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.
[His head tilts to the side, and he cannot help the exhaustion that seeps into his limbs. It isn't simply born of Rey's reaction to his harsh truths, but also the fact that he had not slept as of yet.
Her anger is a warm flame on the other end of the bond. Were circumstances different, he might have basked in it. But instead, its light sears his eyes.]
If that's true — if — then you'll never get what you want.
[ It will never be possible for him. ]
I can't choose you over them if they're not here. So you'd better hope they don't leave us behind.
[ It's a potentially cruel, potentially risky button to press. But it's the truth as she sees it, so Rey grabs onto it now that he has backed her into a corner and stolen the only thing she had left from her. Taken the very weakness he had consoled her for, the moment that had made her treasure his compassion and understanding of her, and wielded it against her. He would make her regret everything she'd ever shared with him if he could.
She didn't want to let him dig that far, sabotage himself that completely. But the problem has always been that she is more invested in his betterment than he is. ]
[It works. Something seizes on the other end of the bond, and all of his limbs grow tense, but he has nothing to shoot back at her this time. He becomes eerily still and quiet, his tired glance shifting to something furious and hurt.]
No. I suppose you can't.
[Now is when he finally moves, nothing but limbs as he backpedals through the curtain and to the bed. He very nearly makes another remark about false hope, but he doesn't have the energy for it.
He forces his body to go limp on the bed, though he is wound tightly like a spring in spite of it.]
[ Watching him retreat, Rey doesn't feel like she won.
It feels like the blood has drained from her body, like the storm will never pass, like the room has grown smaller, quieter, colder. Rey looks away. She can't stand to watch him like this. Instead, she picks up the device that Rost had charged them to find. Turning it over in her hands only makes her want to throw it at the wall. The metal is cold and unforgiving, just like this whole damned city.
She does not want to win when winning demands fighting against him. She wants them on the same side. She wants to feel close to him like she did before. Briefly, piteously, she looks over her shoulder at him. She's lucky that she slept first. Lying there in sheets that smelled of him would destroy her. That was the real reason she'd left their room at the hotel. She couldn't stand to sleep in a place that still felt like him, nor could she stand to see those markers of him erased.
Even now she just wants to crawl in beside him. But she can't force him. And she can't settle. So loneliness it is. She watches through the window as the rain stops. ]
[Kylo continues to lie there, wound and yet still, staring bleakly at the ceiling. His heart rate continues to rise for every moment there is silence, and every second Rey stays on the other side of the room. And as the silence lingers, so does the mounting understanding that he has no rebuttal, nothing to say in return.
The loneliness he can feel only intensifies the feeling of being smothered. He notes that the sound of the rain pattering on the glass has halted. In an effort to drive off the unpleasantness, he reaches up and starts to scratch at his chest uselessly.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.]
Come here.
[He says it suddenly, after a long moment of silence.]
[ He can't have her when he wants and discard her when her needs are inconvenient. She won't go to him pretending things are anything but what they are. If he cannot make himself better, then she cannot bend.
She turns to look at him, at least, but her eyes are full of hurt and resentment. ]
[He reframes it after only a beat, without looking at her. There's a slight squirm when he says it, something that might have been passed off as an attempt to get comfortable, were there not the feeling of being pinned by her resentful stare on the other side of the room.
He doesn't quite wilt, but the sentiment is there.]
[ It's not that easy. It might have been, before. But Rey doesn't soften this time. He's really fucked it up, turning away from her for no reason other than a refusal to be the person she had seen in him, the one she deserves. ]
Why? [ That word isn't magic anymore. The problem goes beyond mannerisms to mindset. She won't conflate his disposition towards her with any meaningful change this time. ]
[He keeps scratching, until his skin feels raw under the threadbare shirt. When he speaks, it is slow and halting, like he is trying to unearth each word from something heavy that it is buried under.]
Because. I do not want to die here. In this city. Alone.
[But that's not quite all of it, is it? This pause is longer.]
[ He has always excelled in taking her words in the worst way possible. This doesn't surprise her anymore. It's strange how completely she has rid herself of illusions about him. No. Not rid herself. Loki had rid her. She couldn't have done it without him either.
Would he think of her and Kylo? Would he try to stop the departure? ]
I'm not going to forgive you for hurting me just because you think we're going to die. If you want forgiveness, do better. [ It sounds cruel now to say it, but she's also not preoccupied with their immediate deaths. They have time at the very least. ]
[He sees no path to earning her forgiveness now, when they are here alone like this. Whatever had seemed insurmountable before, it is twice so now.
He finally turns over now, propping himself up on his arms. To look over at her. His hair is a mess -- too long, pressed flat by how he had been both laying and sitting. It obscures one of his dark eyes.]
[ For too many reasons to list. In fact, the suggestion insults her. Does he not realize that it would hurt her more to be that close to him, knowing she's not important enough for him to grapple with his own shit?
This is the boundary now. Rey won't allow them to creep into some uneasy middle. If they're not together, they're not together. It's as easy as that. Letting boundaries become suggestions, letting 'try' be good enough, was how she'd opened herself to being hurt in the first place. She was desperate for companionship then.
She won't let it happen again. Being alone in this place would be better than being with him, knowing she would never be good enough. ]
[ Rey's hackles raise as Kylo gets to his feet. He offers to beg, but his sheer size as he comes to his full height indicates a different brand of intended leverage. The muscles of her jaw ripple briefly as it clenches. ]
It won't make a difference.
[ Desperate people do desperate things. Rey saw many examples on Jakku. But she wants nothing from him out of desperation, and she wouldn't believe it, anyway. ]
Help me get home to my friends. [ That's the line. ] Help me help Rost. Help anyone but yourself. [ Then, they can talk. It's a glimmer of a chance. Light on the horizon. ]
[He stops walking, working at his lips with his tongue and teeth.]
I will help you.
[He was planning on that, anyway. At least half of what she asks was the only way to help himself anyway. And he has pretty strong believe that they are stranded there. But if her snap earlier had taunt him anything, it would do no good to continue to lay hard truths at her feet.]
--but that will not ease all of your hurts.
[Does she think he is deaf to their bond, now that they are like this? It is muted for a certainty, but he would have to be numb not to feel the pulsating calling on the other end of it.]
[ It would be easier if she could say he was wrong in all the assumptions he made about her state of mind, her feelings. But Ben has always been astute on that point. They are so similar, after all.
Even now, his offer to help her out of the list she'd given leaves her suspicious. He'd always been willing to help her. It is different, yes, when he's helping her against his own self-interest; he would have an easier time investing himself in the inevitability of her buckling to him if they were alone here. It's hard to imagine the rest of their lives at each other's throats if they have no one else. But he still only sees the two of them.
[He recognizes the dismissal for what it is. For a moment he stands there, considering his options.
And then, as instructed, he turns and crawls back behind the curtain on the bed. He does not sleep for some time, but he makes a point to trouble her no further.
And even still, he does not really sleep. His eyes are closed -- but his mind never quite allows him the bliss of slumber. He gives up the act after a few hours.]
[ The flooding has lessened, at least. Rey taps her fingers on the window pane. For the first time, seeming for all the world like she wants to get out, not just wait. She's had a lot of time to think, these past few hours. Being caught up with him in such close quarters makes that hard. They lose perspective as their vision tunnels on one another. ]
You threw me out.
[ She wants to make sure that's well-established. ]
You don't trust me. You would rather see my friends dead than me happy with them. [ He had tried to kill Keith. She had been foolish to walk back from that at all. ] What kind of companionship is that?
[ Doesn't he understand that he's asking her to live a half-life with him? Meanwhile, he treats her like her needs are an attack on him, then when it inconveniences him, or when he's confronted with the fear of death, he claws for it anyway. It's all he has, but he's the one refusing to search for more. ]
I've never had anything to myself, before. Nothing I did not care about losing. And I thought they would steer you from me.
[It's an explanation, not entirely unfounded. An excuse, is what she will call it. That is fine -- he just wants to get it out before he follows up with:]
It...was a mistake.
[He doesn't specify what was a mistake, of course. But he does not argue the points she tries to make. If nothing else had been made clear to him, it was that he would not win anything by refusing to bend. Not this time.]
[ Rey adopts an unearned levity. It rings wrong. Off-key. Because he's so familiar to her now, but that familiarity only helps her point out the gaps. The same pits that used to trap her. ]
You do that sometimes. You'll say that, instead of "I'm sorry." Because you're not sorry for what you did, or what you said. It was a mistake because you don't like the consequences. Like a bad calculation.
[ Some part of her hopes that this time, he tells her she's wrong. This time, he says that he's sorry, and he means it. Instead of avoiding it because she will sense the inherent dishonesty. But she's not hanging onto that hope anymore. ]
[The way she dissects him is disarming and makes him shrink in on himself some. He doesn't really ever know what to say, when she manages to pin him down under his own defense mechanisms. She will no doubt feel the way his anxiety boils over when she points it out.]
I am. I am sorry.
[That, at least, seems like a real apology. He does not know what drives him to say it then, but it comes from his mouth unbidden.]
[ Despite her hope, he catches her off guard. The mask of ease slips. The hardness cracks away like a brittle coating, and her mouth hangs open as she regards him with bright, vulnerable eyes. At first, she doesn't say anything. He derailed her every expectation with that, and she doesn't know what course to correct to. Instead, she gapes, blinking away the surprise.
Then, she steps towards him. Cautious, wobbly, but firm. Just a few steps. Not even enough to close the already narrow distance in this cramped space. ]
[ She takes another uneasy step forward. He's listening. She can tell from the way he pushes for more understanding. This isn't lip service; he wants to make a change. But wanting isn't the same as doing. So she stops after another step forward, drawing a deep breath. Steadying herself. There has to be a limit to how far she's willing to bend. ]
We all feel afraid sometimes. You feel the fear, and you do it anyway. Because the rewards are worth it. You ... You wanted to have someone who would come for you. [ She won't let him forget that. ] Like I would. If I'm the only person you ever trust, the only person you open yourself up to ... People might not disappoint you, Ben. But they won't surprise you either. And they won't be able to care.
[ And he wants to be cared about. She knows that because it's one of the things they have most in common—loneliness and neglect turned into starvation. ]
[His expression will tell her that he is calculating the information she gives him. Now is when he sits up, bracing himself with both arms even as he moves upright. He follows her logic, and yet --]
It is not only that. I am not the kind of person most people care for.
[Not just because he is a murderer. But because he is awkward, does not take social cues, among other problems.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[His head tilts to the side, and he cannot help the exhaustion that seeps into his limbs. It isn't simply born of Rey's reaction to his harsh truths, but also the fact that he had not slept as of yet.
Her anger is a warm flame on the other end of the bond. Were circumstances different, he might have basked in it. But instead, its light sears his eyes.]
It's just us. Again. Whether we live or we die.
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[ It will never be possible for him. ]
I can't choose you over them if they're not here. So you'd better hope they don't leave us behind.
[ It's a potentially cruel, potentially risky button to press. But it's the truth as she sees it, so Rey grabs onto it now that he has backed her into a corner and stolen the only thing she had left from her. Taken the very weakness he had consoled her for, the moment that had made her treasure his compassion and understanding of her, and wielded it against her. He would make her regret everything she'd ever shared with him if he could.
She didn't want to let him dig that far, sabotage himself that completely. But the problem has always been that she is more invested in his betterment than he is. ]
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No. I suppose you can't.
[Now is when he finally moves, nothing but limbs as he backpedals through the curtain and to the bed. He very nearly makes another remark about false hope, but he doesn't have the energy for it.
He forces his body to go limp on the bed, though he is wound tightly like a spring in spite of it.]
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It feels like the blood has drained from her body, like the storm will never pass, like the room has grown smaller, quieter, colder. Rey looks away. She can't stand to watch him like this. Instead, she picks up the device that Rost had charged them to find. Turning it over in her hands only makes her want to throw it at the wall. The metal is cold and unforgiving, just like this whole damned city.
She does not want to win when winning demands fighting against him. She wants them on the same side. She wants to feel close to him like she did before. Briefly, piteously, she looks over her shoulder at him. She's lucky that she slept first. Lying there in sheets that smelled of him would destroy her. That was the real reason she'd left their room at the hotel. She couldn't stand to sleep in a place that still felt like him, nor could she stand to see those markers of him erased.
Even now she just wants to crawl in beside him. But she can't force him. And she can't settle. So loneliness it is. She watches through the window as the rain stops. ]
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The loneliness he can feel only intensifies the feeling of being smothered. He notes that the sound of the rain pattering on the glass has halted. In an effort to drive off the unpleasantness, he reaches up and starts to scratch at his chest uselessly.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.]
Come here.
[He says it suddenly, after a long moment of silence.]
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[ He can't have her when he wants and discard her when her needs are inconvenient. She won't go to him pretending things are anything but what they are. If he cannot make himself better, then she cannot bend.
She turns to look at him, at least, but her eyes are full of hurt and resentment. ]
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[He reframes it after only a beat, without looking at her. There's a slight squirm when he says it, something that might have been passed off as an attempt to get comfortable, were there not the feeling of being pinned by her resentful stare on the other side of the room.
He doesn't quite wilt, but the sentiment is there.]
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Why? [ That word isn't magic anymore. The problem goes beyond mannerisms to mindset. She won't conflate his disposition towards her with any meaningful change this time. ]
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Because. I do not want to die here. In this city. Alone.
[But that's not quite all of it, is it? This pause is longer.]
Knowing that you still hate me, like this.
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[ He has always excelled in taking her words in the worst way possible. This doesn't surprise her anymore. It's strange how completely she has rid herself of illusions about him. No. Not rid herself. Loki had rid her. She couldn't have done it without him either.
Would he think of her and Kylo? Would he try to stop the departure? ]
I'm not going to forgive you for hurting me just because you think we're going to die. If you want forgiveness, do better. [ It sounds cruel now to say it, but she's also not preoccupied with their immediate deaths. They have time at the very least. ]
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[He sees no path to earning her forgiveness now, when they are here alone like this. Whatever had seemed insurmountable before, it is twice so now.
He finally turns over now, propping himself up on his arms. To look over at her. His hair is a mess -- too long, pressed flat by how he had been both laying and sitting. It obscures one of his dark eyes.]
That is why I only asked for your company.
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[ For too many reasons to list. In fact, the suggestion insults her. Does he not realize that it would hurt her more to be that close to him, knowing she's not important enough for him to grapple with his own shit?
This is the boundary now. Rey won't allow them to creep into some uneasy middle. If they're not together, they're not together. It's as easy as that. Letting boundaries become suggestions, letting 'try' be good enough, was how she'd opened herself to being hurt in the first place. She was desperate for companionship then.
She won't let it happen again. Being alone in this place would be better than being with him, knowing she would never be good enough. ]
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[His stare is unmoving now, except for the small glimpses he steals in search for a change in body language. Some sign that he might reach for.
When he finds nothing, he squirms into a sitting position, and then a standing one.]
I will.
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It won't make a difference.
[ Desperate people do desperate things. Rey saw many examples on Jakku. But she wants nothing from him out of desperation, and she wouldn't believe it, anyway. ]
Help me get home to my friends. [ That's the line. ] Help me help Rost. Help anyone but yourself. [ Then, they can talk. It's a glimmer of a chance. Light on the horizon. ]
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I will help you.
[He was planning on that, anyway. At least half of what she asks was the only way to help himself anyway. And he has pretty strong believe that they are stranded there. But if her snap earlier had taunt him anything, it would do no good to continue to lay hard truths at her feet.]
--but that will not ease all of your hurts.
[Does she think he is deaf to their bond, now that they are like this? It is muted for a certainty, but he would have to be numb not to feel the pulsating calling on the other end of it.]
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[ It would be easier if she could say he was wrong in all the assumptions he made about her state of mind, her feelings. But Ben has always been astute on that point. They are so similar, after all.
Even now, his offer to help her out of the list she'd given leaves her suspicious. He'd always been willing to help her. It is different, yes, when he's helping her against his own self-interest; he would have an easier time investing himself in the inevitability of her buckling to him if they were alone here. It's hard to imagine the rest of their lives at each other's throats if they have no one else. But he still only sees the two of them.
The problem remains. ]
Go to sleep, Kylo.
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And then, as instructed, he turns and crawls back behind the curtain on the bed. He does not sleep for some time, but he makes a point to trouble her no further.
And even still, he does not really sleep. His eyes are closed -- but his mind never quite allows him the bliss of slumber. He gives up the act after a few hours.]
Can you see the streets?
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[ The flooding has lessened, at least. Rey taps her fingers on the window pane. For the first time, seeming for all the world like she wants to get out, not just wait. She's had a lot of time to think, these past few hours. Being caught up with him in such close quarters makes that hard. They lose perspective as their vision tunnels on one another. ]
You threw me out.
[ She wants to make sure that's well-established. ]
You don't trust me. You would rather see my friends dead than me happy with them. [ He had tried to kill Keith. She had been foolish to walk back from that at all. ] What kind of companionship is that?
[ Doesn't he understand that he's asking her to live a half-life with him? Meanwhile, he treats her like her needs are an attack on him, then when it inconveniences him, or when he's confronted with the fear of death, he claws for it anyway. It's all he has, but he's the one refusing to search for more. ]
Never expect me to accept that again. I won't.
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[It's an explanation, not entirely unfounded. An excuse, is what she will call it. That is fine -- he just wants to get it out before he follows up with:]
It...was a mistake.
[He doesn't specify what was a mistake, of course. But he does not argue the points she tries to make. If nothing else had been made clear to him, it was that he would not win anything by refusing to bend. Not this time.]
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[ Rey adopts an unearned levity. It rings wrong. Off-key. Because he's so familiar to her now, but that familiarity only helps her point out the gaps. The same pits that used to trap her. ]
You do that sometimes. You'll say that, instead of "I'm sorry." Because you're not sorry for what you did, or what you said. It was a mistake because you don't like the consequences. Like a bad calculation.
[ Some part of her hopes that this time, he tells her she's wrong. This time, he says that he's sorry, and he means it. Instead of avoiding it because she will sense the inherent dishonesty. But she's not hanging onto that hope anymore. ]
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I am. I am sorry.
[That, at least, seems like a real apology. He does not know what drives him to say it then, but it comes from his mouth unbidden.]
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Then, she steps towards him. Cautious, wobbly, but firm. Just a few steps. Not even enough to close the already narrow distance in this cramped space. ]
I don't want us to have to hide or be afraid.
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How do you keep from being afraid?
[He does not ask after hiding. It feels easier to accept, now that everyone already knows.]
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[ She takes another uneasy step forward. He's listening. She can tell from the way he pushes for more understanding. This isn't lip service; he wants to make a change. But wanting isn't the same as doing. So she stops after another step forward, drawing a deep breath. Steadying herself. There has to be a limit to how far she's willing to bend. ]
We all feel afraid sometimes. You feel the fear, and you do it anyway. Because the rewards are worth it. You ... You wanted to have someone who would come for you. [ She won't let him forget that. ] Like I would. If I'm the only person you ever trust, the only person you open yourself up to ... People might not disappoint you, Ben. But they won't surprise you either. And they won't be able to care.
[ And he wants to be cared about. She knows that because it's one of the things they have most in common—loneliness and neglect turned into starvation. ]
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It is not only that. I am not the kind of person most people care for.
[Not just because he is a murderer. But because he is awkward, does not take social cues, among other problems.]
But you did.
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