sololoquy | open post

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. ]

[Ben's waking is violent. He snaps too, all of his limbs jerking free from what seems tot be an imposed sleep paralysis. His head cracks into the small crawl space, minimizing any further violent reaction from him as he reaches to hold his head in between snarls of frustration and anger.]

Tell--tell me you didn't turn the ship around.

[They had a huge head start. If Kira had taken that away, no matter how fast the Falcon was -- he wasn't sure if he could outrun the Supremacy.]

Please.

[He might even forgive her for knocking him out if the could still get away.]

Nothing.

[ She sounds disbelieving, her breaths heaving things that barely suppress her outrage. ]

You were taking me to nothing. [ She works hard to keep her voice from getting louder, from breaking, but she isn't that strong. It snaps like the brittle, sun-bleached bones of the unfortunate who had stayed on Jakku. There is nothing for it. No way to help this. Shouting at him won't even make her feel better because it only makes her feel stupider for believing him. ] We're in hyperspace.

To an abandoned base, yeah. Sorry.

[He doesn't bother to try and lie -- he imagines that the strange feeling that he was being watched was her pulling the information she needed. He forces himself to sit up and rub sense back into himself, brain scrambling for a way out of their current predicament.

Something in his gut doesn't quite feel right.]

How long until he reaches us?

I don't know.

[ She sounds wrung out. He was going to leave her. Take her to the farthest corner of the galaxy and leave her, just like her parents had done. Or maybe they'd already been there. She's not sure which is worse, but she knows she hates it, and she hates that she had hoped he would be better than them. He'd lured her in with stories and smiles and he'd been planning to leave her. ]

This is your fault.

[ Doesn't he realize that? 'Sorry' doesn't cut it; and he doesn't sound sorry at all. ]

If you'd give me what he wanted, we would have both survived.

You have an interesting definition of "survived". Have you ever been used as bait before?

[Its a rhetorical question. He wobbles forward, intent on heading to the cockpit. She will follow, or she won't. He doesn't care -- he will worry about her after he gets away from Snoke.]

Don't kid yourself, sweetheart. I'm not stupid. I know exactly who I am.

[Son of Leia Organa. Grandson to Darth Vader. Anyone who wanted to get at Leia went for him first. That was at least half the reason he'd refused to join the Resistance in the first place.]

If you had just let me keep jumping, we would have been lightyears ahead of him by now! We're going to have to refuel.

[ No.

She is not important enough to be used as bait. Even Snoke would not come for her, were someone to try to weaponize her against him. Especially not now. She'd only been worth something as long as she was with Snoke, and when they were found, when it was made apparent she had directly disobeyed his orders to not allow herself to become distracted by Solo, there would be no forgiveness.

She is reluctant to follow Ben out, as a result, but he's ignoring one big, glaring problem— ]

A headstart is meaningless. We are connected, he and I, and the First Order controls the galaxy. He will not need to pursue us personally, but redirect his nearby forces.

So what, you just want us to stop and roll over? Is that it?

[He can't necessarily tell whether that is actually the case, but he doesn't really care. Ben Solo certainly isn't going to die here, and he's not going to jettison Kira out into space until she decides she doesn't want to be long.]

Like I said. Strap in. You're comin' with me, and we're getting the hell out of here.

[He eyeballs the star map of the lane they currently appear to be traveling. It would be risky to jump out early, but letting the jump complete felt like suicide.]

[ He hasn't figured it out yet. When he does, she's sure it will be a matter of time before she drops her on some nowhere planet as a distraction and lets her keep Snoke occupied until he's far enough away. Punishing her should keep him suitably occupied.

But she's not going to turn away the opportunity, either. ]

Where to?

[ She settles into the copilot's chair, pulling on the harness. ]

We need fuel.

[He taps the indicator light, which is now flashing a dull yellow warning. He waits a few more moments and then pulls out of the hyperspace lane.

Open space. Not a planet in sight. Great.

He checks the chart, brow furrowed. It would be challenging to refuel somewhere where the First Order wasn't.]

After that, we jump for Wild Space.

You're insane.

[ If the lurching from swerving out of a hyperspace lane and back into proper open space hadn't done it, his declaration of heading to Wild Space had. Sure, it was outside First Order control — but only because it was outside of anyone's control. What little people knew to be beyond the Outer Rim was primarily Hutt-controlled, and flooded with pirates.

Ben Solo's kind of people, she realized to her great disappointment.

She leans over the instrument panel to get a look at the charts, doing some math. They'd come a long way towards the Umbara System. Nearly there, but lost in an open nothing just to the Galactic West. They were maybe in spitting distance of a handful of First Order-controlled systems: Corellia, Cato Nemoidia, ... ]

Hapes. If you want to get fuel without getting picked up by a First Order legion, we need to refuel in Hapes.

No, I don’t think so.

[He says that almost immediately before consilting the star chart himself and realizing that she is right. Hapes is easily the safest spot between them and Wild Space. Ben makes a noise of displeasure. Aside from the paranoia of the Hapans, he was not exactly prepared for their scrutiny as foreigners.

But it was the only Inner Rim planet where they would be guaranteed fuel.]

Fine. In and out. But if the Consortium figures out you are with me, we might be toast.

[Maybe not. She wasn’t exactly a jedi, even though she was Force sensitive. He redirects the Falcon for flight.]

I'm not afraid of them.

[ Foolish, possibly. Arrogant definitely. Kira seems to recognize a moment later that it's not as easy as just … stabbing someone in the face with her lightsaber if they spot her and decide they don't want her there. That would summon Snoke's forces down upon them for sure, and the Queen Mother would certainly allow them into Hapan space for that.

She grinds her jaw a moment, sucking at her teeth and looking altogether unhappy with the logic of his argument.

Reaching up, she unclips her lightsaber from her belt, then starts untying her hair. Current mood: I'm not afraid of them, but I'm afraid of Snoke and right now that's kind of the same thing, but I don't want to admit it out loud because kriff off Ben Solo. ]

[Ben gives her a sidelong glance at that decleration, but says nothing once he realizes she is taking steps to disguise herself anyway. When he sets the autopilot, he chews on his lip briefly. She would stand out in her tattered black armored wrappings.]

I don’t think I have anything on board that will fit you. Might have to improvise.

[He picks himself out of the captain’s seat and heads back for his quarters again. There was a needle and thread in there somewhere — if Kira held still long enough, he could take something in before they arrived. Maybe.

When she eventually comes to join him, he tosses a deep blue shirt at her.]

Start with that.

Edited 2018-10-04 05:02 (UTC)

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