sololoquy | open post

[ First time he'd ever seen it, and he is giving it to her. Kira clutches the book tighter to her, as though she's positive now that he will rip it away. Some part of her screams to throw it down and not allow him to use it to get his hooks in her. But she can't bring herself to.

She has never owned anything. Not even herself. She cannot turn away the gift, even seeing the strings tied to it. The trap it sets. Her tongue is weighed down by that fear, though, stopping her from extending a promise that she wants to make: that if he returns with her to the First Order, he could have a hundred paperbacks with the credits they'd pay him for his information.

It's an uncanny sight, the way she curls around it, looking small even in the dark robes of a First Order enforcer, dark but compact and terribly young and wide-eyed for the horrors she inflicts. ]

Why were you on Toydaria?

[ There's a story there. And she's developing a taste for them. ]

[He should have left that part out. Ben makes a slightly exasperated noise, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably.]

Aaah...I had a shipment to pick up. Toydaria has a lot of history, some of the wealthy class finds it easy to pick up things there that they can't find anywhere else.

[There is a pause as he rubs at his neck.]

Only...they wanted me to lowball 'em. I don't know how much you know about toydarians, but lets just say that they were not too happy with me. They're not too fond of humans to start with, so...

[Ben clears his throat and gestures vaguely.]

I couldn't argue them down, so I stole a bunch of puffer pigs and had to break atmo while they were running loose in the hull. Haven't been back.

A thief, too.

[ She doesn't sound impressed. Coolly critical, actually. It shouldn't be; stealing from Toydarians is hardly the First Order's concern. Most of the territories within Hutt Space still resisted falling in line. and as such, fell outside of their protections. But her concern is not with the supposed victims, but with the flouting of law.

But then, wasn't she doing that? Disappearing with Ben Solo in the first place? She had been warned not to waste her time on him, not to allow this to distract her from her purpose. ]

No wonder your ship smells like it does.

[ She stuffs the rest of her rations into her mouth and sets the empty package aside on his night table. Then she's on her feet. ]

How much longer until we reach — [ She doesn't finish her sentence. In fact, she drops the book she had been clutching and sinks to one knee, letting out a terrible snarl of pain that cannot be called a scream or a cry. Either would be too delicate. A voice screams in her head, demanding to know where she is. Snoke has discovered she did not return with the stormtroopers.

The connection he holds to her is not so precise as to garner the specifics of her location, hopefully not of Ben Solo. She cannot make proper reply this way. But his discontent sears across her consciousness so that her vision tunnels, swims. ]

[Ben jumps like he's seen a ghost when Kira snarls, catching himself on the doorframe and staring with wide eyes. He cannot even begin to guess what is going on but -- some deep pit forms in his stomach that coaxes his heart to hammer in fear. Instinct tells him to back away -- slowly, so as to not draw her attention (or the attention of whatever was spying upon her).

But the empathetic part of him doesn't want to leave. The empathetic part of him wants to check and make sure she is ok. What he ends up with is ... still being frozen in the door for longer then he has any right to be.

Eventually, he leans a bit closer, his conflict visible in his expression. What does he do?]

[ She plants her hand on the floor, letting the cool bring her down as she pants through the lingering aftershocks of the pain. Snoke does not hurry out of her mind, does not withdraw his presence easy. There is no purpose to it. His message is no clearer for it — disappointment, rage, and an implicit demand for explanation. But the pain can be instructive. He would say it was there to teach her a lesson.

And he would call her ungrateful for writing off his orders to be here, after all he had done for her.

Picking up her head, her breath still comes out foggy and rasping. She spots Ben in the doorway, frightened, panicked, but not fleeing. She doesn't know what to do with that. The pain is over, but her vision is spotty still. She is dazed. Light-headed. ]

He's coming. [ She sounds half-asleep saying it, her body weakened by the lancing psychic pain. ] I told you: there's no hiding. [ Slowly, she pushes herself to her feet. It looks like she probably shouldn't be there, judging by the swaying. ] I hope you were telling the truth.

[There is a full thirty seconds when he goes pale. “He’s coming”

Kira will only have a moment to pick up his intent before he dashes from his room toward the cockpit. No way in hell was he completing this deal if Snoke was just goig to apprehend and torture him anyway. If everyone was to end up dead, then—

He leaps into the cockpit and pulls the Falcon from hyperspace prematurely, leaving them to grind to a halt in open space. Think. Think. There had to be a way to outpace the Supremacy, even if it meant hiding on a Core World. Think. THINK.]

Stop.

[ She can't quite get her footing. The first few steps are a stumbling mess, knocking her into the doorway, gripping it to steady herself for only an instance before she tries to trip down the hall after him. Her voice is a croak in the back of her throat. Barely coming out, barely audible. She slips and nearly cracks her head on the dejarik board, but for the fact that she grips it with both hands first. ]

Wait. [ She pushes her way into the cockpit. The white lines of hyperspace are gone. Vanished. With it, the suspended calm of those few hours together. No running; no hiding. She'd been right. Why had she been right? ] You promised. You told me you'd take me to the base. Don't you dare turn back.

I’m not turning back. I’m—staying right here.

[The cheer in his voice is gone.]

Snoke wasn’t part of the equation.

[He wasn’t about to setence an entire system to the maw if the maw was just going to devour him with the others. Nevermind the fact that the base he had been taking her to had long since been abandoned. That wouldn’t matter to the Supreme Leader, of course — he would unleash genocide upon the entire planet.]

I’m sorry. It was—easier when I had a proper chance to live.

[ Traitor. Coward. Cheat. All of these are things she knew about him already, but levied against her, it feels like a betrayal anyway. He had dared to show her kindness, and that makes the crime more severe. He'd tricked her. She'd seen him coming, and he'd tricked her.

Murderous, she snarls, reaching out a hand for the Force. ]

If you don't give me what you promised me, Snoke will be the least of your worries.

[ Air closes around his windpipe, bearing down, strangling him without ever requiring her to touch him. Good. For the best. He won't trick her again. ]

No he won't--

[The Force choke cuts him off. His eyes bulge and he claws at the invisible hold that he can somehow feel, but fail to pry away at the same time. Ben struggles to wheeze, bracing himself against the Falcon's flight controls.

His lungs struggle, he feels his face growing warm, but he manages to turn the seat to stare up at her, searching for something in her eyes.

Whatever he is looking for isn't there. But he's still looking. Either Kira will kill him or Snoke will. Probably after they've bled him dry of what few Resistance secrets he possesses.]

[ The crushing anxiety of Snoke's inevitable discovery of them presses down on her, prickling the hair on the back of her neck. She sweats with it, not with the effort of crushing his windpipe, and her hand shakes. She will be punished. She had known the moment she saw him on Ryloth where this would end, but she had hoped that results might temper it. Hope, that foolish flimsy thing that flickered and persisted in even the darkest parts of her. Making it all the more painful.

Just as she had hoped to find something authentic in the way he had made offerings to her — his food, his space, his things. She has never shared anything with anyone, and only been given the barest necessities. But for him. Her teeth grind, wearing down, biting back hurt to replace it with unfettered rage lest the grief of the betrayal sink in. ]

Yes. [ Savage, snapped. ] Because if you don't bring me to the Umbara System, you will not survive to meet him. [ She cannot fly the ship alone. He had warned her that, and she had seen it firsthand when watching him lean across her with his long arms. It is not a ship designed to fly alone. She needs him. She loosens her grip. ] Bring me to the base. Show me what was promised, and you will not suffer at my hand or anyone else's.

[ She can't promise it, but she does. It is not within her power to protect him from Snoke. But she needs to try, needs to find some way to make him comply where violence won't properly do. There are no teeth behind it. If she is to avoid punishment when the Supremacy arrives, she needs results; in order to get results, she needs him. Otherwise she's just adrift in the Falcon because she'd allowed him to distract her again, and even his death would not mitigate Snoke's disappointment. ]

[Ben collapses when she releases him, taking large gulps of air and coughing in between them to try and reopen his airways.]

So. Die now, or die later. Sounds like good odds.

[His voice is gravely when he says it, but there is something in the way that he smears over his face to say that he doesn't believe her. Even if she were telling the truth, Snoke would never heed her whims. He was the son of Leia Organa. He would be bait, until Snoke inevitably realized that his mother would not take that bait.]

You're not a good liar.

[He imagines that Snoke knows that too. Ben struggles to sit back up, a headache forming between his eyes as he tries to divine a way out of this spectacular mess.]

We can turn and head for the Core. Would he follow there?

I told you. Trying to hide from him is a fantasy.

[ He's in her head. Rooted there in her subconscious, reaching across the galaxy if he needs to. There is no severing the connection between a master and apprentice. But why would Ben Solo know that? He's a fool, a child playing at being his father. She cannot explain it to him. Not to someone who barely even understands that he has the Force in him too.

She strides for the instrument panel, trying to work past him to regather their flight path, to return them to hyperspace, to get them to the Umbara System where the base is. ]

If you want to survive, you'll give him what he wants. [ What he offered her. The location of the base. ]

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, he's manipulating you into believing there's no escape so you won't even bother to try?!

[That snaps outward before he can stop it. The stress of the situation is getting to him. His genes weren't particularly benign -- somewhere in there sleeps the progeny of Darth Vader. Ben doesn't want to wake him up, so he takes a moment to shakily exhale and wriggle off his discomfort.]

Don't bother. I know a bad deal when I see one.

[He shoves her hands away in favor of rerouting coordinates for another jump.]

[ She shoves at him, a petty and childish gesture that emphasizes the lack of bite. Ultimately she cannot force him to do anything. She can threaten him and torture him, but the clock is ticking down so she can't put him out of commission for long, and she certainly can't kill him. The alternative, as he sees it, is death. There's no way to sidestep it.

All she has is her righteous anger that he would dare suggest she's just some delusional child who doesn't know better, who has been fooled into believing in Snoke's power. There is no trick in the splitting pain in her head, and no trick in the First Order's military. But worse is the suggestion that she might otherwise try because it digs deep down and prods at a question within her — might she? If she believed it possible, wouldn't she disregard all Snoke had done for her and flee?

She's sick with the thought. Guilty, ashamed. Ungrateful, ungrateful, ungrateful. ]

You don't know anything. [ Spitting venom and nothing else. That's where she's at. Sensitive to it for the fact that it only highlights how familiar the feeling of powerlessness is. She's used to only feeling it around Snoke, however, and exerts her power over everyone else to make her feel better about that. ] Take me to the base.

[He says nothing as he throttles the Falcon into hyperspace. She wants the base? She'll get the base. It's empty anyway -- and what did he care if a bunch of Umbarans died? It was his only chance to escape in the chaos. Probably.

But he's still not going there. He's just going to keep jumping until the Falcon needed to refuel.]

I know enough.

[His mother was going to kill him herself if she ever found out he was kidnapping the First Order's greatest assassin. Or at least attempting to.]

You're going to get us both killed.

[ There's a tremor in her voice and her hands as it settles in. The calm before the storm, really. With fear gripping her, killing him and taking her chances with piloting the Falcon herself is looking pretty good. She could figure it out. Fly herself to the Umbara system and search for traces of the Resistance there. It's not glamorous, but it might lessen her punishment.

Lessen. Not remove. Ben is the only one who could get them to the Umbara base in time to destroy the rebels. Without his cooperation, she can't avoid punishment. But she might survive at least. Her standards are lowering steadily. ]

I'm dead no matter what. You can do me the favor and make it quick, or you can ride this out with me.

[And, with a swallowing of his nerves and careful compartmentalization, he looks over his shoulder to pass her a (tired) smirk.]

Personally, I'd like to delay death and/or immense torture as long as possible. Maybe that's just me.

You don't need to delay it. If you give me the location of the Resistance in Umbara, there'll be nothing to delay. They'll be gone.

[ Doesn't he get that? She's going to be punished for not turning them up, and he'll be killed for protecting them. Nothing less. There's something plaintive and raw in her voice now, something that grapples with trying to see his logic. ]

Help me. You'll be celebrated for ending the war.

Oh yeah, I often hear about how much Snoke rewards children of the Resistance fighters.

[Ben barks out laughter before he can stop himself. He can’t help it. The whole idea that he will live through this is utterly insane to him.]

Yeah, like the rest of my family, right? Give me a break.

[Where were the accolades when his mother had gone to save the New Republic from themselves before Snoke had obliterated all of them?

The Falcon drops out of hyperspace again. The Ileenium system. Once the hyperdrive charged again, they would head for the unknown regions.]

I won't let you take me down with you.

[ She had not suffered everything at the hands of Snoke only to die because she'd trusted Ben kriffing Solo. He was out of his mind to believe she'd just sit here and take it. She reaches out for his mind, then, resigning herself to the difficult task of flying the Falcon solo once she can put him to sleep.

It'll take the Force, but she'll find a way. Better to try than to allow him to take her further and further from her goal. She'd given him a chance, and he'd brought them to the Ileenium System. It was better than he deserved.

She digs her hooks into his mind and tries to force him into sleep. ]

You’ve already let him—

[He feels her dig and immediately flails to try and throw her off, but she’s caught him unawares. The way he slips into sleep is hardly peaceful — he looks to have fainted, slumped in the pilot’s chair with a groan of displeasure. She was going to deliver them right into the mouth of the devil.

He does not ahve a chance to confess his deception: the base was there, still standing, but abandoned. Perhaps she or Snoke might get lucky and trace some manner of electronic information left behind, but the base had been ransacked by the Umbarans already. After all, he had said he would take her to a base — he never specified how active it would be.]

[ Panic shudders out of her all at once as she watches him drop. There's no grace to it. He'd thought the whole way through. She unbuckles him from the pilot's chair carefully and hefts him over her shoulder. He's heavier than he looks. Thick instead of lanky, despite his height. She pushes through, muscles warning her that she's at her upwards limit dragging him around like this, and leaves him on his cot.

She snatches up the book from the floor on her way out and takes it back to the cockpit with her, where she reprograms the hyperdrive to bring them to the Umbara System. It will take a while to reach from here, she realizes, and she frowns as she looks at the nearby starmaps. The Ileenium System. Why would he bring them here? What was he thinking?

Brushing it off, she finishes prepping the flight path from the pilot's chair, then frowns over the instrument panel at the task before her. He's right. Her arms are much too short. She huffs out a breath and draws on that fear that runs like a violent current through her. When she reaches a step she can't do without a copilot, she uses the Force to supplement her reach.

It's not as dextrous as a person might be, not really. She slams the instrument panel a little too hard, pulls the level in a jerky fashion. But she gets it.

She doesn't know where in the Umbara System to go, granted, but it will be easier to interrogate him when they're in the right area. When white lines streak past the viewport, she gets up and returns to his bunk.

For a while she just watches him sleep, frowning and puzzling over the softness of his features and what they belied. He wasn't just a coward. He was a fool, believing he'd be able to outrun Snoke. The fear he'd shown mirrored that which she suppressed, though, and it was hard not to feel something twist in her chest for him.

Yes. Snoke might kill him, as much as she didn't want that.

Kira puts it aside, resolving herself to settle that matter later and instead reaching for his mind. She'd tried asking. She would have to search him, now, for the coordinates. The location of that base was in his head, and if he wouldn't give it to her, she'd just have to pull it out herself. She makes an effort to go more slowly, this time. To be less of a blunt instrument as she intrudes, which does not eliminate the pain, but perhaps lessens it. ]

Edited 2018-10-03 14:51 (UTC)

[Ben is a restless sleeper, especially when he's been induced when under stress. She'll find there is little resistance when she pushes through his mind, though he groans with displeasure in his sleep whenever he does note her presence. Gradually, he curls in on himself, the mattress curling with his center of gravity so squarely positioned near the center of it.

The base was on the largely uninhabited pocket of Umbara, but a cold chill flows through him at the thought of it -- the same sort he felt whenever he thought too hard about the Supreme Leader, associated with death and unpleasant things. A desecrated base from the days of the Clone Wars, and an empty hanger.

As the pain grows worse, Ben starts to stir, attempting to shake off that foreign feeling in his mind.]

[ Empty.

Kira pulls back all at once, her eyes snapping open and flashing as the cold awareness sinks in. There is nothing for them in the Umbara System. There is no forgiveness by Snoke, no way to placate him and bargain for forgiveness. She will be punished. Tortured. And then she will be made to make amends in another way, set back to her hunt.

It sinks in then, the notion of hiding. Fleeing. Entertaining the possibility of actual escape comes with some struggle. She doesn't know where to start. But there is no other version of this where she avoids pain. As a result, she isn't eager to rouse him. She just waits there for him to wake. ]

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