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.
[He stays quiet, worrying at his lip in the silence. He wants to know why, as much as he decided it wasn't important. If he'd resisted her, then she had to know that she wasn't going to get what she wanted. Bringing him to Snoke would have been the wisest move.
But she didn't. The implications of that...]
Well. Not just because of that. Maybe partly.
[He tries to close some of that distance, weighing his options.]
Look. I'm sorry. It's not personal. I just don't have interest in -- whatever it is you and Snoke do. I don't really want it anywhere near me.
[Before she can storm away from him again, he'll reach to put his hands on his shoulders. He does a poor job of masking his fear.]
But I know its there -- something's always been there. Just promise me that you aren't going to make it worse and I'll--trust you.
[As much as he can, anyway. There's a lot of Kill Bill klaxons going off.]
[ At first she thinks he's maybe holding her still to keep her rooted there, gripping her to keep her from bolting again in a rage, but — No. It's more like he's clinging to her, holding on as a way of steadying himself. She searches his face, softening by half-measures.
For a moment she's quiet, reluctant. She ... can't ... promise ... that it won't make it worse. ]
[ Kira looks around at the Falcon in indication. That's as far as it goes. They don't get CNN out on Jakku, and the First Order is a hellscape of highly filtered propaganda, made worse by the insulated childhood she had with Snoke. ]
He was a smuggler and a traitor to the Empire. What does that have to do with this?
[ Let it never be said that Kira isn't focused. As far as she is concerned, the only value is in focusing on Darth Vader's failings. He is a lesson to be learned from, not an icon to aspire to. Still, it bewilders her — he has a legacy like that, blood like that, and he could not be more disdainful of it.
Doesn't he realize that he has everything she wants, and he dangles it in front of her like it means nothing to him? Kira — no, Rey, the little girl buried deep within — aches for wanting. ]
No wonder you can't be honest. [ But that's not what he's getting at. It's just her own separate conclusion. ] Vader destroyed the galaxy when he turned on the Empire. Is that why you're afraid of the Dark? You think it will make you into him?
[She makes it sound stupid, and it causes him to release her, a frown crossing his expression. He is definitely having second thoughts about trusting her with this information.]
You don’t have to say it like that.
[But yeah. He is. And he had not been the only one, he is sure. Its not like he has the Dark Side on speed dial, but he has definitely felt some unexplained, unpleasant emotions hovering over him in difficult times more than once before.]
[ He is injured, and though some malnourished part of her wants to reach out and touch him and make up for the way she can see that she is responsible for it, the better part of her is instead curious. No, fascinated. She has found something in him that is hers alone, that he does not offer to others.
It makes her properly respect that she is the only one who knows what he has with the Force. She had thought it impossible that he would not know, but … no. That is hers too. Possessiveness starts to swallow her, feet-first. ]
You're not him. [ It feels a foolish thing to say to Ben Solo, honestly, but he is afraid of the ugly pieces of his bloodline just as she has been. He can wave his legacy in her face, but she is the one with the power to relieve him of it. ] You're not him, and you're not your mother, and no matter how much time you spend flying around in this piece of garbage, you're not Han Solo either. No one is trapped by what they came from. You can be something better.
But it appeals to some part of him he didn't know about. How long had he been running away from his bloodlines? Wasn't that half the reason he'd dodged the Resistance in the first place? Han Solo -- that legacy felt attainable, but he'd never gotten there. But Darth Vader? Leia Organa?
Yeah right.
He goes quiet, but she has his attention like she's never had it before.]
[ She says that with some considerable disdain. She had fled that memory, clung to Snoke in its place, tried to hide from what they were. Even now she refuses to touch upon what she had done to them, what had brought Snoke's attention to her in the first place. ]
That life was waiting for me too. They were nothing. [ No one else in the galaxy knows this but Snoke. Even saying it now, her voice trembles. Admitting that she was worthless doesn't come easy. She expects he will look at her differently, but no. He must already know. ] But now everybody in the galaxy knows my name. The place we come from does not define us.
[ Help her she literally thinks she's living the American Dream here. ]
[He swallows when she mentions her parents, and the way she talks about them. The fact that she killed them and -- that some part of her clearly regretted it. Snoke must have taken advantage of her. The pieces aren't hard to put together now that he has them all.
It tugs at his heart some. But he can't fix it now.]
...I don't need to be anyone to the rest of the galaxy. I just want to be myself.
[Being nothing doesn't seem so bad, in the grand scheme of things. He looks away from her face then -- because this honest kind of burns, and he can feel something burning at the back of his neck.]
[ She reaches up then, touches her fingers to his face. The movement is too brazen for it to be meant in the intimate way it comes across, though her gaze roams across his face, taking in the sharp angles and disproportionate features with considerable interest. She might be most enthused about the fact that he is caving to this necessity, but there is no doubt as to whether he's a part of it himself.
Her fingertips are freezing against his warm skin, but still she pushes her hand back until her palm presses against his cheek and her fingers curl in the edge of his hair. ]
Resist me. [ Fascination with him has thickened her voice to something that sounds almost lusty, but the effect is no doubt ruined by the fact that she tries to force her way into his mind then, crashing down on his awareness like a battering ram cannon. ]
[If she had been trying to distract him, she does a good job with it. He stiffens under her touch -- though it is not a result of displeasure, only surprise and a clear uncertainty of how to take the gesture. He cannot help but feel like she is looking at him like a prized animal, though perhaps that isn't fair of him to--
Resist me she says. And he gives a short laugh, on the edge of protest with some quippy reply before he feels that spike dig into his head.
She catches him off-guard easy with that, and she's able to grab hold of his equal interest in her without too much trouble. But almost instantly, she is met with fear, with that snarling righteous anger that seeks to shove her directly out of his mind. His heart seizes and he reaches up to try and pry her hands off of his face.
[ This time the laugh is hers. Only it's not quite that, not fully, for she doesn't know what to do with laughter if she's being honest. But as he wrenches her hand away from his face, there's no mistaking the delight that brightens her eyes, or the way her lips turn up as they part so that she can suck in a sudden breath, allowing him his grip on her tensed hand.
Yes. It is there in his fear and fury, that darkness that calls out to her own. She searches his eyes for it, as if snapped awake and made all the more determined for having caught a glimpse of it before he rebuffed her. ]
Harder. [ She doesn't touch him this time, but the force of that spike drilling him bears down with greater force. ] Or I'll take everything. And so will he.
[She hits him again with that spike inside his head, and he wars with his desire to stick this out and the desire to push her as far away as possible. It creates an uncomfortable fissure to lay alongside the crushing pain in his skull.
He reaches for that anger instinctively to shove her back, but stops just short of taking its hand. This is wrong. He knows its wrong, the deeper Kira digs, the more wrong it feels.]
Stop.
[It is small, frightened, nothing compared to the instinctive buck he had first given her. It allows her another scrape of his mind, his mother petting his head through a dark nightmare.]
[ He is weak. She is hurting him. He buckles under the force of it, and Kira nearly flinches as well. It is the touch of a mother that does it. Puts her back on her heels, startles her. She almost lets up. Almost. The joy of pushing (if indeed it could be called that) is gone, replaced instead by a terrible remorse which gives way to what can only be described as responsibility.
Yes, responsibility for him. She had promised to protect him, after all, and she knew of no better way to do that than to give him the tools to protect himself. This was the way. The only way. ]
Yes, you can.
[ The words spilled out savagely, certainly. She knew it like she knew the rhythm of her own heartbeat. He had not bested her only to show crippling weakness at the first sign of further violence. So she did not let up, but insisted to him instead. ]
[He chokes on a deep inhale that turns to a hiccup, tears stinging the corner of his eyes from the pressure that digs deeper into his skull. The pain of it brings him to his knees. The next scrape of his memory delivers to her the pair of shining gold vintage Corellian dice, clutched in the hands of a younger Ben with a room that is cold and dark.
There are tears in his eyes then too. He's holding those dice like his life depends on it, before they suddenly seem to crumble to dust. Something in that dark snarls, and the figure of a younger Ben Solo suddenly looks more angry than despairing. It ripples, transfers, and suddenly both of them are shoving outward at Kira's suffocating presence.
He is on all fours, sweating through his clothes and wheezing furiously. His shoulders quiver with anger, his hands balled into fists. The Dark is pulsing outward now, slowly growing in a manner which Ben cannot seem to get a hold of.]
[ The sudden burst outward knocks her from his mind and then some. Kira staggers back, flinching away with the stab of it. She shakes it off and looks down at where he has doubled over, crushed not under her power, but under the weight of his own.
It summons a complicated mess of emotions in her. Satisfaction that she has succeded is short-lived and wan, undermined by all the rest. In its company comes a pain and loneliness that she can't quite process as regret or guilt, which she quickly suppresses. But beyond that, fear — of Ben lashing out, of Snoke finding them and replacing her with him, of losing everything because she'd prodded this darkness inside of him.
She reaches for him. ]
Ben. That's it.
[ She grabs for his shoulder, sounding encouraging in some terrible way. If he is hers, then her fears are meaningless. ]
[Ben feels a pressure on his shoulder and reacts violently, spinning on his knees to grab at her wrist and crush it in the opposite palm. He can feel the fine bones there -- how easy it would be for him to break them by just closing his fist. He'd never felt so profoundly powerful in his lifetime. He felt as if he could rip a hole into the hull of the Falcon and embrace the vacuum of space with ease.
He says nothing to her -- he is barely recognizable beyond the hateful sneer on his face, behind the red of his eyes and the tears that stain his cheeks. Kira did this to him -- she was the reason he felt as if his bones were about to pop out of his skin.
Before she can get away from him, he reaches for her throat and swings his legs over her to pin her to the floor. Anger floods out of him like its own oxygen source, and he is so much at a loss for what to do with it beyond kill that his shoulders continue to tremble.
[ He acts too quickly for her to anticipate, grabbing her and flipping her before she can react. Kira draws in one last, strained breath as his fingers close around her throat. Eyes wide, she looks up at him with all the panic one would expect of a poor master who had let her pet off its leash. He had never proven himself loyal to her, only to fear of the pain she could inflict, and still she is surprised by the turnaround.
Instinct takes over. Pain answers pain and darkness, darkness. She grits her teeth and pushes outward with the Force, a telekinetic pulse concentrated on knocking him back against the opposite wall and getting her airway free. She does not have the patience or presence of mind to coach him, to nurture him through the overwhelming surge of darkness.
Not when her own life is on the line, not when she has fought so hard to survive this long. ]
[It turns out her instinct is the correct one. He doesn't know how to fight off her applied Force. His fingers pull at the skin of her throat, turning it red with his refusal to release until he cracks back into the wall. It dazes him, knocks him out of the hungry, consuming darkness, and leaves him holding his head and struggling to clear his vision.
He's still short on breath, hyperventilating as he struggles to find a leash for the surging darkness, but present enough in his own mind to not lash out again.
He doesn't like it. He doesn't like it. He doesn't--
Ben starts to tremble again, fingernails digging into his own skin as he tries to pack it all back in a box without the tools to do so. Repeatedly, he claws over his own skin, leaving raised marks as he repeatedly tries to redirect his focus away from his anger.]
K-kira...
[She did this. He felt like he was drowning. She couldn't help him. But he can't help reaching out. She's the only one here. Who else would be there?]
[ She advances on him, follows after the wave that thrusts him back, doesn't stop to see if it knocks sense into him. With his power and his size, if he continues his attempt on her life, she will be pushed beyond the point of merely subduing him. But if she moves proactively, she might be able to make that happen without it coming to greater violence, without potentially costing herself —
Something empty hangs there. She cannot put a word on what she thinks this represents for her, only that it has value.
He is clawing at himself by the time she can get her hands on him, so this time she is the one to grapple with his wrists, pulling his arms off him. ]
Stop. [ There's something grieving and thick in the way she says it. Alarmed to the point of something sticking there in her throat. She does not know how to help him. Reassurance is beyond her ability, but she can muscle him out of turning his anger on himself. Clawing it out of himself. ] Do not succumb. Look at me.
[He fights her grip in a panicked manner initially, like something terrible might happen if he isn’t allowed to continue what he is doing. But then she makes demands, and he obeys, freezing all movement and leaving him a light quivering mess as he looks into her eyes.
What was wrong with him? He’d never felt so — vulnerable and out of control in his life. Even now, it feels like that anger might creep back up on him, and he might hurt Kira again. Or himself. Or his mother. Just thinking of her has him squirming in discomfort again.
But he clamps down on it by turning his hands to grip the smaller woman’s arms.]
Please don’t make me do that again.
[His voice is steady this time, with a paranoid wariness very obviously present.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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But she didn't. The implications of that...]
Well. Not just because of that. Maybe partly.
[He tries to close some of that distance, weighing his options.]
Look. I'm sorry. It's not personal. I just don't have interest in -- whatever it is you and Snoke do. I don't really want it anywhere near me.
[Before she can storm away from him again, he'll reach to put his hands on his shoulders. He does a poor job of masking his fear.]
But I know its there -- something's always been there. Just promise me that you aren't going to make it worse and I'll--trust you.
[As much as he can, anyway. There's a lot of Kill Bill klaxons going off.]
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For a moment she's quiet, reluctant. She ... can't ... promise ... that it won't make it worse. ]
Worse how?
[ Not heartening. Not helping the trust. ]
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[His voice is frightfully honest. The muscles in his hands work nervously at her shoulders.]
How much do you know about my family?
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[ Kira looks around at the Falcon in indication. That's as far as it goes. They don't get CNN out on Jakku, and the First Order is a hellscape of highly filtered propaganda, made worse by the insulated childhood she had with Snoke. ]
He was a smuggler and a traitor to the Empire. What does that have to do with this?
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[Her body language tells him enough. She has no real clue. Maybe coming clean is a bad idea.
That's definitely what's going through his head right now.]
My mother is the daughter of Darth Vader. Which makes me...
[He lifts his fingers from her shoulders when he shrugs. She is smart enough to draw the conclusion.]
So.
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[ Let it never be said that Kira isn't focused. As far as she is concerned, the only value is in focusing on Darth Vader's failings. He is a lesson to be learned from, not an icon to aspire to. Still, it bewilders her — he has a legacy like that, blood like that, and he could not be more disdainful of it.
Doesn't he realize that he has everything she wants, and he dangles it in front of her like it means nothing to him? Kira — no, Rey, the little girl buried deep within — aches for wanting. ]
No wonder you can't be honest. [ But that's not what he's getting at. It's just her own separate conclusion. ] Vader destroyed the galaxy when he turned on the Empire. Is that why you're afraid of the Dark? You think it will make you into him?
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You don’t have to say it like that.
[But yeah. He is. And he had not been the only one, he is sure. Its not like he has the Dark Side on speed dial, but he has definitely felt some unexplained, unpleasant emotions hovering over him in difficult times more than once before.]
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[ He is injured, and though some malnourished part of her wants to reach out and touch him and make up for the way she can see that she is responsible for it, the better part of her is instead curious. No, fascinated. She has found something in him that is hers alone, that he does not offer to others.
It makes her properly respect that she is the only one who knows what he has with the Force. She had thought it impossible that he would not know, but … no. That is hers too. Possessiveness starts to swallow her, feet-first. ]
You're not him. [ It feels a foolish thing to say to Ben Solo, honestly, but he is afraid of the ugly pieces of his bloodline just as she has been. He can wave his legacy in her face, but she is the one with the power to relieve him of it. ] You're not him, and you're not your mother, and no matter how much time you spend flying around in this piece of garbage, you're not Han Solo either. No one is trapped by what they came from. You can be something better.
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[Its better than admitting he is afraid.
But it appeals to some part of him he didn't know about. How long had he been running away from his bloodlines? Wasn't that half the reason he'd dodged the Resistance in the first place? Han Solo -- that legacy felt attainable, but he'd never gotten there. But Darth Vader? Leia Organa?
Yeah right.
He goes quiet, but she has his attention like she's never had it before.]
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[ She says that with some considerable disdain. She had fled that memory, clung to Snoke in its place, tried to hide from what they were. Even now she refuses to touch upon what she had done to them, what had brought Snoke's attention to her in the first place. ]
That life was waiting for me too. They were nothing. [ No one else in the galaxy knows this but Snoke. Even saying it now, her voice trembles. Admitting that she was worthless doesn't come easy. She expects he will look at her differently, but no. He must already know. ] But now everybody in the galaxy knows my name. The place we come from does not define us.
[ Help her she literally thinks she's living the American Dream here. ]
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It tugs at his heart some. But he can't fix it now.]
...I don't need to be anyone to the rest of the galaxy. I just want to be myself.
[Being nothing doesn't seem so bad, in the grand scheme of things. He looks away from her face then -- because this honest kind of burns, and he can feel something burning at the back of his neck.]
Are you going to help me shut him out?
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[ But that's just bitterness talking, and bitterness isn't practical. Kira glances down, composes herself, and settles on nodding. ]
Yeah. I'll help you. But it's going to hurt, and it's going to make that darkness you're afraid of stronger.
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Ok.
[Somewhere in the galaxy, General Organa just had to sit down.]
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[ She reaches up then, touches her fingers to his face. The movement is too brazen for it to be meant in the intimate way it comes across, though her gaze roams across his face, taking in the sharp angles and disproportionate features with considerable interest. She might be most enthused about the fact that he is caving to this necessity, but there is no doubt as to whether he's a part of it himself.
Her fingertips are freezing against his warm skin, but still she pushes her hand back until her palm presses against his cheek and her fingers curl in the edge of his hair. ]
Resist me. [ Fascination with him has thickened her voice to something that sounds almost lusty, but the effect is no doubt ruined by the fact that she tries to force her way into his mind then, crashing down on his awareness like a battering ram cannon. ]
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Resist me she says. And he gives a short laugh, on the edge of protest with some quippy reply before he feels that spike dig into his head.
She catches him off-guard easy with that, and she's able to grab hold of his equal interest in her without too much trouble. But almost instantly, she is met with fear, with that snarling righteous anger that seeks to shove her directly out of his mind. His heart seizes and he reaches up to try and pry her hands off of his face.
Regret. Regret. Regret.]
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Yes. It is there in his fear and fury, that darkness that calls out to her own. She searches his eyes for it, as if snapped awake and made all the more determined for having caught a glimpse of it before he rebuffed her. ]
Harder. [ She doesn't touch him this time, but the force of that spike drilling him bears down with greater force. ] Or I'll take everything. And so will he.
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He reaches for that anger instinctively to shove her back, but stops just short of taking its hand. This is wrong. He knows its wrong, the deeper Kira digs, the more wrong it feels.]
Stop.
[It is small, frightened, nothing compared to the instinctive buck he had first given her. It allows her another scrape of his mind, his mother petting his head through a dark nightmare.]
I can't do this.
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Yes, responsibility for him. She had promised to protect him, after all, and she knew of no better way to do that than to give him the tools to protect himself. This was the way. The only way. ]
Yes, you can.
[ The words spilled out savagely, certainly. She knew it like she knew the rhythm of her own heartbeat. He had not bested her only to show crippling weakness at the first sign of further violence. So she did not let up, but insisted to him instead. ]
You can. You have me. I'll help you.
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There are tears in his eyes then too. He's holding those dice like his life depends on it, before they suddenly seem to crumble to dust. Something in that dark snarls, and the figure of a younger Ben Solo suddenly looks more angry than despairing. It ripples, transfers, and suddenly both of them are shoving outward at Kira's suffocating presence.
He is on all fours, sweating through his clothes and wheezing furiously. His shoulders quiver with anger, his hands balled into fists. The Dark is pulsing outward now, slowly growing in a manner which Ben cannot seem to get a hold of.]
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It summons a complicated mess of emotions in her. Satisfaction that she has succeded is short-lived and wan, undermined by all the rest. In its company comes a pain and loneliness that she can't quite process as regret or guilt, which she quickly suppresses. But beyond that, fear — of Ben lashing out, of Snoke finding them and replacing her with him, of losing everything because she'd prodded this darkness inside of him.
She reaches for him. ]
Ben. That's it.
[ She grabs for his shoulder, sounding encouraging in some terrible way. If he is hers, then her fears are meaningless. ]
Hold onto it. Use it. Don't let it control you.
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He says nothing to her -- he is barely recognizable beyond the hateful sneer on his face, behind the red of his eyes and the tears that stain his cheeks. Kira did this to him -- she was the reason he felt as if his bones were about to pop out of his skin.
Before she can get away from him, he reaches for her throat and swings his legs over her to pin her to the floor. Anger floods out of him like its own oxygen source, and he is so much at a loss for what to do with it beyond kill that his shoulders continue to tremble.
Her words fall on deaf ears.]
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Instinct takes over. Pain answers pain and darkness, darkness. She grits her teeth and pushes outward with the Force, a telekinetic pulse concentrated on knocking him back against the opposite wall and getting her airway free. She does not have the patience or presence of mind to coach him, to nurture him through the overwhelming surge of darkness.
Not when her own life is on the line, not when she has fought so hard to survive this long. ]
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He's still short on breath, hyperventilating as he struggles to find a leash for the surging darkness, but present enough in his own mind to not lash out again.
He doesn't like it. He doesn't like it. He doesn't--
Ben starts to tremble again, fingernails digging into his own skin as he tries to pack it all back in a box without the tools to do so. Repeatedly, he claws over his own skin, leaving raised marks as he repeatedly tries to redirect his focus away from his anger.]
K-kira...
[She did this. He felt like he was drowning. She couldn't help him. But he can't help reaching out. She's the only one here. Who else would be there?]
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Something empty hangs there. She cannot put a word on what she thinks this represents for her, only that it has value.
He is clawing at himself by the time she can get her hands on him, so this time she is the one to grapple with his wrists, pulling his arms off him. ]
Stop. [ There's something grieving and thick in the way she says it. Alarmed to the point of something sticking there in her throat. She does not know how to help him. Reassurance is beyond her ability, but she can muscle him out of turning his anger on himself. Clawing it out of himself. ] Do not succumb. Look at me.
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What was wrong with him? He’d never felt so — vulnerable and out of control in his life. Even now, it feels like that anger might creep back up on him, and he might hurt Kira again. Or himself. Or his mother. Just thinking of her has him squirming in discomfort again.
But he clamps down on it by turning his hands to grip the smaller woman’s arms.]
Please don’t make me do that again.
[His voice is steady this time, with a paranoid wariness very obviously present.]
I don’t want to hurt you.
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