Star Wars Fanworks Exchange

A figure bent over a shrub shifts, and Finn’s eyes are instantly drawn to them. He hadn’t noticed them in the midst of all the other wonders, and he realizes with a shock who exactly is kneeling in the shrubbery.

Finn hastens to straighten up, and nods to the figure, hailing, “Hello, General.”

Leia turns to Finn, and a slow smile dawns over her features. “Finn!” The General pushes herself up to her feet, dusting off her gardening gloves. She looks the least militial that he has ever seen her, devoid of her regalia and the usual frown lines etched into her face. “How have you been keeping yourself?”

“Busy,” Finn answers, confused. “General, have I somehow ended up outside the base?”

Leia’s smile widens, and she beckons him over. “You like it? It reminds me of Naboo most, I think. Or a fairy-tale, perhaps.” Finn takes a tentative step off of the door frame, and sees a path of stones in the dirt that he could have easily missed. He follows the path to Leia, careful not to step on any part of her pet project. She pulls off the gloves she’s wearing with her teeth, and then holds them in one hand, crossing her arms.

“I like it,” he replies easily, because he does. He feels enchanted by the garden’s very existence; something to nurture the soul tucked into the back hallways of a military base. On paper, this place is a waste of supplies. Captain Phasma would have hated it, which makes him like it all the more. “Did you plant all this yourself?”

“Stars, no,” she laughs. “It started out as an affordable way to try to grow food in the base, but we discovered some wild fields that only required some cleaning up before they were ready to be harvested, and this just sort of became… a back-up plan, I suppose. I’m not quite sure who brought the animals in here.” Leia’s smile grows into something more secret, and Finn almost feels guilty for having seen it. “Han’s theory was that Threepio would sneak in here and open the skylight at night because he felt bad for the plants. I told him that it was more likely R2.”

Finn opens his mouth to say something about Han, but no words he could possibly offer would bridge the gap between Leia and her husband. She seems to have come to peace with the loss, judging by her ability to mention him without breaking down, but Finn is terrible at reading people. He can’t even imagine how broken up she must be, especially given the cause of Han’s death. Instead of re-opening the wound, he says, keeping his voice light, “I bet Rey would love this place. Do you know if she’s been in here yet?”

“No, she didn’t mention it to me before she left,” Leia shakes her head, and then looks at Finn suddenly. “Oh, that’s right-- Rey gets back today, doesn’t she?”

Finn nods, as if he hasn’t been counting the days down to her return. “If her and Chewie are keeping track of time, then yeah, she does.”

His nod clearly doesn’t fool Leia. Her eyes are shrewd despite her soft smile. “You must be very excited.”

Excited doesn’t even begin to cover the range of emotions he feels at the idea of being reunited with Rey. After the fight, it had seemed like he’d barely gotten the chance to talk to her—well, to talk to her the way he wanted to, about important things. He’s proud of her, if he’s allowed to think that; it’s not as if he’s done much to help her on her path. At the end of the day, Rey would find a way to becoming a Jedi no matter what obstacles had arisen, seeing as it’s her destiny and all that. He privately likes to think that he had a hand in it, though; and he knows Poe likes to think the same.

(They had stayed up all night last night, holding each other and talking in hushed voices about all the possibilities for the future. They hadn’t done much more than hold, although at one point Finn had been unable to help himself and kissed Poe, buzzing with frenetic affection. Poe had kissed back, but hadn’t let it progress to anything, hands slowly gliding over Finn’s body like ships. “Wait,” he’d whispered, and Finn is still waiting, impatient heart fluttering at the idea of having both of the people he wants to kiss within arms’ reach at once.)

Leia raises an eyebrow, amused at the lack of a reply, so it’s all Finn can do to blurt out in humiliation, “Me? You must be very excited, General.” Leia’s eyebrow only arches inquisitively higher, and Finn explains, “I mean, it’s your brother.”

Again, Leia’s face goes vulnerable, just as it had when she’d mentioned Han. Her smile contorts itself into something unidentifiable. “Has Luke… told you he intends on returning with Rey?”

“Yeah,” Finn says, puzzled. “I mean, no, I haven’t spoken to him, but Rey said she was going to bring him back. I mean, obviously. Wasn’t that the point?”

Leia gnaws on her bottom lip for a moment, musing on something, and then kneels without warning to start sorting through the shrub she’d been working on again. Finn watches her in bemusement, until he realizes she may have turned away to hide her face, and then tries to avert his gaze. She speaks without looking up from the plant. “Luke hasn’t talked to me at all. The only lines of communication we’ve had are Rey’s letters to you and Poe Dameron, and the official reports from the Falcon.”

Again, Finn can’t find the words to try to fix any of what Leia’s going through. “Oh.”

“I mean, I’ve kept hope as best I can, but.” Leia laughs, short and possibly false. “It’s a little hard to have faith that all the men in your life will return when none…” She drifts off, perhaps realizing Finn’s presence again, or bidding herself not to collapse. “At any rate, if Luke does return today, I’ll have your Rey to thank.”

My Rey, Finn thinks, and rather likes the shape of the words. Leia begins to move again, and her hands close around a small off-shoot of the shrub, fingers digging into the dirt. She uproots the plant smoothly, taking it and the dirt into her palms and then getting to her feet. Finn doesn’t comprehend that she’s holding the plant out to him until she clears her throat and clarifies, “Perhaps you could give her this. Poe mentioned that she’s a bit of a collector.”

“Oh,” Finn says again stupidly, and holds his hands out to take the plant. He isn’t wearing gloves of any sort, let alone gardening gloves, but the roots and dirt don’t feel unpleasant against his palms when Leia gives him the off-shoot. It’s pretty, and even though it hasn’t flowered yet Finn sees potential in the form of a dozen little buds sprouting from the stem in a few places. Rey is a collector, and he feels ashamed that he hadn’t thought of the idea of taking a present for her from here before Leia had. Maybe Poe knew her better. “I think she’ll love it.”

“It’ll need water,” Leia instructs, and she smiles again. This one looks more genuine, and Finn hopes that the momentary awkwardness between them has passed. It would be inadvisable to get on the wrong side of the General of the Resistance. “Keep it in a small pot, and if it does well, then you could maybe move it to a planter.”

“Sure,” Finn agrees, not sure where he’s going to find a small pot in a military base, even in one that allows for a secret garden. He figures he’d better get it repotted before Rey’s arrival, which could be any second now—and he hadn’t meant to come in here at all, so really he’s just been wasting time. He stands straighter, nodding in lieu of a salute. “Thank you, General.”

The woman’s tired eyes twinkle with amusement. “I do so prefer that to Princess,” she muses.

Since the second she took control of the Millennium Falcon, Rey has not had a moment of respite.

Her stay on the island had been everything she’d wanted and more; and yet she’d found it surprisingly hard to abandon all sense of self the way that Luke had. When she lived on Jakku she thought she knew the meaning of discipline because she had disciplined herself to eat only what she had to and save the rest. She had allowed her creativity to manifest through collecting junk rather than creating any future because it might turn out to have been a waste of time— and for someone in her position, time was both scarce and endless. She had trained herself to stay on the world, to learn the wrecks and landscapes of Jakku instead of escaping to the stars. She had had an incredibly high and shockingly low opinion of her own potential, and was thus stuck indefinitely.

On the island, with Luke, she learned her potential was boundless, but that she would have to learn her own boundaries regardless. Although she’d been an eager student, Rey had struggled with following some of Luke’s more severe ideas, which had caused tensions to arise between them both.

(Luke had not permitted Rey to fight him for the first two weeks of training, destiny be damned, which had made her feel immature and unworthy and all sorts of negative things. So naturally she’d attacked him anyway, and had had to stop when he refused to fight back on the grounds that she reminded him too much of Leia. Rey had punched him in the shoulder, because legendary hero or not, that had been plainly rude. Luke had laughed, the sound shocked out of him, and it surprised them both. Following that, they dueled just fine.)

(Luke had been curious when he’d caught her writing letters to Finn and Poe, and when she’d suggested he write something to his sister, he left the room—and didn’t return for long enough that Rey was wondering if it would be necessary to find another map. After he eventually came back, neither of them alluded to Luke’s family in any capacity for the rest of Rey’s time there.)

(Luke hadn’t believed her when she’d told him Han had died, and even though she’d read that Jedi weren’t supposed to get emotional, that night she held the most powerful remaining Jedi that was left. She rubbed his back as he bawled, and told him soft stories about Han’s final days, leaving out Ben and Kylo and Snoke and all the other nightmares that threatened to press in on the edge of her tales. When Rey had woken up in the morning, Luke had been talking to Chewie, or more accurately, petting the Wookie’s shoulder as Chewie groaned sympathetically. Rey had pretended to sleep in.)

And despite the letdown of Luke not being the perfect mentor Rey had hoped for, he was wise and experienced, and Rey could see the kindness that he’d kept in his heart since before his own adventure had even begun, so she forgave him his minor downfalls and was as patient as possible. In return, Luke had taught her how to better command the Force: how to turn all these confusing, swirling impulses running amok inside her head into palpable, wieldable things that she could see with her own two eyes.

Finally, she bested him in a fight, and he told her, panting heavily from the ground, “You are ready.” Rey tried not to smile at how proud Luke looked, and failed thoroughly. He’d smiled back.

By the time Rey began preparations to go back to D’Qar, she’d formed such a close rapport with Luke that it seemed impossible he wouldn’t want to come. Her confidence in his presence caused her to bring it up casually, and she was completely unprepared for the violence of his reaction.

“What,” she demanded, staring him down. “Are you joking?”

“I—” Luke hesitated, eyes flitting between her and Chewbacca. “My work is done—”

“No,” Rey cut him off, not entertaining that idea for a second. “Your work is done with me. You still have work to do, and people to see.”

Luke fell silent for a good while, apparently ruminating on the pros and cons of returning to society vs. living as a lonely powerful hermit, and eventually Rey persisted, “I’m not the only one who’s been missed, Master Luke.”

The image reflected in Luke’s eyes of unsettled tides and comfortable isolation, stayed with Rey for a long time, permanently painted into her memories. He opened his mouth to speak, and Rey sensed that he was about to say something she wouldn’t want to hear. She blurted out, “We’ll stay.”

Chewie let out a growl, unintelligible in any dialect but easily translated as confusion, and the heartbreaking look disappeared from Luke’s eyes. “Really?”

“Not forever. Just until I can convince you to come back with me,” Rey stated, and the determined words carried a finality that nobody could argue with.

They touch down on D’Qar not one day late, or two, but two whole weeks.

Rey foolishly assumes that maybe, just maybe, since she had retrieved Luke Skywalker, the focus might be mostly on him and she could take a well-deserved break. But when they land on the Resistance base, the first thing she encounters is, disappointingly, not some food or a shower or her bed. She’s practically lifted up into a crowd of people, Resistance soldiers all cheering her name in a barrage of gratitude and congratulations.

“You really found him,” says a voice that might be Major Ematt’s, followed by a happy shout from Jessika Pava and a thump to Rey’s shoulder that hurts more than it should.

“Okay, alright, yes,” she’s in the middle of saying, when arms close around her, circling into a tight loop around her body. Rey would panic at the sudden embrace if she didn’t instantly recognize the smell, even after weeks of not getting a whiff of it. She lets out a tiny, happy sob, and her hands fly up to clutch at the pilot holding her. “Poe,” she whispers, weak and happy.

Poe pulls away, his grin stretched nearly ear-to-ear without its usual mischievous edge. He’s grown a beard since she left, a well-trimmed thing that only serves to somehow make him more attractive. “You’re late,” he murmurs, holding Rey as tightly as he can without hurting her. The crowd of people surrounding them fade out in Rey’s peripheral, as the only thing she’s focused on is Poe. Poe Dameron, the Resistance’s best pilot, the charmer who Rey’s certain could get anyone he wants but who has inexplicably chosen her.

Rey has not had a moment of respite for the past two months, and has barely slept a wink in the last two weeks, and even though she has learned a higher level of control under Luke than she would have ever reached on her own, she suddenly realizes how much she’s been waiting for the opportunity to do this. She rocks up onto her tippy toes and kisses Poe without warning.

He makes a soft noise against her lips, surprised and pleased (she hopes), and then leans into the kiss, lips spreading pliantly for her. It’s everything Rey imagined their reunion to be, and somehow even better.

“Hey, hey,” she hears from over Poe’s shoulder, and she actually jumps a little with delight, smile spreading against the pilot’s lips. “I thought we were waiting to kiss ’til we were all together again.”

Poe pulls away from the kiss, and glances back at Finn with his usual roguish smirk; the one that sends shivers through Rey’s knees every time she sees it. “Well, we are all together again,” he points out, and his hands slip down, settling right at the small of Rey’s back. She feels soft and small in the best kind of ways.

Finn’s smile is just as bright as Poe’s, and he moves first. Poe slides out of his way, and whereas Poe’s kiss was saccharine sweet, Finn’s kiss makes Rey want to melt into a Force-sensitive puddle.

That thought brings an unbidden laugh to Rey, and Finn laughs too, against her mouth. Poe has a hand on both of them, anchoring them to him and gripping their clothes tightly, and Rey realizes after a moment of laugh-kissing Finn that she’s also crying on him.

“I’m sorry,” she laughs and cries all at once, pulling away and reaching up to wipe at her eyes. “I’m not sad, I promise! I don’t… I just missed you both so much.”

Finn nods quickly, pressing his forehead against hers. Poe jokes, “It must be a Force thing,” and jerks his head in the direction of the Falcon.

Rey doesn’t understand, not until she follows Poe’s gesture to see what he’s indicating to. Standing on the gangway are two figures wrapped so tightly around each other it’s hard to even tell where one stops and the other ends. It takes a moment for Rey to realize she’s looking at Leia and Luke, and after that she sees what Poe’s talking about— both siblings are crying, Leia’s damp cheeks barely visible over Luke’s shaking shoulder. Poe’s arms circle back around Rey and Finn, and Rey watches the two Skywalkers hold each other, finally united after years.

Rey can’t help but notice the missing third member.

Poe and Finn must have read her mind about Han, because the two of them exchange a glance and then Poe clears his throat, drawing Rey’s attention back to him.

“Oh! Right,” Finn exclaims, and takes Rey’s hands in his. She’s struck by how much wider his fingers are, and she instinctively weaves her fingers through his, interlocking them tightly. “We want to show you our room.”

“Our room?”

Our room, apparently, consists of two beds, one bedside table, a wardrobe, and a door that Rey can only assume leads to another room. The wardrobe surprises her more than anything because of how out of place it looks—a dalliance from the mandated and necessary furniture that outfits the rest of the base. It’s a step up from the island, and a discomfiting step down from the familiarity of the Falcon.

She pivots on the spot to see Finn and Poe staring at her with bated breath. Finn is openly anxious, whereas Poe has a hesitant smile, but she can see the nerves clearly shining through both of their expressions.

Rey isn’t sure what to say, so she chews her lip like a child. “I hope you didn’t get the closet for me.”

“Oh, no,” Finn replies quickly. “That was for Poe.”

Taking offense, Poe shoots back, “Excuse me, I’m not the one who keeps people’s clothing.” He looks at Rey, hand resting on Finn’s back as he continues. “And we didn’t know if you’d be switching to the traditional Jedi poncho, so we figured we’d leave room for whatever clothes you had.”

Rey nods awkwardly. “I don’t have any clothes.” She turns back to survey the room again. “And, um, are we missing a bed?”

Poe answers, “No, we figured this would be better. I sleep curled around Finn most nights anyway, but we thought it’d be nice to have the option of space. And if none of us are using it, we can make it a guest bed.”

Finn snorts. “What guests do you intend on having?” and Poe replies cheekily, but Rey isn’t really listening to them. Her attention has been stolen away by what appears to be a regulation cup on the otherwise bare table. The sparsely decorated room has no mess other than the cup, and it’s sitting in the very centre of the table, and maybe Rey’s Force-sensitivity has made her a powerful empath or maybe it’s just her gut but something feels sad about the lonely cup.

“What’s that for,” she asks, cutting Finn off mid-sentence. “Drinking night?”

Neither of the two laugh, and Rey drops her curious smile instantly. Poe’s hand is smoothing over Finn’s back slowly, and his eyes are blank, which frightens Rey immensely. Finn swallows, and Rey watches his throat bob as he looks down at the floor.

She crosses the room, and stands between the large and small bed, picking up the cup with interest. It’s filled with dirt, which is so unexpected she can’t even think of a proper reaction. She lets out an uncertain laugh. “Um… it’s just dirt in a cup.”

Silence presses down on all three of them. “No, it was for you,” Poe says, mostly because Finn doesn’t seem able to. “It’s from Finn—”

Finn corrects, “It’s from Leia—”

“It’s from Finn because he thought you might like something to take care of when you get back,” Poe continues, uninhibited as always. “It, uh, died a few days ago though.”

“I’m sorry, I meant to throw it out before you arrived,” Finn stammers, and Rey examines the cup again, and realizes that it’s not a cup at all, but a make-shift pot. Her hands tremble, and she sifts through the dirt. Sure enough, there are small dead brown leaves littered all throughout the soil, and the tip of her ring finger catches on a root. Rey looks up at Poe and Finn, now both looking anxious.

“I’m sorry,” Finn repeats, voice mechanic.

“If you don’t like the place you don’t have to…” Poe begins, and falls silent, searching for the right word.

Finn picks up quickly, “You don’t have to stay with us if you don’t like it. Living together is a big commitment, and we totally get it if you’re not in love with—”

“I am in love with you,” Rey interrupts fiercely, as Finn finishes with “—the room.”

If the silence before had pressed down on them all, this moment feels like the silence has drained all the air from the room and left them in deep space, in a new, unknowable atmosphere.

Rey puts the cup down on the table again, and folds her hands together. “I am in love with you, Finn. And you, Poe—I mean, obviously both of you, I love you both.”

Both men are staring at Rey, and her chest and neck and face are burning in embarrassment and affection, so all she can do is keep talking. “I’m sorry I came late, but I had to, and I do love the room, and our beds, and the-the fact that you both did this for me when I’ve done nothing for either of you, you got me a present, Finn, and I killed it—”

“You didn’t kill it,” Finn interjects. “I should have kept it alive for you, I just missed you so much. I didn’t know when you were coming back and I wasn’t as— as hopeful as I should have been.” He raises his chin, smiling gently. “I love you too.”

They both turn to Poe, and Rey sees with a start that there are tears in his eyes. Their mere existence practically wrenches Rey to him, and she raises a small hand to cup one of his cheeks, Finn bringing his soft palm to the other.

“I thought it was a Force thing,” she teases Poe, and he chuckles, blinking quickly.

“Guess that means I’m a Jedi, then,” Poe replies, and it breaks Rey’s heart anew to hear him all choked up. She leans in and kisses his cheek where her hand had been, and Finn mimics her. Poe’s arms snake around both of them, pulling them close; this time, he anchors himself to their warmth.

They stand there in the doorway for a beat too long, the moment dragging on into a minute as Poe stops crying and Rey becomes aware of his breathing. Finn’s wide eyes blink open and he moves his kiss from Poe’s cheek to the corner of his mouth, and tugs him into a kiss effortlessly from there.

Rey pulls back only enough to watch, and a different kind of warm affection awakens inside her. “You two have done that before,” she accuses, interest piqued.

“Mm, not as much as I’d like,” Poe says, his voice more level. His hand rests in the small of Rey’s back where they had earlier, and then slowly drifts down. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Rey gasps, and Finn pulls them all towards the bed, tumbling gracefully down onto the covers.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

“Ah, shit,” Poe says, raising his head from between Rey’s legs. His head is practically spinning, his lips are parted wide, and Rey’s going to have beard burn all over her tomorrow morning if they don’t get some spectacularly effective lotion for her before they sleep tonight.

Finn pulls away from Rey’s kiss, his lips also wet. “What’s wrong?”

Rey’s eyes open before Poe can answer, the Force alerting her exactly what’s wrong. “He forgot to let BB-8 in.”

Finn lets out a groan, which turns into a moan as Rey’s fingers do something unprecedented but well-received. “Oh, oh—ah, okay, go quickly.”

Poe looks to Rey for approval, and she nods. Her hair is a mess, one bun having dissolved completely and the other two looking awfully disheveled. She’s practically glowing all over, and her eyes are darker than Poe’s ever seen them before.

“Do you remember the first time we met?” Leia asked, reaching out for his calloused hand, holding it in hers. She realized that whatever Han was going to say, he had changed his mind.

“I remember you yelling at me.”

“Neither of you were taking charge of the situation.”

“So you threw us into a garbage compactor. It was all very queenly.”

“It was better than being shot to death.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Han said. “Stormtroopers have terrible aim.”

Despite herself, Leia allowed a small smile to dance over her lips, and Han leaned down to kiss her. When he broke away, she whispered, “What were you going to tell me?”

“Hm?”

“Before. You seemed nervous.”

“I-” He leaned back, running his left hand through his hair, his other one still holding tightly onto Leia’s. “I was going to wait to ask you.”

Leia tensed. “Ask me what?”

Silence.

“Han, ask me what?”

Han took a surprisingly shaky breath and said, “We’ve known each other for years. But it’s seemed like millennia.” A pause. “Leia, I…I know we…”

“Are you asking me to marry you?” She supplied helpfully, leaning in to kiss the side of his mouth.

When she leaned back again, he grinned. “So that’s a yes, then?”

“It’s always a yes for you, Han.”

“And here I was, thinking you only liked nice men.”

“You are nice men.”

Han grinned wider, as Luke came in hauling machine parts, with his droids and Chewbacca behind him. “I love you.” Han said, his eyes not wavering from Leia’s.

“I know.”

II.

Leia waited tensely for Han to come home. It seemed like ages since she’d last seen him, though it hadn’t been that long, really. And besides, she had been kept busy as well. But that wasn’t the sole thing on her mind.

Unconsciously, she placed a hand on her belly.

She heard the telltale sputter of the Millenium Falcon’s engine. It had never been quiet, but now that it was growing older, it was truly, as her brother had so mildly put it, a piece of junk. Han would never get rid of it though, and Leia never asked him to.

“Leia, I’m home!” Still, his voice sent a shiver through her and she turned around as she heard him enter the room.

“Han.”

His face fell when he saw her. “Leia…” He said, softly. “Leia, what’s wrong? Is it…” He paused, hardly daring to say it. “Is it Luke?” Han knew that Leia carried some of the Force inside of her, that she would know when something happened to her twin brother. When something happened to one of Han’s best friends.

“No.” Leia said, and then she allowed herself a smile. “No, Han, it’s not something awful. It’s something wonderful.”

He seemed to guess before she said it. Maybe because her hand was still rested on her stomach, maybe because of the glow in her eyes. “I’m pregnant. You’re going to be a father.”

Han crossed the distance between the two of them, lifting Leia high in the air with a series of whoops and spinning her around before worriedly setting her down again. “You don’t… I didn’t hurt the baby just then, did I?” He fretted, placing his own hands over Leia’s belly, imagining the future, when he would have a little boy to play fight with, or a girl’s hair to braid.

Leia laughed at his concern. “Han. The baby’s fine.”

“I’m going to be a father.”

“You’re going to be a father.”

His hands slid from her belly to circle her waist. “I love you.”

“I know.”

III.

“Is it safe for him?” Han fretted sometimes. This was one of those times, Ben Solo in his Jedi robes, facing Luke Skywalker with his lightsaber in hand. “Luke, is it safe?”

“Han, I promise you.” Luke said. “I will keep your son safe.”

Leia tucked herself under Han’s arm, reluctant to let her only son leave to train so far away. But the Force was calling within him. It was calling, she knew, and he had to go fulfil his destiny.

“Han, it’ll be alright.”

“I don’t know, princess…” He still called her princess. She still called him scruffy-looking.

“Han, if Luke says it will be alright, it will be alright.”

Luke gave each of them a significant look. “I promise.”

Han nodded resolutely, and she knew that Luke would not have it easy if he broke his word.

They left, and Ben didn’t even turn around to say good-bye. Leia could see how that broke Han’s heart, and it broke her own heart too.

“I can’t believe it.” He whispered. “He’s really leaving.”

“I know he is.” Leia said, looking up at him. “But we still have our other child.” She touched her pregnant belly, far along already. “Our ‘Rey’ of hope.”

Han said, “Well that’s just grand. Finding a replacement already.”

“Han, that’s not what I meant.”

“Really? Because that’s how it sounded!”

She broke away from him, standing with her hands on her hips, a snarl on her face. “Han, do I ever speak like that? Do you think I want our son to walk away?”

Han took a shaky breath. “No. Leia, I-“

She shook her head. Both of them were touchy. It wasn’t Han’s fault. She sighed, “I know.”

And as the years passed, Rey went to train with Luke as well, much younger than Ben had been when he had left. And they watched, side by side, as the world fell to ruin and ash, as the First Order arose like a phoenix, and their daughter disappeared without a trace, presumed dead like the rest of the Jedi. They watched, hand in hand, as their son followed in his Grandfather’s footsteps. They watched as he shook the stars wielding the power of the Sith.

And yet they still loved him.

Times were uncertain. But Han knew, above all else that he loved Leia, loved her like the night loved the stars that lit up the tattered dark.

And she knew that he loved her, and she loved him, wildly, fiercely, back.

IV.

“Han.” Leia’s voice was quiet, and yet it caught his attention. It always had. “Han, you don’t have to do this.”

“Do what, General?”

Her eyelids flickered closed, as if the word pained her, but the moment passed quickly, and she looked up at him, resolute. “Go after Finn. It’s dangerous and if you didn’t come back, I’d-“

“You know I can’t make any promises.”

“You could.”

“But I couldn’t keep them. I have to go with him. He’s just a kid. And… our son. Ben.”

“Kylo Ren,” Leia corrected, bitter.

“Right.”

“You don’t have to go. You could stay.”

“And leave him to fend for himself? I couldn’t.”

“Why not, Han?” Leia demanded, refusing to let her voice rise, refusing to let her desperation show.

“You know why.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“He’s in love with her.”

“The kid. Finn. He’s in love with Rey, our daughter, and if there’s one thing I believe in, General, it’s young love.”

This time the pain that swept Leia’s features didn’t disappear as quickly, and Han knew that the emotions weren’t hers alone. He missed her. God, he missed her every day. Taking a step forward, he hesitantly reached out his arms, and she collapsed into them.

Planting a soft kiss on her forehead, he whispered. “I want to promise you something, at least.”

“And what’s that?”

“I promise that I love you. I promise that I always have and I always will.”

He felt her shudder against his chest, or maybe that was her attempt to hold in her tears. He was fighting tears himself, though he’d never admit it.

“I know.” Leia said, so quiet he almost didn’t catch it. He gripped her tighter. “I know, I know, I know…”

V.

Leia felt in the Force, just as she always knew she would.

A light in her soul, the brightest of them all, sputtered, then flickered out.

She leaned forward, taking support in the sturdiness of the machine, and breathed carefully out, closing her eyes. Crying wasn’t an option, not now. Only numbness filled her bones.

Han.

Han, please no.

Han, I love you.

Han.

She hadn’t expected anything. Then, desperate.

Luke.

Luke, it’s Han.

Luke, we both love him, please.

Nothing, still.

“General?”

She turned, but didn’t reply, and they must have seen the emptiness there, in her eyes, for the lady backed away slowly, discontinuing her statement.

It seemed so long, and yet too short of a time span, when Finn and her daughter returned.

Rey.

It was funny. After all those years of loneliness, Rey had remembered her name. It was as if she remembered, or desperately wanted to remember, the time in which she was loved. Wildly, fiercely. Like the night loved the stars that brought it hope.

It was Rey who explained everything.

The betrayal of her son.

The fall into the abyss.

The explosion.

“Han,” Leia finally allowed a tear to fall. “I… he…”

“I’m so sorry,” Rey murmured. “I… there was nothing Finn or I could do.”

“Our own son.” She had last seen Ben as a child, wild curls, wild smile. Eyes like his father’s. His father’s. It was then, that Leia considered telling Rey the truth. The undeniable truth.

But, no. Not yet. Not just yet.

Someday.

“General, is there anything I can do?” Rey’s look of concern was genuine, and it pained Leia even more to see it.

“Please,” she managed. “Call me Leia.”

“I have to go see Finn.” Rey had rarely left his bedside, ever since he had been wheeled in, unconscious. In a coma, another harm that her own son had inflicted. “I’m so sorry.”

“Please do go see him.” She said, with a wavering smile. I think I’d like to be alone, anyway, she didn’t say.

She sat there for so long, head in her hands.

“Princess.” It was like she could still hear his voice, his easy footsteps upon the floor. “Princess.”

She didn’t breathe, couldn’t. She barely dared to turn around.

“I…” It was an illusion. It was an illusion. It was an illusion. “Han?”

But somehow, some way, he had been brought back to her. “Leia.” His smile conveyed so much joy, and relief, and pain, and sorrow, and suffering, and so many years apart.

And yet the distance closing between them, the universe bringing them together. That still seemed so natural.

He gripped her as tight as he always had, and she hugged him hard around the waist, refusing to let go, just in case.

It’s not an illusion. It’s not an illusion. It was not an illusion.

“Han, how? I felt it, through the Force. And Rey, she said… she said that the explosion must have…the odds were all against you, I…”

“Never tell me the odds.”

Leia couldn’t have said how long they stood like that, embracing one another, steady. Home.

“Do you remember my promise, princess?” He whispered, sometime later.

It was a promise repeated through time: the only one they somehow managed to always keep.

“I remember.”

He smiled. His words were muffled through her hair. “I love you.”

In the whole situation, the only misfortune was that there was no hookup for a fax machine, which meant that at the end of every day, a rather grumpy-looking man named Kylo Ren had to come from the government passport office to pick up their paperwork, as it had been deemed too sensitive to mail or be trusted to either one of Leia’s employees.

The shop next door to The Resistance was owned by a man named Han Solo, who was also very smart and very strong (but in different ways). He owned a thrift shop, a place with endless possibilities for repurposing old things into new ones, called “The Old Falcon”. He and his partner Chewie, a gruff, older man with a low, growly voice, took great pride in seeing the merit in things no one else appreciated.

They employed two college students: the first, Rey, was in charge of fixing up the old electronics, car parts, and appliances that came into the shop. She was most often found wearing a faded pair of overalls, her hair up in a series of complicated knots (with the exception of a few traitorous strands) and a look of intense fascination and concentration as she tinkered and fidgeted with the many glorious things brought into the shop. Finn, the other employee, was the one responsible for bringing all those glorious things in. Every day, he took the shop’s trusty old van to each of the drop sites around town and gathered the donations for Rey to sort through. Finn had a shy smile but an enthusiastic voice, and he could often be found giving a thrilling speech about the latest book or movie he’d found interesting.

For Han and Chewie, there wasn’t really any misfortune in the situation. Not having a phone hookup was not a problem--there was one in the very corner of their shop. They had just never gotten around to hooking it up because Han didn’t like taking phone calls. Or dealing with angry customers. Chewie didn’t mind; he was honestly just happy whenever Han was. And while it was true that Han didn’t much like this Kylo Ren fellow, having separate shops mostly meant that he didn’t really come into contact with him very much.

The two shops, wildly different in content and clientele, would most likely have never afforded their employees the chance to meet were it not for a single, fortunate factor (or unfortunate, in Leia’s opinion). The two shops opened up in the back to a shared warehouse and bathroom, which meant that clients and employees alike mingled together to use the restroom. It was, frankly, a dismal situation. Especially given the fact that Han and Leia did not have compatible personalities.

However, Leia, being a woman strong of will and facial control, kept herself and her employees polite, if not outrageously kind. Well, most of the time, anyway…

“I don’t believe it!” Leia said. She shook her head carefully (ruining her hair wasn’t worth the frustration) and allowed herself the satisfaction of a small stomp of her foot. Directly in front of her was a sign that read, in big letters “Why travel?” Underneath those words, it said “The Old Falcon is an adventure at home!” Someone had stuck yellow circles to the sides of the sign that said things like “cheap,” “interesting,” and “no risk of parasites”.

“Are you serious?” Jessika’s voice came from behind Leia, who turned to look at her.

“Unfortunately, it’s probably as serious as the dead. You know those….” Leia let out a big sigh before continuing, “…that idiot!” Leia shook her head and turned to walk back inside The Resistance.

“Can I….?” Jessika said, trailing off as she walked around the sign a few times, looking at it from every angle.

“Kick it? I wish I could tell you yes, but it wouldn’t be mature of us to retaliate so childishly. My official stance is no, on the kicking.” Leia pushed the door open and walked inside, though it was tempting to stay outside and see what Jessika decided to do.

Jessika lingered outside for a few minutes, staring thoughtfully at the sign, brainstorming. After a minute, she seemed to make a decision, turning and pushing open the door to The Old Falcon instead of heading back into The Resistance.

“Hello, welcome to….” Finn started, trailing off when he looked up from the cash register and saw Jessika. “Hey Jess!”

“Hi, Finn. Do you think you could—” she said, but before she continued, she was interrupted by a call from the back of the store.

“Jess!! Hey! It’s been quite a long time since I’ve seen you around here.” The accent was unmistakable, and Jessika stretched up to see Rey in the back of the store.

“Hi Rey! I’m actually not here for a social call, I was actually wondering—”

“Oh.” Finn gulped. “The sign.”

Rey put down her tools and began to make her way through the shelves to the front.

Finn fidgeted a little, looking down at the cash register where he was filling out some sort of form. “I told Han it wasn’t a good idea—in fact, Chewie put up a big fuss. Said Leia wouldn’t like it one bit, but….”

“You know Han.” Rey finished for him. “We know. It’s incredibly rude.”

“This rivalry is getting a little out of hand, don’t you guys think?” Jessika said. “At this point I’m not sure if we should give them weapons or tickets to the opera!”

Rey giggled. Finn looked confused.

“What do you mean, tickets to the opera?” he said.

“Oh come on, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it?” Rey said, a wide, silly grin on her face as she looked over at Finn. “Han has it bad for Leia. That’s why he fights so hard!”

Jessika nodded. “It’s true.”


Finn looked as though he’d taken a bucket of cold water over the head. Rey and Jessika giggled together for a moment, then Jessika’s face got serious suddenly.

“Do you guys think there’s anything you can do? Leia is trying to hard to be professional and nice, but there’s only so much she can take.”

Finn shrugged his shoulders, but Rey was thoughtful as she said “I’m sure I can think of something—some way to compromise with him. Maybe some sort of…kinder advertisement?”

“That should be fine. Honestly, Leia understands advertisement. But at her expense? You know business is sort of sketchy anyway. Because of Kylo.” Jessika blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, but then frowned, reached up, and inspected it closer.

“You know, I heard a rumor….” Finn said, attempting to glance over at Rey furtively, though Jessika did not miss the movement. She also caught the way Rey shook her head ever-so-slightly.

“No—what rumor?” Jessika demanded, tucking the stray lock of hair back behind her ear and leaning forward over the counter. She eyed Finn steadily, confident in her ability to break his resolve.

“It’s nothing, just a rumor,” Rey said, shooting Finn a serious look of her own, though it held a warning rather than a threat. He struggled back and forth between the two girls, finally settling on Jessika and holding his arms up.

“I’m sorry, Rey. She should know!”

“Finn! You know she’ll tell Leia, and she’ll—” Rey gave a frustrated sigh. “Fine. Tell her. But when Leia and Han rip each other in two, you’ll only have yourself to blame.” She turned again to go back to her earlier task and then, suddenly remembering something she’d meant to ask Jessika, turned back. “Hey—I’ve been thinking I need to get out. Maybe go somewhere for a while. A holiday? Would you guys have the time to help me sort out the details?”

Jessika nodded. “Oh yes. Of course, Rey!” Rey smiled, small and tentative, and then headed to the back room again.

“Now, tell me what’s going on.” Jessika said. Once again, Finn found himself trapped in her gaze. He gulped.

“Is there any sense in asking you not to tell Leia?” he said.

“Nope. It clearly affects her. I’m going to tell her.” Jessika replied. Finn sighed.

“Chewie said he heard Hux saying something about kicking one of us out of our shop. Knocking out the wall and giving the whole space to the other shop. So he can charge more for rent.”

Jessika’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious.”

“I wish, but Chewie doesn’t gossip. You know that.” Finn gave Jessika a halfhearted smile and bent over the counter to finish with his form. A moment of tense silence ensued.

“I always hated Hux.” Jessika said finally.

“Well, he’s not our favorite guy here, either.” Finn said. “He’s never been very fair to any of us, has he?”

Jessika shook her head, her long, dark curls covering her face as she looked down at the floor.

“You know Hux is gonna make Leia leave.” she said. “He’s a jerk but he doesn’t hate your shop. It’s—no offense—inconsequential to him. He’s never been outright hostile to you. He’s always had it out for Leia. Because she works with the government.”

“We don’t know that, Jess.” Finn reached out like he was going to touch her hand, but stopped and let his hand drop onto the counter instead.

“He’s got some weird thing against Kylo Ren being able to come and go as he pleases. I think he uses the other shops in this building for something illegal—drugs, maybe?” Jessika’s hair seemed to gain volume as she spoke, as if it was echoing the feeling in her voice.

“I don’t know, but that’s a pretty serious accusation.” Finn said. The front door to the shop opened, bell ringing. “Hi, Han!” Finn said as the man in question walked into the store and through his open office door, where he began to set his things down.

“Kid.” Han nodded his acknowledgment towards Finn, shucking off his leather jacket and hanging it off the back of the chair behind his desk. “Hey—you work at The Resistance, right?”

Han said, looking to Jessika, who was hastily trying to calm her curly hair with her fingers.

“Uh—yeah.” she said, looking over at Finn strangely.

“Has the old bat seen the sign yet?” Han said, a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

Jessika scoffed. “That was completely uncalled for. Dirty marketing, if you ask me.”

“Good thing no one did, then, huh?” Han said, and he grinned, even though what he’d said was incredibly rude.

“Han, don’t you think…maybe the yellow parts are a little excessive?” Finn said.

“Nope! Just true.” Han said.

Jessika scoffed again. “Well, clearly you’re an adult.” she said, and then turned to Finn. “I’ve got to get to work. I’ll see you around. We’re not too busy around mid-morning, so you should come by with Rey to get her passport started.”

Turning, she fluffed her hair once and then pushed the door open and walked out without looking back.

Finn watched her go, an uncomfortable expression on his face. When the door swung back shut, he spoke again. “Han. Don’t you think we’ve left that up long enough?”

“Forever isn’t long enough!” Han said. “Isn’t it time for you to go pick up your stuff?”

Finn looked at the clock, eyes widening. “Uhh, yeah, actually.” He grabbed his coat from under the counter and moved to leave. “I’m just…..gonnathrowthecirclesaway…” he said, almost under his breath, and Han stood up out of his chair.

“Don’t you dare, kid! Give me 24 hours!” Finn rolled his eyes, but nodded in agreement.

“See ya Rey!” he yelled to the back.

“Bye Finn!” she yelled. Then, there was a big crash, and her head poked up over the shelf she was behind. “Actually—could you stop next door and have Poe schedule me a time?”

“Of course!”

“Don’t you dare go over there, kid! Not on my clock!” Han yelled.

Another roll of Finn’s eyes and he finally made it out the door.

He stopped in front of the sign for a few seconds. Was Jessika right? Did Han harbor some sort of secret crush on Leia? Was that the reason for his inanity? Finn wasn’t really sure he knew the right technique for flirting, but putting an insanely rude sign in front of the shop belonging to the person you were crushing on was NOT it.

Inside The Resistance, Poe greeted him warmly from his usual perch behind the front desk, though he didn’t look up. “Hey buddy! How ya doin'?”

Finn grinned as he watched Poe fiddle with the forms in his hands. The poor guy was always in up to his elbows in paperwork, and the little cell phone rang constantly. The people in this city tended to use The Resistance as a sort of off-the-internet Google for traveling, and more often than not, Poe was the one within reach of the cell phone. And the email inbox (Hux had a wi-fi router set up somewhere else in the building in lieu of a hookup in the office, thank heavens).

Despite what Jessika had said about business being sketchy, Finn had no doubts that they’d be perfectly employed for as long as they’d like to be.

“Good, good. Just stopped in for Rey.” Finn said, looking around the little shop.

“For Rey?” Poe hesitated on his paperwork, raising one eyebrow in question.

“Oh, come on. The woman’s never taken a vacation in her life! She works right next to a vacation-planning business!” Finn said, and then he laughed a little at the irony of her situation.

“That’s true. Is she looking to go somewhere close or will she need a passport?” Poe asked, setting down his papers in favor of other forms, elsewhere on the desk.

“Honestly, she didn’t say, but let’s get her a passport so she has the option.” Finn decided.

“She’s never really been much of anywhere. Moved here as a little kid and then never left.”

Poe made a small noise of sympathy. “That’s too bad.” He reached across the desk to hand Finn the papers in his hands, but Finn put his hands up.

“Naw, she just wanted me to stop in and see if you guys could fit her in later this morning—like 11 maybe? Jessika suggested it.”

“Oh, yeah. We could do that. Anything for a friend! And you know Leia loves her.”

“Yeah. She does. I hope the sign doesn’t change any of that.” Finn grimaced and rubbed a hand over his head.

“Shhhhhh!” Poe said, looking around the corner warily. “Leia just stopped fuming. Don’t let her hear you talking about it or she’ll come up here and give you a severe tongue-lashing.”

Finn looked appropriately apologetic. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment, where Poe didn’t know if he should resume his paperwork or not, but Finn spoke before he could deliberate too long.

“I’ve…got to go. Do my pick-ups.”

“Oh, of course!” Poe smiled, tentatively. The two were good friends, but the friendship was new enough that Poe wasn’t sure if Finn was embarrassed or upset over his remark. Thankfully, Finn smiled back and everything seemed to be okay.

“You should come in with Rey.” Poe said, smiling wider now. “I mean, everyone could use a passport, right? There’s no harm in it.” Finn nodded and returned the smile.

“If I’m back by then, I will.”

He left, and Poe went back to his paperwork; there was always so much to do. It wasn’t like they had too many clients, but each client required a fair amount of paperwork to be done: passport information, travel plans, schedules, credit card information, etc. And because Leia insisted, all of it had to be filed electronically and physically. The tiny filing cabinet under the corner of Poe’s desk almost couldn’t handle it all.

While Poe was musing and filing, a very angry Leia stomped out of the back room, followed by an apologetic-looking Jessika.

“Poe! Did you know anything about this??” Leia barked. Poe’s eyes widened in panic, and he looked at Jessika. She looked doubly apologetic, but offered no help.

“No….what?” Poe said, finally.

“You’re sure? You didn’t hear about it from your little Falcon friend or something and then keep it from me??” Leia narrowed her eyes but kept her gaze steady.

“I’m not even—I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” he said.

“I told you!” Jessika cried, reaching out to touch Leia’s arm. “I told you as soon as I heard, and Poe would have done the same thing.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Leia began, looking at both Jessika and Poe for a long moment before she finally continued, “I know we’ve been promising them discounts for travel stuff, but you two are hereby instructed to charge them double. Or at least 50% extra.”

And with that, she turned and walked back through the doorway, probably to her office to make a phone call to Hux.

“What was THAT about?” Poe whispered, leaning across the desk to get closer to Jessika.

“Um.” Jessika bit her lip and looked nervously towards the back where Leia had disappeared.

“Finn told me…that Hux is planning on evicting us or the Falcon. To merge the buildings. So he can charge more rent.”


Poe’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding me!” he said, his voice a loud whisper.

“I wish I was,” she said. “Rey confirmed it. You know she doesn’t like to start stuff if she’s not sure it’s for real.”

“It can’t be true.”

“It is. Think about it—there’s only one bathroom and phone hookup between the two shops. We share the bathroom but not having a phone jack? That knocks our rent down a lot. If he merges us, he could finally charge the full amount for rent.”

“Wait. Say that again.”

“If he merges us…he could finally charge the full amount for rent?” Jessika quirked her eyebrow at him.

Poe stared at her. “If he merges us?”

“I meant the building—oh. Oh no way, Poe! There’s no way Leia or Han will go for that.”

“You don’t know that.”

Jessika jerked her thumb back behind her. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

A thoughtful expression fell over Poe’s face. “Luke?” he said finally.

Jessika rolled her eyes. “Maybe? I’m not going over there. I have actual work to do, you know.”

A scoff from Poe. “Fine! I’ll think of something.”

The door slammed open, the combination of a gust of wind and the gloved fist of an irritated-looking man.

Jessika looked up at the ceiling and then back at the hallway behind her, as if to be sure Leia wasn’t going to emerge.

“Kylo. How can I help you?” Poe said cautiously. Jessika seemed to hesitate, looking behind her, back at Poe, and then she mouthed ‘Luke,’ and gestured behind her to where Luke happened to be passing by on the sidewalk. Poe frowned and screwed his face up, and then he understood and nodded excitedly. She waved it away, and left out the door behind Kylo.

“The paperwork you gave me last night. One of the passport applications is missing a page.” Kylo said.

A wad of papers held together by a small paperclip flopped down onto the desk in front of Poe, who scowled, picked them up, and began to thumb through the pages, sneaking a glance at Kylo every few seconds. His gaze never wavered, eyes steady on Poe.

“It’s the very last page.” he said, waving his hand in Poe’s direction as Poe idly flipped through the pages.

“I assumed as much, but I was looking to see if I recognized the application. It’s likely I helped the person file it.”

“And? Do you recognize it?”

“Whoa, buddy. Let me finish looking.”

Kylo leaned back a few inches, crossing his hands together in front of him, arms rigid. Poe nodded absently, acknowledging the gesture.

“Oh! Yeah. I remember this lady. She needed run out to her car to take a phone call and hadn’t filled out that last page yet. I filed them all together first so I wouldn’t forget and……it must have—”

As Poe leaned down under the desk there was a startling noise, and Kylo leaned over to see what was going on. Because of this, when Poe brought his head back up from under the cabinet, he almost head-butted Kylo.

“I got it—whoa!” he held up the paper, slightly crumpled, and ducked away from Kylo, who was suddenly too close once again. Poe gave a small frown as Kylo took the paper out of his hands.

He held it up, close to his face and then back a ways so that the ceiling light would show through it.

“Do you have any way to press it or something?” Kylo asked. “I’m not filing this wrinkled piece of garbage.” Turning the paper over, he scoffed and looked back down at Poe. “I can’t even see the watermark. This’ll never get cleared. It doesn’t look like an official document.”

“Maybe I could run it through Jess’s photo printer? I bet that’d do it. Smooth it out.” Kylo looked skeptical, but handed the paper back and followed Poe into Jessika’s photo area.

“Use my printer?” Jessika said, appearing suddenly behind the two. Poe shot her a questioning look, and she nodded.

“Where did you go?” Kylo said, turning to face her.

“Uh. I was just—” she started, but Poe shook his head and she stopped.

“It’s fine, Jess. Rey’s coming soon, and we just need to use your photo printer.” She looked puzzled and Poe sighed. “Mr. Big-Time-Government-Guy over here needs to smooth out this piece of ‘garbage’ because it looks like a forgery.”

“And…you thought a photo printer would do it?” Jessika asked. There was a narrowing of eyes from Kylo’s direction, and Jessika threw up her hands. “Hey! I’m just wondering what exactly you thought would happen. And Rey’s coming? When?”

“11 am.”

Jessika looked up at the clock, which read 10:30, and her eyes widened.

“Print a blank document. The paper should run through and smooth itself out.” Kylo said. “It just needs to look a little less like someone stepped all over it.”

“Is that…what happened?” Jessika asked. Poe gave a hesitant, guilty grin.

The three of them worked to figure out how to ensure that the page would come out undamaged, testing on blank sheets of paper. Somehow, the first five test sheets came out with random, inexplicable blotches of ink across them.

“I don’t have time for this! Just call her back and tell her to come in and redo the paperwork. We’ll file it tomorrow.” Kylo ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the neat waves into his usual disarray. Poe had never seen him in the morning, with his hair still done. He usually came at the very end of the day.

“No! Wait. What if we run it through stuck to a piece of photo paper?” Jessika said.

Poe frowned. “How will that stop the printer from putting ink on it?”

“I can’t stay. I’ll be back tonight to pick up the rest of the paperwork.” Kylo turned to leave, but Poe and Jessika continued to bicker over the printer.

On his way out, distracted by the time he’d already wasted here, Kylo ran straight into a rather distracted Rey coming through the door. She was hurrying and hit his chest right on, falling backwards.

She let out a small shriek as she neared the floor, but before she made contact, she was cradled in long, wiry arms. Kylo had caught her, sweeping his arm under her knees and wrapping the other around her waist.

Their faces were unnaturally close, and Rey suddenly couldn’t catch her breath. His eyes were so brown, his lips were so full, and pieces of his dark hair brushed her forehead. He swallowed as they looked at each other, the muscles in his throat moving in a sort of slow motion as Rey’s gaze flickered from his eyes to his mouth down to his neck and then back up in a frantic circuit.

“B-Ren as I live and breathe! What are you doing in here—now—this morning?” Leia said from behind them, and Kylo snapped into motion immediately, setting Rey down, brushing his hair out of his face, and straightening his suit coat. His face settled into an expression somewhere between uncomfortable and upset.

Rey looked between them, a puzzled look on her face, but Kylo wouldn’t look at her. “I was here for a document that Poe misplaced. He’s still got to…figure things out. I’ll be back at my regular time in the evening.” He put his hand on the door, but Leia spoke before he could leave.

“I see you’ve met Rey?” her smile as she spoke was sly.

Kylo turned his head, meeting Rey’s eyes for a moment before the tips of his ears, just visible through the thick waves, turned a lovely shade of red. He nodded.

“Kylo…” Leia dragged the word out unnaturally, “is the government official assigned to our building. Since we don’t have a fax machine hookup close, you know. A secure one, at least.”  

Leia scoffed. “He handles, verifies, and transports our sensitive documents.” Rey looked up at him, trying to catch his eye, but Kylo refused to look at her. His ears still burned red.

“I really need to be going,” Kylo said, his grip on the door tightening.

“It was nice to meet you, Kylo Ren. I hope to see you again?” Rey smiled hesitantly, her brown eyes wide and friendly.

“Yes…Rey.” Kylo said, finally meeting her eyes for a long, charged moment. Then he pushed the door open and was gone with a swish of his black coat.

“Quite a character, isn’t he?” Leia said, leaning out as far as she could to watch Kylo walk to his sleek, silver, most-likely-government-issued car, get in, and drive away. “And handsome, too!”

“He seems…” Rey blushed and furrowed her brow, looking out the window, too.

Leia laughed. “Oh, you can’t put that one in a box, can you?”

Rey smiled briefly. “Well, I can’t say I’ve gotten to know him very well.”

“Well. I know his face, and if I had to guess I’d say you’ll probably get an opportunity to know him better if you’d really like.” Leia quirked her head towards Rey, gaze steady. 

“What do you mean?” Rey said, looking from Leia to the door, though Kylo had long gone.

“I watched that boy grow up, and he’s not very good at…veiling his feelings.”

“You raised him??” Rey said, her head jerking towards Leia.

“No—” Leia laughed, a short bark. “My brother did. He was his foster parent. Kylo came to Luke at 14, from a pretty terrible home, very poisonous. Very troubled. Turned out really well, actually. He just comes off as a little dark.”

“Luke raised him?” Rey asked, looking out across the street towards the small yoga studio that Luke owned. Rey had been to a few of his classes since she started working for Han, but had ultimately decided that yoga was a little too low-key and physically restrictive for her. He was a nice man, though, if a little eccentric and isolated.

“Yes. After his wife died he worked really hard to fill all the requirements so that he could continue to be a foster parent without her.” Leia’s voice seemed sad.

Rey looked thoughtful for a moment. “I didn’t know he’d been married.”

“It was a long time ago. Anyway, Kylo turned 18, went off to college and changed his name from Ben to Kylo Ren as a sort of way to officially shed his past.” Leia said, and she turned from the door, leaning over Poe’s desk to fiddle one of the cabinet drawers open. “Did I hear Poe right when he said you were coming in to plan your own vacation this morning?” she said between grunts as she dug farther and farther into the drawer.

“Yes! I think it’s more than time. I can’t ever remember being outside of this city.” Rey frowned and walked over to Leia, who was still struggling. “Can I help you reach?” she asked.

“Naw, I got it!” Leia pulled her arm out and straightened up, holding up a small bottle of white-out. “Why don’t you come back with me, and we’ll get you started.”

She led Rey past the front desk and back into the photo room, where Poe and Jessika were crouched over the paper from earlier. The wrinkles had all been smoothed out, but there was a giant blotch of ink over the top where the title of the page was supposed to be.

“I found the white out—see what you can do with that,” Leia said, holding the small bottle towards Poe, who handed it off to Jessika. “I’d hate to have to call that woman back in.”

“We had two test runs that turned out fine! I don’t understand what happened.” Poe said.

Jessika gathered her mass of curly hair in her hands, securing it up in a loose knot with a pen from the table, and opened the bottle, leaning over the paper. “I’ll get it. Just give me a minute and some space so I can keep my hand steady.”

Poe backed up, turning to Rey. “Should we start on some paperwork for you?” he said, gesturing to the table along the other wall.

“Yeah, I’ll likely need a passport.” Rey said.

“Well, we can fix you up with one of those, no problem. Do you have all of your important documents?”

“Um. I have my birth certificate and my social security card? Is that all I need?” Rey dug in the wide front pocket of her overalls, producing a thick manila envelope.

“We actually just need your driver’s license. You were born here, right?” Poe asked, pulling out a few forms from several different folders.

“No, actually.” she said.

“But you’re a citizen?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have your proof of citizenship?” Poe asked, reaching for one more form.

“Yes. It’s in here.” she said.

“Alright. We’ll just get started then.”

Rey and Poe went through the process of filling out paperwork while Leia and Jessika bent over the table together, working on carefully covering up the ink splotch. After watching Jessika for a while, Leia headed up to the front desk to make sure they hadn’t missed any customers.

It turned out, that they had.

Finn was sitting in one of the chairs in the front, and when Leia cleared her throat, he jumped up, shaking his head a little.

“I uhh, I finished my pick-ups and didn’t see Rey next door, so I thought I’d come see if she was here.”

“They’re in the back…” Leia trailed off, staring at something behind Finn. “Why don’t you head that way without me?”

Finn looked behind him, eyebrows raised. Han was walking by, on his way to his car from the Falcon. His eyes widened as he looked back to Leia. Her eyes were steely, determined.

“Uh. Yeah. Okay.”

Leia didn’t even notice him walking away; she just kept her eyes on Han and began to move towards the door.

The squeak as Leia emerged made Han jerk and turn away from his car. She began yelling immediately.

“What were you thinking!? Putting that sign up for all of our customers to see!! You are the most selfish, ignorant, classless idiot I have ever had the misfortune of meeting!”

Han threw his hands up, real panic flashing in his face before his trademark smirk replaced it. “Ah, come on, princess. You know you think it’s clever—don’t they say something like ‘the quality of the marketing indicates the quality of the company’? I’m just saying.”

“Well, if high-quality marketing involves putting others down, then I’d rather stay a low-quality company, thank you.” Leia scowled at him, putting her hands on her hips and fixing him with her narrowed eyes.

“Who said anything about putting others down?” Han said, throwing his hands up again and shrugging nonchalantly.

“Oh! You—you jerk wad!” she huffed, letting her hands fall from her hips. She stepped towards him, slow and careful. “I bet you’re doing this to put our business down so that Hux keeps you in the building instead of us.”

Han’s eyes went wide. “How did you hear about that?”

Leia’s frown deepened. “So you did know. Jessika was right.”

“Hey—how did she find out?” Han closed his eyes and shook his head. “Ahh. Finn.”

“You were going to KEEP IT FROM ME?” Tendrils of hair were working themselves out of her tight up-do.

“No—I—I would have…” Han said, but didn’t bother finishing.

“Sometimes I think that I might be misjudging you, being too harsh, but then you go and PROVE that you’re an insufferable, ARROGANT MORON!”

“Ah. I see the two of you are still getting along just wonderfully.” Luke said as he looked both ways before crossing the street. True to form, he took his time, ambling with a sort of serene, fond smile on his face.

Han and Leia breathed heavy, looking from Luke to each other as he neared.

“What’s the problem, guys?” Luke said, standing with his feet planted shoulder-width apart, hands on his hips. He somehow managed to look intimidating and bemused at the same time.

“Come on, Luke. It’s not like we need you to mediate with all your ‘in-touch-with-your-feelings’ crap.” Han rolled his eyes and chanced a side glance at Leia.

“Really? Because I could hear you two yelling from inside my studio.”

“We were handling it.” Leia said.

“Oh, it sure sounds like you were.” Luke raised his eyebrows at her. Leia ducked her head in response.

“Haven’t you heard?” she said. Han huffed a sigh and looked up with an exaggerated eye-roll.

“Hux is gonna kick one of us out to merge the two shops into one and everybody at The Falcon found out before I did.”

Luke looked at Han, brow furrowed. “I did hear that. Were you really keeping it from Leia?”

“No! Well…yeah.” Luke looked surprised, but Han continued. “He told us last night right before we closed up. Finn telling Jessika this morning before I even got in this morning was…”

“And you putting that ridiculous sign had nothing to do with wanting to steal our business so he’ll pick you??” Leia fumed, looking at Luke with her eyes flashing.

“That…was a poorly timed joke. I made it yesterday morning. Before I knew.”

“At least you have the decency finally to look ashamed.” Leia’s voice was quiet as she looked up at Han.

“I—I swear I didn’t mean—you’re doing—you’re doing just fine over there at your travel shop. We’re...well, we’re just barely breaking even. We could probably afford the higher rent if we stayed, but we couldn’t lose our clientele. All the little old ladies who come in looking for parts for their sewing machines, or the guys who want to fix up their old AM radios. Most of them have been coming here for years and years. If we move we’ll lose them.”

Leia’s face hardened. “Don’t you dare try to sway me with your sob story. If you can afford rent in a bigger place you can afford to move and build up a new client base!”

“Oh yeah? And you think you deserve to stay, princess?” Han stepped closer to her, leaning down with his shoulders squared back.

“Ha! I certainly deserve to stay just as much as you do!” Leia stepped into him, lifting her face until it was inches away from Han’s.

Luke stood to the side, watching with one eyebrow quirked. He shifted his weight and put his hands on his hips.

For a moment, Han forgot to breathe; Leia’s face was so close. Her brown eyes softened as she looked at him and his shoulders relaxed ever-so-slightly into the upward curve of her body. Leia’s gaze was so disarmed that Han knit his eyebrows before moving his face, hesitantly, towards hers. He could feel her breath on his face.

Luke cleared his throat, eyebrows still raised, and the effect was immediate. Leia stepped away from Han, ducking her head and running her hands over her hair, smoothing back the wayward strands and sighing heavily.

“Well, it’s probable that Hux won’t let you guys have any say in choosing which of you gets evicted…if any of you.” Luke said, pursing his lips.

“If any of us…?” Leia said.

“There’s got to be a solution,” Han said, looking at Leia. His cheeks reddened as she returned his gaze thoughtfully. She looked from him to Luke, thinking about what he’d just said.

“Actually,” she said, “I think that there might be.”

Luke’s face brightened with pride and he stood up straighter, but Han looked wary.

“This twin thing is so freaky sometimes.” Han said.

“I’m going to need to call Kylo and get him back over here. We’ll need his opinion.” Leia said.

Luke nodded. “We could always use more of his face around here, anyway.”

“What is going on here?” Han said.

“We’re going to beat the system. Hux can’t kick one of us out if we don’t let him.” Leia looked at each of them before turning to walk back into the office.

They followed.

“Poe!” Leia shouted, and he scrambled to the front desk, Rey, Finn, and Jessika in tow, with varying expressions of alarm on their faces. “Find me Kylo’s number.”

“Yeah—of course. Can I—can I ask why?” Poe said, moving around the little desk to flip through the pages of a book he had sitting next to the phone. He stopped on one of the pages, tracing a number with his index finger before picking the cellphone up and dialing.

“We’re not letting Hux kick either of us out. We’re going to merge, and I need to know if the government will have any issue with that.” Leia said, grabbing the phone from Poe and holding it up to her ear.

Han’s mouth dropped open. “We’re—what? I’m going to get Chewie.” He left the shop.

“Yes!” Rey said, pumping her fist. “What a brilliant solution! And we’ll all get to work together!”

Finn grinned, first at her and then at Poe, and last at Jess. “You guys can use our fax hookup!”

“And that means Kylo won’t have to ‘waste his time’ coming here every day.” Poe said, a soft smile on his face. Rey looked slightly worried.

Jessika, however, scoffed, and said, “Having him around less won’t be any sort of hardship for me.”

Leia, on hold for Kylo, noticed Rey’s face and gave her a wink before pulling the phone away from her face and mouthing “don’t worry we’ll keep him around” at her. Rey flushed and looked away.

Han came back in the door just as Leia got through to Kylo, and everyone got quiet. Luke moved to where Han and Chewie were standing and began a whispered conversation with them.

“Yeah—Kylo, I think you need to come back down here. We’re—we have a situation to discuss and I think you should be involved while we do.” Leia said, twirling a loose strand of hair around her finger. Her face was intent on whatever it was that Kylo was saying to her on the other end.

Rey, standing closest to the Leia, could hear the low hum of his voice, but could not make out any of the words.

“Yeah. As soon as possible, please.” she said. The phone made an audible click as she hung it up and turned to look towards Luke, Han and Chewie. “He’s clearing up his schedule and then he’ll be here.”

“Are we really going to merge?” said Poe. Leia nodded.

“How…is that going to work?” Jessika said.

“I imagine the government will have some sort of protocol for how we’re going to be allowed to do it, but I will jump through whatever hoops I have to.”

“Are…are you sure we shouldn’t just kick the losers out?” Poe said, shooting Finn and Rey a sideways grin.

“Well, if I’m being honest, I did think of that.” Leia said. Han’s mouth dropped open and Chewie offered a comforting hand on his shoulder. Jessika’s eyebrows shot up, a wide, disbelieving smile stretching across her face.

“What made you change your mind?” said Han, shrugging Chewie’s hand off his shoulder.

Leia turned to face him full on, squaring her shoulders and fixing him with her serious gaze.

“Even if you’re a complete douche-canoe,” she said. Han jerked backwards an inch or two, clearly taken aback. Leia continued, “no one deserves to have their livelihood ripped out from under them.”

“Well hold up a minute, princess!” Han said, and Chewie growled quietly, low in his throat. Han ignored the look Chewie gave him and continued, “What if we don’t want to merge with you?”

Leia pursed her lips as if she were trying not to laugh.

“You don’t? I’m sure that we can just call Kylo and go back to competing with each other for Hux’s approval. I’d bet you have a good chance of convincing him that your business will be consistently profitable enough for an investment.”

Stunned into silence, Han huffed and looked away.

They all continued talking amongst themselves for a few minutes, waiting for Kylo to arrive, when Finn looked at his watch and asked “Whoa—does anyone need lunch?”

Luke raised a hand, “Since I’m not economically invested in this…merge…I can go grab food for everyone.”

“Since this is technically a work meeting, I can reimburse you through the company. Thanks, Luke.” Leia said.

He left out the front door, headed towards the small sandwich shop down by his yoga studio, the door swinging in a wide arc as he pushed it.

Rey didn’t realize she had been half-listening for the sound of the door banging shut until the sound never came. She looked up, a confused look on her face, and her eyes widened in a flustered panic when Kylo Ren’s gloved fingers wrapped around the metal of the door.

Funny enough, his eyes scanned the room before settling on hers, and she blushed before bringing her hands up to fiddle with the stray hairs on the back of her neck. There was a heat in his eyes that she didn’t quite understand, but it made the inside of her skin itch. 

“Kylo! Alright, let’s all go sit at the table in the back room—Poe could you—the door?” Leia said, turning her hand to mime locking the door and guiding everyone back to the table Poe, Rey and Finn had been sitting at earlier.

While they were all settling, Poe leaned over, assembling the paperwork they’d done, and handed the collection of papers to Kylo.

“What are these? Is one of these the missing page to the application from this morning?” Kylo asked.

“No…that one—we’re still working on it. These are for Rey’s passport. And Finn’s. I figured I’d give you one last chance to do your job before…it’s gone.” Poe whispered, eyes mirthful in his otherwise serious face. Rey settled into the chair next to him, Kylo on her other side.

Kylo frowned, “Rey doesn’t—you don’t have a passport?” he looked at her for a moment, and then at Poe, his frown deepening. “What do you mean ‘one last chance to do my job’…what’s going on?”

Rey nudged Poe, tutting at him, and Finn leaned over from Poe’s other side.

“Hux is gonna kick one of us out, so Leia’s going to beat the system. We’re merging with The Falcon!” Finn’s voice was very loud in the suddenly quiet room.

Kylo tilted his head to the side, turning to look at Leia. “Is this true?” he said.

“It’s…” Leia sighed. “We’d better just sit down and get into it then.” She sat down, Han at her left, Jessika at her right.

When everyone was seated, Leia looked at Kylo.

“I don’t know if you’ve met our landlord, Hux.” she said.

“I have.” Kylo said, a slight grimace twisting his face.

“Then you’ll understand what I’m about to explain a little better.” she said. Han snorted, and Chewie elbowed him.

Kylo sat in tense silence.

“Hux has decided that he’s going to knock out the wall between us and The Falcon.” Leia said.

“What?” Kylo said, leaning forward and tilting his head to the side as if he hadn’t heard her correctly.

“He wants to make it one space, because of the phone hookup and the bathroom. He’s going to evict one of us and then charge the other higher rent.”

Kylo nodded, gesturing for her to continue.

“If at all possible, I’d like for that not to happen. So we’re merging.”

Kylo made a face. “You’re—what?”

“We’re gonna be one shop, then. Both of us are staying, we’ll split the rent, rearrange some things, and everything will be fine. We can even keep both entrances. There just won’t be a wall between us.” Leia looked at Han, who had a half-terrified, mostly-glazed look on his face.

Kylo frowned. “I’m…I’m unsure about the ethicality of that.”

“That’s what we’re here to discuss. Along with a new floor plan, a way to split the rent, and the payroll, among other things.”  Leia folded her hands together on top of the table, and Poe leaned back, reached into one of the filing cabinets behind them, and pulled out a small notebook. Uncapping a pen, he made a quick note about the agenda on the top of the first page.

“I’m going to have to speak with my higher-ups. My assignment here was based on the lack of faxing capabilities, and this will clear that up. However, handling private government documents in the same place where old microwaves are sold...will be a different sort of complication, I’m sure.” Kylo said, folding his hands in a pose that mirrored Leia’s.

“If we could, I would like to approve that before we make any other decisions or contact Hux. Is there someone you could step out and call?” Leia said.

Rey looked at the two, Leia and Kylo, sitting across each other at the table, looking so alike. Though there were no shared genetics, it was clear that Kylo had grown up watching Leia perform these movements; the mimicry was impeccable.

Kylo nodded. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Of course. Please take your time.” Leia said, and Kylo pushed his chair back before rising out of his seat. As he pushed himself up and out of his chair, he let the fingers of his right hand trail across the back of Rey’s chair, just barely brushing the edge of her bare shoulder before he was gone, around the table and through the doorway.

She shivered with the weight of his gentle touch, and Poe raised his eyebrows at her.

Through the doorway, the sound of murmured conversation could be heard, ending in a short laugh before Luke emerged, bearing two paper bags full of sandwiches.

Leia continued on with the meeting while sandwiches were passed around.

“So obviously we’re going to need to move things around if we’re going to merge.” she said.

Chewie and Han nodded together. “We’ll probably need to knock out all the walls and do a complete redesign.” Chewie said, looking around the room before finally settling his gaze back on Leia.

“Except my office.” said Han. Leia scoffed.

“Oh, you think you get to be special and keep your office?” she said.

“As a matter of fact, I think I do. It’s very important to the way I get work done.” Han said, leaning in close to point his finger at Leia.

She swatted his finger away, barking a short laugh and shaking her head. “I agree with Chewie, I think we can reformat everything and look at including private office space for each of us, but there is some merit in working with a clean, open space.”

“I happen to like the window in the front of my office very much, princess. I’ll just end up choosing the same spot for my office again, so why even bother knocking out the walls?” he said, leaning in too close again.

Leia stood her ground, allowing his childish nearness with a hard swallow.

Poe, Finn, Rey and Jessika looked around at each other awkwardly, and Chewie coughed, hoping to dispel some of the tension.

Luke just grinned and continued to take small bites of his sandwich.

“There are windows at the back of the building, too. And that way I won’t have to look at your face every time I walk past the front of the shop.” Leia said, blinking a few times and turning to Poe.

“Give me a piece of that paper, will you?” she said, and Poe ripped a page out of the back of the notebook and passed it to Finn, who passed it to Jessika, who put it into Leia’s waiting hands.

She reached her fingers into the mass of complicated braids and buns on the top of her head and closed one eye, searching and feeling, and then pulled a pen out of the middle.

She used the end of the pen to tap Han’s shoulder without looking, pulling the piece of paper close to her and drawing a big, wide rectangle.

“See—if this is the whole shop now, then look what happens if we put your office right where it is now.” She paused, pulling her bottom lip into her mouth, and drew a square in the middle of the bottom side of the rectangle. “Then we’ve got to move the travel desk over here,” another square on the left side, “and the cash register...” she thought for a minute, and Chewie reached over Han’s shoulder to point to the space on the other side of Han’s office. “Yes!” she said, drawing it in.

Han looked at what she’d drawn, frowning. He pulled the paper out of her grasp and held it up for the others to see.

“What do you guys think? I don’t see any problems with that.” Han said.

“Yeah, except you forgot to have Leia draw the sign you’re going to need to direct all of your little old lady customers around that massive office sticking out of the middle of the store to the cash register. Or whatever shelves you decide to put on the other side of it.” Jessika said, shrugging. “Leia’s right, I think.”

Poe looked at Jessika with something akin to admiration in his eyes. Jess blushed when she saw it and shrugged. Leia just looked at Han with a satisfied smirk.

“Fine!” Han said, throwing up his hands. “We’ll move my office. To the back. I know you just want an excuse to be closer to me all day. But you better not be lying about those windows, sweetheart.”

Leia made an irritated noise in the back of her throat and jerked her hand backwards. “You’re welcome to go look, marshmallow brain.”

Han shrugged. “Nah, I believe you.”

Chewie took a big bite of sandwich, eyes wide, but Leia just rolled her eyes (though there was a hint of a smile chasing the corners of her lips). Everyone turned to the door as Kylo came back through.

“What did they say?” Leia asked. Kylo had a strange expression on his face as he combed his fingers through his hair and sat next to Rey again. She handed him a wrapped sandwich, which he simply held on top of the passport papers.

“They said…that yours is a very successful branch and we can’t afford to lose the business and service you provide to those wishing to file passport applications and such.” He frowned, looking down at the sandwich and unwrapping it slowly.

“So we’re good?” Leia said, looking at Luke with a big grin on her face. Luke smiled at her through a mouthful of sandwich.

“Yes. With one…condition.” Rey and nearly everyone else turned sharply to look at him.

“Condition?” Rey said, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear.

“There must be room for an…. additional desk in your floor plan. For me. I’ll be located here, permanently. So that I can officially file all the applications without having to go to the government building every day.”

Luke put down his sandwich, smiling wide through the bite he was chewing. “You’re going to work here, now?”

Kylo nodded, sneaking a glance at Rey, the tips of his ears a light pink. She returned his gaze, equally as shy.

“Alright. So our floor plan needs to include a space for Kylo, too. Do you need an office or just a desk?” Leia said, turning her paper over to make notes. Poe did the same. When things picked up in the meeting, she would likely forget to write anything down—it was just better to have two copies anyway.

“I need walls. So that they can designate it as a sort of independent government facility.” Kylo said, looking away from Rey and down at his sandwich. He took a bite, and nudged Luke with his elbow while he chewed. “This is really good,” he said, and Luke shrugged.

“Maybe if you came to visit me more often…” Luke said with a smile, and Kylo hunched his shoulders, burying his face in his sandwich again.

“I don’t do yoga, you know that.”

“I never asked you to! I just want to see your face at lunch sometimes. Anyway—now you can come for lunch every day because you’re so close.” Luke smiled, looking so much like a dad in that moment that Rey felt her heart clench.

“Okay,” Leia said, looking up from her paper, towards Han and Chewie. “Let’s talk floor plans.”

Crumpling up the sandwich wrapper and pushing it away from him, Kylo whispered to Rey, “Why don’t you have a passport already?”

He was leaning so close that his breath stirred up the wisps of hair that had escaped the knot of hair on top of her head; they tickled the back of her neck and made her fidget.

“I’ve never been anywhere but here. My parents brought me and left me. I grew up in an orphanage just across town and when I aged out, Han offered me a job.” she whispered back, fingers reaching out to trace the edges of her passport application.

Kylo nodded, a serious expression on his face. “Where are you planning to go?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always sort of wanted to go back to where I’m from—see if I recognize anything. Or maybe the jungle? Somewhere wet.” she grinned, flushing a little. “I’ve been looking at travel catalogues.”

Kylo smiled. “I’d say the jungle is a good choice.”

“Have you been?” Rey leaned closer, whispering a little louder.

“Yes. A couple times.”

“What was it like?”

By this point they were almost forehead to forehead, and everyone at the table had noticed. Leia cleared her throat quietly, and the two jumped, facing forwards.

“We were just wondering exactly how much space you need for your tools and things, Rey?” Leia said, stern, but with barely concealed laughter.

The discussion continued into the evening. Decisions were made concerning the floor plan, the payroll, and even who’s name would go on the combined official title (Leia argued that there was no reason they should have all three names on the title, and Han said that he and Chewie were backing out if they didn’t.). Luke left about an hour in for a class he had scheduled, but all the others stayed sitting around the table together, deep in negotiations.

The last item up for discussion was the name of the newly combined business.

“The Resistant…Falcon?” Rey said, and Finn wrinkled his nose.

“Well, if you have any better ideas, you can pipe up any time.” she said, reaching over Poe to jab Finn in the shoulder.

“The Old Resistance?” said Kylo, and when Rey laughed and offered him a high five, his ears went pink.

“Stay-cay or Vay-cay!” said Jessika.

“No, no no—guys, I’ve got it!” Poe said. “Republic Travel and Trash!”

Leia looked confused. Rey tilted her head to the side, mouthing Republic Travel and Trash to herself. Kylo just stared at Poe with a blank look on his face before sighing.

However, Han and Chewie exchanged an excited look before they started laughing together.

“That’s perfect!” Han said, and Chewie gave an excited noise of agreement, still laughing too hard to talk.

“Absolutely not,” Leia said. “We cannot have the word ‘trash’ on the front of our shop! We’ll never gain any new customers!”

“We’ve got plenty of customers as it is!” Han said. “I think it’s brilliant. Certainly better than some cheesy combination of the two old names—no offense kids.” he said, with a look towards Rey, Finn, Poe, Jessika and Kylo. All but Kylo, who scowled slightly, looked unaffected.

“Absolutely not.” said Leia.

Han opened up his mouth to shoot back, but Finn, who had a view out the doorway and down the hall to the front door of the Resistance sat up straighter and said, “Uh, here comes Hux.”

Leia stood up. “What perfect timing!” she said, her tone bright and false. Han reached out and caught her hand (Rey let out a soft gasp).

“I’ll come with you,” he said, “see if we can’t get that stuffy ginger to agree to our terms.”

Leia smiled, soft and genuine, and the two walked out together to meet Hux.

Rey sighed and lay her head on her arms, a soft look on her face. Jessika caught her eye and flashed a smile as unruly as her hair.

“I knew it—see, Finn?” Jessika said. “They’re totally into each other.”

Finn wrinkled his nose. “I don’t care if you’re right. It’s so weird.”

Poe laughed.

“What do you think about it?” Rey whispered to Kylo, looking up at him through from where her head rested.

“I must admit—I’m not all that fond of Han Solo.” he said.

She sat up. “Why?”

“I guess he’s nice enough, but…I just don’t see what Leia sees in him.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Rey said. She dropped her head back down onto her arms.

In the silence that followed between them, Kylo breathed in carefully, as if about to speak. Rey waited, but then he closed his mouth and huffed the breath out his nose instead. Jess, Finn, and Poe were talking in quiet murmurs beside them.

“Would…would you maybe want to have dinner with me sometime?” Kylo said, his voice quiet and lower than usual.

Rey lifted her head, blinking a few times. “What?”

“Dinner?” Kylo said.

“Yeah. I could—I’m free tonight.” she said, and her head felt light and warm as she looked at him.

Kylo looked up at the clock. “I need to go back to the office. Take back this paperwork for them. Do you—do you need to go home?”

“Yes. I’d like to change—unless—where did you want to go?”

“Somewhere nice.” he said firmly, and Rey felt even warmer. Kylo looked at the clock again. “Can I give you my number so you can text me your address?”

Rey nodded and he wrote the number down, holding it out to her between two fingers, and as she took it, they brushed against hers. 

He could feel her eyes on him as he walked away, through the doorway into the front room. 

Hux, Leia, and Han were standing in front of the door, deep in discussion.

“Honestly, Hux? I don’t understand why you even care. You’re still going to get your increased rent, and you don’t have to worry about finding new tenants—because if you think that one of us is going to stay without the other—” Leia held up a hand as Han opened his mouth, “Then you’ve got another thing coming.”

Hux grimaced, and Kylo chose that moment to make his escape. The clank of the door hitting the frame was very loud in the silence.

“Well—IF you combine, what would you even call a travel shop that sells junk?” Hux said, standing a little straighter above Leia and clenching his fists.

Leia grinned, glancing sideways at Han as she said, “I’m glad you asked that. We’re going to call it Republic Travel and Trash.”

Leia decided to tell him on the roof of the Falcon. They occasionally went there when they were grounded on whatever rebel base they were this month. It was their favorite place, especially on a planet like this where the stars were clear and the moons were bright. Whether they sat up here just to talk or have a picnic like they were tonight, they found peace here. They could sit for hours and have long deep conversations.

She made him dinner. She wasn’t that good of a cook, but Han surprisingly was since he was so used to making meals on his own. Chewie had to help a bit. But she wanted him to be as calm and as cool as collected when she finally broke the news.

“So I went to the medic today,” Han said with a cheeky smile as he took a glass of Corellian whisky and put it to his lips. Leia was hesitant to tell him what she wanted to tell him, why she refused the glass of whisky in the first place. That alone probably told him something was wrong. “Doctor said the last of the long term effects of the carbonite are gone. I don’t see why they keep insisting I am permanently damaged or some Bantha Fodder like that…I was in  the damn Carbonite for almost two hours, I’m pretty sure I’m fine.”

Leia frowned at that as the image of the event flashed through her mind. All the smoke, the sound of the machine filling her ears, and the rage that coursed through her body when she she saw the slab falling at her feet thinking Han was dead. What happened next terrified her, her chest was burning as she lifted her lightsaber in the air launching herself at Darth Vader. She almost thought in that terrible moment she had fallen to the Dark Side, just as master Yoda had feared.

She sighed deeply, her body shaking as the air left her lungs. Han put down his glass of Corellian whisky and placed his hands on her forearms lovingly running them down the contours of her muscles. His eyes were concerned as if he sensed her hesitation.

“Hey, what’s wrong sweetheart,” Han asked with a concerned smile; one his hands reached for hers, her now robotic hand, and kissed it. It was his way of saying her newest imperfection didn’t change the way he felt about her. “Is it about what happened on Cloud City? If it’s upsetting we won’t talk about it.”

Leia swallowed. So much for waiting. She knew it was now or never to finally tell him. She could either keep making excuses till it frustrated him or she could just tell him. But if there was one thing that their little forced arrangement turned into something deep and profound is that she learned to trust him. She took a deep breath. She knew it was better if she told him so they could work it out together.

“Han, something has happened,” Leia stated. Han frowned. He may have not had the Force like she did but by the way she looked, pale, shaken and absolutely terrified….he knew something was wrong. But he kept his eyes on her, letting her talk. “I’m pregnant.”

Han’s face never shifted. She could sense his mind running in many different directions. In the beginning children was something he wasn’t really keen about, but spending time with Kes and little Poe changed his mind and made him more comfortable with the idea. Yet now when he saw the hesitation and fear in Leia’s eyes he wasn’t quite sure whether to cheer or reassure her.

“You’re not happy about this?” Han said breathing deeply. He closed his eyes for a moment and rested his hand on her cheek, “You’re not ready I am guessin’.” He nodded, “I understand the Empire wants your head, we’re fighting a war and Luke’s still miss-” He bit his lip and stopped himself before going on a tangent, “the point is….if you are not ready to have a kid now….and you want to terminate the Pregnancy….I am with you one hundred percent.” His smile returned. “We’ll try again when things are calm.”

Leia turned away. She did think about terminating the pregnancy without Han knowing, but she knew it would be cruel. Cruel to Han because after all he done for her, to do something like this without at least letting him know….would be selfish and cruel to the child to punish him for something that was beyond his or her control…especially since she too thought about having children before…it all happened…

“No, I want nothing more than to raise children with you Han but….” She said before trailing off. Gods it had been three months since the battle on Cloud City, and she can’t even say the words.

“It’s about Darth Vader being your father isn’t it?” Han said. Leia winced before Han pulled her close and rested her head on his chest. She began to sob as Han ran his large hand ran through her dark hair. “Hey, hey,” He cooed wrapping his arms around her, “Leia, I know I don’t have the Force, but I could imagine it’s frightening having  his blood run through your veins. And you’re afraid it’s going to affect our child.”

“Han, he tortured you….” Leia sobbed burying her head deeper into Han’s chest, she concentrated on the sound of his strong heartbeat, warmth and breathing. It was the only thing keeping her from floating away, “he was willing to freeze me in carbonite and bring me to the Emperor like a prize….he blew up Luke’s planet.”

“Yeah he did that,” Han responded tracing lazy circles on her back, “but my family’s a bunch of pirates and gangsters…hell, I used to be a career criminal…but I ain’t worried that our child is going to be a pirate because of that,” Leia couldn’t help but smile through her tears at that. He always knew how to make her laugh, “just like you shouldn’t be scared about our child. For one…you are one of the of best people I know always willing to put yourself before others. And two….obviously Darth Vader isn’t your only parent…remember the research you did on your mother…”

Leia nodded her head. The discovery of her father gave her a lead to find out about her mother. It was difficult but her research finally led her to Padme Amidala. She couldn’t believe the incredible things she had read. She was a queen at a young age, a crusader for her people and even after her tenure was finished, she still fought for the rights of others. For all the bad Darth Vader had done….she did nothing but good for the sake of human lives.  And knowing this….put her at ease.

“She was a good person and so are you,” Han said, “you shouldn’t worry.” His hand slipped lower and rested on her stomach. He moved his hand in large reassuring circles, trying to feel the life that was growing inside her. “This child…our child, was made out of love, and has more blood from good people running through his or her veins than bad. And their grandmother was a crusader for her people and their mother is a woman who loves with her heart and fights for the people she cares about….our kid…is going to be a good kid….I promise you.”

Leia lifted her head and smiled, her eyes now shining with tears not of fear but happiness. Gods one of the great things about Han, as sarcastic as he could be, he was always her biggest champion. Cheering her on when she faced hard tasks, encouraging her when she had doubts and praising her when she done something good. And now he was helping her through this. He loved her, and stayed by her side despite who she was and where she came from. That alone gave her strength to do this.

To bring a child into the world and raise him to do good.

“So are we okay with this now or still scared?” Han asked.

“I think I am going to be fine now,” Leia said, “a manifestation of love is being brought into the world. I didn’t let Vader take you from me….I won’t let him take this from us either.”

Han smiled leaning and kissing her gently on the lips. It was something simple, something soft that lingered for a few moments before he leaned back and gazed deeply into her eyes.

“I love you Leia,” Han whispered his fingers stroking her cheek.

“I know,” Leia responded.

Han chuckled and shook his head. His large hand moved in circles over her belly. It was his way of trying to introduce himself to their child.  

“I ain’t gonna see the end of it am I,” He hummed between giggles.

Suddenly Leia felt something flutter in her stomach. Something unfamiliar, but another flutter told her what it most likely was. She looked down at her stomach before looking up at Han.

“Han, the child,” Leia said, “I think he’s kicking.”

“He?” Han asked, tilting his head.

“I sense it’s a boy,” Leia responded.

“Well….you have the Force. I trust ya,” Han quipped before looking down at her stomach, “what we are going to name him? I mean Corellian tradition has us naming our children after someone we loved who passed away….I would name him after my father but I feel like Josiah is literally the worst name ever, I wouldn’t torment my son like that. Maybe we give him Josiah as his middle name and name him after your Uncle Owen.”

Leia chuckled as the face of her uncle came to her mind, his arms folding as he shook his head.

“My uncle thought the Force was a load of quack…do you really think he would want our possibly Force sensitive baby named after him?” Leia said sighing deeply. She thought what she could name her son. She didn’t know enough people who came and went in her life to figure out a good name. But then someone came to mind. Someone who helped her discover who she was and was a hero and a strong warrior. “How about Ben? After Obi Wan Kenobi….he was with us at the beginning of our marriage basically and it would mean so much to Mara if we named him after her adoptive father.”

Han’s eyebrow raised when he began to think about the possibility of a name for a moment. But then a large smile grazed upon his lips.

“Ben, Ben Josiah Skywalker Solo,” He hummed with a smile, “It fits….I like it.” Another flutter in her stomach. “Hey….he’s kicking again.” Han lowered his head both hands resting on her abdomen. His fingers moving excitingly in circles hoping he could find where the feet were. “Hey there Ben….I’m your daddy…..it’s nice to meet ya.”

Another kick and Han was chuckling lowly and excitedly, his lips gently touching her stomach. Leia slowly ran her hands through his hair and looked out to the starry night with a smile on her face. Smiling deeply all she could think about now was what little Ben would be like. Would he have his mother’s heroics? His father’s snark? Would he have his father’s nose or his mother’s dark hair? Would he be a Jedi or fly all across the galaxy like his father?

“Han, we live together.” Luke sat up and rested his arms on his knees, looking at Han the whole time with an eyebrow raised. “You don’t need to bring the Falcon into the shop anymore just to see me.” And flirt with me. was unsaid but implied. Han grinned and leaned against the hood of the car.

“You’re the best mechanic around, sweetheart. Only one besides me and Chewie who gets to even touch the Falcon. Getting to see you is just a bonus,” he joked as Luke pushed himself up to his feet.

Luke’s expression was halfway between amused and adoring and so warm that Han practically felt himself melting. He would never admit to looking at Luke like a lovesick puppy. That was Luke’s job, not his, damn it. And speaking of puppies-

“But that’s not what I’m here for today!” Han (embarrassingly) spluttered, and Luke’s knowing grin made Han’s ears burn. “Wanted to surprise you with something.”

“While I’m still on the clock?”

Han scoffed. “Your shift ends in a couple minutes, and with how much you work overtime you’ve earned a couple minutes off, especially for this surprise.”

Luke tried to look stern, but if Han knew his Luke Skywalker Faces (and he did) Luke was secretly relieved.

“Come on kid, this is worth taking a break from your clearly important, life saving work with that engine,” Han pushed not so subtly. Luke rolled his eyes, more long suffering then any sigh, but let Han drag him out into the blazing Cali sun and over to the Falcon.

At first glance, the truck that Han had christened the Millennium Falcon was “a piece of junk” in Luke’s immortal words. Beat up, breaking apart, it was unrecognizable as any truck model because Han had fiddled with it so much, after it had already been messed with by previous owners; but what it lacked in looks it made up for in speed and maneuverability. Once upon a time Han had been a smuggler,and the Falcon his machine of choice. All the hidden compartments were still intact, but they were only used for innocent enough purposes now. At the moment, both windows were rolled down slightly so it wouldn’t become a broiler inside the metal death trap of a truck.

“Wait one sec,” Han said as he looked meaningfully at Luke, turned back to walk to the truck, turned back to Luke again to add, “A-and cover your eyes. No peeking,” then turned again and walked up to the truck, looking in the window.

A puppy’s face looked back, tiny pink tongue lolling out of it’s half open mouth as it panted in the heat. It’s big eyes met Han’s and it started to bark excitedly while Han tried to shoosh it. In one mostly fluid go, Han pulled open and scooped up thirty two pounds of cheerful, wriggling, floppy-eared golden retriever in his arms. It yipped and, after some fumbling, found a comfortable position in Han’s clumsy hold. Han smiled crookedly at the puppy, suddenly nervous. Luke was still waiting, eyes closed like Han had asked, when he walked back over.

"Open ‘em, Luke.”

One unbelievably blue opened tentatively, but once he had gotten a glimpse of what Han was holding both Luke’s eyes flew open, a gasp escaping his lips. Han grinned and handed the dog over, and it took to Luke like a duck takes to water, yapping and licking Luke’s face. Luke laughed aloud, laughed like he hadn’t laughed in years, and he suddenly looked nineteen again, young and naïve with more compassion in him then anyone should be allowed, and Han knew this had been a good idea.

“Does she have a name?” Luke asked once the dog had calmed down enough that he wasn’t afraid he’d get a faceful of dog when he opened his mouth, shaking Han out of his reverie.

“She?” Han spluttered. He hadn’t known that, how had Luke known that? He chalked it up to another Luke oddity (or one of those weird things Luke just knew that no one else knew and probably would never need to know because he used to be a farmer). “Uh, no, not as far as I know.” Luke gave him a questioning look, and Han quickly explained.

“Found her digging in the dumpster behind Joe’s, one leg missing- I washed her before I gave her to you, though, don’t worry!” That got another laugh out of Luke to Han’s (secret) delight.

“She’s a pretty good-looking puppy,” Luke said adoringly, every part the proud new dog father.

“I knew there was a reason she reminded me of you.”

Luke rolled his at this. “Huh, I thought it was because of her missing paw. You’ve got a morbid sense of humor Han.”

But when he turned he was smiling at Han, that smile, like he had swallowed the sun and it shone out between his teeth and bathed you in light.

“Let’s call her Rebel.”

Leia wasn’t going to answer the door. Not today. It was her day, and she didn’t care who it was, they could suck it for all she cared. God, but they weren’t letting up, were they?

“Leia? Come on, princess, I know you’re home. This is important!”

Of course it was Han. When was it not that laserbrain? With a long suffering sigh she dragged herself to her feet and stomped with all the ill-temper she could muster to the door, wearing the scowl of a woman who hadn’t caught a break in weeks.

Being met with Han’s grinning face didn’t exactly raise her spirits any.

Standing next to Han was Luke, with matching smile that did manage to soften Leia’s mood, much to her chagrin; she was still trying to be mad at them for bothering her on her one day off. But Luke was grinning like he hadn’t grinned in years, and she had a feeling the ball of golden fur with two floppy ears in Luke’s arms was to blame for all of this.

Leia didn’t know if she was surprised or just felt she should feel surprised. She just wasn’t shocked by anything these two moon jockeys did anymore. At least this was a good kind of unexpected. The debacle from when Han had “modified” her car so it was undrivable by anyone but Luke, with his inhuman reflexes and lack of any taste whatsoever (she could only imagine Luke driving something with “The Queen Machine” in sparkling bejeweled letters on the hood) was still fresh in her mind. Han had gotten a good laugh out of it, but she had not been amused.

“Considering you’re here, Han, I’m assuming you’re not just here to introduce me to the dog,” Leia said, arms crossed.

“Hey!” Han protested, looking sincerely hurt. Luke was stifling giggles, shoulders shaking, and Leia’s frown softened into a crooked smile. Even the dog agreed with her.

“Come on then, out with it.”

“Gang upon me, why don’t'cha?” Han muttered. “Alright, fine. We just need some cash, for Rebel here’s vet visit and all the essentials.”

There was an unspoken question of approval; if Leia thought Han should keep the dog. Leia glanced between Han, earnest and awkwardly shuffling his feet, and Luke, his eyes pleading, and the dog, paws hanging and tail desperately trying to wag while being squashed in Luke’s arms, and sighed before waving them all inside.

“Alright, come inside while I get my checkbook,” Leia said, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her lips as Luke grinned wide and rushed past her with dog in tow; if he hadn’t had the dog she probably would’ve gotten a faceful of Luke right there as he hugged her, but his arms were already occupied. As usual, Han wasn’t very huggy, but his grin was almost as wide as Luke’s.

“Thanks, Leia.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said, then added, “Only spend my money on Rebel though. I’m not here to fund every crazy thing you just decide to do.”

“Hey! It’s me!”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Taking Rebel to the vet was, possibly, the only thing in existence that could be both nerve-wracking and skull numbingly boring, and when the thrice damned vet finally finished chatting about something to Luke that he had tuned out entirely and they got their dog, Han was glad to be out of there. The dog was amazingly healthy for a mongrel with a missing leg, if skinnier and smaller than she should be, considering she had been digging around in garbage when he found her. She hadn’t caught anything from the muck that came out of Joe’s? That took resilience.

In the Petsmart He fought with Luke light-heartedly over what toys to get, if Rebel needed a nice pet bed, if they even had the money for all the fancy stuff Luke seemed to think Rebel deserved, and what dog food was the best. Luke was adamant that they buy food that had actual meat and actual meat only, even if the ones with corn and meat by-products were cheaper.

“Alright, but if you get the premium all natural shit, you’re gonna have to put the dog bed back.”

Luke hadn’t been happy about that, sporting an expression that was almost an exact copy of her Highnesses when she was fighting with her pride and stubbornness, and had nodded viciously, seeing reason but not liking the injustice of it.

“Dogs are carnivores, Han. I’m not giving up her health just so we can get more things.” There was a pause, then Luke looked at Han like he had just thought of something terrible Han wasn’t going to like. “It just means she’ll have to sleep in the bed.”

Oh yeah, Han was looking forward to that. Well, as long as Luke and Rebel were happy. The dog better not get in the way when they were messing around though. That was where Han drew the line.

They walked out with Han carrying the bags, because dammnit Luke didn’t have to carry literally everything even if he wanted to, and Luke with a gently panting ball of canine cradled in his arms, to the Falcon. Han dropped the bags unceremoniously in the back of the truck, then turned back to Luke.

“Y’know, if you still really want that dog bed-”

“No, Han.”

“You didn’t even hear what I was gonna say!”

“You were going to say we could ask Leia for more money.”

“I- yeah, okay, that’s what I was going to suggest. Just a suggestion. If you really wanted that dog bed.”

“I’ll be fine, Han.”

The drive home, Rebel crawled all over them both, shiny new dog tag jangling on her shiny new collar–which would’ve been cute if Han wasn’t trying to drive. Luke finally pulled Rebel back into his arms, restraining her as well as he could. As they got close Rebel only got more excited, as if she could tell they were almost at her new home, and she just wanted to be there already. Her wet nose and her one paw pressed against the window, while her back legs dug into Luke’s thighs.

When the truck doors opened Rebel practically flew out, stumbling a little but determined to run around and sniff out her place, stubby leg be damned. Luke jumped down with far more grace, boots clicking against the sidewalk, and rushed to scoop Rebel up before she got too far away, while Han came around from the other side and walked to the door of the apartment building, bags in hand. He set them down to dig around in his pockets for his keys.

Where the hell were they? He’d had them a second ago.

A tap on his shoulder stopped him, and he turned to find Luke had the keys in his hands, somehow still holding Rebel in his other arm like she was a baby.

Han grimaced and stuck his tongue out, prompting a grin from Luke, clearly pleased with himself.

The door opened with a soft click and the squeak of unoiled hinges, and Han hustled Luke, Rebel, the bags, and all inside and up the well worn stairs to their apartment, taking the steps two at the time in their rush.

Their apartment was shared between Luke, Han, and Chewie, Han’s black Russian immigrant friend, who a long time Han had helped make their immigration legal and had become Han’s closest companion, and it wasn’t anything special, but it was their and they had made it theirs. There was only one bedroom, but the couch folded out into a bed and Chewie had insisted on using that one while Luke and Han took the bedroom. There had been occasions where Han had ended up either on the fold out with Chewie, or alone in the bedroom while Luke slept out here, but luckily nights like that were rare. Even the best relationships had fights or bad days sometimes, and Chewie was sympathetic, or at the very least a good bed partner when you just needed some space.

On the worst nights Luke slept over at Leia’s, only comfortable with his twin, but something like that was never Han’s fault.

“We’re home!”

A rumbled response came from inside the tiny kitchenette followed by Chewie themself, wearing a Powerpuff Girls t-shirt, boxers, and wool knit socks, their long curly hair pulled into a ponytail. They looked worn out, but their lips pulled into a smile when they saw the dog.

I see he has already taken a shine to her, Chewie said with a huff of laughter, I told you not to worry.

Luke apparently got enough of that, after years spent living with Chewie, because he looked at Han with adoration, laughter dancing in his eyes, which made the blush on Han’s face deepen.

“I wasn’t worried!” Han said, crossing his arms over his chest, “I knew Rebel here’d steal Luke’s heart just as quick as I did.”

“Oh really?” Luke’s eyes gleamed, smile widening.

If that is how long you thought it would take, you must have been expecting a couple years of misunderstanding and friend-zoning to happen first, along with the pup not realizing it’s feelings until much later then Luke did?

“Hey, I had the kid’s heart the moment we met in the cantina,” Han said, and wrapped an arm around Luke’s shoulders to emphasize, which just drew a laugh from Luke.

“You wish,” Luke said teasingly, but leaned into Han’s embrace all the same.

Rebel chose that moment to bark, wriggling in Luke’s arms like a petulant child that now just wanted to be set down because they were done with all the hugging and wanted to play, and Luke laughed again and set her down, letting her explore the apartment from head to toe while Luke hovered and made sure the pup didn’t get into any trouble.

The line moves slowly with the morning rush, and Han tries to be patient. Really, he does. It’s just that he has three bikes in the shop that are being picked up before lunch, and he’s not done with any of them.

He shuffles forward, finally next in line. Before he’s able to open his mouth, a paper cup is placed in front of him. Leia is already turning her back.

“What’s this supposed to be?” Han asks. It doesn’t look like his usual triple shot. It doesn’t even look like real coffee.

It takes Leia a moment to respond, and when she does, it’s like she has more important things to do. She idly glances at him, says, “Tea.” – followed very quickly by – “Next!”

“Tea?” Han asks, incredulously.

She sighs and turns to face him again straight on.

“Yes, tea,” she says slowly, as if she’s explaining it to a child. “It’s still caffeinated, but it isn’t going to increase your heart rate to maniacal levels. Next!”

The girl behind him steps up to the counter on his left, but he doesn’t budge. Han frowns at Leia, then at the tea, then again at Leia. “I don’t drink tea. Triple espresso, please.”

“You get tea today,” Leia says. “Next!”

“Can I –“ the girl starts.

“Now hold on, I don’t want tea,” Han interrupts. “I didn’t order this. Do you want this?” He directs the question at the girl on his left.

“No, I –“

“See? Even she doesn’t want the tea.” He nudges the cup across the counts. “Triple espresso, please.”

Leia simply nudges the cup back towards him and refuses to listen to another word from him. He takes the tea, grumbling and dumps four packets of sugar in it just to spite her.

He won’t admit it to her, but it’s not half bad.

The next day, another cup of tea greets him. He grumbles again, but ultimately decides not to fight it.

“Have a nice day,” Leia says with a smug smile.

The third day, Leia isn’t behind the counter. He orders tea and secretly hates himself for it.

It takes another week for their paths to cross again.

“What can I get started for you?”

“You mean I actually get to choose this time?” Han asks.

Leia, previously distracted, looks up and seems to realize she asked the question without noticing who she was speaking to. She presses her lips together and watches him for a moment. Finally – “I suppose.”

Han is caught off guard. He’s ordered tea every day for the past week, but he doesn’t exactly want to admit to it. Aside from the headache, the caffeine withdrawal hasn’t been so terrible, and he’s actually been able to sleep like he has some semblance of a normal schedule.

“Triple espresso, to go,” he says. He huffs when Leia rolls her eyes at him, but she doesn’t say anything, so he doesn’t feel the need to further defend his decision.

He takes the small paper cup and dumps it in the first trash can he finds on the street.

Han is disappointed to find that Leia is missing from the coffee shop for the next several weeks, but he’s able to order tea without feeling like he’s conceded to anything. The man behind the counter, Luke, doesn’t judge him for ordering tea, and even goes as far as suggesting adding honey instead of sugar.

Luke is friendly, and polite, and seems to like Han, for whatever reason. Han finds out that Luke and Leia are twins.

“There are two of you?” Han jokes one day.

“Do you honestly think the world could survive two of my sister?” Luke replies easily.

No, Han thinks. It couldn’t.

Both of them are behind the counter when Han returns.

“Let me guess –“ Leia starts.

“Hey, Han, the usual?” Without waiting for a reply, Luke begins to pour hot water into a paper cup and adds two tea bags.

Han wants him to stop, wants the world to freeze so Leia won’t see, won’t realize. His stomach drops, but he accepts the cup anyway, shoving a few dollars towards Luke. He avoids looking in Leia’s direction.

“Any plans for the weekend?” Luke asks amicably.

Han shakes his head. They make small talk for a few minutes while Han adds honey to the cup. Realizing he can’t avoid her any longer, he chances a glance at Leia.

The look on her face is too much to bear. Her lips are twisted, as if she’s trying to hold back a grin, and her eyes sparkle with mirth. Han swears he can see the subtle shaking of her shoulders, the laughter trying to burst from her small frame.

“Oh, just say it already,” Han says. “I know you’re dying to.”

“Say what, exactly?” Leia asks.

“’I was right, you were wrong, told you so,’” Han says in a high sing-song voice. “Take your pick, princess.”

Leia bristles. “I was going to ask if you wanted to have dinner with me this weekend, but –“

“Dinner?” Han asks. “Like a date?”

“If you want to call it that, sure,” Leia says. “But –“

“I’d like that.” He says it quickly, spits it out before either of them can change their minds.

“Well, ok then.” Leia is frowning, her tone is cold and her arms are crossed, and Han can’t help but grin at her. Out of the corner of his eye, Luke shakes his head and tosses his hands in the air.

“I’ll call you,” Han offers. He makes sure the lid to his cup is secure and walks backwards towards the door.

“Fine.”

“Ok then.”

Leia rolls her eyes and relaxes her posture. Han turns towards the door. As he leaves, he can hear Luke speaking softly.

“See? I told you he would say yes.”

“Hush, Luke.”

“It’s part of remembering,” he tells Finn, who’s recently started working as one of Leia’s tacticians, “that there are still things to be salvaged. Experiences you still want to go back to.”

Finn nods. “Alright,” he says, eyes wide, carefully trained on him.

Poe is unashamedly in love.

“It’s also a part of me,” he adds, although he doesn’t know how true that really is.

He doesn’t like to admit it, but there’s a sort of innate fear that accompanies him everywhere, recently, constantly off-balance at the edges of his mind. Like an unclean landing, or one faulty engine.

Poe tells himself that it doesn’t matter. That planes can always be repaired and put back up again. Some parts of your body could be malfunctioning at this moment, but it doesn’t mean forever, unless you want it to. Human bodies are made to be sturdy. Like a machine—everything is, really. If you squint hard enough.

It’s this kind of thinking, he supposes, that makes people tell him that he’s really passionate about flying. You bring it around with you, said Leia, once. You look so much more comfortable up there, than on the ground. She’d looked at him with another pair of eyes, then. Like he was another person—like he was Lieutenant Bey’s son.

He’d felt so proud, at that point in time, so invested in what he was but never what he was trying to do, and now—

Poe just feels kinda bitter about this exchange. No particular reason why.

Then: Poe falls out of the sky, with liquid pooling in his brains as his ship crashes into the cliff. The site’s not too far away from base. There are splinters in his body and he’s not quite sure if it can hold it up after all of Jakku and Starkiller; he’s not a young adult anymore. Doesn’t have it in him to be as reckless as all the fresh recruits, but he sure as hell feels like one still, after Kylo Ren had leeched out what he needed and what he didn’t. But Poe understands. You can’t afford to disallow any casualty in law; you can’t offer to rebuild everything. Doesn’t matter if you lose people; what matters are the ones you save.

“I know you wouldn’t have crashed,” he whispers, but he’s not quite sure who it’s directed to. Antilles? Skywalker? Or was it for his dead mother? “I thought that I wouldn’t have crashed again, either, but.”

He doesn’t remember what he was thinking.

“Poe,” someone says, voice frantic, and it could, very likely, be Finn, whose voice is muddled up with the haze in his eyes growing stronger. He misses him frantically, wants to pull him into his arms and run away. Wants to take him everywhere else but that’s impossible, now, Poe would never abandon his station, that’s just not him. There are duties to fulfill. “Poe, please, stay awake for me, c’mon Poe—”

(Poe dreams of his mother, sometimes, her fingers pointing towards control settings, to levers, to the little scar he’d gotten from his first flight, right below his chin.

“War is never clean and easy,” she’d told him, satiating his immature curiosity, and he thought he’d understood. “But there are things to take out of it, too.”

“Like this ship,” Poe supplied.

His ma smiled at him. It could be wistful, but dreams are never truthful and always tinged by longing. “Like the both of you.”)

Poe wakes up, and Finn’s hand is wrapped tightly around his.

“You scared me,” he says, but there’s nothing hostile in those words. There’s nothing accusatory, no you’re supposed to be a commander, Dameron, act like one, or, what were you thinking— and Poe is glad, because he truly doesn’t know.

“How is she?” Poe asks, because he crashed his girl. He doesn’t know if he could handle seeing her get replaced.

Finn’s lips press together. He looks overworked, like Leia had strung him up for too long—but she wouldn’t do that; she takes care of everyone under her wing. “She’s fine. Down for maintenance.”

Poe takes a deep breath. “Good.”

Finn tightens his grip on him, and Poe winces, slightly, before Finn loosens his grasp. “Poe,” he says, voice tight, “are you okay?”

Poe considers lying. “Not really,” he says instead, glancing towards his bandaged limbs. “Got a bit banged up, there.”

“Banged up, is right,” Finn mutters, and Poe throws his back and laughs, just for the sake of doing it. “You gotta be more careful.”

He shrugs. Looks towards the window. He doesn’t know how many days have passed since he was unconscious, but it could have been quite a while, since they’re already well into the next month, judging by the display. “Good weather today,” he mentions.

“Sunny,” Finn agrees, and quiets down. Poe likes this silence of his, usually—but now it’s scratchy, like a faulty recording.

Poe tries to rectify it. Wants it to be replaced with the softer, brighter kind of wordlessness that oft accompanies the slight turn of the edges of Finn’s lips. “Shame that I can’t fly for a few days,” he says, but Finn’s face dims down instead.

“Poe,” Leia says, when she comes to visit him, later that evening.

Poe sits up. “General,” he greets her, although he keeps the eye contact to a polite minimum. It’s more difficult to look at her, lately. It’s not easy knowing that you’ve let someone down.

There’s a pause that hangs in the air, for a bit, and she spends her time observing him, looking him over. Poe itches for his Black One. What they said was right, he knows, that he’s always restless when he knows that he doesn’t have his hands on his girl, ready to fly at all times. Unfit for duty, Poe thinks with a grimace.

“We were worried,” Leia says, gently, and Poe bites back from the words that would have probably come spilling out. He forgets, sometimes, that this may be Kylo Ren’s mother—but she is his, too.

Poe swallows. “I’m sorry,” he admits, feeling his lungs clamping down in his chest. “I don’t know what went wrong.”

He does, of course. Poe knows that Kylo Ren plucked away at his memories, desperately hunting for BB-8’s location, that as much as he’d tried blocking him off with the remainder of his childhood—it hadn’t worked. Nothing did. That he was to be left with something tarnished instead.

I don’t know if I still remember my mother, he wants to scream at somebody, because some days her face is missing and he can’t remember the pattern of her favourite blouse. Can’t remember the interior of that A-wing she’d taught him to fly in. He wants her back; it’s unfair to leave him flying in a ship that feels like his first.

He asks Finn to wheel him to see his ship. He can’t quite stand on his two legs yet, but he knows that he’ll recuperate, eventually, albeit slower. Poe is older, now, closer to his mother’s age than ever before.

She’s patched up alright. Poe knows that the rest of his crew will maintain it for him; he just misses the feeling of strapping himself down in the cockpit and feeling ready to go. He liked the turbulence, the frightening drop of weightlessness. Figures that he’d be scared of it now.

Finn, bless him, doesn’t comment on how Poe can’t bring himself to eat anything. Leaves the food elsewhere instead, even though he’s probably the one person who hates wasting resources the most in the Resistance.

“I’ll be back,” Finn tells him, when the visiting hours are up. “Do you want me to bring anything? Anyone?”

Poe shakes his head, forces out a grin, the charming one he uses on people who doesn’t know him quite as well. “No need for that, buddy, thanks.”

“Okay,” Finn says, solemn. He’s too intelligent to be fooled by a perfunctory premise; Poe knew that he needed to do better than that to get past him. But he’s too tired, wants to fall back into a dreamless sleep.

He shuts his eyes and then there are images of his mother’s A-wing. But he doesn’t see the interior of it. Everything is general shapes and muddled outlines, and Shara Bey smoothing his hair back, muttering in a native language that Poe lost in his head, somewhere.

“I can’t understand you,” he tells her, voice shaking, as she presses her hands to his cheek, mumbling fast. Poe thinks that he’s leaving. “I forgot everything.”

His mother looks at him, then, and her voice subsides, before surfacing back up again, in Standard. “—not our duty to remember.” She smiles. Poe thinks of all the disappointment in the world and how she holds it in her hands. But how else would you go on, he wants to shout, where else would you spend all this hatred?

She shakes her head. “—it’s ours to rectify. You take off from this earth, but it’s the ground that you have to spend your life on.”

“But what then?” Poe argues, weak. He feels back at home in his seven-year-old body. Blink thrice and you’re thirty, he thinks. Shut your eyes for five seconds, and you’re dead. “We rid ourselves of them, and congratulate ourselves? We pick up our dead friends and make shelter under bullet shells?”

“You’re fighting for the chance to rebuild,” his mother reminds him. “And the people you’re holding out for.”

“I always thought that the place was kind of ugly,” Poe mentions to Finn when he wakes, eyeing the heaviness under his eyes. “A massive junkyard, as you would say.”

“—Jakku?” Finn confirms.

“Yeah.” Poe shrugs, gingerly moving his back. Finn rushes forward to help him. “That. But Yavin 4 was. Is. Greener.”

“Rey would like it,” Finn mutters.

Poe smiles. “She would.”

A few hours pass.

“Jakku wasn’t that bad,” Finn says, after a while. The kid looks less tired, and he seems more content to accompany him than anyone should be. “Maybe it was because I was a fugitive, then,” Finn cracks a smile. “But they weren’t. Everyone there still managed to fend for themselves. Out of all the parts they’d left behind.”

Poe hums. “From the previous wars?”

Finn nods. “I’d guess so. But people survive, even in places like those. Or at least you hold out hope until you learn how.”

Poe looks at him, now, properly, through all his exhaustion and his hurts and everything that he lumps together inside of himself, refusing to talk. It sounds like a pretty familiar case, he knows. “You’re really profound.”

Finn cracks a lopsided smile at him, and it warms Poe from the inside out, the heat spreading from his face down to his chest.

“Not bad for a kid, huh, buddy?” Finn nudges him by the shoulder, careful, and Poe rolls his eyes, reaching out for the press of Finn’s hand; he gets it.

Poe thinks about his mother more often, now, trying to recall her face. It’s scratched out of his head ever since he’s woken up from that dream. But her words stick to him, and the feeling of being slight again, the stretch of his fingers as he tries to reach a lever in her A-wing, or her seatbelt wrapping loosely around him. It’s okay. There are still things to salvage.

(But Finn is—a constant. Kylo Ren is unable to reach for Poe’s memories of him inside his head, because of all that came after. He was sliced open and strangled but it hadn’t meant that nothing good would ever follow him on his tails. Finn came for him and lodged himself clearly in Poe’s mind and he doesn’t have any issues with remembering either his voice or his face or his hands. There are no lapses in memory, because he gets to create new ones all the time, when Finn tells an unfunny joke or when his eyes light up at the thought of getting to spend some time with the rest of Poe’s crew on their days off. Poe notices all of it. He lets this information burn brighter in his mind.)

“I crashed,” he admits out loud. Leia is sitting at Finn’s usual spot, while he’s gone on to attend to whatever needed his attention. “Me, of all people.”

Leia smiles at him, soft. He looks towards her face again, lets his gaze wander. He knows that she likes him enough to let this slide, and she lets him. Doesn’t look away as he files new information into his brain; there’s a new scar on her arm, older wrinkles in her forehead, still beautiful. Another mother.

“Yes,” Leia says, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You have to come back down somehow.”

Poe recovers, a few weeks later.

Gets himself into that flight suit and looks towards his girl, doesn’t quite run for her, but it’s close enough. He remembers her controls. He’s in an old body and everything will come smoothly back to him even if it doesn’t, not at first.

“Poe,” Finn calls out, striding towards him, and he presses a kiss firmly onto his lips. Whispers a soft promise into his ear before he swings himself back down to the cockpit, offering Leia a happy salute, which she returns.

He takes off—and the previous clench of his heart is gone. The ship leaves the ground and he returns to the sensations. Comes back to what he was before and turns towards where he’s going to now. Reaches easily towards the lever, and lets out a casual throwaway shout that no one can hear; he’s disabled his comms.

It was a belief that had been fostered by the survivors of the Empire, and carried on by their children. And it was to those children that Leia had promised to lead to the best of her ability—for all that she had apparently failed her own son in that respect. Though it was a relief and a guilt alike to know that there were few in the Resistance­ and none among the pilots who had become her own­ that blamed her for Be...for Kylo Ren’s actions.

That blame had been her own burden, her’s and Han’s. And for all they had grown distant, that was one aspect of themselves that they had always carried together. Leia had known early on that Han had chosen the wrong Skywalker, but a selfish part of her who had lost everything wanted to keep him for herself. Her scruffy nerf herder, whom she loved but just not the right way. When Luke had gone missing Han had been silently despondent and left soon after—and Leia had been left with the sorrow of having facilitated missed chances.

But guilt did not bring back the dead and did little to comfort the living. And so Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan and general of the Resistance did as she had always done, and carried on. The destruction of Star Killer base had been a mighty blow, but it was only the first. The road to freedom was not going to be an easy one, and it was a campaign that would require as much finesse as it would need force.

But Leia Organa was the child of ambassador and Jedi master alike, and had lived the life of both in her turn—she had all she needed of both.

Like so many moments in his...less than illustrious career, Han Solo’s death was highly exaggerated.

Well, maybe not highly. When he had crashed into a support catwalk in the center of Star Killer base Han had been sure in that moment that his life was over. And when the pain had hit a few seconds later he had hoped that it was. His son -­ the man who had Leia’s eyes and his height and somehow Luke’s cheekbones -­ had gone totally to the dark side and tried to murder him in the coldest of blood.

He’d always known that there was too much Vader in him.

But that knowledge had not changed the fact that there was still an assault on the base happening and the goal was still destruction. And if that Dameron brat was still in the air - Gods he had admired Shara Bey but why has she made her son so stubborn?­ - it was going to happen. Which meant that he’d needed a way out, and fast.

And that way out had come from a hard and yet eerily cold hand under his arm, hauling him up and forward at what had felt like far too fast a pace for his liking.

“Let’s go, Solo. We don’t have a lot of time, and this level of Force Manifestation is harder than it looks.”

The voice had been as much in his head as in his ear, and yet somehow through the pain and confusion­ - and having never heard the unaltered version himself­ - Han Solo knew its identity immediately.

“Last time I went anywhere with you, bastard, I ended up frozen in carbonite.” The words took energy, but they were ones that were thirty years coming. “Fuck you for that, by the way.”

“I was too lost then to see most truths, but even then I knew you were bad for my family.” The tone had almost seemed to sniff slightly, in some form of disgust. “Their mother had no better taste. But that is long passed now. What matters is that your son and my grandson walk that same path now, and that is not acceptable.”

It took long moments to parse through that, and by the time he had even started to make sense of it Han had found himself led to a small, almost hidden panel in the arcing wall of the great ship. It hissed open to reveal a small spherical room...and the smuggler-­turned-­general was dumped into what he had suddenly realized was the pilots bench of an escape pod.

“Eject now, Solo—there is much work to do in regaining the balance of the Force, and the Skywalkers have always needed all the help they could get.”

That at least was true, and so Han forced himself to program in the coordinates for the probably no longer secret D’Qar base and strap in before pain and the darkness of hyperspace took over.

Luke Skywalker had been young, once.

There had been a time before the Force, so long before that the memories of it were hazy and bleached by time. But there was a time when he was young, a sand farmer on an insignificant planet with a firm but loving uncle and an aunt who coddled him in her own way. They had been poor but happy, and even though he had longed for a different life he had never really imagined leaving.

And then death and betrayal had changed all of that, and him, forever. It had set him on a path that became more than himself, brought him close to the people he would always be close to. It also gave him just a taste of what he had always wanted, which seemed to be his inheritance. A few moments with his father, a few years with his students...a few chances at the man he loved.

But the Jedi path was never easy. Even when his students were gone and he had fallen into grief and self­-imposed exile it had seemed as though that were the path the Force had meted out to him. Trial and tribulation, to bring about good. He had not been able to stop Ben, had not been able to see Snoke coming. Had not been able to prevent so many things, but over time and meditation and Obi­-Wan’s guidance – and that of Obi­-Wan’s own master Qui-Gon, who was a law onto himself­ – Luke had been able to reconcile much of what had happened.

But the deaths of billions at the hand of the First Order had shaken him, badly. Even in the far distant wastes of Wild Space he had felt the ripples of horror, and no wisdom or comfort from Jedi past could ease it. It was an almost unimaginable loss, and the fact that by not seeing Ben for what he was he had allowed it was...sickening.

But it was far more sickening when, three days later, the death of Han Solo had shaken him far more. For all that it was one life in the face of billions, for all that a Jedi was not truly permitted to love, it was a blow that he was not sure he could recover from.

It was only the fact that the young woman­ – a new Jedi, a new Awakening­ – had come to him and had the ripples around her, had an echo of a similar grief for the same man that he could turn to her and agree to return to the Resistance and what it stood for.

He could not let it stand.

Watching one of his childhood heroes get smacked across the face by his other childhood hero – and godmother, not that many knew it­ – was sort of a high moment for Poe Dameron.

Granted he hadn’t had the best view of it, but BB­-8 had and was willing to replay it on demand. Poe himself had been head and shoulders into Jessika’s X­-Wing, helping his fellow pilot work out a coupling issue in the foils. And checking out Finn’s ass through the open side panels where the former stormtrooper was leading a group of ground troops in a class about First Order armor and its flaws. But mostly helping out Jess.

Regardless of his actions at the time he saw the Millenium Falcon land, and could recognize even at a distance the slender figure of Rey, Chewbacca’s tall form...and another shorter figure, dressed in long hooded brown robes.

And if there was ever any doubt as to the man’s identity it was dispersed when General Organa ran to embrace the figure, and then immediately stepped back to slap him. All activity around them halted in shock­ – the General of the Resistance had just struck the Last Hope!­ – but Luke had only broken out into slightly wet giggles and admitted to deserving it. That had gotten things going again, though after that the small party had retreated back into base.

But Finn had gone with them, and Poe had been able to trade for information about the meeting later. Particularly the apparently tear jerking reunion between Han Solo and a delighted Chewbacca. And the more one sided but certainly exciting reunion between the pilot and an ecstatic Rey. And it was interesting, particularly the news that the Resistance would be taking the fight to the scattered remains of the First Order—that was pilot’s business and exciting to know.

But the fact that Luke Skywalker would be personally leading the hunt for Ben ‘Kylo Ren’ Solo was not.

As a child, Poe Dameron had sat beneath a Force sensitive tree on Yavin 4, and listened to the stories his parents told about a free universe. How the Jedi were going to keep it safe, because they were the only ones who did not pick sides. How his mother had helped get the tree back, which reached all the way back to the first tree in Coruscant.

But in those stories – and in everything he had ever heard or read –, Poe Dameron had never heard of the Jedi being judge, jury and executioner. If they fought it was for their own safety or the safety of others, and then they tried not to kill. They acted not in anger but in wisdom, not in retribution but in understanding that there was balance in all things.

And they did not go hunting their own nephews with lethal intent and a hardened gaze. That reminded him all too much of Darth Vader and his campaign against his own children—against the man that stood in the hanger beneath the X­-Wing Poe had up on the stands.

And the pilot had felt that it was his space to intervene, if only against the growing unease building in his chest. And he might have, if in the moment he was about to climb down Han Kriffing Solo had not grabbed the Jedi and applied a far more personal method of shutting his mouth.

And Poe Dameron would spend the rest his life­ usually over howling guffaws and fake sympathy – insisting that there had been a cool, only semi­corporal hand pushing him off the maintenance supports struts, and not him falling off in shock. Either way he had crashed to the ground with a decidedly inelegant yelp, and ended up breaking what might have become a rather steamy moment between the Last Hope and The Smuggler General.

And the combined glares might have sent him whimpering to the nearest door –­ not that the impact with the duracreet had done much to help against the whimpering­ – had his words not come bubbling out first.

“General...I mean, Master Skywalker, sir, I....you can’t go after Kylo Ren, sir, that’s exactly what he wants. It’s all he wants.”

Han Solo’s glare had yet to subside, but Luke’s expression softened into something...almost wary. “And how do you know this, Commander Dameron?”

“Because he’s been in my mind, sir, but I was in his a little too. And trust me, he...well, he hates himself mostly. But he hates you too, and I think...”

That he wants to finish Darth Vader’s mission was a little harsh to say to the son of said man, but it was the only thing that Poe could think of to say. Thankfully the Jedi seemed to understand, though he was more concerned with the first part of Poe’s statement than the rest of it.

“He’s been in your mind? With the Force?”

“Yeah, when I was...nevermind, not important. What is important is that this is his and Snoke’s game plan–­­”

“Poe.”

The word stopped the commander in his tracks, and he subsided as Luke put a hand on his shoulder. “The two of you were practically inseparable when Han and Leia would go to Yavin 4, and you were even closer after Shara passed, before...before he left. That much emotion­ – good and bad­ – in the Force when it is used like that can leave....scars. It can do a lot of damage, and sometimes it can leave impressions that don’t exist. You need to have someone look at you. I can try to use the Force to­­–”

“Stay out of my head.”

It was snapped out, but as it seemed to surprise Luke into silence and Han into glaring less Poe took his chance and ran with it.

“Look, I know him. I know him and I know what he wants and I think he wants to kill you because the more people he kills who care about Ben the less of Ben exists. And I don't think that he can be only one.”

“Are you saying that...” It took Han a minute to swallow something down and choose different words. “Are you saying that Kylo Ren is still Ben Solo until everyone who cared about Ben Solo is dead?”

Luke made no noise, so Poe nervously continued. “I mean....I think so? It was sort of hazy and I was a little busy screaming and trying not to think about Jakku, but yeah. That’s what I got.”

And the next words came from the part of him that had always gotten him in the most trouble­­ – the part of him that believed, wholeheartedly, that good would always win and that the good guys always got the hot ex-­stormtroopers.

“I think, maybe, I can catch him.”

Rey thought it was the best idea she’d ever heard, which was probably why Luke hated it.

The Jedi had councilled the Scavenger against impulsive actions or being overly emotional, but before everything else Rey was a fighter. She’d grown up fighting for whatever she could put in her belly and whatever she could trade for, and whatever little things in the world she could call her own. The running and hiding and subtle tactics that had kept the resistance alive for so long did not appeal to her, but Poe’s plan did.

She was, after all, a desert creature. And anyone who waited for the desert to give them what they needed would starve first.

The only problem, of course, was that she wanted to take the Millenium Falcon and Chewbacca. And Han Solo was having none of it.

“I don’t care how badly you want to after him, you are not taking my baby and my co­pilot away. Not on this...this...fool errand!”

Chewbacca added his guttural roar of agreement, and Rey crossed her arms. “I need a ship, and you are in no condition to fly. Besides, if I hadn’t brought it to you you would never have found it.”

“You take that back this minute, Chewie and I were this close to–­­”

“You were never going to find it on Jakku.” Finn’s voice was factual from where he knelt by BB-­8, slowly trying to learn the intrinsic nature of Binary. “It was in the middle of nowhere under a tarp.”

And time had not weakened Han Solo’s glare. “Oh yes, a tarp. How would I ever get past a–­­”

“Point is,” Rey said, breaking into the argument before it could start and get away from her talking point. “You aren’t using it and we need it. So we are taking the ship, so we can stop the First Order and bring Kyl...Ben Solo back. If we can.”

The last words were added reluctantly. She wasn’t entirely against the idea of capturing Kylo Ren, but the ‘forgive and let live’ had yet to entirely sync with her more bloody minded ideas of vengeance. Still it was important to the people who were important to her, and she could settle for that.

And in the end she ended up exactly where she knew she would be, in the pilot seat of the Falcon as her Wookiee co-­pilot started up the engines and R2­-D2 and BB-­8 chirped and whirred at each other. Finn was in the gunner’s chair, content with his datapad and years of non-­First Order approved literature to keep him happy while Poe and Black One stayed clear of the afterburn and on point.

And after years of simulations in her walker-­turned-­home, waiting out sand storms as she piloted every ship under the sun, it was where she was meant to be. The rattle and buck of the ship as it powered through hyperspace was a thrum in her very bones, her first language that needed only to be spoken and never learned. Rey was one with the craft, at peace in a way that had never been hers before.

But more than that, she was totally aware of the Force. She moved through it like a snake through the shifting sand, each current and ripple of it known to her as she moved. Where there had once been doubt that some overriding essence connected all life there was only certainty. Certainty that it was there and, in a smaller and more solemn way, certainty that she could bend it and all life to her will if she but tried hard enough.

It was a terrifying feeling, and explained how the Jedi had once been so powerful and respected. But she had felt the licking, scuttling sense of the Dark Side beyond it, and also knew how they had fallen. It was the basic tenants of the Jedi Order that had been their overall downfall. To repress all emotion could only lead to a suppression of empathy and – from there – humanity itself.

It was something that had puzzled her during her brief tenure with Luke, and something that for all her meditation no answer had come forth. If hate and anger where the tenants of the Dark side, shouldn’t love have been it’s antithesis and – by that logic – the true power of the Light?

And from what she saw of it – of Finn’s smile and Poe’s fierce joy, of the two of them together and of the looks that Luke and Han shared when no one else was looking – Rey thought it might be.

And in the end, it was almost terribly easy.

Well, not terribly easy. But no one died, and despite the terror that gripped both Rey and Finn as they watched Poe dogfight twelve TIE fighters it was an incredibly successful mission. After a brief scuffle on the unnamed planet that Kylo Ren’s fighter had bailed onto they had the Sith apprentice bound hand and foot and back on the Falcon. Supreme Leader Snoke would have been more of an issue, but Rey and Chewie between them had more devious ideas than any two beings needed, and even a Sith Lord cannot survive his transport careening into the nearest star.

Kylo Ren was considered enough of a threat­ – and Finn just the right combination of furious and wary to need support­ – that Poe’s X­-Wing was stored in the almost too­-small hanger, and the commander keeping his blaster at the ready. Rey had battered his mental shields to a startling degree, though, and on the Force front he seemed to hardly be a threat.

On the physical side, though, he was nothing to slouch at. And he was patient enough to wait until the Falcon was jouncing enough to keep everyone just a little unstable to shoot up and lunge at Poe with death in his eyes.

“We will see who is intimidated when–­­”

But the words cut off sharply in a shrill screech of pain as Poe Shasek Dameron put all of his nightmares and insomnia and sobbing, soul crushing terror behind one fist, and drove it into Ben Organa-Solo’s nose.

That was far from the end of the war, of course­­ – that day would be years later, over a far different universe. But the capture of Kylo Ren and, after weeks of Force therapy and more than a little tough love, the return of Ben Solo marked the true turning point in the battle against the First Order. Without Snoke and the force driven reprogramming of young cadets there was no longer the capability to mass produce stormtroopers, and those who remained were not totally unaffected by FN-­2187’s escape and freedom. In time the Resistance had it’s own bevy of former First Order soldiers, and Finn commander stripes to match his husband’s.

Also, to no one’s surprise and Rey’s great relief, Finn and Poe were married not long after finally admitting to each other that yes, they did both feel that way and no, they weren’t taking advantage of each other. Out of respect for Leia Han and Luke did not follow suit, though she stated repeatedly that she didn’t mind. Neither she nor anyone with any sense were anything but tickled by the two decidedly middle aged men acting like teenagers, and no one else mattered.

Ben Solo had a longer road to redemption than he would have liked, and the trip was made both harder and easier by Anakin Skywalker. The hard truth of Vader’s true nature was a blow to the foundation of his world, but when he rebuilt he came back stronger. Luke placed firm restrictions on his mind and soul, but they were not unkind. Instead they placed him again at the level of Padawan learner, to begin his walk anew.

But this time he was not so isolated. Rey was his counterfoil at every turn, and they bounced and clashed and drove each other to newer heights. Rey’s belief’s bled through their bond, a second sort of Awakening, and with the scope of the Jedi path changed. Instead of hatred there was understanding, instead of fear there was trust. Neither passion nor emotion was stifled, but instead tolerance and control were made more paramount. They were two sides of the same coin, Rey and Ben, and through that they found their path.

Finn, in a move that proved what had set him apart from other stormtroopers in his unit, had little trouble separating Kylo Ren and Ben Solo. His forgiveness came with such little retrenchment that it actually troubled Ben, but in time they found a rhthym. While not Force sensitive himself Finn was naturally graceful and in tune with his surroundings, and his control of a lightsaber easily rivaling that of a force wielding opponent. In time they became frequent sparring partners, and from there friends.

Poe Dameron did not forgive so easily. There were no fences to mend between he and Ben Solo­ – they had burned to ash in the face of Force mind invasion. Instead they built a new, unsteady knowledge of each other and went from there. It cracked several times but never crumbled, and over long months the best pilot of the resistance and the terror of the first order found a new sort of...comradeship.

Anakin Skywalker never forgave Han Solo for leading both of his children astray, and made his opinion known often and loudly. Luke and Han learned to ignore it. Eventually.

But together they meshed well, for all their pasts and presents and futures. It was their own sort of beginning, for Snoke had not been wrong in his predictions.