Chapter Text
“I dunno…”
Rey raised the curtain with just the tips of her long painted fingernails.
Through the near-white slant of exposed sunlight, she saw the undulating mass of a crowd far, far below the dais.
It was impossible to tell if the roiling, squirming feeling in her belly was her nerves or their baby.
Baby, she decided, when her daughter kicked her sharply in the bladder. She winced, chewing her lip at the throng. “S’a lot of people.”
“Yes,” behind her, where he was working the tungsten clasp of his cape, the Sith answered with his usual patient melancholy. “That’s why it’s called the Imperial address.”
“But does it have to be the whole Empire?” she turned, and gasped. “Oh my Light, you’re hideous.”
He was dressed all in black, a deep, patterned velvet surcoat that seemed to swallow all light, leather leggings and tall boots with tooth-like eyelets for its lacings. His cloak, a long, solid velvet somehow blacker than the rest of his raiment, hung down his left shoulder to pool on the floor behind him. With another sharp inhale of disapproval, she noticed the inside lining was a ghastly sunfire red.
With his gaunt white face and gruesome teeth, he was the colors of his Imperial Insignia.
A horrible smile wrenched his deep mar as he angled his chin to give her his malformed profile. “Merry Christmas.”
“No,” she shook her head emphatically, making the tiny crystal snowflakes draped through her elegant hairstyle chime like bells. She was dressed as his exact counterpart, all soft, feminine lace in pure winter white fitted to her body, overlayed in a thousand crystal beads that glittered like living starlight when she walked. Her face was painted in sweet pastels, the highpoints of her cheeks and bare shoulders frosted in sheer, pale blue to gleam like snow-capped peaks on the horizon.
She swept her long satin Watteau train behind her and minced her way across the tile to where he waited with a smirk. “You cannot go out like that, there are children-”
It was a mistake, she realized belatedly, to come within arm’s reach while they were still behind the curtain.
He threaded his massive paw through the small space created where her hand held her swollen belly. He drew her flush against his front.
He dipped to steal a kiss from her lips.
“Sto-oop,” she whined, her hand on the bottom swell of his titanic ribcage in a vain attempt to preserve her delicate dress. “You’ll smirk it-”
He bent further, giving her a shark’s grin that would have made a lesser mortal faint in fear. “Kiss me so I don’t have to.”
She huffed. “You know what? I think I do know what I want for your stupid Christmas.”
“What’s that?” he leaned closer, cool amusement twisting his scar.
Her eyes narrowed, earrings swinging gaily as she snapped, “For somebody to staple your big stupid Sith-mouth shut, thas what.”
His lashes fluttered in a black parody of the way hers did when his compliment took her by surprise. “Why Rey of Jakku, what a violent little Light you are.” He nuzzled her with the tip of his beak, “I love it.”
“Oh shush up,” she took his big, brutish face between her small hands and kissed him. His skin was like ice, his lips blackened from his power and so, so much larger than hers. Soft and full and luxurious, like the bed she slept in beside him, like the meals he fed her morning, noon and night.
Like the life he gave her.
Their baby leapt and danced inside her.
She held his thick, cold tongue in her mouth.
His eyes had that haunting, hurting look when their lips parted. Like she was twisting his guts with a thin-bladed knife. So pathetical for her.
I love him.
“Please, Sith,” she stroked his cheek, putting a little pretty pleading in her tone. “Please wear your mask?”
“Say you love me,” his love-strangled breath came fast and freezing against her face, “and I’ll destroy all the stars in the sky.”
She forced her lips not to quirk into a smile.
Power was such a beautiful thing.
Her thumb chased the shimmering pink gloss from his dark lips as she studied him from beneath her lashes. “Really? Every star?”
“All of it,” he enunciated with teeth. His lightless eyes had yet to blink for staring into hers.
“Well thank you. That’s very sweet.”
His grip on her tightened somewhat desperately, though his face stayed intensely, expectantly somber.
He was still waiting, she realized.
She stroked her fingers through his mane, the softest part of his outsides. The strands slipped like black silk between her many rings of rare metals and precious stones.
She looked back into the face of her husband. Her lover. Her conqueror.
Her big, ugly, beautiful beast.
“I do love you,” she traced just the tips of his lashes with delicate, whispering touch as her arm wound around his neck. “I love you with all the suns in my heart.”
Her hand not holding him dropped down to cradle their baby through her belly. “We both do.”
His lip tremored. He blinked, and those deep, dark eyes shone wet in the low light of the anti-chamber. “Rey...”
Holding his strong shoulders for balance, she strained onto her toes and laid a soft kiss on his forehead. “S’my name. Don’t wear it out.”
He snorted.
Knocking. Someone was knocking, quiet and discreet.
“Come in, General,” she called, as her husband turned to quickly, innocuously wick the wet from his eyes with the side of his glove.
Her eyes rolled.
As if the whole universe hadn’t seen him sob at some point already.
“Supreme Leader,” the General bowed deeply to her. He looked sharp, almost handsomeable even in his ceremonial regalia.
“Your Majesty is the embodiment of the season. High Commander,” he saluted to Ren, no longer a ruler since abdicating his power to his little Light, but still the General’s senior in rank.
And still a Sith Lord.
“You look-” Hux faltered, at a loss for words.
“Like a big ugly vulture,” Rey supplied with dismay, “I told ‘im, he’ll scare all the poor children to deaf.”
“Death,” her husband clarified with a smirk.
She crossed her arms, catching some of her pretty lace with the gems on her sleeves as she huffed, “Whatevah.”
Pointing across the room at her dressing bureau, she snapped her fingers. “Mask. Now.”
He bowed sweepingly, so low his cape fell over his shoulder and pooled in a whirl of red and black on the floor. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
She couldn’t help but notice, as he stood and turned, that he really was so very broad.
“-brief but not flippant,” the General was giving her a last-minute primer as the apparatus hissed and clicked in the background. “Warm but not overly familiar.”
She bobbed along, clutching the sleeve of his regimental coat like a lifeline as she concentrated like her life depended on it.
“But General,” she pleaded, “shouldn’t he give the address?”
They looked together at the Sith, who stood now at his full ten feet, broader than two large men standing shoulder-to-shoulder, with the steel grate of his mask gleaming like a fang-jawed smile.
“No,” she gave a long, put-upon sigh, “S’pose he can’t, can he?”
“You will do superbly, ma’am,” the General assured her. He gave her hand on his arm a brief, perfunctory squeeze that was nearly comforting, before handing her to the Sith. “Just, if you will, for the love of God, keep to the script.”
“Script, yep, got it,” she nodded. Even in her heeled slippers, she hardly reached her husband’s ribcage.
“Better?” his sardonic sneer sieved porous and metallic through his speech modulator.
In her womb, his baby rolled and clapped.
“I-”
With great flourish, he drew back the curtain before she could finish and dragged her gently onto the balcony.
The roiling, cheering crowd saw him and stopped.
The silence was like a great, malevolent hand pressing downwards from the sky.
Without seeing it, she felt his Darkness sneer.
She stepped out in front of him, a dazzling ray of light amidst the grey and black of their Empire.
The people’s only hope.
“H-hullo,” she gave them all a tentative wave as she stepped up onto the dais before the microphone. Thousands of halocams clicked their flashes in brilliant blinks of light. A camera droid buzzed distractingly nearby.
The air on this planet, the largest in their Galaxy, was cold and sterile in the limelight. She wanted to rub her arms and cower behind him.
Instead, she nervously tapped the receiver. “Check-”
Feedback whined so loudly she flinched.
“Whoops, shitballs. Sorry, so sorry. I- I’m not really a-” she looked down at the crowd.
Brief but not flippant, the Genera’s advice played on a loop. Warm but not overly familiar. Regal regal regal regal-
“I ain’t really a queen,” she dipped down and smiled sweetly self-deprecating into the microphone. Her jewels tinkled merrily.
The crowd shifted uncertainly. Behind the curtain, she heard Hux groan, “Good Lord, not again…”
Her husband snorted.
“I ain’t a leader, neither. Like you, I didn’t pick this for myself. Life handed me this lot, like it’s handed most of you yours. S’way it goes, innit?”
Her thick Jakkuvian lilt washed warm and comforting through the speakers. Her audience relaxed into a murmuring nod of agreement. A few smiled.
One young woman near the dais waved her hand high and shouted, “We love you, Rey!”
She waved back, “I love you too, dovie. Thank you for comin’. Thank all of you for coming. It’s been a shit-fuck cycle, hasn’t it?”
More tentative nods, and a few quiet murmurs and fervent, fear-filled glances up at the Sith.
She pressed on. “A lot of you are wonderin’, about what’s next. How are we going to get by? How are we going to take care of ourselves, feed our fam’lies-”
Her voice snagged. She laid her hand on her belly.
Her baby stay perfectly still, listening.
Her breath shook, she tried desperately not to wring her hands. Over her shoulder, she looked back at the Sith to get some sense of his reaction.
Silently, he inclined his head.
She swallowed her terror, her self-doubt, the last scrap of her innocence, and plowed on. “I know you’re all scared. I know you’re all tired. I know it’s Christmas and we’re all supposed to sing an’ smile and be happy. But our hearts hurt. We don’t know what comes next.”
She looked at the red diamond ring on her finger, at the banners hung stark and foreboding around the great arena, bearing the insignia of her husband’s great empire.
A camera-drone drew nearer, zeroing in on her face.
She licked her lips.
“Well I’ll tell you what’s next. Stability. Safety. Prosperity. Goodness. This Order, who’s been takin’ the mickey outta you all cycle, for generations, they all work for me now,” she pointed to her heart, “this junk-slave, from Jakku. And she, I, work for you.”
Her hand spanned out above them.
The people wondered at her in awe.
Behind her, her husband’s pride swell beyond him, blazing and tidal, to eclipse her on the dais.
Somewhere, beyond her perception, she knew the old Siths were howling, slavering and gnashing their razor teeth.
The thought made her grin. “So, I want all of you to go home and ‘ave a truly happy Christmas. Eat loads of sweets, sing songs to each other, kiss your children,” beneath the podium, she held her baby through her belly, “’cause next cycle, we’re coming out at lightspeed. We’re bringin’ a new Order to the Galaxy. You. And me.”
Her hand lifted. She blew a soft kiss to her people, and waved. “Happy Christmas, dahlings. From your Supreme Leader.”
She turned and gestured. “And the Sith.”
In front of his Empire, his legions of troopers, the Darkness and the Force, Kylo Ren knelt at her feet and bowed.
The planet erupted in violent cheers.
Their cries took to the skies like a flock of doves, thousands of languages and accents rising to touch her Light.
“What are they sayin’?” she asked as he unfolded into a towering, tender menace above her.
Her sweet Sith.
“Howai-too Maza,” his gentle mirth sieved through his mask as his monstrous hands spanned cherishingly around her waist. “It means, White Mother.”
“Oh, well that’s- that’s rather- Kylo!”
He lifted her high, high into the air.
Their people’s joyous raucous quadrupled. They pounded their breasts and shouted her name. Howaitomaza.
Her baby swam with delight.
She grinned, “It is a happy Christmas, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” agreed the Sith.