Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rey was a mechanic whose machines went to rust. So when the foster system dumped her back at her trailer in the desert, she became a picker. As an adult, 4th part cyborgs are all she understands. They won their freedom in a war that cost almost everything. So did she.

---

Half cyborgs prefer, like most humans, to think of 4ths as little more than clever machines. After the war, there’s a mass effort to address segregation through welfare programs. Bots still fall through the cracks.

Previously the government consigned unwanted 4ths, disposing of them as necessary. There exists no record of the names or identities of discarded cyborgs.

On a Thursday morning in zone 8, the slum junkyards of Jakku city, a bot gets pulled from the trash by an overnight picker. Coincidentally, zone 8 is Rey’s turf.

---

“How’d you find him?” she repeats. “From the beginning.”

They stand in the rising sun, so hot it casts a mirage over the shimmering silhouette of Jakku. Rey’s interrogating the night picker for the second time through a chainlink fence.

As they talk, he masticates a wad of washed-out tobacco that stinks like rot. To pickers, 4ths are Chevy parts that occasionally fight back. All Rey’s urgency is lost on him.

“The bot fell out with the other broken shit, when they upended the truck. It’s a 4th, so I thought I could get parts, but it’s face is busted, defective or whatever. And it’s alive. So no go.”

“So you were just going to leave him here?”

Trapped in a filthy consignment net, the cyborg shifts on the ground at their feet. A pool of oil and blood appears under his crushed side, trickling past the chain fence and down the ravine.

Rey’s floored. He’s been so stoic this whole time. Not even a whimper.

“Sure,” the picker says. “Easier to let the sanitation people deal with it.”

The thought of blue latex gloves prying apart the cyborg’s face, breaking it into pieces, it’s too much. Especially if the others are like this man, full of sick opportunism.

“Forget Sanitation, I want him,” she says. “Help me with the net.”

---

On the side of the road, Rey writes all she knows about the bot on a spare receipt. There are unending blanks where others have stories, or families earmarked to return to.

Government-consigned cyborg disposed of in a dumpster outside Jakku city, compacted in a garbage truck, and driven to a landfill in zone 8.

“There,” she says, folding the paper and placing it in the slot where his nameplate used to be. “So I won’t forget.”

He only blinks back, obviously in pain. As a courtesy, she takes it slow the whole drive home. Pulling at last into the trailer’s gravel drive, Rey stops to think.

Of untold pasts and orphandom, of being part anything in society’s ugliness. She has to do all she can for him.

---

The bot proves an even worse mess, once Rey cuts the net. It’s tragic, so sad it fills her with a hard, pitying grief, how his pretty, lopsided face was torn by the trash compactor.

It’s clear now that he’s completely shut down emotionally. Being thrown away is just too much for anyone to take. She knows that lonely place all too well.

So Rey goes out of her way to make her shabby trailer comfortable for the bot. She lights sugar cookie Yankee candles and microwaves veal parmesan dinners. She soaks loofah sponges in lavender oil in her cracked tub.

Cyborgs don’t really get sick, at least not to where they lose functionality. Pain is their furthest element of injury, save death.

Save heartbreak.

She hopes to at least ease that small burden. Everything isn't fixable at once, but some can be taken care of now, by Rey. He doesn't have to be alone any longer.

---

When directed, the bot moves like a prop, too used to being positioned. Only his left side is overtly mechanical, but there’s a quality to him that suggests a lack of human contact.

At first Rey wonders, maybe he was a sex bot. It becomes a looming fear the more she sees.

After walking to the kitchen, the bot on shaky, halting legs, they sit across from each other at the table. Instead of eating, he stays poised upright, ready to anticipate her next command.

His black, doll-like hair hangs in dirty hanks over his eyes. Rey brushes it behind his ears, gathering the bulk of it in a sloppy ponytail. Now she can see, his expression is pinched and taut with pain.

“Do you know how to eat?” she asks at last. The bot nods. As soon as she’s spoken, he’s wolfing down pasta and veal cutlets in clammy chunks that half regurgitate out of his mouth as he chews. It’s unsightly and sad at once.

It's a recurring problem they have as a society. Lots of people managed for years to remain ignorant of 4ths and their human qualities. How they feel hunger and thirst like anyone else, how they each have foods they like or dislike, favorite seasons, favorite colors.

Before, when Rey was a kid, bots were gifted as sex gags in bachlorette parties or strip clubs, many starving to death out of the ignorance of their owners. During the war, their stories came out, spurring a mass reckoning. Now there’s no way to sell a bot, except as parts. Legally. He could have been trafficked at some point.

“Can I get you another plate?” she asks. The bot has a sad habit of cowering. Before he can answer, Rey goes to the microwave. “Or two?”

It's an obvious joke, almost playful, as she's already preparing more. 

With her words the cyborg changes in demeanor. The downtrodden quality to him vanishes. He lifts his gaze to hers for the first time, staring deliberately and intently. Rey’s heart catches. He’s gifted with deep brown mammal eyes, careful, soft and earnest. 

“I'll take six,” he says. "Thank you."

It’s hardly a hoarse whisper, nothing much. Yet his voice is warm and low. There's a bittersweetness between them that lingers, an unspoken fondness. How quickly they mesh, it's exhilarating. 

Rey tilts her head back and laughs then, making sure he catches the flash of her lips, her free smile. She longs for any assurance it's real, this tenuous feeling. After all her life in shadow.

"Glad I asked," she says.

---

Good things happen in life, but the best seem impossible. What's most desirable for whatever reason stays just out of reach. For Rey, this is safety and family. A self-professed loner, she’s largely moved through the world unattached. Yet during the war, when most people’s lives were falling spectacularly apart, she was at her happiest.

For a time that was her belonging, her tether. The cause. The speeches and rallies of the 4ths, their hidden strength and merit, the meddle no one expected when it came to gunfire. All of them born survivors, every last bot.

Rey has rooted for the underdog for so long. She is the underdog.

---

On her travels years ago, Rey picked up a 4th’s war diary. At the end of the first entry is the warning:

"This is not for you." I read that once. And so this is not for you, or for anyone else in hiding. This is mine.

The last coherent paragraph is dated many months later, in a hurried scrawl:

They let the halves go, but here we are in “secondary holding”. No one will tell us when the collars come off. “Behave yourself” what does that mean? Stop being a monster? Because I can’t. I’m a 4th. I was made Frankenstein’s monster. The government scheduled me for consignment tomorrow. I don’t know how I'll die. I don’t know where we go after. I won’t escape either way, will I? I've been in hell for so long, just for existing. So this is probably it.

Rey is protective of the diary, viewing it as her proudest possession. It sits on the bookshelf in her bedroom, dusted every Saturday.

The pages consist of a delicate array of half-smeared sharpie ink on receipt paper, newspaper, onion sheets ripped from the Gideon Bible, innumerable government summons slips. Altogether it’s such scarce material, whatever was nearby, or unwanted.

Every time she rereads the few brief entries, Rey feels more like every word was written inside her long ago, during a different form of captivity. Her favorite part is this:

I was given a serial number. They etched it over my old one, the part with my given name. Now I’m not my own machine - I’m theirs. I’m not even a part of the system, I’m just in it, floating. Letters and numbers are all that’s left.

Rey cries bitterly over that one. Admittedly, for herself. Just five. Alone in the world, standing in a damp, air-conditioned office, while a case worker in an itchy suit typed on a computer. She remembers the first number they provided as identity. 527. 

On his first night in the trailer, she approaches the bot with journal in hand. There’s a soft orange lamp trained on the bed from above. It’ll be perfect if he wants to stay up late reading, or rereading.

“Hey,” she says. “I have something I guess I’ve been keeping for you. As fate would have it.” She places the diary before the broken bot, tucked as he is under her green covers.

The cyborg is struck with disbelief, flipping the pages over and over again in his mangled grip. When she speaks, he looks awed in a different way entirely.

“The 4th lived in Arizona. His name was Adam. I looked him up in the memorial registry, I think he was a pool boy, at a resort? An entertainment bot.”

Rey wishes there was a happy ending. “He died during consignment, but the diary made it. Maybe it’ll help?” 

She falls silent. It's not about her, really.

Slowly the cyborg’s hand lifts, trembling. With it he wipes his eyes. Rey didn’t even realize he'd been crying, he was so quiet. She wants to offer comfort, but ironically there's nothing human inside her to give. So instead she just sits. A companion, a sort of strange friend to this man.

“Thank you,” he says at last, after reading the breath of it. “I’ve never really known another 4th.”

---

The next day she makes fry breakfast. It's already the weekend for her, so there's time to talk.

“Were you someone’s sex bot?” She hates how abruptly it's said, but Rey isn't up to the task of guessing. Best to know the truth.

“No, I was a replacement son, for one who died.”

“Where?”

“Alderaan city. In the senator’s family.”

“Oh. So what happened that you're here?”

“They disowned me. During the sweeps. When they found out how much of a machine I am, from the propaganda. The way I behave, sometimes, it’s scary enough. I get it. Nobody wants to be around that.” 

“That’s not true.” Rey’s at a loss. “I do. Want to be around you.” Before KR kept a hand clenched around his glass, studying the trickle of the condensation, the movement of the ice as it melted. Now his eyes are trained on hers, dispassionate, blank, fearful to be sought out and parsed. 

“For now,” he says. 

In it is the pain he masks so well. Rey fantasizes what he could be without such careful defenses, how vulnerable and kind.

If only he could disengage from his survivor's mentality, his distrust of others, to see clearly how she already knows there's more to the story, but doesn't care.

“If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is stay. I'll prove it.”

Rey puts a hand over his, metal against flesh. The touch is cold. He could crush her effortlessly right now, if he wasn’t so beaten. She could crush him.

“As long as you’ll have me," he says at last, gentle like a promise.

He stops breathing when he talks, like it's a nervous habit. “But you’ll get tired of fighting, if you're not already tired of me. You’ll want to be free. I want to be free."

“We’ll see.” Truly, she’s not daunted. In Rey is the sharp, unwavering loyalty of a person who only ever has second best to offer. "You might think differently someday."

---

KR will never believe how lucky he got.

Rey never seems to harbor any ire towards bots, in fact the opposite. She views them as far as he can tell as kindred spirits. She’s kind in ways others aren’t, observant.

He’s used to being a second class citizen. Here he’s treated with a care above all other machines, even Rey’s laptop, even the car she uses to get to work. It makes him feel almost human, just that close to real. She's right; it's different from anything before.

---

By the following Friday, he's gained some semblance of strength, even on the shattered side. So Rey’s latest project is the quest to get him drunk.To test his tolerance, she’s poured small sips of clear liquid into measured mason jars at the counter.

Rey dances around the kitchen as she works, propelled by wicked humor. He studies the hips and hair that make her soft. It's almost a stirring, of a kind, that catches him off guard.

Maybe she's just pretty for a human, he thinks.

“You’ll love this, here, try,” she says. Even the slightest sip of it stings profoundly in the back of his throat. When he coughs, she frowns in disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately, trying to summon the courage to try again.

“No, let me take that. Maybe we should start smaller.” From the fridge, Rey pulls a delicate glass bottle, full to the top. As she cracks the seal, it hisses with carbonation. The tang in the air is of sweet acidic tea and foamy strawberries. It’s not unpleasant.

“Try this,” she says. This time, it’s like a symphony. He’s never tasted anything so sharp. It’s reminiscent of the antifreeze his uncle poured down his throat once, in place of machine fluid. He prefers the taste, so much better than the weepy burn of the chemicals.

“It’s good, really sweet."

"It’s kombucha, fermented tea. It has some trace alcohol, you should feel something. If the gin is too strong you will. That's where we can start our experiment.” She produces more glass bottles from the fridge. “I have mango, and peach? And something called 'trilogy'...sounds interesting? How much can you drink?”

She winks. He takes all three.

After, they settle in her patio chairs to watch the sunset. It's peaceful, but privately KR is reeling.

All this fancy tea, plus the gin he refused. So much money and effort she’s putting towards one extraneous experiment, that won’t change anything about her life. Only his. Why is everything she does for him?

---

Later, he feels what it is to be buzzed. Intermittently he catches a stare that lasts too long, a smile he shouldn’t be showing. They’ve talked almost through the night. Her feet are on the glass patio table, bare and dirty. They sit under the painted paper stars of Rey's string lights.

“You’re tipsy,” she says. It’s not a question.

“Yeah. I’ve never been before.”

“So we were right to go slow.” She sighs. “I wish I could be such a lightweight. I’m sick of the hard stuff.”

“Then stop.”

“I can’t, it doesn’t work. Humans gain a lot of tolerance. I need gin to feel the same, now.”

“Why do you drink, then, if you don’t like it?”

“Because there’s stuff I can’t forget.” Her voice catches then, turning sad. Like a plea for him to understand, in some small way, what she's suffered. “It takes the edge off. A few hours of not thinking of the past, that’s all anyone wants."

“That’s why you wanted me to drink?”

She laughs. It aches inside to hear, how gentle and soft she turns when they’re alone. He wishes dawn was far, far away. He wishes impossibly for a charming attitude, a personality, for anything to pull over his tiredness to enchant her. He wishes he was a sex bot.

“Yeah,” Rey says. “So we could open up like this. You don't seem like you've had a lot of fun. Besides, I don't know any other coping mechanisms. I'm supposed to be helping you feel better, I'm sorry. This is all my mother taught me. Drink and say stupid shit."

"I like the stupid shit you say," he tells her. "I like the stupid shit you make me say."

"Well, then," she says. Instead of the sky now, Rey's looking at him.

---

When he wakes, she’s thrown an afghan over his legs. He’s in her bed alone, huddled to the warm, sunbaked wall. It’s noon and she’s out.

KR stays still, in a state of paralysis until she returns.

---

“Stay put, Benjamin.” His mother’s frustrated. She’s always upset about something. His father’s infidelity, which should hardly come as a surprise. The ceaseless monsoon in the spring, which is also routine. His troublesome nature, which at this point is a given. “It’s your fault we’re doing this.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Why can’t you be more careful?” She shoves the rag again in the wires of his arm. It tingles with electricity, then burns like fire in his human nerves. He wants to howl. Instead he sits white-knuckled, tears growing and overspilling from his eyes. He’s strapped down; he can’t wipe them away.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again. “It was an accident.” He fails to say, they were bullying me. It wouldn’t go over well. He’s never garnered her support on robot issues.

The other boys knew Ben, too. It wouldn't be toward to take their grief in hand, to weaponize it in a last plea for his distracted mother's love. He has to keep on with what he's been doing, which is slowly giving up.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says at last, withdrawing. “You’ll have to stay like that.”

The unfairness is almost too bitter to take. Any full human with a broken arm would be treated, rushed to emergency and fixed. Since he’s a bot, he’s not a priority, or even a concern of his busy parents. For the next few weeks, he drags his sagging arm around as dead weight, until he gathers the courage to fix it alone.

KR does an okay job. The arm is functional again, albeit with an ache that comes and goes.

---

“Okay,” Rey says. “Your finger.” She’s been home for twenty minutes, only long enough to shower the grit from her hair.

“What?”

“I’m gonna fix your finger, so you can practice typing, while I’m gone. For something to do. I know you’re bored.” Not bored, he wants to say. Just consumed by trying to figure you out.

“Isn’t it complicated?”

“Yeah, of course. You’re a brilliant machine. But I read up. If you’re scared I can cut the nerve, then replace it when we’re done.”

“No, I trust you,” he’s stunned. “I trust you. Go ahead.” As she works Rey’s face is tight, her concentration impenetrable. He stops breathing again; neither of them notices.

“I think it’s this part,” she explains, gently tapping a fucked-looking bolt. “It’s a mess. You should’ve had all new fingers when you were a teenager.”

“Sorry,” he says automatically. Her eyes search his.

“Not your fault, your parents...they should’ve done all the upkeep.” Softly, so as not to spook, Rey takes the wire cutter from her belt. “Were your parents not nice people?”

“They were good with humans. Not the greatest with me.”

“Same. My mother was good with the bottle. Not so good at being a mom.” Rey doesn’t need a response. She’s worked through it, so they both let it rest. “See, right here, it’s cracked.”

Rey works and works. It’s fiddly, her hand slips and she curses. Multiple times he feels a bead of her sweat drip onto the metal. Finally, the bolt's replaced.

“You ready?” He nods. She releases his finger. For the first time since he was thirteen, it doesn’t droop immediately from his control. He flexes it over and over in awe.

“I can use my whole hand,” he says, a little wildly. “I can type.”

“You can,” Rey practically shines, she’s so happy for him. KR wants to repay her, but there’s nothing for him to give. He’s no human man. He has no job, no money.

Rey deserves a partner with all that, and infinite love to share. Or a family that will treat her as their own. As it is, he can offer nothing but gratitude.

“Thank you,” he says. It will have to keep, until he can think of something worthy. "You're always helping me."

---

The next day while Rey's at work, he types. He types her reports, then her general ledger, then copy sheets of what she’s already typed previously, correcting her keying errors. He’s so immersed, he doesn’t hear her walk through the door.

“Hey,” she says sharply. It’s full of chagrin, but to his shock she kneels in front of the computer, and him, making herself sweet, prostrate at his appeal. “This isn’t my way of asking you to repay me. It’s just a hobby. Something you can do. And I’ll pay you.”

From her bag she produces five fresh twenty dollar bills; it’s more money than he’s held in a decade. It's probably all the money she got from her day of work.

“Rey, no.” He stops to collect himself. “I can’t take your money, when you let me stay here. You feed me. You give me soap.” At that she smiles.

“You like having good-smelling soap? Is that what I can do for you. And more spaghetti? Tell me what you like. I’ll find a way to pay you, in something you think has value.”

KR thinks. For a moment he’s seized by nerves. Then he sees her crouched there, toolbelt around her waist, looking young and spent and sad in rerun. 

“What?” Rey prompts. “Anything, you name it.” She's irresistable, in her own way.

“I like it when you do my hair, after I shower.”

It’s his favorite part of the day. Rey combing and carding through the tangles, as they both stare at the flickering tv. From behind him she makes the funniest comments that put him at ease. All my Barbie murdering never prepared me for this level of mane. Are you serious? Because, it’s just so full of secrets.

“I’ll never figure you out,” she says. It comes after such a long silence, he thinks she’s just trying to find a way to deny him.

“Why’s that?”

“4ths aren’t supposed to like touch. But you do.” She stops, backtracking. “You always seem to know what's best about being human, I mean. I guess that’s something most of us don’t even know.”

“Small things are nice.” Because then it feels like it's just the two of us. “It's good to feel normal, after everything.”

“Okay,” she says. “I get that.”

---

He regrets it later, for now Rey spares him no small act of caring. It's as if he's given her the sort of tacit permission she was waiting for.

For dinner that Saturday she makes a homemade version of his favorite freezer food, veggie lasagna. Instead of relegating him to the bedroom, where he was always shunned during meal prep by his family, she asks him over to the counter. 

"Want to watch?" she says. He does want, so much. It's getting bothersome just being in the next room from her, not seeing her all day while she works. He suffers from an impatience he's never known.

"Yeah, show me how?"

"Here, I'm making the layers." She guides his hand to delicately take from a bowl of papery vegetables, striping the red bottom of the dish. She shows him how to set the timer, saying, "Now you can heat things in the oven for yourself when I'm gone." 

He doesn't say, it feels weird being alone. He doesn't even let himself think it. But somehow, in the sidelong way she looks at him, he thinks she hears him. 

"Or when we're together," Rey says. 

---

For dessert are the drop-cookies Rey never bothers to bake; they stay as they are on the metal sheet, half-melted in the heat and gooey to the touch. They gorge themselves with sticky hands, adding extra chocolate chips and pours of maple syrup and whipped cream until laughing, Rey brings out the hot sauce.

“Oh, never,” he says.

“Come on, please?” She’s right in the end, it’s perfect.

---

Sick and satiated, they sit replete on her bed for hours. After three episodes of some stupid restaurant sitcom, he gets up to shower, heart hammering. Rey’s eyes follow his body, but she makes no comment. When he reemerges, she’s sitting sweetly on the edge of the bed.

“Want me to fix your hair?” she asks eagerly.

“Yes,” he says. They’re awkward and it feels new; he curses having told her so much. Yet she’s gentler now, more sincere. Rey wants him to feel safe and if this is the conduit, so be it. It’s obvious in the gesture that she doesn’t care what he needs, as long as it’s hers to give.

She lets him rest slightly back into her, reclining to take his weight off the crushed metal side. Each stroke of the hairbrush puts him more at ease, until he’s no longer leaning into Rey, but collapsed in her lap, asleep.

---

“I didn’t want to wake you,” she says. It’s midnight. He can tell by the far-off sound of coyotes, by the wind clattering against the sheet metal in the yard. He’s in Rey’s lap, her face dark. The tv screen is blank. What has she been doing all this time?

“You didn’t have to,” he says slowly. He shifts off her lap, onto the mattress. “I know you have work early.”

“Work doesn’t matter. One day, when I’ve made enough money, we’ll leave here and go someplace green. Where it rains. Or maybe I’ll get a call that my dead uncle left me his millions, or something.” Rey laughs. “Then we can be rich, and do useless things all day.”

“We?” he asks. Barely, it comes off casual. KR has to force himself not to sound so pitiful.

“We,” Rey says. “You and me, and a really fantastic bioengineer.” She nudges him. “I’ve seen the future, you know."

---

The last person who promised to fix KR was a bioengineer. After getting disowned, abandoned on a desert road, he bounced between 4th operation bases. He remembers them as hellishly overcrowded and dirty, full of fist fights and petty thievery. 

At one of these bases he met the bioengineer. Snoke was a tall, forlorn, misshapen 4th. He spoke often of being failed by the human world, and how that made them brothers in arms. For Snoke was one of the former Senate tech leaders who fronted the First Order battalion. Possibly after being impeached by KR’s own robot-hating mother.

At the time, Snoke became like a father to him. Only at consignment did Kylo learn, Snoke was working for the other side. During the war he secreted sensitive cyborg intel to the government, in exchange for leniency regarding illegal 4th experiments in his former lab. The nature of those experiments KR didn't want to know.

The things Snoke did during the war were enough. Like a 4th used for sex or slave labor, he was rabid in his hatred of the human race. Often he led KR astray by influence alone. KR regrets more than anything the rift between humans and cyborgs he helped create, as he wrecked and fought his way through Alderaan city with the band of First Order bots known as the Knights.

He hates himself more for that the longer he stays with Rey, knowing for however understanding she is, she wouldn't have liked who he was then.

---

Soon after he notices Rey acting like she does before a fix, hoarding parts and keeping quiet. When she summons him to the kitchen table, as if for a meeting, he's slow to comply. He’s still hurting, from his wire side which will never heal. He fears being left to his own devices, for her to ask him to leave in this state, though it would only be fitting. 

“Kylo,” she says. He doesn’t know how it happened, that he has a name.

He let slip that the Senator’s son was named Ben, and that’s what he was called in Alderaan. No, that’s not your name, she’d said abruptly. So they made a new one, from his original registered serial, KR-831 EN.

“Yes?”

She’s bouncing around with excitement, so it can’t be bad. Usually when she’s hyper, it means surgery.

“I found the right parts to fix your stomach,” Rey says. “I just need your take on something kind of wacky."

She leads him across the barren yard to her toolshed. Inside is a box of metal plates, all blank.

“I was thinking, you know, since I can’t afford to weld you a new case, we could use these. But if you look, it’s the same stuff used for etching projects? So I thought...we could give you a tattoo?”

For a moment there’s total silence. Then he surprises both of them by laughing, head thrown back. 

”Really?" he says. “And I can choose?”

“Yeah,” Rey smiles, taking his metal hand. “You can even do it yourself, since they don’t get attached until the end.”

"Of anything?" he asks again.

"Anything," she answers. "It's yours."

---

They agree to fix what's underneath first, to give him time to think of something special. He's more or less always going to be waterproof, case or not.

What matters is he wants to go on runs with Rey. He wants to explore the cavern she's been talking about, claiming there's a hot spring. 

He's never been asked anywhere before. Nothing with a prior arrangement, like a date.

---

"Just keep me calm and I'll keep you safe and we'll do this easy," Rey says. Clearly this isn't her first time performing bathroom surgery. 

"Okay," he says. "Do you need me to take off my clothes?" 

"Yeah, in case sparks fly. I don't want to start a fire." Kylo complies.

He's wearing shorts a size too small anyway, with a dozen itchy patches. Since Rey's wardrobe is so baggy, so utilitarian, since it's mostly uniforms from the war still, he's managed to fly by in it. The only problem being, they often bicker over the comfier pants.

It's then that he registers her staring. Maybe she's never seen him totally naked before. It's possible. He's never seen Rey in less than a bra and shorts. He's never asked to see more, because she's never indicated that's something they do. She's flush, he thinks. I'm that much of a freakshow.

"Oh," she says diplomatically. "I didn't realize. I thought only sex bots..."

"They made me to specs. I guess they wanted their son back in every way." Rey wrinkles her nose. 

"That's sort of creepy." She stops, clears her throat. "Anyway."

---

At a certain point in her work he learns to just brace and trust Rey, for she's near expert. He can't fathom how hard she must've searched for the answer to this problem, because it's anything but an easy fix. 

"One more wire, hang on. You're almost there." She looks up at him, goggles pushed back over her sweaty hair. "You're braver than me, you know?"

Then something snaps in place under her hand. In a moment he's whirring to life, almost throwing her off with the force of a newfound energy. It feels like he's fully functional again, for the first time in so, so long. 

Rey is up in an instant, pushing him to sit back down on the toilet. "Not yet, give me a minute to make sure I don't still have you dialed back."

He waits. 

"Okay, now try again," she says. He stands once more. It's like an effortless marriage of metal and flesh. All his circuits feel fine. Everything's in cohesion, in connection. The sickly, broken ache at the back of his skull has abated. 

"I'm alright," he says. "I feel good."

'Terrific. Then show us, will you?" Show Rey he does. Pulling on his bottoms, he runs to the yard and picks up the heaviest piece of scrap metal he can find. Back inside, he races towards her, picks her body up and slings it over his shoulder.

Kicking and screaming, she manages to say, "Not what I intended!" just before being deposited on the bed. The weight of her bounces, then settles. He climbs on directly across, out of breath and wild. For a second they just stare at each other.

"I don't even know how to thank you," he says. It takes Rey by surprise. What he wants to say is, I can't even tell you how good you make me feel. 

"Then stay until you do," she says.

---

Chapter Text

He’s a monument to entropy, full of malfunctions. Nothing was ever replaced, so it’s all falling apart. Like a plane blazing down, unsupported and finite, he crashes and burns. 

---

He’s reaching for the salt when his bad arm goes. Just like that, the fault of a second. It shorts out in a cacophony, shattering plates spread on the counter, upending chairs. They stand paralyzed, dazed, barefoot in a halo of china. “Kylo,” Rey says sharply. “Look at me, are you okay?”

Once the adrenaline passes she’s patient, helpful. Collecting the pieces, arranging them gingerly in rows according to importance. Soon she’s all focus, studying the aftermath with intent. Her sunburn grazes hot against his shoulder, examining, calculating what’s left.

“Is there any salvaging it?” he asks darkly.

“We could try,” she says. “But something tells me it’s best just to start over.”

---

“Do you like it?”

Tattooed across his side is a windfall of birds, pointed to on runs and torn from encyclopedia pages. Rey’s excited, ravenous to look. Kylo turns in place, twisting on his feet to let her eyes travel. 

“You’re a menagerie,” she says. Her hands fawn over his body, showing no reserve. Endlessly he worked through the night, for this. “You’re beautiful.”

Softly, he explains the birds are a symbol of life in the desert. The kettle of vultures represents the pickers, the western bluebirds, Rey. The falcons are for Adam.

“What about this one?” Rey asks. He added the wren last, almost as an afterthought. Its big, hybrid wings cover great unused swaths of metal, the largest of them all.

“That?” he says. “It's me."

Now it's like another nameplate, a replacement for the one they destroyed. No proof can be etched over that scratched-out, empty space. Yet this is better, more tangible in its belonging. Somehow he feels marked by it, whole. 

Rey’s fingers find the bluebirds again, counting in twos their delicate pairs. Her eyes shine with sadness, sex. 

“Thank you, Mr. Ren,” she says. “For helping me believe in good surprises.”

---

During the interminable war, books were Rey’s buffer. Sitting on ancient buses or government trains, next to droning, vacuous televisions. In the gaps, always. She read.

He drinks as Rey flips through countless pages, some painted totally green by ecstatic swaths of highlighter. The lines of color are all lopsided in her books, as if searching for the right words. 

“Here,” she says at last. “This.” Her voice carries across the yard, thrown far by the pale, sundown splendor:

Do you think I am an automaton? -a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong. I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart-

Despite her diligence, Rey’s eyes drift more and more from the words. She’s able to recite what’s before her without looking at the page, never faltering. Her sweet, wistful bliss is a rhythm like music. 

The epiphany that falls over Kylo then is pure. It carries with it an intense, soulful knowing. Of a long-gone woman in Yorkshire, whose words momentarily burn. Of teenage Rey, alone in a nothing place, looking for any escape from the hell of oppression. 

“Who wrote that?” he asks feebly.

“Charlotte Brontë,” she says. “A total pariah, misunderstood in her time.” Rey takes a long draft of gin, touching him with the barest brush of her toes. “Or ahead of it.”

---

Intimacy still brings Kylo shame. Especially when it’s focused, inescapable. He sits naked on the bed for hours, as Rey meticulously catalogues hundreds of disparate pieces. Her fingers notate and caress every edge and glint, every imperfection. It’s so humiliating he aches.

For not once does she mention his human skin. Marred by blemishes, bisected in half, it’s beneath even her careful charity. So he sits tight and small, chest burning. Unable to lift his head or return Rey’s conversation. Speak, he thinks, desperate each time. Be her brave.

---

“Please,” he says one night. After a few drinks, he finally finds the courage. “Can you fix the human 4th?” 

“No,” Rey says immediately. However anticipated, the vulnerability of it cuts deep. “You’re perfect as you are. There’s nothing to fix.”

“Just try?” he asks. “For me?”

“Okay,” she says at last. “For you.”

Like he’s in triage, Rey pretends to feel for damage. Fingers tense over his chest, putting pressure on his pecs, tracing eddies of muscle down his side. As her hand dips to his stomach, his cock stirs. Rey’s expression is mortifying in its uncertainty.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, to no apparent remedy. For a second she just stares, until a faraway, bright heat rises to her face. 

“Do you know how to take care of yourself?”

“We watched a video, in holding.” With the metal hand he demonstrates, squeezing and slapping at his cock until it purples, shrinking small. Every blow brings bile to the back of his throat; he looks shivery, close to tears. Then without warning, he moans.

“Wait,” she says, holding his hand still. “Do you like it this way?” He tries flinching out of her grip, embarrassed, insecure, overwhelmed by the mere thought. Yet Rey holds firm against his side. Rippling arms keep him steady across the mattress, trapped. 

“I don’t know,” he says, given no other option. “It hurts, and I like it.” 

“Oh,” Rey says. Slowly she unfolds her legs, dragging the seam of her wet shorts against his belly, slotting their bodies together. His hips lift from the bed, chasing her cunt.

Rey points to his cock. It’s fallen, wilted and bruised against his thigh. 

“Don’t be afraid," is all she says. 

Then, with just the nail of her finger, Rey starts to run light, conciliatory lines up and down the head. In a minute, it stirs again.

“I like it that way, too. But not so damn vicious.” She pets his dick with careful fingers until it stands away from his body, sending a bolt of burning shame straight down his spine. 

“This okay?”

“Yes,” Kylo says. It's all he can think.

Naked, her chest is exquisite, nipples piquing at the slightest touch of cold metal. Kylo’s head spins. It tingles at the small of his back, in his teeth. The yearning for humilation, for catharsis. Anything to lift the pressure of a life spent as nothing.

“Do you like the pain itself, or being good?” she asks, searching his eyes. After a moment, she decides. “No, it's both.”

Kylo doesn’t respond; he physically can’t. Whatever he’s thinking, it isn’t worth it anyway. There’s no worship that can do justice to the relief of being pressed where it hurts. Of being left to shake apart under her, hot and undone. Of being allowed to ache.

Gently, taking her time, Rey gathers an immense fistful of his hair. When she finally pulls, the sting is so sharp it grabs his whole attention. She doesn't let go until their eyes meet, his jaw made even with her lips. It's understood that he's to hold himself there, vulnerable, naked on display.

"Do you want more?" she asks. Kylo nods. Throat bared, made captive and submissive, he can't speak. "Then try to get yourself off."

He keens into her, trying desperately, ravaging his body raw. His hips beg senselessly, pumping tight against the slightest curve of her.

Rey only watches, searching deep in his eyes for the suffering. He's a moving trainwreck, shaky and gone, but she's captivated by it, curious.

“You like denial,” she says. "Do you like being teased?"

Lightly at first, then rolling her hips hard, she experiments by dragging her cunt against his belly. She grinds herself over his abs until he thrashes with frustration. Her skin is so soft, it's like doing something filthy with silk. It turns him on so bad he could cry.

"I'm going to take your virginity," she says offhandedly. After so long, after he's so desperate, it's more of a formality. "If that's okay?"

“Right now,” he says, “you can take whatever you want.” 

---

If he comes, she'll stop moving, stop letting him give her pleasure. 

The hold of it is excruciating, unlike any other strain. Yet he’s entranced by the spell of pleasure she’s under, intoxicated by it. He can't help stealing glances at her body, at the muscles in her back that jump and contract with her cunt.

“Breathe,” she says roughly. It takes all her willpower to pull away from his tender, dripping mouth. As she sits up, her eyes go to Kylo's body.

Soaked and feverish, his cock jolts untouched against the metal. Just from a look.

The desire for her is like being drunk. It makes him say what he's thinking in a frenzy, without the sense to hold back. Without even hearing how much of his soul he's bearing.

“4ths don't need to breathe," he says in a rush. "You can sit on me for hours. You wanted to test the arm, do it. Test me.” 

“Fuck,” she says. "Kylo.”

After that it’s quick. His tongue writes litanies inside her, it writes curses. He writes I love you a thousand times across her hot cunt, over all he can reach, until she's breaking apart in shudders.

Each time she comes, Rey drags his mouth against her clit in painful circles. Finally, he gets why. It's to use him like a toy. Like an object, or a well-cared-for machine, whose only purpose is to be needed for dirty, unspeakable things.

"Do you like being mine?" she asks, possessive. "Is it good to be owned?"

Kylo comes then, hips stuttering, stuck in place. He sees and hears nothing for a moment, vision white. It's like the most powerful drug, capable of putting him on another planet. His cock pumps endlessly, painting her thighs on either side of his chest, her arms that hold him together.

As he calms, still half agony, Rey brings gentle touches down on him, gentle words. Saying, it’s over now, and you did so, so good.

---

They rest silent against the headboard, spent. After, she rushed to give him a glass of water, a hug. Now Rey’s smoothing his sweaty hair with a hand, staring at nothing and looking lost.  

He wonders if what passed between them was really love. Or if it was purely mechanical, a way to make the madness subside. He waits in a state of suspended gravity. Fearing if she leaves, he’ll disintegrate.   

“I want to be with you always,” she says sadly. “But you deserve better. I can’t fix you all the way, not like this.” 

“But you did fix me,” he says. He doesn't think she can ever know how much. “It's the best thing that ever happened to me, being found.”

“It wasn't altruism,” she says. "I wanted you for my own. I was being selfish. And you’re so perfect, I don't regret it.” Rey’s tears go bittersweet, for the obliterated past.

“It wasn’t even part of my fate," she says. "Please believe I was empty, and terrified of staying that way. You made me more. Just you, with your magic.”

“Just me,” he says, drawing her close. For a while they're still. Then Rey's hands start to move. Over bolts of metal, indelible scars and freckles. Over his chest, his muscles. Being immersed in her is holy.

“Just us,” he tries, and it sticks.

He knows he'll need to have explanations someday, for what he did and why. For his time with the Knights, for his terror of humans. For his track record of always running away. He knows maybe they'll get found out, be injured, or die.

Only now, in a soft bed under an orange lamp, Rey is kissing him. There is no other universe, no soul inside him to share but the one that presses against her lips. In every sigh and moan Rey makes, there's no other home.

---

The government still curtails 4ths. Kylo’s forbidden to marry. He’s not allowed to vote; he doesn’t stand to inherit. If he flees law enforcement, he’ll be shot. Only, it’s different in the desert. They have a privacy where no one else is, a freedom. Rey was right; there is a cavern.

At midnight they dip underwater, jetting sideways through the deep into a great valley of rock. The hot spring was an excuse, a map to be followed and folded away. What's truly stunning is the dark sky above, framed by a millennia of earth.

When he asks what's happening, she tells him it's a meteor shower. 

"It's only once in a while," she says. "I knew you'd never heard of one, so I wanted it to be a surprise. That it could even be possible."

For hours they float in silence, watching the stars shudder and fall like crystal glass. It’s enough just to be held breathless by the pretty girl who didn’t let him die. With Rey, he's real. 

---