Work Text:
wear your heart upon your sleeve
Let's laugh at them that choose
Their valentines by lot.
To wear their names that use,
Whom idly they have got;
Such poor choice we refuse,
Saint Valentine befriend;
We thus this morn may spend,
Else, Muse, awake her not.
Two score and six years ago, Ben’s father had sailed across the Narrow Seas in the Falcon, the fastest of his father’s fleet to this very day. In his possession, he carried with him a nef in the shape of a Germanic sailing vessel, finely worked in gold and silver, to sign his marital contract with Her Royal Majesty, Queen Leia.
Most of the year, the nef was reserved for the monarchy’s store of precious salt. But on Valentine’s Eve, a handful of names on slips of parchment were placed inside it before supper commenced. And as the merriment drew to a close, the nef would playact for one evening as oracle.
The divination of true love and wedded bliss.
His lady mother’s court had always been a lively one: chock-full of her advisors and various ministers, her coterie of ladies-in-waiting, his father’s loyal knights—and, Ben reflected, his own Knights of Ren now too. And while his mother governed wisely and well, she also loved her games.
Of all sorts.
Every Valentine’s Day, she hand-selected a group of her favorite marriageable youth—the definition of which changed depending on his mother’s current machinations—and into the nef their names went, willing or no. Coupled up by fate or God or, Ben thought wryly, his mother’s determination to see her court paired off in ecstatic couples indebted to Her Grace.
Of course, no one was obliged to marry the name his mother’s hand drew for them. Twas simply a party game designed to divert and entertain. The chosen only had to court for the length of a day. A fact Ben reminded himself of as her hand hovered over the nef’s golden lid. The sun would rise, the sun would set, and he’d be back where he belonged: with his books, his swords, and his men.
“Ah, and for my son, Benjamin, who here shall he court?” His mother’s voice was slyly pleased, and Ben stilled in his seat, a frisson of something portentous coursing through his blood. She was up to something. “Why, how lovely. 'Tis our newest addition, Lady Rey Palpatine.”
The gathered party clapped enthusiastically, boisterous laughs and bawdy well wishes for their courting day rebounding off stone and brick. But Ben sat frozen in place, staring across a room at the only other human statue in Whitehall. Slim in stature, with dark hair in twining braids, and a face he begrudgingly owned to be very, very pretty—and entirely unknown to him.
Who in the world was Rey Palpatine?
“My darling, she’s the heir to Exegol.”
His mother affixed Lady Palpatine’s name to his sleeve, her brow creased in concentration.
“Exegol. All the way north in the Hebrides,” Ben said slowly, his brain sorting through history and half-remembered childhood stories. “Wasn’t he the decrepit duke who tried to delay your coronation in favor of his claim to the throne? Surely he is long dead by now.”
“He is indeed, may God preserve his soul,” Leia countered drolly. “Her grandfather. He passed over Yuletide.”
“And her?”
“Her parents took her away to France as a child, away from his influence, but they perished from fever when Lady Palpatine was but twelve, and she was placed in a convent until her grandfather sought her return. For what, I am not sure of, but I imagine she became of use.”
“Not a particularly happy childhood,” Ben said, a frown tugging at the corner of his lips.
“No, I should think not.” Leia stepped back to study the name on his arm and, apparently pleased, nodded briskly. “You’ll be kind to her, my darling. Don’t abandon her halfway through the day to hack away at straw men with your knights.”
Through clenched teeth, Ben hissed, “We do not hack aw—never mind. Why her, Madam? Why couple us for your schemes?”
The smile on his mother’s face was bright and full of gleaming teeth. A fox in the henhouse. And he was the hen.
“Why, whatever do you mean, Benjamin?”
“I would have you speak plainly. Is this a game for your personal amusement, or are there other stakes at play?”
Leia tilted her head, considering him. Ben could almost see her thoughts flying across her face, too keen for most in her court.
“As you say, my darling, let’s speak plainly. I harbor no ill will toward Lady Palpatine. I had an audience with her upon her return to our shores and a second upon her grandfather’s passing. I find her charming: sweet and direct with a rare intelligence.”
She paused, her eyes fixed upon the name on his sleeve—and then her gaze flicked up to his, and she shrugged.
“But I’ll admit, given her family history, that I’d like to know if she finds me to her liking as well.”
Of course. His mother rarely deployed stratagems for one reason only. There were always rapid currents beneath the still waters of her face.
“So she’s to be a pawn no matter what.”
“I suppose she could be… if needs must. But I’ll be disappointed in my own good judgment if, in truth, she’s not a player. Be our future king, Benjamin. Find out for me.”
After he breakfasted, Ben went searching for his mother’s project and aimed dark thoughts at the frescoes lining the walls of his hunt. He sincerely doubted a girl of nine and ten to have at the ready a well-developed ruse to undo his mother’s rule. Although, Ben snorted to himself, his lady mother had become queen several years before she herself was nine and teen. And would no doubt box his ears, if she found a perch tall enough to reach them, should he doubt a lady’s ability to chart intrigues with the very best of the royal Privy Council.
Either his mother was plotting a wife or preventing a war—and he supposed she could very likely be doing both if it came to that. And in every scenario, he was trapped for the day… but he refused to be trapped for his life.
Lady Palpatine wasn’t with the rest of the party, the little group that was just now embarking on their courting amusements. He checked a few other rooms, growing ever more irritated at this game of hide-and-seek, before he finally found his quarry in the library, skirts in a rippling pool of blue silk tucked around her on the wide window seat overlooking the Privy Garden. There was a book of plays partially hidden in the folds of her dress.
She hadn’t heard him enter the room, and he observed her for a moment, her forehead pressed against the mullioned glass, eyes flitting about the gridded pathways in the garden. He wondered, for a moment, if she’d been hiding from him. If perhaps, like himself, she was uninterested in courting games. He knew firsthand the difficulties in saying no to the queen, and sitting here, sunlight caressing her face, Lady Palpatine looked every inch the innocent.
“Good morrow, my lady.”
With a soft oh, she startled in her seat, one hand pressed to the glass, and her book of plays slid to the floor with a low thump.
Stooping to a crouch, Ben retrieved the book and offered it to her. She took it with a hand more finely boned than he remembered from the evening prior, and raised her gaze to his.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“I am very fond of the second play in that book.”
“I haven’t read that far, sir. But I’ll read it with your glowing review in mind.”
A smile suddenly broke like dawn across her face, and Ben revised his original assessment. She wasn’t pretty at all. She was luminous, and his frustration with his mother’s plots threatened to boil over.
More curtly than he intended, he held out his arm and said stiffly, “Shall we join the others?”
At his tone, or perhaps at his suggestion, the smile faded from her face, and the hand she placed on his arm was tentative. Ben cursed himself. There was no reason to be ungallant to the lady.
“My apologies, Lady Palpatine. I do not have the right disposition for party games.”
Her smile chanced a reappearance, albeit as a smaller star, and Ben felt a strange sort of consolation at her easy forgiveness.
“Nor I, Your Grace. We shall fumble through together.”
As she rose, he noted his name, penned in his mother’s hand, fastened securely to her sleeve. Some unruly part of him liked to see it there. But Ben was his own master, and he quashed the notion sternly and guided her to the door.
“We have an accord, my lady.”
The courting games, Ben soon discovered, were of a dubious nature. Love prognostication, which only the foolish and lovesick placed any stock in. Silly parlor tricks without any scientific merit. The lady at his side had a matching skeptical gleam in her hazel eyes, and he breathed out a sigh of relief. If he must be trapped for the day, at least his trap was clever.
Lady Tano clapped her hands for attention, and the easy chatter came to a stuttering halt.
“We begin the day by reading tea leaves.”
Good God.
“I suppose… it could be a cross of sorts?”
Lady Palpatine’s brows sketched a frown upon her face. He peered inside her teacup alongside Lady Tano. There was a brownish trace of leaves, a line bisecting them towards the beginning.
“Hmm, it could be. But,” replied Lady Tano, her voice quickening with excitement. “I rather think it’s a sword. His Highness is an excellent swordsman, my lady.”
“Is he now?”
Lady Palpatine’s voice was calm, neutral, but when he chanced a glance her way, he could see a flare of amusement sparkling in her eyes. He winked at her, without really intending to, and her eyes widened before she dropped her gaze to her lap.
“And as for His Grace’s teacup,” Lady Tano continued. “Could it be a box or a chest of some kind?”
Sir Calrissian joined their little party and stared into the vessel with great interest.
“Why, Lady Tano, I do believe that is an open book.” The knight, his father’s most faithful, a man Ben considered to be an uncle, after a fashion, turned to Lady Palpatine. “Do you enjoy reading, my lady?”
“Sir—”
“She does indeed, good sir!” Sir Dameron appeared out of nowhere, as he had a disconcerting tendency to do. “His Highness found her in the library this very morning.”
Lady Tano, to Ben’s great discomfort, looked to be the cat who got the cream. His mother, most unfortunately, would likely hear of this shortly.
“I fear I do not understand this game, Your Grace.”
“Well, my lady, against all logic and reason, the apple is going to divine the first initial of our love. Do they not play at this divination in France?”
Lady Palpatine studied the apple in front of her and the knife in her hand. With a shrug, she started to peel it in one long curl.
“Not in the convent, Your Highness.”
A reluctant smile pulled at Ben’s mouth. He found himself agreeing with his mother. The lady was indeed very charming.
“I wonder, my lady, as partners for the day, if we might do away with Your Grace and Your Highness. Could you not bring yourself to call me Ben? Or, if you must, as my lady mother does, Benjamin?”
The curl of the peel dropped into the water with a splash, but neither of them watched it floating there. Lady Palpatine’s hazel eyes were almost green in the sunlight.
“What would Her Majesty think, Your Grace?”
Ben’s smile deepened, crinkling the corners of his eyes. He could well imagine what his mother would think of it, and it surprised him to find that he didn’t mind as much as he thought he should.
“I think you’ll find, my lady, she shan’t be fussed.”
“Not my lady then, Ben. Just Rey.”
“Why then,” cried Sir Dameron. Ben was going to chase down the nearest cat and steal their bell. Sir Dameron needed a collar. “Lady Palpatine’s apple peel has curled into the letter B!”
“It hardly seems wise, don’t you think, Rey,” Ben said as he denuded another daisy, “to leave the fate of our love lives to the flowers.”
They were seated on linen blankets in the gardens just beyond Whitehall. A tendril, teased from her plaits by the southern breeze, danced against her jaw, and Ben had to stop himself from brushing it back behind her ear. All around them, he could hear a chorus of she loves, she loves me not.
“Very unscientific, sir,” Rey agreed. “And very unfair to untalented gardeners.”
Lady Tano walked by just in time to see his last petal drop, and he could see her counting the petals strewn about his lap. Ben wished it were possible to form a temporary allegiance with a stiff breeze.
“His Highness's flower whispers your secrets, Lady Palpatine. It declares you love him.”
“If I do so, Lady Tano,” Rey cheerfully retorted. “I shan’t need a flower to declare it. I’ll tell him so myself.”
His mouth, most unflatteringly, fell open, and she giggled in response.
After luncheon, Sir Calrissian announced the last courting game before the evening's supper. The couples were to go birdwatching, in hopes of determining the tenor of their union.
“And just what,” asked a baffled Rey, “are the birds supposed to tell us?”
“I’m starting to doubt the quality of a French convent education if you cannot recount these sorts of proven scientific theories.”
In response, she pelted him with the daisy she’d tucked into her bodice, and he held up his hands in surrender.
“Peace, Rey, peace.”
Lending his arm to her, they started to stroll through the orchard.
“Let’s see: there’s the goldfinch, which as you can imagine—”
“Ah, let me guess. That way lies a rich husband?”
“Just so. It’s kindness for blackbirds, but if you want to laugh, Rey, search for bluebirds instead. 'Tis power for eagles or hawks." He peered down at her with a smile. "And though I've never caught one reading, little nuthatches are for knowledge.”
“What of sparrows, Ben?”
His heart beat faster. Not sparrows, he thought—please, not sparrows. There were many birds Ben could be, but he'd never be a sparrow. That is, of course, if he wanted to be a bird at all. He'd never wanted to be one before.
“Why,” he asked, gratified by his even tone. “Do you see one?”
“Not I. ‘Tis but a question.”
His heart, that thrice-damned organ, slowed in his chest. Perhaps he was a liar. Perhaps he did want to be a bird.
“You’ll want a farmer for a sparrow, Rey.”
“Oh, I don’t think that would suit at all,” she laughed.
As they ambled deeper into the orchard, they heard an occasional cry go up in the air of bluebird or canary—his mother prized the songbirds—and even a giggled duck. But soon they were all alone, and Ben found them a tree with a drooping branch shaped like a swing.
With a stealthy look around to make certain there were no Sir Dameron-shaped bushes in the shadows, he glanced at his hands and then at Rey. She nodded, and he fit his hands to the curve of her waist and lifted her to the branch.
Seated there, she was half a head taller, and he had to tilt his head up to meet her eyes. The sunlight, filtered through the green leaves and ancient branches, lit the plaits on her head like a halo.
Or, Ben thought fuzzily, like a crown.
“First the convent and then Exegol. Have you spent your life locked away in a tower, Rey, with only a cruel dragon for company?”
Her gaze, which had been fixed on his mouth or perhaps his chin, snapped back to his. Her smile was rueful.
“I do wish that weren’t such an apt way to characterize much of my childhood, but yes, it’s rather fitting.”
Her face was very close to his now. Close enough that he could feel her breath on his lips, smell the sweetness of the apple she’d just eaten. Had he moved or had she?
“And where’s your dragon now, Rey? Or is it too blasted cold in Exegol for fire-breathers?”
“Perhaps I’m my own dragon, sir.”
She was close enough to kiss now. A twig snapped behind them, and Ben knew the voice before it ever rent the air.
“And what are you two lovebirds up to, hidden away in the shady woods?”
Sir Dameron, Ben decided, was going on a life-threatening errand. Post-haste.
“I’ve come to fetch you both for supper. However did you climb up into that tree, Lady Palpatine?”
The walk back to Whitehall would have been nearly silent were it not for Sir Dameron.
“And what of your birds? Tell me now, what did they predict for you?”
“Oh,” said Ben, startled. “We quite forgot to lo—”
A slender hand, resting on his arm a few inches above his wrist, tightened on his sleeve.
“Look, just there! Why, it’s a mourning dove. What do those signify, Your Grace?”
They had returned to titles, Ben thought bitterly. Except… mourning doves.
Sir Dameron, happy as ever to answer questions not directed his way, crowed with delight, “My lady, they are a most excellent sign. The luckiest of all! Mourning doves signify you shall be joyful in marriage.”
The hand on his sleeve twitched. One of her graceful fingers moved, in such a way that could be interpreted as purely accidental, and landed on his bare wrist.
It registered as a scorching burn. And then as a blessing. A balm.
They were not seated side by side at supper, left to gaze at one another over stuffed pheasant and roasted chestnuts. The discussion surrounding them was too animated, too loud to try to continue his conversation with Rey, but when the pudding was served, the rest of the guests were satiated enough that he thought he could sneak one or two words over the breadth of the table.
He managed to catch Rey’s eye and murmur, “Would you join me for a stroll in the Privy Garden after supper?”
She didn’t respond with her voice, but the look in her eyes was answer enough for him.
It took her longer to slip outside unnoticed than it did him, and she glanced over her shoulder warily before stepping into the garden.
“I can only stay a short while. Someone will come hunting for me soon enough.”
Ben couldn’t seem to help himself, and he caught at first one, then both of her delicate hands, and drew her close to him. They were cool and steady in his grasp, unlike his own trembling fingers.
“I’m supposed to return your name to you, Rey.”
“And I yours, sir. It no longer belongs to me.”
She was clever and sweet and all that was lovely. And she was wrong. His name belonged to no one but her now.
“You would wake tomorrow as strangers then?”
“Why, Ben, are we not at least friends?”
He shook his head in despair. Friends, yes, but he desired so much more than that, and he ached to think of the foolish youth he'd been yesterday, to scoff at such a feeling.
“Do you not wish to be friends, Ben?”
“I would wish for more.” His voice was low, scraped and raw and bleeding from his lungs. He could not stop looking at the sight of their hands joined together. Was he just supposed to let her go?
“My good sir, whatever could be more than friends?”
Outraged, he lifted his head to stare at her. Mirth was dancing in her eyes, and her smile was sunny with elation. Ben wanted to taste it. He dropped her hands to throw her high into the air with an exhilarated shout, twirling her around and around until she demanded relief.
“You impertinent little darling. This is how you speak to your future king?”
“I’ll speak to my husband,” Rey sniffed, in a lofty tone of voice, “however I please, Your Grace.”
With an aggrieved sigh, Ben replied dolefully, “I had best marry you, I suppose, for the good of England. To assist you in abstaining from mischief.”
“Extremely sensible, Ben. You're the very model of self-sacrifice. Or—" One of her hands was braced against his chest, the other tangled in his hair, and Ben thought he could cheerfully die. "You could choose to assist me in making merry instead.”
He lowered her until her feet dangled just above the ground, until they were very nearly eye level with one another.
“A very sound strategy. And if necessary, I can always stop your mouth with a kiss.”
Her arms immediately wound themselves around his neck, and she blinked at him owlishly.
“Well? I’m waiting.”
"My Rey," Ben whispered against her lips and pressed his mouth to hers. "My wife. My queen."
He kissed her over and over, and once more for good measure, and drew back only to bury his face in her hair. She smelled of violets.
"We have an accord."
Within the hallowed halls of Whitehall, just beyond the throw of light from a circle of dying candles, stood an older couple. As they gazed out into the darkened Privy Garden, the man’s as yet strong arms stole around his wife’s waist.
“So I take it Lady Palpatine is not a political concern after all? Nor a pawn?"
His wife patted his hand affectionately and smiled at the sight of her son’s joy, shining clearly even in shadow.
“Oh, Han. She never, ever was.”
Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past. Begin these woodbirds but to couple now?
