11. Chapter 11

            Rey suddenly finds herself at a disorienting elevation, and she sways, coming dangerously close to pitching over the ledge and into the ocean below. It takes her a second to realize where she is. There’s stone beneath her feet, and, behind her, a large rock with a flat surface, perfect for meditation. In the distance, where sky meets sea, two suns hang low over the horizon. This a place she knows well. The first Jedi temple on Ahch-To.

            Only there’s something unsettling about the scene, so subtle that it takes another few moments for her to puzzle it out. There’s no wind. This high up, gusts from the sea should be blowing hard enough to whip her hair around her face. There’s an ominous stillness to the whole scene, and she looks at the ocean again and sees that the peaks and valleys of its waves are frozen, absolutely motionless. On the island, which stretches out behind and below her, little black and white dots that she knows must be porgs huddle together in clusters but don’t move or squawk. It’s silent. Silent and still.

            “The Force has a strange sense of humor about these things,” says a man’s voice, a little gravelly with age and disuse. Rey looks and finds Luke Skywalker next to her, leaning against the rock, looking out at the ocean. He looks like he did when she last saw him in life — robed, bearded — yet it’s as though his passing smoothed out some of his worry lines; he’s much less a man haunted by the past. “It wasn’t so long ago that you thought about coming back here. And here you are.”

            “Here I am,” she echoes, with a complex combination of relief she didn’t know she’d feel at seeing him again, since it’s not as if they parted under the best of circumstances, and stomach-churning disappointment, knowing what his presence must mean. “Are you here?”

            He smiles at her, wrinkles deepening around his eyes. “Of course I am, Rey.”

            Rey exhales and leans back against the rock behind her. “I really did botch it, then,” she says. “Because you’re here, and that’s a sunset.”

            “Huh, could be,” says Luke, shading his eyes with his hands as he looks back out at the twin suns. “Could very well be.”

            “What do you mean, ‘could be?’” Rey asks, with incredulity and no small amount of rising anxiety. “The suns are on this side of the island. That means they’re setting. That means I’m dying.”

            “Standard laws of planetary rotation don’t really apply here,” says Luke. “Maybe it’s a sunset, maybe it isn’t. If we wait long enough, we’ll find out.”

            Rey breathes out through her nostrils. Deciphering the old Jedi texts can be like this, too. They’re often written in riddles, winding their way around what they mean, making the reader puzzle it out for themselves. Rey understands the logic behind this, behind making people put in effort to get answers, but it doesn’t translate very well to conversation. She squints out at the ocean. “This clearly isn’t the real Ahch-To. So where’s here?”

            “It’s in between.” Luke looks up at the star-speckled sky above their heads, already dull and darkened, a stark contrast with the sunset that boils over the horizon. “You’re not in your body, but you’re not gone just yet, either. Ben’s working very hard to keep you breathing. If he manages to do so until help arrives, you’ll have a good shot at going back.”

            Rey glances at Luke. “Can you see him?”

            Luke nods.

            She hesitates, then asks, “Can I see him?”

            He turns to Rey and shakes his head. “You don’t want to.”

            “I do want to.” She can imagine Kylo Ren still kneeling over her, sweating as he strains to channel the Force into her lungs. She can’t forget the look in his eyes, the fear and agony she saw reflected in them, the tremor in his voice as he said her name. It stirs something in her that she can’t quite explain away, but she explains it away regardless by telling herself that she just wants to see how proficient he is at keeping her alive.

            “No,” says Luke. “It’s not about him. You don’t want to see yourself like that.”

            Rey flinches away from him as if stung. “Oh,” she says. She has a thousand questions, but the only ones she can manage are, “Is it— really bad? Am I that close to death?”

            “It’s unsettling to see yourself from the outside at the best of times,” he says. “When you’re dying, it’s worse. And when someone in pain is begging you to come back, and you’re standing close enough to touch them or offer words of comfort but you can’t interact with them in any way they’d feel or hear, that’s worst of all.”

            He speaks as if from experience, but Rey doesn’t ask him to elaborate or question him further. She casts her eyes down to the rock beneath her hand and gently flicks a pebble off its edge. “Well,” she says. “I’ll take your word for it, then.”

            “As you should. Maybe not in all things, but in this.” He pats the rock. “Sit. We might be waiting a while. Time doesn’t work like it should here either.”

            Rey pushes up onto her toes, and hops backwards, transferring her weight to her hands so she can push herself up onto the rock. She sits with her knees far apart, and her feet dangle a few inches above the ledge’s surface. Everything feels so lifelike but for the unnatural calm blanketing it all. The frozen ocean is what disconcerts her the most. There are so many thoughts swirling in her head, and she can’t choose which one to articulate, so she just sits, and looks.

            Luke speaks first. “What are you doing, Rey?”

            “What?” She scowls. “What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m sitting here with you, waiting to find out if I’m dead or not.”

            “You know that’s not what I meant,” Luke says, with the hint of a sigh. “What are you doing back there, with Ben?”

            “Oh.” Rey injects a false casualness into her voice. “Um, nothing much of consequence, really. Why?”

            “The first thing you did when you realized there was something wrong with the wine was to keep him from drinking it as well.” Luke leans back, watching her face. “You saved his life.”

            “I suppose,” Rey admits, with some reluctance.

            “You decided it would be better to let him live. Despite the role he’s assumed. The part he plays in the ongoing conflict.”

            “Well, not— no. No.” She shakes her head, and speaks with rising confidence. “It’s not like the First Order disappears if he dies. They’d just have Hux or somebody assume the mantle of Supreme Leader, and that would be worse.”

            “Of course.”

            “Besides,” she continues, grasping for another reason, “if he died there’d be nobody to save my life.”

            “So it was selfish,” says Luke.

            “Well, you know me, I’m… I’m a selfish person.” Rey’s cheeks tingle. She’s well aware of how ridiculous she sounds. Even knowing what she knows about Luke, knowing his flaws, talking with him can sometimes make her feel so immature. “I’m very selfish.”

            “Of course you are.” Luke softens his voice. “You still think he’s worth saving.”

            Rey shifts on her stone perch. “I wasn’t really thinking at all.”

            “Is that so?”

            “It was just instinct.”

            “A selfish instinct.”

            “Exactly,” Rey says, all her conviction deflated. “A very selfish instinct.”

            Luke lets her sit with her falsehood until she squirms from it. “So I’m asking you again, Rey,” he says at last. “What are you doing back there?”

            “I’m— not sure I understand the question,” says Rey, genuinely confused about what he’s trying to get at.

            “When you went to him the first time, you were compassionate. To a fault, I thought.” Luke studies the horizon for a moment as Rey watches him, brows knitting together. “That compassion still lives in you, but now you’re pushing it away so you don’t make the same mistake twice. He can’t let you down if you don’t want to help him.”

            She crosses her arms. “No, I’m not— I’m not pushing anything away. He just doesn’t deserve any compassion right now.”

            “I’d argue that he didn’t the first time, and yet you gave it anyway.” Luke folds his arms too, mimicking her posture, but he keeps looking out at the suns, which are half-hidden behind faraway clouds. “Compassion’s a funny thing. Often it’s unearned, yet still freely given. You’re full of it, Rey, even though with your history no one would blame you if you were selfish. If you looked out only for yourself. That’s what’s remarkable about you. Why you’ve so often succeeded where I failed.”

            He’s quiet for a moment, and then he adds, “I know how much it hurts you and Leia to act like you’ve given up on him.”

            “You gave up on him,” she protests, a little uncomfortable the turn this dialogue has taken.

            “I was never going to be his impetus to return to the Light, Rey.”

            “Well, I’m— not, either.”

            “Are you so certain of that?”

            “What? Yes, of course I am.” Rey speaks from a place of sheer incredulity. “I went to him. He killed his master, like Vader did. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t turn. He doesn’t want to. He wants to be what he is. That’s all there is to it.”

            Luke exhales, and his shoulders slump as if they all at once bear a great weight. “His parents, me… Upon reflection, and I’ve had a lot of time to reflect, we didn’t do a very good job at showing him the other ways to be. That’s how Snoke became his greatest influence. Through neglect, or absence, or betrayal, everyone else let him down.”

            “Master Skywalker.” Rey plants one hand on the rock and twists toward him. She remembers telling him before, when she didn’t have the complete picture, that he wasn’t the one who failed Kylo Ren. Now she knows he did, profoundly. Yet she still says, “He’s not a child anymore. He’s a grown man. He makes his own choices. What happened to him growing up only matters to a point. It doesn’t excuse what he does now.”

            “I know that,” says Luke. “And so do you. But maybe his salvation lies in seeing that there are still better ways.”

            Rey puffs out her cheeks and blows air out through pursed lips. “What are you suggesting, exactly? Are you saying I have to stay beyond my remit to try and fix him? Because I won’t do that, and I can’t. There are so many other people depending on me—”

            “No, Rey. I would never, ever say that to you. I hope you know that.” The lines in Luke’s forehead deepen. “All I’m saying is not to fight your best impulses. You know that compassion isn’t surrender. It’s not absolution. It’s an outstretched hand. He has to be the one to take it. If he doesn’t, then... you may have to withdraw it, as you have before.”

            Rey rubs her hand up and down her bicep, sheepishly. “I have withdrawn it,” she says. “It’s withdrawn. I’m not going to let him get close again. I refuse. By the Force, the things he wanted to do to me—”

            “Terrible things,” Luke agrees, with appropriate seriousness. “Yet his resolve to do them melted the moment he had the chance. If he were actually capable of doing half of what he dreams of doing, we’d be having a very different conversation, you and I.”

            “He does terrible things anyway,” Rey points out. “What does it matter if he does them to everyone except me? It’s not as if he’s been so great to me, on the whole.”

            “No, he hasn’t,” Luke concedes. “Still, when everyone else saw a monster, including himself, you saw something else. And I wonder if you still see what he could be. Maybe you saw it in him just before you found yourself here.”

            Rey shifts again. It all hits a little too close to home. “When I saw those things before, I was wrong,” she mutters. “I was foolish. You were right.”

            “Was I?” Luke looks not at the horizon, but at the darkened twilight sky above their heads. “He’s still trying to save your life.”

            “He’s saved my life before. As I said, it didn’t make much difference.”

            “When you went to him on the Supremacy.” Rey nods, and Luke shrugs. “I’d argue he spared your life that time. He didn’t save it.”

            “I don’t see the distinction.”

            “Sparing a life is much easier than saving one,” Luke explains. “When you spare someone, their life was already in your hands. But when you save them, you have to work to overcome circumstances that are, usually, completely out of your control.”

            “Well, he was preparing to kill me anyway. And that was well within his control.”

            “He would have found an excuse to spare you again.”

            “You can’t know that.” Luke gives her a very pointed sidelong look, and Rey sighs and says, “Yes, all right, fine. Maybe you can.”

            “You know it too. You saw it in him.”

            Rey shakes her head. “I don’t know what I saw.”

            “You know he doesn’t want to kill you,” Luke says. “You know he doesn’t want you dead, because if he did, he’d let the poison take you. And I think you know a little more than just that.” Rey doesn’t respond, so he continues, “It may not feel like enough, but it’s something. It’s more than I ever thought was left of Ben Solo.”

            “I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” Rey says, prickly. Her chest aches. “If you’re trying to give me guidance, just be straightforward. I’ve had a very long day.”

            “If you survive this, you’ll have five days left with him, according to your plan.” Luke’s voice is gentle. “All you have to do is be who you are, Rey. The Light that lives in you serves as a beacon to others. Allow yourself to show the same strength of character that inspired me to become Luke Skywalker again.”

            Rey shakes her head again. “I won’t do that just for him.”

            “Don’t do it for anyone. Just don’t deny your true nature. I know that several times you’ve shied away from pitying him, but pity won’t make you weak, or more willing to tolerate his bad behavior, or likelier to fall prey to him. I think you know that about yourself. I think when the time comes for you to leave, you’ll find yourself able, even if you embrace some of your softer instincts. The less selfish ones.” His eyes search her face. “You teach your students to eschew self-denial, yet you don’t follow your own advice.”

            “But Master Skywalker, I can’t—” She swallows. “Look, say what I saw in his mind is real. Say he’s just put up walls around it, like you think I’ve walled off some of my— whatever. I can’t possibly reciprocate. What would that say about me?”

            “Ah.” He smiles, a little sadly, she thinks. “You think we don’t all wrestle with unwanted feelings? That has nothing to do with the struggle between Light and Dark. Sadly, that’s just part of being alive.”

            “I don’t have those feelings,” Rey huffs, like a child.

            “Of course not,” he says, his eyes twinkling. “But between when you last saw him and now, there was that issue of intimacy, of being unable to be with anyone romantically. Didn’t you think that had something to do with him?”

            “No,” Rey protests. “I just—”

            “You’re telling me there wasn’t some small part of you that wanted to see him again? A part that wished he’d prove himself as vile as you want him to be, so you could move on?”

            Rey blinks at him. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

            “I know why you say you’re here.”

            “The mission’s not why I say I’m here, it’s why I’m here! Wait.” Her stomach drops, and she realizes that throughout this conversation he’s been referencing things that he wasn’t around for, that he couldn’t possibly be privy to. “How do you know all this? Have you been watching me the entire time?”

            “It’s not about watching you deliberately,” says Luke, a little off-handedly. “It’s more omniscience. All-knowing, all-seeing.”

            “Oh, no.”

            “You know the Force connects all things. There’s a way for Jedi to become one with it when we die. Accordingly, we’re part of it, and part of everything.”

            “Right, so this conversation just got—” Rey ducks her head down, both to conceal the redness in her cheeks and to avoid looking at him. “It just got a thousand times worse.”

            He doesn’t say anything for a moment, then, “Oh, you’re thinking about—”

            “Please, don’t.”

            “Rey, I may technically be all-seeing now,” Luke says, with an awkward chuckle, “but I know when to look away.”

            That doesn’t make Rey feel any less like sinking into the stone beneath her. “Right, so you’re constantly present. But this is the first time we’ve spoken.”

            “It is.” Luke looks out at the ocean. “I’ve spoken with Leia a few times, when she’s been in need of comfort. She, too, has an immeasurable amount of strength. Still, the loneliness—”

            “You’ve spoken with Leia?”

            He nods.

            Maybe Rey is already feeling raw from the rest of this conversation, but hearing that hurts more than she expects. “But she never said anything.”

            “At my behest.”

            “At your—” She turns fully now, putting one knee up on the rock so she can face him. “Master Skywalker, I’ve spent countless nights poring over those old Jedi texts, trying to figure out what to pass on and what to let die. I’ve struggled to set up lessons for my pupils when I’m still teaching myself. I do what I can, but I’ve no way to know if I’m doing it right. Why wouldn’t you—” Something hot trickles down her cheek. A tear. She angrily wipes it away and looks at her knees.  “Why wouldn’t you ever come to me?”

            He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. She can feel his touch, but becomes cognizant of a strange weightlessness to them both, as though neither of them is entirely tangible even though they can interact with each other. “Rey,” he says. “You don’t need me anymore, if you ever did. You’ve already grown so much from my mistakes.”

            “Well, I’m almost dead now,” she snaps. “So maybe I could have used some counsel before we got here.”

            “That’s a fair point.” He’s quiet for a moment. “For what it’s worth, though, you’re doing better than I ever did. Your students are happy, they’re balanced. And you so gracefully bear all of the responsibility of your task without succumbing to the weight of a legacy. I didn’t want to disrupt that.”

            Rey lets his words sink in. She’s unaccustomed to praise. Wonder at her abilities, yes. But not praise, and not praise for something she’s put so much effort into doing well. She doesn’t know quite what to do with it. “A ‘hello’ once in awhile might be nice,” she mutters, at last. “If I get out of this.”

            “I think that much I can manage,” he says.

            “If I don’t—” She looks back up at him. “If I don’t, could you ask Leia to tell my friends I’m sorry? Could you ask her to tell my students I have all the faith in the galaxy that they’ll be able to carry on without me? I just—” Her voice breaks, and she stops. “There’s so much I wanted to say.”

            Luke says kindly, “Say it yourself.”

            “What?”

            He looks to the horizon, and Rey does, too, squinting at the suns. She sees them rising, inching ever so slightly upwards in the sky, and she breaks into a smile, overcome with a joy unlike any other she’s felt in her life, now not as short as it might otherwise have been.

            “He did it,” she whispers.

            She feels Luke’s eyes on her. “Yes,” he says. “He did.”

            Rey brings her hands up to her mouth and exhales into them. “Oh, Rii’a’s shorts!” she exclaims, falling back on an old expression from Jakku. She looks at Luke, and she’s briefly tempted to throw her arms around him, but that’s not the relationship they have. She just pulls her hands down and grins openly at him. “That means— that does mean something, doesn’t it?”

            “It does,” he agrees. “For both of you, I think.”

            “Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” says Rey. “But I’m certainly grateful.”

            “And you know it’s all right to feel that way.”

            She nods. “Besides, it’s not like I’m in his debt. I saved his life first.”

            “I think he’d agree.”

            “So. I can be grateful.”

            “Rey,” Luke says, “be whatever way you feel.”

            He pushes off the rock, and looks out at the suns as they retreat from the horizon. Rey does too. They watch that reverse sunset together in silence. When the sky is more blue than it is pink and gold, he says, “I should get going, but you can stay here as long as you like.” A pause. “Trust yourself. Whatever that means. You know what you’re doing.”

            When she turns her head to look at him, perhaps to thank him, he’s already gone.

            “So dramatic,” she says, under her breath, even though Luke’s no longer around to hear. But he’s always around, isn’t he? That’s what he told her. And as the wind picks up again it carries a full laugh that, although she’s never heard it in her waking life, she knows belongs to him.

            Rey does linger here a while, on this Ahch-To misplaced in time. She watches the sky lighten above her as the suns take their places overhead. She watches the waves pull away from the ocean shore, surge back, and pull away again. Three years have passed since she last sat here, but she remembers finding the Force for the first time, truly finding it with intent and clarity and purpose, like it was yesterday. That was when she became aware of the balance between all things and began to understand it. She recalls that moment and lives in it, savors it, as if taking a deep breath and filling her lungs unassisted, once again.

            And when the suns stop backtracking and the ocean waves begin lapping at the cliffs again as they should, and the island comes alive with the sounds of its native wildlife, and the wind swirls around her with the scents of salt and seaweed, she knows it’s time for her to go back. She closes her eyes.

            The first thing she notices about being alive is how heavy it is to be tethered to a body. She hadn’t realized how freeing it felt not to have a physical anchor weighing her down, subject to the ship’s artificial gravity pressing her against what feels like a mattress pad. The second thing she notices is the pain. There’s the dull ache of her muscles, and a sharper, less familiar pain in her chest that surges with every breath she takes.

            But she is breathing.

            She blinks her eyes open, slowly. She’s laying on her side with her arms in front of her, one hand upturned, and her knees slightly curled in as if she’d just been sleeping. She wears a paper-thin gown, and there’s a sensor attached to her wrist, presumably measuring her pulse. Screens crowd around the cot that she can’t make sense of right now. The room is white, sanitized, and mostly empty but for the displays, a nightstand with drawers, and two chairs, one of which has been pulled close to her side.

            That’s the chair he’s in, of course. At first she thinks he's asleep because of how he slumps over himself, but she sees the glint of his eyes through his lashes and realizes they’re just downcast as he watches her chest rise and fall. His hair falls over his face, thoroughly unkempt. She sees his gloves and his cape and his tunic resting forgotten on the other chair and becomes aware that he’s shed his outer layers while sitting up with her. One of his bare hands presses into the mattress near her upturned one, shying just away from touching it. She doubts he slept at all, and as she thinks that she does feel pity, and she feels gratitude, and a couple of other things that she can’t put a name to right now.

            When he sees her eyes open he says, “Rey,” in a low husky rumble, and this time it’s not a plea but a sigh of relief.

            “What—” she begins, and finds her throat sore, her voice hoarse and raspy.

            He shakes his head. “Talking might be difficult. They had to put a tube—” He stops, briefly overcome. “They put a tube down your throat.”

            She nods, and she presses up onto her hands to try to sit up. There’s that surge of pain again. She winces, and he reaches out with the hand not planted on the mattress to help her, but stops himself short, as if he’s not sure that’s what she wants. “You have two broken ribs,” he says. “A bacta treatment should heal them. Those— those are from me. I was careless when I—”

            Rey shakes her head. Gradually, moving with slow and directed intent, she’s able to arrange herself in something like a seated posture, leaning heavily on the two pillows she’s been given. His eyes track her face, but the rest of him stays still.

            “I’m sorry,” he says.

            She shakes her head again.

            “Sorry to have hurt you, and sorry that because of me you were put in a position where… in this position.” He swallows. “The poison had no antidote. It needed to pass through your system on its own. So a ventilator had to breathe for you.” His voice shakes as though he can hardly bear to articulate it. “For hours.”

            She looks at him, at his bowed head. “You breathed for me,” she whispers back.

            He exhales. Rey glances at his hand on the mattress, placed near her but not close enough to touch her skin, and she covers it with her own. And then she does something she promised she wouldn’t do again, or at least not for a very long time. Something of immeasurable significance. Something she told herself he needed to earn and that perhaps, in saving her life, he has.

            She says his name. His real name.

            “Ben.”

            He picks up his head to look at her, eyes wide, seemingly at a loss for words. She leans toward him, but she can’t move very far without aggravating the pain in her chest, so he closes the gap between them, and they kiss.

            One time, Rey watched a star go supernova. Poe had organized the viewing party; he has a not-so-secret love for astronomy and will talk your ear off if you get him started, as he had talked up this event for weeks before it happened. This nameless star was in their galaxy, only tens of thousands of lightyears away from Akiva, he’d said, and they would have a clear view of its final moments, written in history millennia ago but only visible on this planet now. So when the time came, Rey, Finn, Rose, Poe, Connix, and a half-dozen of Poe’s pilot cohort had climbed on top of the Vigilance’s communications tower, sat on blankets, passed ale around, and waited, taking turns squinting up at the night sky through special monoculars that would enlarge the dying star hundreds of times yet keep them from going blind as they looked directly at the event.

            The first whoop of discovery came from one of the pilots, who spotted activity on the star’s surface as it writhed and wrestled with itself, as it failed to hold its shape, and they all got their monoculars up in time to see the shock breakout, the brilliant flash of energy as the shockwave from the star’s collapsing core reached its surface. Magnified by the monocular lens, the flash monopolized Rey’s entire field of vision, and she’d gasped, leaned back, and then laughed at the wonder of it all, how rare a thing it was to witness, much less witness with her insides warmed by alcohol and her heart warmed by company. The others had gasped, too, similarly overcome, then grinned at each other and looked back out into space.

            They all stayed up there for hours, long after the shock breakout faded and the supernova darkened then grew brighter than before, and brighter even than that, until they didn’t need monoculars anymore to see the full spectacle. For weeks it remained the brightest object in the sky, visible even during the day; for weeks, Rey looked up and remembered how all her friends had smiled, transfixed by it, as time stood still.

            The way she felt that night, the unmatched lightness and simplicity, coupled with the way that dying star must have felt as it broke through its borders in a dazzling burst of white, resolved, then grew more radiant than ever before, transcending itself to become something more beautiful: that’s the only language Rey knows that describes how this kiss feels.

            At first it’s uncomplicated. Just closed eyes and closed mouths. Then he makes a small helpless sound and parts his lips and she parts hers and they kiss. She presses into him as best she can and he tilts his head to the side so their faces fit together more easily and they kiss. She brings the hand not on his hand up to his shoulder to stabilize herself, and he brings his up to cup her cheek, and they kiss. It’s their first kiss that’s neither a prologue nor epilogue for sex, but something else entirely, completely removed from it. It’s so strangely liberating, and it lasts for minutes, with only the briefest interruptions as they pull apart, breathe, and find each other again.

            The door hisses open across the room, and a woman’s voice says, “Supreme Leader— oh.”

            Rey and Kylo separate, hastily. When she turns her head to look toward the speaker, a doctor in medical uniform, he’s still holding her face in his large, warm hand, and his nose is a scant few inches away from hers.

            “What,” says Kylo, and while it would ordinarily be barked or snapped, it’s said softly, although not without some irritation.

            “The bacta tank has been prepared,” says the doctor, who keeps her eyes averted, “if the patient is ready for her immersion.”

            Patient, Rey notes, not prisoner. She wonders just who she is to these people. She assumed that word had gotten out of the woman staying in Kylo Ren’s chambers, but to what end their actual relationship had been publicized was unclear. She opens her mouth to speak but her throat is still hoarse, so she just nods. She pushes off of her hands to ease herself toward the edge of the cot when she feels Kylo wrap an arm around her waist.

            “I can stand,” she whispers, bristling a bit even now at having to depend on him.

            “I know you can,” he says simply. “But you don’t have to.”

            It’s the acknowledgement of her capability, even more than the fact that she genuinely is in pain, that sways her. She nods again and drapes one arm over his shoulders as he pushes the covers back and gets his other arm under her bare knees. He lifts her off of the cot as though she weighs nothing at all, and she looks up at him as he adjusts his hold on her a bit, surprised at how comfortable she feels in his arms. Out of the corner of her eye Rey sees the doctor turn and leave the doorway. When she’s gone, Kylo tilts his head and kisses Rey again, a brief kiss that stands in for all of the things she feels from him through their Force bond that he will not, or cannot, say aloud.

            He carries her out of the recovery room with a gentleness she did not know he had left within him.

            It’s standard protocol to give patients tranquilizers so they don’t panic while floating in bacta tanks. Rey has only ever been treated with the flexpoly bacta suits the Resistance uses, which take up less space and are less disorienting on the whole. For the first few moments after she lowers herself into the tank, before the drugs kick in, she feels like she’s being swallowed up whole by slime, but with chemical assistance her brain grows accustomed to the idea of submergence, and gradually she loses awareness of anything but warmth and comfort. She doesn’t remember being pulled from the tank, although she’s conscious for it; she does feel strong arms carry her back to a bed, and once they set her down she gives herself over to the sweet embrace of sleep.

            She emerges from her rest, hours later, to find herself back in the medcenter’s private recovery chamber, alone this time. Her eyelids are heavy with the last of her sedated haze, and although she’s free of pain she still moves slowly. It takes her what feels like a full few minutes to arrange the two pillows behind her so she can prop herself up and sit comfortably. The pain from her broken ribs is gone; even her throat feels less sore. Her hair is still slightly damp from the bacta and the pieces that have dried are weirdly stiff. She finds herself missing the shower in Kylo Ren’s chambers. Then she finds herself missing Kylo, too, in a way that exceeds mere physical need, and although she’s slightly uncomfortable to know that longing exists, she lets it be.

            He doesn’t keep her waiting for very long. Only a minute or so after she gets herself upright he strides in, carrying something in his far hand that he presses up against his side so she can’t see it. He immediately goes to her bedside and kisses her, now that he knows they can kiss whenever they want, but she’s already begun to greet him so she ends up saying, “Hi— mph, mm. Hi.”

            “Hello.” He doesn’t pull back very far, and brings up his empty hand, curling his fingers in on themselves and tucking them under her chin so he can turn her face up to his. He still looks like he hasn’t slept for a day, or showered, but there’s a brightness to him now, a new glow that de-ages him at least five years. “How do you feel?”

            “Better,” she says. “A little grimy. I’ve never floated in a real bacta tank before. It was… interesting.”

            “Disorienting.”

            “Yes.”

            “I’ve always been grateful for the sedatives.” Kylo uncurls his fingers, traces them along her jawline, then pushes some hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “I brought you something.”

            “I see that,” says Rey, trying to peer around him. He’s so broad-shouldered. “Are you going to let me have it or make me guess what it is?”

            “Oh, no, you can—” Flustered, he fumbles with it as he brings it around to his front. “You can have it, I just—”

            “I’m teasing, Ben,” she says. She wonders for the first time how much of what she’d interpreted as standoffishness or arrogance from him was actually just awkwardness. She takes the item in her hands. It’s some kind of metal dish, more like a bowl, with a lid, and it’s warm to the touch.

            Kylo returns to the chair nearest the bed again. “I thought you might be hungry,” he says.

            “I’m never not.”

            “Hungrier, then. Since you’re healing.” He sits forward, elbows on his knees. “Open it.”

            Rey removes the lid. Inside the bowl are a trio of fresh, fragrant, perfectly golden-brown butter rolls, nestled around a shallow dish containing pats of butter that are melting slightly at the edges from the rolls’ heat. “Last meal,” she says, and her mouth turns up at the corners. “You remembered.”

            “You didn’t get to eat them.”

            “No, I suppose I didn’t.” She laughs. “Thank you. Although I hope—” She notices him staring, transfixed, and she stops. “What is it?”

            He shakes his head, and she feels a wave of what she can only describe as sheepishness rolling off of him. “Nothing, it’s nothing.”

            “I feel what you feel,” she points out. “You can’t fool me.”

            He presses his lips together, and then he says quietly, “I’ve never heard you laugh before.”

            “Oh. Well.” Rey feels herself flush. “I really love these rolls.”

            “They are very good rolls,” he agrees. “I might not go so far as to say that I love them, but I can’t fault you for it.”

            She looks down at the dish in her lap, then picks up one of the rolls and holds it out to him, wordlessly. He sits up and back a little. “No, I couldn’t—”

            “If there’s anything I’ve learned about the First Order, it’s that you have plenty more where these came from.” Rey brandishes the roll in front of him. “And also that they are very good rolls.”

            He nods, and takes the roll. It looks much smaller in his hands. “That they are.”

            Rey picks up another and begins tearing it open with her hands. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him doing the same, and a smile creeps back onto her lips. “I hope you’re not going to whisk me away for execution as soon as I finish them,” she says, dropping a pat of butter into the roll’s steaming core. “I may lose my appetite.”

            “No.” He, too, reaches for a pat of butter, taking it between his bare fingers and dropping it into his roll, copying her. He looks down at it as it melts. “The doctors want to keep you overnight for observation. And it may take a few days for you to recover your full strength. It wouldn’t do to kill you if you’re still ailing.”

            Rey nods. “Certainly not.”

            “So the execution has been postponed.”

            “Oh?”

            “Indefinitely.”

            “I see.” Rey bites into her roll, chews, and swallows. She’s never tasted anything more delicious.

            “As it turns out,” he says, “I’d made preparations for a grand assembly, but I’d neglected to announce what it was for.”

            “That was careless of you,” Rey says dryly.

            “Extremely,” he agrees. “It was a mistake I thought I’d rectify after dinner.”

            “Only after dinner?”

            “Well,” he says, “I had thought the rolls might persuade you to reconsider my offer.”

            Rey makes a show of internally debating this. “They are very good,” she says.

            “They are.”

            “Not that good, though.”

            “I’ll have a word with the bakers.”

            “You do that.”

            He finally bites into his roll, and they eat together in silence for a minute. Rey is surprised at how easy it is to eat next to him now, how it feels as though they’d been dining companions for years. Once they’ve both finished their rolls, she sees him subtly looking around for something he can use to wipe the crumbs off his fingers, and she reaches out and takes one of his hands between two of hers.

            “Rey, I swear, whoever did this—” he says, misinterpreting her intent.

            She brings his hand to her mouth and kisses the tip of his index finger. “Hm?”

            “I—” He clears his throat. “When I find them, they’ll pay dearly for…”

            “You haven’t found them yet?” She sucks a little butter off his ring finger.

            “We— what are you doing?”

            She looks up at him through her eyelashes and finds him almost as red as his lightsaber’s blade. “I’m helping you get the crumbs off your hands. Please continue.” She presses her mouth to his knuckle, which definitely doesn’t have any crumbs on it. “I’m deeply interested in your vows of revenge.”

            “This is not— fair.” He exhales and shifts in his chair. “You’re on bedrest. We can’t—”

            “It’s not like you don’t fight dirty,” she says, but she lets up on him and presses her cheek to the back of his hand. Whatever other possibilities acknowledging her feelings might open up, it’s definitely liberating to express her attraction to him. Her physical attraction. “Go on.”

            “The assassin took his own life before he could be interrogated,” Kylo says, after recovering himself. “The bottle of Toniray was found unopened in the vault. It turns out there’s another, less potent Alderaanian wine of near-identical coloration. Instead of tampering with the Toniray, the assassin had acquired that wine, poisoned it, transferred it to a very similar bottle, then sealed it.”

            “That’s not a plan that could have been arranged in an hour,” Rey says, sitting up a little straighter. “Who knew you had the Toniray in the first place?”

            “The collector has been questioned. He swore no one asked him about it.” He frowns. “Although the presentation of the gift was very public. It occurred at a banquet. We’re scrutinizing the guest list to see who among those present might have motive.”

            “No small number, I reckon,” Rey says.

            “There’s an attempt on my life every fortnight,” he replies. “I’m very difficult to kill.”

            Rey looks at the wall as she processes all this. It shouldn’t matter much, but there’s a detail there that she wants to press. She asks, “The collector who gave you the wine, is he still alive?”

            “For now.”

            She doesn’t miss the hard edge to his voice. “Well, I’m alive,” she says. “I’m going to be fine. Nobody needs to die because I had a rough night.”

            He blinks at her, uncomprehending. “It was more than a rough night,” he says. “You nearly died, Rey. I nearly watched you die.”

            “Even so,” she says. “Nobody else needs to die.”

            He’s quiet for a second. “Except the perpetrator.”

            “Sure. After a trial and sentencing, maybe.”

            Kylo exhales. “This is my mother talking.”

            “It might be. She’s not wrong.”

            “We can negotiate it.” He leans down to kiss her, and she closes her eyes and reciprocates, eagerly, easily. He murmurs against her mouth, “I assume some amount of torture is fine.”

            “You are really something,” she tells him, and she punctuates it with another kiss.

            “As are you,” he says, pressing the bridge of his nose to hers, “because I can feel that there’s a part of you that’s flattered I’d kill for you. When it’s ‘justified.’”

            “There are parts of me that feel lots of ways,” she counters. “I don’t heed them all.”

            “Mm.” Another kiss. “So which parts are you heeding right now?”

            He slips a hand under her gown, just at her shoulder, so he can run his thumb along her collarbone. But he knows what even that simple touch does to her. “This is not fair,” she says breathily. “I am on bedrest.”

            “So you can give it but not take it,” he says, turning his head to nose her hair. She hears a hint of amusement in his voice, and wishes she could see his face.

            “You know I can take it,” she replies slyly, and he coughs. But clearly the line works on him, because he moves the empty bowl to her bedside table and pulls her off the mattress and into his lap, sitting her sideways across his legs.

            “I’ll facilitate your bedrest,” he says, pressing his face to her neck, to her live, warm skin. “I’ll be very good.” He kisses her throat. “I’ll only kiss you until you fall asleep.”

            “That’s so?” She knows part of her is only talk. Her body’s exhausted by its ordeal, and between his warmth and the lingering influence of the sedatives she feels herself slipping back toward slumber. Still, she says, “Self-control’s never been your strong suit.”

            “Well,” he points out, “I never specified where.”

            She falls asleep, cradled against his chest with his mouth on hers, before he can make good on his implication. But she appreciates the honesty. It’s one of his better qualities. As it turns out, he may yet have some of those after all.