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 does not believe for a second that she will not fight him, but her claims draw out the stubborn desire to push her -- even after all those years, he is still incredibly predictable.]
Well, if you won't fight...
[He reaches to untie one of her hands in a deliberately slow manner -- he has no doubt that she can outlast him in a game of patience, but she has done him the favor of nearly dislocating her shoulder prior to this moment. If she does, in fact, try to fight him...it should not be difficult to restrain her again. He'd just walk out with more bruises than he first anticipated.
And right now, that doesn't sound so bad. He was never one to shy away from physical pain -- quite the opposite, actually.]
[ Her heartbeat picks up, fluttering in her ribcage, as she follows his fingers to her wrists. The makeshift binders have done their share of damage, chafing the skin until it is red and raw beneath the wrappings he carefully untangles.
He's a fool. She would be a greater fool to act on impulse and reach for the lightsaber still buried within her cloak. If nothing else, he has done her the favor of wanting her to be awake before he tried to touch her. Waiting for an opportune moment is wiser.
Rey says nothing, though a flash of pain does spike between them as the weight of her arm drops — heavy from being in one position, sore from all of her thrashing. It jostles her shoulder again, an agonizing burst of pain, but she gives no voice to it beyond a grunt — even as fresh tears threaten to spring to her eyes, turning them glossy.
They never fall. Tears had never gotten her anywhere, after all. Instead, she focuses on drawing her arm back to her, watching him all the while to ensure it isn't a greater trick than it already is for his attempts to provoke her into action, observing him like an animal distrusting the hunter that had locked it in a cage and now thinks to free it. ]
[And like a hunter, he observes her reaction, from the flinch of pain to the tears that spring to her eyes and the way she curls in on herself. He is slower with the second binding, drawing on the few memories he still keeps packed away -- memories of how to keep an interaction intimate in its control, how to possess and own every slow slip of the rope as he unknots it and leaves Rey to her relief.
And he is leaning over her to continue this observation, a shadow covering a good portion of her body as he digs for the familiar signs of Rey -- the fight, the belligerence, the survival instinct. He craves it, practically vibrates with the need to feel it in the bond again. So engrossed in it, he seems to have nearly forgotten his cause for recapturing her in the first place.
His focus is singular, enough that his commlink can be seen flashing on the banister away from them as he ignores yet another summons.
She hasn't struck him yet beyond that first kick. Hell, she hasn't even tried to struggle -- so he gets bolder. The hand that had been playing with her lower lip drags back to thread through her hair, which he casually examines like one might examine a favorite plant.]
You must be starving.
[It is unclear if he is talking about food, or something else.]
[ His fingers ruin what their scuffle in the sand hadn't, disrupting what's left of the braid that hangs low at her back. It promises what had once been intricate — familiar, a memento from Leia that she can only replicate now.
She hadn't had the heart to ever disband it. It's clear she has taken no better care of it — and herself, for that matter — than what had been strictly necessary to keep it free from dangling in her face, greasy from sweat and lack of proper hygiene, hanging in the middle of her spine. It hasn't deterred him, she notes, as she had hoped the state of her might.
It seems she was wrong. He is too desperate to find her unappealing, even wan and unwashed. Rey's dry throat works as she swallows, deliberately ignoring whatever suggestion she thinks she hears between the lines. Ignoring him, more than that, as she angles her face away to pay attention to rubbing feeling back into her arms.
She is convinced he will eventually stop once he gets no reaction. And if he will not stop ... She can take advantage of his current fixation. ]
I had all that I needed in the desert.
[ Enough to sustain herself on just enough nourishment to survive. Enough warm bodies if she needed the company, though she could never bring herself to want human contact again. Opening herself meant inevitably losing it. ]
[Not him. Not a family. No real connection — and for all Rey tries to deny that she doesn’t need those things, he knows that she lies. He knows because he lied too, until he could nor take it anymore and increased the search for her.
And certainly not enough food. He rises to his feet, intent on providing.]
I will be back.
[And after just a moment’s glance down at the discarded rope, Kylo Ren backs out of the room and locks the door behind him. His room, of course, is utterly bare bones: a bed with an imprint of the same position he has slept in every night with one crushed pillow that he seems to have been hugging. There are no photos on the wall, and only a calligraphy set poised on the table.
He returns before long with an MRE of sorts — fancier than anything Rey has likely had, and places the tray on the one table in the room. He also brings a wheeled IV, which he parks in the corner of the room.]
[ Not everything, he says, and Rey can only interpret it as arrogance. His folly is in believing himself to be the key to her salvation — the missing piece of her that will make her whole, make her see him as he wants to be seen. It's a child's belief thinking he can coax her from the festering void of the dark when he had been the one to push her there, but Rey has already done what she can to denounce his misconception.
He rises too quickly for her to dispute it, regardless. Rey is left staring at the door as he departs, waiting until the sound of his thudding footsteps has dulled before she rises. Locked, as she had suspected, but she couldn't have forgiven herself if she had not tried to seize the opportunity.
She returns to her place on his bed minutes before he returns, perched at its very edge in her refusal to get comfortable there. Kylo Ren has already convinced himself she belongs there, a fixture, a pet; she won't give him further reason to believe it. The room itself remains untouched and undisturbed, unwilling to risk rifling through it just yet. ]
There's no water.
[ Rey points that out bluntly once she has settled the tray on her lap, keen to observe all the ways in which he is lacking in caring for her well when she knows he would prefer gratitude. She's going to puke it up if she consumes it in its entirety, anyway. There won't be avoiding any of that after her stomach has settled into a routine of subsisting on scraps, unable to fully digest beyond those limits.
Petulantly, she doesn't warn him. It wouldn't do her any good when he'll shove his fingers down her throat and coerce her into eating, and she is not above forcing him to learn from his mistake of believing he knows best. ]
[Rey's complaint earns her a frustrated stare down, and for a long moment, it seems like he expects her to eat without it. Then, abruptly, he summons his canteen from the table and hands it to her expectantly. Inside is cool tea, obviously freshly brewed not long before she had woken up.]
My apologies, your highness.
[He manages to keep any sarcastic tone out of his reply, though the Force tells enough of that story.]
I already told you, didn't I? I don't need anything from you.
[ Just barely, she prevents herself from continuing with that bratty rampage by reminding him she had not asked for the tray he has brought. If he should fault anyone for his lack of foresight, for his inadequacy, it should be himself.
But it gives him too large an opening to suggest she has made a request of him when she knows it isn't true. Demanding is easier and spares her from feeling as if she must rely on him, taking on that imperious demeanor with ease. It continues as she unscrews the canteen, stirring the container until the liquid sloshes against its edges, and sniffs — nose twitching like a rabbit, as if she can detect anything amiss.
He wouldn't poison her when he'd gone to such great lengths to keep her alive. Drugging her seems equally out of the question for how it would alter her mind, but she remains skeptical, distrusting — and eager to insult him by reminding him of that, even now.
The first sip she takes is cautious, but the next is messier, throating working to swallow what she drinks down with greed — liquid spilling out onto her chin, missed when she finally breaks away to wipe at her mouth with the back of her hand. ]
[Again, Kylo Ren watches studiously as she devours his carefully prepared beverage, arms at his sides and eyelids half hooded. He waits until she is done before slowly and deliberately offering his hand to take the canteen from her. His fist uncurls one finger at a time.]
It seems your thirst would beg to differ.
[He offers her no smug smile, but the bond hides nothing now that they are in the same room again. It feels sticky, pleased by the fact that they've been reunited even while at odds with one another.]
Fortunately, there is plenty more where that came from.
[ She doesn't trust that promise for a second as she sets the canteen back in his hand. Rather than address it, Rey rubs away the moisture collecting at her chin, dripping down onto the bed like a stalactite, and turns her eyes to the meal he's offered. This time, she is careful not to dig in quickly, not to enjoy it.
Kylo Ren would only consider it another victory, and she knows well now that needs and desires are exploitable. He is not above dangling them above her head, using them as bait, to coerce her into behaving as he wishes, slotting her into the role he wants in order to indulge his fantasies.
Her disdain pollutes his satisfaction in the bond, working to overpower it. Carefully, she picks at the block of processed ingredients — meat and bread, if she had to guess, and snarks, ]
Did you expect me to thank you? I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
[A blatant lie that he has no problem offering her. With that, he turns his back and heads to the counter on the other side of the table, intent on preparing more tea. It was supposed to be his, after all.]
If I wanted to be thanked, I would not have gone through so much trouble to hunt you down in the desert, Rey. I would have waited for you to seek me out. But we both know that was not going to happen.
[The use of her name is deliberate, reminding her that there is nothing to separate them now. Not names. Not familiarity. Nothing.]
So instead, you are my prisoner. Again. Until we both expire, this time.
[ This time, she does not spare him the sharpness of that accusation, eager to remind him that he is not immune to the bond's properties. He cannot hide from her any more than she can conceal herself from him. As an advantage in her hands, it grants her the smugness he had not outwardly shown, dripping from every letter.
Despite soothing her parched throat, Rey's voice dips unnervingly, crackling and hoarse. ]
Even after all this time, you're so desperate to be seen. Desperate to be loved. [ It must hurt, knowing another creature of the darkness would not dare to grant him that. ] You're too afraid to be alone. Being without me killed you.
[It's all so true, true enough that he knows better than to react. Kylo Ren imagines this beautiful moment when he turns to Rey and just smiles, like he knows better than her. That's not what happens though.
She earns herself the outburst she had no doubt been craving to see, a slamming of the canteen that sends boiling water all over his hand and burns the skin there before he turns and rapidly closes the distance, looming over her and stopped short only by the meal he had given her -- a reminder that she was still weak, that he was still not at full strength, and that giving in too deeply to that anger could kill them both.
So instead, he's stuck breathing like an angry bantha, hovering over her and trembling with the urge to strangle her into the mattress.]
And yet here I stand. Being without you did not do a very good job of killing me.
Rey's chin tips, almost regal in its gesture, to bare her throat. Not as a predator entrusting another with its weakest point, but goading him with its presentation, long and slender and easy to wrap his fingers around and squeeze as he is doubtlessly imagining. The bond feeds her that indulgent fantasy, too.
In the end, his imagination is sufficient if he will not give her the reality. It does nothing to free her, no, but it lends her the power he thinks he can strip from her. Emotionless in the face of his outburst, she looks on unblinkingly, listening to his stuttered breaths labored by unconcealed rage. ]
There are worst fates. [ A phantom burn stings the back of her hand, reddened from the damage he has done to himself. Rey doesn't react, though it's difficult to determine if it's obliviousness or numbness to the pain flaring there, seeping out of him and into her. ] You have me here, but you're still alone.
[The tip of her neck coupled with yet another acknowledgement of the truth means that Kylo Ren cannot resist a second siren call of the urge to choke her. His large burned hand snaps around her bared neck, squeezing and shoving her backwards into the mattress so she has the perfect view of his bared teeth, wild black hair, and bulging eyes on the verge of allowing some other emotion besides anger leak past.]
It's over, Rey. The First Order has already won. What do you think killing us both will accomplish?
[He does not squeeze enough to be lethal, just enough to force her to struggle to breathe.]
[ In her kindest dreams, he appears to her as he is now. A shadowy beast, clawing into her throat — offering her the only intimacy he can, the only intimacy she will accept, in the band of his fingers around her windpipe.
Even her subconscious cannot endure the cruelty of imagining him kind, how he might have loved her in another life.
The tray scatters with a metallic clang, spilling its contents until they are strewn across the floor. Rey can scarcely hear it over the pounding in her ears and the harsh scrape of her breath, rasping and wheezing from her constricted trachea. At her sides, her fingers twitch and tremble, but never reach to struggle against his hold.
Neither does she waste her oxygen on breath. He would only mock her with her answer, her longing for peace — for herself, for Ben Solo. She presses her throat into the palm of his hand, instead, seeking out the grip of pain — gaze vacant, as if she has gone faraway, even as a tear drips down the corner of her eye. ]
[For a long minute, it seems like he might finally do it. The Dark makes it seem so easy to just twist his wrists to the side and snap her neck right then and there. Something is pulling him to do it, just as something is calling him to resist. The result is that one of his own tears mixes with her's. And then another. And another.
Finally, he let's go with a roar of frustration, swinging his fists to instead slam them heavily on the wall, along with what remains of his bulk. And he sits there, shaking with a mixture of anger and grief, fighting with exhaustion that suddenly grips him as he continues to bang his fists in an effort to work all the energy out of himself.
It takes a few minutes, but eventually his blind rage ends, and he is left leaning against the wall -- wheezing.]
[ The first intake of unimpeded air feels holy, spiritual. As does the next, and the next — every gasp drowned out by the futile beating of his fists — until she realizes what he has denied her.
Disappointment sets in, but Rey quickly transforms it into rage. Rage at his cowardice, rage for his audacity to weep. It isn't for her, she decides, or what she has become. Similarly, she refuses to interpret it as the sting of his shame. Kylo Ren has never cried for her, after all — only himself. ]
If you ever cared for me, you would have finished it.
[ Her eyes are still red with an excess of tears she won't allow to follow, cheeks damp with the product of his own. It disrupts the flaking, dried trails of blood his wounds had left on her in the desert, as if trying to rinse her clean.
In the end, it's clear that she views his failure to follow through as a betrayal, as a declaration of how little she had ever meant to him. It should come as no surprise; she has long since embraced the lesson he had taught her on the Supremacy. She will always be alone, will always be disappointed, as she had been as he had turned her away — as her parents had, leaving her to waste away. There is power in accepting that truth in needing no one but herself, armoring herself with it.
For some reason, it still stings that he cannot even give her this after the suffering he has caused her. ]
[Kylo Ren does not turn around then, when Rey boldly attempts to assert her feelings on the matter of his actions. He stays against the wall, uselessly hiding how he weeps like a child from her, as if the bond didn’t exist to betray him and his emotions. But somewhere between his wheezing, a scoff sneaks through. And another, followed by a hollow and quiet chuckle.
When he turns back around, there is a different quality to him — something vaguely unhinged behind the puffy, red, boyish and scarred face. His teeth click on every consonent he delivers to her.]
Funny.
[The bass monotone suggests that its not very funny at all.]
That is precisely what Snoke told me, about my father.
[But he’d lied about that too, hadn’t he? He spreads his hands, burned hand now bloody from how he had beat it into the wall and split the skin there.]
[ The comparison to his former master should sting, and yet it never burrows beneath her skin despite the injustice she regards it as, believing him to be unfair for relating her need for an end to her pain as anything close to Snoke's manipulative orders to slaughter his father. Beneath her deadened stare, something else dares to spark instead. Remembrance. Sentiment. She buries that quickly, just as he had buried Han Solo, Leia, Finn.
Han Solo is gone. It rests on her tongue, a segue into reiterating that she is much the same as Han — gone, left behind for the same ambition he faults Snoke for having possessed — but she can't bring herself to say it. It does too much damage, too much disrespect, to a man that had done too much for her. ]
Han Solo meant something.
[ To him — more than she had, her anger tells her. She isn't speaking solely of herself, of the galaxy, of Leia — but even that is true. Rey is no one now as she had been no one then, finding her only worth in retribution on Kylo Ren and the First Order. At the end of it all, however, they both know there would be no one left to miss her. No one to truly remember her. ]
Edited (bc i added an unnecessary comma and forgot to finish a thought and it was bugging me) 2019-08-29 08:51 (UTC)
[She doesn’t want to hear it, he knows. But Kylo Ren doesn’t much care for what Rey does and does not want to hear now. The memory her words trigger reminds him that there is no longer any room to bribe or threaten her. He is the Supreme Leader now. To allow her any command over him like this — it would mean all of it was for nothing. He had risen to protect himself from such things.
And yet here she was, tempting his sympathy, of which there should be none.]
I know you feel it. It still calls you to me, as it still calls me to you.
[Somewhere in that vacuum between them, Kylo Ren twines his hand around the bond and squeezes it. His heart twists in his chest for the trouble, a pain so sharp and crisp that it nearly doubles him over as he approaches the bed again.]
And you will betray yourself for it. Just as I did.
[That betrayal worked in his favor and brought Snoke low. Perhaps the same would happen to Rey, and his own reign would end. Or perhaps the poison will taste too sweet, now that they are together again.]
[ This she offers plainly and without passion. Without appreciation, truly, that their roles have reversed so poetically — so grotesquely. Ren's hope is a mere shadow of what she had known her own to be, bright-eyed and determined, and tainted by his own obsessive delusions.
Whatever he intends to provoke, it's the wrong answer. Whatever had come to the surface slips away before it can be coaxed out, the offer too insufficient when his crimes against her betray his sentiments. ]
That might have been true when I was someone else. Something else. Before I understood.
[ Before he taught her. He should be proud, she thinks, bitter and puzzled all at once for his refusal to truly believe it it, holding onto the pieces of her light had once touched. For all that he claims he had not wanted this outcome, it had been what he offered among the wreckage of Snoke's former reign.
He still doesn't understand, but he will.
Rey's breathing sputters for only a second, strangled by his vice grip on the bond before it slackens from his fatigue. She watches as it nearly crumples him, unmoved. The only sign she is affected at all is the flutter of her eyelids, trying to blink away the dark spots in her vision, the dizziness that wants to render her unconsciousness for a brief, agonizing moment.
Slowly, she exhales. ]
I was always meant to be alone. You showed me that.
this sentence is your last stop before non-conlandia
[He offers that concession, one word for all her proclamations. She'd misinterpreted his lesson, then -- she was always meant to be alone with him as far as he was concerned. They only ever needed one another.
But her interpretation didn't matter now. He had managed to capture her, and he made it clear that he wasn't going allow her to kill herself. She could find a way to enjoy his company, or she could be miserable until he was no longer around to keep her breathing. It didn't matter to him one way or another now.
Once he is in front of her at the edge of the bed again, he continues forth until he broaches her personal space -- no matter where she seeks refuge or how she pushes at him, he advances until he has her cornered.]
But you're not alone, Rey. You won't die before I do. And I won't die so long as you live.
[ He isn't there until he is. Rey's next blink brings him into focus, fading in and out of her disassociation, to realize he has eclipsed her — looming, imposing himself. It loses some of its effect due to her disconnect, but the intent is there, as clear as the soulless pit of his eyes peering back at her.
Waiting for her to succumb to prey instinct, she thinks, for him to enjoy the hunt. To award him a reason to fault his cruelty on her actions, seeking to justify himself. To seek her participation in this. Rey merely stares back, glassy-eyed. He cannot hurt her more than he has, cannot prove he cares for her less than he already has.
In the end, he is only making her more powerful. ]
I'm more alone than I have ever been.
[ He's shown her that, too. Her physical existence here means nothing. He is still clinging to that, it seems, to console himself. Still posturing himself as triumphant, unable to realize he cannot break her. It's a tired pattern that gains him no reaction as her eyes trail away to stare at the ceiling. ]
I suppose that will make all of this easy for you, then.
[Without resistance, climbing on the bed is easy. Nudging himself between her legs is easy. All it really is is a communication of intent -- though the outline of his cock is easily felt without distance between them, it is still flaccid. A betrayal and a comfort, perhaps, that he does not enjoy this as much as he seems to claim.
But its not really about his state of arousal -- not yet. He leans in to grab her biceps, using them to shift her further back and allow him more space on the bed to work with. He was not a small man, after all, but the bed was not designed in mind for multiple parties.
Without asking, his hand shifts to slip under her shirt to grope at her chest roughly. His weight makes it easy to lean down where she had once bared her neck to him, sinking his teeth there intimately, deaf to outside stimuli.]
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no subject
Well, if you won't fight...
[He reaches to untie one of her hands in a deliberately slow manner -- he has no doubt that she can outlast him in a game of patience, but she has done him the favor of nearly dislocating her shoulder prior to this moment. If she does, in fact, try to fight him...it should not be difficult to restrain her again. He'd just walk out with more bruises than he first anticipated.
And right now, that doesn't sound so bad. He was never one to shy away from physical pain -- quite the opposite, actually.]
I suppose we don't need these after all.
no subject
He's a fool. She would be a greater fool to act on impulse and reach for the lightsaber still buried within her cloak. If nothing else, he has done her the favor of wanting her to be awake before he tried to touch her. Waiting for an opportune moment is wiser.
Rey says nothing, though a flash of pain does spike between them as the weight of her arm drops — heavy from being in one position, sore from all of her thrashing. It jostles her shoulder again, an agonizing burst of pain, but she gives no voice to it beyond a grunt — even as fresh tears threaten to spring to her eyes, turning them glossy.
They never fall. Tears had never gotten her anywhere, after all. Instead, she focuses on drawing her arm back to her, watching him all the while to ensure it isn't a greater trick than it already is for his attempts to provoke her into action, observing him like an animal distrusting the hunter that had locked it in a cage and now thinks to free it. ]
no subject
And he is leaning over her to continue this observation, a shadow covering a good portion of her body as he digs for the familiar signs of Rey -- the fight, the belligerence, the survival instinct. He craves it, practically vibrates with the need to feel it in the bond again. So engrossed in it, he seems to have nearly forgotten his cause for recapturing her in the first place.
His focus is singular, enough that his commlink can be seen flashing on the banister away from them as he ignores yet another summons.
She hasn't struck him yet beyond that first kick. Hell, she hasn't even tried to struggle -- so he gets bolder. The hand that had been playing with her lower lip drags back to thread through her hair, which he casually examines like one might examine a favorite plant.]
You must be starving.
[It is unclear if he is talking about food, or something else.]
no subject
She hadn't had the heart to ever disband it. It's clear she has taken no better care of it — and herself, for that matter — than what had been strictly necessary to keep it free from dangling in her face, greasy from sweat and lack of proper hygiene, hanging in the middle of her spine. It hasn't deterred him, she notes, as she had hoped the state of her might.
It seems she was wrong. He is too desperate to find her unappealing, even wan and unwashed. Rey's dry throat works as she swallows, deliberately ignoring whatever suggestion she thinks she hears between the lines. Ignoring him, more than that, as she angles her face away to pay attention to rubbing feeling back into her arms.
She is convinced he will eventually stop once he gets no reaction. And if he will not stop ... She can take advantage of his current fixation. ]
I had all that I needed in the desert.
[ Enough to sustain herself on just enough nourishment to survive. Enough warm bodies if she needed the company, though she could never bring herself to want human contact again. Opening herself meant inevitably losing it. ]
no subject
[Not him. Not a family. No real connection — and for all Rey tries to deny that she doesn’t need those things, he knows that she lies. He knows because he lied too, until he could nor take it anymore and increased the search for her.
And certainly not enough food. He rises to his feet, intent on providing.]
I will be back.
[And after just a moment’s glance down at the discarded rope, Kylo Ren backs out of the room and locks the door behind him. His room, of course, is utterly bare bones: a bed with an imprint of the same position he has slept in every night with one crushed pillow that he seems to have been hugging. There are no photos on the wall, and only a calligraphy set poised on the table.
He returns before long with an MRE of sorts — fancier than anything Rey has likely had, and places the tray on the one table in the room. He also brings a wheeled IV, which he parks in the corner of the room.]
Eat.
no subject
He rises too quickly for her to dispute it, regardless. Rey is left staring at the door as he departs, waiting until the sound of his thudding footsteps has dulled before she rises. Locked, as she had suspected, but she couldn't have forgiven herself if she had not tried to seize the opportunity.
She returns to her place on his bed minutes before he returns, perched at its very edge in her refusal to get comfortable there. Kylo Ren has already convinced himself she belongs there, a fixture, a pet; she won't give him further reason to believe it. The room itself remains untouched and undisturbed, unwilling to risk rifling through it just yet. ]
There's no water.
[ Rey points that out bluntly once she has settled the tray on her lap, keen to observe all the ways in which he is lacking in caring for her well when she knows he would prefer gratitude. She's going to puke it up if she consumes it in its entirety, anyway. There won't be avoiding any of that after her stomach has settled into a routine of subsisting on scraps, unable to fully digest beyond those limits.
Petulantly, she doesn't warn him. It wouldn't do her any good when he'll shove his fingers down her throat and coerce her into eating, and she is not above forcing him to learn from his mistake of believing he knows best. ]
I'll choke without it.
no subject
My apologies, your highness.
[He manages to keep any sarcastic tone out of his reply, though the Force tells enough of that story.]
Will that be all?
no subject
[ Just barely, she prevents herself from continuing with that bratty rampage by reminding him she had not asked for the tray he has brought. If he should fault anyone for his lack of foresight, for his inadequacy, it should be himself.
But it gives him too large an opening to suggest she has made a request of him when she knows it isn't true. Demanding is easier and spares her from feeling as if she must rely on him, taking on that imperious demeanor with ease. It continues as she unscrews the canteen, stirring the container until the liquid sloshes against its edges, and sniffs — nose twitching like a rabbit, as if she can detect anything amiss.
He wouldn't poison her when he'd gone to such great lengths to keep her alive. Drugging her seems equally out of the question for how it would alter her mind, but she remains skeptical, distrusting — and eager to insult him by reminding him of that, even now.
The first sip she takes is cautious, but the next is messier, throating working to swallow what she drinks down with greed — liquid spilling out onto her chin, missed when she finally breaks away to wipe at her mouth with the back of her hand. ]
no subject
It seems your thirst would beg to differ.
[He offers her no smug smile, but the bond hides nothing now that they are in the same room again. It feels sticky, pleased by the fact that they've been reunited even while at odds with one another.]
Fortunately, there is plenty more where that came from.
no subject
Kylo Ren would only consider it another victory, and she knows well now that needs and desires are exploitable. He is not above dangling them above her head, using them as bait, to coerce her into behaving as he wishes, slotting her into the role he wants in order to indulge his fantasies.
Her disdain pollutes his satisfaction in the bond, working to overpower it. Carefully, she picks at the block of processed ingredients — meat and bread, if she had to guess, and snarks, ]
Did you expect me to thank you? I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
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[A blatant lie that he has no problem offering her. With that, he turns his back and heads to the counter on the other side of the table, intent on preparing more tea. It was supposed to be his, after all.]
If I wanted to be thanked, I would not have gone through so much trouble to hunt you down in the desert, Rey. I would have waited for you to seek me out. But we both know that was not going to happen.
[The use of her name is deliberate, reminding her that there is nothing to separate them now. Not names. Not familiarity. Nothing.]
So instead, you are my prisoner. Again. Until we both expire, this time.
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[ This time, she does not spare him the sharpness of that accusation, eager to remind him that he is not immune to the bond's properties. He cannot hide from her any more than she can conceal herself from him. As an advantage in her hands, it grants her the smugness he had not outwardly shown, dripping from every letter.
Despite soothing her parched throat, Rey's voice dips unnervingly, crackling and hoarse. ]
Even after all this time, you're so desperate to be seen. Desperate to be loved. [ It must hurt, knowing another creature of the darkness would not dare to grant him that. ] You're too afraid to be alone. Being without me killed you.
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She earns herself the outburst she had no doubt been craving to see, a slamming of the canteen that sends boiling water all over his hand and burns the skin there before he turns and rapidly closes the distance, looming over her and stopped short only by the meal he had given her -- a reminder that she was still weak, that he was still not at full strength, and that giving in too deeply to that anger could kill them both.
So instead, he's stuck breathing like an angry bantha, hovering over her and trembling with the urge to strangle her into the mattress.]
And yet here I stand. Being without you did not do a very good job of killing me.
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Rey's chin tips, almost regal in its gesture, to bare her throat. Not as a predator entrusting another with its weakest point, but goading him with its presentation, long and slender and easy to wrap his fingers around and squeeze as he is doubtlessly imagining. The bond feeds her that indulgent fantasy, too.
In the end, his imagination is sufficient if he will not give her the reality. It does nothing to free her, no, but it lends her the power he thinks he can strip from her. Emotionless in the face of his outburst, she looks on unblinkingly, listening to his stuttered breaths labored by unconcealed rage. ]
There are worst fates. [ A phantom burn stings the back of her hand, reddened from the damage he has done to himself. Rey doesn't react, though it's difficult to determine if it's obliviousness or numbness to the pain flaring there, seeping out of him and into her. ] You have me here, but you're still alone.
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It's over, Rey. The First Order has already won. What do you think killing us both will accomplish?
[He does not squeeze enough to be lethal, just enough to force her to struggle to breathe.]
You already said it -- we're already dead.
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Even her subconscious cannot endure the cruelty of imagining him kind, how he might have loved her in another life.
The tray scatters with a metallic clang, spilling its contents until they are strewn across the floor. Rey can scarcely hear it over the pounding in her ears and the harsh scrape of her breath, rasping and wheezing from her constricted trachea. At her sides, her fingers twitch and tremble, but never reach to struggle against his hold.
Neither does she waste her oxygen on breath. He would only mock her with her answer, her longing for peace — for herself, for Ben Solo. She presses her throat into the palm of his hand, instead, seeking out the grip of pain — gaze vacant, as if she has gone faraway, even as a tear drips down the corner of her eye. ]
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Finally, he let's go with a roar of frustration, swinging his fists to instead slam them heavily on the wall, along with what remains of his bulk. And he sits there, shaking with a mixture of anger and grief, fighting with exhaustion that suddenly grips him as he continues to bang his fists in an effort to work all the energy out of himself.
It takes a few minutes, but eventually his blind rage ends, and he is left leaning against the wall -- wheezing.]
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Disappointment sets in, but Rey quickly transforms it into rage. Rage at his cowardice, rage for his audacity to weep. It isn't for her, she decides, or what she has become. Similarly, she refuses to interpret it as the sting of his shame. Kylo Ren has never cried for her, after all — only himself. ]
If you ever cared for me, you would have finished it.
[ Her eyes are still red with an excess of tears she won't allow to follow, cheeks damp with the product of his own. It disrupts the flaking, dried trails of blood his wounds had left on her in the desert, as if trying to rinse her clean.
In the end, it's clear that she views his failure to follow through as a betrayal, as a declaration of how little she had ever meant to him. It should come as no surprise; she has long since embraced the lesson he had taught her on the Supremacy. She will always be alone, will always be disappointed, as she had been as he had turned her away — as her parents had, leaving her to waste away. There is power in accepting that truth in needing no one but herself, armoring herself with it.
For some reason, it still stings that he cannot even give her this after the suffering he has caused her. ]
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When he turns back around, there is a different quality to him — something vaguely unhinged behind the puffy, red, boyish and scarred face. His teeth click on every consonent he delivers to her.]
Funny.
[The bass monotone suggests that its not very funny at all.]
That is precisely what Snoke told me, about my father.
[But he’d lied about that too, hadn’t he? He spreads his hands, burned hand now bloody from how he had beat it into the wall and split the skin there.]
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Han Solo is gone. It rests on her tongue, a segue into reiterating that she is much the same as Han — gone, left behind for the same ambition he faults Snoke for having possessed — but she can't bring herself to say it. It does too much damage, too much disrespect, to a man that had done too much for her. ]
Han Solo meant something.
[ To him — more than she had, her anger tells her. She isn't speaking solely of herself, of the galaxy, of Leia — but even that is true. Rey is no one now as she had been no one then, finding her only worth in retribution on Kylo Ren and the First Order. At the end of it all, however, they both know there would be no one left to miss her. No one to truly remember her. ]
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[She doesn’t want to hear it, he knows. But Kylo Ren doesn’t much care for what Rey does and does not want to hear now. The memory her words trigger reminds him that there is no longer any room to bribe or threaten her. He is the Supreme Leader now. To allow her any command over him like this — it would mean all of it was for nothing. He had risen to protect himself from such things.
And yet here she was, tempting his sympathy, of which there should be none.]
I know you feel it. It still calls you to me, as it still calls me to you.
[Somewhere in that vacuum between them, Kylo Ren twines his hand around the bond and squeezes it. His heart twists in his chest for the trouble, a pain so sharp and crisp that it nearly doubles him over as he approaches the bed again.]
And you will betray yourself for it. Just as I did.
[That betrayal worked in his favor and brought Snoke low. Perhaps the same would happen to Rey, and his own reign would end. Or perhaps the poison will taste too sweet, now that they are together again.]
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[ This she offers plainly and without passion. Without appreciation, truly, that their roles have reversed so poetically — so grotesquely. Ren's hope is a mere shadow of what she had known her own to be, bright-eyed and determined, and tainted by his own obsessive delusions.
Whatever he intends to provoke, it's the wrong answer. Whatever had come to the surface slips away before it can be coaxed out, the offer too insufficient when his crimes against her betray his sentiments. ]
That might have been true when I was someone else. Something else. Before I understood.
[ Before he taught her. He should be proud, she thinks, bitter and puzzled all at once for his refusal to truly believe it it, holding onto the pieces of her light had once touched. For all that he claims he had not wanted this outcome, it had been what he offered among the wreckage of Snoke's former reign.
He still doesn't understand, but he will.
Rey's breathing sputters for only a second, strangled by his vice grip on the bond before it slackens from his fatigue. She watches as it nearly crumples him, unmoved. The only sign she is affected at all is the flutter of her eyelids, trying to blink away the dark spots in her vision, the dizziness that wants to render her unconsciousness for a brief, agonizing moment.
Slowly, she exhales. ]
I was always meant to be alone. You showed me that.
this sentence is your last stop before non-conlandia
[He offers that concession, one word for all her proclamations. She'd misinterpreted his lesson, then -- she was always meant to be alone with him as far as he was concerned. They only ever needed one another.
But her interpretation didn't matter now. He had managed to capture her, and he made it clear that he wasn't going allow her to kill herself. She could find a way to enjoy his company, or she could be miserable until he was no longer around to keep her breathing. It didn't matter to him one way or another now.
Once he is in front of her at the edge of the bed again, he continues forth until he broaches her personal space -- no matter where she seeks refuge or how she pushes at him, he advances until he has her cornered.]
But you're not alone, Rey. You won't die before I do. And I won't die so long as you live.
[His smile is a small and cruel thing.]
It's just us now.
choo choo or should i say yeethaw
Waiting for her to succumb to prey instinct, she thinks, for him to enjoy the hunt. To award him a reason to fault his cruelty on her actions, seeking to justify himself. To seek her participation in this. Rey merely stares back, glassy-eyed. He cannot hurt her more than he has, cannot prove he cares for her less than he already has.
In the end, he is only making her more powerful. ]
I'm more alone than I have ever been.
[ He's shown her that, too. Her physical existence here means nothing. He is still clinging to that, it seems, to console himself. Still posturing himself as triumphant, unable to realize he cannot break her. It's a tired pattern that gains him no reaction as her eyes trail away to stare at the ceiling. ]
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[Without resistance, climbing on the bed is easy. Nudging himself between her legs is easy. All it really is is a communication of intent -- though the outline of his cock is easily felt without distance between them, it is still flaccid. A betrayal and a comfort, perhaps, that he does not enjoy this as much as he seems to claim.
But its not really about his state of arousal -- not yet. He leans in to grab her biceps, using them to shift her further back and allow him more space on the bed to work with. He was not a small man, after all, but the bed was not designed in mind for multiple parties.
Without asking, his hand shifts to slip under her shirt to grope at her chest roughly. His weight makes it easy to lean down where she had once bared her neck to him, sinking his teeth there intimately, deaf to outside stimuli.]
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