Baby, this is your kingdom [Reylo]

2- Finding Hope

As the Ascendancy, together with five other Star Destroyers emerged from hyperspace, there was no evidence of the Supremacy ever being present in this solar system except for the huge fireball above Crait.

"This is Admiral Maxwell of the Ascendancy, I demand a status report."

Ben was lucky that the Silencer's transmission got through and that his fellow Admiral rushed to the rescue extremely quickly. He didn't know how serious Rey's wounds were and when he combined them with her exhaustion from the fight with the Praetorians and the torture from Snoke, he figured her health condition wasn't the best and that he could lose her if she didn't get help. That was something he would not let happen, ever.

"This is Kylo Ren. I am sending coordinates of my starfighter now, pick us up immediately," he demanded, surprised how easily the pronoun us escaped his lips.

"Supreme Leader Snoke?" The Admiral asked, knowing it was his duty to save the leader of the First Order first.

"He didn't make it. Following the chain of command, it is I who is in charge, but we will deal with that later. Admiral, I need your men to extract every remaining shuttle that made it out in time," with his final order Ben ended the transmission, focusing on maneuvering the TIE Silencer in between the wreckage.

Rey was asleep in his lap. The tingling light that was her Force signature could be compared to a blazing flame of a candle. It was small, warm and ready to ignite stars once it got stronger.

Rey woke up covered in silk sheets . It surprised her, because the softness was something she wasn't used to. On Jakku, she was glad to sleep with an old rug covering her torso. On the coldest nights she often woke up trembling, hugging her knees up on her chest and warming her feet with the movements of her hands. It took her a few moments to realize where she was – it was definitely not her AT-AT. Recalling the past few days she figured she was on board of one of the Star Destroyers. It was fascinating how she woke up in such luxury quarters rather than the detention level.

As she reached out to uncover herself she noticed that the wounds on her hands were bacta patched. Her fingertips trailed along the left side of her head where she found another healing patch which meant that the medics had already helped her and she was not dying. A series of beeps interrupted her thoughts and she noticed a black droid rolling over to the other room of the quarters.

"Master, Master, your girlfriend is awake!!" Rey frowned her eyebrows as she translated the binary into basic. Did the droid really say –girlfriend-? True, it was a while since she needed to rely on her skills in the language of droids, especially astromechs, so it was possible she just misunderstood and translated the word differently.

"Ninee, for the last time, she is not my girlfriend," a voice replied and even though it was almost a whisper, Rey knew who it belonged to. So her binary was still pretty good, the little droid had indeed said girlfriend, but why?

This time the droid, Ninee, beeped so quietly she couldn't make out what it was saying, but judging from Ben's reply it was another remark concerning her.

"Shut up ball or I'll throw you out the airlock." Her lips curved up in a smile as she imagined Ben talking to the droid in the adjacent room.

Rey stood up and noticed the chrono on the bed table. According to the digits on its display it was a little past oh-one-hundred which meant it was night aboard the vessel. Her stomach growled and Rey placed her hand on it, trying to silence it before it would wake up the whole crew. She quickly found her boots and walked over to the other room where she saw Ben squashed on a little couch with a holopad in his hand. The black droid was resting beside him, enjoying the gentle strokes of Ben's hand against its little head. It was a BB unit, but unlike BB-8's dome his was not perfectly spherical. Rey muffled her eyes with her hands and blinked a few times to make sure this was not a dream – she was looking at the feared Kylo Ren petting a droid. The silent chuckle that escaped her lips got Ben's attention. He immediately stopped the caresses and dropped his holopad.