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Leia is drinking her coffee when she hears Rey upstairs. It is early, and there is something about snowy mornings where they seem to make the quiet that much heavier, that much more all-consuming. But even if it weren’t snowing, she is still quite sure she’d hear Rey’s muttered “Shit,” because it is the early more than anything else that makes it quiet.
Leia looks up from her crossword puzzle. It had been one quick little syllable, which makes it hard for her to actually determine if this is the sort of shit where she should bestir herself and see what’s wrong, or if she should trust that Rey is an adult capable of resolving her own problems.
She hears a door open, and close. She hears footsteps—heavier than Rey’s—Ben’s awake. “What’s wrong?” Her son’s voice is gravely in the morning. He’s only just woken up. Once, the mere fact of that might have worried Leia. Ben was always the most unpredictable when he was just waking up or just going to bed. But Rey is good for him. He seems a lot more grounded whenever she’s around. It’s one of the things she so likes about the two of them.
“Nothing,” Rey’s reply is breathy.
Ben snorts. “Liar.” Then there’s a pause, “Hey, hey, it’s ok. Hey—” and Leia imagines him pulling Rey into his arms because that’s the tone one uses when the person you’re talking to bursts, unexpectedly, into tears. “Hey,” he says, his voice a little more muffled and she’s sure his face is pressed into Rey’s hair. “Hey.”
“We need to talk.” Yes, Rey’s definitely crying and Leia takes a long slow breath. How many times had Han complained that we need to talk was the worst way to initiate a serious conversation with your significant other? Unless you’re breaking up with me, we don’t need to talk, we should talk, he’d groused on more than one occasion. But of course, that was his Qi’ra baggage, even if he tried to deny it. Leia did her best to be cognizant of it, but sometimes, they needed to talk—usually about Ben, and frequently long after they should have talked.
“Ok,” Ben says. He’s just woken up, Leia thinks nervously. This can only go poorly. She knows what it sounds like when Ben’s trying to be calm.
Footsteps—they’re going back into the bedroom and Leia gets to her feet. If she goes out into the hallway, she’ll be able to hear them, so long as they don’t close the door, and while she doesn’t like to think of herself as an eavesdropper, if Ben’s girlfriend is about to leave him, she needs to be emotionally prepared for the damage he’s going to do to her house.
They don’t close the door all the way, thank goodness and while Leia misses Rey’s opening words, she knows what they must be because Ben’s voice rings through the house like a bell. “You’re pregnant?”
“I was late with my last period,” she says. “So I got a test last night after everyone went to bed. And I took it this morning. And yeah. Pregnant.”
Silence can be so loud sometimes, and Leia’s mind is whirring. Pregnant. Rey’s pregnant.
I’m going to be a grandmother.
If they decide to keep it.
And the reality—the likelihood of the latter not being true can’t quite deflate the way her heart swelled the moment she thought about it. A baby. Her baby having a baby. She’d given up dreams of grandchildren when Ben was fourteen, and not even his having a steady girlfriend had let her change her mind about it.
“So yeah, we need to talk,” Rey mumbles at last.
Ben doesn’t say a word, and Leia can imagine him clearly, sitting there, staring off into space, dazed—like when she’d told Han that she was pregnant. One fun night at the Yub Nub Club and a little bit of carelessness with the condom... Not that she’d ever tell Ben that he’d been an accident. He’d guessed it for years, but she’d go to her grave asserting he hadn’t been.
“You want to keep it,” Ben says at last—a statement, not a question.
“I don’t know. I learned about it five minutes ago.”
“But you want to keep it.” Ben’s saying it so knowingly, as though in his mind he’s been running through everything he’s ever known about Rey, everything he’s ever understood about her and—
“Look,” Rey says a little heatedly, “Yes, I want a family, but I don’t want to be a single mom, ok?” Wait—single mom? Why on earth—
“Which is why we’re talking,” Ben grunts. “Because clearly—” he pauses. Then that comforting, “Hey,” once again. “Talk to me.” He says it so gently that Leia wonders briefly who invaded her son’s body and is talking to his girlfriend like this.
“This was just supposed to be fun,” Rey says. “Right? Like we never talked about anything. Just blowing off steam, right? The most we ever talked about anything was coming here and visiting your mom.”
Oh.
Oh, so that was the way of it, was it? This wasn’t a relationship, this was just fucking around?
Yeah, and look how me and Han turned out, Leia tells herself before she lets herself get too heated. That was supposed to be just fucking around too. Until Han developed feelings and messed everything up.
“Yeah, but—” Ben begins but Rey plows on.
“And I hate the idea that it’s a responsibility you feel you have to take on. You hate shit like that—having expectations you don’t choose set on you—”
She’s right, god knows she’s right, and Ben cuts in with a second, “Yeah, but—” but Rey ignores him.
“And I like spending time with you and I like having you in my life and what if this ruins—”
“Will you shut up for just a second?” Ben growls and silence stretches once again. Or rather—it doesn’t stretch because that’s the sound of a kiss, a long one, a steady one, a deep one. Rey sighs a little bit and Leia wishes in that moment that they’d closed the door more fully. Or that she hadn’t listened in on this conversation and had her illusions that Ben’s girlfriend was actually his girlfriend dashed. Probably the latter. Well I suppose this is what I deserve for eavesdropping.
“Listen,” Ben says and his voice is low, quiet, breathless. “Just let me talk. This whole blowing off steam thing—it was never blowing off steam. Not for me, anyway. And maybe that makes me the asshole because I was too much of a coward to tell you that I’m in love with you, but I am. And I’ll take how you want me and if this was how you wanted me, fine. But don’t think it’s a fucking responsability, or something—me saying I’d want to be there with you. Because I would. I will. For as long as you’ll—”
And Leia gets to her feet, knowing full well that Rey’s cut Ben off with a kiss and that she’s heard just as much as she needs to hear and that she really wouldn’t be surprised if things progress so much farther than she wants to hear. He really is so very like his father.
In fact, she’s going to run to the store and pick up some more eggs. They’re running low. She’ll let them have the house for the next forty-five minutes or so.
***
They don’t tell her they were never dating.
She allows it, if only because when it does come up, years from now, hopefully as a joke, she can respond with an, “Oh, honey, I know that. You think I can’t spot a fuck buddy you’ve grown feelings for when I see one? You are too much your father’s son.”
The Rey’s pregnant phone call comes a month and a half later, along with a Rey and I are moving in together.
“That seems wise,” Leia tells him.
“Yeah,” Ben says. “We’re looking for places now.”
“Still in town?” Leia asks. She knows better than to hope that Ben and Rey will come out and live in the suburbs. Rey more than Ben has friends she’ll want to see who live in the city.
“Yeah,” he says. “But near the rail lines so it’d be easy for you to come visit—if you wanted to.”
Leia pauses. That they’d even consider her when thinking about where to move...well, she’d never expected it. “Of course I’ll want to,” she says, her voice a little thicker than she wants it to be. “You both can’t expect me not to want to visit, can you?”
Ben pauses and she can hear so much in his silence. Did you really care, mom? Did you really want me? I know you care about Rey, and like her, but me?
“Love you,” he mumbles at last.
“I love you too, sweetheart,” she says. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah?” he sounds defensive. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because you’re going to be a father and that’s scary,” she says carefully. Unexpectedly, with the girl you’ve been in love with but all this is new and fast, she does not add.
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. “What if I’m bad at it?” he whispers.
“All parents fuck up their children in some way,” she says. “It’s our curse.” Mon Mothma had told her this about ninety times throughout Ben’s teenaged years. It’s unavoidable.
My parents didn’t fuck me up, though, Leia had replied.
Your hero complex and your incapacity to let anything go—hm. Sounds like you’re compensating for something, had been the tart response over a mimosa.
“We mess up,” she adds. “And then there are ways we don’t. No parent is perfect, like no person is perfect. You’re going to be the best dad your child could have, Ben.”
“And what if that’s not very good?” Ben asks again. “What if I’m…” his voice trails away and she knows what he’s trying not to say.
“You know who I never thought would make a good father?” she asks.
“Who?”
“Your father,” Leia says smoothly. “And don’t get me wrong—there were ways in which he was truly terrible. He was terrible at being a co-parent, in helping around the house, in keeping up with your teachers and school and doctors appointments. But he was good at you , Ben. I didn’t think he had that sort of emotional maturity. I didn’t think he could nurture. But he did.”
“Not his fault I didn’t listen,” Ben says wryly.
“What I’m trying to say is: being a father is different from being a son. It’s different from being a friend. It’s different from being a boyfriend. This is your child.”
“And what if I don’t feel anything at all?” he asks and there it is—the real fear. “What if I look at it and go, this is a brat. I don’t care about it. I hate kids. I didn’t want kids. ”
“I think the fact that you’re afraid of it means you know it’s not true,” she says quietly. “You fear what you are and what you’re capable of, Ben. You always have. You don’t fear the things you’re not.”
He’s silent for a long time after that. She thinks it’s possible he’s just staring out the window, numb and hearing her words again in his ears. Or maybe he’s crying. She doesn’t know. She lets him be silent. You have to stop trying to control him, her shrink had told her when he was in college and turning into everything she’d dreaded. You’ll only make it worse if you deny his agency to be a person. Because he is one. He’s not an extension of or a reflection of you. Love him or don’t. But see him, and let him be who he is.
“Rey’s getting here,” he says at last. “I should go make dinner.”
“We’ll talk more soon,” Leia replies.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“Love you too, mom.”
***
“He must love you a lot,” Leia laughs to Rey as she drinks some of the punch.
The tiny apartment is full to bursting with Rey’s friends. She knows they are Rey’s friends from the way they all are delighted when they see Rey, when they hug her, when they ask her how she’s doing, when they ask if they can touch her stomach, when they give Ben a wide berth and curious glances.
Leia hadn’t had a baby shower. Sure, Han had married her—that’s what you were supposed to do back then, marry the girl you knock up—but her hormones had mostly made her more irascible—as though she hadn’t always argued with Han—and so one of the few things they’d agreed on was that it was best not to bring their friends into the mix and have a huge party that one or both of them might end up screaming during.
Ben and Rey don’t seem to have that problem. Maybe because they aren’t married, or maybe because their arguments had been less about how much they wanted one another—as hers and Han’s had always been—and more about that they didn’t have one another yet, now that she knew that they hadn’t actually been together before they’d gotten Rey pregnant. He was quiet throughout the party, only really engaging when others spoke to him. For the most part he hovered near Rey—not so close as to be breathing down her neck, but always within easy distance if she needed anything.
The smile Rey gives her—well it’s heart-melting. There’s a little disbelief in it, but not the sort of disbelief that comes from an I don’t believe you , but that comes from an I do. Her gaze drifts over to Ben, who is watching her. He comes over at once, his hand slipping to the small of her back. Rey’s not huge exactly, but Leia remembers distinctly how everything just got tired faster when she was pregnant with Ben. Han’s hand at the small of her back had always done so much to make things easier. Even if it was just that someone was there with her.
He presses a kiss to the top of her head and Leia notices—which means she is sure that Ben does—just how many of Rey’s friends pause to notice the little intimacy. “Everything ok?” Ben asks Rey quietly.
She nods up at him and smiles and tilts her head just so. Ben obliges her with a light kiss on the lips.
“You love me,” Rey teases him gently.
“Glad you finally noticed,” Ben says dryly, but the dryness doesn’t meet his eyes. Indeed his eyes are sort of sparkling, and bright.
“Rey!” someone squeals and a woman Leia doesn’t recognize—tall, black, natural hair—is hurrying towards them through the crowd.
“You came!” Rey replies in equal delight and then she’s gone, moving heavily through the party guests towards her friends. Ben watches her go and Leia notices him swallow.
“What’s wrong?” Leia asks him.
And he rolls his eyes, more than a little frustrated that she’d picked up on it.
“Why can’t you be like everyone else and too afraid to ask?” he grumbles.
“Because I’ve known you your whole life,” she says calmly. “And you’ll know your son this well, too.” Han had known Ben the way she did, but Han had never pushed. Leia had had to learn to. For Ben, it will come naturally. He’s always pushing. But she isn’t going to tell him that now.
“It’s dumb,” he mutters turning away from her.
“I doubt that,” she says, falling into step beside him as he goes into the kitchen, ostensibly to bring out more orange juice.
“She never greets me like that,” Ben mumbles. “Never greeted me like that.”
“Oh honey, she doesn’t have to,” Leia says, trying not to sound exasperated. Ben’s worked hard on his need for approval but—
“Even when we were just friends.” Even when you were just fuck buddies too, probably.
“How often does she see you?” Leia asks him point blank.
Ben swallows.
“And how often does she see...I don’t know her name.”
“Jannah.”
“Jannah.”
“Maybe once every two years.”
“You see my point?”
“Yes.” Begrudgingly, but conceded. God, her son is a better man than he’d been a teenager. Or maybe she’s a better mother to him as an adult than she could have been when she was younger. She’d tried her best, but her best had never seemed to land. Now, though...
“She gives her heart to everyone, but most importantly, she gave it to you. Accept that, Ben. Know that however loud she is in her delight at others, you’re the one she wants, and you’re the one she leans on. Don’t hold the other against her because that —” and she tries to emphasize the point as firmly as she can. “That will send her running.”
“I’m not jealous of her,” Ben says. “I don’t want her not to be friends with them I just…”
“You already mean more to her,” Leia says. “Remind yourself of that. I know it’s hard when you’re surrounded by her friends and they don’t know you but—”
Ben looks away and she stops. He’s looking back towards the door of the kitchen, and she follows his gaze to see Rey there looking at him tentatively. He’d known she was coming, somehow. The way that Leia had always known Han was coming.
“Where’d you go?” Rey asks quietly, holding out a hand, and Ben’s whole body seems to relax.
“Having a moment,” he replies. “But it’s over.” He glances at Leia and his lips tug not quite at a smile, but it’s enough.
“Jannah wants to meet you,” Leia hears Rey say as his hand slips to the small of her back once again.
***
Ben is out of town when Rey goes into labor. Ben’s boss—an ass if Leia’s ever met one—has undoubtedly been trying to milk Ben’s presence at work as much as possible before he goes out on paternity leave and has been sending him across the country for weeks.
And of course Rey goes into labor three weeks early.
Leia gets the tearful call from Rey, who is in an Uber on her way to the hospital. “I’m so sorry,” she moans. “I wouldn’t call unless—”
“Hush,” Leia tells her at once. “Just hush. I’m coming.”
“I went in because the pains wouldn’t stop and they told me that they wanted to keep me here. My water hasn’t broken but—”
“It’ll be alright, sweetheart.”
“It’s not supposed to be happening yet. My water hasn’t broken yet.”
“I’ll be there. And if it’s a false alarm, it’s a false alarm.”
She can hear Rey swallow through her tears. “I don’t think it’s a false alarm. The contractions aren’t stopping.”
Ben phones her in a panic four minutes later. “Mom, Rey’s—”
“I know, sweetheart,” she says. “I know. I’m on my way.”
“Thank you,” is all he says. He sounds too stunned, too dazed to really know what else to say.
“Do you have a flight back?” she asks.
“I’m at SFO. I should leave in an hour and a half.”
“Then with any luck, you’ll be there in time,” Leia says.
She can tell he’s nodding because he doesn’t say anything. She can see him in her mind’s eye, staring out at the blue sky, out at the tarmac, not really taking in either. “Fuck this,” he mutters after a moment.
“Nothing you can do about it now.”
“Fuck it, though,” he tells her. “Just fuck it.”
She grimaces.
He hangs up on her after a little while, and an hour later she’s at the hospital, sitting in a room with Rey.
Rey’s face is pale, sweaty. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she looks determined in her muscular setting, but there’s a tinge of fear to her eyes.
“I’m not going to sugar coat it,” Leia says. “It’s going to hurt a lot. No matter what drugs they give you. And if he’s anything like Ben, he’s going to be huge even if he’s a bit premature.”
Rey looks down at her phone. She’s been checking Ben’s flight status ever since Leia had arrived. Ben’s still at the airport, undoubtedly pacing, and woe be tide the airline worker who tries to delay the flight, she’s sure. Ben’s gotten a lot better at controlling his anger, but something tells her that flying across the country because his son’s being born prematurely might test his patience.
Rey looks at her and her face crumbles. She looks so lost.
“Sweetheart,” Leia says at once, getting to her feet and wrapping her arms around Rey.
“I’m just—I want him to be here,” she mutters. “But I don’t want it to last so long that he’ll get here. And then I feel bad and like there’s no way this is going to be ok, and what if something bad happens and—”
“Hush,” Leia tells her. “I know it’s hard. But hush. Don’t think that far ahead. Just focus on breathing now. He’s coming—both of them are coming. And there’s nothing you can do except wait until it’s show-time.”
“I hate waiting,” Rey mutters.
Leia knows. Rey had hated waiting for the delivery people to drop off the furniture that Leia had insisted on getting them for their new apartment. (Ben’s was the same furniture she’d bought him at Ikea when he was just starting college and Rey’s looked like she’d found it on the street for free.) Rey hated waiting for the train, hated waiting for phone calls, hated waiting for anything that wasn’t on schedule. So waiting for her baby to come, waiting for Ben to fly across the country…
“Want me to see if I can find a pack of cards?”
Rey gives her a derisive look.
“Anything that’ll help pass the time. I used to play card games with Ben when Han was running late,” she says. Han had bought her the cards before they’d actually gotten together. I know I run late. That doesn’t mean I want you twiddling your thumbs and getting mad at me. She’d gotten mad at him anyway, but had always been grateful for the distraction that a game of Solitaire could provide when Han wasn’t there yet.
She’d stopped carrying them in her purse when he’d died though. She hadn’t had anyone to wait for anymore.
“All right,” Rey says at last. “I guess.”
They play Go Fish. Rey is not invested in it at all, which Leia can’t blame her for, especially when her body is contracting around the baby it’s preparing to birth. But she tries valiantly to keep her mind off Ben—especially once the text that reads Airplane mode. I’ll be there so soon , comes through.
Rey’s water breaks fifty minutes later.
“I just want him to get here,” Rey mumbles, clearly trying not to burst into tears as one of the nurses helps her into a new hospital gown. “I don’t want to be alone. And I know I’m not, I know you’re here. But it’s different, you know?” She looks like she doesn’t want to admit it to herself—how much she wants him there. How much easier it is not to be alone.
Leia remembers feeling the exact same way about Han.
Han had been late to Ben’s birth too. He’d made it in the end.
“Ben will make it here,” she says. “Such mundane things as the laws of physics won’t stop him, I promise. He loves you so much.”
“He does,” Rey says and she sounds almost dazed. “And I love him.”
She gives Leia a smile that Leia wouldn’t understand if she hadn’t known that Rey and Ben weren’t a fling that had gotten serious—a sort of stunned disbelief that you found someone, as if entirely by accident. But how could it have been an accident at all, when they’d clearly liked one another?
Leia takes her hand and squeezes it before checking her phone for the time. Ben’s been in the air for three hours now. He’s likely going to be landing soon. The nurses and doctors who come and go to check on Rey haven’t made any noises about her being ready to pop yet, so Leia deals her out another hand.
The clock ticks on. How many fish has Leia caught? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. They are interrupted from time to time by the sharp pains in Rey’s womb, that only grow sharper and more frequent as time goes on. Rey refuses to let cry, refuses to do more than grit her teeth, but Leia sees the way her hands ball into fists, the way her knuckles go white. This is nearly as bad as when she and Han had played for hours when Ben had had his appendix out. Neither of them had been paying much attention, and they’d known Ben would be fine but the waiting was miserable all the same.
“How we doing in here, mama?” asks a nurse the next time someone comes to check on her. Rey grimaces as the nurse measures her dilation, and glances at her. “I think we’re getting there.”
“Like now, or like maybe an hour?” Rey asks.
“Like another centimeter or so. However long it takes your body to get there. Could be fast, could be slow.” Rey’s contractions have been getting closer together, and more painful. Soon , is all Leia can think. She feels helpless.
Rey looks at her phone sitting on the card table.
“We’re waiting for dad,” Leia explains. “Kiddo’s a bit early.”
The nurse nods slowly. “Well,” she says. “The kiddo’s coming when the kiddo’s coming. Hope dad gets here soon.”
Rey starts blinking a lot but it’s not until the nurse has stepped out of the room once again that the tears fall.
As if he knew she was crying, Rey’s phone begins to vibrate and she almost drops it on the ground as she grabs for it. “Hi,” she sobs.
Leia doesn’t know what Ben says, but she knows in order to be calling, he has to have landed. “No,” Rey says. “No, not yet, but soon. Please just get here. Please.”
He says some more words and then Rey hands Leia the phone.
“Hi,” she says.
“I’m waiting to get off the plane,” Ben says. “They’re gonna let me off first, the flight attendants have been very understanding.” Leia hopes to god he didn’t throw a fit at them. She hopes to god he politely asked them to be understanding of his situation.
“Get here fast,” she says.
“Believe me, if I could do anything through sheer force of will, I’d already be there.” He pauses. “I’m glad you’re there with her.”
“Me too,” Leia replies. “She’s being very brave.”
“She always is,” he says quietly.
She passes the phone back to Rey who is taking deep, shuddering breaths. “I’m going to rip Snoke’s head off the next time I see him,” she says at last.
“Not if I get there first,” she thinks she hears Ben reply, though his voice coming through the audioport isn’t exactly loud enough to hear clearly.
There’s another pause and then Rey whispers, “Love you,” and puts the phone down.
“Another round?” Leia asks as Rey stares off into the middle distance.
Rey nods and Leia shuffles the deck for the hundredth time.
Forty minutes later, the door bangs open far too violently for it to be a doctor and Ben is barreling towards Rey, his mouth covering hers desperately as her fingers fly to his hair, tugging at it, rubbing at his scalp, clinging to him.
“I’m here,” is all he can think to say. God he is so like his father, Leia thinks, smiling.
Then she gets to her feet and quietly slips out to the waiting room.
She’s just about to close the door when Ben says, “Mom?”
“They’ll only want one of us in here,” she says. “I can go wait.”
Ben’s looking at her and the relief on his face is so palpable. He never looks relieved at her. It makes her throat lock. He’s not a little boy anymore, but he’ll always be her little boy.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Thank you so much,” Rey echoes and Leia nods to both of them before slipping away.
***
She finds Ben staring through the window at him. He looks like he’ll never be able to take his eyes off him.
“He’s beautiful,” Leia says. He has a thick head of dark hair, and chubby cheeks. He’s big for a baby born three weeks premature, too.
“We still don’t know what to name him,” Ben says. “We were still arguing about it before I left for my trip.”
“You’ve got a little time,” Leia says. “They don’t need it right away.”
“Yeah, but he does,” Ben says. He turns his gaze back to her at last. “I had a thought, though. I’d need to convince Rey, but it’s a newer one than the ones we were arguing about.”
“Oh?”
Ben looks back down at Leia. “I was thinking something like Lee. L for Leia.”
Leia opens her mouth. Then closes it. Then opens it again. Her son wraps his arms around her and that’s when she’s aware that she’s crying. Her son wants to name his son after her. Years of anger and hurt and misunderstanding, but her son wants to name his child after her.
“I never thought you’d fall in love,” she whispers. “I never thought you’d have a family, or someone like Rey to make you smile the way you do.”
He blinks down at her. “I never thought so either,” he says at last. He doesn’t sound hurt. He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds a little sad though—at the memory of himself the way he was. “Happy accident, I guess,” he says.
One fun night at the Yub Nub Club and I had one too. She looks up at him, unsure if she’s supposed to respond. But he goes on.
“I never planned for happiness, so I guess I can just let it knock me over, and spin me round.” He pauses. “Never planned for her, or him, or you. So that makes it that much more…”
In the cradle on the other side of the glass, Ben’s son wriggles and yawns. His face is squished and pink. And he’s just as beautiful as Ben was the day he was born.