Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He tried to talk her out of it for months. The health risks, the chance that it might not work. He cupped her cheeks in his warm, rough hands like this could soften the blow of his words: “You could get an infection in your eyes.”

He did his research, and he started rattling off statistics to try and scare her. In eighty percent of cases for this implant, patients would require later surgical intervention, for reasons like hemorrhages, low eye pressure, and detached retinas. Inflammation, infection, and pain would most likely occur. If FOS were to shut down tomorrow, there might be no chance at repair, and she would have a piece of obsolete technology stuck inside her eye that could be dangerous and costly to remove.

Rey had to smile at that one, considering that Poe worked at the FOS – that was how she learned about the implant. She also countered that inflammation, infection, and pain could be counteracted with medication. As for everything else…

Rey huffed our a sigh. She brushed aside his hands. “Like that’ll make anything worse?” she asked, annoyed.

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She reached out, tentatively — always tentatively, because she didn’t want to jab him with her fingernails. As soon as she reached out, Poe took her wrists and pushed his face into her open hands, like something touch-starved. A pain stretched inside her chest, like her heart wanted to fall out of her ribcage.

“You don’t know this,” she said, “but for nine years, I’ve only seen your face in dreams.” His jaw was rough with stubble; Rey had hated the look of beards before, but that didn’t matter after. She ran her fingers along his warm, sandpaper skin. “Just once, I’d like to see it again,” she said, her voice straining against her throat. “See you again. And everything else.”

He swallowed audibly, the muscles in his jaw shifting.

.

A series of astronomically expensive, time-consuming surgeries followed. Implants were attached to both her eyes to reactivate the degraded optical nerves. Rey was afraid, but with Poe beside her, she was at least comforted by the fact that the likely thing she could lose from this was blood and money.

The gray in front of her eyes fomented, as if the air were made of a million billion little particles. It made Rey think of ants. A tingling, itching, crawling sensation erupted across the surface of her skin. She fought back the fear, the urge to claw at her eyes.

Light.

A strangled cry escaped her mouth. Poe squeezed her hand.

Rey moved her head, and the light folded. She could make out the vague shapes of things. She touched the table edge to verify that it was real, and then she wiped her face with her free hand. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

The doctor spoke to her in reassuring notes, “You’ve been blind for so long, it’ll take your brain a while to retrain itself to process what your eyes are taking in.” The doctor cleared his throat and excused himself.

Rey brought Poe’s hand to her mouth, running the contours of his knuckles against her lips. She was so excited that it hurt to breathe. Poe squeezed her hand, and he leaned in to kiss the tip of her damp nose. Rey had never experienced him being so vulnerable, and she could sense the raw emotion pouring off of him. She wanted him by her, at all times, but eventually he pried his hand from hers and went to the bathroom. Rey smiled; at this point, he was still a tall blob.   

The objects surrounding her sharpened in definition. Rey looked around at everything, feeling very much like an alien in a new world. The doctor warned her that it might take a while for her to adjust to her reality, but to Rey, she couldn’t help but think that she was returning home.

Just then, a large, pale man entered the room and took the chair perpendicular to her, where Poe had been sitting. His knees jutted out in front of him; he was almost comically large compared to his seat. His eyes were pink with tears, to go with his wide, rosy mouth. He wore a loose blue shirt and denim jeans, and his hair was long and wavy, down to his shoulders. He was cute in a puppy-ish way.

Rey stared at him, before averting her eyes. He wasn’t dressed like a nurse; maybe he was a patient? The FOS stood at the forefront of ‘electroceuticals,’ and some of their boasted projects could cure PTSD and regulate emotions. Rey wondered if maybe he was confused.

Suddenly the man reached out, his hand brushing hers. A shot of nervous energy ran through her and she flinched, jerking away from him. Who the hell was this guy?

His smile fell, replaced by a look of alarm. “Rey?” he said. His voice was soft and nasal to her ears. She stood up straighter, thinking, How do you know my name?

He observed her so acutely, so intently. A sick, falling sensation stretched in her gut.

He brought his long, pale hands to his chest. “It’s me, Rey,” he said. His voice was watery, but painfully familiar.

No. Rey shook her head, she couldn’t help herself. She glanced around, silently willing a nurse, an orderly to come in and collect this man because he was obviously disturbed. Somebody needed an implant checked, somebody needed a reality check, because this was wrong.  

A man in a long white coat came in. Rey silently begged him to look at the giant in the room and escort him out. “Well, Rey, how are you feeling?” the doctor asked, picking up a clipboard.

He ran her through a series of tests to check for color, light gradation, etcetera. The strange man faded in the background during the tests, during the miracle that was regaining her sight again, but she could still sense him in her blurry peripheral. When the tests ended, he hadn’t disappeared as she hoped.

“I believe you’re all set, Mrs. Dameron,” said the doctor. “I’d like to check up on you next week to see how you’re progressing, but of course you’ll have Phasma’s number if you have any questions or would like to schedule an earlier appointment. In case of an emergency you have my…” He rattled off other names and canned prescriptions for pain meds. “… if that’s all, then I think Poe will take you home now.”

“They gave me an instruction packet, so I’ll know how to take care of you.” The man smiled at her, which thinned his lips into a U. Rey’s stomach flipped nauseatingly at the thought of going anywhere with this creep.

She realized too late that she had visibly grimaced, and she watched the man’s smile contort into a hurt expression. Suddenly Rey was aware of the doctor staring at them, observing this interaction closely. Sweat broke out in the small of her back. 

“That’s… great,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips. Her skin crawled with a nest of ants.

Who are you?

Rey searched her memory for an idea for what was happening. After her speech about seeing his face only in her dreams, it would be pretty fucking embarrassing if the face she dreamed of wasn’t even her husband this entire time. 

Was it possible that the neurosurgeons jabbed something that they shouldn’t have and scrambled her memories? Had she ever seen this man before?

She remembered the real hurt on his face, the pink of his eyes and his mouth when she woke up. Guilt stabbed at her. If he was a complete and total stranger, he had to be a psychopath to be able to fake those emotions in front of her; an intelligent psychopath who could trick the FOS into thinking he was the real Poe, too.

Maybe… she had a stroke on the table, or wires were crossed, and that was what Poe had always looked like? A tall white guy? But if so, then what else would she see? What else was wrong with her picture of reality? Her friends and loved ones?

He pushed the wheelchair across the parking lot. No orderlies stopped him, no one screamed ‘Stop that man’, no alarms sounded. Rey let out the breath she had been holding in a long, aching sigh. She raised her head, staring up at him. The afternoon sun tinged the sky pink, but the warmth didn’t touch his pale face. He noticed her staring and looked down at her, smiling. She turned away quickly.

The wheelchair came to a halt in front of a four-door black sports sedan, the Silencer. She knew that Poe had bought it a couple years back, but this would be her first time seeing it. It was a beautiful car.

While the man opened the door, she quickly glanced back at the hospital entrance.  

Her entire body prickled. She didn’t want to get into a van with this stranger. He opened the passenger side door, before standing in front of her and reaching down. Rey flinched.

“I – I can walk,” she said. She gripped the armrests of her wheelchair and pushed herself to her feet.

The man stepped back from her, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, I… I know. I’m just excited to have you back home.”

The interior of the car stood out like a dark portal. Rey hesitated. Her instincts screamed at her to run, but her knees were ready to buckle underneath her. She slid into the passenger seat, the door closing behind her. The man slid into the driver’s side next to her, and the locks clicked shut with finality. Rey’s hand moved to the door handle; I can still escape this, she told herself, as if this was a kidnapping.

“Rey?” Her hand slipped from the handle. She turned to him and he stared back at her, his eyebrows knitted together. One of his hands rested on the wheel.

There was a long pause.

“Did you forget something at the hospital?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “Like… like my wallet.”

“Honey, I have that,” he said. He leaned forward; Rey leaned back, alarmed, but he was only reaching behind to the back seat. He pulled a beat-up red handbag from the back of the car. He placed it in her lap.

Rey pulled the zipper back, and felt the shape of her wallet, her keys, tampons, and… pepper spray, if it came to that. She bit her lip. “Your wallet..?” she asked. Now she was digging for excuses not to get taken to a secondary location.

The man tapped a bulge in his left pocket, grinning ruefully at her.  He turned the key in the ignition.

He asked her if she wanted him to drive anywhere, but Rey shook her head. “I’m just tired,” she said mildly. 

“I thought you’d be leaping at the opportunity to go to Takodana Forest,” he said. “You know. Looking at flowers. Looking at trees.” The corner of his mouth lifted up in a grin. 

The car pulls up in front of a house, in a neighborhood lit by evenly spaced streetlamps. The front door opened up into a foyer, with walnut paneling. She walked to where she expected to find the living room, and entered a carpeted den, with a padded armchair for reading, and a black sectional sofa. Dark, solid colors, like a Bond villain’s man-cave. She told herself that this would not be how Poe would decorate their home.

When not-Poe entered the house, with her hospital bag, she went upstairs to escape him. She entered the bathroom, and then went through the master bedroom into the bathroom suite, and noted the bathmats on the floor and the railings in the shower stall and the bathtub. After closing the doors, she opened the walnut wardrobe and dresser drawers. The wardrobe carried racks of dark suits and ties, built for that giant of a man.

Rey pulled open the dresser drawers, and felt a sinking in her gut. She saw some girl’s bralet and panties, so if she was kidnapped then he had been prepared for this. She rifled through the other drawers, until a scent hit her. She pulled out a massive band shirt and wrapped it around her face. Poe’s scent filled her lungs, and she held her breath to keep him inside of her chest. That was how he found her, sitting on the floor with her face buried in a shirt. He didn’t say anything; he touched her shoulder, and pulled her up, before putting the shirt back into the drawer.  

Post-surgery, the doctor recommended a light meal, so the man heated up a can of chicken broth. They ate it at the kitchen table, sitting across from each other. Rey kept her attention trained on the bowl in front of her, conveying spoonfuls into her mouth. Rey felt a touch against her ankle, and her knee jumped — slamming the underside of the table. Her soup bowl skipped in place and sloshed some liquid onto the table spread. 

“Oh,” said Not-Poe.

Strange men made her nervous. Strange, large men masquerading as her husband made her nervous. Her body went still and she prepared herself for an adverse reaction. The man stood up and disappeared into the kitchen, and when he came back, he held a swab of paper towels. He went to her side of the table and swabbed it up, reaching over to her.

His proximity brought the smell of his body to her. Rey tallied another strike against him: that’s not how Poe would have reacted. Poe would have cussed in Spanish or something. At least, she thought so.

After dinner, the man asked her if she wanted to watch some television with him, but Rey shook her head. He smiled and wished her a goodnight, and Rey climbed up the stairs. After brushing her teeth, she unfolded herself into the massive, empty bed. That, too, smelled like Poe, and it made her lungs ache.

Rey felt exhausted, but as soon as the lights went off, she couldn’t shut her mind down. The day's events swam in her mind, in a hopeless blur. Particles of shadow danced at the edges of her vision. She wondered if it was supposed to do that, or if she was already breaking down.

She fell into a light sleep, when the door opened. Rey cracked open her eyes, her body going stiff. A silhouette walked into the room, giving a frustrated sigh. Lying down, she appreciated again how much bigger he was compared to her. He shucked down his pants and lifted his shirt over his head, his body contorting as he wrestled out of his clothes. With his shirt tangled around his elbows, he paused, turning to look at her.

“Are you awake?” he asked.

Unnerved, Rey closed her eyes, and pulled the covers over her head.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in a low voice. “Normally, this wouldn’t bother you.”

She prayed that he would shut up. This night would be long enough without him talking.

The opposite side of the bed sank. Rey’s eyes shot open, in total darkness.

He unfolded himself behind her. Heat radiated off of him; his breath washed over her senses. Every nerve in her body was coiled to spring.

She half-hoped that maybe darkness would make the unfamiliar familiar again, except she’d just spent a day whinging at the sight of this man. The weight of his arm fell like a bar around her midsection. 

He had to know that she was awake, she told herself. He had to know that she didn’t feel right about this whole mess. 

His breathing eventually slowed to a long, rumbling snore that issued from his nose. If she closed her eyes, maybe that would sound like Poe. 

Chapter Text

I think I would remember if my husband were a white man, Rey thought to herself.

Before, she would have bet on her life that Poe Dameron was a Latino man. This guy? This guy was a tall glass cistern of milk. Additional sun exposure might give him a tan, but it would also give him about five new moles.

And this ‘Poe’ had a LOT of moles. His face was as speckled as a Dalmatian. After the first few days, the strangeness of seeing him did not wear off, because he looked like no man that Rey had ever seen before. His nose looked less Latino and more Germanic in origin, and his lips were bulbous in proportion. If an average-height white guy had replaced Poe Dameron, Rey would have been a little miffed. But seeing a six foot tall Sasquatch in his place intimidated her; it made her suspect that something bad had happened to her real husband.

For the first couple days after coming home from the hospital, the man worked from home, while Rey used up sick leave to adjust to her surroundings. No medical complications occurred in the meantime, only the psychological: her life had become a Lynchian movie. She had no idea how to talk to him or how to relate with him, because she had no idea who he was. Her skin crawled every time he entered a room that she occupied.

She needed to put more space between herself and Not-Poe; she needed a change in perspective. She breached the subject with him.

“You want to go back to work?” he asked. His lips turned downwards. “I thought your office has a telework option.”

Rey felt a flicker of annoyance. She scratched the back of her head. “But I want to see the office, and the people I work with,” she said.

“I’d feel more comfortable if you were at home, in case anything were to happen.”

“But I’m doing great,” snapped Rey. “I’m getting cabin fever being locked up in here all day…” with you, she didn’t add. 

“We could go somewhere,” he suggested. “Take a vacation.”

The word ‘vacation’ brought to mind a seedy motel. Where he could probably tie her to a bed and kill her. She shuddered – yeah, no thanks.

He blinked. A microexpression flashed on his face – hurt.

Rey felt an unexpected tinge of guilt, which only confused and alarmed her, so she walked out of his home office to catch her breath. Not-Poe had made a salient point. The doctor did say that she should stay at home supervised, in case issues arise.

Blurry vision, dizziness, light headedness, retinal bleeding – all the things that Poe himself warned her against. But then that raised another uncomfortable thought: what if that wasn’t Poe after all?

Cold panic washed over her. She wrapped her arms around herself. How long had this deception been carrying on?

Rey tried to busy herself with some work of her own, even though she was on sick leave. Her work laptop came with a braille keyboard and audio cues that read anything out to her – important emails and webpages. Over Teams, she received a stream of DMs because her coworkers noticed that her status read Online – mostly everybody wanted to know how the operation went.

Behind her, she heard footsteps. Not-Poe made his way out of his den and went to the kitchen, while Rey ignored him. She clicked on an email, and a robotic voice read to her: ‘Rey, How are you –’ “Since you can see now,” he said, “do you want to try cooking?”

Rey spun around. The fresh sight of him always upended her, because of his indecent size and his hair and his constant five o-clock shadow. It made her hindbrain go How did this homeless man walk into my house?

The laptop droned, ‘Rose heard from her friends at Resistance that you’re getting your sight again.’

“Remember that MasterChef episode?” Not-Poe asked. “One of the winners was blind or near-blind.”

“I can’t,” Rey spat out, before hitting the mute button on her laptop. “I’m busy.” She didn’t want to be near him, in a contained space, next to a knife block.

Not-Poe frowned, before his lips curled into an easy smile. He tisked at her. “Princesa,” he called her. “Fine. I guess I’ll always be your servant.” He rolled the R in his mouth, and his eyes crinkled in the corners. Rey felt a pulse in her core and she squeezed her thighs together. In an instant, revulsion.

What the hell is wrong with me? That isn’t Poe. He was probably a registered sex offender, somewhere. “What are you making?” she asked, trying to cover for her adverse reaction.

“I’m trying to empty out the pantry and the fridge,” he explained. “Spaghetti, probably.” He returned to the kitchen.

That doesn’t sound very Ecuadorian of you, Rey thought. She slumped back into bad posture on the sofa.  She didn’t want the imposter to know that she suspected him, but she didn’t know how long she could keep up this act. Rey checked the email and scrolled through it. Her eyes caught at the name on the bottom:

Yours, Finn

It took a moment for her to process that: Finn. Finn. She scratched the back of her head, before typing out her response.

They ate dinner together. Rey didn’t have a thing to say to him, but apparently he needed to fill the void. He talked about his work, and he conceded that Snoke did want him returning to the office as soon as possible. He also asked about the email that he interrupted earlier, but Rey shrugged and told him that it was work related stuff, very urgent. They both had better get back to work. Rey didn’t completely lie; Rose used to work for Resistance.

Rey excused herself and went to bed early, so she could avoid spending quality time with him. Just as she crawled into bed, she heard him stomp up the stairs. He opened the bedroom door and smiled at her sheepishly, before walking into the en-suite bathroom.

Shit shit shit, Rey thought to herself, pulling the blanket over the bottom half of her face. Some lies were easier to maintain than others. Rey still couldn’t find an excuse to sleep in a different bedroom from him; for a few days, she could at least go to bed an hour before him, to avoid awkward pillow talk.

Not-Poe exited the en-suite bathroom. He bunched his shoulders, before pulling his shirt over his head. His pectorals stood out on his barrel chest. A trail of moles carried down the column of his neck, and speckled his chest and his abdominals. He shed his pants so that now he stood in front of the bed in only his boxers. Until now, Rey didn’t know that men could reach his size.

“It was almost worth it, to see you make that cute face,” he said breathily. Rey startled out of her thoughts and looked at his face, wondering what he meant by that.

That smile fell from his lips; heat flushed his cheekbones. The look on his face brought to mind warnings about making eye contact with a wild animal. He crawled over the bed, on his hands and knees, the mattress sinking beneath his weight. Panic rose and stole Rey’s breath.  

“No. Not tonight,” she said. He was on top of her, backlit by the ceiling light. “Not tonight,” she said, firmer. She placed a hand on his chest to try to push him off; his skin burned as hot as a furnace.

He hovered over her for a moment, his pulse fluttering beneath her hands. For a moment, Rey wondered if this was when the mask slipped off, when all her doubts would be vindicated. If he attacks me now, it’s all over. The real Poe would never force himself on her.

He let his weight bear down on her, her elbow straining to support him. Like a tree falling, he fell sideways and landed next to her, displacing a gust of warm-smelling air.

“I guess I’m uglier than you remember,” he said, with a defeated air. “I knew this would happen.”

Her mind spun. If her life were a horror movie, she could have sworn… “Not uglier,” she confessed. His brow rose suggestively at that, and she felt heat rise to her face. Maker, she was a terrible person. “You’re a lot… paler than I remember.”

“I spend a lot more time indoors,” he said. “I spend most of the day indoors working for the FO.”

She bit her lip, searching for the right words to say. At some point, she would need to outright confront him, but not right now. Right now it would either go one of two ways:

One, he’s not Poe, and he reacts by whipping a bedside lamp at her head for exposing him in the lie.

Two, he IS Poe, and he looks at her like she’s crazy, and they get a divorce because Rey can’t recognize her husband any more.

Rey didn’t know which outcome could be worse.

Before I accuse him, I better have a gun on me, she thought, staring at his broad shoulders.

“Another thing,” she said, “you…” He turned to look at her, his eyes wide. “I don’t remember you with so much facial hair.”

He brought a hand to rub his stubbly jaw. “You don’t like it?” he said, sounding oddly hurt. “I grew it out so that… because I thought you liked to touch it.” He croaked the words, like the confession embarrassed him.

He reached over his side of the bed, and picked up a dog-eared book. He looked at her expectantly. It took her a moment to read the title: Don Quixote. Poe used to read to her a little bit before bed, because his voice would put her to sleep. Her heart twisted inside her ribcage. She glanced up at him.

What if this was Poe?

What if the implant really did make me crazy?

Rey went quiet for too long, failing to give him an answer. He released a sigh that moved through his whole body and he said, “Why don’t you close your eyes and listen to me for a little bit?”

Even the suggestion that she close her eyes around him made her leery, as if she hadn’t slept beside him for the last few days. The man who called himself Poe Dameron observed her, and his shoulders drooped further. “Can you just humor me for a second?” he said in a low voice.

Rey turned on him, but the words she meant to say died on her lips when she saw his expression. “Fine,” she scoffed. She closed her eyes.

She wanted the magic, even if she doubted it. She waited for it, for that tinge of recognition when she heard his voice and everything would fit into place. Rey would have willingly grasped at anything if she could just have her husband back, because she missed him most of all. It was as if she had traveled to a brand new planet, but the person she traveled with had inexplicably disappeared. It was as if she left Poe in that other place, in darkness.

He sat up, his back against the headboard. Heat radiated off of his body. He gave the chapter number, and the header which read like translated hentai titles: OF THE QUARREL THAT DON QUIXOTE HAD WITH THE GOATHERD, TOGETHER WITH THE RARE ADVENTURE OF THE PENITENTS, WHICH WITH AN EXPENDITURE OF SWEAT HE BROUGHT TO A HAPPY CONCLUSION.

“The goatherd's tale gave great satisfaction to all the hearers, and the canon especially enjoyed it, for he had remarked with particular attention the manner in which it had been told, which was as unlike the manner of a clownish goatherd as it was like that of a polished city wit; and he observed that the curate had been quite right in saying that the woods bred men of learning…”

Rey’s head began to spin. She thought she understood the individual words, except for ‘canon’ and ‘curate’. More than anything else, Rey became aware of the fact that she was lying in bed with her eyes screwed shut, while a strange man posing as her husband talked at her.

His voice drifted and slowed to a stop, not at the end of a chapter but in mid-sentence. Rey took a risk and cracked open one eye. Not-Poe stared down at her, through his eyelashes. He reached down with his massive hand; Rey steeled herself, goosebumps flushing down her entire body.  

The back of his knuckles grazed her cheek.

Chapter Text

One fateful morning, the muscles in her left calf shifted – and locked into place. Rey’s eyes shot open; she tried to sit up, when the pain sliced into the muscle and sinew of her leg. She hissed through gritted teeth, hot knives shooting up her nerves.

A mountain rose up in the bed beside her. He swept a mane of dark hair out of his eyes. Without a word, he pulled up the covers, and his hands wrapped around her seizing leg.

Rey tensed, tears beading at the corners of her eyes. Conflicting emotions battled for dominance. Half of her screamed to yank her leg out of his hands and kick him in the face. The other half of her, lit up in searing pain, focused on the movement of his thumbs as he dug into her tortured flesh.

Rey had no idea how he knew – maybe her whimpering and thrashing woke him up – but in her current state, she settled on the path of least resistance.  His stupid thick fingers kneaded her calf until the muscles released. Her back muscles untensed and she sank into the mattress.

She gazed up at the ceiling, unseeing. The only sensation in the world was the feeling of his touch unraveling the knot in her calve muscles, like magic. She cast a grateful look at her savior.

He raised his head towards her, his hands still massaging her calf. His hair veils his eyes, but his bottom lip is thrust out in a kind of determined pout. Rey stiffens in surprise, and the man pushes his hair out of his eyes, at last looking at her.

A part of her is disgusted and afraid – how dare this creep put his hands on me!

Another part, vulnerable and drunk from pain relief, shivers at his touch and the hooded look in his eyes. He’s not Poe, but he’s very attentive, and good with his hands.

As he caught her gaze, and his mouth twitched upwards in a smile. His hands stopped moving. The temperature in the room rose a few notches. Rey became aware of how tight the elastic band of her pajama shorts felt around her hip bones, and how her nipples scraped against the inside of her cotton shirt.

With a wild kick, she tore her leg from his hands. Her foot slammed into his chest before she scrabbled to fold her knees beneath her.

Not-Poe placed a hand above his heart, like a wounded man. Guilt seized Rey for kicking him like that. She pretended to study the alarm clock on the nightstand so he wouldn’t have to see her face.

“I’m sorry, am I allowed to touch you?” he asked in a low voice. “Did I have your consent to touch you, princesa?”

“It’s only six thirty,” Rey announced, as if she could sleep for another hour. 

“Tell me you think I’m ugly,” he said. “Tell me you don’t want me to touch you ever again.”

She took it as a joke, like a teenage girl pleading Tell me I’m pretty. Ignoring him, she pressed buttons on the clock, pretending to make sure her alarm was actually on.

When she finished, she sat down heavily on the bed. In the silence that followed, Rey combed her fingers through her hair and smacked her lips, looking anywhere except at the man who claimed to be her husband.

She thought she could be cold-blooded like her estranged grandfather, Sheev Palpatine, but when the man rose off of the other end of the bed, she felt her heart squeeze painfully.

Once he entered the en-suite bathroom, he closed the doors behind him. Rey slipped back under the bed covers, a wave of exhaustion washing over her. Immediately she wanted to call in sick from work and lay in bed, forever. Her leg still ached from that cramp. When she heard the bathroom doors open, she poked her head out and she forced herself to say something to him – anything. “Are you going to work, too?”

“Yeah, but after I take you to the bus stop,” he said. “If you’re not here, then there’s no point in me being here.”

She felt a flicker of annoyance. Actually, the only thing that prevented her from snooping for clues around the house was the constant presence of her dearly beloved husband. Rey didn’t want to provoke another round of guilt-tripping, so she slid out from under the covers and left their bedroom, limping as fast as she could.

Rey sat at the kitchen table, glumly picking at her raisin bran, when a man walked into the kitchen. His hair was combed to either side of his head, brushing his shoulders. He had a heavy brow, with sharp, lupine eyes, and a strong nose. He wore a crumpled-looking tailored suit with a red tie, and his pants needed an ironing. He messed around with the thick watch on his wrist, before sitting in the chair across from her. The air around him smelled of patchouli oil.

Until now, Rey had only ever seen him in shirts and boxers. Before this, when it came to work, he exercised the privilege of turning off his camera during telework meetings. So while his underlings were sweating in the office, Not-Poe snarled at them behind a shared earnings Powerpoint, while sitting in his underwear.

Clean-shaven, in a suit, he resembled an entirely different class of man.  

Rey and Not-Poe ate breakfast together in torturous silence. She shoveled raisin bran mush into her mouth, and tried not to breathe in the scent of freshly washed and perfumed Not-Poe. Not-Poe stabbed aggressively at his cereal, eating as if he were racing to a finish line. As soon as she was done, she limped towards the sink and dumped her dirty bowl in the sink.

Watching her progress, Not-Poe’s frown deepened. “I think this is some kind of sign,” he said. “The Force is telling you that you shouldn’t go to work.”

“But I’m fine. I can walk now.” Rey swung her leg back and forth, hiding a wince as her tendon ached sharply.

For her first day back into work, Rey put on a dress and a light cardigan, and she did her hair in three buns. Her office didn’t have the strict office-formal dress code that the FO suffered. She and her husband made a strange pair as they walked down the street. It made her wonder if the two of them had always been so incongruent, but then she stopped that train of thought. Was this man her husband or not?

A cloud front enveloped the entire sky over Coruscant. For the first time in years, Rey saw the city where she lived and worked, and the people who populated it. Not-Poe jumped around her, putting himself between her and the road, or her and the pedestrians who came too close. Rey didn’t care about the close contact; she almost felt assaulted by the sights and sensations she took in of streets she had never seen before.  

A hand squeezed around hers, and she looked up. At first, Rey hated Not-Poe for insisting on walking her to the bus stop. But between the two of them, Rey was a tourist in a foreign country, and Not-Poe was her tour guide… who also functioned as a guard dog.  

At last they came to the bus stop. This was the part where Not-Poe was supposed to leave; people stared at his shoes, his watch, and his nails. He looked too rich to be riding public transport. “Is it too much?” he asked, his brow furrowed. He made a pretty convincing look of concern. “I could drive you to the office.”  

Rey blinked, and then she smiled, shaking her head. Not-Poe raised a hand, his thumb smearing tears from the corner of her eye. Before the bus came, he stood in front of her, blocking her view of the road. Suddenly he grabbed her shoulders.  

“When you’re finished, come straight home,” he said. “I don’t care if you hate me. I don’t care if you’re afraid of me. Come straight home, or I will find you.”

Before Rey could process that, he leaned down, and stole a kiss.

Work proceeded in much the same way, only Kaydel acted as her appointed tour guide and less like a guard dog. Rey absorbed the mauve walls, and the sight of her lavender-haired boss, Amilyn Holdo. When introductions had finished, Rey sat down at her desk and fished out her telework laptop from her backpack. Rey cracked her knuckles while the loading screen booted up. Right. It was time to work. She checked her email.

Hey Peanut,

Glad to hear that you got your eyes back! Of course I’d be happy to catch up with you and show you my handsome face, but I’d need to check with Rose’s schedule first.

About those pics you asked for – I’m sorry, but back in college I had one of those little flip-phones that you could buy at an AT-AT store. Long story short, it fell into a pot of boiling soup. I’ll keep hunting around, though!

Rey blinked. She began to type out a response, but then checked her tone and deleted it. Fair enough, accidents happened. Sometimes a man dropped his phone in hot soup. Sometimes a man lost all of the pictures of his best friend in college. Rey wrote back that she would be happy to see Finn again, and she typed out her cell phone number in case he wanted to call. Rey hoped that he wanted to call.

The lights were on at home when she returned. She walked towards the source of the sounds and found her husband in the kitchen wielding a knife. “What are you doing back so early?” she asked, not bothering to hide her suspicion. “I was sure Snoke would work you to the bone.”

He shrugged indifferently. “I wanted to see if you would make it home okay,” he said.

“I’m fine. It’s Coruscant, not the streets of Mos Eisley.”

“I don’t know why you insisted on the bus when I could’ve driven you there just fine,” he said. “The news on the television should’ve been enough to discourage you.”

“We already talked about this: I wanted to go by myself,” Rey muttered defensively.

“I’m surprised you even decided to come home,” he muttered. Not once did he raise his eyes from the chopping block.

A knot formed between Rey’s shoulders. Besides her guilt, she thought, How does he sense the way I feel about him? She forced a smile and said, “You’re being paranoid.” Her immediate instinct was to save her marriage, not destroy it. Not before she learned more.

“Just say you want a divorce already,” he said in a low voice. Rey bit her lip.

“Would you stop it?” she snapped. “Stop trying to guilt-trip me.”

With a bang, he slammed the knife down. His eyes laser-focused on hers, lips twisting into a snarl. “Tell me I’m wrong then,” he said. “We haven’t had sex since you got your sight back. You can’t say you love me, you can’t touch me, and you get so tight and angry when I touch you. I see the way you look at me when my back is turned.”

Unable to argue with him, Rey pretended nonchalance and opened the fridge door. She felt like she needed strength to tolerate the evening, and her eyes scanned the levels of the fridge looking for alcohol. She reached in and pulled out a bottle with tinfoil wrapped around the top with a rubber band. Poe had brought it home from a company party about a year ago. She pulled the top off, tossed out the foil, and sniffed the spout before drinking. It tasted bad, but not any worse than it did a week ago when it was freshly opened. Only the carbonation was gone.

She escaped the kitchen as soon as possible. This is exactly why Rey wanted to regain her sight so bad. This is exactly what Rey wanted to return home to, after a long day’s work: bad television, a flat beer, and a strange ‘husband’ complaining that they didn’t have sex anymore.

She plopped herself down on the sofa and turned on the television. After five minutes of a sitcom, the ads began, though there was a late night news alert about an uptick in sex crimes on buses. Rey focused on drinking her beer and zoning out.

For a moment, she considered her plans for the future. Let’s say she divorced this man, and spent time searching for the ‘real’ Poe. How long would it take? What would her first steps be? Obviously: confronting the imposter himself. In that case, a divorce would be counter-intuitive. She needed to get as close to this man as possible, to poke holes in his identity.

As soon as she thought it, a slick, oily sensation washed over her. What could she reasonably do? Was she looking for excuses to get to know this man? On a subconscious level, did she want to exchange Poe for this intense, moody stranger she can’t remember seeing in her entire life?

Rey plated her dinner for herself: a grilled steak with sides of asparagus and mashed cauliflower. When she cut open her steak, a thin trickle of blood ran out. Rey peered at the meat and her nose wrinkled; did Poe always cook his meat so rare?

She looked across the table and saw Not-Poe bringing the almost-tartare to his lips. Did she really trust this guy to cook her food? She forced herself to take a bite; Rey couldn’t really compare it to the last times Poe cooked meat. If she closed her eyes, Not-Poe would think something was wrong with her.

After she swallowed, she noted the way it went down her throat and settled in her stomach. She decided to stick with the vegetables. “Maybe I should make dinner,” Rey wondered aloud.

He chewed for a moment, thoughtfully. “Need to knock back another strong one?” he asked. “We have wine in the sideboard. From when my mother visited.”

His tone was brusque and he went right back to eating. Rey thought, Fine, I deserve a drink.   

Rey went to the sideboard and retrieved the bottle and a glass. When Not-Poe cleared his throat, she took a second glass for him. Not-Poe waited patiently for Rey to locate the corkscrew, and he thanked her as she poured out a glassful both for him and for her.

Accidentally, she initiated a kind of drinking contest with Not-Poe. Rey didn’t think she was drunk already. The wine went down smooth, easier than the beer, and she filled up her plate with vegetables. The room spun, but she felt clear-headed.

Instead of lying on the couch while feeling sorry for herself, she collected their plates and went to the kitchen to wash up the dishes. Of course Not-Poe followed her, and he scraped off the food bits she thought she had already sponged. His cleaning standards were more exact than hers.  

As soon as the pots and pans were wiped clean, she handed it off to him and threw down her rubber gloves on the counter. Her eyelids threatened to close. If the alcohol succeeded in anything, it would have to be the promise of a good night’s sleep.

Before she left the kitchen, a hand gripped her shoulder and spun her around, so she was face to face with Not-Poe. His breath smelled hot and acidic. His eyes were dark and liquid.

“Say that you love me, Rey,” he demanded. His hands trembled as he fisted her dress. “You promised. You promised you would love me even after you got your sight back.”

Heat flushed down her body, but she forced herself to hold his gaze. The ultimatum occurred to her: if he hit her, if he forced himself on her, it wouldn’t matter if he was Poe or not – their marriage would be over.  

“Do you remember what you made me promise?” he asked. “A long time ago?”

Horror washed over her in waves. How did he know? She asked herself. To hide her confusion, she breathed deeply, in and out of her nose.

“Do you remember?”

“Yes,” Rey murmured. Her insides twisted into knots. The present became shaky and unreal to her. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure about anything anymore; even her two feet on the floor could be a dream.

He leaned in slowly, and Rey panicked – she fidgeted for a moment, before squeezing her eyes shut and planting her lips against his. Without sight, kissing became easier; her lips parted, and his tongue slid into her mouth. His hands wrapped around her throat.

It was soothing and familiar, until it wasn’t. A voice at the back of her head whispered This isn’t Poe, and therefore, These aren’t Poe’s hands wrapped around your neck. Her eyes shot open, and she shoved hard at his chest in panic, at which point he let her go.

Rey half-ran out of the kitchen, and trotted up the stairs. A hand snared her ankle and she yelped as she tripped on the hardwood steps, landing on her knee.

“Sorry,” he choked. Rey kicked him away and vaulted back onto her feet, running towards the bedroom. As soon as she was inside, she tried to slam the door closed, but his hand caught the door in time.

The adrenaline pumping through her bloodstream mingled with the alcohol. She raked her hands through her hair, and looked for another way out.

Without taking his eyes off her, he nudged the door closed and locked it. His hand went to the light switch, but Rey shook her head, No. His hand fell from the wall and he grinned.

“Good,” he said, “because that’s what I normally did anyway.”

Rey had to think about it for a moment. Heat rose to her face.

Rey tried to push him away, and she said No, and Not tonight. Suddenly, he ducked and threw his shoulder into her stomach, pushing her down onto the bed. He pinned her with a hand on her neck as he straddled her, nuzzling her face. His hand slid up her dress, up her thigh, until his palm rested on the seat of her panties. He moved the fabric aside and used two of his fingers to probe her.

Rey was drunk and afraid and she couldn’t look Not-Poe in the eye, so instead she stared over his shoulder. It stung at first, and she was sure she was about to be raped. She heard him lick his fingers before easing them inside her, teasing her clit. Her body began to open up, wider and wider, until he was pumping his fingers inside her.

It was almost-sex. She grunted, moving her hips and bringing her thighs up higher, so that he could hit her deeper. Her vision blurred; she turned her head, hoping to see Poe again, but instead it was his face. His face: too pale, too long, too dotted with moles. His too-wide lips curved into a smile.

His breath fumed hot on her cheek as he finally made his confession. “I like to look at you when we’re making love. I like those cute little faces that you make.” His lips peeled back in a horsey smile; no matter how awful she found him, his fingers were currently buried deep in her cunt. “I know you’re liking what I’m giving to you.”

Rey turned away from him, disgusted with him and disgusted with herself.

“I can put a bag over my head, if that helps,” Not-Poe murmured.

“Shut up,” she snapped, her back arching. “Stop it.”

He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. “I can see it in your eyes,” he said, “that you’re forcing yourself to do this.”

To her, this sounded like a preface for him in backing out. He had to know how bad this was; he had to know that she didn’t believe he was her husband, and she didn’t really want this to go any further.

He wet his lips, before leaning in. “I appreciate it,” he breathed.

Chapter Text

Rey normally had no problem navigating her way to the bathroom, but the hangover and the hammering in her skull made the room rock like a boat. She stumbled out of bed, wincing in pain as her bare feet touched the cold tiles. With a lurch in her stomach, she realized that her dress was gone, leaving her with only her underwear. She winced again as her bare bottom touched the cold porcelain.

When she finished and her hands were washed, she teetered precariously back towards bed. Halfway towards her goal, she stopped cold.

Rey debated on how seriously she wanted to go back to the bed, when a voice spoke to her from the darkness. “Honey, how bad is your night vision?”

Rey blinked.

The shape on the bed moved, an appendage rising into the air. It was silhouetted by the dim glow coming from the window. “Can you count how many fingers I’m holding up?” he asked. His voice was gruff from sleep.

The thought of climbing back into bed with Not-Poe sobered her instantly. Her immediate actions narrowed down to two choices: run, or stay and pretend everything’s fine. As she took a step towards the exit, her head spun perilously. She swallowed, realizing she wasn’t as sober as she hoped she was.

“Come to me,” he ordered, “follow the sound of my voice.”

Rey bumped her toe on the foot of the bed, before crawling back into it. She tried not to touch him, but his legs were hideously long, and she felt a knee and a thigh under the blankets while Not-Poe pulled back the covers.

As the blanket fell over her, his arms circled her waist, pulling her towards him. She flinched, but Not-Poe didn’t seem to notice. As the planks of his feet tangled with hers, he hissed in dismay.

“You’re too cold,” he complained.

Huddled into his chest, Rey said, “You were holding up three fingers.”

“What?”

“Before, you were holding up three fingers.” Rey shimmied to try and put some space between their bodies, and felt her ankle brush against the rough down that covered his legs. She tapped one-two-three fingers on his chest.

He’s silent, mulling over her words. Then he gave her a peck between her eyebrows. He gathered her face into his hands and peered at her, as if she were a child.

There was a transmitter that wirelessly sent signals to an electrode array implanted into both of her damaged retinas. Rey was a ‘prime candidate’ for this implant because she had been born with vision; in theory, her brain was already adapted to receiving and interpreting visual stimuli.

The technology wasn’t perfect; in the absence of light, details got lost between shades of black and grey. She could make out the black chips of Not-Poe’s eyes, and the shadows of his nose and lips. The grainy quality of the image reminded her of old VHS videotapes.

“Can I touch it?” he asked. His hand moved, sliding up her chin to reach the side of her right eye where the incision was made. “How does it feel?”

She shrugged her shoulders, pretending that nothing bothered her. The truth was that she didn’t want to show him her discomfort. The scar tissue burned slightly beneath the pads of his fingers. 

Rey wished she could tell him to stop touching her, but his hands were enormous, and it was hard not to imagine them wrapped around her neck.

“Can I say something selfish?” he asked. “I was worried that after the implant, the color of your eyes would change. The incision the surgeon makes in your retinas – there was a risk of discoloration. I didn’t want to tell you this before; otherwise, you would think I was being superficial.”

As Rey absorbed this information, her eyebrows knitted together.

“That’s what made me fall in love with you,” he confessed, “the color of your eyes.”

Several questions occurred to Rey, including, Would he have left me if my eyes weren’t green anymore, and Why is he telling me this now. Worst of all was the little what-if she considered: if she had regained her sight and found herself alone in the post-op room because her eyes weren’t the same anymore.

A pit of anxiety formed in her stomach. Great, now he’s made ME feel insecure, she thought.

“You’re right,” she forced out, “that is really, really superficial.”

This was the perfect excuse to toss her head and leave the bedroom, but she just wasn’t sober enough for sudden and decisive movement. Not-Poe’s mouth stretched into the most condescending smile. “That was one of the reasons why I fell in love with you,” he corrected himself. “You… you have cute, cute tits, and a sexy accent. When I first saw you at that fire pit on the beach, you were wearing that teeny, tiny bikini, and Finn had to fight me to keep me away from you.”

That last sentence threw her. She knew she needed to catch him in the lie, if there is one. In her panic, she stuttered, trying to form a coherent sentence. “Did… did we…”

“Did we what,” he asked.

“Tell me about it,” she blurted out. If he was there, he would remember details.

“What?”

“Tell me how we met.” She fished for a more specific interrogation question. “Who was Finn dating at the time?”

Not-Poe scratched the side of his neck. “It was years ago, honey. My memory is kind of selective. If he was seeing a girl, she must not have been that memorable.”

What a perfect non-answer, she thought.

His pupils slid up towards the ceiling. “It was sundown at Crait beach. Finn and I were dancing around looking for driftwood to burn, and that’s when I first set eyes on you. Finn introduced us, but before then I only knew you as Peanut.” Rey frowned. “I thought you would be like a scrawny little kid he rescued from the orphanage. Then I saw you,” he said. In that last sentence, his voice trailed off wistfully; whatever details he intended to add were either disregarded or forgotten.  

He paused, as if waiting for her to chime in, but her mouth had suddenly gone dry.

“Finn was supposed to take you back to your fosters’,” Not-Poe added, “but we couldn’t find him.”

“Where was Finn?” Rey quizzed him.

“He and some other drunk idiot were playing swords with driftwood, and Finn got knocked on the side of his head,” Not-Poe answered, without missing a beat.

His voice dropped low as he continued, “It got late, and you were nervous about being separated from your friends. Me being a gentleman, I decided to keep you safe from all those thieves and murderers and rapists who lurked the boardwalk at night.

“You told me about the island,” he said. “You told me about being scared of the dark.” Rey flinched as his fingers brushed her arm. “The strap of your bikini kept slipping down your shoulder. You looked into my eyes. That’s when you told me you weren’t that kind of girl… normally.”

Rey felt herself blush all the way down to her toes. She remembered this; she remembered that night. She remembered the roar of the waves and the flickering of the distant bonfire, and wondering how she would get home at this hour. She gravitated towards Finn’s cool older friend, who let her drink some of his beer, while the sky grew darker and darker. Heat bloomed in her stomach.  

What is wrong with me? she asked herself. This wasn’t the man she made those memories with, but her body reacted like that didn’t matter.

“Last night was a mistake,” she muttered. She was so confused, and she wasn’t ready for this level of intimacy.

“What do you mean, last night? We didn’t do anything.”

His dismissal infuriated her, but it also raised another important question. “Did we… did we have…” She said that word beneath her breath.

Not-Poe leaned in to hear her. “Did we have se-ex?” he asked, parroting her. “Did you forget what se-ex feels like, Rey? Has that much time passed?”

“Stop saying it like that,” she mumbled.

“What, se-ex?”

Not-Poe disappeared under the covers. He hooked his hands beneath her knees. Rey had a short minute to ponder the mystery of what he could be doing or looking at down there, when she felt him move the seat of her panties aside. He dipped his head and something wet swiped across her entrance, making her jump.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, and with the other, she moved to try to push him off of her. Her fingers tangled into his soft, dark hair.

All at once, her body went slack. She gazed up at the ceiling, panting for air. The air buzzed; the morning light thrummed like a living thing. Rey squeezed her eyes shut, trying to sort herself out. When she next opened her eyes, Not-Poe was straddling her, his face and lips pink from exertion.

Rey made the mistake of looking down, between their bodies. “Uhhh.” Her throat went dry.

Only now could she truly appreciate Not-Poe’s size compared to her. His shoulders were broad and his chest was barrel-shaped. Moles kissed every spare inch of his skin. On either side of her, his arms and thighs were thick and corded with muscle, but worst of all was the limb between his legs. His penis was dark, the base thatched with black hair; the head disappeared from sight behind the apex of her thighs, but she could venture a guess of how long he was based on how thick he was.

One look at him made her body quiver in fear – he looked like he could rip her in half.

Not-Poe must have seen the fear register on her face, because he frowned. “It’s okay,” he said, “this is the first time you’ve seen my penis in a while.”

“Wait – please, I don’t…”

“Believe in yourself,” he said kindly. “Forget about the way it looks. You’re stronger than you know.” He patted her thigh in sympathy.

He grabbed and positioned himself, until his cockhead aligned with her entrance. A shiver ran through her core, and she felt a liquid heat inside her – her own body’s betrayal.

“Do you think your pussy shrunk in the last couple months?” he asked seriously. “I warmed you up just now, so it shouldn’t hurt.” A push of his hips penetrated her.

Rey hissed, arching her back as she was forced to take him. Her teeth clacked together; her hands grasped his neck and shoulders for purchase.

Just knowing that he could crush her discouraged her from fighting. Instead, she went limp and tried not to react as much as possible; the issue was that Not-Poe didn’t seem to mind. He placed his hands on her waist and used his grip to move her, while making shallow thrusts. Against her will, her channel spasmed each time he hit just the right spot.

“Is this familiar?” he grunted. “I’m still the same size.”

A thought suddenly occurred to her, breaking through the haze in her mind. “Don’t cum inside,” she blurted out. “P… Don’t – don’t come inside! Don’t!”

He murmured something under his breath, his cock hitting her deeper. Rey could be babbling gibberish for all she knew. Before she could react, he finished inside her with a gasp. He kissed her jaw, before dragging himself off of her – taking his warmth with him.

She drew her hand back and shoved him hard in the chest. With rabbit kicks, she sat upright with her back on the headboard.

“I’m not on the pill!” she cried. “You – you monster! I’m not on the pill!”

Not-Poe stared at her, his eyes hazed over. He reached out to her again, trying to wrap her in a hug. Since pushing didn’t work, she used her nails and raked them over his biceps, his chest, and finally his jaw. “Don’t touch me!” she snapped. She yanked the bedsheets over body, her pussy still sore. She slipped her fingers down between her legs and felt slick there, wondering if she could still wash him out.

Not-Poe stares at her for a moment, before sitting up. Rey doesn’t want to look, but her eyes are still drawn to his thick, shapely thighs, and the thatch of his pubic hair. He works his hands between his legs, and when he’s finished, a stretched rubbery thing dangles from his fingers. It looks like plastic wrap.

It took a moment for Rey to understand what she’s looking at. Grade school sex ed kicked in as she remembered what a condom looked like, especially after getting slipped over a banana. She covered her mouth with her hand, her face flushing with embarrassment.

“Do you think I would do that to you?” he asked, hurt.

Before she could struggle with an answer, he said, “All these years, I could’ve punched a hole through a condom. I could’ve lied to you and gone without. But I didn’t, because you said you weren’t ready. Why don’t you trust me anymore?” he demanded. “What changed?”

Rey felt sick with guilt and embarrassment. He left the bed with a sharp twist of his hips and went to the bathroom, the double-doors slamming shut behind him.

Rey nibbled her bottom lip. Reluctantly, she moved her fingers to her mound. Her thighs were hot and sticky with sweat, and she felt dirty. If she closed her eyes, she knew what raw sex feels like. In the heat of the moment, maybe she panicked, horrified by the idea that she would be pregnant with this stranger’s child. If Poe had done that to her, her reaction would’ve been… different. They had both discussed children, but then her vision had begun to deteriorate, and all those conversations were simply forgotten…

Rey swept her hair off of her forehead with a loaded sigh.

She couldn’t be sure if what happened really counted as rape – not because he was her husband, but because she had a hangover and she didn’t really fight him to her full capacity. A rape involved kicking and screaming and punching, and instead she sort of let it happen after getting cunnilingus. That’s another whole bag of worms.

When the bathroom doors opened, and Not-Poe came out, Rey decided then and there to bite the bullet. “I’m sorry I… I overreacted the way I did,” she said. “There are a lot of things I still need to get adjusted to.”

Not-Poe didn’t look at her. Instead he gave her the cold shoulder, and went to the wardrobe, pulling open drawers to look for a suitable pair of pants. “I didn’t mean to be so rough,” he said at last, “I just… needed to know you were still mine.”

Rey pulled up her knees to her chest and watched him, stalling for time. She watched the curve of his back as he threaded his thick legs into his trousers, one foot at a time. From this angle, he didn’t look like a psychopath.

Not-Poe straightened before selecting a leather belt from a hook on the inside of the wardrobe. As he looped it around his waist, he finally looked at her. “You’re still mine, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice lifting softly at the end. “You’re still in love with me.”

Rey swallowed thickly. “Yeah,” she said. Her voice sounded light and reedy to her ears.

“And I love you.”

“I know.” She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.

Chapter Text

Out of guilt, Rey played the role of happy wife. She left the bed, got dressed, and went downstairs to search the fridge. By the time that her… husband came down, she had breakfast laid out on the table. Nothing fancy, mind, but toast and scrambled eggs with a side of canned beans sautéed with onions and bell peppers. For added sophistication, she put cumin and ketchup in the beans.

Not-Poe stopped in front of the table and stared down at the plate she platonically set for him, and then he sat down and ate it without a word. He wore a navy double-breasted suit, which bulked up his shoulders, and starched trousers. Incongruously, he wore no socks, and he hunched over his plate, shoveling and scraping the last of his meal into his mouth like a caveman who just discovered the spoon. Rey imagined what would happen if bean-mash fell on his knee, and allowed herself an imaginary coronary. 

Not-Poe cleaned the plate, but he didn’t compliment her on her cooking skills. Somehow, this hurt her feelings. It wasn’t that she was a needy person, who needed praise for every little thing she did, but this was maybe one of her first real efforts in reaching out to this strange man who claimed to be her husband.

“Are you going to work?” he asked.

“I think I’ll call in sick. I still feel a little dizzy.” Her hand fluttered to her temple. “When it’s… grey, I can see particles flying around. It’s like the dark is grainy and it’s seething like a living thing.”

Rey glanced at Not-Poe, and saw him staring at her. Rey cursed inwardly, but she was satisfied that he was concerned for her well-being. She waved her hands and said, “I think it’s nothing; it just freaked me out.”

“I don’t think it’s nothing,” he countered. “Did it look like your vision was failing?” She shook her head. “Did you feel any tingling? Any nausea or dizziness?”

“No,” she said. But was there tingling? Maybe the sex overstimulated her. Maybe getting eaten out caused full-body tingling.

He stood up from his seat and circled the table, and all at once he stood towering over her. He grabbed her face in his hands; Rey flinched and tried to push him away, before he could choke her or twist her head off. He crouched so they were at eye-level with each other. Her struggling stopped.

“Do I scare you?” he asked. The question stunned her; she didn’t answer fast enough. “Do I scare you, Rey?” he repeated slowly.

She swallowed thickly. “A little bit,” she confessed. “You’re, um… taller than I remember.”

“You know I would never hurt you, right?”

Instead of waiting for her answer, he cupped her jaw and kissed her on the forehead, before releasing her.

“After what you told me, I don’t feel comfortable leaving you home alone,” he said. “But I know you need your space.”

“Thank… Thank you,” she stammered.

The effect that the kiss had on her was that it made her feel confused, and bad and inconsiderate. It would be so simple if he would just hit her, because then she could point at that attack and say You are not Poe, and I don’t want to be married to you anymore. Instead, he kissed her and he pet her hair, and now butterflies beat against the walls of her stomach.

I’m a good wife, she thought to herself, I know I am. If you were really mine, I… I think I could love you.

As Not-Poe made to leave, she went to the coat closet and drew out his heavy wool overcoat. Not-Poe finally smiled at her, before turning around and threading his arms through the sleeves. She handed him his hat and the scarf to wrap around his face, so his ears and his nose wouldn’t catch frostbite.  

I am a good wife, she assured herself. I’m considerate.

Visually, the interior design of their house should lean into her sighted husband’s favor. Rey imagined finding nudie magazines or soccer memorabilia lying around the house (or football jerseys, since apparently her husband was a white man). But the house was Spartan; Not-Poe favored hardwoods and dark, solid colors when it came to interior decorating. In terms of decorations, he was a minimalist. The walls were empty and there were no knickknacks or decorations crowding the shelves, except the devices she needed and the fidget toys she played with when she was blind.

No picture frames, either.

When they were dating, Poe snapped so many pictures of Rey, Finn, BB (his dog), and his car. Then her vision began to deteriorate, and suddenly there was nothing that Poe wanted to capture of the present moment.

She didn’t blame him; that was the most difficult, the most painful period of their marriage. Poe didn’t ask to be saddled with a visually impaired wife.  The more helpless she became, the less Poe wanted to be around her. He needed space, he said. He said that a lot.

That argument, one of many, still remained lodged in her heart even after all those years. She was draped across the couch, still in her pajamas, shivering from fear and self-pity, when the door opened in the middle of the night. Poe Dameron stole into the living room like a thief, trying to head to the stairs undetected.

Rey could have ignored him, but she sat up and she confronted him. Where have you been and stuff like that, as if she’d caught him cheating, when he probably went to go hang out with his friends. Poe became defensive. He turned her accusations and her insecurities around and he (rightfully) called her paranoid and controlling. It set her off.

Even now, she could summon his voice: a pained scream that left her eardrums ringing – I don’t know what you want me to do! I can’t take you anywhere!

She shuddered involuntarily. Instead of getting hurt all over again, she stared off into space until the pain numbed over. It was a well-trodded memory, a wound that’s long since scabbed over and formed a scar; she knew it couldn’t hurt her anymore. She reminded herself that she loved Poe, and Poe stayed with her, as he promised.

Maybe there were no memories he wanted to capture from that miserable time, but what about after?  Was there none of it he wanted to remember?

Or what if there were pictures, but Not-Poe destroyed them all?

She took her cellphone and brought up his number.

On the first ring, he picked up. “Is everything alright?” he asked, sounding concerned.

Poe used to assure her that she could call him about anything; with Not-Poe, she suddenly felt a little shy. “Everything’s fine,” she said at last, before remembering her reason for calling. “I was looking around the house, and I was wondering why we don’t have any pictures.”

There was a pause on the other end; Rey heard a murmur in the background. “Actually, I do have pictures of you,” he returned.

“Where?”

“Give me a moment. I’ll call you back.”

The call ended. Rey suddenly had a brilliant idea: she would play her voice messages over and determine if Not-Poe sounded like Poe.

Rey checked her voicemail and found it full of automated scam calls from the Imperial Revenue Service: “If you do not call this number back, you WILL be fined several hundred credits. Failure to comply will subject you to multiple penalties, including jail time!” She deleted those until she had only a handful of voice messages. The lack of them shocked and saddened her; she thought there would be a lot more recordings of his voice. That and the nonexistence of any pictures made her feel as if the only record of her and her husband’s lives together only existed in her memory.

The last one was from two years ago, around the holidays. She chose a message, and then hit the speaker button.

A short, clipped recording played. “It’s just me, sweetheart. There was a bus accident on your route home, and I wanted to ask if you need me to pick you up.” A pause. “Okay,” he said, and the call ended.

Her heart sank. Rey replayed it again, just to confirm it to herself. She looked at the number it came from: his office work phone. Her lips prickled.

That speech pattern – of course she heard it before, of course she recognized it. When he came home that day, she played the message back for him and he tried to wrestle her for her phone, trying to delete it.

That was Poe.

And at the same time, she recognized it as Not-Poe’s voice.

She played an older recording; this one was from four years ago: Poe left a pitiful message for her after he lost her in the Mos Eisley casino.

“Where are you?” he asked. “Rey? I’m waiting in front of the buffet. I…” In the background, Rey could hear the murmuring of the casino surrounding him. Suddenly, his voice came through sharp, and sure: “Oh. Never mind. I see you.”

She played it again, her shoulders bunching together. She remembered standing in the casino foyer, holding her phone to her ear. Arms folding in around her, making her yelp with surprise: Poe.

Rey’s skin began to crawl. She knew that this was supposed to reassure her, but instead she felt as if her memories were being overwritten. All of these small, sweet moments with ‘Poe’ didn’t happen with Poe at all, did they? How much of her life was a fabrication?

Her phone buzzed and a notification popped up on the top of the screen. This was the first time she received a text since she got her sight back. It’s Finn, she thought, excitement overwriting her existential dread. She opened her texts.

Somebody sent her a picture of a girl, reclining on a deck chair. 

She startled. The girl’s hair was done up in three buns, and she wore a pair of thick, black sunglasses. She wore a blouse with a keyhole at the collarbone and capri pants. Her cheekbones and arms shone with sunscreen. Her legs were crossed and she was smiling to herself. Whoever took the photo stood in front of her, but there was the sense that she wasn’t aware of him at all.

It took a moment for Rey to realize that this was a picture of herself. Her blood ran cold.  

She called Not-Poe immediately. “When did you take this?” she asked. “P… You know this is really creepy, right?”

“Why is it creepy?” He sounded hurt.

“You could’ve asked for my picture.”

“Why bother you by asking for permission? It would’ve made you self-conscious. You would’ve said no.”

“You just don’t take people’s pictures, without permission,” she said slowly. A lengthy pause suggested there would be no apology forthcoming from Not-Poe’s end. With a huff, she changed the subject. “Where are our older photographs,” she demanded, “like our wedding pictures?”

He clicked his tongue. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen those,” he said. “They might still be in my old phone.”

“But I thought we had printouts made.” Silence from his end. “Could they be in the attic?”

“I doubt it. That’s where we put our old holiday decorations and other garbage,” he said. “I’ll find them.” Rey made a lukewarm sound of agreement, which only made him more suspicious. “Don’t go scavenging around in the attic, Rey. It’s dark up there.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“Don’t go up there,” he repeated. “I’ll go up there with you tonight if you want, but I swear you won’t find anything of interest.”

“Oh-kay,” she hummed. Already she knew she would be going to the attic. Not-Poe had to be hiding something up there. 

When the call ended, Rey had another brilliant idea: what stopped her from snapping a picture of Not-Poe and sending it to Finn? What stopped her from asking, Do you know this man?

Finn was slow to call her, but she could email the pictures to him if she had to from her work laptop.

If her husband turned out to be Poe, she would shrug her shoulders and accept defeat – either her bionic eyes were damaged, or her memory, but either way, this man would be the husband she loved. And… and she would go to the doctors, or see a psycho-therapist, to help her understand why her memory of her husband turned out so starkly different from her present husband.

If he was NOT Poe, she could still run for her life. And she could find out what happened to her REAL husband. 

Rey got excited about her plans for the future and for saving her marriage. Maybe tonight she would have some answers.   

Chapter Text

Rey changed into jeans and a t-shirt, and prepared to get some exercise in. She went to the top floor, and pulled open a hatch in the ceiling. The steps to the attic folded out. She climbed, giddy from a mix of excitement and dread.

When she stood up, she arrived in an airless space.

Rey blinked and the shadows danced. She jumped in place and fell on her butt – mere inches saving her from tumbling back down the hatch – and choked down a cry. Quickly she scanned the attic, her ears primed for the chittering of rats. The only light came from a circular window set high on the wall. Particles of dust floated in the light. She forced herself to breathe.

It’s only darkness, she told herself. I’m alone.  

She rose too quickly; her legs erupted into pins and needles. A buzzing ran through her skull. She hissed and squeezed her eyes shut.

The buzzing continued. It felt like a migraine behind her eye sockets: annoying, but not impossible to handle. It was hard to get a full breath up here.

She brushed off a layer of dust from the back of her jeans and carefully noted the location of the hatch. She made a mental warning to herself not to walk backwards; the last thing she needed was a broken neck.

She searched the attic alone. The comprehensive list of what she found included:

• Old Galaxy Wars comic books
• Leather-bound history journals
• Sci-fi paperbacks
• An old handgun, with three loose bullets rolling around
• Vehicle repair and upkeep manuals
• Cookbooks
• Spanish-to-English dictionaries and vocabulary books
• The collapsible Christmas tree and boxes of ornaments

The handgun didn’t worry her as much as it should’ve. The cold iron sat heavy in her hand, and she quickly set it back into the toolbox where she found it, before wiping her palms on her jeans. Rey knew that Poe carried and insisted that she learned how to shoot, out of self-defense – that was another one of his life goals that had been sabotaged by her loss of eyesight.

She let herself get distracted by the cookbooks. The box was heavy, so she leafed through the ones she could reach and looked at the pictures, if there were any. She pawed through a book of Ecuadorian home recipes, when a question occurred to her.

Would Poe really have kept this?

Before, Poe usually moved too fast to cook. He went out and he got breakfast from the place across the street from his office; he ate out with his friends; he had happy hour after dark.

The question expanded to every item she found. This version of Poe didn’t match with her old perception of Poe, from before her vision began to deteriorate.

Rey gazed at the boxes surrounding her without actually seeing them. Her head continued to buzz and buzz, a live wire running between her ears. Snot ran down her nose.

Her head grew heavy; I just need to lie down, she thought to herself.

She lifted her head off of a stack of comicbooks. The back of her mouth felt like cotton; her nose couldn’t get any air.

What just happened?

Did I fall asleep?

The light in the attic was dimmer now than she remembered; instead of sunlight, only grey sky remained outside the window.

Whatever her questions, her first instinct was to leave this place. She turned back and saw the light from the hatch on the floor. Hugging the sides, Rey crawled down the stairs from the attic.

He was a large man with severe features, like a casting call for a Bond villain. Her heart gave a kick each time this man, who could crush her, decided to pet her instead.

Rey sat up quickly, almost knocking her head against his. She found herself on the couch, with a blanket draped across her body. Not-Poe rose to his full height, gazing down at her with a paternal air. His suit was draped down one arm, but he still wore his white dress shirt, as if he’d just gotten home and found her. The air around him smelled very nice, like top-shelf men’s office cologne.

Rey felt a deep and strangling sense of guilt. She did no work and she discovered nothing. “’M sorry I didn’t cook dinner,” she said, her humiliation deepened by the fact that she sounded like a 1950’s housewife.

He leaned down and smoothed his hand over her forehead, before placing a kiss between her eyebrows. Rey arched her neck into his touch, his warmth unraveling a knot inside her chest. He murmured, Don’t worry about it.

“Do you want to move your things down from the attic?” she suggested.

His eyes widened and he glared at her, in shock. “You went up there?” he demanded. “I told you to wait for me. There’s so much dust up there, it could make you sick breathing it in.”

“Sick?” She shrank a little bit beneath his anger.

“Yes. There’s insulation up there. Dust. Insects. Maybe rats – we had that rat problem last year and you said you could hear them up there. Fighting.”

Just as he said it, Rey grasped that explanation like a lifeline. It all clicked into place: the lack of airflow and the dust made her lightheaded, which explained her fainting spell.

Not-Poe threw his suit across the back of a chair. He went into the kitchen and began to magic up dinner, and Rey followed behind him. Believe it or not, she could cook, just not as fancy as her husband.

She took out a bag of green beans from the freezer and popped them in the microwave; the buttons were braille and the microwave recited the numbers as she pressed them in a tinny voice: “One, three, zero. Start. One minute and thirty seconds.”

Rey waited, but he didn’t ask about what else she found up there. Then again, maybe he knew I’d find nothing.

Over his shoulder, he said, “I don’t need comicbooks or cookbooks anymore. They should really go to Goodwill. Or to the recycling bin.”

She rubbed a knuckle against her eye, wiping away sleep-sand. “If you still like them, you should keep them,” Rey said truthfully.

At the back of her mind, there hovered the specter of what happened in the attic: the seething darkness and the fainting spell. She wanted to tell Not-Poe about this medical episode, but she couldn’t muster that level of trust in him. Instead she reached this weird middle-ground, where she would try to think of him as less of a fraud, and more as a human being. That way, she could make herself believe that he really cared about her, and that he didn’t kill Poe.

Before dinner, she changed out of her stiff, dusty jeans and into a pair of shorts. She returned to mix her green beans with canned corn and mayonnaise, when Not-Poe stopped her.

He held up his palms. “I want to show you something,” he said, “it turns out that I do have a picture of our wedding day. I knew the photographer put it on a thumb drive, and I had it uploaded to the cloud at work in case the thumb drive got lost.”

He trotted out of the kitchen and returned with a long cardboard tube. He popped off the lid and carefully unrolled a long, thick sheet of what looked to Rey like a laminated poster. He opened the scroll and held it open for her on the table.

“See?” he said.

Her first thought was that Not-Poe’s face didn’t fit that well on Poe’s neck and shoulders. She noted the way the sunlight touched her face, compared to his. Both of them were smiling, Rey gazing into the distance. She wore a white scoop neck dress with sleeves – a rental – and kept her hair down her shoulders, because she was told it would make her look mature. Not-Poe had his head down, looking vaguely in her direction. His expression wasn’t exactly right; either the cameraman caught him in a candid moment, or he was smiling at the lawn. He looked so much paler than her, and the shadows…

It struck her how cruel all this thinking would be if he really did turn out to be her husband. Shame washed over her entire body.

Could she really trust her eyes at this point? Her memory?

Rey glanced at Not-Poe, and there was something that crossed his expression – a deep crease between his eyebrows. Fear. When he noticed her watching him, his features smoothed, but the indent on his brow remained. Not-Poe was a man who worried often.

Her insecurities hardened into resolve. He was hiding something, and she would find out what.

She managed a smile. “It looks great,” she lied. “We should get it framed.”

He smiled shyly. Abruptly he bent down to kiss her, his nose brushing Rey’s cheek. To her dismay, he returned the picture to its case, muttering about ‘improving the lighting’ and ‘touching up some details’.

“Wait,” she said, “let me take a picture of it.”

He frowned at her and shook his head. “I’ll send you a better one. I noticed that the lighting is off.”

“But I…” He glanced up at her with a frown. Rey chewed her bottom lip. “I want a picture of you.”

His hands settled on the cardboard roll. He didn’t look at her, but she could see pink creep up his neck. “No,” he croaked. He looked down, as if suddenly remembering he was trying to make tomato sauce while wearing a white dress shirt.

Out of the kitchen, he ran. Rey nabbed her phone off the dining table counter and followed at his heels. He rocketed up the stairs, Rey in hot pursuit. He stopped in the threshold of the bedroom, his hands grasping the doorway. Rey stopped short of slamming into his chest.

“Do you want it that bad?” he said. “Take the picture.” He grinned at her. “Take it.”

Rey fumbled for her phone, her hands shaking. She swallowed a lump in her throat and muttered, “Hey, BB,” she said, and the phone chirped in reply. The screen lit up and she tapped the camera app on. It took a moment. She never had to take a picture with this phone before; her fingers kept blocking the camera.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked. “It’s just you and me.”

With shaking hands, Rey held up her phone. The picture blurred; she was standing too close to him. As she took a step back, out of his reach, he pushed the door closed. 

When he returned, he changed into a cotton tee and whipcord sweatpants. The difference between business and casual wear with him was that it transformed him from Bond villain to a house husband. Dinner proceeded without comment, like nothing happened. And when he let his guard down, Rey eased her phone out from underneath the table.

His fork clattered against the plate. He cursed as he threw a hand over his face. “What are you doing?”

“What?” Rey said innocently.

He rose from his seat. “Put that away. Now,” he growled.

Her fingers bracketed her phone. When she raised her arms, he backed away towards the hallway, his hand obscuring everything but one baleful eye. “Are you doing this to teach me a lesson?” he demanded.

“How is it fair that you have pictures of me, and I don’t have pictures of you?” she asked.

“I was considerate,” he grated out. “I didn’t let you know that I was taking pictures of you.”

He retreated into the den, where the lighting was worse. Rey pressed down on the circle at the bottom of the screen. The most obnoxious ‘shutter’ sounds clicked out of the phone. She looked down the screen and counted about twenty photos of the back of Not-Poe’s hand, with his lips and the tip of his nose peeking out.

While she was distracted, he veered close to her. “There’s no way that came out decent,” he deadpanned. “Let me see it.”

Rey spun around just as Not-Poe lunged at her. He wrapped her in a bear hug, trying to rip her phone from her grasp. She stuffed it down her shirt, her bralet barely catching it. She broke out of his hold and stared at him, aghast.

His eyes scanned her body, landing on the indent of her phone inside her shirt. When he saw the look on her face, he gave an evil little smile, and he shrugged.

“Look at me. You know I could take that from you,” he said.

He squared his shoulders as if he made to lunge at her, and Rey knew he was telling the truth. He could take anything he wanted from her; he would take anything he wanted from her. A shameful thrill ran up the nodes of her spine.  

If I run, he’ll chase me. If I fight him, he’ll win.

The carpet was soft and warm and springy beneath her feet; with revulsion, she caught herself wondering what it would feel like to wrestle on top of it. It wasn’t fair; he had his big house, his six-figure job, and his health. Why did he need to take her sanity and her body too? Why couldn’t he give her time to adjust?

She drew herself up and met his eyes. “I don’t think it’s fair that you can save all these things about me, and I have none of you,” she said stiffly.

Not-Poe opened his mouth as if to argue.

“You know,” she said, “I only have two voice messages from you. What if I regained my sight and you died, how would I remember you? What if I never regained my sight, and you… and I only had two voice messages…”

Her airways began to choke, her breathing labored in the way that usually precedes tears. She inhaled sharply and tilted her head up to the ceiling.

Not-Poe sauntered close to her. Rey thought that if he tackled her now, she would just let him have the phone if he wanted it so much. He extended his hands towards her, but she brushed them aside.

“I’m not. I’m not sad,” she croaked.

“I know.”

“Just. I’m frustrated, okay.”

His arms circled her, and he pulled her to his chest. She stiffened for a moment, but then she leaned into him, just barely. He smoothed his hand down her elbows. “Just… ask when you want a picture of me,” he said gruffly. “I just want this to end, too.”

She raised her head. Not-Poe stared into space for a moment, before smiling down at her.

Rey felt weak and ashamed of her show of tears. If he was a psychopath, maybe he was one of the good ones, Rey concluded.

Without a word, they returned to the dining room and polished off the cold remains of dinner. Rey indicated that she was ready by lifting her phone. She cleared her throat; it dawned on her that she didn’t know how to call him. She couldn’t recall ever calling him ‘Poe’.

“Now?” he asked. “You want me to smile or something?”

He set his elbow on the table and rested his jaw on his knuckles. He managed a smile, but it was like he was being held hostage and he was trying to scream for help with his eyes. Then he lowered his chin and he looked like an evil bird.

As soon as she took the picture, he went back to looking like a normal human man, or as normal as possible for him.

“Let me see?” he asked, holding out his hand. “You know how you have voice commands for your other apps? Maybe it would help if you could enable that for the camera, too. Then you can say ‘Smile’ and it’ll take the picture.”

He messed around with the app settings and showed her what the other symbols to the side represented, like light and color changes.

He took out his own phone. “And now… now I take one of you,” he said.

“Let me see,” she said.

He held up his phone screen for her. “See?” he said. “Pretty girl.”

Rey chewed her bottom lip. Then she tapped something, and her eyes widened, cat-like. Distracted again by how cute she was, and he didn’t take a moment to stop her from swiping upward.

Too late, he snatched his hands away. But the damage was done. She had seen too much. “That’s not for you,” he said.

Rey looked up at him, betrayal flashing across her face.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, for lack of anything better to say. “You know I take pictures of you.”

He babbled. He emphasized how pretty she always was, and he didn’t see the harm in taking pictures if she didn’t know.

No, no, no, he cried. He wanted to drop his phone and rip out his hair from the roots. He needed something tactile to release the anxiety building up inside of him. They were doing so well; she was just beginning to accept him. He couldn’t let it end this way because of carelessness.  

He could feel himself dying inside. My collection, he wailed, she’s going to tell me to delete my collection! What killed him was the logic’s negation; if she left him, he would have nothing but his pictures.  

Rey held up a hand, motioning for him to stop talking. She looked so lost, so helpless, it broke his heart. "Why," she asked, "why do you have pictures of me sitting on the toilet?"

Chapter Text

“Well,” Not-Poe began. He placed his hands on his waist. “It’s because I – I never knew you would see these pictures.”

“You do know how evil that sounds, don’t you?” she grated out. She stood up from the dining table; she needed space from him and his perverted mind games. As she walked out, she heard his chair slide back. Rey spun around and nearly collided into his chest; she took a step back. For a man so large, he could move awfully quick. And he was quiet, too.

He wore a befuddled expression on his face, like he couldn’t divine why having pictures of her on the toilet would upset her.

He began to wave his arms around and pace the living room, like a caged animal. Of course this didn’t improve her anxiety levels. Rey rubbed her temple, her ears buzzing. “How many pictures do you have?”

He stopped, his hands linked behind his head. “That’s a tough question,” he said, “I think of storage in terms of SD cards, but every month I perform a backup of my phone that saves what I have into cloud storage. My current phone has 32 gigabytes memory. Not all of that storage goes to photos; about half is my contacts, work emails, and some videos.”

He used a dry tone of voice, as if he was sitting in marriage counseling.

He worked his jaw, frowning at the ceiling. “If I highballed, I would say six-thousand,” he said. “I’ve changed my phone once in the time that we’ve married.  My old phone had 32 gigabytes, half into photos, and now this one is full and it tells me every day that my storage is too large to save to the cloud.”

“The smartphone age must’ve been great for stalkers,” she said. “Can you imagine having to go to the pharmacy to get six thousand photos of a woman processed?”

“Can you imagine developing six thousand photos in a darkroom?” he countered. “I would be dead from cyanide poisoning.”

He smiled as if he’d said something funny.

Now more than ever, Rey believed that her husband was replaced by a psychopathic sex criminal. It took every ounce of her self-control not to run from the room. If I’m calm, then he’s calm, Rey told herself. If I freak out, he’ll freak out. So far this strategy appeared to be working; Not-Poe looked confused and distressed, but not as much as what Rey felt on the inside.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he assured her. “Pictures can’t hurt you.”

“I’m not afraid,” Rey lied. “Just. Surprised.” She bit her lip. “I – I guess I should be flattered. I don’t suppose you share them around at office parties?”

She couldn’t keep the edge from her voice. Rey winced and thought Oooh now I’ve done it – now I’ve made him angry, and she steeled herself for a blow. It was the same instinct she developed when she talked back to Plutt.

Not-Poe’s mouth twisted in disgust. “No,” he said. He drew his shoulders up, his posture defensive. “The fact that you can even ask me that shows how little you know about me. I’m not some kind of monster.”

“Maybe that’s true,” she conceded, “I really don’t know you at all.” He looked at her sharply, with a caught expression. “Why don’t you show me more pictures?” she asked. “Show me you aren’t a monster.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed.

Not-Poe may have consented to showing her his phone, but he wouldn’t give her his phone. After a few minutes of thought, he sat down heavily in the loveseat. His long thighs spread apart in a wide V. Not-Poe stared at her pointedly, until she sidled close to him.

Inwardly, she balked at the prospect of sitting in his lap. She was not only afraid of him, but the idea of sitting with her back pressed against his chest made her lightheaded.

I can do this, she urged herself, taking a deep breath. Maybe if I can get his phone, I can prove he’s not Poe.

Maybe if I can survive this, I can find out what happened to Poe.

As she sat down between his legs, she felt the hardness of his thighs. Not-Poe stiffened briefly, before his arms closed around her. His wrists were thick, and a single vein stood out in the middle of each one. He had long fingers; Rey knew that because of the way he would grab her, but this is the first time she ever observed them up close. His nails were trimmed and clean, and he smelled like salt.

“Let’s see,” he murmured, his breath tickling her hair.

Not-Poe scrolled through the pictures on his phone. Most were of her sleeping, but there were others of her staring into space, while he sat across from her at a restaurant. “Wholesome,” he said.

“You tell me it’s wholesome and then you take a picture of me sitting on the toilet,” she scoffed. He made a sound in his chest, before kissing behind her ear.

When he flicked his finger again, Rey choked. She turned her head, hiding her face in his shoulder. She burned with rage and embarrassment; she didn’t need to see her own dick-sucking face.

The picture raised awful questions again about the nature of her marriage, and about the fabric of reality itself. The foundations of her past were turning to quicksand and dissolving beneath her feet.

What did the picture mean? When was Poe replaced? Was Poe ever replaced?

Did this mean that she’d been having sex with Not-Poe this entire time? Who is her husband?

He ran his palm between her shoulder blades. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I thought I moved it to a different –.”

“I need to see it.”

He stiffened.

Rey turned to look at him, eye to eye. “All this time I’ve been married to a pervert. I feel like I’ve been tricked,” she deadpanned. “I feel like I’ve been made a fool of.”

The bait worked. A muscle in his jaw ticked, and he held her gaze for a second too long.

Rey turned away from him in disgust. He hooked his hand around her waist, and pressed his palm into the soft of her stomach.

He flipped quickly through a few more bedroom pictures until Rey gripped his wrist to make him stop. It was a singular picture of her, in the process of either removing or trying on clothes. Cold horror washed over her as she realized she didn’t recognize the closed-in walls or the lighting – it had to be a public dressing room.

“How did… how did you get this angle?” she asked.

Not-Poe sniffed. “We went into that little boutique store, in June,” he answered. “The weather got hotter than you thought it would, and you wanted to buy shorts and a shirt. I slipped my arms under the changing room door.”

She was floating, and only his embrace kept her pinned to his lap. “Did you… did…”

His voice dropped into a low rasp, his lips grazing her ear. “The store owner saw me, but she knew you were mine,” he said. “I could’ve squeezed in there, and taken you in that booth.”

Rey felt her core squeeze; her thighs locked together.  

“But I was good, and I wanted to wait.”

“How, um…” She croaked, at a loss for words. “Uh…”

His palm spanned her entire chest, his pinky and thumb grazing her nipples. She grabbed his thumb and pushed it away, and his hand fell in her lap, between her thighs.

“You see,” he said, “this girl means very much to me. More than she knows.”

He dragged his middle finger up her slit, stroking her. She brought her knees up, her breath leaving her in a hiss. Out of reflex, her hands landed on either side of her seat – gripping the outside of his thighs.

Not-Poe shuddered. His body curved over hers possessively, forcing her into a bow. “You don’t know,” he murmured, “how pretty you are.”

“P-. Stop,” she croaked. She snatched at his phone, only for it slip from his hand and land on the floor with a clatter. A thousand dollar phone like that, and he didn’t care. Instead his free hand went to her throat, holding her in place.

“I have to watch you, to make sure you don’t hurt yourself. That no one hurts you. That no one…” He grasped her neck, while his other hand stroked her cunt. “… touches this, except for me.”

Not-Poe petted her like that in his lap, like an instrument. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought, Maybe if I pretend it’s Poe, but instead she imagined a dark, tight changing room, with a man pressed close behind her. And the man had a long nose, and rosy lips, and hands that could crush her. There was no guilt in this fantasy, because this beast of a man forced himself on her – he covered her throat with one hand and pushed her into the changing room wall, before taking her in the way that he promised.

The fantasy pushed her over the edge. Not-Poe moved his hand into her panties and slid his fingers between her folds, gathering her slick. Her breathing fluttered, and she fisted the fabric of his sweatpants, her core pulsing. Sensing her lack of resistance, Not-Poe dragged her backwards, so she sat on his erection.   

With her eyes still closed, she turned her head and kissed him – first on the jaw, and then on his mouth. He seemed surprised at first, but then he kissed her back, pulling her bottom-lip between his teeth. For a moment, everything clicked into place, and he became familiar to her.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, just as the kiss ended. Her chest beat painfully when she saw that his face didn’t magically transform into Poe’s.

He swallowed thickly. “I’m so glad I found you first,” he confessed. “A really… bad man would’ve taken advantage of you.” He rested his forehead against hers. “They would’ve locked you in a darkroom somewhere, and made you pump out babies.”

They went to bed soon after, and she let him fuck her as a continuation of what began in the living room. The guilt returned in full force; she scraped her teeth against her bottom lip to keep from making a sound. Not-Poe switched off the lights this time, and Rey concentrated on her memory recall – if he was hitting the exact same spot she liked, or if the sounds he made would trigger a sense of déjà vu.

If he noticed that she wasn’t fully participating, he didn’t mention it. He tossed the condom out and cursed as it splattered off the rim of the wastebasket. Then he kissed her on the cheek before throwing the blanket over them both. Soon, Not-Poe snored lightly beside her.

Rey stared unseeing at the ceiling. Several cold possibilities were beginning to settle over her, ones she had been trying unsuccessfully to block out.

It was possible that Poe had been gone for a long time.

It was possible that she was falling for a man who wasn’t her husband, who potentially hurt or killed her husband.

It was possible that she was a whore.

She knew in her heart that this wasn’t Poe. Poe was not a man who creeped around taking pictures. If he liked a girl, he would approach her.

A fresh wave of agony seized her. How long could this go on? Was Poe suffering each day, or was he already gone from this world? How long could she keep playing house with this psychopath?

Not-Poe snorted in his sleep. Rey waited until she could hear the regular draw of his breath, before she could let herself think again. It would be so easy if she could shake him awake and ask him, What have you done with my husband? But that might wake up the beast inside him, so to speak.  

Wonderful questions arose, such as, How bad is he going to react? Is he going to turn around and kill me? Is he going to try to tie me up in the bedroom and keep me there as a sex slave?

In her mind, his voice returned his possible reaction: ‘…would’ve locked you in a darkroom somewhere, and made you pump out babies.’

She shuddered, and she hated the way her body tightened in response. She hated herself. Right now, Rey needed to focus on finding out what happened to Poe. Her heart squeezed painfully each time she thought of him; she was sure he was dead.

Rey could not get any sleep, so she got up at 5. Rey texted Finn the picture of Not-Poe, and then she made breakfast omelets. Not-Poe came down later, in his boxers and a long t-shirt. He wrapped his arms around her and rubbed the sleep sand from his eyes on her shoulder.

After breakfast, he did the magic trick – he changed outfits and transformed from fluffy-haired house husband into office hitman. She had a strange sensation that if she could forget Poe entirely, then this could be her life.   

Rey put on a blouse and black pants, but she was too tired to put her hair in buns. He waited for her at the front door, before explaining that the parking lot at his office was under renovation. “I think I’ll ride the bus with you, if that’s okay,” he said, grinning.

Rey smiled back, and inwardly she wondered, How is he excited to ride a bus with me?

Maybe he is crazy.

At work, Finn finally replied to her text. This was right before the lunch break.  

Today 11:15 AM

Rey, we need to talk

You’re right – that isn’t Poe

That guy has a whole bunch of different names

I think he took theater in college, he’s got MPD

Kylo Ren

Ben Solo

Matt I think

Where is Poe?

He didn’t answer immediately. In the meantime, Rey gathered up her things in her handbag – her wallet, spare change, her mug, whatever that would keep her hands busy. She Googled How to leave my husband and then local women’s shelters, and wondered if she could keep coming to work.

She didn’t feel upset or scared at all, which surprised her – just the sense of urgency. Maybe deep down inside, she expected this all along. Maybe the worst feelings would come later. Her phone buzzed again.

Today 11:44 AM

I don’t want you to be mad at him

Why won’t you pick up my calls?

Why haven’t you ever called me?

Finn is that really you?

They made me swear

Poe and him

I thought it was sick but I didn’t want to hurt you…

It had to be some sort of conspiracy. ‘They’ – whoever took Poe – was now impersonating Finn. Maybe Kylo Ren or Ben Solo kidnapped Finn, too.

Her phone began to buzz. He texted an address, and then a string of other messages, but Rey didn’t want to read any more lies. She went on her work laptop and printed out a map so she would know where to find him. It may have been a trap, laid out by the evil conspiracy that took her husband from her, but she didn’t care. She needed answers.

Rey called Not-Poe’s cell number. She received his voice message, and at the sound of the beep, she choked out, “I know.”

Her fingers blurred over the text pad, and she sent messages as soon as she had them typed out.

Today 11:57 AM

Did you like playing pretend

Like a stupid blind girl won’t noticed

Her husband is literally a different man

She set her phone down for a second, when it began to vibrate.

Whoever told you these things is lying.

Finn is a coward. He had a crush on you first, and it made him angry that you would love me. He would say anything to get back at me.

I’m in a meeting. We will talk when I get home.

Are you speaking as Poe right now, or Ben Solo?

Or Kylo Ren?

Or Matt?

She put her phone in her desk drawer and locked it, and she dropped the key in her office mug. From inside, she could hear it buzzing as he tried to call her. Rey neatly folded her map into her handbag and resisted the urge to retrieve her phone; what was it, but a device for spying on her, and lying to her? There was nothing in there she wanted, no memories she wanted save, now that Finn told her the truth.

She peered into Holdo’s office; Amilyn and Kaydel were in a teleconference meeting, and they each looked up at her from their laptops. “I have to go,” Rey whispered, with grave seriousness. “Family emergency.” Amilyn nodded her understanding and waved at her to go; Kaydel smiled.

The bus arrived at the stop on time. The entire ride, Rey stared at her printout of the map, until she memorized the route. She needed to get away from him, before he tried to kill her or hurt her to make her stay.

Rey arrived home and moved on autopilot. She threw as much as she could into a rolling luggage case. Then she had a great idea; she went into the attic and retrieved the handgun, along with all three bullets rolling around in the toolbox. She put these in her handbag for safekeeping.

She went downstairs and took his car keys from the bowl. Rey stopped and looked around the house that she shared with her husband, the house that she hadn’t seen in nine years. The walls were empty of pictures, but there were books and there were blankets for when she got cold. There was the microwave that read out the time, and braille on the remote control and any button on any device – proof that she did live here.

All of it, nine years of lies.

I won’t miss any of it, she told herself. HE can keep it all, because I’m never coming back here.

She locked the door behind her, and she held the house key in her hand. After a moment’s thought, she made herself press it into the dirt outside the front door, and she wiped her eyes.

Chapter Text

It was close to a decade since Rey sat in the driver’s seat of a vehicle. Rey kept her hands glued to the wheel, gripped by a constant high-level terror. The Silencer lived up to its name – its suspension so smooth, the ride so quiet, that the silence ate at her nerves.  

Her pulse rate accelerated as she drove the car up the expressway ramp. Her nerves buzzed, and her hands perspired over the wheel, making it slippery. Her driver’s license was in her wallet; that, too, was also expired a decade ago. Rey kept her eyes peeled for police cars; unless Not-Poe reported the car as stolen, all she needed to do was avoid a speeding ticket and causing any car accidents.

After the next ten minutes of driving the highway, her anxiety settled into a dull buzz at the back of her skull. If she died in a fiery car crash, she died. She wondered if Not-Poe would miss her; she wondered if psychopaths could even feel that level of grief.

Maybe Not-Poe didn’t miss her at all. In her mind, she imagined him returning home, seeing the empty driveway. Unruffled, he would pull his cell phone out of his pocket. He would dial his overlords, hold the phone up to his ear, and report, ‘She’s taken the car,’ like a villain in a Bond movie. ‘My cover has been compromised.’  Maybe a kill squad was trailing after her, right now.

Suddenly and inexplicably, she recalled the freeze-frame in her mind of the first time she saw him: an inexplicably large man, sitting in the too-small chair meant for her husband. The loose blue shirt, the jeans, and the mussed hair that made Rey mistake him for another hospital patient. His eyes wet with tears as he smiled at her.

Rey inhaled sharply, to relieve the sting in her chest. Did they teach him to cry like that, in spy school? Finn did say that the imposter had a background in acting.

In the rearview mirror, she noticed a black SUV with tinted windows. Rey stared at it, at the silhouette of the driver. After fifteen minutes, it slipped into the right exit lane.

Rey drank nothing and ate nothing.

A decade ago, Rey remembered how calming it was to go for a drive. Unlike Rose or Finn, she could sit behind the wheel for hours and hours, her head a perfect blank as she took in the scenery. She didn’t mind miles of gas stations and fast food signs, because these represented security and food besides breaks of scenic highways.

Now, the buzzing at the back of her head grew louder and louder. Clouds blotted out the sky and formed a low ceiling over the horizon. The sun disappeared. All the color drained out of the world, leaving her in shades of grey and black. In an instant, night fell in the afternoon.

A thought occurred to her: what would it be like to lose her sight and her hearing? What if instead of perfect silence, all she heard was this painful humming in her mind? The thought poisoned her with existential dread. As the highway passed over a wide river, Rey saw the black, roiling waters underneath, and she wondered what it would be like to drive the car over the barrier. Even as the car sped far past the bridge, the image stayed with her.

Rey nosed the car down the nearest exit. Droplets splattered onto the windshield, before the sky erupted into a torrential downpour. Rey took her time walking to the motel entrance. Inside the office, her shoes made squelching sounds against the carpet. She handed the desk clerk a wad of damp cash, and her expired driver’s license.

The desk clerk was a tall, pimply teenager with a beanie and dyed hair. He pretended to squint at her driver’s license, while casting flickering glances at the way her wet shirt clung to the outline of her breasts after coming in from the rain. He gave her a greasy smile that told Rey that he knew the license was expired, but he would let it slide for now, and he handed her the room key. Their fingers touched as she took the keys from him; Rey couldn’t care at all, because she carried the gun in her hand purse. She went back outside to go get her things.

Never, ever in her life was she afraid of thunder, or rain. She stood beneath the downpour and opened her mouth, her arms spread up towards the sky. She swallowed until the water soothed her parched throat and filled her stomach.

Rey stayed outside longer than she should, before she got her luggage case from the back of the Silencer. The temperature had dropped, and a chill settled across her damp skin. Shudders racked her body. As Rey heaved her case up the stairs, Rey pulled to the side to let a little old woman pass, but the woman tutted and helped her pull the bag up the rest of the way, while offering her the shelter of a bright orange umbrella.

In the privacy of the room, Rey knew she needed to get warm and dry, fast. She stripped down to her underwear, and left her clothes in a damp pile on the writing desk by the television.

As soon as she returned to her room, the electric buzzing hammered on the back of her eye sockets, beating in time with her pulse. Rey fell on top of the bed, shuddering as the charge ran from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. Her last conscious thought was that if she had to die, she wished it would have been outside, in the storm.

Poe collected overtime at work, and he stayed out for drinks with his buddies, or so he told her. She signed up for this when she agreed to marry him, he always reminded her; a pilot worked long hours. 

Rey half-suspected that he was cheating on her, which filled her with equal measures of rage and guilt. She couldn’t muster up the courage to confront him. What if she was wrong, and she was being paranoid? Worse, what if she was right, and he left her to be with his mistress?

Rey went to bed and woke up to these fears, alone in an empty apartment. Rey went from sofa to kitchen to toilet, sleeping and eating and relieving herself, with her arms outstretched – a large, miserable cat. She jumped out of a miserable sleep, awakened by the sound of the door opening. It had gotten so bad that she couldn’t tell if it was the afternoon, or the evening with the light on.

“Poe?” she croaked out. She smoothed her hands through her tangled hair and over her shirt, ashamed of how she must look right now. 

The door closed, and Rey heard the lock being turned. “Rey,” he answered. His footsteps shuffled towards her.

She gripped the back of the couch and pulled herself upright, facing the direction of his voice, as if she were a flower turning towards the sun. “Are you feeling better?” she asked tentatively. His voice sounded… different, as of late. Rey told him as much.

“Still the cold.” He coughed.

Rey frowned. She wished she could say that she felt sorry for him, but truth be told, Rey preferred this softness to his tone than the screaming matches they had only a month ago. Because of this lingering chest cold, Rey hoped that he would come home more often instead of staying out all night – but of course she wouldn’t suggest this out loud. She didn’t want to be a nag.

She felt guilty for not having dinner ready for him; right now, in her newfound disability, Rey was relegated from working woman to stay-at-home wife. Poe used to cite that as a reason for his not coming home soon enough – that, and the ‘wallowing in self-pity.’

This time, Poe asked if she had anything to eat, so Rey buried her face in the sofa to keep from answering him. Her stomach gave a pathetic growl. He laughed at her (the chest cold also changed his laugh). “That’s alright,” he said, “it’s not that late.”

Poe disappeared, and then he called her to dinner. Rey stumbled towards the dining room, this time spared from the agony of knocking her shins against the table again. She pulled back her chair and slowly eased herself into it, until her bottom touched the seat. She reached out and touched a cold, leathery surface. Poe told her it was a burrito.

She grabbed the thing, and felt a heat scorching from within. She bit into it and tasted hot eggs and spinach in there, inside the fridge-cold wrapper. Rey chewed it for a moment, and then frowned. “Did you forget to toast this?” There was no answer. “Poe?” she asked, cautiously.

“Uhhh,” he said, “I… I forgot.” After a pause, he sighed. Lately, Poe had been sighing a lot, though she didn’t blame him. “I see chicken salad wraps like this. I guess it slipped my mind.”

“It’s alright,” Rey said, “it’s store-bought, which means it’s already cooked.”

“I think Taco Bell could do better than me,” he laughed.

“Hey, don’t knock Taco Bell.” He knew too well about her love of the Crunchwrap Supreme.

Rey could remember having sex that night, and then that weekend, too, after a daytrip to Coruscant. A day at a time, their marriage recovered, and Rey gradually lost her fear of both her blindness and of her husband leaving her.

Now, a decade later, she began to piece together a new reality – one where Poe didn’t return to her at all. Instead, a psychopath… a changeling… an actor, whatever he was, slipped into place, and occupied the vacant role of husband.

Rey opened her eyes and lifted her head from the bedsheets. A bead of saliva dangled from her lips. As she pushed herself up, her shoulder blades scissored together. What is happening to me? She asked herself. Am I dying?

A knocking at the door roused her out of her thoughts. She picked herself off of the bed and shuffled towards the window. Through a slit in the vertical blinds, she saw the glint of eyes peering in at her. He tapped his finger on the glass, and waved his hand, like Death paying Rey a visit.

Her blood ran cold at the sight of him. Then she screwed her features into a glare. She had a gun and she lacked answers. If she died, she died. Rey figured, Why not?

She unlocked the door and walked quickly to the chair by the window. The door slowly swung open, admitting Not-Poe – the man who pretended to be her husband – into the room. He wore black slacks and a water-proof coat with the collar turned up, though he was completely dry. The rain had stopped by now. His eyes flickered from the gun in her hand, to her face. 

“Who are you?” she asked, casually.

Instead of answering her straightaway, he took a slow look around the room. He gazed flatly at the pile of damp clothes on the desk and at the crumpled bedsheets, and then he gave her a once-over, where she sat on the chair in nothing but her underwear and panties.

He shifted his hips, his hands slipping into his pockets. “Rey,” he said, sternly, “you don’t want to shoot me.”

“Yes, I do,” Rey corrected him. “I could if I wanted to.”

“No, you don’t. I see it, in your eyes. In the room next to this one, there’s a little old woman with inch-thick prescription glasses. If you miss, you could hit her.”

Rey lifted her hand higher and levelled the barrel of the pistol directly at his chest. She spoke in a low tone of voice, “If you’re so concerned about her, maybe you should stay right where you are.”

“Is that what you want,” he asked. “Do you really want to kill me? Your finger isn’t even on the trigger.”

He took a step towards her. Rey startled and placed both hands on the gun, this time grazing the trigger. Her hands couldn’t stop shaking, and her entire body burned from cold.

“Are you ready, Rey?” he asked. “Are you ready to know the truth?”

“Don’t come any closer,” Rey warned him.

“Straight out of college, you married a man named Poe Dameron. A year into your marriage, you realized your vision was failing.”

What is this, Psychopath Storytime? “And where were you?” Rey demanded. “Were you backpacking across the country strangling women?”

“If he had taken care of you, I would have left you alone,” he grated out, “but he didn’t. Your loss of sight frightened him; what if your children inherited it? It depressed him to come home to you. He didn’t sign up to become your caretaker.”

She thrusted the gun at him, making him rear back. She hated him so much. She would kill him, she knew she had to; she just needed to find the strength to do it.

He took his hands out of his pockets and took yet another step forward, saying, “Poe Dameron abandoned you. Finn couldn’t disparage his idol and his best friend by telling you the truth, so he abandoned you, too. He seized the first opportunity to move away from you, and cut off all contact. They told themselves they were sparing your feelings, but the truth is that they tossed you away like garbage when you became inconvenient to them, the same way your parents left you behind. You’re nothing to them.”

It can’t be true. There must – there had to be some kind of conspiracy against her. Her eyes watered.

No, Poe Dameron and Finn love her – the people at work love her. Her parents loved her; that’s why her mom promised she would come back. Rey had a husband who loved her and took care of her when she lost her sight. No, there had to be an evil force that conspired to take away her parents, her real husband, and Finn away from her.

He lunged for her, and forced her arms above her head, prying the gun out of her grasp. Once he had it, he opened the chamber and shook it out, but no bullets fell into his palm. He stared at his palm, and then at her, before tossing the gun behind his shoulder. It thunked on the carpet, like a toy.

He shrugged his jacket off and moved towards her, at the same time shucking down his slacks past his waist so that he could relieve the erection tenting his boxers. Rey pushed his face away from her, sickened – no human man should be able to get aroused from having a gun pointed at him, or at least she thought so.

Undeterred, he ducked his head under her armpit and lifted her off of the chair, carrying her on his shoulder until he could throw her onto the bed. Rey landed heavily on the mattress, her brain bouncing inside her skull. The buzzing behind her eyes returned.

Her vision focused and unfocused. He crawled over her, kissing his way up her thighs and stomach, until he braced himself over her.

“Are you ready, Rey?” he asked. “I’m tired of waiting.”

He kissed her again, only this time, Rey felt a surge of fear as she realized what was at stake. “Please don’t do this,” she begged him. “I need… time. I need to see Poe and Finn and figure out how this happened. I have no idea who you are.” I have no idea how dangerous you are.

Shadows wreathed his face, but Rey could hear the anticipation in his wavering voice and feel it in the trembling of his hands on the mattress. “We’ve had nine years together,” he said, “and now I’m ready. I’m ready to share you with our children.”

Chapter Text

Rey tried to fight him. She said No, and placed the flat of her palm against his jaw and pushed his mouth away. She raised her leg and pressed her knee against his hard abdomen. But either her thoughts were lagging, or he moved very fast – he shoved aside her knee and gripped the back of her neck in his hand, before thrusting his tongue into her mouth. He rubbed his erection against the seat of her panties; her core tightened painfully, her body getting wet in expectation of him.

Rey beat her knuckles against his shoulders. A buzzing sensation kicked on behind her eye sockets; particles of shadows danced on the ceiling, as if the motel room were swarming with insects. A jolt of electricity ran from the crown of her head down to the soles of her feet.

Ben Solo, or Kylo Ren, or the Prince of Darkness moved aside her panties and brought his cock to her folds, skin to skin. He let out a wet moan that made the shadows vibrate. He laced his hand with hers and filled her up, slowly.

Rey burned up inside; she wanted to scream, but nothing could come out, her teeth were locked together. His features grew blurry and she saw herself gazing up at a featureless mask, with vague textures to indicate his eyes. Rey cried in terror, locked inside herself. She could only curl her fingers in his, and feel him stretch her channel out. The walls pulsed in time to her heartbeat.

Rey wished she could close her eyes or black out again, but adrenaline pumped through her veins and forced her to witness her own torment. Once he was seated inside her, he moved in sure, slow strokes.

“That’s it,” he groaned, “just like that.”

As he moved, the tension in her spine unraveled. It would have been better if he hurt her or choked her, because maybe then she would have fought him harder.

She closed her eyes, giving in to the sensation instead of fighting it. In her mind, she took herself to a better place: she was making love with her husband of ten years. They were finally ready to have a baby together; Rey trusted that he would make a devoted husband and father. He waited for so long, and he was such a gentle, patient man, and now he earned his reward – their reward. He nuzzled her cheek, and a sigh escaped Rey’s lips, her walls fluttering around him.

Rey woke up the next morning, and realized everything she had worked so hard to achieve had been for nothing. Her husband was not her husband, her friends had abandoned her to the whims of a psychopath, and the miracle implant that should've restored her sight was malfunctioning.

The morning light that came through the window made the objects in the room look like a blurry soup. Rey tried to concentrate, to make her vision focus, but what was a table the day before now looked like a plane of light floating in inky darkness. Rey squeezed her eyes shut, a wave of cold grief pulling her under. She took a few slow breaths, the pain cresting over her until it became an ache in her chest. The numbness spread through her entire body.

Mentally, Rey decided that the name Kylo suited him more. Ben and Matt were normal, run-of-the-mill names for boys who did not stalk abandoned wives and insert themselves as husbands. Kylo sounded more exotic, more threatening in comparison.

Her first immediate priority was leaving Kylo. She needed to show no hesitation, no weakness. Weakness was the trigger that attracted Kylo in the first place. Although it would be very easy to reach over to his side of the bed and seek out a shoulder to cry on, she needed to be strong.

Rey angled her feet off the bed. She couldn’t really drive in this condition, but maybe if she could get to her car and lock the door…

A hand closed around her wrist. Rey grit her teeth.

“Where’re you going?” he asked, his voice muffled with sleep.

Rey muttered something about feeling like going to the bathroom and then not needing to go anymore, before stretching herself out on the bed again. Kylo moved forward and threw his arm around her midsection, snuggling against the curve of her spine. He kissed her neck. Rey stiffened; in her head, she entertained fantasies about punching him in the crotch.

What should she do now? If he dragged her out of the motel room, he would discover that the implant stopped working. He would attach himself to her like a lamprey, and they would go back to the way things were before.

Kylo apparently read her mind, because he said, “We can call a tow truck to take my rental, and I’ll drive you home in the Silencer, if that’s okay.” He tried to say this as casually as possible, but there was a note of childish hope in his voice. He rubbed his stubbly cheek against her shoulder.

“I’m not going back,” she answered. Next she made a conscious effort to name him, now that he wasn’t Poe. “Kylo,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he demanded, getting angry. “I – I know you. Don’t be afraid of me, Rey. I am exactly who you want me to be; I’m not a stranger just because now you can see my face.”

“I want to talk to Poe, and Finn,” she insisted. Her voice wavered at the edges; she reached down and pulled the blankets over her head, to hide her face from him. She couldn’t be weak. She couldn’t let him see her weakness.

Kylo shouted at her, “You mean your husband, your friends? Those traitors who abandoned you in your time of need? Forget them. Let their memory die.”

Rey laughed, although she was huddled in a fetal ball. “You really don’t understand me,” she said, injecting contempt into her voice. Nobody understands what I’ve went through.  

“I do,” he insisted.

Oh really? Resentment crackled through her. Were you also abandoned at seven years old? Were you abandoned by your spouse when you started losing your eyesight?

“I know what it’s like to… be disappointed by the ones you love.”

Rey wiped the sand from her eyes, and her hand came away wet. She waited, but Kylo didn’t say more, and she didn’t want to risk asking him for more or risk giving him the incentive to attach himself to her. “I can’t be with you until I see Finn and Poe,” she forced out.

“Let me take you to them.”

Rey was about to shake her head; she asked herself how willing he is to take a No for an answer.

Even in the increasingly likely event that Finn and Poe verified that what Kylo says was the truth, she didn’t want to be with Kylo by default. She needed some space and some time to think about whether she wanted to actually be married, at this point, after being lied to for so long.

“It’s not that I just want to talk to them over a cup of coffee,” Rey said. “I feel so stupid. You – everybody, but especially you – tricked me. There’s this thing inside me that’s woken up, and I don’t know how to make it stop.” Rey squeezed her hands into fists, until her nails bit into the meat of her palm.

Kylo said nothing; Rey imagined that he was poised over her, like a cobra rearing back to strike. If he yanked back the covers, realistically he could do whatever he wanted: drag her to the car, rape her, or even kill her if he got angry enough. Really, if the people in her life had not abandoned her as per usual, she would not be in this situation, venting her frustrations to a psychopathic stalker!

“I wish Finn and Poe were dead,” she muttered.

There was silence from the other side of the blanket. “As you wish,” he answered.

He said it so quietly. Rey quieted her breathing to hear what he would say next, but nothing followed it after. She felt his weight lift from the bed. Was he serious, or was he doing a bit just to humor her?

He was quiet for so long, that Rey couldn’t pin where he stood in the room. She peeled back the blankets and caught the shape of him. She observed the white planes of his back as he collected his pants off of the floor. He dressed himself methodically, not in any hurry. He spun around and faced her with a performer’s grace. Rey hastily retreated into the blankets.  

“Were you… their friend?” she asked stiffly.

“My mother knew Poe’s mother when we were children,” he said. Rey waited, but that was the only explanation he provided. He leaned down, and peeled back enough of the blanket to kiss the crown of her head.

“Wait for me,” he whispered.

Rey waited, and when she raised her head, he was gone from the room. Rey paced around clumsily, and checked the closet and the bathroom, but there was no sign of him. Although she knew she should’ve been relieved, she only felt abandoned once again by someone who claimed to have loved her. She sat down on the bed and cried.

Chapter Text

Is it possible to live in a world where no one knows you, or loves you?

When she was a child, she lived on the basis of finding her parents again, certain that they would come back to her someday. When she grew up, Finn became her family, and then Poe Dameron became her husband.

Then when she regained her sight again, she realized that her life was built on a foundation of lies.

Eventually the tears stopped, and she picked herself off of the bed. She took her now reasonably dry clothes from the writing desk and dressed herself.  

She made her way outside, clutching the railing as she walked down the damp concrete steps towards the lower level of the motel. The air smelled of petrol. The sunrise mixed soupily over the black conifers that marked the border of the motel’s parking lot.   

When she reached the front office, the desk clerk was away. She stood by the service window and politely rang the service bell only once, until he emerged from the back room. By now, she couldn’t make out the pimples on his face; the only features she could see were his eyes and a vague shape for his mouth.

“Rough night, huh?” he asked. His breath reeked of stale cereal milk. Rey asked for him to call a taxi.

At around three pm, Rey checked herself into a woman’s shelter, just so that she could have somewhere to sleep for free while she gathered her thoughts. One of the shelter advocates took pity on her, even if Rey didn’t really feel as desperate as some of the other women there. Ms. Tano was the one who admitted her that afternoon and patiently showed her where all the shared facilities were.

Rey took mincing steps and hugged the walls, committing the floor plan of the shelter to memory. The implant’s functions were slowly coming back to her. Ms. Tano’s face looked alarmingly orange.

The shelter was a low brick building shaped like a V, with childcare off to one wing. This was the third time in her life that Rey had stayed in a women’s shelter; the first two times were for running away from bad foster placements. She knew that she was taking a spot that could have gone to a woman in more desperate need.

Rey didn’t have any children, and she wasn’t running from an abusive husband. Kylo never hit her. “I’ll only stay here for three days,” she assured Ahsoka Tano. The two of them sat on her cot, just talking.

“Where do you plan to go afterwards?” Ms. Tano asked. It was impossible to tell how old Ms. Tano was; no wrinkles marred her face, and she sat on the bed with perfect posture.

Rey shrugged. She thought that would be the end of it, but Ms. Tano sat there, patiently awaiting a better answer – anything but the street, in the middle of an incoming winter. “I think my main priority is to get away from my husband,” Rey confessed. “I have the money to pay for a hotel room.”

“Do you believe that your husband is searching for you?” Ms. Tano asked.

“… Yes. But it’s not a serious issue,” Rey answered quickly. She rushed to assure Ms. Tano that Kylo was not a security threat – at least, Rey believed so. “He wouldn’t get a gun and try to hunt me down.” That wasn’t the kind of man he was.

“Are you afraid of him finding you?” Ms. Tano clarified.

Rey hesitated. Embarrassment kept her silent at first. “Not… afraid,” Rey said, both to herself and to her advocate.

Recounting everything that happened to her since she received the implant put things into a certain perspective. For years, Kylo had the opportunity to rape her and kill her – but he didn’t. He never hit her, or forced her to have his baby.

Kylo didn’t even drag her from the motel room. He just… left her, alone again. For some reason, that hurt her in a way that she didn’t want to explain.

Was I ever really in danger? Rey wondered. Looking back, all of her fear of him now felt like paranoia. Maybe she could try to talk to Kylo…

Ms. Tano had been listening attentively and without criticism while Rey spoke. But when Rey told Ms. Tano about her indecision, the woman shook her head in anger. “He did assault you, Rey,” she said. “He purposely deceived you, and gaslit you into believing that he was your lawfully wedded husband.”

“But in the ways that mattered –.”

“In the ways that mattered, he was never your husband; he was a virtual stranger. He never gave you his real name.”

Rey blinked and felt a weight lift off her body. Instantaneously she knew how much of a stupid idea it would be to go back to the ‘husband’ she ran from. Was this what it would always feel like? Was Kylo like an acid inside her body and spirit, dissolving her from the inside out?

Ms. Tano asked Rey if she felt safe returning home, and Rey answered no.

Rey assumed that the house was in Kylo’s name and that he slept there. He made six figures at work, so maybe he bought that house for their fake marriage like a dollhouse. Maybe he kept several wives in different houses around the city. The thought alone made Rey shudder in disgust. She could never go back.

The temptation would be too great. She knew she’d end up sitting on the couch and waiting for him to come home.

Ms. Tano asked Rey if she planned on returning to work, and Rey shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. She couldn’t be sure if Kylo would show up at her office. He could be very charming, and she imagined him talking Kaydel and Amilyn into letting him into the building. But Rey hoped to continue working, for money and if only to keep the last remaining shred of normalcy in her life.

“Do you still wish to talk to Finn and your former husband?” Ms. Tano asked.

It took Rey a moment to understand that Ms. Tano meant Poe. “I… don’t know,” Rey whispered.

In a dry voice, Ms. Tano asked, “Do you need to talk to them?”

“… No,” Rey answered. She already lived without them for so long.

That night, Kylo answered all of her burning questions. Her will to see Finn and Poe had died right about then. A low-burning anger coursed through her when she thought about the men who abandoned her to the whims of Kylo Ren. If she talked to Finn and Poe now, she couldn’t guarantee what she would do to them. Her hands curled into fists.

Maybe in the future, she would be able to confront them about what they did. But right now, she wanted to be alone in order to get her life back together – her new life. Alone.

At the back of her mind, she remembered one of the last things she said in the motel room: that she wished they were dead.

Even now, Kylo’s promise whispered in her ears; As you wish.

In the shelter, a shudder ran through Rey’s body. She shrugged it off.

Ahsoka Tano offered the services of a legal clinic in order to untangle Kylo’s assets from hers, but Rey shook her head. She didn’t want the Silencer or the house. In her mind, they belonged rightfully to Kylo, and if she even tried to touch them, he would lawyer himself up. It was like a divorce without being an actual divorce, because Kylo had never actually married her.

Ms. Tano didn’t see it that way; she believed that Rey deserved half of everything that Kylo owned, although Ms. Tano was forced to acknowledge that Coruscant did not recognize common law marriages, which Kylo had effectively trapped Rey into.  Ms. Tano said that Kylo was an evil man for what he did, and he shouldn’t have to get away with it scott-free.

Rey disagreed. She twined her hands between her legs as she sat on the lumpy cot. “I don’t think that Kylo is evil,” she said slowly. “If… If he had only talked to me, I think we could’ve been happy.”

“Every day that he lived with you, he made a deliberate choice to continue the lie,” Ms. Ahsoka insisted.

“But he’s not… evil.”

Ms. Ahsoka said nothing.

By her third night in the shelter, Rey sorted out the housing that she wanted to stay in for visually impaired adults. She called the motel to ask about the Silencer, but she was informed that a towing company had taken it away the night after she checked out.

“Your husband said to tell you that he’d take care of it,” the desk clerk said.

Rey swallowed thickly and ended the call there. As she lay in her cot, a wave of loneliness hit her. She itched regularly for her phone, and wondered if Amilyn, Kaydel, or even Rose had tried to contact her. Instead, Ms. Ahsoka obtained a new cell phone for her; of course it had less features than her old phone, but it was federally subsidized, and the numbers had brail on them. Rey promised Ms. Ahsoka to stay in contact, but Ms. Ahsoka had dozens of other women and children to keep track of.

On her last day at the shelter, the noises of her neighbors in the other cots helped to block out the buzzing sensations in her head at night, making it easier to sleep. She closed her eyes to the static seething on the walls at the corners of her vision.

Cotton filled her mouth. She blinked slowly as she came to. She could see nothing.

For a moment, fear filled her chest and her airways. What’s happening? Am I dead? She wondered. Just then, she took a breath, and a warm musk filled her senses. Rey slid her hands down beneath the heavy blankets, and pulled a piece of cloth that had been draped over her chest. She brought it to her nose.

Rey felt the rough tag at the collar of the shirt. It smelled like her husband. It smelled like home.  

A cottony voice filled her skull; she reached out blindly and felt rough plastic handles on the bed she laid on.

“Rey?” A familiar voice spoke to her. “Can you hear me?”

Rey tried to speak, and choked on the dryness in her throat. She reached out and a warm, manicured hand took hers.

Has it been three days already? Rey wondered. I got my bags all packed. 

Rey’s hair felt hot and itchy against her scalp, even though she showered the night before.

Ahsoka Tano explained, “You’ve been unconscious for two days. They needed to take you into surgery.”

Oh, Rey thought. She gathered her strength, and managed to croak out, “What?”

“On the morning that you were supposed to check out,” Ms. Tano said, “we found you on your bed, unresponsive. We called the hospital – Jannah thought you were going to die.” Ms. Tano stopped and took a deep breath, squeezing Rey’s hand. “Doctor Aphra wants to speak to you,” she said.

“Hello, Rey,” a woman’s voice said.  

The doctor explained that a leakage in her retinal implants caused Rey to have a low-level seizure. Then she asked if Rey ever experienced dizziness, blurriness of vision, or lightheadedness. “Yours is like nothing our surgeons had ever seen before,” Dr. Aphra added warily, “but we’re reasonably confident that we were able to break the current that fed into the electrodes inside the malfunctioning implants. We’re attempting to get into contact with a representative of the First Order’s surgical team so that we can get a consultation.”

As the explanation washed over Rey, she felt a pressure growing in her chest. When she was finally able to speak, she asked, “Are my eyes still green?”

The First Order sent Dr. Pryde to speak to her. He apologized for the ‘inconvenience,’ and then offered her a steep discount on her next purchase of retinal implants. “The issue is that in the last six months, your model was recalled,” Dr. Pryde admitted. “Instead of offering repair, we’ll be inserting upgraded electrodes… This one will come with a video camera which will project directly into your retinas, with sharper image quality. Unfortunately, it’ll take two surgeries – one to remove the old implants, and one to implant the new, but the price you pay would be covering both.”

Although Rey couldn’t see him, he had the voice of a kindly doctor; but Rey knew a sales-pitch when she heard one. She shook her head and explained, “I’m currently going through a… divorce. I don’t think I’ll have the funds or the time for that much surgery.”

“No?” Dr. Pryde sounded genuinely hurt. Rey believed that if she could see his face, his sales pitch would’ve worked on her by now. He cleared his throat. “Forgive me for my indiscretion, but… your husband holds an account with us. He insisted that whatever choice you made, would be free of charge to you.” Dr. Pryde paused to let that sink in. “I personally believe it would be a mistake to let this opportunity go past.”

Rey nodded. She imagined that if she said yes, to both surgeries, she would wake up in the operating room again – with Kylo sitting right beside her each time. He would have two redos. Reluctantly, she made herself push his shirt off of her chest and sit up in bed. “No,” she said again, “and that’s my mistake to make.”

Chapter Text

And Rey never, ever saw Kylo Ren again. She might never see anything ever again, in fact, and she forced herself to come to terms with that.

There must’ve been some willful suspension of disbelief on her part. She saw that now. Seemingly overnight, her ‘husband’s’ voice changed completely and irreversibly. He forgot how to make plantains and beans, and yet he absorbed how to make cacio e pepe ‘from watching it on television once.’

Some days hurt more than others. Maz warned her not to beat herself up over her emotions and instead allow herself to feel them. But Rey couldn’t help missing her husband; either she rejected those feelings and hated herself over them, or she embraced them and wanted him so bad that she wished she’d never left him. The ache hurt so bad sometimes, that it felt like her body and soul would die without him – which she knew wasn’t true.

Rey lived alone now, with no usable vision. She kept her job but worked from home now, so she wouldn’t need to commute to the office or run the risk of meeting her ex. However, her coworkers were very supportive, and her boss Amilyn Holdo promised that Rey would be free to return to the office whenever she felt ready. They didn’t know about Kylo, but they knew that the implant had failed.

Medicaid subsidized her apartment and paid for Maz Kanata’s therapeutic services. Rey also went to classes for visually impaired adults; Maz even suggested a supportive housing residence in the city in case she wanted to live with a group of people. Rey liked that – maybe in the future, when she felt… safer.

“In good time,” Maz agreed. “Living with others would be good for you, Rey. You might meet another handsome man, one who will be better than Kylo in every way.”

Rey snorted before she could stop herself. “Yeah right,” she said, resting her jaw on her knuckles.

Maz misunderstood her, because the air in the room changed. Rey heard Maz shift in her chair (a ruffle of fabric against leather). “It’s understandable that you would still love him,” the old woman said, “but ask yourself if he loved you enough to give you the truth.”

Rey’s teeth clacked together. “I don’t –,” she began, but she couldn’t finish the sentence. She meant that there’s no way she would ever date again, because who would want her? Blind, divorced from a bizarre ten-year-non-marriage from a psychopath, and penniless. Rey wanted nothing to do with love.

The thought made her so angry and embarrassed that she pushed herself to the corner of the suede chair. It was fine if she didn’t say anything – Medicaid covered the whole session.

“I’m sorry,” Maz said slowly. “You know I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Rey ground her teeth together. Her breath contracted, like a fist slowly releasing her heart. When Rey heard the timer go off, she rose from her chair and gathered her purse over her arm and her extendable walking cane. Maz said she would see her next week, so Rey managed a curt nod before leaving.

It was six in the afternoon when Rey left her therapist’s office. She had nothing to do, but she didn’t want to go home, or else she would fall into a depressive spiral about whether or not Kylo loved her. Rey knew this much about herself – that she was weak, and that she still cared about him. That if she could turn back time, she would have left the motel with him, even though she would’ve hated herself for it.

There was no going back, ever. Instead, she walked to an Italian restaurant where they knew her, and she ordered cacio e pepe. A bell on the door announced when customers were coming or going; after she entered, she heard the bell only three more times. Just then, a waiter bustled over suddenly and placed something heavy on the table.

“What’s that?” Rey asked.

“Oh,” he said, “the gentleman over there wanted you to have fresh flowers. Here,” he said, pushing a stem into Rey’s hand.

Rey flushed with embarrassment, but she accepted the flower and brought it to her nose. The petals surrounded an open face – a daisy, her favorite.

While she waited for her food, her new phone rang. Rey picked it up and answered it. “Hello?” she asked. “This is Rey speaking.” At this hour, she was willing to shoot the breeze with a telemarketer at dinner – why not? She shouldn’t have blown up at Maz, the old woman just doesn’t want her to be lonely.

“Hey,” said the woman on the other end of the line. “Rey, how are you.” Her voice was so quiet, that Rey couldn’t place her at first.

“I’m sorry, who is this?” Rey asked.

“It’s me,” was her answer, “Rose.” Either Rose had a head cold, or she was miserable; Rey had never heard her speak like that before, in dead monotone.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Rose went on. “Before he died, Finn told me. Everything.”

A hand grazed her shoulder, making her jolt in place. “Ma’am, your food,” the waiter said apologetically. “You haven’t touched your plate – is there something wrong?”

“I – no, that’s okay,” Rey said, waving him off with her free hand. When he was gone, she picked up her fork and lightly combed the tines across the full plate in front of her.

The waiter must’ve slipped it in front of her without her knowing – impressive. It’s like all her senses failed her, with the exception of her ears. Rey brought the fork to her mouth and tasted congealed pasta. It went cold right in front of her and she hadn’t noticed. It’s funny, but she wasn’t hungry at all anymore.

“… and I think it’s important that you be here,” droned Rose’s voice. “If not for him, then for me.”

Rey sat there in silence, holding her phone to her ear.  With a start, she realized that she was expected to answer. Rose just told her the time and date and location of Finn’s funeral – Finn, who was once her best friend. Finn who took her away from her godawful foster father. Rey’s throat began to close.

“Are you going?” Rose’s voice seemed to come from a hundred miles away.

“I’m not sure, Rose. I don’t know. I – I’m sorry.” Rey dropped the fork and heard it clatter to the ground. “Sorry,” Rey blurted out, to her fellow diners.

As Rey bent down under the table to search for the fork, Rose asked, “What are you sorry for?”

“I uh, I dropped my fork,” Rey said into the phone, but Rose spoke over her.

“My husband fell to pieces after Poe died. At first, I thought he was being paranoid, but he said that somebody was stalking him. Following him in a car.” Venom added an edge to Rose’s voice. “And then, he tells me about what he and Poe did to you like ten years ago. Then somebody stabs him to in the back over a wallet?”

Rey’s body broke out in pins and needles. She froze stiff, like a deer blinded by headlights.

As you wish. Kylo’s voice whispered between Rey’s ears. Don’t be afraid of me. I’m everything you wanted. Rey’s hand closed around metal. She raised her head and knocked the corner of her table.

“Rey, are you still there? Can you help me puzzle any of this out?”

As she straightened, her head spun from vertigo. “Yes – no,” she stammered, lightheaded.

Rose’s voice grew in volume, enunciating each word. “Did you kill my husband and his best friend? Because you felt that they left you?”

Cold flash-froze Rey’s body and soul. She set the fork down on the table. “Goodbye, Rose,” Rey said stiffly. Then she ended the call and blocked Rose’s number.

He wouldn’t. Kylo Ren was crazy, but he wouldn’t actually kill people. His mother knew Poe’s mother. Kylo knew Poe and Finn in college, enough that Finn felt confident enough to diagnose Kylo with MPD.

Was that right? What did that even mean? If she hadn’t thrown out her old phone, Rey would still have those texts to read – she could’ve tried to learn more about who Kylo was and wasn’t –.

Rey stood from the table and paid for her food, without touching any of it. Then she left. A hard wind blew and drew tears from the corners of her eyes. At this moment, the pain comforted her. After what happened to Finn, and Poe, maybe she deserved all the pain that she got.  

The entrance bell jingled again behind her as someone else left the restaurant after her. Her body went cold. Rey stopped in the middle of the street, stopped and listened. 

The daisies, she remembered. A single set of footsteps walked towards her. His footsteps were sure and casual; he barely paused as he walked past her, towards the parking lot. Rey sniffed the air and caught the barest hint of cologne in the wind. She found herself listening hard to the footsteps, trying to place that stride in her mind. Rey waited to hear him get into his car, because she knew what sound the Silencer made when its doors unlocked. When she didn’t hear it, she forced herself to leave and walk away, her head spinning in circles.

Rey walked as fast as she could without tripping until she made it to her apartment building. She scanned her key card and went inside, pushing the door shut behind her.

Rey walked up the flight of stairs. She lived on the fourth floor, and the higher she climbed, the more lightheaded she grew. Her conscience argued and collapsed in on itself.

It was her fault. Did Kylo even know right from wrong? Did he know that she didn’t mean it, that she was just angry at the time?

It couldn’t be Kylo; he had to know that she wasn’t serious. Kylo wasn’t a murderer – he’d lived with her for about a decade and he never hurt her.

Something wasn’t right. If Poe died, why didn’t anybody tell her? Was it because Finn felt that guilty? How dare Rose try to pin everything on her!

Rey turned the key in the lock, and the door swung open. She closed the door behind her and locked it, then set her cane to the side of the door. Then she turned, and she heard his voice in front of her, inside her apartment.

“Hello, Rey,” he said.

Time stopped. Her brain stopped. She’d run this scenario a hundred times through her head, but now that it actually happened, she didn’t know what to do.

He moved towards her; Rey felt his foot fall before her, on the laminate flooring, when suddenly his hands wrapped around her waist. He’s bigger than she remembered; he lifted her feet out of her shoes. For half a second, Rey thought he was going to kill her. His mouth fell on hers.

Rey wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him into the kiss. His hair felt longer, and oily, and a moustache rasped against her face. He carried her over and threw her down on her patch-work sofa. He shirked off her pants and ripped apart her underwear before slotting himself between her legs. Rey had just enough time to whimper before he began pushing himself into her cunt.

Rey couldn’t do anything; she could only feel him inside her. He was bigger than she remembered and stronger than her. It hurt, but even the pain was beautiful and she wanted it from him. Rey grabbed fistfuls of his hair as he fucked her. Only after the second thrust did she realize that he wasn’t wearing a condom, but by then, it was too late to stop.

He wrapped his arms around her body and embraced her as he came deep inside her, hitting her cervix. Rey bit his collarbone and screamed as liquid heat filled her. He held her like that, his penis twitching inside her.

Rey traced his neck with the tip of her nose. A warm scent lingered on his skin. For a long time, she’d been afraid of this, afraid that he would be angry at her for leaving him. At the same time, she’d also wished for it.

Kylo came back to her.

In her sessions with Maz, she went over her own self-respect and independence, how she deserved better than a partner who had lied to her. Now, the lies seemed trivial. Kylo Ren was never Poe, and Rey didn’t want Poe. She wanted – needed – a husband who would love her. Who kept his promises. Who would always come back to her.

Rey caught his face in her hands and blotted her eyes against his sandpaper jaw. In an instant, he was hard again.

“I know,” he murmured, “I feel it, too.”

But one question gnawed at the core of her happiness. Rey could’ve cursed Rose for calling her. Rose had her chance to be happy – she had her sight, her sister, her husband – Finn.

Finn, who was her best friend.

Rey lifted her jaw, and she asked Kylo.  

“Now there’s nothing between us anymore,” he said simply. “They can’t keep us apart anymore.”

Rey shook her head. In her mind, she could still see his face, when the implant still worked. She imagined him smiling down at her – his eyes hooded, his full lips twisted into a rueful grin. She wished she’d loved that face better when she could still see it.

“Did you kill Finn? And Poe?” she asked, her voice cracking.

There was a long pause. His hands gripped tighter around her shoulders. “They needed to pay for abandoning you,” he answered in a cold voice. “A mother doesn’t abandon her child when he’s born broken. A husband doesn’t abandon his wife when she becomes sick.”

Rey sucked in a breath. He’s unwell. It doesn’t matter that he loves you. Rey shook her head, wishing she could shut up her conscience – it’d never done her any good. He is very, very sick in the head, and his love is its symptom. The faces of Finn and Poe materialized in her mind’s eye, as clear as day. They were looking down at her from Heaven.

“I…” Rey wished she could’ve gone back in time and never agreed to the stupid implant. Then she would’ve kept everything she wanted.

“I can’t…. do this,” she said slowly. “Kylo… Ben, whatever your name is, you need to turn yourself in,” she said.

Rey said this as gently as possible. She felt a touch of hope when Kylo brought his hand to her face. “No,” he said.

“I never asked you to kill Finn or Poe,” Rey blurted out. “What they did was wrong, but they didn’t deserve to die. Poe just didn’t want to be married to me anymore, and Finn was… caught, in the cross-fire, between two of his friends.”

Kylo’s breathing changed and deepened, like a hunted animal. Rey knew in an instant that she was losing him. “YOU PROMISED ME,” he shouted. “YOU SAID YOU WOULD NEVER LEAVE ME!”

“I love you, and I’ll wait for you when you leave prison,” she assured him. “Kylo, what you’ve done isn’t good or right. Even if it came from a good place in your heart, nothing you did has been good or right. Do you see that?” Rey begged him to understand. “I remember the promise, too, Kylo! Only you didn’t need to lie to me or kill two of our friends to keep it!”

Ten years ago, Kylo Ren wandered into the house of Poe Dameron and his wife, Rey. He knew from his friend that his wife was losing her vision. Whatever the reason for Kylo’s visit – altruism, morbid curiosity, or an opportunity for rape – he found a woman alone, and afraid.

Rey mistook him for her long-missing husband. Instead of being rightfully angry, she chose to forgive him after being served dinner instead of junk food she found in the kitchen – spaghetti, her first real food in days. And instead of relieving her of her misunderstanding, Kylo stepped into the role of husband. However, each of them had a condition.

Rey made him promise that he would never leave her. For some strange reason, Rey’s ‘husband’ made her promise the same thing to him – as if she would ever be capable of leaving him.

Kylo forced himself to breathe through his nose. His hands on her forearms lost their grip, but he still continued to hold her. Relief took hold of Rey.

“I see,” he said. “Whatever you want, sweetheart.”

She was so happy, that she wrapped her arms around his neck, embracing him. She felt him stiffen; he stirred himself inside her. Although she was sore, she wanted him again, because at any moment he would have to go away again. “I love you,” she whispered in his ear. Her legs crossed behind his waist as he eased himself into her body.

Everything was going to be okay now.

“You’re going to make such a good mother,” he answered. Rey wanted to believe him.