#laureljupiter

He opened her cell an hour ago with a serious look on hisface that said he didn’t want to think about what he was doing. She nearlypissed herself in terror but put on a brave face.

“Here to kill me?” She asked him, impressing herself withher defiance.

“Shut up,” Kylo Ren said in a low and slightly nasal voice. “Shesent me. We’re going.”

“I’m not going anywhere,”Rose spat back. “Not with you. Who sent you?”

She could see the tops of his bottom teeth as he sucked in abreath. He closed his eyes. “Rey.”

She scoffed, put off by his dramatics. “Rey sent you.”

“Don’t sound so incredulous about things you don’t understand.”

If the look on his face hadn’t convinced her of the honestyof this frankly baffling admission, his sharp and perfect recitation of herlast conversation with Rey did. It was like he’d been sitting with them in herroom, taking notes on the strange and meandering argument they had aboutrepairing the new base’s laundry equipment.

It was, in a word, unnerving.

But then again, Rose muses now, watching dumbfounded as Ren’supper half disappears into an access panel on his own personal shuttle to rip out the fusebox that powers the ship’s tracker,what about him isn’t unnerving?

“Literally everything about this is illegal!” She halfyells, half hisses.

Kylo Ren grunts as he knocks against something on his wayout of the panel. He has a sparking fusebox in one hand and a hydrospanner inthe other, slightly charred from where she assumes he used it to pry off the fusebox.

“Appropriate that now would be the time I start living up tothe name.” He sounds almost wistful.

He stands and drops the fusebox onto the nearest surface, abuilt-in bench along the wall. He towers over her, but Rose hardly notices, confusedand on-guard at his cryptic admission. “What?” She asks, chin tilted high.

“What do you care about legality, anyway? You’re a Rebel.”

“What do you mean ‘living up to the name?’”

He looks taken aback. “What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’”

Rose wrenches the spanner from his hand and brandishes it athim. “Don’t repeat my question back at me!”

“You don’t know who I am?”

“Of course I know whoyou are, Kylo Ren.” She spits the name at him, already tired of whatever gamethis is. “You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to the galaxy.”

“No,” he says, a little quieter. “Before that.”

Rose grits her teeth. She wants to scream. “Out with it! Wedon’t have time for a dramatic reveal right now!” There’s a following pause andshe’s about to warn him not to bother if it’ll make her hate him any more thanshe already does, when—

“Ben Solo,” Kylo Ren says, voice low, eyes lower. “That wasmy name.”

She can tell he’s expecting a gasp, the gentle cracking of aworld-altering revelation. And maybe three weeks ago – before Finn and Rey andnarrowly escaping death on Crait and the First Order beginning its incomprehensibleand rapid implosion – she would have obliged him.

But Rose Tico is different now. More skeptical, yes, but alsoless afraid.

Which might be why she reaches up to grab his chin and tiltshis face down towards her. Her eyes skim the flaring bridge of his nose, thefeline tilt to his eyes, the unruly, triangular brows. She scrunches up hernose, remembering what she can of Han Solo’s face from the holos she’s seen.

He’s surprisingly calm for someone being manhandled by anenemy, if that’s still what they are.

Fair enough, shethinks, that might as well be true, too.

“Well, Solo, putit to some kriffing use.”

She can tell that the smile he cracks is supposed to becharming – that it would have been on Han’s face, all loose and careless – and shecould have expected it to be menacing, even sad.

But what it is instead is absolutely goofy.

His cheeks wing out and he has a gap between his front andeye teeth on both sides. Even worse, he has dimples. Rose can’t help herself.Her eyes roll back.

They’re flying through First Order-controlled space in aship that is (probably) technically stolen, possibly about to do irreparabledamage to the Order and definitely goingto do irreparable damage to the (probably) stolen ship in the process. Disablingthe tracker will be absolutely necessary to making their escape through hyperspace,but the entrances and exits of the lanes are now fully monitored by the Order,meaning that they’ll be apprehended almost instantly once they emerge out ofFTL.

No matter how much Rose knows they’re doing the right thing,it doesn’t change how kriffing dangerousit is, nor how stupid.

She tells him as much.

“Son of Han Solo or not, you can’t fly a ship that’s, one, ina million pieces or, two, booted by C-Dot.”

“Then let’s not get booted.”

“Uh-uh,” Rose says, actually wagging a finger in the face ofKylo Ren, menace of the galaxy. “Let’s just boot them first.”

“It’s an expensive ship, but there aren’t torpedoes.”

“No, we can be cleverer than that.”

“We?”

“What do you know about electrical interference?”

A distant, slightly horrified look crosses his face. “Some.Biologically speaking.”

“That’s fine,” Rose says. “I know enough. What weapons do we have?”

“There’s a standard short-range IR-73 blast canon mountedunder the hull and a miniature rail gun under the cockpit,” he snaps, havingwritten enough reports on this shuttle to answer Rose’s question withoutreflection.

“Wow,” Rose says, flat and sarcastic, “I’m surprised it’snot an IR-80. And here I thought you liked your guns big.”

She turns towards the cockpit and Kylo huffs something likea laugh and follows without thinking. The IR-80 is the blast generator thatsits inside the surface cannons of a star destroyer. Mount one on a ship thissize and it’d blow you back twenty-thousand clicks every time you fired.

“That’s actually—”

“What General Hux suggested in the armaments meetingyesterday,” she finishes for him, giggling as she goes to tap her handheldsplicer into the cockpit’s consol. “I know.”

Kylo Ren tilts his head, looking for all the world like acurious dog. Rose raises her brows and jiggles the splicer in her hand, a small,satisfied smile dimpling her cheeks.

“Didn’t have a lot else to do. Thought I’d get intel, listeningin on the monitors, got a laugh instead.”

Rose ducks away to focus on her task, muttering and swearingunder her breath as she fights the override protocols coded into the ship.

“Okay, almost there.” She presses a button and swivels as ahatch opens nearby. “Grab us those PPE’s.” She points and Kylo obeys, largebody crossing the cabin’s vertical and horizontal space with little more than astretch. Rose doesn’t bemoan her stature, but she kind of wishes she could dothat.

Kylo Ren tosses her a suit and begins pulling his own on. “Theoscillator, right? From the life support block.”

“Yeah,” Rose says, pleasantly surprised by his deference toher orders. “We’ll vent the ship.”

“Then move it into the charging block of the rail gun.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know much about electricalinterference.”

“I don’t,” he says, zipping up the rubberized collar of thesuit. “But she does.”

This time Rose’s brows and lips scrunch up with her nose. “Youmean Rey again. You can say her name, you know.”

His eyes sweep down. Rose’s brain momentarily short-circuitsas she recognizes the look and color on his face. He’s…bashful? Embarrassed? Maker,she really doesn’t have time for whatever thisis.

“You know what?” She flicks a hand in front of herself, asif shooing a fly. “I’m not gonna worry about it.”

He seems relieved, nodding as he pulls on his helmet.

“For now,” she adds. Butjust try to stop me later.

Once they’re suited up, Rose presses another button and thehum of the shuttle’s engine vibrates just lower than before.

After a quick test of the suits’ comm system and asuspiciously synchronized nod, Rose initiates the depressurizing sequence andthey’re plunged into the echoey silence of the vacuum.

They work with minimal banter this time, careful to avoid jostlingthe oscillator and hooking it into the rail gun’s generator system withcareful, coordinated hands.

Rose explains in a soothing, even rhythm how the oscillatorwill charge the rail gun bolts with ionic energy. At the low-power setting she’sprogrammed into it, that will make the bolts effectively nonlethal, but perfectfor their intentions. The ionic charge will ripple through the systems of thetraffic monitoring stations and reverse the current on board for a fewmicroseconds. They’ll essentially have a small power surge, but won’t gooffline. If they time it right, they won’t even notice the shuttle at all. Ifthey time it wrong, they’ll notice the shuttle but not its missing tracker.They’ll get by on looks. It’s actually…she takes a moment to be proud ofherself. It’s actually a pretty foolproof plan.

To her surprise, Kylo Ren agrees.

What’s more, they manage to pull it off. Even in two layersof gloves and a terribly restricting helmet, Kylo is a damn good pilot,managing to target the nearest waystation within microseconds of their jump outof hyperspace. Doesn’t even use the tracking systems. Is that how the Forceworks? Rose will have to ask Rey.

Or, well, she guesses she could ask Kylo. Once this is over.

Once they’re past the scanning range of the traffic stationsand have returned the oscillator to life support, they hang around in thecockpit, PPE’s half-peeled off with the arms tied at their waists. Just in casethey have to suit up again. Kylo taps on the ship’s cloaking and spools hisbody comfortably into the co-pilot’s chair.

“Shouldn’t you be—?” Rose asks, gesturing to the otherchair.

His eyes flicker to hers in confusion, then it clicks. “Iusually don’t, uh—”

“Oh,” she says. Huh.

He stiffens, “I can—”

“No, that’s fine.”

He coughs low in his throat, looking away and running a handthrough his hair. Scrunched up like this, he actually looks capable of feelingself-conscious. Scratch that, he does look self-conscious. Rose recognizes it,feels sympathetic to it, even against her better judgment.

Things have been changing fast, recently. She’s starting togive up on fighting it anymore.

“Also, uh, ‘shut up’? Seriously?”

He shoots her an indignant look.

It doesn’t frighten her at all. And from what she can tellthrough her steely and unwavering gaze, he can tell. His face softens just alittle in response.

“It’s been…” Silence stretches out as his gaze falls out offocus, swimming through the endless mid-distance of space.

“One hell of a week,” she says, “I know.”