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WISHLIST (TROS SPOILERS)

anything force-bond related, but especially:

slow-burn corruption (either direction)

inappropriately timed force bond moments (both nsfw and humor approaches)

dream-sharing

emotional bleed/transference (from rey, involving other parties)

inappropriate force bond voyeurism on rey/poe or rey/finn

mid-conversation force bond interruption

The Rise of Skywalker- Cross-galaxy chase of the Resistance

anything related to ben solo, but especially:

snoke confessionals with family or friends of family

returning to the light

smuggler life style

jedi knight ben

resistance-fighter ben

The Rise of Skywalker- Force Ghost communications w/ Rey

anything related to supreme leader kylo ren, but especially:

fall via coup

resistance fighter reconditioning (gen or nsfw)

force ghost visits from anakin/luke/rey/leia/snoke

defeat by the resistance, and subsequent aftermath

The Rise of Skywalker- Mole Discovery w/ Hux

canto bight:

shady weapons deals

picking up prisoners

recruitment

obligatory dinner party

general casino shenanigans

beach party

basically any reason you can think of to use canto bight as a setting piece

A note on romance:
I will ship all of the new trilogy characters with Kylo Ren (except Snoke/Family).
But I have no interest in exploring domestic-style takes on them.
Thank you for understanding.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[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.

Invading your--what?

[You can't just drop a bomb on him like that, Rey "Kira" Lastname. He's most certainly hung up on it, but he'd been wanting to leave Hapan space since last night -- like something had been trying to warn him. After that dream, he is more certain than ever that leaving is the right call.

He'll just. Ignore that last part.

So, still beleaguered from sleep, Ben stumbles to his feet and cracks his spine once before heading down the gangplank to finish business with refueling. He's still rubbing his eyes free of sleep (or trying to massage the bags under his eyelids away) when he returns to the cockpit to get the Falcon into the air.]

[ Kira is already in the cockpit when he returns, seated in the pilot's chair and operating the instrument panel for pre-flight checks. When she sees him join her, she starts the engine priming. It's as sure as sign as she'll get that they're no longer at risk of exploding hyperfuel. ]

I warned you.

[ She can't help but feel bitter about it. Resentful that he hadn't listened when she told him they'd never be able to keep outrunning Snoke. ]

That was him. He'll have someone looking for us. Maybe he won't spare a whole ship, maybe we'll get lucky and he'll send a bounty hunter or the other Knights, but he knows we're running now.

You're in my seat.

[He says it sleepily as he hears the gangplank hiss closed. He doesn't sit down in the co-pilot's seat -- he's still trying to shake off his jitters. Before that, he'd been doing a good job ignoring the hovering doom over their heads.

But just because he was ignoring it didn't mean it didn't exist. It's interesting -- Kira behaves as if she's never been chased before.

Being on the run, Ben is used to that. It's a shame they had to run so soon, though.]

You were in my head.

[ Turning her head, she glares up at him. If he wants to talk about invading spaces they don't belong, she's a leg up on him as far as she is concerned. No, it doesn't matter that she had already invaded his mind once before. This is different. (Because it's her.)

Displeasure ripples through her features and she moves to the copilot's chair rather than engage the fight. That alone should speak to ... how terrified she is. ]

You're the brain invader, not me.

[He's--actually surprised that she moves, and thus he hesitates for a moment before taking his seat. At least she seems to have figured out some the Falcon's fiddly bits. The smell of hyperfuel floods the old ship, a hiss echoing somewhere back behind them.

Ben reaches up to the landing gear to set them into space.]

You can angle the shields if you're that worried, instead of making me reach over you.

Don't act innocent.

[ She reaches over accordingly to get the shields settled, directing her attention halfway to that once she has herself buckled into the copilot's chair. Still she affords a considerable part of her energy towards Ben instead, but it's scathing now instead of soft. ]

You wanted to know about my dreams, and when I wouldn't tell you, you forced your way in. You're no better than I am.

Are you insane?!

[There is some obvious fear mixed in with his frustration, and he hits the throttle full bore, probably knocking over some innocent technicians with the force of the liftoff. He had suspected that maybe hat dream wasn’t quite a dream but — she thinks he did it consciously?]

That was a dream. If anything, you invaded my head. How else would you even know about that? Do I look like a Jedi to you?

[That’s how the Force works, right?]

You don't need to be a Jedi to know the Force.

[ Said snidely as though it should be super obvious. And, from her point of view, it is. She's no Jedi after all. ]

No one could do what you did — to me — by accident. That was my dream.

[ Nightmare, actually, but she isn't letting this up. He wants to pretend it was incidental, or worse push it off on her. She won't let him. ]

I didn't want you there. I told you to mind your own business.

Whatever, ok? I don't want to talk about this.

[Clearly the idea that he might be Force sensitive makes him supremely uncomfortable. Of course, maybe some part of him always knew -- but acknowledging it is way different than being aware of the possibility. He'd rather forget that any of it happened. All of it.

(If that was Kira's dream, was he really clutching her like that? Force -- don't think about it.)]

I'm not talking about this.

[Better not to leave her the option to press him.]

Yes, you are.

[ She finishes with the shields and sits back in the copilot's chair, scowling over at him. Neither of them have had enough sleep, let alone restful sleep, to put up with this conversation. But here it is. They're doing it. Kira isn't taking no for an answer. Everyone is shocked by this turn of events. ]

I won't have you forcing your way into my mind while I'm asleep.

[Someone needs some boundaries training. Ben studiously ignores her right until she says that last thing, at which point he slams random coordinates into the navicomputer and punches them into hyperspace just in time to stand up and whirl on her.]

I am not forcing my way into your mind!

[He shouts, more out of terror than anger. His hands are back to shaking, and he hears that growling in the back of his head, prompting him to close his ears until it subsides.]

I--I wouldn't even know how, even if I wanted to, ok? It was just a dream. I don't know how else to explain it--

[He's scared. He can't admit that to her (she wouldn't care), but this newfound lack of barrier is terrifying.]

[ Oh, kriff.

Looking up at him, scrutinizing him as she is, Kira cannot help but observe that ... well, he's telling the truth. And, more to the point, she can sense his fear. She smells it like a corellian dog smells blood. Her gaze sharpens with her own anxiety.

It's true. He's not doing it deliberately. Somehow, though, that's worse — it means it's not as easy as just telling him to stop. It means that he is strong enough with the Force to not know he's used it against her twice now. Completely clueless, and therefore incredibly dangerous. ]

I just explained it. You're not listening. [ She rises to her feet as well, mostly so she's not as wholly dwarfed by him as she was. She's still pretty short beside him. ] ... I can teach you how it works. At least enough for you to be able to stop yourself.

No. I don't want to know how it works.

[He says that almost immediately and sinks back down into his seat somewhat clumsily, running a hand over his face and leaving it pressed over his eyes. Calm. Seek peace.

This has to be a bad dream. Any second, he will wake up, and none of this will be real. He'll be back on Ryloth, having a drink, waiting for his next job.]

I'm not getting involved. I did not sign up for this.

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