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“Do you think we should be worried?”
Poe’s question is unexpected. He shares his worries one afternoon, as he and Rey walk across green fields away from Raddeley House.
Of course, she knows what he is referring to. While Leia’s Home for Orphaned Children had been funded and sponsored by Leia since before Kylo Ren was born, the building and purpose of the orphanage had been property of Mr. Ren since he had come of age.
Rey’s smile steals light from an elusive sun in the last days of Summer, when ungloved hands start to cool on the streets, and children are ushered into homes earlier as daylight fades away faster. Across of them, the fields at nightfall paint a portrait of orange skies and violet silhouettes, and Rey thinks, with a sight so beautiful, how could life be unkind.
“He’s Leia’s son, Poe. There’s no reason why we should be worried.”
:::
The sound of metal clicking against porcelain cuts through the silence in a room with a sudden temperature drop of about five degrees celsius. Leia stirs her tea while Kylo’s is being served on the seat across of her.
“How have you been, Ben?”
There’s displeasure in the cracks of an impassible facade, at the mention of Kylo’s true name —but he’s used to it.
“I have been very well, thank you” he answers, although there’s something brisk about the way he says it.
“Do you intend to stay for Christmas?”
“Absolutely. And possibly Spring.”
The answer surprises Leia, who is used to Kylo’s political affairs keeping him away for long periods of time, and to him visiting Raddeley House only once or twice a year. It also probably shows on her face, because he is quick to ask, “is it an inconvenience, mother?” in a tone that’s dryer than raisins.
“Ben, you are —and always will be— welcome here. You can stay for as long as you wish.”
After that, there’s silence that stretches until seconds age like hours. Leia stirs her untouched tea some more.
:::
“Have you heard of the wonderful news?” Poe says one evening, in the drawing room of Raddeley, while he and Rey are in the company of Leia.
“Our friends from Banmoreshire —Mr Finn and Miss Tico— are finally getting engaged.”
“Really?” Leia says, surprised “I thought Mr. Finn’s family didn’t exactly have a high regard for Miss Rose.”
“Oh they don’t” Rey answers “he was told they would disown him, should he proceed with the engagement.”
“It must have all been a charade, I’m sure.”
“I’m afraid not, Mrs. Solo. And, of course, I won’t argue that their income won’t be an issue, but they are as happy as they have ever been, and I believe that’s all that matters” Rey concludes, beaming.
“What an absurd idea.”
A new voice breaks into the conversation. Everyone turns around to see a tall man standing at the entrance, black hair brushing against a tailored cobalt waistcoat. His back is leaned on the frame of the door, making it clear that he had been standing there for quite some time, unnoticed.
“And why is it so absurd?” Rey questions.
The stranger waves a hand, idly. “The lives of people without resources will inevitably fall apart. It’s easy to live in harmony when everything is alright and there isn’t anything utterly important to overcome. But people change under misfortunes and constant pressure.”
“And yet” Rey counters “I’ve seen many miserable people with pampered lives, and a great deal of troubled families live fairly happy lives. No” she shakes her head, “people are not defined by their external circumstances. We are not defined by the things we can’t control. They do not define our limits —we do.”
Her speech gains the approval of almost everyone in the room —except for the stranger, who glares back at her, terribly unamused and uninspired.
“That is one of the most immature assumptions I have ever—”
“Miss Rey, Mr Dameron, this is my son, Ben Solo” Leia interrupts, because she knows Rey only too well to know when things are starting to boil up. “Or Kylo Ren, as he is known by in the world of politics.”
Poe Dameron opts for the forgiving and forgetting route, because he has a more mindful approach to first impressions. So he gets up, and extends his hand, in the most amicable of fashions.
“Pleased to meet you, I’m Poe Dameron”
But Ben Solo ignores his outstretched hand —ignores Poe altogether— and leaves.
:::
“I think he’s stupid”
They are back at the orphanage, in Rey’s room. Its wooden walls —narrow, humid and filled with cracks from which the cold air of September crawls in— might not seem much compared to the grandiosity of french furniture and chandeliers of Raddeley House, but as an orphan of her time, not having to live and work on the streets or in a tavern means everything to her.
Poe is luckier than her —he wasn’t born an orphan. Through family connections, he fell under Leia’s patronage, and though he too has a room adjacent to Rey’s, he has a true house to go back to when he so wishes. While Rey works as a mistress for the children, it is Poe’s job to make sure that, in Ren’s absence, all of Leia’s wishes and plans for the orphanage are executed: the creation and preservation of a space where orphans can learn, live, and grow up in a safe, comfortable, ethical environment.
Maybe it’s because he is luckier than her that she fails to see what Poe sees in Kylo Ren.
“I think… I think I pity him” she answers.
Poe gives her a questioning glance. Rey leaves her quill on the desk and turns around to look at him.
“He clearly hasn’t been happy in a long, long time, Poe. I doubt he even knows how it feels like anymore.”
:::
“When are you going to tell them?” Leia asks her son, one evening during dinner. This makes Kylo Ren choke on his soup, who wastes no time grabbing his napkin, and some of his lost composure.
“Tell who?” he asks, but Leia can tell he already has an idea of what she is trying to say.
“Mr. Dameron and Miss Rey. About the orphanage.”
A shadow clouds Kylo Ren’s carefully constructed facade, but it may have been due to the unstable flames of the fireplace beside them. Kylo ponders the question carefully before he answers.
“In due time, mother.”
“At least give them some time to adjust” Leia advances.“Mr. Dameron is under my patronage, but Miss Rey-“
“I’ll think of something. I promise.” Kylo intervenes And it’s odd, because this time, he doesn’t carry his usual, condescending, it’s none of your business, you have no right to control my life nuances. It sounds —dare Leia say it— reassuring.
:::
“You’re wasting your time, Miss.”
Rey finds Kylo Ren in the gardens of Raddeley House. He’s in the named ‘forest of the greek gods’, contemplating a statue of Ares, god of war. The figure, made of marble, holds a spear in one hand and a shield in the other, its defiant gaze looking at the deities above him, hidden somewhere beyond the clouds.
Kylo knows why she’s here —and she knows he knows, too. He’d left the party in the middle of a conversation about inheritance. They’d gone on and on about how science in a future will probably find a way to prove that more than just the color of one’s eyes, or hair, are passed on to newer generations, and, well. He’s screwed for life just to think he has to deal with pieces of Han Solo’s psyche until his dying day.
Rey stops at arm’s length. There’s profound determination in the way her eyes gleam, and Kylo is certain it’s going to take the fires of Hell to argue against whatever it is that she has to say.
He inclines his head and bows. Rey curtsies.
“Mr. Solo. You have a family. You have people that care for you-“
“It’s not that simple, Miss Rey” he interrupts icily, but regrets this as soon as the words leave his mouth. He’s heard things about her; the girl whose last name, Jacue, was owed to the name of the street she was abandoned in. An unsavory taste lingers on his mouth; it’s poison that tastes like metal and dust and reminds that there’s a time and place for everything.
“…I just want to understand” she beseeches.
“All that glitters isn’t gold, Miss Rey. You don’t know anything about me —my past, my family.”
She doesn’t respond, but nothing about this gesture feels neutral. It’s boiling water on the edge of the table; a savage fire crackling in the distance burning away last year’s mistakes. Outside of their orbit, goldcrests play with french lilacs and camellias, and for a moment, there is silence while she, too, contemplates the statue of Ares.
“If I knew my parents, maybe I could understand myself better” she reveals. “I’ve felt… forever, that certain parts of who I am just —just don’t add up.”
Kylo looks at her. Her features are all youth and strength, but her words are raw; a wound exposed at risk of infection that reveals the true fighter within.
Her confession is so honest —so brutally unguarded— it takes him by surprise.
“You want to belong, but aren’t sure where” Kylo offers. It’s not a shoulder to lean on when the day weights hard on bodies, or a coat to shelter trembling limbs from the cold winds of November —but it’s all a jaded mind can give, and this leaves him with a certain sense of peace.
He is no stranger to that feeling, either. Han Solo, Leia Organa —they are a part of who he is, no matter how hard he tries to shake it off. But the same light that shines from within them, is nothing but frailty and meekness in Kylo’s hands. A broken candle, unable to guide in the right direction. Never like his parents, never too close to his grandfather. He is the omen of the fable; the shadow of a ghost that’s trapped in limbo.
“I wonder if people would fear me if I had a spear, too” Rey says out of the blue, and there’s something about the way Kylo Ren’s lips curl that could remind of a smile.
Leafs crackle with each movement; they blanket the floor they stand on in assorted yellows, golds and browns, and Kylo wonders why, then, against all reason, does it feel like Spring to him.
:::
News that Kylo Ren will be closing the orphanage arrives a Sunday morning, while Poe and Rey are assembling old history textbooks in the library.
It’s a bucket of iced water, a boat falling down a precipice —the light at the end of the tunnel that will never, ever come.
They decide not to tell the children just yet, but the following days, Rey has trouble trying to concentrate on anything, and nothing anyone can tell her to make her feel better works. Like rain falling down on steep ceilings, nothing they say stays with her.
All her life is contained inside these walls; from the hall where she used to play hide and seek with the youngest mistress in her childhood, to the small room at the end of the first floor where she spent a few detentions for sneaking out to town with Finn. There’s the library, too, where she used to spent most rainy evenings, and still today rescues her on sleepless nights. And the basement, where she tinkers with rare objects and designs toys for the children.
It’s not just the building itself —it’s the only family she has. It’s the little boys and girls that she lives with, and Poe, and what is going to be of the children, and her, once it’s all over and they all have to leave to find their place. And where is she to go? She has no parents, or uncles, or sisters or brothers. There is no future in this world for orphans —or women, other than a way out through marriage.
Well, technically, there is. But a life on the streets isn’t really a life.
:::
“Are you going to marry him?”
Kylo mutters this with a contained voice, but a clenched hand. Outside of their conversation, young girls in beautiful silk gowns dance while more tired people observe the dancing couples from a distance in the company of a friend or two. Handel’s Concerto Grosso No 6 plays in the background while he follows her into the balcony and out of earshot.
Rey turns, brisk and choleric, and what little light creeps in from inside the windows reveals a few strands of hair that are starting to fall out of place.
“What if I am?” she challenges.
“You don’t love him” he defends, because he’s noticed. She doesn’t have that incandescent glow in her eyes when Poe sits with her to discuss unimportant matters, and never stares for long, enraptured, whenever he plays the pianoforte. He’s noticed a lot of other small things, but those are the first that come to mind.
“That is unwarranted. Poe is my closest friend, and he has given me a chance at a future.”
“Where is the person who once believed that we are not defined by the things we can’t control?”
What little composure was left in Rey is gone entirely at the reminder of that conversation. She turns into a ball of fury and he wonders how it is possible to contain so much of an emotion in something so thin and young.
“That person died the moment you decided to close the orphanage!” Rey screeches, and Kylo has to turn his head to check wether she has drawn the attention of others. “Mr. Ren” she spites, the way she formally addresses him sounding like mockery “I have nowhere else to go, there is no other way for either those children, or me.”
“But there could be” Kylo breathes —against his odds and against the unfavorable wind, he does something that makes Rey forget whatever else she has to say.
He slowly gets down on one knee.
The high collar of his shirt is slightly out of position, and his tailcoat billows in the penumbra. The vision slightly matches how he feels inside: restrained, although his heart is thumping furiously, and he isn’t exactly sure why.
“What are you doing?” she manages to say, eyes wide open as though they they might find it easier, this way, to believe what they are seeing.
“Let the past die, Miss Rey. Kill it if you have to. Especially, if it is the only way to become who you were meant to be.”
There is silence for a moment, but it is not the same silence he recalls from their first walk in the gardens of Raddeley House. This silence feels like lightning; silent and deadly, a fraction of a second before the thunder.
“Is that your idea of a proposal?”
Kylo Ren’s lips flatten, and his eyes become embers that blaze fiercely in the darkness, when he glares back at her from his kneeling position. His tone deepens as he asks, with unrepressed disdain:
“How many more are you expecting to receive?”
Rey’s nostrils flare, nails biting into her palms, arms shaking visibly. When she speaks again, it is the voice of an echo —a biting whisper that resonates.
“I couldn’t care less if this is the last chance in all my lifetime. If there is one thing you must learn about me, then let it be this: my life and my love are not an object of charity.”
:::
Rey gets out of bed at the sound of persistent knocking. It’s 6 in the early morning, and she wonders whether she would have heard it had she not been awake at this time. It was a coincidence that someone had chosen this day to knock at such an hour; because today is the day she tells the children they will no longer have a home, Rey has hardly been able to sleep.
She opens the main entrance door, and sees Leia on the other side, with two feet that can’t stay two seconds in the same place, and a sense of urgency unmistakable on her face.
“Miss Rey, I wish to speak to you alone.”
“Mrs. Solo, I was planning to tell the children today—“
“That is precisely what I have come to tell you about, Miss Rey”
“I am so sorry” Rey ushers her in “I know I should have told them earlier. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them until—“
“Miss Rey, will you please let me talk?”
Rey stops fidgeting around, ceases trying to come up with futile excuses that lead to the same road. It’s a reflex maneuver, striking with this sense of impending dread over whatever Leia has to tell her, which is so important that can’t wait for the sun to rise.
“There is no need to tell the children anything. It is Ben Solo— Kylo Ren’s wish that everything regarding the orphanage remain as is.”
Rey’s hand goes to her chest; overcome by a feeling of dizziness so sudden, a fluttery sense of euphoria stretching throughout her abdomen, it’s a miracle she doesn’t faint.
“Are —are you serious?”
“I would never joke about something like this, Miss Rey.” Leia reassures her. “Everything will continue as always, and no one is going anywhere. There is no need to worry any longer.”
“Are you completely sure of what you are saying, Mrs. Solo? Are these Mr. Ren’s orders?”
Something about what Rey says amuses Leia, who first smiles to herself before she smiles back at her. She nods. “I believe Mr. Ren has more pressing matters, now, in London. I’m not entirely sure what he is up to there, to be entirely honest, but word of mouth is, his name was on a list of possible candidates, at Westminster Palace, for parliament.”
Without warning, Rey’s chest starts to ache. Her body, all of a sudden, feels cold, and she wants to blame it on the wintry weather or the shock of seconds ago —but a lie told a thousand times will still remain a lie.
“I don’t know what made him make that decision, but…” Leia adds, with a sparkle in her eyes Rey can’t quite read into, “I’d like to think it has something to do with something I told him a few days ago.”
“Mrs. Solo” Rey calls from behind, because she can’t quite contain herself, and the woman is already turning towards the door. “If you can forgive my boldness —what did you tell him?”
Leia smiles once again, and its warmth permeates across the room and steals away part of the cold of starless December nights.
“To fail without regret. To break walls, and rebuild them them from scratch, if he has to” Leia opens the door, and turns round one last time before she leaves.
“You know, there’s a risk people might call those decisions mistakes, but they never will be mistakes as long as they are made from the heart.”
These words morph into an unfinished song that rings in Rey’s mind —and even after she’s left, there’s remnants of her as Rey stares, absent-mindedly, at the space where she was standing on. Only Poe’s entrance, from the same front door and much much later, manages to drive Rey out of her trance.
When she does wake up from that trance, she becomes a whirlwind of hurried steps and resolution.
“I need a horse.”
:::
Hux was telling Kylo something about the extension of his contract, trying to hand over a stack of papers for him to sign, when an unlikely energetic voice breaks trend among the accustomed whispers at Westminster Palace.
“Please, do not leave Craitfordshire!”
Kylo immediately turns, because, like Thomas the Apostle, he needs to see in order to believe what his ears are hearing.
Rey is standing on the other end of the ridiculously large corridor, and he has to wonder whether these past months have taken a toll on him and he is staring at a hallucination. For a moment, the future ahead of him looks terribly bleak—but everyone else appears to see (and hear) her too.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mr. Ren” Rey insists “please, do not leave Craifordshire. I know I’m probably the last person you want to see, but you have people who care for you there. And perhaps I was wrong all along, after all.”
“Miss Rey, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I’m talking about the orphanage, and everything. You, me —however unconvincing and unlikely that might sound.”
Hux drops the pile of papers he has in his hand, and Kylo, who is all raised eyebrows, for the sake of her, tries hard not to laugh. His ankles touch while he bows his head at her presence, in a very diplomatic manner.
“Miss Rey” he informs, “I’m not leaving Craitfordshire.”
Rey’s mouth falls open. There’s a rise of about three tones in her vocal pitch when she has it in her to speak again.
“You’re not?” she stammers.
“I bought Tielencer House. I plan to settle there a few weeks from now, once the proper refurbishments are made.”
“But… but you’re here. I don’t understand. Isn’t your name up for parliament?” she asks, rubbing her forehead.
“Was, Miss Rey. I’m retiring from politics.”
“Oh.” Rey blurts out, faintly, as everything starts to piece together inside her mind. He can almost pinpoint it; the exact moment where surprise turns to sheer embarrassment. He can tell: from the instant flush on her cheeks, to her entire body freezing in place.
“Oh.”
Kylo Ren smirks. This causes Rey to recover somewhat and react.
“This is not what you think it is, Mr. Ren” she warns him.
“I believe you” Kylo responds. It’s a very curt response, indeed, but his smirk is still intact.
He is so occupied finding the entire scene too amusing and replaying it in his head, he almost misses the part where she turns around and leaves.
“Miss Rey. Miss Rey!” he follows her, past the corridor and out into the street.
She almost doesn’t turn around, but finally obliges, after some persistence on his end.
“Yes?”
Kylo stops at arm’s length. An unusual smile crawls on his face.
“What do you think of a ball, at Tielencer House?”
She rolls her eyes, and turns round again —but he seizes hold of her arm, stopping her from doing so.
It must be something about the snow, falling down on rooftops, snowflakes finding their way to their shoulders and glistening in their hair —something magical about December, or the way she looks at him during these precious moments that they share together, or how the entire world seems to freeze around them when there is only him, Kylo Ren Organa Solo, and Rey of Jacue Street, versus all of their circumstances and everything else that stands between them.
“I know this is not what I think it is” Kylo Ren dares, “but, in the remote possibility that it were— perhaps, this time…” he lets go of her, and bows, “would you do me the honor of saving me the first dance?”
Her smile lights up the entirety of Westminster, and feels like rain forests and starry skies. “You’re asking with too much anticipation, Mr. Ren. When it comes to you and I, I can think of a number of things can happen in two weeks’ time.”
“Quite right” Kylo agrees, arching one eyebrow at her “that leaves you, Miss Rey, with plenty of time to reject another wealthy suitor—and to mope about it soon after.”
Rey lets out a whimpering sound at his jest. “I most certainly do not mope, Mr Ren.”
Kylo Ren then goes into extensive detail on a slightly over-exagerated version of Rey’s marriage refusal, which Rey denies most of, as they walk past hurried citizens and humble shops. Their conversation stretches on for hours until city lamps are lit, and years later, Kylo Ren would still remind Rey of this very conversation: on rainy evenings by the fireplace, at Tielencer House; between movements of a pianoforte sonata or a few chapters of a book, while the rest of the world is sleeping, and they have only each other to keep them company.