less weird for us each to have a tray than for me to have two and look like a pig."

Under his breath, Finn said, "Yeah, except everyone here already saw me finish eating like five minutes ago…"

Rey pretended she hadn't heard him, and proceeded to accept as the kitchen staff dumped piles of food onto her tray. Finn's tray elicited a few raised eyebrows, but they didn't deny him. His portions, however, were more modest.

Once they were through the line, the two of them sat at a table by the window overlooking the nearby forest. This time of year, there were only a few hours of darkness for every rotational period, so even though it was pretty late to just now be sitting down to dinner, the sun was still up, hanging low over the trees. She swapped trays with Finn, leaving the larger portions for Ben. "Thank you. If you hadn't been here I would've felt compelled to just split one portion in half, rather than have the nerve to actually present two trays."

"No problem. So what have the two of you been talking about, anyway? How to slice open a guy's spine?" He cocked his eyebrows at her teasingly, but one look at Rey had him regretting his joke.

She looked solemn, her hand hovering over her meat as she got caught midway, about to stab into it. She recovered, and proceeded to pierce the food and slowly cut through it with her knife.

Finn softened as he evaluated her. "Sorry, I don't really know how to talk about that. It's either make jokes, or…"

"I know," she said. "I suppose this whole thing is utterly ridiculous, isn't it," she asked rhetorically.

"It is weird, right?" he asked, somewhat conspiratorially, leaning across the table so he could lower his voice and still be heard over the din. "I mean, you know I trust you, I always will, but I don't totally get what's happening here. I never really pushed you about what happened with you two just before Crait, but the way things got left, it's just odd that he would be here and not be an immediate, obvious target for elimination."

She contemplated his words, adding, "Yes, well, things with him are complicated."

"All you ever told me about what happened was that you had been having weird shared visions with him. You thought you could get him to turn, but it didn't work, and then not only was he not on our side, but he was calling the shots with the First Order. Has that changed?" He leaned back in his seat and regarded her questioningly.

Finn was the only person Rey had confided in about her connection to Ben. It was a testament to his absolute, unwavering trust in her that he'd never shared that information with anyone else—and he knew what it meant that he was the only one she'd told. Kylo Ren had nearly killed Finn, but Finn's trust in her outweighed his fear of Ben.

"Changed?" she asked. "Yes, according to him. He says they booted him out after they killed Leia, and now someone else is in charge of the First Order." She paused to take a breath. "He's here now, because… that is, in a couple days, we're going to leave the base—but not the planet, don't worry—and I'm going to let him… train me in the ways of the Force." She said this last part like she knew how ridiculous it sounded.

Finn's face was the picture of shock. "Really? Wow, that is a change, damn." He took another moment to process what he'd just heard. "So, Kylo Ren is going to train you to use the Force…" He shook his head briskly, shaking off his astonishment. "Well! Okay, what can I do to help?""

Rey's heart swelled. Trust like this was a rare treasure, and she was damned if she would take it for granted. She smiled fondly at her friend. "Well, for one thing, there was information Poe needed me to get from him, so, since I'm already here talking to you now, I would love it if I could just tell you and have you pass that along to him tomorrow so I can get straight to work packing for our trip."

"Sure, lay it on me."

Rey proceeded to summarize everything Ben had told her. Finn listened intently, trying to keep his reactions to a minimum so as not to interrupt.

"Wow. That's incredible. And really bad news for our hopes of a military alliance with any major planets," he said, leaning back.

"Yeah," she nodded in agreement. "And there's still one more thing I need you to do for me."

Finn gave her a nervous look. "That sounds ominous. What is it?"

"Someone tried to poison Ben. That's why I had to dump that tray of food. The guards monitoring his room knew about it, even. I need you to tell Poe, and get something done about it."

"Are you thinking just a change of guards and a little more vigilance and caution, or are you thinking we do an investigation and round up the perpetrators?" Finn asked.

"More the former. We're trying to avoid a lot of fuss before we leave—this is part of why we're leaving. Ben is convinced half the base is out to murder him. I just want Poe to know, and to watch out for him a little. I'm terrified that this happened on somebody's orders, but I have nothing to base that off of."

"Okay then." Finn looked out the window to the dark sky beyond. "Speaking of Ben's food, weren't you going to bring this to him? It's probably cold now."

Rey jumped slightly in her seat. "Oh, shoot, you're right. I better warm this up and get out of here. He's probably starving." She stood up to leave, and Finn followed suit. She took a long look at her friend. "Thank you, Finn. I really don't know what I would do without you."

Finn shrugged, smiling. "If I wasn't here, somebody else would step in to give you a shoulder."

"Not like yours." She hugged him hard, picked up Ben's tray and was about to leave before realizing she had her own dirty tray to deal with.

He read her mind. "I'll take care of it, don't worry."

"You don't mind cleaning up after me?"

He smiled knowingly at her. "It's my honor to clean up your messes. Now get going. Good night, Rey."

"Good night, Finn." With a smile and lifted spirits, she was on her way.

Ben had been roaming the whole base in his mind for the better part of that day. Resting had been difficult, knowing how many potential threats there were, so there was little else for him to do while he sat in his hospital bed trying to heal. It wasn't all bad though. He was getting to practice a skill he had really only heard about, never having had the patience to try before: Force mapping. By reading the Force signatures of the living things around him (and the holes in those signatures left by various nonliving objects), he could create a three-dimensional mental map of his surroundings. After today, he felt well acquainted with the whole medical bay, the canteen, and the hangar, and he had found Rey's quarters. Once he had the base down, he would branch out and scan the outside for a suitable training site. He had little else on his agenda for tomorrow.

The guards outside his door had been tight with nervousness and fear ever since Rey's departure. She was reckless to have been so loud before, and then to blatantly confront them about it in the hallway was really asking for trouble. Projecting his thoughts directly into her mind had clearly taken her by surprise, but he had to make sure she got control of herself before she really made a mess of things. Thought projection would have to be one of her first lessons.

Ben detected Rey's approach, and sat up a little in his elevated hospital bed. It was late and he was exhausted, but he hadn't wanted to be sleeping when she showed back up, so he'd instead monitored her presence in the canteen. She'd been talking with FN-2187—what was his name now? He couldn't remember, not even sure if that was a thing he'd ever known to forget in the first place.

When she got to the door, she didn't stop to talk to the guards, she just let herself right in, not interested in interacting with them further. She was surprised to see Ben awake.

"Oh! You're still up? I'm sorry, that took longer than I'd expected, but I have your food. I had to reheat it though." She set the tray of food down on the same table from earlier, and remained standing at the foot of his bed rather than taking the chair.

He reached for something he didn't need a fork to eat. "Thank you. So you've thoroughly debriefed your friend, I assume?" he asked, taking a bite.

She looked surprised. "Who do you mean? Poe?"

"No," he said, chewing, "I mean the one you were with, that stormtrooper. What's his name?"

"Finn."

"Right, Finn. 'FN', of course. That's very creative—did Poe come up with that? Anyway, it should be easy to remember…"

"How did you know I was talking to him?" she asked, brow creased.

"I'll tell you later. I don't feel like getting into it right now." He sighed and relaxed back into his pillows. The rings under his eyes had grown dark.

"I'm sorry, it's probably difficult to rest here. I'll try to do something about that." She took a step toward the door. "Well, eat your food, and then get some sleep. Tomorrow I'll get to work on preparations to leave, and I'll finish stitching up your clothes. The shirt shouldn't be as difficult as the pants were…" She took another step towards the door to leave, but then stopped herself and turned back to him. "What are you going to do tomorrow?"

He had relaxed back into his pillows. His eyes were closed, and he had food in his hand. "Same thing I did today."

"Do you… want a book or something?"

"No, I'm fine, trust me. Keeping busy…"

"Okay then…?" She gave him a weird look. "Well, don't fall asleep with food in the bed. I'll make sure it's safe to sleep, so hurry up and eat and then do that."

"Uh huh." He sighed sleepily.

She gave him one last look of incredulity, then exited the room and closed the door. It had been an incredibly long day. She hoped tomorrow would be less eventful. She resolved to go back to her room and get some sleep of her own, but first, she needed a word with the guards.

"You will do whatever it takes to keep that man in there safe."

The two men straightened. In unison, they replied, "We will do whatever it takes to keep that man safe."

It was a mercifully uneventful trip back to her room.

The following morning, Rey awoke feeling an intense sense of purpose. She was grateful for the distraction that Ben's presence provided—her grief over Leia's death was still fresh, but dwelling on it wouldn't help anything. Rey stopped by Ben's room in the morning to deliver a safe tray of food and to have a "word" with the new guards who were on duty. He once again assured her that he wasn't bored, and she should just get straight to work and not worry about him until dinner—he didn't need lunch. She wasn't sure she agreed that everything with him was fine, but she had work to do, so she let it go.

It took Rey about an hour to finish stitching up Ben's clothes, and then she scrounged up some large backpacks from the supply room adjacent to the hangar. In there, she also found a few other necessary supplies: bedrolls, extra blankets, tents, ration packs, lanterns, and canteens, among other things. She loaded up what she could into each of the bags, and hauled them back to her quarters. She packed a smaller satchel with various personal items she thought would come in handy, including the Jedi texts and her broken lightsaber. She wasn't sure what Ben would want in the way of personal items, but she had another smallish bag and crammed some generic stuff in there, trying to anticipate what his basic needs might be. Still no extra clothes for him, but she had a lot of fabric left over from her patch job on Ben's pants, and she'd found some comfortable canvas sheets in the supply room that she could easily repurpose into something wearable. She packed a pair of sturdy scissors and her needle and thread, resolving that if push came to shove, she would just make him something simple.

Dinner came more quickly than she'd realized, and she was once again eating later than most everyone else. She wasn't as late as she was yesterday though, so when she got to the canteen, there were still a good many people there enjoying their food. She grabbed a tray for herself. She would have to get Ben's meal afterwards—she was far too famished to split her own portions in half. She had just finished in line and was looking for an empty table to sit at when she heard her name.

"Rey! Hey, Rey, over here!"

She looked toward the source of the sound, and saw Finn waving at her from across the room. He was sitting with Rose, and it looked like they had only been there for a few minutes. Their drinks were half full and they still had most of their food left to eat. She walked over to them, and Finn gestured for her to sit down. She took the seat next to Rose, and greeted them warmly. "Hey guys, how are you doing?"

"We're fine," said Rose. "We've been busy installing new hyperdrive units into our larger transports that should require twelve percent less fuel than our old ones."

"Twelve percent, really? That's really good. It takes a lot of energy to accelerate those old hulking beasts." Rey was genuinely interested in this sort of thing—to her, it wasn't just small talk.

"Yeah, no kidding," said Rose. "So, are you all ready to head out in the morning?"

"I told her most of what you said to me yesterday," interjected Finn, somewhat sheepishly. "I hope that was okay."

"Yeah, it's fine. My leaving was going to become common knowledge sooner or later, and I'd prefer the real reasons for it getting out before people have time to start making up their own nefarious explanations."

"Okay, good," said Finn, relieved that he hadn't broken a confidence.

"Anyway, to answer your question, Rose, yeah, I'm pretty much ready. I packed bags, stitched up his clothes, and—" Rey stopped, and had to chuckle. "Jeez, I guess that's it. That took all day? Seems wasteful…" she said, giving her head a light shake.

"Well, I'm sure it was a lot of packing," said Rose.

"How long will you two be out there?" asked Finn.

Rey considered this. "You know, I'm not sure. I think Jedi training is supposed to take a long time, but I've known a lot—well, not a lot—but pretty much all the Jedi I've heard of had their training cut short due to circumstance, and they all became strong with the Force anyway, just on their own. So who knows? Oh yeah, hey," said Rey, changing the subject, "did you get a hold of Poe today to explain things for me?"

"Oh yeah, of course! I told him everything you told me about the situation with Ben—then he got mad at me for calling him 'Ben', and I had to endure this whole tirade—"

Rey rolled her eyes.

"—and then I explained everything about the First Order, Leia's assassination, and how this would probably scuttle our efforts to establish any major alliances for a while." He paused in his hasty listing off of events in order to catch his breath. "He thinks we'll have to redouble our grassroots efforts instead. Focus on small victories. That's what he planned to tell the council, anyway."

Rey nodded. "Good, that was the most important stuff. Did you tell him I'll be leaving tomorrow?" Her eyebrows were raised.

"Oh! Yeah, he was furious about that, sorry. He'll probably give you an earful tomorrow."

"Well, at least he spared me from it today," she said, inserting a forkful of food into her mouth.

Finn nodded, chewing his own food. "He was too busy to get into it with you today, or he would have, I'm sure."

Rey shook her head, silently chewing.

Rose spoke next. "Poe's just worried about you, Rey. He trusts you, he just doesn't trust him. He wanted to keep you where he could help you if you needed it."

Rey nodded. "I know, I just wish he wouldn't worry so much," she said with a sigh.

"Oh, and I told him about the food thing," Finn had lowered his voice conspiratorially, his eyes darting around the room.

"Did he know anything about it?" Rey wasn't sure Poe respected the chain of command enough not to resort to vigilante justice, but she wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. She really hoped the answer was "no".

"No, he hadn't heard anything. He seemed pretty incredulous that anyone would try to murder him—I mean, he understands that people might want to murder him, but he didn't seem to think anyone would actually try," he said, taking a sip from his beverage.

"So he thinks I'm wrong about it? Or that Ben's lying?"

"I didn't say that, I just said he sounded incredulous…"

No one spoke for a moment. They just sat there quietly chewing and glancing casually around the room.

As an afterthought, Finn added suddenly, "He did say he'd look into it though—when he 'had time'."

"Time, right," muttered Rey. "Well, we're leaving tomorrow anyway, so I guess it doesn't really matter." Rey sighed, "On that note, I should probably get out of here. I still have a few things to do before I can call it a day." She collected her utensils into the middle of her tray, and polished off her drink.

"Will you be back to visit much?" asked Rose.

"I'll try, but Ben doesn't want me to be too distracted. He says he'll lose his patience if my progress slows down because of 'other people's drama'." She gave a wry smile.

"Other people's drama—that's rich," said Finn. "There's no way Poe will let you just disappear for months—let me reiterate: He was not happy when I said you'd be leaving the base."

"Yeah, I think he thinks this is some elaborate plot to turn me to the dark side or something," said Rey.

Finn bit his lip, appearing to debate whether or not to respond. "I don't think that's the only thing he's worried about," said Finn, exchanging a glance with Rose.

Rey ignored the insinuation and stood up, collecting her tray. "Well anyway, I think I'd better bring Ben his dinner now. I'm pretty sure he won't eat unless I'm the one who gets it, he's so paranoid."

"Sure, get going. We'll see you in the morning before you leave, right? You're not going to leave without saying goodbye?" asked Finn.

"No, I wouldn't do that. We'll probably leave from the hangar and take a speeder or something, so look for us there."

Rey said her goodbyes, and was headed back to collect Ben's dinner. From there, she set off to deliver it to Ben and catch him up on everything she'd accomplished that day.

When she got to Ben's room, there were four guards standing in front of it. She cocked her head at the sight, and approached to speak to them. The two guards from this morning were there, looking tired and determined. "Why are there four of you here?" she asked no one in particular.

One of the two newer guards looked at her and gestured at them. "Good question! These two refuse to stand down. We've all been standing here together for over two hours. They won't even leave to pee. I think this one's going to hurt himself," and he jabbed a thumb in the direction of one of the guards, who stood shivering in front of the door.

Rey realized she may have been overzealous when she had checked in with them that morning. She made a mental note to allow them to give themselves breaks one at a time.

"You two will stand down now," she instructed.

"We will stand down now," they repeated, and immediately, the two relaxed. One flopped down into a chair and folded himself in half, placing his head between his knees and breathing heavily, and the other one bolted for the refresher.

The two newer guards regarded her quizzically, without speaking.

"They're really good listeners," said Rey, by way of explanation, and then she helped herself into Ben's room.

When she saw Ben, he was smiling. "That was hilarious, nice job. I've never seen two men more selflessly dedicated to the task at hand."

Rey smirked, rolling her eyes. "Thanks. Here's your dinner."

"Thank you," he said, and he sat up straighter and took the tray from her hands. "So will we be ready to leave in the morning like we planned?"

"Yes. I packed bedrolls, blankets, tents—"

"We don't need tents," he interrupted. "There are houses we can use about ten klicks from here."

Rey furrowed her brow at him. "How do you—whatever. Anyway, I'll put the tents back, but if it turns out we needed them, it's your fault. I also packed field rations—"

"Don't need those either, but whatever, they're small. What else?"

She grumbled in irritation at having been interrupted a second time, but continued. "Lanterns, canteens, some fabric so I can make you a change of clothes—oh shoot! I meant to bring you your shirt."

"Just bring it in the morning. Is that it?"

"Just some personal items. Speaking of which, is there anything specific you want me to pack for you?"

He rubbed his cheek. "A razor would be nice. This is getting scratchy." You could indeed read the passage of time on his face. "And some cooking gear."

"Cooking gear? What for? I packed rations," she said, like his suggestion was the most illogical thing he'd said all day.

"If we have to rely on rations, we'll be coming back here every few days just to resupply, and I have no interest in that. No. We're cooking."

Rey was silent for a moment, then sighed a sigh of pathetic resignation. "I only know how to prepare field rations."

"Then consider it part of your training. Lesson 1: 'How not to be killed by your own ineptitude'."

She glared at him. "Cooking gear, fine. Is there anything else?"

If he noticed she was irritated, he gave absolutely no indication. "That ought to do it. If there's anything we didn't think of, we can always come back for it later."

Under her breath, she muttered to herself, "But coming back here for field rations is out of the question…"

He shook his head at her dismissively. "Can you bring my cloak and gloves back when you bring me my shirt?"

"Sure."

He could still hear the irritation in her voice, but he ignored it. "Great. You can leave now. Try not to drive any more guards to self-harm, not that it wasn't amusing. Just, you know, trouble…"

"Right, trouble. I'll be more careful. Good night," she said, and she stood up from her seat.

"See you in the morning," he said, and he plunged his knife and fork into a slab of something brown on his tray. After eating the food in the canteen, she didn't understand what was so bad about field rations.