sololoquy | open post

[ Her dreams aren't pleasant. They never are. But in these dreams, Snoke has wormed his way into her subconscious, and he pries open her fears as a way to better understand what crime she has committed against him. There's something needy and clinging and desperate rooted there, and as he prods at it, her arms twitch tighter around the book, clutching it to her chest.

It has her on the defensive, subconsciously, but also eager to grasp for anything that might wake her. When the blanket settles on her, Kira snaps awake. Her first instinct is to presume a threat, so she reaches out to grasp his arm, grip like a vice and eyes wide and dark with —

Fear. Not hate or anger. Her heart hammers in her chest, her jaw tight. The book has fallen away from her chest as her other hand goes for her lightsaber, but she falls short of igniting it, though her grip on the gleaming hilt is tight enough that her knuckles have gone white.

Information filters in slow. He is not trying to kill her in her sleep, probably. A blanket would be an awful way to do it. As restless as she feels under its weight, she does not think he is smothering her. But that leaves her with something she can't make sense of — gentleness, in the wake of callous cruelty that had refused to see her as anything but a creature.

She should be glad of that. She is a monster. She doesn't want to feel as human as he makes her.

It's all very confusing, and so she's left breathing hard, tense without letting up, but also not attacking him outright. ]

[She snatches his arm and his hand snaps over her's in reflex, but he can almost feel her fear pulse when he does it, and thus it causes it not to yank her off. His own heart mirrors some of that fear, like he knows where this is going and desperately wants to avoid it. He doesn't want to die--

So, he finds himself gripping her hand in return. Both because he is scared, because he can somehow feel her own fear, and to try and reassure both of them that -- its fine. Whatever this is, its fine. She's not going to kill him, and he's not going to kill her.

They're fine.]

--sorry.

[Its all he can think to say. It feels stupid and foreign. To apologize wasn't really in his blood on either side of his family. But its the only thing that comes to mind.]

[ Despite his apology, her breath comes out hard for a few more seconds. It takes that long for the adrenaline to start to process, to drain out of her blood, to get her focused on him again and anchor herself in where she really is. She heaves in and out slower and slower until finally she's not seeing red anymore.

Slowly, her grip loosens.

His hand is warm. His arm is warm. And this blanket he has heaped on top of her, that's warm too, if heavy. She doesn't want to let go. Doesn't want to push him away, but doesn't want to pull him closer either. She's paralyzed, caught ever in this middle space. ]

What are you doing?

[ It's a stupid question, maybe, but she figures it can't possibly be the obvious. He doesn't see her as a person. ]

[Ben relaxes once her grip loosens, though he does not immediately let go of her. There is some concern in his eyes, though its impossible to tell whether it is concern for her or concern for his life.

Then she asks the clarifying question, and his eyes drop to his hand over her's. A swallow causes his adam's apple to bob before he looks up to her eyes again.]

You looked cold. [Pause.] And then you grabbed me so--

[He shrugs and then gently goes to untangle himself.]

I wasn't trying to startle you.

[ No. It was something worse. He was trying to fix her again.

Snoke has shaped her to his liking, and though she grappled with that at first, Rey had ultimately come to accept it. His liking, as it turned out, had made her stronger. More capable and more dangerous, so that the galaxy could not do to her again what it had done on Jakku.

That is not what Ben Solo is looking for.

Slowly, to great inner conflict, she releases her hold on him. She does not want to disarm, but neither does she want to keep touching him. ]

We're not friends. [ She'll just put that plainly. ] Stop expecting that to change.

[He exhales impatiently out of his nose when she tries to drop that realness on him. About the same time she releases him, he jerks his arm back in annoyance and backs off of her.]

You kidnapped and tortured me. Of course we aren't friends. But I have to sleep in the same ship as you.

[If she were anyone else, he might have told her the truth -- that sometimes doing nice things even for terrible people made him feel better about himself. But she would no doubt use that information to hurt him.

And she's right, in part. He is probably wasting his time. But she's got the blanket, and she can do what she wants. She'll get grilled on her nightmares once they are in the air.

He wanders back to the cockpit, smearing his face in his palms. What is wrong with him?]

[ She scoffs at his use of 'torture.' Of course he chooses to overlook that she would not have had to use those methods of interrogation had he shared the information willingly. He was a criminal, resisting the authority of the First Order. There was nothing for Rey to feel guilty for; he was the one hiding rebels.

More to the point, it seems awfully overdramatic to fixate on it. He was fine, as it happened. Unharmed in the long run, and now she was helping him stay alive. Choosing to let him live. He ought to be grateful, if anything.

Judging by the beeline he makes out of the bunk, he doesn't see it that way. She pulls the blanket up around her, distracted by the consideration of it. If he isn't trying to be her friend, she's simply not sure how to interpret it. It goes beyond civility, as if it were an effort to make up for his earlier callousness.

Well, she hasn't forgiven him.

She heads out after him, sounding almost pained in her confusion as she asks what she really wants to know, ] What do you want from me?

[He's got his feet up in the co-pilot's chair, and is staring out at the Hapans finishing up their work on his ship. He looks to have calmed some from his outburst in his bedroom, but it doesn't stop him from looking at her with the most naked look of confusion that he can muster.]

What?

[What does he want from her? What kind of question even is that??]

[ The trouble is that she takes him as genuine when he's not. She'd believed his lie about the base too; she can't trust the Force to identify his deceptions. Her mind is clouded, where Ben Solo is concerned. Kira frowns, regarding his puzzlement with some suspicion as a result. Ultimately she can do nothing but take him at his word, but it irritates her.

Explaining it to him means drudging up all her discomfort and externalizing it. Vulnerability has never looked good on her. It makes her feel like that weak, orphaned thing that had been left behind on Jakku. A girl she'd meant to kill. ]

You know what I am. Just now you made it clear you have not forgotten it. But you act like you expect me to be something else, or worse, you try to fix me. [ There's something thick in her voice as she says that, though she speaks too quickly, keeps her stride, lest real emotion break through. Finally she lands on what she hopes context makes clear is the worst crime, ] And I can feel the way you stare.

I do not need to make friends. I do not need your charity. [ The word tastes sour on her tongue. ] And you do not actually want to give me either, so I can only conclude you must want something from me.

"Fix you"?

[He repeats it, and slowly his one brain cell puts all the information together. She's not used to kindness -- and granted, he isn't exactly behaving like a reasonable person either. A reasonable person would have tried to kill her already. A reasonable person wouldn't have fed her, covered her with a blanket after having his mind picked apart.

But...he hadn't forgotten what had happened after that. How she'd chosen to keep him from further harm, how she cared for him in that odd way of her's. He feels uncomfortable even calling attention to it in his mind.

It's kind of fucked up. He's kind of fucked up for wanting that.]

You might not need any of that. But I'm not -- [He struggles to vocalize his emotions just as much as she does as it turns out] -- I don't know, ok? I just. Wanted to.

[What a lame answer. He looks away when he says it, willing any color out of his cheeks and staring stubbornly ahead of himself -- like he is angry with her.]

[ That answer isn't good enough for Kira, as it turns out. She can sense his stubbornness, his evasion, his discomfort, but none of it provides her with an answers, and she's too curious and fixated to settle for less. He has upheaved her life, put her on the run — only through her own choices, admittedly, but she's not going to be self-reflective enough to accept that blame when she can put it squarely on him for karking things up instead.

She surges forward and grabs him by the chin and forces his face to turn towards hers, demanding eye contact, demanding anything more than his imitation of remaining placid and unaffected. ]

Why? Why did you want to?

[ But she doesn't like what she sees there. Instantly, in fact, she regrets touching his face and getting in it at the same time and she releases his chin and recoils like he's a recently fired ion drive. There's a jolt of fear there because all of this is getting pretty directly at one thing: intimacy and human connection.

It shouldn't be that surprising. He sees her as human, even if he also sees the monster and the weapon that she has been shaped into. In many ways that is what fascinates her about him. But it also makes her furious and uncomfortable and she cannot help but poke that rancor. She regrets it. Often. Always. ]

[Something flutters in his chest and frops heavily in his stomach when she grabs him, turns him, and drags him into her face. He goes entirely stiff out of fear — not fear of being injured as will become apparent in the way that he does not stop her. He also doesn’t really relax when he sinks back into the pilot’s seat. Ben is forced to clear his throat and shift back into the most unaffected pose he can manage. The effort mostly fails; his fingertips are quaking slightly.

He can’t be attracted to Snoke’s assassin. It just — he couldn’t be. There was no known galaxy where that was acceptable.]

Because you — didn’t kill me. Haven’t killed me. I like having you around.

[Maybe she won’t notice him slip that last one in there. He could handle the rejection — it wasn’t like he hadn’t handled it before. But he still doesn’t want to hear it. And really, this was totally ridiculous. She was afraid of being too close to him. It shouldn’t have mirrored that way.]

[ It's maybe one of the stupidest things she's ever heard. 'You didn't kill me, so I like having you around.' But on some basic level, she gets it. Most of her time has been spent looking over her shoulder and wondering who's out to kill her; the fact that she had woken to Ben attending her instead had been the unnerving trigger to all of this demand for substantiation in the first place.

Still. She stands there, flushed and panicked for a moment, not sure what to do with that. I like having you around. It's so simple and straightforward and identifies what she, too, has felt since — well, since she had tortured him, by his account. She grapples with it anyway. It is less odd, she thinks, in that direction. She is used to being feared. Not … wanted.

But it's a warm sentiment, and it settles in her chest even as it turns her stomach.

It is not so easy for her, though. She has wrested it from him, but she cannot come forward with I feel connected to you. It sounds asinine even in her head. But she had been drawn to him, asked him to read to her rather than spend her time alone and vigilant, because she too liked being around him. And that demands recognition of some kind. ]

I see.

[ Fuckin nailed it. ]

Our paths are tied together now. [ She says this slowly. ] If your intent is to persuade me to stay, you need not waste the effort. [ She has literally nowhere else she can go, at this point. He has avoided Snoke this long; he's her best bet at escaping punishment for, well, fraternizing with him. A self-perpetuating problem. Kira is in big trouble. ]

I think you give me too much credit. Keep that up.

[It is an effort to waylay the tension he suddenly feels twisting horribly in his stomach. “I see” isn’t much of an answer, nor is almost anything she said after that. It doesn’t really feel reciprocated, even in the confirmation that she has no plans to leave him.

It feels childish and selfish to want something...more. Also, psychotic. This was Snoke’s apprentice. His father must have been turning in his grave.]

A-anyway, we should. Probably keep moving. Just in case.

[Hapes had nothing for either of them.]

[ She nods, quieter now that she has her answer. The angsty defensiveness has faded, given way to a sense of understanding, which would bring her peace if it weren't rife with so much conflict. He feels as she does, an inexplicable pull, but that pull has also been responsible for turning her away from Snoke. Snoke, who had given her everything, who had promised her power and importance and purpose.

The Supreme Leader had been right, it turns out. It feels silly to have thrown it away for this: I like having you around. Yet she can't quit chasing it. ]

When the ship's ready. [ It'll be a while longer, probably. They'd planned on overnighting on Hapes. ] ... I can move to the floor, if you'd also like to sleep.

[ She looks uncomfortable after having just made a big deal about things like basic human decency. Now here she is showing her ass by offering him his own bunk. ]

...right. I knew that.

[Ben slowly removes his hands from the controls, doing his best not to look sheepish. It was his instinct to run away from his problems — and he had been about to try and flee the awkwardness of this interaction by shooting the Falcon into space while it was still refueling. Stupid.

Well, he couldn’t possibly fuck this up anymore. He is at least convinced of that, until she speaks.

He glances up at her, and can’t hold back his charmed smile. As it turns out, Kira is quite bad at hiding how much she is intrigued by being treated like a human being. That is adorable and he loves it.]

I can sleep in the chair. I’ve done it before.

[A little voice asks him WHAT THE HELL HE IS DOING and his smile fades some. She doesn’t like it when he is smirking at her. He has figured that out at least — so he tries to will it away entirely before he gets called on it.]

[ His smile is disgusting and he should feel bad. No, really, the twitch of her lips looks almost like she might be sick looking at it. She doesn't know what else to do. She's not used to people smiling at her, and it's not the first time he's done it. Especially on the heels of a declaration like that, she flounders over it.

It weakens, but he doesn't have the good sense to wipe it away entirely, and so Kira sputters for a short moment, trying to figure out what to do about that. The answer is nothing. Nothing. ]

It's your ship. [ She looks away in a huff. ] I'm not soft. I've slept on worse.

Have you?

[Her floundering is palpable, somehow, though he didn't need any intuition after she pointedly looks away from him. It does not cure the nasty urge to press her -- in fact, it makes it worse. So much worse.

So, like a true Solo, he hoists himself out of the chair to close the distance, leaning smartly against the top of it to loom over Kira instead. It doesn't quite trap her in the corner, but it makes it much harder to avoid looking at him.]

How much worse?

[ Usually she stands and carries herself like she's taller than him, despite the considerable disparity, but when he looms like that, she appears to shrink and wither, as though she were a star collapsing onto itself. He's just too karking close. If he were anyone else she'd close her fist and cut off his windpipe and be done with it, but —

She doesn't want to. It's that simple, just as he had put it. But she does feel panic clawing its way up her throat, shortening her breath. Her pupils narrow to pinpricks as fear constricts them, her pulse roaring in her ears as her heart picks up.

She reaches back to grab onto the copilot's chair to steady herself, jaw set. Worse than his proximity is the question. He is trying to drag out her vulnerability. It had not been an offer. She flounders for a way to discourage him. ]

Sith temples are built of stone. My master sent me to one to build my lightsaber.

[ She was cold and alone and barely thirteen years old then. She leaves those details out. They are too critical to how unpleasant it had been. ]

The floor is nothing. [ Her voice sounds thick and unfamiliar to her. ] Sleep in your bunk.

[He listens, and watches her reaction. At this point, he is just trying to get a rise out of her. Maybe she will pick up on that -- maybe she won't.

But Ben's lips stretch into a playful smirk. She makes it far too easy -- he can't remember the last time he's actually had someone drag their reaction out for this long.

By now, he is used to being left behind -- or slapped. He'd almost be ok with a slap from Kira. He may or may not be thinking about how to get it from her.]

No. I don't think I will.

[ The greatest problem here is that while she feels panicked over not knowing what to do about him in her space, she also doesn't particularly want him to leave it. But the smirk draws her attention to the fact that this feels less than genuine, and that opens the barn doors on her rage.

Unfortunately she doesn't reach to slap him. She just shoves him bodily back at the pilot's chair, snarling. ]

Fine. [ She tries to straighten up and gather her composure back, but she's red-faced still from the proximity. ] It doesn't matter to me what you do.

[He is not particularly well balanced, so her shove works handily. He's almost disappointed, but at the same time, he'd gotten what he wanted. He can spot the red in her cheeks -- even if her snarl makes his heart flutter and drop nervously into his stomach.]

You don't need to prove anything to me. And you don't have to sleep on the floor.

[He points this out only after he's found his voice again, and he has to clear his throat at least once to get a hold of it.]

Its a freighter -- built for a crew. There's a padded bench, the pilot chairs ... my bunk.

[ The way he says that is suspect. Kira narrows her eyes, scrutinizing him, which is all for the best because she needs the moment to pull it together and not look so flustered. She's not used to sharing space. She's less used to people willingly getting in her space, even less from those who would test her willingness to commit a murder, and least of all from those who have already experienced pain at her hand. ]

Obviously.

[ She seethes it. She's not going to clarify that she had offered to take the floor so that she could ... sleep in the same room with him. That it ties back to a desire to be around him. Though it stops up her throat, briefly. ]

If you're not going to use it, I plan to.

[ And she slips away from the cockpit then because at least if she goes back to sleep she will be free of this torment. ]

Good--

[She might hear him exhale and lift himself out of the creaky pilot's seat to follow her just a few steps after she leaves the room. He doesn't really realize he is doing it until they are half way back into the Falcon.

Then, he stops.]

I mean it though. You're better off with the bed.

[He...sits down on the bench for this, because he expects her to react in a manner that is going to make him regret bring this up. But there was a purpose to this before he decided to be an asshole.]

You were tossing a lot earlier. Nightmares?

[ Kira stops in her stride, hesitating, but her countenance doesn't properly change. It's still just as stiff and straight as ever, but she slowly pivots, casting a loathsome glance over her shoulder at him on the bench. The kind of gaze that burns a hole right through him. ]

No.

[ A lie, and a poor one. She does not try to make it sound otherwise. But it's hard and violent and brokers no further questioning on the subject matter. Then she turns back around and carries on into the corridor towards his bed. ]

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