Chapter Text
There was an image of him she would always remember: because in the moment of it she felt such perfect love that she vowed she would never forget.
Even when she wanted to.
Her husband entered through the door behind her in what was, at least when it was in shadow, a honeymoon suite. She was taking off her sunglasses in the bedroom and glanced back to see him walk through the door.
As a husband, in this beginning, that first slice: he was a pleasant amusement. Growling at her as he rolled her stocking down her legs, snapping the elastic of her garters before he unclips them, he always made her giggle. That nervy first night of marriage was long over. Now cast in sunlight, there were no more shivers of anticipation each time the door enclosed them in privacy, and somehow she had lost her trepidation to be alone in the room with this man.
This time he did not carry her through the threshold, but a hatbox in his hands. Her husband had taken her shopping through the fashionable streets of Paris. He held it in such a way as she had seen men in the Orchestra carry a case that held priceless musical instruments: with such care and consideration.
Pianos couldn’t be carried. Wouldn’t fit in a car. Curse of the instrument, really. Maybe if she’d played flute she could have really run off with it.
He was puzzled at her own expression, which she had not managed to catch in the mirror on the wall to know why exactly it surprised him, a hand running through his hair.
She never saw the look on her own face that must have inspired the confusion in him.
It was a small chivalry to carry it for her as if she needed to tell him where to set it down. Sweet. Simple. Hardly a grand gesture. Nothing compared to the rush of courtship: too much to even focus on all the ways he tried to spoil her.
With her examination, he clearly didn’t know whether to be concerned or darkly amused. If she puzzled out her blossoming new impulses as a young wife or was stricken with the malady of sadness that clouded all connection running through them. If she’d flutter her hands like dove wings and coo for him to come over and take her to bed.
Or if she’d simply weep in the hotel suite.
She didn’t feel much inclination one way or the other at that moment.
It stopped time for her. The soft whisper of clock hands silenced forever. Her lungs couldn’t release the air they held. The sun was stuck at the center of the sky like a beetle on a cork board with a pin stabbed neatly through the shell. It was something begun that would never end now.
It could never be forgotten. She loved this man so perfectly that in that moment she thought she would die from it.
Rey’s gait was never as appropriately clipped as it was on that day; stepping from the car out into the thunderous rain engulfing Kylo Ren’s manor.
She moved with the careful precision of a chess piece hopping from space to space, skimming across the board’s squares in a perfunctory way to reach her acquired position. That was the house that loomed up ahead and would have frightened her if it was not her only shelter. She clung to her small, light suitcase and hoped the wind wouldn’t blow her away before she ever reached the house.
An invitation over telephone is a nebulous thing. It is issued, and then dissolves like vapor. It is impossible to call upon for evidence of the reason being here. Like air. But when she’d received the phone call from her sad little room in London asking her to stay with him, his voice warm and enticing, she had little other option outside of teaching piano to posh little children.
Stone columns that were bared like white fangs waited for her at the end of the path.
She shivered and looked at once back at the cab she had emerged from, which was already dashing away through the rain. Morbidly, Rey wondered to herself what would happen if this was in fact the wrong house, another snarl in her string of horrifically bad luck on this twenty-second year of her life. Trying to briefly imagine whatever she would do next if this was just another thing gone terribly wrong.
This journey would require all of her bravery.
But the door swung open as soon as she knocked, and her name was spoken aloud in recognition by the housekeeper, all of it almost happening too quickly for her to feel herself firmly arrived at the manor.
Her case was taken from her hand by a valet and a blanket was produced to wrap around her soaked, shaking shoulders before she felt like she drew her first proper breath inside of the house.
There was little to know of what to expect from her new position here: what she was hired to do. She had gone to the library back in London to seek out any information she could find on the old estate, a looming, architectural marvel, and quite an ugly one at that. It demanded to be looked at, twisted and jagged thing, like a pyre of flame or a wounded animal.
Though she supposed she wouldn’t need to know that much of the carved stone outside to be able to clean the insides. She had asked around in offices of employment what might occupy a maid—hired as a favor with no experience—before she left London, but those offices had no patience for a woman with work who had no idea how to do it. She hoped there would be more patience here: or feared if the favor only extended as far as she could reach up to meet it.
His housekeeper introduced herself as a Mrs. Timker. Wisps of graying blonde hair covered her brow, falling like a cloud of dust. Otherwise she was very orderly-looking.
It was the housekeeper who had given her the blanket. She clutched it now as the old woman greeted her. It was nice to have someone waiting with a blanket when she came in from the rain. Like she is expected. Welcome.
“If you’d just follow me. He’s quite insistent on seeing you before you get settled in.”
Rey tightened her fingers around the edges of the blanket surrounding her.
“Excuse me?”
The housekeeper was already motioning for Rey to follow her down the hall.
“Kylo Ren wants you to see him first before you’re shown to your rooms,” the housekeeper clarified. It wasn’t mean. But it was what absolutely had to be done.
Rey swallowed and clutched the blanket tighter around herself.
She had not seen Kylo Ren, her generous benefactor to whom she owed her thanks, since her parent’s funeral.
It was so clear in her memory. She thought she was perhaps wicked back then because she could not cry. And perhaps the coldness of the other mourners regarding her was because of that. A strange girl, burying two parents and now alone in the world, who could not weep.
But then Kylo Ren stood before her in the proceeding line to give his condolences. Her friend, her admirer, at his own insistence. He held her entirely without touching her, like a shadow, and merely kissed the back of her hand. His expression was kind, like seeing her made him happy, and that happiness warmed her as well on that cold day where she buried her family.
The hallway was too dark to take in her surroundings as she followed the housekeeper to see him. A warmth flowed from the doorway at the end: Rey was nearly desperate for the fire she could sense roaring inside. Her need for warmth outweighed her social graces, she entered the room realizing she had not thought of a single word she would say when she first saw him.
Then she lifted her eyes from the flames and saw the picture of the master of the house in their shadow.
She started with:
“He’s beautiful.”
And she meant it to praise the elegant hound resting his head on his master’s knee.
She was greeted with a soft smile for her misstep from the Lord of the Manor.
Kylo Ren patted the dog she had complimented grandly, like the neck of a prized racehorse.
“Pilot. My closest companion in this lonely house. Until your highly anticipated arrival, Miss Niima. Welcome.”
This was new to Rey to hear; companion. It sounded much nicer than a silly little maid allowed to dust his portraits out of charity.
A series of impoliteness seemed to act as a test that increased in intensity over a span of a few moments. She stood on the rug in front of him with her hands folded. Even with her cold, wet things cling to her skin as she had not been permitted to change out of them first.
He did not offer a chair so she did not take one.
He seemed intrigued by her politeness in the face of these small, incremental indiscretions, so trained into her was the instinct to behave so that she would stand all night if she had to, bearing all discomfort.
She wanted to laugh back at him for his amusement. A chill and some sore feet. This was nothing.
“Thank you for your generosity.”
Again, a wryness twisted his features, and he grinned into his hand and scratched his dog behind the ears approvingly.
“It’s the very least I could do. I had coveted your talents for a great deal of time, Miss Niima, though I wish the circumstances in which I had earned their keep were different.”
It clicked into place, like the set of a metronome, and in an odd way, things made sense once again amongst time’s rhythmic tick. While he was one of her most appreciative patrons, she had never made the connection that her skills would be utilized as a member of his household before now.
“You brought me here to play piano?”
She was faintly pleased by this information. She was brought here, at least, to do the one thing she did best. It made her feel foolish, picturing all the domestic work piling up that she was resigning herself to perform each day. It was another kind of performance Kylo Ren himself had been privy to. In her grief she had forgotten how she knew him before the funeral. He had seen one of her earliest concerts and sent flowers for any show he would miss. There weren’t many he was absent for.
There were flowers for when he attended too.
For a brief moment she thought of the flowers, the seemingly innumerable amount of them now, and how many bouquets he had sent over the years would fill this room. Scores of them since the funeral as well. It would become a garden, a lovely one, but the thought added to her doubt. Was she brought here merely for her musical skill?
“Yes,” he looked at her from his chair by the fire. “Please, come warm yourself.”
Perhaps her overwhelming feelings were clear on her face. Rey had often been warned by that by her mother. While her hands and back were lovely while she played, if she struggled with the notes her nose usually wrinkled and her nostrils flared in frustration. There was all at once a review, and then a hasty retraction and apology, run by a newspaper who had published a critic who had described her facial features as hissing and ferocious during a show during her first European tour.
Mrs. Timker brought her a cup of steaming hot tea. She felt her wet hair drip down her neck. The blanket pulled tighter as she refused to tremble before him.
As she sat down on the plush velvet chair Rey tried to gather the parts of herself she had assumed she would abandon in this new phase of her life. It was odd to suddenly feel like she could remain herself. Kylo Ren was a patron of the arts: but he was by no means a manager or a talent agent. She had been prepared to give up the piano for little other than pleasure, if ever allowed, in some dead wing of his house no one else dared enter.
She glanced about the dark drawing room while taking a sip. It was uncannily eerie.
He didn’t allow for much light besides the large fire in the mantle. She knew he was moneyed, and from reputation too good a family to disrespect. But there was evidence of ancestry all over this room. Busts on the mantle. Portraits on the wall. The air felt stagnant: like he entertained her in a storage closet for his own legacy. It was heavy with history, making her shoulders cave in slightly under the pressure, even as she was trained to sit up straight.
Perhaps haunted, from the look of this house.
“You want me to play piano for you, here?”
Such an instrument filled the corner of the room. Her host nodded with his lips curved in a smile as she figured it all out.
“And elsewhere. Talent like yours can’t be wasted. It will be sheltered here, as will you, in the wake of this great tragedy. You’ll stay on as my guest.”
He himself was eerie but kind: always had been. His voice was soft while entangled amongst the snapping, blazing fire in the fireplace. She felt as lulled by his presence as the dog with his head upon his knee having his ears touched. His words, like his fingers, sought the right place on the ear to scratch into submission.
“I don’t know how to thank you. I owe you so much.”
He sat up abruptly, and she felt the charge in the air, tossing across the mantle like a nest of sparks: the catch. This would be where he established his rules. Where things sounded nice until they had one condition.
But instead he simply states:
“Please, Miss Niima. Your playing is the only thing that brings me comfort. It is a gift. Never speak again of repaying me.”
Rey was led upstairs by Mrs. Timker and shown to her room. Waiting up there for her would be fine clothes, hot food, and leather-bound stacks and stacks of sheet music. She would finally be able to take off her wet things and dry herself and be warm, and all under his roof.
The thought soothed his weary soul for the first time in years.
Kylo Ren took up Miss Niima’s teacup from the table where it was left. It wasn’t burning, but still warm as the flush of fingertips over skin. Rain droplets clung to it, left there by her lips.
He brought it to his own lips and drank the remainder of her tea down in one gulp. His mouth against the rain that had touched hers. His tongue darting out to taste every drop.
Rey awoke in the middle of the first night in a nightgown that was not hers, in a bed that was not hers, in a house that was not hers. The unfamiliarity was cloaked in the heavy exhaustion of her travels: but what could not keep her from waking were the sounds she heard at the end of the hall.
Rey was not placed with the servants, but in a lovely guest room that looked over the property, all the gardens and even a birch wood at the edge of them. Deep and wild and good for hunting, Timker had told her. There was a beautiful window seat that curved along where the overlook jutted out of the house. A pleasant spot to read. It was her little turret: but it was much too dark to see anything but shadows outside by the time she was brought to the room.
She was confused about her place here. Not sure if she should accept it or make a call to Poe to try and arrange the flimsiest of touring schedules just to her moving through the continent again, unable to worry or even think. But a place he had offered her had seemed so soothing when all she had ever done when her parents were alive was work. This felt like a retreat, and Kylo Ren’s offer is now clearly that of a guest holding high honor.
Now it was pitch black, the dead of night, and everyone should have been asleep. But she heard strange sounds of all sorts coming from the darkness at the end of the hall.
Her eyes flew open. She was a musician: sound was her sharpest sense. The most powerful, in her opinion. When a sight was strong it only settled into the window of one’s mind. A smell could be stopped by holding one’s nose. Sound, when powerful enough, reverberated through the whole body, vibrating in every bone. It couldn’t be hidden from. Even when she covered her ears, her body flinched when the old house pulsed with whatever noise she was hearing.
Heavy, but rattling, asynchronous. Like chains. But thudding, like a hammer, or moving furniture around a room. Surely it was too late for that. But she clung, as long as she could, to the hope that this would cease and in the morning Timker would apologize for the apparent construction project being done in the middle of the night.
When the sounds did not cease they finally brought her out of her bed: but her fear of them was equal to waking anyone else in the house. With the silence of the grave, Rey pulled open her bedroom door and stepped out into the hall in only the silky nightie she had been provided with in her closet full of new clothes.
She relented to wearing it because she was simply too tired to unpack, and it was a great deal finer than her old nightgown. Now she regretted her surrender to the garment. It did not suffice to outfit her for her investigation.
The horrible, drafty chill of the hall had her gasping when she poked her head out of her room.
She did not leave her room to investigate strange noises once before. And if she had, maybe she wouldn’t be in a stranger’s home on this night.
Rey would not repeat this mistake as long as she was alive.
In the servants’ wing, she would at least not be alone. She could knock on the nearest door and wake the whole hall if she was well and truly frightened. Though it would not be wise to do so if she had hoped to make any friends amongst them, fear can elevate far above social graces in times like these.
She also couldn’t go to her host: for she did not know where Kylo Ren slept. And she could hardly appear at his door like this. It was uncouth.
Instead Rey took a deep breath and wandered out the hallway with all of her bravery, which was exhausted by the trials of facing her new life, clutched tightly to her chest. Searching for the source of the pounding. Matched only in her tightly beating heart. Near bursting with fear.
The noises stopped at the end of the hall, as if frightened off by her soft footsteps. She peered out the windows at the gardens below, just the skeleton revealed by white lines of moonlight illuminating pale lines of trees and marble sculpture. This place felt truly horrible at night. Dead. Alone. Like another abandoned, decaying planet.
She glanced back over her shoulder. Now that the noises were gone she almost forgot she had ventured from her room to check for them. Or that they might resume.
Nothing was there.
And yet, still, it was torment to think she should go back to bed, as if something were unfinished. She’d not rest until she knew the source of the noises.
But she was very tired and had travelled so far today. Exhaustion thickened her thoughts until all she could do was want to curl up in bed.
Rey swallowed and tried to calm her pounding heart. Tried to tell herself again.
There was nothing there.
Then she went back to her room and pretended she was safe inside.
There was little to occupy her other than filling a day with small things to keep her attention: and only Kylo Ren would know how generous that was to offer her.
She had been used to a maddening schedule of touring and rehearsal. If Rey had an extra moment to take a breath: she would never be given the time to take two.
Days passed in the old manor with little ceremony. Rey woke late when the light had filled the bedroom to the brim, not just touching it with a weak slash of sunrise. She did not need to be dragged to constant lessons and concerts. Facing another day here, her time was her own to do what she wanted with it.
Kylo Ren was usually on his morning walk when she arose. She would lie in a guilty, luxuriant silence because no one would bother until Rey announced her wakefulness. She half-suspected if she slept all day, no one would come for her. She didn’t rush to get out of bed for all the noises that came at night. It was usually when she felt saved by the slant of dawn coming in through the east-facing window of her room that she was able to close her eyes fully.
Timker would see to her breakfast when Rey rang her to bring it up. Rey believed the space was deliberate, the meditative privacy, and his distance was a kindness. She was a young woman in mourning in an unfamiliar house. He gave her all the time she needed to feel comfortable starting her day. She didn’t take advantage, but there was a clever, pleased smile across her lips when she saw how high the sun was whenever she would ring for a maid to bring up a tray, always prompt, always heaped with a ready, hot meal as if it were magic.
Boredom was luxurious after the strict schedule she had been kept to for all these years. Decadent.
He would know: Kylo Ren had also come in direct conflict with that schedule. Rey always had a feeling that, despite his generosity and connection, her parents did not exactly like him. He was present in her life, but not pencilled in. If there was some party Rey had to be at for a Symphony season or a fundraiser, there he would be in an impeccable suit, but when he attempted to reach beyond their casual acquaintanceship into friendship, perhaps more, Rey was mysteriously made even more busy than ever.
Rey wondered about this. How it felt he had been dangled in front of her when all began to feel adult and exciting, only to be snatched away each time she had interest. It was all very frustrating to have so much time now and be too mopey to know how to become friends with him. And to his credit, it’s not like he expected her too.
Usually in the afternoon, after she’d read or played with Pilot or wandered the house or grounds for a few hours, he’d emerge from his office, leaning with his hands braced on the doorframe and poking his head in wherever she would be.
He came to her, always, with the request she play for him on the piano for a little while.
When he came to ask for it, he wouldn’t phrase it so plainly.
He'd just say, “Songbird?” and she knew.
His songbird. She had thought once that he would be her beau someday when she was a young concert pianist; but something that presence in her life would either be a plateaued, subdued constant or a short burn of furious attention. Or perhaps, upon receiving his offer to live here, she imagined him a cruel employer once he had her where he wanted her in this big house. But here he was less a friend or a tyrant and more her falconer. He’d hold out his arm while she was circling the sky: she’d alight and make music for him when summoned. It was an oddly trusting relationship where each were trained to know their place. Rey could reach her heights. And he would take care of her. Symbiotic in that odd way artistic patronage is.
Piano was an automatic skill. To play in a man’s office where he was not viewing her on a stage was a rare freedom within her skill. He made no requests for songs, even when she asked if there’s anything he’d like to hear. Instead he just let her run through whatever she was feeling that day. She could do this for him and clear her head, or think as hard as she needed to, or focus on a piece that was too difficult to grasp, too risky in the time allotted for rehearsals, to be performed. The odd ones that weren’t allowed because of the audiences. The ones she longed to hear someone listen to and genuinely feel.
And he’d think. Toying with some odd artifact on his desk, listening intently, puzzling away at something. Sometimes he was so entrenched in work there was no indication he was listening to a song at all. But he always thanked her intently when it was time for them to refresh themselves for dinner. Made some kind acknowledgement, usually even giving a recognizing mention by name and composer, of the piece she had worked on.
It felt like they were spending intimate time together; but it was comfortable instead of vulnerable. Natural. It wasn’t as awkward as conversation, alone together, at a restaurant after a ballet he wanted to take her to.
They’d never tried that. It had never worked out that they could. The young pianist was always whisked away from the mysterious man.
Rey had imagined it. Her best dress, which was too prim for an actual taste of nightlife; cocktails, whispering, the hush of a darkened theater. She knew if they had done this back then, things would be different, become different, and she sometimes hid from the thought and just wanted to be a girl to him still.
She wondered, between the trill of the keys, if they ever would do something like that now that she was here out of his pity. Perhaps that chance was gone.
Her parents would certainly rest easier in their graves knowing it was over.
Each evening they took dinner together: but a dinner at home was a much more formal affair than out on the town. The service staff was his, and knew him, and knew his guest. He provided the ambiance and hospitality. The best table was his, the seating by design to hold just them.
They sat modestly far apart, and Rey ate delicately, and they conversed, for the most part, to the benefit of those listening in to refill their water glasses.
“How do you like the fish?”
“It’s lovely,” Rey ran her sauce-soaked fork over her tongue, “the lemon absolutely dances.”
She’d heard that phrase in London, at a luncheon for one of the opera houses where she’d done her first solo show. Borrowing it for his table felt like a smart theft to make. Like a knife hidden in her pocket for when she’d need it.
He smirked at her, sensing the unfamiliar taste of the phrase on her tongue with a touch of amusement, but that fish appeared on the menu enough times for her to know a change had been made to suit her tastes.
She was curious as to why he didn’t press her about what had happened. Once the days were able to develop their own sense of normalcy without much divergence. They managed to stretch on with a tension, and anticipation that he soon would have questions about what had happened that night.
Those questions never came.
Time moved like a dream. While he merely let her exist in comfort, every need met, every whim satisfied within the reasonable confines of the house: he never pushed her to talk about it.
Rey anticipated the waking phase of her life with grim despair.
So during one of those painfully polite dinners: she found the tension in the unasked questions caused a fracture. And she broke across the table all at once.
“I would like to tell you what happened to my parents.”
Kylo went still, furrowing his brow at her from across the table.
“That isn’t necessary Rey, and I fear will only cause you more distress.”
“I want to tell you,” she folded her arms across herself, as she had hoped she could finally feel like she could tell someone. “For I feel it may change your decision to foster me here if I chose to hide this from you. That it was not an abrupt illness set upon them in Paris that killed them. It was murder.”
Kylo emptied his hands of any utensils, flattening them to the table with his palms down and then lifting his eyes in focus to Rey’s face.
Her own eyes were large with the weight of this secret. They looked so fragile, like they’d burst like soap bubbles if she were touched. She was just a frightened thing at his table.
He sighed and looked at her sadly.
“What makes you believe that, songbird?”
Her laugh was cruel.
“Perhaps the knife that killed them, or the blood all over the hotel suite.”
He stood up from his chair.
“You poor thing,” he said, with feeling, and left his chair to go to her side. While Rey remained with a straight back in her seat, he knelt on the floor and held her hands, and kissed them. “I am so sorry you had to see such terrible things.”
She trembled with anger and clutched his fingers so hard her knuckles turned white. She felt the truth in his words: in some ways he had done all he could to prevent her from seeing such a sight.
Kylo Ren had invited her to go with him to the ballet that horrible night where her innocence was lost forever. Her parents made her refuse his invitation yet again. Perhaps if she had gone —and not obeyed her parents and returned to the hotel to take a long bath feeling like a wretched child that she was not permitted to go— she might have been spared the sight awaiting her. She could have been safe in an opera box with Kylo Ren, enjoying the orchestra more than the dancers, while someone else found them dead. Perhaps a neighboring room would have called the police that night instead of Rey.
Perhaps the police would have spared her from entering that room filled with blood by the time the ballet was done. She would have missed all of it. Every awful minute.
Instead it was sulking in the bathroom how she had remained that night until she heard the loud shouts and thumping from the main room. When she emerged in her robe to find what had happened, terrified, her whole life had been taken from her.
“Whoever did this to them is a monster,” she could not swoon into Kylo Ren’s arms as he offered her solace now, but she did weep, bitter tears that twisted her face in anger. “And I hate them.”
“Rey.”
Kylo Ren was eccentric, distant, and a little closed off, but he was never harsh with her. This was the closest he neared to it, just a firm tone when he wrapped his arms around her. He rested at her feet like Pilot did, the gesture just as fiercely loyal in his body, perhaps a greater show of subjugation from the mere size of him to kneel before her.
“Your hatred will only make you suffer. I will keep you safe,” his hands went from a comforting hug to clutch at her spine. Rey knew little of this sort of thing in her sheltered life, but he made her arch into him, and she felt their bodies deliberate brushing as he held her, “I will keep you safe here with me, where nothing will ever harm you. Your distress pains me. Tell me what I can do to soothe it.”
She had felt this feeling of the truth of that statement from him once before, that he would keep her safe. He was holding her hand as she came out of a rehearsal, slightly sweaty and tired in her frumpy clothes and possessing no plans for the evening. She could join him. They could go see La Sylphide together and she would be safe in Paris at night with him.
Her parents had refused this for her. To be safe from the sight of them killed. She was haunted by that night. If she could only go back and run away for that glimpse of happiness before everything was taken, it would mean more to her than being a good daughter.
He held her so close her legs fell open and fit him between them.
No. This was not done. He brought her here out of simple charity—
His arm slithered around her waist like a giant python and squeezed her close, so close so fast, and brushing against so much of him that a choked cry fell from her lips. He gave her such a shock.
But his hand was gentle as it pressed along the side of her face. His fingertips guarding her temple, the heel of his thumb cradling her jaw. Touch soothed Rey, intimately, even when it was unknown to her before now.
He wet his lips before he spoke:
“I have kept my distance because I knew how much this had hurt you, songbird, but I should have held you instead, shouldn’t I? You were in such pain.”
His words were so tender and she folded into his touch, bowing close, permitting him to move ever-closer.
Her hands came down to cradle his head to her stomach, thighs tensing around his body as a shudder urged him closer. It felt good to be held when she was alone for so long. It dissolved her questions that maybe he didn’t want her after all. Maybe he did, he just respected her mourning, another kindness of his—
The service door banged open.
“Should we begin clearing in here, Sir?”
Rey was breathless, still being held open by him and watching his eyes glitter at her from above her lap like no one else was in the room.
“No, Mrs. Timker, Rey and I aren’t quite finished.”