Part 2

A communication had just come in, Chewbacca informed Rey in a casual moan, handing her a blinking datapad.

She thanked him and made her way into Ben's study.

"For you," she said, placing it on his desk and settling into the large plushy chair next to the window. The Jedi text before her was, to her mind, long-winded and lacking in merit but Luke must have seen something in them to have kept them so long. She resumed reading where she had left off.

"Oh no," Ben said scrolling through the comm.

"What is it?" She asked, as he was not one for undue drama.

"The New Galactic Senate demands we end our petition for a new academic license."

"Why?" She cried.

Ben slid the datapad across his desk toward her. The message was from Poe, he was currently an administrative liaison for the government offices in Coruscant.

"Safety concerns?" She questioned, incensed. "Artoo?"

R2-D2 awoke from sleep mode in the corner with a few distinctive beeps.

"Could you access a recording of Phasma's speech before the Senate regarding planetary education permits on the holonet?"

R2-D2 indicated he was searching.

"Even you, have to admit their concerns have some foundation." Ben rested his elbows on his desk and massaged his forehead with his fingertips while he spoke.

"Coming from Phasma," Rey quipped, "I'll admit no such thing." She stood to her feet and circled to the front of his desk. She leaned across the desk, her burgeoning belly grazed the top of his desk as she gently pulled his hands away from his face. "Don't let the dark side tug you into believing that you were irredeemable."

Ben met her eyes, he knew he didn't deserve his life but he was always grateful when Rey affirmed her belief in him.

R2-D2 beeped in the corner, he had found something.

Rey sat back in her chair, welcoming the relief it brought her swelling feet.

"My fellow delegates to this distinguished body," Phasma began, "As a servant of the former First Order, may I remind you all," she paused for dramatic effect, "...of the suffering that was brought upon our great galaxy by the followers of the Jedi Order."

Ben bristled a bit, "We were not exactly following the Jedi Order..."

"These religious fanatics destroyed planet after planet, fellow delegates. I had a front row seat, witnessing their careless destruction of peaceful worlds in their battle against the various factions of their breed."

"She was Hux's right hand officer," Rey fumed at the thought of Phasma's deception before the Senate. It had never ceased to amaze her that Phasma had so successfully pulled the wool over the eyes of the Parnassos System to get herself elected Senator.

Phasma's speech was droning on in eloquent phrase, until she finally arrived at her point, "The academic application office has informed me, their most ardent defender in this body, that an application has been received from Kylo Ren himself. That, ever fraudulent Supreme Leader who now has reclaimed the name of Ben Solo in order to cover himself with his mother's upstanding reputation. He and the former scavenger he married in an blatant attempt to legitimize her low birth status as the child of drunken miscreants, have endeavored to take in innocent children to teach the ways of this decisive practice."

"Artoo, stop playback." Ben ordered. He'd heard enough.

Rey stared at him for a moment silently as she stood to her feet, rubbing her belly gently as the baby seemed to do somersaults inside her.

"I'm going to Coruscant," she announced.

"No, absolutely not," Ben stammered, "...the baby!"

"It's not coming for a while," she countered.

Ben could feel her determination infiltrating the Force around her. He sighed. It was a lost battle before it began.

"I'll go with you."