sololoquy | open post

[ 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. ]

Liar.

[Yeah there's. Nothing to stop that. Even as he says it, he mentally slaps his own face. Idiot.

Time to play it off and stretch out on the bench.]

I'm taking off when the ship's ready whether you're awake or not.

[ 'Liar' hangs over her as she disappears into the crew cabin, gathering the blanket and the book and her saber and trying to ignore the fact that she has outright nested in his bed like a lost bird. It is not the worst thing she has been called; not even the worst thing he has called her. But it stings because he has caught her, spotted the chink in her armor and sought to exploit it.

She burrows under the weighted blanket, and under the rest of his bedding, only once she has tucked the lightsaber and book away where they won't disrupt her sleep. The smell of his pillow only makes his presence linger in worse and more obvious ways. She wrestles with that, tossing and turning with no way to get comfortable. The nightmares wait at the edges of her mind as if he has summoned them.

She rolls flat onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. The weight of the blanket only makes her feel claustrophobic. The ambience of his stirring and chattering, as annoying as she claims him to be, has been helping to dispel the unease lingering in the back of her mind. It descends now unchecked, hideous memories and intrusive thoughts she can't fight.

Out of sheer stubbornness she presses her eyes shut and buries her face in his pillow and bites down her rage.

Kira should not be here. She should have gone back to Snoke, should have flown them all the way to that fake base and taken the punishment she was given. Now she's a fugitive tied at the end of a string. It is only a matter of time before her Master comes calling, and she will suffer worse for indulging this. She should be able to hate Snoke for that, but instead she finds the fury channeled toward Ben Solo for daring to seduce her to entertaining it in the first place.

Eventually anger brings her the calm necessary to fall into a fitful sleep. ]

[Ben doesn’t plan to fall asleep where he is, but he ges trapped in a loop of thought quite easily. If he ran to Wild Space with Kira, would Snoke really come after them? He doesn’t believe for ine second that Kira is as important to Snoke as she seems to think she is. Would be abandon the war just to chase down his apprentice and a cheeky smuggler? He doesn’t imagine so — but if he did...

Well, he might have just single handedlt saved the Republic. For a time, anyway.

He shakes himself out of that train of thought. That was his mother’s war, not his. But before he can get a good grip on it, he drifts off to sleep himself. But his sleep isn’t quite so pleasant this time.

The night is filled with darkness, a room where he is alone and isolated and where he can see nothing and only hear some whispers that he cannot make sense of. They feel far away — like they don’t beling to him at all. He tries to follow them anyway when curiousity gets the better of his dream-self. It isn’t long before he feels as if he is standing on top of the source of the whispers—but still, there is nothing there.

He can make out one word, and he echoes it.]

—Rey?

You shouldn't be here.

[ It's Kira's voice, or a strange variant of it. It's higher and nasaly. Which makes sense because it seems to belong to the child belong him, wearing a cream-colored rag of a frock and her hair messily tangled in three buns. She looks skinny. Bones jutting out in places they shouldn't, skin not just dirty but dark with bruises. The sound of some beast growling seems to quake the very ground under their feet for how deep and low and threatening it is.

The girl — Kira? — flinches and looks behind her, as though to look out for some nasty thing chasing her. She hastens towards Ben then and takes him by the hand. ]

He'll find you.

[ There's a hoarse warning in her voice, a child's stage whisper, that is nonetheless tense and sounds a lot like she has been trying to hide him. ]

[The appearance of a child fills him with dread, moreso the state she seems to be in. A conscious part of him understands that he can't possibly be awake at the present and yet -- everything feels so real. There is a weight to the small girl's hand when it wraps around a few of his fingers -- it is much to small to encompass any significant portion.

He stares dumbly in the direction of the growl, but allows himself to be tugged nonetheless.]

This--what's going on?

[There is a mixture of fear and anger in his voice. Why is he seeing this girl -- Rey? Kira? He can't even tell anymore. What are they running from, and -- why? Like this?

He'll find you echoes again in the back of his head. If this was Kira, could she be talking about Snoke?]

He can't find us where we are.

[ Unfortunately, though Kira begins to lead him off opposite the direction (inasmuch as such a shadowy nothingness can have direction), the growling sound appears to exist everywhere at once. It does not seem to get any closer or further away no matter how they move.

Despite this, the landscape begins to solidify around them, as if emerging from within some thick black fog. It's not a place anyone would want to visit, however. Rolling dunes start to swallow their feet, sand sloughing off with every step. Though Ben probably hasn't been to Jakku before — why would anyone go to Jakku? — he would be able to feel the sudden powerful certainty that this is where she was when 'he' found her.

And that it therefore is not being 'his' reach. ]

Yes, he can. [ Kira corrects him with all the stubbornness a child can possess. ] He's everywhere.

[ Here, at least. He is everywhere here, in her mind, because nothing is barred to him. He wormed his way into the deepest, darkest parts — a shadow to linger in perpetuity. ]

[If Ben is being honest, he's a little freaked out right now. The growling is awful, it feels like someone breathing down the back of his neck, and he shuts his eyes to try and drown it all out -- but little Kira's hand is still holding onto him and grounding him there.

When he opens his eyes again, it stops briefly. Long enough to look down at the small, frail girl.]

Lots of things are everywhere.

[He's mostly babbling to try and reassure himself. Kira doesn't scare him, especially not like this -- but that growling does. It is familiar, and calls to some long buried piece of him.]

What's so special about him?

He made me.

[ Put simply. It's all the explanation that she offers. It should, in her opinion, convey everything. This place is a reflection of her mind, and he made her, so he has access to all of it. Obviously. It's math.

The sunlight never cuts through the shadows, so they're left on what looks like Jakku at night, an enormous metal monolith hulking out of the sand. The growling grows louder and closer as they scurry across the landscape, bringing with it a claustrophobic feeling that some monster is closing its jaws around them. It's around this time that Kira stops. ]

It's too late. He knows. There's nowhere to hide you.

[ Except for that big ol' AT-AT in the sand. But Kira won't look at it?? For some reason. ]

[His heart beats faster until he feels it seize painfully in fear. That is what gets him to stop blindly allowing Kira to drag him toward the monolith. When he turns back around, there is only darkness behind them, shielding the horizon. The only way seems to be forward toward the monster--

Until he spots the dull gleam of the AT-AT. Instinct yanks him toward it with all of his being.]

Here--

[Now he finally takes the smaller girl's hand and turns her to seek refuge in the walker.]

No.

[ It's a sputter at first as she stumbles along with his tug.

Then the heels of her boots dig into the sand, gouging it, leaving deep valleys. And she yanks at his grip and tries to pull her hand back and fights and scrapes to wrest herself from his grip with all the ferocity of someone who is being burned simply by getting closer to it. ]

No! No, you can't! Don't go in there.

[ The closer they get, the more her distress increases, the pitch of her voice peaking. It brings the growling closer, like her pain and misery is a siren to summon the monster. ]

Kira--

[He says her name without thinking -- it comes to his tongue in the same frantic way she shouts her panic.]

There's nowhere else. We have to go.

[The creature is nearly on top of them, and Ben decides he has to act fast. Something is wrong here, so very very wrong. And regardless of all her fighting, he quickly scoops her up in his arms, locking his elbows as tight as he can so she cannot kick or squirm free, and beelines for the entrance.]

[ She foregoes words from there, howling and screaming her way into the felled walker. It is darker there, musty, and it reeks of something sweet and charred. Kira reaches out to grab onto the entrance, her fingers scrabbling at the opening, bruising with the effort of resisting him.

But she is not a Sith assassin. She's just a child. The fight barely lasts a moment before she is pulled in with him, and at that moment, the door slams shut. She does not give up on throwing her fit.

The inner space has been made up into a home for one. A single hot plate, a cot that is worn beyond reasonable use, a withered flower, and tally after tally on the wall. A faint light illuminates it all, the yellow emergency light. Beneath it, beyond the half-table at which this hovel's occupant had once eaten, there is something else.

It would not be fair to say they looked human anymore. What lays there in the middle of the floor is charred beyond recognition, more ash and crisped leather than matter. ]

[Well that's horrible.

He hadn't expected to find anything happy inside. But the growling sound has dimmed some, and Ben is unsure if that is due to where they are or for some other nebulous reason. He doesn't care. This is all still a dream, as far as he is concerned.

He is promptly knocked out of his state by a stray punch in the jaw, to which he grunts and swaps his grip to better hold her to his chest.]

Stop it--cut it out. HEY.

[He eventually gets his giant arms around her in a way that smothers all movement.]

[ Once he gets her arms pinned, there's really no hope left for clambering away. Kira puts a solid effort towards thrashing, but she doesn't get anywhere, so she settles on simply straining at his grip, turning her face hard away from the morbid mess on the floor. Her shoulders twist uselessly, and after a few moments, she's clearly sniffing back tears. ]

[He can’t help his sudden protective instinct, allowing her to turn away from the side and hide in his chest. But Ben — Ben is looking aroubd. It isn’t hard for him to ubderstand what he is seeing, and it subconsciously makes him hug the small girl just a little tighter.

He doesn’t completely understand — but he can sympathize. The mess brings up unpleasant memories of his father, but he has gotten good at shoving them downward. Instead, he slowly sinks to the floor, arms still wrapped around Kira’s smaller form.]

It’s ok.

[His voice cracks slightly as his eyes spot the tally marks. How long had she been alone? What was this dream trying to tell him?]

It’s going to be ok.

[ It's alien to her, being held. For a moment Kira resists even that, but she gradually melts and collapses into him, letting the sobs shake her. Tiny hands cling onto him, and she buries her face in his shoulder. It's only after some time that she says. ]

They tried to leave me.

[ Without leaving much room for what that means in this context, there's a sudden and horrible feeling of being combed through, sifted and picked apart, and the growl returns with a sudden snarl of, 'Solo.'

Like it's familiar, like it is begrudged. Rey's head snaps to look up, suddenly anticipating. ]

[Ben is digesting what Kira says to him with a bit of dread in his stomach. The implication isn't pretty. Part of him is even repulsed by it -- but even with that knowledge, this girl is but a child. A terrifying and murderous child but...a child nonetheless.

He opens his mouth to respond, and his spine goes rigid when he hears his name snarled. The feeling that accompanies it seems to give him a bit of a fever, sweat causing his hair to stick to his face, as if there were no shield from Jakku's suns.

Ben reaches down to turn Kira's face up to his, brushing her hair out of his eyes so that they meet with his own.]

You have to wake up.

[His voice is quieter, like the sound of the snarl has tried to chase it away.]

[ Wake up, he says, and Kira's hiccuping slows, starts to even out. Something in that sticks out in her mind. Snoke is closing in, a pressing darkness closing in around them. She can't stop him. She hasn't been able to stop him since …

Since this.

It's not Rey anymore in his arms. Not the little girl. Kira in the inky cloak of her First Order robes is instead nested in Ben's arms, wrapped up in him, staring at the door of the AT-AT. ]

I can't.

[ She tells him, her voice sharper. Crisper and certain. ]

It won't stop him.

[It is jarring to suddenly have a full grown Kira in his arms in comparison to the small child. She is still pressed against his chest and will no doubt feel his heart stutter after she makes him aware of that fact. There is a moment where he considers how to react, and in that moment, he notes the darkness pressing on them.]

Yes you can. Look at me, Kira.

[He reaches for her face again to implore her, to make sure her focus is on his eyes and not the pressing darkness.]

If you don’t trust your strength, trust your survival instinct.

[Trust me goes unsaid.]

[ Her face is still stained with tears, and she's shaking her head, pouting and trying too hard not to look at him, ashamed of her own weakness even here in this surreal middle-space between sleep and waking. Ben doesn't feel real to her — only Snoke does. She can't trust him. All she can trust is her experience, and that experience is certainty of pain.

She makes a sound like a whimper, fighting the touch of his hand on her face, trying to turn away from it and push back from him.

Snoke's presence is getting closer. That inky shadow descending, almost like they can hear something rumbling towards the walker's hatch. Kira presses her eyes shut like she can will herself away from there, or perhaps just like she's bracing for the inevitable pain. That is her survival instinct. Withstanding pain, outlasting it. It is inevitable and constant in her life, but she can come out the other end of it, she can—

'Solo.' Murmurs Snoke's voice again. Her fingers dig into Ben's shoulders, clutching him tight like he's hers to protect from what has already been done to her.

Panic jolts her awake, sudden enough for her to crash and thump against metal flooring and walls as she flails out of his bunk, panting and gasping and sweating. ]

[Kira disappears from his arms, and Ben suddenly finds himself alone in that darkness, all details of the AT-AT now gone from his vision. His heart pounds for a long moment while the sound of silence rumbles with the echo of his name. He feels something in his chest seize painfully when the clutch of Kira's hands disappears. He can see his breath in the cold void.

But he does not snap awake the same way Kira does -- his slumber continues, deeply induced, and no familiarity comes to rescue him from it.]

Kira?

[He mumbles it from the cockpit, barely able to be made out for the word that it is, though her name echoes in the blank space of his subconscious. The darkness is suffocating, but he is paralyzed to move -- like anything might trigger the return of that growl.

Back in the Falcon, he remains fast asleep on the bench, rigid as death itself, but twice as pale and clammy.]

[ Every breath weighs heavy in her chest as she tries to come back to herself, trembling and nervous, but the feeling of despair hasn't faded. The telling sense of Snoke's presence is gone from her mind, but still thick in the air. She grabs onto the edge of the bunk and uses it to steady herself, to stand.

She hears something from the other room. 'Wake up,' Ben had said in her dream, as if he knew. As if he felt it. He'd spoken before, about her nightmares — had he been in her mind? Had he been real? She clutches at her chest, fear tightening its grip around her heart. If he was real, then he had seen ...

She tears off out of the room to find him there prone on the bench, clammy and paralyzed and clouded in the Dark. No. A rank possessiveness seizes hold of her — Snoke cannot have him. This one thing cannot be made his when her entire life already is. She crouches beside Ben, grabbing for his shoulders and shaking him. ]

Wake up! [ It's a shouted order. ] Wake up, dammit.

[Ben jerks awake with a shout, struggling to fight Kira off of him and pressing his back into the bench in an attempt to get away. His hands are shaking quite badly, and he doesn't seem to notice it right away until Kira's face swims back into focus. He is breathing hard and fast enough to cause pain in his chest, and one shaking hand presses there to try and calm it all.

That is about the moment he realizes that he is no longer dreaming -- that those things he was seeing are gone, and the pressing, knowing darkness was little more than a nightmare. He still have to wipe his face clean of sweat -- and when he does that, he realizes how sick he must look.

He looks at Kira, unsure how to react. It was just a dream, after all. How was he supposed to explain all of that?]

W-what, what? Where's the fire?

[ She wrestles him. Ben Solo is massive, admittedly, but Kira is dense. She gets a hold of his wrists that keeps him from shoving her away, pinning him against the bench until he has regained his sense and anchored himself in the waking world. The sympathy in her expression is buried beneath cold necessity.

He doesn't know. Of course he doesn't know. No one had ever bothered to give him the tools. She'd felt the Force in him the first time they'd met. Surely Snoke could sense it too. His interest in discouraging Kira from pursuing Ben Solo went further than discouraging her weakness and far into Snoke's own ambitions. A sick feeling swelled in her gut as she considered the very real possibility that he meant to replace her. ]

We have to leave. Now. [ She gets to her feet, pulling away from him and glancing at the cockpit. ] Stop the refueling. Whatever they've already pumped in will suffice to get us away from here. We will deal with the matter of you invading my mind once we are clear of Hapan space.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

child abuse warnings ig? ? ?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject