Archive of Our Own

“My troops are loyal, Supreme Leader!”

“They are not.” Kylo Ren’s gauntleted hands unclenched long enough to make an appeal towards the hologram that towered before the two men. “Supreme Leader, General Hux thinks they’re loyal because they remain silent when he speaks.”

“I tell you they are! Our new surveillance net would pick up the slightest hint of insubordination.” Hux’s voice carried a dangerous chill with every clipped syllable.

Kylo’s contempt was clear in every line of his black-robed body as he turned towards him.

“They have been monitored every minute of their lives. You think they haven’t found a way around it? They’re not stupid!”

“I want evidence of these rebellious attitudes you claim to detect.”

“I sense it in the Force!”

“I want better proof than that!”

The two men were now standing face to face in the black chamber, fists clenched.

Snoke interrupted, his voice raised to the level that signalled danger.

“I tire of your bickering!”

Hux and Kylo snapped to attention facing him.

“Ren may be right, but I find your mutual hostility annoying,” continued Snoke. “Hux, stop blocking Ren’s requests. Ren, leave now. You will go undercover as an ordinary crew member and find the proof Hux wants.”

Kylo stiffened in disbelief before bowing. He was glad his mask concealed his feelings from Hux. Beside him, Hux sniggered just loudly enough for Kylo to hear.

•      *        *

Rey’s job on the Finalizer today was perhaps the worst one possible one for a spy. She was testing wall panel weld integrity. And that meant hitting their metal surfaces with what amounted to a technologically-enhanced spoon, and listening for structural flaws. She’d been going up and down the ship all week, turning heads with the maddening “sping…sping……sping of the stupid tool. But it was evidently a regular part of the Finalizer’s maintenance schedule, and nobody questioned her.

It’d been easier the previous week, when she’d had a clipboard and a voltmeter. You could stand anywhere with those. She’d taken full advantage of that, downloading the First Order’s records of the stormtrooper child acquisition programme in full view of the bridge crew. The following day she’d transmitted them to the Resistance from a minor data relay centre in the Supplies administration hub. It was her last assignment. Her work here was done.

She just needed to find a way to leave.

Her maintenance map today showed the ship had an "audience holochamber” nearby.

What goes on there? she wondered. She spinged and pinged her way steadily towards it until she was almost at the junction with the broad corridor by its entrance.

There was the sound of large doors opening around the corner with a whoosh and a boom, and the doubled clack of bootheels on durasteel. Two people. Rey quickly applied her tool the the wall and leaned over it, cocking her ungainly helmet as though checking something.

“I tell you, insubordination is running rife,” said a voice with the muffled flat bass of a helmet vocoder. A mingled thrill of fear and delight ran through Rey. How terrible if she were caught! But how funny to eavesdrop on Kylo Ren like this!

“They stand to attention while you rave on, but inside their helmets they’re laughing,” Kylo continued.

“Oh, everyone’s a critic,” answered a smooth voice. Rey had heard this voice before too, during the Finalizer's Loyalty Hour broadcasts.

The speakers appeared in the corridor junction. Rey thanked the stormtrooper outfit which hid her features so completely. Kylo she knew already. The other, the redhead with the sour expression, had to be General Hux. The two men paused, evidently unwilling to drop their discussion before parting ways. “I haven’t heard you give any inspirational speeches lately. Or ever,” said Hux.

“I will wager you that if I go undercover, I will find plenty of individuals who don’t find your rants inspirational.”

“And I bet you won’t. My troops are the product of the most sophisticated training system ever developed. They have nothing but respect for me and the First Order.”

“If you lose, you have to lick Snoke’s feet.”

“He’s a hologram, Ren.”

“Nonetheless….”

Rey slanted her helmet to watch them. Kylo was doing his trademark threatening loom over Hux.

Hux snarled and then leaned closer to Kylo. “And if you lose, you have to…” His voice dropped so Rey couldn’t hear what he said. Whatever it was, it made Kylo rear back.

“That’s disgusting!”

“Nonetheless….” mimicked Hux.

Kylo rallied. “I think a little conversation with your precious stormtroopers will reveal the truth, and it won’t please you.”

“Enjoy slumming it in the lower decks, then,” sneered Hux.

“I look forward to some real talk with real folks,” Kylo replied heavily, making it sound like a threat. He turned away from Hux with a flourish of his cloak and headed stompily down Rey’s corridor. Rey pretended to enter figures in a datapad as he brushed past without looking at her. Inside her helmet, Rey sniggered very quietly.

But once Kylo was some way down the corridor, Rey turned her head. She saw his shoulders slump and his head go down. He kicked half-heartedly at the wall panelling as he retreated.

Rey’s smile died. Soon she would have to face Leia. Yes, he’s still with the First Order, but I don’t think his heart’s in it.

Leia’s dark eyes would bore into Rey, fierce with love and pain, wanting more. And Rey had seen more, despite keeping her distance from Kylo.

His allegiance to the dark side is like a child’s moth-eaten blanket that he drags around with him because it promised him comfort once.

No, I don’t think he’s happy. Not at all.

•        *           *

Rey didn’t have to wait long to see developments. Over the next week the voice of her boss, Lieutenant L’Eslee, could be heard ringing down the corridors as she vented her irritation on their section’s new radar technician.

“That is not the prime alpha coupler. You colour blind or what? The green one, GREEN, the Maker save us, you didn’t know it had to be green? You get your education from a hologame? Or you jus’ dumber than a bag of rocks?”

“Maker preserve us, why are you always losing your tools? Do you know how much time I’ve wasted this cycle filling out requisition forms for the crap you’ve lost?”

There it was again, around the next corner: Lieutenant L’Eslee’s voice raised in a trumpeting of disgust. Rey could hear Kylo muttering some sheepish reply. Her curiosity got the better of her. She took her hull integrity sensing spoon and pinged her way along for a closer look.

Rey stopped at the sight of Lieutenant L’Eslee kneeling by an open access hatch next to an absurdly disguised Kylo Ren, who was scrunched down to reach inside for whatever he’d dropped. He had black smudges of grease on his face.  As Rey absorbed the sight of his unconvincing blonde wig and ugly glasses, she felt a giggle rise in her throat. She tried to disguise it with a cough, and ended up choking.

So this was his undercover assignment!

Rey wasn’t too worried that Kylo would notice her. In her armour, Rey looked just like any other stormtrooper, and she’d been on the Finalizer for weeks without him detecting her Force signature. Clearly the mental shielding Luke had taught her was effective.

If Kylo was looking for disloyalty in the ranks, the worst offender was staring right at him, and he didn’t know it. The thought made another treacherous giggle rise in her throat.

“Something wrong, RA 2223?” asked L’Eslee.

“No,” gulped Rey.

“Good. Have you met Matt, our new radar technician?”

“We haven’t been formally introduced,” said Rey, counting on her stormtrooper helmet to disguise her voice. Come to think of it, we weren’t formally introduced the last time we met, either.

“I wasn’t aware we needed anyone new on our team, but apparently we do,” said Lieutenant L’Eslee, her voice dripping with acid.

“Ah.”

“It’s a good thing we don’t need him, because he’s completely useless,” continued L’Eslee.

Kylo, to his credit, kept his head down and said nothing. Rey didn’t need the Force to sense how he seethed. His body hunched itself around his rage to keep it down.

“What’s your deployment this week, RA 2223?” asked L’Eslee.

“Internal hull integrity,” said Rey, holding up the spoon tool.

“Spike that. The calcinators on decks one to seven are overdue for maintenance. Take Matt here and work through them. He can hold your vibrospanners or something. I’m sick of the sight of him.”

“Yes, ma’m.”

Lieutenant L’Eslee stood up, slammed shut the conduit hatch and dusted her hands, satisfied, and walked off. “I’m goin’ get myself a muffin,” she sang out happily as she retreated. “I’s gonna need some sustenance while I fill out the paperwork for all the stuff Matt’s busted or lost.”

“Matt” stood up too and eyed Rey sourly, as if wondering whether he could eliminate witnesses to his humiliation. Anyone would recognise that hot, coal-black glare if they’d seen it before.

Rey was one of the few that had.

She made herself into an uninteresting model of stormtrooper blankness. This time, she was the one in the mask. The irony was not lost on her.

But she didn’t want to deal with Kylo while she was looking for a way off the Finalizer. There were times during her working day when she wanted to explore things that were not exactly part of her maintenance schedule, and she needed to use just a touch of the Force to help people forget they’d seen her poking around the landing bay or repair dock. She wouldn’t like to try that with Kylo around.

“So. Calcinators. Hand me that schematic,” she said, to break the  awkward silence that had developed as “Matt” loomed sulkily over her. He shoved a datapad into her hand.

Rey looked it over. Reading schematics came easily to her, but still, she hadn’t actually been taught any of this. She could probably work it out given time, but having Kylo staring down on her made  the back of her neck prickle.

“Which ones have you already done?” she asked, hoping that would give her a clue.

He reached over and pointed hesitantly at some red lozenges with a cresh symbol inside. Rey shivered. This was the closest she’d been to him since their fight on Starkiller Base. If she hadn’t had her helmet on, he’d have been breathing on her hair. Ewwww!

This was not a good time for those memories. “So, this is conduit ---- .” Rey squinted at the hatch cover beside them, “29?”

“Yes,” he mumbled. “We’re going along one conduit at a time.”

Rey figured the black lines on the diagram must be the conduits. The diagram showed them threading around and between the Finalizer’s corridors. “Right, this way,” she said, with as much confidence as she could muster. Kylo fell in behind her like an unwelcome loth-hound.

By the end of the day Rey and “Matt” had examined fifteen calcinators, and the boredom of the task had drained away his anger. Once they got the hatches off, they would put their heads together and stared thoughtfully into the conduit innards. It was unclear who was supposed to do what. “Matt” unscrewed and refastened connectors apparently at random. Rey would nod and say, “That looks good,” also at random.

“Matt” dropped another vibrospanner and Rey, in her clumsy stormtrooper gloves, couldn’t catch it before it disappeared into a narrow gap. There was a quick tug in the Force from Kylo, quickly suppressed. Rey nearly had a fit of the giggles because she’d had the same urge to grab it with the Force.

Calcinator number 16 had burn marks around one of the couplings. The others had been shiny, and this one was black.

“That doesn’t look good,” said “Matt,” clearly fishing for information from Rey.

Rey had no idea. “Check the serial number and make a note of it, and we’ll bring a new one tomorrow,” she said. It seemed like a safe bet. “Shift’s over, anyway.”

Kylo insisted on following her back to the mess hall, making conversation all the way. As they’d worked together she’d almost gotten used to his charade of being Matt the Radar Technician. Now, with him walking behind her, she didn’t see Matt as much as she heard Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren making conversation was weird. Again, the hairs on the back of Rey’s neck prickled inside her helmet.

“So, do you like this job?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Fixing things is important,” she replied virtuously.

“Do you like to feel important?” he asked.

That was unexpected. Rey tried to imagine how a genuine stormtrooper would answer. They were people like anyone else, but they also said things out of their groupthink that Rey didn’t see coming.

“Everyone here has a purpose, I meant to say.” Surely nobody in the First Order would disagree with that.

When they got to the mess, Rey grabbed a packed dinner. She couldn’t eat with the others if Kylo was sharing her mealtimes. Datapad in hand, she signalled she still had duties elsewhere. She’d have to find somewhere safe to take her helmet off and eat later.

The next morning Rey learned that “Matt” was assigned to work with her for the next ten-day. “He’s waitin’ for you in Supplies,” said Lieutenant L’Eslee, grinning. Rey saluted glumly.

The next few days went like the first one. Rey’s small store of conversation as a stormtrooper ran out almost right away. Kylo stopped pestering her for opinions about life on the Finalizer once it was clear that she didn’t have any.

During meal breaks, Kylo sat next to a different person every day. Holding her takeaway dinner, Rey would linger nearby, tapping earnestly on her datapad. It gave the impression she was still on duty. Meanwhile she could watch him covertly through her helmet’s eye-slits.

“So, what did you think of the General’s speech?” he’d ask his latest target.

Everyone in earshot would nod enthusiastically, while edging away from “Matt”.

“Very motivational,” was the usual reply.

“Not up to last week’s standard, I thought,” said the only dissenter, RT-9836. “Only the front row got spit on them.”

“Yeah, it was like he didn’t really care,” said a trooper sitting across from them. “I prefer the delivery to have a bit of force behind it, if you know what I mean.”

“The week before was excellent, though,” said RT-9836. “Really left me feeling like I’d had a boot up the backside.”

“I hear efficiency was up 15 percent after that one,” somebody else said, and everyone at the table murmured approvingly.

After a week of it Kylo was clearly losing his temper and throwing out wild suggestions. Anything to get a bite.

“So who would you back in a fight, Hux or Kylo Ren with one arm cut off?”

“Kylo Ren’d win, but he’d wreck the ship and we’d all die. So he gets no votes from me,” said the stormtrooper nearest to him. Something about the look on “Matt”’s face made him suddenly decide to go for dessert.

It was almost pathetic. There was laughter and easy talk everywhere “Matt” wasn’t. It dried up as soon as he tried to join in. He had no idea what stormtroopers talked about. Rey knew what that felt like. She was still an outsider herself.

So she was surprised when one of the other stormtroopers on her team, TL-9456, came up to her at the end of shift one day and invited her to a Secret Cantina.

“Tomorrow, after third shift. Welding Bay Nine,” said TL-9456, whispering into Rey’s helmet. “It’s for Green Watch troopers only, unless you have a date you want to invite…” He didn’t make eye contact, but broke into a sudden shuffling dance-step before walking away.

Rey had been to a Secret Cantina before, welcoming her as a newbie. Secret Cantinas were stormtrooper parties held in places that had no surveillance. The last one had been in the uniform supply rooms. Everyone had made themselves comfortable on piles of unsewn fabric while getting drunk and telling stories and jokes Rey didn’t understand. Once they’d loosened up enough, they sung maudlin songs about love and war and comrades lost in battle. It was sad and funny at the same time. Rey wasn’t sure if she wanted to go to another one. She might end up liking these people who were meant to be her enemies.

But to her surprise, she found herself agreeing. The strain of working with Kylo all day was getting to her. The thought of a bit of fun and laughter was appealing.

But there was something more…

Welding Bay Nine….

Something tugged at her memory. Yes! There was a pod of couriers in the adjacent dock, fresh from their refit and ready for delivery. She’d been trying to get assigned to the welding crew so she could get into one of those fast, light ships for weeks, with no success. Now their upgrades were complete and they’d been moved next door. The main access corridors to their dock were heavily guarded. The Secret Cantina might solve her problem, offering a back way in at a time when people were less than alert.

She’d take a bag, fill it up with food and drink at the party, wait until everyone was busy with their merrymaking, and take a casual stroll to one of the ships parked next door.

She’d be off the Finalizer before anyone knew what was happening.

•          *             *

“This one’s too hot,” said Kylo, looking at their forty-ninth calcinator the next day. Rey could see the inputs vibrating. She reached over smartly and switched them off. The calcinator let off a puff of steam and hissed down to silence.

“Good work, Matt,” she said. “I think we caught it just in time.”

They both stared at it for a while. “We’ll let it cool and mark the whole unit down for replacement,” said Rey brightly.

“Shouldn’t we, um…” Kylo poked at the calcinator with a magwrench.

“No, leave it. A team will come through and swap it out next cycle,” said Rey. “It’s more efficient if they do them all in one swoop. Meanwhile, there’s lots of redundancy in the system.”  At least, she hoped so.

Kylo shut the conduit cover and stood up, stretching. He looked relieved. Amused, even. Rey was almost certain he’d figured out that she didn’t know what she was doing any more than he did.

The next calcinator was some distance away. They walked side by side.

“I have a question, RA-2223,” began Kylo, as they stood aside to let a squad of trainees march past.

Uh-oh. Maybe this was the moment when Kylo rumbled her as a fake. Rey stiffened, feeling her pulse accelerate.

But it wasn’t what she expected.

“You’re going to the Secret Cantina tonight, aren’t you?” Kylo asked her.

“Yes, probably,” said Rey, almost sagging with relief. “Are you?”

“Uh, well, I would like to. But I haven’t been invited.”

“ Sorry, Matt. Not up to me,” said Rey.

The squad had passed, and they could start walking again, but instead Kylo placed himself in front of her like an ugly orange wall. His eyebrows were peaked up, signalling some kind of distress.

“Ah. Uh, I know that. I thought maybe…”

“What?” said Rey, with the sinking feeling she knew already.

“I could go as your date?”

“What?”

“Look, I want to make friends, but I never get invited to anything!”

This was more like the Kylo she knew. He loomed over her, stiff-armed, fingers twitching, using anger to bulldoze aside his embarrassment. “Give me a chance! I promise I won’t hang around. I just want to get in the door.”

“That’s a really unappealing proposition, you know?” said Rey. She hadn’t been invited on many dates — or any, really. But she was pretty sure this was not how invites were supposed to work.

Kylo stepped closer. “Oh come on, it’s a fake date, just so I can get to know people. You weren’t planning to ask anyone else, were you?” His eyes flashed for a moment on that last question. Was he…jealous?

“Let me think about it, Matt,” said Rey. “I can’t decide anything with you hovering over me like this. Being so persuasive and all.”

Kylo turned with the exaggerated flounce of somebody more used to wearing a dramatic black cape. In his shapeless orange jumpsuit he merely looked ridiculous. Rey suppressed a snort.

They continued their walk to the next calcinator, somewhat more stiffly.

It was almost the end of their shift when they took the hatch off a calcinator that set Rey’s alarm senses pinging.

“Maker, that’s about to…” Kylo had obviously sensed it too. The whole thing was vibrating just at the edge of perception, and an ugly, stuttering buzz emanated from the step-down unit. Both of them reached in together to flick off the inputs. Kylo’s hand wrapped around Rey’s glove for an instant. Her pulse jumped. But there was no time to contemplate that now — the calcinator was still juddering under their hands. Kylo jammed in the vibrospanner, straining to uncouple the alpha line, which was still feeding power to the unit. The coupler seemed to be fused. He struggled with it while the buzz rose to a high pitched whine.

Rey knew he was operating on Force-enhanced instincts, and they were serving him well. But she could also feel something else, a surge of instability coming down the conduit towards them, tripping one calcinator after another in a gathering storm of power.

“Kylo, watch out, it’s going to —

He whipped around, one hand still deep in the recesses of the machinery. “What did you call me?”

There was no time! Rey shoved him out of the way and cut the conduit with a plasma knife, her own Force flashing into a protective shield around them as the calcinator bucked and sparked for an instant before going dead.

Steam poured across the corridor for a moment then dispersed.

Kylo straightened up slowly, taking Rey by the arm and pulling her up too. He stared down at her for a long moment while a dozen expressions battled across his face.

“How long have you known?” he said at last.

“Since always,” said Rey. No point beating about the bush. “I overheard you planning to go undercover.”

Kylo reared back. It was almost comical how furious he looked at being found out so quickly. Then his eyes narrowed. His stare burned into her.

“Take off your helmet,” he said flatly.

“Why?”

“I just felt you use the Force.”

“No! I’ve been covering for you all week, and I just saved your life. Forget it!”

“Take off your helmet, Rey!”

Rey broke his grip on her arm with a jerk. They jumped apart, both reaching for the Force.

They froze for a moment. Then Rey took her helmet off, shaking her hair out and fixing him with a challenging stare. It was only right, she thought. This whole mess had started when he’d taken off his helmet that first time. Let’s see what happens when we reverse our positions.

Kylo’s eyes widened behind his clunky glasses.

The Force sizzled between them until the empty corridor seemed to glow with it.

Then Kylo started to laugh, a heavy, unsmiling, “hah-huh-huh!”. He seemed to be laughing at his own expense. Rey felt her eyebrows climbing up her face.

Kylo pulled himself together after a minute, shaking his head. “You’ve been right next to me all this time. You could have killed me. Why didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t my mission!” said Rey, ears burning. She’d asked herself the same question many times, and every time it left her both angry and ashamed. How could she have trouble telling right from wrong? It had never happened to her before.

At first she hadn’t looked for revenge because Leia didn’t want it, strange as that seemed to Rey. Then once she’d been on the Finalizer long enough to observe Kylo, once she’d worked with “Matt”, she’d seen more clearly. The murder of Han had done something to Kylo too. It had frayed away his belief in the dark side until it was like a cape of shadow too full of holes to wrap around him any more. It protected him from nothing.

Rey’s pity confused her.

Then there was the way he sacrificed his pride and anger to pass as Matt, the useless but obliging radar technician. Following her round like some dumb luggabeast, grateful that she didn’t expose his ignorance.

And he hadn’t exposed hers! Rey started to smile at the absurdity. Amazingly, Kylo’s face cracked into a smile too, a real one this time. She’d never seen him smile before, and she was startled to recognise that quirked mouth, that cocky and confident face. Suddenly he was a person she’d never seen before, neither hapless Matt nor mad Kylo. A person who looked a lot like Han Solo.

“You were nice, as Matt,” said Rey lamely. “Why are you skulking around undercover, anyway?”

“Looking for traitors,” said Kylo, turning serious again. “I think your friend started something and I don’t want it spreading among our stormtroopers.”

“Who? Finn?”

“If that’s what he’s calling himself.”

“Couldn’t you just interrogate them like you did with me?” asked Rey.

“You think I haven’t?” he replied, sounding exasperated. “They’re all convinced there’s a secret society, but everybody’s guesses about who’s leading it are wrong. There’s thousands of stormtroopers. I’d wear myself out trying to find who’s really guilty.”

“Well it isn’t me,” said Rey, weighing up her loyalties. “Or it is. I mean, obviously I’m not loyal to the First Order. Tell you what, though. I bet the Secret Cantina is the best place to find who you’re looking for. If I take you as my date, promise you won’t turn me over to Snoke.”

“Uh. Snoke.” Kylo’s gaze hardened, and a smug smile pulled at his lips. Gotcha! He’s going to be so pleased...  But then the smile faded away, and he was simply looking at her. “You’re really pretty, you know?”

“What? I don’t think Snoke’s going to care.” Rey’s eyebrows were now just about lifting off her face.

“I know. What a waste,” said Kylo cryptically.

“So, promise!” said Rey, irritated. “And no handing me over to Hux or anyone else either,” she added hastily.

“All right, but you have to promise you will take me tonight.”

“Tonight? We’re going now! Shift’s over, and I’m not leaving you to go find a posse to arrest me.”  Rey put her helmet back on and turned to go.

“I have to get changed,” said Kylo, raising his arms and looking down at his hideous jumpsuit.

“What, going to put on your little black dress? Fine, but I’m coming with you.”

Rey followed him into a lift that took them up to the officer decks. It took a long time, and they were alone. Kylo stood, arms folded, leaning against a wall and looking down his nose at Rey. A couple of times he made a sudden move as if to grab her. She jumped and flung her hands defensively at Kylo so the Force whacked him against the wall. He laughed, rubbing the back of his head.

“Hah, you looked funny. You really thought I was going to attack you!”

“Weren’t you?” said Rey angrily.

A minute later Rey did the same thing, and it was Kylo’s turn to flinch and defend himself with a Force push. Rey picked herself up off the floor, rubbing her arm. “Calm down!”

“Well leave me alone!”

“You should have seen the look on your face, though,” Rey laughed. “Now look who’s skittish!”

The lift doors opened and they walked side by side to Kylo’s room, eyeing each other sidelong.

Kylo bowed her into his room. “Be my guest.”

“Not that line again,” snarled Rey. Kylo disappeared into some inner room. Rey shucked off her armour, leaving her in standard issue tunic and pants. She looked around Kylo’s quarters. They were ferociously devoid of personality. Black was the dominant colour. There were no decorations of any kind, apart from a melted helmet on a pedestal. Rey shuddered. It was the most depressing room she’d ever seen. An empty shell for a man whose heart was elsewhere.

Kylo strolled out of his room wearing  the same dull grey clothes as Rey,. Fashion choices on the Finalizer were even more limited than Jakku.

“Perfect,” said Rey, looking him up and down. At least the damn things were a better fit, giving more than a hint of his broad shoulders. The wig and glasses were still stupid, though.

“You look ravishing,” he replied, giving her the up-down scan in turn. Rey shrugged and looked at the ceiling. Jakku hadn’t taught her any flirty replies. She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to unflatten it.

He pulled something off a shelf and spritzed her head with it. She jumped away, sure he was spraying her with narcodoze or something.

“This what you were looking for?” he said. “Hairspray.” She glared at him. He ignored her look, reaching over to bouffe up her hair with his fingers. His hands strayed slowly down to the nape of her neck and his lips quirked into a half-smile that had more than a hint of challenge to it.

Finn had taught Rey about head massages. Apparently her traitor scalp didn’t care who was giving them, because right now it was tingling with pleasure. My own hair is siding with Kylo Ren, Rey thought with disgust. Probably envious of his lovely locks.

“Ugh! Let’s go!” she said, and charged out the door before things could get any more confusing.

They met up with a troop of Rey’s colleagues who waved at her. TL-9456 gave her a wink. Kylo  stepped over and put his arm around Rey’s waist as though he thought TL-9456 might whisk her off to the party without him. Rey did an undignified hop and squeak, but Kylo kept his hand firmly on her hip.

“Shush. Calm down. We’re on a date, remember?” he murmured into the top of her head. Rey growled.

It was the wrong time to cause a fuss, so they followed the others, Rey wedged awkwardly under his armpit. It was like walking with a wall. A big, warm wall. “This is so romantic,” she muttered her tone flat. But…it kind of was. How many times had she huddled in her freezing AT-AT, wishing somebody would do exactly this? Fold themselves around her, warm and solid, shutting out the cold?

They arrived at the door of Welding Bay Nine. A pair of stormtroopers in full armour guarded it. They scanned Rey’s wrist coder and nodded, then turned their blank masks towards “Matt”.

“I’m with her,” he said, pulling Rey in even closer against him. Rey grinned rather dizzily. The guards nodded and opened the doors. Rey and Kylo walked out of the sterile grey corridor into a different world entirely.

Welding Bay Nine was rigged with arc lights hooked to a circuit that made them whirl and flash.Thumpy music poured out of an arrangement of boxes in the middle of the huge space.  Hundreds of people strobed in and out of darkness in time with the lights. Released from duty and free of surveillance, the Green Watch threw themselves into a frenzied bacchanale.

Somebody was barbecuing meat with a welding torch that had been altered so it poured milde sheets of flame over racks of kebabed protein chunks. Rey breathed in the smell of sizzling fat. Real actual meat! Flametroopers jumped around turning the spitted meat while people danced and clapped at the sight of the flames. Every now and then a kebab would be flung out to the crowd, who would roar and jump, a dozen hands reaching for the flying food. There was a cloud of steam as somebody upended a vat onto the hot durasteel floor.  Three laughing women skidded on the spilled drink, making it into a game.

Kylo’s grip on Rey tightened. She looked up at him. In the strobing light she could just make out his face. He looked as overwhelmed as she felt. Spotting a quieter corner on the other side — not coincidentally, the side closest to the landing bay — Rey nudged him and pointed. They staggered towards it, a four-legged clutch-armed unit dodging dancers high on alcohol, glitterstim and other things Rey didn’t recognise. The music was almost a solid force of its own.

TL-9456 surged out of the crowd, still arm in arm with his friends. “Drinks that way!” he roared. Kylo followed his pointing hand, taking Rey in tow. The drinks table was away from the music, standing in a pool of downlights that gave relief from the insanity of the dancefloor lightshow.

Kylo grabbed the nearest thing, a glass of something fizzy and green, and shoved it into Rey’s hand.

“What’s this?” she screamed over the music. He shrugged, mouthing “Don’t know,” and grabbed one for himself. She sipped. It tasted sweet and floral, with a noxious chemical aftertaste. It carried a heat that lit up her throat all the way down.

Lieutenant L’Eslee sailed up, seized a drink, and then appeared to recognise “Matt”. She screeched something at Rey, doubled over laughing, and sashayed off. Rey stretched up to put her mouth to Kylo’s ear.

“Well, here you are. Secret Cantina. Go and find those traitors. Have fun!” Something — possibly the horrible green drink — made her feel she should accentuate her meaning with a boop on the nose, so she did, reaching out with one fingertip. Kylo gave her a look, half hurt, half amused.

“Ditching me already? Let’s have some fun first!” he yelled.

“Fun? How?”

“We should dance or something!” Without waiting for an answer, Kylo hauled her onto the dancefloor.

Rey had never danced in her life. Apparently it meant being held like a rag doll and smooshed against Kylo’s chest while he jumped around in time to the music. Rey’s feet had to look after themselves. Her alarm turned to laughter: it was a game, to avoid being stepped on.

She started drawing on the Force so she could predict which way he’d jump. Their movements became synchronized. Together they leaped backwards and forwards, around and around. People drew back and formed a ring to watch them, clapping and cheering. Kylo flung Rey around in a circle. Rey twisted under his arm, ducked, and skidded between his legs on her knees. He pulled her back onto her feet with a showy twirl. The crowd roared. Kylo and Rey faced each other, hands linked, and did a sideways gallop up and down the length of the room. People copied them, weaving and dodging around their course.

Rey and Kylo leapt apart, hands outstretched, and came together again. Both of them just, just goosing the Force a little so they could almost fly across floor, anticipating each other’s moves as they whirled and turned.

There was such beauty and power to their moving together. If only it could be turned to the good.

Rey didn’t know how long they danced. All she knew was that when they finished, both of them were dripping with sweat and her throat was parched. Kylo must have felt thirsty too. Without any discussion they both danced over to the drinks table. He handed her a drink, tossed one down himself, and paused, looking down at her with a wolfish grin. She laughed up at him. Strands of black hair were snaking out from under his wig. She reached up to tuck them out of sight.

“That was fun!” Rey shrieked. And it had been. He was so strong he could fling her into the air, and no matter what he did her quick reflexes had an answer. She knew how she looked; graceful and lithe, flying through the air. She saw it in people’s faces as they flashed past, she saw it now in Kylo’s face, glowing with approval.

They had danced another dance once. A deadly one in snow and silence: the dark reflection of this wildly joyful duet in the noise and heat of the stormtrooper’s Secret Cantina.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Kylo read that thought. His eyes widened and he laid a hand on her arm. His lips parted to say something that could not be said in this throbbing, crowded room. She read in his eyes how much he wanted to hold her and keep her.  

The terms of their earlier promises seemed suddenly less clear.

Time to get out of here.

A trio of troopers came rollicking over, arm in arm. They yelled happily at Kylo and drummed friendly punches on his arms and shoulders, the way stormtroopers did when they got drunk. Kylo stiffened and then smiled limply. Rey could make out shouts of “Hey Matt!” and “Dominating the dance floor, you loth-hound!”

Well, his social life was off to a flying start. If he wanted to get the dirt on stormtroopers, he’d never have a better chance.

Rey was walled in by happy drunks, so she ducked and rolled under the drinks table. It took her to the wall right by the door to the landing bay. Grabbing a couple of drinks, she eased it open and squeezed through. The door shut behind her with a solid thunk, cutting off the staggering noise of the Secret Cantina. A light switched on, showing her a storeroom filled with gigantic reels of hoses, the kinds used for both welding and refueling. She passed between them to another door that opened into the cool silence of an enormous landing bay. A line of freshly-refitted light couriers waited, slim shadows brooding in the soft light. Their landing ramps were down to allow loading droids to carry on supplies.

Beyond them, open space and the stars.

“What are you doing here off duty?” A stormtrooper clomped over from his post over by the main access doors.

“Didja know that Sienar Fleet Systems always sen’ off their new ships wiv a toast?” Rey held up her drinks. “We should do that. These ships are as good as new now.” She tried to sound drunker than she was. It wasn’t difficult. Her words slurred themselves.

“Where did you…?” the stormtrooper began, and then said, “Oh! I heard that Green Watch were holding a Secret Cantina tonight. Is it near here?”

“It might be. It’s invitation only, and you’re on duty,” Rey said. “But if you need a bathroom break, I sugges’ you use the facilities in Welding Bay Nine.” She gestured meaningfully with her drink, back the way she had come. With her other hand she focused the Force in its most persuasive mode.

The stormtrooper snatched eagerly at her meaning. He marched towards the door to the Secret Cantina.

Lightheaded with relief, Rey trotted over to the nearest courier and up the ramp. Moments later she was in the cockpit. She ran her hands happily over the controls. Comms, navigation, ignition, propulsion. The ship was fuelled up and ready to go.

Boots thundered up the ramp. How could she have forgotten Kylo? Rey sprang out of the chair as he burst into the cockpit. He was breathing heavily and she’d never seen him so flushed. His glasses couldn’t hide the thick, angry line of his eyebrows.

He stopped, hands gripping the doorway. “You thought you’d give me the slip!”

There was something else under his anger. Loss.

Rey lowered her eyes, unwilling to see it. Surely this was no time to be worrying about his feelings. When she looked up, Kylo quailed at her expression.

“I’m going. Over your dead body, if I have to.” She backed against the pilot’s seat, arms raised. She had no weapon. She hoped he didn’t either.

“Back to the Resistance?”

Rey was on the point of snapping back at him. But she felt the unmistakeable sense of the Force moving to speak for her. “Or wherever you want to go,” she said, surprised only for a second by what came out of her mouth. She canted her chin at the view beyond the bay door. “There are a million star systems, and this is a fast ship.”

Then she waited, watching Kylo’s face fall out of its tense lines, his lips parting and his eyes lighting up as though he was seeing something for the first time. There was a choice to be made. Everything hung in the balance, and one wrong word could throw Kylo off. Back into the dark.

But maybe words were useless, and the Force no guide at all.

Rey stepped forward, slow and careful. Kylo did not move while she lifted her hands to his head. He blinked as she pulled the wig off, and caught his breath as she hooked off the glasses too.

Then understanding grew in his eyes.  His arms reached around her, pulling her close. One hand easily spanning the space between her shoulderblades, the other one dropping to her hip, gathering her in as she paused, her lips close enough to feel the warmth of his face. Locks of his hair, released from their prison, hung down to tickle her cheeks.

Rey let him decide.