Work Text:
Ingarian Expectations
The problem, Rey realized years ago, was that she was supposed to succeed.
Everything said so. Everyone said so. She was an orphan, penniless, and pretty to boot. In the village of Market Chipping, nothing could be more promising. Even the third children of poor-but-noble woodcutters spoke with envy about Rey. A pretty penniless orphan? If she didn't go on a quest and come back with the head of a newly-slain evil dragon and wagons of gold, she was at least certain to marry a disguised prince and rule the land as a beautiful wise queen for a hundred years. Success was assured.
And yet: here she was. On the doorstep of a hovel in the town of Porthaven that she'd been told belonged to the Sorcerer Solo, ready to beg for a job, because no one — no one! — wanted to hire a pretty penniless orphan who was sure to go on a quest at the drop of a hat and leave them in the lurch with a schedule to fill.
But the Sorcerer Solo, apparently, wasn't even home.
How's that for the luck of pretty penniless orphans?
"I don't know," said the boy who answered the door. "I don't think Wizard Ren is looking for any help right now."
Rey frowned and adjusted the bag over her shoulder. "I thought this was the home of Sorcerer Solo?"
The boy just shrugged. "Depends on the day," he said evasively.
Rejected from the doorstep of a wizard with two names by a boy not old enough to grow a beard? No. Absolutely not. Rey straightened her back. "I can clean," she offered.
"Clean?"
"Clean. Organize. Cook. Tend the fire. Whatever it is that Solo — Ren — oh, I don't care what his name is, I need a job!"
The boy looked even more skeptical at this outburst, if possible. Then he brightened. "Are you under a curse?" he asked hopefully. "That would make sense. That's more how these things are supposed to go, you know."
"I am cursed," Rey said grandly, "with expectations."
From inside the house, a crackly, splintery voice called: "Oh, just let her in, Michael. No one here feeds me logs like they should."
"Ren won't like it," the boy — Michael — called back.
"Ren doesn't like anything."
To this, it seemed, Michael had no answer — which is how the Wizard Ren got himself a pretty, penniless, destined-to-succeed yet utterly-unemployable orphan as his new housekeeper without ever actually hiring her.
***
Wizard Ren, it seemed, didn't come home very often.
Rey was surprised to discover that the interior of Sorcerer Solo's Porthaven hovel was actually a decent size. A main room, taken up by Michael's workbenches and a large hearth housing a cantankerous fire demon named Calcifer, led off to a staircase with two bedrooms and a bathroom, then a back door to a yard full of scrap. Rey lost no time in making herself cozy in the nook beneath the stairs. Then she started a daily routine that consisted of scrubbing floors, dusting shelves, organizing rooms, and feeding logs to Calcifer whenever he complained of hunger, which was often.
Michael did not care for it. "Shouldn't you be on a quest?" he asked Rey more than once, especially when he thought it might distract her from knocking down cobwebs or sweeping out beneath his bed. "Searching for your parents, maybe? You're probably the granddaughter of an emperor or something."
"That's what everyone says," replied Rey, undeterred from her relentless schedule. "I just can't get people to accept that I'm a common, garden-variety orphan, child of nobody important."
"No hidden magical powers?" pressed Michael.
"Not yet."
"You might not be in the right place," said Calcifer thoughtfully. "Ren wasn't."
"I've been to Market Chipping, Kingsbury, and now Porthaven," said Rey. "I've even been out to the Wastes. Where else is there?"
Calcifer shifted his flames across a log in what can only be described as an evasive manner. "Traveling might help," he suggested.
"I'll ask the Wizard Ren about it when I see him," promised Rey. "I'm not opposed to adventures, just to expectations." She stood and dusted off her hands. "In the meantime, that scrap in the backyard needs scavenging."
***
The most interesting thing about Wizard Ren's house was, of course, the front door.
It had a small dial near the knob, and that knob could be turned to four different colors: green, red, blue, or black. The door opened to a different place depending on the color of the dial.
Green led to Chipping Valley, just beyond the moors. When Rey first saw that, she realized that she was currently cleaning the interior of not only the hovel in Porthaven, but the moving castle that sometimes wandered above Market Chipping. (The people of Market Chipping had often suggested that Rey should search that castle out, because it seemed like the perfect sort of place for a pretty penniless orphan to seek her fortune. The people of Market Chipping were welcome to chase castles all day if they so wished, but Rey was not interested. Not unless the owner of the castle was willing to give her a job. And now: here she was.)
Blue led to Porthaven.
Red led to Kingsbury, where Wizard Ren was known more illustriously as The Great Wizard Organa-Skywalker, and messengers often came from the palace looking for him. Michael kept putting them off. Rey found that looking over Michael's shoulder at them, scowling, broom handle in hand, was rather effective at making the messengers leave as well. Perhaps Ren would want her as a security guard in addition to a housekeeper.
Black led to…
Well. Michael did not know, and Calcifer wasn't telling, but Rey deduced pretty quickly that, whatever was beyond that black dot, it was where Ren was hiding himself.
He'd come home eventually, right? And if he didn't — could Rey stay either way?
At least no one here bothered her with expectations about her supposedly great destiny.
Also, she found some sort of metal tube in the backyard with buttons, and when she pressed one of them, a magic red sword lit up and nearly took her hand off at the wrist. Rey might not be seeking her fortune, but it was interesting here in Wizard Ren's home.
***
It took four whole days for Ren to finally return.
Rey — who, despite the fact that her pretty penniless orphan appearance was always made even more perfectly tragic by just the right level of starvation, never missed a meal when she could help it — had just explained to Calcifer that he was going to bow his head to cook breakfast for her and Michael or she was going to upend a pot of water on him, when the knob by the front door turned itself to black and noisily burst open.
Rey looked up.
Striding through the door came a tall, well-looking man dressed all in black. Black clothes. Black cloak. Black hair. Black helmet in hand. He even came from blackness, thick inky blackness that stopped just at the threshold of the door. Rey could see nothing beyond it — but she could, however, hear voices out there in the dark.
"Ben Solo! Come back here! You can't keep running away from your destiny!"
"The hell I can't," snarled Wizard Ren, and he waved his hand irritably. The front door slammed shut without a touch. "I am never going back there again," he declared.
"You say that every time," said Calcifer, his voice somewhat muffled by the cast iron pan sitting on his forehead.
"I mean it this time." Ren tossed his helmet aside. It bounced on the freshly-scrubbed stone floor. "Michael, what did I miss?"
"The King wants you to help fight his war."
"Of course he does, and I'm not doing it."
"There's an aunt in Market Chipping who says you stole her niece's heart. She has hatpins."
"I barely looked at that girl. Her heart is her own problem."
"Oh, and you have a housekeeper from Porthaven." Michael added this last bit carelessly, with his head bowed over the sink, like maybe Ren wouldn't notice the announcement if it were mumbled into a stack of soapy dishes. "Rey. She got rid of the spiders."
Wizard Ren pulled up at this. He looked over to the fire. He noticed Rey for the first time. "I don't have a housekeeper," he said.
Rey crossed her arms, ready for battle. "You do now."
"It's not my fault," Michael said helplessly. "She's not on a quest or even cursed. I don't know what she's doing here. I can't get rid of her. I tried! But she cleaned under my bed!"
Ren still had one black-booted foot on the top step. His black eyes were roving over Rey from head to toe, doing nothing to hide his evaluation. Rey noticed there was something slightly glassy in their cast. "You have the look of someone with a destiny," he said at last. "My condolences."
Rey decided in that moment that she didn't mind his evaluation too much. No one had ever condoled with her on her destiny before, and frankly, they should have. "I am a penniless orphan," she told him gloomily. "And pretty, too."
"You are at that," Ren conceded. "Unfortunate. Are you the granddaughter of an emperor?"
"That's what I asked!" cried Michael.
"I better not be," replied Rey.
"I like her," declared Calcifer. "She feeds me. You never feed me. You're always out being moody."
Wizard Ren scowled at this. It was, indeed, a very moody scowl. "I'm from a magical family," he explained to Rey, "with a villanous-but-redeemed grandfather, a savior uncle, and two war-hero parents. And my mother is a princess."
Rey gasped in horror. "No."
"Oh, it's even worse than that," added Ren. "I am their only son."
"I see," Rey said, and she did. "Have you started your redemption yet, or are you still evil?" There was no other choice, of course, for the only son of a family like that. Probably he would die at the end of his redemption, too. What an unfortunate fate, especially for a man nearly as pretty as she.
"No, because I have no interest in expectations," Ren told her. "No more than you have, I suspect, in being a pretty penniless orphan who will be wildly successful after going through many trials and tribulations."
"Exactly." Rey had never met someone who understood so perfectly before. "It's very boring."
"Cliche, even," Ren agreed. "But I came to this land and made this castle—"
"It's a house at best, and a very dirty one," Rey interjected.
"—to avoid cliches—"
(Calcifer coughed a puff of smoke and a word that sounded suspiciously like Liar.)
"—so, if that's your purpose as well, I don't mind if you stay." Ren's gaze swept over Rey a second time. "But please leave the spiders alone."
"And me!"
"And Michael."
"We'll see," said Rey. "As long as you don't expect me to quest. I refuse to be the long-lost granddaughter of an emperor."
"I would never," said Ren, then swept up the stairs in a whirl of black. For someone uninterested in a scionic redemption arc, Rey couldn't help but note that he was very devoted to the appearance of one. Though, she had to confess to herself, it was undeniably attractive.
"How did you make this house?" she called after him, curious in spite of herself.
"I made a trade," Ren said without looking back, "and that's all I'll be saying about it." They heard the bathroom door slam at the top of the stairs.
Michael stared helplessly at Calcifer. "I don't understand what just happened," he complained.
"It's fine," Calcifer said. "Ren just found a new way to slither-out, that's all." The fire demon raised his head, which made the frying pan slide back almost into the coals. "You do know," he said to Rey, "that you've started your hero's journey. Winning the heart of a wizard isn't as common for a pretty penniless orphan as discovering a lost family, but it still fulfills the usual expectations."
"I'm doing no such thing!" cried Rey. "I only needed a job, and I am certainly not out to win anyone's heart, wizard or otherwise!"
Calcifer smiled a flickering smile. "That's just as well," he said, "because, you see, Wizard Ren is quite heartless."
