Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rey hadn’t really noticed it before- the small stem at the bottom of her right foot. It looked like ink bled under skin, a single black line pressed into her, thin as a vine, steady as a heartbeat.

It had been there for a month, maybe, and she told herself it was a birthmark that she’d never noticed. Except birthmarks didn’t wake her at 7am with a prickling heat, and they didn’t feel like someone was tugging a thread inside her bones.

Friday the 13th. Of course.

She showered, tried to scrub the thing away as if it were a bad doodle, and got exactly nowhere. By the time she laced her boots, she’d convinced herself it was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just like how she absolutely didn’t Google “black line foot omen totally not cursed” on her way out the door.

The lobby of Organa House always made her feel small: glass, chrome, the hush of shoes on marble. J.J. at the front desk lifted a hand. 'Morning, Rey.’

‘Morning’ she said, aiming for normal. The mark hid inside her boot, but today it felt loud, like it had climbed into her throat and sat there, tapping.

She cut across the floor to the elevator, head down, shoulders tucked. When the doors slid open, relief spread through her, a little bubble of privacy, four mirrored walls, nobody looking…

She stopped short. Someone was still inside. 

He didn’t move. Neither did she.

Black hair, too long for corporate comfort. Broad shoulders under a charcoal coat that didn’t try to flatter so much as smother. And eyes, unnervingly steady, the kind of steady that felt like weather. Storm gray, bleak and bright at once.

Ben Solo.

Her breath snagged. The mark in her foot stung like a live wire.

‘Yes?’ His voice was a low scrape, polite, concerned. 'Are you okay?’

‘Fine,’ she managed, lying out of reflex. Sweat threatened at her hairline. ‘I’ll, uh, … I’ll wait for the next one.’

One corner of his mouth tipped, almost a smirk, almost not. ‘I think we can both fit in the elevator, Rey’

She felt her cheeks redden as she got on the elevator and stabbed the button for 25 even though it was already lit. The doors whispered shut.

Silence swelled. Her shirt collar tightened like it had a vendetta. The floor indicator blinked up as they ascended.

‘So,’ he said at last, hands in the pockets of black jeans that were absolutely not regulation at Organa House. 'How have you been?’

Small talk. Ben Solo, the reclusive bestseller who’d worked under a pseudonym for years and then torpedoed that secrecy in the splashiest way possible, was trying small talk.

‘Good,’ she said to the numbers. ‘I’ve been good, Mr. Solo. How are you?’

‘Mr. Solo.’ He echoed it, tasting the syllables like he wasn’t sure they belonged to him. A soft huff- almost a laugh. ‘Ben is fine. I thought we were past business-only, Rey.’

They were not anything. Strictly speaking.

Almost a month ago, Organa House had sent her to wrangle him. She’d been an intern then, the kind who fetched coffees and prayed not to mislabel an arcane track-changes thread. He needed someone to break the stalemate with his book- someone to shove the boulder with him, keep him moving. “A month,” they’d promised. “He likes isolation. Somewhere quiet.”

“Somewhere quiet” turned out to be a writing retreat on the northern side of the Spocland- spare, high, an observatory center converted into a handful of rooms. At first he was all edges and silence, a man acclimating to people the way you acclimate to altitude. Then he thawed, a fraction at a time, like sunlight finding a way through stone.

They finished enough pages to make her supervisor cry in relief. She came home with a promotion and a ridiculous story and the conviction that whatever passed between them up there was a contained phenomenon, elevation-dependent, sealed by thin air and too many stars.

‘Strictly business,’ she said now, steadying her voice. ‘You’re the writer. I’m-‘

‘-the editor?’ Another near smile. ‘Last time I saw you, you were an intern who barged into my room and introduced herself like a storm front.’

‘I knocked,’ she muttered. Heat crawled up her neck, and of course he heard her. He always did. He laughed, the sound warm enough to be dangerous in a sealed metal box.

The sting in her foot sharpened. no, Not sting. Pinch. Like someone tweaked a nerve. Her ankle buckled. She hissed and grabbed for the railing, doing her best not to face plant into the mirrored wall.

His hand was there first, steadying hers. Big, careful, infuriatingly gentle.

‘Rey?’ His brow pulled tight. ‘What is it?’

‘Just a cramp,’ she said, because the truth was weirder. The black stem in her skin felt aware, like it had recognized something and was responding. It had hurt precisely when she looked into his eyes.

He didn’t let go immediately, and his hesitation was a visible thing, like a pane of glass you could breathe on and write a message across. His thumb almost brushed her knuckles.

‘If you say so,’ he murmured, and then the doors slid open with a chime and they were on twenty-five.

She stepped out. She didn’t look back. But she did. His mouth held the barest curve, as if he’d solved a riddle the rest of them hadn’t yet heard.

‘You too, Ben,’ she said, answering a goodbye he hadn’t quite spoken. and the doors closed hiding his serene face.

The air outside felt thinner than the mountain.

She made for the bathroom before her desk, locked the stall with hands that didn’t feel like hers, and wrenched off her boot. The sock followed. She braced for nothing.

Not nothing.

The black line had grown. It wasn’t a neat stem anymore; it had crept up, a dendrite branching just above her ankle bone, a sketch of roots or lightning under skin. She pressed two fingers to it, half expecting a pulse.

There wasn’t one. Not there, anyway.

She bit her lip. A month of pretending had just run out.

She needed a doctor.

Or.. her own reflection flickered in the metal dispenser, pale and wide-eyed, ridiculous. She needed someone who understood that some marks weren’t medical.

Because it had hurt when he looked at her.

Because her skin had drawn a line, and she had a terrible, impossible hunch about who it was leading to.

Outside, somewhere, an elevator hummed toward the lobby. Her phone buzzed with a calendar reminder. She pulled on her sock and boot and stood. The world tilted and caught.

‘Okay,' she told the stem, very softly. ‘We’ll figure you out.’

Then, because it was either laugh or scream, she laughed. Friday the 13th. Of course.

She washed her hands, steadied her face, and walked out into the bright electric hum of Organa House like she hadn’t just discovered a creeping constellation under her skin. She passed her desk. She almost kept going.

But she could feel him in the building. No, not feel, don’t be dramatic.. just…aware. The way a person is aware of a storm rolling in, bones humming in advance.

She sat. She opened her email. When she saw his name in her inbox with a subject line that read simply edit?, the mark on her ankle tightened like a promise.

Chapter Text

‘So, are you meeting us at the bar tonight?’ Rose leaned over their shared partition, chin on her hands. She’d been at Organa House three years; Friday drinks at the place across the street were ritual. Rey often skipped the ritual.

‘Maybe. I might have to stay late, finish some edits.’

‘What are you on now?’

‘Nothing new. Projects from last year,’ Rey said, airy on purpose.

‘Projects from your intern year?’ Rose’s eyebrows climbed.

Heat crept up Rey’s neck. The mark in her ankle prickled, as if the word intern had tugged a string. ‘Something like that.’

Rose watched her a beat, then: ‘This wouldn’t be about a certain new author, would it?’

Rey busied herself with her screen. ‘Do you want me to meet you there at seven or…?’

‘Deflection noted,’ Rose said, grinning. ‘Seven. First round’s on Finn.’

When Rose disappeared, Rey’s email pinged again. Subject line: edit? The mark tightened like a fist.

————

Rey adjusted the red-string seal on the envelope, LEGAL/CONFIDENTIAL stamped in black and looked at the door to Meeting Room 805. Red light. Do not disturb. She didn’t mind waiting.

It was almost 8pm, the floor deserted, unusual timing, which meant important. She waited at the little desk across from 805 with the document in front of her, scrolling on her phone because there was nothing else to do. Five months into the internship and she knew everyone’s coffee orders, everyone’s preferred pens, everyone’s complaints about writer’s block.

Luke, her professor, her mentor, had talked up this internship. My sister’s company, he said. You’ll learn everything.So far, she’d learned to spell macchiato. He’d tasked her with delivering this document by hand to Leia tonight before she left the office. He’d dropped by earlier intending to give it to her himself, but Leia hadn’t been in, so he’d asked Rey to deliver it. When Rey arrived, Leia was too busy to talk and had commanded the senior editors to the meeting room, and they’d been in there for hours.

The door flew open without warning. No one came out, just voices, sharp enough to cut.

‘There is absolutely no reason we should take him on,’ Poe Dameron said, white-knuckled on the handle. ‘You’ve read his work. You’ve heard the rumors. You know where he’s been signed. The only reason you’d take him on is nepotism. He’s your son.’

Rey almost hid under the desk.

‘Dameron, keep your voice down and close the door,’ someone snapped. ‘Remember your position.’

‘You’re blinded by motherly affection, Leia. We’ll eat the backlash. Think of the company, of the authors. We have people who won’t survive the bad publicity.’

Leia’s reply was steady. ‘Ben has changed.’

Poe’s laugh was a scrape. ‘Oh, he goes by Ben now, does he?’

‘Poe, please,’ Amilyn Holdo said, cool water over hot metal. ‘Close the door and come back in so we can discuss this civilly.’

‘Think about it. Press framing first,’ Poe said, voice low and dangerous. ‘Media won’t run ‘new book’, they’ll run ‘FO defector coddled by mommy’s company.’ That’s the headline.’

‘We control the copy,’ Leia replied. ‘Future-facing. No legacy language.’

‘And the online brigades?’ Poe didn’t wait. ‘FO stan accounts brigaded a debut last month for criticizing their slate. I’m not feeding our juniors to that.’

‘No junior runs point,’ Holdo said. ‘Crisis comms in place.’

‘Assigning him a fixer means pulling one from five authors who actually turn in pages,’ Poe snapped. ‘Who do I starve to babysit him? Platform him while the First Order stink still clings and our DEI council will quit on the spot.’

A beat. Paper slid. A pen clicked.

‘We’ll discuss strategies,’ Leia said. ‘Now close the door, Poe, and let’s discuss this civilly.’

The door closed. Rey breathed a sigh of relief. She’d have hated to be part of something she wasn’t supposed to be aware of. But she still had the document to deliver, so she waited. Finally, a few minutes later, the door opened and some senior editors headed for the elevator, leaving the room ajar; the indicator light had gone dark. Rey approached slowly.

‘Regardless of his infamy,’ Poe was saying, ‘he is known for his bad work ethic. When would he even deliver a first manuscript? Will we have to hound him every day? How is that supposed to work? I am not sending anyone from my team to waste their time on his moody ass.’ He bounced his knee and clicked his pen, sitting opposite Leia and Holdo.

‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll have someone work with him on the draft,’ Leia said calmly, not even looking in Poe’s direction as she read over a document with Holdo at her side.

‘This is a waste of resources. Do we even have the means to cater to his whims? And who says this book will be successful? Who would even believe him?’ Poe continued.

Rey hovered in the doorway. Holdo noticed her first and nudged Leia, who looked up.

‘Oh!’ Leia straightened. “Miss Niima, is it? What are you doing here still?’ She glanced at the clock. ‘How long have you been waiting?’

Rey stepped forward, heat rising to her face. ‘Professor Skywalker asked me to deliver this to you by hand.’ She offered the envelope.

Leia took it, broke the seal with a thumbnail, scanned the first page. Whatever she read firmed her expression. She slid the papers to Holdo, then returned her attention to Rey, assessing, precise.

‘You do come highly recommended by Mr. Skywalker, Miss Niima.’

Poe scoffed. Leia ignored him and continued.

‘You’re thorough, you keep your head down, and you’re not on anyone’s radar yet.’ A beat. ‘Pack a bag. You’ll assist our new author with his manuscript until a draft exists. You’ll keep him moving. You’ll report to me and to Director Holdo. Understood?’

Rey was shocked; it took a moment for her senses to catch up. ‘Understood,’ she said, swallowing a thick lump.

‘Excellent.’ Leia’s mouth tipped. ‘You’ll meet with HR tomorrow morning to sign a few documents, and then we’ll discuss this further. Nothing to worry about. This will be very good for your career.’

Poe’s pen clicked hard enough to crack. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I’m entirely serious,’ Leia said, already reaching for the next document. ‘Close the door on your way out, Poe.’

Rey stepped back into the corridor with her pulse in her throat and a job she hadn’t had five minutes ago. The red light over 805 flicked back on.

———

Rey didn’t know what she was signing, ten months ago, when HR buzzed her in at 8 a.m. the morning after Leia’s impromptu offer. Stack of NDAs first, one to enter Leia’s office, one to hear the name, one to say it out loud.

‘Initial here, and here,’ HR said, sliding over the third NDA. Rey’s wrist ached.

‘Why three?’

‘Because once you hear the name, you can’t un-hear it.’

The fourth form read PROJECT: SOLO. The fifth spelled out ALSO KNOWN AS: KYLO REN.

Beneath it: bullet points. Essay collection that detonated academia. Space-western series in film development. Public remark comparing fictional antagonist to national leadership. Coordinated boycotts. Production collapse.

Rey signed anyway. Ben Solo, also known as Kylo Ren, a renowned author who’d spent nearly a decade at First Order Publishing.

First, an essay bomb that called academia a pyramid scheme and lit up every campus inbox. Then a blockbuster space western, bound for the big screen… right up until the moment he compared his creepy villain to the sitting head of state. Boycotts. Money torched. A studio belly-up. And that’s not even half of Kylo Ren’s baggage. 

Leia’s office looked over the city like a ship’s bridge, glass, a scatter of taillights below. The door clicked shut behind Rey. The muffled buzz of the floor fell away.

‘Sit,’ Leia said, not unkindly, gesturing to the chair opposite her desk. The desk was neat: a leather blotter, a stack of contracts, a framed photo of a boy with storm-dark hair at a piano, his head turned away from the camera.

Rey sat. Leia folded her hands. ‘We’re sending Ben out of the city for a drafting sprint. You’ll go with him.’

‘Him.’ Her mouth went a little dry. ‘Where?’

‘The Spocland,’ Leia said, as if she hadn’t just named the most secluded mountainous area in the country. Hard rocks, high peaks, isolation. Rey wasn’t even sure tourists were allowed. ‘A converted observatory on the north point. Quiet. No distractions. He writes; you keep him writing. One month… maybe less if he behaves.’ 

Rey found her voice. ‘I’m an intern. I don’t- I mean, I’ve never-‘

‘You are precise, you are stubborn, and you are, for the moment, invisible to the people who would like this to fail.’ Leia continued. ‘That is valuable. And you were recommended by someone whose judgment I trust.’

‘Luke.’ Rey said.

‘Luke.’ Leia echoed, a flicker of wry fondness. ‘He thinks you can tell my son no.’

Rey blinked. ‘Your son.’

‘Yes.’ Leia’s gaze held. ‘You heard enough outside 805 to put that together.’

Rey blushed and shifted her foot under the chair. ‘I… don’t know if I’m the right choice.’

‘You’re the right choice if you can do three things.’ Leia lifted a finger for each. ‘One: protect the work. Two: protect yourself. Three: tell him the truth, especially when it’s the last thing he wants.’

Rey let that sit. ‘What does protecting the work look like?’

‘A clean pipeline.’ Leia said. She pushed over another packet: BOOK MEMO. ‘Air-gapped laptop. Numbered printouts. No cloud. You are the single point of contact. He hands you pages; you log, copyedit light, track milestones. If he doesn’t deliver by Friday each week, you call me. We stop support. No pages, no peace.’

‘Protect myself?’

‘HR will brief you.’ Leia’s voice lost none of its calm. ‘Boundaries in writing. You set your schedule and you keep it. You do not enter his room after ten p.m. You do not answer messages after your off-hours unless it’s an emergency, and ‘the sentence feels wrong’ is not an emergency. If you feel unsafe at any moment, you call Holdo or me and you leave. No questions asked.’

Rey glanced at the photo again. The boy’s profile. The ache under the glass. ‘You’re very sure this will be… complicated.’

Leia looked down grimly at the stack of papers on her desk. 

‘And if he refuses to go? Or refuses to work with me?’

‘He will not.’

Silence spread, steady as breath.

‘What’s the book?' Rey asked, finally.

‘An examination of power and the narratives that protect it,’ Leia said. ‘Thriller bones, literary muscle. He’s been circling it for a year and a half.’ A beat. ‘He just needs someone to hold the rope.’

‘What does he know about me?’

‘Your name. Your role. That you’ll be honest.’ Leia’s eyes softened. ‘I will not pretend this is simple. It is not. But it is meaningful. And it could be very good for your career.’

‘And for him?’ The question surprised her.

‘For him,’ Leia said, “it is a new beginning.”

‘When do we leave?’ she asked. Not when would we leave. She had made her choice. Leia took note of that and her face softened.

‘Tomorrow night,’ Leia said. She slid a small, battered notebook across the desk, blank pages, soft cover. ‘For your notes. Don’t put anything in a phone you aren’t willing to see on the front page of the Chronicle.’

Rey took the notebook. It fit her palm like it had been waiting.

‘One month,’ Leia repeated. ‘You will not fix him. You will not save him. You will help him make a book. That is all.’

Rey met her eyes. ‘I can do that.’

‘I know.’

Leia stood; Rey stood with her. At the door, Leia added, almost lightly, ‘And Rey, if the altitude makes you dizzy, sit down before you fall.’

Rey’s mouth quirked. ‘Noted.’

————

INBOX

Subject: edit?
From: Ben Solo <[email protected]>
To: Rey Niima <[email protected]>

Rey,

I am sending you the final version of the book. I know you have requested to not be part of the editing team, but I thought you deserved to have a look at it, before the public does.

Best regards, 

Ben

Rey’s cursor hovered over the attached file, like she was worried it contained a virus about to kill her computer. Attachment: SOLO_MS_Final_v10.docx. Double click. 

She shut her laptop. The mark at her ankle tightened, then eased, as if it had read the line and nodded. She really was going to need a huge drink tonight. 

Chapter Text

The car idled at the curb with that discreet, expensive hum that says someone important owns me. Rey’s breath fogged the air; she watched it vanish and willed herself to look more confident than she felt.

‘Ms. Niima?’ The tall man by the rear door asked, long coat, gloved hands.

‘Rey is fine,’ she managed, handing over her bag. Her palms were damp. Great. Professional.

‘I’m Trip Pio. Ms. Organa asked me to collect you and Mr. Solo.’

Hearing Leia’s name steadied her and spiked her pulse at the same time. ‘Nice to meet you,’ Rey said. Smile. but not too many teeth. She hugged her coat tighter and slid into the back seatt.

‘Flight at eleven. We should already be moving,’ said the man in the front passenger seat, eyes never leaving his tablet. Stout, solid, a charging cable looped around his wrist like a bracelet.

‘Sorry?’ Rey asked, because her brain had decided to stop understanding basic sentences now.

‘Arto Dell,’ Trip supplied, settling in beside the driver. ‘He’ll accompany you. Logistics and ground support. He’ll stay a few days to get you settled.’

Arto flicked his eyes up, assessed her in a single, efficient scan, and dipped a nod. ‘Tickets confirmed. Gate C14. I’ve pre-cleared bags. If Mr. Solo is downstairs in the next six minutes, we’re on schedule. If not, we make a new schedule.’

A small, traitorous laugh rose in Rey’s throat, half panic, half relief. Someone else was holding numbers while she held her spine. ‘Oh. Great,’ she said, aiming for calm because panic doesn’t help clocks. You asked for this, she reminded herself. You said yes. Luke believed in her. Leia believed in her. She could borrow their belief until hers arrived. Fake it and pray she makes it. 

They moved through the city like a needle through black cloth, streetlights, wet pavement, Tuesday-night hush. Trip pulled beneath a cantilevered awning of glass and steel. The building looked like it had been designed to keep people out. A brass plaque by the door read Aldera Residences in small, tasteful type.

‘House property,’ Trip said quietly, catching her glance. ‘Leased under a shell. Easier to keep the press and First Order eyes off him.’

‘Right,’ Rey said, smoothing the corner of her folder. ‘Have you let him know we're here?’

‘I have texted him. Twice.’

Arto held up a slim access fob on a lanyard. ‘Concierge will accept this for a visitor pass, if you want to go up. We have to hurry up.’

‘I’ll go up.’

‘Ms. Organa asked that you-‘ Trip began.

‘She asked that I get him on the plane,’ Rey said, giving a small, not-entirely-reassuring smile. ‘If I’m not back in fifteen, come drag us both.’

Arto set a timer with a neat, merciless beep. Trip huffed something like a laugh, already checking the time. Rey took the fob from Arto, told her heartbeat to behave, and stepped into the lobby.

The concierge accepted her Organa House badge like a password and slid over a visitor key. Elevator up. Mirrored walls.

The thirty-second-floor hallway was the kind that made footsteps sound like secrets. His door was a matte-black slab with a silver 32B. She knocked.

Nothing.

She knocked again, louder. ‘Mr. Solo? It’s Rey Niima. From Organa House.’

Silence, then a muffled ‘I know who you are’ in a low scrape she’d later learn by heart.

‘Our flight is in eighty five minutes,’ Rey said, crisp. ‘I have your itinerary, the clean laptop, and the list of snacks you requested.’

Another silence. Rey checked the time. She pictured calling Arto to abort. Then she pictured Leia’s face if they missed the plane.

‘Open the door, Mr. Solo.’

‘It’s not locked.’

Of course it wasn’t, he probably expected them to come up to him. Rey turned the knob and went in.

Tall windows, gray light, shelves crowded. The air smelled like coffee, paper, and a forest-scented detergent people buy when they wish they lived in the country. A pair of boots by the door with dried mud maps.

He stood in the bedroom doorway, bare feet, dark sweater, black jeans, hair that had recently lost an argument with sleep. Larger than the photos. Less curated. He watched her take him in. 

‘Ms. Niima,’ he finally said when her gaze finally met his dark eyes. Her breath hitched, she counted to three until her pulse behaved.

‘Mr. Solo.’ She finally said, regaining her senses. She was not about to let herself be steamrolled by him from their first meeting, not by his pretty face, not by his broad shoulders, his tall build, his strong hands. She needed to impose herself. ‘We need to go.’

‘You barged in.’

‘You invited me. Indirectly. By being impossible.’ Rey stepped past him into the bedroom without waiting for permission, which she recognized as a choice and chose anyway. The room was tidy in the way of frequent travelers. An open suitcase lay on the bed: one sweater, a passport tossed like it wasn’t important, a notebook with a cracked spine, a fountain pen uncapped. If she looked hard enough, she suspected she’d even find a typewriter. Who even used those anymore?

‘You’ve packed for two days,’ she said. ‘We’re gone a month.’ Or maybe he intended for someone to come up and do this for him. 

‘It depends how fast I behave.’ Or maybe he’d just decided to be a brat from the very beginning.

‘That line reads better on paper.’ She folded shirts from am open drawer into precise thirds, not because she was his assistant -she wasn’t!- but because chaos wasn’t going to make the plane wait. ‘Where are your warm layers?’

‘I run hot.’

‘Congratulations. Spocland doesn’t care.’ She angled toward the closet. ‘Coat. Hat. Gloves. Things with texture.’

He assessed her for a heartbeat, and she was about to start sweating, he wasn’t used to that someone being five foot four with a stubborn mouth. He produced a coat and she approved with a nod she didn’t mean to make.

‘You’re very certain of yourself,’ he said.

‘I’m very certain of time.’ She checked her phone. ‘We now have eighty minutes.’

‘Seventy eight,’ he corrected, glancing at his own.

‘Then stop helping me be right.’

Something like a laugh ghosted his mouth. He handed her the notebook without being asked. ‘This comes.’

‘It doesn’t,’ she said. ‘Anything written before today belongs to people who’d love to derail this. Clean pages only. That’s the rule.’

He studied her like a paragraph he hadn’t decided to delete yet. ‘You’re new.’

‘I’m necessary.’

‘You’re not afraid of me.’

‘You’re late. That’s different.’

Another almost-laugh. He capped the pen, slid the old notebook into a drawer, took the clean one she offered. 

‘What else,’ he said.

‘Toiletries. Chargers. The book you pretend you’re not reading on the plane.’

He nodded toward the dresser; she found a thick thing about glaciers and politics, slid it into the suitcase. She bent to zip the suitcase; the rug slid half an inch. He stepped in still barefoot and their ankles knocked, clean bone to bone. A bright little bell seemed to strike inside her joint and answer inside his. Not pain, more like a line drawn and erased.

‘Sorry, she said, catching the bed frame.

‘My fault,’ he answered, but he was looking down, puzzled.

The sensation was gone by the time she straightened. The clock wasn’t.

‘Shoes,’ she said.

He looked at the boots by the door, then at her, their gaze meeting and latching for a few beats, as if they were finally seeing each other clearly for the first time after a fog. He pulled them on while she zipped the case.

They moved through the living room in a choreography that felt older than five minutes should. He lifted the suitcase. She grabbed the folder, the laptop, the printed itinerary. 

They stepped into the hall. Elevator down, mirrors, silence, numbers falling.

Trip was already on his feet, a soft look on his face.

‘Ben,’ He said, taking the suitcase. Ben’s nod was the smallest yes but his jaw was relaxed and his eyes were kind.

Doors shut. The car eased from the curb. Trip caught Rey’s eye in the mirror, made it, and faced the road.

———

The bar across from Organa House was still quite empty when Rey showed up and slid on a barstool.

‘Kitchen’ll open in 30, but you can order drinks now,’ the bartender said sliding over a menu. He probably didn’t recognize her from the usual Oragna House crowd, as she barely ever came.

‘ aginger ale please’ Rey said. ‘With a lime.’ He nodded and left to make her drink. SOLO_MS_Final_v10.docx sat smugly at the top of her recent emails. She flipped the phone face down like it might bite, and then, because that wasn’t enough, slid it into her bag and zipped the pocket. The mark at her ankle tightened, precise, as if it could read file names. She studied the chalkboard menu like it was a sacred text. Fries. Olives. Something called ‘honeyed endives.’ Perfect. She could devote her life to endives for the next ten minutes.

Across the street, Organa House glowed behind glass. If she looked long enough, the building blurred into the shape of a refurbished observatory. She didn’t look long. The dedication line unspooled anyway: For- No. Endives thoughts only.

Door-chime. Rose breezed in, cheeks pink from the cold, bracelets chiming like tiny announcements. ‘You beat me?’ she said, delighted and suspicious. ‘You never beat me.’

‘I’m turning over a punctual leaf,’ Rey said.

‘Is the leaf named Avoidance?’

‘Possibly.’

Finn arrived a minute later, coat draped over one arm, gentle hurricane of warmth.

‘You’re late,’ Rose said, cheerful accusation. ‘You owe us gossip.’

Finn looked affronted. ‘I am absolutely not late it’s barely past 7. Rey does though, for all the times she ghosted us.’

‘Gossip is not my brand,’ she feigned. ‘How was everyone’s week that isn’t mine?’

‘Finn convinced Legal to use the word ‘delightful’ in a contract note,’ Rose said. ‘That’s my week highlight.’

‘It was relevant,’ Finn protested. ‘The clause was absoluetly delightful.’

Rey smiled, grateful for her friends and change of air. A server swooped, took their orders, and vanished. More people joined them as the place filled up. Rey had just finished her first drink when Rose leaned in. ‘So. How’s the ghost in the machine?’

Rey blinked. ‘What ghost?’

‘The one that makes all of Marketing say ‘no comment’.’

‘Oh.’ Rey traced a circle on the damp ring Finn’s glass had left. The mark at her ankle tightened, the way it did when her mind said don’t go there and went anyway. She tried to find a change of subject, looking around the room when she spotted Poe slidding in with two copy editors. He clocked their table, and came their way. Relief breezed through Rey’s ribs, saved by the boss.

‘Don’t let them add synth,’ he said to no one in particular, gesturing at the playlist like it could hear him. ‘It cheapens the mood.’

‘Hi, Poe,’ Finn said, smiling like a shield.

Poe rested a palm on the table edge, ‘You three hear anything useful today, or just ambient panic?’

‘Ambient panic is useful,’ Rose retorted. ‘It tells us we’re alive.’

Poe’s mouth twitched. He was about to say something else, something pointed, when his phone lit. He skimmed, hummed, pocketed it. ‘Enjoy your night,’ he said instead, and ghosted back to his orbit.

‘Is it just me,’ Rose said in exaggerated disbelief, ‘or did he just…not lecture us?’

‘Miracles,’ Finn said.

Outside the window, in the lobby of Organa house a figure, long coat, shoulders she recognized even at a blur. Her ankle went hot, precise. She didn’t breathe for two counts, then did. Then stopped again as the figure walked directly towards her. Well towards the bar.

The door chimed, and cold air folded in as Ben walked i. n. He went straight to the bar, spoke low to the bartender.

Rose noticed her looking but was mostly concerned by the almost pained look on Rey’s face, so she didn’t comment. Ben paid, tipped, and waited for his usual order of food to go. In the mirror behind the bottles, his eyes slid over the room and caught hers in the reflection. They held each others gaze, not making any move. Rey was feeling herself blush now, the mark on her leg sprouted, little lines wrapping around her calf now. 

Poe appeared at Ben’s shoulder. ‘You’re trending again,’ he said, not unkind, showing a phone and then pocketing it. ‘Try not to feed it this time.’

Ben’s mouth tipped in the smallest non-answer. Poe’s eyes flicked once toward Rey, then away, as if acknowledging a concealed situation and refusing to address it.

The bartender slid the paper bag across the counter and Ben thanked him, nodded once at Poe, and turned. As he passed their table, he didn’t stop. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to as he’d already served. Her phone sat zipped in her bag with a file like a small, lit heart, pulsing. His move had been made and the page blank beside it was hers to fill.

Chapter Text

Rey finally understood the rush only when the car peeled off the expressway and slid into a smaller airport tucked far beyond the city’s glow. The regional terminal had that liminal hush of places between places: coffee gone sweet and stale, a lineup of half-drunk martinis and beer glasses abandoned to rim-sugar and meltwater, rain ticking lightly against the high windows. 

Trip handled the luggage with a practiced sweep and Arto moved ahead with the kind of eerie calm that makes everyone else stay alert. Behind them, Ben kept pace beside Rey without touching her, head tipped down beneath a beanie, glasses hiding his face. She tried to look anywhere but at him, departure boards, a child asleep across two chairs, a custodian polishing the same circle of floor over and over again while watching a sports replay on one of the big screens. Her gaze, however, ended up on their synchronized footsteps. She suspiciously thought that his tall build would have allowed him to easily outpace her, but he was still steadily walking beside her. 

At the tarmac window, Arto tilted his chin toward the plane waiting in the rain. It was a six-seater with a belly the color of yellowed pages, adorned with burgundy stripes.

Rey’s jaw clenched, and her face turned ashen, then crept back with an unnatural shade of green. ‘We’re…getting on that?’ she asked, keeping her voice steady because her stomach absolutely wasn’t.

Ben’s eyes tracked the change in her. He didn’t look rattled at all. ‘It flies,’ he said, mild, not unkind, like a man who lacked the vocabulary for soothing, which was ironic, given the job title.

‘Consider it character building,’ Arto added, frowning down at his phone. ‘It’s a short hop: Up, across, down. You’ll just hate it for the first twelve minutes and then you won’t.’

Rey nodded as if just agreeing with him could settle the ground under her feet. She pressed two fingers against the strap of her bag, and told her breath to line up and behave. Ben’s shoulder hovered in her peripheral vision and she willed her eyes to stay on the painted number stenciled on the fuselage and said, mostly to herself, 'Okay.’

It must not have been a reassuring Okay at all because Arto looked up, and turned his frown to her. ’Relax,’ Arto added, deadpan. ‘I used to sling Han into smaller aircraft. He’d bring a microphone and a fishing net. Called it ‘fieldwork.’’

Both Ben and Trip flinched, for different reasons entirely. Ben’s shoulders ticked at the name, small, involuntary, and Trip at the lack of filter on Arto’s mouth. Rey felt the shift and, for a heartbeat, wanted to set a palm between Ben’s shoulder blades the way you do for someone bracing for cold water. But she kept her hands at her sides.

Ben turned abruptly and walked out the glass door, and was quickly followed by Arto. Rey fell in behind with Trip, a woman on a mission, the trolley sliding over the tile before the wheels bumped to tarmac.

‘Han?’ she asked, keeping it light, as if she were only testing a name on her tongue. ‘As in…?’

‘Wildlife amateur, but now also a very large TV presence,’ Trip said under his breath, pushing the bags a little jerkier now. ‘About thirty years back he signed a series with the House. Luke found him. Numbers were good. Great, actually.’ He hesitated, his conscience doing a small, visible wrestle. ‘Han Solo,’ he finished. ‘Ben’s father.’

Rey stumbled half a step she hoped no one saw. ‘Oh.’

Trip’s mouth flattened. ‘Sore topic, Arto should’ve known better than to bring it up.’ he said softly. ‘I’d avoid it. Unless he brings it up.’ A beat passed and then he added: ‘Which he probably won’t.’

As they got closer to the plane, Rey had to pitch her voice a little higher to be heard over the ramp noise. ‘Is all of this truly necessary?’ she asked, and it wasn’t only a question about small planes and back doors.

‘First Order thrives on a story they can bruise with. Legal is unwinding the old contract and while they do, we keep him off the board. Better to be a rumor than a headline.’ Arto replied tactfully. 

Ben watched the propeller as Trip conferred with the crew: a single pilot in a windbreaker, the kind of man who’d signed a stack of papers at dawn and promised, not without flourish, not to know what he was doing. Not his first rodeo, Rey thought, just a quieter one.

Rey walked towards Ben. The rain beaded on his lashes. She wanted to chase one drop with the pad of her thumb and couldn’t, so she used words instead. ‘Are you okay?’ She asked softly.

He looked at her then, properly, and the look in his eyes felt like a question at first, what are her motives. Sonething on her face must have given away the reluctant fondness that was gathering for him, because the wariness eased into calm and something not quite like gratitude, but something quieter, something that said you understood the bruise and didn’t press it harder. He nodded. And that was that. 

Inside the cabin the air smelled like new fabric and dampness. Rey fastened her belt and immediately set a folder in her lap from her backpack. Ben took the seat across and angled toward the window, but not away from her.

‘We should talk about how we’ll work,’ she said, softer now, trusting the nearness to carry the sound. ‘Not to corral you, just so I know how I will fit in your writing process.’ She was a little wary about his work ethics, she’d naturally heard a fair share of rumors concerning him.

He almost smiled, there it was, the faint one, the one that meant we’re speaking the same language. ‘Tell me.’

‘Pages on Fridays by noon,’ she said firmly. ‘Morning check-ins everyday at ten-thirty. I am not your assistant. I am your editor. I don’t answer after ten at night unless something is actually on fire, and I don’t answer to your whims and tantrums.”

He exhaled, and the sound was approval disguised as amusement. ‘I can be okay with that.’

‘Good,’ she said, and it felt like placing a stone in the right part of a river. They placed their headsets on and looked out the window at Trip waving them goodbye from the side of the runway. 

The pilot’s voice came through their headsets, a calm promise of half an hour up and half an hour down, the chance of a view if the cloud allowed grace. Arto gave a last nod from the jump seat like a blessing.

Ben closed his eyes for one measured breath and then opened them again, meeting hers.

‘This feels like page one,’ he said, sounding surprised by his own words. She didn’t speak, just gave him a small smile. She rested her head against the seat and let the sound of the engine fill in the places in her mind that needed to be quieted. She thought of a furtive touch, of a boy at a piano in a frame on a woman’s desk, of a man looking out at a small wing and choosing to trust the lift.

—

The ride was mostly uneventful. When the first shake came, nothing dramatic, just a reminder that the sky is a living thing, her breath tugged short. Across the aisle, Ben flattened his palm on the armrest, not touching her, but still showing her how to anchor anyway. He tapped once, twice, three times with his thumb, slow, steady, a rhythm she could borrow if she wanted. She let her lungs match it. The bumps passed like a mood. 

They dropped into a world scrubbed clean and utterly rural. The strip was a dark slash stitched into pale ground, flanked by low hills and the stunned, attentive quiet that follows a storm, or maybe precedes the storm in this case. Arto was standing before the props had fully touched ground down. On the tarmac he pressed a small satellite phone into Rey’s hand. ‘Button one calls me. Button two calls Maz Kanata, she keeps the observatory going now.’

The little device felt heavier than plastic, as if it knew it would be the last -vocal- thread to the world when Arto left in two days. Ben slipped past into the cold; the air outside tasted like iron and pine and something so sharp and clean it bordered on painful, like shards on her lungs. A small car idled nearby, old, square, the kind of machine that had been new when the observatory still counted stars probably.

The drive up was long and steep, small melting snow piles on the side of the road. The front door was a manual revolving drum of glass and metal, it opened onto a vestibule full of hooks and a corkboard with yellowed papers of aurora forecasts clipped with pushpins. A line of snow shovels leaned like bored sentries. Beyond the tile, burgundy carpet took over with walls half wood half wallpaper, leading to a small service desk and, to the side, a kitchenette where someone had already set a kettle for boiling water. Somewhere deeper a generator hummed, the steady sound of life support. A grand stair in the same burgundy climbed toward the upper floors, beside it an elevator with an OUT OF SERVICE sign.

Maz Kanata came through a side door in a red sweater and black watch cap, headlamp still looped round her neck. Up close, Rey saw the fringe of credentials tacked behind the service desk with a photo of a younger Maz under this same dome with a team in parkas and ridiculous smiles. Astrophysicist, Rey realized. Not housekeeper. Retired, probably. She went straight to Arto and crushed his arm in a greeting. ‘Haven’t seen you in too long,’ she said, grin wide and all tooth. 'I nearly fell over when Leia’s email came in last night… we haven’t done any of these last minute booking in a while. Not since-‘ She turned, and stopped when she saw Ben. ‘Oh.’

Ben frowned and didn’t bother to disguise it.

‘The prodigal son,’ Maz said, but her smirk softened at the edges. ‘You probably don’t remember me at all, but I was good friends with your father when he was still walking around with a mullet and sandals. I visited when you were a bean in a blanket. It’s good you came home to your mother’s side, after all the…’ She searched for a word and chose, mercifully, none. Ben was looking even more annoyed if that was even possible, and Arto looked quite anxious now.

‘Now, now, Maz,’ he said, sheepish, a hand up. ‘Let’s not-‘

‘Right. Sorry.’ She clapped once, resetting the room. ‘You’re the anonymous writer we’re housing. And you?’ She turned to Rey.

‘I’m no one,’ Rey said too quickly before she could think better of it.

Maz’s brows climbed. She lifted her glasses to see Rey cleanly. ‘No one?’

‘She’s the editor, Rey Niima,’ Ben supplied, the faintest annoyance fraying the edges. ‘Here to edit what I write. Isn’t that right, Miss Niima? She comes highly recommended.’

‘Luke’s recommendation,’ Arto added to be helpful,  but instantly regretting it.

‘Luke’s mentoring?’ Ben echoed, incredulous now, cutting Rey a sideways look that stung more than it should have.

‘Luke’s still doing that?’ Maz asked, surprised and amused in equal measure.

Heat hit Rey’s face so fast it left her dizzy. She felt like a punchline to an esoteric joke she hadn’t been told. Arto rescued them with motion.

‘Tour,’ he said, already heading for the stairs.

They wove through a small maze of doors and narrow halls. ‘Kitchen here,’ Maz said, patting a swinging door. ‘Breakfast eight to nine, nothing too elaborate though just bread, butter, jam, coffee. Lunch at noon, dinner at seven.’

The lights dimmed. 

‘The lights are dying,’ Rey murmured.

‘On purpose,’ Maz said. ‘Slow dim keeps your eyes night-ready.’ She winked before leading them upstairs.

They climbed to the fourth floor. Under the dome, the workspace breathed cold and purpose. ‘You have access to this workspace,’ Maz said. ‘Heat comes in fits so the blankets are not decor. There’s a kitchenette over there tea, coffee, snacks, available all day.’ She looked pleased to answer the question Ben hadn’t asked. ‘Yes, the roof still opens if the weather behaves.’ She sighed looking out the window. ‘I ran instruments here for twenty years before they moved to a bigger place south. Now it’s a hotel for the scientific crowd and, occasionally, for guests who prefer quiet to press. The stars don’t mind the change, but I keep the rules for them anyway.’

‘Do you usually have visitors?’ Rey asked, pausing at a window.

‘Seminars, week-long workshops,’ Maz said. ‘More in February, when the Rendar slopes open.’ She smiled, small and real. ‘But not now.’

Ben’s eyes were everywhere and nowhere, cataloguing angles, testing sight lines. He touched the rail that circled the dome and looked out through the slit of glass as if inspiration waited just beyond the forest below.

‘You good?’ Arto asked.

Ben considered, then gave the same almost-nod he’d given Rey on the tarmac. ‘Good.’

They looped back to the east wing. ‘Scientists lodged here,’ Maz said, rapping her knuckles lightly on a doorframe as if greeting old ghosts. ‘You’ll take 04, 05, 06. I’m in 02 if you need anything. There are usually day staff and night staff, kitchen, grounds, but we cleared the calendar. You’re it. There will be a cook and a housekeeper during the day, and you know how to join me if you have any issues.’ She clapped her hands again, a tiny thunder. ‘I’ll leave you to settle. Refectory in two hours for dinner with soup first night, it’s a law!”

And that was that.

—

Rey set her bags inside the room. It was very spare and efficient: a bed, a desk, and a narrow window framing a slice of ridge and sky. A door opened onto a bathroom with only what was needed. Through the wall came the faint, percussion of someone unpacking like a person who hadn’t committed to being here and was punishing objects for it. She smiled into her shoulder.

She sat on the bed, spread her hand on the cool sheet. ‘You can do this,’ she told the room. She wasn’t entirely sure what this was yet, but saying it made something inside her stand up straighter.

Sitting would make thinking worse. She went back to the workspace under the dome and let her fingers skim the spines that lined the shelves, star atlases, instrument manuals, a memoir with a cracked dust jacket that smelled like old paper and snow. The door opened a while later. Even with her back turned she knew who it was, The air in the room felt electric and cool.

‘I appreciate your enthusiasm,’ she said, not turning. ‘Tell me you’re here to write your first pages.’

He didn’t answer at once. When she faced him he was there with sleeves shoved to his forearms, the secured laptop under one arm, caution in the lines of his shoulders. Their gazes held, and then:

‘Where do you want me?’ he asked, voice a touch tight.

‘Here.’ She motioned the corner of the long table and didn’t blush at how it sounded.

He set the laptop down like a ceremony and didn’t open it. Not yet. He stood a moment longer, looking up. The slit of the dome framed a wash of gray sky.

‘You didn’t mention working with Luke,’ he said, coolly.

‘Your uncle?’

‘Let’s not mention that.’

‘Is it going to be an issue?’ She kept her tone even.

‘I’m surprised he didn’t tell you about me,’ Ben said, looking at her now.

‘Was he supposed to mention his nephew working for his main opps?’

‘I guess not.’ He flicked a humorless breath. ‘No one likes talking about their failures.’

Silence opened; Rey measured her words. She could defend Luke and risk burning this before it began, or she could swallow it and hate herself later.

Ben chose the fire for her. ‘I’m surprised he’s still allowed a job, frankly. He should’ve retired years ago.’

The snap came fast and clean. ‘Your failures don’t belong to him,’ she said harshly. ‘You joining First Order wasn’t his shame. He’s a respected professor. Your behavior reflects only on you.’

‘My failures?’ He stepped closer, the room seemed to shrink. There was only her and him and the few inches between them, everything else faded away. She needed to keep her focus. 

‘Yes,’ she said, holding her ground. You joined FO. You left FO. So you must know better by now.’

He laughed darkly, humorlessly. ‘You don’t know anything. You shouldn’t speak about what doesn’t concern you.. what you don’t know.’

He stopped within arm’s reach, not touching, the shelves cool against Rey’s spine. She swallowed but didn’t look away. ‘You opened the subject.’

‘I thought you knew,’ he said, lower now, his head leaned towards hers slightly. ‘Apparently you don’t.’

They stared each other down, heat in both their faces. The lights dimmed a notch, Maz’s rule about easing the night, and a distant sheet of lightning lifted the sky. Rey didn’t move. As if under a spell,  he lifted a hand, paused, then tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, his fingers brushing the side of her neck. The contact shot a neat, shocking line through her; he flinched, too, as if the same current had struck him.

‘You have no idea what you’ve walked into,’ he said, almost tender. She took a sharp breath in. His eyes fixed on hers. Her mind was blank, he was everything and everywhere, in front of her and under her skin. Suddenly, he stepped back, turned towards the table, and sat on his assigned seat. The laptop opened. The moment folded itself away.

‘I’ll deliver a rough draft of Chapter One by Friday,’ he said, fingers finding their rhythm on the keys.

She shook herself into behaving normally and swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘Okay,’ she managed, dazed and slightly out of breath. She picked a book at random and left with it pressed to her ribs. In the corridor she let out the breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding. This was going to be harder than she’d expected, for reasons that had nothing to do with snow or schedules.

—

Dinner was a quiet affair. The refectory looked like a school cafeteria: long wooden tables in two rows, flickering tubes washing everything in a practical white, epoxy floors and walls the color of tea with too much milk. Beyond the glass, the mountains standing guard. Maz and Arto took the far end of one table by the windows, Rey and Ben sat opposite, the view between them.

A burly man pushed through the revolving door from the kitchen carrying a tray. ‘Evening,’ he said, setting out plates, a jug of water, a carafe of red.

‘Still the same cook?’ Arto asked, laying a napkin in his lap.

‘Yes,’ Maz said. ‘Sandra’s still here. This is her son, Geno. Home on break and I’ve conscripted him.’

‘Splendid. I’ve missed Sandra’s food,’ Arto said. ‘Tell her I’m praying for a casserole.’

‘That can be arranged,’ Maz said, pleased.

Dinner was soup first with warm bread that steamed when torn with dessert of chocolate mousse in small glass bowls.

‘Delicious,’Rey said, resting her spoon on the empty plate. She hadn’t contributed to the talk consisting of the weather up here, city gossip, Organa House news, mutual acquaintances, but gratitude was easy. ‘Thank you.’

Ben kept his quiet, answering when spoken to and otherwise letting the room move around him.

The lights dimmed another notch as they left the refectory, a gentling of gold to rose to almost-night. Back in her room, she set a towel on the radiator and turned on the shower until steam climbed up the mirror. She stood under it until the day loosened its grip, then as she washed the soap away noticed it. A hair-fine line lay under the skin at her ankle, black the way ink looks under glass. Not long. Not even dramatic. A stem, really, thin as a thought.

She touched it with a wet fingertip. No pulse. No heat. It didn’t hurt, aside from the way noticing sometimes does. It’s quite peculiar to notice a birthmark at her big age, because what else could it be really. Something she’d never clocked. Or a rub from the boot. Or hot water rash. Or altitude doing tricks. Any of those would do.

Back in her room, she switched off the lamp and the generator’s hum sounded in the night like a lullaby. Through the wall came the soft thrum of a notebook closing, then the faint scrape of a chair and a pause before the creak of the bed.

Rey fell asleep with thoughts of a warm hand on her neck.

Chapter Text

Rey woke before her alarm and lay a moment staring at the ceiling, recalling last night’s activities. Cold air on her face, and the wool blanket up to her chin, the faint echo of keys from the room next door that might have been real or might have been a dream.

But there was no sound now. No movement on the other side of the wall. Good.

She dressed in layers, laced her shoes in the dim light, and moved down the corridor on her tiptoes. She slipped through the manual door and into the cold morning.

The air bit, it had snowed in the night, but now the sky looked clear, ready for a beautiful day. Beyond the parking patch the ground fell away into scrub and rock, a dent in the snow that could be a fox’s print. She ran the perimeter track at a careful pace, testing the crunch of the frost, lungs burning clean. By the second lap the heat under her sternum steadied and calmed her jumbled thoughts.

She slowed at the far corner where the trees broke to give a beautiful view of the ridge and there he was, the object of all her thoughts. Ben, coat unbuttoned, beanie low, a paper cup between his hands. He’d taken the path from the generator shed, a neat line of his tracks scalloped the frost. He looked up at her and the charge from last night flickered like a light deciding whether to come on or die.

‘Morning,’ she said, as neutral as she could make it.

‘Morning,’ he returned, his breath white in the air.

They stood with the observatory at their backs and the ridge in front of them, not quite shoulder to shoulder. Rey tugged at a glove with her teeth and flexed her fingers until the sting left. Up close he smelled like warmth and coffee, like everything she needed at that moment.

‘You run,’ he said, which was not a question but felt like one.

‘Only when I feel like I might combust.’ She glanced at the cup. ‘How tragic is it?’

‘Heroic,’ he said, and lifted it toward her. She hesitated for a heartbeat, then wrapped her hands around the cup, grateful for the heat. The rim was soft from a mouth she refused to think about. She took a careful sip and judged that it was, absolutely, heroic.

‘You were working?’ she asked, giving it back.

He nodded. They watched nothing happen for a while. The sky was pale, the trees majestically beautiful, the mountains looked down on them reverently. Somewhere a raven barked and was answered. Rey found the rhythm of her breath again and let last night’s edges move back a step.

‘Truce?’ Rey asked, eyes on the ridge. ‘We can survive this if we stop swinging at each others. Let’s focus on the work.’

He glanced over, the corner of his mouth conceding. ‘Truce.’

They passed the coffee back and forth without ceremony, heat moving from his hands to hers and back again.

‘My father mentioned this place once,’ he said finally. ‘I was four, maybe five. We were supposed to go on some trip with my friends, maybe to the zoo, I don’t even recall anymore. He canceled at the last minute. Luke had to take us instead.’ His laugh had no joy in it. ‘When he came home, he was full of stories anyway: stars, constellations, a new instrument up here using hyperspace that could see deeper than we’d ever been able to. He said they’d found a new star.’ He shook his head, Rey’s heart ached for the little child she saw in the frame, frowning over his piano, she was tempted to take his hand in hers and squeeze him tight. ‘I was young enough to forgive everything if the story was grand enough. A kid with stars in his eyes.’

He looked up at the dome, at the paint flaking along the seam, at the rail that needed oil. ‘The place I imagined was a cathedral. This is… a forgotten ribcage. My grand prison for a month.’ He tried to make it lighter. ‘Super glamorous.’ 

The joke slid off her but what caught was the picture it left. She could see him small at a door, shoes on the wrong feet, pockets stuffed with zoo animal figurines, a paper crown waiting, watching the hallway go long. Luke trying to make up for the loss, but not matching the fatherly warmth a child needed. A man returning later with the galaxy in his mouth and no apology. The ache that rose in her was protective, she had to deliver carefully so it wouldn’t look like pity.

Rey tipped the cup back to him, their knuckles touched, brief and warm. ‘I’ve met the kid with the stars. He survived. He can move cathedrals with his words now.’

Something eased in his face, just enough to notice. She hoped he couldn’t read the recognition on her own. She knew that door wait feeling, the quarters saved for a day that didn’t happen. A childhood in a great-aunt’s dim apartment with medicine bottles like little monuments on the counter, rent receipts tucked under the sugar jar, cupboards that echoed. She’d learned to live by lists and library light, to trade sleep for study, to stitch scholarships into a future that always felt like a dream. She had visions of dark times, tough decisions that had to be made. But, she was so close to the future she’d spent years building that the thought of it pricked her eyes. She sniffed, gathered herself, and managed a smile. ‘Breakfast,’ she said. ‘Then pages.’

‘Then pages,’ he echoed, no argument, and they turned toward the door, step for step, the morning opening a little wider in front of them.

—

Arto left with as little fanfare as he did everything else. Rey and Maz stood in the vestibule doorway and watched the old car thread until the road bent.

‘Well,’ Maz said, tapping Rey’s shoulder on her way back inside, ‘your real job starts now, young lady.’

Ben hadn’t come down to say goodbye. Arto had expected that, he hadn’t looked hurt so much as resigned. When he hugged Rey, he bent to her ear and let the practical soften. ‘I hope this is good for him,’ he said. ‘Good luck.’ Then he straightened, tapped the satellite phone in her pocket. ‘You’ll want to call me for everything but you’ll need to call me for very few things: Learn the difference.’

She’d laughed and waved him off, brave because he needed her to be.

Now the quiet reassembled itself around the building. Rey looked up to the fourth-floor window of the workspace and, for a moment, swore she could make out the furtive cut of a man looking out the window back at the horizon. There was a lot of the hurt child in the adult.

—

Rey made sure Ben was settled and working before she joined Maz Kanata for the morning rounds.

‘Power, water, sky, people,’ Maz listed as she handed Rey a wool hat from a peg by the door. ‘We check them in that order, and if the first three behave, the fourth usually follows.’

They crossed the vestibule and stepped into the cold. The generator shed sat a short walk away, square and stubborn, with exhaust feathering the air in a pale ribbon. Inside, the place smelled of warm metal and old coins. Maz lifted the latch, tilted her head, and listened. After a moment she nodded and invited Rey closer.

‘The engine sounds healthy,’ she said. ‘If it coughs, you either sweet-talk it or fetch me, because arguing with a machine wastes time you do not have.’ She guided Rey’s hand to the dipstick and showed her the mark. ‘We are at three quarters. You can log it on the clipboard.’

A clipboard hung from a nail near the door. Rey wrote the numbers in careful block letters. Back on the path, frost cracked under their boots. Maz passed Rey a soft brush and pointed to the solar panels. Together they swept the night’s thin crust of snow from the glass until it cleared and darkened to a clean sheen. From the catwalk railing above, Pilot, the observatory’s resident raven, issued a string of throat clicks that sounded very much like commentary.

‘He believes he runs the docket,’ Maz said with a faint smile. ‘He is not entirely wrong.’

They paused at KEEPER, the old control rack under the dome stairs. The thermal printer had spooled a fresh ribbon that recorded barometer and temperature in tight numbers. Maz tore off the strip and slipped it into a jar already full of curled paper.

‘We keep these out of habit mostly,’ she explained. She pressed a square of red film over a computer monitor and covered a blinking green LED with tape. ‘We also keep our secrets,’ she whispered with a sly smile.

They made a circuit of the rooms with practiced efficiency. Maz topped the kettle and bled a reluctant radiator until it stopped knocking. Together they coaxed a sticky window latch back into cooperation. In the pantry, Maz checked a clipboard and read off the inventory, beans, rice, tinned tomatoes, tea, and said that if the road held, Sandra would send more rations with the noon run. If the road did not hold, they would become creative with legumes.

The radio on the counter crackled, and a woman’s voice came through with weather and road conditions. Maz thanked Ranger Pava and set the handset down. She turned to Rey and said that wind would likely arrive by evening, which meant the roof slit might test their patience. If it opened, Rey should close it. If it refused to move, she should leave it alone. The day would go better if they worked on what wanted to be working.

At the stair to the dome, Maz rested a hand on the banister worn smooth by years of use. ‘How is he sitting?’ she asked, and her voice held practical concern rather than gossip.

‘He is very still.’ Rey said, which was the truest answer she had. Rey placed a mug of tea on the long table and stepped back without comment. Ben looked up long enough to register the offering and then returned to his screen. His sleeves were pushed to his forearms and his focus had the confident shape of work begun in earnest. The rhythm of the keys built into something even and persuasive.

Rey circled to her end of the table, opened her notebook, and began her own steady tasks. She dated the page, set headings down the left margin, and left generous space for questions and hinges. Maz lingered a moment in the doorway before disappearing. ‘Power, water, sky, people,’ Maz said again, under her breath. Satisfied, she moved on.

—

By Friday, Rey had fallen into a routine. She woke before her alarm and lay still for a moment, listening for the soft sequence that meant Ben was awake: the faucet, the brief rush of water, the door opening and closing with careful hands. She laced her shoes and ran the perimeter, but she never saw him out there again, the path belonged to her alone. He did not appear at breakfast either. After her run she joined Maz for the morning rounds, checked the generator, brushed the panels, and logged the numbers. On her way back she paused at the workspace to leave his third coffee of the day and to make sure the room, and the man in it, still held together. At lunch and at dinner she shared a table with him in the refectory but he ate in a contained quiet with the notebook at his elbow, sometimes writing as he chewed, sometimes letting the food cool while he stared through the window at a line in the horizon. Maz kept Rey company with stories from the observatory’s working years, and Rey learned to appreciate the quiet of the rural life.

Friday arrived thin and gray, the kind of morning that wants you curled up in blankets and a soft book. By nine-thirty the dome room had warmed a degree, KEEPER’s ribbon had printed its modest column of weather, and Pilot had tapped the rail with punctual authority. Rey opened her notebook and dated the page. Across from her, Ben closed his laptop and peered at her. She waited a respectful beat. ‘Well, it’s Friday. Let’s see what your first draft is about,’ she said, not unkind, already dreading his answer.

He held her gaze for a moment and then let it go. ‘I don’t have anything to show yet.'

The words landed between them with the particular weight of something true and unhelpful. Rey uncapped her pencil and set it down again to take the sting out of her first reaction. What was he playing at exactly? He had been on time for meals and absent for everything else human, he had written in silence or stared through soup. What has he been scribbling in his notebook? Was he just wasting her time? She had to keep her anger at bay. 

‘All right,’ she said, and kept her voice even. ‘At Organa House, Friday means pages. Here it can mean evidence of work. That includes ugly paragraphs, an outline with bones, or a list of words to be expanded into paragraphs. Which of those do you have?’

His mouth tipped in a shape that was not a smile. ‘I have intentions.'

‘That is not on the menu,’ she answered her voice clipped, and slid her notebook toward him, clean page waiting. ‘Pick one.’

He looked at the page as if he didn’t know how to hold a pen anymore. ‘I tried the opening a dozen ways. Every version sounded like spectacle or apology.’ He rubbed his thumb along the grain of the table.

‘Then we do not aim for a first paragraph,’ Rey said. He did not move. For a long thirty seconds he looked everywhere but at the paper.

‘I can hear the voices,’ he said finally, very quietly as if he was a man at an interrogation table. ‘What they will call me if I miss when I write under my own name for the first time.’ 

Rey let a beat pass, then let her anger and disappointment choose pragmatism over pity and sympathy. ‘Well, there won’t be anything to comment on if there is no text.’ He looked up at her a little startled by her coldness. He had expected a little more sympathy. She shrugged. ‘A deadline is a deadline.’

‘One more week.’ He asked. 

‘Tuesday,’ she said, already turning for the door. ‘Not a day more.’

——

The truce had split cleanly and left ice behind. By Sunday morning, the air between them had the careful chill of a museum that said do not touch. They ate in the refectory like strangers, Rey with her soup and a book she did not turn, Ben with his notebook open and pen untouched, and his eyes somewhere beyond the window. They passed in doorways and under the dome in a silence that sounded like restraint trying not to become anger.

On Sunday morning Maz found Rey over bread and jam and set a hand, warm and practical, on her shoulder. ‘Let Geno take you down to town today,’ she said, as if proposing a proven remedy. ‘There is a market and a lake. A new scenery and social interaction will do you good. It will be better for you than mopping around waiting for the sound of pen on paper.’

Rey worried her lower lip and tried to keep her eyes on the steam rising from her cup. What needled her was not just the silence upstairs. Leia’s email from Friday sat in her inbox like a stone: Status by close of day. Any worries to report? Rey had written and deleted three drafts of a reply, none of which could make ‘no pages’ sound like an appropriate answer.

‘I’m fine,’ she lied, and Maz’s look said she had not fooled anyone.

‘Go and look at something that is not his face or your inbox. Geno can drive.’

Across the room, Geno stacked clean glasses, glanced over, and lifted the smallest of nods as if he had been volunteered before and did not mind it.

Rey folded her napkin and tried to imagine a town where no one asked for a status by close of business. ‘Two hours,’ she said, already calculating what she could send Leia that would be honest and would not pour gasoline on anything. ‘Maybe three.  I’ll be downstairs in twenty.’ 

Geno, dressed in a plaid shirt and plaid jacket over it, with tweed pants, waited for her by the service desk. He twirled his keyring on his finger and had a hint of peach fuzz and rosy cheeks that made him look quite cute. He beamed at her when he noticed her. ‘Ready to go?’ 

She sighed involuntarily and felt a pang of guilt for her lack of enthusiasm. He chuckled and pushed the doors for them.

‘Is my company this unappealing?’ he teased.

She groaned, feeling embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so anxious about the work and deadlines. I’m not even sure I’m allowed to talk to you about this.’

He patted her on the back and opened the car door for her. ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll just do my best to keep your mind off this stuff for a few hours.’

As the car door closed, she glanced up at the workspace and swear she saw a lone silhouette staring at her. The tension in the air grew thicker, sending shivers down her spine.

‘Are you cold? It’ll take a while for the car to heat up, but there are blankets in the back,’ Geno said as he started the engine.

‘No, I’m fine. Let’s just get going. I can’t wait to see the lake!’ she replied, hoping her voice sounded more enthusiastic than it actually was. 

By the time they came back up the mountain, the skies was a beautiful pink and violet bouquet. Geno parked by the shed and carried a paper bag like a trophy, it smelled indecently of butter and sugar. He wished her a good evening with the ease of a man who was used to play touristic guide with the guests at the observatory.

The dinner table was already set, and Ben was already at the long table by the window, with no notebook this time, and a spoon untouched in the bowl. An air of foreboding hung in the air, and Rey felt a strange sense of misplaced guilt. She had somehow left her anger at the lake. Maz ladled Rey a portion and slid the basket of bread toward her, and Rey took the chair opposite Ben because it seemed foolish to pretend there were other choices.

Ben looked up at once. His eyes flicked to the paper bag Geno set on the counter for tomorrow’s breakfast, then back to Rey, then down to his spoon as if he had to remember how that particular tool was meant to work.

‘Where were you,’ he asked, and he did not add a question mark to the sentence. It arrived like a report he felt entitled to.

Rey set her napkin in her lap to give her hands something to do. ‘Maz sent me to the town,’ she said in the same tone she used to tell him what time the panels had iced. 

His jaw eased and tightened once, the briefest acknowledgment that he knew she wasn’t speaking the full truth, but let it slide. ‘You took the sat phone.’

‘I did,’ Rey said. ‘Leia wrote on Friday. I sent her a plan.’ She tore a piece of bread and placed it beside her bowl. ‘You will meet Tuesday’s deadline.’

His gaze came back to her and stayed there. ‘You are very sure of that.’

‘I am sure of what I require,’ she said. ‘And of what you promised.’

He flinched in a way that would have looked like annoyance in anyone else. ‘I did write.’

‘I am glad.’ She took a spoon of stew and felt the heat settle under her ribs. ‘You will show me tomorrow.’

They finished in a quiet that did not feel punitive. Maz brought the cinnamon rolls from the bag and set them under a towel for morning. When they stood to leave, Ben paused by Rey’s chair. ‘You should tell me when you go,’ he said, and the words came out more pleading than possessive. ‘Not because you owe me a report, but because we’re out here together.’

Rey felt the impulse to make a joke and let it pass. ‘Then I will write it on KEEPER and on the board,’ she said. ‘That way the entire building is informed.’

He nodded and made a small concession to humor. ‘The building is less likely to judge my progress.’

‘The building has better manners,’ she said, and the glance they exchanged had warmth in it again, thin as thread and just as strong.

They stepped into the corridor together. The lights dimmed a notch, polite as always. 

——

Tuesday after breakfast, in the workspace, across from her, Ben closed his laptop and reached into his bag.

He did not offer a file name on a screen. He set down a stack of printed pages clipped at the top, the paper still faintly warm. The first sheet carried a title in plain type: provisional title :THE SILENCE MACHINE, and an epigraph beneath it: Quiet isn’t free.

Chapter Text

‘I brought pages,’ he said, and the words landed as both a statement and a small, private victory.

Rey slid the stack to her side and took a breath she did not realize she had been holding. She read the first paragraph there at the table because some things should be heard in the room that made them. 

When you are a child, grandeur comes preloaded: every map looks like destiny, every loud adult sounds like truth, and the first person who names your hunger convinces you they can feed it forever… I believed the people who told me I could move the world if I signed where they pointed; I learned, late and at cost, what the world looked like from the other side of that signature. This book is about that correction, the turn from worship to witness, from being used by a machine to naming how it works.

Rey read the paragraph again and felt the floor tilt, of course it was autobiographical. When she looked up, her eyes were wider than she meant them to be.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked, keeping her voice low so it wouldn’t echo in the vast room. ‘About telling it this way.’

‘I thought about not doing it for a long time,’ he said. ‘But this is the only way it would make most sense. Someone has to light the way under the stage and name who’s moving the scenery. If I can do it, I should.’

She watched the line of his mouth, the part of him that always gave away more than his words. ‘It won’t be easy, and it’ll also shed light on your decisions.’ She thought back to the conversation they had on their first day here. 

‘Yes. But I am ready to face consequences for my actions.’

‘Why not keep the pseudonym?’

‘Let the past stay in the past. It’s time to move on and leave it all behind.’

Rey hesitated, and then voiced her thoughts. ‘Does that include Luke?’ 

He went very still, and for a moment she wished she could gather the words back and swallow them, but then he nodded. He opened his mouth to speak when the alarm started as a steady beep from KEEPER, then the lights snapped to emergency mode. The lights dropped a note and kept dropping.

Maz came in at a fast walk, already zipping her jacket. ‘That’s a fuel line freeze. Geno, with me. Rey, Ben, grab the emergency bin by the stair and take it to the common room. We’ll shut the generator down before it tears itself apart.’

Geno appeared with a tool roll under his arm. He tossed Rey two headlamps and handed Ben a bundle of wool blankets. ‘Common room has the woodstove. Get the fire going. If we’re longer than twenty minutes, consider rationing the heat.’

They split without more talk. In the common room the stove waited cold. Rey knelt, opened the draft, and stacked kindling from the bin. Ben struck a match, held it until the kindling caught, then added two splits and watched the flames take. The room was already cooling, their breath showed.

The radio on the counter crackled with Maz’s voice. ‘Shutting down in three, two, one.’ The generator went quiet. The silence that followed was not pleasant.

Rey filled the kettle from a jug, set it on the stove’s trivet, and checked the bin again. There were lanterns, spare batteries, a first-aid kit, and a tin of hand warmers. Ten minutes in, the stove started to do its job. Small heat, steady heat. The emergency lights stayed on, dim and red. Wind pressed against the windows loud and heavy. The radio came back.

‘Line is thawing,’ Maz reported. ‘We’ll bleed and restart after it clears. Stay put. How’s the stove?’

‘It’s catching,’ Rey replied. ‘Heat is building and we have water on.’

‘Copy. We’re fine out here,’ Maz said, and cut the channel.

They pulled two chairs near the stove, tossed a blanket across their knees, and watched the fire settle into a clean burn. Close was warmer. Close made it hard to pretend they were still angry.

‘You asked about Luke,’ Ben said, eyes on the stove door. ‘You should hear the whole thing.’

‘Go on,’ Rey said, looking at him.

‘I wrote an essay about the university’s money,’ he said. ‘Not theory. I documented how a donor fund redirected a department’s hiring, how adjuncts were kept under the benefits threshold, and how a lab padded results to keep a grant. I used two sources that weren’t protected well enough. I also swapped a source’s wording for a stinkier line. That was wrong. Luke saw a late draft. He sent a confidential memo to the journal’s board asking them to hold the piece until I fixed the sourcing and attribution, and until the grad student who spoke to me couldn’t be identified. He copied only the editor.’

‘How did you see the memo?’ Rey asked.

‘An industry contact forwarded it,’ Ben said. ‘They wanted me to see it.’

Rey studied his face. ‘From the First Order group?'

He didn’t answer right away, but he gave a faint nod eventually.

‘Did Luke know it was shown to you?’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘As far as I know, he probably still doesn’t.’ He fed one more split to the fire, then sat back. ‘Then he taught a seminar on research ethics. He used an anonymized case that was my draft with the details shaved off. He left one thing in he thought was general, but it was something about my father, and the room connected the rest. I sat there and learned my work as a lesson with my name sanded out but still visible. After class he told me the lesson would save more harm than it caused. He wasn’t wrong, but I needed him to see it from my point of view.’

Rey nodded once. 

‘But the hardest part was the fellowship,’ Ben said. ‘I was up for a junior research fellowship at the university. Luke sat on the advisory committee as a non-voting member because of the family connection. He said the committee should consider deferring me a year because of my age and because there were unresolved ethics questions from that early essay. He didn’t really name me, but everyone knew. Then he left the room.’

‘What happened next?’ Rey asked.

‘They declined me,’ he said. ‘The minutes leaked, just enough to make it sound like a famous professor had shut a door on his own nephew.’

Rey held his gaze. ‘So he followed policy on paper and still hurt you in practice.’

‘That’s how it felt,” Ben said. “He’ll say he protected the process. I heard, ‘Not ready, not trusted,’ from the one person who was supposed to know the difference between protecting me and sidelining me.’

The kettle began to whisper. Rey poured hot water over tea bags in two mugs and passed him one. ‘Thank you for saying it this plainly,’ she said. ‘I can see that he tried to protect people and hurt you in how he did it. I can also see that FO used his memo to wedge you away from him.’

‘I let them,’ Ben said. ‘I took their deal and wrote under a name that could take the hits. I told myself I was telling the truth about academia, and sometimes I was, but I was also swinging at him.’

Rey took a sip. The tea was too hot, but the heat steadied her. ‘Luke found me on scholarship,’ she said. ‘I owe him a lot. He was the first adult who treated me like a mind.’

Her hand trembled against the mug. Ben covered her fingers with his, not hesitantly, but firmly. The cup ceased trembling. He didn’t pull away, and she didn’t ask him to. A warm flush spread across her cheeks, and she wondered if she was becoming delirious as she continued her confession.

‘My parents were too young,’ she said. ‘We moved a lot.. couches, motels, caravans. School changed every few months. When it got hard, they left me with my great-aunt. Paula tried, but she was old and sick, and some days she made it clear I was one job too many.’ Rey set the cup on the hearth tile, but his hand stayed a second longer on hers, warm and steady. ‘I worked nights, took morning classes, lived in libraries, and told myself it would add up. It did, eventually.’

Ben’s thumb pressed once at the base of her knuckles, a small answer she felt all the way up her arm. ‘Luke eventually noticed my work and took me under his wing,’ she said. ‘He was more than a mentor; he was a father figure. He talked to me. He saw me. That was new.’

Ben shifted his chair an inch closer, enough that his knee brushed hers under the blanket. The contact felt both ordinary and impossible. ‘For what it’s worth,’ he said, voice low, ‘I noticed you. There was never a version where I didn’t, even if you hadn’t knocked the door off its hinges the day you arrived.’

He kept her hand a moment longer, and when he finally let go, the space he left was as clear as the warmth he had given. They sat close, sharing the blanket and the heat from the stove, and neither of them reached for the radio even when it crackled.

Geno’s voice broke in, brisk and a little breathless. ‘Fuel line has thawed, we’re starting the bleeding.’ There was a pause, a cough of sound from somewhere deep in the building, and then the generator caught. The emergency lights brightened a notch. Low heat from the baseboards crept back in.

Maz came over the radio again. ‘We’re good. Keep the stove going for an hour to help the rooms recover. I’ll come up and check the panel.’

They stayed where they were, not because they had to anymore, but because neither of them was finished with the warmth. 

Maz came in with snow on her shoulders and shook it off by the door. She checked the stove, approved the flame with a short nod, and looked between them. ‘All right here?’

‘We are,’ Rey said.

‘Good,’ Maz replied and then headed back down the hall. The building sounded normal again.

Ben finished his tea and set the mug on the hearth tile. He reached for her hand again, just long enough to press his palm to hers, and then let go. The small touch felt like agreement. They banked the fire, checked the latch on the window, and walked the corridor together. At the turn for their rooms they stopped, close enough that she could see the tired in his eyes.

‘If the power drops again, I’ll find you,’ he said.

—

The next two weeks were steady. Ben arrived at the long table by nine-thirty every morning. He opened his laptop, checked his outline, and started typing. He paused to read a sentence aloud when it sounded wrong. He deleted lines without arguing when Rey pointed to a problem. He took short breaks at the same times each day, went on long walks when the weather allowed, even did the night rounds with Maz a few times. Rey kept her notebook, the sat phone, and a calendar beside her. She logged what he handed over, marked questions in the margins, and held the schedule.

Most afternoons at five, Rey sent a full document to Leia and Holdo. She attached the revised chapter and a short cover note that explained what had changed and which documents supported the claims. She wrote clearly and did not promise more than they had. Each evening during their sat window, the replies came back.

Holdo’s emails were direct. She asked for more info, pointed out lines that sounded like performance and asked for plain language instead, and Ben read her notes without defensiveness. He made the changes.

Leia’s emails combined edits and a check-in. She said the opening worked and and requested a more detailed exploration of the emotional outlook of the book. She ended with a question that had nothing to do with the text. She asked if they were sleeping well out there. She asked if they were eating good. She asked if the building felt safe with the storm. 

On the tenth day Leia sent her most personal line yet. ‘He sounds like himself again,’ she wrote. ‘Tell him I am proud.’ Rey did not forward the email. She waited until dinner and told him at the table. ‘Leia says the latest chapter is strong,’ she said. ‘She says you sound like yourself. She asked me to tell you she is proud.’ Ben put down his fork. He did not hide his reaction. His eyes went bright and then steady. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He finished eating. He did not speak for a few minutes, before asking her if maybe she’d join him on a walk that evening. 

Their days held small changes that mattered. Ben stayed in his chair when Rey’s notes were strict instead of storming off and leaving the room. Rey began to notice quiet habits. He made her tea at four without asking which tin to use. He had seen which one she chose. She saved him the end of the bread because he liked the crust. He noticed that she tied her hair up when she needed to concentrate and left it down when she was tired, and knew when to cut the day short. She noticed that he rubbed the base of his thumb when he was about to cut a paragraph he had defended.

The eleventh day brought heavier weather and a short road closure. Maz checked the pantry and said they were fine. Geno checked the fuel and said the generator would hold. They all ate together that night. The talk at the table stayed simple. Rey watched Ben listen and be part of the conversation. He did not drift away. He stayed in the conversation and added a short comment when it fit.

On the twelfth day Leia asked one more personal question. ‘Are you all right,’ she wrote to Rey. Rey thought before she answered. She wrote, ‘I am all right. The work is hard but it makes sense. He is keeping his promises. I am keeping mine.’ She sent the email and put the sat phone back on the table.

On the thirteenth day, their routine held. Ben handed Rey a revised chapter at nine-thirty. She marked three questions and one cut. They worked through lunch because the chapter needed it. Maz brought stew to the workspace and set the bowls on the table. Rey and Ben ate and kept their pages in reach. In the afternoon, Pilot stole Ben’s pen and hid it in the kitchenette. Ben looked startled and then laughed. The laugh sounded like a release rather than a defense. Rey laughed too. That evening the common room was warm. The day had been long, but it had been good. Rey made tea and carried two mugs to the couch. Ben closed his laptop and took one.

‘I want to ask something that is not about edits,’ she said. ‘You can pass.’

‘Ask,’ she said.

‘About your relationship with your mother.’

He looked at the rim of his mug and took the time to answer. ‘She was new to the job when she met my father. She had just taken the company from her stepfather. She was learning budgets, contracts, and which doors would open if she pushed and which would not. Luke came back from a field trip talking about a man who could hold a room just by naming a bird. He said the man wasn’t a scientist, but he had a way of watching that made people want to look too. Luke thought there was a book in him and brought him to the House.’

‘Your father,’ Rey said.

‘Han,’ Ben replied. ‘He was a wildlife amateur with stories from rivers and deserts. He could talk for hours about tracking, about patience, about sleeping in bad weather and finding a way through maze-like forests without a compass. Leia met him with a stack of contracts and a pen. He made her laugh. He said he didn’t trust rooms without windows. She said she didn’t trust men who didn’t read what they signed. They liked each other immediately.’

Ben’s voice was even, but she could clearly hear the care in each line. ‘Luke handled the pitch and Leia handled the deal. Han got a small advance and suddenly there was a series. He recorded a podcast in a spare studio and it did better than anyone guessed. He was charming in a way that didn’t feel rehearsed. He loved the attention and hated the schedule. She loved the order and hated the chaos. They tried to meet in the middle.’

‘Did it work?’ Rey asked.

‘For a while,’ he said. ‘They were good at the parts that looked like scenes. Launches. Panels. Dinners where everyone wanted a photo. At home it was different. She had calls late into the night. He would leave for a shoot that wasn’t on the calendar. He would come back with a story and expect it to make up for the missed thing. Sometimes it almost did.’

He set the mug down and folded his hands. ‘They had me and tried to make the differences smaller. They did not get mean. They did not throw things. They just kept choosing the lives they had before they met. She chose the company because it needed her. He chose the road because it made him feel like himself. It still left me in the middle.’

‘Who raised you most of the time,’ Rey asked.

‘Whoever was free,’ he said. ‘Leia when she could be home, Luke when she could not, a set of kind employees from the House who let me sleep on a couch under their desks when a sitter canceled, Trip or Arto mostly when no one else could get to me. Han was around in bursts. He was very good with me when he was there. He taught me to make a fire in a tin tray on a balcony using my crayons. He said a boy should know how to survive with what he had on hand. Then he would be gone again.’

Rey felt the shape of that answer in her own body. ‘That sounds lonely.’

‘It was,’ he said. They understood each other. ‘I made it worse when I signed with the First Order under a pseudonym.’ He sat a little straighter, as if he wanted the record to be clear. ‘I used the name Kylo Ren. I told myself it was only about the work. I told myself I needed a place where no one looked at me as Leia’s son or Luke’s nephew. I also wanted to hurt Luke, and I convinced myself that made sense. I did not tell her before I signed. She found out when an excerpt went live and a junior publicist flagged the cadence and the themes.’

He looked at the table for a moment and then back at her. ‘She called me into her office herself, bypassing the usual text left by Kaydel, her assistant. She asked me once, directly, if the work was mine. I said yes. She asked why I had not come to her. I said she would have tried to stop me. She said she would have tried to protect me. I said I did not want protection. I said it like a wall, defenses drawn against her, and that was the worst part.’

‘What did she do,’ Rey asked.

‘She took off her glasses and set them on the desk,’ he said describing the scene. ‘She said, ‘You are my son. I will not fight you in public but I will not defend this in private.’ She told me the door would be open if I wanted to bring the work to her on terms that did not ask her to lie. Then she ended the meeting. She did not shout. She did not plead. She was clear, and I walked out anyway.’

He rubbed his thumb once against his palm. ‘I knew I had broken something. I did not go back for a long time. When the First Order pushed me to escalate, I escalated. When they rewarded me for noise, I got louder. We send short messages around the holidays, but we did not talk about the work again until I called her to say I was leaving.’

Rey held his gaze. ‘You hurt her,’ she said. ‘You also kept hurting yourself.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Both are true. I cannot ask her to pretend this did not happen. I can write a book I can stand behind and stop asking her to carry the cost of my choices.

Rey nodded and squeezed his hand. They stayed like that for another few seconds, hands together on the table, and then left the room when the light dimmed. At the doors to their rooms, he paused and waited for her to go in first before closing his door. She felt seen. She slept well that night. He wrote two clean pages before he turned off his light. The work felt like it belonged to both of them, and the shape of something personal began to take form without pushing the work aside.

Chapter Text

Rey and Ben took the path that started behind the shed and slipped into the trees. The air was cold, and the ground held a thin crust of old snow that broke under their boots with a quiet crackle. A small stream moved along the edge of the trail and made a steady sound.

Rey walked with her hands in her pockets and let her shoulders loose. She had spent all morning at the table and her eyes felt tight. The woods gave them both a change of scenery and fresh air. Ben matched her pace without effort. He kept his hat down and his scarf high. When the wind reached them through the trees he shifted a little closer so she could share the shelter of his coat.

They reached a break in the trees where the ground opened into a small clearing. A fallen log sat at the edge like a bench. The stream widened there and caught the light. They stepped off the path and stood together in the space. The observatory sat behind them, quiet and out of sight. The world felt simple: cold air, their breath, the sound of water, the rhythm of their steps still in their bodies.

Ben took off his glove and flexed his fingers. She followed his action, pulling one glove off and rubbing her hands together. He watched her a second longer than the action required. She felt it and did not look away.

A gust moved through the clearing and lifted a few dry leaves. Rey shivered and stepped closer without thinking. He lifted a hand and touched the edge of her scarf to tuck it under her coat. His fingers were warm from the ungloved hand. He did the small task with care. She held still and watched his face. His attention was on the scarf and then on her mouth and then on her eyes. She felt a slow pull under her ribs that had nothing to do with the cold.

‘Rey,’ he said. He said her name like he wanted to check that this was welcome.

‘Yes,’ she said. She heard how plain it sounded and was glad for it.

He lifted his hand to her cheek, his palm was warm and she leaned into it. He did not rush, he just lowered his head and stopped just short. She could count the space between them: It was small and deliberate. She closed it by half and then waited and he closed the rest. The first touch was light, it was not a test, it was a yes. She exhaled against his mouth and felt him answer. He kept it gentle. He did not take more than she gave. She lifted her hand and held the side of his neck.

They broke apart at the same time. No one jumped back. No one joked. They stood close and looked at each other.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, his voice a little rough.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Are you?’

‘I am,’ he said.

She smiled. It felt new in her face and easy to hold. He smiled back and it was beautiful, boyish, and adorable. ‘We should walk a little more,’ she said. ‘If we stay still I will start thinking and I do not want to do that yet.’

They moved back to the trail. Their arms brushed now and then. He did not try to hold her hand. She did not ask him to. The contact from the clearing stayed with them and warmed the space between their bodies.

‘Tell me one thing you want when this book is done,’ she said. ‘Not about sales. About you.’

‘I want to sit at a table with my mother and not prepare for an argument,’ he said. ‘I want to take a trip that is not hiding.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I want to cook for you, or take you out.’

She laughed, her cheeks red and not from the cold. ‘I would love that.’

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘I want to stop bracing for the next problem,’ she said. ‘I want a job where my name is on the spine at least once, even if it is small. I want to choose a place to live and stay long enough to know my neighbors. I want to see you finish and keep the part of yourself that is careful and kind.’

He listened. ‘I can try for the last one,’ he said. 

They reached the end of the loop and turned back toward the observatory. The building came into view through the trees. Smoke rose from the chimney in a thin line. The sat phone buzzed in Rey’s pocket.

‘Rey,’ she answered.

Arto didn’t waste any time. 'Listen carefully. The First Order has apparently been made aware of the book and is launching a campaign against it. First, they intend to send a defamation threat to intimidate printers and distributors. There’s also an ‘ethics complaint’ to the Editors’ Guild, which is being circulated. Additionally, there also might be a press package claiming that the manuscript relies on stolen internal data and that you tampered with evidence.'

Rey stopped walking. Ben was already watching her face.

'We just intercepted a ‘request for comment’ to your work inbox from Culture Signal,' Arto continued. 'They’re alleging Organa House used improperly obtained performance decks and that a junior editor ‘managed the leak.’ They attached blurred screenshots of emails and texts and say they’re your edits to ‘shape testimony.’ The Ledger is drafting a companion piece about a ‘pattern of manipulation’ tied to the seminar chapter.'

Rey put the phone on speaker.

'What do you need us to do,' Ben asked.

'Step one,' Arto said. 'Rey, forward every press email to Leia and Holdo now. Do not reply, do not correct, forward and archive. Step two: lock your sat window. No personal calls, no social. All comms route through me. Step three: if the observatory line rings, you read the holding statement and hang up: ‘Organa House confirms Mr. Solo is at work on a nonfiction project. We do not comment on rumor, anonymous claims, or ongoing legal matters. Please direct inquiries to Organa House Communications.’ Nothing else.'

Ben’s jaw set. Rey kept her voice even. 'How did they get any screenshots?’

'Partial breach,' Arto said. 'Scrape of old cloud backups from Ben’s previous device, pre-Organa House, and a lobby corridor still. Nothing from our secure drive. Legal has sent hold notices to the sites hosting the images. There are worries that they might name you, Rey, as the one who helped with the leak.’

'They don’t get to drag her,' Ben said quietly. 'I’ll post a statement.'

'Absolutely not,' Arto cut in. 'You speak now, you feed their frame. You protect her by finishing the book and letting us run the shield. There will be a time to speak. Not today.'

'What about our authors?’ Rey asked. 'Poe will be furious.'

'Comms is emailing our list in ten minutes,' Arto said. 'They route odd traffic to us and do not amplify. Legal is pre-clearing two printers to blunt the hits. We’ve also filed platform notices on the doctored screenshots already circulating.’ A beat of silence and the. 'Ben, just keep writing.'

'We’re going back to work now,' Rey said.

The call ended. They ran for the door. Cold air scraped Rey’s throat. Ben reached the handle first and pulled it open. Maz was already in the vestibule with her keys and the building log.

‘Arto called me,’ she said. ‘We’re on red, phones to Arto only. Geno has sent a memo to block the road and report suspicious activities. Staff on hand has been briefed, so one answers the landline.' 

Rey nodded. ‘I’ll forward the emails to Leia and Holdo and start the log.’ 

Maz looked at Ben. ‘You sit down and you write, that is the part only you can do.’

'I will,' he said.

They moved as a unit. Rey went to the workspace, opened the sat window, and forwarded the Culture Signal email without comment. She archived it, then checked her personal account and took screenshots of anything new without opening the messages. Her hands shook once; she set the pencil down until it passed.

Ben stood at the table with his laptop open. He watched her for one breath, then reached over and closed his hand around hers. The touch steadied her. He let go and sat.

'Are you all right?’ he asked.

'I am,' she said. 'Are you?’

'I’m angry,' he said. 'I’m also going to give you the finished book by the end of the week.'

'Good,' she said. 'Leia and Arto will handle the rest.'

Maz dimmed the outer lights and shut the interior doors. The observatory went quiet. The sat phone lay face down between them, waiting for Arto’s next call. Ben put his fingers on the keys and began to type. Rey opened her notebook for the day’s work. The sound of him writing was steady. It helped.

The sat phone rang during the evening window. Rey set it on the table between them and hit speaker.

'Any news, Arto?' she asked.

'This is not Arto,' a woman’s voice said.

'Leia,' Rey said.

'I wanted to speak to both of you,' Leia replied. 'Arto is handling press traffic and legal intake. I’ll keep this brief and clear.'

'We’re here,' Rey said. 'You’re on speaker.'

'Good. This is an update and welfare check,' Leia said. 'Legal has sent letters to Culture Signal and The Ledger outlining our standards for anonymous sourcing and requiring verifiable facts for any reference to internal relationships. Communications has issued a holding statement to all inquiries: Ben is at work on a nonfiction project; we don’t comment on rumor or ongoing legal matters; all questions go through our office. Our authors have been told not to engage online and to forward anything unusual.'

Ben folded his hands and leaned toward the phone. 'Are they naming Rey yet?'

'Not in print,' Leia said. 'Only in emails to reporters and in private messages we’ve captured. We’ve prepared a background memo on Rey’s role and reporting chain. It lists dates, job descriptions, and relevant NDA language. If a serious outlet asks, we’ll share that off the record.’

'Thank you,' Rey said. Her voice came out tight. She took a breath. 'Thank you.'

'Rey, I know this feels personal,' Leia said. 'It’s designed to feel personal. You are not alone. You’re doing your job well. You have our full support. If anyone contacts you directly, you forward to Arto and stop there. You are not required to manage this. That is our job.' A beat. 'Do either of you need anything specific right now?'

'No,' Rey said. 'We have what we need.'

'Dinner is handled,' Maz called from the doorway, catching the tail of the call. 'They have time to eat.'

'You heard Maz,' Leia said, and Rey could hear the faint smile. 'Eat, sleep, and send me the next packet when it’s ready. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.'

The line clicked off.

Rey set the phone down and let out a slow breath. Ben watched her.

'She’s steady,' Rey said.

'She is,' he agreed. 'It helps.'

They went to the refectory. Dinner was already on the table, Sandra had made soup and a simple salad. Geno poured water and asked if they needed anything else. Rey said they were fine. Ben thanked him. They ate without rushing. No one brought up the emails. The room felt normal in a way they both needed.

After dinner, Rey forwarded two more inquiries to Arto. Ben added a paragraph to a section they had flagged earlier and saved the file. When the window closed, Rey powered down the sat phone and locked it in the drawer.

The building had settled for the night. Ben carried two mugs of mint tea to the common room and found Rey on the couch with a small radio, blanket folded beside her. She looked up when he came in and made space for him without speaking.

‘Tea,’ he said. ‘No caffeine.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. She took the mug and wrapped her hands around it. ‘I found this old thing in the drawer’ 

Ben turned it on and it squeaked before settling on a local station playing older songs. A slow track started, the kind that fills a room with nostalgia. Rey took a sip and set her mug on the table. Ben did the same. Neither of them moved for a few seconds.

‘Do you want to dance,’ she asked. Her voice was calm. She did not rush the question.

He surprised himself by smiling. ‘I do,’ he said.

They stood. She stepped forward. He met her halfway. He put one hand at her waist and took her other hand in his. She rested her free hand on his shoulder. They began to move in a slow, steady sway. He kept the hold light and checked her face more than once. She held his gaze and kept her steps small so they would not bump the table.

He smelled like clean soap and a little of the laundry powder Maz used. His palm was warm against her back. She let her forehead come close to his cheek and listened to his breathing settle. He matched her rhythm without trying to lead in a showy way. He was careful and present. The song changed. They did not stop.

‘I like this.’ He said.

Her mouth tilted at the honesty. ‘I do too.’

They danced through a second song. The clock on the wall moved to the next minute. No one came in. No one needed anything. He shifted his hand an inch higher on her back and traced a small shape of comfort there. She let out a breath she had been holding for more of the day than she realized. He felt it through her and eased her closer by a fraction. She went.

‘Can I kiss you?’ he asked.

‘Yes’.

He lifted his hand to her face and held her jaw gently. He lowered his head and kissed her once, soft and sure. She kissed him back. He pulled back enough to see her eyes and waited. She nodded. He kissed her again, longer this time. Her hand tightened on his shoulder. He made a quiet sound in his throat and deepened the kiss by a small step. When he drew back, her cheeks were warm and his were too.

‘That was good,’ she said.

‘That was very good,’ he said.

They went back to the couch. He unfolded the blanket. She sat close enough that their knees touched. He covered their legs and left the rest of the space open. She leaned her shoulder against his chest. He let his arm rest along the back of the couch and then settled it around her when she made it clear that was welcome. She felt his heartbeat under her ear, it calmed her nerves.

They finished their tea. The radio played another slow song. The heat from the radiator clicked once and held. She shifted and lay back against the couch, still in the circle of his arm. He adjusted the blanket and made sure her feet were covered.

He did not move for a long time. She felt his fingers trace a calm pattern on her forearm, nothing suggestive, just contact. Her breathing slowed. The worries from the day did not vanish, but they moved to the side. She closed her eyes. He watched her face relax. When her breaths turned even, he watched for another minute to make sure she was truly asleep. He brushed his knuckles along her sleeve and spoke quietly.

‘I’m going to take you to your room,’ he said. ‘You’ll be more comfortable there.’

Her eyes opened a fraction. She looked at him, still soft with sleep, and gave a small nod. ‘Okay’ she whispered, and closed them again.

He slid one arm under her knees and the other behind her back. She was warm and limp with trust. He rose slowly so he would not jostle her. The blanket slipped, he caught it and tucked it around her shoulders. She settled against his chest with a small sigh.

The corridor was quiet. He walked at an even pace, and nudged her door open with his shoulder. Inside, he set her down on the bed with care and eased the blanket up to her collarbone. He took off her shoes, lined them neatly by the wall, and folded her sweater over the chair.

She blinked awake for a second. She reached for his hand. He gave it to her. Her fingers curled around his. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll be next door,’ he said. He stood there a moment, letting her grip loosen on its own. When her hand slipped back to the blanket, he set a glass of water on the nightstand.

‘Good night, Rey,’ he said. He bent and kissed her forehead again, slow and sure.

‘Good night, Ben,’ she murmured, not opening her eyes.

He turned off the lamp, and walked back to his room.