sololoquy | open post

[ He is surprisingly unflinching in the face of her willingness to torture one of the citizens to draw information from — well, him. It's unsatisfying, and as a result, when she leaves, she lets up. She sucks her teeth, tongue pressing out briefly as her eyes dart around the cantina.

There's nothing for her here.

He knows where the base is. She's sure of it. Rather, she has convinced herself of it because it will mean that following Snoke's orders involves pursuing her own interests as well. She turns on her heel and marches out after him. ]

This will be easier if you cooperate.

[Honestly, he can’t believe it worked. It worked a little too well, actually. She comes after him far too fast to book passage off Ryloth. So, Ben turns to face her with a raised eyebrow.]

So, you listen to me enough when I talk to be annoyed by it, but not enough to digest anything I am actually saying.

[Ben actually manages to sound annoyed.]

I don’t know where anyone is. You think I’d open myself up to that after the last time? I don’t think so.

You're not here by coincidence.

[ The Force isn't that absurd. At least, she doesn't think so. Snoke has always taught her that it is a tool, not the entity of guidance that the Jedi regard it as. She's not very spiritual, as a result, and anything else would require accepting the possibility of kismet — that he had appeared to her just as she was preoccupied with him, in the road to something entirely unrelated. ]

I'm not fool enough to believe that, so you can stop pretending.

Do I look like I'm pretending?

[The answer to that is: no, he doesn't look like he's pretending.

But his truths are definitely half truths. The Resistance was somewhere on the planet at some point -- whether they were still there or where they were supposed to be, he didn't know. He conveniently avoids her first point.

Because yeah, it would be a crazy coincidence.]

Oh. I get it. Snoke sent you.

[Some of the confidence leaves his voice, replaced by disgust.]

Yes. I'm here for a reason. And you? What are you here for?

[ There's something efficient and probing about it, but it lacks the bite to be called ruthless. All bark. She is not here to attack him. She is not beyond probing his mind, but it is apparent by now that she is reticent to do so. She could have made her life easier by doing it already, but there is something stopping her. ]

Or do you need more time to fabricate a good lie?

Even if I was here for any particular reason, why would I tell you?

[Ben can't help the small scoff that sneaks between his nerves. He is not looking for a round two, after all -- but he can't really say anything without incriminating himself or the Resistance.

She probably knows that. He's not smart enough for this crap.]

To prevent me from taking steps to find out myself. [ She steps around in front of him, cutting off his path and narrowing her gaze. There's nothing there in the twitch of her expression, but buried in her eyes is a plea. Something strained and insistent and earnest. ] The Supreme Leader sent me here for results. By whatever means necessary.

[Kriff. He can't stay quiet in the face of that. Not just because he doesn't want a mind probe again, but because--

Well, mostly that. But the twi'lek were staring at the scene, and would now all be aware if he chose the coward's way (the more appealing way, he mentally corrects) out.]

What kind of results?

[He can stall. They were already evacuating the bases, surely. If he kept talking long enough...]

Don't you like to keep your hands clean of this business? [ She says it with only the most minute of judgments. The sort that implies she doesn't quite believe that his hands are clean, but if it's his goal, it's his business. He can keep trying. Keep pretending. She won't buy it. ] I think it'd be in your best interest if you didn't ask.

You don't believe that.

[Ben folds his arms pointedly, shifting his weight to make himself look taller -- not that it was particularly hard or that he was particularly short. Its more of a reaction to being annoyed and uncomfortable at the situation he's been placed in.]

So if you're going to try and drag me along, you can at least tell me what you're trying to frame me for.

You think I want you to take credit for my work?

[ She scoffs. That would require shame of some kind for it. She has no interest in that. More than that, she has no interest in involving herself in the obviously complicated relationship between himself and Leia Organa, who leads the Resistance. Rey lacks the knack for family interactions, and frankly, it's obvious that Ben's situation is as fraught as her own.

Another reason he'd be happier if he were to join with her instead of play the middle. But he waffles all the same, uncommitted. ]

You're coming along because I don't trust you to give me valid information. [ But at least he's accepted that he's coming along. ] The only person you care about is yourself. If I want to rely on what you tell me, then yours is the life that I have to threaten.

You think I want credit for your--whatever you're doing?

[It feels wrong and inhuman to call it "work", so he avoids that turn of phrase very purposefully. But she's right about most of that other stuff, so he exhales impatiently out of his nose.]

You're right. I only care about myself. Which means if I knew where the Resistance was, don't you think I'd tell you?

[He gives a side-long glance to the stormtroopers that have accompanied her.]

I think you should.

[ She offers this carefully, assessing him with elevator eyes that show no interest in the troopers that make him so nervous. They are not the ones he should fret about. She could send them away, and he would be left alone with the real monster. She regards him with a slight tilt in her head, realizing that he perhaps doesn't view it that way.

No. Surely he does. The troopers are only a symbol. She glances away from him. ]

But while I don't take you for selfless, I've never thought you were terribly clever either. You may not know their exact location, but you know something. Tell me. I won't ask again.

[He makes a grand show of mulling it over, glancing around presumably for an exit from this conversation, which he does not find. Besides, he handly remembered the last time he tried to run. It did not go well for him. And while he knows he is most likely properly fucked here, he would like to avoid as much injury as possible.

Eventually he sighs and pinches the skin between his eyes to force any tells out of his fave.]

Alright, fine. I know that you’re several parsecs too late to catch any of ‘em. I saw them evacuating the system when I landed. Couldn’t tell you from where though.

[Which is mostly true. He’d been coming to make a delivery, but they caught wind of Kira’s approach first and so the twi’lek reaped the spoils rather than the Resistance.]

[ It's not what she wants to hear. In fact, it's the worst thing he could have said. It's evident in the way her spine prickles and her hackles rise. She is not defeated, that much is certain. She is dreading what comes next. Returning to Snoke empty-handed, with only news that the Resistance had slipped their grasp, will lead to her being the one punished. The impossibility of it is irrelevant. The fact that Ben Solo and the distraction he provides had nothing to do with it matters not.

What matters is that this failure equates a personal failure on her part when it is her duty to make up for a previous mistake. ]

Does it hurt that your mother doesn't trust you with her location because she knows you would sell her out for a bristlemelon? [ It's pointlessly insulting. But she doesn't retract it. She can only lash out at him. ]

[He can’t hold his laugh, though he tries. A part of him is viciously pleased to be useless to “the cause” just this once, but also Rey’s insult could hardly be called an insult when it was — half true. His judgement had not always been the best. That was not a secret. He wouldn’t sell them out willingly. He certainly wouldn’t pointlessly sentence them to their deaths.

But all of that aside, something just innately tells him that laughing was the wrong reaction, so he reflexively puts his hands up.]

Not really. It usually keeps me out of trouble. Present company nonwithstanding.

[He can’t resist that one. She even gets a smarmy little Solo grin from him. He can’t help what he was born with.]

[ There's a little twitch of something in the base of her lizard brain that warns her of danger when he laughs, when he offers her that lopsided grin. It's a crossed wire of some kind. Obviously there's no danger in it, but she bristles all the same, stiffening and stilling and staring back at him with a suspicious placidity. Her gaze narrowed, her eyes searching his face for some context for that sound. ]

I am harder to fool than debtors.

[ Which is, probably, the usual callers for Solo's head. She frowns a little then, though, and glances at the stormtroopers. She nods her heads in Ben's direction. ]

Take him.

[He senses what is about to happen before she demands it — he can’t explain it, but he feels a chill set in his blood that wipes the smirk off his face. He deliberately takes a few steps back, looking between Kira and the platoon with her.]

Hey—come on. We don’t have to do this again. You already got what you—

[But the Stormtroopers don’t hesitate; when Ben starts to back away, he finds himself checked in the gut and the knee, forcing him to the ground to be restrainted.]

Results.

[ It's an icy reminder. ]

Unfortunately, the Resistance is gone.

[ But she wouldn't be going back to Snoke with nothing. She'd be going back with Ben Solo, and that, perhaps, would be enough to lure his mother. She could hope, at least. It was the only offering she had, and her life had to be worth more to her than —

Than whatever that feeling was. ]

And you, our only tie to them. [ Rey walks up, leaning over to get at his eye level, hands behind her back lest she feel the instinct to reach out for him. ] You should have given us something.

[The wind knocked from his lungs, it takes a second for him to muster up the energy for a reply. One thing he knows for sure is that he doesn't want anywhere near the Supremacy. The prospect of a mind probe is -- horrifying, but not quite as terror inducing as one might think. No, he understands her perfectly.

She is going to give him to Snoke directly. That is terrifying. He has to think quick--]

--I can take you.

[It comes out on a blurt -- its a desperate lie, until a plan starts to form.]

I can take you to the base. But you can't bring the Stormtroopers -- they'll draw too much attention, and they'll run again.

[None of that appears to be a lie either, but Ben has gone slightly white, and he isn't meeting Kira's eyes. Shame?]

I thought you didn't know where the base was?

[ There's no denying the sharp interest she shows in that, however. It is precisely what she needs, offered at precisely the moment she needs it. No part of her wishes to hand him over to Snoke. She wants to keep him for herself, a secret, something that is finally only hers.

But he avoids her gaze, and she grows more suspicious for it. No. There's no need for suspicion. He's humiliated to have caved so easily. It will be troublesome if his conscience gets the better of him again. She reaches out then to tip his chin up, forcing him to look at her. ]

You're a liar who cheats other liars. Why would I trust you now? Go on. Tell me.

[ Her needling is genuine. She wants a reason. ]

Not here.

[He feels the stormtroopers back off some once Kira tips his chin upward. There's some real honesty in his discomfort, though the root of it is nebulous. Still, there is nothing to hint at dishonesty.

Everything she says is perfectly valid, after all. He could just give her a location to a wild goose chase and then run away again.

So:]

Because...you don't need to trust me. I'll take you there myself.

Or you'll take me as far away from them as you can before we conclude there is no destination.

[ The notion leaves her seething. It's cruel of him, she thinks, to dangle in front of her precisely what she needs and to do so knowing there's little room for her to trust its legitimacy. Not deliberate on his part, she's sure — he is too stupid to be cruel — but painful all the same. ]

And I will have wasted my time on Ben Solo, yet again.

[ Snoke won't tolerate that. ]

You don't believe that. No time with me is "wasted".

[Again, Ben can't help his smarmy comment. He has no idea what is really going through her head, but he can only hope to fake it til he makes it. Because if he gets put on that ship and mailed off to Snoke, he has no idea what is going to happen to him from there.

He's trying so hard.]

Besides, you already lack a location. So even if I were lying, which I'm not, nothing changes. You still have nothing.

[His dad would be so proud of him. He hopes. He wishes.]

Your call, sweetheart.

Edited 2018-09-29 23:18 (UTC)

[ The thing about Kira is that people don't treat her like she's a person. Snoke least of all, of course, but no one else does either. She gets about 30% of the spectrum of human emotion on a good day, as seen through: fear, misery, grief, panic, hate, and anger. These are the things she sees out of people, and no one goes out of their way to have a normal conversation with her.

And she's been with Snoke since she was four years old. That's fifteen years for her to lean into the asocial nightmare of her human existence. She stares at him, unblinking, as he makes what seem to be ?? ? come-ons? ?? Which like, in concept, she is familiar with, but they have never been directed towards her.

So, congratulations. For a minute she's full-on flustered. More confused than anything else. And then she realizes she doesn't know how to respond to that, and that makes her uncomfortable and frustrated, and finally she realizes he's almost certainly fucking with her, and ah yes. There it is. Her old friend Interminable Anger.

She grabs him by the back of his neck and shoves him forward. It's too rough a shove, and it lands him in the dirt courtesy of him ... having been on his knees to begin with. What a good time. ]

On the shuttle. Now.

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