who: Kylo Ren & Fen when: Wednesday, June 20 where: Physical Cottage What: Fen and Ren talk about them, Eliot, and 🔪 warnings: None that I can think of. status: Complete.
Fen spent the week outside, putting her forge together. It wasn’t as difficult or daunting as it might have seemed. The exterior shed was purchased separately, something prebuilt and relatively simple and unimportant to the equipment it housed. Inside she was building what looked a little like an oven, magical brick from Fillory that would not melt or crack no matter how high she brought the temperatures, not create deadly fumes, which would keep the temperatures she needed and cool quickly and safely when she was no longer working.
Fray was supposed to be helping her, but Fen gave her the option to do chores inside the cottage and at the moment, Fray had opted not to help Fen outside. No matter. This week Fen was finally starting to feel useful, no longer biding her time on the couch inside on her tablet. It felt good to move and stretch and work again.
Kylo had wanted to speak with Fen after their conversation with Eliot, but he'd also needed some time to think through and try to figure out what was the underlying tension he'd felt. Or maybe he hadn't felt? It wasn't clear to him, just that there was something niggling in the Force, some… something that he felt he ought to be able to catch onto.
When he walked up in the yard, returning from his shift at the Espresso Pump, he realized she was out here working, and after a heartbeat he walked up towards her, offering her a smile and a steady gaze as he approached.
"How's it going?" He asked without any other prelude. They both knew what she was working on, and it was greeting enough.
Fen was more dressed down than usual, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers and heavy work gloves. Her hair was pulled back plainly. She returned Ren’s look with a smile.
“I wouldn’t mind some cooler weather,” she admitted. “How’re you?” She took a step away from her work to signal he had her complete attention.
"Sadly altering the weather patterns is not in my ability set," he responded dryly, glancing up at the sun. He disliked the hot weather, disliked the fact that it made him have to shift his wardrobe to something that made more sense logically, but didn't feel like him. Today it was a dark linen shirt, and trousers, but he suspected it would have been smarter to make either of those things a lighter shade. Kriff hot weather.
But she'd asked a question, and he turned his attention back to her. "I'm good," he told her. "Maybe you should take a break. I'll make you iced tea," he offered.
Fen paused. Had anyone else offered, including her husband, she might have turned them down. The forge gave her a sense of purpose that she had been sorely lacking, even in Fillory as a stand-in king, knowing she was only keeping a seat warm for Margo upon her return.
But Ren was quiet, shy, and so his offer stood out to Fen. She considered and then smiled at him, wiping the sweat from her brow with a forearm. “That sounds lovely. Thank you.” Pulling her gloves off her hands and letting them fall to the ground with a gentle toss inside the shed, she followed Ren back into the gloriously air conditioned cottage.
Iced tea was a drink that Kylo had mostly discovered in Tumbleweed. While there were similar things at home, he didn't think he'd really appreciated it until he'd moved here. It was so hot during the summer months that the drink actually was satisfying in a way that he wouldn't have anticipated, and right now he headed for the refrigerator to look for the pitcher he'd made up before he'd left that morning.
He pulled it out, and started two glasses. They were, for the moment, anyway, alone in the kitchen, but he was quiet as he put ice in up to the rim, and then he filled them with the liquid.
He handed one over to Fen. And then he took a sip of his own.
"I don't consider you an intruder," he stated, perhaps rather bluntly, but the words had been used, and he felt it was important that she knew that. "I don't want you to feel like one."
Fen’s expression softed, and she smiled at him. “Ren, you haven’t made me feel unwelcome. You’ve been nothing but kind to me considering the circumstances. The relationship between Eliot and I hasn’t… we’ve had our problems. The two of you just seemed so close and loving and… that’s all I meant.” She exhaled softly. “It wasn’t anything you did to make me feel that way.”
"Good," he offered, and then he let the word linger as he took another sip of tea. He didn't know if he'd managed the situation well, and Kylo didn't typically consider himself able to manipulate - no that was the wrong word - to navigate social situations well. He hadn't known how to navigate things with Eliot, but he'd watched Eliot and maybe learned something. Maybe. And even if he still felt like a disaster most of the time, Eliot didn't seem to mind.
But Fen wasn't Eliot and she had every reason to dislike him and to consider him an intruder or an usurper, even if her relationship with Eliot wasn't one they'd both walked into because they wanted it. But Eliot's desires for Fen had shifted and oddly, come far more in line with what Kylo had anticipated. Perhaps he should have considered her an intruder. Usually, he was a heck of a lot more jealous than this. Certainly he'd been jealous with Margo, and at times there was even a soft spike of it with Q, but he didn't feel the same way with Fen. Maybe it was because she'd had a claim before he ever met her, and he'd always known it was there. Or maybe it was just Fen. He glanced over at her.
"I feel as if we tiptoe around each other. Like we might set off a grenade if either of us says the wrong thing, and I-" he considered. "It's exhausting. Like wearing a mask? and I've worn enough masks in my life. So you shouldn't do that, like, you won't hurt my feelings, or if you do, other people have hurt them worse, I guarantee it." He was rambling now and he sighed. "Anyway."
Fen frowned. She’d sat down to enjoy her tea, but leaned in and reached forward for Kylo’s hand after he spoke. “I want you to be yourself around me. I want to get to know the real you,” she said, giving his fingers a squeeze before releasing them.
It occurred to Kylo that maybe it was really him that was just tiptoeing around her, wondering what happened when she found out that he was who he was. In some ways it was easier when people just knew. Telling Eliot had been simple because he'd been the only one to tell. When your spaceship is being pulled into a giant black hole and the person in front of you is your only friend, then they become the one to hear your last confession.
"What do you know of me?" He asked curiously. "I mean, what has Eliot said?"
“You’ve told me most of what I know about you,” Fen said. “You can do something with the Force? I just don’t really understand what the Force is yet.” She blushed a little to admit that. “You told me you were apart of the First Order once, but you also said you didn’t want to talk about it.”
Kylo nodded. It didn't entirely surprise him that Eliot hadn't said much, maybe because he suspected that Eliot believed it wasn't his information to share. But it surprised him maybe a bit more that Fen hadn't caught on to more of it. On the other hand, people really hadn't talked about him so much over the network of recent. Maybe they'd said all they had to say.
"I don't like talking about it," he offered, putting the tea down on the counter, but leaving his hand around the glass. "Although it's perhaps fair for you to know some of it. People talk sometimes, and they say things, and it likely is better for you to hear some of it from me. I've done things I regret. Eliot knows of them - he knows everything - but not everyone sees me like he does."
“Ren,” Fen offered gently. “I only meant I don’t want you to feel like you have to wear a mask around me. I have seen how you care for Eliot, how you’ve been kind to me. That’s what I think of when I think of who you are. When I say I want to get to know you, I don’t mean you have to tell me about the parts of yourself that you want to leave behind. I want to know what kinds of things you like, the things you enjoy doing, your favorite places to go to, that kind of thing.”
Fen sighed and looked at Ren fondly. “I’ll listen. Whatever you want to tell me, I’ll listen. But I want you to want to tell me.”
Wasn't this what he wanted? It was what Eliot had offered him, back in the beginning, and it had been what they'd built an entire relationship on. And here it was offered again, from someone equally unaware of who he was. There was a strange dissonance at times between both having the opportunity to absolutely and completely reinvent himself and be a different person entirely, and yet knowing that even for those like Eliot and Rhy and Alucard and Fen, who did not know his story, and knew him only as he was here, that there was the possibility that they might learn it and if they did, that it would change their entire view of him.
"I just think you should know, that -" he frowned as he gazed into the amber liquid of the tea. "That who I am here is not entirely congruent with who I was at home." He pressed his lips together for a heartbeat, and pulled in a breath. "Eliot offered me the same thing you just did, more or less. It's why I fell in love with him."
He brought his gaze back up to her. "I don't want to talk about it, I would prefer to pretend much of it never happened, but I can't entirely do that. People here know me - or they think they do - and I would far rather you hear things from me than from them." He breathed out.
"I got memories from home a few weeks ago," his gaze turned distant for a moment. "I-" Part of the reason it was difficult, he supposed, was because he cared that she not see him badly. Not even just for himself, but as a reflection on Eliot too. He turned that gaze back to her. "You're generous and hopeful, Fen, and I don't know what I expected, but I like that."
“You’re worried someone will say something to me about you?” Fen’s expression softened. When he complimented her, she blushed just slightly. “How about this: I’ll come to you if I have questions. I promise if someone says something to me, I’ll come to you if I have concerns. But no one has said anything to me yet and I don’t get the impression that they will.”
After a beat Fen added, “I like you, too, Ren. I was never very close with King Idri. I’m glad that it’s you, and that you and Eliot have each other.”
“Things come up on the network sometimes,” he responded quietly. “At least it has in the past, the whole ‘fictional’ thing.”
He looked up at her intent for a moment. “I appreciate that. Perhaps I will figure out a way to … say more about it in the future.”
He hadn’t said anything exactly except maybe warned her that other people would not have good things to say about him, but somehow it felt like enough for now. And so one small step forward. He breathed in and then out, lifting the tea to his lips and then as he put it down smirking, he asked: “Are you as well trained in using knives as you are in making them?” His eyes sparkled with interest.
“Oh,” Fen blushed again to be asked about her skill. “I know the basics, but I’m a better blademaker than I am a fighter.”
Fen lacked the experience to be great, but then she was not the sort of person that was regularly asked to fight. In a land with magic, knowing how to use a knife was not considered as impressive.
“What about you?” she asked.
He quirked an eyebrow at the blush, and couldn't help but smile. "I'm trained in the use of various melee weapons," he told her. "I'm most proficient with my lightsaber, but I've learned to use blades and other things as well. I don't frequently use them, because the Force solves things with most people, but it's a good skill set to have." His mind wandered back to the fight in the throne room with Snoke's guards. "I would say I have more than a casual knowledge. Perhaps you can make me a good blade at some point. It might come in handy at some point."
“I would love to,” she said. Her expression brightened, but the blush remained as if his request had really been some great compliment. In a way, it was. “May I see this light saber? Understanding what it is, and how you fight with it, would help me design something appropriate for you.”
He nodded, then after a moment, he added. "I've got two now. My current one, and the one I had when I was a boy. The blade is plasma and can be very dangerous - it's different than a metal blade - but I don't have any doubt you can handle it. I'll show you both of them if you want."
Fen nodded, eagerness tempered by her professional curiosity. “Does your fighting style have forms? Technique? I’d like to see some of that as well to get a better idea of what kind of blade might work best as a replacement for your plasma blade.”
"It does yeah," Kylo looked over and smiled. "I can show you a bit, if you want. There are different forms that are used with it, I know some better than others, and I suppose have a preferred fighting style and technique. If it would help, you could watch me practice?"
“Yes, I would like very much to see it,” she said. She’d almost forgotten about putting together the forge for a few moments, eager to see what sword fighting looked like in other worlds. “When would be a good time?”
Kylo smiled, took a sip of his tea, and he shrugged. "Later today? I'm free in the evenings, and I know you've got the Forge. When works for you?"
“My schedule is open. Any time this evening would be fine,” Fen said. She’d half forgotten her tea. “Do you practice regularly?” she asked.
"I try to. Maybe less than I used to at home, but there's still reason to keep it up here - obviously." Kylo looked at her questioningly. "After dinner maybe?"
“I’ll see you then,” Fen said. She felt lighter, happier about it, but could not entirely pinpoint why.