sololoquy | open post

[ There's a flicker of something light behind her eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or pride. Whatever it is, it's satisfied with his laughter, even awkward and exaggerated as it is. It's not like she knows the difference. The smile doesn't hit her mouth fully, but the corners turn up just slightly as she lets her gaze skate away from him. It's too obvious that she's avoiding looking at him, really. There's nothing else remotely interesting in this room. ]

I train. [ So, no. Not entirely a joke. And truthfully, the staring at people thing probably comes from (1) the fact that she's rarely in social situations at all, (2) the fact that he's the oddest, most fascinating person she's ever met. She stares at him far more often than anyone else. In fact, she prefers to avoid looking at most people. ] I didn't come here to talk. I prefer you when you aren't speaking.

Yeah well --

[She didn't really need to say as much. In fact, his feelings might be a little hurt -- or they would have been, if Kira hadn't taken him hostage once before. Still, wanting him to only be silent is a little too real.]

-- I don't exactly keep a lot of company 'round here, so.

[Excuse him for calling her out on the staring. His sleeping quarters are evidence enough that he doesn't entertain often. Or ever. There are a few empty ration packets scattered around, clothes shoved in every corner imaginable, a few blaster parts scattered on his nightstand.

He forces himself to turn away from her, in hopes that he'll stop thinking about her staring at him.]

Don't stare. It's rude. And you'll give people the wrong idea.

What idea is that?

[ She sounds genuinely curious. Moreso, now that he points out that he doesn't keep a lot of company. She chooses to overlook the 'around here' part of his admission. For all her talk of wanting him to be silent, for once, she seems conversational. It's almost normal, if not for the fact that she has the social skills of a genetically modified chimera built in a terrible genetic experiment by a pair of psychopaths perpetuating their childhood abuses. But other than that. ]

[He is so not equipped for this conversation.]

The idea that you want someone else's attention on you.

[That's a little less blatant than the actual answer he probably should have given. But its not his job to teach Snoke's killing machine the ins and outs of social grace. He isn't particularly good at it himself.

And now this is somehow more awkward.]

Which you obviously don't actually want.

[ She weighs that opinion for a minute but ultimately doesn't confirm or deny. Whether or not she wants his attention on her is seemingly irrelevant to the situation, after all. If he has something he wants to be doing, he'd do it regardless of what she wants. Kira does not imagine her wants rank anywhere of significance — for him, or anywhere else, so long as there is no violence behind the communication of those wants. ]

Read it out loud.

[ That seems to solve all of it. ]

And I'll stop staring.

[ Then she doesn't have to go through the difficulty of conversing with him, he will be spared her staring, and she will still sate this gnawing feeling in her chest that demands his company. A win all around. Go go gadget problem solving skills. ]

You said you--

[No, you know what? He isn't going to complain about Kira no longer telling him to shut up. Or, he wouldn't, if not for her suggestion. If possible, he looks even more uncomfortable -- and he has to clear his throat before he can reply.]

Actually, I think I prefer the staring.

[ An unexpected response. Kira's eyes flash wide, briefly, and she staggers on that response. It's more abrupt than she had thought it would be, despite a reasonable compromise. She's clearly stepped in something, but she can't imagine what.

Maybe it's private.

Maybe it's personal.

She probes at his feelings, but it's just discomfort. Congrats. Now he gets more intense staring. He unlocked that secret reward. ]

Why?

Because.

[He's a little defensive when he says it, closing the book and shoving it under the pillow of his cot like it never existed. This is how he dies. With Snoke's assassin coaxing him to read Stardust to her.

He needs to say something more.]

What happened to not wanting to hear me talk?

[ She is put in an uncomfortable position by that. At this point, it feels like they're just playing hot potato with that visceral discomfort. She grapples with it a moment. It's hard to respond to him without being like 'I hate your entire personality but your voice sounds nice.' That, also, is not entirely true. She only hates the way he makes her feel mocked and human at the same time. ]

In the interest of killing time, I've made an exception. [ Then she gets an idea and goes for the logical appeal. This would be easier if she were good with people, and used to relying on anything but blunt honesty and brute force. ] You told me my time in your presence would not be wasted. Unless you have another suggestion?

Alright, fine. Fine. Fine.

[If she's going to be that way, then he's going to make it his business that she regrets it. So, Ben sits himself up and reaches under his pillow to grab the book, folding the corner of one page so he doesn't lose his spot later.

Then he goes back to the beginning and. Struggles for a moment to get started. But then he goes on.

As it turns out, Ben has inherited his mother's dramatic flair. He starts off in a rather droll narrator voice, but when it comes to voices, he assigns a different one to each character. It is a slow start, spending much of the time building up the lead male character to be charismatic and do-no-wrong.

If she doesn't stop him before the leading female (and love interest) is introduced and summarily put in harm's way for the male's heroic rescue, he will pause shortly after.]

--this is. Kind of long. Are you sure you want me to read the whole thing?

[ To her credit, Kira follows through on her promise. She does stop staring at him, instead picking some of the blaster parts off his nightstand and diverting her attention to fidgeting with them, piecing components together and inspecting them while he reads. It keeps her hands occupied with something mindless while she focuses on the story.

He has a calming voice when he's not being obnoxious, rumbling and consistently dipping in and out of different characters, and it's a good story. She hadn't expected fiction, somehow, but this is an adventure story. The hero is charming and brave and he swoops in to rescue that woman. It's all very silly, frankly. The world Kira knows does not work this way. There are no heroes who swoop in and save anyone. There is only the cold reality that if you want to survive, you cultivate power, and those who have power seek to use it.

The absurdity of it, so removed from reality, does not stop her from looking up with wide, frantic eyes when he interrupts himself. The panic doesn't strike the rest of her face, but by the look in her eyes, you'd think he had threatened to depressurize the cabin. ]

Don't stop.

[ It comes out tight like an order. Her hand grips the blaster component a little tighter. But of course he's bored. He's read it all before. By the look of it, she suspects multiple times, but she tries to barter anyway— ]

Skip ahead to where you were.

[ Then he can go back to reading, and she can just be a voyeur to it. ]

Edited (what if i remembered to call her kira more often than 30% of the time) 2018-10-01 15:11 (UTC)

[He notices it, and fights the smile it threatens to bring -- really, it'd be a sad sort of smile anyway. She's hooked on his every word, but that makes sense of course. If she was raised by Snoke, he can't imagine she's ever been read to. Had she ever read fiction to start with? Aside from all the First Order propaganda, that is.

He considers her demand for a moment, dropping his gaze while all his sympathetic thoughts climb over each other. When he had agreed to take her on board, he hadn't expected this sort of behavior. He expected the hovering, the ordering about, and had been prepared for that with his own rebuttals. He has no rebuttal for this, only the reminder that she is a fascist killing machine...in theory.

But what kind of fascist killing machine wanted teen romance novels read to them?

Ben decides before long that he can't think about it too deeply. He only has room to care about one organization, and that organization certainly wasn't going to be the First Order.]

Okay.

[He flips the book back to its dog-earred page and picks back up from where he'd left off, trying to remember the voice acting he'd already committed to. They are deep in the plot now, with the hero going through some self-discovery plot and discovering the Force within him, and how it connects him to the rest of the galaxy.

The focus switches from introduction to the hero being chased down, and then to being threatened. The love interest taken hostage, being forced to choose between autonomy and her life. Somewhere from before he'd read to Kira, a Wookiee companion had been introduced, and his life is to be traded for the love interest. He doesn't translate the Shyriiwook -- there's too much drama to bother.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Kira mess with the blaster parts.]

[ The components don't actually fit together. Kira realizes this rather quickly, noting before he gets through another chapter that there's not actually a complete blaster here. She gives up around then, setting them back on the nightstand where she'd found them, arranging them so that he can easily tell everything's there.

Afterwards she just tips her head back against the wall, shutting her eyes lest he think she's staring. She's so impassive as to look like she may have fallen asleep, but every once in a while she furrows her brow as though trying to parse some part of the story made difficult by hearing it rather than reading it, or some piece that she has to pick up on quickly now that she has skipped a considerable chunk and things need to be slotted into place.

It's an oddly peaceful moment. She loses herself in it, forgets the distracting ambient thoughts of maybe she ought to stare at him because she does want to give him the idea that she wants something from him.

Choosing to stop him feels impossible, but she knows eventually, that's what it needs to come down to. They will arrive. There is a task at hand still. And it simmers low in the back of her mind until she cannot physically ignore it anymore. She opens her eyes as he finishes a chapter. ]

Why is the Resistance in the Umbara System?

[Ben pauses mid-breath -- he'd been doing exactly what he'd asked her not to do, after all: staring. He's somewhat surprised by the way she chooses to interrupt, though ... not really. It was bound to come up eventually.]

You should probably ask someone who's actually in the Resistance for a proper answer.

[He points that out first, making a new dog-ear and shutting the book with a light snap. He shouldn't be so annoyed -- the peace was never going to last. But he can't help it.]

Makes sense to me. Where would you go if you were trying to hide from someone, aside from all of the obvious?

[ His breath hitches, and Rey's head tilts, puzzling over that reaction. Not surprise, not exactly, not arrested by the suddenness of her question. But he did not hesitate in dog-earing the book, did not need to look up at her. Her stomach flops with that awareness.

Fortunately the subject matter is too dire as to permit examination of that fact. ]

I'd never delude myself to believe I could hide from him.

[ Cynicism pollutes the declaration, making it sound faintly haughty and superior, but beneath that lies a bedrock of bitter resentment. Not of Snoke, necessarily. No, it's too complicated for that. Snoke has been the closest thing she has to a parent; she owes him too much, since he had taken her in by choice after her parents had not been able to rid themselves of her fast enough. He'd given her life worth and meaning. Even if he was a monster. But resentment that he has shackled her to him like this, resentment that now that he is not so giving, she cannot escape.

There is nowhere in the galaxy far enough to flee someone who has infected your mind. ]

They were fools to think they could.

[Ben watches her in silence for a moment before exhaling in defeat out of his nose, standing and moving for the door of his quarters after shoving the book back under his pillow.]

Yeah well. They would have, if not for me.

[There's some obvious guilt the way he says it, but he is careful not to look at her when he does. He doesn't want to think about his betrayal, and he certainly doesn't want to admit that she's managed to get to him in any sense of the word.

Distance seems like a better idea. There's nothing valuable in his quarters anyway. Just little sentimental pieces of a life he doesn't live anymore.]

[ He withdraws. Instinctively Kira rolls up to her feet, but he's already in the doorway by then, and she stills. It would be silly to chase him. There is nothing she has to say to him. He's right. He is the one who has turned them over, even if Snoke would have found them eventually. That's not a bad thing, as far as she's concerned. It's the smart thing to do. It's what a survivor would do.

It shouldn't be eating him alive. He's ruthless. Selfish. Those things are dependable. If he's letting guilt get the better of him, he's a liability to her and her mission. Her hands ball into fists at her sides and she huffs out a snarling sound, glancing away from the door.

She takes up residency on the cot and takes the book from under his pillow, stealing glances at the first few pages. Most of them are not words she knows by sight, and she can't really sound them out. It's a futile endeavor without him. ]

[It is some time before Ben comes back, but when he does, he is carrying ration packets. He spots her nose in his book and worries at his lip for just a moment while his mind struggles to reconcile what he is looking at.

She's so curious.]

...you can keep it, if you want. I've already finished it twice over.

[May as well keep her entertained. He holds out the packet to her wordlessly, looking tired.]

No.

[ She folds the book shut with too much haste and tucks it back away under his pillow. Swallowing thickly doesn't gather her composure properly, doesn't stow the consternation that furrows her brow in response to her inability to muddle through the pages as well as she would like to. It feels like failure, and failure has always led to pain.

What she does not tell him is that she has no use for it. What she does not tell him is that she can't read it anyway, so keeping it would be no good because she can't finish it twice over. Instead she looks accusingly at the rations packet as though he were here to bring her poison. She snatches it out of his hand anyway, but doesn't open it yet. She'll wait to see him open his and eat it, thanks.

It hits her then, a moment later, that he has offered her something. Two somethings, actually. ]

You're my prisoner. [ Which sounds like a moody accusation: start acting like it. No one gives her things without strings, and more to the point, prisoners don't give things up willingly. And prisoners don't blame themselves for giving information that was threatened out of them. ]

[Ben can only shrug in response as he opens his own packet and begins picking at its contents while watching her struggle to save face.]

Uh. Is that supposed to be a threat? New information?

[He can hear the accusation in her voice, and instead of letting it bug him, he moves to sit at the edge of his cot -- away from her, but still sharing space.]

If you're planning on locking me up and throwing away the key later, I'll enjoy my last few hours of imaginary freedom, thanks.

By sharing your food and offering me your book.

[ She does a good job of making gifts sound like accusations. Swiveling her head to watch him, she keeps her eyes fixed. If the lesson earlier about staring sunk in, it means she certainly expects something more out of him.

Fortunately, she has the social acumen of a gecko, so here it comes: ] What do you want? Do you think that if you're kind to me, I'll let them go?

[This girl is a piece of work.]

You know, this might be a revelation for you, but sometimes, people are just nice. The proper response is "thank you", to which I say --

[He reaches for her ration packet and passes her his own opened one, which he has already eaten a piece from to prove he is not trying to poison her. Afterwards, he crosses his legs and leans back.]

You're welcome.

[ When he swaps out the ration packets, she stiffens further. It's not only tacit and familiar in a way that she has not earned with anyone (nor has he earned with her, honestly), but it's seamless. He has observed her quirks and accounted for them and solved the issue, even if it does mean giving her food that he has already stuffed his dirty fingers into. (It's not the worst thing that's ever happened.)

The trouble is that she still doesn't believe him. If anything it only makes her more suspicious. Something truly awful must wait for them in the Umbara System. An ugly trap. His 'few hours of imaginary freedom' are likely her own. He has set a trap for her, and now he's trying to keep her docile long enough to see it through to the end.

Panic claws up her throat, and she closes her fist around the packet, crumpling it somewhat.

It's too late, of course. There's nothing to be done. She had put herself on this ship with him because she had chosen, foolishly, to regard him as stupid and her own skills as greater. But she can imagine no alternate reason. ]

The truth.

That is the truth. Tell me I'm lying. You Force-y people can do that, right?

[He opens the second ration pack and starts eating out of it. As it turns out, it is also not poisoned.

There was, of course, also the fact that he spent most of his time alone, and that Kira was the first real company he's bothered to entertain in years. And, perhaps, the fact that he doesn't lose anything by keeping her comfortable.

But he stands to gain quite a lot.]

[ No. No, he's not lying. That's the most puzzling part. Her rationale mind can recognize it, but she feels foggy and clouded as a result of her own paranoia, doubting what the Force is telling her. It makes her want to reach deep into his mind, as she had before, and pull out what she wanted, pry him open and see for herself what was in there, what motivated him, what he felt and feared and — ]

Yes. [ She says tightly. ] We can do that.

[ His honesty is a complication she does not need. Every piece of Ben Solo is a complication she does not need. But assured of his honesty, for now, she opens her palm and looks down at the rations packet. She opens the top cautiously and starts picking out crumbled pieces of packed protein. ]

I'll take it. [ She says stubbornly. ] Your book. I'll take it.

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