19. Chapter 19

            At first Rey thinks she’s misheard. She says, “What?”

            Thankfully, Hux does not decide that the best way to correct her is through further murmuring. He pulls back to put a more socially acceptable amount of distance between them without missing a beat of their dance. “Nothing you haven’t done before, as I said. Ren maintains that you killed Snoke. What’s another Supreme Leader to add to your tally?”

            Rather than gaping at him, Rey focuses on making her feet continue to move in time with the music, even as her mind races at a much faster pace. She had thought that he would ask a smaller favor of her, something that would allow her to walk away with the illusion of a clear conscience. Lure Kylo away somewhere, for example. Get him alone, and let whatever happens next play out. Surely he can’t have laid his entire hand on the table only to reveal that his trump card is her willingness to carry out an assassination.

            What irony, then, that he should ask her for the one thing that she knows she absolutely will not do.

            The thought is simultaneously the most obvious thing in the galaxy and something that shocks her to her core. She wonders if this is how Kylo had felt, when he had watched her slipping away in his arms. This is a problem, or— it should feel like more of a problem than it does. They’re enemies yet, aren’t they? He’s a tyrant still, isn’t he? It’s more than likely her own people will call upon her to kill Kylo Ren, somewhere down the line. And yet...

            Her mouth moves, her body moves, but they seem almost detached from the rest of her, which is busy grappling with the realization that she cannot kill him, she will not kill him. She hears herself ask, “When?”

            “Soon. I’ll be giving a speech. You’ll act at the end of it.”

            “In the middle of the gala? That’s suicide.”

            “It doesn’t have to be,” Hux says. “I’ve come to an arrangement with the ceremonial guards. They’ll take you into custody and ensure you disappear after it’s done.”

            Rey recalls her instinct to say nothing in the elevator. It had been the right one, as her instincts so often are. She supposes she should stop calling them instincts and start crediting them to the Force. What an unfortunate choice of words: “disappear.” She has no doubt that Hux will have her killed once she’s served whatever purpose he needs. He thinks she’s a softer target than Kylo Ren because he believes much of her value comes from how distracted Kylo is by her bare skin. She knows Hux is clever enough — it’s why he’s still alive — but how is it possible to be such a clever idiot?

            He must read something in her expression, some amount of reluctance or mistrust, because he adds, “My dear, it doesn’t have to be so messy,” like she’s a child in need of placating. “You can lay low for a time, somewhere warm and green. Or back in the desert, if you prefer the coarseness of sand.” He twirls her one last time, and she endures it, numbly. “With a new name and some reeducation, you might make a suitable Empress yet.”

            Rey wrinkles her nose in disgust.

            “Or not,” Hux says quickly. “But if you agreed, there would be strategic benefits. You’ll have your life and all the time you’ll need to think it over.”

            She says nothing, because she knows well enough that there’s no thinking it over where Hux is concerned. He’ll always arrange it so the second option is death. Kill Kylo or die. Lay low in custody, or die. Submit to “reeducation,” or die. Agree to a marriage of convenience, or die. Each choice is no choice at all.

            “Why does everyone think I want to rule the galaxy with them?” Rey asks. “I don’t.”

            “But you do want to affect change,” Hux points out. “And you want to save your Resistance friends. This is the most efficient way. Concessions for concessions. It’s the sort of thing that was done to cement alliances back when the Elder Houses were relevant and bloodlines were given more credence.”

            “That won’t work,” Rey objects. “I’m not the inheritor to any sort of bloodline, and the Resistance will never agree to an alliance with you.”

            “The Resistance is nothing more than Leia Organa’s cult of personality. When she’s gone, who will they look to for leadership, hm?”

            Rey could prolong this argument — Poe is being groomed for leadership, not her, whatever mythos she has as the last Jedi — but she doesn’t respond. Debating won’t change that this is the most ridiculous and offensive proposition she’s heard in her life, and Kylo Ren once called her nothing while offering her his hand. Kylo, at least, had the decency to put some emotion behind his plea; Hux could be organizing a dinner party for sometime next week in the same tone he’s using to barter with her life and the lives of her friends. She focuses on keeping her own expression neutral so he can believe she’s processing, agreeing, cooperating, a helpless pawn. Inside, she simmers with rage.

            She barely realizes her feet have stopped, the music has stopped. Hux releases her, and he takes a step back to bow before her, keeping up the appearance of respect. As he straightens, he whispers, “Your weapon is under the table. When you hear ‘a new era,’ end his life. And do it quickly.”

            He walks away then, up the stairs to the podium at the far end of the dais, leaving no room for objection. Just as well. He wouldn’t have liked anything Rey had to say.

            The dancing guests all glide away from the open floor to their seats. Rey looks up to find Kylo waiting for her, standing behind the chair to the right of his throne. She doesn’t think his eyes have left her since their dance. She meets them now, too far away to make out all of the emotion contained behind them but struck by the intensity of his gaze all the same. They had stood on more solid ground after that elevator ride, but Rey suspects that her acceptance of an invitation to dance with someone else had shaken him. She holds that gaze as she departs the dance floor, unsurprised to find her hands trembling as they lift her skirts away from feet.

            She barely registers mounting the stairs of the dais until she’s walking behind the table to the chair Kylo has pulled out for her. He clutches the back of it a little too tightly, and when she draws near he lifts a hand to skim her bare back, as if to reassert his claim on her through touch.

            Rey looks up at him, and he makes to draw his hand back, as if he’s overstepped his bounds. Before he can, she utters, in a low voice, a one-word warning: “Darling.”

            Kylo blinks, remembering the code they’d agreed upon before the previous night’s party, that “darling” means “someone’s said something awful.” He seems a little surprised that she still wants to use it. Maybe he had thought the time for pet names was past.

            “What was it?” he asks, eyes flickering toward the podium, where Hux is moving into position, squaring his shoulders and drawing himself up to his full height in order to look more authoritative. Kylo’s mouth presses into a line, and his hand moves toward the lightsaber hilt at his belt on instinct, as if he’s preparing to strike Hux down this very moment.

            Rey shakes her head. “No,” she whispers. “I’ll show you.”

            Kylo’s eyes search her face, then he nods. Whatever else between them, he trusts her, and Rey feels it like a punch to the gut. Trust is more meaningful and less easily given than his attention, than his lust, than even his affection.

            She swallows and sits as he pushes her chair in behind her. The traitorous thoughts return: how could she desert him so easily, after all of this? He said he was willing to talk with her about his pupils. He had proven himself willing to trust her counsel. Maybe another option will present itself. If the Force is so desperate to have them together, the Force might yet provide.

            At least this gives her an opportunity to ignore Hux’s speech. As soon as he begins with, “Honored guests,” his voice a little too hard and harsh to mean it sincerely, she reaches for Kylo under the table. The arms of his throne get in the way, and for a moment she fears he won’t perceive her intent, but then she feels the bare fingers of his right hand brush against hers and sighs quietly with relief. She stares at Hux’s back and feigns interest in his words as she shares her memories with Kylo.

            It’s easier than it’s ever been. He tugs, lightly, as if pulling at a thread, and she pushes her conversations with Hux to him, edited in places. She knows she’ll have to tell him everything soon enough, but she doesn’t want him getting distracted in the meantime. If he doubts her now, it might spell the end for both of them.

            As Kylo rifles through her memories, Rey feels under the table with her free hand. Sure enough, beyond the tablecloth, her fingertips find the smooth, cold metal casing of her saberstaff, held fast in place by some sort of adherent. Hux kept that promise, at least. She allows her eyes to wander the room, taking note of who is armed and unarmed. She wonders how many of the people assembled are in on the plot. A few, she’d bet. Hux would have to be be stupider than she ever imagined to stage an assassination without any kind of backup in the event that it went sideways. She remembers that knot of other generals who had been watching her and Kylo train through the observation windows. Her eyes roam the crowd, briefly, and she spies the female general Hux had been conversing with the previous evening. There’s one. At least some of Kylo’s guards. How many more?

            That general’s eyes flit over to Rey, and Rey angles herself to face Hux more directly. He’s still droning on about the First Order’s military capabilities, its unparalleled greatness. He throws a glance or two in her direction, eyes narrow, ostensibly to see how his Supreme Leader is receiving the speech but really to check that Rey isn’t stirring up trouble. He seems satisfied by what he sees, every time. Rey sits quietly like a cooperative little minion. She isn’t saying a word to Kylo Ren.

            Then again, she doesn’t need to. He’s just about done processing her memories.

            What ensues between them now is less a dialogue than a sequence of feelings transferred. From him: inquiry. What does Rey plan to do? From her, apprehension. Even if his Knights remain loyal, the robed guards may be compromised, and there certainly are more than a handful of Stormtroopers prowling the walkways above their heads. From him, dismissal. They can handle it together. Perhaps he should just stand up now and call Hux’s bluff. Gentle reproach: that wouldn’t be wise. Gentler defiance: let him try to kill me himself instead of having you do his dirty work. Amused shock: Ben!

            She chews the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at his boldness, and feels a rush of warmth from him. I should kill him anyway, Ben thinks in a very clear-cut sentence, not just for poisoning you, but for daring to try and steal you from me. Rey brushes this aside. She’s not something that can be stolen, and besides, she’s more than capable of fighting her own battles.

            The stormy sea of his mind settles for a moment, and Kylo sits back against his throne. Very well, then. Hux is her problem now.

            As Rey squeezes his hand, a massive holo flickers to life above the heads of all of the guests. It breaks her concentration, and Kylo’s mind partially uncouples from hers, although she can feel him still, feel a new edge of wary alertness drowning out his discomfort with formal events. She looks up at the holo and feels a queasy pang of recognition. She’s seen this image before, although it was not of such good quality, or so close. These are the twin Dreadnoughts Poe and company should be en route to destroy right now. They don’t look all that incomplete to Rey, and she shifts in her seat.

            “It is to my extreme regret that these Dreadnoughts could not be a part of tonight’s procession,” Hux says, not sounding entirely regretful. “But I am pleased to present live footage of our progress. Soon they will join the rest of our fleet. These ships—” He points up at them. “—will be the crown jewels of my navy!”

            Murmurs of approval from the crowd, most of whom, Rey would imagine, have already profited from these massive fleet-killers or will soon. Kylo sits forward. Now that he’s been brought up to speed, Rey knows he can’t help but notice that presumptuous choice of words. My navy. She caught it too.

            “The few remaining independent systems will have no choice but to bow before us or accept destruction. Organa’s Resistance will crumble.” Hux’s voice rises as he speaks, in pitch, in fervor. “With these weapons, we will usher in a new era of—”

            That’s her cue. As Hux expects, she wrenches her saberstaff out from under the banquet table and stands as she ignites it. The weight of it in her hands again is so right; she hadn’t realized until this moment how much she missed it.

            At least five thousand pairs of eyes turn to her. Kylo’s do, too, but they’re bright and expectant. A couple of holodroids speed over to begin recording her. Hux is mostly angled away from her at the podium, but she can still see the corner of his mouth turn up in a triumphant smirk when he hears that telltale hum.

            His victory is short lived. She vaults over the banquet table and lunges at him with a yell.

            And then—

            Chaos.

            Rey blinks back to consciousness. She couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds, she thinks. Her vision is still clouded by gray smoke, and she can’t hear nothing beyond the ringing in her ears. She opens her mouth to speak, or to breathe, and coughs, tasting ash at the back of her throat.

            The explosion flares out, weaker than it would be but still strong enough to sear, and the last thing she feels is a wave of heat before—

            She lays on her stomach with her face burrowed in the crook of her left elbow, and as she moves it to push up to her forearms her flesh stings and throbs. The pain nearly sends her back to unconsciousness, but she grits her teeth and bears it, her forehead pressing against the cool metal floor. Her entire body shakes. She smells burnt hair. Hers, she thinks.

            She tries to remember how it had all happened, winding the memories back from end to beginning, like she would a length of climbing rope.

            Rey closes her eyes against the white-blue fire, almost blinded by it. Both of her outstretched arms shake as she tries to keep it confined to a sphere until it burns itself out. It’s up the hangar from her, much closer to where Ben and the Knights were fighting moments ago. But even they are gone from her thoughts. All she knows is the explosion, and the full-body agony she feels from the effort of channeling the Force to keep it from destroying them all.

            Her knees begin to buckle, and her face softens as she is overcome by an odd sense of peace. She has this, she can do this, she’s capable. If this is the only thing she can do—

            Someone shouts, “No!”  Then a weight barrels into her from behind, knocking her to the ground, covering her, as the blast roars to life, filling the hangar bay.

            The ringing in her ears begins to subside, and as it does Rey hears the crackle and popping of a hundred small fires. Had Ben been the one to knock her down? No, impossible. Rey was certain that voice had been a woman’s.

            She tries to gather the Force to her, tries to reach out to him through their bond, but her body’s too weak a vessel and her soul is spent. Trying to stop that torpedo from incinerating them all had drained her more than she realized. She can’t feel him yet. Or maybe that’s because—

            That’s not possible. Rey refuses to consider it.

            “Ben,” she croaks, picking up her head. “Where’s Ben?”

            Rey sees him go down as though it happens in slow motion. From across the hangar he looks small enough to be a toy. He falls to the side with the blade still in him, but it slips out as the guard holding it falls back. One of the Knights has discharged a blaster into his gut at close range.

            Her scream echoes in her ears, but Ben is soon the least of her worries, because a spark of blazing light slips through the gap between the closing hangar doors, a bright trail streaking behind it as it arcs toward the floor.

            No, the torpedo. She remembers the torpedo. Before that.

            She turns her head and manages to get a look at the burn on the back of her arm and shoulder. A few, very small, bubbling white blisters in places, but otherwise her skin’s only been scorched a deep pink from the wave of heat that rolled out from the explosion. Not so bad, all things considered; a bacta patch will heal it up and prevent scarring, once she can get to a medpac, and she’d managed to shield her face. In the scheme of things, she’s very lucky. It all could have been worse. Presumably, anything explosive like fuel or munitions had been removed from the hangar in preparation for the gala.

            The Knight of Ren who’d knocked her down is sprawled out on the floor a couple of meters away. Her helmet had come off when she hit the ground, and Rey sees that she has shiny black hair braided in a long plait, woven into a circle at the back of her head. Her skin is light brown, her nose is long, and a crescent-shaped white scar circles one of her eyebrows. She can’t be any older than Ben; maybe a little younger. As Rey crawls toward her, she stirs and opens one eye.

            “All right, milady?” she asks, a little gravelly, in a voice with a thick accent not too unlike Rey’s.

            Rey blinks at her, dazed.

            “You all right?” she asks again. “Ren would have my hide if you weren’t.”

            For some reason, Rey hadn’t registered that she was the one being spoken to. Probably that “milady” nonsense. She clears her throat, swallows thickly. “I’m Rey,” she says.

            “I know.”

            “I mean, call me—” She shakes her head. No time for any of that. With a groan, she manages to push up to a seated position and looks around.

            The Knight also sits up. “Nasty burn, Rey,” she says, easily. She feels around for her poleaxe and pulls it to her. Rey realizes that this is the Knight she’d stolen a weapon from in the training room earlier that morning, but if she begrudges Rey for that, she doesn’t show it. In fact, she smiles at Rey, which Rey finds mildly disconcerting. She would have thought all of the Knights were dour and serious. “I’m Aylu, since we’re on a first name basis.”

            “Aylu.”

            “You really ought to wear more armor if you go on picking fights like this.” Aylu grimaces as she gets to her feet, leaning heavily on her axe. She holds her hand out to Rey. “Up, we’ll find him. He’s not dead. Too stubborn for it.”

            Rey takes Aylu’s hand and allows herself to be pulled up. She takes a second to breathe, and as her aching head clears she can feel the Force again; the hilt of her saberstaff calls to her, and she wills it into her hand.

            Ben calls to her, too. He’s not dead. Rey’s other senses may still be muddled, but the longer she’s conscious, the more their bond reawakens, the more she can sense him. He is alive. She feels his aching arms, his— pain sears through her, and she presses a hand to her side. “He’s hurt.”

            She stands with her back to Aylu’s parrying volleys of blasterfire; the remaining guards encircle Ben and the other Knights, too focused on breaking through to him to bother with a girl and one errant Knight. Not so for the Stormtroopers and the officers, who seem to realize that keeping Aylu from completing her task is essential to winning the day, if it can still be won.

            But Rey is growing weary; sweat beads on her forehead. She reaches out with the Force, sending two of the assailants flying back, but she’s contending with four more, and her arms ache with the effort of keeping her staff moving quickly enough to provide cover. “Hurry!” she shouts to Aylu.

            “Almost there,” Aylu calls back. “Just a few moments more.”

            Rey can’t even spare a glance over her shoulder to see what the Knight is doing. She’s too focused on keeping them both from getting shot. But Ben is in her line of sight on the dais, and she can see that he, too, is flagging. His shoulders shake with the effort of redirecting the torpedoes away from the hangar, his outstretched hand wavering. His lips curl back from his teeth, baring them. It would be an ugly snarl were he not busy saving them all. Funny how context makes so much difference.

            Aylu lets out a yelp of triumph, and the hangar doors shudder and begin to close. Just as she’s thinking it, she sees a flash of movement; one of the Knights, hamstrung, sinks to a knee, then, lightning-quick, the glint of a vibro-voulge—

            “No!” she tries to yell, to warn him, but she’s too far away for Ben to hear.

            “Let’s not tarry, then,” says Aylu, looping an arm around Rey’s waist. She’s a little shorter than Rey, but seems stockier, more muscular, although that may be due to her armor. Rey is also privately relieved that she didn’t have to ask Aylu to support her. Weariness drenches her to the bone, and her legs might give out on her at any moment.

            Aylu begins moving slowly through the debris, the overturned tables, the bits of burnt First Order banners raining down around them. There are fewer bodies than Rey would have thought. She sees some on the upper walkways, a few on the ground, the flash of a guard’s wine-colored robe up by the throne, which itself is scorched but unbroken. Most of the guests must have escaped. Rey feels oddly thankful for that, and questions it. Surely it would be a boon to the galaxy if most of the First Order’s leadership were destroyed?

            But the idea of cutting people down unarmed, in their evening finery, turns Rey’s stomach. If nothing else, she and Ben were able to buy time. She looks for him at the dais, but doesn’t see him.

            “We have to close those hangar doors!” she yells over the thrumming of the lightsabers in her hands, the seemingly endless blaster fire. They stand back to back in a circle of Knights of Ren, who are busy fending off Kylo’s traitorous guards and the attackers from various other points in the room, Stormtroopers and a few scattered officers loyal to Hux who are busy covering his escape.

            Ben says nothing, but he takes his eyes off of the entrance for a brief moment to look up at the command center. Rey watches as a TIE fighter swoops in and fires off two more torpedos. She grits her teeth and reaches for them with one hand. It’s becoming more and more difficult to redirect them, but she locates them in space and wraps the Force around them to altering their trajectory away from the hangar, nothing fancy. They burst harmlessly against the hull of the Conquest II, and the TIE dodges and dives under the ship and out of sight.

            As soon as Ben turns back to keep vigil, Rey sneaks a glance up at the command center and sees that there’s smoke pouring out of broken windows. “That’s no help.”

            “No,” says Ben, who deflects another torpedo with a wave of his hand and a grunt. He makes it look almost effortless, but she can tell he’s tiring.

            “The emergency release is by the doors,” shouts the Knight with the poleax, who Rey now knows to be Aylu. “There’s a code. I know it.”

            Rey looks at Ben over her shoulder, meets his eyes. They know their course of action immediately. “I’ll cover you,” Rey says to Aylu, and Ben gives her a small nod as they peel off from the group and begin sprinting through the hangar.

            She can’t keep working backwards toward her failure. Something else, anything else. It had been Aylu who knocked Rey down and broke her focus, so she asks, “Why did you stop me? I had it contained.”

            “You were about to kill yourself.” Aylu steers them around a few half-charred tables. They’re near where the torpedo struck, now. Rey can see the blackened scarring it left on the floor. “Better to be a little burnt than to channel the Force so hard you join it.”

            It takes Rey a moment to parse those words. She wonders if she isn’t a little concussed. “You’re Force sensitive,” she says, slowly. “You were one of Master Skywalker’s students?”

            “That’s right.”

            “But you left to go with Be— Ren?”

            “I did.”

            Even now, Rey’s curiosity is an unscratchable itch. “Why?” She asks.

            “His sparkling personality, of course,” says Aylu.

            Rey huffs a laugh. “Something tells me that’s not quite true.”

            “Not completely.” Aylu readjusts her grip on Rey’s waist, and explains herself in very simple terms. “Skywalker tried to kill him. Didn’t seem right to stay.”

            Rey recalls her own flare of temper upon learning of Luke’s folly. Even now, even though she knows both sides better than she did then, it burns in her belly. “I suppose I understand that.”

            Aylu smiles again, a little ruefully. “I thought you seemed okay for a Jedi.”

            “Even though I stole your axe?”

            “Yeah, even though.”

            Rey looks at her feet. That morning seems far away, like it happened months ago, or in a dream. She remembers her fury at finding the children. She can’t muster it now. There’s just the numb void of exhaustion and the overwhelming concern that Ben could be laying on his back somewhere, his blood staining the floor of the hangar bay.

            Ben.

            It feels familiar. It feels right. She’s retreated to the dais to be at Ben’s side, twirling her saberstaff to deflect the blasterfire from the Stormtroopers above. Finn had told her how strongly Stormtrooper conditioning emphasized the brilliance and supremacy of Hux and his late father. It makes sense that he’d leave the dirty work to them while he himself flees, a coward’s escape.

            Ben grunts his agreement as his lightsaber blade sizzles against the vibro-voulges of two of his guards. He pushes them back, and two of his Knights immediately fill the space, coming between him and danger. Three form a semicircle in front of Rey; one with a long-range blaster rifle begins returning fire at the assailants above.

            “I don’t need bodyguards!” she exclaims, deflecting a bolt that would have hit Ben’s shoulder.

            Ben doesn’t reply, and as she turns her head to look at him she sees what’s drawn his focus. Outside of the hangar, the procession has broken up. Confusion ensues, and a few of the ships are taking advantage of it to wreak havoc on the rest. How deep the conspiracy goes. Hux must have ensured that some of the ships were crewed by officers loyal to him in the event that his plan went awry.

            Three TIE fighters break off and speed toward the hangar of the Conquest II. Once they’re remotely within range of the open hangar, one fires off two torpedoes. At this distance, they might be comets. Rey lets out a wordless yell of warning that seems utterly useless in the face of their imminent demise, and wonders briefly why Hux wanted Ben dead if he could have just torpedoed the hangar and killed everyone in it.

            She isn’t left wondering long. Ben extends a hand, and the Force moves through him, a massive amount, directed out of the hangar, out into space. The torpedoes freeze for a brief instant before looping back toward the TIE that fired them. It can’t escape quickly enough, and one of the torpedoes collides in a direct hit with the cockpit. The TIE explodes on impact, and a piece of its wing careens into one of the neighboring starfighters, which can’t dodge in time.

            One of the Knights whoops in triumph. Ben grimaces. He had made that look easy, but Rey had felt the great effort it took to move objects traveling so fast, so far away. But now she also knows such a thing is possible, and sometimes confidence is all it takes. If he can do it, she can. Next one’s mine, she tells him silently.

            And she makes good on that.

            Rey hears him before she sees him. He’s on the far side of the dais, hidden from her sight by the throne. She drops her saberstaff with a clatter and wrenches herself out of Aylu’s grip to stagger over toward the sound, to where she hears him saying a little too loudly, “Rey is alive. Find her.”

            She pushes past the throne to see him with his back turned to her, seated on the steps of the dais. The other five Knights are clustered around him in various states of dishevelment; the one who had been hamstrung by the guard is leaning heavily on a companion.

            “My Lord, you need medical attention,” protests one of the Knights, a man.

            “I won’t leave her.”

            “I understand, but we will see to it that she’s returned—”

            “Ben!” Rey cries. He doesn’t seem to hear her at first, but then one of the standing Knights points to her and he turns his head. He waves one hand to silence them and makes as if to rise, then collapses back to the steps, holding his side. Rey hurries toward him, holding up the torn and blackened edges of her gown, nearly slipping on the hem of a corpse’s robe.

            “Rey,” he says, and then she sinks down to sit on the stairs beside him and places one hand on his scarred cheek and she’s kissing him, kissing him, kissing him, so enthusiastically that he can scarcely keep up with her, his lips chasing hers half-seconds after they move. Something blooms within her, something nourished by the combination of the adrenaline and the relief and the exhaustion and the comfort she only finds with their mouths pressed together. He brings his free hand to the small of her back and shifts to his side to press her to his chest.

            Behind them, Aylu coughs. Ben breaks away first; it takes Rey a second to register the sound for what it is. He doesn’t seem at all embarrassed to have kissed her in front of all of his Knights, and Rey finds that she mostly isn’t, either. After all, they might never have kissed each other again.

            “Let me see that wound,” Rey says, looking down between them. He’s been stabbed very near the place Chewbacca had shot him with the bowcaster, years ago. She can see blood seeping through the fingers of his glove, and winces on his behalf. That puts the pain in her own abdomen into perspective. “I can close it, I think, but you’ll still need a bacta treatment later.”

            Ben doesn’t seem to hear her. He notes the burn on her arm and, in his delirium, or his elation, he reaches for it. “You’re hurt—”

            “Would you sit still,” she hisses. “I’m not very good at this at the best of times.”

            He acquiesces, dropping his arm to rest his palm against her hip, instead. She peels his hand away from the stab wound, and sucks her breath in through her teeth. The cut is clean, but deep, and bleeding freely. Rey hovers both of her hands above it and closes her eyes, trying to muster the will, the strength, to channel the Force one more time tonight, to ride its currents down into the wound.

            Healing is tough work, requiring finesse and unbroken concentration, and Rey’s already drained. The Force feels slippery somehow, but she manages to hold it, to direct its flow, to begin knitting Ben’s capillaries back together, his veins, his muscle tissue. She’s thankful to find that none of his internal organs are damaged, and thinks this is no accident. The Force isn’t done with him yet. It’s not done with either of them.

            “—pairs. Two to see to survivors. Two to the bridge,” Ben says to the Knights, just at the edge of Rey’s awareness. She grits her teeth and redoubles her focus as he keeps talking. “And if any of the conspirators remain, track them down before they can reach their transports. I want them alive.”

            Rey works from the deepest parts of the wound back to the surface of his skin, trying to force out any contaminants. It’s delicate, painstaking work, and somewhere in the middle of it she swims out of consciousness for what she believes to be a brief moment. When she comes back around, the Knights of Ren have gone, and she and Ben seem to be alone. Ben is cradling her close and kisses her temple, her forehead, the bridge of her nose to wake her.

            “What happened?” she mumbles, curling in against his chest.

            “You overexerted yourself,” Ben replies. He doesn’t sound cross. At some point one of his arms came to wrap under her shoulder blades. He keeps kissing her — the tip of her nose, her cheek, her hairline when she comes to duck her head under his chin to avoid his tickling lips — as if through kisses he can restore some of her energy.

            It seems to be working. Rey already feels better. The burn on her arm stings less, and when she turns her head she sees his hand hovering over it. She realizes that he’s siphoning off her pain through the bond and using it to fuel his own power, so he can return the favor and heal her back. Clever. Rey wonders how many tricks they’ve yet to discover. She noses his collar apart to nuzzle at his throat.

            “I may have also hit my head when I fell,” she confesses against the cool metal clasp of his cape.

            “Then rest,” he says. “No more. I’m healed enough.”

            “But you’ll bleed out if—” she says, pulling back to look down at his wound. She feels down his sides until she finds the place where the voulge rent his jacket. The gash is pink and shiny, as if freshly scabbed. “Oh.”

            “Yes.”

            “I did that.”

            “There was no stopping you.”

            “Mm.” She begins running her hands over his chest, down his sides, ostensibly checking for any other wounds she might have missed. Ben makes a soft, needy sound against her hair. There’s very little else to find; his cape and jacket are singed in a couple of places where he narrowly dodged blaster fire. The Knights had guarded him well. She presses her mouth to his neck and doesn’t stop touching him even once she’s satisfied he’s unharmed.

            “Rey—” Ben begins, but he cuts himself off with a strangled gasp when she starts sucking a welt into his neck. Above her head, he tugs off the glove that’s sticky with his own blood so he can press his bare hand to her back. He removes the other one with his teeth, and combs his fingers through her loose hair.

            She tilts her face up toward his, pressing her nose to his jaw. “Darling.”

            “Rey.” He seeks out her lips with his own and covers them. The hangar is cold now that the only other bodies in it are corpses, but he’s warm, and his breath is warmer, and she would swear she can feel his heart beating against her chest, even through all his layers of clothing. He’s alive, and it’s all that matters. He says, “My love.”

            That word on his tongue both frightens and thrills her. She shushes him gently and reaches up to undo his bun and unravel his braids, letting her fingers luxuriate in the softness of his hair as if for the first time. But as she pulls his dark locks down and fluffs them to full volume, she feels something warm and sticky, and takes her hand back to find it wet with a little of his blood. Rey looks up at him. She can’t see any obvious cuts, but she locates the source quickly when she pushes his hair out of his face: a slow ooze from his left ear. “Oh, Ben.”

            He shakes his head and pulls her hand away, then busies himself with kissing the backs of all her knuckles. That means later. That means nothing that can’t be fixed. And she should tell him they need to go get patched up now but he buries his head in her neck and she’s kissing his hair and if he’s wholly to blame for distracting her she’s at least a little complicit.

            “Ben,” she whispers, grabbing at his sleeve, his back, her fingers slipping over his cape. “Ben.”

            Ben picks up his head, briefly, to undo the clasp at his neck. His cape falls away, allowing her better purchase. Then he kisses her on the mouth again and again and presses her back to sit on a step so she no longer lies awkwardly on her side. Rey doesn’t know if they are truly alone, if the only people left in this massive hangar bay are the dead, or if there are personnel scampering about to begin the cleanup or look for survivors, but she doesn’t care. She can tell herself they’re hidden by the shadow of the throne. The day they spent fighting, as enemies and allies, was too long. She needs him on her skin again. Everything else can wait.

            And he feels it, too. When she parts her legs, he crawls up between them immediately, setting his knees a few steps below her hips. He pushes her dress up to her thighs, and as he bears down on her she feels that he’s already half-hard. His skin is flushed and hot and slick with sweat. All that combat, all that killing, all that death, and they lived through it. They survived it together. They always do.

            Rey yanks the top button of his coat through the buttonhole a little too hard. She would have him undress completely so she could see him, all of him, the planes of his body, his moles, his scars, wounds new and old. But he doesn’t leave her a lot of time to think about the thousand reasons she can’t have that right now, because he slips a hand inside of her underwear to rub against her clit and her mind goes brilliantly blank. Her head falls back against the dais as she pushes her hips forward, grabbing at his bicep and squeezing. She’s aroused too, hot and wet against his hand, and she marvels at that, wonders giddily if she isn’t a little addicted to danger.

            Ben picks up on her thoughts, and he chuckles and shakes his head. This is just how it works, he thinks, and she’s briefly overwhelmed by flickering memories of him undressing after battles, touching his scars, burning for her even though she’s impossibly far and closed off from him. But she’s here now, she’s here and warm and writhing at his touch. His hair falls into his eyes and clings to his damp forehead and cheeks, but he never once stops watching her face, not even to look as he works a finger inside of her. He knows her body by heart now, and he effortlessly curls that finger in the way that makes her squirm.

            No more waiting. She has to have him. She can’t grasp the words to tell him, but he’s in her mind as she’s in his, and he knows. The second finger fits too snugly because they’re rushing, but Rey endures it until her discomfort turns over into something better. This time, as she gasps and her abdomen clenches with pleasure, she pulls his hips up so she can start undoing his trousers. He only grew harder as he coaxed her to readiness, and he barely needs her help, but she touches him anyway. When she does, when she wraps her hand around his cock and begins stroking it, Ben falls forward ungracefully, not unlike he had the first time she palmed him through his clothes. Rey smiles and lips at his shoulder. This time feels a little like that time, the imperativeness of it. Ben brings his free hand up to grip the edge of the dais by her head as she pumps him.

            Then he’s ready, and she’s ready. All he has to do is pull her underwear down. But when he tries, he finds it clipped to her stockings, and her stockings secured under all those buckles of her sandals. He growls his frustration until Rey, catching on, crooks a finger and undoes all of the clasps at once. He tugs her underwear to her knees, and she pulls one leg out. It’ll have to do. This will have to be enough for now.

            She watches him as he grips her with one hand and aligns them with the other, his eyes glowing, covetous, the shape of his lips needy. When he shifts his hips to enter her he shifts the rest of himself too, lowering his body onto hers, covering her. She reaches up to touch his hair again, scraping her fingers over his scalp, gripping, pulling as he rocks into her, deeper, deeper still, until he’s settled all the way inside at what feels like the core of her. The weight of him presses her down against the stairs, and the edge of one juts uncomfortably into her back behind her shoulder blades. She drags her fingers down his arm and wills him to move.

            Ben moves. He wraps his arm under her again and moves them both so her entire upper back can rest against the surface of the dais as she sits on the topmost step. Better. Much better. She sighs his name and cants her pelvis up into his, relishing their togetherness, their correctness, and he answers with a wordless moan and a thrust of his own. His hand finds her thigh and he helps her hold it up— higher, and at a better angle for them both. She wants him deeper than deep, she wants for them not to part again; she wants those things so badly and in a way that’s almost unrelated to the pleasure she takes in the way they move as one.

            At first the pace they set matches the urgency of their entwined need, an almost animal rut, then Ben slows a little, savoring her for a moment. The only sounds Rey can hear aside from the still-sparking fires are the whisper of their clothing, their puffs of breath, the occasional gasp or soft cry that falls from someone’s mouth. She closes her eyes, glad for the momentary reprieve, the opportunity to memorize the way he feels between her thighs, the brush of his lips against her forehead or her cheekbone or her lips, the breathy exhale of yes and Rey, the salt of his sweat on her tongue. It might be the last time, she realizes with a twinge of despair. If she runs back to the Resistance, she might never have this again.

            It’s an ugly, broken thought, unpalatable, inconceivable. The only time she’s ever felt balance, the way the universe should be, has been when he’s inside her. She refuses to believe the Force would be so cruel as to tear them apart when she knows with such clarity that it wants for them not to be adversaries, but lovers. Rey pulls herself up against him and shoves the thought aside. No. She’s certain now of what he’s known, she thinks, for slightly longer: some way, somehow, they belong with each other.

            She turns her head to press her nose to his cheek. They don’t have time for slow, and she knows, he knows, but he doesn’t want it to be over so quickly, and he doesn’t want to finish alone. Rey blinks, her eyelashes brushing his skin, and she realizes that this one time she doesn’t really care about finishing. It seems almost beside the point. The point is more that they’re here, they’re alive, and this is how they prove it. The point is that she’s enveloped by his body as he is by hers, that his essence and hers are inseparable.

            But Ben doesn’t agree. He keeps the one hand by her head so he can brace himself, but the other finds its way under her navel and down between her thighs to her clit again. Rey pulls at his hair as he picks up the pace, and before long there’s that familiar tremor in her thighs that heralds the coming of her orgasm, and her breath goes short and hot, and her galaxy narrows to the one bright point of their intersection before—

            “Rey,” he gasps, and he bucks into her one final time as her muscles tense and her body clutches him to her, in every way, in the best way she knows. Relief courses through them both as they hold themselves there, right there, trembling, flushed, tangled.

            He stays on top of her for a moment, and she cups his face in both her hands and kisses him, long, savoring kisses, drinking him in. But it’s not a pleasant position to hold long-term, and she feels a distant stab of pain in someone’s knees — his, must be — and that, along with the danger of being intruded upon, spurs him to roll off of her and onto his back, panting to catch his breath. He lets his head fall back across the dais, like hers, but keeps his eyes soft and closed like he doesn’t want to wake from a particularly good dream.

            Rey begins to notice the small ways in which they’ve made a mess of each other. Ben’s coat is all out of sorts, especially where she’d wrenched the collar open, and she notices the sheen of drying fluid on his trousers as he does them back up. The coat should cover it, at least. She’s sticky with his semen, but unfortunately the best she can do is wipe her underskirt between her thighs to absorb it and hope nothing visible seeps through to the front of her ruined dress. She sits forward to tug her underwear back up her legs, over her stockings, but her abdominal muscles betray her by throbbing with a dull ache and she quickly flops back down again once she’s decent.

            It’s worth it, though, Rey thinks. The mess, the aching, all of it, is worth seeing his lips parted and curled up at the corners, his hair fallen over his face, his chest swelling with the depth of his breath. “We should cap off every battle like this,” she remarks with a very small smile.

            Ben opens his eyes and looks over at her. “Every battle?”

            “Mhm.”

            “That means you’ll fight more of them by my side.”

            Despite how drained she is, despite her injuries, despite the choice she still has to make, despite all of it, Rey feels blood rushing hot to her cheeks. She says, “I haven’t decided yet.”

            “I see.”

            “It’s possible.”

            “Yes, I understand.” He lays one of his large hands on her belly. “Rey.”

            She turns her head toward his. “Yes?”

            “Nothing,” he murmurs, stroking his thumb up and down the soiled silken fabric of her dress. “I just wanted to say your name.”

            Rey shifts closer so she can kiss him again, her eyes softening closed, but before her lips brush his a voice somewhere beyond their borders says quietly, “Supreme Leader?”

            She feels Ben shift to look before she even opens her eyes. The moment’s passed. “What is it?”

            “Hux is gone, sir,” says the officer. It’s the young male officer that had delivered the bad news about her clothes soon after she arrived. He looks nervous at the prospect of having to share more, but he is still here, which means he hadn’t been recruited for the coup. Or maybe he just fears Kylo Ren enough to stay. “There’s no trace of him. Half the fleet jumped to hyperspace, the Finalizer included. We assume he’s aboard. And—”

            Ben sits up and reaches to the side. He hands Rey his cloak so that she can cover her bare shoulders. “Yes?”

            “We were running through his recent transmissions…” The officer casts his eyes up to the ceiling, to the massive holo projection of the two Dreadnoughts, which still flickers in place. “He sent the activation codes for the Dreadnoughts off a few days ago.”

            “What?” asks Rey, pushing herself up off the stairs. “What do you mean?”

            Startled, the officer looks at her as though he hadn’t been expecting her to speak. “Err, well,” he says, “the ships need to receive a specific transmission for activation as well as have a startup sequence input from the ground before they’ll fly.”

            “But they’re not ready to fly, are they?” Rey asks. “He said they weren’t. That they would be the jewels of— of his navy.” She exhales and looks up at the holo. “No, he can’t have—”

            Ben comes to stand beside her. “What is it?”

            She looks at him. “Hux didn’t want there to be a firefight,” she says. “He wanted me to assassinate you so he could seize power in the aftermath. But clearly he knew there might be one, so he kept the Dreadnoughts well out of the way of it. They’re not still under construction. They’re—” Her stomach sinks. “They are ready. Now.”

            “But if that’s true, he could have used them to do more damage here,” Ben says, his brow creasing.

            “He hoped he wouldn’t have to,” Rey points out. She is a bit uneasy about how clear the plan is to her, how well she can divine Hux’s intent. “That was all Plan B. He hoped the Conquest II would become his flagship without an outright coup. But if things didn’t work out that way, he’d still have two perfectly good Dreadnoughts to use against you later.”

            “Not if we get there first,” Ben says, with increasing volume. “Not if we jump to hyperspace now. We could intercept his fleet before he has a chance—”

            “Supreme Leader?” says the young officer, his voice wavering. “I think it might be too late for that.”

            Above their heads, one of the Dreadnoughts’ ion engines begins to glow.

            There’s no escaping the weight of her failure now, the magnitude of it. Rey closes her eyes, and finally relives the battle’s beginning.

            Two of the guards move to put themselves between Rey and Hux, raising their vibro-voulges to block an overhead strike that would have cleaved him in two. Hux recoils from her — coward — and a swell of gasps rise up from the watching crowd. “Supreme Leader!” he cries to Kylo Ren. “She’s gone mad!”

            Rey glances back over her shoulder to see that Kylo is standing now, one fist raised to keep the Knights of Ren from moving in on her. His gaze is calm and cold as he regards Hux, who seems to quickly realize that, somehow, he’s been made.

            “She hasn’t,” Kylo says. “I’m letting her arrest you.”

            The not-entirely-feigned look of shock fades from Hux’s face, replaced by an ugly sneer. “She hasn’t the authority,” he says, which seems like an odd thing to quibble over. “She’s Jedi scum. Even now she’s working to betray you.”

            “That’s rich, coming from you!” Rey shouts, trying to push the guards back. “You asked me to murder him!”

            “As a— a test of your loyalties.” It’s weak. Hux glances at Kylo to see whether he buys this explanation; he clearly doesn’t. “Well,” says Hux, “so be it.”

            He moves quickly, ducking behind the podium, and wrenches a blaster off a nearby officer’s belt. It’s small, largely ceremonial, probably set to stun; he fires it anyway. Rey recoils, but the bolt never finds its mark, and when she looks up she sees Ben — the anger etched across his face is Kylo Ren, but the heat in his eyes when he looks at her is all Ben — flick his fingers and redirect the bolt up toward the ceiling.

            The two guards seize on her moment of distraction to try to herd her back toward the throne, the table. She wraps one up in the Force and pushes him aside, then darts down the stairs toward her target, undeterred. Behind her, she can hear Ben shouting out orders to clear the room, can hear his lightsaber ignite and blasterfire volleys begin. But she doesn’t turn back. She knows he can handle himself.

            Besides, this is personal.

            Hux is running for a side door, and the distance between them is too great for her to catch up with him, not running in this dress, in these shoes. Another officer is holding the door for Hux, beckoning him forward, and when he sees Rey coming he takes a blaster from his own belt and fires a couple of bolts her way. They go wide, and she jerks her head, sending the weapon flying out of his hands.

            She takes one hand off her saberstaff so she can gesture, directing the Force to trip Hux, but before she can pull her toward him a pair of Stormtroopers begin shooting at her from a walkway above. She has to dart out of the way of the fire, and she loses her hold on him. He’s almost at the door now, almost out of sight. Frustrated, she lets out a growling yell, and because she can’t think to do anything else she wrenches Padmé Amidala’s hair ornament out of her hair and hurls it at him.

            The edge clips his arm, slicing through his uniform, and he turns his head, his face ruddy with outrage. He had been barking orders to the other officer, who now takes his arm and says, “Sir, our window is closing.”

            “See to it that our allies get to their transports!” Hux shouts, as another pair of Stormtroopers keep Rey at bay with a rain of covering fire. His eyes meet hers as he says, “Then tell them to let everything burn.”