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.
[ 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.]
Your fear of your own power is keeping you from using it. You're letting it use you.
[ Importantly, this is not an answer to his request. She has not decided if she is or isn't going to make him do it again. The power he had, that she had seen, is seductive. Already she can imagine that if he could overcome her as he had with such an outburst, directed properly, the two of them together might be able to ensure that neither of them had to worry about Snoke again.
It's a startling thought. One she will need to take time to consider — Snoke had been the source of her power, he'd pulled her out of nothing and given her a purpose. But he'd also done that by hurting her, damaging her, making her fear and loathe him. Considering it, however, will be pointless if Ben remains so damnably terrified of himself.
Considering the crux of his particular fear as he has voiced it, she softens by a hair to insist: ] And you didn't hurt me. [ He might have, had it continued, had she not deflected him. But he didn't. ]
How am I supposed to control it when I don't even understand how it works?
[That is partially hissed, like he is afraid someone else might hear him. He still feels as if something is knocking on his mind, trying to find a hole to make its way inside, and so he has to close his eyes for stretches of time to come back tot himself.]
I could have. I'm not trying to hurt people -- unless I have to.
[To protect himself. So, in this case, maybe it was justified--no. No. No. He vigorously shakes his head to dispel the thought.]
What is it going to take for you to have to? We're already running for our lives.
[ She sneers that out, but she doesn't try to jerk away from him. It's a shame. She was really into him for like 30 seconds there, and now he's ruining it. Well, not entirely, but his persistence that his own darkness is a bad thing really doesn't make her feel loved and appreciated here. That's 89% of her being. ]
[ It's fine, just keep insulting the practices and religion of SNOKE'S ASSASSIN. He's so good at shaming himself with that. He could shame himself with it a little more now. ]
You learn how to pull on your anger and actively force him out on your own.
[ All of this she offers like it's elementary. She's not great with educating. But she is patient, so she pulls her wrists free and backs off. ]
If you're practiced in defending yourself, you're more likely to subconsciously and automatically resist what you did last night.
[Ben Solo is good at one thing and its ruining everyone else’s good time, no matter what is happening in this or any other universe. He lets her arms go as he mulls over her explanation. That makes. A little more sense, layed out like that. But he is still frowning.]
But ... last night, there was no pain. I didn’t even know it was him. It was just a — dream to me. How am I supposed to tell?
[Now that his hands are free, he sets about rubbing his cheeks, which no longer feel like they are about to melt off.]
[ There's something soft and insistent in her voice. It almost doesn't belong there. Kira isn't soft by any stretch of the imagination; even when she's vulnerable, it's like she's tightly coiled and frightened, all bare anxiety. But now, slipping into the explanation of the Force, the assurance she possesses and offers seems gentle. ]
Helping exercise your power will sharpen your senses. Both conscious and unconscious. Your reflexes improved as you became a better pilot, didn't they?
That explanation cleary hooks onto his one braincell as his brows knit in concentration and he slowly starts to nod. At the same time, he attempts to dig deepfor that animal he can feel snarling under his skin, opening the door little by little while simultaniously attempting to seek a calm somewhere in that yawning darkness.
There’s nothing there, but the calm sticks with his effort to slowly engage with that strange, far away feeling.]
[ She thinks of her own training. Of how she'd felt, facing the pain every day, forcing herself through it, surrendering to that snarling beast within. She thinks of it, and she recognizes that she would have wanted a break. Snoke had never given her one. She doesn't reach for him, doesn't budge, but she looks him over slowly, thoughtfully, and ultimately settles it. ]
We'll take a break.
[ She says it as though it's her executive decision, a gift. Keeps her voice hard like she is in control of what's happening. ]
[Ben nearly doesn't hear her through the roar in his ears, but her tone of voice grabs his attention enough to force his eyes open. It takes him a second to process.]
Yeah? Ok.
[He's not going to complain about a break. In fact, it sounds utterly delightful. So he leans forward on the dejarik table.]
[ The one she's been invited to. When she nods her head, it's with the explicit expectation that his bunk is the reading room, that they ought to sprawl themselves in there once more rather than any version of events where she brings it out here for a nice, neutral reading climate where they're not crammed in close and no one's in a bed.
She heads back that way, pulling the book out from under the pillow there. ]
[He absolutely expects her to come back out. When she doesn't, it settles in that she is looking for the same sort of intimate setting he had accidentally set up for them earlier, in an effort to befriend her. For some reason, it gives him pause now -- because they had been through more? Because he'd seen the inside of her dreams?
He knows if he stalls too long, she will get upset with him. So Ben eventually slinks into his bedroom and holds out an arm for the book, moving to sit on the mattress.]
[ She hands the book off to him, but she doesn't settle down onto the floor again. Instead she regards him with a sort of careful curiosity and then settles onto the bunk beside him, pulling her feet up onto it, boots and all. She folds her arms around her ankles, knees bent fully, and looks over at him, expectant. ]
[Ok, confirmation that they're doing this. He's not going to make this weird. Its not going to be weird. They can do this.
It takes him probably longer than it should to get comfortable. He kicks off his boots and nests himself in the opposite corner of her -- not really searching for distance so much as a place to comfortably lay his legs and rest his back. As a result, his long legs tuck themselves to her right against the wall.
Then, he searches for where they'd left off.]
Where were we...
[He clears his throat, trying to capture the same voices he'd used earlier to narrate.]
[ She stops him — a few times, actually — to make him reread the previous page, a testament to her investment. She doesn't want to miss anything. Now that she has set aside the awkwardness of it, she feels more able to appreciate it fully, to engage the way she has wanted to.
But his voice is soothing, too, and she is without restful sleep. After a time, she starts to doze against the opposite corner, breath even and slow and uncharacteristically calm. There's no forced restraint there. With him, in this moment, she feels at ease. For however long that lasts, for whatever that's worth. ]
[He obliges her each time she stops him, to the point that he is smiling near the end of his reading. This is the version of Kira he prefers: full of curiosity and near-innocence. That is about the moment he notices that she has stopped asking for him to go back and--oh.
She'd fallen asleep. She'd felt safe enough to sleep in his presence, even after all of the arguing they'd done just a few hours ago.
He gently closes the book to watch her. Every now and then, when she turns like she might wake, his heart thunders a little faster and he hastily looks away, as if he fears that she might catch him staring at her. And he is absolutely staring. She seems an entirely different person, like this. He wants to wrap a blanket around her again, but he hadn't soon forgotten the last time he'd tried that.
So, he stays right where he is, lost in mapping the way she's curled in on herself, the way it morphs the curves of her body. If only he could see her face from here.]
[ The more comfortable she becomes, the more pronounced her gentle snoring sounds. It's still light, more like heavy breathing than real snoring, but it's there. So is a softness that does not make its way through while she is conscious, keenly aware of him, and protective of herself.
It's some minutes before her brain processes the lack of the sound that had lulled her and the way he has stilled. She draws in a sharp, short breath, but even then doesn't move at first. Instead, she wakes slowly, blinking blearily, turning her eyes on him as they're still coming into focus.
A yawn holds her back for a moment, scrunches her nose, and she has to shake her head to quell it before she can ask — ] Did you stop?
[When she draws that sharp breath, Ben startles hard enough to crack his head into the top of the cubby hole.]
Sssson of a bantha!
[It comes out as a hiss, because not only does it hurt, but he is probably thoroughly busted. His cheeks start to color, and he aggressively attempts to clear his throat in an attempt to answer her question as casually as possible.]
Y-yeah. Thought you’d want to hear the whole thing and all
[And I totally wasn’t distracted by your prone sleeping self at all]
[ She takes a moment to study his puzzling reaction. A kinder person might offer some concern for his injury, or at least some sympathy, but Kira stares just as blank-faced and unflinching as ever. It's almost accusing, really, the way her eyes burn into him, study his bumps and bruises and sputtering. ]
You're staring again.
[ Now it's definitely an accusation. But she clearly doesn't know what to do with it. Only that she knows, now, because of him, that there is something to that. He has admitted he wants to be near her. But here she is, and he's still gaping, like he's perpetually waiting for something else. ]
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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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[ Importantly, this is not an answer to his request. She has not decided if she is or isn't going to make him do it again. The power he had, that she had seen, is seductive. Already she can imagine that if he could overcome her as he had with such an outburst, directed properly, the two of them together might be able to ensure that neither of them had to worry about Snoke again.
It's a startling thought. One she will need to take time to consider — Snoke had been the source of her power, he'd pulled her out of nothing and given her a purpose. But he'd also done that by hurting her, damaging her, making her fear and loathe him. Considering it, however, will be pointless if Ben remains so damnably terrified of himself.
Considering the crux of his particular fear as he has voiced it, she softens by a hair to insist: ] And you didn't hurt me. [ He might have, had it continued, had she not deflected him. But he didn't. ]
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[That is partially hissed, like he is afraid someone else might hear him. He still feels as if something is knocking on his mind, trying to find a hole to make its way inside, and so he has to close his eyes for stretches of time to come back tot himself.]
I could have. I'm not trying to hurt people -- unless I have to.
[To protect himself. So, in this case, maybe it was justified--no. No. No. He vigorously shakes his head to dispel the thought.]
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[ She sneers that out, but she doesn't try to jerk away from him. It's a shame. She was really into him for like 30 seconds there, and now he's ruining it. Well, not entirely, but his persistence that his own darkness is a bad thing really doesn't make her feel loved and appreciated here. That's 89% of her being. ]
This is how we hold him off.
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Ok, fine, I'm not trying to hurt you. Or anyone else that I--don't hate.
[We won't use the phrase "care about" yet, that feels like a stretch for his agreement with Kira.
He can't even argue that he doesn't want to kill some stormtroopers. That's definitely on the list of things that won't bother him whatsoever.]
So...what, every time he tries to -- do whatever he does, I have to hulk out? That doesn't sound like a plan to me.
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[ It's fine, just keep insulting the practices and religion of SNOKE'S ASSASSIN. He's so good at shaming himself with that. He could shame himself with it a little more now. ]
You learn how to pull on your anger and actively force him out on your own.
[ All of this she offers like it's elementary. She's not great with educating. But she is patient, so she pulls her wrists free and backs off. ]
If you're practiced in defending yourself, you're more likely to subconsciously and automatically resist what you did last night.
[ Oh for a better turn of phrase. ]
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But ... last night, there was no pain. I didn’t even know it was him. It was just a — dream to me. How am I supposed to tell?
[Now that his hands are free, he sets about rubbing his cheeks, which no longer feel like they are about to melt off.]
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[ There's something soft and insistent in her voice. It almost doesn't belong there. Kira isn't soft by any stretch of the imagination; even when she's vulnerable, it's like she's tightly coiled and frightened, all bare anxiety. But now, slipping into the explanation of the Force, the assurance she possesses and offers seems gentle. ]
Helping exercise your power will sharpen your senses. Both conscious and unconscious. Your reflexes improved as you became a better pilot, didn't they?
[ She tilts her head. ]
It's the same.
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That explanation cleary hooks onto his one braincell as his brows knit in concentration and he slowly starts to nod. At the same time, he attempts to dig deepfor that animal he can feel snarling under his skin, opening the door little by little while simultaniously attempting to seek a calm somewhere in that yawning darkness.
There’s nothing there, but the calm sticks with his effort to slowly engage with that strange, far away feeling.]
We’ll see, I guess.
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We'll take a break.
[ She says it as though it's her executive decision, a gift. Keeps her voice hard like she is in control of what's happening. ]
You can read me more of that story.
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Yeah? Ok.
[He's not going to complain about a break. In fact, it sounds utterly delightful. So he leans forward on the dejarik table.]
Where'd you put it?
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[ The one she's been invited to. When she nods her head, it's with the explicit expectation that his bunk is the reading room, that they ought to sprawl themselves in there once more rather than any version of events where she brings it out here for a nice, neutral reading climate where they're not crammed in close and no one's in a bed.
She heads back that way, pulling the book out from under the pillow there. ]
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He knows if he stalls too long, she will get upset with him. So Ben eventually slinks into his bedroom and holds out an arm for the book, moving to sit on the mattress.]
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It takes him probably longer than it should to get comfortable. He kicks off his boots and nests himself in the opposite corner of her -- not really searching for distance so much as a place to comfortably lay his legs and rest his back. As a result, his long legs tuck themselves to her right against the wall.
Then, he searches for where they'd left off.]
Where were we...
[He clears his throat, trying to capture the same voices he'd used earlier to narrate.]
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But his voice is soothing, too, and she is without restful sleep. After a time, she starts to doze against the opposite corner, breath even and slow and uncharacteristically calm. There's no forced restraint there. With him, in this moment, she feels at ease. For however long that lasts, for whatever that's worth. ]
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She'd fallen asleep. She'd felt safe enough to sleep in his presence, even after all of the arguing they'd done just a few hours ago.
He gently closes the book to watch her. Every now and then, when she turns like she might wake, his heart thunders a little faster and he hastily looks away, as if he fears that she might catch him staring at her. And he is absolutely staring. She seems an entirely different person, like this. He wants to wrap a blanket around her again, but he hadn't soon forgotten the last time he'd tried that.
So, he stays right where he is, lost in mapping the way she's curled in on herself, the way it morphs the curves of her body. If only he could see her face from here.]
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It's some minutes before her brain processes the lack of the sound that had lulled her and the way he has stilled. She draws in a sharp, short breath, but even then doesn't move at first. Instead, she wakes slowly, blinking blearily, turning her eyes on him as they're still coming into focus.
A yawn holds her back for a moment, scrunches her nose, and she has to shake her head to quell it before she can ask — ] Did you stop?
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Sssson of a bantha!
[It comes out as a hiss, because not only does it hurt, but he is probably thoroughly busted. His cheeks start to color, and he aggressively attempts to clear his throat in an attempt to answer her question as casually as possible.]
Y-yeah. Thought you’d want to hear the whole thing and all
[And I totally wasn’t distracted by your prone sleeping self at all]
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You're staring again.
[ Now it's definitely an accusation. But she clearly doesn't know what to do with it. Only that she knows, now, because of him, that there is something to that. He has admitted he wants to be near her. But here she is, and he's still gaping, like he's perpetually waiting for something else. ]
Is that why you're nervous?
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