Chapter Text
Ben Solo was going home for Christmas.
It was the first time in years and something that he wouldn’t have been happy about under even the best of circumstances. The relationships with his parents and his ridiculously overbearing uncle were unpleasant at best and spending several days in the childhood home that was crowded with bad memories and resentment was something he had actively avoided for over a decade.
He stood on a snowy platform, waiting with two tickets in his hand and an overwhelming feeling of anger at the universe’s cruel twists of fate for the train that was supposed to take him north. He was supposed to be making this journey with his fiancée at his side, but Bazine had decided that Christmas would be much better spent somewhere tropical with the man she’d left him for.
She’d never been all that enthusiastic about Ben or their life together so maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d rather break off an engagement than endure an awkward dinner with the family he had never bothered to introduce her to.
Hell, he didn’t think he’d even bothered to tell his mother Bazine’s name when he’d finally given in and told her that he had a fiancée, not that Leia had bothered to ask. She didn’t care at all about the details, just that he might have finally found someone to keep him in line and make him come home periodically.
She hadn’t even asked if Bazine was his soulmate.
What kind of mother didn’t ask if her son’s fiancée was his soulmate?
Even after all these years her attitude still got under his skin. Did she not care about him now any more than she had when he was younger? Or had Leia just assumed that he wouldn’t be marrying Bazine otherwise?
Even Ben had to admit that was a possibility. Maybe her years with Han had caused her to forget that most people didn’t get so lucky. Ben had never been lucky so the idea that he might have actually met his soulmate, when so many far better people went their whole lives having never met theirs, was a laughable one as far as he was concerned.
At least, it would be laughable if he weren’t standing alone on a crowded train platform before dawn on the day of Christmas Eve, watching as the snow drifts inched higher up off the concrete. The twinkling of holiday lights glinted off the snow, the cheerful pattern making him even more sullen as the cold tried and failed to seep in through the thick fabric of his expensive winter coat.
Snoke was a bastard, but at least he paid well.
A loud voice rose over the soft murmur of conversation around him, high pitched and just a shade shy of hysterical. He didn’t want to turn with the crowd, to stare at someone who was clearly having a bad start to their day, but the urge was compulsive and impossible to resist.
He promised himself a short glance to satisfy his curiosity, but he found himself staring when he followed the sound to its source and found a young woman at the ticket booth. Her hair was twisted up in an odd three bunned style and the tattered edges of a worn brown coat fluttered around slender hands as she waved them for emphasis. He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the tears in her voice as she begged the ticket agent to check again for an available ticket. The man in the booth, tired and unmoved, simply tapped the sign taped to the glass.
Sold Out
Ben ran a gloved hand over his face, considering his options. It wasn’t like him to interfere. He preferred to mind his own business, as he had always wanted others to mind theirs, but there was something about the plea in her voice, the desperate tiredness that she was steadfastly ignoring that drew him in.
“Fuck it,” he muttered, turning away from the tracks and pushing his way to the back of the crowd. The few people that looked like they might want to object to his shoving quickly changed their minds when they got a good look at his height and the broad width of his shoulders. He knew he had a harsh face, all sharp planes and aggressive angles, framed by ink black hair that was made even more threatening in contrast to the unusual paleness of his skin.
People moved for Ben Solo, even when he wasn’t at work with the reputation he had earned as Kylo Ren and Snoke’s ruthlessness behind him.
“I have to leave this morning, now ” the woman was saying as he approached the booth. “I don’t care which train it is or where it’s going.”
“They’re all sold out, ma’am,” the man repeated, huffing in frustration. “Maybe you could try the bus?”
“The bus station is all the way across town!”
“Excuse me,” Ben said, grimacing when she jumped at the sound of his voice so close behind her. He hesitated when she spun around to face him, pink lips slightly parted in surprise. She had a scattering of freckles over a pert nose and eyes that were red rimmed and swimming with tears.
She was probably going to think he was a creep he realized belatedly when she took a quick step back, glancing over her shoulder at the man in the ticket booth to make sure he was still there.
“I, uh…” Ben stammered, glaring back at the ticket man who was looking at him with thinly veiled hostile suspicion. “I heard you were having a hard time getting a ticket.”
She sniffed, her nose cherry red in the cold. “Yeah,” she said, crossing her arms protectively over her middle. She wasn’t wearing any gloves and it made him irrationally angry seeing how red and chaffed her fingers were.
“I have an extra,” he blurted out swiftly.
“What?”
“An extra ticket,” he explained. “My fiancée was supposed to travel with me but… Well, she’s my ex fiancée now but I guess that doesn’t matter…”
“You’re offering me a ticket?” she asked suspiciously, looking disbelievingly at his coat and thick leather gloves.
“Yes,” he said, pulling both tickets from his pocket and holding them up into the light so that she could see that he was telling her the truth.
She frowned, her brows drowning together in concern. “Look, I don’t know how much of a profit you’re hoping to make here but I can barely afford the cheapest ticket they sell and I certainly can’t afford to pay half of a private coach.”
“Oh,” he said, flustered and ashamed that he had caused the embarrassed flush on her cheeks. “I wasn’t going to ask for money.”
Her eyes flashed, bright fury naked on her face as she closed the distance between them and stabbed her finger into his chest. “I’m not going to whore myself out to you for a train ticket, so you can just go straight to hell,” she snarled, rocking up on the balls of her feet so that she was viciously whispering each word directly into his face.
“No,” he sputtered, holding his hands up and away from his body to show her that he meant her no harm. “I wasn’t asking for sex! I just already have the ticket and it’s going to go to waste if no one takes it. I have one, you need one. I was giving it to you.”
The fight went out of her immediately and she curled in on herself, shrinking herself down as she stepped back.
“Oh,” she said, setting her small white teeth against the plump curve of her bottom lip. “I’m sorry, it’s just…”
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” he cut in quickly. “I probably would have thought the same thing if I was you.”
They both turned as the piercing echo of a train whistle cut through the night air and she looked back at him, hesitating and fidgeting with a hole in her jacket. “If you’ve changed your mind,” she began, “I understand.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head and offering her a tentative smile and holding out the ticket. “I didn’t change my mind.”
She took it from him with shaking pink fingers and he tugged off his gloves. “Put these on,” he urged gruffly, waiting for her to put the ticket into her own pocket and then pulling them onto her hands, careful not to touch her in case he made her even more uncomfortable and frowning at how much extra room there was in the fingers. “You probably won’t be able to carry your bags like this so let me…”
“I don’t have any bags,” she said, curling her hands inside his gloves and looking away. He caught another glimmer of tears and decided not to press her on the issue. Not now, not until he got her safely onto the train.
“Okay,” he said simply and she sighed, clearly relieved that he didn’t intend to pressure her about why she was so hellbent on taking a train to anywhere else but here with no bags packed and holes in her scruffy winter coat.
Neither of them spoke until they boarded the train, the last ones on since they had been standing so far toward the back of the platform, and she hummed happily as they stepped inside the warm interior and the doors closed behind them. He wasn’t sure if it was the heat or the realization that she was truly on her way to somewhere else that made her so happy but the contented noise she made was enough to put a smile on his face.
“We’re this way, I think,” he said, leading her down the corridor until he found the private compartment whose number matched their tickets. It wasn’t a large space, but it was better by far than being crammed into an airplane seat like sardines in a can and he dropped into his seat and watched as she settled hesitantly across from him, folding her hands primly in her lap.
She was still wearing his overly large gloves.
The seconds ticked by in silence and Ben realized belatedly that they would be stuck in this small space together for hours. They weren’t due to reach their destination until lunchtime and the sky hadn’t even begun to gray yet with the coming dawn- a quick glance at his watch told him it was only five am and the pervasive darkness outside the windows would linger for a while longer.
He was going to have to make conversation with her, something he had never been comfortable doing with strangers and especially not the prickly kind with pretty eyes and mysterious lives.
She jumped slightly when he cleared his throat and his fingers itched with the unexpected urge to comfort her, to soothe whatever problems had driven her here.
It should have been unwelcome, considering his recent split with Bazine, but he found that he cared very little about his ex-fiancée when this stranger was sitting across from him.
“I never caught your name,” he said quietly, careful to not startle her again. “I’m Ben… Ben Solo.”
It felt strange to give her the name he’d been born with after so many years, but he supposed he’d better get used to it before he went home. His mother was unlikely to call him Kylo, no matter his protests and, for reasons he didn’t want to look at too deeply, he didn’t want this woman calling him that, either.
She twisted her hands in her lap, the leather of his gloves bending easily around her slender fingers. “I’m Rey,” she said. “Just Rey.”
Silence descended again, leaving his mind reeling for something to say, a safe topic of discussion so he wouldn’t give in to the urge to ask her why she was running away.
“I think breakfast should be served soon,” he said quickly, at the same time that she said, “So, where are you traveling to this Christmas?”
They looked at each other in surprise then laughed at the awkwardness of their forced confinement.
“You go first,” she said, still beaming at him with a wide and contagious smile.
“I was just saying that I think breakfast should be available soon. I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten already.”
She shook her head, shifting uncomfortably. “No, but I’m not terribly hungry.”
Her stomach rumbled lightly, and he nodded. “Well, you could always come with me to the dining car anyway. The meal came with the ticket so it would be a shame if you didn’t take at least a few bites.”
She bit her lip again, looking at his face and then back down at her lap.
“And you?” he prompted. “What were you going to say?”
“I was asking where you were going this Christmas?”
“Home,” he said with a sigh. “Seeing my parents.”
Her face lit up, illuminated from within. “Oh, how lovely! Do you go every year?”
He laughed, dark and bitter. “No. I haven’t been in years. This is the first time in…maybe ten years?... that I was even speaking to my parents at Christmas.”
The happy light left her eyes. “Oh,” she muttered. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said with a shrug. “We haven’t really gotten along. Sometimes it’s better to be alone, you know?”
“No,” she sighed. “I don’t know.”
He felt like he was making a mess of this conversation, that she was disappointed in him for some reason that he couldn’t quite figure out. “What about you? Are you not seeing family for Christmas?”
She turned her face away, looking out the window as the train finally pulled away from the station and began to pick up speed. “I grew up in the foster care system. I don’t have a real family.”
“I’m such an ass,” he said, wiping a hand over his face as he realized how callous his words must have sounded to someone that had never had the option to choose solitude, having it thrust upon them instead. “I’m sorry…I didn’t know.”
“No one does,” she said with a shrug. “I’m used to it. Everyone complains about the holidays and having to spend time with their families.”
That much was true, but not everyone had the misfortune of doing it directly to someone that would have loved to experience the dysfunction that he had always despised. He opened his mouth and then closed it again when his mind refused to supply the right words, or any words at all, to fill the awkward silence between them.
She seemed content with the quiet, her face turned to watch the sights of the city fade away to scattered houses with faint lights illuminating their space in the darkness and then nothing but snow-covered trees as the sun finally began to rise in the sky.
The light of day was less forgiving than the soft illumination of the train’s yellow glow and he frowned as he realized how frayed her coat really was. He couldn’t see much of the rest of her clothes but the boots she wore were nearly as worn as the coat and there was motor oil beneath her nails and dark circles under her eyes. He’d politely ignored several more rumbles of her stomach, eyeing his watch subtly each time and counting down minutes until the dining car would be open.
He’d asked about it specifically when they had come around to check their tickets, while Rey was distracted fishing hers out of her pocket.
He didn’t remember having ever felt this surge of protective concern with anyone else in his life, not even Bazine, but Bazine had been utterly polished, verging on spoiled. She’d never needed him- she’d merely allowed him to exist in her sphere for as long as it suited her.
Nobody had ever needed him, and Ben was beginning to realize that maybe this girl did and that maybe, just maybe, he liked it. It might be nice to have someone that might view his presence as a thing to be desired and not simply tolerated.
When his watch finally showed the time as 7:25 he stood up and her eyes, hazel in the light from the window, followed him as he moved toward the door.
“Breakfast?” he asked, pausing with his hand on the door handle. The train rumbled gently beneath his feet as she stared at him cautiously, her teeth wrapped around her bottom lip. “I’d rather not go alone,” he encouraged, holding out a hand and hoping to tempt her.
She reached for him tentatively, and he guided her out of the compartment and down the corridor with her hand in his, still wearing the oversized gloves that she hadn’t taken off since the platform.
He wondered if her hands were still cold.
She followed him into the dining car, glancing around at the small tables with white tablecloths and little red flowers in crystal vases. The air was fragrant with the smell of breakfast pastries and bacon, all overlaid with the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee and he sent up a quick and fervent prayer that her hunger would win out over her pride as they settled down at a table.
“You want coffee?” he asked.
She picked up the menu and nodded. “Coffee with sugar and lots of cream,” she said absently, looking over the menu selections like her entire future depended on choosing the right option. “There’s no prices on anything,” she muttered, and he thought he caught a glimmer of tears in her eyes before she blinked them away.
“It comes with the ticket,” he reminded her. “You can have as much as you want. I’m starving, personally, so I’m gonna get the biggest breakfast they have. Maybe even a hot chocolate once I finish my coffee.”
“Hot chocolate?”
“Mmm hmm,” he said, tapping the menu to show her. “With extra whipped cream.”
She bit her lip again, peeking up at him from under her lashes, but when the waitress came to take their order she asked for the same thing as him and he smiled.
She wouldn’t go hungry as long as he was with her.
They lapsed back into silence again as they waited for their food until she pinned him with a direct gaze and asked, “Why’d you give me that ticket?”
He shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee. “My fiancée was supposed to go with me, meet my family. She ditched me a few days ago.” Her brow creased, a lovely line forming as he explained. “She’s in the tropics somewhere with her new boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but he shook his head.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “I’m not, at least, not really. It hurt my pride more than anything else.”
“You didn’t love her? She wasn’t your soulmate?”
“She definitely wasn’t my soulmate,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t think either of us really loved the other, we were just looking for someone to fill the empty spaces. It looked presentable, so why not?”
“That’s sad,” she said, twirling the spoon in her coffee, “but even if you had an extra ticket, why give it to a stranger instead of inviting a friend along or something?”
“I work a lot,” he said. “It doesn’t leave a lot of time for friendships.”
“So, you don’t talk to your family and you have no friends? Just this fiancée and she left you a few days before Christmas?”
“Yep,” he agreed. “And then I saw you and it seemed like you needed to get out of there so…”
She sighed, picking at the side of her cup with her fingernail. “Thanks,” she said. “I just couldn’t take another day in that town.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
“Plutt happened,” she darkly, as though that would make everything clear. She must have read the puzzlement on his face because she laughed softly, the sound of it warm and comforting. “He used to be my foster parent and I stayed on working at his garage because I didn’t have anything else to do once I aged out.”
“He wasn’t good to you?”
She shook her head. “He took everything he could out of my paycheck. I worked eighty hours a week and couldn’t put food on the table.”
“Plutt, huh?” He filed the name away to deal with later. Quite a few people in Jakku owed favors to Snoke and the First Order. “So, where are you planning on going? The train will take you as far as Chandrila. Do you have a plan once we get there?”
She winced. “Not really, but people work on cars everywhere, right? I’m sure I can find a job.”
He was spared from having to answer that immediately by the arrival of their food. She was at least as hungry as he had estimated her to be, digging into the mountain of eggs and breakfast meats and pastries like she hadn’t eaten in days.
She probably hadn’t.
He was a big man and people had always commented on the size of his appetite, but she finished before him and ate the last of his pancakes. When she finished there was syrup on the tip of her nose and he was certain that he’d never seen anything as endearing in his life.
“So, I was thinking,” he said, watching in amazement as she sipped her hot chocolate. She was already eyeing his cup, and he knew she’d end up with most of that as well.
“Yeah?”
“You should come with me to my parents’ house for Christmas.”
“What?”
“It would benefit both of us,” he explained, resisting the urge to wipe the whipped cream of her lip. “I wouldn’t have to tell my parents that my fiancée dumped me, and you would have a place to go when we get to Chandrila. Mostly everywhere will be closed for a few days due to the holidays and it will be tough finding a job until the businesses open back up.”
She frowned, and he knew she hadn’t considered that.
“You want me to pretend to be Bazine?”
“No, I want you to be Rey and just pretend that you like me for a few days,” he said. “They never asked who my fiancée was. They didn’t know her name or anything else about her.”
“I don’t know,” she hedged. “You’ve already done so much…”
“We won’t get there for a few hours,” he said, pushing his cup of hot chocolate across the table. “You can take a nap and think it over.”
“Okay,” she breathed, picking up his cup and draining the last of its contents.
She followed him back to their compartment, hands tucked into her pockets this time, and curled up next to the window. She was asleep in minutes and he tucked one of the blankets stored in the overhead bins around her carefully, before settling back into his seat to watch her sleep.
Now that she’d eaten, her body seemed to need rest more than anything else and the train’s gentle swaying as they swept down the track did nothing to disturb her.
He didn’t wake her until they were nearly to Chandrila, and even then he hated having to do it. He shook her shoulder as gently as possible, the blanket soft under his fingers but not plush enough to disguise the way her bones poked at her skin.
If he ever got his hands on Plutt…
“Rey,” he murmured, careful to wake her slowly and as gently as possible. “It’s time to wake up. We’re almost there.”
She mumbled in her sleep, but she opened her eyes, looking directly up at him as he hovered over her. She startled a bit, before she looked around and remembered where she was and how she had gotten there, then she smiled.
“Ben,” she said quietly, and his name had never sounded more beautiful than it did on her tongue.
“We’re almost there,” he repeated, stepping back before he made a mistake and leaned forward into the soft curve of her mouth. She hadn’t done anything to indicate that she was interested in anything more than a ticket out of town and a meal.
Even if she had, it felt too much like taking advantage of her circumstances.
“Right,” she said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. “I slept for a long time.”
“Only a few hours,” he said, glancing at his watch. It was nearly lunchtime. Whatever she decided about Christmas, he hoped she’d let him feed her again.
“That’s a long time for me,” she said, stretching her arms over her head and sighing contentedly. The circles under her eyes were gone and the combination of food and sleep had put a healthy pink flush on her cheeks beneath the scattering of freckles.
He looked away.
“I’ll go with you,” she said without preamble. “To your parents.”
He looked back at her, found her sitting with her elbow on the armrest and her chin on her fist, watching him.
“Really?”
“Mmm hmm,” she hummed, nodding. “I’ve never had a real family Christmas.”
“Well, it’s not like my family is something out of a Hallmark movie but there will be a tree and food.”
“Presents?”
“Definitely,” he agreed. “My mom loves buying gifts.”
“I’ve never gotten a Christmas gift before,” she mused, breaking his heart and leaving the pieces scattered across the floor of the train. “Or given one.”
“We’ll stop on the way to their house,” he said, realizing that he hadn’t even thought about gifts. “Buy something for everyone. Mom and Dad, Uncle Chewie and his wife. Even Uncle Luke.”
“You don’t like your uncle?”
“No one likes my uncle.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling this time.
“We’ll need to get you a few things, too,” he continued, rubbing his hand over his face. “If you had left the city with me as my fiancée, you would have had bags packed.”
She looked at him skeptically. “You’re going to buy me clothes?”
“Yep. Clothes, shoes, luggage…a new winter coat.”
“I can’t let you do that,” she said firmly, wrapping her arms around the hideous brown jacket she was wearing.
“It would be for me,” he lied. “If my mom thought I let you run around in winter without a decent coat, she’d kick my ass.”
She shook her head again, but her arms relaxed on the coat. “I guess that makes sense,” she admitted grudgingly, eyes locked onto the thick coat on the back of his seat. “How much did that one cost you, anyway?”
“Almost seven hundred dollars,” he said smoothly. “Real goose down.”
“Oh,” she said, plucking at the loose strings around the hole in her own coat. “Well, that’s just…”
“I’m buying you one,” he interrupted. “Red maybe? No, blue. It’ll match your eyes.”
She huffed, clearly both amused and exasperated. “You can’t buy me a seven-hundred-dollar coat.”
“Sure, I can,” he argued with a smile. “I have plenty of money and a judgmental mother. Besides, your hands were cold when I met you, so I’m going to buy you gloves and boots and scarves, too.”
She laughed, throwing her hands up in a confused half-hearted protest. “How long are we going to be at your parents’ house? I don’t need all of that.”
He shrugged. “A few days,” he said, leaning out the window as the train started slowing down. “We’ll be there in a few minutes, so let’s get ready. We need to get all of our shopping done before the stores close for Christmas Eve.”
She didn’t object when he led her off the train, his hand resting on the small of her back, or when he insisted that she get into the warm interior of the car he’d rented, a black luxury sedan with remote start that had the heater running and the seats heating before she’d even opened the door, while he loaded his bags into the trunk.
He remembered more of the streets of Chandrila than he’d expected and it only took him a few minutes to find the downtown area and park the car. He rushed her into the nearest café and fed her a bowl of soup with warm crusty bread and hot tea and then bustled her along into the clothing and gift shops that lined the snow-covered streets.
He didn’t give her time to look at the price tags on the items she picked, piling everything she looked at on his arm until they had so many bags that they had to make a return trip to the car to pile it into the trunk before they could finish buying the gifts for his family.
“Ben,” she protested. “This is insane- Do you even know how much money you’ve spent today?”
“No,” he said, unable to focus on anything but her, standing on the sidewalk in her new blue jacket. She was warm enough now with a black scarf wrapped around her neck and black leather gloves that fit her fingers properly. Black winter boots crunched the snow under foot as she shifted her weight to stare at him incredulously.
“You bought me a whole wardrobe of clothes! Shirts, pants, dresses, shoes- I lost track at the boutique with the pink sign but I'm almost certain that the sales lady put in pajamas and lingerie.”
“You needed clothes,” he reminded her.
“I’m a mechanic,” she said, pursing her lips. “What am I going to do with all these fancy clothes?”
He tore his gaze away from her mouth. “Maybe you don’t have to be a mechanic,” he said, reaching for her hand and tugging her along behind him as he headed back to the car with Leia’s gift under his arm. “My mother knows everyone in this city, she can probably find you a better job. Something with a good salary and health benefits.”
“Ben,” she said. “I’m not going to ask your mom for a job. I’m supposed to be your fiancée, remember? You don’t even live here.”
“We’ll tell her that we’re thinking of moving here and she’ll be thrilled. She won’t take the job away once we tell them we aren’t together anymore.”
“This is all too much,” she argued. “She’s never even met me.”
“She’s going to love you,” he promised as he opened the car door for her. She shot him a glance over her shoulder as she settled into the front seat, and there was a sinking feeling in his stomach that warned him that maybe his mother wouldn’t be the only one.