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“Princess Aurelia of House Palpatine and Exegol, Heir to the Imperial Throne, Third Claimant to the Royal House of Naboo, First of Her Name.”
It’s a soft voice which speaks then – “Thank you, C-3PO,” – dismissing (or attempting to) the imperious droid announcing her arrival, a soft voice which obviously originates from the small, slim figure standing there beside her, a voice, a figure he knows — and Ben Solo has to take a sharp breath of his own.
She’s back.
Rey stands on the ramp of the Falcon, steady and centred as she requests entrance to a ship with which she’d once been intimately acquainted. She’s stunning, draped as she is in the ornate ceremonial robes oft favoured by the noble houses of her world – and of his house too, he supposes, his grandmother’s certainly. The artistry of her costume is evident in the colour, drape and sheen of her robes – chosen, Ben imagines for their rich, deep shade of emerald green he knows to be Rey’s favourite colour.
Whomever her new stylist is, they have talent, that he’ll admit.
Rey is a vision.
At her side, C-3PO pauses, not in response to her command, apparently, nor to take a breath (he’s obviously no need), but to give the impression of taking one. (It is something he often did to put his human listeners at ease, he had once told Ben.) The appropriate moment taken, the tall, skinny golden android then continues to drone on about protocol.
“Oh no, Highness, it would be a gross breach of my programming to ignore your remaining titles. Why your grandfather would find my failure to do so quite distressing–”
Well accustomed to his habits, Ben ignores the droid, focusing instead on the slim girl standing before him; somehow, he manages to remind himself of the manners long drilled into him since childhood.
“Didn’t think we’d see you back again, Your Highness.”
There’s a shortness to his tone addressing her that he regrets even as he hears, but Rey’s return, after all these months and indeed, abruptly, it has him off balance, and even he is willing to admit it. So does her appearance. Her robes mark her so clearly as who she is, who her family is, but it’s not even that that has him stumbling, though. It’s her face. Her makeup is flawless, but it can’t quite hide the scattering of her freckles, and the hint of them, barely visible through the powder on her face – the hint of the Rey he had known (had thought himself known by) if only for such a short time.
That hint of her – of Rey, not the ‘Princess of Exegol’ - it’s making him itchy.
Thankfully, his father suddenly appears, manages to stick his foot in his mouth before Ben continues to do the same.
“Careful there, Rey,” the old rogue says, a hint of the wry humour he’s known for shining through his voice alongside his crooked grin as he greets her with a fondness he shows so few. “Don’t wander too near the engines. You don’t get any grease on that fancy get-up on yours.”
(Of course, Rey hugs Han, lets him wrap her up in his arms until she has to stand on tiptoe. Of course, she lets him heft her up in a big hug; of course, she smiles at him, grin big and toothy and unrestrained, hazel eyes shining, fond.)
The moment, as the two of them grin at each other as they hug, does make it easier for Ben to steal glances at her, as he soaks in the sight of their royal visitor, as, even as he knows it unhealthy, he gorges himself in the feast she presents for his eyes. For her robes are art, her makeup – as much as he hates it – makes her face seem both as elegant as a porcelain vase and as expressive as the morning sky. The new, elaborate hairstyle she sports adds additional inches to her already impressive height (when first they’d met, he’d immediately noticed how the exact measure of her height meant she had fit all so neatly into him, he’d immediately felt the warmth blooming in him about how she slotted into the space under his chin in ways pleasing and right).
Standing there now, in robes that had probably cost more than the engine retrofit the Falcon was currently undergoing, Rey could be both a stranger and his every furtive fantasy come to life — and the whiplash is disorienting.
“What are you doing here, Rey?”
Blurting it out while she’s still greeting his father, the words spilling from his lips almost without thought, he doesn’t need to hear C-3PO’s sharp gasp or feel the weight of his father’s sharp glare to acknowledge how rude is his interruption. Still, he holds his ground against their disapproval and continues to look straight at Rey, almost challenging her with his gaze.
He suddenly wishes her gone, since gone she will surely shortly be.
The furrow in her perfectly smooth brow and her fierce gaze give away her irritation at the terseness of his words, even if her tone as she answers doesn’t. (The training she’d received since leaving them is responsible for her impressive control, he imagines; the Imperial tutors employed by her grandfather’s family are renowned for their ability to beat diplomacy into their charges, after all.)
Her words as she answers his challenge are simple, serene, soft.
"I wanted to see you.”
Gentle, she is gentle with him, even despite his rudeness, and he would almost feel bad for the shortness of his welcome, but in the next moment, she continues, and almost immediately, the uncomfortable sensation fades.
“All of you,” she says, and there’s a hint of a blush to her cheeks, he thinks, but that could mean anything.
All of them, not him, or at least, not only him. Of course. Moving to be gone, excuse at the ready – there’s always something to fix on this bucket of bolts his father calls a ship — Ben ends up instead looking like an idiot as his father beats him to the punch, as he leaves him behind alone with Rey before he can find a way to get safely away.
“Don’t be a stranger, kiddo,” Han tells Rey as he leaves her with a long hug. “It’s not the same without you hanging ‘round here. Her Worshipness misses you — and she ain’t the only one, either.”
There’s no mercy in Han Solo, anyone can tell you that — so it is that he makes sure to take Ben’s last buffer between himself and the woman he’d thought never to see again along with him as he goes. “Quit squawking, Golden Rod,” he hears his father say to C-3PO as he drags the droid away from where Ben stands staring at Rey, not even pretending to be discreet, his voice projecting all too easily in the Falcon’s halls. “Those two need to talk, and sooner rather than later.”
He knows Rey hears it too; then there’s only that silence in Han’s wake.
“Why did you come here today, Rey?”
Ben’s mouth runs away with him again, but he finds he has to do something to fill the still air of the ship, the quiet that hangs heavy where it has never done before. It’s awkward, in ways it has never been awkward before, this silence between them, the air had never sat this muggy, not during the short trip from Jakku to Naboo. They’d never struggled to fill the silence during the course of that trip; the air between them then had been charged, electric, heavy – tense, certainly, but never awkward.
It could be the weight of the months gone by since they had spoken last, but Ben thinks it's more than that.
Maybe it’s the change in her attire as she visits today, maybe it’s his reaction to the make-up she wears, maybe it’s the way she plays with her bejewelled hands – a nervous mannerism of hers he doesn’t remember her having before – as she stands there, as she looks at him. Maybe it’s the way looking at her means watching her take him in — his old, battered, second-hand brown leather jacket a contrast to the glory of her finery.
Maybe it’s that he doesn’t remember being nervous around her any more than he remembers her being the same around him.
“I wanted to see you,” she says again, and this time, there’s no denying it; the blush is there, just as there’s no denying how the way she plays with her hands, clutching and unclutching them, twisting the rings she wears round and round her delicate fingers, denoting the extent of her nerves as she rushes on. “The others, too, of course, I wanted to see them, your father, your mother, Chewie, but — you, Ben. I wanted to see you in particular.”
He hears an echo of it in his own voice as he admits to her what he only barely acknowledges.
“I figured you’d have forgotten all about us.”
Me. I figured you’d forgotten all about me.
But then, he hates how the nerves he feels are so open in his voice, too; maybe he hates how pathetic he sounds as he confesses without words his vulnerability in front of her, how he confesses without words how much he misses her, this creature of light and beauty, this girl so far out of his league he might well be a Jakku happabore.
The smile that flashes across her face, though, is a knife — sharp, bright, searing.
“As if I could ever forget about you.”
She smiles as she tells him, as she teases him, and then, with that, he doesn’t see Princess Aurelia Palpatine, heir to one of Naboo’s most renowned Elder houses. He doesn’t see an ethereal creature of beauty and grace — a woman dressed by the renowned artisans of Naboo as a living art piece.
He sees only Rey.
Rey, that half-starved desert rat who’d stalked into a dive of a cantina on Jakku –the only place on the planet that might charitably be referred to as an oasis from the harshness of the elements — a defiant glare in her eyes and a faded, torn bounty notice clutched in one hand. Even with the make-up and the clothes and the heeled sandals, standing there, on his ship, Rey smiles, and he sees her.
“I’m looking for a ship,” she had said, and Ben, looking at her, had known nothing about the trip would be simple.
Trouble, he had thought, and trouble she had turned out to be. The truth was, though, Ben had known, just known, that entire trip and especially as the Falcon had hit the Outer Rim, that they were just looking, looking, for trouble. The truth was, he’d known it as they’d found it. As Rey’d stomped into that stupid bar, her clothes encrusted with more sand than did the table Ben and his father had so recently sat themselves at, he’d just known. Looking at Rey, he had heard it, as loud as if someone had announced her, that she was it.
Trouble indeed.
He’d known the truth of her; he’d known, even as his father had put on his tough persona to challenge Rey as to her ability to pay. He’d known, as he’d seen the realization bloom in his father’s eyes, the acknowledgement as they spoke that they were taking this girl on to their ship regardless of the amount of credits she held, or even those she didn’t. He’d known as she’d told them their destination — Coruscant.
He’d known as she’d slipped up in that dirty, dusty cantina, had lost her temper, acted to shove aside the thugs of her former ‘guardian’, the ones come to take her back, into the wall of the cantina through the strength of her will and the power of her mind alone. Known as she’d, even as, having no choice, she had relented enough to show them the bounty poster and a genetic test to go along with it.
As every truth of her parentage was revealed, Ben had known.
The Emperor had been scouring the galaxy for his lost family — she was it. Rey of Niima Outpost. Rey of Jakku. Princess Aurelia of House Palpatine and Exegol, Third Claimant to the Royal House of Naboo, First of Her Name. Granddaughter and Beloved Heir to Sheev, Darth Sidious, the Emperor Palpatine.
‘Rey’. Trouble with a capital ‘T’.
Leaving them at Coruscant, she’d promised to keep in touch, and even though he’d known it impossible, he’d somehow hoped. In the months since, he’d never thought the Falcon could echo — feel almost empty – as it had without her.
It feels almost like home with her here.
She may be here once again on his father’s ship, his ship – she may be standing here once more, on a different planet, in different clothes – she may be draped in shimmersilk and wearing sandals with heels sharp enough to kill someone rather than rags and rough, handmade, puteed boots– but she’s still Trouble. Always will be.
He just doesn’t know which kind — yet.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
The words of longing ripped from his soul — he hadn’t given them permission to do so, hadn’t meant to speak them – there they are, hanging in the air between them. It’s confounding, confusing, because he doesn’t know how he can never control himself, his words, his thoughts, around her. Just as he still didn’t know how it’d happened, how a girl he’d known would never stay had wormed her way into his heart.
He’d tried, he really had, but try as he had, it had happened. Though quieter than even he, their hours after meeting had yet passed quickly in quiet conversation, and somehow, she’d stormed his carefully maintained defences without him even noticing. Somehow, between Jakku and Coruscant and Naboo, over never-ending cups of the Falcon’s bitter burnt caf, late nights spent watching endless loops of hyperdrive, over secrets shared and confidences spoken in the soft voices night brings, somehow, she’d become everything — at least to him.
It’s the reason it feels as though he’s all but ready to pledge his soul to her service – a silly, romantic thought he can’t deny – even as she takes a shaky breath, as she seemingly prepares to tell him at last why she’s here.
“I need a favour.”
A statement more than a question, and there’s that smile to which he can never say ‘no’, full of mischief and a hint of glee, though this time, there is a hint of nerves to linger underneath. He’s ready to agree to whatever it is she needs, and she hasn’t even told him yet how he can help.
“It’s been brought to my attention that I should have a retinue.”
“A what?”
He really must appear an idiot, but truth be told, it takes a moment to absorb her words, for if there’s something which he’s trouble imagining, it’s Rey being followed along by a train of servants.
“A retinue, Ben,” she says, tapping her little sandaled foot at him now, seemingly impatient with how obtuse he’s being even as she laughs fondly, looking at him, teasing him. “You know, people, and droids and shit.”
The grin that springs to his lips is a relief; he can remember how to think, after all.
“Yeah, Rey, I know what it is.”
If the favour she needs is as easy as that, he might yet escape unscathed.
“You want to steal C-3PO?” His father would be over the moon. His mother would be slightly less so, but then again, if it’s for Rey, well, anything is possible; she might well send the old droid on his way personally. “I mean, I get it, he’s a pain in the ass, but he’s great at protocol and languages.”
Of all people, he should know.
When it came to protocol, C-3PO had certainly been keen to tutor them all, especially Ben, to the extent that he had made his life as a child hell. (The weeks he’d drilled Ben on Shivani customs for fine dining had been a particular nightmare.) He never wants to relive those days, never wants to enter that world of pomp and protocol and state events again, and he certainly would never choose C-3PO to drill him on those questions ever again.
Still, if Rey might find him useful, and maybe, given her new life as the Emperor’s heir – and well she might – then Ben wants to help; and she’s welcome to the old protocol droid, anytime.
It takes only a moment, though, to see how Rey is looking at him with a steely, nervous determination as she shakes her head.
“No, not C-3PO- I mean, yes, Leia, I mean, your mother, already agreed I could borrow him for a while, and my grandfather–”
He notes that she still stumbles slightly, using the honorific.
‘My grandfather.’
“-he’s already arranged everything when it comes to my droids, but he won’t care if I choose instead to use C-3PO as my own personal protocol droid; he’s certainly more than qualified, and it’d be nice having another friendly face with me.”
Another friendly face? What does she mean, another friendly face?
“It’s just that – Ben, it’s just that I really don’t want him, Sheev, I mean, my grandfather, I guess, I mean the Emperor– I should say the ‘Emperor’, everytime, really, it’s proper, they all tell me, it’s just that sometimes I forget – it’s just that I don’t want him to be the one to choose the, um, the being– I mean, the one that I’m supposed to–”
She takes another deep breath, even as Ben looks at her, the sense of dread building in the pit of his stomach as it grows along with her evident nerves.
The being who what?
“Rey–”
She’s not making any sense.
“The being I’m supposed to–”
And with the dread building deep in his belly, he finds he’s losing his patience.
“The being you’re supposed to what, Rey?”
But then it all spills out of her in a rush.
“I need a Companion, all the upper-class ladies on Naboo have them, apparently, past a certain age, it’s like required. And they tell me it’s best if it’s someone who’s a member of one of the Elder Houses, and actually, that part is required as well–”
He’s still staring as she smiles again (weakly, this time) at him as his mind whirls. Why would she be telling him this? A retinue? Okay, but what is a ‘Companion’? Is it like a Consort? Or like a Concubine–? But– she can’t mean. No. She wouldn’t. Anyway, even if that’s the case, why would she be here, on the Falcon, on his ship, telling him this? It makes no sense. He could never be — a Companion? Rey’s Companion? — he could never be one of those, could he?
But besides all that, it wouldn’t work. He’s not a member of the Elder Houses of Naboo. He’s a smuggler, a pilot, a failed Jedi, a Corellian, an Alderaanian, an Organa – a Solo.
“You’re a Naberrie, right? The grandson of a former Queen of Naboo, Amidala?”
Kriff. He’s fucked.
He should sit down, he thinks, even as she keeps talking and everything becomes crystal clear.
“I need a Companion, Ben. I need a Companion, I need one soon, I need to pick one myself so my grandfather doesn’t pick one for me, and so I need it to be you.”