Chapter Text
Rey doesn’t have many belongings to call her own. Just a handful of second-hand dresses, aprons, and a few sewing items.
But there’s one thing Rey keeps like a treasure. It’s kept in a trunk under her bed, carefully placed between a box of needles and balls of yarn. She usually takes it out at night, after everyone else has gone to bed, and runs her fingers along the cover, feeling the outline of the letters printed on the leather.
Gulliver’s Travels.
It’s just a book. Worn at the edges, the pages stained with use. But it was the last one Mr. Solo gave her, sliding it across the table toward her with a smile before he walked through the door and got into his carriage.
She never saw him again after that. If she had known, that day, that his carriage would slide down a hillside and crash into a creek bank, she would have summoned the courage to hug him, as she had wanted to do ever since she met him.
But reading the last book he gave her feels like it. Every time she opens Gulliver’s Travels, it’s as if she can pretend Mr. Han Solo is there, repeating the words until she can read.
Well, the old Mr. Solo.
There’s a new Mr. Solo now, after all. A distant, reclusive son Rey has never met. In the seven years she’s lived here, not once has Mr. Benjamin Solo deigned to visit his father. Most of the time, she doesn’t even remember that Mr. Han had an heir.
The first time she’s seen him is at his father’s funeral.
In some strange way, it feels like it’s her father’s funeral, too. Or as close to it as she’ll ever get.
She’s sewn a black scarf herself, wrapping it around her head to hide her red eyes. Maz stands by her side the entire time, the two of them quietly repeating the priest’s prayers in the back of the chapel.
Because no matter how much she adored Mr. Han Solo, she would never sit in the front pews. She was still just a servant.
His absent son, however, was granted a seat right at the front of the altar. She could see only the back of his head, but when Mass ended and he stood, she got her first glimpse of him.
And...he looked nothing like the former Mr. Solo.
Han Solo had been all copper-bright warmth—sun-creased eyes, laugh lines fanning like gull wings, a quick grin that made his whole face tip toward mischief.
Benjamin Solo is the eclipse that follows.
He rises from the front pew in a long black coat that fits his broad shoulders like a closing door. The same bold Solo nose, yes, but where Han’s had been set in a face mapped by smiles and desert wind, his son's is carved into something severe. His jaw looks as though it was tightened with a wrench; his mouth is a straight, undecorated line.
No laugh lines—not even the faint suggestion of one.
His eyes, nearly black in the muted light, sweep over the gathered servants without stopping. They slide past Mrs. Maz. Past Rey.
Past, past—because they do not see them at all.
One by one the townsfolk bow their heads and press their gloved hand, murmuring soft regrets—as if a decade of absence can be smoothed over with stock phrases and black crepe.
He acknowledges each offering with a terse incline of his head, the movement precise, mechanical, as though he’s tallying debts instead of accepting sympathy. Not once does he smile. Not once does he set the mourners at ease with a quip the way Mr. Han would have.
As the chapel begins to empty, Maz pokes her in the arm, “Come, child,” she says, “We’ve supper to see to. And linens. And tomorrow’s arrivals.” Her tone softens. "Mr. Han wouldn't thank us for shirking."
Rey breathes in, nodding, “You’re right.”
They start down the path that threads between tombstones.
Behind them, the church bell tolls a single, solemn note, echoing across the white fields like a final farewell.
______
For better or worse, she doesn’t see Mr. Solo very often in the week following the funeral. Despite them living on different floors of the same mansion.
She busies herself with the cooking and cleaning chores, watching sideways as more and more trunks arrive and are carried upstairs. Not to Mr. Han’s room, to her surprise, but to long-disused rooms in the opposite wing, which the new Mr. Solo orders cleaned and prepared for him.
Those rooms had been sealed since before Rey’s arrival; she remembered sweeping their thresholds once a year and coughing at the stale air that billowed out.
Maz found her lingering.
“Curious?” the older woman teased, flicking flour from her hands.
“Only wondering why anyone would choose the coldest wing.”
Maz’s shrug was quick, but her eyes were thoughtful. “Cold rooms hold fewer memories.”
Rey told herself the new master’s privacy was a kindness, sparing the staff extra formality. Even so, she felt the absence like a pulled tooth. In Han’s time every supper ended with a story or a joke loud enough to reach the stairwell; now Maz carried porcelain trays up two flights and came back down with cloches barely touched.
She can’t tell if this is a reflection of his taciturn personality or his way of dealing with grief—probably the former. Rey imagines it’s hard to grieve too much for someone you barely know.
Some folk mourn with noise, some with hush, Maz suggested one day.
Rey set about polishing glassware, but resentment pricked. Ten years he couldn’t bother to visit, she thought, buffing harder than necessary.
Maz wiped her hands on her apron and leaned a hip against the prep table. "Mind the stem, girl. That glass is bigger than both of us."
“I won’t break it,” Rey muttered, but her strokes slowed.
Footsteps approached—a young footman hurrying in with a folded note. “Mrs. Maz,” he puffed, “Mr. Solo asks for coffee in his office.”
She sighed, tied her apron tighter, and climbed into the copper kettle. Rey watched her steady movements and felt shame crawl up her spine. Maybe Maz was right. She has known Mr. Solo since he was a child. Who was Rey to judge people's grief?
“Let me take it,” she heard herself say.
Maz paused mid-pour. “You sure?”
“If he wants coffee, I can manage.” Rey squared her shoulders. “Besides, I need to find out if we polish the silver for more than show.”
Maz’s mouth twitched. “All right then.” She pressed the tray into Rey’s hands: a pot, two cups, a small dish of sugar cubes.
She set off toward the servants’ staircase and climbed to the floor of Mr. Solo’s office. At the final door—oak, taller and darker than the rest—she balanced the tray on one palm and knocked.
Silence. She counted three heartbeats.
“Come in,” a voice called.
Rey pushed the door open carefully and stepped into the room.
He sat behind the desk, his broad shoulders slightly hunched as he studied a stack of papers, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The desk itself was meticulously organized, each piece of parchment perfectly aligned, pens placed with care.
The moment she stepped in, he looked up from the papers, his gauze flicking first to the tray she held, then to her face. His expression was unreadable, his features sharp.
A man carved out of stone rather than blood. So different from his father...
She wonders, for a moment, if he misses Mr. Han as much as she does. If sometimes his gaze wanders to a random spot and his mind freezes in the memory of a moment between them.
He must.
Rey had only seven years with Mr. Han. He had so much more than that.
So much more to remember, so much more to grieve.
There are no dark circles under his eyes, though. Not like Rey's. His eyes don't hold a mournful sadness like hers, just a calculated attentiveness.
Maybe his grief is different from hers, that's all.
"Excuse me, sir. Your coffee?".
“Leave it there,” he said, gesturing to the empty space on the table in front of him.
Rey set the tray down carefully, the porcelain clicking softly against the wood. As she straightened up, she felt the weight of his eyes on her.
"Miss Niima, I suppose?"
Rey's breath hitched. She hadn’t expected him to know her name. Her mouth opened to say something, but the words caught in her throat. She nodded, suddenly self-conscious under the weight of his gauze. "Yes, sir. That's... that's me."
He didn’t respond immediately. His gauze flicked over her, perhaps noticing the raw surprise on her face.
His lips quirked into a small, almost imperceptible smile, one that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I know the names of everyone in this house, Miss Niima. It's just practical."
She nods, awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other.
The sugar bowl clicked softly as Rey placed it beside the pot, her movements fluid and almost automatic. Mr. Han liked his coffee sweet—two or three sugar cubes at least.
Rey’s fingers hovered over the sugar cubes, instinctively ready to add them to the coffee she’d just brewed. But as she glanced up at Mr. Solo, she noticed that he was watching her.
“How much sugar, sir?”
His gauze lingered on her for a moment before he glanced at the sugar bowl. “I prefer plain coffee”.
“Oh.” Her voice faltered slightly, and she quickly pulled her hand back from the sugar. "Of course. Plain coffee."
He nodded once, then reached for the cup, taking a measured sip. Rey watched the way his fingers curled around the porcelain—controlled, careful, as if the act of drinking itself was part of some larger discipline.
She waited for him to dismiss her. But he didn’t.
Instead, his eyes flicked back up to hers.
“How long have you worked here?” he asked, but something in his tone seemed to suggest he already knew.
“Seven years this spring,” Rey said.
Her days before the Solo mansion are a blur—she remembers a man named Unkar, and other children, and a wooden house with leaking gutters that dripped when it rained. But most of her memories live within these walls.
He studied her as if trying to fit that into some private timeline.
“A lot’s changed,” he said finally.
Rey didn’t know whether he meant the house or the staff. Probably both.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said softly. “I’ve only ever known the house as it is now.”
"You probably know it better than I do, then."
His words lingered in the air, heavier than the silence that followed.
He set the cup down more forcefully than before, the porcelain clinking against the wood with a sharp, jarring sound.
Then his tone shifted, cool and composed again. “That will be all, Miss Niima.”
Rey nodded, more flustered than she liked to admit. “Yes, sir.”
She turned and made her way to the door, but before she could step through, he spoke again—just one more sentence, quiet and dry:
"Next time, no sugar, but a touch more heat. This is lukewarm."
Rey glanced back over her shoulder. His gaze was already on the papers again.
“Yes,” she hastened to agree, “As you wish.”
______
From then on, Mr. Solo asked Maz to assign Rey the task of serving him coffee daily.
And he is meticulous about it.
She always serves him in his office, always at specific times. She makes sure to boil the water properly and doesn't even bother to carry the sugar cubes upstairs on the tray.
He seems to be always engrossed in his papers, perhaps catching up on the accounting and business of the house. Except for 'come in' and 'that's all, Miss Niima', he doesn't say a word to her anymore.
The way he never looks up from his papers makes her wonder if he even notices the subtle tension in her posture, the way her hands sometimes shake ever so slightly as she serves him.
At least he never complained about the coffee again.
______
On Sunday, Maz and Rey go to mass, as usual. The small town church is just a few streets down from the Solo mansion, so they walk down, rosaries swinging in their hands as they go.
“I didn’t see the grooms readying Mr. Solo’s carriage,” Rey says, glancing back toward the estate, “He’s not coming to mass?”
“Mr. Solo’s not very religious,” Maz replies vaguely.
Rey frowns. “Mr. Han never missed mass.”
“He’s not his father.”
“I know,” Rey nods, clutching her rosary a little tighter as they turn the corner, the bell from the church tower beginning to toll gently through the crisp morning air, “I guess I just… I just miss him.”
Maz slows her pace and slips an arm gently around Rey’s shoulders. “Of course you do, child,” she says softly. Then, cupping Rey’s cheek with a warm, calloused hand, she adds, “You held him close in your heart—and don’t think for a second he didn’t hold you just as dearly in his,” Maz gives her a small smile, the lines of her face softening with warmth, “Should we light a candle for him today? Perhaps one for Mr. Solo too.”
Rey nods, and the two step inside the church, the soft murmurs of the congregation filling the space, the faint scent of incense curling through the cool air.
After mass, they do as Maz suggested, and light two candles near the altar.
They watch the flickering flames in silence for a moment, and Rey closes her eyes to pray.