sololoquy | open post

Rey.

[ Her reply is small, and she doesn't spend too long looking at the faces of the people who greet them in the hangar. It gives the impression, yes, that she thinks she's too important to be doing this here and now, but it's also genuine.

She has never been to Hapes. The First Order isn't welcome there. She keeps an impassive expression, but her eyes are everywhere, marveling over the architecture of the cityscape, which has resisted the historical spread of Jedi- and Republic-influenced fashions and icons.

When her eyes skate away from the workers who greet them, they seem to accept that they're not going to be addressing her, but her ... ? ?? They clearly aren't quite sure how to characterize the relationship there. They won't quite buy Ben Solo as a manservant or footsoldier despite the fact that such an interpretation matches the body language she gives off — her clothes are another part of the reason that doesn't quite sell.

Maybe she's just his really bossy girlfriend. ]

[Ben awkwardly clears his throat when he catches the glances of the crewmen, noting their confused stares.]

I ... might have made a miscalculation on our travels. Fuel-wise.

[The two crewmen exchange glances and then grin understandingly toward "Rey" before going back to address the screw-up in front of them. The freighter was large and would incur a small tax to refuel, of course, to which Ben sighed and fished out a pouch to pass extra credits to the pair.]

Consider it paid. We'll be back later.

[Fortunately, most of the onlookers are too busy gaping at the Falcon to really pay attention to anything Ben is saying. It only serves to drive Kira's point home, but his good demeanor falls once they are cleared and everyone's backs are turned.

They're all pawing at his ship. His ship.

When he returns to Kira, he jerks his chin the direction of the beaten path behind them, leading to civilization. He doesn't speak again until they are out of earshot.]

There we go. Not so bad.

You're very good at pretending to be incompetent.

[ It is not immediately clear if this is (a) a dig that he is actually incompetent, (b) a dig that he had fooled her with his incompetence too previously, (c) a genuine admission that it had gone surprisingly well. It might be a little of all three. Kira doesn't look at him even once he starts trying to chat her up. She's lost, elsewhere.

Her thoughts drift to Jakku. It's not the first time he has forced her to think of it. With the pressure of the moment gone, she wonders at it. Rey had come to her too quickly. The stiff, regulated parts of her wanted to insist it was a fake name used for a purpose; it meant nothing. But it hadn't been just any name.

It had been her name, once.

Snoke thought she had forgotten it, that he'd taken it from her. Kriff, she'd gone years without thinking of it. Maybe he had. But it was here now, an awkward thing on her tongue. Rey. It belonged to her. ]

We should not leave them alone with the ship. My weapon is on board. [ Paranoid? Maybe. But the Dark Side often is. ] We should sleep there tonight while we wait for them to ready it.

That's...probably not a bad idea.

[Well, not entirely a bad idea.]

It might look suspicious. I announced our cargo -- they have no reason to look beyond the confirmation scan. But if we go back like we've got something to protect...or hide.

[He pauses mid-step and glances back toward his ship. Having a lightsaber on board was pretty damning, if someone did decide to go searching -- especially on this planet.]

Well, we should at least pick up something to change into. This isn't going to be the only place we stop.

You want to go shopping?

[ What a great maneuver to pull Kira out of her brooding. Instead of mopey, she's incredulous. It seems beside the point. However, she can't deny that the opportunity for food that isn't ration packets sounds tempting, and there is to consider that her shirt isn't actually her shirt, but his shirt bastardized.

And a vest that he inexplicably had in her size ?? She still hasn't examined that very far. ]

Yes. I do.

[He says it like it is the most obvious solution in the world. In fact, he's almost surprised to hear that she isn't excited for it. She couldn't possibly enjoy her current attire, could she?]

Or you can stay here. But I'm going shopping.

[He starts off down from the hanger bay.]

[ Left alone with his ship? He'd talked about the illusion of trust, yes, but that strikes a little close to the mark for her to be comfortable. In fact it's uncomfortable enough for her to turn it down handily, hastening after him. Hustling to catch up with his long legs isn't particularly dignified, to her great regret, but once she's striding alongside him again, she straightens her spine and keeps her chin up higher.

Moments like this, when she looks like the young girl she is, are rare. She hasn't been that girl since Snoke took her in, not really. But the impressions of her linger. ]

Nothing you buy to change into is going to disguise the Falcon.

Stop talking about the Falcon.

[He says it in a way that is extremely curt, a tone that brokers no argument. If she happens to look up, she will notice that he isn't looking at him -- and that he looks immensely sour again.

It takes him a fair bit of effort to swallow it down. He can't afford to have an emotional breakdown in the middle of the street.]

So you can keep ignoring the problem?

[ There's heat in her voice, made worse by the fact that he won't even look at her. She doesn't break her stride the whole time, but there's a fervid edge to her voice that has stayed mostly out of it but for talk about Snoke. It'd be easy to attribute this to the same, but — The truth is it goes beyond that.

He's clinging to something that will only disappoint him. And that sentimentality is going to get them both killed. Survival is more important, ultimately, than whatever emotional value that ship has for him. ]

You got us into this, lying to me, and now it's my neck on the line too.

Let me ask you something.

[He spins abruptly on his heel, fast enough that she will bump into him if she isn't paying attention.]

What exactly would you have done? Knowing you were going to die either way. Die anyway? Run? Take everything you care about down with you?

[He sniffs off as much of his anger as he can before turning back around and marching toward the first storefront he sees.]

I guess you'd actually have to care about someone for that last one.

[ She tears off after him. If he thinks being in public is going to save him from this conversation, he has another thing coming. The shopkeeper approaches them as they enter, and Kira turns a heated gaze on her that doesn't hesitate — ]

Return to what you were doing. We do not need your help.

[ The shopkeeper turns away, and Kira grabs Ben by the arm. ]

With the Resistance gone, your life is meaningless. There would be no point to your death. [ There's a surprising pitch in her voice towards the end of this declaration. ] If you had just given them to me, I could have protected you.

[He violently shoves her hand off of his arm before he can digest the end of her sentence.]

Protect me?

[He says it incredulously, both in part for the fact that she was at all interested in preserving him, and also because she seemed to think she was capable of keeping Snoke (or anyone else who wanted his head for his betrayal) away from him.

But she seems to be on the right track for some of her line of thinking anyway. So he focuses on that after he's made his skepticism known.]

What makes you think I would want to live a meaningless life?

[ The bite of his shock rattles her, if only because it reminds her of how disdainful Snoke had been of her fixation on him, of the distraction he had posed for her. He'd treated her like a simpering little girl, taken in by a pair of pretty eyes. She had not wanted to confront that now or ever again. It is the worse specter of the inevitable moment when Snoke tracks them down — the humiliation of the fact that Snoke had been right, and Ben had used it to hustle her. ]

Meaningless to him. [ She forces it out, flustered and frayed and spitting mad. She doesn't like being backed into this corner one bit, and she likes even less being mocked for the connection she feels to him. It has left her defensive to his question, hackles raised. ] You don't care about the Resistance, or you'd be with them. You picked a stupid time to make this your fight.

[They are having this argument in the middle of a Hapan shop. They are attracting stares. This is the one thing that gets him to calm his temper enough to use his "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" voice.]

Just because I don't want to be involved in their politics doesn't mean I want to murder my own mother or those who believe in her.

[And that, as far as he is concerned, is case closed. He's going to go FUCKING SHOPPING NOW.]

[ Unbelievable. Truly and completely unreasonable.

No, genuinely, Kira cannot see a difference between having her out of his life entirely and wanting her to die because, well, it had been the same for her. Whatever had pushed him away from his mother ought to be comparable. Who would choose to not directly connect with their family, if their family had not been disappointing some catastrophic way?

No one, that's who.

She looks as resentful as anyone might anticipate, dark and glowering and imposing despite her small profile. She trails him through the shop like a wraith, begrudging him too considerably to manage speech. ]

[He starts pulling outfits off of racks. He doesn't really know her size, but considering how she's stalking behind him, he has a vague feeling that she isn't going to engage here unless he forces her.

So, without paying any real attention to aesthetic, he shoves three completely different outfits into her arms.]

Try these.

[And then he will go and find his own.]

[ The bonus of shopping with Kira is that most things are her size. She's the size that stores are designed to be in. Especially in Hapes, where everyone is just a little slimmer and a little taller than elsewhere. She's actually safely in the average range for height instead of a little tall, and the fit is mostly designed for someone of her unremarkable bust.

It'd be Heaven, if they weren't on the run and she actually cared about fashion.

But she doesn't, and they are, and the outfits that he puts in her hands earn her chagrin in different ways. Her lip curls at one that's pastel blue, which is largely too colorful for her. The others, at least, are charcoal and some brown-gold combination respectively. She can tolerate those.

She trails after him still, committing to the notion that she won't be allowing him out of her sight lest he abandons the Sith on Hapes without her lightsaber. It'd be a cruel trick. She no longer puts those past him. When she goes in a dressing room, he's going in a dressing room. ]

[She is still following him. He almost asks but -- no. Intuition fills it in for him. She does not trust him not to leave her here. Fine. Fair enough -- he'd have likely done the same thing, if he was in her shoes.

He takes longer to find something for himself. Hapan fashion is clearly too high class for him. Even the more casual wear is relentlessly pawed through without settling on anything.

Eventually and reluctantly, he finds some darker, royal blue and eggshell suits, and one sort-of gown garment attached to some smaller, more simple piece. Its far too flashy as a whole, but he could work with parts of it.

He does his best not to share his discomfort with Kira as he heads toward a fitting room. He only steps out to briefly observe himself in the large corner mirror. None of these outfits fit him very well -- he is too tall and broad shouldered. Everything looks slightly tight.]

This isn't going to work.

[He finally mumbles it, conceding.]

[ Kira has the opposite luck. She emerges with him to consider the corner mirror, but only in one of the two outfits she had deemed barely tolerable. The brown undershirt runs long like a tunic, all the way to her knees with two slits up the side, but the forearm cuffs are banded gold. Over it she wears a golden vest that dusts down to her boots as well.

With the curls still in her hair from letting it loose after all this time, she looks like a senator or an ambassador, not the galaxy's most efficient serial killer. ]

You're right.

[ She hates her own clothes too. Too light, not like her at all. That's the point, of course. But it sits poorly with her to look in the mirror and see … a human being. She doesn't look like a weapon, like this, and being anything more had been what got her into this trouble with Ben Solo in the first place.

She hasn't yet imagined a future beyond it that doesn't involve somehow remaining as she is. She doesn't know how to be anything else.

But Ben looks ridiculous, and so it's worth announcing that they're both in bad shape shopping around here. The colors are nice, and the design makes it apparent just how he could take better advantage of his blessings were he anything less than a dirty smuggler, but the ill fit keeps her from focusing too long on 'uwu Ben Solo.' She glances away from him. ]

We'll hire a tailor.

[ There's no way around it for him, at least. And Kira doesn't have any particular compunctions against using the Force to, well, force someone into their service while they're here. They'll be gone back into hyperspace before anyone knows what hit them anyway. ]

Wait--

[He's staring at Kira in the mirror, blinking like he is trying to clear his vision of what he's seeing. She looks -- like a totally different person. It doesn't match the smuggler aesthetic, but its a damn good disguise. They might have to change their cover story...

But. That's a good look. He turns to appraise her more obviously, reaching in an attempt to turn her around so he can get the full scope of what he's looking at. He's so in awe that he's not really thinking about the fact that she's probably not going to like him manhandling her.

#smugglers]

No, this is--perfect.

[ His hands close on her shoulders and she's too startled to do anything for a moment because she's not used to anyone daring to touch her, let alone grab and manhandle her. Kira staggers slightly as a result despite all her usual composure, eyes wide as he spins her so he can get a look at her back.

By then she throws out her arm to shrug him off, swatting violently and twirling to snarl at him with her lip curled and a flush rising in her cheeks. It might be the first time in her life anything related to her has been judged as perfect, even if it's only a tertiary connection. ]

Don't touch me.

[ Priorities. ]

Alright alright! Sorry--

[He lifts his hands, but Kira's proclamation has already brought the ire of just about all the Hapans in the store. Several of the women move closer to Kira, clearly trying to decide if she can defend herself or if she needs backup

Karabast. Think fast. He can't stop himself from stammering, though the nerves are born of the fact that he knows that their cover is inches from being blown.]

P-please forgive me. I--only meant to pay you compliment.

[Half true. She did look quite nice in the outfit but--he was definitely speaking in terms of disguisabilty and not hawking her hot body. Honest.]

[ She grabs him by the throat like she's ready to squeeze him until his head pops like a champagne cork, but it is his simpering which stops her. Kira heaves out heavy breaths like a rancor coming down from a blind rage, and she slowly takes stock of the people around her with her preternatural sixth sense, the prickling on the back of her neck telling her that she needs to handle this delicately.

Things Kira is good at: literally not that. Please. Anything else. ]

Next time I suggest using your mouth instead of your hands.

[ Those sure are words she just said out loud. It's enough to make the Hapans and their propriety glance away and busy themselves with the racks of clothing because they'd clearly just stepped into something they didn't fully understand. There's a lot to unpack here.

She releases him. ]

Take off those clothes. You look ridiculous.

Right. Yeah.

[Oh.

Ben doesn't actually know what to do with that collection of commands that Kira has just given him, so he stands there stammering wordlessly for a second before he...slips back into the dressing room, both embarrassed and called out to change back into his sad shabby clothes.

He clears his throat, keeping his hands folded behind his back so there is no further misunderstanding.]

I still think you should hold onto that one. It--looks nice on you. And its -- different enough from your usual look.

[He says this quietly.]

[ She's not sure what she did to disband the peanut gallery, but she's glad for it. She feels more at ease with eyes on them. She's too used to people looking the other way, avoiding being too close to her, that drawing attention sits poorly with her. Her work doesn't traditionally involve spending a terribly long time with anyone, let alone caring about the opinions of strangers.

But when he comes out and reiterates the 'compliment' — she hardly considers it such when he's complimenting her by telling her that she doesn't look like herself — she gives some pause. Glances at him, evaluating. ]

Fine.

[ He is unfortunately the one who's better at managing eyes on them, even if he has managed to incense her into starting a scene. ]

But keep your hands off of me.

[ They look like a mismatched pair like this, but she makes no comment on it. She goes into the dressing room to get the clothes she had changed out of and heads to the front. Instead of paying, she uses the Force to compel the attendant to give her a bag for her old clothes, and asks that she overlook the payment this time. A gift.

Her voice is low enough to not attract too much attention as she impresses this demand on the shop attendant. ]

A tailor will still be needed, if you're to change. [ 'If' is emphasized here to echo her earlier sentiment — she hardly sees the point, when he is so stubbornly set on keeping the Falcon. ]

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